Women choose their choices. Men are exploited.
I’m on a posting roll here (I know, I’m a feast or famine blogger).
People, or more specifically funfems, are horrified to learn that a porn company hired a bunch of homeless men and filmed them being beaten up for the masturbatory pleasure of other men. The homeless men came away with serious injuries, and two of them are suing the porn company.
In this case, the funfems have decided it was exploitative for the pornographers to use financially desperate men in their vids.
paying a domme to grind her boot into your balls is a lot different than being paid to get whipped and kicked when you have no other source of income. The former is a choice to indulge in a certain sexual behavior — the latter … is exploitation.
Yes. But Jezebel, what about the womenz? Because paying to fuck someone is a lot different from being paid to let someone ram their dick in and out of your reproductive orifice, is it not? The majority of women in porn/prostitution also have no other source of income. Many of them are homeless, or near homeless. Many of them also come away with serious injuries (not to mention STDs, pregnancies and PTSD).
But, according to funfems, women have this magical thing called Choice, which men in these sorts of situations apparently lack. Because seriously, when was the last time Jezebel (or any funfem site) wrote about women being exploited by pornstitution?
Like this:
Filed under: pornstitution | 28 Comments
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COMMENTS
well miska. you know as well as i do that poor black men have no choices; thats the liberal party-line. wheras WOMEN of all backgrounds have agency, particularly when it comes to letting men fuck them. thats the fun-fem party-line. its intersectionality, baby! and boy is it UGLY. perhaps we should call this one the double-double-back bend-over-backwards to please lefty liberal men tuck and roll doublethink, with a curtsey and a blowjob for all the liberal doods at the end.
youre right, you cannot make this shit up.
sorry, was that rude?
Hahaha. Yes, hilariously rude!
Basically, the patriarchy has the power to hurt and exploit men, but not women. But at the same time there is a need for feminism, which is why they call themselves feminists, even though there isnt a need for it because women have magical Choice, which is like some kind of protective force-field of empowerment, which men dont have. Whatevs. BLOWJOBS FOR ALL MEN. YAY!
the thing (of course) about the “men have no choices” thing is that depending on how “intersecting oppressions” of race, class etc affect them, its largely true…BUT FOR the complete erasure of their male privilege. specifically, ALL MEN, including race and class-oppressed men, do go around sticking their dicks into women, and causing unwanted pregnancy BOTH through rape and mandatory PIV. ignore the type of privilege they *do* have, and sure, okay, they have no privilege. but that could be said about anything, if we are ok with ignoring stuff. ignoring male privilege is what EVERYONE does best. its mainstream, baby!
interestingly, the men pictured in the article are white. hmmm! so the fun-fems are ignoring these doods WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE. a rather large elephant in the room…but no doubt this works for them, as most of the liberal doods they are trying to placate are also white. and…this link appears to be *women* beating up the men! oh noes! an epidemic if ever there was one.
now…what would the fun-fems think if these “porn companies” not only hired poor homeless men to get beaten up, but they ALSO gave them drugs and alcohol and then got them to “consent” to anal sex with other men? hmmm. somehow, i suspect the fun-fems would draw parallels…back to being beaten up, and never make the connection between that, and women who are economoically, physically, or pharmaceutically coerced into being penetrated anally, orally, and/or vaginally, by men, for money, by porn companies.
no, that would be a little too honest of them, and it will therefore NEVER. HAPPEN.
is a lot different than being paid to get whipped and kicked when you have no other source of income
Major disconnect there – most of the women who prostitute themselves have no other source of income.
And how come the mozzers never fight for these women, and totally ignore them all the damn time?
I believe it was Paula Clennell, one of the “suffolk stranger’s” victims, who gave an interview at the time, that even though she knew that there was a killer on the loose in Ipswich, she HAD to go out to earn money for her habit.
I guess the funfems file that one under “choice” do they?
This is just. too. fucking. much. Thinking of your other post (the problem w/ FF), I think it’s when online funfems are decrying this kind of thing, that a whole bunch of lurkers go, uh, gee, uh, I kinda get what people have been saying about women getting treated like this. Ah ha moments, in other words. And then, hopefully, they look around for something that isn’t quite so fucking stupid and find us!!
(Lard only knows how the FF’s would shriek and rend their garments if those were F2T. Do they shriek and rend their garments over M2T getting abused in porn? Seems they must — themz the mostest exploited people on earth!!!!!)
Yes, noan. I agree that it’s stuff like this that makes some women search for an alternative. I guess the problem is that it’s not so easy to find radfems though. As UP pointed out at FCMs, both of us had linked to the feministing article about abortion, but feministing doesnt publish critical pingbacks. Basically radfeminism and funfeminism are independent bubbles in a lot of ways. (and really, I’m glad that feministing doesnt publish those pingbacks, because I dont want all the funfem traffic).
Also funfems do shriek about M2T in porn. I have seen them say with a straight face that M2T are worser off than women because their bodies are MOAR objectified than our bodies. Ha. What a load of shit.
I believe it was Paula Clennell, one of the “suffolk stranger’s” victims, who gave an interview at the time, that even though she knew that there was a killer on the loose in Ipswich, she HAD to go out to earn money for her habit.
I guess the funfems file that one under “choice” do they?
Germaine greer said something like “a prostitute who has to work to support a drug habit is one of the least free people on the planet”, and I completely agree with that. The drugs are needed to deal with the prostitution, and the prostitution is needed to buy the drugs. It’s a terrible cycle, and so difficult to break. It’s so contemptuous to say that choice is involved, anywhere in these situations.
Wow. Yeah, this is pretty much exactly it. Is it bad that I read an article about those men and my reaction was basically, “So?” I didn’t really connect this logically with women in porn, but that’s probably why my initial reaction was so whatever, big deal. I mean, the pictures didn’t even look that bad. I think the article I read had a picture of some white dude’s back with some bruise lines all over it. Oh no! Bruises! On his back! The poor baby! D: Maybe there were worse injuries, I don’t know, the articles I read were really vague about the injuries (anyone read one that wasn’t vague?) which makes me think that there really wasn’t anything super horrible. If they keep the injury list vague then people can ASSUME broken bones and huge gashes in their sides or whatever.
These dudes will (more than likely) get over their injuries. A lot of women in porn and prostitution won’t and those women may die or be beaten far worse than it looks like any of these men were. This is a constant threat for women in similar positions and yet we hear nothing about it. Better yet, even if these men don’t get over their injuries they are pretty certain to have many, many people who feel they were victims and didn’t deserve what happened to them. Shoot, they already do have all these people just fawning over them and getting ready to go to war over some bruises (and other injuries?).
Does a beaten up prostitute have that kind of support?
I don’t have much hope for Jezebel et al finding us and going Omigawd!!!111 I get it!!111.
We’ve been here for some time. Blogging, commenting, writing, agitating in real. Dozens of radcial feminist blogs, websites and radical feminists.
They didn’t get it then they won’t get it now. Feministe/FWord/Jezebel same old same old.
Choice. Take a look:
http://www.missingpeople.net/task_force_releases_updated_post.htm
subscribing
I don’t even have anything productive to add to this conversation because all I can seem to do is splutter about the sheer idiocy of this. It’s truly stunning that these women can live with their own cognitive dissonance.
As for funfem types finding radfems, I think there is hope but only for those who already question some of the stuff the funfems were saying. I didn’t know that there were radfems out there until I followed a bit of a rabbit trail… IBTP got linked somewhere, and then it was through comments on there (and subsequently the commenters and links on their blogs) that I found this brilliant network of radfem women. So at least for me, the comments helped. And I do think that’s one way we can get to people like me, who are truly radfem at heart but don’t have the words or the theory or the community yet. But I also recognize that commenting in posts like that is a battlefield. There’s no easy way… if we speak loud enough to be heard by those who need us, we’ll also be heard by those who hate us.
pmsrhino These dudes will (more than likely) get over their injuries. A lot of women in porn and prostitution won’t and those women may die or be beaten far worse than it looks like any of these men were.
Yes, that’s what it comes down to.If anyone wants to talk about the way pornstitution exploits and harms, there’s no point focusing on a few men. Look at the biggest group who is affected, which is women. Obviously. I get that this situation was newsworthy because, omg, it’s men being harmed!!!!11!. Seems like the feminist thing to do would be to use this news article to lead off on a discussion about the way the industry harms women. Guess that is too much to expect from funfems, though.
@selah
I guess IBTK acts as a sort of bridge between funfeminism and radical? It seems like a lot of people ‘discover’ online radfems through the comments there.
@Jilla
That link reminds me very much of this blog
http://estelaville.wordpress.com/
It was only updated for a short while, but it really drives the message home I think
Oh God I had not seen that one. Thanks. I think.
Oh gahd, the fuckin’ irony.
You know if funfems really give a damn about the poor then why don’t they get up and help the women in poor communities so they won’t feel the need to get into prostitution? I hate people who pretend to give a fuck about you-they’re the worst kind of people.
I guess IBTK acts as a sort of bridge between funfeminism and radical? It seems like a lot of people ‘discover’ online radfems through the comments there.
I doubt that it is a bridge for much longer, given the massive amount of radfem bannings since Translucent.
The bridge over the river Kwai, *kaboom*
While thinking about the chemical castration experiment to eradicate lesbians and gay men I was contemplating how to drop that bomb at IBTK in a way that would make her have to address it.
Well, it would be utter discrimination to to SAY that women are being exploited. By saying those words YOU would be discriminating women. But to talk about male victims is a new trend in education, it really is. Because TALKING about male victims undermines GENDER ROLES (which basically equal oppression). I’m not kidding you the gender-people are.
Aside from that: No wonder (white) men are able to sue those a@@holes and get sympathy. How many women get that far? It’s disgusting.
In an androcentrist society even victims are rather considered to be male. The poor are men. The minorities are male. But androcentrism is considered outdated as an analytical tool…
This made me think about an article on Rage Against The Man-chine, regarding the very problematic Kink.com. The pro-porn tards came in droves, defending the women’s right to be abused on camera. “But it’s their CHOOOOOOICE!” they screamed. And I can’t count how many times I’ve seen an MRA accuse women of not being “responsible” for their CHOICE (there’s that word again) to appear in hardcore porn.
So, by fucked-up funfem & dude logic, these men got exactly what they deserved. They CHOSE to take the money, and they CHOSE to allow themselves to be beaten. They provided a service and got paid for it. The dirty little whores.
PS I think the bigger problem here is how our society is desensitized to female suffering. Both mainstream feature films & pornography are rife with images of women being in pain, in one way or another. But, the darker element is how men are not only desensitized, they’re actually aroused by the sight of a woman screaming in agony. OTOH, male suffering is seen as “TOTALLY BAD AND WRONG AND… AND… AND SOOO INHUMANE CAUSE MEN ARE REAL PEOPLE!!111!!”.
Ironically, this situation of ‘poor men, few choices, get exploited for the entertainment of others (porn)’ is the EXACT argument/situation that radfems have been trying to point out (for women, victims numbering in the tens of thousands). Yet, this viewpoint (that women can be exploited by economic conditions and lack of choices) is never ever taken seriously because the victims are women. It’s only ever taken seriously when the victims (of anything) are men. Even rape, somehow the woman is criticised for HER actions/lack of action/choices, but a male victim never is. I know, this is radfem-101 stuff, but I think I reiterate it because potentially funfems might read it, and wake up and smell the patriarchy in the choosey-choice bullshit. Selecting from a platter of available bad-choices really is not choice at all, it is risk management or survival, and never true choice.
Yep, Mantis hit the nail on the head here. Men can be hurt, harmed and exploited because men are human. Women cannot be hurt, harmed or exploited because women are not human. They are less than human. Their pain, therefore, does not matter or count… men’s orgasms, however, do count, do matter. Because again, men are human, women are not. Sigh. And the women over at Jezebel call themselves feminists? WTF!
Sort of a derail, but did anyone else see the post on child sex slavery at Feministe about a week ago? Mixed in with legitimate criticisms of what seems a fairly silly and ineffective celebrity charity was a lot of weirdness about how the statement “child sex slavery is wrong” is harmful, oversimplifying and “erases women’s experiences.” (An adult woman calling herself a girl is fun, but it totally makes sense to refer to child sex slaves as “women” as if they were adults.) One person in the comments even said she thinks sex trafficking is a “bogeyman” invented by radfems and rightwingers to punish women who choose to engage in sex work. The contrast between the reaction to this story about homeless men and the assertion that sex trafficking is imaginary when the victims are women (or female children) is interesting. Anyway, I wonder if that was a wake-up moment for any of the Feministe readers. How many people really want to be associated with a feminism that thinks it’s going too far, making things too black-and-white, to say that child sex slavery is wrong?
Claire, the majority of the posters at that site are males. In lippy. Although you can’t see them, if you look closely you’ll see the lippy.