Porn is a bummer.
I went to see a famous guy named Robert Jensen talk about pornography. He wrote Getting Off (Pornography and the End of Masculinity). Dr. Jensen started out saying that if he did his job well, we'd all walk out of there feeling pretty horrible. He was right.He talked about pornography and its use not as a moral or legal issue, but from a feminist viewpoint. He explains how porn is the systematic degradation and humiliation of women. That pisses me off. Oh wait, i should use feeling words: i feel disappointed, frustrated, confused and hopeless.
I don't think he likes organized religion. He said at one point, "I don't mean to sound unnecessarily provocative, but Christianity -- particularly Protestant [he probably meant Evangelical] Christianity -- and pornography are flip sides of the same coin when it comes to subjugating women." That's a bold statement to make in Grand Rapids, home of the CRC, Zondervan publishing, and, like... God. But when we Christians use the bible to repress women, i agree. I wish i could remember where i'd read this, but the numbers of fundamentalist Evangelical families who have significant sexual problems (addiction to porn, sexual offenses, incest) is disproportionately high. The need for power and control in a fundamental, conservative household is great, and sex offenses (and porn) are all about power and control.
I can't even think of anything upbeat to end with. The weather was cool and thunderstormy. Oh, it's my buddy Michelle's birthday today. Happy birthday, Michelle!!! And, i played chess with Houston twice, and got checkmate twice, but he's sticking with it. Good kid.
So I was watching “The Price is Right” the other day and some “Barker’s Beauties” were on the screen when I realized that as fun and wholesome as the show seems, it does a horrible job of objectifying women. Think about it, here are these nameless, voiceless women, all dressed alike whose sole purpose is to make some other object look good. And to top it off, they’re referred to in the possesive simply as beautiful things. They are simply beautiful objects that belong to Bob Barker.
So, yeah, porn is a huge problem… but there are also other huge objectification of women problems right under our noses, not just hiding in the shelves of sleezy “adult” stores.
-- Steve (Email) - 04 October '07 - 10:36