cui bono
cui bono's JournalWell you mentioned something from a different post, so it didn't seem that you read what I linked to
and that you assumed because I mentioned facials I was talking about that other post that you referenced.
You are being defensive. You are worried I'm telling you what to watch, you made a false analogy that inferred that I'm rifling through your videos and telling you what to watch, you made a point of stating that you are a grown up who can decide for himself. You are making very personal arguments rather than simply discussing the merits or ill effects of most porn.
I'm glad to hear you don't like misogynist porn. I never said porn containing blow jobs was misogynistic. You are arguing things I never said. Except that I did say most porn is misogynistic and I believe that to be true.
You make a lot of assumptions as well. Rather than ask if I've ever watched any porn you just assume I haven't. You think that only people who have never watched porn think it is generally degrading to women? Or you think that all people who think it's degrading to women haven't watched it?
One last thing and then I have to go to bed. As a man, do you find it odd that you keep arguing against what so many women (and men) find degrading? Who are you to tell a woman that it's not degrading? Should white people tell blacks what is and isn't to be perceived as racist? And you also keep defining feminism. Should whites go argue with blacks and define racism to them? Should they go and name drop the most extreme person that most people don't agree with, with whatever motive they might have for doing so?
Why don't you allow for the fact that many women (and men) feel it is degrading to women and trust that women would know if it is or isn't? Why don't you try to be sensitive to that fact? The fact that you insist on arguing against the fact that women feel it is degrading shows that you disregard women and don't value their opinions and feelings. You are dismissing it away just because you don't want to believe it. The real issue is that most women do find it degrading and yet you want to convince them that it isn't. If you were at all concerned about women's issues you would try to understand why they think that. You appear to be more concerned that some woman is trying to take something away from you. It's not about a gender war, it's about understanding, respect and empathy, or at least sympathy.
I try to understand what it must be like to grow up black or gay in this country all the time. It's not up to me to define what is and isn't racist or homophobic, it's up to me to understand why blacks or gays feel something is racist or homophobic. I certainly don't go around trying to define it for them and tell them they are wrong to feel oppressed. If they tell me something is offensive to them or degrading to them or oppressive to them I try to understand why they feel that way, I don't go telling them they are wrong.
And that is the real crux of the situation here.
Good night.
What an articulate, well thought out, reasoned and detailed response.
Clearly I must be completely wrong.
It was in his platform, he mentioned it in campaign speeches and he touted it during his first year
as POTUS.
By Zaid Jilani on December 22, 2009 at 4:00 pm
“I didn’t campaign on the public option,” President Obama told the Washington Post. But he touted the public option on his campaign website and spoke frequently in support of it during the first year of his presidency, citing its essential value in holding the private insurance industry accountable and providing competition:
– In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign’s website, candidate Obama promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008]
– During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market.” [6/15/09]
– While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a public option.” [7/17/09]
– During a conference call with progressive bloggers, the President said he continues “to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” [7/20/09]
– Obama told NBC’s David Gregory that a public option “should be a part of this [health care bill],” while rebuking claims that the plan was “dead.” [9/20/09]
Despite all this overt advocacy for the public option, it appears that Obama was reticent to apply the political pressure necessary to get the plan in the final hours of congressional negotiation. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — who threatened to filibuster the creation of any new public plan or expansion of Medicare — told the Huffington Post that he “didn’t really have direct input from the White House” on the public option and was never specifically asked to support it.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), one of the most ardent backers of public insurance, blamed the demise of the public option on a “lack of support from the administration.” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) — perhaps the most visible defender of the public option in the entire health care debate — went even further, saying that Obama’s lack of support for congressional progressives amounted to him being “half-pregnant” with the health insurance and drug industries.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/12/22/74682/obama-repeatedly-touted-public/
Regarding Obama saying he never campaigned on the public option:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/yes_obama_did_campaign_on_the.html
A summary of Obama’s proposal — still up on BarackObama.com — says it “Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice.” And a document his campaign put together, “Barack Obama’s Plan for a Healthy America,” says:
The Obama plan both builds upon and improves our current insurance system, upon which most Americans continue to rely, and leaves Medicare intact for older and disabled Americans. The Obama plan also addresses the large gaps in coverage that leave 45 million Americans uninsured. Specifically, the Obama plan will: (1) establish a new public insurance program available to Americans who neither qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP nor have access to insurance through their employers, as well as to small businesses that want to offer insurance to their employees
On the other hand, the words “campaign on” have a fairly specific meaning — they imply making some issue or message a particular focus of your campaign, as in, “In 2004, President Bush campaigned on terrorism.” And while it was indeed a pretty weaselly thing for him to say, Obama’s comment was, on that score, accurate.
http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/obama_public/
For me when you say "racism exists" it means there are some racists in the country,
but when you say "racist culture" it means it's systemic, which it is. It's not just simply that there are some racists. Minorities are profiled, suspected more often, arrested more often, convicted more often even for crimes that more whites commit. And in many more areas than just crime. Affluent minorities are accosted for shoplifting even when they've paid for the item simply because it is ingrained subconsciously that they can't afford the item. I'm sure though that if you asked the store personnel who stopped them they do not consider themselves a racist.
Same idea with rape culture. Like I said, it's a subtext that permeates the subconscious.
I think an analogy would be that bacteria causes the infection, but the surroundings that allowed that bacteria to thrive is the "culture". So yeah, the individuals are the ones who actually rape, but the rape culture is what allows it to happen and be gotten away with and have far to lenient sentences way more than should happen.
I'm glad "we all support equal pay, equal rights, equal protections." 
Well rape culture as a whole doesn't mean every single person
or even every single social network. Just as racist culture doesn't mean every single person/social network.
But it does mean that it is systemic. There is a general attitude about rape that is different than all other crimes. So yes, let's focus on where the problems reside. Like the judicial system, the blaming of the victims, the attitude of young men who think raping a passed out female is not rape. Also teaching boys from when they are in high school and just beginning to date what it means to respect a woman and not think of her as an object to be conquered.
Look at the Republican Party. As a whole they think women are property to be told what they can and can not do with their bodies. How many men are influenced by that, and women too. That's horrible. So there you have half the country with that sort of mentality. That's a lot. So all their kids are being taught that mentality. (And all kinds of other weird attitudes towards sexuality but not any real sex education.) So it's an uphill battle, especially with the backlash against women's rights lately, to even just have women regarded as people, let alone with a voice of their own to say what can and can't be done to them and their bodies.
So when women are being treated as less than men, are having (mostly) men legislate what they can and can not do with their bodies, are actually legislating that a woman who has been raped has to be vaginally probed by a doctor, and forcing women to have ultrasounds and being forced to look at them even if they're pregnant because of rape, well that all adds up to women being looked at as less than a man and as an object that men are allowed to control and do with what they please.
Of course I'm not saying it is a spoken idea, but it is a subtext that exists in our society that permeates the consciousness so that then you get people questioning the victim of rape to the point where they don't even want to report it lest they be dragged over the coals about it again, after they already feel completely violated and humiliated.
What I don't understand is why men feel such a strong need to invalidate the idea of rape culture. What difference does it make to you? Why not believe women when they say this is how they feel? We are the ones who live with it every day of our lives. Would you argue with a minority and tell them racism just doesn't exist?
I agree rape is violence. That doesn't negate that there is a rape culture.
It also doesn't mean that pornography is simply sex. Nor that magazine covers showing girls in bikinis are not a problem.
You seem to be conflating a lot of things. You're throwing a lot of things into the mix that all contribute to a sexist society and various women's issues but are not necessarily a direct reason for rape existing.
Do you really think pornography is simply sex? Come on, it's generally pretty violent for sex, gang banging, facials, choking, porn is not just "sex". At it's best it isn't regular sex, there's no affection, etc... Even if there weren't violent porn out there, which there is, there's a lot more to pornography than what shows up on the screen. Do you think all women get into porn willingly or because it's what they dreamed of doing when they grew up? Do you think that women who get into porn have high self esteem and many good alternatives in their lives? What do you think it's like on the set of a porn? There was a post recently by a DUer whose friend was in the business and she described what it was like to have to go through being in a porn movie and it was horrific.
When I was in college I was at a friend's dorm apt., it was a male apt. so 5 guys lived there. One of them came home and was really angry, he said he was angry about something then said "I just need to fuck something/someone ( don't remember which)". Where does he get the idea that that's a way to get his anger out? Very likely comes from porn. Where else do you see anger expressed with a sexual act?
Have you seen this talk? It's fantastic. If you haven't watched it it may shed some light on porn for you. It's a man talking about why he doesn't watch porn any more. Please do watch it. If you've already seen it please watch it again.
But anyway, back to rape culture... American absolutely does have a culture of rape. How many murder cases do you suppose have evidence just rotting away untouched on the shelves? How many armed robbery cases do you think the victim is too afraid to report because they will get blamed? What other crime blames the victim like rape or shames them like rape? Why is it so common for perps to get such lenient sentences in rape cases, even when it's pedophilia?
Why do so many young men think it's okay to violate a woman sexually when she is passed out? Why is there a drug called the "date rape" drug? The sexism that permeates society adds to men thinking they have a right to sex with women. They think of it as a conquest. All the slut shaming, the victim blaming, the objectification... it all adds up.
It's the objectification of women, the lack of respect for women that allows men to treat them as an object to be violated, that allows rape to be blamed on the victim and rape kits to be systematically ignored, that all adds up to a rape culture. Yes, it does exist. Just as white privilege exists. Just as so many things exist that are perhaps easier to grasp, understand and see if you are part of the group that is affected by it. Denying it is like denying that racism exists.
I just read this post that says a better term would be "rape enabling culture". Perhaps that makes more sense to you? I like it better myself.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4705334
But that's not the issue. The issue is the objectification of women.
And the harm that these media images - which are airbrushed and photoshopped and give unrealistic "goals" for girls and young women.
Nothing wrong with a healthy sex drive and sexual attraction to whomever you are attracted to, but putting it out like this and ogling over the women in public is crass and rude and is objectifying women.
Again, rather than be defensive about it, why not just see that it bothers a lot of people and act accordingly, as a sensitive human being would do? If your female friends were in a room with you and you were ogling this cover and making comments out loud and they said it bothered them, would you not stop? Even if you aren't able to see the societal problem with it?
And regarding the societal problem, look up all the anorexia and bulimia that comes out of this media onslaught of these sorts of altered women's bodies cases. Do the search as "my friend ana" or "my friend mia". Those searches will get you to pages where females suffering from this talk about what they do and give advice to others on how to not gain weight and avoid eating food. There was a story I saw about a girl who was early teens who would eat paper to fill her up so she wouldn't be so hungry but was still not eating food that would put weight on her.
This sort of objectification contributes to that. As you are not a woman you won't be able to completely know what women go through and deal with, so perhaps you can take what they say into consideration and adjust your public behavior on behalf of their feelings. Have some sensitivity to it rather than be worried that you won't be able to have sexual desires. You can, there's just appropriate times and ways to express it. Imo, this is not one of them.
There was a time when people didn't realize that some varying degrees of racism/homophia were inappropriate or hurtful. As time goes on those views have evolved and changed. Sexism as well. Hopefully they all continue to change as more people become aware and evolve and decide to show some sensitivity to each group's plight.
As to your last paragraph. Do you believe that about racism and homophobia as well?
It's not just about the person it is directed at.
I would think a guy to be crass and rude if I heard him wolf whistle at another woman, it doesn't have to be towards me. And here everyone on the board can see it.
Imagine if you said something offensive to one African-American, would not all AAs who heard it be offended? It's not about the target, it's about the person who is doing the objectifying, about their attitude. And it's about the effects of that on society.
Honestly, I started becoming aware of all the sexism in our society in a class on Marxism in the early 80's because the male professor was in tune to it and brought it to our attention by him having every other person reading aloud substitute "she" for "he" because everything is written as if it only applied to men. It made me think about it.
Perhaps rather than thinking of it in terms of "sides" you can just think of it in terms of what women have to experience every day in their lives. It doesn't have to be a combative issue. Do you think of racial issues in terms of "sides"?
I think that may be part of the problem of these discussion on DU, they become so combative it's no longer about just looking at what a person has to deal with on a daily basis and thinking about how to alleviate that. Seems to me that if people know something is offensive and irritating to people they wouldn't keep doing it and trying to justify it, even if, or perhaps just because, they don't like the way someone is conveying their discomfort.
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