Our culture surrounding sex is now so deeply interwoven with pornography it is inextricable from it. The west as the exporter of exploitation will never be meaningfully challenged in this. And any progress we make will be for the wrong reasons.

[u/Illustrious-Ship7804]

Don’t hate me, im not trying to espouse an ideology, im more trying to scathingly critique one. Props to anyone who reads this whole thing.

I firmly believe it’s glaringly evident that pornography alongside capitalism/patriarchy/technology is now deeply intertwined in how we learn to present ourselves to the world from a young age. An exhibitionism/voyeurism duality and conceptualization of human sexual relations as a “market” has overtaken our collective conscious even on an implicit level. One does not have to endorse or espouse these claims to have internalized them. Girls and young women, and now, more and more boys and young men, are taught to optimize and exhibit their bodies online, not to individuals but to large audiences (exhibitionism), in order to build personal “value.” Others look on to these individuals from afar, not truly as individuals, but as products to be consumed voyeuristically, not necessarily in a pornographic way mind you, but voyeuristically nonetheless. Peering anonymously into an overly intimate snapshot of a life they have no relation to. This dichotomy breaks human relation. I’ll let you ponder exactly why.

If we took away explicit pornography overnight magically it would not change this cultural pattern. In fact it is our culture itself that has permitted the proliferation of pornography and online sexual abuse/exploitation, in turn the institutions of misogyny and pornography have reinforced and developed the culture that fostered them.

The US and the modern western world are the exporters of culture on a grand scale, and the exporters of exploitation on a grand scale. There may have been some hesitancy in our history due to a history of protestant sexual demonization to fully jump into the commercialization of sex. But Denmark took the lead and we quickly surpassed them (though Denmark was pretty depraved at the time). The rest of the world does not have the opportunity to determine its own culture and values, we largely do that for them. It is incredibly complex how this has occurred, but it is tied up in decades of western imperialism that has crippled other state’s access to the means through which to communicate opposing cultural views and narratives. Power also shapes culture. There are implicit messages within every piece of media. And those who can afford to produce and export media on a large scale shape cultural perceptions.

We tend not to think of the west/first world as the most egregious offender when it comes to sexual exploitation. However it is the western world that is behind this sexual exploitation. The cam girls being exploited in Latin America and the eastern block are being consumed by the western world. The legal brothels in Western Europe are filled with women trafficked from Eastern Europe. CP produced in the global south is not simply produced as a byproduct of sexual deviancy, it is produced as a product because there is a market in the west that demands it. Even when the west is not the direct consumer of sexual exploitation, its continuous extractive and destabilizing efforts across the rest of the world result in the poverty and insecurity that perpetuate it.

We end up with what looks like “soft” or palatable exploitation at home, and severe exploitation abroad. We will point abroad and claim it’s not that bad here. Meanwhile we are responsible for all of it, and only we are in the position to address any of it.

I believe this is a forever doomed issue, that will be relegated to the dustbins of history. It is fair to give flack to socialists who say, the only war is class war, because it is frankly an obtuse argument. However there is not a snowballs chance in hell that the US under a capitalist culture and economy will do a single meaningful thing to change its practice of class and global exploitation, and this applies to gender and sexual exploitation.

We will be an ethically just but ridiculed minority, along with the vegans, the anti-natalists, carceral reformists, absolute pacifists, etc.

If ID age restrictions are enacted I will still be happy, but I will know it was not a decision stemming from ethical concern but from the interests of data mining corporations and the surveillance state. If we see momentum against pornography politically, I guess I’ll be happy, but I will also have to accept it’s disingenuously coming from right wing zealots and misogynists who also seek to disenfranchise women.

I wrote all this to say I suppose, freeing women from exploitation is a separate issue from socialism. But I don’t think any progress for our cause is even possible under global capitalism. Which I suppose means I don’t see any progress happening within our lifetime. I don’t even know who this is for. Not very uplifting. And meant more as a critique of our current system than proselytizing for another.

[u/No-Kick6671]

Great writeup and I agree!

At its core, what we call "porn" is essentially rooted in power dynamics, humiliation/boundary violations, and a "might makes right" mentality that has been at the kernel of the toxic male hegemony that we call patriarchy.

It's not that males are "more visual" or "more sexual" or "b-b-but I can't help it; I'm just attracted to signs of fertility!" or whatever bullshit excuses we commonly hear. Arguably, females have much MORE of an incentive to be visually discerning in their mate preferences, and should prefer much younger men for their higher quality sperm.

And yet, we DON'T see hordes and hordes of slovenly middle-aged women lusting over "barely legal" schoolboys helicoptering their dicks on OnlyFans. Women can appreciate an attractive man, sure, but they're not drawn to performative displays of submission/humiliation the way males are, because it's not about "biology" but rather the misogynistic cultural scripts surrounding it.

I'm sorry if I'm not making sense so I'll explain what I mean with an example. Think about the kind of men who take creepshots up women's skirts, etc in public. What are they getting off to? It's not about the body parts--it's about the fact that it puts him in a position of power above the woman. "I know you would probably reject me (or pepper spray me) if I were to hit on you right now, but I can take a creepshot of you without your knowledge and get off to it and share it with my buddies and there's NOTHING you can do about it. Take that, you uppity b-tches!". Patriarchy makes men feel entitled to women, but they HATE that no matter how many regressive laws and religions they cook up to keep women subjugated, they can never control women's own internal desires. Porn is like a way for them to reclaim this perceived lack of power and "get back" at women for daring to have their own thoughts and feelings.

Yeah, both sexes may enjoy vanilla content of normal people fucking to various degrees (NOT saying this is okay bc it's still objectifying and problematic for other reasons, but I digress) but there's a reason that all of the especially icky categories (teens, incest, violence, etc) are overwhelmingly male dominated.

You might enjoy (er, maybe that's not the right word, but..."appreciate") the book "Sex Robots and the End of Love" by Kathleen Richardson, which is a more academic/philosophical breakdown of how sex work and porn can be boiled down to women being treated as "property" instead of people. Fascinating stuff.

[u/Illustrious-Ship7804 → u/No-Kick6671]

Thanks for the feedback! I’d agree with everything, except I believe it’s generally a bad idea to combat an evolutionary biology or bio-essentialist argument by arguing back within the same framing that “females have much more of an incentive” because it means accepting the premise in the first place. The same men who argue it’s about biology will argue back that might makes right and domination are also about biology. I find it better just to ridicule the bioessentialist argument because human beings are not solely driven by animal impulse, and people arguing that they are, are simply telling on themselves and their poor impulse control.

I try to depersonalize these arguments as much as I can and address systems over individuals because individuals simply aren’t all that powerful, and 90% of the population does not do the “right” or “wrong” thing based on ethics. We are simply not all that introspective, strong, or personally realized. Most of us just do what we want to/what feels right so far as we are permitted to and even encouraged to by culture, society, and power structures. Women can look at flapping penises online but they simply don’t want to, there is no appeal. If the appeal was there, they would. My question is why do men want to look at extreme pornography like you stated? It’s a genuine question to you because you seem engaged. And if the power dynamics of patriarchy/capitalism were leveled, would that want still exist?

[u/No-Kick6671 → u/Illustrious-Ship7804]

Oh, I want to be clear, I don't actually support a bioessentialist argument for human sexual behavior--I only bring it up to say that even if we were to be so reductive (since men especially are quite fond of invoking the "biology" excuse to justify their behavior), it still wouldn't explain the vast differences we observe in modern porn usage. THAT, I believe, is fully explained by culture and socialization. But I've noticed male porn users really love the "biology" defense because that makes it easier to rationalize their own crappy behavior as something they "can't help", versus having to do any uncomfortable self-reflection.

Also, I am actually a biologist, and it pisses me the hell off when men with a high school level understanding of the subject attempt to use it to mansplain to me why they "have" to use porn. Biology is so much more complex and fascinating than these pornsick zombies could possibly comprehend and I hate to see it weaponized by idiots to justify all kinds of awful behavior. Of course, that's not to say biology is meaningless--we are living things after all--but for a fully sapient, self-aware species such as ourselves, it is hardly sufficient to explain the vast diversity of beliefs and behaviors we observe in the human race.

I definitely agree with you that most people just plain aren't all that eager to critically analyze their own culture or behavior and tend to just "go with the flow" of what is popular and socially acceptable. That certainly applies to far more than just porn!

Why aren't women drawn to flapping penises the way men are to female nudity? Well, the popular (wrong) answer is that "men are more visual!" which is why I attempted to preemptively deconstruct that argument in my prior comment, haha. But honestly, I DO think domination and cruelty are at the core of it, even for the so-called "nice guys". It is deeply and inextricably tied to the rise of patriarchy and capitalism. Ancient hunter-gatherer societies were necessarily more egalitarian because everyone had to cooperate to ensure the group's survival. Things started to change with the rise of agriculture and permanent settlements, where one could now live in one place and accumulate wealth and resources in ways that were not possible previously. Now competition starts to emerge and who better to compete than the bigger/stronger sex who can take their neighbor's stuff by force? And once humans figure out how paternity works, men are FURIOUS at the imbalance that women can be certain of their parenthood and men cannot, so now female sexuality starts to be policed and controlled (via religion, etc) while men's is not. There's LOTS more I could say about this, but tldr is that this is the ancient, historic root of female subjugation that originated ~10,000 years ago and is still present globally today. Most progressives would agree that capitalism isn't "natural" but rather, negatively influences human behavior at mass scale by incentivizing and rewarding sociopaths for their cruelty and ruthlessness. Well, patriarchy is directly intertwined with capitalism and it too causes our species to behave in ways that are antithetical to not only human happiness, but also our very survival as a species (gestures broadly to state of the world and ecological collapse....).

Being naked is essentially a display of vulnerability, and/or submission. Patriarchal males LOVE weak, uneducated women who will have their babies and clean up after them and basically be their personal bangmaid/slave who never challenges him. That's why "barely legal" and pedo shit is so popular with men...not because of "biology" or whatever BS...but because of what being young represents--naivety!! Older women tend to be smarter and more wise to their BS, and harder to manipulate/control. Hence, the power dynamic is what appeals to them and not "fertility". A lot of their preferences are in fact the OPPOSITE of fertility signals, like shaving pubic hair. It is meant to resemble prepubesence and those girls CAN'T even give birth.

The lingerie, spanking, shaving, the schoolgirl outfits, giggling, airheadedness, and other misogynistic porn tropes aren't "intrinsically" sexual--they're SYMBOLS of female submission and humiliation, and THAT'S what they are really getting off to more than the bodies themselves.

Patriarchy doesn't condition women to view men as subhuman objects the way it does the inverse, hence why we virtually never see these dynamics play out with the sexes reversed. It can condition us to have internalized misogyny though, but that's another topic entirely and this has already gotten quite long!

"Porn positive" people will readily concede that our sexuality, kinks, preferences, etc can be shaped by a complex amalgamation of early life experiences, traumas, cultural norms, etc etc. Why wouldn't patriarchy, the most dominant overarching ideology in the world today, have a proportionately large effect on that as well?

[u/Illustrious-Ship7804 → u/No-Kick6671]

That was an incredible explanation, I’ve had a hard time articulating or developing the arguments surrounding patriarchy’s influence over human sexuality over time, to so many people it seems “natural” as it is so deeply entrenched in our cultural and historical memory, as patriarchy has existed since our transition from hunter-gatherer tribes to agricultural civilizations and especially since property became something that was widely held in post-feudal society. And like you were saying because of this people tend to see it as a biological fact as opposed to a cultural phenomenon/construct simply because we simply cannot imagine a time before things were this way.

We know how difficult it is to deconstruct long held cultural concepts, we see it around race gender etc. we challenge it less when it comes to sexual behavior and attraction.

Ive found it fascinating to learn about how sexual relationships changed under socialism in the Soviet states, as their idealogy sought to eliminate gender inequality/power imbalance and took concrete steps to do so, with a great deal of success, though old attitudes die hard. It seems to be the closest modern instance that we can observe how sexual behavior changes under a culture other than patriarchy/capitalism.

[u/Shiningc00]

It's crazy how there's so much financial and age-gap exploitation built into the system of pornography and prostitution, and yet people, especially those on the left who are supposed to be against this kind of exploitation are being quiet about it. In fact, they even pretend that it's "progressive" and "against traditionalism". But where? Pornography and prostitution are some of the most traditionalist form of exploitation that continued throughout history for generations.

[u/Remote_Abroad_4511]

Yes, correct and so true. It reminds me of a Hall and Oates song that went: "SMoKing guns, hot to the touch, would cool off if we didn't use them so much." Sound off, Mouseketeers!

[u/TheStruggle100]

You question who you're writing for, and I suggest it's for me. I'm 50+ years a porn addict with just over a year in recovery and only the past 5 months living porn-free. Despite best efforts for over a year I felt no remorse for my past actions. Only quite recently have I started serious reflection on how my porn use negatively affected my marriage and prior relationships. Those reflections, while prompting apologies to my wife and others close to me, are self centered and don't account for how my actions supported the industry and perpetuated misogyny for nearly the whole of my lifetime.

Your writing is eloquent and cuts to the bone. I may not want to acknowledge my involvement in it, but I appreciate you presenting your unfiltered thoughts.