Poll: Can pornography exist in a sexism free society?

[Duster]

I think this entire topic is comedy gold.

 

[Dagda Mor]

I think you worded the poll choices poorly. You should ask if it WOULD exist in a sexism-free society--the first option should say, "Pornography would exist as it does now," the second, "Pornography would exist, but some types wouldn't," and the third, "Pornography wouldn't exist at all."

As for my opinion on the matter, sometimes people want to be seen as a sex object. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that people don't want to NEVER be seen as a sex object, but that they should only be seen as a sex object when they want to.

 

[Shadow flame master]

Porn is going to exist even after the eventual heat-death of the universe, it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. People might make it harder to watch it, but seeing as it is nothing more as a fantasy that MANY people enjoy, people will find a way to make it and watch it.

People enjoyed it in the past, are enjoying now, and will enjoy it in a sexism free society. (I also have doubts that there will ever be a truly sexism free society, let alone a racism free one.)

 

[Gorrath]

Many of the portrayals of women and men in pornography, especially hardcore pornography, are sexist and objectifying in nature. It's okay to say that they are and discuss why this is. It's also perfectly fine to state that, just because a portrayal is sexist/objectifying that it is also perfectly okay. Not every instance of sexism or objectification is inherently morally or ethically wrong.

To you it is sexist/objectifying so yes, it is okay to state that. To some people it is simply attracting/pleasing. Since this becomes a matter of perspective. I don't think there is anything wrong with discussing it necessarily. I think the problem was that I flew off the handle and took it as another example of someone saying "Porn is sexist and it can only exist in a society with sexism". So my fault big time there and very, very stupid of me for doing it.

Actually, I'd say it is often both. Sexism and objectification to many people is attractive and pleasing. To say it is sexist or objectifying isn't simply a matter of perspective I think, since there's a lot of porn which is explicitly designed with sexism and/or objectification as major themes. One would be hard pressed to argue that a porn production who's central theme includes objectification is not objectifying; it's tautological. But we can and should differentiate between systemic sexism in broader society and specific sexism that might exist in media. The former is almost always an ethical issue while the latter often isn't.

I think a lot of people link sexism with ethical issues automatically. That tends to make people view all sexism as something that needs to be fought against. This also tends to make people react defensively when something they enjoy is accused of being sexist. That reaction is a reasonable one if there's an ethical problem at stake. That's why I've taken to highlighting, as often as is appropriate, that sexism and objectification are not inherently problematic. Anyone who wishes to claim that something is sexist and ethically problematic needs to do more than just call something sexist.

To address your last line specifically, sexism can exist in a society that does not engage in systemic sexism, and that's why porn can be sexist and still be a-ok. Thanks for your level headed response, I appreciate you taking the time. Cheers!

 

[loa]

I don't see how a "sexism free society" would mean everyone magically loses their sex drive.

Outright banning pornography might be extreme, I realize, but perhaps making more forms of it illegal and punishable much like child pornography would be the way to go? For example, porn that simulates a women being raped/sexually assaulted by a man would be illegal due to concerns that men who view it might think of women more as sexual objects versus people.

Careful there.
The reason why child pornography is illegal is because to make it, a child has to be abused.
There is no "moral" reason behind its ban based on the subject matter alone no matter how much you kick and scream that it is so.
NO simulation should be banned. That thought crime stuff belongs into 1984, not in the real world.

 

[AtomChicken]

Porn is porn, and important, it has been held as First Amendment speech repeatedly.

I think it's important to realize that while Porn maybe distasteful to some along ethical grounds, doesn't mean it should be banned. Unless its the deplorable and actually illegal stuff, then Porn has every right to exist as a statement of sex and free speech.

 

[Amir Kondori]

You can get very different results depending on how you word a question. There is a whole science to it. To whit, the second option, "Pornography can exist, but certain types should be outlawed", saw a very small percentage of people pick as their response, yet if the same statement were reworded to say "Pornography can exist, but certain types, such as child pornography, should be outlawed" I believe it would have received the most votes.

To the question at hand, pornography involving consenting people of age should be a-ok in a free society. A free society should have a light approach to regulating morality. As long as children are not featured, as our society believes children are not developed enough to fully render consent, nor animals, which obviously cannot render consent in any verifiable way, then I am all for a free for all.

Now society does have an interest in regulating the production of pornography, i.e. mandatory testing of actors, in order to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. That, along with consent, is where regulation should end.

 

[vid87]

... I don't really know how to answer the question as given.

To be honest, I used to be a lot more relaxed about porn than I am now.

Can't look at it myself, or at least, haven't found any that doesn't usually make me feel slightly sick, rather than aroused, but that's a minor issue.

What really made me aware of why perhaps it's more of an issue than I originally thought is... Because I was abused (arguably even raped) by a guy... Who for some reason I let come back anyway.
It was actually possible to have a reasonable conversation with him though, and ironically I wouldn't say he's a horrible person... But what I did come to understand was largely from a moment he decided to try and show me porn...
I'm sure he was hoping it would excite me somehow, but instead it just caused me to have a sudden realisation.
His lack of regard for my feelings, and weird ideas of what was possible to do sexually (many of which made me quite uncomfortable) were quite clearly related to the porn he had been watching.
It became obvious he had unrealistic expectations about sex, because he was assuming that what he saw in porn could be applied directly to reality. (When in fact porn is in many ways just as fake as any other kind of 'entertainment' media)...

That realisation really forced me to stop and think about this...

However, all it's really done is left me rather confused. I don't like banning things as a principle, yet I can see, and have first-hand experience of the subtle negative effects it can have...

I just... Don't know what to think, at this point.

That unfortunately seems to be a lack of perspective on the guy's part if he's so tunnel-visioned that he can't acknowledge other people's feelings. It's hard to say what causes that kind of mentality but I believe there are studies that conclude far too much porn viewing causes changes in the brain I believe similar to drug use in that it alters brain sensitivity to neurotransmitters. How it could go about altering perception and attitudes I'm can't say for sure, but too much of something without perspective is never a good thing. I agree with you that banning and censorship do little good in principle, but there are things that, left unchecked, can indeed cause harm. It's definitely confusing and doesn't have a clear answer, but it's why we should be having this debate.


CAPTCHA - "Open Wide" ...must you, here?

 

[CaitSeith]

I think pornography would exist, because in a society without any real sexism, sex wouldn't be something to be ashamed of. Of course that would be an utopia where everybody gets treated fair and everybody can reach the happiness they desire, without thinking if they neighbours have more than they deserve.

PS catpcha: agree to disagree No more to say...

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

The way I see it, pornography centers around objectification. For the time you're viewing whatever form of pornography you're looking at, the person/people you're viewing exists soley for your sexual gratification.

Bullshit.

By that logic, any actor in any media only exists to be objectified. Clark Gregg who plays Coleson on Agents of Shield only exists for my personal entertainment. Not to make art, not to play a role - because I enjoy his acting, I objectify him.

I don't think anyone would agree that Clark Gregg - or any other actor - only exists as an object - a source of entertainment. Therefore, the idea that a woman (or man) in a porno only exists to be objectified is equally absurd.

This is one of my many, many problems with that particular Second Wave philosophy. The one objectifying porn actors are the people who think that it is impossible to view them without objectifying them.

That said, would I like to see more protections in place to help porn actors? Sure. Would I like to see more sex-positive features in porn? Sure.

I'd also like to live in a society where being a porn actor wasn't considered shameful. Where people didn't feel the need to hide their sexual desires, but were open and honest about them. Fix that, and you won't have to worry about the rest - it will fix itself.

tl;dr: A truly sexism free society would have MORE porn, not less, because no one would find sex shameful.

 

[HardkorSB]

With the discussion about sexism/objectification in society fair hot nowadays, there's a question I've been wondering about that I've never seen brought up before. Namely, is it possible for a form of media whose entire existence centers around sexual objectification properly exist in a society that is either free of sexim, or desires to be?

I think that most people rambling about a "sexism free world" don't know anything about human biology and how sex drive works.
Being attracted to a person's body is a normal natural thing.
Our genes are basically telling us that that particular person is good for mating.
The only way people will stop doing that is if you change human DNA and by doing that you could possibly remove our desire to reproduce and end our species.

I know putting a ban on porn would go about as well as Prohibition in the 1930s, but think about this concept in a more ideal form versus an actual form.

It would be worse.
Alcohol isn't needed to survive, sex is.

Outright banning pornography might be extreme, I realize, but perhaps making more forms of it illegal and punishable much like child pornography would be the way to go? For example, porn that simulates a women being raped/sexually assaulted by a man would be illegal due to concerns that men who view it might think of women more as sexual objects versus people.

Regarding child pornography, I honestly don't have any problems with animated stuff.
No child is being harmed and the people who are attracted to kids can get off without harming anyone.
With simulated rape, the key word is SIMULATED. It's not real so what's the problem?
We watch movies and play games with simulated murder and we don't turn to murderers because of it.

Final note, a lot of people don't have sexual partners yet they still want to satisfy their sex drives.
That's what masturbation is for and porn makes masturbating more pleasant.
If we could just have sex anytime and any place with anyone, we wouldn't need porn but we can't so we do need it.

 

[babinro]

Can it? Of course...I'm sure plenty of it already exists. Simply display the genuine affections of two consenting partners doing whatever they want to each other.

A lot porn tends to objectify both making one appear superior often through social stereotypes. Sexism seems to exist in nearly all sexual fantasies since they often focus on one persons power over another.

Out of curiosity though, do you find the second part of your statement to be a problem? A lot of people seem to think any objectification or sexism in media is automatically an ethical problem. It's a position I've argued against before. I just can't tell from your statement if you do or do not think it's a problem in this instance.

Personally, not at all.
My view may be overly simplistic but I simply see this as a fantasy.

This is not a display of sexism that is trying to teach us a moral or ethical lesson. I don't really know how to explain myself here other than to say it's the same way I view gaming. I can play God of War and accept that Kratos is not morally justified in murdering 100's of people yet I'll have fun with it because it's for entertainment. I don't feel the need to invoke real life morals and ethics to gaming, movies, books or t.v because they are portraying a fantasy.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Banning it would just criminalize even more people. It wouldn't make porn go away. However, it needs to be regulated a lot better than it is now. I know a lot of people think that women wouldn't do porn if they didn't want to, but it's not that simple. I saw a video of a former porn actress on YouTube some time ago and it made me really sad:

While porn viewers may not be sexist, men that work in the porn industry are more often than not scum of the fuckin' Earth.

 

[Gorrath]

Can it? Of course...I'm sure plenty of it already exists. Simply display the genuine affections of two consenting partners doing whatever they want to each other.

A lot porn tends to objectify both making one appear superior often through social stereotypes. Sexism seems to exist in nearly all sexual fantasies since they often focus on one persons power over another.

Out of curiosity though, do you find the second part of your statement to be a problem? A lot of people seem to think any objectification or sexism in media is automatically an ethical problem. It's a position I've argued against before. I just can't tell from your statement if you do or do not think it's a problem in this instance.

Personally, not at all.
My view may be overly simplistic but I simply see this as a fantasy.

This is not a display of sexism that is trying to teach us a moral or ethical lesson. I don't really know how to explain myself here other than to say it's the same way I view gaming. I can play God of War and accept that Kratos is not morally justified in murdering 100's of people yet I'll have fun with it because it's for entertainment. I don't feel the need to invoke real life morals and ethics to gaming, movies, books or t.v because they are portraying a fantasy.

Great, thanks for the clarification! Sounds like you and I have a similar take on the matter. Cheers and thanks for the response.

 

[loa]

... I don't really know how to answer the question as given.

To be honest, I used to be a lot more relaxed about porn than I am now.

Can't look at it myself, or at least, haven't found any that doesn't usually make me feel slightly sick, rather than aroused, but that's a minor issue.

What really made me aware of why perhaps it's more of an issue than I originally thought is... Because I was abused (arguably even raped) by a guy... Who for some reason I let come back anyway.
It was actually possible to have a reasonable conversation with him though, and ironically I wouldn't say he's a horrible person... But what I did come to understand was largely from a moment he decided to try and show me porn...
I'm sure he was hoping it would excite me somehow, but instead it just caused me to have a sudden realisation.
His lack of regard for my feelings, and weird ideas of what was possible to do sexually (many of which made me quite uncomfortable) were quite clearly related to the porn he had been watching.
It became obvious he had unrealistic expectations about sex, because he was assuming that what he saw in porn could be applied directly to reality. (When in fact porn is in many ways just as fake as any other kind of 'entertainment' media)...

That realisation really forced me to stop and think about this...

However, all it's really done is left me rather confused. I don't like banning things as a principle, yet I can see, and have first-hand experience of the subtle negative effects it can have...

I just... Don't know what to think, at this point.

I'd chalk that one more up to a sexually repressed society than porn.
We are terrified of sex so we never talk about it, especially not to children. How can you even form realistic expectations that way?
While it is true that porn -like any fiction- can create unrealistic expectations of sex, strict regulations will most likely not fix that and may even make it worse since sweeping it under the rug is the core problem to begin with.
So I think the key to solving this issue is communication, not regulation.

 

[default]

I don't see why it's a problem. Two people have sex, film it and put it on the internet for people to watch, what does that have to do with gender or sexism? EVERYONE on the screen is a piece of meat. Yes, the vast majority of porn is aimed at men because the vast majority of men DO watch porn, as opposed to a lot of women who don't. Just generally depends on different needs and interests I guess. There is still a lot of porn for ladies out there where the men are objectified as much as women are. It's just an inherent part of the game. Who gives a shit about their personality when you're trying to jack off? Sexism shouldn't come into it.

 

[Inglorious891]

Uh...yes? Seriously, who argues against porn unless the people involved have been forced into it?

My mind is cast back to 2013 when Iceland was propsing a ban on the sale and distrubution of pornography both online and off over concerns on the effects it had on children and the male population. I realize that proposition went nowhere fast, and for good reason, but I was reminded of that recently and it got me thinking about the subject of pornography causing objectification, and what people think of that.

Outright banning pornography might be extreme, I realize, but perhaps making more forms of it illegal and punishable much like child pornography would be the way to go? For example, porn that simulates a women being raped/sexually assaulted by a man would be illegal due to concerns that men who view it might think of women more as sexual objects versus people.

Huge red flag for me here. You're going down the track of, "media made them do it!" If a man with a healthy mind thinks of a woman as a sexual object, this is an opinion that was most certainly informed by more than just his watching of some porn. Even if you can find an instance or instances of men raping women because they wanted to live out a sexual fantasy they saw in a porno, arguing that we should ban the porn would be akin to saying the same about someone who shot up a mall after playing CoD.

The effect media has on people can't be argued against; obviously, what we see on our monitors/in books/etc. has an effect on the way we live and think. Recently, the effects media has on the way the male population thinks of the other half of the population is being discussed more and more, with the general consencious being that too much media exposure that shows women in dehumanizing/objectifing forms causes men to view the whole gender with less respect. With that thought in mind, wouldn't pornography be the biggest source of this ill as it focused purely around present women as sexual objects?

In the end, only insane people would try to recreate pornos in real life, but if someone said that frequent causes men to think of women more as sexual objects then people, I could see where they're coming from. Wouldn't agree with them, but I can see how they'd reach that conclusion.

Pornography frequently involves acts of abuse and mistreatment of the actors and actresses. When the poll says that porn should stay as it is, does that mean including that?

Depends what you want done about that mistreatment. If you are Ok with it, then pornography, as it is now, wouldn't change, but if you find such things dangeriously objectifying, and you want such things to go away, then you'd want pornography to change.

 

[Rblade]

aside from stuff that is, you know, illegal, like human trafficing and slave labor. Ofcourse it shouldn't. Because aside from those cases all you are doing is 1. Making men, on the whole, more sexually frustrated and 2. Limit women in the ways they can choose to make money. Both clearly bad and utterly pointless. Because assuming you can control the excesses porn is the very most private exchange between creator and consumer that absolutely nobody is forced to watch.

The only valid argument against porn is that it causes a lot of guys to have a wrong image of what sex is. But the only thing any type of ban would do is tell some slice of the population: "No, that is not all right, your preferences and fetishes are weird, and you are weird." That doesn't strike me as the point we should be trying to get across.

 

[Erttheking]

Banning it would just criminalize even more people. It wouldn't make porn go away. However, it needs to be regulated a lot better than it is now. I know a lot of people think that women wouldn't do porn if they didn't want to, but it's not that simple. I saw a video of a former porn actress on YouTube some time ago and it made me really sad:

While porn viewers may not be sexist, men that work in the porn industry are more often than not scum of the fuckin' Earth.

You know I really shouldn't be surprised about this. Suppose I should just make things easier on myself and stick to drawn and typed porn.

 

[Inglorious891]

I don't see how a "sexism free society" would mean everyone magically loses their sex drive.

They wouldn't, they just wouldn't be able to satsify their sex drive via pornography. They could still masterbate of couse, just no porn.

Outright banning pornography might be extreme, I realize, but perhaps making more forms of it illegal and punishable much like child pornography would be the way to go? For example, porn that simulates a women being raped/sexually assaulted by a man would be illegal due to concerns that men who view it might think of women more as sexual objects versus people.

Careful there.
The reason why child pornography is illegal is because to make it, a child has to be abused.
There is no "moral" reason behind its ban based on the subject matter alone no matter how much you kick and scream that it is so.
NO simulation should be banned. That thought crime stuff belongs into 1984, not in the real world.

And I can easily argue that pornography, or at least certain forms of it, should be eliminated for the same reason female sexulization should be from other forms of media (games, movies, etc.): because it supports the idea that women are sexual objects instead of human beings. Child pornography is outlawed because it harms those involved and those who view it, and regular pornography, while not as horrifying or damaging, can easily be argued against for simlar reasons.

The way I see it, pornography centers around objectification. For the time you're viewing whatever form of pornography you're looking at, the person/people you're viewing exists soley for your sexual gratification.

Bullshit.

By that logic, any actor in any media only exists to be objectified. Clark Gregg who plays Coleson on Agents of Shield only exists for my personal entertainment. Not to make art, not to play a role - because I enjoy his acting, I objectify him.

I don't think anyone would agree that Clark Gregg - or any other actor - only exists as an object - a source of entertainment. Therefore, the idea that a woman (or man) in a porno only exists to be objectified is equally absurd.

This is one of my many, many problems with that particular Second Wave philosophy. The one objectifying porn actors are the people who think that it is impossible to view them without objectifying them.

There's a different between a porn actress and a normal actor: the type of action they're performing. Sex seems to tap into a more base part of the mind, and seeing it has a different effect than watching some guy act for a TV show. Because of that, someone seeing depictions of women as objects for sexual gratificaiton is going to have a much bigger impact on his mind than seeing an actor play a role in a TV show will, and that impact isn't going to be particularly good, as it will likely have the same result as women being presently soley as sexual objects does in other forms of media: men having a lack of respect for the wishing and feelings of women.