Porn is NOT about your private masturbatory life

"You need to balance keeping your values against your partner's entitlement to a private masturbatory life"

Recently through twitter I came across what I initially thought was a fabulous video debunking porn myths, what a great resource I was thinking, till the end when the conclusion was that porn is great and sex is great they're just different. 

Concerned I wondered over to the website that had created the video and discovered it was a website designed for young people aged 16 to 25 about health and well-being. The page on porn made some very good points but also had gaping holes. There was no discussion about making and distributing pornography - and for this age group that is definitely an issue. And the only reference to the exploitative nature of the industry was as one possible reaction a young women might have on discovering her boyfriends secret porn collection, no discussion about whether this is a well founded concern. 

Lets imagine for a minute the conversation was about finding out your partner is secretly a member of the BNP would being concerned about the racist nature of that group be one of several possible reactions and explored no further and would the ensuing advise be "you need to balance keeping your values against your partner's entitlement to a political life?" I would hope not.

What is the difference between balancing your values and compromising your values? I think there is a confusion of values with issues of taste. My partner does not expect me to drink coffee, get excited about football or history documentaries and nor do I actively try and convince him not to do the above, we have different interests. However he also knows that there is a long list of food stuffs that I will insist we do not buy, a limited number of places we can buy clothes from, and very specific places we keep our money. Because I do not want to be involved in the exploitation of any other human being. These are values I will not budge on, though sometimes do slip up on.

Most people masturbate at one point or another but porn is not about masturbating it is a juggernaut of an industry that is systematic degrading of all women (and many men) and exploitative and abusive of those women ensnared in the industry. We are human, humans beings have sexualities but porn is not humane. When a person chooses to watch porn it is not a private activity many others are involved and those others are humans and I will not compromise about that.

The Pornoglare

A poem inspired by Gail Dines' Pornland and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland! Probably won't make much sense if you haven't read The Jabberwocki.

`Twas normling, and the sleazy perves
Did gawp and grimace on the web:
All wanky were the femaphobes,
And the playboys outbleb.

"Beware the Pornoglare, my child!
The jaws that tare, the claws that gag!
Beware the Hustler bird, and shun
The profitmine de-beautmag!"

She took her Buttle sword in hand:
Long time the maxcore foe she sought --
So rested she by the Tumtuc tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in femish thought she stood,
The Pornoglare, with eyes of blame,
Came gourging through the primesat wood,
And distorted as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The Buttel blade went snicker-snack!
She left it dead, and with its head
She went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Pornoglare?
Come to my arms, my beamish girl!
O frabjous day ! Callooh! Callay!"
She chortled in her joy.

`Twas equaling , and the bodyforms
Did mix and mimble in the posed;
All gone were the gender norms,
And the sexism exposed.

Though it might seem like it because some of the words and concepts are new this is not a nonsense poem, just as anti-porn literature is NOT nonsense. 

So here's a few words that may need defining:

Normling: refers to that time of day before dinner after school pick up when your to tired to listen or think properly and the tv babysitter is the only thing that keeps you sane. The time when your intellectually most vulnerable the time and space that some people use to normalise what is not and should not be normal.

Outbleb: Bleb is a protrusion on a membrane or a fluid filled blister. To be outbleb is when the gunge you've filled yourself with bursts filling the mainstream or when other blisters grow so big they engulf you.

Profitmine: something that knaws into you for profit.

De-beautmag: A creature that takes away your sense of beauty. 

Buttle sword: a rhetoric cast in the mold of Josephine Buttler

Femish thought: A mind most detested by the Pornoglare, independent, deconstructive, creative and powerful

Primesat: A place that has been so saturated with the Pornoglare dung that the trees have both come to be dependent on it and poisoned by it. (A combination of primed and saturated)

Equaling: The time of day when you are most alert and celebrating life and humanity.

Posed: All places where images are placed for public viewing

The rest of the words that don't make sense you can blame on Carroll!

The Real Man

I've just been listening to a discussion on yesterdays women's hour when a man who's name I forget actually said that if his wife had consistently earned more than him over the years his penis would have fallen off. Later on he said he knew it wasn't very popular but he did believe in the concept of 'the real man'.

I would just like to echo that I absolutely believe in The Real Man.

The one and only really real human man lived 2000+ years ago and His name was Jesus. Jesus was both fully god and fully human, he was the most human human ever to live, he was also anatomically male. He wept, cared for children, cooked, washed people's feet oh and was financed by a group of women.

This is a short little rant and I think this guy was arguing from an evolutionary point of view, but it reminded me how pervasive the quest to be a 'real man' also is in Christian culture, and I just want to say, men stop trying to be real men and fix your eyes on The Real Man, join the human calling to become more like Jesus, and don't worry about your penises dropping off - they probably won't.

Unsistered

Anyone who has tried to occupy the space of being both Christian and feminist knows how uncomfortable and painful it can be. Being in spaces where you want to belong, where you should feel solidarity and instead feeling in limbo, unable to bring your full identity into those spaces. 


Hearing the word "christian" or the word "feminist" spat out with venom and almost always connected to words such as "right wing" or "radical" (quite why christians should be using the word radical as a swear word is beyond me!) is isolating. I am sure it is not only christian feminists who have these experiences. I am sure many feminists are made to feel excluded in places where they should be welcomed.


I have listened and re-listend to this a talk entitled “Theapalooza: The Rhetorical Turn in the Third Wave of Biblical Feminism” Presented by Dr. Alena Amato Ruggerio (http://www.eewc.com/audio/) because I think it contains much powerful wisdom about how we can use rhetoric to bring great understanding and freedom to ourselves and the church as a whole. In this talk she says 

"It is a feminist act to create new symbols to correspond to feminist references." 

She then explores how as christian feminists we could first identify our common experiences or references and give them symbols (that is words). She describes doing this with her students in a secular context and they developed a word which I love: "femafision" which they defined as the experience of patriarchy pitting women against each other.


So I decided that I wanted to name what I believe is a common experience for christian feminists that is the experience of being disallowed through attitudes and prejudice to exist as both christian and feminist and I want to name this as being "unsistered".


I am unsistered when my church family feel the need to dissociate themselves from the women's movement when discussing women's equality. I am unsistered when preachers use phrases such as 'unlike radical feminism...' I am unsistered when people don't ask me about work because they are nervous of my politics; I am unsistered when there is a refusal to confront patriarchy and male privilege. I am unsistered when feminist medium only ever uses the word "christian" with the phrase "right wing" or "religious fundamentalists", I am unsistered when there is language that presumes the non-existence of God, I am unsistered when people of faith are assumed to be oppressed and unenlightened. 


Please don't unsister me.