Eh, I'm bothered by some of what the commenter said, but you know? She at least admits that her reaction is really unreasonable. That's a step up from the "but what about real women's bodies?" thing that often pops up, at least...

But yeah, some of it does bug me, most notably the "if he agrees with me that it's degrading, why doesn't he stop?" I don't know the guy, but I'd say he probably sees her point and feels torn, rather than "doesn't care that he's degrading women" or whatever.

But the "I'm being unreasonable, but this is driving me crazy anyway?" Eh. I do that too. Over other things, but... yeah.

But what body issues I do have are sort of about myself alone. They really don't occur in the context of pictures of Jennifer Aniston or something. Joscelin looks at porn and I don't mind that the women are hot. (I mind more when the women are big-eyed anime girls, but that's not because of a comparison, it's just more eew.) I guess it doesn't really occur to myself to compare my body to other people's. Maybe it's because I am so far away from them that the comparison just doesn't make sense. (I did notice when I shaved my head that, at certain lengths, I looked like Laura Antoniou a bit.)

I relate to this a lot -- except that if Monkey and I lived together I'd probably look at the porn *with* him. He looked at the porn I have saved when he visited me here...

That really bothers me. Be up front about your issues. Don't say "oh sure you can look at porn, i just don't want to know" and then yell at the person for hiding it.

IMX, "I just don't want to know" usually means "An argument is imminent." I've rarely seen it work.

I think what she probably meant was a situation like this:

She says, "I'd rather not know if you watch porn, but it's totally okay if you do."
He says, "I don't watch porn," and makes an effort to hide the fact that he does.

See the problem now?

It's an irrational reaction. If knowing someone does something you dislike makes you unhappy, but they still have every right to do the thing, it's fairly common to say they can still do it in an "OH $DEITY I just don't want to KNOW!!!" way. It's a classic point from someone who's upset enough that they haven't thought through the implications of what they're saying.

The question specifically about the power of Other Bodies I wonder if it is again to do with the idea that still is annoyingly pervasive that a woman has to find way to keep her man and that all other women are competition for him (which I guess originates in the times when the man was the breadwinner, and you had to keep hold of him or end up in the poorhouse).

That's interesting. I bet that does have something to do with it.

That's definitely an interesting way of looking at it. I hadn't thought about it in those terms. Thanks for posting this!

http://www.davidbrin.com/neotenyarticle1.html

suggests it's perhaps an evolutionary thing.

Oh, man. This is going to be a rant, and I don't have time to make it a very good one, but I'll do my best.


In the quoted passage in the OP, it's wrapped up in this question of "made me feel like I wasn't good enough and that he had to fantasize about others to be able to stay with me." The mental question is, "If that's what he really wants, why would he bother with me? Does he think of me as merely 'the best of bargain-bucket range'?"

Yes, this.

Just from the other comments here, and from the tone of the people who are being "tolerant" of this woman, I feel nervous about saying what I'm about to say, but ... well, here goes.

I used to be exactly like this girl. In her reaction, I see mine. I knew my boyfriends watched porn and I told them I didn't want to know about it, but when I thought about it, I felt disgusted and sick and used. I had one boyfriend who told me he didn't watch porn just because he knew it bothered me; when I found out that he did, I felt not just sick but betrayed, and I cried for hours. Was that my fault? Really? Was it my fault that when I tried to honestly make space for him to watch porn, he lied to me and said he didn't? Was it my fault that I felt disgusted and used and sickened by the fact that my boyfriends were watching porn? Where was my failure? WHAT WAS I DOING WRONG?

I don't feel as strongly anymore. Not so much because I think porn is awesome; porn doesn't turn me on. It's not my kink (which I'm sure was part of the problem in the first place -- that I just didn't get it). What helped was the following:

1) Finding out that alternative porn exists, and researching it. That taught me something that I maybe should have already realized, but hadn't: that the huge juggernaut of "mainstream porn" is not actually shorthand for "all male desire". Everyone tells us that mainstream porn is built for men, that it's what men want, etc etc. Even FEMINISTS tell us this. So how was I supposed to feel when I looked at porn, saw that it was NOT ME, and also heard the message that it was WHAT MEN WANT? When I got up my courage and asked men about it, they'd say things like, "Well, you're REAL, that's so much better than porn!" which carries the implied message of: "If porn were real, we'd go for that, but since you're real and present, we'll accept you." The message that was supposed to make me OK with porn went like this: "You can't measure up to porn or get your boyfriend to like you as much as he likes porn. The reason he's settling for you is that you actually exist and are present, but porn is what he REALLY wants."

2) Exploring my own sexual needs to the point where I figured out that there are things that turn me on that DON'T mean ANYTHING about how I feel about my partner. So that made me realize that, duh, my partners probably can be turned on by things that don't reflect on me at all.

You know what didn't help? What DID NOT HELP was people telling me that I was "repressed", "had issues", or otherwise unworthy of sympathy. What didn't help was people telling me that I had an anti-porn reaction because I was overly influenced by society and couldn't understand consent, or objectification, or feminist theory, or God knows what else.

What didn't help was people telling me that if I just examined enough, I'd get over my weird anti-porn reaction. Oh hey, does that examination argument sound familiar?

I'm SO TIRED of people seeing women who have REAL, HONEST, SERIOUS emotional reactions to porn, and getting mad at those women -- writing them off as "manipulative" or "sex-negative" or "bad communicators". I'm SO TIRED of sex-positive bloggers who say things like what Ren said above, "I think I am done having any sort of sympathy for women like this." Way to contribute to the problem and exclude this woman from our community.

(By the way, I don't look like a porn actress, but I am relatively conventionally attractive. So I don't think this has much to do with body image issues.)

Is it impossible that he might agree with the feminist thinking she puts forward, while at the same time, using porn as fantasy, with an understanding that it isn't real, and that, in masturbating, he isn't trying to replace her, but instead is just... doing something that he likes that isn't based around these ideas of rationalization?

Personally, I have no idea whether I'm reading it right, but I thought that maybe his reaction was similar to the reaction I had to anti-porn arguments when I first encountered them. That was, I had trouble formulating why I didn't agree with them and so "gave ground" in the intellectual debate, but didn't believe deep down and continued to look at it.

What the arguments did more than anything was to make me feel vaguely guilty and apologetic and uncomfortable, but not to actually change my mind. So I read it as him saying "Well, I see your point, and now I feel kind of uncomfortable with what I'm doing, but... in the end I'm not convinced enough to stop doing this."

They are, however, people who want to feel like their relationships are emotionally honest, and also people whose experiences of porn show it as very much a thing to be consumed by men. A lot of mainstream porn is even shot from the perspective of some anonymous dude fucking some much-less-anonymous chick, ferinstance.

*nod* That doesn't really bother me, so it's tough to wrap my head around that as very upsetting, though I know it is.

However, there's probably a totally obvious and dumb reason why that doesn't bother me: I'm often the penetrator in sex. That looks like what I see! (Okay, sometimes ridiculously zoomed-in...)

Which is also probably part of where the immediate arousal for me comes in, too. It's shot to look like "this person here is ready for this, so do it." It's... hot to think about someone who (is presented as if) she feels that way about someone who could easily be replaced by you.

I linked you already upthread, but... I think it's important to keep in mind why Ren wrote that comment:

http://trinityva.livejournal.com/1004382.html?replyto=6288478

Far too often, women in porn are assumed to not be around, not be listening, while people say all sorts of unguarded and even vicious things about them. Like I said above, I didn't love that comment. But I don't blame Ren for making it, because I think that "you're not real as anything more than something hostile to me, porn women" thing absolutely needs to stop.

Yeah. Count me in as another bad feminist.

I mean, as a trans woman, there's a whole nother set of anxieties I could imagine--my partner's looking at REAL (ie cis women) cos I'm not enough. Or sumat.

But I guess I tend to assume that most if not all men will have porn, that it's a habit that continues more or less regardless of any specific relationship. So I'm pretty meh about it.

I do find it strange to get upset (that's not a condemnation, mind, just bemusement), like not everything's about you, you know?

Though maybe that's the problem, the notion that your partner's fantasy life will only centre on you when actually, it doesn't and never totally will.

My basic feeling about porn is that, like most instances of Other People's Sex Lives, I don't want to be involved - which includes a partner's consumption thereof. But so long as I'm not expected to participate, whatever, no skin off my nose or more intimate anatomy.

I suspect certain twitterbirds would suggest that this is because I'm so defective I don't expect monogamy, but hey, whatever. That's no skin off my bits either. I know my husband has some (a very little visual, a fair amount of written which he seems to prefer), I know my liege has a collection of weird fantasy art that includes a lot of suggestive images (but I don't know if he has any proper porn), and in any case it's on their time, not mine, so.

Also... People have to be rational and reasonable now? People are messy. We contradict ourselves. Constantly. We're fucked up, messed up. No specific "we", just people in general. I get she posted this publicly and by default that opens her up to whatever anyone wants to say about her... but really, the arm chair analysis going on in some of these comments is really squicky.

I have to say, I don't compare myself to porn stars, nor do I get bent out of shape over porn. My ex watched a lot of porn, I barely thought about it. I'm not particularly into porn myself (I think I'm immune after watching so much of it in various brothels over the years, it just fails to do anything for me these days, though once upon a time I liked it) but people watching porn... eh, whatever. I was the girl who got angry at my boyfriend if he didn't get a private dance when he went to a strip club. Strippers are fellow sex workers and that's how they make their money... I'd be damned if my boyfriend went there and ogled for free. During the death of my last relationship, I had low libido and a loss of attraction to my partner, amongst other things. I had always been very open about the fact he could go elsewhere for sex if he desired, so long as he was safe and was honest with me. I didn't want details, just an idea of what was going on. When I found out he'd been seeking the services of other sex workers, what annoyed me was that 1) he'd kept it from me and 2) he wanted to me to be pissed off about it. He'd tried to manipulate me and it didn't work. Big whoop. Never spared a second wondering what they looked like.

But I get the body stuff. I get the shame, and the uncertainty and the desire to change it and wishing it was easy. And it is. not. easy. to. overcome. Especially when you've been in denial about disordered eating for a really long time.

But you know... her reaction... is just HUMAN. Fragile, and irrational and human. To me, it's poignant because there's a divide between her and someone she loves and due to any amount of fucked up social programming they aren't communicating as honestly as they could about it. Overreaction? So what, really? People overreact all the time. It happens. It's because we have heart. Do I agree with her? No, but I feel for her. And really, compared to the radfems out there? Her reaction was pretty mild.

Bearing in mind the vast amount of negative diluge this woman has probably gotten consatntly, as most of us have, about her body... I just don't think it's that weird a reaction, even if I don't share it.

Then you're lucky. I'm not thin. I'm not "fat". I'm that godawful inbetween with just enough excess body fat to make me seriously dysmorphic. I cannot be thin unless I kill myself in exercise and extreme dieting and I don't think I know how to be happy unless I'm thin.

And the thing is... I don't mean this to mock your pain or anything, but unless I misunderstand "inbetween," that sounds like "most people." And I never really got, and I honestly do mean this, why not looking like most people is so incredibly gut-wrenching for so many women.

I mean, I understand that models make it look like in-between isn't pretty, and I understand why that causes pressure. I've felt that myself. I just don't understand where the "I can't even look at myself in the shower" intensity of it comes from.