All-Fisk Insurance

[BasedBuzzed]

(Le repost because mods say you should be able to counter-fisk this fisking: (also feel free to re-edit thread title if pun is too obfuscating to the content))
Taken into account that vague criticism of attitudes might be taken as a veiled personal attack and semi-prominent critics don't have the time to get into a tussle themselves, when now turn to a fisking, if mods allow it: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/feminist-current/2015/09/melbournes-ormond-college-takes-bold-position-against-porn-s

>In what might be deemed a radical move, The University of Melbourne's largest residential >college banned access to pornography on campus. This means students at Ormond College >will be blocked from accessing "adult sites" on Wi-Fi networks.
The internet is 4/5 or so porn, good luck blocking all of it(also people will just download from the more obscure torrent sites, since obvious sites which actually lead to moolah for performers will be the first to go).
>The reason for this is straightforward.
Lol @ the straight part, because there's plenty of heteronormativity here.
>As college master Dr. Rufus Black stated, pornography is exploitative and "presents women >primarily as sex objects who are a means to the end of male pleasure."
Confirmed.
>Simple, right?
You mean the thesis or the speaker?
>Wrong!
>While Black told Jill Stark at The Age that "allowing the college's 400 students to access >porn on its network would be condoning the objectification of women," some students felt >the ban limited "freedom of expression."
You will not stop objectification with this, do you think men will suddenly fantasize themselves going "are you OK with this? Can I do X?" whenever they use their imagination now?
>Apparently, for men, facials are an art form.
longrantoneroticismandart.txt
No, let's just go with the fact that dudettes can also do a facial(best not ask what the pee/cum ratio is).
>But, in truth, it isn't "sexual expression" that's being banned (if that's the line of argument >we're going with), it's just men's "right" to access websites that sell female degradation. So >"expression" is not limited in the least. No one has banned masturbation and, of course, >men are still free to think about gang raping women or to sexualize "schoolgirls" inside >their own heads as always. Vive la liberté!
We get it, all men love to sexually abuse and degrade women, keep doing that Chinese Robber Fallacy gig.
>Luckily, male students angered by the ban have liberal feminism to fall back on, so they >don't need to defend their misogynist interests as such.
>Stark reports that first year law student Thibaut​ Clamart​, 24, "wrote a newsletter response >objecting to the ban, saying it was a 'moralizing statement' and that not all pornography >was demeaning."
>"We all agree there is an issue with the current state of mainstream porn but banning it is >not the answer. It won't educate people, it is condescending and paternalistic," he told her.
Look at this guy thinking men can be educated. I bet he's just parrotting talking points and using this letter as a circumspect way to pick up dudettes.
>Do "we all agree," Thibaut? Oh good. Good. I'm so glad to know "we all agree."
>Let's just quickly test that statement though... Just to be sure. We're all in this together, >right Thi?
How does this passage pass an editor? It says nothing and just makes the author sound like someone who has never made the effort to actually get good at passive-aggressiveness.
>He tells Stark, "If their argument is that it's about respecting women and enabling young >people to discover their sexuality without having the repressive influence of porn, that >makes the assumption that looking at porn is going to perpetuate those attitudes and you're >going to behave like a porn actor."
>Hmm... Seems like we may not all agree, after all. First, it's very clear that the media we >consume impacts our worldview.
Ergo, this is you binging Gail Dines, if you had any self-awareness.
>This is how advertising works, for example. Simply, we receive messages about products >which convince us we need to buy said products. It is through advertising (as well as other >forms of media, but ads were the first to do this) that we learn about supposed "flaws" we >must fix -- yellow teeth, perspiration, body hair, cellulite, visible pores, etc.
It's missing a link: advertising capitalizes on things humans already enforce as societal beauty standards.
>Media teaches us how we are supposed to look, what "sexy" means, which body parts we >are to sexualize, how thin we should aspire to be, and even, yes, appropriate ways men >should behave towards women. To pretend as though porn has no impact on our ideas about >sex, sexuality, women and men is silly.
longscreedonhowthoseinfluencesareadropintheoceancomparedtoxyz.txt
>We can simply look to culture at large to see that lessons about male entitlement are >widespread and ever-present in media. Anita Sarkeesian's recent video addresses the way >in which gamers learn, quite literally, that female bodies, affection, and sexuality are things >that are owed to them and that they will be rewarded with if they simply press the right >buttons. When men sexually harass, catcall, grope, or rape women, we see this entitlement >in action
Luckily this is evenly balanced with the propensity of video games to make men go on shooting sprees, so it will lead to sexist behaviour only half the time.
>Pornography very much exemplifies men's sense of entitlement to access female bodies at >any given moment. So much so that many see pornography and masturbation as >interchangeable. This is why men believe that attempts to limit porn use are, in fact, >attempts to limit "sex."
If I'm allowed a slippery slope too, you actually want to limit sex, ideally, because most sex is coercive and problematic in this type of worldview. You'd rally against enthusiastic consent as liberal feminism and applaud "teach men not to rape", to illustrate the distinction.
>Black, too, understands that the messages in porn are clear, arguing that his decision was >based on a "well-held view that pornography depicts women for the gratification of male >sexuality."
Fap material aimed at hetero men depicts sexualized women, more tautologies at eleven.
>Interestingly, Stark points out that back in the 90s, when Dr. Alan Gregory, former Master >of Ormond College, was accused of sexual harassment, he responded to the complainants >by accusing them of "puritan feminism." Sound familiar?
Chinese Robber Fallacy, sing it with me.
>Liberal feminism: the gift that keeps on giving. To misogynists.
I thought that was herpes.
>When we equate male entitlement to "sexual expression," women pay the price.
>Rachel Withers, president of the University of Melbourne Student Union, told Stark she >"would personally prefer to see colleges tackling issues around respect for women's bodies >and consent through educational programs and ensuring students receive comprehensive >information on consent as part of their college orientation."
Translation: now I also have to go to extra hassle whenever I'm randy.
>Now, that's a good idea too. A necessary part of changing attitudes is, I believe, real, good, >feminist education (sex education, as well as just regular old "woman are human" >education). But the problem with teaching "consent" within a context of liberalism is that, >when it comes to porn and prostitution, "consent" is used against us. I mean, how would >students who believe pornography equates to "freedom of expression" want consent to be >taught? Would they learn that simply agreeing to exchange sex for money is good enough -- >end of story? Or would they talk about larger contexts of male domination and financial need as things that limit or at least shape women's ability to "consent?"
Called it, you view sex itself as coercive, and your response is wanting to wrest the remote control from the patriarchy's hands instead of simply smashing it. Women have the ability to decide for themselves, and any cognitive bias that they might suffer from due to media imagery is not different than for example how skewed one's political judgements can get due to the news. It's a subtle distinction, but of vital importance.
>What's clear is that "consent" is not enough. People consent to unethical things all the time. >Technically, women have "consented" to abuse for eons. They marry abusers, they agree to >participate in rape porn, they go on second dates with men who've sexually assaulted them. >We know now that women's consent does not necessarily negate rape -- they can say "yes," >but what actually goes down after that may very well constitute assault.
Nobody consents to abuse, you nimrod. Someone who is gaslit in an abusive relationship cannot consent. Someone who participates in simulated rape can consent(you know nothing about kinksters, that's evident). Someone who goes on a second date with someone who assaulted them may just give the person a second chance(if a person slaps me on the first night we meet because he was drunk and he apologizes and makes amends and I hang out with him again, am I condoning abuse?).
>As Catharine MacKinnon wrote in her book, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State:
>"The unquestionable starting point has been that rape is defined as distinct from >intercourse, while for women it is difficult to distinguish the two under conditions of male >dominance."
>Our very understanding of what constitutes "sex" is rooted in notions of male domination >and female subordination. Therefore, teaching "consent" to men is insufficient so long as we >live in a rape culture and a porn culture.
Nein, nein, nein, here's how to do this right: https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/168/
>So please give me a break with this "men have a right to porn, we'll just teach them about >consent" garbage. Not only do men already feel entitled to jack off to abuse, but now >they've learned about "consent" from liberal feminists and are using that discourse to >defend their right to degrade, exploit, and oppress us. Because we "consented."
By that reasoning, your arguments are shit too because Xtians on a moral crusade nick them to try and take other rights away in order to protect women.
>Black's move is "radical" in a way, but only because we are so far gone, as a culture, we >can't even make the most obvious connections. The decision to ban access to porn on >college campuses -- places where rape and sexual harassment are ever-prevalent -- is one >that shouldn't even be up for debate. This is not about criminalizing porn users and it won't, >in truth, even prevent students from looking at porn. They can easily go off-campus to seek >out degrading images of women if they must. This is about teaching students what is right >and wrong. It is about sending a larger message.
They can also do it on campus, learn to interweb. And it's about educating without actually doing any of the legwork to teach, and empty symbolic gestures. Because that's all you'll ever have, really, because your theories twist reasonable ideas into unworkable, shoddy worldviews.
>Black said, "We're not in any way restricting their ability to do what they want with their >own personal resources but the college's Internet is a common resource therefore what it >gets used for is a question of community values."
>The message here is that misogyny is unacceptable on campus. And this is something we >truly should all be able to agree on.
Everybody already agrees on that, it's just quibbling over what counts as misogyny or not that will keep us busy for a few more centuries.

Verdict: this is apparently the same person who wrote that pathetic piece on why Laverne Cox's posing for a shoot was actually terribly objectifying, and in images the obligatory middle-finger selfie popped up. Take from that what you will.

As an aside, by far that biggest facilitator of violence, accidents, and sexual abuse is alcohol. And yet we tolerate that, with the only reform being a few halfhearted campaigns against substance abuse and simply taxing it. Yet with products of pop culture, people go bananas with the bans and the overwrought thinkpieces of why it induces bad behaviours. I just find it weird.

[BasedBuzzed]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/18/universities-bans-on-pornography-enable-more-freedoms-than-they-take-away
As a follow-up, the Comment Is Free (of Any Coherent Argument) section of the Grauniad(or however Private Eye spells it, a typo of a word mocking typos pleases my hipster sensibilities).
>You’re young, as hot as you’re probably ever going to get, and there’s a party on every >night with people as young and as bright and as hot as you. And you want to stay in your >room and masturbate to internet porn? Really?
Fapping to pr0n and visiting a party can happen on the same night. Do you ever talk to any men about these topics or do you just get all your cues from teen movies in which the goofy sidekick reserves a night with lotion, tissues and the newest vid of his fav starlet?
>This week Melbourne University’s Ormond College blocked access to porn websites on its >Wi-Fi network, stating the genre does not allow people at a “formative stage of life” to >develop a “healthy sexuality”.
Most teens have already been ruïned by easily accesible wank material before college, sadly enough.
>Some students have argued not all pornography is demeaning (it’s even educational!), and >to deny students the ability to watch porn in their rooms is to clamp down on freedom of >expression.
Can confirm porn is educational, heaven knows my new job would be far more difficult if I didn't have a ton of nicked cliché dirty talk to throw into the chats.
>But I reckon there are other freedoms that are more worth fighting for.
>The college’s master – theologian and ethicist Dr Rufus Black – argued in a newsletter to >the college’s 400 students that pornography was exploitative, objectifies women and >“presents women primarily as sex objects who are a means to the end of male pleasure”.
>As an administrator, there are certain things you don’t want happening at your college: you >don’t want a Skype-style sex scandal of the sort that dogged the ADF, you don’t want the >“rape culture” that characterises a number of US colleges and you don’t want a repeat of >what happened at Ormond in 1991 – where female students made a complaint of sexual >assault against the master, and accused the college of being blind to issues of sex and >safety on campus.
She's honestly arguing that Australia does not have a *skeptiquote*rape culture*skeptiquote*? According to the conventional model of it, the whole world suffers from it. Also, the notion that good PR should be the central pillar of a college's sexual assault policy is beyond dumb.
>To stop or discourage the behaviour that you don’t want, you need to start with an ideal. For >Black, that ideal is that students shouldn’t sit in their rooms watching stuff that objectifies >women, and in some cases, depicts violence towards women.
Instead they should go out and trawl parties looking for tail whenever they're horny, as per the opening paragraph.
>In extensive research I did for a magazine article (and later a book) on Australian colleges, >I interviewed many students of Sydney university colleges.
>Many young men and women I spoke to reported environments that were subtly, and not so >subtly, anti-women.
You're going to come up with examples of misogyny, and then suggest instead of crafting policy to ban these behaviours, we need to ban porn.
>One student wondered if the set of circumstances in her college would fall under the >definition of domestic violence – students urinated on her door after parties, banged on her >door in the middle of the night and cat-called her as she crossed the quadrangle. There >were thresholds of the dining room at certain times of the day that she didn’t like to cross >because a group of guys would hiss at her. There were lots of times and lots of places in >the college – her home – where she did not feel safe.
No porn, even Bang Bus type crap, start with this premise.
>Others talked about O-week humiliations: the “sex-exercises” where fresher girls had to do >push-ups over a guy, or shave their head, or drink until they were sick.
Come up with a good hazing policy for the frats.
>When I went to a Melbourne university co-ed college in the 1990s, women were called “fur”. >First year students were freshmen and second year and above were called “gentlemen”. It >didn’t matter that half these “gentlemen” were women, and that the college administration >had banned – or at least strongly discouraged – the use of those terms. Students were in >thrall to traditions and traditions dictated that terms left over from the start of the 20th >century remained in use.
Launch an awareness campaign for gender-neutral language.
>Students didn’t have to watch porn to objectify women – this objectification was already >buried deep within the colleges’ DNA.
Bye-bye goes the entire premise of the article.
>To start to unravel and destroy the objectification of women is the great task of college >administrators here and in the US, where one Columbia student carried her mattress to >graduation to protest the handling of her sexual assault case.
Isn't Nungesser's lolsuit still ongoing?
>Many students who go to Ormond – and colleges like it – move onto positions of power and >influence in society. Tony Abbott is a former student of St John’s at Sydney uni and Gough >Whitlam went to St Paul’s. Famous alumni of Ormond include Sir Robert Menzies and Greg >Hunt. To have women enter the world having learned to accept a degraded position in it, >alongside men who accept women being degraded – whether that is through the >pornography they watch on campus, or the words used to described women in college >parlance – is dangerous. We should not allow this acceptance to be internalised in the ruling >class.
Show more concrete examples of this tangent. How his porn use led to misogynist policies, what rhetoric accompanied those policies that highlighted the link? If I can't get this past my editor for a student-run mag, how the hell do you get away with it even in a column?
>In its own way college life can be a utopia, distinct from the “real world” – a time and space >apart. This can be incredible: wiling away the days spent on the lawns, reading a book, or >putting on a play that fails, singing in choir or joining the Fabians, staying up late at night >drinking port and talking about post-structuralism (if that floats your boat).
You never entered the real world again, after college you will move in the same obnoxious and pretentious circles of moneyed asshats who discuss applause lights like these over dinner parties.
>But a utopia can go both ways: freedom from something or freedom to do something. You >can be free to spend a whole semester reading Ulysses in the sunny parts of the >quadrangle, to walk around in your academic gown over your pyjamas, to drink all night >and not face too many consequences in the morning. But we should also be able to argue >for freedom from posters around the college that objectify women (Pimps and Prostitute >themed-balls, for example), and “pro-rape” Facebook pages set up by college students.
What are your thoughts on freedom from speech codes?
>The reasons behind the porn ban are sound: in order to create a space where young women >can thrive, you attempt to remove the conditions where they may be degraded. And if >young women thrive, young men thrive as well.
This is just a hodgepodge of examples without any causal links. At least throw in a study or something.
>After all, you have the rest of your life to watch porn on the internet. You’ll eventually > (hopefully) move into a flat and live on your own. You may come home at night from your >job at the investment bank and have long, lonely hours to fill and high speed broadband to >help you fill it.
Next thinkpiece will be on how arrested men are for placating themselves with porn instead of going out there and getting hitched now that they have the financial security to do so.
>But now? Log off. There are parties to be had, connections to be made and people – real life >people! – to meet who will blow your mind and change your life more than any porn site.
I don't think minds are the kind of thing these peeps who have to swear off porn are looking to have blown.

There's probably an argument about neuronormativity to be made here, too.

[nearly_takuan]

Porn gets in the way of developing a "healthy sexuality"? This I know from nothing, but it seems to me most people tend to develop their sexuality in whatever way they can. This thing reads like the desired outcome is for teenagers to stop watching porn and start having more sex with each other. (Which, as you said, are also not even mutually exclusive within the scope of a young adult's evening.)

I vote everybody watches what they want to watch, and fucks whoever shares with them a mutual interest in fucking.

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