Porn and Me

At one point during the fabulous Paris Exmo Expo 2007, I gave my usual spiel on porn and feminism. I can't remember why the hell I brought up porn at the "Kingdom of Beer" (and the other ladies are probably also wondering). But since the subject came up in the meatspace version of Outer Blogness (and because we've been talking about people's biases here lately), I figured perhaps I'd share with you my history (hence bias) on this subject:

I was raised in a religion (I'll just let you guess which one) that is extremely patriarchal as well as repressive and negative towards sexuality.

Then, when I gave up that religion at the age of seventeen, I was free to embrace my sexuality and my feminism with equal abandon. (Obviously feminism and women's sexual freedom go hand-in-hand, right?) So I became more and more interested in reading books and articles about feminism. To show you just how ready I was to accept and embrace any and all of feminism, I stopped shaving and wearing a bra for a few months for no other reason than because I'd heard that that was some sort of feminist thing to do. And as I was reading along, I learned that the feminist movement is opposed to porn.

My first reaction was surprise and bewilderment. Agreeing with the church on any sex-and-gender issue seemed like a humongous red flag. Those shame-sodden lectures that taught me I was a deviant for fantasizing about sex and that I'd be as worthless as chewed gum if I acted on my desires: they also contained a message about how pornography leaves your mind permanently impure. Naturally I had filed all of these hate-your-sexuality messages in the same mental drawer -- and later moved them all together into my mental garbage can.

My post-Mormon experience with porn started when I took a look at the magazine collections of various boyfriends. (Yes, they were physical, printed magazines. Yes, I'm that old.) I also watched some porn movies with another boyfriend. I didn't find any of it particularly objectionable. As a straight woman, I figured that being aroused by the sight of naked women was an appropriate quality in a boyfriend.

Naturally I also looked for materials that would be arousing for me. I found that stories did more for me than pictures, but even sex stories aimed at women left me going "meh" if they were really graphic. I liked the erotic scenario better than having the mechanics spelled out for me. And one of the main themes in my favorite erotic scenarios was the thought of a man being aroused by seeing and/or touching a woman (see here). I guess that makes me a rather unique type of pervert.

Anyway, I'd analyzed my own sexual responses, and found the anti-porn faction of feminism treating me every bit as much like a piece of chewed gum as the church had: they told me, in essence, that I should feel ashamed of turning men on with my body; of letting a man "use me for his pleasure." It was a harsh blow to see feminists -- the people I hoped would counter shame I learned from the church -- were giving me the same "poor, fallen woman" crap in new words.

But I was determined to be a feminist, so I was determined to figure this one out. Then I learned the slogan "Porn is the theory, rape is the practice."

"Aha," I thought. "Pornography is bad because it causes rape. Well, if porn has been shown to cause rape, then I certainly agree that it's bad." The next natural question was "So does it lead to rape? Is there some hard evidence to back that up?"

Um, no.

Reading along in various feminist publications, I discovered a curious excuse as to why it was okay for feminists to fight to suppress porn -- on the grounds that it leads to rape -- despite the lack of real-world evidence to that effect: Women can see intuitively that porn inspires men to harm them, and we women need to value women's type of reasoning (intuition) more highly than we value masculine reasoning (logic and evidence).

Let me tell you that I was about to breathe fire when I saw that argued as a feminist position!!!

Now, I really hope that I misinterpreted that feminist article I read so many years ago and/or that it was just in some student publication or something. Because if any serious, respected feminist intellectual argues anything even remotely like that I really, really, really don't want to know about it. There I was -- a female Mathematics major -- fighting with all my heart and soul to demonstrate that reason and logic aren't something unique to men, and that girls can do math too if they're encouraged to try.

So I fundamentally disagreed with the anti-porn squad on practically every level right from the beginning. (Did I mention censorship? And how obscenity laws often get used first against gay materials and women's health information? And how a Dworkin-inspired anti-porn law has been ironically used to censor Dworkin's own anti-porn book?)

Yet I've never really been an activist about this subject. I read a few books (like Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights). I canceled my subscription to Ms. when I got fed up with its Dworkin-MacKinnonite stance and what a waste of feminist energy it was: a bunch of privileged white women navel-gazing about whether they feel "degraded" because some schlub is masturbating in the privacy of his own bedroom. Then I figured I was being a hypocrite since what am I on this issue but a privileged white woman navel-gazing about my sexuality? So I decided social justice was more important, and kind of put this issue on the shelf for a bit and focused on other issues.

I still think social justice issues are more important, particularly as they pertain to building a sustainable future for our species.

So why am I bringing this up now?

Hell, this is a blog -- I can talk about whatever I want. Navel-gazing about porn is no more a waste of my time than posting pictures of whale genitals... ;^)