So today on the news I heard stories about people from my alma mater, CMU being upset about a porno flick playing on campus. Apparently some stick-in-the-muds, who have decided that they hate sex because they can’t get laid, are complaining because part of their student activities fee went to bringing porn to campus. Nevermind the fact that the student activities fee is like $50/year and supports about a thousand clubs, in addition to the say 160 movies that are shown on campus in a given year. Even forgetting the other clubs, that means each student is out 31 cents for this flick. Factor in all the other clubs, and its maybe a penny out of each students pocket. Maybe. Boo fucking hoo! I am so put out.
Another story was in the news today about a bus of strippers outside of Sunday’s Tampa Bay Bucs game. Apparently, the local Deja Vu Club had the great idea to create a moblie strip club. For $20 a guy could come in the the motor home and hang out with seven dancers and buy lap dances for another forty bucks. The police apparently decided this was a crime. I just call it enterprising business.
Ok, we know where I stand. Me likem the sex. Me likem the sex a lot. I’m pretty much all for just getting sex out there as much as possible. And hey, if there can be sex at a football game or sex in a boat movie, two of my greatest passions, well then hell yeah. I think that CMU having a an activities fee is a good idea. And I’m all for it being spent in diverse ways. If the activities fee can support Asian, African and Jewish cultural organizations, if it can support clubs devoted to gaming or juggling or medieval reenactment, if it can support social organizations for devoted to rock climbing, skiing or geeks being, well, geeky, then jayzdammit it should be able to bring a porno flick to campus twice a year. I don’t care if it offends some people. What if I’m a nazi and the black and jewish clubs offend me?
And I think we know where I stand on the whole stripping thing. I’m well on record for legalizing prostitution. Legalize it, regulate it and tax the fuck out of it. Sex is just an act. A service. Any other service can be be commoditized and no one cares. Why can’t fucking? Why does everyone always make sex so special. Because its part of marriage? I can pay someone to cook for me, clean for me, take care of me when I’m sick and raise my kids. Is sex really the only part of marriage worth protecting? If so then who the fuck cares about the whole gay marriage issue. Just fuck whoever you want. Everyone will be happier that way. Well, except the people who are ugly, since you’re not letting them buy pussy.
Ok, I get that some people don’t agree with me or my politics. Really I do. I really don’t have a problem with that. I know that I’m nuts. I lost my mind a long time ago. Really, I’m ok with it. But can someone who is rational please explain to me why people have a problem with sex? I’m totally for someone making the personal choice to not go to a strip club. I’m ok with someone not wanting to watch porn. I’m ok with someone keeping their kids from listening to Howard Stern. Whatever. But exactly why is sex so big a deal to people, religious or otherwise that they go out of their way to stop other people from enjoying it. At least with things like cigarettes or drugs, there is an argument, a weak one, but an argument that other people doing them might raise insurance rates. But all allowing me to lust, fornicate, sodomize or whatnot will do is send me to hell. How does that hurt you? Wouldn’t religion teach you to let me make my own choices and failures? And if you remove religion, what possible reason is there for any of these laws whatsoever. I’ve got like a degree in analyzing culture, and I could make something up, but that’s all it would be. Made up.
So that’s what I want to know. No matter which side of the issue you fall on. I want to know why you think there’s any justification to having laws about this stuff one way or the other. And hey, let me know where you stand and why too.
The movie cost $30, btw. So admissions more than paid for it. Student money used to pay for it? Only that of students who saw it. But why let facts bother you, when you have a mission!
$30 to get in? Are you serious? Buying the DVD yourself from Jesse Jane’s website is only $49.95. Or are you saying that it only cost CMU $30 to show it, and they charge the standard $1.00 admission?
No. Thirty dollars to show. That’s entirely the cost of printing the posters and paying the AB person to sit in the box and run the projector (I think they’re paid?). AB actually got to show the movie itself for free, on the condition that they put the movie’s website on all of the posters.
That’s right. This was pure profit.
ok, so these people are just COMPLETELY insane then. *sigh* I posted the URL. Why don’t I get a free copy of the movie.
Also, this still doesn’t explain why people care.
ok, so these people are just COMPLETELY insane then.
Also, this still doesn’t explain why people care.
No, I think that pretty well sums it up.
I don’t think insanity is a good enough rationale. Listening to those people, it’s clear that they’re doing something they think is right for what they believe are the right reasons. There’s some sort of logic there. I don’t have to agree with it, I just want to know what it is.
For instance I get the anti-smoking logic. I get the keeping sexual things away from children logic. I get I don’t agree with them, but I understand them well enough that I could have an intelligent conversation with someone who has the opposing viewpoint and I can see their points as valid, if wrong.
I don’t get the logic behind keeping sexual material away from consenting adults who want to enjoy it. Are we just trying to save souls? Are we trying to keep crime away? Are we trying to not lower the property values? Are we doing something more. I mean, tell me they believe it raises rape instances. Tell me something.
Hell if I know what’s really at the base of it. I’m pretty sure though, that when people try to talk about all of the horrible things that porn does to a person, they’re just trying to justify their pre-existing feelings.
As best I can tell, people just take it as an axiom that Porn is Bad. Why? Because Porn is Bad.
right, but masturbation is bad, and I don’t see a lot of people trying to enact laws to stop that. They just accept that us sinners are going to go to hell blind and with hairy palms.
Same with all kinds of non-sexual only harmful to self issues. Eating red meat, drinking too much, playing contact sports, being black (or jewish or mexican or insert minority group here). Pretty much everything that is “wrong” with the exception of sex, and I guess drugs, people look blindly away from. But with those two things, there always has to be a law. Hell, the extreme christian right doesn’t even try to force laws making people worship Jesus. They just assume that all the jews and muslims and hovaites are going to hell and fuck us. If we’re really trying to use laws to save souls, you’d think they’d be much more worried about the jews, which have got to be greater in number, than the strippers and gays.
You know what make *me* hot?
The fact that Pirates comes in HD-DVD. Not that I’m a dork or anything.
Re: You know what make *me* hot?
yeah, I saw that too…its what’s making me seriously consider the purchase
Re: You know what make *me* hot?
You’re just going to have to buy it again in BluRay once HD-DVD fails and it becomes impossible to buy a machine to play them anymore. Or something.
Re: You know what make *me* hot?
well, I preseume that the disc must play on standard DVD as well, otherwise they’d have no market for it at all.
Hmmm… “BluRay Porn. The closets you’ll come to actually fucking her and yet still being lame!” Yeah, I should go into marketing.
Re: You know what make *me* hot?
Actually, I rather suspect neither DVD format will really win. If Sony owned a movie studio back when VCRs were first gaining popularity, they’d have kept releasing all of their movies on Betamax, some/most of the other studios would have used VHS, and you’d have needed 2 players to play all of the available movies.
Besides, if Sony can convince the other studios to release movies in a format that will only play on a Sony-produced portable device at the same time as releasing DVDs, who’s to say they won’t be willing to put out every single movie in 10 competing high definition DVD formats, with widescreen and fullscreen versions of each?
Re: You know what make *me* hot?
nah, Betamax didn’t because Sony didn’t have their own studio. Betamax lost because Sony was stupid/greedy about letting other people produce hardware and media. UMD doesn’t have that problem (at least not by design, we’ll see how it turns out). And BluRay is meant to be a standard, Sony only has partial ownership. It almost certainly won’t be a problem. Anyway, following the buzz over the last couple years, I actually am pretty much expecting BluRay to crush HDDVD.
people want to pretend like sex just doesn’t exist outside of thier own world or when they themselves are thinking about it…or there’s always the cry that the children will see it and we can’t have that, even when there’s no chance of any kids ever seeing it. Just tight-asses enforcing their views on everyone else
even if I grant the children argument, which I’m not sure I do. V-chip technology is such that we really shouldn’t have to worry about it. And the above instances I quoted, a X-rated movie and a mobile gentlemen’s club, children aren’t allowed anyway. No on can see these things by accident. They are only available to adults who pay to enjoy them. No one is going to happen upon it by accident. They are explicitly asking for it. Leave these people alone!
Mmmmm…. tight asses….
FWIW the student $1/film in DH2210 (room and price have changed no doubt) has had a porno once a year for all the years its been running, at least that’s how I remember it. it ain’t news!
oh, college coeds watch sex flicks, I’m shocked, shocked.
yeah, that’s what I was pointing out. One or two films out of 160 shown over the year.
Damn puritans…
i remember back when i wanted to show a porn. well a. if there’s 1000 people seeing it, i’m sure that paid for the movie, not the fee. and b. i had a problem… grrr… i had to get a not-really-porn to “show” nad have someone “break in” and switch to a porn “without me knowing”
so lame.
that’s what was saying above. Apparently, it only cost them $30 to show the film since the company gave it to them for free for the advertising.
As a member of ABTEch you had to lie to get porn played? That’s odd, because they used to do it all the time and advertise for it. And apparently they are again.
As you probably know I’m pretty libertarian on social issues. Whatever consenting adults want to do or watch in privacy, so long as it only involves consenting adults and/or inanimate objects, is pretty much fine with me.
As to why various others don’t agree with this stance… I observe that a number of members of prosetylizing religions (Christianity and Islam being the obvious examples) have some stake in making everyone (members of the religion or not) conform to the religion’s behavioral ideals. I could go on for some time about why I think this happens, but suffice it to say that I think it’s mostly a product of “OneTrueWayism” and the notion of earthly life as a short-term proving ground for whether one goes to heaven or not.
Otherwise, some number of other people (not necessarily religious or “conservative” in the popular sense) do believe that there are social costs to sexual liberalism… everything from degradation of marriage relationships, to unhealthy environments for rearing children, to increased misogyny due to unrealistic portrayals of women in pornography.
I think my problem was with it being shown in the UC, which is a very public place, and it being advertised on posters all around campus. I know lots of college kids watch porn. I’ve been stuck in a room with “Lord of the G-Strings” on the TV before, so technically, I guess I have, too. But … in public? Condoned by my university?
My problem with pornography (because, yeah, I’m very anti-porn) is, like said, because of “degradation of … relationships” and “unrealistic portrayals of women in pornography.” For the latter, I wouldn’t use the word “misogyny,” necessarily, because doesn’t seem to me like it would lead to a hatred of women… just a, um, misunderstanding. A … view of them as lesser people. (“Contempt,” almost, but not quite.) People aren’t sex objects, and pornography seems to imply that they are. And a lot of pornography, “Pirates” in particular, is showing the women as sex objects. It’s degrading. It’s offensive. It’s disrespectful to women as people. (Yeah, you could argue that it “glorifies” women, but it only does so in their “role” as sex objects, and that is not what women are. Sorry. I don’t like that there’s a huge industry devoted to making films telling us differently.)
And sex is, to a lot of people, a really personal thing. In those people’s minds, it’s just not something that belongs on film. Watching pornography is desensitizing. It gives people who watch it unrealistic expectations of both themselves and their partners.
Anyway, this is all in my opinion, of course. I’m not out there lobbying to take away your porn rentals or to close your strip clubs. I didn’t raise a big stink about “Pirates,” despite being offended by it (and every other TBA before it). Watching porn is a “right,” I suppose, and while I won’t get up in arms about people trying to take it away, I won’t help them. (I won’t sign petitions to “Keep Porn Legal,” either, though.) I just… I find its existence abhorrent, and I want it kept away from me.
Well said–this is pretty much how I feel about porn.
which part do you agree with? All of it? just parts? I haven’t answered yet because she has a lot of well thought out arguments, and I want to take my time responding. But I think she makes good points and bad. I will expound later.
Aside from the nature of pornography itself, there is a fundamental objection to pornography because it (and I’m generalizing here) targets women with low self-esteem and/or women who deperately need the money, possibly to support a drug habit. (I’m not suggesting a causal relationship, but a correlation likely exists.) Sex, even on a porn-set, is personal enough of an act that we probably don’t want the full weight of a capitalist economy pressuring people into (or out of) it.
My personal viewpoint is that professional grade pornography tends to be kinda boring, and only really interesting to heckle. The bodies are too fake, the sex too unemotional, and frankly, whoever invented the “ball-cam” angle really needs to have bad things happen to him. I find amateur and homemade porn much more interesting. The moans tend to correspond to actual things happenning, the guys aren’t so desensitized that they are actually able to have orgasms without lending a hand, and it all seems more… accessible? People tend to be into the moment and enjoying it, rather than bend-over-and-think-of-England.
I got sidetracked by the comments, and forgot to comment on the original issue.
[rant]
1) You don’t get to choose where your student activities fee goes, so cope with it. If you really don’t like the university’s ethics, go somewhere else. I’m morally opposed to us nuking the planet fifteen times over, but I don’t get to vote than my dollar doesn’t go towards nuclear proliferation. The best I can do is try to choose leaders who aren’t nutjobs, or run for office myself. If people don’t like the way AB runs movies, they are welcome to try to change its leadership, open a competing organization sans porn, or just pretend it doesn’t exist and not support it further. Going to the school administration is like complaining to your parents that your brother stole your GI Joe figure. Grow up and deal with it like an adult.
2) If AB made money on it, then it is more a fundraiser than a university sponsored production, in which case the university should butt out. If it isn’t illegal, they should let it happen. Schools are too sensitive over their public image, and it is derailing free speech on campuses.
3) If that person seriously thinks that pornography is fine at home, but shouldn’t be shown as a campus show, then she’s a fucking fascist and should mind her own business. Objecting to porn is fine, but objecting to free speech of something which you don’t find questionable is not.
[/rant]
1) Exactly. I always felt that way whenever anyone protested how activities fee money got spent. As I said elsewhere, the entire point is to bring different culture to campus. I support giving activities money to a club showing a porn flick. I support giving activities money to a club bringing Malik Zulu Shabazz to speak. I’d support using money to allow a nazi to speak as well. To make a judegment call based on values of one activity weakens the freedom of all the others. If porn is objectionable then maybe its objectionable to allow those faggots in cmuOUT to have money. And if its ok to block them from fund, why not those niggers in Spirit. And if that’s ok, then we should be able to take that house away from those filthy Jews in AEPi. And now that we’ve gotten rid of the jews, why are we admitting women to the school at all?
2) Exactly, that was just born of ignorance, I think.
3) Yeah, that’s kinda what I was trying to illustrate in 1.
hmmm… that generalization is certainly a commonplace enough belief, whether its true or not. I don’t know that I believe it. But as I said, it doesn’t really matter. I just want to hear people’s viewpoints. Anyway, do you really think that the treatment of the talent is really on the minds of 90% of people who protest porn?
For the record, though yeah, its orthogonal to any actual point. To the extent that I like porn at all, and as I said elsewhere, I really prefer softcore, Skinemax B-movie stuff, I tend to prefer hollywoodish overproduced porn to amateur stuff. Really, I’m not terribly exicited by watching other people fuck. I could do without the ball-cam yes, but in general, I’d much rahter see well lit, well photographed camera sex to real sex. Real sex is not very visually appealing. Impractical movie sex on the other hand, that takes into account aesthetic visuals over the actual pleasure of the actors, that’s something more appealing to me. Similarly, when modeling, nude or fashion, for photography or painters, generally the more uncomfortable the pose, the better the shot is going to be.
I do see your point about the porn-showing perhaps not being the most appropriate University-condoned activity, though I was never particularly bothered by it when I was there. I did go to a couple of the TBAs and found that most people seemed to view it as comedic material rather than something for sexual gratification.
Personally, I’ve found nearly all the porn I’ve seen to be dull, unintentionally funny, or otherwise unappealing. I do agree that the objectifying portrayal of women (and men, too, in a way) is sometimes dismaying and certainly not something I care to emulate in my own life.
Having browsed through various store collections, my impression is that porn is oddly equal-opportunity about exploitativeness– gay porn, anal sex, interracial, transexuals, old/young pairings– whatever your desire (unless it’s good lesbian porn, but I digress), you can find it commodified for you on the net or DVD. That doesn’t excuse exploitative behavior in general, but I think it does counter the argument that porn is primarily oriented around the exploitation of women.
Now I’m curious about whether any of the TBAs have been anything other than relatively vanilla hetero content. Would people tolerate a showing of Big Black Gay Dicks Anal Action 12?
The porn industry is about making money. Therefore it strives to aim at every possible niche market there is. Are you into seeing girls in angel costumes vomit on guys in leather gore suits while midgets watch from a vat of mashed potatoes, then dammit, there’s something out there for you. But much like any other industry, particularly media, there is going to be one one strong demographic that is primary driving force. In porn, like most other movies and TV, its 18-35 year old, hetero white males, so that’s what the movies are going to be tailored to.
That said, I agree with you, even in these movies, the objectification is not just towards women. Men are actually more objectified as the women tend to be more central to the storylines. Ron Jeremy is actually on record saying that no one is watching porn to see him. The guy is a prop. A penis might as well be a dildo.
The thing is, art, particular film, is all about exploitation to one level or another. A painting of a woman is not a woman. The Mona Lisa is exquisite because it captures a specific element. In the case of porn, that element is sexuality. How successfullyl it is captured is a different issue. But the point is that in order to tell a story, the artist relies on the the audience bring certain understandings to the piece and imbueing a stereotype with these experiences. Porn happens to be a very successful media because sex is a subject that people really want to explore. But this is no less true of any other story.
At least that’s what logic says. But what I’m still looking for is someone to explain the feelings.
so it took me a while to get to answering you because I wanted to wait til I could write a really good one.
so I got into this a little bit with. My biggest complaint with the whole objectification argument is that it is artificial. Yes, porn does make sex out to be more important than any other aspect of a woman’s personality. But it does the same to men. Moreover, detective movies make crime-solving ability. Action movies celebrate the ability to shoot straight, etc. Sexuality is a big part of womanhood in our society. That’s simply how it is. And I don’t personally consider sexuality to be less worthy a trait than anything else. We tend to say that models give unreasonable body expectations to young girls, because most people simply can’t look that way. But most people can’t be rocket scientists either. Aspiring to be Marilyn vos Savant is just as unhealthy as aspiring to be Marilyn Monroe.
anyway, that said, I don’t really disagree with your dislike of porn. I actually much prefer B-movies (I wouldn’t classify Lord of the G-strings as porn) to porn. I’m not so into renting our buying porn. Viewing realistic sex doesn’t really turn me on. Viewing fantastic sex is better. Its the difference between taking an attractive picture and a realistic one (even of dressed people). Art isn’t about reality. Its fantasy that is appealing. Anyway, my point is, I’m not really defending porn because I’m into it.
Anyway, my big point is that if you want to not see porn, there’s a very simple solution. Not going to see it. The one that you seem to be practicing. But by saying that you want it kept away from you, I feel that that’s asking “the law” (not necessarilly, but you get my point, I hope) to do your job for you. At the expense of others freedoms. Is porn desensitizing? I’d actually argue no. You’d argue yes. But it doesn’t matter. Because even if it is, that’s irrelevant because 3000 people made a choice to see that film that night, and they have the right to be desensitized. Unlike yourself however, there were people complaining about how AB had no right to show those films because they might offend some people. Offense doesn’t matter. If I’m offended by Penguins, that doesn’t mean that no one should be allowed to see March of the Penguins. Of course, the issue is that this isn’t penguins, its sex. But my entire point is “why is sex special?” Why is it ok to want to block sexual movies from campus view but not ones dealing with explicit language(Sin City), racism (Hotel Rawanda) or murdering children (Star Wars III). Ok, I personally am very hard to offend, but I know several people who are offended by the Harry Potter movies, for their portrayal of magic and its sacreligiouness. It is impossible to argue that Pirates shouldn’t be shown and argue that Harry Potter should.
I for one am of the opinion that it is CMU’s responsibility to give their students the opportunity to be exposed to as many different cultural influences (agnostic to whether they are positive or negative influences) as possible, and therefore, the movie was not only ok, but good. If there were a club that simply drained money away from the activities budget so that 5 guys living in the basement of mudge could rent a porn flick every saturday night, I’d say that maybe there was a point. On the other hand, that essentially how the anime club got started (only it was anime and not porn). But this wasn’t that. This was a profitable (not a drain) viewing of a relevant cultural phenomenon (pornography is big, for better or for worse) by a large group of consenting adult students. I think its commendable.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time for giving a detailed opposing viewpoint. That’s what i was really looking for. If you feel like responding, I’d love it if you’d detail exactly why sex is important enough to warrant special protection (even if you don’t believe it is) whereas other things aren’t. Or where other things are important to warrant protection as well.
As far as the one true way theory, its my contention that most people, even very religious ones, don’t seem to really follow that except in very specific circumstances. Sure there are door to door jehovah’s witnesses. There are nation of islam muslims passing out literature at the bus station. But for the most part, even the most religious of people don’t really seem to have the ambition to push their beliefs on others, except when it comes to sex and maybe drugs.
I’m not sure I believe in increased misgony dude to unrealstic portrayal of women. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. I think its an overly dramatic simplification born of too strict belief in a feminist ideal. I actually think the concept of feminism is good. But taken to the extreme the belief tends to be that anything objectifying is bad, and objectification is most often claimed when the issue is sexual in nature. But art in general, and fiction in specific are about objectification. It sets just as unrealistic a goal for women to meet to portray a character that is a crime solving, neurosurgeon astronaut with a 160 IQ as it does to show a 5’10, 38DD-22-36, blonde with a perfect tan. For some reason people tend to only center on the sexual portrayal instead of the intellectual one.
Finally, I guess what i was asking is WHY does sexual liberalism degrade marriage or create an unhealthy environment for children. If someone could explain to me why they felt it did (even if I didn’t agree), I could at least understand (the way I understand but disagree with the misogyny and unhealthy body image arguments). But instead, much like the premise that homosexual marriage weakens marriage, I don’t see how porn or strippers hurt the children (who don’t get to experience them in the first place).
What I find to be ironic, if not hypocritical, is that people will bitch about sex in tv/movies/pornos/etc, yet there’s not a big issue about people’s heads being chopped off or blown off.
Our country seems to have the idea that sex is bad and violence is awesome. Speaking as someone who’s watched French tv, it’s the exact opposite, which could explain their MUCH lower crime rate. Not that TV/movies cause violence exactly, but the correlation between the two is too strong to ignore.
Because, obviously, watching two adults have consensual sex is much more sinful/evil/terrible than watching something like House of 1,000 Corpses or Saw or even The Exorcist. (Heavy sarcasm)
ah ha! yes. This was exactly my point. I think its totally fine for them to play Saw on campus. I think its totally fine for them to play Pirates. But I do think its really silly that people are so much more likely to have a problem with Pirates than with Saw.
For the record, I enjoy having sex a lot more than I enjoy chopping people’s heads off, but if the situation was reversed, I’d be defending violence in film too.
Lol. Sex is definitely better than chopping off heads.
But that’s just the way our society is…unfortunately. I’d much rather watch porno than House of 1,000 Corpses or Saw!
well, that’s an awfully telling comment that I didn’t know about you… 🙂
We had a porn watching party a long time ago… maybe some day again…
There’s a lot people don’t know about me…even people who claim to know me very well.
Porn watching party? That sounds…interesting. So basically a bunch of people show up and you all just sit around watching porn?
yep… and drink and make fun of it…
alternatively, I guess we could have a porn making party. I do have a video camera. But that’s a little different.
Ummm…porn making party? Not a good idea. lol.
well, it depends on what your concept of good idea is, doesn’t it?
Well, yes it does. My concept of a good idea is probably not watching porn. Although entertaining, I don’t want a bunch of horny drunk guys around me. lol