We tend to comment reactively on this and like issues only from current and very insular perspectives.

Try this on estimates of the scale of casual prostitution in Victorian London by contemporary observers:
http://www.victorianlondon.org/crime/numbersofprostitutes.htm

“Japan is currently the largest pornographic producer in the world, producing more pornography than the United States”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Japan

@1 ummm… lots of “citation needed” tags all over that article. Including the statement you quote.
Although if you’re looking for an example of a culture that over-sexualises it’s children Japan is the right place for it, if you’re brave enough google “lolicon” (definitely NSFW, or even polite conversation). Hold onto your sunday lunch though.

So basically, despite all your earlier comments about women having agency, etc. you still want a ‘consensus’ which views sexuality in explicitly 1970s quasi-Marxist terms?

You make a lot of assertions about a link between capitalism and ‘patriarchy’ but you don’t demonstrate any link at all: in fact your language (‘brutally identikit heterosexual consensus’, ‘grinding, monotonous, deodorised sexual dialectic’, etc) might employ a couple of Marxist buzzwords but it is essentially conservative and moralistic.

Can you explain to us what YOU mean by a ‘dialectic’ because as far as I can see it means fuck-all in the sentence you used it.

Commentators, including feminist thinkers, are making the dangerously recalcitrant assumption that any sexually explicit culture is automatically misogynist, and that rather than working to challenge the sexual consensus, we should simply prevent women and children from coming into contact with it.

Well, that’s exactly what happened back in the 1980s in both the US and the UK, thanks to a toxic combination of Dworkin and Mackinnon’s anti-porn feminism, and the Reagan/Thatcher New Right. The former repeatedly conflated the sexism of porn with its sexual explicitness, and now it looks like the same mistake is about to made all over again by a new generation (along with the feminists who made that mistake last time and have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing in the meantime). Moreover, it may also be the case that sexual choices are not simply some sub-category of feminist struggle (a woman’s right to her own sexual choices is the issue, not what she chooses to do by way of sex). Throwing restrictive legislation at the problem – a typical Home Office stretegy, let alone a New Labour one – makes it impossible for those women who either want to be honest, or to challenge the status quo (e.g. by producing ‘feminist porn’).

The assumption behind the kind of quasi-Marxist feminist critique of sexuality we see here is that ‘patriarchy’, ‘capitalism’, or whatever, distorts some kind of natural, presumably ‘un-deodorised’ sexuality that deconstructing present social relations will return to us, which is clearly (a) an essentialist argument, and (b) total bollocks.

There is no prelapsarian ‘natural state’ that any revolution, sexual or otherwise, will return us to. Culture, society and sexuality are always socially defined. Criticising existing relations as ‘deodorised’ or whatever doesn’t help your argument *at all* since whatever alternative you propose to take their place are no more ‘natural’.

You are trying to have it every which way in this article. Free sexuality is fine but it’s also misogynist, women aren’t responsible for their sexuality but they also have agency.

What is the problem exactly and what makes this obsession with women consensually getting their tits out any different from a Tory moral panic.
Women have more respect for their sexual autonomy than ever before, so what do we find? Women’s free sexuality isn’t all that different from men. It is demanding, promiscuous, gross and totally unashamed. Only a thorough bourgeois would have a problem with accepting that.

Whilst I share some of the worries here I find it deeply problematic to see a feminist using terms such as ‘slag’ and ‘slut’. These terms have been used to oppressive effect, to control women’s sexuality and castigate those who do not conform to sexist norms.
As feminists, I think we should be careful about the language we use. It may seem a small matter, but it is all too easy to perpetuate the social norms that we should be challenging.

I think I agree with Nick in that this article sounds contradictory Laurie. If there shouldn’t be a moral panic over women sexualising themselves – then why do you sound like you’re having a moral panic anyway?

Also, you say: Instead of slapping a blanket ban on pictures of tits, we need to look harder at the economic basis for sexual exploitation and at the reasons why many women make the choice to comply with raunch culture.

I’m not sure what you mean here either. There is an economic basis to sell porn/mags, and not all women who get into stripping do so because they’re exploited.

If what you mean is – we can’t get rid of this system unless we overthrow capitalism, then just say so. I’m not sure otherwise what you’re saying.

FWIW I noticed a few years ago that it was becoming increasingly unusual for women – of almost any age above school-leaving age – to wear skirts and dresses. Travelling around on buses – since I don’t have a car now – I did a few number checks on pedestrians we passed. Sure enough, the majority of women were wearing trousers. I can’t believe this is just a new fashion trend.

The second thing to notice is that with the soaring costs to students of financing a higher education, young women are exploiting their sex as a means of raising funds. This is true not just of Belle de Jour and the author of: Confessions of a Working Girl (Penguin Books, 2007) but also of this enterprising New Zealand student who auctioned her virginity over the internet to fund her tuition fees:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3286794/Teen-sells-virginity-for-45-000-online

Could this be one reason why women students now outnumber men across the board?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1074003.ece

We have come a long way since Daniel Defoe wrote this in 1719:

“I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.”

What, no mention of Simone de Beauvoir, a pioneering feminist, tactfully described in her wiki entry as polyamorous?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir

Laurie, I agree with you that the current commentary about women’s increasing sexualisation should be rejected. It seems pretty clear to me that they’re mostly just advancing the standard patriarchal pattern of encouraging/coercing women to use their sexuality as a social tool, while then condemning said women for being ‘whores’ when they do so. (Standard double-bind).

I don’t think this has anything to do with agency or the lack thereof. Yes, we’re mostly looking at the free sexual choices of women and yes these choices are mostly made in heavily constrained, biased circumstances.

I grant that sexual images would be unproblematic in the socialist-feminist utopia, but in reality the patriarchal influence of these images is going to remain for some time. Displaying soft porn in our culture is going to have decided anti-female effects, so why not ban it? It’s no substitute for assaulting the elements of culture that mean that a simple image of a naked woman has negative effects, but it will stop harms that otherwise would definitely occur.

@2:

As for citations, late night, live sex-shows on Japan’s TV networks are notorious among visitors. There’s one retrievable on the web – which I won’t post a link to – showing a large, bubbly audience of teen girls cheering on a live show conducted as theatre in the round or in a sumo wrestling match arena, presumably so the whole audience could get a good view of proceedings and to facilitate audience participation – I joke not. The Daily Mail would go apoplectic if anything remotely like that was broadcast in Britain. It’s difficult to believe that the large audience was being coerced. We need to allow the possibility that different historic traditions cultural values may prevail in other countries.

Btw as for child-sex, other Asian countries have more of a reputation than Japan.

Sunny – ‘If there shouldn’t be a moral panic over women sexualising themselves – then why do you sound like you’re having a moral panic anyway?’

Women sexualising themselves in a staid and self-objectifying manner, rather than exploring desire in a more healthy way, should be a cause for concern. But there’s a clear distinction between a cause for concern and a moral panic leading to unhelpful legislation, which is what we may have here. Do you see the difference?

Women need real economic alternatives to sex work and to self-objectification: they don’t need pity, or to be blamed, or to be protected from ‘sexual’ materials.

If we’re to ban anything, how about banning actually misogynist advertising? Have a bunch of feminists work in consultation with policymakers to decide what is and is not hatespeech and put guidelines in place for advertisers? Far more targetted and effective, without being repressive.

There are pitfalls in judging matters of sex and sexuality without analysing the associated cultural and social context.

While feminism has been obsessed with these issues for decades I can’t help but feel that any progress gained in the 60s and 70s was lost in the 80s and the subsequent backlash against idiot Dworkinism and other extremes.

It all smacks of a fear of the implications of allowing adults to freely express themselves sexually in case the result fails to conform with some assumed political position.

‘Women need real economic alternatives to sex work and to self-objectification: they don’t need pity, or to be blamed, or to be protected from ’sexual’ materials.’

Women in your world have no economic alternatives to sex work? WTF?

‘If we’re to ban anything, how about banning actually misogynist advertising? Have a bunch of feminists work in consultation with policymakers to decide what is and is not hatespeech and put guidelines in place for advertisers? Far more targetted and effective, without being repressive.’

I knew that sudden conversion to opposing censorship wouldn’t last long. Having a bunch of feminists – presumably quasi-Marxist ones – vet all advertising for ideological impurities might be the kind of ‘utopia’ you dream of but it’s not that different form that proposed by the Taliban.

Laurie @ 13: “Women need real economic alternatives to sex work and to self-objectification”

C’mon. Let’s have a bit more reality and less leftist fantasy.

“Women now out number and out perform men at all universities, study finds”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5417475/Women-now-out-number-and-out-perform-men-at-all-universities-study-finds.html

“More women than men in the UK now work in high status professions, research by the University of Cambridge has shown. But men are still paid far more than women, the report into employment and pay in 10 European countries reveals.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8194541.stm

“More women will be working than men within four years after the number of males with jobs slumped to an all-time low, say researchers. They believe the recession has created a ‘Full Monty generation’, who have lost traditional male jobs and moved on to benefits.

“An analysis of official figures reveals that the number of men of working age with jobs has slumped from 92 per cent in 1971 to 75 per cent today. Meanwhile, the number of women who are employed has risen from 56 to 69 per cent as the service sector has flourished.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239783/More-women-men-work-4-years.html

Ah there we are. The classic Marxist and feminist answer to all our ills. This isn’t just censorship, this is Arbitrary censorship. Just hand over the powers to some committee with the right comptence and let them punish people they deem to be engaging in hate speech. Or better yet, ban anyone from expressing anything until it’s been okayed by the wise ones.

No chance of the committee ever running amok mcarthy style or getting captured by special interests. After all that never happens when something as basic as free speech is at stake.

I have to say I struggle to see the difference between the meaning of this sentence:

“Despite the dazzling gains made for bourgeois white women by reformist feminism, we’re….well, we’re turning into sluts.”

And this passage:

“I’m not arguing that raunch culture does not hurt young women. It hurts us deeply. It encourages us to lessen, cheapen and diminish ourselves, to think of ourselves as vehicles for the sexual appreciation of men who still hold economic sway over our lives. It makes us understand that what we look like is as important or more important than what we do, and sells us a fake, plasticised image of empowerment that, for most of us, is deeply disempowering – as many wealthy and powerful middle-aged men and women have recently observed.”

Surely their meaning is identical, it is just that one uses a lot bigger words at some greater length?

@13

If we’re to ban anything, how about banning actually misogynist advertising? Have a bunch of feminists work in consultation with policymakers to decide what is and is not hatespeech and put guidelines in place for advertisers?

Erm… seriously? Just who is defining ‘feminism’ here? And ‘misogynist’ for that matter. And would the highly successful businesswomen Katie Price be allowed on board?

Absolutely cracking post, Laurie.

Sunny: there’s nothing incoherent here at all. Laurie is quite right to make the distinction she does in her reply to you above. Indeed, this is an extremely nuanced piece that elegantly walks a tightrope between different forms of confusion and over-reaction.

Shatterface: Do you reckon maybe you could try reading one of Laurie’s articles without going all swivel-eyed first? It might help you connect to her actual arguments as oppose to what you expect her arguments to be before you read them.

“I’m not arguing that raunch culture does not hurt young women. It hurts us deeply. It encourages us to lessen, cheapen and diminish ourselves, to think of ourselves as vehicles for the sexual appreciation of men who still hold economic sway over our lives.”

What do you mean “we”. Are you saying that you’re capable of the level of self – deluding mental contortionism which would be required to allow you to think about yourself in that way, despite writing this article? Because, if you don’t think of yourself as a “vehicle for the sexual appreciation of men” then you really shouldn’t be using the first person plural pronoun, should you? If, however, you have written this article and still manage to think of yourself in that way then it’s clearly evidence that there’s something seriously amiss. I mean seriously amiss with you, not with society. To what extent are you, personally, economically oppressed or controlled by men? To what extent do you, in your day to day life, feel encouraged to lessen or cheapen yourself? Do you manage, by some heroic effort, to resist such encouragement? You’re an inspiration.

Is this not, in fact, just another article, the main object of which appears to be to allow you to place yourself in a group which is staggering under the yolk of some form of “oppression?”

“we are real people with real desires and real agency, trying to negotiate our personal and sexual identities in a culture whose socio-economic misogyny runs far deeper than conservative commentators would have us believe.”

Ah yes, there you go. By the way, what exactly does “real agency” actually mean? How do you “negotiate personal and sexual identities”? Who are the parties to this negotiation? What form does it take? Why do you feel the need to express yourself in such a pretentious manner?

Paul – I don’t think shatterface has ever managed to read an article before going swivel-eyed first.

Laurie: Yeah I see that difference – but do you then object to legislation putting men’s mags like Nuts on the top shelf?

Women need real economic alternatives to sex work and to self-objectification: they don’t need pity, or to be blamed, or to be protected from ’sexual’ materials.

Mmmm… there are economic alternatives already. But if you mean women should not have to face economic hardships – I agree. But that would also apply to old people who fall into poverty, young youths who are marginalised from society if they commit a crime (after punishment, I mean) and the rest. The fact is – some people fall through the economic cracks and some don’t. Some women who go through objectification don’t necessarily end up in prostitution, and some women who become prostitutes aren’t insecure about their bodies – they just want to make some money.

You seem to be saying every woman who becomes a prostitute has body issues and ‘economic alternatives’ will solve the problem. Neither may be true.. especially if you decrease the number of prostitutes – which means demand and money for it increases, which encourages some women to go into it to make easy money.

What I’m saying is – there is an element of determinism coming from you too.

Also, I don’t think the ASA would agree to consultations with feminists in the same way they’re not going to agree to consultations with a group representing blacks, Muslims, white men etc etc. The only way forward is to raise a big stink everytime some ad like that comes out.

The idea that women don’t have economic alternatives to sex work is wrong-headed. If women in the UK who are desperate for money turn to prostitution, it is not out of a lack of alternatives: it is because society has sexualised them through advertising and so on. Also there are links with drugs. We have a social security net and benefits system for those who cannot find work.

Laurie, whilst I normally like your writing, this piece along with your Cif article about our generation, is far too riddled with generalisations. You make these big sweeping statements about where society is headed and what’s wrong with it, that do not seem to be grounded in

a) evidence
b) experience
c) ideology

Any analysis of society needs to be grounded in all three.

‘do you then object to legislation putting men’s mags like Nuts on the top shelf?’
I believe that Nuts and its ilk should be called what they are – porn – and if putting them on the top shelf will signal that, then I’d concur.

But I don’t think restricting access to that sort of imagery will make it any less endemic in contemporary culture. Young lads already read and watch restricted pornography from an early age – in fact, the more restricted it is the more illicit and naughty it seems. I’d like to see the owners and editors of Nuts (yes, including the female ones) prosecuted for hatespeech, though.

Just because I don’t believe censorship is the answer doesn’t mean I don’t object to the way the logic of misogynist porn saturates our culture. My objection here isn’t to people’s legitimate concerns over the types of images that surround us. My objection is to the conflation of those concerns with priggishness and victimisation/shaming of young women.

And – you think there are real economic alternatives to self-objectification? Try being a woman under thirty trying to make her way in any career. I was recently taken aside by an older columnist and told, with a regretful sigh, that I’d get on much better if I started wearing more skirts and being more flirty with editors. I’m sure you didn’t mean to suggest that that sexual presentation doesn’t dominate every aspect of women’s economic lives, but if you did, you may want to check your privilege.

You may also want to read this recent f word article from a female financial analyst about appearance fascism in the City : http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2010/01/the_professiona

….please don’t interpret the above to mean that I love you any less, Sunny. You’re a great feminist, and it’s all about the love, I just think you’re wrong on this.

‘We have a social security net and benefits system for those who cannot find work. ‘

ORLY? Looked at the progress of the Welfare Reform Bill lately? Or, for that matter, have you tried living on £216 for food, travel and bills per month in a major city?

you think there are real economic alternatives to self-objectification? Try being a woman under thirty trying to make her way in any career. I was recently taken aside by an older columnist and told, with a regretful sigh, that I’d get on much better if I started wearing more skirts and being more flirty with editors.

Okays Laurie, there is a HUGE difference between wearing skirts/flirting and spreading your legs for a stranger. Huge. The vast majority of women living on or below the poverty line don’t spread their legs for strangers to make ends meet – the ones that do, do so for reasons that go beyond the economic – not all of which are conscious, and none of which are empowering in any way. It is a tragedy nonetheless. What really gets me are the middle class prossies who don’t even need the money. Don’t you think they do all people a disservice by making sex just a commodity to be bought and sold? That’s taking Marx’s theory of the extraction of surplus value just a little too far.

Also, why are some ‘feminists’ so keen on making “sex work” as ‘respectable’ as other jobs which don’t involve letting a man fuck you for money? I don’t get it. Either you respect a woman as a human being, or you think of her as a slab of meat that a man can have his way with if he chucks a few coins her way. Just because some women choose to do it, and they say they enjoy it, doesn’t mean it isn’t incredibly demeaning.

‘And – you think there are real economic alternatives to self-objectification? Try being a woman under thirty trying to make her way in any career. I was recently taken aside by an older columnist and told, with a regretful sigh, that I’d get on much better if I started wearing more skirts and being more flirty with editors. I’m sure you didn’t mean to suggest that that sexual presentation doesn’t dominate every aspect of women’s economic lives, but if you did, you may want to check your privilege.’

Look at it another way. At least you CAN use your sex appeal if you want to. What does a young male wannabe journalist do? Not much, from what I gather is happening in journalism at the moment. I would suggest you look for a sector where people are actually trying to make money and get stuff done, rather than slowly draining the few resources they have left and dividing up the crums on the basis of who is blowing who at one moment in time. In a productive environment, you can’t afford to hire people on the basis of sex appeal.

‘Just because some women choose to do it, and they say they enjoy it, doesn’t mean it isn’t incredibly demeaning.’

Actually, I think you ought to respect people’s own experiences on the matter, both the bad experiences born of desperation and the good experiences born of choice and a desire to make cash much faster than otherwise would be possible. Who are you to judge how someone makes use of their own body without even asking their opinion?

Laurie:

I like your sentiments here and I think much of what you write is a much-needed corrective to the moral panic around media sexuality. (Although looking at the current politics of the UK in this regard, you unfortunately may be a voice crying in the wilderness.) However, I think you concede a bit too much when you talk about the “harms of raunch culture”. Basically, this is a buzzword introduced by Ariel Levy, which is basically who Natasha Walters seems to draw heavily on. (Her book isn’t available where I am (the USA), so its hard for me see if she’s really contributed anything new here.) I will say this much about the grain of truth under Levy’s writings about “raunch culture” – that too many young women don’t have a clear idea of their own sexual self-interest and that being *sexual* for one’s own good is more important than being *sexy* for others. (This is something that Susie Bright has been pointing out for a while now.) I suppose this is what you’re getting at with the idea of “self-objectification”.

Where Levy and other “raunch culture” critics absolutely lose it is that they start to equate any form of sexual culture they have a distaste for – porn, cake parties, boi culture, or whatever – with an externally-imposed “raunch culture” that needs to be cleared away before “authentic” sexuality can prosper. They also seem to think that in an “authentic” sexual culture, objectification will cease to exist (or will have been driven out of existence), which I think is a presumptive idea. I think as long as you have an openly sexual culture, there will always be some degree of sexual objectification. However, I think that in a culture where everybody has a strong sense of being a sexual subject (the way most men typically do by default), this is largely harmless. I think gay men’s culture is very good example of sexual objectification and sexual subjectivity existing side-by-side.

Who are you to judge how someone makes use of their own body without even asking their opinion?

Oh sorry, I forgot. Laws are bad. The legal system has no right to judge against men who sexually exploit women. Who is it to judge?

Shatterface @ #5:

I half-agree with you here. I think the idea that there’s some kind of sunshine and flowers sexuality buried beneath the deforming influence of patriarchal capitalist culture is a bit utopian. Likewise, when I hear people use the phrase “healthy sexuality”, I reach for my proverbial gun, or, at least, I really want to know what their definition of “healthy sexuality” is.

I disagree with with the other half of your statement, in that it seems to fall back on hard social constructionism, basically saying that there is no sexuality independent of social context. And while that’s true to a point, I think its also pretty well-established that there are aspects of human behavior, including human sexual behavior, that are hard-wired. Its the whole reason people are even capable of sexual arousal, whoever or whatever they happen to attach that attraction to. I think that’s why certain sexual fetishes and attractions come up time and again cross-culturally.

Basically, I think society can channel sexual behavior away from its most anti-social directions (eg, punishing rapists), but can probably never get rid of a broad range of urges that some might consider distasteful. Hence, I think things like BDSM, porn made with fully consenting performers, swinging, and the like are a good way of channeling what might be otherwise destructive sexual expressions into ones that are entirely consensual and harm no one.

Blanco – I said ‘own body’. I.e. you should be able to decide what to do what you want with your own things and only be subject to the law if you do something that harms those that didn’t consent to it. That is when you need a judgement to take place, not before.

This is a fairly core liberal idea which was sort of what allowed us to all stop bashing each other over very personal things like religion and sexuality. It was this sort of idea that kinda what allowed the Enlightenment to get started and, in some ways, contributed to us having much more prosperous lives than before. Limited government, rule of law etc.. Any of this ring a bell with you?

Very simple rule of thumb: ask the supposed ‘victim’ if they think they are an actual victim. When it comes to complex things like prostitution, sometimes the people involved will say they are, and other times they will say they aren’t. But if you don’t even ask them or you ignore their opinion, then you are not recognising their most basic human capability, which is to interpret their own experience and make the final decision on what they can do with their own bodies.

Blanco @ #30:

Laws aren’t bad per se, but legal overreach and mass criminalization campaigns most certainly are. Legally punishing someone *does harm*, and the greater the punishment, the greater the harm. Hence, punishment needs to be justified by its prevention of an even greater harm. If this isn’t demonstrated, the law isn’t justified.

This is particularly true when you have you have cases like this where there is a complete lack of broad consensus as to whether a harm is being done.

And in the case of somebody doing sex work, I think if they’re doing it with informed consent, I don’t think its any business of a third party to say the sex worker is being harmed even if they don’t know it, and justify punishment of so-called sexual exploiter on that basis.

“Either you respect a woman as a human being, or you think of her as a slab of meat that a man can have his way with if he chucks a few coins her way.”

Um, I’m quite capable of seeing a prostitute or a porn star as somebody who I might want to get my kit on with AND see her as a full human being with a life outside of what she’s performing at the moment. I’m quite capable of holding more than one thought in my head.

For all the good stuff in this article, I think you would clarify your thoughts a lot Laurie if you could just go for a few weeks without using the ugly and empty word ‘heteronormative’. If it contains an idea, let us know what you think it is. You can’t be committed to it for its euphony.

And what is this ‘raunch culture’. You talk about it as if it is obvious, but it isn’t. I am pretty sure I don’t live in a ‘raunch culture’ and I don’t think my daughter does either.

Laurie:

Why do you think the editors of Nuts should be prosecuted for hate speech? Is it for any specific thing, or for the type of magazine it is? If it is the latter, in what way is that not censorship?

FWIW I agree with your general sentiments in the article.

I understood the first sentence, but your desire to look clever means I haven’t got time to read this in my lunch hour.

Is there a correlation between big words and the strength of the argument you are making?

Paul Sagar: ‘Shatterface: Do you reckon maybe you could try reading one of Laurie’s articles without going all swivel-eyed first? It might help you connect to her actual arguments as oppose to what you expect her arguments to be before you read them.’

Judging by the other comments on this thread it seems you are in the minority in finding anything coherent in Laurie’s post.

Perhaps YOU can explain what a ‘deodorised dialectic’ is because to me it looks like word salad.

‘I disagree with with the other half of your statement, in that it seems to fall back on hard social constructionism, basically saying that there is no sexuality independent of social context. And while that’s true to a point, I think its also pretty well-established that there are aspects of human behavior, including human sexual behavior, that are hard-wired. Its the whole reason people are even capable of sexual arousal, whoever or whatever they happen to attach that attraction to. I think that’s why certain sexual fetishes and attractions come up time and again cross-culturally.’

If you could isolate any ‘hard-wired’ aspects of sexuality, Laurie would be the first to call you ‘heteronormative’.

Human sexuality is as divorced from reproduction as writing poetry is from shouting ‘Look out – tiger!’ (or the Paleolithic quivalent).

I watched a Lady GaGa video this morning and was bloody shocked – she was dancing around in her bra & pants and was also naked in other clips. Hmm..

There does seem to be imported vulgarity of quite an extreme nature – apparently American kids are much younger mentally than us Europeans and also obviously have more cash so they tend to start shagging and popping it on the internet as a way of validating themselves. The porno industry in the US is much more mainstream than anything over here – it may just be that kids are more down with the zeitgeist than bloody old giffers like me.

If it helps me getting my end away, who cares ?

Our ancestors knew better how to deal with cases of inbridled lust:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southwest/sites/local_history/pages/horse.shtml

No wonder they want to cut back the BBC.

Nick @27:

Look at it another way. At least you CAN use your sex appeal if you want to. What does a young male wannabe journalist do?

Mostly, he relies on the security of knowing he has three to four times the chance of acquiring an editor’s desk than any female competitor, just for having a cock. I will admit that this statement is more true of the generation before Laurie’s, but while fading as we get further from the 1950s, that undercurrent of unwarranted assumptions is definitely still a problem.

This, on the other hand:

In a productive environment, you can’t afford to hire people on the basis of sex appeal.

is blatant crap. I can think of professions [1] in which sex appeal/personal presentation and charisma are legitimate criteria at hiring. Then there’s the vast number of professions where it isn’t, but is still used as a screening process. Blond, posh and size 8: these are first-cut criteria in use at city-PA recruitment firms like Tiger. Long before the actual executive decision is made, the recruitment firms have already culled the cuties out of the dross for you. [2]

You really calling the pharmaceuticals industry an “unproductive environment”? Or the Big Oil firms? Or Parliament?

… Hmm, I may have just shot my argument in the nadgers with that last one.

And this:

Actually, I think you ought to respect people’s own experiences on the matter, both the bad experiences born of desperation and the good experiences born of choice and a desire to make cash much faster than otherwise would be possible. Who are you to judge how someone makes use of their own body without even asking their opinion?

is quite clearly deliberately obtuse. Laurie was, obvs, pointing out that misogynist polemic is flawed in using those women who are able (usually through privileged starting conditions) to operate as sex workers and enjoy it, as a stick to batter those who are trapped by poverty, drugs or violence into a life without sexual agency.

Some women like sex work. Most women who do it, don’t. These are both anecdotal statements from personal experience which, afaict, are also recognised as broadly true for the Western world by the professionals in the field. Sex work in our current social economy is demeaning because even when men are paying enough to respect what they buy, the axioms of our sexual system are so tilted towards male gaze and pleasure, and away from female agency and sexual self-determination, that even for those who enjoy it, the profession is demeaning.

The demeaning is being done by society at large, not by Laurie or by the happy sex workers.

In fact, by people like you and me. And David Cameron. And Julie Bindel. And ABp Williams, and the Pope, and Bill Clinton and Sarah Palin.

[1] Mostly jobs which rely on charisma and interpersonal skills. Like many roles in the tertiary industrial sector, which dominates our economy.

[2] This is partially anecdotal, in the sense that I have sources, who worked in the industry within the last 5 years, but are not happy to be named. I have a much longer list of sources for the general attitude, but for the specific practice of keeping a file of posh, slim blondes and a file of ‘unemployables’ I’ve got fewer.

Shatterface:

If you could isolate any ‘hard-wired’ aspects of sexuality, Laurie would be the first to call you ‘heteronormative’.

Er, but that’s just wrong. The hard-wired aspects of human sexuality aren’t heteronormative; gay and bisexual people are also part of “normal” for human sexuality.

It is precisely because our society tries to impose ideology on sex, defining several things which are entirely naturally occuring (and in some cases are spectacularly difficult to avoid) as “wrong”, that our society has produced generations of fucked-up kids.

Sex, like electricity, can be best viewed as information transmitted, rather than work done. When we teach them anything but shame, we teach children to view sex mechanically, rather than communicatively. There arises this idea (which you clearly share) that “hard-wired” == “straight”. It really doesn’t.

The best statement one can make with any safety is that among our species, in this cultural context, to be straight is typical. All variations on the theme of sexuality are ‘normal’, including ones that I personally think are 100% wrong. [1] Our society tries to limit normality not to one option from a list, but to one “option” from a continuum. Comparing Apples to apples; it’s a mistake.

[1] The non-consensual variations, specifically. I can’t argue that rape isn’t normal, but I can still argue that it’s bloody well wrong.

Youarecuriousblue:

I think as long as you have an openly sexual culture, there will always be some degree of sexual objectification. However, I think that in a culture where everybody has a strong sense of being a sexual subject (the way most men typically do by default), this is largely harmless.

This is brilliant; clear, and expressing something that badly needs saying. There is just one thing I would be inclined to propose as a change:

I think as long as you have an openly sexual culture, there will always be some degree of sexual objectification. However, I think that in a culture where everybody has a strong sense of being a sexual subject (the way most men are taught to think by society), this is largely harmless.

Most male chauvinists do not arrive at that position by independent reasoning. They get that way by osmosis. We need to add the assumption of sexual subjectivity to women, not remove it from men.

#45 Surely the easiest way of dealing with that anomaly is to argue that rape has nothing to do with sex.

tim f @ #47:

“#45 Surely the easiest way of dealing with that anomaly is to argue that rape has nothing to do with sex.”

The problem is, while that sounds good rhetorically, its not entirely true. Rape is an act of violence, primarily, but its clearly sexual violence. And there are also a lot of gray areas between fully consensual sex and rape, which there would not be if one had absolutely nothing to do with the other.

At the same time, I think its important to clear up the myth that rape is simply caused by an overabundance of lust, that men can’t control themselves if they’re aroused beyond a certain point.

‘Sex, like electricity, can be best viewed as information transmitted, rather than work done. When we teach them anything but shame, we teach children to view sex mechanically, rather than communicatively. There arises this idea (which you clearly share) that “hard-wired” == “straight”. It really doesn’t.’

I didn’t claim hard-wired was ‘straight’, I pointed out that the biological function of sex is reproduction. There is no such thing as biologically ‘straight’, any more than biologically ‘gay’, as ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ are social constructs not biological facts.

As I think I made clear, sexuality is a social artifact as distant from ‘nature’ as literature is from primal grunting. It’s Laurie who seems to believe in some primative form of sexuality existing outside of culture that we’d all have access to if we just stopped deodorising our genitals dialectically.

I didn’t claim hard-wired was ’straight’, I pointed out that the biological function of sex is reproduction. There is no such thing as biologically ’straight’, any more than biologically ‘gay’, as ’straight’ and ‘gay’ are social constructs not biological facts.

Gender is 100% socially constructed. Gender is about behaviour. Sex is definitely not 100% socially constructed; sex is about biology, anatomy, hormones, genetics. It’s not even as if we only had two sexes in this species; the biologically deterministic binary dichotomy, or ‘sex war’ to use tabloid terms, is a construct of religiously inspired gender politics. Some are born intersexed; some are born with theoretically functional sex but are by inclination entirely asexual.

In this post-Puritan society, you’re surely not trying to tell me someone who has same-sex crushes got the idea from peer pressure? If the incidence of homosexuality is not, in fact, about the Teaching Teh Homosex In Our Schools, then that person must have got it from somewhere else. How many options are there, if it ain’t nurture?

When you say ‘no such thing as biologically straight’, you seem to be clumsily expressing the idea that sexual orientation is a continuum, without understanding the implications thereof. You agree that most people are not 0 or 6 on Kinsey’s scale. Good, this is what the science says.

I, for example, am probably a 1. I might, in theory, love a man emotionally enough to be sexually aroused by the person; the body is not sexually interesting to me, no matter how aesthetically pleasing. In practice I’m a 0; never had homosexual sex.

However, I’m kinky. My kink manifested itself through fantasy and dreams by the time I was four or five. And it always involved straight encounters, right from then, long before I knew what sex meant or how gender stereotypes played in society. Worth noting it wasn’t this society they played in, either; I grew up in bush-country Africa. My partner, on the other hand, is English and bi; her kink manifested as early as mine, and always included both sexes.

Biological determinism is wrong because it says you can’t change, conquer or behaviourally modify your pre-existing inclinations. That’s clearly stupid; the entire concept of civilisation and enlightenment is based on the ability of humans to claim agency through conscious choice.

This doesn’t, however, mean that some people aren’t wired up to prefer the opposite sex, or their own sex. Statistically, it seems to be about 10% of people are wired for their own sex, with the possible implication that only 10% of people are like me, as well. The other 80% seem to be very heavily influenced by nurture in how they behave, but to have at least the capacity, acknowledged or not, for bi-sexuality.

Now, to address the other failure of thinking here:

The biological purpose of sex is reproduction.

No; one of the biological functions of sex is reproductive. We’ve known this for decades, at least. Ever since we overcame subsistence agriculture as the basic expression of human economics, that function has become less significant in furthering the species than the social functions of sex.

The closer we get to uterine replicas, and genuine reproductive freedom for all humans regardless of sex, the less significant the reproductive aspects of sexuality will become; but I guarantee you that the human race will not turn celibate. We are by no means unique in finding reproduction to be the boring bit of sex; anyone who’s seen QI is surely aware of the most famous other example. [1]

Sex is a very significant process for the formation of secure bonds between individuals to facilitate co-operative strategies for species advancement. Or, in lay terms, happy humans work better in teams and humans really like to fuck.

The definition of “acceptable sex” as “reproductive therefore hetero” is JCI dogma, it’s a Bushism. The idea is not in any way related to truth or fact (which are arguably different things). It is a meme propagated long ago to acquire control of reproductive capacity, for the economic and political benefit of a small number of people who can’t bear children (i.e. the actual patriarchy, the alliance of fathers against women/servants and younger men/rivals).

So, no; if one notices that some people just like girls and some people just like boys (“biological hard-wiring”, in your original comment), and notice that the body they were born into seems to have little effect on which way round [2], then Laurie wouldn’t accuse one of being heteronormative. Quite the reverse; this is part of the line of reasoning that normalises homosexuality.

[1] Bonobos.

[2] A britpop band called Blur figured this one out in the early 90s, and i suspect they were handicapped by the haze of alcohol between them and their thoughts.

@ Laurie

Women sexualising themselves in a staid and self-objectifying manner, rather than exploring desire in a more healthy way, should be a cause for concern.

But who are you to decide what is “healthy” and what isn’t?

Your readiness to impose your view of what is and what is not acceptable in gender politics demonstrates highly worrying proto-stalinist tendencies that are, in their way as crass as homophobia. You say you are against censorship but you want the editor of Nuts prosecuted for hate crime!!!

The fact is that most young women are heteronormative and are enjoying the freedom they now have to express their sexuality- by attempting to attract the opposite sex. In this article you struggle miserably to fit that fact into your feminist/Marxist counter culture conspiracy theory of our patriarchal/capitalist society.

But that is not a problem for the “irritating slags and wannabe sluts”.

That’s a problem for you.

Wow! Nice work. I especially like your supposition that women who are involved in sex work might actually be there by choice. I will never understand how a slogan like “My body, my choice” can become so powerful in the crusade for a woman’s right to abortion and then be so flagrantly trampled by the very same activists when it comes to sex work.

It seems to me that a crusade for women’s rights should be fighting to facilitate a woman’s capacity for self determination rather than insulting them by insisting that they’ve been victimized or are in denial if they choose to behave contrary to what’s politically popular.

Those who would deny a woman’s right, if she so chooses, to engage in sex work are no better than those who would deny her right to an abortion. In both cases they are forcing someone else to behave according to their own standards. To then claim that they are doing it in support of women’s rights is like banning the use of foul language in the name of free speech.