Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:05 pm  

carl_spackler wrote:

That reminds me of the Traci Lords story. Was she the exploitee or the exploiter?

Aye, you could write a book on that. Mine would start by pointing out that by the age of 15 she had already acquired knowledge of the porn industry and the money to be made and devised a plan to con her way into it. So that situation was a product of, at least, the availability of the facts about the sex industry to her, and her own conscious decision that given her reputed physical assets, she could make money at this whilst using it as a way in to the movie industry. I didn't and don't know the details of the story but from what I've briefly read I don't know of any Machiavelli pulling her strings? The problem was she was only 15, and if a child under 18 cannot make those sort of decisions, or should not be allowed to, then whilst a legal limit might be the only practicable limit, it must certainly be true that plenty of under-18s know extremely well their own minds and are 100% capable of making decisions, just as many over-18s are still hopelessly naive.

Then she (like any actress or indeed actor) was "exploited" in that their body and image was used as a means to get audiences to part with money to see them. But not "exploited" I think in a child abuse type of way (that is, not knowingly, or even 'turning a blind eye') since it seems she had a fake passport and since I assume that no "legit" sex studio would dream of getting shut down and the staff sent to jail for using underage girls.

Personal quotes of hers from IMDB suggest some ambivalence:

[about her porn career] No one put a gun to my head and said "you have to do this."

[about her porn career] I was really young, I was really stupid about some things.

carl_spackler wrote:

Doesn't that work on the basis that all 'not nice' behaviour is rooted in aggression? I don't agree with that at all.

I'd put it that a great deal of 'not nice' behaviour is rooted in aggression. Which can of course take many forms, not just punching someone.

There are many other 'not nice' behaviours but I suppose it's those that directly and significantly impinge on the safety and well-being of others that are the most relevant to the discussion. Activities such as TWOCcing and driving around like a lunatic, not caring who might be injured or killed (the overwhelming majority of TWOCcers are young males). Or burglars (the substantial majority of whom are male). But as a general indicator of the complexity of the topic, any of these people may well, in general be thought of as "nice" rather than "not nice" by their peers.

If you weren't a child being abused by him, was Jimmy Savile "nice"? Or Stuart Hall? Were they "nice" right up to the moment they committed their first offence, but then automatically are irrevocably deemed "not nice" for all purposes? Or were they never "nice"?

It raises one particularly interesting point, though. We all probably know - I certainly do - at least one person who is nice as pie when sober, but turns into a real nasty piece of work drunk. Is it that the alcohol triggers brain activity that encourages violence? Or does it mean the person is fundamentally aggressive and the alcohol removes some kind of aggression inhibitors that control when sober?
(Incidentally by far the best example of this that I personally know is female).

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:15 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

Aye, you could write a book on that. Mine would start by pointing out that by the age of 15 she had already acquired knowledge of the porn industry and the money to be made and devised a plan to con her way into it. So that situation was a product of, at least, the availability of the facts about the sex industry to her, and her own conscious decision that given her reputed physical assets, she could make money at this whilst using it as a way in to the movie industry. I didn't and don't know the details of the story but from what I've briefly read I don't know of any Machiavelli pulling her strings? The problem was she was only 15, and if a child under 18 cannot make those sort of decisions, or should not be allowed to, then whilst a legal limit might be the only practicable limit, it must certainly be true that plenty of under-18s know extremely well their own minds and are 100% capable of making decisions, just as many over-18s are still hopelessly naive.

Then she (like any actress or indeed actor) was "exploited" in that their body and image was used as a means to get audiences to part with money to see them. But not "exploited" I think in a child abuse type of way (that is, not knowingly, or even 'turning a blind eye') since it seems she had a fake passport and since I assume that no "legit" sex studio would dream of getting shut down and the staff sent to jail for using underage girls.

Personal quotes of hers from IMDB suggest some ambivalence:

[about her porn career] No one put a gun to my head and said "you have to do this."

[about her porn career] I was really young, I was really stupid about some things.

I think the most 'interesting' thing about it all is the apparent deviousness of her scheming. I once saw a documentary which said that not only did she get into the porn industry underage, but she established herself as a massive star and formed her own production company with remarkable timing. All of the films where she was underage and subsequently had to be banned were for other people's companies, all of those that could still be distributed legally were her property.

Adds a whole other layer, and doesn't just make her seem ambivalent, rather it makes it look like she had her end game in sight from the start and actively pursed it.

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

I'd put it that a great deal of 'not nice' behaviour is rooted in aggression. Which can of course take many forms, not just punching someone.

There are many other 'not nice' behaviours but I suppose it's those that directly and significantly impinge on the safety and well-being of others that are the most relevant to the discussion. Activities such as TWOCcing and driving around like a lunatic, not caring who might be injured or killed (the overwhelming majority of TWOCcers are young males). Or burglars (the substantial majority of whom are male). But as a general indicator of the complexity of the topic, any of these people may well, in general be thought of as "nice" rather than "not nice" by their peers.

If you weren't a child being abused by him, was Jimmy Savile "nice"? Or Stuart Hall? Were they "nice" right up to the moment they committed their first offence, but then automatically are irrevocably deemed "not nice" for all purposes? Or were they never "nice"?

It raises one particularly interesting point, though. We all probably know - I certainly do - at least one person who is nice as pie when sober, but turns into a real nasty piece of work drunk. Is it that the alcohol triggers brain activity that encourages violence? Or does it mean the person is fundamentally aggressive and the alcohol removes some kind of aggression inhibitors that control when sober?
(Incidentally by far the best example of this that I personally know is female).

Fair point, probably some of the more common dangerous behaviours are linked to aggression. I'm still not necessarily convinced that men are inherently more aggressive than women, though. I think it's more about social grouping than gender biology. Partly because of your last point, as I have personally found that to be the case more with women than with men. Unless there is testosterone in lager, I am therefore more inclined to believe that the aggression is already there and comes out when inhibitions are lost.

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:17 pm  

Oddly enough having mentioned Mad Men in me earlier post, I just came across this article Discussion of "exploitation" often assumes that the subject of discussion does not know or "understand" whether they are being "exploited". In this article there is a passage that reads: Martinis were compulsory at 5pm and there was the perennial dilemma - when your boss puts his hand on your knee do you smile sweetly and pray for a rise, or do you knee him in the groin? Helen Gurley Brown, the late editor of Cosmopolitan {and author of 1962 book Sex and the Single Girl}, knew the answer to that question. "You see, I don't think it's wrong to use your sex appeal and femininity to get ahead on a job. In fact, I can't think of a better way to do it," she said. She had worked her way up through 17 different secretarial jobs and ended up as a copywriter on Madison Avenue, the best paid in the business. "A secretary offers the only kind of polygamy we recognize in this country, the chance to have a second wife at the same time you have your first one and not go to jail. "If you select her carefully, she can be the loveliest of all fringe benefits. And to think, the company pays for her." Her advice to women: "You get to a man by dealing with him on his professional level, then stay around to charm and sexually zonk him." So, her bosses, if they had thought about it at all, may well have agreed that yes, they were exploiting her. Whereas if asked, the truth was she was confident that she was in fact exploiting them. Maybe they were exploiting each other, who knows, Gurley brown sounds like a highly focused and determined woman who knew her own mind and was very intelligent, but doubtless there will be those who know better than she did herself, and would insist to her that she had been exploited.

Oddly enough having mentioned Mad Men in me earlier post, I just came across this article Discussion of "exploitation" often assumes that the subject of discussion does not know or "understand" whether they are being "exploited". In this article there is a passage that reads: Martinis were compulsory at 5pm and there was the perennial dilemma - when your boss puts his hand on your knee do you smile sweetly and pray for a rise, or do you knee him in the groin? Helen Gurley Brown, the late editor of Cosmopolitan {and author of 1962 book Sex and the Single Girl}, knew the answer to that question. "You see, I don't think it's wrong to use your sex appeal and femininity to get ahead on a job. In fact, I can't think of a better way to do it," she said. She had worked her way up through 17 different secretarial jobs and ended up as a copywriter on Madison Avenue, the best paid in the business. "A secretary offers the only kind of polygamy we recognize in this country, the chance to have a second wife at the same time you have your first one and not go to jail. "If you select her carefully, she can be the loveliest of all fringe benefits. And to think, the company pays for her." Her advice to women: "You get to a man by dealing with him on his professional level, then stay around to charm and sexually zonk him." So, her bosses, if they had thought about it at all, may well have agreed that yes, they were exploiting her. Whereas if asked, the truth was she was confident that she was in fact exploiting them. Maybe they were exploiting each other, who knows, Gurley brown sounds like a highly focused and determined woman who knew her own mind and was very intelligent, but doubtless there will be those who know better than she did herself, and would insist to her that she had been exploited.

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:36 pm  

So when does exploitation become an unwritten unspoken mutually beneficial arrangement?

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:08 pm  

Horatio Yed wrote:

So when does exploitation become an unwritten unspoken mutually beneficial arrangement?

As I understand Gurley Brown, so far as she is concerned, she was doing the exploiting. One point I made was that however confident she may be of that, plenty of people would still claim that she is wrong.

The arrangements she had certainly must have been mutually beneficial, since it seems she was able to be a top class worker (since she worked her way to the top) and she herself got what she wanted out of it.

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:48 pm  

Horatio Yed wrote:

So when does exploitation become an unwritten unspoken mutually beneficial arrangement?

Well, this is the great question.

My opinion?

I think that there is a lot of rubbish talked about it.

I find the entire patriarchy argument to be flawed.

Women are not 'better' than men intrinsically – history reveals that women behave badly if and when they have the opportunity. It's pretty much as simple as that.

Women are bitchy (this is a generalisation) in a way that men are not and seriously not nice. Physical violence? Maybe not, but there are more forms of violence than the merely physical.

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:59 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

As I understand Gurley Brown, so far as she is concerned, she was doing the exploiting. One point I made was that however confident she may be of that, plenty of people would still claim that she is wrong.

The arrangements she had certainly must have been mutually beneficial, since it seems she was able to be a top class worker (since she worked her way to the top) and she herself got what she wanted out of it.

They were both exploiting each other.

The main victims will have been the women who received unwanted sexual advances from their bosses, refused them and saw their career prospects disappear.

Did Gurley Brown work her way to the top, or did she simply sleep her way there? Would her talent have allowed her to reach the top without sleeping with her bosses?

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:03 pm  

There are things in life in which we should be seen as humans, therefore equal.
e.g. equal pay for the same job: there is no reason why a man and a woman doing an identical job should be paid different.

There are things in life though in which we should be treated as a man and a woman, and allowances made for that, we are genetically different, we are made of different chemical mixtures, we both have great attributes that compliment each other but we are different. Almost two different symbiotic species combined to be classed as 'human'.

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:09 pm  

Horatio Yed wrote:

There are things in life in which we should be seen as humans, therefore equal.
e.g. equal pay for the same job: there is no reason why a man and a woman doing an identical job should be paid different.

There is though. Why should a woman who performs better, has better experience and gives superior service receive the same pay as a man, simply because their job titles are the same?

Re: The expert opinion on banning porn... : Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:11 pm  

That's performance based pay though, a different issue.