Saving women who didn't ask to be saved isn't feminism

I've seen this piece - "I clean up the messes of the pornography industry" by American lawyer Ann Olivarius - shared by several feminist groups that I follow on Facebook and Twitter recently. While I respect their right to hold different views to mine on the matter of porn, I do feel disappointed that feminists are getting behind such a post without deploying any critical thinking towards its content. 

I can see why the post is getting shares; it's not just written by a "random" feminist who has a beef with an industry with which (as is often the case with anti-porn activists) she has very little actual familiarity, but comes from a lawyer who has dealt with porn actors. (Or at least one porn actor.) That immediately appears to give it authority; it can't just be another piece advancing the moral biases of the author, now can it?

Well, actually - the very title of the piece is misleading. What exactly are these "messes" Olivarius claims to be cleaning up? The first - very deliberately emotive example - is about a suicide caused by revenge porn. I hesitate to even call non-consensual sharing of explicit images "porn" because it implies there's no difference between that and consensually produced porn. But that's a deliberate tactic by people such as Ann Olivarius - to make it look like these things all exist on the same spectrum. But they don't.

There's a world of difference between an adult woman making her living as a cam girl-- and I spent an evening amongst many such women last week, one of whom said "Everyone wants to know if I've been exploited in this industry; and I can honestly say I never have. In fact I sometimes wonder if I'm doing the exploiting, getting these men to pay me these amounts of money"-- and a vulnerable teenager being betrayed by their sexual partner. One has fuck-all to do with the other.

The porn industry does not have the power to create 16 year-old rapists. Implying it does lets the adolescent scumbag off lightly.

Which brings me to another of the author's deliberately heartstring-grabbing points; when she uses the case of an 8 year-old girl sexually abused by her cousin, and tries to lay the blame at the feet of the porn industry because apparently the cousin got ideas for how to molest the girl from his smartphone. Again, it continues to amaze me how feminists can't see the parallel between blaming porn for rape and sexual abuse and blaming a short skirt, an alcoholic drink, a smile, a "no" that wasn't screamed loudly enough. Any adult or teen with a smartphone has instant access to a dizzying cornucopia of images and videos at any given time. I can watch a cat video, or I can watch adults engaging in faecal play. I can laugh at a dog on a skateboard, or watch Colonel Gaddafi get beaten to death.

I make these choices. And even if I were to watch the more extreme choices, I would still consider no one and nothing but ME responsible were I to try and act out those things non-consensually on another adult or, god forbid, a child or animal. Same goes for everyone else on the planet. Having access to those images is not what makes you force yourself on another person. Billions of us do, and yet we manage not to rape or molest anyone. That twisted, rotten part of a person which thinks it's OK to do so is already there and was already there long before they opened their phone screen. By shifting responsibility away from the rapist/abuser you are merely supporting a culture and a system that already refuses to blame perpetrators far too readily. That's not feminism.

These emotionally manipulative tactics aside, the part of the article that probably got up my nose the most was the total misrepresenting of the porn actor who approached this lawyer. It's important to note here that the actor did not approach the lawyer with any complaints of mistreatment or abuse from her industry, as the title of the piece would have you believe. Instead, her question was a factual one; whether she was entitled to any job protections while being off work with an injury. Now, because the injury was sustained in her line of work -- from filming a scene that the author calls "brutal", even though the actor's own words are conspicuous by their absence -- that apparently is sufficient evidence that the porn industry is an evil, misogynist place where women are routinely injured. Even though, again, the question from the porn actor is not a complaint of mistreatment.

Well, let's just take a moment and allow me to list the injuries I sustained in my decade of doing care work on and off.

- Needlestick injury (where a hypodermic syringe accidentally pierces your skin, necessitating blood test and in some cases, Post-Exposure Prophylaxis to guard against HIV. Hepatitis is also a risk here.)

- Multiple bites; hands and arms were the most common places

- Cuts and bruises from having someone gouge their fingers as hard as they could into my skin

- Facial swelling and bruising from being headbutted

- Various bruises on arms and legs from being kicked and punched

- So many sore scalps from having my hair yanked I couldn't even begin to count them

- Ear infection from having a full plate of food thrown at my head (got gravy in my ear!)

(To work in care you're also advised to have Hepatitis B vaccination, because of the likelihood of coming into contact with bodily fluids, needles and/or sustaining one of the above injuries and then coming into contact with them [like the guy who gouged my arm - he often had faeces under his fingernails]. If you think porn actors are the only people who come into contact with some nasty stuff, you really need to get out more)

All those injuries, assaults and precautions come alongside doing a job that's both physically taxing and emotionally stressful, where one regularly has to clean up faeces, urine, saliva, vomit and blood, dodge violence from dementia patients and those with learning disabilities who exhibit "challenging behaviour," often work understaffed or with poorly trained, apathetic workers (three male staff once stood by and watched as a teenage boy a foot taller than my 5'2" headbutted me), where one gets paid maybe a bit more than minimum wage but not much more, and where one enjoys *none* of the protections of holiday pay, sick pay or pensions because I usually worked for agencies or as relief staff.

So, are feminists going to say that care work is inherently evil and degrading because people get injured doing it and because it's underpaid and there's little job security? Or because it's mostly women doing it?
Funnily enough, they are remarkably silent on that issue, except to suggest that we might need better working conditions and that care should not be seen as a solely female arena. I agree with both those statements. So why not suggest the same about the porn industry; that because as Olivarius says"this is not an industry in which performers can grow old, have a pension, guaranteed holidays, or job security," there should be reform, rather than abolition? Because I can sure as hell tell you that writing, my main career, is NOT an industry in which there are any pensions, sick pay, paid holidays or protection. No advances, pitiful royalties, and a plethora of clients asking you to work for a pittance, if not actively trying to get your work for free. I'm an internationally published author (not self-published) and yet if I relied solely on the money I've made from my book, I'd be homeless if not dead. I've worked for major publications on both sides of the Atlantic and yet I still have to supplement my writing work with private tutoring, care work and renting my spare room out in order to stay afloat. Where are the campaigns to save me from the evil, misogynist writing industry?!

I'm being facetious, of course -- I love what I do and I enjoy many privileges that mean I can manage to do it despite the often insulting remuneration offered. So why is it such a leap of the imagination to think porn performers -- who I would wager are HELLA better paid than care workers or writers!--might feel the same? So it might not be a long-term career choice - so the hell what? Neither is being an athlete, a dancer, a model, a racing driver, or indeed various jobs that require masses of energy and physical fitness, but we don't discourage children from aspiring to these jobs.

Ultimately what this misleading, mistitled, manipulative article is saying is "I don't like or understand porn, I don't see the appeal, and therefore I'm going to dress this personal distaste up as a moral fact." Did this lawyer ever ask the porn performer who came to her for a legal service how she actually felt about her job? Or did she just hijack her client's story to fit her own personal judgement on what is a totally legitimate job? If a male boxer came to her for legal advice on whether he was entitled to any job protections while out of work from having been injured in his line of work, would she use that as an excuse to go on a protracted rant about the evils of the boxing world, portraying this man as a victim of an evil misandrist industry that preys on those too stupid to see the harm it's doing to them?

Come on. You can't have it both ways. As feminists, we believe women are smart enough to make their own choices; a freedom enjoyed by men for millennia. You can't believe that and then simultaneously write off hundreds of thousands of women as moronic brainwashed children, preyed upon by an evil, male-dominated industry. You especially don't have the right to do that when your "evidence" that this industry is harmful amounts to nothing more than two unrelated anecdotes that deliberately use the old "won't someone think of the CHILDREN?!" tactic to manipulate readers into conflating non-consensual sharing of explicit images, rape and abuse, with consensual adult erotica; and one innocent legal enquiry by a worker who has made no complaint against her industry. 

So yes, please do fight against bad working conditions. Please DO fight against lack of job security. Please fight against the industries in which work is shitty and low-paid being disproportionately staffed by women and immigrants. Hell, come and help me fight for care work and writing work to be remunerated to a level that actually shows some bloody respect for those two jobs. But don't take your personal crusade against depictions of sexuality that you dislike and hijack other people's stories to bolster that. It's cheap, manipulative and does nothing to improve anyone's job. That's not "cleaning up a mess," it's fighting an enemy that doesn't exist and then wanting a pat on the back for it.

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#NoDickPics - why is revenge porn so gendered?

I posted this tweet recently because, well, it just can't be said enough. Since revenge porn was made a crime in the UK in April this year, the Guardian reports that there are 8 female complainants for every male complainant. Which could make you think that women are going apeshit sending out nekkid pictures of themselves, while men are much more circumspect about the matter. But we know that's not the case: as any woman who has received an unwanted dick pic will tell you, there’s a big demographic who love sending out pictures of their genitals whether the recipients have asked for it or not, and that's straight men. For whatever reason, these men don't seem to end up shamed, humiliated, blackmailed or threatened with exposure (literally) in the way that women who dare to share explicit pictures of themselves with their lovers do. 

As plenty of women in possession of a computer or mobile phone will tell you, you don’t have to be dating, have expressed an interest in, or even made contact with a man for the explicit selfies to start flooding in. As a lesbian woman recently mentioned to me, you don’t even have to be straight; presumably chaps think the allure of their penis is so irresistible that it will “turn” gay women. As I can testify myself, even when you ARE having a sexual relationship with a man, and have explicitly TOLD him that you don't like receiving dick pics, you will get the inevitable, "I know you said you don't really like them, but..." message that warns of an incoming genital image. Two different lovers have done that to me, presuming that while all other penis images must leave me cold, theirs will be the magic one that will suddenly have me rubbing myself against my phone screen with arousal. Apparently there is no arena in which a woman's "no" will not be interpreted as "please transgress my boundaries and I'll surely find it seductive." 

I asked a friend recently "WHY do men DO THAT?" and she theorised that perhaps the men who send these shots really don't have any idea of how common it is to receive unwanted dick pics, and therefore assume they're doing something special, different and interesting. Maybe there's something in that. Maybe it really is pure personal arrogance, the thought that "everyone else's junk must surely look awful, but the image of MINE will be the one that will set this woman's loins afire!" Maybe it's an inversion of (some) men's own wishes, the idea that because they would love it if women sent pictures of our bits to them, the same must be true in reverse. Sorry chaps, but it's just not. I don't know how erotic disembodied genitals ever are, to be honest. Much as I loathe those hoary old stereotypes about "women just aren't as visually aroused as men," (and can tell you they are BS anyway) I'm also not going to lie; if I find someone attractive, I'd rather see a whole picture of all of them (faces are still nice, after all! When did people stop wanting to see those?) than a snapshot of just their junk, and better than that, would rather encounter them in person, and be able to engage all my senses in being near the whole of their person. Also, perhaps one of the reasons women don't find dick pics erotic is because we're genuinely only interested in erect penises as far as we can actually do something with them. I don't find a picture of a vibrator sexy. But I might find playing with it extremely fun. The same kind of goes for men's junk: unless it's here, in person, about to offer me some actual physical pleasure, I'm just not going to get hot and bothered by the sight of it. 

Given the proliferation of dick pics, it does speak volumes to me that the majority of people having their explicit pictures used against them are women. Yes, in an ideal world no one would be a vindictive jackass and try to shame their ex-partners for having dared to share intimate images or videos with them. But since "revenge porn" is a thing, why the hell are the victims almost always women, when there are so many men out there who could also see their jobs, relationships and reputations shattered with a quick upload from a vengeful woman (and not necessarily someone he'd even been intimate with - as we've covered earlier, there doesn't need to be any pre-existing relationship in order for for dick pics to get sent)? To me, it's at least partly a sign that we're stuck in archaic ways of thinking that dictate women should be shamed for having been sexual while it's a source of pride for men; as I say in an earlier post, revenge porn wouldn't be a thing without sexism. Because then having explicit pictures of you made public would not be considered the worst thing that could happen to a woman; it would not be considered humiliating, shameful and traumatising. And perhaps the fact that it isn't considered an equally awful fate for a man is why women are less likely to use revenge porn as a tool to get back at male exes; or perhaps it just doesn't occur to women to try and sexually shame their exes (although that seems unlikely, especially if a breakup has been acrimonious). One woman has recently been blackmailing men via threats to release nude videos of them recorded on Skype, so there is apparently enough money in men's fear of sexual exposure to get the con artists involved. I just think, if next time we encounter a story of a woman being victimised through revenge porn. every woman who's ever received an unwanted or inappropriate dick pic made it public, there'd be a sudden and rapid emptying of workplaces, family homes and pubs, as all the men who think it's OK to impose their sexuality on women ran to hide...

"Revenge porn" can't exist without sexism

The concept of "revenge porn" - the act of someone, usually male, posting naked or sexually explicit images/video of their ex-partner, usually female, online in order to humiliate and distress them, is in the news today. Yesterday it was reported that the UK Justice Secretary is considering new laws in order to tackle this distasteful trend, and empower victims rather than leaving them with bewildered police telling them "there's nothing we can do about it." I've been listening to discussions about revenge porn on Radio 1 and 2 today, with comments ranging from "It happened to me and was horrendous" (mostly from women) to "If you're silly enough to let someone take naked pictures of you, you get what you deserve" (funnily enough, that one was from a man). In between all the hand-wringing about whether today's selfie-crazed generation no longer has any concept of privacy and are therefore all hopelessly naïve to expect that intimate pictures stay private, very few people have raised the question of why exactly "revenge porn" has such a devastating effect on its (usually female) victims.

 

The only article I've seen that touches on this was today's piece by Dr Brooke Magnanti, who writes "We need to assess why, exactly, revenge porn is considered so humiliating and so embarrassing in the first place. In a nutshell it is because so many people believe that a woman who has ever been naked in front of a camera is and should be dehumanised to the point of being seen as a slut." This, to me, goes to the heart of the issue, and I can't believe Magnanti is the only one pointing it out. Why do we still expect grown women to be so ashamed of the fact that they - gasp - sometimes take off their clothes and have sex? Why do we shame them for wanting to show themselves to their partner in an erotic manner? Why do we deem the hundreds of men who think it's acceptable to send women they've never met pictures of their penises on online dating sites merely a subject for gentle laughter, while we judge and sneer at women who trustingly send explicit pictures or videos to their intimate partner as naïve daft cows who deserve everything they get?

 

"Revenge porn" is a self-perpetuating concept. Shame and humiliation is the expected result, and it's what the victims duly display. But why? Why is the evidence that an adult has been sexually active seen as more shameful and disgusting than say, evidence that they were a homophobe? An anti-Semite? There are plenty of acts that can be caught on video or picture that are shameful - harming our fellow human beings, especially children, or animals, or being cruel, rude, bigoted and selfish. Posing in our natural state and indulging in consensual erotic acts with another adult should not be viewed on the same level as the many terrible things human beings can and do carry out every day.

 

Now, that's not to say any of us want our parents, grandparents, children, employers or friends to see us naked or having sex. It's a pretty icky thought (not to mention one that goes both ways - I want to know LESS THAN NOTHING about my parents' sex lives, thanks very much!). But, let's be grown-up about it for a second. We're all adults. We know the majority of us are sexually active. If we happen to stumble across concrete evidence of that, it may put you off your dinner, but what harm has actually been done? We all have parents who have seen us naked, squalling, shitting, pissing and puking. We all have friends who have seen us drunkenly shape-throwing to the The Final Countdown and dribbling Blue WKD down our fronts. We may be lucky to have grown up in a pre-internet era when all of this wasn't captured and distributed online for all to see, but unless we are celebrities, it's unlikely that we care much about how people perceive us beyond our immediate circle anyway.

 

My point is, the 'shame' we expect women to feel over their naked form being spread over Tumblr or Facebook is in direct proportion to the shame we expect women to feel for being sexual, full stop. And this is nothing but full-blown sexist hypocrisy. Our society demands that women sexualise themselves at every turn - but never for themselves. And despite women's magazines effectively churning out a never-ending parade of advice on how to please a man, should a woman actually send erotic images of herself to her male partner with the objective of doing just that, she must be condemned for it. Confused? Yeah, I would be too - if I let the tidal wave of misogynist hogwash that still colours our media dictate my behaviour.

 

So let me come out and say something that sadly still constitutes revolutionary words in Britain, 2014. I'm a 30 year-old sexually active woman. I have sex with men. I get naked. I sometimes wear things considered 'sexy', and display my body in ways that might be considered 'erotic' or even 'explicit', sometimes for my pleasure, sometimes for that of my partner, very often for both. If there are any adults in my life who don't know that, they would have to have been sleeping under a very big rock for over a decade. If pictures of me indulging in any the above acts were to appear on the internet, it would be embarrassing, sure. Of course I wouldn't want my family, friends or employers seeing such images, (and not just because it's often that when you think you look your sexiest, you actually look like a sockful of clothespegs - yet another reason I haven't fallen prey to the selfie cult), but I'd like to think I could get over it once all the sniggering stopped. Because what's really to be ashamed of? I have a body. I have a sex life. Big fucking deal. Post a video online of me kicking a cat to death, and I'll rightly be ashamed, go into hiding and be chased with pitchforks. But till then, fuck the very idea of "revenge porn". Because without sexist beliefs that sex, nudity and being sexual is degrading to women, it couldn't exist.