What To Do About Porn? (Part Deux)

In an earlier post, I had discussed (male-created) porn and its dark side, and what to do about it. One of the best things I had recommended was for Women to take over the industry, or at least jam the culture with feminist porn, as opposed to reflexively banning or censoring the often problematic stuff that is currently out there today.

Well, it seems that the city of Berlin, Germany is taking up this idea.  They plan to publicly fund and distribute feminist porn and make it freely available via public broadcasters.  Yes, really.  And their goal is to counteract all of the sexist (and often racist) mainstream porn that is currently readily available online to anyone with a pulse these days.  Young people will look at porn regardless, but at least with feminist porn, they will be learning useful things like consent, communication, and mutual pleasure, while hopefully unlearning all the toxic messages found in mainstream porn.

And I couldn't agree more.  Bring it on!

UPDATE:  Examples of existing feminist porn/erotica can be found here (NSFW).

Why (Sexual) Capitalism Must Die, and How to Humanely Euthanize it

I have discussed before how that favorite evil brainchild of patriarchy, capitalism, is literally killing our Mother Earth as we speak, and is thus both ecocidal and ultimately suicidal since humanity is in fact part of Nature (despite frequent and stubborn protestations to the contrary).  And that the only way to humanely euthanize that vile system is to give it the one thing it cannot survive--ABUNDANCE--while harsh austerity measures of any kind (ecological or otherwise) will ultimately backfire in the end, leaving us permanently stuck in a very bad place while still ending up destroying ourselves along with our planet.  But did you know that capitalism also has a sexual dimension as well?

Wait, what?  That's right--and it is one that would make Freud himself blush beet red.  So much so that capitalism should really be called "greed patriarchy", while patriarchy should really be called "lust capitalism" or "sexual capitalism".  Please allow me to explain:

• While financial rentier capitalism uses artificial scarcity of money, goods and services, etc. to control the masses, sexual capitalism uses artificial scarcity of sex (and sex substitutes) to do the same.
• Sexual capitalism, which is part and parcel of patriarchy, uses the "commodity model" of sexuality to make sex just artificially scarce enough for the conditions of the times to effect maximum control of the masses.
• In the commodity model of sexuality, sex (however defined) is seen a something of value that men "take" from Women, but not the other way around, and is seen as a zero-sum game.  A Woman's worth is thus considered inversely proportional to her level of sexual experience, while the reverse is usually (though not always) true for men (i.e. the classic double standard, slut-shaming, etc.).
• Therefore, men have a vested interest to keep the "cost" of sex as low as possible, while Women have a vested interest in keeping the "cost" of sex as high as possible.  One can see how this does not exactly make for harmonious gender relations or mutuality, since the interests of Women and men are inherently opposed in this model.
• At the same time, the (mostly) male elites have a vested interest to keep the "cost" of sex as high as possible, or at least just high enough to control the masses.  This is typically done by punishing Women in one way or another for having too much and/or the wrong kind of sex (i.e. "giving it away" for free or cheap), imposing a very high cost on Women who then pass some of that cost onto men.  Or demanding for specious and spurious reasons that sex be only for procreation and claiming that sexual pleasure especially for its own sake is somehow "sinful".  Thus, they control Women in order to indirectly control men, while (in the days before modern birth control and DNA testing) also ensuring paternity certainty as well.
• That explains the patriarchy's arcane and archaic rules against not only "fornication" and adultery (note how usually only Women have historically been punished for these in practice), but also masturbation, homosexuality, non-monogamy, non-coital sexual activities, abortion, "artificial" birth control, divorce (albeit with some nuance), pornography (albeit with some nuance), and most ironically of all, prostitution (despite the fact that patriarchal marriage is often little more than long-term prostitution in practice).  It also explains why so many self-proclaimed "pro-lifers" have the GALL to oppose birth control despite the fact that it actually has the net effect of reducing the number of abortions due to fewer unwanted pregnancies.
• A high cost of sex (and its substitutes), ceteris paribus, leads to higher birthrates (Women are the brood mares in this system) and more work done by men (men are the work horses) in order to gain access to sex, which ultimately makes the rich richer going.  A low cost of sex (or its substitutes), especially sex for pleasure, leads to lower birthrates and theoretically less incentive for the serfs to work harder to make the rich richer.
• Thus, a relatively high cost of sex is seen as necessary for the oligarchs to keep the whole Ponzi scheme of growth for the sake of growth (i.e. the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host) going to make them even richer.
• And the experience of physical pleasure, affection, and intimacy in general (not just sex, but overall) are restricted to one degree or another, so much so that people end up craving it even more through a narrow little keyhole called sex, particularly coitus.
• Not that such sexual strictures really make The System any more virtuous in any sense, of course.  A certain amount of male-defined prostitution, sex trafficking/slavery, rape, and even pedophilia and incest is virtually always tolerated or even tacitly encouraged (clandestinely or otherwise) to one degree or another in patriarchy provided it does not threaten The System or inadvertently give Women too much power.  And these ills tend to explode when sex in general is highly restricted and costly (see what happened in the Victorian era, for example).  It's all just "collateral damage" in the eyes of the patriarchy and the oligarchy, basically.
• And of course, Women primarily get blamed for "getting themselves raped", rather than the men who rape them, since under the commodity model, the onus falls on Women to be "gatekeepers" of the  "commodity" in question and keep it it from becoming "too cheap" in the "marketplace".  And the resulting fear of rape (and blame/shame for it) is used as a cudgel to keep Women "in their place".
• And much like in Maragaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, patriarchy relies on Women to police each other (enter slut-shaming, body-shaming, the "mommy wars", etc.), further enhancing the divide-and-conquer aspect of The System.
• And just like financial capitalism, sexual capitalism functionally sets itself up as a contest to see who cares the least, in more ways than one.  A contest that MEN, not coincidentally, nearly always win.

And really it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how this model perpetuates the 7000 year battle of the sexes, promotes rape culture (much like how financial capitalism promotes crimes motivated by money and possessions), and even contributes to the destruction of Mother Earth in the process via overpopulation and ecological overshoot.  Fortunately, the whole "commodity model" of sexuality is indeed currently dying as we speak, and that is a GOOD thing. Such an outmoded, outdated, toxic, and sexist paradigm is downright dehumanizing to both primary genders, and we would all better off without it. Sex is a mutual act, and it is time we started treating it as such. And marriage for economic reasons rather than love is becoming increasingly obsolete, as it should in an increasingly egalitarian society. And while marriage can be re-purposed for a post-patriarchal society, the idea that everybody must get married as the sine qua non of "real adulthood" is outmoded and no longer holds any real water in the 21st century.  Ditto for the whole "everybody must procreate" mentality as well, which is now downright maladaptive in a world of overpopulation and ecological overshoot. 

(Note that I while I condemn the commodity model, I do not intend to disparage any actual sex workers of any kind.  They are, after all, some of the most honest people on Earth when it comes to their intentions, and in any case are not the real problem here.  It is the "little man behind the curtain"--the system of patriarchy and capitalism--that is the real problem.)

This inherently capitalistic and patriarchal model should be regarded as obsolete and outmoded, and replaced yesterday with the "performance model" or "mutual pleasure model" of sexuality.  And thus sexual capitalism will also be humanely euthanized by giving it the one thing it cannot survive--ABUNDANCE.  So what are we waiting for?

Let the planetary healing begin! 

What To Do About Porn?

I had recently written an article about sex work--particularly prostitution--that offered something seldom seen in either side of the debate these days:  nuance.  To wit, I had argued that it is both "the oldest profession" AND "the oldest oppression", and the difference ultimately depends on who has the power.  I had also argued that Women need to take over the industry and that decriminalization is, on balance, the least-worst alternative for the time being.

But I realize that I left out something crucial, namely the other main kind of commercial sex work:  PORN.  While it contains many of the same issues that prostitution has, it also has a much wider audience and thus much wider influence.  In fact, it is an even bigger elephant in the room, and is more accessible now than ever before. So what do we do about porn then?

To be brutally honest, we need to come to terms with a rather inconvenient truth.  Porn, or at least 99% of the stuff that's out there today (give or take a percentage point), does indeed have a serious dark side.  It typically contains--when it is not overtly cruel, violent, and degrading to Women, like far too much of it is--a particular kind of warped, twisted, toxic, and patriarchal (i.e. male-dominated) version of "sexuality" that is markedly and often fundamentally different than healthy sexuality.  Also, many of the performers, especially the Women, are often forced, coerced, deceived, and/or brainwashed into it.  And the often very young viewers end up with a distorted view of what sex is really all about, particularly if porn is the only "sex education" they ever really had.   Thus, "making love" gets confused with the "making hate" that is normalized in porn, with predictable results.

So where does this dark side actually come from?  You guessed it--the MEN who control and create it.  And, of course, the MEN who demand it reinforce it even further.  But either way, it begins and ends with MEN.  Yet the genie is out of the bottle at this point, and any attempt to ban it entirely is certain to backfire, to say nothing of free speech issues.  The only real solution, I believe, is for Women to take over the porn industry and jam the culture for the better.  And yes, there is indeed such a thing as feminist porn--not only is that not an oxymoron, but there needs to be more of it.  Yesterday.

There are, of course, those who cynically argue that there is inherently no such thing as feminist porn and can never be, period.  They even give examples to try in vain to prove this unprovable negative.  But the questionable examples they give of so-called "feminist porn" are in fact straw-man examples that are virtually identical (at least in content) to male-dominated mainstream genres.  It is of course not enough for it to be produced by Women and done without coercion, but the content itself also needs to at least largely reflect a more feminist and humanizing paradigm of sexuality as well.  Thus, such critics do not actually "debunk" the real concept at all, which does in fact exist.

In the meantime, there are several other things that we as a society should do.  We need to help young people develop better media literacy to safely navigate a world in which the internet porn genie is long out of the bottle.  We need real, honest, accurate, shame-free sex education that goes beyond the pathetic joke that passes for it currently.  We need to crack down on any form of coercion or trafficking that does occur in the porn industry, of both adults and children, and have better regulation and monitoring of the industry to prevent it.   We need tough laws against "revenge porn" as well. And we should probably require that at least all free porn sites (that don't require a credit card for age verification) be shunted onto the .xxx top-level domain so exposure to such sites can be more readily blocked and filtered from children (currently, the average age of first exposure is 11, and often accidentally).  All of these things need to be done yesterday.

But at the same time, we must also take a nuanced view that porn is not always inherently bad or unhealthy, and realize that censorship is NOT a solution--it is in fact a part of the problem, as is the denial of Women's agency. And furthermore, we also need to realize that once we start punishing people for "thoughtcrimes", we will have essentially crossed the proverbial Rubicon on the road to [insert dystopian novel here].   And that, ladies and gentlemen, is far more horrifying than even the very worst gonzo porn out there--which really says something!

As I like to say, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither.