Misogynistic lines/attitudes from porn does it bother you ?

shellyboo wrote: »

I think it has a lot to do with the medium, to be honest. I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of men out there who, when in company with their female friends in a social situation, would think it acceptable to even joke around with language like "swallow it, bitch." However, because of the anonymity that boards affords, people feel they can go that bit further, pushing the boundaries of what's considered acceptable behaviour.

shellyboo wrote: »

And my gut reaction to anyone who had a problem with seeing this kind of stuff online would kind of be, 'suck it up'. If you're easily offended (not saying that you are Thaedydal), the internet's a really bad place to hang out. I heard someone say recently that 'no-one has the right not to be offended' and I would tend to agree with that. If you put yourself in a public forum, you have to be prepared to see things you don't agree with. All you can do is express your disapproval through the conventional means afforded by the site.

Dragan wrote: »

LoL, sexual harassment laws from a males point of view are a total joke.

Ask any bloke who has ever felt uncomfortable in the workplace or has filed such a complaint.

Dragan wrote: »

Personally, i am finding it hard to find how we have jumped from the dialogue or porn, to the content of AH to sexual harassment in the course of a few posts.

farohar wrote: »

You advocate liberation for women yet cling to the belief that they are incapable of what was previously "male" behaviour.

Tying women to a new set of sexual norms is not genuine progress, writes Ariel Levy.

A FEW years ago I noticed something strange was happening in my native US. I would turn on the TV and find strippers in nipple-tassels explaining how best to lap-dance a man to orgasm. I would flip the channel and see babes in tight, tiny uniforms bouncing up and down on trampolines. Britney Spears was becoming increasingly popular and increasingly unclothed, and her undulating body ultimately became so familiar to me that I felt like we used to go out.

In my own industry, magazines, a porn-like new genre called the lad mag was hitting stands and becoming a huge success by delivering what Playboy had only occasionally managed to capture in the past: greased celebrities in scraps of fabric humping the floor.

Some odd things were happening in my social life too. People I knew (females) liked going to strip clubs (female strippers). It was sexy and fun, they explained; it was liberating and rebellious. My best friend from college, who used to go to Take Back the Night marches on campus, had become captivated by porn stars.

Only 30 years ago, our mothers were supposedly burning their bras and picketing Playboy, and suddenly we were getting breast implants and wearing the bunny logo as symbols of our liberation. How had the culture shifted so drastically in such a short time?

What was even more surprising than the change itself were the responses I got when I started interviewing the men and - often - the women who edit magazines such as Maxim and produce reality TV series about strippers. This new raunch culture didn't mark the death of feminism; it was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved. We'd "earned" the right to look at Playboy; we were "empowered" enough to get Brazilian bikini waxes.

Women had come so far, I learnt, that we no longer needed to worry about objectification or misogyny. Instead, it was time for us to join the frat party of pop culture where men had been enjoying themselves all along. If male chauvinist pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would beat them at their own game and be female chauvinist pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.

How is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavoured to banish good for women? Why is labouring to look like Paris Hilton empowering? And how is imitating a stripper or a porn star - a woman whose job is to imitate arousal in the first place - going to render us sexually liberated?

The critic and author Natasha Walter noted after the publication of Naomi Wolf's new book last month there's "a general feeling that feminism had become tolerant of cultural sexism". And cultural sexism is linked to underlying political and economic inequalities that make it not so ironic or funny.

There is a widespread assumption that simply because my generation of women has the good fortune to live in a world touched by the feminist movement, that means everything we do is magically imbued with its agenda. But it doesn't work that way. "Raunchy" and "liberated" are not synonyms. It is worth asking ourselves if this bawdy world we have resurrected reflects how far we've come, or how far we have left to go.

Many women today seem to have forgotten that sexual power is only one, very specific, kind of power. And what's more, looking like a stripper or a Playboy bunny is only one, very specific, kind of sexual expression.

We have to ask ourselves why we are so focused on silent girly girls in g-strings faking lust. This is not a sign of progress, it's a testament to what's still missing from our understanding of human sexuality with all of its complexity and power. We are still so uneasy with the vicissitudes of sex that we need to surround ourselves with caricatures of female hotness to safely conjure up the concept of "sexy". It's kind of pathetic.

Sex is one of the most interesting things we as humans have to play with, and we've reduced it to polyester underpants and implants. We are selling ourselves unbelievably short.

Without a doubt there are some women who feel their most sexual with their vaginas waxed, their labia trimmed, their breasts enlarged, and their garments flossy and scant. I am happy for them. I wish them many blissful and lubricious loops around the pole. But there are many other women (and, yes, men) who feel constrained in this environment, who would be happier and feel hotter - more empowered, more sexually liberated, and all the rest of it - if they explored other avenues of expression and entertainment.

Women's liberation and empowerment are terms feminists started using to talk about casting off the limitations imposed upon women and demanding equality. We have perverted these words. The freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough freedom; it is not the only "women's issue" worth paying attention to. And we are not even free in the sexual arena. We have simply adopted a new norm, a new role to play: lusty, busty exhibitionist.

There are other choices. If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire. We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex, instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. That would be sexual liberation.

If we believed that we were sexy and funny and competent and smart, we would not need to be like strippers or like men or like anyone other than our own specific, individual selves. That won't be easy, but the rewards would be the very things female chauvinist pigs want so badly, the things women deserve: freedom and power.

Ariel Levy is a contributing editor to New York magazine and the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs (Free Press).

Dudess wrote: »

Yeah I loathe raunch culture - Bratz dolls are sickening with their heavily made-up eyes and sultry "fuk you" expressions. Some Bratz merchandise I saw recently included bed clothes - all wine and purple brothel colours.

I notice it's quite all right for the Pussycat Dolls to be gyrating their barely clothed bods and singing about how when they grow up they "wanna have boobies" on lunchtime MTV Hits, and for Christina Aguilera to be bellowing out how dirrrrrrrty she was on a hardcore porn set a few years ago on Saturday morning television... and for Britney to be advising some guy how she was a "slave 4 him" - also on a similarly seedy video set, with ample doses of panting and steam thrown in for good measure.

11-year-old girls are regularly exposed to this sh1t.