I am Regina Bellen Sercovich, I am 20 Years old, I was born to a Jewish Orthodox/Liberal family. Right now I am studying at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City,second semester of Finances and economics/business administration.
I consider myself a Humanist. I recently was called to have a debate on media and its harmful effects, specifically those regarding Pornography and how it must be seen by society. Some of my female friends thought I was going to stand up for the anti porn side, but I didn't, in fact I decided to do the opposite, I assumed the defense for the porn industry. The devil's advocate.
I consider myself a Humanist. I recently was called to have a debate on media and its harmful effects, specifically those regarding Pornography and how it must be seen by society. Some of my female friends thought I was going to stand up for the anti porn side, but I didn't, in fact I decided to do the opposite, I assumed the defense for the porn industry. The devil's advocate.
I had a conversation with some fellas who are against porn, most of them feminists;in order to know what their arguments are and see what I thought about them. I have to recognize that the whole thing felt like they were convincing me, which put my ego in a sort of high level (joke) Ultimately, I concluded that the entire speech was far from being convincing to me.
Let's analyze what some of the anti pornography statements are before getting further into this personal opinion. The following is taken from:
https://antipornfeminists.wordpress.com/whats-wrong-with-pornography/
1- Pornography harms women.
Pornography is not fantasy. Pornography happens in the real world, to real women; everything you see in pornography happened somewhere to a real woman.
2- The pornography industry is a multi-billion dollar global industry.
Pornography exists to make money. It is an industry that chews women up and spits them out; it is an industry where exposure to violence, harassment, injury and infection are seen as normal and acceptable.
3-Pornography doesn’t expand our sexuality – it stunts it.
Mainstream heterosexual pornography dictates a narrow and limited idea of human sexuality. In pornography, male sexuality is predicated on cruelty, coercion and degradation; female sexuality is predicated on submitting to or appearing to enjoy being subjected to cruel, coercive and degrading treatment. Pornography eradicates women’s sexual agency, and makes it harder for women to find out about their own bodies and their own sexuality.
4-Pornography portrays sexual violence against women as normal, natural and an inevitable part of male sexuality.
Sexual desire does not develop in a vacuum. The prurient attitude we have to sex in this country, combined with a lack of decent sex education, means that many people use pornography as their primary source of information on what sex is supposed to be like. Mainstream heterosexual pornography tells men that the sexual abuse of women is exciting, and that women enjoy being abused. It tells women that in order to do sex properly, they have to put up with and enjoy such abuse.
5-Pornography reinforces male supremacy, and the idea that men are entitled to sexual access to women’s bodies.
Men define themselves as being whatever is not a woman, in order to be a man it is necessary for there to be a subordinate group of women for men to compare themselves to and feel superior to. In mainstream heterosexual pornography men are always the active agents and women are always the passive objects. No man in pornography ever fails to get what he wants; the women in pornography exist solely to satisfy men’s desires, they have no will or desire of their own except to service men’s needs.
6-Pornography portrays sex and women as disgusting.
The words used to describe women and women’s bodies in pornography betray the fact that women and sex are seen as dirty and disgusting by the men who use it: ‘bitch’ ‘cunt’ ‘slut’ ‘fuck toy’ ‘fuck hole’ ‘dirty’ ‘filthy’ etc etc.
7-Pornography promotes misogynistic beauty standards.
In mainstream heterosexual pornography women are interchangeable, it trains women and men to see a natural female body – one with pubic hair, or small breasts, or any fat – as unnatural and disgusting.
8-Pornography affects you.
Even if you are not a pornography consumer, a significant number of the men you interact with every day will be. It’s difficult to imagine that a man can spend a lot of time viewing and masturbating to degrading images of women without that pornographic ideology having a negative effect on his view of women.
After checking all these statements and points, I have the impression that we keep making the same mistake. Unfortunately we keep taking some weight off of our shoulders and putting it on someone else's shoulders, that is the main problem here: the way society is raised and shaped.
''Pornography harms women''
Stop seeing pornography as a genre thing, those are people, people who chose their fate. As far as I know they are not kidnapped nor forced to do what they do. To this day I have no news about any former porn star who had been threatened or forced to GET into the porn industry. Most of them recognize that they wanted money or that they wanted fame or assume it as an stupid mistake caused by their own young naivety (naivety that now they regret). Otherwise it would be an actual crime to be punished rather than a moral debate. The question here is why? Why are SOME women working on this? What kind of education did they receive from their parents and what kind of parents do they have to allow them to do this? (here is where we as society start to assume responsibility, which is not comfortable) What did the public education do to prevent them from going this low? Are they really going low? Has anybody asked them? Or are we generalizing here as usual? Our society is pretty good at making general assumptions and get them as facts in order to defend our stances, all that before knowing realities, because it's easier.
Are we sure that we are seeing something like the animal trade industry? Or are we just guessing that these women have to be going through the worst just because we think of it as logical?
Yeah, of course, some of them may be suffering abuse and drug addiction,but some of them not. Some may prefer this to a daily job that makes 8 dollars a day. We don't know the entire spectre, because as any legal industry, it is very hard to understand and be aware of everything. This leads me to the next point:
The pornography industry is a multi-billion dollar global industry.
This happens in many industries, Hollywood included. Fashion and even in the technology industry, sorry to break the bubble. In the film making industry, dozens of actors and actresses are chewed by managers, directors, drug dealers and then spit out when they are not cute, nor handsome or when they are unable to age as demanded by the audience. Should we overlook the constant rape accusations and declarations made by many actors exposing Hollywood as a rotten and corrupted web? In the sport industry, a player who breaks his leg or arm can see his career disappear, treated like a piece of meat and getting few dollars as compensation, in fact, this is a very common thing in the sport industry.
In synthesis, this will happen in any industry in which big amounts of money are at stake and playing. Period. Pornography is an entertainment tool such as movies, music, sports, Soap Operas and so on. So, do we have to reject those as well? I am not saying this is good, I am just saying that porn is not an ''special'' case, the truth is that it is more sordid because it is about sex, just that.
Pornography doesn’t expand our sexuality – it stunts it.
Like I said, Pornography is an entertainment tool, (I will go against society again) we have somehow accepted that porn activities can be applied to our normal lives and rule people's sexual existences, and this has been caused by several elements: religious dogma,clumsy parents unable to put their children in a healthy sexual stage, lack of interest from parents, abandon, harmful concepts of maleness and the biggest one: Taboo. Unable to speak about sex, we have allowed pornography to take control of the situation and not the other way around, it is as if we allowed violent films to control the way we interact with others when we are angry. As society we tend to lose the margins between reality and fiction and the same happens with porn, parents around the world must explain their children that what happens in the screen stays in the screen, no matter what it is .Pornography is not real life and this lesson must come from the deepest sexual directions. A puritan attitude have come into this. But it's not the media the responsible, it is the way we educate and receive education, sadly, it is easier to blame the spectacle in question.
Even the article cited agrees on this '' The prurient attitude we have to sex in this country,(in the whole wide world, I have to say) combined with a lack of decent sex education, means that many people use pornography as their primary source of information on what sex is supposed to be like''
Sooo...who is the responsible here? I got lost,sorry. Pornography... or people in charge to teach young audiences about sex?
Pornography portrays sexual violence against women as normal, natural and an inevitable part of male sexuality.
Yeah, pornography is a lie, it is fiction, it is for mere fun, if some individuals swallow it (no pun intended) and believe it and want to imitate it, it is not porn's fault.
Pornography reinforces male supremacy, and the idea that men are entitled to sexual access to women’s bodies.
Pornography reinforces many things, this also goes coupled with the body shaming thing that porn supposedly evokes (check no. 7) . Sincerely, I can't imagine a self assured woman dealing with this kind of treatment, not really. The problem here is that women allow a lot of garbage and some of them seem to be fine with it, why don't women simply cut it and demand...mhh...let's not not call it respect, let's just call it ''reality''? Why is the woman in question ashamed to be compared to a porn star? I'll tell you why: because many of them have weak perceptions of their own personas, what caused this? A poor instruction of self respect during early stages of life.
Did someone teach you how to value yourself? Did anybody tell you that most of human bodies are average and that the guy who wants to have sex with you will be aware of it? Did some person teach you that nobody can use your body unless you want it that way?
No. That is why you have relationships with guys who think that porn is real and will never, ever respect you. I often hear stories like that ''my boyfriend prefers porn over me'' ''my boyfriend likes porn and he rarely spends time with me'' The boyfriend in question is always the same: rude, egocentric, narcissistic, vain, a complete idiot...then my question is ''What are you doing with someone like THAT???'' Have you asked him why he prefers porn? If so, then I imagine he has reacted violent or extremely defensive about it, maybe he has blamed you for not being ''sexy enough'', who is the responsible one here? The narcissistic delusional guy you are hanging with or porn? What I am addressing here is that porn predilection, is usually a side effect of a broken relationship with bigger and harder problems than pornography itself, don't fool ourselves.
Did someone teach you how to value yourself? Did anybody tell you that most of human bodies are average and that the guy who wants to have sex with you will be aware of it? Did some person teach you that nobody can use your body unless you want it that way?
No. That is why you have relationships with guys who think that porn is real and will never, ever respect you. I often hear stories like that ''my boyfriend prefers porn over me'' ''my boyfriend likes porn and he rarely spends time with me'' The boyfriend in question is always the same: rude, egocentric, narcissistic, vain, a complete idiot...then my question is ''What are you doing with someone like THAT???'' Have you asked him why he prefers porn? If so, then I imagine he has reacted violent or extremely defensive about it, maybe he has blamed you for not being ''sexy enough'', who is the responsible one here? The narcissistic delusional guy you are hanging with or porn? What I am addressing here is that porn predilection, is usually a side effect of a broken relationship with bigger and harder problems than pornography itself, don't fool ourselves.
Pornography portrays sex and women as disgusting
No. Pornography portrays (in any case) THOSE women as disgusting and THAT sex as disgusting, it doesn't represent me and I don't want it to do so, and I will not tolerate anyone who wants to treat me that way. Right?
Pornography affects you.
Another generalization and a very risky one, by the way. A person who watches pornography must be affected/broken anyhow, something wrong has to be happening to them, even if we don't know what it is. No proof, no source, no anything that makes us really believe that porn itself can drive someone nuts or crash someone's personality in any way.
The conclusion that I take from these kind of articles is that we still live in a very retrograde illusory society that can't tell between fiction and reality, a society in which women feel comfortable with the victim role rather than demand their rights and put harmful people away when its needed. A society whose contempt toward sex with love has become something ''cool'' even supported by females (mothers) ''my son is a man, he has needs, it is okay if he sleeps with this and that woman''.And I also notice some kind of selfish hypocrisy here, we read things like ''everything you see in pornography happened somewhere to a real woman.'' ''The words used to describe women and women’s bodies in pornography betray the fact that women and sex are seen as dirty and disgusting by the men who use it'' These arguments are used in a double sharp way,at first you would think that those people would be worried about those women involved in that evil industry asking an active response in order to free them from that cruelty, but in the end the lesson is this: ''we must prevent pornography because it is affecting me, because I don't want my boyfriend/husband to see it, because it makes me feel ugly and because I can't address the topic, because we can't talk anymore. Sincerely...I really don't care what happens to those bitches in the screen''
We must change the way young people perceive sex, we must teach our young girls to love and respect themselves and our young boys how to respect and love their female partners, does someone really do this? I doubt it. It'll be there when the terrible effects of porn will be over.
If you watch it, understand that it is only fiction, understand that ''NO'' means no. Learn something from it and don't let your life be immersed in to it, don't become a porn geek/nerd.
Wash your hands right after.
