Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Yes, but is it pornography?

A problem for those of you into conceptual clarification and sex.

1. I have been receiving a lot of spam recently that advertises movie clips of women kicking men in the balls. Generally the scenario involves a woman being assulted or sexually harassed on the street and replying with violence. The "money shot" is her kicking a guy in the balls.

2. I encountered a genre of pornography called "pedal pushers", which depicts women in short skirts and high heels revving the engines of exotic cars. The camera, it seems, stays on their feet.

So the question: are these pornographic? Assume for a second that they are what the advertisements say they are, (I have no reason to doubt this, although I have not actually watched any of them) and that there is an audience that watches them, indeed, compulsively watches them. They are advertised like pornography and packaged with other things that most people would agree are pornography. But their relationship to sex is hidden under many, many layers of repression and fetishism. WTF?

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