Ren has a post up about the whole “pornified” concept, and how women who do certain things or look a certain way basically become whipping girls for all of society’s ills, including poor body image among women and the impending demise of feminism, and oh yes, did I mention the terrorists hate us?
Over there, I wrote, in response to a thoughtful commenter called seven (quoted portions from her are in italics):
I think, though, that women look around and see that their significant others are spending their time looking at the pornified women. And we are told in this culture that if your man is even looking at someone else, you are failing as a woman.
A few things there:
Not every woman’s is S.O. “spending time looking at pornified women.” But I don’t think you necessarily meant all women, which brings me, more to the point, to…
Not every woman is threatened by her male S.O. finding other women attractive. I have blogged about this before, and how I think this weird jealousy/insecurity thing is built into our culture as an expected part of what makes a relationship, but really it’s dysfunctional as hell.
And it all boils down to communication, really. What are your expectations in the relationship? What type of behavior do you expect when it comes to acknowledging sexual attraction toward others? (To deny it exists at all is silly; we’re all human.) Nobody is a mind-reader, and it’s unfair to expect someone to adhere to a standard that they don’t even know about. This goes for men, woman, straight, gay, bi, everything.
So, I don’t think that your choice to be pornified changes what my choices ARE, but the fact that some women choose to be pornified lessen my chances at getting laid, or even looked at as an option by men.
Well, seven, I have to ask: if that’s the case, then would you really want to have sex with those guys? If all they’re looking for is a very specific kind of physical appearance? Would that make you happy, if the physical appearance they were looking for matched yours?
The responsibility here is with the guys, not with Ren or any other women who happen to fit a certain standard of beauty. This is not to say there’s no pressure from society (I wrote about this on another post, in fact); obviously there is! You’d be living under a rock not to admit it. But societal expectations or no, it’s still the responsibility of each individual adult to make decisions for him and herself, and not just behave as a mindless, hapless cog in a machine.
Later in the thread, someone called mr. deet comes along and points out something that I’ve found to be true for a lot of men (emphasis mine):
Not all men want porn looking women. Most men don’t really. They might look, but part of it is because we’ve been told to look.
…
Most men could also probably not handle being with a woman who does what Ren does for a living. After all, we get jealous too.
And, again, this is the men’s responsibility. All of it stems from what we’ve been taught about sex, men, and women in our culture; Figleaf aptly describes it as the “no-sex class” phenomenon.
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