more stuff on pornography, feminism, censorship, etc
>Here is one topical example of how this might happen. Some feminists object to pornography on the grounds that it harms women. Others claim that pornography may not always be harmful to women and may even sometimes be liberating and beneficial. It seems that there is genuine disagreement here. But is there? Not necessarily. For the two sides might mean different things by “pornography.” Suppose that feminists who object to pornography are defining “pornography” as sexually explicit material that subordinates women. So, pornography, for them, is that subset of sexually explicit material that in fact harms women. This definition makes it definitionally true that pornography, wherever it exists, is bad for women. Those who defend pornography, however, may be using “pornography” to mean simply sexually explicit material aimed or used primarily for sexual arousal (regardless of whether it is harmful to women). There may thus be no genuine disagreement here, for both sides might agree that sexually explicit material that harms women is objectionable. They might also agree that there is nothing objectionable about sexually explicit material that does not harm women (or anyone else). If different parties are using “pornography” in different senses they may be talking past each other, perhaps without realizing it.
>Two really substantive issues at stake in the feminist debate over pornography are 1) whether any sexually explicit material is in fact harmful to women; and, if so, what should be done about it?; and 2) whether all sexually explicit material is in fact harmful to women; and, if so, what should be done about it? (We can thus phrase two of the important issues, if we like, without mentioning “pornography” at all.)>https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pornography-censorship/
>Since 2015, expanding research on the Moral Incongruence Model has demonstrated that self-identified addiction to pornography is highly predicted by moral and religious conflicts. Further, these internal conflicts of shame over one’s sexual desires not only predict self-identification as addicted but appear to greatly increase the degree of distress and struggles that people feel about themselves.
>Hating yourself for wanting a kind of sexuality that you were taught makes you a "bad" person understandably increases negative emotions, such as depression, stress, and anxiety, but also increases the degree to which individuals feel that their sexual desires and behaviors are out of their control.>https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/women-who-stray/202307/homophobia-and-religiosity-drive-struggles-with-porn
>“I think the overrepresentation of homosexual men in sex addiction centers is strong evidence that the diagnosis is primarily used for social control of sexuality, rather than treating any actual disease that should affect all men equally,”>https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg8j8/how-porn-addiction-took-hold-of-the-internetCan't get access to these two but I skimmed them a bit, need a sci-hub key to dive further
https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1710&context=etds>The Effects of Pornography on Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Men's Body Image: An Experimental Study >https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0736585315000350?via%3Dihub>Third person effect and Internet pornography in ChinaAlso, just a quick search of "porn made me gay no fap" gives dozens upon dozens of posts like this, which I think do echo a some of the things discussed in the articles referenced above, the last study mentions that 30% of pornography created is explicitly gay in nature, but the majority of other sources discussing ethics, censorship, etc don't talk about those things within a queer context
From a Marxist viewpoint, the idea that pornography is the main reason for the oppression of women and a driving force for the patriarchy seems a bit simplistic at best. Pornography is a relatively recent invention as a medium, really becoming a thing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with erotic photography, yet the patriarchy is not nearly as recent. Marxists would say that capitalism is the driving force of the patriarchy.
That said, I haven't reached a conclusion as of yet.
It's also worth noting that major anti-pornography sites like Fight the New Drug and No Fap were started by Mormons
I'm just saying man, Mormons and Christian conservatives are some of the biggest benefactors and pushers of the patriarchy.
>https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J056v16n01_05
>Empirical research has failed to provide a clear understanding of the relationship between pornography use and sexism. Study 1 showed an inverse correlation between modern sexism and pornography use, such that participants who used pornography more frequently displayed less sexist attitudes. Study 2 found a positive correlation between pornography use and benevolent sexism, such that participants who used pornography more frequently displayed more benevolent sexism. Our studies provide insight into the largely inconclusive findings of previous research on pornography use and sexist attitudes toward women.
>https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/socf.12506>Abstract>Much contemporary debate about pornography centers on its role in portraying and perpetuating gender inequality. This article compares traditional gendered attitudes between cisgender men attending the Adult Entertainment Expo (n = 294) and a random sample of male respondents from the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS), a U.S. representative survey of general attitudes and beliefs collected every two years (n = 863). Our survey borrowed questions from the GSS to measure attitudes about gender equality across four dimensions: (1) working mothers, (2) women in politics, (3) traditional gender roles in the family, and (4) affirmative action for women in the workplace. Through bivariate analyses, we found that “porn superfans” are no more sexist or misogynistic than the general U.S. public on two of the four measures (women in politics and women in the general workplace) and held more progressive gender-role attitudes than the general public on the other two measures. We conducted binary logistic regressions for those two measures to determine if the relationship remained significant when controlling for other factors. For one dimension, working mothers, it did (p < .001). Our results call into question some of the claims that porn consumption fosters de facto negative and hostile attitudes toward women. Really need to get me a sci-hub reference so I can actually read these beyond the abstracts
>https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/not-safe-for-work-feminist-pornography-matters-sex-wars/Some actual leftist discussion on the topice
I think I will interview some friends who are/have been in the industry via onlyfans to get some further insight
>https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg89mb/sex-workers-describe-the-instability-and-necessity-of-onlyfans>Sex Workers Describe the Instability—and Necessity—of OnlyFansOne thing that sparked this deep dive into the relationship between communism and sex work, particularly pornography, was a very rigid response on r/communism101, that basically said these workers are petit bourgeois and thus aren't people we as communists should be worried about organizing with, yet the workers in this article mention things like having mental illness, physical disabilities, living paycheck paycheck, finding themselves in precarious situations in order to survive
A mass line approach calls for organizing the most disenfranchised members of the class society first