I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I am November 22, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in Body Image, objectification/commodification, pornography harms, quote of the day, sexual exploitation.1 comment so far
Pro-anorexia websites, which often display pictures of emaciated looking women to provide “thinspiration” to users and tips on how to fool doctors and falsify weight, outnumbered recovery sites five to one, she said.
“These sites are toxic and very dangerous. While some are run by girls with anorexia there is a clear link to pornography and evidence that there are people who get sexual gratification from grooming young girls and getting them to post pictures of themselves online.”
From this article (quoting Susan Ringwood, chief executive of beat, an eating disorder charity).
The Rise in Cosmetic Vaginal Surgery November 20, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in Body Image, pornography harms, quote of the day.1 comment so far
From an article in today’s Guardian:
Those asking for this surgery on the NHS, Creighton says, “can be very young – sometimes as young as 10 or 11. Mostly they’re in their late teens or early 20s. There are two pairs of labia: the fat pads on each side and the thinner, slightly more frilly skin on the inside. The ideal these women want is not to be able to see their labia minora at all. That is the image from porno-graphy and magazines. Because of shaving and fashions in underwear, this part of the body is more visible now. And everyone is more exposed to these images of a ‘perfect’ body, so people feel pressured to look a certain way.” She argues that women are aiming for “a certain genital appearance that used to be an obligation only for some glamour models”. The report warns of a culture where a “homogenised, pre-pubescent genital appearance” is therefore being perceived as the norm.
As with any surgery, labiaplasty is potentially risky. Creighton says that there have been no studies into the after-effects or possible complications of labiaplasty, nor has there been any research into the impact on childbirth: she suggests that women who opt for this procedure might experience the same problems while giving birth as women who have undergone ritualistic female genital mutilations. Allison Henry, a US woman who had her labia reduced after a vaginal prolapse, recently wrote that the operation “was brutal. All [the] patients who say it doesn’t hurt are lying. I’d rather get my teeth pulled out than do that again.” In Anna’s case, she was unable to walk for two days after the operation, and was in recovery for six weeks.
One thing we have noticed is that people will have it done and then come back to have more taken off.
Quote of the day: IBTP archive November 9, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in Radical Feminism, bin the bunny, pornography harms, pro-sex anti-porn, quote of the day.add a comment
Take, for example, that, despite the Rollergirls’ impressive skaterly talents, the “sport” is only nominally about skating. You have already guessed what it’s actually about, but I’ll tell you anyway: sex. That’s right, sex, only not real sex, such as the kind we could all be having if Hugh Hefner hadn’t ruined it for everybody, but phony sex as defined by the horndog ideology of the pornocracy. The roller derby is an example of what you might, if you were me, call “proto-porn”—a non-penetrative, G-rated, but nevertheless two-dimensional, stereotypical, and bogus picture of female sexuality generated from an amorphous plasma of cultural misogyny. It’s kindergarten burlesque.
From this post.
Quote of the day: getting along in the Patriarchy November 6, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in Radical Feminism, quote of the day, violence against women.add a comment
This quote of the day comes from commenter Pantsuit Sally, over at I Blame the Patriarchy; it comes in response to a critique of a misogynist 1960s film titled: “How To Murder Your Wife.”
All you need to know to get along in the [Patriarchy]: infinite examples in pop culture in which the audience can sympathize with a female character’s murderer=perfectly reasonable, not misogynist; Andrea Dworkin asking men not to rape us=psycho castrating feminazi.
Can’t work out how to link to individual comments, but it appears at 9.53 am on November 5.
Quote of the day: Cultural Transmission November 4, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in pornography harms, quote of the day, sexual exploitation, violence against women.add a comment
From this post at Reclusive Leftist:
The whole premise — that TV and movies and records and pornography have no effect on reality — is just preposterous. Humans are cultural animals. TV/movies/records/pornography are a means of cultural transmission, just like any other medium or form of communication. Nowadays, in fact, these are our primary means of cultural transmission.
And everybody knows that. That’s why people object to racist depictions or homophobia or even the absence of positive onscreen role models for minorities. Because all that’s part of our cultural transmission, part of how we share and exchange and teach values and ideas.
This knowledge mysteriously evaporates, however, when the subject is something dear to one’s heart — like pornography or violence or bimbotastic portrayals of women. Then, magically, the movies and porn are said to exist in some kind of otherworld vacuum: no cultural transmission, no values, no impact whatsoever on the humans consuming. It’s fucking ludicrous.
Quote of the Day: Rapists’ Utopia November 1, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in pornography harms, quote of the day, sexual exploitation, violence against women.add a comment
Interesting essay up at The Thinking Southerner, titled ‘If I Were a Rapist …’ (discovered as she links to us in the essay), in which the writer examines rape culture.
In my rapist’s utopia, I’d make sure that women’s bodies were used to sell EVERYTHING, and that half-dressed women in sexy poses, airbrushed and photoshopped to perfection, were on the covers of almost all the magazines in the stores. Then women would compare their bodies to the women they’re seeing on the magazines and TV commercials and movies, and realize they could never measure up. Thin, beautiful women might work excessively at staying thin and “beautiful”– doing everything they could to look like the women in the media, hoping to gain some sort of acceptance, while all along learning to use their beauty and superficial sexuality to make gains in life, win attention, and make life easier. Then they’d come to view themselves not as whole women, competent and with great potential, but as shells to be polished and presented, whose worth depends completely on a specific set of ephemeral physical qualities that may or may not last through life. I’d make sure that women who don’t fit that narrow definition of socially approved physical “beauty” doubt themselves, and constantly think that nobody could ever find them sexy, so that when they are offered less than ideal sexual experiences that are degrading, devastating, or dismissive, they’ll readily accept, having been taught that to be found sexy and attractive is an ideal to aspire to in and of itself, with or without the empowerment that comes from having your sexuality honored by a caring and attentive partner. And I’d definitely want children to see these media images from a young age, so that little girls learn that their value comes from their ability to use their sexuality, and little boys learn that women are objects to be used.
23rd Carnival of Radical Feminists October 31, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in Radical Feminism.add a comment
The 23rd Carnival of Radical Feminists is up at Learning Feminism.
Carnival Against Sexual Violence 80 October 30, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in violence against women.add a comment
Porn Profits October 21, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in objectification/commodification, pornography harms, sexual exploitation.1 comment so far
Cath Elliott has blogged about the falling profits for the US porn industry, as a result of free on line content. This has resulted in porn performers having to accept lower pay for more dangerous sex acts.
It’s interesting how people’s attitudes suddenly change when they’re confronted by the reality of what goes on in the porn industry. Instead of the usual sanitised crap the industry itself tries to present to the world, and that we can see in this video with all the smiley clean-cut blokes trying to come off as respectable businessmen, Donohue comes face to face with an industry insider who’s prepared to tell the truth about what it’s all about. And it’s about shitty crappy parents trying to push their daughters into porn so they can make some money off their backs; it’s about girls and women being increasingly expected to do more and more extreme acts in return for less and less money; it’s about, as Shelley says, girls and women being expected to carry out acts with up to 75 men at a time.
Cath also posts this YouTube vid:
Statement by Members of XPALSS October 19, 2009
Posted by antiplondon in Radical Feminism, objectification/commodification, sexual exploitation, violence against women.add a comment
Statement by members of:
Ex-Prostitutes Against Legislated Sexual Servitude
As women who have been prostituted in Vancouver and in the light of these facts:
- That current discourse on prostitution would have the public believe that it is normal work that simply needs to be better regulated
- That there is currently a proposal to open a legal brothel in Vancouver
- That this proposal is said to speak for current and former prostitutes of Vancouver
- That this proposal promises to make the lives of prostituted women “safer” at best
- That none of us have ever met a prostituted woman who would not leave the “trade” if she had a real chance to do so
- That we are women who have been abused on Canadian soil, by Canadian men while all levels of our Government did nothing to intervene.
- That some members of parliament are now advocating to legalize that abuse.
We want you to know:
We are women who have been harmed by prostitution. We believe that no amount of changing the conditions or the locations in which we were prostituted could ever have significantly reduced that harm. We experience the normalizing of that harm by calling it “work” insulting at best.
It matters very little to us whether we were prostituted on the streets or in the tolerated indoor venues and escort agencies of Vancouver. Our memories are not of the locations but of the men who consistently acted as though we were not quite human. We remember the countless other men and women who daily averted their eyes. We remember the utter lack of services or options that made any sense and the blatant denial of access to any kind of help or justice. We remember the need to “dumb down” our sense of entitlement to a better life so we could bear the one we were in. And we remember too well the numbing despair that came when we finally lost faith that there existed in this world anything decent and good.
We oppose any measure that would put more power in the hands of the men who abused us by telling them that they are legally entitled to do so. This proposal does not speak for us, would not have affected our level of safety in a way that matters, and would not have spared us the harm that is inherent in prostitution.
We are not impressed with lip service proposals to make prostituted women’s lives “safer”. Safer is not good enough. We consider it a violation of our human rights that we were abandoned to years of situations that fit the definition of sexual assault under current law. But not only is this violence not recorded, not prosecuted, not punished. We are now being told that we chose it.
We believe that, where there is public and political will, lives can be changed for the better. We do not believe the lie that prostitution is inevitable. We believe it can be abolished.
As hosts of the 2010 games, we want our city, our home, to refuse to take part in the global flesh market that is sex tourism and send a message to the world that women will not be sold in Vancouver.
We believe that every sexually exploited woman represents a life wasted. We are greatly saddened for the lives of women lost in prostitution, as well as the loss of the sum of the contributions that countless women still living would have made had they not been abandoned to sexual slavery.
We urge you all to refuse to believe that prostitution is normal or that it is an equal exchange ”between two consenting adults”. We urge you to oppose any attempt to introduce a legal brothel in Vancouver.
