The Wonderful Co-op.

Co-op are not going to be stocking a number of exploitative magazines aimed at a manipulative and patronising construct of masculinity (my rather long winded avoidance of saying 'lad's mag's!). 

Wahooo!!!!

This is because those companies have refused to provide said magazines in sealed bags which would prevent people being able to see the content unless they actively wanted to and bought them. (Unfortunate that these have been referred to as 'modesty wraps')

The wonderful wonderful thing about this is that no one can call this censorship - it is not. The Co-op is, well a co-operative, and has a membership, a membership today I am very proud to be part of. This decision is a response to listing to that membership. Democracy at work. 

The publishers where given a choice and they made a decision, a decision I would imagine might bring the co-op many more customers and members. 

What I love about what's happened at the Co-op is that it demonstrates how alternative business structures bypass the debates other organisations will inevitably get tangled up in: Freedom of speech (aka I want to wank to whatever I like) vs. the right to live free of oppression and intimidation, everyone needs to be free to chose and we can't possibly do anything to effect our profit margins, etc, etc.

Members of the co-op said um actually no we don't like it so it's going - simple.

I suspect though that the co-op will be miss-understood and accused of censorship. Just as David Cameron fundamentally misunderstood the point of the 'No More Page 3 Campaign' . There seems to be a disconnect between campaigners using collective voicing of issues to challenge and change attitudes and practices and those who should understand democracy and the democratic process seeing calls for censorship everywhere.

There is a co-operative alternative to capitalism. 

The essence of F***

‘I had to fake it till I made it’ is Rhianna’s explanation for how she became ‘so comfortable in her sexuality’, a sexuality which Esquire magazine described as ‘the very essence of F***’.  I think I found these statements some of the most disturbing of the whole interview.  Essentially it was a discussion not about the individual life choices and experiences of one 24 year old but a moment, for those who could see it, of real honesty about the pornification of the music industry and indeed the universe.

There have been a lot of responses that have raised concern about Rhianna’s comments about her relationship with Chris Brown, jumping to reiterate that abuse is never acceptable and berating Rihanna for not giving a more nuanced  response, especially since she was a ‘role model’. But even if she had given a model response would we want to be promoting her and by implication the industry she is involved in, as a role model.  

It makes no sense to say that Rhianna is comfortable in her own sexuality if she had to fake it until she made it. If she had to fake it, it is not her sexuality it is someone else’s, and is not about her pleasure, desire or sexual expression it is about someone else’s. But what choice did she have? As Gail Dines puts it the choice for many young women ‘is to be f***able or invisible’.

Rhianna was described as the very essence of ‘F***’ not ‘sex’, not ‘beauty’ not ‘love’ but ‘F***’ There is something in the word F*** that is inherently aggressive and violating.  The way we use the word reflects this. Have you ever heard anyone say ‘My love shall we have a F***’? It is rarely something mutual but normally describes one person doing something to another without consent and to the detriment of that person. I wonder if the pictures of Rhianna after Chris Brown assaulted her contributed to her ‘F*** essence’?

Rhianna stated that she was not sure that that was what she had been aiming for. I am fairly convinced it was exactly what many in the industry where aiming at for her and I’m not sure she really ever had a choice about how people would see her. But here we are, in a situation where the highest accolade for a woman is that she is the essence of ‘F***’.

Of course the other option available for women (though it is a little more niche and American) apart from invisible or ‘F***able’ is to be virginal, so virginal in-fact that you can’t even get raped and certainly can’t conceive from rape.

Is this why 50 Shades of Gray is so popular? I have to be honest I have not read it and do not intend to, but I have read substantial amounts about it. From what I gather the book is all about Ana becoming F***able and F***ed by a powerful, rich and controlling man. Women who have been so surrounded by pornified images and narratives, but for the most part still not able to overcome the social mores and watch porn, are perfectly able to read something penned by the hand of a woman (but really written years ago in the offices of Hustler et al.) that dresses itself up as a romance novel, and dream about gaining some value through becoming ‘F***able’.

And is this why so many people seem so confused about what rape is? ‘Cause clearly if a powerful man like Assange “inserts” (thanks George!) while you are asleep you have been ‘F***ed’ and should therefore be flattered. When ‘the essence of F***’ becomes the dictated ambition of women rape becomes a compliment.

It looks like the ‘essence of F***’ is here to stay impregnating every part of our lives, it looks like it is determined to be the dominant definition of what it is to be a woman, forcing all others into obscurity. But I for one refuse to be invisible and they can think of a million names to dismiss me with, but I will not become invisible.

I will not become invisible because I have unearthed other archetypes and role models, some in legend, some in story but my most favourite in scripture. A diversity of strong courageous diverse women who lived life on their terms creatively challenging the patriarchy around them and a Jesus who meet them on their own terms and offered them not 50 shades of ‘F****ed up’ but a celebratory rainbow of humanity. 

The pornification of childhood

My small daughter’s life is extremely edited.  She is likely to grow up thinking the only program on TV is Abney and Teal. She will have a surprise when she gets to school and discovers that the bedtime stories she’s come to love actually don’t have an equal representation of men and women and that the world is not a fair and egalitarian place.  And she will at some point encounter that horrifying narrative of the princess.

What has any of this got to do with porn? Well what I would like to argue is that:

1.) We use story and narrative to understand and explain the world and this is especially important to children.

2.) There is a particular narrative that Porn tells

3.) This narrative has been present in childhood for a very long time, but is now becoming more insidious and endemic and it primes children to accept and expect a porn narrative.

So what is the porn narrative? Essentially it is that women exist for the sexual pleasure of men and their worth is connected to how sexually attractive they are to men. Masculinity is defined by sexual violence and predatory conquest within the porn narrative. 

Recently I re-watched Disney’s Snow White. In an early scene Snow White is singing about wishing for the one she loves to find her, she is clearly not talking about someone she knows, she looks like a teenager. Suddenly an adult man appears beside her she is clearly frightened and runs away but then listens at the window flattered by the attention. We all know what happens at the end of the story, that while unconscious, having been drugged, this same man sexually assaults her and then they live happily ever after. (While we are at it Sleeping Beauty is the story of a women out cold, a strange man climbs through her window and sexually assaults her. This is not OK.) But that initial scene struck me as I had just finished Gail Dines’ chapter on the use of pseudo-child images and the narratives were very similar ‘At first she was nervous, but she wanted it really’.

So these storys we tell young girls and boys that normalise sexual violence and male ownership are far from new, but while they used to function to groom young girls into being submissive compliant wives who on getting wed discovered Cinderella had no better time of it in the happily ever, now we are seeing a narrative creep into childhood that has a slightly different angle. Building on the princess, girls are now taught that they must exude sexiness in order to please the men.

So enter beauty pageants (http://www.missminiprincess.co.uk/), Bratz by day Catz by night, (http://www.bratz.com/), pole dancing dolls, cute little playboy bunny’s everywhere, make up and high heels for toddlers, even Lego thinks a girls preoccupation should be beautifying herself (http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3187.aspx), and don’t even let me get started on Hannah Montana. While grooming our girls we equally groom our young men into a sense of privileged and a warped idea of masculinity. How many times have you seen 'naughty' 'trouble' etc written across toddlers just because they happen to be male. Boys watch the princess stories too and learn they are to be characterless thugs. Boys also play with dolls, only theirs come with weapons and biologically impossible muscles and a noticable absence of genitals.  

So the messages of porn are infecting early childhood, grooming and priming children so that as they enter adolescents their space and freedom to explore and discover their own sexuality is severely restricted. And now they are bombarded with normalising attitudes in magazines, television programs and even on occasion what purports to be objective positive information. Girls begin to experience sexual violence and intimidation in school environments and discover adults are ill equipped to respond and protect them, that victims get blamed and perpetrators get kudos. They begin to hate every part of their body because, like the all seeing eye in lord of the rings, the pornofied gaze is everywhere. The only option of validation left for a young woman is as a sexual object and the ultimate expression of masculinity for a young man is to perpetrate sexual violence.

I know some people think my anxiety about my own daughter and other childrens experience of childhood is misplaced, that it is not that dangerous or toxic environment I think it is, that body dismorphia and self loaving are not inevitable.  I agree, they are not, but in our current climate they are probable and I am not kidding myself about the kind of effort we need to make to provide an alternative storyline for young people.  Hugh Hefner himself said ‘I don’t care if a baby holds up a playboy bunny rattle’. So let’s not pretend that a powerful industry is not trying to groom the next generation of product and purchaser. 

Porn is NOT like doing the washing up

This mourning while doing the house work I have been watching Louis Theroux's documentary 'Twilight of Porn Stars.' There is so so much so very very wrong with this 'documentary' but I'll leave the critique about whether the industry is 'dying' to the excellent Gail Dines. (See here)


Just to briefly make the point that no one would argue that because seamstress in Bangladesh where getting less pay and finding it harder to find work that the clothing industry was in crisis.  


I just want to explore whether porn is like doing the washing up? Several people during the documentary made that point that we all have to do things we don't want to do. 


Today I have a day of admin and house work before me, I don't particularly want to do any of these things. So far I have done half the washing up, half sorted the laundry and half cleaned the bedroom. I have not particularly enjoyed any of them, but neither have they exposed me to huge levels of risk and abuse.


Not really wanting to do anal, but doing it anyway because we all have to do things we don't really want to do, is so very very different from not really wanting to do the washing up but doing it anyway, because we all have things we don't really want to do.


Firstly I am not doing the washing up for financial reasons, I'm doing it because its part of life. Capitalism has so  warped how we understand work that we see money as the end product of work. Work should be about changing the world, stewarding and governing, it moving it towards Shalom. Money should be the way we codify stewardship. An unwanted sexual act produces nothing towards this end. 


Secondly doing the washing up does not compromise my bodily integrity. The body is not a product, the body is not an apology, the body cannot be sold or bought. A sexual act that is unwanted, where a person does not feel able or cannot say no is a sexual offence. This was brushed over in the documentary, left unchallenged. Could someone say no? was not asked.


Thirdly there is not a huge weight of documented evidence to show the damaging effects of the washing up, nothing to expose the coercive nature of the washing up industry, it will not increase my risk of infection, anal  hemorrhage and I will not only be able to sustain involvement in the washing up for an average of three years, no one is making billions out of my doing the washing up.


The documentary ended by saying 'Porn is a refuge for people fleeing lives of chaos a place where they can blend in and feel valued' these words made my stomach turn. What a misunderstanding of the word refuge and what irony at a time where services seeking to provide refuge from gender based violence are being slashed. 

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!

Porn 2: Why men should be mad

So I wanted to call this post Feminists: a man's best friend, but someone pointed out to me that it could well be read to infer women are dog's which wouldn't be great!. But I just wanted to share with you a couple of things that were said at this amazing conference I was at that have got me thinking.

"Men, feminists are your best friends. We're the ones who don't think your born rapists, we're the ones who don't think you're born murderers. We're the ones who think your fully human."

I know a lot of men who don't feel like this, they feel that feminists hate them, are man eaters, want to castrate them and lock them up. Feminism is a broad group but from my experience this could not be further from the truth, we are talking about a group of people actively opposing violence and de-humanisation it would be a little hypocritical to want to do that to men. The problem lies I think in the fact that mostly there is little conversation between men in general and feminist discourse and what does happen is mediated by the press so that what people fear when they hear 'feminist' (and I have huge numbers of female friends who run from that label) is not feminism but a phantom created by the powers that be because actually they don't want men to realise what feminism is actually saying.

Why? because Patriarchy though it privileges all men all of the time it benefits some men some of the time and harms most men most of the time. Patriarchy is just hierarchy where only men get to be at the top, and only one type of man at that.

The second thing that was said that I wanted to share was this:

"Feminists are the ones who don't think your a life support machine for your penis"

That's what the porn industry thinks of you, it thinks you are a life support machine for your penis and your wallet, and it capitalises on that dark side of all of us that is capable and able to oppress.

It's time to get mad at how the porn industry manipulates and de-humanises you whatever your gender. This is the other thing you should know feminists don't want men to feel rubbish about being a man, we want you to feel good about it, we want you to get mad with us, mad at the dehumanising forces that squeeze us all into little boxes, so that,  in our current context, they can squeeze money out of us.

Men if your mad here's a couple of place you can go:  http://www.antipornmen.org/
http://www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk/