I gave up and checked out their website. It's an "amateur" for-pay clip site (that claims to specialize in "genuine" sex) that does revenue sharing back to the users, according to the various claims I could see in 30 seconds of poking around.
The site's main idea seems to hinge on a very narrow definition of "porn". It offers sex video clips intended to arouse the audience -- I'm not sure what else to call that but pornographic.
It tries to keep a niche focus on "realistic" content produced by amateurs but considering most real sex doesn't translate well to video, I'm guessing it'll eventually be either just another low-quality amateur clip site or sacrifice authenticity for production quality and become a generic "for women" porn site.
For context, here is what distinguishes "porn" from "real sex" according to the website (obviously this list is not intended to be exhaustive):
* coming on women's faces
* no "hair down there"
* no foreplay
* no clitoral stimulation
* all women love anal
* dirty talk
I'm willing to wager creating porn without these qualifiers isn't a novel idea and that there are already existing websites offering that. None of these seem necessary or sufficient to distinguish between porn and "real sex" videos.
Wow, that is so ridiculous. I was wondering what it was too.
So, this is really about people drawing weird boundaries around what they find acceptable and labeling whatever's outside the boundary "porn". Mmm, so progressive.
Much of what is called "sex positivity" strikes me as suspicious for similar reasons.
Well, that article portrays banks as moralizing prudes and neglects to mention why they don't want to deal with those companies: very high amounts of fraud. Process payments for a porn site and you're going to be hit with charge backs out the wazoo. The industry has been mostly shady since the beginning so you likely won't recoup the money you got stiffed.
Certainly there are legitimate players, but you can't blame a payment processor or bank for not wanting to take high levels of risk.
A situation in which all relevant assets are priced appropriately and there is no way for one's gains to outpace market gains without taking on more risk. Assuming an arbitrage-free condition is important in financial models, thought its existence is mainly theoretical.
"We don't want this business because it makes it harder to do business elsewhere" also does not violate that principle. So that rule of thumb, while nice, doesn't help a whole lot here.
Honestly, a lot of tech has been initially pushed by the adult industry. VHS and (arguably) DVDs to name just a few. Not making any value or judgement calls, but they seem to be trailblazers for further mass market.
Have you tried actually acquiring Bitcoin ? It's nowhere near the credit/debit card experience. I've done it and unless I was buying something illegal I just wouldn't bother. Not to mention insane transaction fees.
A simple and easy way to buy things online, including porn, without it showing up on any statement is to use a prepaid debit card that you bought anonymously with cash.
It doesn't have to be bitcoin (I'm rather thinking ETH due to fast and cheap transactions) and it doesn't have to people who care about owning it. Using it as an intermediate coin IMO makes sense because you can separate it completely and easily from your identity and you solve the problem of shady adult payment providers.
The high rate of chargeback is to a large degree to do with customers, not the providers, as far as I'm aware. "That wasn't me, honest guv, I'll do a chargeback".
Either way, your customers have to get the currency somehow, and barely any of them will be bothered to. I suspect a lot of porn purchases are "heat of the moment", so to speak.
Because it makes things more difficult for those accepting the money. Their bills likely don't take bitcoin, after all. And once you get into private video chat and prostitution, tech workers and designers - where a portion to all of the money is going to the one hired - it gets pretty useless.
I'd not accept a job that only pays wages in bitcoin and in fact, it might violate minimum wage laws some places because you aren't paying in "real, government approved" money.
I took a look at what ethical investment indexes says, and they too exclude any pornographic companies. It is listed as unethical, together with companies producing weapons.
Banks either are or are not "moral" gatekeepers. They don't get to have it both ways. If the issue is the charge back rates, then should the business not have the charge back rates with that specific merchant, they should gradually remove restrictions.
Is it really rampant levels of fraud, or is it more likely husbands who can't be honest with their SO's about why PornHub is on the credit card statement?
So much of the issues around this stuff would literally vanish overnight if we could just grow up in regards to sex and things involving sex. It's twenty freaking seventeen and we're still acting like it's this big scary thing.
I'm pretty sure that fraudulent chargebacks are still fraudulent even when your justification for them is that they're part of a lie to try to keep the peace with your SO.
I can see "How are you going to actually make money" questions applicable to all kinds of well funded startups except for the ones peddling porn and sex.
> “In the beginning, a lot of people told me not to go to the tech industry [with this product], but to go to the porn industry instead,” says Tio, who created the product for his wife during their long-distance hiatus from one another. “But for me, this is not porn. This is not kinky stuff. This is about intimacy because a lot of couples are looking for solutions to maintain intimacy.”
It's like they're on the middle rung of the sex-positivity ladder, looked down upon by potential investors while themselves looking down at porn.
Maybe not looking down so much as differentiating from it. Kind of like you don't have to look down on coffee to sell tea instead cuz some people prefer tea.
When we look at a professional football player play football, we never call it fake football. So why when it comes to sex we choose what is real and what is fake.
I understand that very few people can have Sex like porn stars and very few women have the ability to look like porn starts. But why do we look down upon them and call them fake.
Because it's staged and directed? If it was just recording people having sex, you'd be right. But there's a lot of editing and other work going on. If you watched a football game where directors came on and had the players redo a certain takedown then it'd be a closer comparison. Maybe compare to WWF wrestling?
If the people are actually having sex, because they want to, and reacting to each other spontaneously according their desires, rather than according to a script or external direction, then sure.
Because porn objectifies women. Today's porn doesn't have to do anything with sex, at least not the sex most people are used to do. There's no intimacy. Women look artificial with all these cosmetic surgeries. The whole thing looks artificial. Not to mention that it gives youngsters a very distorted view of how sex should be which is a whole other story by itself.
It does if the argument is being made in absolutes.
You could say "some porn objectifies women", or even "most porn targeted at straight men objectifies women", but making the claim that porn in general objectifies women is patently false.
>It does if the argument is being made in absolutes
Casual talk is not dealing in absolutes. We're not speaking in theorems and axioms. Even if someone says "people are idiots" they don't mean "X, for every X where X a person, is an idiot".
Note how they didn't even say "all porn": just "porn objectifies women". In casual speak even saying "all X does Y" is not necessarily intended to convey "absolutely all X". Just saying "X does Y" even less so.
>You could say "some porn objectifies women", or even "most porn targeted at straight men objectifies women", but making the claim that porn in general objectifies women is patently false.
No, it's perfectly OK (if a little beyond the point, see my other answer).
Here's how to read the phrase of the parent in casual conversation:
Porn objectifies women (when there are women in it -- DUH!). Most porn, that is -- some special snowflake outlier porn with women in it might not objectify them, and that's ok (DUH!). I'm talking about what generally happens, and what people actually get to see most of the time when they watch porn, not what some Peruvian feminist porn might show (DUH!). I also know there's animal porn, which obviously doesn't objectify women (DUH!)
In general, if how one interprets a conversational statement can be taken down by the addition of a few "DUH!", then probably this is not the interpretation intended by the original speaker. That's the "principle of charity".
> if someone says "people are idiots" they don't mean "X, for every X...
It can do, it depends on context. When a statement is ambiguous, you have to infer meaning from context.
> That's the "principle of charity".
What about the "principle of unambiguous speech"? If a conversational statement can be taken down with a few "DUH!", people will try harder to be precise in their communication.
>It can do, it depends on context. When a statement is ambiguous, you have to infer meaning from context.
That's the whole art of casual conversation -- or any conversation for that matter, even the most rigorous scientific paper depends on millions of context-based assumptions.
There is a lot of explicit convention in science, it is not the same as general "art of casual conversation"; Scientists will likely have explicit qualification, and provide stats and data. More so for Law, were stakes are arguably even higher.
Anyway, in this case you made a absolute claim ("they don't mean") that isn't necessarily true. They can mean that.
How do you demonstrate that this isn't true, if is so subjective (an "art")? The answer, would be to incentivise clear, unambiguous language; at least in technical, specific conversations.
But I've never seen anybody mention say something about members of a group, ethnicity, nationality, whatever, etc in casual conversation and really mean it absolutely applies to everybody in that set with no exceptions (e.g. "Scots are stingy" or "Californians are into health").
And when I say "never seen anybody", consistent with my rule, I mean "I only seen very few do that".
So, I'm sure you can find some counter-examples. But do you really believe what I say is not true in the large majority of cases?
You didn't say "women are X", you said "porn is X", so it could be a categorical statement about the nature of porn.
I believe what is is less important that what can be. Bitcoin/freenet/bitorrent is used heavily for shady and/or illegal business - that needn't be the case in the future.
"porn objectifies women" is a fairly loaded term, that incorporates, on average, a lot of assumption about what that means, and why it is relevant. The context is a large effort by certain groups, trying to prove porn is "harmful" - the objectification argument is the latest round of arguments against porn.
>You didn't say "women are X", you said "porn is X", so it could be a categorical statement about the nature of porn.
I fail to see the difference between "women are X" and "porn is X". Both are statements of the type "Y is X".
Furthermore, my point is that categorical statements in casual conversation mean "most, the majority etc", unlike categorical statements in formal logic.
>"porn objectifies women" is a fairly loaded term, that incorporates, on average, a lot of assumption about what that means, and why it is relevant. The context is a large effort by certain groups, trying to prove porn is "harmful" - the objectification argument is the latest round of arguments against porn.
Whether "porn objectifies women" is true or not is orthogonal to what I discussed here: that someone saying "porn objectifies women" doesn't mean "all porn ever made with no exception objectifies women" -- and thus their point can't be shut down with a mere counter-example (like several parent commenters here did).
That doesn't make sense as an accusation, as that's the whole point of the activity: to objectify women (and men).
Porn, like casual sex, is about seeing the other person, and being interested in them, for a single dimension: sexually. Which is totally fine. Who said you should be interested in the whole package deal every time?
Maybe not have sex unless it's a relationship/marriage either? Men AND women do enjoy casual sex without any further purpose all the time.
Employment also sees the other person in one dimension: professionally. Traffic cops see the person in one dimension: how well they drive. Credit card companies see a other person in one dimension: what they do with their bills. All of those are objectifications: the other is a means to something. It's just because of being prudish and/or misunderstood feminism that specifically seeing the other in terms of sex (for casual sex, porn, flirting, etc), is considered especially heinous.
>Women look artificial with all these cosmetic surgeries. The whole thing looks artificial. Not to mention that it gives youngsters a very distorted view of how sex should be which is a whole other story by itself.
That's more like why it's "fake" -- not the objectifying thing.
Between having sex only if you intent to marry her and having sex without even kissing her once there is a whole world of difference. I don't know about you, but I can't have sex without kissing my partner, even if it's a one night stand. I mean come on, women aren't just objects of pleasure. They're human beings. What's wrong in treating them like so? Does it degrade the whole experience? I think not, quite the opposite. Treat women with respect. And then go and have sex as bizarre as you like or whatever.
In porn women are just objects. Or at least, in the mainstream str8 porn.
>Between having sex only if you intent to marry her and having sex without even kissing her once there is a whole world of difference.
A world which is nobody's business between consenting adults.
>* I don't know about you, but I can't have sex without kissing my partner, even if it's a one night stand. I mean come on, women aren't just objects of pleasure.*
Is this based on the false premises that: (1) kissing isn't pleasurable as well, or (2) they don't kiss in porn?
>I mean come on, women aren't just objects of pleasure. They're human beings. What's wrong in treating them like so?
What's wrong is that it doesn't mean anything. Wanting to fuck someone (and just that) doesn't mean you treat them inhumanely or that there's no respect. What would respect entail? Asking about their life story?
Where in seeking the other (or same) sex for pleasure and sex only did you see a lack of respect?
It's just a limited goal oriented interaction. It doesn't mean you beat them or cuss at them or threaten them or make them discomfortable.
It's like in some people's mind there's only love and cuddling and/or relationships where respect is possible, whereas casual sex is some unsafe and dangerous realm, if not close to rape.
Mainstream porn is about objectification. At the birth of modern video pornography, pornography was a vehicle for a story. The story was the theme, and the sex took up a small portion of the total run time, because who wants to watch people fucking for two hours?
Objectification is a very specific thing as regards sex. To objectify is to render less than human, to make something inanimate, lifeless. To have a single task, to be used as a tool. As a thing to be achieved or gained or possessed, bought and sold; a commodity.
Mainstream heteronormative porn mainly espouses a chauvinistic male point of view. In that view, women are usually objects. And since the women are the main subject of such porn, there's no focus on the guy, either - so both often seem like objects.
Porn in itself is an object, similar to a painting or piece of music. And also like art, the point is not to objectify the subject - it's to identify with the subject. What one does after that is particular to the person. Maybe you fall in love with the person on the screen? Hate them? Imagine a past lover who looks similar? Not everyone sees porn subjects as objects. Sometimes people want beautiful art, or escape. They don't necessarily want to see two machines banging into one another for an hour.
>Objectification is a very specific thing as regards sex. To objectify is to render less than human, to make something inanimate, lifeless. To have a single task, to be used as a tool.
And when you want to just fuck, whether you are a man or woman or anything else, that's exactly what you want.
When you want love and cuddling and connecting, that's another story (and you can even be the same person that in other instances wanted to just fuck. In fact usually that's the case).
But somehow those that want to just fuck, and thus seek in the other just that, are supposed to be made to feel guilty -- even if the other doesn't mind, and wants just that themselves.
>Mainstream heteronormative porn mainly espouses a chauvinistic male point of view.
That's the whole point. Porn is about pleasure. The "chauvinistic male point of view" provides pleasure to the majority (mainstream) of males.
Porn is not about expanding your mind and connecting with the Other and the magic of the universe. It's also not about empowering etc -- any more than cooking is about empowering eaters.
> > Objectification is a very specific thing as regards sex. To objectify
> > is to render less than human, to make something inanimate, lifeless.
> > To have a single task, to be used as a tool.
> And when you want to just fuck, whether you are a man or woman or
> anything else, that's exactly what you want.
"Just wanting to fuck" is not objectification. I can want to fuck someone without dehumanizing them. Implying that "just wanting to fuck" is the same as objectification, for everyone, all the time, is really not healthy.
> But somehow those that want to just fuck, and thus seek in the other
> just that, are supposed to be made to feel guilty -- even if the
> other doesn't mind
I haven't mentioned guilt or shame at all. I think you're projecting something else into my comment.
> That's the whole point. Porn is about pleasure. The
> "chauvinistic male point of view" provides pleasure to the majority
> (mainstream) of males.
It's pleasurable to you. It's not so pleasurable to someone else if they become the subject of your objectification fantasy without agreeing to that. And it's not so pleasurable to large segments of society who then become targets of behaviors learned from watching only this kind of porn.
..... which is the entire point being addressed by the business mentioned at the top of the article. But anyway.....
> Porn is not about expanding your mind and connecting with the Other
> and the magic of the universe. It's also not about empowering etc
> -- any more than cooking is about empowering eaters.
This is your view and personal opinion. It doesn't apply to everyone else.
>It's pleasurable to you. It's not so pleasurable to someone else if they become the subject of your objectification fantasy without agreeing to that.
Fantasies are personal. And if you mean the porn actors, they are paid and are into the whole thing (if they are not, that's of course another story). So what someone's fantasies are, is no business of anybody else -- and no one's agreement is required.
>And it's not so pleasurable to large segments of society who then become targets of behaviors learned from watching only this kind of porn.
Porn didn't exist when cavemen raped women. Besides, should we extend the same concern to video games, movies, literature, etc? How about we add violence to it? I, for one, wouldn't find it "pleasurable" to become target of behaviors someone learned in a street fighting video game or a FPS.
Next time I open a porn video that features no women at all, I'll be sure to take a moment to appreciate how it's objectifying women.
Regardless of your false statement, porn objectifies everyone involved. That's the point of porn in the same way that hooking up with someone for a night and going about your business the following day objectifies both of you. There's nothing wrong with being sexually interested in someone else and nothing else.
I wouldn't equate porn actors with professional sports players. The large majority of online porn is repetitive, degrading and banal. I believe the quality of sex comes from intimacy and mutual pleasure / respect. The porn industry seems to think quality means harder, faster, longer, whatever.
>But why do we look down upon them and call them fake.
For the same reason we call don't consider a role an actor portrays as "real".
Not only is the guy in the porn video not an actual plumber, but he probably could not care less about having sex with the lonesome busty housewife -- and especially not in front of a crew of 10, and following a specific formula until the final money shot.
They are different. No one argues that the participants in WWE are not physically impressive (it takes considerable strength and control to perform some of their moves) but it isn't sport in the same sense as football or "real" wrestling because it is largely choreographed rather than truly competitive. I tend to think of it as ultra-violent ballet.
It is still a perfectly valid sport (caveat: depending, of course, on how you define sport itself which can be a subjective matter) but if categorising things is your bag then I think it belongs more with synchronised swimming than it does with professional football.
(personal context: I've never been a WWE fan, though recreationally I do partake in catch wrestling from which WWE can claim some heritage)
You're totally right. And, many couples use porn for a purpose similar to that product. I suppose that's somehow less intimate than buying what this person is selling.
Here is what people like the first woman in this article never address:
If porn is so denatured, and so misrepresentative of reality, why do people make it themselves, and then share it with others, while never getting any money or fame from it? There's no other explanation than they enjoy it. And there are SO many places on the internet where people do this. And you can find all the stuff that is supposedly sooo unrealistic that "normal" people don't do. Singles, couples, groups, women and men, all of it. All of it.
Why not just admit, hey, there's things I like and things I don't like, and sometimes people like things I don't, and vice versa. (I mean, I know why, but.)
If they had a solid revenue model, they might be a good target for blockchain fundraising. I dislike the term ICO, because a token makes zero sense for this company. They could do what we're doing and sell shares (token-shares/blockchain bearer shares). I think we'll see a turn to this model in the post-ICO era, once the hype dies or the bubble bursts.
Another business which ran into this in its early days was NaturalMotion - they were initially building tech for realistic animated interactive porn - and they got an initial round of angels (HNWIs) on that basis.
Of course, they pivoted and ended up producing tech for movies and games, but porn was where they started.
It's not impossible to get investors for an adult startup (far from it), but it is hard to grow, as word of mouth and so-forth doesn't work so well there, for fairly obvious reasons.
If you are well connected in the adult business it is easy to get financing from other adult businesses and even more important massive traffic. But you need to have a unique concept that converts traffic which she clearly doesn't have.
The sex industry was under the scope of Operation Choke Point, an Obama-era initiative of the United States Department of Justice, which would investigate banks in the United States and the business they do with business in "edgy" categories, including pornography.
What does the MLNP company do? What is their business model? Looking at the website, the best I can tell is that it a person selling conference talks about sex.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 152 ms ] threadIt tries to keep a niche focus on "realistic" content produced by amateurs but considering most real sex doesn't translate well to video, I'm guessing it'll eventually be either just another low-quality amateur clip site or sacrifice authenticity for production quality and become a generic "for women" porn site.
For context, here is what distinguishes "porn" from "real sex" according to the website (obviously this list is not intended to be exhaustive):
* coming on women's faces
* no "hair down there"
* no foreplay
* no clitoral stimulation
* all women love anal
* dirty talk
I'm willing to wager creating porn without these qualifiers isn't a novel idea and that there are already existing websites offering that. None of these seem necessary or sufficient to distinguish between porn and "real sex" videos.
So, this is really about people drawing weird boundaries around what they find acceptable and labeling whatever's outside the boundary "porn". Mmm, so progressive.
Much of what is called "sex positivity" strikes me as suspicious for similar reasons.
Not huge money raised to be sure, but a good little business that's been growing pretty well.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/crave#/entity
https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/09/19/50-shades-of...
Their company site: http://www.lovecrave.com/
Certainly there are legitimate players, but you can't blame a payment processor or bank for not wanting to take high levels of risk.
Transaction fees are high but there are other cryptos. If the chargebacks are priced in to costs the sites could give a crypto discount to compensate.
You can buy these at many US supermarkets.
Either way, your customers have to get the currency somehow, and barely any of them will be bothered to. I suspect a lot of porn purchases are "heat of the moment", so to speak.
I'd not accept a job that only pays wages in bitcoin and in fact, it might violate minimum wage laws some places because you aren't paying in "real, government approved" money.
It isn't a morality issue (banks don't care) it is a risk issue.
Also, why won't they outright say they are concerned about fraud, much better than indirect responses they've been getting.
Not sure about VCs though, good point.
So much of the issues around this stuff would literally vanish overnight if we could just grow up in regards to sex and things involving sex. It's twenty freaking seventeen and we're still acting like it's this big scary thing.
Still makes the CC's fraud department do a lot of work.
It's like they're on the middle rung of the sex-positivity ladder, looked down upon by potential investors while themselves looking down at porn.
When we look at a professional football player play football, we never call it fake football. So why when it comes to sex we choose what is real and what is fake. I understand that very few people can have Sex like porn stars and very few women have the ability to look like porn starts. But why do we look down upon them and call them fake.
Gay porn invalidates your argument.
You could say "some porn objectifies women", or even "most porn targeted at straight men objectifies women", but making the claim that porn in general objectifies women is patently false.
Casual talk is not dealing in absolutes. We're not speaking in theorems and axioms. Even if someone says "people are idiots" they don't mean "X, for every X where X a person, is an idiot".
Note how they didn't even say "all porn": just "porn objectifies women". In casual speak even saying "all X does Y" is not necessarily intended to convey "absolutely all X". Just saying "X does Y" even less so.
>You could say "some porn objectifies women", or even "most porn targeted at straight men objectifies women", but making the claim that porn in general objectifies women is patently false.
No, it's perfectly OK (if a little beyond the point, see my other answer).
Here's how to read the phrase of the parent in casual conversation:
Porn objectifies women (when there are women in it -- DUH!). Most porn, that is -- some special snowflake outlier porn with women in it might not objectify them, and that's ok (DUH!). I'm talking about what generally happens, and what people actually get to see most of the time when they watch porn, not what some Peruvian feminist porn might show (DUH!). I also know there's animal porn, which obviously doesn't objectify women (DUH!)
In general, if how one interprets a conversational statement can be taken down by the addition of a few "DUH!", then probably this is not the interpretation intended by the original speaker. That's the "principle of charity".
It can do, it depends on context. When a statement is ambiguous, you have to infer meaning from context.
> That's the "principle of charity".
What about the "principle of unambiguous speech"? If a conversational statement can be taken down with a few "DUH!", people will try harder to be precise in their communication.
That's the whole art of casual conversation -- or any conversation for that matter, even the most rigorous scientific paper depends on millions of context-based assumptions.
There is a lot of explicit convention in science, it is not the same as general "art of casual conversation"; Scientists will likely have explicit qualification, and provide stats and data. More so for Law, were stakes are arguably even higher.
Anyway, in this case you made a absolute claim ("they don't mean") that isn't necessarily true. They can mean that.
How do you demonstrate that this isn't true, if is so subjective (an "art")? The answer, would be to incentivise clear, unambiguous language; at least in technical, specific conversations.
I made it in casual conversation myself. They can -- it's physically possible. But generally (statistically significantly) they don't.
I don't think so, and neither did the original respondent.
But I've never seen anybody mention say something about members of a group, ethnicity, nationality, whatever, etc in casual conversation and really mean it absolutely applies to everybody in that set with no exceptions (e.g. "Scots are stingy" or "Californians are into health").
And when I say "never seen anybody", consistent with my rule, I mean "I only seen very few do that".
So, I'm sure you can find some counter-examples. But do you really believe what I say is not true in the large majority of cases?
I believe what is is less important that what can be. Bitcoin/freenet/bitorrent is used heavily for shady and/or illegal business - that needn't be the case in the future.
"porn objectifies women" is a fairly loaded term, that incorporates, on average, a lot of assumption about what that means, and why it is relevant. The context is a large effort by certain groups, trying to prove porn is "harmful" - the objectification argument is the latest round of arguments against porn.
I fail to see the difference between "women are X" and "porn is X". Both are statements of the type "Y is X".
Furthermore, my point is that categorical statements in casual conversation mean "most, the majority etc", unlike categorical statements in formal logic.
>"porn objectifies women" is a fairly loaded term, that incorporates, on average, a lot of assumption about what that means, and why it is relevant. The context is a large effort by certain groups, trying to prove porn is "harmful" - the objectification argument is the latest round of arguments against porn.
Whether "porn objectifies women" is true or not is orthogonal to what I discussed here: that someone saying "porn objectifies women" doesn't mean "all porn ever made with no exception objectifies women" -- and thus their point can't be shut down with a mere counter-example (like several parent commenters here did).
But you said "something about members of a group". Y in the first case is a group (a population), Y in the second case is not.
Maybe statements about people, or groups of people, conventionally refer to the average, mean etc. but not necessarily about concepts such as "porn".
> orthogonal to what I discussed here..
Your last comment says "do you really believe.." so I stated my opinion in response to that.
You are cherry-picking an example when the speaker belongs to the category.
That doesn't make sense as an accusation, as that's the whole point of the activity: to objectify women (and men).
Porn, like casual sex, is about seeing the other person, and being interested in them, for a single dimension: sexually. Which is totally fine. Who said you should be interested in the whole package deal every time?
Maybe not have sex unless it's a relationship/marriage either? Men AND women do enjoy casual sex without any further purpose all the time.
Employment also sees the other person in one dimension: professionally. Traffic cops see the person in one dimension: how well they drive. Credit card companies see a other person in one dimension: what they do with their bills. All of those are objectifications: the other is a means to something. It's just because of being prudish and/or misunderstood feminism that specifically seeing the other in terms of sex (for casual sex, porn, flirting, etc), is considered especially heinous.
>Women look artificial with all these cosmetic surgeries. The whole thing looks artificial. Not to mention that it gives youngsters a very distorted view of how sex should be which is a whole other story by itself.
That's more like why it's "fake" -- not the objectifying thing.
In porn women are just objects. Or at least, in the mainstream str8 porn.
A world which is nobody's business between consenting adults.
>* I don't know about you, but I can't have sex without kissing my partner, even if it's a one night stand. I mean come on, women aren't just objects of pleasure.*
Is this based on the false premises that: (1) kissing isn't pleasurable as well, or (2) they don't kiss in porn?
>I mean come on, women aren't just objects of pleasure. They're human beings. What's wrong in treating them like so?
What's wrong is that it doesn't mean anything. Wanting to fuck someone (and just that) doesn't mean you treat them inhumanely or that there's no respect. What would respect entail? Asking about their life story?
I hope you're not serious. Respect means knowing and respecting boundaries. It means ensuring the other person feels safe and comfortable.
Where in seeking the other (or same) sex for pleasure and sex only did you see a lack of respect?
It's just a limited goal oriented interaction. It doesn't mean you beat them or cuss at them or threaten them or make them discomfortable.
It's like in some people's mind there's only love and cuddling and/or relationships where respect is possible, whereas casual sex is some unsafe and dangerous realm, if not close to rape.
Objectification is a very specific thing as regards sex. To objectify is to render less than human, to make something inanimate, lifeless. To have a single task, to be used as a tool. As a thing to be achieved or gained or possessed, bought and sold; a commodity.
Mainstream heteronormative porn mainly espouses a chauvinistic male point of view. In that view, women are usually objects. And since the women are the main subject of such porn, there's no focus on the guy, either - so both often seem like objects.
Porn in itself is an object, similar to a painting or piece of music. And also like art, the point is not to objectify the subject - it's to identify with the subject. What one does after that is particular to the person. Maybe you fall in love with the person on the screen? Hate them? Imagine a past lover who looks similar? Not everyone sees porn subjects as objects. Sometimes people want beautiful art, or escape. They don't necessarily want to see two machines banging into one another for an hour.
And when you want to just fuck, whether you are a man or woman or anything else, that's exactly what you want.
When you want love and cuddling and connecting, that's another story (and you can even be the same person that in other instances wanted to just fuck. In fact usually that's the case).
But somehow those that want to just fuck, and thus seek in the other just that, are supposed to be made to feel guilty -- even if the other doesn't mind, and wants just that themselves.
>Mainstream heteronormative porn mainly espouses a chauvinistic male point of view.
That's the whole point. Porn is about pleasure. The "chauvinistic male point of view" provides pleasure to the majority (mainstream) of males.
Porn is not about expanding your mind and connecting with the Other and the magic of the universe. It's also not about empowering etc -- any more than cooking is about empowering eaters.
..... which is the entire point being addressed by the business mentioned at the top of the article. But anyway.....
This is your view and personal opinion. It doesn't apply to everyone else.Fantasies are personal. And if you mean the porn actors, they are paid and are into the whole thing (if they are not, that's of course another story). So what someone's fantasies are, is no business of anybody else -- and no one's agreement is required.
>And it's not so pleasurable to large segments of society who then become targets of behaviors learned from watching only this kind of porn.
Porn didn't exist when cavemen raped women. Besides, should we extend the same concern to video games, movies, literature, etc? How about we add violence to it? I, for one, wouldn't find it "pleasurable" to become target of behaviors someone learned in a street fighting video game or a FPS.
Being sexually harassed at work objectifies women.
Next time I open a porn video that features no women at all, I'll be sure to take a moment to appreciate how it's objectifying women.
Regardless of your false statement, porn objectifies everyone involved. That's the point of porn in the same way that hooking up with someone for a night and going about your business the following day objectifies both of you. There's nothing wrong with being sexually interested in someone else and nothing else.
Also, found on the website linked on the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV8n_E_6Tpc
For the same reason we call don't consider a role an actor portrays as "real".
Not only is the guy in the porn video not an actual plumber, but he probably could not care less about having sex with the lonesome busty housewife -- and especially not in front of a crew of 10, and following a specific formula until the final money shot.
It is still a perfectly valid sport (caveat: depending, of course, on how you define sport itself which can be a subjective matter) but if categorising things is your bag then I think it belongs more with synchronised swimming than it does with professional football.
(personal context: I've never been a WWE fan, though recreationally I do partake in catch wrestling from which WWE can claim some heritage)
If porn is so denatured, and so misrepresentative of reality, why do people make it themselves, and then share it with others, while never getting any money or fame from it? There's no other explanation than they enjoy it. And there are SO many places on the internet where people do this. And you can find all the stuff that is supposedly sooo unrealistic that "normal" people don't do. Singles, couples, groups, women and men, all of it. All of it.
Why not just admit, hey, there's things I like and things I don't like, and sometimes people like things I don't, and vice versa. (I mean, I know why, but.)
Of course, they pivoted and ended up producing tech for movies and games, but porn was where they started.
It's not impossible to get investors for an adult startup (far from it), but it is hard to grow, as word of mouth and so-forth doesn't work so well there, for fairly obvious reasons.
There are also a couple of adult crowd funding sites, eg http://www.adultxfunding.com and some more.
The sex industry was under the scope of Operation Choke Point, an Obama-era initiative of the United States Department of Justice, which would investigate banks in the United States and the business they do with business in "edgy" categories, including pornography.