Monthly Archives: November 2010

China’s crackdown on porn

Two articles from the past week: China vows to break interest chains behind Internet porn from China Daily Read the whole article here 2China has vowed to target the roots and cut off all parties which are behind the Internet, cell phone-based pornography in the country. Liu Yunshan, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), called for greater anti-porn efforts to ensure a sensible cultural environment for the healthy growth of juveniles…” and China bans 60,000 porn websites from The Times of India Read the whole article here “More than 60,000 pornographic websites have been shut in China following a massive crackdown…”

Arguments from Psychology

Psychologists remain divided about the effects of pornography on the human mind, and they are likely to do so for quite some time. As with many fields involving something as complicated as thoughts, feelings and emotions, this is one in which most work will be entirely theoretical, as we can never really prove these things to be true. While we might finally see the effects which online porn has had on an entire generation within the next few decades, for the moment academics are completely divided about it. One of the most complicated aspects of this area is the debate about whether or not pornography addiction exists; some deny that it is even a possibility, while some studies have claimed that it is as...

News: Pleasure and porn

In the Green Left by Tim Dobson and Jess Moore “When I was 15, I remember going to parties and being really uncomfortable when someone put on porn. Porn told me how, as a woman, I needed to look, act and experience sex; and that people found women being treated this way funny or arousing rather than frightening.” — Anonymous…. “Anti-porn writing often says porn is bad because it sexualises violence, domination, injury and degradation. Some porn is violent and involves non-consensual sex, but some does not. But the vast majority of porn today reduces women to objects, prioritises male demands and pleasure (either in content or of the viewer), and implies female pleasure is about pleasing men…. “Viewing porn can distort and limit...

Event: Saturday 27th Bristol University Feminist Conference

Event: Saturday 27th Bristol University Feminist Conference

Including Chris Green of the White Ribbon Campaign. Take a look at the flyer below and the conference website.

Steve Biddulph writes…

In my experience the people most concerned, and most angry . . . are those most in touch with their sexuality; affectionate and vibrant kinds of people. So writes Steve Biddulph about sexual depictions in the media, including pornography. He goes on to say that what is happening in our culture that so permeates our lives, might be more accurately termed de–sexualisation, the death of sex, the draining out of all spontaneity, connectedness and meaning. Steve has lived and studied families in many cultures, tribal and rural, eastern and western. ‘It’s my view’, he writes, ‘that we are one of the least sexy cultures ever to inhabit the earth. Robbed of inner meaning, tricked out to sell worthless junk, sex in the western world...

Images of degradation

At the start of October this year, I attended a charity postcard auction at The Aubin Gallery which was organized to help raise funds for the 2010 Feminism in London conference later that month. The evening before the auction I came across an online-only article about it on the Guardian website which focused on some of the contributing artists and their postcards. The article was complemented by photographs of 9 of the postcards which were to be auctioned the following day. One of the artworks featured in the article and slideshow was that of a young artist called David Rusbatch. It was described by as “a triptych of female images” and showed the following pictures, each accompanied by a label attributed to them by...

Taking Back Anti-Porn Feminism

40 years ago, feminists were agreed that women were not objects. That women were not the sexual, political or social captives of men. They didn’t work for men, they didn’t give in to men, they didn’t owe men a good time. Empowerment was defined as women who could control their lives, who could live in a way that pleased themselves. It was societally encoded that women were submissive to men, but the feminists agreed that the woman is empowered by breaking free from this jail, not by locking herself in. A decade later many feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin, extended this philosophy to the sex industry. Dworkin fought against the exploitation of women as sex objects, as products to be owned by men. In...

“The Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn” Rips the Mask off of the Porn Industry

New Book by Former Porn Star Shelley Lubben Provides Detailed Accounts of What’s Really Going on Behind the Scenes The “Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn – The Greatest Illusion on Earth” is the first book ever written by a former porn star that exposes the “secret” side of porn. “Pornography is modern day slavery for thousands of women and the millions of addicts who can’t stop clicking,” said Lubben in her book. Read more about The Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn here and Shelley Lubben here.

What is pornography?

That pornography has got nothing to do with love or sex should be clear from the word’s linguistic roots. Pornography stems for the Greek words porne ‘prostitute’ + graphein ‘write’ and literally means ‘writing about prostitutes’. Thus pornography has, since its origin been linked to the commercial sexual exploitation of the most vulnerable women and children who have to sell their bodies as utilities for men to achieve orgasms. The link between prostitution and pornography is particularly relevant to current mainstream pornographic films, which are nothing more than the stylized, recorded prostitution of women in which men can do to women whatever they want. To put it in the words of someone I know and words I have come to agree with – “the...

Page 1 of 2

1 2 »