i don't care about disabled men wanting to have sex. i don't care about the "plight" of incels. i genuinely don't. these supposed issues would not exist if men did not feel entitled to women's bodies
they talk about “access to sex” like it was “access to the internet” or “access to food.” most people (men and women) don’t see sex with a woman as an activity shared between two people but as a resource, something a man extracts from women. That’s why women who have “too much” sex are viewed like a plot of land that’s been strip-mined. men seriously don’t see women as people.
I cannot describe how freeing it is to think of womanhood as a state of being female and nothing else; no expectations, no rules, just being content with how I was born and who I was meant to be.
70 years ago the fear was “babies will be grown in vats” but little did we know the vats would be impoverished women on the other side of the globe. capitalism and misogyny combine, finding the cheapest, not the safest, way to deliver babies as a product.
“People are always telling you that “we have always done thus,” and then you find that their “always” means a generation or two, or a century or two, at most a millennium or two. Cultural ways and habits are blips, compared to the ways and habits of the body, of the race. There really is very little that human beings on our plane have “always” done, except find food and drink, sleep, sing, talk, procreate, nurture the children, and probably band together to some extent. Indeed it can be seen as our human essence, how few behavioral imperatives we follow. How flexible we are in finding new things to do, new ways to go. How ingeniously, inventively, desperately we seek the right way, the true way, the Way we believe we lost long ago among the thickets of novelty and opportunity and choice…”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Seasons of the Ansarac (via probablyasocialecologist)
hookup culture has men enjoying 100% orgasms while women only manage to orgasm 7% of the time
Relevant quotes from the full study:
"Research suggests that women may set the bar for satisfactory sex quite low - specifically, the absence of pain and degradation rather than the presence of pleasure and orgasm."
[Regarding men being more likely to engage in manual clitoral stimulation and oral sex when in a relationship, while fellatio was prevalent among hook-ups and relationships] "According to the authors, these findings suggest the orgasm gap is larger in casual sex because women are less likely to feel entitled to seek their own sexual pleasure and men are less motivated to provide their partners with pleasure..."
so what do women gain from sexual liberation and hookup culture? they get no orgasms, no emotional support and still get judged and slutshamed by society.
it seems to me that sexual liberation is a misnomer and hookup culture which is marketed to women as a way of expressing their sexual freedom and overcoming the unfair patriarchal standards women were supposed to live up to is actually a way to get women to accept less commitment and emotional investment.
Bottom text: "Let us help girls and women obtain qualifications by developing the construction of boarding schools, workshops for the unemployed, clinics and health centres.
look. i don’t think my stretch marks are beautiful. i don’t think they’re tiger stripes or natural tattooos. i don’t think my acne is beautiful. i don’t think the bags under my eyes are beautiful. i just think they’re human. and i don’t think i have to be beautiful all of the time in order to be accepted and loved and sucessful. i don’t think every small detail of my outer appearence needs to be translated into prettiness.
fun fact: this POV is actually called “body neutrality” and it’s SO MUCH more accessible/realistic for a lot of people. it’s based on the idea that the way we look is the least interesting/important thing about who we are, and that our bodies are worthy of respect regardless if they fit the mold of the current beauty ideals.
“Even though in actuality not all women can produce babies, all women are defined as the producers of babies. That is why radical feminists regard women as a class of persons who have in common the same relationship to production (reproduction).”
“In male-supremacist cultures, women are believed to embody carnality; women are sex. A man wants what a woman has - sex. He can steal it (rape), persuade her to give it away (seduction), rent it (prostitution), lease it over the long term (marriage in the United States), or own it outright (marriage in most societies). A man can do some or all of the above, over and over again.”
“In male-supremacist cultures (except for a few socialist countries where serious efforts have been made to end the exploited sexual labour of women as prostitutes), prostitution is the one profession genuinely and whole-heartedly open to women. Hard-working prostitutes earn enormous gross sums of money (compared to gross sums typical earned by other women), but they do not go on to become financiers or founders of universities. Instead their money goes to men, because men control, profit from, and perpetuate female prostitution…
The prostitute’s utterly degraded social status functions to punish her for daring to make money at all. The abuse that accrues to her prevents her from translating money into dignity or self determination…”
“In general, then, women do the lowest work of the society whatever that lowest work is perceived to be; and when women are the primary workers in a field, the field itself takes on the females’ low status. Therefore, it is false to think that the inferior status of women will dissolves when women do productive labour or enter freely into high status professions. When women enter any field in great numbers, the status of the field itself is lowered.”
“If these revolutionary necessities (reproductive freedom and an end to male sexual violence) are not our first priority, we will be led down the garden path and into the sunset by seducers and pimps of all persuasions who will do what they have always done - pillage our bodies, steal our labour, and bury us in unmarked graves under the weeks of centuries of contempt.”
More than 400 people can now demand the illegally obtained films be removed from websites.
Hundreds of people tricked into making explicit videos for porn websites have been awarded the rights to the videos and millions of dollars in damages.
The sites, GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys, had been the subject of a long-running legal battle.
The US Department of Justice has ruled that rights to videos and images produced by the now-defunct sites belong to the women.
More than 400 victims can now ask for the online footage to be removed.
They are likely to enforce notices ordering the firms, including Pornhub and Google, to take down the material.
GirlsDoPorn producer Ruben Andre Garcia was sentenced in the summer to 20 years in federal prison for coercing women into appearing in sex videos.
The latest ruling is part of a restitution order from the prosecution of Garcia, who also went by the name Jonathan.
Originally, women responded to adverts for clothed modelling work and were then told they would be highly paid for anonymous adult video shoots.
According to the women who appeared in GirlsDoPorn videos, Garcia pressured them into filmed sex acts and lied about the true nature of the shoot.
Garcia told the women that the videos would be published only on DVDs and sold overseas.
In fact, he knew the illegally obtained videos were being posted online, including on Pornhub, one of the most visited websites in the world.
Under the terms of the order, US district judge Janis Sammartino has ordered Garcia to pay $18m (£13.6m) in restitution and hand over the video and image rights.
Sammartino's order grants the video rights to 402 GirlsDoPorn victims, who can now seek "takedown" notices, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, against websites that continue to allow the films to be shown.
The women have been seeking justice against their traffickers since 2016.
"This is an extremely important ruling that returns power to the victims by giving them control of the images and videos that caused them so much pain and suffering," said Southern California district acting US attorney Randy Grossman.
"We hope this helps the victims close a difficult chapter in their lives."
"An important step in this long-healing process is for the victims to be able to take back control of their lives," said FBI special agent in charge, Suzanne Turner.
"This ruling helps to facilitate that shift while the FBI aggressively pursues the lone outstanding fugitive in this case... Michael James Pratt."
Authorities still haven't located Pratt, who the FBI has described as the ringleader and who was added to its "Most Wanted" list in September 2020.
In October, Pornhub's parent company settled a lawsuit brought by 50 women who said they were victims of the sex-trafficking operation.
'Invisible Women' by Caroline Criado Perez is an incredible book that everyone should read, first published 2019, about the way society is built around men in literally every aspect of life
'Pimp State' by Kat Banyard, first published 2016, is an amazing takedown of the six main myths that surround the sex trade
'Firebrand Feminism' by Breanne Fahs, first published 2018, interviews and looks into the lives of prominent Radical feminists Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dana Densmore, as well as discussing the basics and historic origins of radical feminism as a grass roots movement
'Spinning and Weaving : Radical Feminism for the 21st century' edited by Elizabeth Miller, first published 2021, is an anthology of various essays on topics such as porn, intersectional feminism, lesbian feminism, transgender politics and more (some are better than others, it's 600+ pages so I'm making my way through)
'Trans' by Helen Joyce, published 2021 - not so much radical feminism - moreso gender critical, as Joyce herself claims to be 'fiscally conservative' - and a few takes I don't quiet agree with but overall an excellent comprehensive discussion of the current and historical political climate of trans issues
Why Women Are Blamed For Everything by Dr Jessica Taylor, about the psychology of victim blaming. Grim but straightforward reading. It’s been years since I read it, but also Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls, about the hypersexualisation of young women and return of misogyny as ‘empowerment’. Also Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine, about the science of sex differences.
“The Women’s History of the Modern World: How Radicals, Rebels, and Everywomen Revolutionized the Last 200 Years” by Rosalind Miles (2021)
“Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood” by Michelle Goodwin (2020)
“The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society” by Dr. Debra W. Soh (2020)
“Witches, Witch Hunting and Women” by Silvia Federici (2018)
“Butterfly Politics” by Catharine Mackinnon (2017)
“Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality” by Gail Dines (2010)
“The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade” (2008), “Beauty and Misogyny” (2005), “Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism” (2014), “Unpacking Queer Politics” (2003) by Sheila Jefferys
Janice Turner: The pop star Billie Eilish will be an inspiration to many young people in rejecting grotesque images of sexual violence
Billie Eilish began watching porn aged 11 to be cool, “one of the guys”. But the brutal, abusive scenes she encountered gave her nightmares and in her first sexual relationships she complied with acts she hated “because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to”. Porn, she said this week, “destroyed my brain”.
Yet already Eilish, who only turns 20 this weekend, is being censured for her “anti-porn tirade”. Her lush voice, dark lyrics and seven Grammys can’t save her from being branded a Swerf (Sex Worker-Excluding Radical Feminist), a slur applied to any woman who dares challenge the global sex trade.
For a decade the supposed progressive position on pornography has been that it is liberating and “sex positive”. Those alarmed by its ubiquity and ever more savage content are right-wing, “pearl-clutching” old prudes. Cancel culture has given porn a free pass. A 1990s sitcom episode must be erased for showing blackface and an unwanted pass is classified as abuse. Yet porn, awash with grotesque racial tropes and extreme sexual violence including choking and slapping, often of apparently non-consenting, underage girls, is mere “fantasy”.
When you point out this paradox, many in their mid-twenties and thirties insert fingers in ears. So Eilish’s opinions raise a fascinating question: have the youngest adults, internet natives, scrolling smartphones from 12, watching anal sex years before their first kiss, formed a different view of porn?
In her recent book The Right to Sex, the Oxford professor Amia Srinivasan describes teaching her students the work of “second wave” feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, who argued that porn writes the script for male oppression. Srinivasan assumed undergraduates would find their position as outdated and repressive as she did. Instead they were electrified, agreeing with 1970s feminists that porn objectifies women, ignores female pleasure and, like Eilish, that it groomed them into sex acts they didn’t enjoy. Srinivasan reflects that at 36 she only encountered porn as an adult, while “sex to my students is what porn says it is”.
Srinivasan concludes with the old liberal fudge, that violent porn is best defeated by feminists creating “ethical” porn. (As if a few arty shags can displace Pornhub’s millions, or that men would watch them.) Yet I’d bet her students, boys and girls suffused in traumatising images from childhood, now angry their most tender, intimate selves have been shaped by rapacious companies, would consider stronger solutions.
This week a joint committee report was published on the draft Online Safety Bill, putting age-verification controls back on the agenda to keep children safe from accessing pornography. Although a government commitment since 2015, this was kicked around for years until finally killed by Nicky Morgan three months after Boris Johnson became Tory leader. With an election looming, the prime minister was reportedly unwilling to get between Red Wall man and his right hand.
Five years ago this policy was loudly disdained: surely canny, horny teenagers can breach age blocks with virtual private networks (VPNs) which conceal your country location. When porn companies proposed launching their own verification companies, users feared their identity and sexual proclivities would be exposed in any data breach. The proposal that porn access tokens could be sold at newsagents was viewed with hilarity and horror.
Yet since 2015 political pressure to bring online platforms under the same ethical and legal constraints as terrestrial publishers has grown. There is disgust at Instagram and Facebook for allowing, say, self-harm images to be viewed by vulnerable teenagers. Moreover, the moral exceptionalism once afforded to porn is dead. Last year campaigners revealed that Pornhub allowed child rape and other non-consensual acts to be uploaded on to its platform. When MasterCard threatened to block use of its cards on the site, Pornhub took down ten million videos overnight. Thus the world’s heedless governments were schooled in ethics by a credit card company.
It is now impossible to ignore the alarming sexualisation of children exposed to porn. An Ofsted report in June revealed that nine out of ten secondary school girls and half of boys had been sent unsolicited “dick pics”. In the two primary schools it studied, children were already accessing porn. Only the wilfully blind could dismiss a link between girls being pestered for nudes, TikTok videos where 14-year-olds proclaim they enjoy being strangled and spat on, what Ofsted calls a “normalisation” of sexual harassment and porn being woven into children’s lives.
Children’s charities have implored the government to bring in age verification. True, a 16-year-old may circumvent any barrier. But 60 per cent of 11 to 13-year-olds are first exposed to porn unintentionally, so it might at least stop a small child blundering across gang rape. (And if Netflix can defeat VPNs, why not governments?) The online gambling industry has used age verification successfully for years.
Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, reports that porn companies are happy to introduce age verification via third-party sites. But they want government to compel them so everyone must fall in line. De Souza says her office is having under-21s draw up online guidance aimed at protecting younger siblings. She says: “They are seriously concerned. I doubt they’ll be letting their children do it.”
A generational shift is under way. Those supporting unlimited porn access aren’t liberated promoters of social justice, but shills for Big Porno which degrades human sexuality for cash. Younger people, whose childhoods were defiled, will agree with Billie Eilish who says with a fearlessness born of pain: “As a woman, I think porn is a disgrace”.
too many people think intersectional feminism means “being a woman is not oppression by itself, only when it’s combined with a different oppression” instead of “misogyny intersects with other oppressions to alter and intensify the nature of the daily terrorism all women face”
“When we are asked, 'What about the women who choose?', we need to be less quick to respond, 'But do they really choose?', and more ready to explain why their choice (or lack thereof) is only one of many morally and politically relevant features of the situation. We also need to emphasize, continually, that the pornography industry-like prostitution more generally-does not ultimately exist because of women's choices. Rather it exists because men, as a class, demand that there be a sub-class of women (and children, and men, and transgender people- but mostly women) who are available for their unconditional sexual service.”
Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant. Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. 2004.
