Utterly disgusting behavior obviously. One note on one of the articles “experts”
One common trope of the pornography that these gooners consume has men ejaculating over women’s bodies, faces and hair – acts that, Lankford said, have no basis in evolutionary biology and are difficult to interpret as anything other than demeaning to the women.
This is both obviously wrong and so completely misses the point of how generic porn is misogynistic/what is going on here. I actually would like to never hear criminologists and “evo psych” weirdos takes on sex.
It’s more of a puritanical analysis that serves to be misogynist in its own way.
Porn is itself misogynist, certainly as produced as a commodity under capitalism, and sex work is expanded by capital as a sign of gendered impoverishment. And it impacts not just women, but all those systematically hyperexploited. Very, very few sex workers are simply working a job because they have other reasonable employment options. Most are trafficked.
The consumption of porn does spread misogyny, but the people in question are fantasizing about and acting on sexual assaults, which is a very particular corner of the internet that is already misogynist in its own other ways as well. These are the most hateful people, the most dehumanizing of women, and it’s not about seeing some “outrageous” sex acts in commercial porn and trying to replicate them. They find a community of like-minded misogynistically violent people and share their assaults.
At various points in European history, these would be people openly tolerated by the state to be doing regular nightly raids and assaults on women as roving bands. If the target is women, it is usually tolerated by the bourgeois state by default, as their marginalization serves a “useful” ongoing function in driving down wages and the reproduction of wage labor.
The puritanical analysis flips this around to an extent and makes it about labeling somewhat innocuous sex acts as inherently degrading, a decision that makes sex itself a degrading act that is inevitably turned back on women et al as a way to oppress them and humanity more generally.
I think your analysis is overall very good but I want to flag one thing
Very, very few sex workers are simply working a job because they have other reasonable employment options. Most are trafficked.
Is a bad take. The org I am a part of actively organizes sex workers among others (both hookers and dancers, not so much porn actors/models) and probably a quarter of our cadres are such. A large majority of the sex workers we organize with in our specific local area consider their work preferable to other jobs under capitalism, for a variety of reasons. Conditions vary widely from region to region and from industry to industry within the exceptionally broad category of sex work, much as the specific experience of manufacturing workers will vary wildly based on region, industry etc. Broad and inaccurate generalizations are not necessary to argue that sex workers face unique forms of exploitation under patriarchal capitalism.
It’s important to understand that your experience is the slim minority. If the typical case were that it was work like any other job (i.e. not uniquely coerced) then we should of course consider it like other forms of wages labor and prioritize a rejection of the harmful social aspects surround it rather than the thing in itself as it usually exists. To attempt work to divorce it from its material roots in systemic capitalist misogyny (sex as a means of last resort for gendered economic violence, the escalation of proletarisn division via the establishment of misogynist mores and associations). I do appreciate efforts to destigmatize in isolation, it’s important to work to divorce a socialist analysis of sex work from those exact mores socially ingrained to say it’s wrong on puritanical grounds.
But this is not the typical case. The typical case is more extreme forms of coercion than face the typical wage workers in their own societies, and of course especially male wage workers. It more often is slavery than wage work. You likely deal most often with the most state legitimated forms. You likely also encounter some less state legitimated forms, wherein failure to comply with your boss’s demands comes with a threat of direct physical violence or death. In that limited context it’s easier to see a path forward through further legitimation and (always) industry expansion, i.e. attempt to turn a black market into one regulated explicitly by the state and ostensibly with identical worker protections as everyone else.
I do not of course know everything about your experience, but I would guess you work less often with those with stolen passports, with servants forced into unexpected sexual aspects of “employment” (again tied up in immigration or other legal status), with abused partners, with children.
I want to also note that there are principled communist orgs against the expansion of sex work and many are made up of or founded by sex workers. Some of the positions I’m sharing come directly from them.
Edit: I think I maybe wasn’t clear so I just want to say your work in organizing sex workers is great and so is them being in your cadre. I also don’t want to imply that you are simply “expansionist”.
I think both can be true. I always like to imagine: If we had luxury-space-communism, would these sex-workers still be doing sex-work?
Some absolutely would be, some absolutely would not be. Based on vibes, I think most wouldn’t, and that’s a problem.
But I think the same can be said for accountants, or wait-staff, or most other professions. The problem is the “need to earn a living” that is pushed on people by society.
Doesn’t really matter what entirely different conditions would theoretically produce. These ones produce coercion, and not just typical wage slave coercion. The sex industry is rife with it, it’s inseparable from it as of today.
Though even if we did look past that, there’s some rhetoric that has been used by basically every communist ex-sex worker I’ve met. It goes like this: under capitalism wage labor is wage slavery, there is a strong coercive component. Then what is coerced sex? And sex for a wage? The answer would trigger the content filter.
Basically all porn adopts misogynist trappings and framings, unfortunately. I intentionally did not add that framing. Misogyny is the primary marginalization at work here.
The establishment/reinforcement of a (implicitly or explicitly gendered) sexual hierarchy where traits deemed feminine are the object of submission, degradation, domination, ridicule, and undermining of consent. These traits tend to be intentionally played up to have exactly those effects, as they are or become fetishes.
If all involved are men, the direct economic misogynistic relation is missing (systematic impoverishment of women, their casting into the role of sexual servitude, human sex trafficking overwhelmingly women victims), sure. Though indirectly it tends to be the same industry, the same companies.
To be clear I’m not kink shaming, I’m focusing on the ways in which misogyny exists in both the production and consumption of porn, and nobody is a bad person because they watched some random porn video.
The establishment/reinforcement of a (implicitly or explicitly gendered) sexual hierarchy where traits deemed feminine are the object of submission, degradation, domination, ridicule, and undermining of consent.
I hate these tropes enough that I have no desire to engage with porn that uses them, and despite this I have no shortage of suitable material, so I feel like “basically all” is doing a lot of lifting. Or maybe I’ve just surrounded myself so thoroughly by a tiny bubble that it looks a lot bigger to me than it is
I think it’s one of those things where misogyny is so deeply normalized that it can be easily missed even by those who are committed against misogyny. I’m not saying you personally necessarily missed it nor do I want to drag through your own habits, but if you did miss it you wouldn’t be the first - and still wouldn’t be a bad person for having done so. There is also an extent to which it can be relatively harmless compared to the more explicit examples, audiences, and cultures.
For an example in a different topic, consider the trope of BIPOC people getting killed off first in a movie. It implicitly devalues the lives of BIPOC people, a pervasive racist sentiment, but is every single film that has done it equally guilty of racism? Of course not. And it may even be a decision made for other reasons entirely or even as a critique of the idea or to mean something more deeply about the film itself (
spoiler: parts of a certain horror movie
like in Midsommar
). But we can still say that the trope, and how pervasive it is, demonstrates and perpetuates a deeper societal commitment to racism.
Not a question we can resolve conclusively since obviously I’m not gonna share my stuff here, but this is a genuinely interesting bit of cultural criticism.
Utterly disgusting behavior obviously. One note on one of the articles “experts”
This is both obviously wrong and so completely misses the point of how generic porn is misogynistic/what is going on here. I actually would like to never hear criminologists and “evo psych” weirdos takes on sex.
It’s more of a puritanical analysis that serves to be misogynist in its own way.
Porn is itself misogynist, certainly as produced as a commodity under capitalism, and sex work is expanded by capital as a sign of gendered impoverishment. And it impacts not just women, but all those systematically hyperexploited. Very, very few sex workers are simply working a job because they have other reasonable employment options. Most are trafficked.
The consumption of porn does spread misogyny, but the people in question are fantasizing about and acting on sexual assaults, which is a very particular corner of the internet that is already misogynist in its own other ways as well. These are the most hateful people, the most dehumanizing of women, and it’s not about seeing some “outrageous” sex acts in commercial porn and trying to replicate them. They find a community of like-minded misogynistically violent people and share their assaults.
At various points in European history, these would be people openly tolerated by the state to be doing regular nightly raids and assaults on women as roving bands. If the target is women, it is usually tolerated by the bourgeois state by default, as their marginalization serves a “useful” ongoing function in driving down wages and the reproduction of wage labor.
The puritanical analysis flips this around to an extent and makes it about labeling somewhat innocuous sex acts as inherently degrading, a decision that makes sex itself a degrading act that is inevitably turned back on women et al as a way to oppress them and humanity more generally.
I think your analysis is overall very good but I want to flag one thing
Is a bad take. The org I am a part of actively organizes sex workers among others (both hookers and dancers, not so much porn actors/models) and probably a quarter of our cadres are such. A large majority of the sex workers we organize with in our specific local area consider their work preferable to other jobs under capitalism, for a variety of reasons. Conditions vary widely from region to region and from industry to industry within the exceptionally broad category of sex work, much as the specific experience of manufacturing workers will vary wildly based on region, industry etc. Broad and inaccurate generalizations are not necessary to argue that sex workers face unique forms of exploitation under patriarchal capitalism.
It’s important to understand that your experience is the slim minority. If the typical case were that it was work like any other job (i.e. not uniquely coerced) then we should of course consider it like other forms of wages labor and prioritize a rejection of the harmful social aspects surround it rather than the thing in itself as it usually exists. To attempt work to divorce it from its material roots in systemic capitalist misogyny (sex as a means of last resort for gendered economic violence, the escalation of proletarisn division via the establishment of misogynist mores and associations). I do appreciate efforts to destigmatize in isolation, it’s important to work to divorce a socialist analysis of sex work from those exact mores socially ingrained to say it’s wrong on puritanical grounds.
But this is not the typical case. The typical case is more extreme forms of coercion than face the typical wage workers in their own societies, and of course especially male wage workers. It more often is slavery than wage work. You likely deal most often with the most state legitimated forms. You likely also encounter some less state legitimated forms, wherein failure to comply with your boss’s demands comes with a threat of direct physical violence or death. In that limited context it’s easier to see a path forward through further legitimation and (always) industry expansion, i.e. attempt to turn a black market into one regulated explicitly by the state and ostensibly with identical worker protections as everyone else.
I do not of course know everything about your experience, but I would guess you work less often with those with stolen passports, with servants forced into unexpected sexual aspects of “employment” (again tied up in immigration or other legal status), with abused partners, with children.
I want to also note that there are principled communist orgs against the expansion of sex work and many are made up of or founded by sex workers. Some of the positions I’m sharing come directly from them.
Edit: I think I maybe wasn’t clear so I just want to say your work in organizing sex workers is great and so is them being in your cadre. I also don’t want to imply that you are simply “expansionist”.
I think both can be true. I always like to imagine: If we had luxury-space-communism, would these sex-workers still be doing sex-work?
Some absolutely would be, some absolutely would not be. Based on vibes, I think most wouldn’t, and that’s a problem.
But I think the same can be said for accountants, or wait-staff, or most other professions. The problem is the “need to earn a living” that is pushed on people by society.
Doesn’t really matter what entirely different conditions would theoretically produce. These ones produce coercion, and not just typical wage slave coercion. The sex industry is rife with it, it’s inseparable from it as of today.
Though even if we did look past that, there’s some rhetoric that has been used by basically every communist ex-sex worker I’ve met. It goes like this: under capitalism wage labor is wage slavery, there is a strong coercive component. Then what is coerced sex? And sex for a wage? The answer would trigger the content filter.
Here is an article that touches on that phrasing and also directly answers your statements. Content warning: sexual abuse. https://thistlefarms.org/blogs/learn/articles?srsltid=AfmBOopWRF4cNLXjqrjwQuknMCh5H-TKVxDpv2c7E0RP_d_nd5xUH9Kw
you should specify hetero porn made for straight men if that’s what you mean. when the puritanical crackdowns come they hurt queer people first.
Basically all porn adopts misogynist trappings and framings, unfortunately. I intentionally did not add that framing. Misogyny is the primary marginalization at work here.
What misogynist trappings and framings specifically does “basically all porn” adopt?
The establishment/reinforcement of a (implicitly or explicitly gendered) sexual hierarchy where traits deemed feminine are the object of submission, degradation, domination, ridicule, and undermining of consent. These traits tend to be intentionally played up to have exactly those effects, as they are or become fetishes.
If all involved are men, the direct economic misogynistic relation is missing (systematic impoverishment of women, their casting into the role of sexual servitude, human sex trafficking overwhelmingly women victims), sure. Though indirectly it tends to be the same industry, the same companies.
To be clear I’m not kink shaming, I’m focusing on the ways in which misogyny exists in both the production and consumption of porn, and nobody is a bad person because they watched some random porn video.
I hate these tropes enough that I have no desire to engage with porn that uses them, and despite this I have no shortage of suitable material, so I feel like “basically all” is doing a lot of lifting. Or maybe I’ve just surrounded myself so thoroughly by a tiny bubble that it looks a lot bigger to me than it is
I think it’s one of those things where misogyny is so deeply normalized that it can be easily missed even by those who are committed against misogyny. I’m not saying you personally necessarily missed it nor do I want to drag through your own habits, but if you did miss it you wouldn’t be the first - and still wouldn’t be a bad person for having done so. There is also an extent to which it can be relatively harmless compared to the more explicit examples, audiences, and cultures.
For an example in a different topic, consider the trope of BIPOC people getting killed off first in a movie. It implicitly devalues the lives of BIPOC people, a pervasive racist sentiment, but is every single film that has done it equally guilty of racism? Of course not. And it may even be a decision made for other reasons entirely or even as a critique of the idea or to mean something more deeply about the film itself (
spoiler: parts of a certain horror movie
like in Midsommar
). But we can still say that the trope, and how pervasive it is, demonstrates and perpetuates a deeper societal commitment to racism.
Not a question we can resolve conclusively since obviously I’m not gonna share my stuff here, but this is a genuinely interesting bit of cultural criticism.
Sadly not surprising, either. Lots of people will go to incredible lengths to explain sexualized violence without mentioning patriarchy.