For the life of me, I do not understand why anyone thinks it reasonable or appropriate to defend pornography. How best to get at the problem is a worthwhile discussion, but I find it incomprehensible that anyone might consider pornography something worth defending.
I would put those two things in the category of what to consider in determining how best to address the issue, as distinct from being any kind of endorsement of pornography as a positive good. I think WDI has done a very good job here of laying out the harms to women and girls, which are vastly underestimated and most often ignored or derided. That really has to stop. Julie Bindel is also excellent on these issues—I have learned a lot from her about how bad and widespread the effects of pornography are.
The same censors that you would empower to take down "porn" are also going to take down films like "Babygirl", an "erotic thriller" (wikipedia's description) written, directed, and produced by a woman, and starring a very famous very wealthy woman (Nicole Kidman) who obviously took that role as a free choice.
Here is the "parents guide" on the film from IMDB: "Pervasive & graphic sex depicting exclusive & explicitly sexualized full female nudity with intensely vivid female masturbation & porn use. Graphic BSDM featuring explicit female humiliation, female sexual satisfaction equated with elements of danger & female consent depicted as unclear with severe male manipulation/seduction & female marital infidelity."
You think your censors would allow that? I sure don't.
The price is too high. The price of censorship always is, and always will be.
Mark, c’mon, of course I recognize the slippery slope argument when it comes to free speech. FYI, I go way back on this—when in law school in the ‘70s, as co-President of my school bar association, I invited Margot St. James to speak. I wish I had understood back then what I know now about the incredible harms to women and girls, as I would have asked her about that. So don’t think for one minute I am coming at this blind. Of course I have a view, and my view is that the issues raised by WDI are valid and woefully under-recognized, and that pornography is not a positive good. Now the question is how to grapple with the harms and solve the problem. Adopting the Nordic model would be a good starting point. And perhaps Martine Rothblatt could be persuaded, with his gazillions, to manufacture robots and give them to the poor wee men who are unable to control their impulses. I will only say to you, and I am sure I will not be persuasive, that support of pornography is not the hill to die on.
WDI USA did not just "raise issues", their statement calls for "the complete eradication of pornography".
Which they did not bother to define. They just know it when they see it, they know it's bad, and they're quite sure that those they will empower to "eradicate" it will not later turn on them.
Even though they've just emerged from a dystopia where their very own speech was suppressed (on twitter and many other platforms) as "actual violence". Remember that? Saying "trans women are men" was deemed to be "actual violence" and would get you instantly deplatformed. How Kara could have forgotten this and joined the ranks of the new censors is utterly beyond me.
To summarize: support of free speech is in fact a hill I will gladly die on. Even if it's speech that you do not like.
What I think is it’s not necessary to agree with every line of everything to appreciate that WDI has a point in sounding the alarm. There is room for discussion here, without dismissing the effort root and branch. I think you are overreacting, as other men (funnily enough) have done in their comments here. I suspect this will irritate you that I say this, but I enjoy our discussions nonetheless. You keep me on my toes, which I appreciate, and I hope maybe I do yours. Will you at least admit to enjoying my thought about recruiting Rosenblatt to keep feeble minded men with uncontrollable appetites off the streets and away from women and girls?
"This morning, a federal court ruled in favor of reality. Biden's Title IX rewrite has been vacated nationwide."
Can you PLEASE explain to us exactly what this is and how a ruling of the Northern Division of the Eastern District of Kentucky determines the standing of Title IX nationwide?
Kara, you are completely right about transgenderism and doing fine work there. But everything in today’s post is puritanical nonsense. If I had ever given money to WDI, I’d stop now.
Seriously, that you consider the content of that post puritanical speaks volumes about you and all the men who run to defend your “right” to watch the filmed abuse, rape and sometimes torture of women. The genres of porn say it all, with things like “teen painal” being popular.
This is a MASSIVE driving force of the trans BS, because so many men are into sissy porn and equate being humiliated and abused with being a woman and they have a fetish wherein they act it out. How cute.
If you don’t see the obvious in this it is because you don’t care about women and girls as a sex class, and feel entitled to wank over what is often literally the rape of girls and women, and when it is exposed as such the videos don’t come down.
Go over to one of the sites where women are rescued from trafficking, which is how they supply that *industry* and give it a read. Or are you so convinced this is harmless good fun?
Agreed. It's really striking how much the evidence base for this form of totalitarian policing is as weak as the evidence base for transing kids. Ideological capture is everywhere.
Apparently, Kara, you don’t realize that this is exactly why women often aren’t taken seriously — because so many of you are prone to hysterical garbage like calling a sex magazine or video “violence.” And by what right do you tell other women what they’re allowed to do with their own bodies? The hypocrisy would be comical if it weren’t so damaging to liberty.
This is the equivalent of "if you don't want men in womens' sports you must hate trans people".
EVERYONE objects to trafficking, abuse, rape, etc.
But consensual filming of consensual sex is NOT those things. You are equating them, and then claiming that anyone who does not equate them must hate women.
It's an invalid argument when made by trans activists, and it's an invalid argument when made by speech restriction activists.
I'm just sad to learn that Kara is a speech restriction activist.
More women are forced into prostitution and pornography than choose it, and even women who initially chose it find themselves being forced into doing things they did not consent to.
You are just conveniently blind to this fact.
Like I said, get yourself on over to one of the organizations that is helping women who are trying to put their lives back together and read their stories. Or is that too much of a bother for you?
The fact that you feel that women should be commodifying their bodies and the act of sex is offensive to feminists, who believe women should be able to be in this world living safely with dignity.
It’s interesting because, you see, I AM a woman. And I am fine with people having consensual sex and if they wanted to film and share that, fine. But this is not what the commercial sex industry is based on, and the world over there is one fact: women and girls are trafficked, by all methods and means, and they do not get a choice.
So, even if 1/2 the porn were consensual (it is not) then how do YOU feel about the other 1/2?
Or do you feel it is fine?
Why don’t you tell us all a little about how you feel about the women who ARE trafficked, who ARE raped, abused, battered in the name of pornography and prostitution.
Because I see your sense of freedom of choice is inflamed by women not supporting this, and it makes me curious. Do you EVER think about all the harm done to women and girls as a result of this? Ever????
Or is it like the slaves mining lithium for your iPhone? Like, slavery is wrong until you get something you really like out of it?
Please, engage in this dialogue if you care about people’s freedoms. Because otherwise you are going to sound a lot like the people who defend the second amendment like it is the best thing in the world for people, while giving no fucss about the rest of the constitution.
FREEDOM AND RIGHTS ARE AN ALL OR NOTHING TOPIC.
If it doesn’t work for everyone, it doesn’t work. And the sex industry does not work for us. Sorry, Charlie.
"Forcing" someone to do something against their will is a crime. Those crimes should be fully prosecuted.
You admit to using a device with lithium in it (all electronics use lithium, not just iphones) that you believe was mined by slaves, and yet somehow it doesn't stop you from using the device.
So I guess FREEDOM AND RIGHTS ARE AN ALL OR NOTHING TOPIC is not really true for you.
Kara, did you know that Substack likely monitors your Substack email and blocks it? I forwarded an article to you about a popular trans identified male writer ( Salon, Daily Beast, etc)
Samantha Leigh Allen, he also writes approvingly on prostitution, The blocked article is:
It's true that in China the internet is censored for gratuitous violence, pornography and the promotion of unscientific supernatural superstitious beliefs. See:
But in many other countries there is also strong censorship of racist and antisemitic communications like the "n" word, which a lot of people support. It depends on community values - unlike the censorship of trans criticism , which is driven by a small minority. On the other hand, the word b*tch, which is even more dehumanizing than the "n" word, as it refers to a subhuman species, a dog, is used with gusto, which exposes the relative value accorded to women. Descriptions of women as bleeders, breeders, chestfeeders, etc are also used with abandon, especially in drag culture, without worry of offense or being censored. It's all relative, as the man defending pornography/prostitution demonstrates. Can you think of any other group besides women who are referred to, portrayed in this way?
Right. And I think most Americans are opposed to that level of government control of speech. Rap music is full of the N word. I’m no defender of pornography, but creating the infrastructure for the government to determine what uses of slurs or sexual imagery are allowed and which are not is not something I would ever support.
For the life of me, I do not understand why anyone thinks it reasonable or appropriate to defend pornography. How best to get at the problem is a worthwhile discussion, but I find it incomprehensible that anyone might consider pornography something worth defending.
There is a decent case to be made that porn availability reduces rape and other sexual assaults by providing a more acceptable sexual outlet:
https://www.quora.com/Has-porn-reduced-sexual-crime
Then there is the undeniable fact that working in porn is a choice that some women have freely made. Here is a long conversation between two of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmlUm0S2uw
I would put those two things in the category of what to consider in determining how best to address the issue, as distinct from being any kind of endorsement of pornography as a positive good. I think WDI has done a very good job here of laying out the harms to women and girls, which are vastly underestimated and most often ignored or derided. That really has to stop. Julie Bindel is also excellent on these issues—I have learned a lot from her about how bad and widespread the effects of pornography are.
The same censors that you would empower to take down "porn" are also going to take down films like "Babygirl", an "erotic thriller" (wikipedia's description) written, directed, and produced by a woman, and starring a very famous very wealthy woman (Nicole Kidman) who obviously took that role as a free choice.
Here is the "parents guide" on the film from IMDB: "Pervasive & graphic sex depicting exclusive & explicitly sexualized full female nudity with intensely vivid female masturbation & porn use. Graphic BSDM featuring explicit female humiliation, female sexual satisfaction equated with elements of danger & female consent depicted as unclear with severe male manipulation/seduction & female marital infidelity."
You think your censors would allow that? I sure don't.
The price is too high. The price of censorship always is, and always will be.
Mark, c’mon, of course I recognize the slippery slope argument when it comes to free speech. FYI, I go way back on this—when in law school in the ‘70s, as co-President of my school bar association, I invited Margot St. James to speak. I wish I had understood back then what I know now about the incredible harms to women and girls, as I would have asked her about that. So don’t think for one minute I am coming at this blind. Of course I have a view, and my view is that the issues raised by WDI are valid and woefully under-recognized, and that pornography is not a positive good. Now the question is how to grapple with the harms and solve the problem. Adopting the Nordic model would be a good starting point. And perhaps Martine Rothblatt could be persuaded, with his gazillions, to manufacture robots and give them to the poor wee men who are unable to control their impulses. I will only say to you, and I am sure I will not be persuasive, that support of pornography is not the hill to die on.
WDI USA did not just "raise issues", their statement calls for "the complete eradication of pornography".
Which they did not bother to define. They just know it when they see it, they know it's bad, and they're quite sure that those they will empower to "eradicate" it will not later turn on them.
Even though they've just emerged from a dystopia where their very own speech was suppressed (on twitter and many other platforms) as "actual violence". Remember that? Saying "trans women are men" was deemed to be "actual violence" and would get you instantly deplatformed. How Kara could have forgotten this and joined the ranks of the new censors is utterly beyond me.
To summarize: support of free speech is in fact a hill I will gladly die on. Even if it's speech that you do not like.
What I think is it’s not necessary to agree with every line of everything to appreciate that WDI has a point in sounding the alarm. There is room for discussion here, without dismissing the effort root and branch. I think you are overreacting, as other men (funnily enough) have done in their comments here. I suspect this will irritate you that I say this, but I enjoy our discussions nonetheless. You keep me on my toes, which I appreciate, and I hope maybe I do yours. Will you at least admit to enjoying my thought about recruiting Rosenblatt to keep feeble minded men with uncontrollable appetites off the streets and away from women and girls?
Kara, Riley Gaines has posted on Twitter:
"This morning, a federal court ruled in favor of reality. Biden's Title IX rewrite has been vacated nationwide."
Can you PLEASE explain to us exactly what this is and how a ruling of the Northern Division of the Eastern District of Kentucky determines the standing of Title IX nationwide?
Thank you!
Looks like it is nationwide:https://twitter.com/AGTennessee/status/1877379286954553591
Thanks! I saw someone explain it this afternoon on Twitter.
This is AMAZING.
#WeAreWinning
Kara, you are completely right about transgenderism and doing fine work there. But everything in today’s post is puritanical nonsense. If I had ever given money to WDI, I’d stop now.
A man defending pornography AND threatening to stop giving money that he's never given.
Quelle surprise.
Buh-bye.
Seriously, that you consider the content of that post puritanical speaks volumes about you and all the men who run to defend your “right” to watch the filmed abuse, rape and sometimes torture of women. The genres of porn say it all, with things like “teen painal” being popular.
This is a MASSIVE driving force of the trans BS, because so many men are into sissy porn and equate being humiliated and abused with being a woman and they have a fetish wherein they act it out. How cute.
If you don’t see the obvious in this it is because you don’t care about women and girls as a sex class, and feel entitled to wank over what is often literally the rape of girls and women, and when it is exposed as such the videos don’t come down.
Go over to one of the sites where women are rescued from trafficking, which is how they supply that *industry* and give it a read. Or are you so convinced this is harmless good fun?
Agreed. It's really striking how much the evidence base for this form of totalitarian policing is as weak as the evidence base for transing kids. Ideological capture is everywhere.
Apparently, Kara, you don’t realize that this is exactly why women often aren’t taken seriously — because so many of you are prone to hysterical garbage like calling a sex magazine or video “violence.” And by what right do you tell other women what they’re allowed to do with their own bodies? The hypocrisy would be comical if it weren’t so damaging to liberty.
Yes, women are not taken seriously because we object to being trafficked, abused, raped, etc.
Just stop. You do not care about what women *choose.* You are an apologist for men’s sexual violence against us.
This is the equivalent of "if you don't want men in womens' sports you must hate trans people".
EVERYONE objects to trafficking, abuse, rape, etc.
But consensual filming of consensual sex is NOT those things. You are equating them, and then claiming that anyone who does not equate them must hate women.
It's an invalid argument when made by trans activists, and it's an invalid argument when made by speech restriction activists.
I'm just sad to learn that Kara is a speech restriction activist.
No, it is not equivalent.
And here is why: statistics.
More women are forced into prostitution and pornography than choose it, and even women who initially chose it find themselves being forced into doing things they did not consent to.
You are just conveniently blind to this fact.
Like I said, get yourself on over to one of the organizations that is helping women who are trying to put their lives back together and read their stories. Or is that too much of a bother for you?
The fact that you feel that women should be commodifying their bodies and the act of sex is offensive to feminists, who believe women should be able to be in this world living safely with dignity.
It’s interesting because, you see, I AM a woman. And I am fine with people having consensual sex and if they wanted to film and share that, fine. But this is not what the commercial sex industry is based on, and the world over there is one fact: women and girls are trafficked, by all methods and means, and they do not get a choice.
So, even if 1/2 the porn were consensual (it is not) then how do YOU feel about the other 1/2?
Or do you feel it is fine?
Why don’t you tell us all a little about how you feel about the women who ARE trafficked, who ARE raped, abused, battered in the name of pornography and prostitution.
Because I see your sense of freedom of choice is inflamed by women not supporting this, and it makes me curious. Do you EVER think about all the harm done to women and girls as a result of this? Ever????
Or is it like the slaves mining lithium for your iPhone? Like, slavery is wrong until you get something you really like out of it?
Please, engage in this dialogue if you care about people’s freedoms. Because otherwise you are going to sound a lot like the people who defend the second amendment like it is the best thing in the world for people, while giving no fucss about the rest of the constitution.
FREEDOM AND RIGHTS ARE AN ALL OR NOTHING TOPIC.
If it doesn’t work for everyone, it doesn’t work. And the sex industry does not work for us. Sorry, Charlie.
"Forcing" someone to do something against their will is a crime. Those crimes should be fully prosecuted.
You admit to using a device with lithium in it (all electronics use lithium, not just iphones) that you believe was mined by slaves, and yet somehow it doesn't stop you from using the device.
So I guess FREEDOM AND RIGHTS ARE AN ALL OR NOTHING TOPIC is not really true for you.
Kara, did you know that Substack likely monitors your Substack email and blocks it? I forwarded an article to you about a popular trans identified male writer ( Salon, Daily Beast, etc)
Samantha Leigh Allen, he also writes approvingly on prostitution, The blocked article is:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14111339/power-lesbian-corey-burke-wife-samantha-leigh-allen-seattle.html
My question is how is this accomplished without massive online surveillance and censorship, i.e. China. The cure may be worse than the disease.
It's true that in China the internet is censored for gratuitous violence, pornography and the promotion of unscientific supernatural superstitious beliefs. See:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/nyregion/shen-yun-dance-abuse.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
But in many other countries there is also strong censorship of racist and antisemitic communications like the "n" word, which a lot of people support. It depends on community values - unlike the censorship of trans criticism , which is driven by a small minority. On the other hand, the word b*tch, which is even more dehumanizing than the "n" word, as it refers to a subhuman species, a dog, is used with gusto, which exposes the relative value accorded to women. Descriptions of women as bleeders, breeders, chestfeeders, etc are also used with abandon, especially in drag culture, without worry of offense or being censored. It's all relative, as the man defending pornography/prostitution demonstrates. Can you think of any other group besides women who are referred to, portrayed in this way?
Polling shows that a minority (28%) thinks that pornography should be banned for adults: https://www.thearda.com/categories/ahead-of-the-trend/should-pornography-be-completely-banned
This is comparable to the percentage (26%) that thinks that boys should be allowed in girls sports: https://news.gallup.com/poll/507023/say-birth-gender-dictate-sports-participation.aspx
Right. And I think most Americans are opposed to that level of government control of speech. Rap music is full of the N word. I’m no defender of pornography, but creating the infrastructure for the government to determine what uses of slurs or sexual imagery are allowed and which are not is not something I would ever support.