I aim to please.

In reply to this comment by thepinky:
Now, THAT made me laugh. Props to you for making me laugh at myself.

>> ^gwiz665:
It dances so prettily...

>> ^Farhad2000:
Your hypothesis that porn is related to sexual assault is very slim. The argument is the same as saying that watching violence on TV makes people violent. Both acts occur naturally, even with the removal of porn and violence such acts will exist.
I live in the Arab world, women here wear hijabs, pant suits, and long skirts. There is very little sexual stimulus. The internet here is filtered. Most lay men cannot access any pron what so ever. Yet sexual crimes here are just as prevalent. Especially the gang rape of maids, young boys and other forms of sexual abuse.
I think you connect the act of sex, and porn and sexual abuse together. I believe sexual abuse is a expression of power over an individual, the act of molestation that fulfills a certain dark seated sexual desire. There are countless accounts of serial killers who only got sexual satisfaction upon killing their victims, then masturbating on them, or necrophilia. Most of these people were psychopaths to begin with, how can one imply that what they did was because they say watched porn when they were young.
I think you underestimate the human nature, and it's ability to lay blame anywhere but themselves. People who commit sex crimes always say that it was abuse they received or porn they viewed, they can never admit that maybe they are simply are inherently skewed and like nothing more then raping or touching little girls.
There is too much of that in society now, I have a problem X, its not me that is at fault its society or practice Y.
I don't know a thing about Arab culture, but that argument doesn't hold water for me because the causes of sexual crime in the Arab world may be completely different. For example, the lack of sexual stimulus and the repression of women's sexuality are possible causes. As you said, rape is about control. I think that in a culture where women are controlled, crimes of control are more likely to happen. I'm guessing that many sex crimes in Arab nations stem from the culture's distortion of sex, just as ours do. Their repression of sexuality in women may not be heathy, either. I really can't say, but I think we ought to reach a happy medium.

I wasn't implying that all necrophiliacs are what they are because of a porn problem. I'm not even saying that all sexual abusers are consumers of porn. I'm saying that porn CAN and DOES cause sexual problems, and I have seen it occur with my own two eyes. The person in question is not a psychopath. He is a good person. Any problems that he had when he was younger stemmed from an exposure to porn at a young age. I am positive that he would not have done what he did if he hadn't been looking at porn since age 7. He was an innocent kid. Of course, that's just one example and it doesn't always turn out that way. But say he already had a tendency toward sexual crime. Do you think porn would encourage or stifle that tendency? A society that teaches a healthy regulation of sexual activity is more likely to help that guy than a society that teaches him to masturbate to porn with increasing frequency. Just my opinion.

Not all molestation is about control. Rape, probably. I think that molestation is sometimes simply about what gets the person off.

And what of the problems of our society? What DO they stem from? Are we supposed to completely refrain from assigning blame to any of our own practices? Are we supposed to allow our society to deteriorate because we can't get to the root causes of our problems and fix them? There is a general trend on the Sift toward the attitude that the fewer controls and restraints on behavior, the better. That nothing matters except pleasure and freedom. I just don't agree with that philosophy. Sometimes your freedoms hurt other people, and in order to be moral, people have to sacrifice a few freedoms. Porn doesn't help, it hurts.

Now, THAT made me laugh. Props to you for making me laugh at myself.

>> ^gwiz665:
It dances so prettily...

>> ^thepinky:
THANK YOU! Seriously. No hard feelings. I kinda deserved it and I was asking for it.
You don't mind if I continue to argue and comment in here, right? Because I could totally stop.
>> ^LadyDeath:
quote was deleted requested by thepinky I Hope the down voters are happy now and so ms pinky



Oh No Dear Feel Free to keep your argument here...even If I Still Think the word Porn should not be in These comments because has nothing to be with the video...

THANK YOU! Seriously. No hard feelings. I kinda deserved it and I was asking for it.

You don't mind if I continue to argue and comment in here, right? Because I could totally stop.

>> ^LadyDeath:
quote was deleted requested by thepinky I Hope the down voters are happy now and so ms pinky

One more thing:

I really appreciate your kindness and understanding, but I have to admit that this part of the comment makes me so upset I don't even know where to begin. Ladydeath, don't read this if you don't want the drama. I gave you fair warning. You don't have to read it.

It makes me feel almost unbearably frustrated that something that is so influential in sex crime is so socially accepted that people don't even see it as a cause. Okay, I'm not talking about the video, I'm talking about porn now. Porn distorts our view of sex. Porn separates sex from love and emotion. Porn makes people into objects and into means to an end. True story: An innocent little boy exposed to porn does evil things to little girls and it takes him years to overcome it, but he does overcome it because he is a good person. PORN did that! P-O-R-N. It wasn't that the little boy was inherently evil or had some kind of sexual disorder. He was exposed to a sick and twisted and distorted exploitation of the human body and of the act of intercourse.

We wonder "Why-oh-why is child molestation increasing? Oh what can we do about it? Oh, no, porn couldn't make any difference, because I view porn! There's no way that there is anything bad about it! I get sexual release! If anything else, it KEEPS them from doing bad things!" and on and on and on. Porn DOES NOT decrease the need for sexual release, it increases it. The more you look at porn, the more often you want to, the more interesting you want it to be, and some people take it too far. Just because you don' doesn't mean that it isn't a disgusting an unnatural thing. Do you think sex crimes develop because a person's sexuality was kept under good regulation? Repression, as some of you call it. And don't give me the Catholic priest argument. The vast majority of the world's sex predators are not Catholic priests, and the vast majority of Catholic priests are not sex predators. I swear, all the people who wanted to justify unbridled sexual release just loved that whole scandal. Do you think that the guy who, because of his religion or whatever the cause may be, has never looked at porn and who is going to wait until marriage to have sex is going to one day go out and rape a kid because his sexuality has been repressed? No, he's not. In fact, that guy isn't even sexually frustrated. He's pretty darn happy, because his control is his own choice. I know many guys like that. I'll tell you the guy who is sexually frustrated. He's the guy that sits at home and jacks off all day to porn. THAT guy is frustrated.

You're going to say that porn is not the cause of sex crime. Well, maybe it isn't. But it certainly helps. Porn may be a correlational feature, but it is not insignificant. It does not teach control of inappropriate sexual tendencies, it perpetuates and increases inappropriate sexual tendencies.

I beleive in this so much that I can't even respond coherently. I feel like I can't even begin to make you understand how wrong you are. It's like trying to explain to a blind person what red looks like.

I know what your arguments are going to be, but I'm sick of trying. I'm going to go do something that will actually make a difference now.

>> ^EDD:
1. Porn is in no more a reason behind sexual assaults than welsh kitties are. At best, and very seldom still, it might be an insignificant factor stimulating this kind of behaviour, however, most of the time, it does negate these desires, both in short and long-terms. Any assailant saying they were motivated by porn is obviously finding excuses; and if any psychologist is buying that crap, they need their diploma taken away from them ASAP.
2. Openness about sexuality is really the key to rehabilitation. Porn can, if anything, actually help victims of sexual abuse, even though it has to be a gradual process, but for one, it's a lot better than erotic novels. This is because of using fantasy when reading a book rather than direct visual stimuli in pornography - the former quite often has women readers picturing themselves in the stead of female protagonists and therefore being more likely to cause traumatic comparisons/flashbacks than the latter, in which one should feel a lot more disconnected from the people involved in the sexual act.

A little clunky but it makes a few interesting points, I hope. :-) Have a great week!

In reply to this comment by thepinky:
Great reply. Thanks.

In reply to this comment by oohahh:
Looks like much of this hullaballoo stemmed from semantics, namely, the definition of "porn". [snip]

I'm not talking about Dita. I'm talking about all forms of erotica, porn, whatever. Dita may love it, but she is a sex object when she is on that stage. All that matters is her body, whether she realizes it or not. That is what objectification is. Dita is the effect of a culture, not the cause of it. Anytime sex is removed from love, someone is an object. SOMEONE is a means to an end. And that end is sex.

There are so many comments to reply to that I don't know where to start!

I can't talk about this anymore. It is emotionally draining, frustrating, and above all, pointless and hopeless. You're blind to what porn does, what it did to me, and what it is doing to you.

Peace.

Great reply. Thanks.

In reply to this comment by oohahh:
Looks like much of this hullaballoo stemmed from semantics, namely, the definition of "porn".

In 1964, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . . "[ JACOBELLIS v. OHIO, 378 U.S. 184 (1964)]

Over fifty years later and we're still using the same broken metric. Our difficulty stems from the very nature of this metric - it's a moving target. It changes as society changes. We're not working with a rigid definition of porn and we're certainly not all on the same page with that definition.

Dag's definition is entirely personal when he asks, "am I aroused?" To add rigor to that definition is difficult: Dag's just never around when I want to talk about pron ;-) so that definition has to be tossed out as a generalized definition on the grounds that it's inconvenient. If we had portable Pikachu-dags, then maybe we're onto something.

Until then, though, perhaps looking at this from a different angle my be illustrative:

What's the border line between where dance becomes porn?

Dance is an appreciation of form at rest, form in motion, and the segueways between the two. In it's purest, we try to see the human body in it's most distilled essence. Typically, dancers wear tight clothing; leotards. It's rarer but not unknown to dance naked. That's the human body in it's purest form.

Let's come back to this video now: do you think the video is pornographic because of the movements she's making or the way she's dressed? Me, I don't see it as both. I think we can be clear and say it's the clothing she's wearing.

So what if Dita was wearing a leotard? Would that make it acceptable?

What if she started completely naked - that is - not wearing the pasties and panties? Would that be acceptable or unacceptable?

Reconsidering this dance from another light: what about bellydancing? They essentially wear sparkly undergarments out in public and dance in them. If we say that's the equivalent of porn, we'll end up with 10,000 angry bellydancers on the doorstep, so we ought to be really careful in answering that question.

Are these even the right questions to be asking? Would it simply be better to say, "whatever that guy did was wrong. I hope you're doing better now."

>> ^oohahh:
Looks like much of this hullaballoo stemmed from semantics, namely, the definition of "porn".
In 1964, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . . "[ JACOBELLIS v. OHIO, 378 U.S. 184 (1964)]
Over fifty years later and we're still using the same broken metric. Our difficulty stems from the very nature of this metric - it's a moving target. It changes as society changes. We're not working with a rigid definition of porn and we're certainly not all on the same page with that definition.
Dag's definition is entirely personal when he asks, "am I aroused?" To add rigor to that definition is difficult: Dag's just never around when I want to talk about pron ;-) so that definition has to be tossed out as a generalized definition on the grounds that it's inconvenient. If we had portable Pikachu-dags, then maybe we're onto something.
Until then, though, perhaps looking at this from a different angle my be illustrative:
What's the border line between where dance becomes porn?
Dance is an appreciation of form at rest, form in motion, and the segueways between the two. In it's purest, we try to see the human body in it's most distilled essence. Typically, dancers wear tight clothing; leotards. It's rarer but not unknown to dance naked. That's the human body in it's purest form.
Let's come back to this video now: do you think the video is pornographic because of the movements she's making or the way she's dressed? Me, I don't see it as both. I think we can be clear and say it's the clothing she's wearing.
So what if Dita was wearing a leotard? Would that make it acceptable?
What if she started completely naked - that is - not wearing the pasties and panties? Would that be acceptable or unacceptable?
Reconsidering this dance from another light: what about bellydancing? They essentially wear sparkly undergarments out in public and dance in them. If we say that's the equivalent of porn, we'll end up with 10,000 angry bellydancers on the doorstep, so we ought to be really careful in answering that question.
Are these even the right questions to be asking? Would it simply be better to say, "whatever that guy did was wrong. I hope you're doing better now."

Great reply. Thanks.

on my list of favorite sifters, also.
very real person who's queue I regularly visit.
Thank you for recognizing what a unique place this is, and for recently posting a comment which instantly endeared you to me. (Particularly the last sentence.)
Congrats, and I look forward to more interactions with you!

O LAWD! Ich würde lieber nicht einmischen, aber ich muss.

But I like Ladies with names like Dita Von Teese, or Kat Von D. There is something about these names... cant quiet put my name on it.

This is a subculture. Like tattoos, hackers, anime nuts, and well sifters. So don't freak out.

>> ^rabidness:
People who think this is art... please try to create some art, pretty please?
If it's art, what is she communicating? This is as close to art as Fergie is... and I hope we can all make the assertion that Fergalicious is, with the most generous judgement, 'art' only in the kind of way that nearly anything can be art.
The furthest this is from porn is that it is 'classy' porn.
I agree with thepinky. This has no place on the sift.
I don't mind the nudity but this isn't the site for drivel.



"This has no place on the sift"
4 days 9 hours 27 minutes ago • 6141 views
89 votes whatever,keep the comments coming

>> ^schmawy:
Bravo, Calvados. Some one did bother to ask the woman herself.

>> ^dag:
Upvote finally from me for the discussion. Way to go Calvados.


Ta gents -- I have my moments

There's no universal definition of either feminism or feminist stances, which is why there's no way to discuss it and reach any universal agreement. There's simply no way to win when taking on "feminists", because anything and everything you say WILL be wrong. If you think women should be able to wear burkas you're oppressing them, but if you are for them wearing whatever they like you're objectifying them. It's all depending on what feminist you ask and where you're asking the question, and always the discussion is predetermined by the mindset that all womanhood is being oppressed and that manhood as a whole is oppressing them.

There are still areas where men and women are unequal, but you really have to realize that driving a wedge inbetween the people who hold those beliefs and trapping them in an argument where all answers are wrong won't further any thoughts on equality.
"Equal but different" is how my mother brought me up to look on men and women. There are people who don't see it that way; some who see it as men being superior to women, and relatively recently that women are superior to men, that's where you need to focus your attention if you ask me.

Feminism isn't about reprimanding people for complimenting a woman in a clumsy manner, about verbally attacking someone for making a joke or try to create some moral highground by drawing farfetched conclusions based on scewed movie statistics. Chastising the people who hold the equality beliefs will not further any feminist cause, because there's no corralation between enjoying Dita von Teese's burlesque show and objectifying women and viewing them as inferior to men.
Change comes from engaging the minds and views of persons who haven't been brought up into thinking humans are equal no matter their gender.

There was a political party who formed in Sweden called FI (feministic initiative) which fell apart in a matter of months. It did so because it couldn't agree on a political agenda, what policies to push and what parties to cooperate with, due to everyone having different ideas on what feministic initiative meant. There was no common ground to build a platform on, because on every issue one member wanted to pursue, another held the opposing view on the same argument.
The initiative ended up polarizing people even more and doing more harm than good, simply by attacking persons who held the view that everyone's equal by turning everything they did into an affront to women's suffrage.