Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Humiliation in Fetish Videos and Pornography

I consider myself a moderate pro-porn feminist: I don't object to all pornography, but I do object to certain themes, such as torture, rape, and humilation.

Humiliation seems to be a prevailing theme in the videos I've been discovering these days. Take the salon creaming videos, which are hot as I mentioned earlier, but the whole point is that all the shaving cream is meant to humiliate the subject rather than pleasure her. Then there's the video where a woman thinks she's auditioning for one thing, and then she's gunged, or covered in various messy things, with the purpose of humiliating and upsetting her - she's screaming and crying in parts of the videos.

Not okay.

Here's where I'm torn: I'm sex-positive, relatively pro-porn, and I want to be accepting of all fetishes and sexual interests. I mean, some people are just turned on by weird things. But where does it end? Should I really be okay with pedophilia? Crush videos where small animals are stepped on with spikey heels? And should it matter if certain fetishes are accepted, should non-acceptance mean that type of porn isn't made?

I guess my views on porn are the same with sex: if both parties are willing, why not? But if someone isn't willing, and lured into a room on false pretenses, I'm not really okay with that, and honestly, I don't think it should be allowed.

I realize this is less shampoo related and more related to fetish videos in general. And I'm repeating myself in the sense that I object to videos where the subject doesn't consent to what's happening.

My objection goes deeper than my empathy for those who are exploited in the making of fetish videos. I have a problem when women are unwilling participants, especially when they're humiliated, degraded or worse, because of the underlying notion that women are second-class citizens who only exist for men's pleasure whether they like it or not. And of course, there's the misguided idea that they secretly do like it and do want it done to them, they just don't know it yet.

On a final note, I do believe that forced shave videos - videos where a man cuts or shaves a woman's hair - does fall under the category of humilating fetish videos, and I definitely object to that genre.

If a woman doesn't consent to what's being done to her, it's not okay.

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