Velvet Verbosity

Though this video is about human sex trafficking, it touches on how pornography and the pornification of our culture is driving demand that is creating more and more victims every year. I found this through the Second Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution where I was linked. Not sure how they found me, but I’m honored to be doing my part. Over at A Room of Mama’s Own, MPJ sums up pretty well how it is a problem of the spirit, not one of morality, prudishness, or censorship. I agree with her, though I still think things go much deeper and there is clear and compelling evidence that actual people are being harmed directly and indirectly. This video highlights how demand drives the sex industry as a whole, and thus contributes to human sex trafficking. I won’t apologize for making you feel squirmy. We all should.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8237966222974862949&hl=en

Because if you’re online AT ALL, you can’t avoid it.  It’s one thing if there’s a product out there, and sure I don’t mind if they spend some money on advertising because even if I don’t want their product, someone else might, or I might change my mind later, and it’s good to know what’s out there.  But when you come on to MY turf and bombard me with your product again and again, it’s ANNOYING.  Here I am, changing my blog real estate, paying for my own nice digs, and now that I’m just settling in, ready to do some decorating, feeling good, what do I get?  Up to 5 long-a** spam porn comments a day.   It’s annoying.  It’s more than annoying, it’s disturbing.  And to be quite honest, it’s reminiscent of how the tobacco industry behaved for a very long time.  Peddling their product while sending us the message that everyone was doing it, that all the cool cats were smoking, and no harm was being done.  They never mentioned the addiction.  They never mentioned the disease.  The tobacco industry single-handedly changed our culture, and if anyone objected, cautioned, or even tried to tell the truth, they were considered to be uptight.  The top players in the tobacco industry knew long before we did that what they were selling was harmful, but that didn’t matter to the bottom line.  They infiltrated our psyche in magazines, newspapers, television and movies.  It wasn’t just the advertisements either.  They knew full well if they got actors to smoke, they would not only hook the actors, they would hook the masses.

The porn industry already has more money than God.  Why do they need to try to break into my comments on MY blog?  Why bother with my humble little blip in the universe?  They’ve already secured magazines, books, television, and Hollywood in general.  They already own more internet real estate than most industries combined.  They’ve got people talking and acting like porn is just a normal everyday part of life.  They’ve managed to drive labiaplasty to be the largest growing form of plastic surgery.  What more?   Sexual stimulation rewards the dopamine pathway.  The addiction highway.  The internet delivered by computer is as close to a Skinner Box environment as you could create outside a lab.  Directly reward the dopamine pathway with a click, increase the stimulus with each click, and you’ve got yourself some pretty slick conditioning right there.  So when they send out millions of spam comments, emails, popups, whatever, they know that for every X number of people that ignore or delete, Y number won’t be able to resist having just one look.  “Just one look” at porn is like trying to eat one french fry.  Practically impossible.  The porn industry knows it, and just like the tobacco industry got the majority of an entire culture to get hooked on its product, so too will the porn industry continue to spam my blog and everyone else until they’ve hooked as many people as they can.

Someday the studies will come out and the porn industry will be saying, “whoops, my bad”.

Girls Accepting Sexual Assault At School As Fact Of Life: Reports

The article doesn’t actually make any correlations between over 20% of girls being sexually assaulted in Toronto schools and expecting it and the pornification of our culture. The only conclusions the experts can draw is to say that the problem is that “most kids don’t actually know what sexual assault is”. Really? Now why wouldn’t they know what sexual assault entails when this is the generation of kids that grew up with “innappropriate touching” education? And why, like the title suggests, are girls accepting this as part of school life?

Someone please give me an intelligent answer to this, because I’d really like to hear it. Be forewarned, don’t use the party line that this has been going on all along, because I’m not buying it. I went to school. Boys cat-called, and on dates they sometimes tried to get more than they were going to get, but I don’t remember one single incident of a girl telling me that a guy followed her into the bathroom and stuck his hands down her shirt, and she thought this was to be expected! There have been times in history and places on the map where women have been subjected to this type of treatment, and that’s because they lived in a time or culture of oppression. How do we explain that in a time and place where women are supposed to more or less have equal rights, that this is happening? How do we explain the conflict between being told we are in a “sex-positive” and “sexually liberated” culture that brings us such gems as Girls Gone Wild and the fact that young girls don’t feel safe getting their EDUCATION? Is it at all possible that the sex industry that has leaked into every facet of our daily life and portrays women liking being objectified, used, and abused and as nothing more than a commodity to be obtained for male pleasure is having any influence at all on young minds?

All I ask is that you open your eyes and take a look around. Listen to the music. It’s not just about sex, it’s about sexually degrading women. Pay attention to the television, the movies, the ads, the stuff that is all around us everyday and how it is not just about sex, but about women being objects. Do this for a few days. Do it honestly. Then come back and give me your answer.

While you’re thinking about it, you can start with this thoughtful video: Hip Hop - Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Pay particular attention to what the people on the street are saying starting at about three minutes in. Watch the full length video here.

***On a lighter note, “note to self”. When putting on a turtleneck sweater, if the neck is so tight you feel like you’re being birthed all over again, it’s time to stop putting said turtleneck sweater in the dryer. Capiche?

Lately my blog has taken a decided and sudden turn toward feminist issues. Let me explain. Some recent exposure to men who objectify women without batting an eyelash and as long as it’s not anyone they know, and “no one is getting hurt”, has compelled me to look for the evidence that this justification is ludicrous. Not only have I found sufficient evidence to confirm my gut feelings, I’ve found enough evidence to make my gut sick.Second, raising two children in a culture that is becoming rapidly disconnected as fast as it is connecting, and becoming increasingly media driven and pornified, I am reaching a point of ORANGE ALERT.

In my research, I found Sparkle Matrix, who has opened my eyes to issues I wasn’t even thinking about. Take this rape campaign poster that clearly blames the victim. Horrified as I was, still, I thought Sparkle Matrix’s interpretation of the intention was overkill. After all, Britain was trying right? Maybe their attempts were slightly misguided, but change and progress is a slow and painful process. Lighten up already! At least there WERE posters being made.

Then, because it was on my mind, I brought this up to a few people, and I was a little dismayed that they could not immediately see the connection between the message and victim blaming.

Still, I thought, we’re making progress, right? No. Not enough.

We’re not making enough progress when Harriet McCormick, a bright young woman who lives in the very same country that produced those progressive anti-rape posters, made the mistake of getting drunk and blamed herself, suffered for almost a year, before finally taking her own life. This woman would have contributed great things to society. She was already on her way to doing so. Instead, she took her life because she couldn’t live with the guilt, the trauma, or the conflict between the two. I wonder what her rapist is doing today? I wonder if he is giving his life in service to others? I wonder if he is racked with guilt? Somehow, sadly, I doubt it.

The thing is, Sparkle Matrix and others are right on this issue, and I see that now. Maybe one out of three rapes happen when a woman is drunk, but three out of three happen when there is a rapist involved. Why focus on the 1 out of 3? Why focus solely on the woman’s responsibility in the possibility that she will be raped? Why not focus on teaching men that rape is just wrong. It’s wrong. It’s always wrong. And you know what else? Women do NOT fantasize about being raped. Not the way real rape happens, but I will talk about that in another post. The reality is, it’s more like this.

What’s more, I did a Google search after reading the story of this girl to find the post I had read about the rape campaign posters. I found this one instead. Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive after reading about a young woman throwing herself off a bridge and plummeting to her death, leaving behind family and friends to pick up the pieces. Maybe I’m just being a silly woman. Maybe I’m just being an angry feminist.

Or maybe this ad is using sex to sell anti-rape. How else would you get a guy to look at it, right? “Must put a woman in panties on poster”.

When people think it’s no big deal that anti-rape campaigns use such misguided messages as these, please read her story. Read it over and over until you are sick with the idea that the message in our culture is still to blame the victim, and to still use women’s bodies to sell everything from deoderant to “please don’t rape us, it hurts”.

People, it is 2008. When the hell are we going to evolve? And women…it is time for the next wave of rebellion. Honest to goddess, it really really is.

Stay tuned for “A Letter to Men”, “A Letter to Boys”, “A Letter to Women”, “A Letter to Girls”. (John B., I’m talking about it.)

And if you’re not angry enough yet, read on here about how a convicted rapist of children was just buried with full military honors. If you are angry, sad, or otherwise moved, please share this, bookmark it, and talk about it.

Remember that book Forever, by Judy Blume? Remember how utterly scandalous it was at the time that Judy had the nerve to write about two teenagers having sex? When I hold that in contrast to what we accept from the porn industry, knowing full well that our teens are seeing it, my brain makes a little cracking noise. The two lovers in Forever discover sex with each other. It is a beautiful and moving story of sexual discovery and awakening between two young people who love and respect each other. Parents did not want their young impressionable teenagers reading this book. My school banned it and suspended kids found with it.

We got around this by distributing the book in a brown paper bag. By the time it made its way to me, the bag was thin and wrinkled and the binding of the book had disintegrated. This story of two virgins learning about their bodies was hardcore stuff that our parents and teachers didn’t want us reading. Yet most had Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler right under their beds. That was ok. In fact, it was “understood” that it was a right of passage for boys to sneak their fathers skin mags to share with their friends so they could learn about the female body and sex. Boys will be boys.

Remember, pornography is only a bunch of images and fantasies. It has no effect whatsoever on real life. So the explosion of its availability should not cause us concern whatsoever. I wonder, what then drives growing trends such as blow-job clubs among young adolescent girls. I wonder whatever gave them this idea, or what they get out of it. I wonder how they have come to believe that servicing a guy in this way without any reciprocation or respect is good for them. I wonder.

In my research for this post, I found an amazing post, that coincidentally covers both Judy Blume’s book Forever, the trend of girl on boy casual oral sex, and pornography. It’s long, but well worth the read.

Let me interrupt this post to say, SEX is not a dirty word. I repeat, SEX is NOT a dirty word. Sex is a beautiful, natural, wonderful act! We humans are incredibly blessed in this department because our brains evolved to include emotion and reason and intelligence, and we get to have sex because we want to and choose to, not just because we are driven to procreate. And sex is so much better because of it. It can be infused with eroticism, and fantasy, and love, and intimacy, and discovery along with the pure pleasure.

The second thing I want to say is that not only do I not hate men, I love men. Truly. All my life some of my closest friends and companions have been men.

So when I’m against pornography, or the sex industry in all of its forms, I am not against sex and I’m not against men. I’m against the diminishing of sex. I’m against a devolution of men and women. I’m pro-humanity. I’m pro-women and pro-men. I’m PRO SEX! Between real men and real women, people with minds as well as bodies. I’m pro-girls and pro-boys who should get the opportunity to discover sex in their own time, with each other, on the same level, like in the book Forever. And I truly think that the pornification of our culture is robbing too many of our children of that opportunity.

It needs to be talked about, and in a way that makes sense. Not in a sexual freedom vs. sexual repression way. Not in a right vs. left way. Not in a men vs. women way. In a genuine, open, inquisitive way that is relentless and unforgiving in the search for the truth about pornography and the sex industry.

The following is an excerpt from a 2004 article by Robert Jensen. Read the full article here.

The only resistance is collective, and the pornorgraphers want to squash it

When I critique pornography, I often am told to lighten up; sex is just sex, people say, and I should stop trying to politicize pornography. But pornography obviously is political. Telling men stories about sex in which women are three holes and two hands, not people, is
political. It offers men a politics of sex and gender. And that politics is patriarchal and reactionary.

As with any political issue, successful strategies of resistance to injustice and oppression must be collective. There cannot be personal solutions to political problems. If we avoid engaging political problems in public and hope to make the best of things in private, we fail. Pornographers know that, which is why they want to make sure no collective remedies for women (through legislation or the courts) are considered, let alone enacted. But they also would prefer that none of these issues even be discussed in public. In recent years, their strategies for cutting off that discussion have been remarkably successful. When we criticize pornography, we typically are told we are either sexually dysfunctional prudes who are scared of sex, or people who hate freedom, or both. That works to keep many people quiet. The pornographers desperately want to keep people from asking the simple question: What kind of society would turn the injury and degradation of some into sexual pleasure for others? What kind of people does that make us — the men who learn to find pleasure this way, and the women who learn to accept it?

The pornographers want to label any collective discussion of the meaning of intimacy and sexuality as repression. They want to derail any talk about a sexual ethic. They, of course, have a sexual ethic: Anything goes. On the surface that seems to be freedom: Consenting adults should be free to choose. I agree they should. But in a society in which power is not equally distributed, “anything goes” translates into “anything goes for men, and some women and children will suffer for it.” Any society that claims to take freedom seriously must engage in a discussion about power, and take steps to equalize power. That means taking steps to end men’s domination of women.

There are many controversial questions in the pornography debate: What is the nature of the relationship between sexually explicit media and behavior? Under what conditions can the consent of people involved in acts that may be detrimental to their own well-being be questioned? What harms of speech acts can trump free-speech concerns?

But there should be nothing controversial about this: To criticize pornography is not repressive. To speak about what one knows and feels and dreams is, in fact, liberating. We are not free if we aren’t free to talk about our desire for an egalitarian intimacy and sexuality that would reject pain and humiliation.

That is not prudishness or censorship. It is at attempt to claim the best parts of our common humanity — love, caring, empathy, solidarity. To do that is not to limit anyone. It is to say that people matter more than the profits of pornographers and the pleasure of pornography consumers. It is to say, simply, that women count as much as men.

Amen.

Woman Remodeled posted about PETA, the objectification of women and her views on pornograhy. I had already been thinking about posting on the topic, but now I have to. I’m one of those people that WR refers to as “not ok with it”. When I was younger, pornography was available but someone had to go out, in public, and buy it, or wait for it in the mail. For most people it wasn’t worth the bloody effort. And getting hold of more hardcore, deviant, or illegal stuff was no easy task.

But isn’t the internet a beautiful thing? Just turn on you computer and ask yourself where you want to go, and you’re there, instantly, cheaply, and anonymously. Addicts call this the three A’s. “Accessible, Affordable, Anonymous”.I don’t share Woman Remodeled’s laissez-faire attitude of porn. We share no cross words over it, but we’ve had many long conversations exploring our own views on it. I’m against pornography, not blanketly, but against the allowance of it being so prevalent and so easy to get. My objection to it is not moral or religious. I am thoroughly dismayed that the few people who are blogging against pornography do so from a heavily Christian slant. Unfortunately, that only furthers the case for the proponents of smut because they can easily draw a clear line in the sand.

“If you’re on that side, clearly you’re a prude, but if you’re on THIS side you’re fun and free and sexually LIBERATED!”

If only life were that simple.

I object to pornography in the same way I object to fast food, or factory farming, or excessive consumption. It’s not about “right” or “wrong” morally. To me, it is about the health of a nation and its people, and since WR brought it up, I’m going to spend a few posts talking about it.

Neither the hardcore supporters of porn or the religious “prudes” are right on the issue. There are other reasons to think that free, easily accessible pornography coupled with anonymity isn’t such a good thing. I have several points to make but today, I want to point out one of the serious flaws in the proponents’ argument.

Most supporters of pornography will tell you, “it’s just images, it’s only fantasy, therefore it’s harmless”.

Blink. Blink blink.

Oh how I love this argument. I do so wish I could stand on a debating podium and rip this one to shreds in front of a live audience and then walk home with a big fat trophy leaving my opponent to weep over her big plastic boobs.

Ok, that was harsh. I digress.

Seriously, if images had no impact on the human psyche, if fantasies could wield no influence over human decisions and actions, then WHY would the business world spend BILLIONS of dollars on marketing? And what sells more? A text-only ad or a full blown, full color, mini-length movie featuring an OBJECT OF DESIRE??

Another argument, closely related, is that there is no direct correlation between watching pornography and acting out sexually. What they mean is that there is no direct correlation between watching a violent rape pornography scene and then going out and raping a woman. This is more or less true, but not entirely true and I’ll cover those stats tomorrow. But neither is there a direct correlation between watching a commercial and jumping up to go buy the featured product. So why would marketers continue to make commercials? Because there is an effect, and it is cumulative. It happens over time, and it happens by changing people’s minds slowly, slowly and surely. You probably don’t have the slightest clue how insidious, clever, and powerful advertising is. Even if you don’t feel like you’re being affected, you are. Somewhere, sometime, some advertising is going to plant little seeds of desire in your mind. Marketing plays on the basic human condition of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction=Desire=Survival. This formula got us this far, and marketers now know how to plant suggestions about what particular things we should desire next in order to survive.

Like cars. Do we really need them for survival? We sure think we do. I bet your first thought is, “But Velvet Verbosity, you NEED a car.” Do I? Do you? Does anyone need a car? Why? To get to your job? So that you can pay for your car? Did we need to build our lives around the dependency on a car? I know lots of people who get around just fine with public transport or bicycles. Desire makes us need a car, not necessity. Desire for mobility, for freedom, for ease of living, for sex appeal, to have an outward trophy of our succes.

The flames of that desire are fueled by commercials, and that advertising worked SO well that our culture is saturated with cars. Cars are so normalized in our culture that we really think we can’t live without them. Really? Would I die if I didn’t have a car? No. I would not. I would find a way to make my life work without one.

Images are powerful. The idea that consistent use of pornography will not have a cumulative effect of some kind is about the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Well. Except for that one argument against gay marriage, “What’s next? Marriages between humans and animals?”. Right, because that logically follows. Maybe if you’re a follower of bestiality porn it does.

So, am I saying that if you watch enough rape porn you will eventually go out and rape a woman? Yes. I am saying that. And here’s the rub, it might not be reported, because it’s been normalized in the pornography desensitized mind of the victim through the prevalent, steady, pornification of our culture. Or, if reported, the rapist may not be prosecuted or punished to the full extent of the law, because, as studies have shown, violent pornography makes people less empathetic to the victim and more sympathetic to the rapist.

However, most men will still not go out and perpetrate a violent rape on a strange woman. Instead they will coerce their girlfriends and wives to act more and more porn-like in the bedroom. You don’t think so? Do you think that women decided that learning how to pole dance in their very own home was fueled by a woman’s deep seated desire to fulfill herself by learning how to wrap herself around a pole? Or that women risk their lives going under the knife to have their breasts and genitals reshaped and reworked to look more and more like porn stars because it empowers them?

In 1968 we shouted and burned our bras. In 2008 we shut up and fill em up. You tell me where the empowerment is in that. We women too have been duped, duped I say, by the pornification of our culture.

It is late, and I don’t have time to link to stats and studies tonight, but they are out there and I’ll get them to you.

Just finished reading an essay by Margaret Atwood on pornography. Here is some of what she had to say:

“This leads us back to the key question: what’s the harm? Nobody knows, but this society should find out fast, before the saturation point is reached. The Scandinavian studies that showed a connection between depictions of sexual violence and increased impulse toward it on the part of male viewers would be a starting point, but many more questions remain to be raised as well as answered. What, for instance, is the crucial difference between men who are users and men who are not? Is there a clear line between erotica and violent pornography, or are they on an escalating continuum? Is this a “men versus women” issue, with all the men secretly siding with the proporners and all women secretly siding against? (I think not; there are lots of men who don’t think that running their true love through the Cuisinart is the best way they can think of to spend a Saturday night, and they’re just as nauseated by films of someone else doing it as women are.) Is pornography merely an expression of the sexual confusion of this age or an active contributer to it?

Noboby wants to go back to the age of official repression…Neither do we want to end up in George Orwell’s 1984, in which pornography is turned out by the State to keep the proles in a state of torpor, sex itself is considered dirty and the approved practise is only for reproduction. But Rome under the emperors isn’t such a good model either.”

It is important to note that she is discussing hardcore and violent pornography, NOT erotica.

Should there be regulations? Do you think it is harmful? How do we protect ourselves and maintain freedom?