Porn and feminism continued...

I have been meaning to get back to the porn issue ever since my previous post sparked so many thought-provoking comments (and great links - see here for those interested).

And today being a day that I've only had to reheat my cup of tea once (so far), I am finally getting on to it. That said, I started this post at 10am this morning and now it's almost 7pm, but we get there in the end, don't we?...

Some of you may have since watched this fairly heated discussion on SlowTV between Gail Dines, Kate Holden, Catharine Lumby and Leslie Cannold. It's worth reading the comments as much as watch the debate.

Among the responses to my post, were these questions from Damon Young: Can women dress in lingerie and not be objects of a 'male gaze'? And when they dress in slacks, blouse and jacket, and grow their pubic hair, do they necessarily avoid this 'gaze'?

I think what he's asking is: Can anything or anyone avoid some objectification? And can banning porn fix this inevitability? (Am I right?!)

Not being an academic, I come at these issues from more of an intuitive/experiential position, and so perhaps using Mulvey's term was a bit throwaway and lazy of me, though the idea of girls being raised to be conscious of the 'male gaze' (and even exploiting the supposed power that this gives them) has always made sense to me...

Is there anything wrong with a woman wearing lingerie with her partner because it's fun to play a role, to play with the 'objectification' or 'distancing' this creates? No. That's not what I'm saying.

But surely there is a big difference between that and an anonymous woman in lingerie being spread across a billboard to sell soft drink...

And another big step away again to a porn video in which a woman is exploited and abused for the sake of turning people on.

And I don't think the issue is whether the actors involved feel empowered or not; perhaps the porn model is happy in her work and perhaps she's getting paid squillions for it, who knows. The point is - if there is a narrative of vistimisation and degradation, do we want this to go unquestioned?

More to the point here, shouldn't parents be aware of the increasing need to help contextualise the sexual content our children might be coming across on the internet?

I don't agree with all Gail Dines says, I sometimes feel repelled by the way she says it, and I'm not sure that all of her proposed solutions are workable. But I respect her concerns that young people might be coming across complex sexual material before they have the maturity or experience to process it or put it in perspective regarding what's 'normal', or real.

I'm not anti-porn as a whole, but I do sympathise with Dines' broader concerns about the 'pornification' of mainstream culture - that is, the way the pornography industry has influenced pop culture and risks distorting our concepts of sex and sexuality.

I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the normalisation of hardcore sex acts, and the promotion of unrealistic expectations about how we (especially women) should look, is a growing problem. This, to me, is a matter worthy of our concern and people shouldn't be dismissed as prudes or wowsers for raising the matter.

But mostly, I see it as part of a general drift away, culturally, from what's real; from the joy of blindly feeling our way into things, no matter how clumsily, from a place of curiosity and self-discovery.

The ready availability of extreme porn, and the impact that seems to be having on some people, I see as part of the general problem of internet-induced distraction and dissatisfaction (as you, Damon, discuss so well in your book) - a lack of genuine connectedness and integrity about the way we live.

I don't know the answers, or where this leaves us. Except perhaps with the question: How are we, as individuals and as a society, going to learn discipline and self-restraint in an era of all-too-instant gratification? And I'm not talking about real-life sex here!