True Freedom Includes the Freedom to Say No (explicit language)
Tree of Finches makes some excellent rebuttals to common pro-porn pro-prostitution arguments about freedom, choice and empowerment. He also notes how liberals will gladly hammer a sneaker company over abusive practices but just can't see it in the sex industry:
See also:
Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley Advocate
Mr. Vannah concedes that "there is some percentage of people who are not willing participants in the sex industry", but believes that if the Advocate refuses to accept Massage/Escort ads, this will unacceptably crimp "artistic freedom". He mentions Mapplethorpe pictures as an example. How dropping ads for commercial sex enterprises will compel the Advocate to turn away Mapplethorpe pictures is not clear to us.
Prostitution: "It is high time to expose and challenge the liberal consensus"
Penn State Law Professors Trot Out 'Female Porn Leaders' to Whitewash Realities of Adult Industry (explicit language)
How can women really feel "empowered" working in an industry that can't even agree that it's immoral to stick a woman's head in a toilet [explicit link]? It's no wonder that after exposing women to porn, one study found their desire to have daughters fell by more than half.
Smith Sophian: "Definition of 'no' should not be debated in cases of rape"
Why is the meaning of "no" even debated in cases like this? And is this the start of a slippery slope? Will "no" eventually cease to actually mean anything, to have no power? No means no and rape is rape, regardless of when it is said or for what reason.
Now Showing at Amazing.net: The War on Privacy and Consent (explicit)
Let's grant, for the moment, that porn performers are indeed consenting adults. We'll set aside the evidence of abuse in their pasts, the abuse on the set, the rampant addictions, the deception, the blackmail, and the performers' often urgent need for money and shelter--these are all addressed in the articles below. Let's look at the messages of the films themselves, as sold today at Amazing.net/Goflix.com. Not only do many of these films fail to foreground consent, they celebrate invasions of privacy, violence, exploitation, aggression, coercion, hatred, revenge and torture, selling them as sources of orgasmic pleasure...
As we wrote last April, porn gets into dangerous territory when it makes the appearance of a lack of consent out to be sexy. A common theme in porn is that many women will initially resist many of the practices it promotes, but if you persist, they will come to enjoy them. In other words, no means yes. This attitude seeps into many viewers...
Testimony in Indianapolis: Porn Wants You to Believe Women Secretly Love Bondage and Torture, that "No" Means "Yes"
The whole storyline indicates that she told him she was scared, and she told him she didn't want to do any of this, and she told him it hurt, and she asked him and begged him to stop and yet, the storyline indicates that secretly she loved it. Secretly, she was aroused and it was the most wonderful experience of her life. This tends to be the story that is retold and retold in this literature. And at the end of the story, of course, she describes herself as the man's willing slave. All she wants is to do any humiliating tasks he assigns to her. She has learned her lesson.
Kink.com: Bondage Porn Gone Chillingly, Cheerfully Corporate (explicit language)
"Our powerless girls scream as they are tied up and forced to have sex over and over. Are they screams for help or do they really just want more?"
Lizzy Borden: We don't shoot "all the lovey-dovey stuff that there's not a big market for" (explicit language)
Q: So what is this scene going to have in it that's controversial?
A: A girl being kidnapped, being forced to have sex against her will, being degraded. Being called "a cunt, a whore, a slut, a piece of shit." Then being butchered at the end, and spit on. She's being degraded...
The Science Behind Pornography Addiction
Permission-Giving Beliefs are a set of beliefs that imply that my behavior is normal, acceptable, common and/or doesn’t hurt anyone so I have permission to continue to behave in the way that I am. In all types of violence and addiction, Permission-Giving Beliefs are involved. Examples would include “All men go to prostitutes”, “Women like sex mixed with violence” and “Children enjoy sex with adults”. These particular Permission-Giving Beliefs are also common in pornography...
Statement of Rev. Susan Wilhelm: "...the sex became especially abusive after he started using pornography" (explicit language)
He exposed me to the pornography, too. Once we saw an X-rated film that showed anal intercourse. After that, he pressed me to try it. I agreed to once, but found the experience very painful. He kept trying periodically. He told me my vagina had become as sloppy as an old sow's and he could not get pleasure any other way. He also used to pinch and bite me. When I said "it hurts," he would say, "no, it doesn't." I became numb. I lost track of my own feelings. One time, he said in reference to himself sexually, "it's supposed to hurt."
Exposure to Pornography as a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization
The incest started at the age of eight. I did not understand any of it and did not feel that it was right. My dad would try to convince me that it was ok. He would find magazines, articles or pictures that would show fathers and daughters or mothers, brothers and sisters having sexual intercourse. (Mostly fathers and daughters.) He would say that if it was published in magazines that it had to be all right because magazines could not publish lies... He would say, “See it’s okay to do because it’s published in magazines...”
Feminists Confront Feminists Over Pornography
Academic Defenders of Porn Need to Engage with Reality (explicit language)
Regarding the Sex Industry and "Empowerment", Part 1
...I’ve been to strip clubs, and I fail to see how a woman can be empowered when she is crawling on her hands and knees with her butt in the air while dirty, ugly dudes stuff dollar bills between her breasts, or while pretending to be orgasmically excited by the act of grinding into the lap of some of the grodiest huggers in the world while they try to finger her without the bouncer noticing. That’s not exactly the kind of “empowerment” I want, and I’m pretty glad I don’t have it.
I’d also like to point out that even if a woman can feel empowered by such a profession, does it really make her more powerful? More well-respected?...
If so, I fail to see how; in fact, I live in a Navy barracks, I know exactly what men think of strippers, and the language is some of the crudest and most misogynist I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, so respect is out the window...
True sexual liberation is the ability to say “no, I don’t want to have sex right now” and have it stick. The sex industry only gives women the ability to say “yes”. How is that liberating? How is that empowering?...
A woman who says “no, I will not be in a relationship with a man who uses porn or goes to strip clubs” is not seen as exercising her sexual liberation, she’s seen as a prude who apparently just needs a good fucking. Apparently “sexual freedom” only means the freedom to have wild, kinky sex, go to strip clubs, and watch porn, not the freedom to say “no, I won’t tolerate those abuses of my body and my sense of self-worth”.
And it’s THAT power which will really shake the world up in terms of equality. So of course, that’s the stuff that’s met the with most violent, nasty resistance.
Regarding the Sex Industry and “Empowerment”, Pt. 2 - Choices
...Are we talking about women who have the option between stripping, a scholarship to Harvard, and a fulfilling career in a skilled trade with no glass ceiling? Or are we talking about the option between watching your five year old starve on the street and taking off your clothes for men to gawk at you?...
Fight for women’s right to choose their path in life? Bloody hell, yes. What the sex-pos crowd misses is that part of that fight is enabling that choice to be an actual choice, instead of simply glamourizing their oppression and the performance of sexual acts and mimicry for men’s pleasure.
How many of the women in this thread would quit their jobs, or drop out of their schooling, to become a prostitute? A stripper? A porn star? It’s not a choice unless it can be freely chosen, and as the links I’ve provided help to show, that fact is rarely in evidence...
Regarding the Sex Industry and Empowerment, Pt. 3 - No Acceptable Losses
...how bad did Nike have to treat its workers in China for liberals of the world to get up and boycott them? Not all those workers lived in such nasty conditions, though... but we didn’t focus on them. We focused on the suffering, we organized action, and we got results. When it comes to the sex industry, though, we see similarly deplorable treatment of workers, but we focus entirely on the ones who have it pretty decent and say things are pretty much fine as they are, no action necessary against the industry or even specific companies.
I see it as a pretty sad statement of the western world that we seem to be saying that we’re willing to tolerate more horror and abuse in producing our orgasm aids than we are in producing our shoes.
See also:
Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley Advocate
Mr. Vannah concedes that "there is some percentage of people who are not willing participants in the sex industry", but believes that if the Advocate refuses to accept Massage/Escort ads, this will unacceptably crimp "artistic freedom". He mentions Mapplethorpe pictures as an example. How dropping ads for commercial sex enterprises will compel the Advocate to turn away Mapplethorpe pictures is not clear to us.
Prostitution: "It is high time to expose and challenge the liberal consensus"
Penn State Law Professors Trot Out 'Female Porn Leaders' to Whitewash Realities of Adult Industry (explicit language)
How can women really feel "empowered" working in an industry that can't even agree that it's immoral to stick a woman's head in a toilet [explicit link]? It's no wonder that after exposing women to porn, one study found their desire to have daughters fell by more than half.
Smith Sophian: "Definition of 'no' should not be debated in cases of rape"
Why is the meaning of "no" even debated in cases like this? And is this the start of a slippery slope? Will "no" eventually cease to actually mean anything, to have no power? No means no and rape is rape, regardless of when it is said or for what reason.
Now Showing at Amazing.net: The War on Privacy and Consent (explicit)
Let's grant, for the moment, that porn performers are indeed consenting adults. We'll set aside the evidence of abuse in their pasts, the abuse on the set, the rampant addictions, the deception, the blackmail, and the performers' often urgent need for money and shelter--these are all addressed in the articles below. Let's look at the messages of the films themselves, as sold today at Amazing.net/Goflix.com. Not only do many of these films fail to foreground consent, they celebrate invasions of privacy, violence, exploitation, aggression, coercion, hatred, revenge and torture, selling them as sources of orgasmic pleasure...
As we wrote last April, porn gets into dangerous territory when it makes the appearance of a lack of consent out to be sexy. A common theme in porn is that many women will initially resist many of the practices it promotes, but if you persist, they will come to enjoy them. In other words, no means yes. This attitude seeps into many viewers...
Testimony in Indianapolis: Porn Wants You to Believe Women Secretly Love Bondage and Torture, that "No" Means "Yes"
The whole storyline indicates that she told him she was scared, and she told him she didn't want to do any of this, and she told him it hurt, and she asked him and begged him to stop and yet, the storyline indicates that secretly she loved it. Secretly, she was aroused and it was the most wonderful experience of her life. This tends to be the story that is retold and retold in this literature. And at the end of the story, of course, she describes herself as the man's willing slave. All she wants is to do any humiliating tasks he assigns to her. She has learned her lesson.
Kink.com: Bondage Porn Gone Chillingly, Cheerfully Corporate (explicit language)
"Our powerless girls scream as they are tied up and forced to have sex over and over. Are they screams for help or do they really just want more?"
Lizzy Borden: We don't shoot "all the lovey-dovey stuff that there's not a big market for" (explicit language)
Q: So what is this scene going to have in it that's controversial?
A: A girl being kidnapped, being forced to have sex against her will, being degraded. Being called "a cunt, a whore, a slut, a piece of shit." Then being butchered at the end, and spit on. She's being degraded...
The Science Behind Pornography Addiction
Permission-Giving Beliefs are a set of beliefs that imply that my behavior is normal, acceptable, common and/or doesn’t hurt anyone so I have permission to continue to behave in the way that I am. In all types of violence and addiction, Permission-Giving Beliefs are involved. Examples would include “All men go to prostitutes”, “Women like sex mixed with violence” and “Children enjoy sex with adults”. These particular Permission-Giving Beliefs are also common in pornography...
Statement of Rev. Susan Wilhelm: "...the sex became especially abusive after he started using pornography" (explicit language)
He exposed me to the pornography, too. Once we saw an X-rated film that showed anal intercourse. After that, he pressed me to try it. I agreed to once, but found the experience very painful. He kept trying periodically. He told me my vagina had become as sloppy as an old sow's and he could not get pleasure any other way. He also used to pinch and bite me. When I said "it hurts," he would say, "no, it doesn't." I became numb. I lost track of my own feelings. One time, he said in reference to himself sexually, "it's supposed to hurt."
Exposure to Pornography as a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization
The incest started at the age of eight. I did not understand any of it and did not feel that it was right. My dad would try to convince me that it was ok. He would find magazines, articles or pictures that would show fathers and daughters or mothers, brothers and sisters having sexual intercourse. (Mostly fathers and daughters.) He would say that if it was published in magazines that it had to be all right because magazines could not publish lies... He would say, “See it’s okay to do because it’s published in magazines...”
Feminists Confront Feminists Over Pornography
Academic Defenders of Porn Need to Engage with Reality (explicit language)
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