With all the anti-pornography talk, can we have a sex positive thread?

[BainsBane]

391. So if I don't like rape and rape culture?

I'm right wing? Suddenly the left is defined by being pro-rape? You all have jumped the shark. The one surprising thing about your post is its author. I expected more from you.
Rape and choice are antithetical. Women and men who are raped are deprived of choice. Some rape porn is simulated and some is real. All contribute to rape culture and the kind of disregard for victims we have seen this weekend.

This insistence you have of a clear line between rape porn and rape is simply false. That point has been established many, many times over these past few days. Some of that porn is made from women and children who are actually being raped. Some are enslaved and are therefore not free to grant consent. Men upload their actual rapes of victims online for others to watch. Pornographers bill rape porn as real because that is what their viewers want to believe. I did a google search this weekend and the top results were "Indian gang rape," "drunk rape," and "military women raped." This is porn geared for men who see a news report and think, "that's hot. Let me find a porno." Are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable advocating for the subsidization of an industry that is responsible for the enslavement of hundreds of thousands if not millions?

Actually the commonalities with the right are shown in defenders of rape porn who insist their right to control women's bodies and shut our mouths about actual violence against women trumps our rights to basic safety and life. The idea that this is about women's choice, when we are talking about workers who labor without benefits, who contract a host of work related illnesses, and about some are even forced to labor as slaves or through debt peonage is a classic right wing argument. Do Walmart workers choose to make substandard wages. Do they choose to not earn enough to have a Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, on one level they do. But their choice is constrained by the marketplace, what Marx referred to as economic coercion. The same is true for porn workers. But here we're talking about an industry where most of the work force is women, and therefore their rights become inconsequential. Their only function in is to serve as a source of arousal for men. And if women object to rape, rape porn, and rape culture, we're prudes. If we object to the fact that rape fantasists are propping up an industry that uses a great deal of slave labor, we're buzz kills. The lives of the objects of porn don't matter. It's all about the consumer, just like the lives of workers in the consumer economy don't matter as much as the profits of the wealthy and low prices for the middle class.

I get it. Don't challenge male privilege or you'll get called right wing. Insisting women have rights and be considered full human beings is reactionary. If I do not recognize I have no right to speak against anything men want, I'm a right winger. Rights exist only for men--well, unless they are rape survivors who don't consider reenactment of their violation arousing.

I get that rapists and wannabe rapists love their rape porn. There is nothing I can do about that. But there is no fucking way I am going to pretend it is anything but violent and predatory. Obviously my opinion means nothing since it's been made clear I can't even be considered a feminist if I don't acquiesce to exactly what men demand.

These threads demonstrate precisely why rape culture is so persistent in this country. The rights of rapists and rape fantasists will always trump those of rape victims, especially since 90% of them are women.

Don't for one second think I don't see exactly what this is--an unwavering determination to force us to submit to what men want and silence us about our own rights.