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In reply to the discussion: With all the anti-pornography talk, can we have a sex positive thread? [View all]BainsBane
(53,032 posts)Last edited Tue Nov 26, 2013, 12:26 PM - Edit history (1)
I am not DU. I am not the woman from Swarthmore you talked to in the 1980s. I am one person, me. I am responsible for no one's ideas but my own, and I resent have my concerns dismissed because of what you saw someone else say once upon a time.
The issue is that is how virtually everyone has threatened the argument I've advanced. As far as I can tell, no one has read anything I say. They insist I have no right to mention the world rape culture and refuse to read further. They deny my right to discuss the issues in terms that are important to me. You of course aren't responsible for what others say, but together it forms a picture of complete disregard for even trying to understand what matters to me.
It's clear to me you don't know what this porn is like, which is why I suggested you (and everyone) do a search to have a look at it. The "egregious stuff" is the topic of the discussion: rape porn. It is indeed egregious. That is the point. It's a genre whose viewers are aroused by terror and violation of the victim portrayed. It is indeed illegal to force others to have sex on camera, but it is also widespread, both on and off screen. All the DOJ stats of reported rapes aside, 1 out of 5 (to 1 out of 4) girls and women are raped in their lifetimes: some at age four, some as adults, and others at any age from infancy to their 90s. That statistic includes just not loud-mouthed feminists but every other female in the country, including the wives, sisters, and daughters of male DUers. It also includes men, who comprise 10% of rape victims in civil society and far more in prison. I have PMed with some male rape survivors who feel incredibly saddened by these threads. Many here insist rape porn and rape bear no relationship to each other. I consider that a false assumption, which I have explained elsewhere in greater detail.
You can go the UN site or any anti-slavery group and read about the fact more people are enslaved today than at any point in human history, and the sex industry is one of the primary if not primary users of slave labor. No, that is not the labor force for all porn, but it is enough to make extremely difficult to know if the rape is real or simulated, especially since so many pornographers bill the porn as real. Clearly that is what their viewers want to believe. I have also repeatedly raised concerns about the rights of workers who do choose to enter than profession. Those concerns have been completely ignored and distorted to claim I want to "control women's bodies." Yet no one accuses posters of trying to control Walmart workers bodies. There is a clear disconnect about workers rights when it comes to sex work.
Rape survivors have an interest in seeing rape culture mitigated. It's hurtful to continually see concerns about one's safety turned into a joke about prudery. I can't force you or anyone else to see me as an individual with real concerns. I state my views and others completely ignore them in lieu of a caricature that bears no relation to what I have said. That strikes me as a performative illustration of the dynamic at work here: a dismissal of my rights and those of others impacted by rape and the rape culture--the same kind of disregard that enables the crime to be committed with virtual impunity.
I become angry because I see talk of the kind of violence I and so many other women here have experienced in our lives turned into a joke, turned into a denouncement of "misandry" and "punishing men." When I see that kind of trivialization and mocking of my concerns about the kind of violence I have experienced in my life, I am left feeling that members here see my life and those like me as without value. I understand that is not your conscious intent, but that is nonetheless how it feels.
I am consistent in my opposition to violence: from gun violence, gun culture, and the corporate lobby that promotes it, to slavery, rape, rape culture, violence against women, and the death penalty. These are the most important personal and political issues of my life. They are are from a joke to me. They are core to my sense of social justice, as well as my personal safety.