I’m thinking we need to somehow combine this thread withthe latest post on “military sexual trauma.”

Krl, thanks for this insightful look from the inside. Invaluable.

The reason combination of threads comes up is pretty simple (for folks here at least). But at Huffpo, the comments are trickling in, and without even 10 reactions we already have remarks that claim women with guns can’t be raped, etc. The rape-doubt thesis, which is rape denial cloaked as balanced discourse.

One has to spoon-feed them over there at Huffpo, patient as patient can be. Sex as aggression; aggression as sex. Repeat after me…

@Krl, and WWF, there is a fine film by MEF called Wrestling with Manhood on exactly that topic.

“a Pavlovian type process where unbridled contempt/hatred/and violence against the other (however defined by film, women in general but types/colors of women in particular and more violently so) is rewarded with nature’s ultimate release of endorphins.” is the quote of the day, imo.

De’s point on Nikki’s website, then, has given me an idea. Since my blogging privileges haven’t been revoked at dKOS or Huffpo (yet), would y’all be willing to combine these points and anecdotes in package for re-post over among the librul-boiz?

Honestly, I hate bringing the issue of porn and violence up any more, because the inevitable and tediously predictable attacks — as anyone who has taken up this cudgel can attest — are like the drip-drip of some exquisite water-torture. Which is a kind of intentional Pavlovian conditioning, too, and therefore the reason we need to bring it up more an more (that’s some catch, that Catch-22).

I think Nikki Craft’s new site is brilliantly named:

Manufactured Contempt

the play on Chomsky’s book title is very powerful. it challenges liberal/lefties to face their cognitive dissonance: they believe that through propaganda and advertising and media control, corporate and elite power can influence public discourse and shape policy, yet they continue to deny that the overwhelming noise machine of pornography has any effect on the consumers’ thought or behaviour. in other words, they engage seriously with Chomsky but demonise Dworkin.

Re: Addictive theory/look at porn…there is a straight up utilitarian/violent indoctrination aspect (so far as archetypes/cultures etc) are concerned that reminds me of 1980′s WWF (violent pron for lil boys) wherein the treacherous ethnic evil villain who gets roasted and humiliated by the “all-American” hero is always ripped straight from the headlines…what’s that? Hezbollah bomb ur barracks? Have Hulk Hogan beat the snot out of that evil Iron Sheik (who believe it or not was part of the Shah’s palace guard in real life). Don Imus in trouble from these uppity black women, no problem, start a new video line called “Nappy Headed Hoes” (no joke-one of the higher ranking new lines). Ready to bomb some Arabs in Iraq? Don’t forget the “Arab Street Hookers” (no joke) and other assorted sites featuring dudes in mil uniform ripping the veil off of and sexually assaulting “Arab” women (Latina “actresses” mostly). What’s that? White girls talking about title 9? No problem, really degrade her by having her GB’d by the untermenshen (“White meat on black street” many others)….Neo-Nazi who got beat up by a black dude, get revenge by signing up at “Ghetto Gaggers” – racial slurs and forced sodomy/atms/ with a byline that reads “Don Imus approved” or even worse Nazi N***rs- site which featured neo nazi’s running trains on blk women on top of swastikas while sig heiling/spitting etc racial slurs etc- the fatter and more slovenly the white dude the better).

I worked as a film editor for a small CA porn company during college (Media Studies minor) and trust me, what yall have is a) the tip of the iceberg so far as the violent hate and contempt goes (becomes exponentially violent when issue is racialized or overtly politicized -when a white woman is a professional or attempting to “get something” from guy) and while one (male) may get sexual gratification while watching said images that’s just the icing to what the real purpose is — a Pavlovian type process where unbridled contempt/hatred/and violence against the other (however defined by film, women in general but types/colors of women in particular and more violently so) is rewarded with nature’s ultimate release of endorphins. I cant think of a stronger reinforcer of violent ideas and imagery.

I’ll Let u all know how the book is…

[very minor edits by moderator for readability]

Some communication aims at suppressing non-acceptable responses, i.e. “Shut up bitch” and a raised fist comprise a communication which demands a response of silence and submission, and forbids any feedback.

This gets us back into the idea of intersubjective sexuality, i.e. sex as communication, interaction, eliciting mutual responses, vs instrumental sexuality, i.e. using the body of another person to elicit a sexual response in oneself. When the expected or acceptable response is very narrow — i.e. silence and submission, or only one or two acceptable predetermined outcomes — then the communication is “closed” or coercive, the Other is only allowed to respond in certain predefined ways (like consumer choice… you can have coke or pepsi). “Closed” communication always has an element of control about it, of someone telling the reader/audience/viewer what to think or feel.

Corporate porn, consumed from early ages, tells men how to feel sexual; like advertising it not only responds to demand, it shapes and trains that demand. And as with all corporate product, its primary purpose is to sell yet more product. G-d forbid the customer should ever be satisfied, then the selling would stop and the economy would falter — meaning, the wealthy would accumulate less or more slowly.

@james I suspect that if we analyse it to the last degree we will end up concluding that the investment of our sexual feelings in static external representations like text, audio or video, which can be replayed under our control and on demand, poses an inherent ethical problem. however, the degree of harm done to others may vary immensely.

ummm — say that eating chocolate in order to feel better when sad is a minor addictive behaviour, and theoretically it would be better to deal with those feelings another way. but chocolate’s less harmful to onseself than alcohol, and fair trade chocolate is less harmful to others than slave-labour plantation chocolate.

here’s one of the most puzzling aspects of the whole thing to me, and a meme space to explore when I have some time: the parallels between sex and food (we’re already on this turf with the junk food analogy). people — mostly men — often say they need sex as if it were food, that they are “starving” and so on. yet who, when hungry, seeks out a video of other people eating?

btw, some people refer to cooking shows as “food porn.”

little puzzle pieces to play around with…

The “addiction-recovery community” — which has plenty of its own problems, imo — at least deals with the issues of feeling “compelled,” of obsession that runs laps in our heads, and from the perspective that there is something fundamenmtally amiss at a deeper level — a void (no pun intended) — that requires both willful behavior self-modification and a protracted period of fearless introspection to understand.

My own experience in 12-Step World is mostly positive, though the “program” has a tendency toward its own orthodoxies (another tendency that cries out for deconstruction), and its scrupulous avoidance of what it calls “outside issues” (politics) along with its strict focus on the individual, sort of disallows any public discussion of the culture and-or political economy as the etiology of the “disease” (another problematic metaphor that gets taken literally in 12-Step programs). Their organization is pretty anarchist, which I believe gives them a great deal of self-organized stability… but I digress.

My Methodist minister friend adheres to René Girard’s mimetic theory.

Research on “television addiction” also has something to tell us about this. MacKinnon’s post-marxist insight about important things like work and sex which are “most ours, yet most taken away.” McLuhan on media and message. Jessica Benjamin on “intersubjectivity”. Kintz on “resonance”.

Multiple viewpoints to see this phenom 3-D.

The thing is, the advertizing/PR industry — which permeates not only commercial, but political practice — already understands all this, the same way Nazi doctors came to understand hypothermia. This is an historical materialist phenomenon (based in a spatio-temporal and contingent set of structures)… the internet porn, the fashion porn-meme advertizing, the emo-porn, all of it. Trial and error, and massive R&D budgets, have been employed for many years now to see “what works” to get people to do things that are neither healthy nor self-fulfilling nor good for communities.

Consumerism is imbricated with a global economy that requires Americans to purchase a lot of things in order to valorize the total global capital (without the US consumption base, the system would grind to a halt), which necessitates not merely advertizing, but demand production (and here is where it gets pretty Pavlovian), whic in turn has become the production of culture… the enclosure of culture, and with it, the enclosure of meaning… that very point where the individual human being is interfused most inextricably with her social environment, and one that is imprinted on the personality with (Kintz here) deeply affective (seemmingly sacred) resonance, almost from birth…

Leftism — with some remarkable exceptions — has largely ignored this notion of the personality; and liberalism has copped to Homo economicus.

This discussion of pornography — a consumer product, as well as a mode of production, as well as power propaganda — by simply applying our well-tested logics (as De does with the McDonald’s comparison) — is an unfamiliar and uncomfortable space for leftist and liberal men (and even many women, themselves indoctrinated by the discovery of the reified world in the process of living in it).

Add the real privilege that accrues to some (men), and the vertigo of doubt about all those constructed meanings upon which we have thusfar relied, and the sensational reinforcement of orgasm after orgasm (people get off with porn), and you begin to get a sense of how deeply embedded this thing is… and an idea of why the reaction to those of us who shed doubt on the underlying beliefs that justify it is met with such anger and panic.

There is a parallel with race and white imitation of black cultural expressions. The phrase “trying to be down” means a white person, who is really “up,” imitating someone lower on the racial hierarchy. Because they don’t really have to deal with job discrimination or racial profiling, there is no risk of white kids in hip hop gear really being “down” socioeconomically, politically or legally at the end of day.

In all three cases, there is a kind of show of power in flirting with a lower status for a short time period.

A few points:

1) I am, like everyone else, astonished that Alternet even allowed this topic to be broached. You know DKos, for example, has already summarily banished an entire subset of the Left, referred to by that creepy Democratic Party sycophant Markos as “the women’s studies set.”

2) I am (a tiny bit) hopeful that the conceptual frame around this issue is moving beyond the old, tired, libertarian, “Puritans vs. ‘sexual freedom’” false dichotomy. The right way to understand this is that we are doing what leftists and other people of conscience do – we challenge the ethics of how the things we consume are produced, whether it’s the oil that goes into our cars, or the hamburger we eat, or the Gap shirts on our backs. Jensen’s reportage on porn seems to be in the same vein as a book like “Fast Food Nation” — exposing the truth and questioning the ethics of an industry whose products we Americans enthusiastically consume, but whose methods most of us would rather keep hidden from our awareness, so we can guiltlessly continue to consume them.

3) It’s interesting to me that distinctions and definitions are being made in these articles and on this site with regard to what this thing called pornography actually is. De’s earlier definition is extremely helpful, and it expresses to me what’s always been the crux of the issue, which is the depiction (as propaganda) of a certain set of power relations happening within the context of sex — the context being, in my mind, secondary.

We have, further, Riane Eisler making a distinction between “erotica” and pornography — a concession to the shades of difference within sexually-explicit media that I haven’t tended to see made by anti-porn feminists (in my admittedly limited readings.) And then we have De positing a difference between a “genuine” amateur porn and the phony kind.

And of course, the good porn vs. bad porn line of argument is one of the 1st defenses to emerge when the ethics of the industry are challenged; I’ve found myself, when in these arguments with people, experimenting with making distinctions between what I call “abusive porn” and, well … everything else, because I haven’t felt completely ready or willing to dismiss all of it absolutely. It seems ridiculous to staunchly assert that *every last bit* of media created to assist in vicarious sexual gratification reflects the previously-mentioned power dynamics, and is innately harmful.

But then again, I am damn hard-pressed to find an example of the “good porn” that makes me want to sing its praises as an empowering paragon of erotic virtue. Maybe that’s asking too much; perhaps a more realistic wish would be to find something that simply doesn’t turn my stomach, or set off one of those inner alarm bells that says “there’s something wrong here.” And I am by *no means* a prude.

Still, there persists the notion of “good erotica” (as opposed to De’s definition of porn,) which seems plausible at least as a concept. Or is it? Is this a silly question? I am very much wishing to hear other people’s thoughts on this. Is the tendency here to go with the definition of porn as patriarchal-propaganda, or “bullyphilia,” and allow room for the potential, at least, of there being “good stuff” out there? Or are we closer to being absolutists on the matter?

4) I question whether or not the serial viewing of erotic *imagery* of any kind (for gratification purposes) is a particularly healthy practice — as A) it involves a reduction of all the senses involved in sex to just one, the visual, and entrains one’s arousal over time almost strictly to it; and B) it precludes a relationship & communication with the “object” of one’s desires, making it a one-way relation to a 2-D image — further reducing the potentialites of sexual experience, and abstracting the woman (usually) into mere contours and shades on a flat screen or page.

And, because we have our choice (like a McDonald’s menu) of sexual scenarios to choose from in porn, a person can become highly specialized in terms of his turn-ons, and less apt to be present in the moment with the experience — he starts to require that events unfold according to a (porn-defined) script … as any number of women who’ve been requested to enact porn “IRL” can attest to.

What I’m getting at here is, it’s a pretty far cry from intersubjectivity. “Penis-bot,” exactly.

Thanks for reading.

With porn this is pretty obvious, but e.g. racist propaganda (and o.c. much of porn is also racist propaganda), even without the sexual content, delivers a reward to the reader… perhaps by offering reassurance of his/her superiority to the despised Other being caricatured/slandered; perhaps by offering him/her an heroic, larger-than-life role in a mythic Struggle Between Good (Us) and Evil (Them); perhaps by provoking a good ol’ fit of hate and rage (vicarious violence) that can be justified by the ideology behind the propaganda.

What they all have in common is that they deliver primarily not information, not insight, and not questions, but sensations. The point of consuming porn is its first-order effect on the consumer (it’s all about the consumer, and this self-importance is imho displayed over and over again by the Me Me Me Me tone of the classic pornophile defences). This is where porn and hate speech (and maybe emo-porn as well) fit conceptually into a drug/addiction metaphor: like drugs they are self-administered in discrete doses to achieve a reaction in the consumer, and like drugs there tends to be a diminishing returns pattern, in which the intensity of response lessens with familiarity or frequent exposure and more extreme materials or larger doses are required to achieve the same “high”. Pretty well attested.

At the same time I shy away somewhat from applying the “porn” label too freely/widely, since “emo-porn” often focuses on the lives of the privileged and is consumed by the less privileged, in a (mho) rather pathetic attempt to feel that they are close to or part of the imagined celebrity world of influence, wealth and power (and this goes back a long way, at the very least to the newspaper columns dedicated to Court gossip and scandal in the Georgian era and probably a lot further than that); whereas porn-porn reflects a view downward, from the more privileged into the lives of the less so.

We are lacking (gee I wonder why) a useful language for categorising these attributes of media/literature/art: whether it celebrates power-over and dominance (pornlike, propagandalike), whether it is shallow in the sense of being tailored to manipulate the viewer/reader into a specific state of mind/emotion (propaganda, porn, advertising, tabloid journalism), whether it tends to produce a relationship of dependency or addiction-like diminishing returns for the consumer (because the “reader/viewer” becomes a mere “consumer” when the media become a dose of narrow-band stimulus rather than a means of conveying information, insight, or questions/ambiguities that provoke thought).

Maybe we should refer to stimulus-response media (ah, a Gary Larson moment) as Pavlovian Media or Little Pill Media; and to media that celebrate power-over and dominance as… I dunno, bootlicking media bullyphile media? because porn is both Pavlovian and deeply bullyphiliac.

I like the term emo-porn and would like to suggest–very tentatively–one reason it’s appropriate, namely that (like porn) emo-porn delivers a reliable button-pushing payoff to the consumer. If, exposed to porn or emo-porn, we respond with solidarity for the exploited subjects or anger at the exploiters, we’re stepping outside the structured transaction, which is meant to evoke one and only one response. All communication aims at evoking a response, but there’s a wide range from the most “open” communication–an example might be the freeze-frame shot at the end of “The 400 Blows”–and the most rigidly mechanistic, in which the response is narrowly specified; producers of big-budget Hollywood “action” movies (another kind of porn) carefully calculate the maximum interval between “action beats,” their version of porn’s “money shots,” in order to keep the audience balanced between adrenalin highs and partial comedowns.

A superstar who KNOWS that little girls and young women are buying her products making her rich and imitating her and wishing so super hard that they can BE LIKE HER ONE DAY, while they struggle to maintain their own fame and fortune, can’t be excused from padding themselves from the effects of their own actions on other people’s lives. WE also, are responsible to a degree to turn off the god dang TV, stop buying the Cosmo and the Enquirer, and swallowing the myth.

Ok, that’s all.