Our governments stifle the freedom of men in order to infantilise them

This is a follow-up to some feedback email I received. You can read the original blog post here.

Dear Mark

I could seemingly not upload this letter as a comment on your blog. Will you do that if you can?

With respect to Feministing.com I am glad that you make clear that focussing on the trivialities of a particular cause from time to time is not necessarily always a bad thing. But I completely agree with you that only focussing on trivial matters is to neglect many of the issues that really matter in this instance your trash magazine-analogy was a nice example. I do not know if Feministing.com censor opposing view, are obtuse [or] fling obscenities at their opponents, but if this is really the case, then of course they would go down in my estimation as well. I am just yet to experience this as I do not really spend much time on the Feministing home page.

You go on to say that [w]e hear a lot about women in the media and that a lot of silly commentary like Feministings does appear out there all over the place. I would argue and urge you to consider that you are having this particular experience precisely because you (because of your position in the Mens Rights Movement) are subconsciously but actively seeking out contexts in which trivialities and silliness is bound to occur. I am not making any presumptions about where you are and what you are doing, but I certainly do not experience a great interest in womens issues in the mainstream media (here speaking of the 6 oclock news and the morning newspaper; whatever your average citizen reads), and whatever issues are featured are seemingly not something which is done anything about in any case. I would, however, like to see not only more emphasis on womens issues, but on mens issues as well. If gender relations were something that all men were as passionate about as you then I believe we would have much more varied media coverage of gender issues and as a result hereof these issues would not as easily be dismissed by politicians as I often feel they are in this day and age.

Secondly I do not expect you to address reams of points in one video, but I am glad (not in the I agree-kind of way) to hear that you plan to actually formulate and publish your opinions about pornography in a YouTube-video. Notify me when you have done so, and I will (perhaps) make a rebuttal video. For now I will address the points you make in your reply.

To brand pornography evil is NOT an arrogant presumption. First of all, it could not possible be a presumption since it is not an opinion I pull out of the blue, but an assertion based on long and thorough research on the matter. Second of all it is not arrogant as my view stems from actual knowledge about the industry of pornography and thus subsequent empathy for the women in it rather than from an ignorant and ideological black/white world view which I (without makinf presumptions) think you are exhibiting at this point. Pornography and prostitution is hate propaganda and exploitation. Pornography and prostitution are factors that must be outlawed and eliminated from society in the same way that we have outlawed (but not) eliminated slavery, child abuse and the legality of men stamping on daughters necks because of their religion and bigotry. When you say that women in pornography choose to do it and make quite a bit of money doing so, you are making two assertions. 1: Women choose it themselves and are responsible for their own choices, and 2: They get paid a lot to do it. First a few words about your assertion about choice.

From the point of view you present it SEEMS (note that I am not presuming anything) that you believe that choices are something we human beings either make or do not make and that all choices are uncomplicated, clear cut and gets you from point to point in life by your own responsibility. In my opinion, to hold a view like that is simply to be ignorant of all the nuances and abstractions that a human life is full of. More than quite often, the people I meet who use the trump card argument of choice are people who will thwart any call for self-reflection about their use of pornography; most often because they are born into privilege; never having had to experience how ones social heritage, skin colour, family or economic situation, etc can affect how one makes (or is directly or indirectly forced to make) choices that will lead you to very uncompromising places in life.

I am not saying that you are necessarily one of these people. I am saying that you at least use the choice argument here as if there is not an age-long tradition of academic peer-reviewed and approved research which has long proven beyond reasonable doubt that [a] meaningful discussion of choice cant be restricted to the single moment when a woman decides to perform in a specific pornographic film but must include all the existing background conditions that affect not only the objective choices she faces but her subjective assessment of those choices (Robert Jensen. Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Cambridge: South End Press, 2007. P. 87). You ought to do some check-up research on the matter yourself before speaking so casually about choice. I assure you that thorough research has been done on the matters of childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical abuse and their later-in-life repetitive natures, the role of poverty, homelessness, economic deprivation, socially determined lack of economic opportunity, trafficking, fraudulent job advertisements, and finally cultural training and socialisation to pornified culture. There is a rich body of literature out there for you to explore, or you can perhaps start out at www.againstpornography.org. Anyway, all of the factors mentioned above must be taken into consideration when you speak of choice, and the more factors in play, the less meaningful the notion of choice becomes. Ill emphasise this with an example:

Chinese single mothers who spend 18 hours a day in a sweat shop factory under working conditions that would make even the most neo-liberal asshole cry do also have the choice to either be or to not be in that factory. But taking all of the social conditions under which these women live into consideration, the notion of choice looses all meaning. To bend it in neon for you: If one performs a degrading and/or self-destructive act whilst knowing that there is a chance of there being even worse future consequences IF the degrading and/or self-destructive act is not performed, then your choice to perform the act has been rendered meaningless.

Seen in the light of all this, your second assertion, that women make quite a bit of money doing so, i.e. doing degrading and/or self-destructive acts (my words, not yours) is not any better. That people contribute to the economy on the one side and are humiliated, degraded and abused on the other side as a consequence thereof does not a morally acceptable balance of human interests make. One would have to be either extremely ignorant or extremely cold hearted to render notions of abuse, humiliation, degradation, violence, etc acceptable as long as one could make money off of it. Unfortunately people like these DO exist and they are constantly trying to make you and others adapt their view of human kind (and women in particular, though also men) to make you buy their product and increase the demand for more abuse, humiliation, degradation and violence.

You will perhaps make the argument that some women choose to be in pornography completely of their own free will without any free-choice compromising being in play. While it might be possible to actually find these women somewhere, you still have to take into account the inescapable fact that at least some women (and probably a majority according to research) choose under conditions that seriously complicate their choices. So when you as a consumer throw on a DVD at home or engage in online pornography, you have no way of telling which category the girls you are watching belong in. Even if you knew for a fact that the particular woman or man (or donkey) you were watching was there completely by his/her own free will with no compromising conditions behind her/his decision, you are still helping the porn industry staying profitable and thus helping to increase the demand for new adult performers some of which have not made the choice themselves or under the wrong conditions. There are of course resources for getting off like YouPorn, RedTube or the good old file sharing systems, where the consumer does not contribute economically to the porn industry. But this still useless, since the consumer of porn is both altering his (or her, but in 90% of the cases his) view on sexuality and fuelling his appetite for more rough kinds of pornography; a well-known syndrome of the porn user that one kind of porn leaves you needing more and different visual stimulation for your next fix. In any case the consumer is still looking at women being degraded and humiliated and if that is his erotica then he has a problem.

I know that you are an ardent individualist, but your passionate anger about the patriarchal oppression of women in Islam leaves me thinking that you of course have empathy for other human beings. I urge you to read this article by Martin Amis and reflect on whether pornography is perhaps equally oppressive in nature. Here you go: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4153718,00.html. Now to something else.

The following I did not say in my first letter, but I am going to say it now in the light of what I have just discussed. I think that being against Islam because of Islams oppressive nature towards women while simultaneously being pro-pornography is to be against one form of oppression but for another. And now an apology:

If I in any way made presumptions (right ones or wrong ones) about you in my first letter, I am very sorry. It was a rather quick and not well though through scribbling down of commentary section material. I apologise. In this letter I have tried to emphasise when I am expressing my personal perception of you or when I am talking about people with the same attitudes and ideas as you. When I PERCEIVE something about you, I am not making presumptions be sure of that I am more than open to the fact that you are not the way I perceive you to be. Just tell me when I perceive wrongly.

Finally, I have watched your video Men are More Oppressed than Women, and I really feel that I should not mix this letter with my rebuttal of it. I will perhaps do that in another letter or make a video for you. The long and the short of it is that your assertion that men are more oppressed than women is flat out wrong, and that your arguments for it are easily dismissed we do agree on a few things in your video though.

I hope that some of the previous has made you rethink your attitude toward certain things too.

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Sorry to bother you again, but I forgot to mention something that might not be obvious to anyone. I just want to make clear that when I say 'BAN pornography and prostituion', I am NOT AT ALL (just to emphasise!) proposing that we make it illegal for women to prostitute themselves or to participate in pornography. Even though there might be conditions that influence what choices they make, it is ultimately their own bodies and their own minds.

What I am saying is that we need to make illegal the BUYING of prostitutes and the DISTRIBUATION of pornography. In that way we will in both cases have eliminated the economic factor which ensures that it remains a growing industry. Once money is out of the picture, the ones who make porn in the privacy of their own home because they WANT to (secular society with respects to pornography as it is our goal with respect to religion) and those who have sex with 10 men a day because they WANT to, can do so without me or others suspecting that pimps and other scumbags are making money off of the humiliation of women, men and children.

At the same time we will of course have to engineer more economic opportunities and social relief for women so we remove the conditions that might make them turn to being humiliated sexually for a living in the first place and create opportunities for those who wish to leave prostitution or the porn industry

Hi,

First of all I have to say that you write well and respectfully. I appreciate that. It is certainly rare on YouTube.

Human choices are not simple, one would have to be a fool to believe that. What I think is that the government (which one implies when one is talking about laws and what should be allowed) must respect people's choices that they make. It is not the role of government to analyse the nuances in our decisions and act like mummy to us, this is tyrannical. I suspect that this is simply where we have differing opinions about what the role of government should be but I think that you too are a man who is seeking to clarify where we differ rather than win.

Some of us base our decisions around some guiding principles. For me it is liberty. The freedom to make my own choices and mistakes and to have the oppressive spectre of the government off of my back.

Bearing that in mind, let's examine your arguments where you present research. You can cite all the papers you want to me, it will mean nothing. Let's compare it to a similar situation – smoking. I know that smoking is bad for me so I don't need you to cite me research that says so.

The government deciding what it will allow me to do based upon what it thinks are acceptable ways to lead a life means we have entered a situation where our governments stifle the freedom of men in order to infantilise them. This is not a good situation.

You may say that smoking is legal and indeed it is, but the government already tells businesses that they cannot allow smoking on their own premises. Also, I cannot smoke pot can I? A substance far more useful than tobacco and far less damaging to society than alcohol is.

Basically you sound quite high-and-mighty deeming the decisions of these women to be "self destructive" and "degrading". I object to attitudes like this, be they the social righteousness of the left or the moral righteousness of the right. If people want to degrade themselves then let them do it.

To address your follow-up email. You might say that all I have written so far does not apply because you say you're not really for banning porn. Then I must say that it is quite a dishonest position to say you don't want to ban porn in spirit but want to ban the buying and distribution of it. That is imbecilic as a position to be quite frank. What is the point? That is like saying "I'm for cars as long as no-one dies in one", then you're not for cars. Also it still represents the ban happy attitude of our government where they intrude into our lives more than is necessary.

Sorry I have not written more, given how much you wrote, but I think there is a clash of fundamental world views here.

Sincerely,
Mark