Can anyone point to a society where pornography is illegal..

[The Vinyl Ripper]

*And* women have the same rights as men?

Including the right to do as they please with their own bodies?

[Fovea]

1. It's that second clause that is really the kicker

isn't it?

[The Vinyl Ripper]

3. We shall see..

Won't we?

[Katherine Brengle]

2. I don't think anyone said pornography should all be illegal.

Someone might have, but I could have missed it.

I believe the prevailing "anti-porn" argument is that some things we have come to accept as the norm are exploitative and harmful to both "performers" and consumers.

The entire world is under patriarchal control, so even where pornography is outlawed, you are unlikely to find women (as a class) on an even keel with men (as a class).

Pornography (certain aspects thereof primarily) is just one part of a huge problem, not the problem in and of itself.

I know of no place on this earth where a woman can do whatever she likes with her body and face no repercussions (whether legal or social).

[The Vinyl Ripper]

4. There are societies on this planet in which pornography is illegal.

There are also societies in which women have the same rights as men.

Including the right to do as the please with their own bodies, at least as much as the men are.

Are there any societies in which porn is illegal and women have the same rights as men?

That's all I'm asking..

[Katherine Brengle]

8. What are you talking about?

I didn't say there were no places where pornography is illegal. I do not believe there are any places where women are truly equal in all ways to men in the eyes of the law and social unwritten law.

I think you are wrong about that.

And like I said before, no, there are no societies in which porn is illegal AND women are equal to men, because there are no societies in which women are truly equal to men.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

9. So you are saying that women are subjegated in every society on the planet?

There are no societies at all where women have the same legal rights as men?

[HardRocker05]

11. pretty much; even in the ones where they have the same legal rights, this has been a recent inventio

and does not change the reality on the ground overnight. you don't deny this, do you? also, when the more liberated societies exist in a world where much less liberated societies are all around, it is easy for the notion to persist that allowing women equal rights is some kind of fashionable luxury and a privilege that they are not actually entitled to by any right. that attitude is extremely prevalent right here in the good old US of A, in case you didn't notice.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

13. The USA is far from the most liberated society on the planet..

I think there is a slight chance that the USA could go backwards on women's rights.

In many of the Western European nations that isn't going to happen.

[unpossibles]

7. why is porn part of a problem?

I suppose it could be a symptom of a different problem, but otherwise I disagree. Sure, some porn is horrible and desgrading, but some is not. I could say the same with any job - washing dishes can be horrible and degrading as well, depending on your employer.

[DangerDave921]

5. ?

And your point is?

Pornography is not automatically degrading to women. Note the word automatically. Now if gross old fat guys are going to Thailand and paying destitute young girls money to film their acts, that is degrading because the young girls are in dire straits. But if a woman freely wants to have sex on camera for money, and is not coerced into it, or drugged, or any other element of force, then by all means she is free to do it. Just like I'm free to watch it and enjoy.

If you don't like porn, don't watch it. (doesn't that sound familiar?)

[The Vinyl Ripper]

6. I find the majority of porn a turn off..

Particularly the rape fantasy and gynecological spelunking varieties.

But I have no desire at all to make porn illegal.

That's not what I'm getting at.

[HardRocker05]

10. can anyone point to a post saying porn should be illegal? nt

[The Vinyl Ripper]

12. Where did I say porn should be illegal?

There are societies on the planet where porn is illegal.

There are also societies on the planet where women have the same legal rights as men.

Is there a society in which both things are true simultaneously?

[scisyhp1]

14. I can. It is easy - the Soviet Union.

Pornography was illegal there, while women most certainly had the same
rights as men. I believe in Cuba too pornography is illegal, and nobody
would accuse Fidel Castro of discriminating against women.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

15. People in Cuba are free to do as they please with their own bodies?

People in the Soviet Union were free to do as they pleased with their own bodies.

It's interesting that you would hold up two very repressive dictatorships as examples of places where pornography is illegal and people are free to do as they please with their own bodies.

Note that was one of my criteria in the OP.

[scisyhp1]

16. They certainly are. And they certainly were in the Soviet Union.

If not being able to star in porn movies qualifies as "unfreedom",
then your whole question is a useless tautology. Besides that I can't
think of anything that was not allowed for people "to do with their
own bodies" in both Cuba and USSR. They could have abortions, for
instance, paid by the state. Try that in the US. Pornography was indeed
illegal in USSR, and it was nowhere to be found as a result. Yet somehow
society survived without even noticing. Of course, without constantly
being bombarded by sex and porn marketing, nobody even new that they were
supposed to enjoy viewing pictures of naked people having sex.

[treestar]

20. In the US people doth protest too much about how they enjoy sex

If they really did, they wouldn't have the time for porn.

Yet the porn industry is so huge and makes so many billions of dollars.

[lumberjack_jeff]

21. Except, perhaps, walking that body out of the country. n/t

[treestar]

19. There was a reason for it

The repressive dictatorship, oddly enough, does have a hard time hanging on. All of the weapons of repression are still not enough.

So to keep it going, the dictatorships gave people free reign somewhere where they thought it wouldn't undermine their power. Human nature needs someone to be left free - this is so ingrained in human nature that even a dictator with all tools of repression needs to let the people have some outlet, or he'll find himself very dead.

Supposedly birth control pills were sold over the counter in the USSR. They knew they could let people do as they would in that one area.

Interestingly, the personal drama that results would keep people busy and not noticing politics. Heck, that is the case in the US to a great degree. All the divorce and child custody and sexual drama played out every day takes up so much of people's energy that it possibly at least partly explains why people are so uninterested in politics.

[Postman]

17. the United States....

Vermont passed the country's first statute prohibiting the publication or distribution of obscene materials. Other states followed, and by the middle of the nineteenth century the production and distribution of obscene materials was a crime throughout most of the United States.


http://www.porn-report.com/202-history-of-pornography.htm

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. You're 100% Correect

Women and men had the same rights in the Soviet Union and Cuba...The right to be arrested for having homosexual sex:


"Despite all these factors, the number of confirmed HIV infections has remained relatively low in the region. Prior to its dissolution, the Soviet Union was virtually isolated from the influences of the West. In the early years of the epidemic in the United States, news about the "Western problem" of AIDS was frequently in the Soviet press. Because homosexual activity and injecting drug use were illegal under Soviet law, officials were confident that HIV/AIDS would never be a problem in their country."

http://www.thebody.com/content/art14037.html

Well-they don't arrest homosexuals in Cuba...They just quarantine those who contact HIV:


http://www.aegis.com/news/ads/1991/AD912177.html

[treestar]

18. No, but the connection isn't quite the same

It is not illegal in those countries because it exploits women. It is illegal for some other reason.

It should be legal, and in such countries, women will tend to have more freedom than in those countries where it is illegal.

Women reaching true equality would tend to mean porn is legal, but there isn't much of a market for it.

Porn is men getting 100% their way. Romance novels and soap operas are women getting 100% their way. Equality is somewhere in the middle, there, I suppose. Or people getting more in tune with their inner selves and not selecting out the part that isn't assigned to their sex by patriarchal societies.

[Matariki]

23. Great questions!

Sexual prudery and efforts to control women seem to go hand in hand, don't they?