OMG CENSORSHIP

The first thing that came up when I googled “Wanker painting”

Today on the web there has been a spate of liberal bloggers weighing in about why they won’t support banning rape p%rn.   (I’ve substituted a % sign instead of an O in a probably futile attempt to fend off p%rn seekers:  Sorry if you find it annoying.)

I won’t link to the various bloggers:  most of them have a bigger platform than I do.  Some of them work in the media and are getting retweeted all over the place, whereas maybe ten people are going to read this post.    Nevertheless, I know so many women who are quietly fuming about this that I have to say something.

Liberal dudes love p%rn.   They feel entitled to it:  the internet is their sexual smorgasbord.   When they get stuck on the hedonic treadmill, as they always do, they seek ever more violent and degrading forms of p%rn to keep themselves amused.  And they get so upset when their sense of entitlement is challenged.

Their argument is always some version of this:  “YOU CAN’T BAN PORN OMG CENSORSHIP WE’LL LOSE ALL OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND END UP IN THE GULAG”.

Using p%rn is actually free-speech activism!  Because liberal dudes be idealistic, yo!

They won’t listen to the truth that p%rn harms women, that it harms men, that it harms children, that it is hate speech, that raping, or even pretending to rape, women is not artistic expression any more than a man pulling a gun on another man and demanding his wallet is artistic expression.  Why should they give up the right to wank to violent images just because it’s damaging, these noble souls who believe in social justice for all?

They just don’t believe in justice for women, because women aren’t people.  They’ll support contraception and abortion, though, because that makes women more sexually available to them.  And they know they can keep women dependent on them by threatening to let the other side take them  away.

For all their railing about censorship, they don’t seem to know how censorship actually works either:

In order to perform actual censorship, a censor must first occupy a position of authority over the censoree, and must be able to command minions sufficient for enforcement. The dudes and dudesses of DudeNation, for example, censor radical feminists all the time. Have you ever seen a radical feminist sitcom, fashion spread, toilet cleaner commercial, or New York Times bestseller?

Conversely, radical feminists, dangling by gnarled claws from our remote precipice out in Lunatic Fringe, are in no position to censor anything. We’re not in power. We have no authority. We enjoy little privilege. We command no minions. Even if we wanted to, which we don’t, we couldn’t prevent even one celebrated genius from writing child rape fantasies and calling it art.

Twisty, from this post at I Blame the Patriarchy

It’s illegal to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, but we don’t see anybody railing about how oppressive that is, do we?   Nope, the freedom of speech figleaf is only brought out to cover for men who want to beat off to images of women being exploited and abused.

Women eager to please those liberal dudes can be found all over the web, defending p%rn as harmless fun or insisting that the filth cannot be stopped, so resistance is futile, if you can’t beat ’em join ’em, et cetera.

Why do women do this?

Women – even ones who call themselves feminists – have been well trained to cater to male interests.   Deep down they fear that their dude will dump them before he gives up the p%rn, and they’re right.  He will.

These women, all full of their supposed agency and choices,  somehow always end up agreeing with men and supporting what men want.   Women are bombarded with messages telling them to be the cool girlfriend, the sexually liberated wife.  They are told that anybody who opposes p%rn must be a prudey bible-thumper in disguise, because nobody who believes in social justice could possibly be opposed to freedom of artistic expression.   Thus liberal dudes use accusations of prudery to manipulate past any boundaries women try to set and to make them do what those men want.  They set up radical feminists as the enemy, calling them ugly, hairy-legged, angry, and so on to scare women away from the only people who will tell them the truth.

The more deeply enslaved a person is, the more desperately they need to convince themselves that they are free.  This is why so many women defend male privilege and male interests so aggressively.   It is too hard and too painful to admit just how much power men have over us and how little freedom we actually have.   It is too hard to take a critical look at male partners and recognize how imbalanced those relationships are.  Much easier to pretend everything is fine, we’re all equal now and that nobody’s being oppressed.

I’d like to try banning rape p%rn.  Why not?  Judging by the insidious encroachment of p%rn into every aspect of our culture, what we’re doing about it now sure as hell isn’t working.  The worst that could happen is that the ban is ineffective, not that we’ll all end up in the gulag.

The only people who benefit from the proliferation of p%rn are the p%rnographers.  Women who defend p%rn are collaborating with their own oppression.

I leave you with this message from Nine Deuce to Liberal Dude Nation:

As soon as you aren’t part of the group that runs everything, go ahead and start telling people to stop worrying about being shat on. As soon as the p%rn industry is dominated by images of men being choked and called derogatory names, tell me to stop being angry. As soon as men start getting raped on the same scale women do, and as soon as women start beating their husbands to death, you can come tell me this shit doesn’t matter. As soon as women can walk down the street without assholes harassing them, as soon as women earn equal pay for equal work, as soon as our bodies aren’t used as decoration for advertising and entertainment, tell me I have nothing to be irritated by. As for doing our best to be good human beings, that’s what I’m about here. I’m trying to do something to alleviate some of the ills I see plaguing women in our culture, if only by making one person at a time more aware of the problems that exist. But thanks for the patronizing pedantry.