#be sex positive
CN: binary language
All too often (in my opinion), porn is constructed by men for male enjoyment, even “lesbian” scenes are often created purely for men, which seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
When I was at school, I asked one of my male friends why men like watching women kiss, and he responded that it was because they were obviously doing it to turn men on, to show men that they were up for sex. At the time, I blindly accepted this as a suitable response, but seriously? How conceited is it for straight men to think that women’s sexuality is always a performance for them?
This is a common theme in porn, an industry that routinely abuses and demoralises women in many ways, including the perpetuation of this myth. This is not to say I haven’t ever watched or enjoyed porn, because I have and do regularly. But sometimes I do struggle to take off my feminist hat and accept the male gaze, as defined by Laura Mulvey (a feminist goddess and film theorist).
“As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with active power of the erotic look… a male movie star’s glamorous characteristics are thus not those of he erotic object of his gaze, but those of a more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original movement of recognition in front of the mirror”, in other words, the male protagonist/porn star is constructed as the object of desire for the pleasure of the heterosexual male spectator, the spectator sees himself in the character and so by watching the character be desired, the spectator feels desired and empowered. Any women in the scenes are merely objects who make the man feel desired.
However, this doesn’t always have to be the case. In female-directed porn, the women seem more authentic, more real. There’s less focus on male pleasure and more on the pleasure experienced by all characters in the scene.
Watching porn doesn’t make you a bad feminist, nor a bad person in general, but it is important to acknowledge what constitutes good porn (safe, equal) and bad porn.
Have a watch of the video below, created as part of YouPorn’s female director series for some more info about feminist pornography
http://www.youporn.com/watch/12543019/youporn-female-director-series/
PT
TW: discussion of abortion, mistreatment of women, rape, abuse
Following the closure of a UK abortion clinic in July of 2015, women’s charities and sex positive charities have been calling for buffer zones to be established outside abortion clinics.
But it’s a free country! I hear you cry. Indeed, we are incredibly lucky to live in a country where each woman is free to choose, whether that be to choose abortion or to choose to disagree with abortion.
However, the flaw in this “free country” argument is that yes, this is a free country, until you use said freedom to encroach on another’s.
For hundreds of years, and still today, women’s bodies have not been their own. They have been treated as incubators, sold like cattle, gawked at, and been abused. In the UK, we now (for the most part) have the right to make our own decisions concerning our own bodies, “own” being the operative word. A woman down the street may not make the same decision as me, nor may I make the same decision as my best friend, and that’s just fine.
It saddens me to see women restricting the rights of other women, when we have fought long and hard to be able to take back ownership of our bodies.
I am not suggesting that everyone be pro-life, it is entirely your own decision, but please, don’t force your opinions on anyone else. Should you wish to protest, do it elsewhere!
You have no idea the amount of time, thought and emotion that may have gone into the decision to go to the clinic that day. There are a multitude of reasons why a woman may have to or want to get an abortion, and, quite frankly, they are none of your damn business. The woman in the video below articulates this point exactly:
So take a breath, take a step back and reflect on what you’re actually doing. You’re using your freedom to protest someone else’s freedom to choose. How can that mean that we are all free?
The idea of the buffer zones is that we can all keep our freedom.
You can sign the petition for buffer zones here.
PT
Originally posted here.
TW: abortion, rape, sexual violence
I suppose I should probably start by explaining what I mean by “Pro-choice = pro-life”, before you condemn me as an uneducated idiot. Pro-choice is the school of thought that says that the decision to have, or not have, an abortion is the decision of the individual pregnant woman in question, and pro-life is the idea that any fertilised egg counts as a human life and to have an abortion is equivalent to murder.
“So how can you say they are the same thing?” I hear you say. By removing a woman’s right to choose, you are often condemning her to a life she does not want. I am by no means suggesting that a woman who continues with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy will despise her child, because often she won’t. But she will live a life that she did not want, which isn’t exactly pro-life, is it? So maybe we can start to use pro-life to mean pro-female life, a stance which seeks to value women’s lives and choices.
We are lucky in the UK to live in a country where attitudes to abortion are comparatively modern. It is legal and free for a woman to have an abortion (yay). This doesn’t mean that everyone is pro-choice, and there are still plenty of barriers to this choice (you can read more about this here), but compared to the 74 countries (yes, 74!) where abortion is illegal, except in extreme circumstances, we are pretty lucky.
These countries are:
RED COUNTRIES ON THE MAP: ABORTION ILLEGAL IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES OR PERMITTED ONLY TO SAVE A WOMAN’S LIFE.
South America:Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gustamala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nigaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela,
Sub-Saharan Africa:Angola, Benin, Central African Rep.Chad, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Dem. Rep. of Congo, Gabon, Guinea- Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauretania, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda.
Middle East and North Africa:Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Sudan ®, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.
Asia and Pacific:Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka.
Europe:Ireland, Malta.
ORANGE COUNTRIES ON THE MAP: ABORTION LEGALLY PERMITTED ONLY TO SAVE A WOMAN’S LIFE OR PROTECT HER PHYSICAL HEALTH.
The Americas and the Caribbean:Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru,
Sub-Saharan Africa:Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe
Middle East and North Africa:Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabi
Asia and Pacific:Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand
Europe:Poland
El Salvador has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world, partially due to the fact that 67% of sexual violence victims are under the age of 17. The men who commit these crimes can be sentenced to 6-10 years in prison. The victims who choose to seek out illegal abortions to liberate themselves from some of the consequences of these crimes could be sentenced to up to 50 years in prison, five times the punishment of the man who forced her into the situation, if new legislation is passed.
Before you stop me and say “but she chose to get rid of her baby, she could have just kept it, so she’s just as bad”, many of these women are too young to care for a baby and/or not in a position where they could financially care for a baby. Few women, few people, would choose to bring a child into a world where they know that that child will go to bed hungry every night, won’t have clean water to drink, and will never have the chance to go to school, if they knew there was another way.
By introducing these increased penalties, not only women who choose to have abortions, but also the innocent victims of obstetric emergencies, will be punished. Women have already been imprisoned for allegedly attempting to have abortions, when actually their babies were still-born. Perhaps one of the most painful experiences a woman could have, topped off with a jail sentence. As if she hadn’t suffered enough?
If you’d like to try to block this new legislation in El Salvador, and support a woman’s right to choose, please sign this petition, and show you’re pro-(female) life.
PT
