Reply #239: And let's be clear about that sexual attention, too --

[Morgana LaFey]

Well said, btw.

We are not that far removed from the time when women depended for their very survival -- their literal survival -- on "attracting" the right man to marry because the jobs and economic opportunities for women were severely limited and not very well-paying either.

It's STILL a male-dominated world, where social and political power resides with men, almost exclusively tho economic power has been equalized a LITTLE (even tho women still earn only a percentage of what men in comparable jobs earn). So it's STILL a "sellable" idea that women have to kowtow to men, attract men and their attention in order to have access to the social and political power we can't get on our own, since we're all still quite "unequal" and the most sure-fire way to do that is sexually.

PLUS, it's how many if not most women in this culture are raised (acculturated): to strive to become first and foremost not just sexual beings but sexually attractive to men beings, at the expense of every other consideration, including their very humanity (see: Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilar, et.al.).

So LOOK at the attention this woman is getting -- 5 men!!, thanks to her submissiveness. It's a horrible message to put out to women of any age but especially the young and foolish and impressionable, but it's also a horrible message to put out to men, that they somehow merit or deserve or are ENTITLED to this kind of display or submissiveness and obeisance.

And since it IS basically a rape scene, it also promotes violence against women in the same way that some porn does, because as DU's own pornographer put it, in this thread;http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=229&topic_id=6490&mesg_id=6490

to some of you men, it's just an ad, esp. since we poor hysterical women tend to see "sexual boogiemen" under every rock (a stock response, apparently, drawn out for use in this thread too). To him, the woman was not clearly demonstrating fear or any other signal of being distraught, so it's all good.

That is actually PRECISELY WHY the ad is so very harmful, not to mention disgraceful (or rather one reason, a major one).

RAPE is wrong, illegal and unbelievably traumatic for every woman who experiences it. It can and has ruined entire lives. Perhaps more to YOUR interest, it has ruined women's entire sex lives as well. It causes PTSD. It causes STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Most rapes go unreported, reported rapists uncaught, caught rapists untried, tried rapists unconvicted -- AND virtually all rapists are serial rapists which helps explain why something like 1 in 4 women will be RAPED IN HER LIFETIME, and she doesn't even have to be a sweet young thing to be so "lucky," she can be 80, crippled and/or demented.

Pornography makes all that okay -- for the men: see how she's not afraid? See how she LIKES it? See how she WANTS it? LIES about women, for male "pleasure." LIES about women for male "pleasure" that will result in more women getting raped.

And that's why I have such utter contempt for pornography and the people who defend it.