Very true, very true:

“It is no great accomplishment to be desired by a man.”

If it were not true, we would hardly be able to fulfill our evolutionary mandate to multiply, to fill and subdue the earth, eh?

As far as porn, I guess... I like the sound of the word "pornulation." But it seems likely to me that porn is as culture-bound as anything else (and the more corporatized/industrialized it gets, the worse it is for you). It does seem to me, though, that "we" (the pundit's "we as a society") are coming to associate the pornographic with the desirable. (There's some play to be had in the "graphic" vs. the "able," there, but I'm not sure what it is...) This is true across the board, from the Abu Ghraib photos to model railroading (q.v., CD, q.v.).

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

pornulates evertyhing. Advertising is all about image, not substance. Women who dress to get the attention of men, or of anyone, man or woman, are just advertising. Selling the image, hoping the substance closes the deal.

That is one of the best things about most blogging. For many people (me) the only image that counts is one of words. What is the content of your mind?

OTOH, I'm not looking to hook up, either.

Men have to sell an image as well, I think. Men must be successful - the car, the house, the job - all that striving for success is often no more than a hugely expensive effort to get the attention of women.

Men propose, women dispose.

Usually. There are variations and permutations.

I have asked women friends, in the past when I was more stupid than I am now, why they wore makeup. I don't believe I ever received a straight answer. The most honest, but least introspective, was "I feel naked without it." Yet, without men, would women wear makeup? Not likely.

Advertising - pornulating - works because it bypasses the intellectual and goes right for the reptile in all of us.

Jake

I ignore the opinions of everyone who doesn't bother to allow others to express themselves. The views of such people are primitive. They have not been tempered by conflict with those who disagree with them, and as such their arguments are inherently weaker than those who do. All they've ever done is debate people who agree with them on 90% of all issues, that leaves their arguments full of holes and their opinions extremely flawed.

And reading this post, it's pretty clear that the feminist hostility to science is creating real flaws in their through process. Good luck trying to remove the mate-selection drives from our instinctual processes. You're not going to convince girls and women that they don't want boys men to find them pretty, all shame and guilt is going to do is cause psychological damage because of these desires. Really, it's not like we use a love of handbags to keep women down. We just do what people have always done and set you against each-other to keep you too busy to fight us. An exploitative consumerist culture keeps you buying these things, not men telling you'd look good if you only owned 50 pairs of shows. But back to the point above. If we didn't have to worry about members of the opposite sex finding us attractive, we wouldn't be better off. We'd have died in one of our many near-extinctions.

The same thing with the feminist war against porn. The ever shifting rationals Like the "OMG! The mafia ran porn 30 years ago so it must still be made up of criminals now!" line, or the "OMG! Porn drives men to rape women!" or the "Porno Girls are so hot men won't have sex with real women anymore!" just make you all into jokes. You hate porn, but you can't just say you hate porn because it's a political non-starter. So instead you drum up these bizarre reasons why it's evil, most of which are outdated or were never scientifically accurate to begin with. You conflate foreign sex-slave pornography with American produces to make that industry sound more exploitative and illegal. All in the hopes of convincing men that looking at pretty girls nude is evil, and should not be accepted. Good luck with that. All you'll be able to do is damage young men with guilt and shame.

At this point, Feminists are best known for telling other people what they can look at and moralizing about how evil everyone but themselves are. Some of reputation is the result of unfair maligning by the right, but a good portion of it is the result of the similarities between fundamentalists and feminists. At their heart, both movements are about instituting a moral world view on others without regard to efficacy or scientific accuracy. I swear to god, if I hear one more wannabe sociologist feminist claim that breasts aren't an inherent sexual attractor in our species, despite the work done on this By Morris Et Al, I'll scream. Sure, there is some controversy about the issue, but all zoologists, primatologists, and biologists are on one side, and the other side consists of social "scientists" or physicists who don't have anything to do with evolution.

and i don't "hate" porn, i just don't enjoy it and i think it's highly problematic in our culture, for the reasons that jake mentioned above. anything enslaved to the consumerist/corporatist interest is a bad thing, imho.

as for the science behind sex, well...hopefully you can agree with me that science isn't exactly perfect when it comes to gender issues. there are some great books on the topic, i'm a tad busy now but i'll try to come back and post on them. the short version: many, many, many times in the history of modern science, "scientific fact" about sex and gender has been motivated by unscientific ideology. there are tremendous biases, even still today, in much of what "science" assumes about gender. i'm not saying that we know nothing about gender, or that science hasn't offered us important insights into gender, or that we're not making a kind of progress and coming to better understand things. but some of us remain critical of "scientific" claims, knowing that not all scientists are completely unbiased in their research. sigh, it's just not true that scientific research in this country is untainted by corporatist/authoritarian ideology. look too bush appointees (remember the fundie veterainarian he appointed to oversee women's health initiatives?)

anyway, thanks for your comments. those of us who don't support ever increasing "pornification" have many reasons why we feel so, not the least of which is that it can be dehumanizing to men, as well as women.

How about a link? How about a little factual backup?

Cause your argument stinks of fear of women and women who aren't inferior to you by cultural fiat in particular.

Just so you know, I noticed.

"No rendirse, muchachos!" William Barrett Travis, 1836

You’ve raised some interesting questions, well done! We could also explore the whole Freudian pistil-stamen-Georgia O’Keefe relationship between messing around in the dirt for months with flowering plants and your perhaps not so coincidental enchantment with topics on human sexuality, but maybe another time.

Lots of questions here, and damn fewer clear answers than either Twisty or your man friend seem to allow. Part of the issue is semantics, so often a difficulty when dealing with highly charged topics. What is the difference, and where are the boundaries, between pornography, eroticism and beauty? It really is a two-party definition, the viewed and the viewer, and what is one thing for you could be something quite different for me. How much of what might be seen as pornography is inherent in the object itself and how much is dependent on the bias of the viewer? What then is "pornification" exactly ?

Can’t help you with GLBT points of view, and especially not with the female because if there is one thing that has been made abundantly clear to me it is that I do not understand women. However, I can give you some insight into the heterosexual male perspective, where porn is pretty simple - “it is no great accomplishment to be desired by a man.” All of the radical feminist derogatory characterizations about us are true - we are fundamentally, overwhelmingly sexual creatures, not much more than ambulatory erectile tissue with testosterone receptors. Lots of testosterone receptors. When we see a female, we immediately and involuntarily ask two questions: (1) Do I want to have sex with her? and if the answer is yes then (2) Will she have sex with me? Pornography allows entry into a fantasy world where the answer to Question Two is always yes. We like it. We buy it by the ton. It’s a genetic imperative, we can’t help it and we’re not responsible. That we actually do anything that is not overtly sexual, like work, mow the lawn, and earnestly listen to women talk about their day, is the result of an enormous strength of character for which we receive far too little credit.

What is meant by the premise that pornography objectifies women? Of course it does in the broadest sense, to the extent that the reduction of any living breathing complex being into an object is, de facto, objectification. Is this always bad? How about Botticelli's Birth of Venus? Michelangelo’s David? A photograph of someone dear to you? If objectification is used in a sense of being demeaning, it doesn’t get any easier to explain. Consider your example of Aimee Mullins. She is bright (double major at Georgetown), a gifted speaker, and certainly not shy – she could make a living any number of ways. Yet she has chosen, yes, chosen, to pose for public view in provocative, semi-nude postures that cannot be interpreted in any way but erotic, and done so for a magazine that is directed primarily at men. Is there any question that the pose for Sports Illustrated was meant to arouse sexual interest? Clearly it was, and so who then is the pornographer? The magazine, or Aimee Mullins? Is she demeaned or, as she sees it, empowered?

Threaded within the richly textured tapestry of Soullite’s commentary is at least one legitimate point, and that is whether or not any of us have the moral right to condemn legal behavior of others. If Aimee Mullens wants to pose with her airbrushed butt in the air, and SI wants to publish it, and some lonely farmer in North Dakota gets excited by it, and Aimee and SI and the farmer are altogether OK with that, who is harmed, and who is to be blamed? Why is there any need for blame at all?

That sex sells is apparent, although I personally don’t get it. I am not so delusional as to think that if I only buy the right car/watch/clothes/ hairpiece/beard dye then every woman I meet will fall all over me. Experience strongly suggests otherwise. It must work for somebody, because the use of sex in advertising is so ubiquitous. But is it demeaning specifically and exclusively to women? There was a recent TV ad for some cologne or aftershave where a man on a desert island applies a bit and is suddenly pursued relentlessly by thousands of bikini-clad beauties. On the one hand it is clearly parody, hopelessly hyperbolic. On the other hand it could, if one were overly sensitive and lacked an adult sense of humor, be seen as demeaning women by portraying them as warm-blooded automatons controlled solely by their olfactory sense. Fair enough, but does it not then also, in a way that is much more calculated and damaging, demean men by assuming the intended male audience is so gullible that they can be persuaded to part with their hard-earned money on the premise that a spritz of scent will transform the seediest slug into an irresistible object of female desire? Are not both sexes demeaned by erotic advertising? Why are women more damaged by it than men?

And then there are a whole host of women’s self-depricating choices and their utterly incredible propensity to dump responsibility for their own behavior on men. Seriously now, I don’t have the least interest in makeup, hair dye, high heels, push-up padded bras or any of the rest of that kind of false advertising. It is the height of effrontery to smear your faces with colored clay, hang bits of sparkly things from your ears and totter around on short sticks while expecting us to respect you. Please. The compound term self-respect requires that both parts be operative. No one can credibly demand respect from others if they don’t first give respect to themselves. Trying to emulate porn stars in public will get you viewed by men primarily as a porn object, and how difficult is that to understand? Here’s some free advice for all women, the same as I give to all my daughters: Dress sensibly and modestly in public, save the racy stuff for private time. Besides, do you really want attract and keep someone who is that shallow? Really?

Without wading fully into the indefensible reverse misogyny of holding men responsible for 21st Century Western women’s behavior, not to mention all the ills of the world, there still are far more questions here than answers. Great topic, terrific comment thread, looking forward to Partie Deux.

Waiting for bees to make honey? (If they even will any more?)

+1 on the biological substrate. All we can do, all of us, is do the best we can, given the givens. Personally, I see "no great accomplishment..." as a great why to get out from under all that... (And personally, if I never saw cosmetics used again, I'd be happy. Perfume, now, that's another matter...)

It seems to me that humans objectify other humans all the time. Sweet Jeebus, go look at the Romance section in Borders! (To me, "Romance" as a genre is far, far more disgusting and depraved than porn, because of the emotion and the narrative involved. Oh, I've got to live up to that? Oh, now you're telling me it's just a fantasy? Just a picture? Hmmm .... )

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

i'll tell my lover what you said about the flowers, i'm sure jealousy will ensue. ;-)

so from now on i should call you "walking penis?" that's what i read from your comment

It’s a genetic imperative, we can’t help it and we’re not responsible. That we actually do anything that is not overtly sexual, like work, mow the lawn, and earnestly listen to women talk about their day, is the result of an enormous strength of character for which we receive far too little credit.

your little head is that much more powerful than your bigger one (i'm assuming here, but you know...)? hmmm. let me try this on on you, in the male voice:

it's a genetic imperitive that men kill. our genes are programmed for us to be violent in order to establish ourselves in the socio-sexual hierarchy, and over millions of years, it is the proven way of guaranteeing access to fecund women. that we don't kill more is the result of enormous strength of character, and when we do we should be forgiven, because we're not responsible. that sometimes we kill women and children is merely a spillover of an uncontrollable urge about which we can change nothing.

your thoughts?

as to makeup and high heels, well, i suppose you'd get most women to agree that they'd skip them if they felt they could. i like playing dress up, but i also like to play in the mud with fuzzy hair and sweaty pits. but i'm not a 'normal' woman, and most women i know do feel 'naked' without decorative trappings in public. not because men make them feel that way (survey after survey shows men prefer women without makeup) but because of the pressure other women place upon them, and because of how from birth, women are taught that they are naturally 'imperfect,' and must buy (key word in this argument) lots of things that will alter their appearance in order to get a man. which, ultimately, is the only value of a woman's worth, or so we are taught.

so it gets back to an argument i tried to make and with which others disagreed. the patriarchy is the basis upon which all other forms of oppression spring. right now, corporatist/consumerist pressures combine with elements of patriarchy that the feminist 'revolution' failed to eradicate. so, we have men taught that a close up pussy shot is "sexy," while the image of two clothed people walking while holding hands on a beach at sunset is not. i honestly believed that just as women are taught that must consume makeup and degrading clothing to be desirable, men are taught that their desires must be channeled towards porn, and not other things that can stimulate desire. be honest: has there never been a time when a unmade up women, fully and modestly clothed, speaking of a topic that has nothing to do with sex, has turned you on? it happens to me all the time (smart is soooo sexy to me) and i'd like to believe that men here aren't so condition to porn that it happens to them too.

they can sell you porn, even condition you to get excited by nothing else, but they can't sell you the sunset. that, to me, is the important point men and women of all orientations should look to.

Gotta laugh, otherwise we'll just sit around and sob all the time.

Will have to be brief here, things to do and this thread may be petering out now it’s off the front page.

First of all, Lambert, soil fertility rituals are equal opportunity, and the ancient ways are the best. If you and your significant other aren’t having sex in the newly tilled earth, well, no wonder your garden gets mildew and yes, there's still time to do it in the dirt this growing season.

For the father of all patriarchal spring fertility rites go here: http://japundit.com/archives/2006/05/08/...

And CD, if you’re going to call me by a body part I prefer that you use Mr. Penis until we know each other better. :)

You ask “your little head is that much more powerful than your bigger one”? You have no idea. What I wrote was an understatement. Read The Selfish Gene. But the penis is only a manifestation, it is the testes that are more powerful than the brain. Women have a similar effect from their ovaries, but with different manifestations –an insatiable need for more shoes, inability to walk past a mirror without looking, the tendency to go batshit crazy once a month, a weakness for committing to subordinant roles in relationships that are bad for them – stuff like that.

Equating killing with sexual desire is an insult, actually. While we think about sex probably a thousand times a day, we seldom think about killing as a means of sexual conquest, so old school. Not all men are rapists, nor do we want to be. Consensual is what the healthy libido desires. Aggression is not gender based per se but rather it depends on power and control, who wants it, who has it and what they will do to gain or keep it. The behavior of female monarchs, (Elizabeth I, Victoria, Maggie Thatcher) in recent British history is an easily accessible example of women wielding power no less ruthlessly than men. Other contrarian examples such as Joan of Arc and Boadicia versus Mohandas Gandhi leap to mind.

The current patriarchal hold on power is an artifact of earlier times when the physical dominance (bigger, stronger, faster) and relative expendability (sperm are transferable, ova are not) of men was key to survival of the tribe in the face of combat. Modern warfare technology is rendering the physicality of the warrior moot; it doesn’t take broad shoulders or a thicker skull to push a cruise missile launch button. The same thing is happening in civilian life, with increased equality in educational achievement and a shift from industrial to informational economic structure leading to progressively more women in positions of commercial and political power, but with little apparent change in societal values regarding aggression and dominance.

Women as a group have had control of America through the ballot since 1920. One can only assume that things are the way they are today in this country because that’s what American women, as a group, want. If women haven't organized to act in their own best interests politically by now, whose fault is that?

Smart is sexy, above all. Hot looking and dumb has little real appeal beyond short term gratification and even then, smart women are way better in bed or so my randomized prospective study shows. You turn me on, I’m a radio……………..

Got to get this conversation back to the front!

"We are killers. But today, we choose not to kill." Capt. James Kirk

"No rendirse, muchachos!" William Barrett Travis, 1836

but not today. i want to have this discussion enlarged and spread out over a long time, because i see tremendous need for it in our community. i'm so glad our readers are willing to engage me, and each other, and aren't afraid of a little radical feminism.

Thank you so to Sarah and CD for wanting to keep this thread going, was feeling blue at the possibility it would just fade away. As a reader, engaging on these sorts of issues it is an absolute delight. It is entirely possible to be in agreement on ultimate objectives including pursuit of freedom, equality, and security for all people, and disagree on the most productive strategy by which to achieve them. An open civil dialogue is the best way to move everyone forward, point and counterpoint, fearlessly embracing the power of the dialectic.

Independence Day offers an opportunity to reflect upon and be thankful for all we have that is good, and renew commitment to the struggle to make things better than they are. "Nature and Nature's God" notwithstanding, the truth is that all of our freedoms, rights and liberties were seized at gunpoint from those who had suppressed them; securing these rights is a never-ending struggle, expanding them an even greater challenge. It is a privilege to be a part of this discussion with such interesting and articulate people.

“The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.” S. Freud