Category: Pornography - On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings

"#MeToo" Movement(s) Reveal Known Knowns

10/19/2017

Content Warning. Discussion and examples of sexual violence. Examples of repulsive language describing women.

It’s remarkably odd, isn’t it, that even those things that one already know, or are widely known generally, once they are confirmed – or perhaps just reaffirmed – can hit you for six. This has happened to me twice recently, and one example is the “metoo” hashtag on social media.

Many people seem to have been shocked by this thing that we all already knew – that women and persons presenting as female, feminine, or trans, and gender queer, are subject to a great deal of unwanted sexual attention and forms of violence, sexual and otherwise. Certainly anyone who has studied, even at basic level, criminology and/or feminism “knew” this already, just as they “know” that large percentages of these violent incidences do not figure in official statistics.

This social media phenomenon is associated with an actress called Alyssa Milano, although Milano has acknowledged an “earlier #MeToo movement” began by black activist Tarana Burke. This latter movement, assuming that they are separate, went viral on social media in October 2017 to denounce sexual assault and harassment, in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein.

According to Slate, Milano tweeted “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” Since then, I’ve seen many of my Facebook friends post about their experience of sexual abuse and harassment. Many have also spoken about their shock at the apparent prevalence of the issues that have arisen: rape, molestation, attacks, unwanted touching, being subject to aggressive sexual insults, etc.

Whether we really “knew” before, we sure know now. As a heterosexual man, I can think of several examples that had underlined my “knowing” of such issues. Apart from academia, studying and then teaching subjects such as feminism and critical criminology, the following places immediate jump to mind.

When I was a projectionist in Kirby, Liverpool (1975-76).
At the British Steel site in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire (1977).
Working at the Ford Motor Co. in Dagenham, Essex (1979).
Prison (1980s)
Playing football – especially 11-a-side – in Bangor, North Wales (1990s).

In Kirby, I was initially shocked to find that many men would call their female partners, “me tart.” One woman, Ruth, put up with tremendous amounts of verbal abuse – not just banter, real nasty stuff – from her partner. One day I asked her why and she said that, when they were alone, her partner was nice and caring but she thought he felt the need to present a very masculine self in public. Indeed, I was also told that girls and young women are told to learn how to walk in a “hard” manner to reduce the possibility of being attacked on the street. As we’ll see below, verbal abuse is one means by which sex workers’ self-esteem is severely damaged.

I was the Chief projectionist in Kirby, and I had a “number two” who I’ll call Bill. I distinctly remember that whenever we walked together through the shopping centre that was attached to the J&A entertainment centre where we worked, he would regularly point at women and say, “I’d f*** that, and I’d f*** that, and I’d f*** that.” I told him this was unacceptable but I don’t remember him stopping – I think I may have just stopped walking with him. To this day, I’m sensitive about language issues, not least in relation to human relations with other sentient beings.

I can group British Steel and Fords together, although the following was worse in the Dagenham car plant as I recall. There were plenty of “pin-ups” on the car assembly line, and some in the canteen areas of the steelworks. Both were overwhelmingly male environments, and both involved shift work. When we did see female staff, it would be canteen cleaners, or those working in administration. They were subject to sexualised calls from some of the men and, if young, whistling. More than that, though, I got my first taste at what some men will say to other men about females when in a group. Some say absolutely horrendous things. Violent sexualised language pours out of some men. What they want to do to any given woman, and what they assume “she wanted” or else “would get anyway.”

Prison was also “very male,” with even more reason, as far as both the staff and “inmates” appeared to believe, to be and act “manly.” Female staff were seen less frequently here. However, some women worked in the education department and one person, who I got to know quite well, would address the “induction wing” about the delights of the prison’s Education Department. After she had gone, the same old, same old, happened: what they were going to do to her, and what they thought “she wanted.” One nasty character could not stop talking about the assumed size of her “piss flaps.”

There’s more “pin-ups” in these prison locations – but much, much, more graphic pictured pornography too. In Armley jail in Leeds, I remember seeing one cell which was literally covered wall-to-wall with pornographic pictures. More than that, the guy in the cell had so many pages from porn magazines that some had to be overlapped over others. Except for scenes of oral sex, he chose to cover the heads of the women, resulting in picture after picture of headless female body parts in a variety of explicit sexualised poses.

I’ve included the case of “chris” below and she is one of those people who were deliberately bred by sex rings to be exploited as babies onwards. As part of her “training,” she says that she was taught how to adopt these stereotypical “porno” poses as a child.

Finally, I was getting on a bit when I was playing football in Wales. Being one of the guys with a car, I got the job of picking up three or four other players for away games. I sat through their tales of sexual conquests of the night before in Bangor’s only “nightclub” called the Octagon. The locals called it the “meat market” and the way the lads talked about women was frightening.

Around the same time, I was teaching in Wales and finishing my PhD. In one chapter, entitled ““Dehumanisation: "Using" the Species Barrier,” I looked at the issue of pornography as part of dehumanisation and depersonalisation processes – or “othering.” In part, I looked at male attitudes, and some of it can be a difficult read, so please take care of yourself… I began,

Several of the contributors to Cathrin Itzin’s (1992) collection, Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties, detail the frequent violent dehumanisation of - mainly but not exclusively - women in pornography. There is evidence that the phenomenon of dehumanisation is common and widespread in the production of some pornography.

And continued,

It seems evident from a perspective such as [Karen] Warren’s that an instance of violent pornography (as distinct from “erotica” involving consenting participants) is an example of a logic of domination, defined as a patriarchal prerequisite that has sustained and justified the twin domination of women and “nature” (Warren, cited in Crittenden 1998: 249). In a great many examples of pornography, it appears that (at least) sexism, racism and speciesism merge and blend within a single act of ideological domination with often excessive culturally symbolic subordination set and represented within acts of extreme cruelty, persecution and, indeed, rights violations.
For example, Forna (1992: 105) alludes to interlocking strands when she states that pornography sustains an entrenched belief that sex with a black women or a black man is “different” - and certainly more “savage” - than sex with a white person. More particularly, while sex with black people is seen as “more physical” than sex with white people, it is at the same time less emotional, less spiritual and, of course, ultimately less human:
Black women are represented in porn as synonymous with deep carnality, animal desires and uncontrolled lust... “Naturally” less civilised than her white counterpart, she exists solely for sex... The words and adjectives which caption pictures of naked black women are the same words used over and over again. The black woman is described as being “panther-like,” possessing “animal grace.” She is photographed caged, chained and naked. Hers is a savage, wild and primitive, exotic sexuality: a less than human sexuality (ibid.: 104).
In relation to black men:
They are super-sexualised studs, members of a lower caste without the natural inhibitions of civilised whites. Sex between two blacks is a steamy, savage affair (ibid).
Citing research conducted in 1980 and 1981 by Teish and Leidholdt, Mayall and Russell (1993: 167) also make the claim that black women are regularly associated with nonhuman animals in pornography. Teish notes that the lucrative pornography industry exploits black and white women in different ways: she argues that white women are often portrayed as “soft,” while black women are frequently shown as “ugly, sadistic, and animalistic, undeserving of human affection.” Similarly, Leidholdt reports that while Asian women are often portrayed as “dolls,” Latin women are depicted as sexually submissive but voracious and, in arguably the most negative portrayal, Black women are shown as “dangerous and contemptible sexual animals.”
Recalling the point about dissection, Itzin herself (1992: 43) says that pornographic accounts often reduce women to “just” their genital organs, while their assumed animality is never very far away. Thus women are sometimes regarded as:
holes, slots, sluts, pieces of meat. Men can walk the streets looking for “slots,” look at their wives as “slots.” And indeed letters from male readers [to pornographic publications] describe their wives in such dehumanised and derogatory terms: as “groaning and moaning like a stuck pig,” with “gushing fannies,” and “sopping cunts.”

And a final extract,

Some feminist-inspired research does suggest that male attitudes to real women are often influenced by pornographic characterisations, produced and distributed within patriarchal culture. However, is there also any evidence to support the ecofeminist perspective that men may see both women and animals/nature as objects for exploitation? The same research does seem to offer evidence in support of that assertion as well.
For example, Russell cites Shere Hite’s research in the 1980’s which was based on asking male respondents to account for their declared wish to rape women. One interviewee said this:
Why do I want to rape women? Because I am basically, as a male, a predator and all women look to men like prey. I fantasise about the expression on a woman’s face when I “capture” her and she realises she cannot escape. It’s like I won, I own her (quoted in Russell 1993: 120).
Here “man-the-hunter” is revealed, the “predator” after his “prey” - or perhaps “man-the-pet-owner,” who “wins” his women like one may win goldfishes at travelling fairgrounds. Russell was also soon to find further evidence of “man-the-dissector,” as it appears that some rapists may not see their victims as whole human beings, rather they see them simply as a collection of body parts. Russell says that to many men, women “are tits, cunts, and asses. This makes it easier to rape them. ‘It was difficult for me to admit that I was dealing with a human being when I was talking to a women,’ one rapist reported” (ibid.: 135). And, look out, here comes a-hunting the butcher man once more (reported to Zillmann and Bryant in 1984): “A man should find them, fool them, fuck them, and forget them;” with, “If they are old enough to bleed, they are old enough to butcher” (cited in ibid.: 139).

So, all that is why I started this blog entry in terms of what I already “knew.” Some men, when they talk about women in particular, say the most vile, awful, vicious things.

I spent a couple of hours preparing material that was unfamiliar to me for this blog entry. What did I find? Predictably, more disturbing news.

For example, in Mother Daughter Revolution (1994), Elizabeth Debold writes

Of girls who have been sexually abused, the greatest number were eleven years old when such abuse first occurred. While one in three girls acknowledges an unwanted sexual contact before age 18 with an adult male, three-fourths of that unwanted contact occurs during adolescence. In fact, psychiatrist Judith Herman writes that rape might be thought of as girls’ “social rite...of initiation into the coercive violence at the foundation of adult society.” As many as one-third of all high school and college-age girls are involved in violence in an intimate or dating relationship.

Writing in the Washington Post in 2016, Gail Dines said

Using a wide range of methodologies, researchers from a number of disciplines have shown that viewing pornography is associated with damaging outcomes. In a study of U.S. college men, researchers found that 83 percent reported seeing mainstream pornography, and that those who did were more likely to say they would commit rape or sexual assault (if they knew they wouldn’t be caught) than men who hadn’t seen porn in the past 12 months. The same study found that porn consumers were less likely to intervene if they observed a sexual assault taking place. In a study of young teens throughout the southeastern United States, 66 percent of boys reported porn consumption in the past year; this early porn exposure was correlated with perpetration of sexual harassment two years later. A recent meta-analysis of 22 studies between 1978 and 2014 from seven different countries concluded that pornography consumption is associated with an increased likelihood of committing acts of verbal or physical sexual aggression, regardless of age. A 2010 meta-analysis of several studies found “an overall significant positive association between pornography use and attitudes supporting violence against women.”

All of these studies were published in peer-reviewed journals.

In the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Michelle Oberman writes

During the spring of 1993, a group of, teenage boys who called themselves the Spur Posse combined adolescent competitiveness and sexual bravado to develop a “game” in which members of the group sought to have sexual relations with as many females as possible. Members scored one point for each sexual conquest-i.e., each time they achieved orgasm with a girl.

And

a fifteen-year-old boy who climbed through a bedroom window and demanded sex from an eleven-year-old girl; of a group of boys lining up to have sex with one girl, whose clothes had been taken away from her by gang members demanding that she have sex with them, since she had had sex with another member; and of boys who described their typical sexual encounter as “Just throw a couple of pumps, and you’re done,” and who distinguished it from the kind of sex one had with a girl one really liked: “Whores you just nut and you leave. Good girls that are fine and respectable, you give them the all-night thing, you please them and romance them.., and eat them out and shit.”

In the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Bennett and Fineran write,

In dating relationships, girls were more likely to be the victim of boys’ violence, and in all types of relationships, girls were more likely to be the victims of boy’s sexual violence. Whether the violence was between intimates or non-intimates, sexual or physical, seven out of ten cases of violence in this sample were boy-to-girl. It should be noted that there was a certain amount of girl-to-boy violence; however, most of the severe violence between teen intimates-punching, kicking, beating, forcible sex, or rape was perpetrated by boys upon girls.

According to a couple of those sites about slang language, some men use terms such as “drilling,” “blasting,” hammering,” “beasting,” “riding,” “boning,” “doing the nasty,” “slapping uglies,” “kicking it,” “giving her the bone,” “whoring,” “hot beef injecting,” “porking,” “beating,” “cowgirling,” “pounding the duck,” and “smashing the bitch,” to describe “doing” sex.

Sex Work.

There is a huge male demand for paid sexual services. Brothels can be found in most towns and certainly cities – several in many cases. Each contains a number of sex workers, “servicing” several “customers.” Then there are the “street walkers," and the independent sex workers who work without pimps, at least “official pimps.” Their friends and partners may do that job at times.

As we might imagine, the language is the same, or worse, when it comes to men describing or talking to sex workers. The things men say to them during sex, and how they talk about them afterwards, is very, very, nasty. Research suggests that men feel a sense of entitlement when buying sex. They get to tell the sex worker what to do, and how to be, even though some data suggests that some men buying sexual services are timid and even shy. It appears to be the “habitual buyers” of sex who are the worst problem in terms of their attitudes and behaviour towards others. This group is likely to want violent sex but all men seem to want sorts of sex from dehumanised sex workers that they cannot obtain from “a real human being” like their own wives. Data suggests most sex worker users are married men. Many tend to see sex workers as little more – or nothing more in some cases – than objects and receptacles.

Sex workers seem always in severe danger of being violently attacked and raped. Not just sex workers, but female academics too. In a paper entitled, “Intersections of Sex and Power in Research on Prostitution: A Female Researcher Interviewing Male Heterosexual Clients,” researcher Sabine Grenz had to take precautions because she was propositioned by respondents and even had to be “less friendly” to interviewees than is usually recommended:

One man asked, after I had explained the procedure, “May I also show you my penis then?” Another potential participant introduced himself as obsequious, wanting to call me “Madam” or “Mistress.” Still another man asked whether he could have a “little punishment” as a reward for the interview. I did not agree to any of these requests.
Fortunately, the respondents who contacted me afterward were prepared to give interviews without obviously drawing me into their sexuality. Additionally, all potential and actual participants always remained polite. Nevertheless, since I did not know beforehand who would turn up, I had ongoing concerns about my security
For the same reason (potential sexual availability), I had to take care not to be too friendly and not to have too much rapport, which in other interview settings would be considered a necessary prerequisite for successful research.

For sex workers themselves, they get lots of advice in the hope of keeping them safer. One piece of advice being, don’t have a pillow in your room because it could be used to smother you.

A hospital that treats sex workers said this in 2004,

Have a time limit for each service - if a customer can’t come within a reasonable period, he’s costing you money by preventing you from seeing other customers. His failure to get off may also make him agitated or violent. [And] use some mentholated salve (for chapped lips, colds) inside your nostrils - you’ll smell the customer less when you give head. (St. James Infirmary) [1]
Be aware of exits and avoid letting your customer block access to those exits... be aware of where your client (trick) is at all times, as much as possible... shoes should come off easily or be appropriate for running in... avoid necklaces, scarves, across-the-body shoulder bags or anything else that can be accidentally or intentionally tightened around your throat. (St. James Infirmary)

New Zealand issued a 100-page guide for sex workers in 2004 which included information on repetitive strain wrist injuries from masturbation of the customer by the prostitute, warnings to carry a flashlight to inspect customers for STDs, and instructions for setting up a brothel.

Does it seem realistic for a sex worker to get to check for sexually transmitted diseases? Other advice is about the installation of “panic buttons.” However, one sex worker testified to the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that she was forcibly restrained from pressing a panic button while a “customer” raped her in what she described as one of her “paid rapes.”

There are some, including feminists, who forcefully argue that sex work can be fulfilling, satisfying, and even empowering for those who do it, although personally I find it hard to see how. If there are such cases, surely they represent an infinitesimal number in terms of the total of sex workers that there are? One suggestion is that indoor sex work is much safer than outdoor sex work – which does sound like common sense.

However, according to Farley, et al., criticising Weitzer’s position, “What is wrong with prostitution cannot be fixed by moving it indoors. The same harms are there whether she is in a trick’s house, a back alley, his car, or a room at a hotel. And the same physical violence occurs whether it is in a pimp’s massage parlour, the private booth of a pimp’s strip club, a pimp’s legal brothel, or on a pimp’s street turf.

The same psychological violence occurs indoors, too—none of that changes based on the location of the prostitution. She still gets called those vicious names while he is masturbating in her, those names that as one woman said, “cut you like a knife,” so that she has to get high or she must dissociate to tune out the poison. Weitzer’s apologetics for and evasions of this reality cannot obscure it or change it.
He appears not to have read the series of studies that permit me to conclude, “Our findings from 9 countries on 5 continents consistently indicate that the physical and emotional violence in prostitution is overwhelming” (Farley et al., 2003, p. 55).

On interviewing 100 women, Farley, et al., 2005, found an extremely high prevalence of lifetime violence, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 82% of respondents reported a history of childhood sexual abuse, by an average of four perpetrators. This statistic (those assaulted by an average of four perpetrators) did not include those who responded to the question, “If there was unwanted sexual touching or sexual contact between you and an adult, how many people in all?” with “tons,” or “I can’t count that high,” or “I was too young to remember.”

72% reported childhood physical abuse, 90% had been physically assaulted in prostitution. Of those who reported physical assault, 82% of the perpetrators were their “customers,” and 78% had been raped in prostitution, with 67% of those raped having been raped by “customers” more than ﬁve times.

89% had been physically threatened while in prostitution, and 67% had been physically threatened with a weapon. 72% met the criteria for PTSD, while 95% said that they wanted to leave prostitution. 86% reported current or past homelessness with housing as one of their most urgent needs. 82% expressed a need for treatment for drug or alcohol addictions.

In studies by Silbert and Pines in 1981 and 1982, 70% of women surveyed said that they had suffered rape in prostitution, with 65% having been physically assaulted by “customers.” One survivor described prostitution as a ‘harrowing metamorphosis’ that included frequent physical assaults and which ultimately resulted in a “neutralization of the body” or “somatic dissociation.” Dissociation refers to a compartmentalisation of experience: elements of the experience are not integrated into a unitary whole, but are stored in memory as isolated fragments…The continued use of dissociation as a way of coping with stress interferes with the capacity to fully attend to life’s ongoing challenges.

67% of Farley, et al’s., interviewees reported that pornography was made of them in prostitution; and 64% had been upset by an attempt to force them to perform an act that customers had seen in pornography. Again, how any of this is supposed to be “empowering” escapes me. With camera technology not only so good but everywhere – on virtually any phone – the sex workers who are filmed do absolutely no favours to other persons who may be in even worse circumstances than they are, such as those who are trafficked. How does adding to the huge weight of internet porn – much of it violent and non-consensual I expect - do anything but bolster and support the ideology of patriarchy which does so much damage to women’s (indeed, everyone’s) interests?

Many sex worker respondents who reported physical violence cited stabbings and beatings, concussions, and broken bones (such as broken jaws, ribs, collar bones, ﬁngers, spinal injuries, and a fractured skull), as well as cuts, black eyes, and “fat lips.” 50% of these women had head injuries resulting from violent assaults with, for example, baseball bats and crowbars. Many had their heads slammed against walls and against car dashboards. Sex buyers regularly subjected them to extreme violence when they refused to perform a speciﬁc sex act.

Farley, et al., found that a fear of men was pervasive. One woman told them that being hit and bruised were "just your common aggressiveness from men."

The verbal abuse in prostitution is socially invisible just as other sexual harassment in prostitution is normalized and invisible. Yet it is pervasive: 88% of research respondents described verbal abuse as intrinsic to prostitution.

“Customers’” verbal assaults in all types of prostitution are likely to cause acute and long-term psychological symptoms. A woman in one study explained: “It is internally damaging. You become in your own mind what these people do and say with you. You wonder how could you let yourself do this, and why do these people want to do this to you?” (Farley, 2003).

Baldwin argues that the verbal abuse against prostituted women is seemingly reﬂected in the names that all women are called by violent men during sexual assaults. The epithets seem intended “to humiliate, to eroticize, and to satisfy an urge for self-justiﬁcation.” Readers won’t be surprised to discover that the names sex workers are called include “whore,” “slut,” “cunt” “bitch” “motherfucker,” and “pig.” These are names often verbalised during sex acts, as well as instructions like, “get on your knees,” “spread your legs,” “open your mouth,” “swallow everything you bitch,” and “suck it now.”

On motives for seeking sex workers, police arrested “clients” were asked by researchers to agree or disagree with 13 statements designed to reflect popular and scholarly understandings of the reasons men seek out prostitutes. Many conventional understandings were supported by the results.

A substantial proportion of clients appear to be excited by the illicit, risky, or “raunchy” quality of sex with a prostitute. Responses suggest that, for some clients, one of the appeals of prostitution is that it invites a self-focused, consumer oriented, conception of sexuality in which one can conveniently meet sexual needs through purchase. Some of the arrested clients report wanting a different kind of sex than their regular partner and liking rough sex, supporting the idea that some men seek out prostitutes because they can do things with them that others might find unpleasant or unacceptable. Findings also suggest that some men pay for sex because they have difficulty becoming involved in conventional relationships. For some of these men prostitution is an attempt not only to have sex, but to establish intimate relationships. Finally, some of the men simply did not feel that they had the time, energy, or interest to engage in a conventional relationships. Overall, most of the items seem to reflect a sense of entitlement to sex among the respondents.

Respondents said that it was easier to have sex with sex workers without the use of condoms than it was with their wives.

Second - and most obvious - sex workers are seen as objects to be bought, not as humans. More often than not, sex workers are not portrayed as skilled workers who provide their customers with a service in exchange for a fee. Rather, they are things - to be perused, used, and dispensed of by the “hobbyist” who uses them to bolster his “monger” status (these are “insider” terms). The sex worker herself is seen as “the product” denied her status as a worker, performer, or businessperson - a person capable of choosing if, when, and under what circumstances to offer a service.

The idea that johns think of sex workers as objects is obvious. But it’s also important to note that “customers” believe that the bodies of sex workers are available for their use in any way they choose.

Some academics have suggested that the ability to treat women as objects is part - or perhaps even all - of some sex worker users’ real interest in prostitution. It is a grossly unequal power relation in which one is apparently allowed to say the most vile things to the other while suggesting degrading sexual things to do.

Academics talk about “habitual buyers,” and these seem to tend to have psychological problems and possibly sexual addictions such that they can only relate to women in sexualized or extremely violent and degrading ways. Some men have such a distorted view of those they buy sex from that they need to attend an educational programme before they can even begin to realise that sex workers “have feelings, too, like everyone else.” However, one study revealed that 76% of “habitual buyers” (the ones who are most likely to be sexually violent) said they would continue buying sex even after attending a so-called “john school.”

In Off Our Backs: A Women’s Newsjournal (2002), chris grussendorf and jill leighton tell of their personal experiences. jill says,

Bruce promised me food, shelter and a safe, steady job; six hours later, I was bound, handcuffed, blindfolded and locked in a closet built below the stairwell in the cellar of his home. After my abduction and rape, Bruce began sexually torturing me as part of my “training” to become a bondage submissive for clients who enjoyed S&M.
Six weeks of brutal rapes, beatings and other assorted bondage-themed torture sessions inspired by my captor's immense hard-core porn collection offered me a clear picture of my “job”: the “submissive” in various adult entertainment industries. This meant I was the “bottom” in pornographic movie shoots, prostitution, and exotic dancing. Any and all money I made went to Bruce.

Depending on the venue and amount of money paid by the clients, the show could last an hour, and could be graphically violent and degrading or entirely simulated. Whipping my naked body, being shocked with a cattle prod [see above about the links between speciesism and patriarchy] or being forced to perform sexual acts on the "dominant" drew copious amounts of money, all of which were given to my captor. The more violent, humiliating, degrading and sexual the show, the more money the clients paid, and the larger the sum of tips and gratuities.

Jill was held captive for three years until Bruce was arrested. Chris says,

I was born into a familial run prostitution ring, which amounted to being delivered as a baby into a life of sexual slavery. The sexual abuse I suffered began when I was a toddler and extended into my early twenties.
The men who used me - my father, his father, my father's uncles and various friends of theirs - were extremely well organised and knew exactly how to sexually torture women and girls into submission. The men who prostituted me, known as pimps and handlers in everyday parlance, were rapists and batterers who used brainwashing techniques along with sexual torture to create and maintain control over women and girls whom they then sold.

chris was told that she was a “good fucker” by “prostitute ring men,” and concludes: “I was a sexual commodity, groomed, seasoned and taught how to be raped and how to be a sexy plaything for men. This was my childhood. It was my life and, because I cannot escape the memories of it now, it is still my life.”

Trafficking.

Traffickers routinely beat, rape, starve, confine, torture, and psychologically and emotionally abuse others, usually women. The buyers, too, are sometimes violent and often force sex workers to engage in degrading or abusive sexual acts. If victims attempt to escape, they bear a high risk of being caught and severely beaten or even killed by their traffickers.

Some buyers of trafficked sex workers like violent or sadistic sexual acts, including slashing, burning, or whipping the women.

In truth, sex worker users seek trafficked persons, prostitutes, or sex workers for a multitude of reasons, including the desire to have a certain type of sexual activity which they are unable to have with their primary partner, the thrill of the illicit adventure, the desire to realise a “sexual fantasy” or to unleash their anger and misogynistic beliefs, and the need to have ultimate power and control over another person.

#MeToo has merely reminded us of what we already know. Capitalist patriarchy, or patriarchal capitalism, is very dangerous for female identified persons. I wait to see how any of the above can be described as “empowering.”

Pro-intersectional vegans should be at the forefront of exposing and denouncing this massive tide of suffering, abuse, and rights violations.

[1] When one thinks about it, the cleanliness of “customers” must be an issue for sex workers.

I don’t know whether there would be a possibility to do something about a “dirty client.” Certainly, it seems unlikely that those sex workers in the least advantageous circumstances would have the opportunity – or facilities – to wash their “customers,” especially if there is a group of them. In the course of preparing this blog entry, I did something that was ill-advised (and twice). Because of my interest in language, I thought I would see what sort of titles there are in modern pornographic films. I thought of some key words and googled, “Irish amateur xxx.” Several sites came up. I want to make it crystal clear that I did not watch any of the, apparently, hundreds of films that are on every site – I just jotted down a number of titles.

Whether the films actually correspond to the titles, I cannot confirm. Some sites had static “galleries” of the various film clips on offer (they all appeared to be free) but one was set up so if a computer cursor was hovering over a picture, then a slide show of about 4 pictures would begin. Assuming they are stills from the film itself, then, for this site at least, the titles seemed “accurate.”

The sites themselves included titles and “blurb” such as, “Irish amateur sex tube, free porn videos,” “Irish amateur xxx movies. Irish amateur xxx movies is a new word in the world of high-quality free Irish Amateur porn. Only here can you find hundreds of exclusive…” [I could not see the rest because that would have required clicking on the link], “Search Irish – XXX Amateur porn – Amateur XXX girls Amateur girls porn, Start your filthy adventure,” “Free amateur Irish Creampie Fuck clips and hard amateur creampie sex films!”

In relation to the point, one film was entitled, “Irish ex sucks smelly cock.”

Other titles included, “Irish slut rough reverse cowgirl,” “Finger ruby pussy,” “Teen fucking,” “Irish teen masturbation,” “Hottest collection of Oral St. Patrick’s Day and Readhead porn movie scenes,” “Frotting and cumming,” “Irish girlfriend sucks and rides,” “Irish Pawg,” “Dildo fucking,” “Pregnant Irish redhead,” “Irish wife sunday afternoon,” “Irish slut face fucked,” “Irish wife hotel sex.” “Irish fuck slut big pussy,” “Irish slut from behind,” “Irish car sex,” “Blonde Irish girl sucks,” “Bound and fucked,” “Irish bird sucks dick,” and “Having anal.”

The reason I looked again is that I vaguely remembered the reference to the unclean penis but wasn’t sure. I was shocked to discover that this film clip now took a scroll to find, whereas it was prominent as a first film the first time I looked. I’m not sure whether this means that the films load randomly each time, or this indicates the daily rate of uploads (there was a day between visits). If the latter, that is deeply worrying to me, and suggests that sex workers who are filmed when “performing” sex acts must find themselves online regularly. Indeed, chris says, “When I pull up pornographic websites on my computer I find the first twenty-odd years of my life on display, splayed, trussed, raped, bruised, and chained. I see myself in the faces and poses of the women and girls for sale on my computer screen. I see myself when I was a sex slave, a girl child bred to be a prostitute, bred to make money for men” (in grussendorf and leighton, 2002: 36)

Baldwin, M. A. (1992). “Split at the root: Prostitution and Feminist Discourses of Law Reform.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 5, 47–120.

Bennett, Larry, and Susan Fineran (1998.) “Sexual and severe physical violence among high school students: Power beliefs, gender, and relationship.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 68, Iss 4, (Oct): 645-652.

Farley, Melissa. (2005) “Prostitution Harms Women Even if Indoors. Reply to Weitzer.” Violence Against Women, Vol. 11, 7: pp. 950-964.

Farley, Melissa, Jacqueline Lynne, and Ann J. Cotton. (2005.) “Prostitution in Vancouver: Violence and the Colonization of First Nations Women.” Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol. 42, 2: pp. 242-271.

Grenz, Sabine (2005.) “Intersections of Sex and Power in Research on Prostitution: A Female Researcher Interviewing Male Heterosexual Clients.” Signs, Vol. 30, No. 4, New Feminist Approaches to Social Science Methodologies Special Issue, Editors: Sandra Harding and Kathryn Norberg (Summer), pp.2091-2113

grussendorf, christine and jill leighton. (2002) “reader discretion advised: Stripping as a System of Prostitution.” Off Our Backs, Vol. 32, No. 1/2 (January-February), pp. 34-40

Martin A. (1999.) “Focusing on the Clients of Street Prostitutes: A Creative Approach to Reducing Violence Against Women.” Monto Ph.D. Document No.: 182859. Date received: October 30, 1999

Oberman, Michelle. (1994) “Turning Girls into Women: Re-Evaluating Modern Statutory Rape Law.” J. Crim. L. & Criminology 15.

Whowell, Mary. (2010) “Male Sex Work: Exploring Regulation in England and Wales.” Journal of Law and Society. Vol. 37, No. 1, Regulating Sex/Work: From Crime Control to Neo-liberalism? (Mar.), pp. 125-144.

Yen, Iris. (2008.) “Of Vice and Men: A New Approach to Eradicating Sex Trafficking by Reducing Male Demand through Educational Programs and Abolitionist Legislation.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Volume 98. Issue 2 (Winter), Article 6.

What Pornography Does to a Culture

2/10/2016

Dehumanisation and Depersonalisation Processes in Pornography.

1/7/2016

Content warning. Descriptions of violent pornography, rape, and violent attitudes towards women.

Several of the contributors to Catherine Itzin’s (1992) collection, Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties, detail the frequent violent dehumanisation of - mainly but not exclusively - women in pornography. There is evidence that the phenomenon of dehumanisation and depersonalisation is common and widespread in the production of some, arguably all, pornography.[1]

Many contributions to Itzin’s book provide substance to assertions that socialisation processes are powerful social forces which can lead to fundamental social values which in turn can validate and justify the commissioning of harmful acts. In particular, just as Itzin and her co-writers propose that what pornography “teaches” people about sex is often sexualised and eroticised violence, portrayed as if “this is sex,” early and on-going “lessons” in socialisation go a long way in explaining human attitudes to nonhuman animals.

For many in the animal advocacy movement, general socialised attitudes about other animals – for example, when socialisation processes assists in the construction of human beliefs about what humans and animals are; and even produce societal beliefs about what nonhuman animals “are for” - can be seen as one of the obstacles that the animal movement must overcome in trying to explain new ideas about human relations with other sentient beings.

In relation to campaigning strategy, Steve Baker (1998) seems entirely correct to suggest that nonhuman advocacy has significantly benefited from feminist writing, particularly in the 1990’s. Although “ecofeminism” has causes some controversy in feminist philosophy,[2] the following perspectives on pornography appear to benefit from being viewed through Karen Warren’s ecological feminist conception of the logic of domination.[3] Indeed, a general ecofeminist lens is useful it seems, since writers such as Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva see pornography as a form of “dissection” because, the argument goes, many rational modern machine-men have difficulty dealing with “real,” “complete” women. Therefore, such men prefer pornography and perhaps sex tourism based on the exploitation, commodification, and the reduction to their sexual parts of exceptionally marginalised and generally powerless women.[4]

A strength in the ecological feminist approach, it seems, like the earlier “humanitarian” stance of Henry Salt, is its insistence on seeing various intersecting forms of subjugation as firmly linked to and interwoven with other modes of oppression. It seems evident from a perspective such as Warren’s that an instance of violent pornography (as distinct from ‘erotica’ involving consenting participants) is an example of a logic of domination, defined as a patriarchal prerequisite that has sustained and justified the twin domination of women and “nature.” In a great many examples of pornography, it appears that (at least) sexism, racism and speciesism merge and blend within a single act of ideological domination featuring acts of extreme cruelty, persecution and, rights violations.

For example, Forna (in Itzin [1992]) alludes to interlocking strands when she states that pornography sustains an entrenched belief that sex with a black women or a black man is “different” - and certainly more “savage” - than sex with a white person. More particularly, while sex with black people is seen as “more physical” than sex with white people, it is at the same time less emotional, less spiritual and, of course, ultimately less human:

Black women are represented in porn as synonymous with deep carnality, animal desires and uncontrolled lust... ‘Naturally’ less civilised than her white counterpart, she exists solely for sex... The words and adjectives which caption pictures of naked black women are the same words used over and over again. The black woman is described as being ‘panther-like’, possessing ‘animal grace’. She is photographed caged, chained and naked. Hers is a savage, wild and primitive, exotic sexuality: a less than human sexuality (Forna, 1992: 104).

In relation to black men:

They are super-sexualised studs, members of a lower caste without the natural inhibitions of civilised whites. Sex between two blacks is a steamy, savage affair (ibid).

Citing research conducted in 1980 and 1981 by Teish and Leidholdt, Mayall and Russell (see HERE) also make the claim that black women are regularly associated with nonhuman animals in pornography.[5] Teish notes that the lucrative pornography industry exploits black and white women in different ways: she argues that white women are often portrayed as “soft,” while black women are frequently shown as “ugly, sadistic, and animalistic, undeserving of human affection.” Similarly, Leidholdt reports that while Asian women are often portrayed as “dolls,” Latin women are depicted as sexually submissive but voracious and, in arguably the most negative portrayal, Black women are shown as “dangerous and contemptible sexual animals.”[6]

Recalling a point often made above about dissection, Itzin says that pornographic accounts often reduce women to “just” their genital organs, while their assumed animality is never very far away. Thus women are sometimes regarded as:

holes, slots, sluts, pieces of meat. Men can walk the streets looking for ‘slots’, look at their wives as “slots.” And indeed letters from male readers [to pornographic publications] describe their wives in such dehumanised and derogatory terms: as “groaning and moaning like a stuck pig,” with “gushing fannies” and “sopping cunts.”

Itzin notes that much pornography shows women “enjoying” being “used as animals” (seemingly assuming that other animals like to be “used as animals”) (ibid.: 49).

It is also remarkable the number of times hunting associations and butchers’ knives find their way into pornographic narratives. For example, Itzin describes scenes from a “snuff movie” thus:

[A]fter a rather brutal rape, a young woman was tied to a table, and a hand was amputated with a Black-and-Decker type saw. Then she was raped again, and in the course of it her guts were spilled out by the rapist using a great butcher’s knife (ibid.: 49-50).

After viewing this particular video (obtained in Dublin), Clodagh Corcoran of the Irish Campaign Against Pornography said, “I have lived in fear ever since, knowing that while the rape, degradation and dehumanisation of women is filmed and sold as entertainment, women’s status in society is worthless, and our lives within and outside our homes are also without value” (in ibid.: 50 – see HERE for a 2007 article about pornography in Ireland). Itzin, along with Labour MP Clare Short, went to the Obscene Publications Branch at Scotland Yard and found several examples of adult and child pornography involving stories such as a pornographic cartoon about Little Red Riding Hood who is gang-raped by several hunters and shown to “enjoy it;” women being penetrated by a dog, a donkey and a pig (while one kisses the pig’s snout); women hung by their breasts from meat hooks, and a woman being eviscerated - as if in a slaughterhouse - and sexually murdered (ibid.: 51).

Peter Barker (in a chapter entitled “Maintaining Male Power,” in Itzin, 1992: 134) understands common pornographic themes of representing woman as animals or engaged in sexual acts with animals as a clear expression of utter contempt for women. Contempt, moreover, that “has to be continually reinforced in order for men to believe that their domination of women is justified.” After all, he says, echoing dimensions of the logic of domination thesis, it is “weaker,” and “lesser-than” groups who are candidates for exploitation: “there would be no justification for abusing and subordinating a group of people who were seen as being equal and worthy of respect” (ibid). “Porn” also makes men feel good, because men in pornography are virtually always “sexual athletes” and “studs” whose “performance” is never less than sufficient to satisfy all the needs and more of their sexual partners [not that partner satisfaction seems a particularly common consideration, especially – of course – in violent and child pornography].[6]

Barker also claims that pornography teaches men that sex is something men “do” to women. In pornography, “all men have the means of feeling sexually desirable, sexually proficient, and completely strong and powerful, even if it is just for a few minutes” (ibid.: 136).

Barker is another writer who notes that a great deal of pornography shows women enjoying being abused (ibid.: 140). This factor seems to warrant some comparison with John Robbin’s (1987: 131) claims that modern culture provides a “cotton candy” version of the lives of other animals who are depicted as being delighted “offering themselves to children as friendly things to eat.”[8] Some individual women may obtain some sort of masochistic satisfaction by placing themselves in the position of “the used and abused,” yet pornography appears to suggest that this is a common attitude for women to hold or - as in the rape scene [the director denies that the scene depicts rape – see following link] in the controversial 1970s film Straw Dogs - something they will eventually appear to accept. However, it is a fair bet that no non-fictional nonhuman animal has actually delightedly offered herself up to the slaughterer’s knife or the experimenter’s scalpel. Therefore, such depiction, in either case, are perhaps best regarded as essentially ideological in nature.

Do these constructions of women in pornography have an empirical effect? Strict causality is not claimed here. However, it is far easier to be content with a position like Ted Benton’s, who suggests that cultural influences can shape the human individual. If a societal “ambience” exists, different people will react to it in different ways, but the general point that societies can effectively “set the tone” for the adoption of shared beliefs and attitudes appears to be a sociologically defensible position.

Some feminist-inspired research does suggest that male attitudes to “real women” are often influenced by pornographic characterisations, produced and distributed within patriarchal culture. However, is there also any evidence to support the ecofeminist perspective that men may see both women and animals/nature as objects for exploitation? The same research does seem to offer evidence in support of that assertion as well.

For example, Russell cites Shere Hite’s research in the 1980’s which was based on asking male respondents to account for their declared wish to rape women. One interviewee said this:

Why do I want to rape women? Because I am basically, as a male, a predator and all women look to men like prey. I fantasise about the expression on a woman’s face when I ‘capture’ her and she realises she cannot escape. It’s like I won, I own her (quoted in Russell 1993: 120).

Here “man-the-hunter” is revealed, the “predator” after his “prey” - or perhaps “man-the-pet-owner,” who “wins” his women like one may win goldfishes at travelling fairgrounds. Russell was also soon to find further evidence of “man-the-dissector,” as it appears that some rapists may not see their victims as whole human beings; rather they see them simply as a collection of body parts. Russell says that to many men, women “are tits, cunts, and asses. This makes it easier to rape them. ‘It was difficult for me to admit that I was dealing with a human being when I was talking to a women,’ one rapist reported” (ibid.: 135). And, look out, here comes a-hunting the butcher man once more (reported to Zillmann and Bryant in 1984): “A man should find them, fool them, fuck them, and forget them;” and, “If they are old enough to bleed, they are old enough to butcher.”

MacKinnon also notes that in Merced, California, a man named Victor Burnham was convicted of spousal rape for forcing his wife to have sex with 68 neighbours and/or strangers while he took photographs, no doubt for later pornographic use. His wife says she was also forced by him to have sex with a dog. Finally, and quite shockingly in terms of the logic of domination thesis, she further testified to “episodes of torture with a battery-charged cattle prod.”

In the Sexist Playground.

Feminist writers have understandably been interested in children’s sex role socialisation and the effects of pornographic representations. Research with school students suggests that, on a personal and peer group interactive level, naming young women as certain types of animal can serve to restrict, alter, and constrain their social behaviour. For example, in the early 1980’s, Sue Lees and Sue Sharpe interviewed around 100 15- and 16-year old females about a variety of their views and interests. It soon emerged that one of their foremost concerns involved the social construction of their sexual reputation and the careful steps they took to avoid being called hurtful names.

It became evident that many of the respondents believed that they were being forced to tread a fine line between acting in ways that may result in their teenage boyfriends, male acquaintances, and female friends calling them names such as “tight bitch” (because they resisted sexual advances) on the one hand, and “slag” or “easy lay” (because they too readily “gave in” to sexual advances) on the other. Lees and Sharpe also found a range of animalistic labels such as “old dog,” “cow,” and “blind dog” used in a derogatory manner.[9]

One of Lees and Sharpe’s interviewees said she would rather be called a cow or a dog than a “slag” on the basis that others can clearly see that she is not an actual four-legged bovine or canine creature. Both the authors of this piece and this particular respondent think that the animalistic slurs mentioned lie somewhere between the terms “tight bitch” and “slag.” Lees and Sharpe say of their respondents, “they mustn’t end up being called a slag,” because, “slag” appears to rank with names such as “slut,” “tart,” and “scrubber.” In this sense, still engaged in the business of dehumanisation, there seems to be some labels even worse than being named as a type of nonhuman animal. In fact, this latter point appears to be true in some pornography as well. For example there is a particularly disturbing anti-Semitic book entitled Sluts of the S.S. (cited in Mayall & Russell) in which Jewish women are described with “standard” derogatory insults such as “whore,” “slut,” “dog,” and “swine”.[10] In one violent encounter a woman is called a “filthy Jewish slut.” However, as a final insult - the move to absolute “thing-like” status with no possibility of moral status - she is called a “human toilet” in scenes of oral rape.

[1] I find the standard dictionary definition of pornography rather misleading. Often pornography seems to depict violent behaviour rather than sexual behaviour. THIS is a legal definition of the term.

[2] On the one hand, “mainstream” feminists (and I immediately acknowledge the problematics of using such terms) suggest that ecofeminism essentialises women as “close to nature” beings, while Carol Adams, who has labelled herself a “feminist-vegetarian critical theorist,” criticises ecofeminism for not recognising that animal domination is absolutely central to nature domination. This appears similar to Jim Mason’s “agri-cultural” perspective.

[3] The notion of the “logic of domination” has proved to be controversial in ecological philosophy, with writers criticising and defending its conceptual validity. See, for example, Dixon’s attack and Crittenden’s defence. The first articulation of a logic of domination I am aware of appears in Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, first published in 1964.

[4] see HERE for an account from Earth Island Journal of the global trade in women and children. Like nonhuman animals, this article notes, “Throughout history, patriarchy has valued women not as persons but as things, pieces of property to be bought and sold.”

[5] Pornography titles comprising racism or speciesism, or racism and speciesism: Animal Sex Among Black Women, Black Bitch, Black Girl’s Animal Love, Bitch’s Black Stud, Gang Banged by Blacks, Geisha Girls, Oriental Sadist’s Pet. Raped by Arab Terrorists, Bound Harem Girl.

[6] Patricia Collins (see HERE) note that, “Certain ‘races’ of people have been defined as being more body-like, more animal-like, and less godlike than others.” Biological notions of race and gender prevalent in the early nineteenth century which fostered the animalistic icon of Black female sexuality were joined by the appearance of a racist biology incorporating the concept of degeneracy (Foucault, 1980). While the sexual and racial dimensions of being treated “like an animal” are important, the economic foundation underlying this treatment is critical. Other animals can be economically exploited, worked, sold, killed, and consumed. As “mules”, African-American women become susceptible to such treatment [these views reinforced by pornographic images of Black women]. Publicly exhibiting Black women may have been central to objectifying “Black women as animals” and to creating the icon of “Black women as animals.”

[7] This is complicated by the narratives that suggest to men that women “like” to be abused, or “taken by force,” etc.

[8] We may recall reactions to the scene in Douglas Adams’ Restaurant At the End of the Galaxy when a pig enthusiastically offers himself up as food, even suggesting the body parts he felt to be the most tender.

[9] Lees and Sharpe (1984: 19) recognise that there are derogatory names for young men too, such as “wanker” and “prick” - interestingly, no animal names are used to depict men, at least in this study, while the authors claim that there is a far bigger choice of hurtful names to aim at females rather than males.

[10] The Anti Nazi League has cited Holocaust denier David Irvin who says of Hungarian Jews being shipped to Auschwitz in 1944: “You are talking about 45,000 tonnes of meat.”