SecondBeach

I was wandering around the feminist blogosphere and ran up against a thread of heavy (justified) anti-porn feminist rage.  So, typical me, I responded…and it became a manifesto still waiting for moderation.  So I thought I would post a version of it here, somewhere I’ve lurked for years without ever authoring anything.  So here’s my passion pro-porn plea.

Another perspective:

Porn has become more misogynist and extreme in recent years, and this terrifies me, because with it this empty, harmful, unrealistic approach to sex (something I LOVE and will fight tooth and nail to protect) has become imprinted on a generation of young mens’ minds as the only way sex can be.  The studies that correlate you men viewing porn and young men becoming numb to the abuse of women, or being more likely to perpetrate it themselves, is real.  I’m a scientist and I take that stuff seriously.  You can’t Google anything without finding sites advertising women being drugged and assaulted, or girls who look too young to be legal, or scenes with extreme violence and verbal degradation in a decidedly non-consensual, awful context (I’m kinky myself, so I see room for pain to be pleasurable, but that’s a different story and not what I’ll address here).  Our porn is the logical outgrowth of our culture: one that tells men that women won’t ask for what they want, that want your attention (or your penis) while still saying no.  Porn ...