The belief that the elimination of porn

will achieve a gender-neutral society is ludicrous

The problem lies in the fact that

we live in a male-dominated society,

where gender bias is integral to

the capitalist system, creating exploitation

Porn Exploits Women? Capitalism Exploits Everybody

Some people feel that pornography is bad, that it ought not to exist in a good society.

Presumably, they think once Israel has stopped ethnically cleansing Palestinians, once the U.S. has stopped smashing Haiti, and once capitalism has given way to participatory economics, that porn will also go the way of the dodo bird.

I guess the argument goes something like, since porn objectifies women, in any society where the sexes are to be truly equal, pornography must be eliminated. Well, of *course* pornography objectifies women in this society.

What *doesn't* objectify women in this society - or portray them as weak, or childish? Women are objectified by shampoo commercials, for god's sake.

(Remember that the next time you enjoy that totally organic Herbal Essence experience.)

The assumption that porn objectifies women as an act of god is little different than the assumption that men are genetically better at math and science than women are.

The belief that elimination of porn is necessary to achieving a gender-neutral society is ludicrous. Is it possible for people to have non-sexist sex? Then why is it not possible for people to film, photograph, and write about non-sexist sex?

The answer, at least in our current society, lies in the fact that we live in a male-dominated society, where gender bias is co-reproduced in the capitalist system.

We live in a horribly sexist society - a society in which, if the president of a major university were to intimate that blacks were more likely than whites to be criminals, he'd pretty likely be out of a job very quickly - but the intimation that male skills at math and science exceed female skills leaves him gainfully employed.

We live in a society where sexist thought and behavior is so firmly and deeply indoctrinated in people that many even highly educated women *want* to assume their husband's identity upon marriage - a society in which virtually everyone sees nothing at all wrong with an entire family taking on the identity of an individual man.

The solution to constructing a gender-neutral society isn't the elimination of porn any more than it's the elimination of shampoo. If you really believe that porn is intrinsically sexist, then you must also believe that heterosexuality is intrinsically sexist.

Rather than eliminate porn (or heterosexuality), we should strive to create and define new roles and modes of sexual expression.

Or, given that people's sexuality is already more varied and diverse than what capitalism allows us to (readily) see, perhaps all we need to do is work to popularize what's already lurking beneath the surface.

It has to beat taking on a fight which is not winnable, both because it's morally the wrong fight, and because too many people enjoy their smut and aren't going to give it up.

(Besides, if you seriously propose to take people's porn away from them, what do you propose to replace it with?)

Porn as it exists today is aimed at men, but (pretty much) *everything* as it exists today is aimed at men. (Do romance novels count as porn?) That can be changed. But only if that's the fight we choose to have.

A visitor from Mars coming here, after surveying portrayals of sex and sexuality across the spectrum from mainstream movies, books, and TV shows, to soft-core porn, to hard-core smut, would go away thinking that our sex lives were horribly two-dimensional and quite sexist.

The correct fight isn't to try to eliminate portrayals of sex and sexuality in whatever form, but rather to change what's portrayed.

That fight ultimately cannot be won in a capitalist economy; market-based allocation has to give way to participatory planning (among other necessary economic changes) before the fight can be truly won.

But even given the constraints of a classist, market-based economy in which sexist gender roles are continually co-reproduced, progress could be made if we could realize what it is we ultimately want to progress to.

What we should be striving to progress to is (among other things) a society in which our biological sex doesn't have us feel pressured to fornicate in certain prescribed ways - nor love, date, or cohabitate in prescribed ways, either.

*That* is what we should be expecting to have in a good society - and plenty of hot porn too.