Comments Elsewhere

Amp:

None. I can’t understand the [relevance] of this question, however, unless you misunderstood my post.

I wasn’t saying that porn shared EVERY trait with women’s magazines, etc; just that it shared certain, particular traits I object to. “[Masturbation] material” isn’t a trait I object to, and isn’t one of the shared traits I was referring to.

Amp, the reason I asked is because for most antipornography feminists, the role that pornography plays in the formation of men’s sexual fantasies, desires, attitudes, pleasures, and activities is not just incidental to the critique of its consumption. It’s an important fact about pornography that men masturbate to it; not because masturbation is bad, but because fantasizing about and orgasming to scenes that are supposed to derive their “sexiness” from pornographic display, infantilization, sexualized humiliation and control, misogyny, racism, et cetera is.

Of course antipornography feminists need to, and do, strenuously object to misogynist content in all forms of media. (Dines’ and Jensen’s main point in the article you link is actually that if you accept those forms of media criticism — as you should — then it doesn’t make sense to suddenly turn off the scrutiny when it comes to the usually much more overtly reactionary content of pornographic media.) But the problem with saying, “This isn’t a problem with pornography specifically, it’s a problem with all media” is that there is a specific difference between “media” that you relate to by laughing at it, getting kicks from it, relaxing to it, etc., and “media” that you relate to by orgasming to it, habitually.

And that difference might explain why antipornography feminists think that pornography’s role in men’s sexual desires, fantasies, pleasure, and behavior deserves particular attention and criticism.