Am I Being A Prude, Or Overly Sensitive?

[Eleanor]

social sanctions against sex work (the bullet) are a powerful force, and you are are standing in its path to said target (sex workers).

I'm not sure if you mean to be as defeatist and disempowering as you seem to be. The bullet metaphor implies a inevitability in the reactions, not just now but forever. That's a pretty defeatist attitude. Right up there with "women can't do math." Here is the thing: if your take on the implications of evolutionary socio-biology is right, it at worst absolutizes and at best naturalizes the status quo. Both ways the tendency is to "explain away" the problem. "That's just the way it is, so suck it up and get used to it." Personally, I hate this answer. I find it dehumanizes both victims and perpetrators. It is an excellent device for letting everyone off the hook.

Plus, I'm not sure we shouldn't stand between the bullet and the innocent victim. I think it has to be an option, case by case. In a lot of cases, I guess I think if one can do so effectively, one should do just that.

Put "porn star" on your resume and go try and get a job.

Depends on the job, and who is hiring I'd think. Depends on the porn as well. I'm not arguing there is not bias or discrimination, there is. And this is far from the only kind. There are a lot of things one would be well advised not to put on a resume. Resume's are PR items, not depositions where you tell the whole truth about yourself. My point is that there is not inevitability here - just like not all people who smoke pot die under a bridge of a heroin overdose (the popular narrative often told to elementary school children) not all people who go into sex work end up social pariahs. And if we care about the people who go into sex work, particularly those who do so because they are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, I don't think it helps them to propagate or buy into that bleak narrative. It doesn't help to ignore the risks either. But when we sell the risks too hard, it tends to diminish the possibility of positive outcomes. Best, in my view, to try to be factual and realistic about the situation.

I care a lot about being clear about agency - what it is and isn't and that means trying to be pretty careful about inevitability and, for lack of a better term, evitability. Effective agency depends on accurate understanding of reality. Without that, we have to rely on luck. Best to have both.

The above gets just a tad too far away from personal responsibility for me. Systemic, cultural forces are absolutely mammoth agents in the creation of individual behavior, and yes, media outlets are a big contributor to this effect, but I cannot shake feeling there is an echo here of the thinking that goes "She wouldn't have been a victim if she hadn't been wearing that."

My experience with modesty and womanhood has been shame. Crushing, sickening, toxic shame.

It is all these layers that make it all such a muddle. And the fear gets used against people (men and women.) It seems to me that making it ok to ostracize or disenfranchise individuals for symbolic or arbitrary reasons (like being gay or liking sex) is bad. More and more people are finally in a place to start thinking rationally and pragmatically about how much freedom we can routinely grant individuals and still have a functioning society, and balance social necessity against what actually promotes human flourishing. Just-so stories about sociobiology aren't particularly helpful in this regard.

Shame is a social emotion - it is taught to children. Shame only makes sense in a social/interpretive context. Unfortunately, like all emotions it is a conditioned response, so it changes more slowly than the cognitive structures it was built on. So even if one no longer believes nudity to be shameful, if one was raised to feel that it was, the conditioned response still happens. Depending on the severity of the training, it may be very difficult indeed to recondition this response, whether it is impossible is an open question. Because brains are so very plastic I tend to think that in principle it is possible, but we just don't have very reliable ways of doing it yet. This has led many people to become a lot more careful about what we train our children to be ashamed of.

I'm sorry @Simply Simon, I can't imagine the shame you feel is even remotely deserved. Unless you are a innocent-torturing remorseless predator, (and I'm pretty sure you are not!) that degree of shame (and most lesser degrees as well) is wholly uncalled for. I'm sorry you suffer with it. If I had a magic wand, I'd disappear that shame pronto.

 

[The Albatross]

“There's a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the f*cking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.” ~ Tom Robbins

 

[Anarchy]

group of African- American men were purposely infected with VD so that the Doctors could study the effects of the disease on them.

My understanding is that they were not deliberately infected, but were identified as having been diagnosed with syphilis, and their medical notes were marked to ensure that they did not receive any treatment which might prevent the progression of the disease.

That isn't to detract from your main point, That when individuals are in some way de humanized, licensed abuse, by some individuals who are inclined towards abusing, usually follows. https://www.myptsd.com/threads/kick-abusers-out-of-your-life-unless-they-are.50874/

I whole heartedly agree with that observation and deplore any dehumanization of any individual.

 

[Dana1010]

And if we care about the people who go into sex work, particularly those who do so because they are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, I don't think it helps them to propagate or buy into that bleak narrative.

Once they've already done it, and the albatross is around their neck, then of course they should try to heal, live the best life they can, and be optimistic just like all survivors of trauma, mistakes, etc. But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and I don't think hammering home that sex work is a bad idea is harming anyone.

Also, if you've done porn, you don't have to put it on your resume--someone will see it and get you fired. I believe there was a documentary made recently about ex porn stars losing their jobs once coworkers or bosses recognized them. So anyone considering the industry should have one thing straight from the beginning: Someone. Will. Notice. You.

 

[Pencil]

I so wish we had Violet Blue on this forum to comment on women and porn.

 

[scout86]

Also, I'm not bashing men anymore than evolutionary psychologists, Robert Wright, Steven Pinker, and David Buss

I got that far reading and wondered "Who ARE those guys?" since I had never heard of them. Just for the record, near as I can tell, Robert Wright is a journalist. Steven Pinker is a psychologist who seems to have his primary interest in "linguistic psychology" and David Buss, is, in fact described as an "evolutionary psychologist". The first 2 guys, I find one a piece of a reference to a writing that apparently had something to do with gender issues The third guy there's more.

I wanted to throw that out there because this IS a valid topic that's worth discussing. I think there's enough stereotyping and misunderstanding and accusations of questionable accuracy available on all sides of the issue. I'm not sure we need to do that here. HERE, maybe just for the heck of it, we could try actually thinking and listening and speaking our OWN truths, not invoking the names and ideas of "experts".

The real cool thing about "evolution" is that the process can lead to "progress". The whole point of all that gray matter is so we can USE it. We are not captive to our instincts. I, frankly, don't give a rat's behind how cave people chose their mates. Now, if a guy is still doing it the same way? Yeah, that's relevant information and he's probably not someone I want to spend much time around. Do we have examples of that type of person HERE? I have absolutely no idea. The few guys on this forum that I've had conversations with don't seem like "cave men" to me. Many of my best friends are male and NONE of THEM seem to be like that. Does the "virgin/whore dichotomy" exist? I suppose. Fine! Who care? It's supporters, regardless of gender (because women are quite capable of buying into that stereotype too) are misguided. That would be basically THEIR PROBLEM. Not mine. Would I be willing to do what I could to change their way of thinking? You bet! But throwing around sweeping generalizations to combat a stereotype? That makes not sense to me at all. Because a sweeping generalization IS a stereotype and it's a mistake regardless of which side of the issue you're on.

By the way, a bullet is very small. Deadly under the right circumstances, but small. Depending on your definition of "between" there's a lot of space between it's point of origin and the target that a bullet will never occupy. The thing that's important is that one not try to occupy a space at the same TIME as the bullet. Nothing else really matters.

 

[Pencil]

Twenty years ago gays got fired for being gay, mothers lost custody of their children for being gay, the same churches that ex-communicated members for being gay now marry them. In Scandinavian countries porn stars are celebrities. We can't conduct a sociological study on a topic while rooted in the world view of that topic. I'm too tired to articulate what I'm trying to say - but it boils down to: there is something very wrong with a society that spends billions on an industry, and vilify the very people they spend the billions on. Is there something wrong with the women in porn, or with US who make these moral judgements? Nope, I am still not clear. I might return later.

 

[Anarchy]

More and more people are finally in a place to start thinking rationally and pragmatically about how much freedom we can grant people and what actually promotes human flourishing. Just-so stories about sociobiology aren't particularly helpful in this regard.

(bold added)

You are taking a very positivistic or even small c communist line of reasoning with that.

implicit within that line of reasoning is the idea that it is up to some central planning body or other, to grant permission or to create "rights".

admittedly that is the current mainstream paradigm, and arguably has been since the time of the "progressives" at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.

It is also a potentially very dangerous system, as the history of the twentieth century has shown, as it grants license for various partizan opinions to be violently forced down the throats of all.

A much safer (but currently derided by the mainstream) system is the position that we each have self agency, and the right to do whatever we please - so long as that freedom does not infringe on the equal right of any other individual to do likewise.

By contrast to my individualist position, the current mainstream system is to grant a specially privileged few the right to do whatever they please, regardless of their infringements on the rights of others to live their lives without molestation.

Before anyone levels the accusation of "libertine", I'll link to an (imo excellent) essay by Frank van Dun, who lectures on the philosophy of law at Ghent and Maastricht, covering exactly the debate about porn and banning of porn. http://users.ugent.be/~frvandun/Texts/Articles/KNEE-JERK LIBERTARIANISM.DOC

 

[Ronin]

@Pencil, you were quite clear.

 

[shimmerz]

I so wish we had Violet Blue on this forum to comment on women and porn.

We might have and don't know it. :D

Having worked in Digital Forensics I have seen the 'dark side' of the sex trade which can overlap very easily into child pornography. I can't tell you the feeling when searching for child porn on a digital device and seeing the things that I have. Thousands of children and babies. It is enough to make one want to kill. I don't say that easily.

What we are speaking about here is consensual work. That is a different story.

As far as bashing men goes, some women, in my experience, are women's worst critics. Especially when it comes to the morality of other women. It isn't just about men. It certainly isn't about all men. This seems to be about emotion. Making this into an intellectual argument is ridiculous when the premises of this discussion are so flimsy. What is the actual premise of this argument?

 

[Dana1010]

The whole point of all that gray matter is so we can USE it.

The gray matter you're referring to evolved because it conferred a reproductive advantage in challenging environments. Rational thought, provisioning, delaying gratification, all evolved because they conferred a reproductive advantage. You have ten fingers and ten toes because they conferred a reproductive advantage. Everything is a means to a reproductive end, and every cell in your body knows it. Genes don't talk; they operate through gut reactions, and while you can, if you choose, challenge them with rational thinking, thought is slow, and gut reactions are quick. In a draw, gut reactions win the day, because they pack the emotional punch.

BTW, Steven Pinker wrote The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, and Robert Wright wrote The Moral Animal, both books that popularized evolutionary psychology.

@Pencil, I don't think it matters too much if porn stars are celebrities in Scandanavia--serial killers can be celebrities, it doesn't mean they're respected. I once read a Scandinavian liberal man denouncing American puritanism over porn. He said: "They're just pictures of whores." Note the terminology. Also this:

there is something very wrong with a society that spends billions on an industry, and vilify the very people they spend the billions on.

It's not the society, it's the species. There's hypocrisy because people are hypocrites. There's injustice because people are unjust. Enjoyment of sex is natural, but that doesn't mean the shame and hypocrisy that travel alongside it aren't natural too. Sex is extremely important to people; that's why there are so many rules and regulations around it.

Can you paraphrase Violet Blue's views on Pornography and women for us?

 

[Dana1010]

What is the actual premise of this argument?

The premise of my argument is that in the final analysis, when you tally the pros and cons, doing sex work is always, categorically a negative thing. I also contend that most if not all people who consume sex work wouldn't want anything to do with the providers in real life.