porn sucks and I hate how pervasive it is in our society, especially on the internet. Any positive thing gets compared to porn, "foodporn", "map porn", etc., idk call me puritanical but I just find it gross.
Also, I'm too young to know the answer to this, but what effect do we think internet porn has had on spawning a generation of incels? Idk what the pre-porn incel market was like.
Sex is great, intimacy is wonderful, but I don't like porn.
porn didn't create any incels, people who have no sex education or 'visualisation' still have the social expectations of patriarchy. 'internet porn' largely coincides with the long-run alienation trends of the last decades, it's a relatively unimportant part compared to economic outlooks and social isolation.
Also, I’m too young to know the answer to this, but what effect do we think internet porn has had on spawning a generation of incels?
Some effect, but likely a negligible one. Most dudes of childrearing age, cause I'm not gonna sit here and act like they're all fathers even if they sired a child-- most dudes won't cop to it, but Gen Xers and boomers are where this started. They taught their boys a very specific way that offshot of the way they acted, even if what they SAID ran contrary. It's what their fathers did that these incels want to emulate, not what they said.
I'm speaking from personal experience here; because I was once very much the same way. One bad relationship with a cheat had me misogynistic as fuck at one point in my life; and what I fell back on was all of the maladaptive, machismo-type bullshit my father lived by. "Never let a hoe fuck with your money", "never trust a hoe with your feelings", the whole nine-- and this experience is what kind of. I might verbally john on incels every so often, but I consider it genuinely tragic because they were maladaptively socialized for a society that is quite literally disintegrating in real time.
tl;dr I think it might tweak the dynamics of the incel/manosphere, but not in a way that'd undo the phenomenon. If anything, you're gonna see more Andrew Tate-alikes who talk about porn and masturbation being mentally or spiritually crippling, but still keep up all the regressive misogyny if not stronger because dollars-to-donuts says they'll just default to "blame women" for why the porn is gone. (Despite all their slagging of OnlyFans models.)
just watching movies from the 80s and 90s is enough to see how incel-type behaviour not only existed, but was somewhat normalized as "romantic protagonist" behaviour
I don't think it's a gen x or boomer thing, I think there have always been men we'd now identify as incels in patriarchal society, as it's the logical end point of male sexual entitlement. The way we describe them has changed, but ideas like women not being able to be trusted with money or men not showing their feelings go back hundreds, if not thousands of years. I think what's really changed is the internet has given those people somewhere to gather and jerk themselves off about how unfair it is, intensifying their persecution complexes and causing them to act out more.
The prevalence of the male incel identity coincides with sexual harassment becoming less socially acceptable.
That's the main part of it. It's the shadow of lingering social misogyny trying to reassert itself through the very real phemenons of alienation and loneliness.
Also, I'm too young to know the answer to this, but what effect do we think internet porn has had on spawning a generation of incels? Idk what the pre-porn incel market was like.
idk, I think it's hard to separate the effects of internet porn from the effects of the internet in general. i think regular ol' internet forums (some of which host porn but not necessarily as the main focus) are the biggest factor in the proliferation of "incel" mindsets / identities. you know, before the internet if you were somebody who can't get laid, you'd maybe talk to your friends about it and get encouragement or advice, or talk to family, or just be sad basically. the chances of you independently coming to the conclusion that there's something about you that makes you completely unlovable (maybe even to absurdly specific degrees, such as that you will never be able to get laid because your wrists are too narrow) and that the problem will never ever get better and that all women are unthinking evil creatures who want unlovable men like you to die so they never have to be reminded that anyone but exists... are pretty slim. nobody comes up with those kinds of ideas on their own, that requires insular groups that take time feeding each other's frustrations and insecurities and slowly building up a mythology. if you dont have access to the internet, you're going to have to discuss your difficult love life with someone who can get laid. but incel internet forums provide an extremely unhealthy outlet for those frustrations that don't involve ever talking to someone who can get laid.
I also don't think internet porn is significantly more harmful than the good ol' magazines and VHS tapes and whatever that we had before. though, one way in that it is obviously more harmful is in the sheer availability. if you've got a dirty magazine you've got, you know, one magazine of porn. if you've got a smartphone you've got more porn than you could ever desire to look at in a hundred lifetimes. and if you're a kid, you at least have to hide a dirty magazine. teens these days have basically no risk of being caught being addicted to (even extremely niche) pornography. i think that's gonna be the biggest effect of internet porn for the next few generations. when millennials (and anyone older) were growing up, their experience with porn, if any, was maybe a few dirty magazines where they could look at some tits. now kids are growing up totally addicted to enormous amounts of wild, hardcore porn.
i generally agree with you that porn is bad. by volume, anyway. like 99.999% of all porn is bad for a wide variety of reasons. I think it's possible to make porn ethically. Very difficult unless there are no humans involved (like with drawings or pure writing), and even then it's still possible to do it unethically (sexualizing children still sucks even if there are no real kids involved, for example)
I do think that the 99.999% of porn I'm talking about should be illegal, though.
in a utopian vision of communism porn absolutely would not exist. far from the first thing on the list (i agree making it illegal under current conditions as a lone act would be useless and probably regressive) but if we take the abolition of exploitation seriously it's gotta go
But imagine for a second that we had an internet where credit card handlers and big tech companies were the deciding factor if NSFW content could be allowed on an internet platform and they started hammering down on any website big enough in order to block pornographic or illustrated erotic content on them. That would be horrible. Thank god Biden won't let that happen
Sorry but in a communist world, porn would be done away with nobody would have to sell their body or their body-having-sex-as-content in order to put food on the table, pay rent, etc. You gotta really consider how many people in that industry are exhibitionist, how many are escaping bad situations at home, or are groomed by society to see this as an acceptable form of labor, or are being exploited in destructive manners with zero recourse, no better than forced labor. Hypersexuality in teenagers and adults can be a response to domestic violence and abuse, it can be a dissociative way of dealing with unpleasant feelings and stress, and porn consumption, and production can take advantage of that; it also makes it difficult to distinguish between puberty driven desires and societal pressure. Porn can also be the end result of trafficking like European, and specifically Eastern European pornographic rings that are the source of human trafficking.
Feminists have been debating about the inherent oppressive conditions of sex under a patriarchal and capitalist world. We have to include that into the analysis of the pornographic industry. If the industry was to be tolerated, it would have to be with stringent measures for entry, licensing, testing, and performance procedures that would basically legislate it out of existence.
Yes, an exceptionally high percentage of sex workers today are wage slaves and worse, coercion is the norm today. But to reduce all porn production to 'unacceptable labor' is not a reasonable conclusion either.
Free of financial coercion, some non-negligible amount of people would still choose to do sex work. Sexuality is a normal, healthy, human trait, and there are plenty healthy ways to engage with it.
we don't live in a communist world and the movement to legislate-it-out-of-existence from the right without solving any of the economic/social cleavages that put people into sex work is just going to escalate the criminal character & make it more dangerous for workers
i think in the idyllic after-the-revolution there wouldn't even be a demand for porn production: with the elimination of IP, just go around and obtain consent forms from whichever former performers don't mind it being out there, & there'd instantly be a huger library of available pornography than anyone could countenance under capitalism. the industry thrives on artificial scarcity and ephemeral availability, but there's nothing fundamentally new
This is how I see it. The best outlook to end the adult entertainment industry's abuses isn't "ban porn," but rather, it's "make it redundant by ensuring basic human rights so people do not feel a need to go down that route."
It's funny, cause I actually legitimately wonder about this sort of thing. A shocking amount of people write/draw NSFW stuff not out of any kind of profit motive, but just because they want to.
A lot of "x wouldn't exist under communism discourse" seems to stem from x thing being a modern invention. Communist writers didn't write about porn because filmed porn didn't really exist until the late 1960s. Movies and television as we know it didn't exist before the late 1960s either.
What you wrote also applies to acting and film making in general. You could substitute "pornography" with "movies and television" and it would be effectively just as true. Are there actors who don't like to act but do it anyways because they are promised fame and fortune? Do people who have suffered traumatic events watch films and television to dissociate from their lives? Have the producers of hollywood movies and television engaged in acts of human trafficking? Have feminists debated the inherent oppressive conditions of film production, acting, television and movies under a patriarchal and capitalist world? The answer to all of these questions is yes but we wouldn't say that communism will legislate movies and television out of existence.
more right than you think because the correct view is that most of american culture and media, like porn, is a societal ill and has a net effect of harm. i think your direct comparison is a bit vulgar though
What you wrote also applies to acting and film making in general. You could substitute "pornography" with "movies and television" and it would be effectively just as true. Are there actors who don't like to act but do it anyways because they are promised fame and fortune? Do people who have suffered traumatic events watch films and television to dissociate from their lives? Have the producers of hollywood movies and television engaged in acts of human trafficking? Have feminists debated the inherent oppressive conditions of film production, acting, television and movies under a patriarchal and capitalist world? The answer to all of these questions is yes but we wouldn't say that communism will legislate movies and television out of existence.
I'm sorry, no. Films and movies have, to some extent, artistic merit. I think the discourse in a communist world would be "what is pornographic" and what has "artistic value"; there's terrible movies and great porn right now so that'd make for an interesting discourse - the distinction would probably reside on performed sex scenes vs. penetrative acts. But on the concept of comparison, let's look at analogous professions like "porn star" and "prostitute" (appropriate and respectful term being sex worker). Grab a list of zip codes in this country and divided by median income. If you visited each one and offered random man or woman money in exchange for sex, how likely is it that those in higher income areas would say yes? What would they agree to? Now, widen your search and make your way down each zip code, the chances you "convince" someone increases. Imperialist white supremacist patriarchal capitalist societies create ethnic and low-income enclaves that allow for prostitution and exploitation in a variety of ways. Patriarchal systems generate sexual exploitation. Capitalist societies maintain that exploitation under class hierarchal relations and labor exploitation. Now think of this at the global scale. The existence of an industry that generate pornographic or sexually explicit interactions between client and worker, necessitate a constant supply of bodies; specially because Patriarchal values has pedophilic tendencies. I think it's also worth noting that current, and mainstream, pornsites try to filter, to some extent, major abuses; but even mindgeek/pornhub has run into legal issues due to age and model verification systems, with revenge, exploitative, and CSA uploaded to their site, not to mention they are an exploitative monopoly that control major distribution platforms. One of the arguments that pro-porn proponents are currently making is that banning pornhub or forcing them to store a license, drives users to websites that are not rated, do not follow certain policies, and are part of the "dark web"; where young adults can be exposed to unmoderated pornographic material.
I don't think we'd ever reach a communist utopia, specially with climate change breathing down our necks, but I do think that communist countries are following good principles when they try to legislate away certain industries and try to raise the standard of living for exploited populations.
What would that mean for personal sexual relationships? I think, if anything, adults might become freer from current sexual mores and would rely less on explicit pornographic material to compensate.
Do people who have suffered traumatic events watch films and television to dissociate from their lives?
Not so fun fact, yes actually folks that suffer from high anxiety will often watch the same shows this process is comforting, yes, but maladaptive.
are they though? they haven't been very active about it but that's true of every red-state legislation they don't have large enough minorities to disrupt.
I haven't looked at this story for a while, and this is just the first link I saw, but California is (was?) looking at one of these age verification laws. Calmatters.org
This!
This will happen the next time a Republican POTUS gets elected.
Project 2025 will most definitely turn into 2029 which will turn into 2033 and so and so on.
Which I’m begging Dems to whip up their own Project 2025 to make sure that other one doesn’t happen.
If the Democrats did a project 2025, it would either not exist or be near identical to the Republican one lmao
Project 2025 will most definitely turn into 2029 which will turn into 2033 and so and so on.
Just keep voting blue guys. Don't worry about the genocide, police brutality, asylum ban, banning apps because people on it support Palestine etc. No matter how bad Biden is, project 2025+4+4+4+4+4 is worse
It's so convenient that they found a way to shift off of "trump bad".
When people like us confronted them with "what will you screech about once trump is dead?" They found the perfect boogyman. A nebulous collection of ideas the Republicans have been open about for 50+ years. At least this one has a cute name!
I guess on the one hand, this is closer to how messaging should work, but alas, they will just scaremonger and fundraise off it until we slow walk into fascism.
You can tell because they've been trying to scare everybody with project 2025 for a year but if you ask them what their plan is if they win they'll just look at you confused and say they aren't Trump.
I mean, multiple Democrat mainstay organizations were caught out funding the think tank behind 2025; so I'm gonna put my chips on "identical to the Republican one".
I like Madeline Pendleton’s take on Project 2025. It’s just everything The Heritage Foundation has been pushing for for decades, but most people don’t know about The Heritage Foundation, so it seems like it’s out of nowhere. It’s nothing out of the ordinary or special for Republicans.
Go ahead and ban it, I already got plans drawn up for porn speakeasies with private booths for gooners to goon all day in. Going to be $69 an hour, I'm going to be fucking rich and it'll be perfect.
No no no you see porn is an accessibility tool for people with aphantasia, everyone else can just fantasize but but but what about the poor people who cannot visualize mental imagery at all, we have to let them get off too right
TBF I think the commentary here is on the hedonistic conservatives being oblivious that the cultural conservatives want to take their toys away, not “Biden be the porn president.”
That being said, it does fall into that wide category of “If it’s so certain Trump will do this, why didn’t he during his first term when he had majorities in Congress?”
i think there's some of the impulse to not solve hot-button issues that dominates the dems in the republican camp too, as well as different lobbies creating different factions in the party. porn bans aren't exactly the pro-business position, though it benefits some capitalists im sure: VPNs, surveillance firms, physical sex stores (that won't last long under a morality police regime tho lol)