"Consent" in pornography: an analogy with combat sports

Can I add something simple thats often overlooked when this common argument is banded about, there are ALOT more kinds of porn than this popular image of a dude with a big schlong jack hammering away at some blond bird with fake breasts in a studio in LA while he slaps her in the face, makes her gag and generally degrades her while she asks for more, as someone who is not afraid to admit they watch porn I can honestly say its very rarely that I even come across stuff like that its just not what I gravitate towards. Also As somone who just about comes under this generation of males who grow up with easy access to porn that Owelmatt's mentions I honestly don't feel that it's created any expectations of woman in the real world to behave in a way thats fantastical (believe me I'm under no illusions that woman are queuing up to drop trow and fulfil any of my fantasies) maybe thats a personnal thing but to me that argument sounds like it should be in the cornor with video games and horror films cause violent acts.

 

its disturbing that people are denying that and yet your point is totally mute if its applied to pornography that doesn't fit the ridged stereotype, lesbian/gay or solo porn (no male/female dynamic of any kind), dominatrix, femdom, BDSM (alot of it) etc (reversal of the common veiw of the male/female patriarchal dynamic)

 

Its a societally conditioned view of porn - and it is outdated

 

I think there's definitely a place for alt porn, but I think that one of the primary tenets (and most enlightened!) of s&m and various other sorts of... I mean, I don't want to be insulting here, but alternative emphasis sexualities(?) is the idea that it should be safe sane and consensual. I'm not sure how strong an argument this is (still mulling it over), but I'll put it forward, and that is that adding monetary incentives introduces an element of compulsion to these sexualities. I don't really have a solidified view of this yet, but I thought I'd put it forward as an alternative perspective and hear your thoughts.

 

to be honest it was just a really long winded way of saying I like lesbian porn ! jk (about the thats all I was trying to say part anyway) in seriousness I'm not with you.

 

Yes, unless it is the "bend over and take it" kind mentioned before.
Shameless mode: off :Angel:

 

Some do, some don't. Like anything really.

Though IME it gravitates more toward erotic fan fiction and the like, but you'll always find some people who are into more extreme stuff.

 

Ok so two points have been made here.

1. Not all porn is man on woman with the female being the submissive.


It's true not all porn is this way; and accordingly there are often different problems with different kinds of porn. Lesbians are often turned into sex-objects this way and as a result are at high risk of sexual assault because the main presentation they get in media is as things that people masturbate to. (though part of that is not inherent in porn but rather the lack of representation outside of porn)

BDSM in general has issues with consent, which is partly spurred on by the way parts of its porn industry presents itself (good blog here on the topic: http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/one-in-three-kinksters-reports-a-consent-violations/ ) and it is a topic of great debate regarding how you give freedom without engendering power narratives in normative ideas of sex (which can be just as problematic with F>M as with M<F because it normalizes a modus operandi that shouldn't be normalized).


Gay porn has issues with the "relationship" between the top and the bottom, particularly with the bottoms being stigmatized far more than the top.

(http://smartalien.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/its-gonna-hurt-sexist-language-and-racialized-gay-porn/ Nothing too solid in this piece but some interesting thoughts none-the-less).

So again, yeah there are other forms of porn out there (though they each have their own problems), right now the discussion is focused on a particular kind of porn. If anyone is really concerned about say BDSM porn, then it'd be better for them to actually start a thread on that, rather than risk derailing a discussion on the problems of vanilla porn (I know that's not necessarily how the conversation started, but that's where it went).

2. Porn doesn't influence social beliefs.

Culture influences social beliefs and the kind of porn people watch is part of their culture; kind of inescapable really.

Also I do happen to think video games cause violence. This however is a reason to treat these subjects seriously and think about the kind of media we release both on a micro and macro scale to help ensure we have that free-media but can still mitigate its side-effects.

Classic Lads Mag study that I have posted on MAP before:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02086.x/abstract

 

I'm not keen on the objectification of people in any context.

However, it bears keeping in mind that women were treated far more as objects before the proliferation of pornography.

As for video games and violence, the (now) developed world was far more violent before the invention of video games.

 

True, but that's really a correlation. It doesn't say much about the effects of violent video games on violence.

 

Hahaha...I work in a video games company with about 70 guys that live, eat, make, play and breath violent video games almost 24/7.
A less violent group of 20-40 year old men you'd be hard pressed to find though.
Maybe in a monastery?
But if there was some correlation between violence and immersion in video games you'd expect us lot to be the worse ones right?

 

Woah, woah, woah.

I didn't say, if you play video games you become a killer (I happen to play plenty of violent video games), just that violent media has a causal role in violence.

Much in the same way drunkenness can increase aggression; doesn't mean that all drinkers are violent, merely that it can be a factor that tips situations over.

For example; the suggested link between violent crime after televised boxing matches. http://www.siena.edu/pages/6527.asp

 

Isn't it more that drunkeness doesn't so much increase aggression as reduce inhibition though?
Meaning a person truer personality comes through (one reason I don't buy the "I was drunk" defence for anything).
There's much clearer evidence for the role of alcohol in violence than video games.
At most I think they could maybe, just maybe, feed into an already violent person (in the same way porn can feed into an already sexually dangerous person) but they don't actually cause anything in and off themselves.

 

In which case you can make an argument for it being involved in violence.

I agree, but I'm not really saying violent video games are especially linked to violence more than something like Alcohol.

I don't like that approach, it's too close to "no-true-scotsman" territory; "X media doesn't affect trend Y and even if it does it's not its fault anyway".

Bit like saying "I'm not cheating on you, and anyway she seduced me so it's not my fault."

 

And as in my example of the blokes I work with, *if* there was some sort of effect I'd expect a dose response whereby the more exposure there was the more of an effect you got?

 

No, too many extraneous variables to do with poverty, racial/political tensions, urbanization, changing family structures etc

Obviously because of the ethics involved you can't set up an experiment nowadays in which your dependent variable is the number of times in which participants act violently towards one-another so you are forced to measure more indirect things that might be indicators of violent activity (which plenty of studies successfully do).

http://rsna2006.rsna.org/rsna2006/V2006/conference/event_display.cfm?em_id=4433801

 

I doubt the effect is like a simple drug; my feeling is that there might be a maximum saturation point at which it has no further significant effects.