Pornography: Liberation or Enslavement?

from Jocelyne - 18.03.2005 21:48

​
​​​​The Internet has created a porn explosion by opening huge new
markets. In 1996, there were 30 million surfers, and in 2001, 500
million! The pornography business is mainly run from and between the
economically developed countries but now reaches developing countries
as well. Pornographic sites number about 450,000. By Jocelyne, Militant, Louise-Michel Group of the Fédération anarchiste, 2003.

Translated by SonofTomJoad, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 3/05

Original French @:  http://increvablesanarchistes.org/articles/2000_apres/2003porno_liberat.htmbr>

Most dictionaries define pornography as the self-indulgent
representation of obscene acts that shock the prudish, a subjective and
variable concept according to historical era, country and culture. What
qualified as pornographic in the 18th century seems quaint to us
today—a glimpse of a naked breast … or ankle. Pornography has both a
provocative and a profitable dimension. Eroticism, however, can be just
as titillating and saleable, but it depicts emotional and sexual
experiences between consenting partners who want to increase their
sexual pleasure together by playing erotic games to reach orgasm.

Pornography achieves no such effect. There are two categories of sexual partner in porn—

the dominators (men) and the dominated (women or children) used as
objects. Sexuality serves as another means to create or reinforce
inequality. Women (or children in the case of child pornography) are
represented in degrading, shameful situations, showing that they can
only find pleasure in submission and humiliation. Pornography
apologizes for violence against women, and even children, in which men
triumph as the dominant sex. Aside from the commercial aspect,
pornography differs from eroticism in that it makes no aesthetic quest
but only seeks a crude reality, limited to the genital organs or the
scatological, as opposed to eroticism, which explains, or more often,
suggests intimate situations. Pornography only displays the physical
aspect of the body, while eroticism plays with the entire personality
of the person.

Internet porn

Pornography has evolved over the centuries, with paintings discovered
on the walls of the brothels of Antiquity and writings and songs
sometimes serving as an outlet for official writers, but that evolution
is microscopic compared to the exponential way it has developed over
the past thirty years and how extremely violent its content has become.
The Internet has created a porn explosion by opening huge new markets.
In 1996, there were 30 million surfers, and in 2001, 500 million! The
pornography business is mainly run from and between the economically
developed countries but now reaches developing countries as well.
Pornographic sites number about 450,000. They offer videos, photos,
prostitute catalogues, sex shops and stores selling sexy lingerie, so
women can excite their male partners. Web-cams allow some sites to
offer direct visual relations with very young girls or children. Since
communication has become so international and provides new markets for
the sex industry, 2.5 % of total Internet traffic carries pornographic
images, and users have the freedom to visit porn sites without much
fear of being located, thanks to the anonymous complexity of the Web.
Men comprise 95% of customers, according to polls, and they can watch
scenes of torture, rape and lesser crimes if they like. The police have
dismantled some sites because they involve minors. However, proposals
for regulation are denounced in the name of freedom of expression and
the right to privacy. The Internet is the communication space with the
closest thing to a complete legal void at its disposal.

Pornography has become more violent over the last several decades. In
1976 in the US, the film Snuff provoked important demonstrations,
especially of feminists, because it presented as real the torture,
murder and dismemberment of a woman. This escalation of violence may be
explicable as a response to the women's liberation movement born in the
Seventies, which put male supremacy at risk! In 1976, pornographic
movies released in France numbered about 11 million, and while that
number fell to 2 million in 1985, in the same period there was a
flourishing of sex shops, peep shows, sex chat lines, as well as the
explosion of video sales. Porn film production is now the work of big
media outfits like Vivendi Universal Canal +, which had a world
monopoly on the market in 2001.

Content

Above all, pornography is a sex industry that uses all the methods
necessary for its expansion. It produces a misogynistic vision of
sexual relations between men and women based on inequality and the
domination and violence of men against women, reflecting patriarchal
society. Contrary to erotic-pornographic literature like Lady
Chatterley's Lover, The Story of O, Lolita and Emmanuelle, which allow
the reader's imagination to bring the description alive, the films do
not allow the unconscious to re-appropriate the projected fantasies
because they are more primitive and brutal and too fast. Active readers
interpret words and situations by adapting them according to their
personalities and lived experiences, thus paradoxically re-inventing
the story. Images projected on the screen do not allow this distancing,
this re-appropriation. They appear and vanish too quickly, not allowing
the necessary reaction or unconscious adjustment, and so they are
received passively.


Pornographic film content has evolved over the years to become more and
more violent and brutal toward women (but also children). In this way,
it mirrors capitalist society, which reinforces class inequalities and
the inequality women have in relation to men. Women's bodies are shown
as sexual objects, pieces of meat, of merchandise, with overused wide
shots in order to better show penetrations of all orifices and the
final (male) orgasm displayed by the emission of sperm. The penis is
only filmed when erect, the patriarchal symbol of male power, never
before or after. The ejaculation of sperm is dramatized as the erect
saviour's awaited apotheosis flooding the sprawling body of the woman.
Storylines are usually absent because these films only seek to satisfy
the need of men to dominate women and even create that need (in the
film's advertising). These films don't show sexuality between men and
woman, which is not limited to penetration but involves the whole
person. Fixating on the genital organs casts aside an important part of
the human body connected to orgasm—the imagination. Physical orgasm is
a component of sexuality between consenting partners that is not
defined by penis size or trying to beat multiple penetration records
but by a common quest for pleasure. Sexual pleasure is subjective and
relative according to individuals; having a hard-on is not enough to
achieve Completeness of Being.

A social evolution?

The unimaginative ubiquity of pornography, far from freeing individuals
and destroying the religious taboos of our societies, only reinforces
the foundations of capitalism and patriarchy. Money is the impetus and
the goal of success (social success in the group and not personal
success); social success can only be reached in an unequal social
context in which force dominates, freedom is repressed, relations
between the sexes are based on degradation, the domination of men over
women reproduces itself— thereby encroaching on already acquired
rights, returning to moral order, reinforcing the power of religion
(diktats of integrationists and fundamentalists alike).

Access to more pornography only gives the illusion of a liberated
society. Some women artists demand the right to do what they want with
their bodies when, in fact, they are only participating in the market,
cornered by men, that does what men want with the bodies of others
(such as in the film Baise-moi) like they do in war. Changes in sexual
behaviour remain linked to a liberal society endowed with the new
alienating component of the pornography invasion that perpetuates the
domination of an owning minority over all other people, such
exploitation the very essence of capitalism. While some pornography
feeds off extremely perverse situations—violence, torture, rape, murder—
it does not help to emancipate individuals and social groups. Despite
the evolution of pornography that could be perceived as an outlet for
mainly male aggression, which is the consequence of patriarchal
society, sexual crimes have increased along with spousal abuse, while
rape has not decreased, and the sexual exploitation of women, children
and men in prostitution is growing.

There is no real sexual liberation because the spirit has not followed
the body, and this dichotomy only brings low self-esteem. Emancipation
does not come from more and more sex relations. Sexuality is part of
well-being, but pornography, far from liberating people, keeps them
dependent, and it only benefits and reinforces capitalist society at
the expense of a libertarian society of adult and totally fulfilled
people.


Are we going to let that happen?

Most dictionaries define pornography as the self-indulgent
representation of obscene acts that shock the prudish, a subjective and
variable concept according to historical era, country and culture. What
qualified as pornographic in the 18th century seems quaint to us
today—a glimpse of a naked breast … or ankle. Pornography has both a
provocative and a profitable dimension. Eroticism, however, can be just
as titillating and saleable, but it depicts emotional and sexual
experiences between consenting partners who want to increase their
sexual pleasure together by playing erotic games to reach orgasm.

Pornography achieves no such effect. There are two categories of sexual partner in porn—
the dominators (men) and the dominated (women or children) used as
objects. Sexuality serves as another means to create or reinforce
inequality. Women (or children in the case of child pornography) are
represented in degrading, shameful situations, showing that they can
only find pleasure in submission and humiliation. Pornography
apologizes for violence against women, and even children, in which men
triumph as the dominant sex. Aside from the commercial aspect,
pornography differs from eroticism in that it makes no aesthetic quest
but only seeks a crude reality, limited to the genital organs or the
scatological, as opposed to eroticism, which explains, or more often,
suggests intimate situations. Pornography only displays the physical
aspect of the body, while eroticism plays with the entire personality
of the person.


Internet porn

Pornography has evolved over the centuries, with paintings discovered
on the walls of the brothels of Antiquity and writings and songs
sometimes serving as an outlet for official writers, but that evolution
is microscopic compared to the exponential way it has developed over
the past thirty years and how extremely violent its content has become.
The Internet has created a porn explosion by opening huge new markets.
In 1996, there were 30 million surfers, and in 2001, 500 million! The
pornography business is mainly run from and between the economically
developed countries but now reaches developing countries as well.
Pornographic sites number about 450,000. They offer videos, photos,
prostitute catalogues, sex shops and stores selling sexy lingerie, so
women can excite their male partners. Web-cams allow some sites to
offer direct visual relations with very young girls or children. Since
communication has become so international and provides new markets for
the sex industry, 2.5 % of total Internet traffic carries pornographic
images, and users have the freedom to visit porn sites without much
fear of being located, thanks to the anonymous complexity of the Web.
Men comprise 95% of customers, according to polls, and they can watch
scenes of torture, rape and lesser crimes if they like. The police have
dismantled some sites because they involve minors. However, proposals
for regulation are denounced in the name of freedom of expression and
the right to privacy. The Internet is the communication space with the
closest thing to a complete legal void at its disposal.

Pornography has become more violent over the last several decades. In
1976 in the US, the film Snuff provoked important demonstrations,
especially of feminists, because it presented as real the torture,
murder and dismemberment of a woman. This escalation of violence may be
explicable as a response to the women's liberation movement born in the
Seventies, which put male supremacy at risk! In 1976, pornographic
movies released in France numbered about 11 million, and while that
number fell to 2 million in 1985, in the same period there was a
flourishing of sex shops, peep shows, sex chat lines, as well as the
explosion of video sales. Porn film production is now the work of big
media outfits like Vivendi Universal Canal +, which had a world
monopoly on the market in 2001.

Content

Above all, pornography is a sex industry that uses all the methods
necessary for its expansion. It produces a misogynistic vision of
sexual relations between men and women based on inequality and the
domination and violence of men against women, reflecting patriarchal
society. Contrary to erotic-pornographic literature like Lady
Chatterley's Lover, The Story of O, Lolita and Emmanuelle, which allow
the reader's imagination to bring the description alive, the films do
not allow the unconscious to re-appropriate the projected fantasies
because they are more primitive and brutal and too fast. Active readers
interpret words and situations by adapting them according to their
personalities and lived experiences, thus paradoxically re-inventing
the story. Images projected on the screen do not allow this distancing,
this re-appropriation. They appear and vanish too quickly, not allowing
the necessary reaction or unconscious adjustment, and so they are
received passively.

Pornographic film content has evolved over the years to become more and
more violent and brutal toward women (but also children). In this way,
it mirrors capitalist society, which reinforces class inequalities and
the inequality women have in relation to men. Women's bodies are shown
as sexual objects, pieces of meat, of merchandise, with overused wide
shots in order to better show penetrations of all orifices and the
final (male) orgasm displayed by the emission of sperm. The penis is
only filmed when erect, the patriarchal symbol of male power, never
before or after. The ejaculation of sperm is dramatized as the erect
saviour's awaited apotheosis flooding the sprawling body of the woman.
Storylines are usually absent because these films only seek to satisfy
the need of men to dominate women and even create that need (in the
film's advertising). These films don't show sexuality between men and
woman, which is not limited to penetration but involves the whole
person. Fixating on the genital organs casts aside an important part of
the human body connected to orgasm—the imagination. Physical orgasm is
a component of sexuality between consenting partners that is not
defined by penis size or trying to beat multiple penetration records
but by a common quest for pleasure. Sexual pleasure is subjective and
relative according to individuals; having a hard-on is not enough to
achieve Completeness of Being.


A social evolution?

The unimaginative ubiquity of pornography, far from freeing individuals
and destroying the religious taboos of our societies, only reinforces
the foundations of capitalism and patriarchy. Money is the impetus and
the goal of success (social success in the group and not personal
success); social success can only be reached in an unequal social
context in which force dominates, freedom is repressed, relations
between the sexes are based on degradation, the domination of men over
women reproduces itself— thereby encroaching on already acquired
rights, returning to moral order, reinforcing the power of religion
(diktats of integrationists and fundamentalists alike).

Access to more pornography only gives the illusion of a liberated
society. Some women artists demand the right to do what they want with
their bodies when, in fact, they are only participating in the market,
cornered by men, that does what men want with the bodies of others
(such as in the film Baise-moi) like they do in war. Changes in sexual
behaviour remain linked to a liberal society endowed with the new
alienating component of the pornography invasion that perpetuates the
domination of an owning minority over all other people, such
exploitation the very essence of capitalism. While some pornography
feeds off extremely perverse situations—violence, torture, rape, murder—
it does not help to emancipate individuals and social groups. Despite
the evolution of pornography that could be perceived as an outlet for
mainly male aggression, which is the consequence of patriarchal
society, sexual crimes have increased along with spousal abuse, while
rape has not decreased, and the sexual exploitation of women, children
and men in prostitution is growing.

There is no real sexual liberation because the spirit has not followed
the body, and this dichotomy only brings low self-esteem. Emancipation
does not come from more and more sex relations. Sexuality is part of
well-being, but pornography, far from liberating people, keeps them
dependent, and it only benefits and reinforces capitalist society at
the expense of a libertarian society of adult and totally fulfilled
people.

Are we going to let that happen?

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