From: uunet!infmx!hartman@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Robert Hartman)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Those damned magazines (was: clearing something up)
Date: 16 Dec 1992 06:13:40 GMT
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In article <1gea5aINN6ms@agate.berkeley.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>-*----
>I agree with much of what Janis Maria Cortese wrote in her previous 
>post.  But some I would like to add to and some I would like to 
>disagree with.
>
>In article <1gbltfINNo8u@agate.berkeley.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>> When young boys learn about sexuality for the first time, they
>> do it through these damned magazines. ...
>
>Speaking as a former young boy, let me add a note of optimism
>here.  The messages young boys receive about sex and
>relationships come from a broad variety of sources: observing
>adults, observing older juveniles, novels, peer behavior, TV,
>computer nets, etc.  It is hard for me to imagine an environment
>so barren that skin mags are the major source of a young boy's
>information about sex and relationships.  (They may have been, at
>one time, the major source of a young boy's visual images of
>women's naked bodies, but even that is not so much true any
>more.)  In any case, young boys are quick to pick up on all these
>sources and to recognize that each has been packaged for
>different purposes.

Would that this were so.  But it isn't always.  For some young boys,
perhaps you're right.  However, my experience as a young boy was not
like yours.  My experience was that no one talked to me about the
emotional content and context in which sex--whether it be a romantic
long-term commitment, or a wild-ass fuck--needs to take place in order
to be healthy.  I had no basis for evaluating the porn I was exposed
to, and so, my attitudes about sex were heavily influenced by Playboy,
which catered to my need for a positive view of my sexuality.  Too bad
it was such a falsely positive view.

I didn't need my fantasies to be catered to.  I needed the truth.  But
Playboy told me nothing about how to negotiate in good faith for what I
wanted, or how to make commitments I could live with.

It has taken me a long time just to recognize how much that has harmed
me.  I suspect it will take me a while yet to undo the damage.

As far as Playboy was concerned, you either "got lucky" because you
were a "real man (TM) like Hef" or you did without.  And when I a young
man has to "do without," even though he may not like them, the
misogynist messages in those magazines accorded well with the
bitterness, self-hatred, and resentment that he feels.  Those
misogynist messages can become associated with sexual arousal in true
Pavlovian fashion.

When young boys get adequete emotional support and guidance, then
yes, they'll see through these magazines.  But as long as young men
are "on their own" emotionally, she's right.  Those damned magazines
can and will have an undue influence on the sexual values of young men.
And for a significant minority, that influence will be very bad.

>The popular feminist criticism of pornography as an act of
>objectification overlooks the fact that objectification is a
>necessary aspect of *any* media portrayal or act of
>entertainment.  Entertainers depend on this fact.  The obvious
>refinement of the criticism is thus: sex is not an appropriate
>subject for such objectification.  But this is a harder row to
>hoe.  If murder, disease, war, crime, religion, professional
>behavior, and personal relationships are appropriate subjects for
>entertainment, why *not* sex?

Well ... usually there are portrayals of both "healthy" and "unhealthy"
attitudes in the media regarding all those other things.  But because
our conventional culture depends on the mutual suppression of women by
men, and men by women, the _only_ portrayals of sexuality are
associated with rebelliousness, defensiveness, or unrealistic utopian
ideals (e.g., wishful thinking a la Playboy).  That's where the harm
lies in soft porn for boys, as well as romance novels for girls--
combined with the dearth of a culturally favorable and respectable
views of healthy sexual and romantic expression.  If we made available
such views to balance the fallacious ideas in Playboy and the romance
novels, girls and boys would have the perspectives they need to develop
healthy mores for themselves.

Note that the answer here is not to suppress these forms of
entertainment, but to make sure that children are exposed to healthier
influences.  (But of course, that would force us to restructure our
values around sex, and doing that would imply a restructuring of
society, and of course, we just can't have that!  Grrrh!)

-r


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