Men’s movements movements suffer from narcissism and do not adequately address the problem of male privilege. An authentic men’s movement must be pro-feminist: women are entitled to a collective identity and vie for their rights – gender equity and gender equality. In masculinist consciousness and mindfulness, which undergirds our celebration of International Men’s Day, we should acknowledge fully and be cognizant of the vast array and spectrums of privileges enjoyed and burdens endured by males and men.
What should be celebrated and honoured the most out of men’s virtues?
I aver that men must celebrate, first and foremost, the greatest male philosophers (and political scholars) such as Indigenous philosophers, the Buddha (from the East), Al-Jahiz (from the Middle-East). Nelson Mandela (from Africa), Andrés Bello (from South America), Martin Luther King (from North America), and Marx (Europe), to name a few. Then there are eminent scientific scholars such as Einstein who should also be celebrated and honoured. Equally, great male philosophers include men and Elders of ‘hunger-gatherer’ societies and cultures, and International Men’s Day must be multi-cultural – celebrating great men of all cultures, societies and ‘races’. We should avoid ethnocentrism, and extract positive meaning and synthesis of men of all cultures.
The aim of International Men’s Day should be to encourage masculine identity to be better associated with philosophical, scientific, political and social contribution in society.
A drive for equal economic and social opportunity underpins the left’s social programme of open borders so that people from economically disadvantaged nations can gain access to a First World lifestyle and wealth.
A world without borders is envisaged by much of the left.
However it is possible to close the wealth gap between nations (abolishing Third World debt for example), First World nations taking in those genuinely fleeing persecution in their own countries with on-shore processing, and to maintain nation state borders and nation state sovereignty.
The human seems to be a ‘territorial’ animal – especially under the capitalist mode of production, and whilst inhuman nationalism needs to be reeled in, nation states, currently in some ways, may tend to provide a sense of belonging and territory, and they can or should act as a humane power-break on centralised capitalist world government institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund which currently and largely fuel, perpetuate and ingrain more inequality between nations.
The nationalist arms-race needs to be carefully deconstructed as it is ultimately a waste of resources and is deployed mainly for and to maintain global class divisions in the geopolitical capitalist economy.
Immigration provides a sense of pluralism vital to ‘post’-colonial cultures, memetic contagion, and the creed of tolerance. The restriction of the flow of people in favour of a sense of nationalist citizenship may be wholly outmoded or transmogrified with the achievement of a global resource-based economy (Fresco), wherein greater interconnectivity through technological means will create new social arrangements of belonging, home-making, and identity.
The personal is political, and so is the human brain and the way it shapes our experiences and perceptions. It is the command centre of the human body and the whole human organism. Hence, it is a ‘political organ’.
Our brains allow us to comprehend cosmic and biological evolution, and communicate and reason with advanced language-based syntax. The evolution of our brains themselves are merged with technology and technological inputs at an ever-increasing rate.
So how is it possible that we regress into primitive political ideology and praxis such as fascism?
It is because the human brain is so easily susceptible to a lack of empathy. This is a latent and in-built flaw of the most influential and environmentally affecting ‘political organ’ – the human brain.
Systemic run-away issues caused by this prolific controlling organ include anthropogenic climate change, the ever escalating threat of nuclear annihilation, and environmental destruction and pollution.
The natural inclinations and states of the human brain are control over environmental, social and political processes, which in many instances prove to be elusive. Yes, even in ‘hunter gatherer’ cultures the human brain had a proclivity to control.
We should select for more control over nature, and select for progressive political, social, economic, and environmental processes. This trajectory is the authentic aiming point(s) of the human brain, but we are oft alienated from this trajectory by the (currently) immense flaws and faults in our brains.
A corrective regimen or antidote to this is a commitment to life-long multi-disciplinary tertiary education. This will assist in leveraging the authentic control of the human brain over all facets of life and augment the flourishing of human and non-human species. This way the human brain currently being implicated in the plight of and embroiling the planet will then become the world’s indisputable best ‘political organ’.
See Dr. Saniotis’ incisive synthesis and culturally revolutionary informative video on animal intelligence in relation to human intelligence:
Principally, due to the threat of nuclear annihilation, run-away anthropogenic climate change, poverty and hunger in the Third World, battery farms, war, crime, inequality, structural racism, and acute classism, we are yet to become the best species.
What we are good at as a species is language and technology.
If our social, political and emotional intelligence matched our prowess at language and technology we would easily claim to be the best species.
Our capacity to reason allows us understandings of the world animals cannot grasp, such as taxonomic knowledge of nature, different species, atomic and sub-atomic knowledge, the scientific method, ‘natural selection’, cosmological understandings about the nature and origins of the universe, knowledge of evolution and meta-evolution, space exploration, and philosophical understandings and innovation, are formidable unique human attributes.
However, animals have an impressive array of abilities and knowledges in the realm of kinaesthetic intelligence, ecological intelligence, memory abilities, and sensory intelligence. The richness of the senses of animals, such as olfactory and auditory senses, and not limited to human preoccupation of the visual sense, is an area we have been chronically underestimating re animals’ sensory experiences and endowment.
There was a period in human history where we lived with ecological intelligence, and where population did not exceed carrying capacity, this was in ‘the hunter gatherer period’ (or the EEA – environment of evolutionary adaptation). In this period we could proudly assert species’ equality with animals without ecocide. Since then we’ve taken a turn for the worst in objectively measuring our greatness: to be guardians and protectors of life on earth and maximising the net positive aspects of sentience in the world (positive meaning, happiness, enchantment, health and well-being) and minimising suffering, are the yardsticks of this greatness mandate. When we do this in a systemised and controlled way, we can proudly assert that we are the undisputed best species.
If I was charged with the duty, obligation, and/or latitude to create different gender essences, as a creationist God, I would establish, as an informative ethical and empowerment template, gender equality, gender equity, and gender diversity – what aligns with and what we indefeasibly have now as a result of real-world evolution in gender, in the human species. To explicate, gender equality means women/female, men/male, and non-binary have equal power(s) overall; gender equity involves fairness despite differing abilities, and respective gender strengths (and weaknesses); and gender diversity is in the social relishing of differences in gender. It is only natural, that each gender is in awe of the others’ strengths, and at times, a little jealous of these abilities of ‘the others’.
As a creationist God on gender of the human species, with this duty of intelligently creating and designing essences of women, non-binary, and men, I would imbue the following gender traits (non-exhaustively):
Traits Exclusive to Women:
Have more brain-based empathy, through a respective and dimorphic larger and more active anterior cingulate gyrus in the brain;
Have mind-reading powers during intimacy;
Have a capacity for pregnancy, and carrying life in the womb; and
Arriving at truth through empathy.
Traits Exclusive to Men:
Have more physical athleticism;
Have more emotionally detached and emotionally less engaged brain-based abstract reasoning powers;
Arriving at truth through more abstract reasoning;
Emotions and empathy more attached to, and more augmented through, abstract reasoning, in compensating for a respective lack of brain-based empathy; and
Have more brain-based gender specialisation in fight and flight responses through a larger amygdala in the brain.
Traits Exclusive to Transgender:
Mixture of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ traits, and on spectrums.
Traits Mutual to All Three:
I would create the gendered-brains to have potential for, that is much coveted, (especially cultivated) telepathic powers1, as an extension to empathic powers of all three, an ability equal to all three genders. This would be to reduce conflict, enhance communication and cooperative aptitude, and this would result in increased species’ fitness.
For some interesting cutting-edge scholarship on putative telepathy of extant humans, see the evolutionary scientists Professor Henneberg and Professor Saniotis’ section The Dragon’s Psyche: Exploring Non-Local Mind in their book The Dynamic Human (2016), Bentham Science Publishers, Sharjah. I quote from them: ↩︎
“Non-local mind can be defined as the ability of one mind to influence another from a distance, or knowing something that is beyond the grasp of sensory perceptions…[t]here have been approximately 900 studies conducted over the last sixty years on non-local ways of knowing [185]. Many of these studies were conducted in order to ascertain whether observers could affect matter [185]. The majority of these studies provide “independently replicable evidence that observers can affect the behaviour of physical systems” [185], thereby, supporting the probable existence of non-local mind. The sheer volume and veracity of these studies challenge cherished scientific myths of the falsity of non-scientific ways of knowing. This view needs to change.” (pp.107-8)
Human beings are all inherently equal, and we need a social system which respects this truth and moves us to continually elicit substantive and formal equality. Equality is an outcome and a process.
Equality should mean we are all more and more equal in talent, health and wealth. Equality should mean continually better equal opportunity and not merely in one’s wealth but in sharing the empowering labour, and an equal say in one’s workplace and in political participation, including directly voting on economic production and decision making in consumer councils for socialising demand for goods and services in a more informed manner.
The citizenry will be empowered to vote on ‘ideas’, products and services, and research and development in a more informed manner, the more we as a people are committed to quality life-long multi-disciplinarian tertiary education scholarship.
No one is better than anyone else. To think so is an alienating form of ‘false consciousness’. We must seek to rehabilitate those of us afflicted by the sickness that comes with social, political and economic exploitation and start caring for one another and cooperating to the full extent.
We have enormous latent ability to cooperate and care for one another. Let’s unleash this beast!
It is imperative we treat each other well, without slurs, insults and defamation. If someone else attacks, it’s better to just withdraw.
Withdrawing means the attacking party does not benefit any longer from a friendship or allied relationship.
It is simply the most powerful thing a person subjected to an attack can do.
Being kind and compassionate to one another, without manipulation in the realm of person to person relations is the first step in creating a better world for all. It is congruent with the structural changes a social justice activist aims or seeks to elicit.
Critiquing another is fine, but this should not descend into ad hominem attack, and should be cooperative; human reason is a team-sport with no opposition!
Psychosis may be described and conceptualized as an over-identification with or the invasion of the personal unconscious (Freud) and/or the collective unconscious (Jung) into (waking states) of consciousness. This interpretive model of psychosis’ characteristics is the invasion and flooding of conscious mind with unconscious mind (Bateson).
In circular dialectics, the consciousness informs the personal subconscious/unconscious, and the collective unconscious informs the consciousness.
This universe which we inhabit is lawful – i.e. it is deterministic cause and effect, precluding free will. However, there could be ‘parallel’ universes in the multiverse which allow for free will – choice and an ensuing battle between a somewhat Manichaean conception of good versus evil but with a mixture of both all as embodied – in a power-quest of all individuals. This may be connected to our deterministic universe via and connected to the collective unconscious, particularly manifesting in dreams and altered states of consciousness, and perhaps informing some waking states of conscious through intuitive knowledge gleaned from a healthy pineal gland ‘third eye’ connective consciousness-‘antenna’.
Attached to the above model of universes with different modes of conduct for individuals and their agencies is my theory of surplus power or energy. Certain kinds of knowledge, being, symbolic powers, bravery, courage, altruistic risk-taking, compassion and with-suffering, all may work to produce a surplus. This surplus power or energy is then paid forward to a parallel universe in the multiverse. Many of us, to varying degrees, may have been channeling energy off-world, to a parallel universe, through knowledge production and esoteric karmic overlay in thought and deed.
The aligning of symbolism and synchronicity would be particularly potent in soliciting a surplus paid forward off-world.
Surplus power of an individual is paid as a dividend to the self in another universe ‘parallel’ to it.
If the above theories hold true – and I acknowledge they are empirically unverifiable – then there would be the need for the reconciling and balancing of immediate on-world individualist power generation and/versus off-world power consolidation.
These theories are informed by the many great human religions: it theorizes an afterlife as existence in different universes that could be considered ‘parallel’. This is a kind of reincarnation – not of a different species or a different human individual, but of an adult individual in their mature prime, perhaps without ageing.
Some universes in the multiverse may go extinct and others born anew.
Karma banking and connective (‘ecological’) knowledge acquisition and production will ensure a better life in this world for certain, but it may also serve us beyond the sensory information our brains process on-world in the universe as we know it!
I am a social scientist and philosopher of sexology. I’d like to canvas the virtues of monogamy and polyamory, before turning to a wholesale rejection of polygamy. If there is a creator, this is what she/he had in mind!: sexual and emotional monogamy and polyamory, as ideals.
True love is progressive. It’s between two people, or network of lovers, who ideally identify as soul mates. The bedrock of these relationship is mutual intellectual and emotional growth and companionship.
When done humanely, they are both based on emotional and sexual loyalty – close relationships that can be done with care and respect. Both, I hold, have their unique advantages and drawbacks across different contexts, but are equal in merit (when done in a thoughtful manner). Not inferior or superior to one another, just different.
I’d like to turn to monogamy first. I contend, emotional and sexual loyalty between two consenting partners is optimal for child-rearing. This is so children can have emotional and material support by their parents (not knocking adoption here, as adoption is progressive, but adopted kids deserve two parents, no matter what the gender). Here I’m moralising for and asserting an inclusive monogamous model of the nuclear family, open to LGBT+ adult individuals. This is because genetic reproduction invokes an archetype involving sexual penetration and subsequent fertilization by one person (only one person’s sperm fertilizes one person’s egg), which I will develop later in this blog post.
Sexual relations between monogamous partners can progress over time as trust is built. Emotional and sexual monogamy (also) pays respect to, and caters for (humanising) the ancient biological-genetic reproductive strategies of both women and men. It fulfills the needs of emotional connection and security in a relationship for women from men as well as catering for the needs of sexual loyalty from women for men (in loyal emotional and sexual monogamy): a culture of respectful, loyal monogamy when it arises is imperative, both fulfilling the humanised and reciprocal versions of men and women’s differing reproductive strategies, which is socially symbolically extended in monogamous relationships beyond mere biological-genetic reproduction.
The narrow sociobiological view that men are polygamous because some male primates are (trying to solicit as much reproductively successful sex with ovulating females as possible) doesn’t hold up against the humanising strength of true love monogamy.
Furthermore, paternity testing can help annul paternal angst, but mainly it can be eschewed through a culture of trusting, respectful and loyal monogamy when compatibility arises, based on people having compassion and principled behaviour towards one another.
We need more trust and true love as a culture, I contend, which can be met through enlightened forms of monogamy or polyamory, not the overly permissive liberal hedonist model we are somewhat currently mired with in late-capitalist social relations.
Same-sex and LGBTQIA+ relationships, deploy non-normative and different, and actively queer, symbolic hetero-normative reproductive strategy. They make and forge their own nuanced symbolic meanings, yet true love (emotional and sexual monogamy or respectful and enlightened polyamory) is applicable to these relations (except for asexuality which may be best undertaken with emotional monogamy or emotional polyamory), has the greatest humanising effects, too, just as with hetero cisgender monogamous relationships.
A drawback with polyamory is that there is the inevitably uneven emotional and sexual investment across consenting partners, which can be emotionally and sexually hurtful. I will canvas some guidelines and boundaries for those seeking polyamorous intimate relations further into this blog post, which also mitigate or even wholly abrogate this (potential) drawback.
Re asexuality, there may be social contradictions with voluntary celibacy (but that’s another matter for another time)!
To put it poetically, true love, between two people or with multiple partners (or multiple soul-mates even) is both real and ideal! 🙂
Having scaffolded some of the core progressive and idealised features of a culture of monogamy, I’d like to carefully reconcile the ideal, sophisticated, nuanced and functional polyamory. Is one more ideal than the other? That’s a huge debate, and one that I will not do comprehensive justice herein. I suggest that they are equal when done reflexively.
A good way to envision it is that each person can ‘casually’? consent to a level of intimate exchange with different partners without having cheated on anyone, where a monogamous agreement or consecration? has not been agreed upon.
Intimate and emotional needs can be met through a ‘casual polyamory’ with certain rules for optimum mental, emotional, and sexual / intimate wellbeing. I suggest that we, in our courting and intimate rituals, reserve phallic penetration of a woman’s body for monogamy. That, I argue, should be reserved for the protection and security of emotional and sexual monogamy. And further to this, ejaculatory hetero sex should only be engaged if trying for a pregnancy (See What is Legitimate Male Reproductive Power?: https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2018/08/03/what-is-legitimate-male-reproductive-power/).
So, this kind of ‘casual polyamory’ I am fleshing out can consist of networks of trusting partners who engage in ‘mini’ microcosmic monogamous intimate exchanges within a ‘casual polyamory’ framework or praxis – perhaps just laying together and giving each other massages – without the kinds of sexual exchanges which may spread STDs / STIs. Phallic penetration of a women, I argue, should be exclusively in the realm and prerogative of full-blown mutually loyal monogamous relationships – preferable in marriage where exclusive intimate and emotional loyalty is pledged and consecrated – a lifetime commitment between two soul mates! To summarise, I argue that what we want in terms of the choice in polyamory is a ‘casual polyamory’ – multiple intimate partners – without phallic penetration of a woman. Lastly on polyamory, I’d like to add that multiple partners in polyamory need not meet one another to be a part of a polyamory network.
Justification (or The Why) (note: arguably hetero-normative justification, but need not be construed as such, and that can be queered):
The archetype (‘original model’) of reproductive sex (vaginal penetration by a phallus) and its primary offshoots (heterosexual phallic penetration in fellatio and anal phallic penetration) are so sexually emotionally powerful – archetypically and evolutionarily psychologically related to ‘reproduction of self’ as the evolved way to live on genetically after mortal death – that they therefore, I argue, should be conducted within and protected by sexually and emotionally loyal monogamy; fellatio and anal phallic penetration are abstracted one-step from vaginal phallic penetration – from the archetype – and thus slightly less archetype-centric, and slightly less closely related to reproduction and symbolic reproduction. For further nuanced clarification: the archetype of reproductive sex is itself heterosexual and hetero-normative intrinsically and by nature. Whilst invoking this intrinsic heterosexual, hetero-normative archetype, on the other hand, may, arguably, be a hetero-normative reproduction. Invoking it thus must have a humane exigency, as it does in this instance: it furthers respectful intimate relations in a graded fashion so as to enhance emotional and sexual wellbeing – mooring to powerful psychological processes in gendered sexual relations across (evolutionary) time.
I do extend empathic sentiments for not meticulously reconciling non-cisgender, bi and homosexuality and queer practice with monogamy and polyamory. In my defence, my logic is that perhaps this courting guidelines and culture could / should be pioneered, justified, reasoned and governed by trans/non-binary and bi/homosexuality / pansexuality persons themselves. Perhaps that kind of gender and sexual orientation philosophising is better constructed by non-hetero and/or non-binary women and men. Perhaps it’s not my business – encroaching on the autonomy of non-cisgender and non-hetero persons to construct their own courting and sexual moralities. But I do hope I have given some food for thought! If you can be homo-normative or non-binary-normative, then I can be hetero-normative by omission as long as I don’t try to abrogate your mature and informed indefeasible right(s) in construction of individual and collective queer identity if you so wish. I use ‘queer’ here in a humane ‘re-appropriation’ and reclamation sense, as you have my libertarian political support and alliance for your identity-making rights, as is both just and altruistic. I would also like to acknowledge a fluidity, ‘overflow’ and ‘the vast expanse’ in sexual orientation and gender, which many-a-time escapes ‘neat’ categorisation and is resistant to taxonomic labelling.
Turning to polygamy – I don’t believe we can morally rescue or reconcile any of its tenets or practices. And, it should be frowned upon. Firstly, what is it? Polygamy is in a person having multiple sexual partners but psychologically enforcing or an imposing an injunction in prohibition of those partners not to have multiple partners themselves – a repudiation of their just choice. It is ‘glorified’ cheating and totally asymmetrical in power relations. It inculcates loyalty to the power-monopolising-abusive party without reciprocation rights of the subordinated parties. Even if it can be ‘consented’ to like in monogamy and polyamory, it has abusive power-dynamics so thus doesn’t meet the threshold of informed structural consent (See Liberal Consent Versus Structural Consent: https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2021/05/11/liberal-consent-versus-structural-consent/).
I make the distinction between “real pornography” and “virtual pornography”: technological reification in photographic or filmed capturing of real people in sexualized behaviours or engaging in sex are distinct from animation pornography which does not capture real people in sexualized behaviours or sex.
The harm of “real pornography” is manifold (and “virtual pornography” is not without its ‘costs’):
At its heart, “real pornography” is often a de-personalized voyeurism subjecting real people to sexual surveillance – for the sexual consumption of strangers. It is akin to a “reverse -panopticon” where the many surveill (neologism for subjecting someone(s) to surveillance) the few. This is a form of exploitation inherent to “real pornography”.
“Real pornography” also allows for one-way sexual gratification without emotional connection, which is arguably socially aberrant: it is a form of sexual exploitation and objectification to gain access to another’s sexualized body, without emotionally investing in their personhood especially where is no sexual reciprocity by consumers of “real pornography”. It – “real pornography” is a one-way extreme version of casual sex but with anonymous sexual surveillance (often on a mass-scale). MacKinnon (1989) sees pornography as an exploitative gendered system, wherein men objectify women by gaining access to their sexual bodies whenever they want. I think “real pornography” does harm to male participants and consumers, here, when looking at the problem from a holistic perspective. So, I find MacKinnon’s perspective too totalizing and one-sided in her gender analysis, even though I, too, adopt a form of anti-(“real”-)pornography ideology.
Whilst not intrinsic to or an essence of “real pornography” there are currently issues of inequality between participants in accrued meta-knowledge, wealth and age for example exacerbating the inherent exploitation in “real pornography”, and of course not just between participants themselves, but inequalities between participants and consumers also. MacKinnon would say there are inherently power inequalities between men and women, where women always adopt a subordinate position or at least this is the pivotal norm around which all pornography is built or referential to (the standard arrangement… from [which] which all else is defined”) (MacKinnon 1989, pp. 332-333).
This ignores the gap in payment for pornography workers between women and men, where women pornstars out-earn male pornstars. It also ignores the power dynamics in which male pornstars are subjected to sexual and emotional humiliation, and sexual splitting of the masculine gender. However, we should not ignore the underage sex trafficking of young women in the (“real”) pornography industry and the subjection many women pornstars have in BDSM and sexually humiliating acts.
Without adequate sex education, pornography in general, can socialize for sexual objectification in sex outside of pornography.
Also, particularly views/consumers of hardcore pornography, undergo sexual desensitization: in order to reach orgasm, an equivalent level or evermore hardcore and/or humiliating sexual imagination or pornography is ‘needed’. This is at the cost of a more innocent (soft-core) intimate imagination.
Consequently (of all this), should the making and/or possession of pornography be or become a criminal offence”?
I argue, that no, in libertarian socialism, emphasis should be on choice, growing out of and beyond “real” pornography, at the level of raising social-and-political-consciousness towards restoring socially just monogamous intimate integrity and relations, without the sexual surveillance indicative of and inherent to “real” pornography. This would be preferable, along with a temporally intervening unionization of (all) sex and pornography workers.
Rubin (1984) gives an extensive account of the discrimination faced by marginalized sexual minorities, so we should not add to that persecution or shaming and should actively dismantle these forms of social exclusion.
I think that raising the consciousness of everyday people about the exploitation inherent in “real pornography” is the way to one day arrive at an abstinence consensus, whilst simultaneously enriching diverse sexualities outside of “real pornography” promoting the sacrosanctity of real intimate exchange and the sexual privacy we should afford to all agents.
In saying this, I make two exceptions: sexual humiliation and BDSM, which should be illegalized (but not criminalized). Sexual cuckolding is an extreme form of sexual humiliation (and yes, women (and all people) can be victims of this form of violence, too). Sexual cuckolding is a consensual form of sexual humiliation which is an attempt at the annihilation of a victim(s)’ symbolic social reproductive strategy. Especially when captured in filmed footage to be shared for the predatory consumption of anonymous strangers, sexual cuckolding (the symbolic extension of and socially transmogrified reproductive cuckolding – the manipulation of reproductive angst where a person unwittingly invests emotional and physical resources in the bringing up of genetic offspring which is not theirs (a manipulation which causes reproductive angst and ‘capitalizing’ on another’s or anothers’ reproductive angst by the perpetrator(s)). Sexual cuckolding is camouflaged in the liberal hedonist version of ‘consent’ and is often insidiously framed as a (liberal hedonist and overly permissive) ‘kink’.
We must acknowledge the reality that people can ‘consent’ (note: see my blog post on liberal versus structural consent: https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2021/05/11/liberal-consent-versus-structural-consent/ ) to acute harm in abusive power dynamics between sexualized agents. BDSM is the eroticization of abuse in sex, it subjects a victim or victims to physical and psycho-sexual harm which should have redress in legal (non-criminal) remedy/remedies.
The interim between now and socially outgrowing BDSM and sexual humiliation in “real pornography” and “real pornography” itself, the legalization of sex work and of “real pornography” best protects those people(s) engaged in these forms of (sex) work, with the promotion and enactment/actualization of legal regulation of ‘these industries’ and unionization for these workers.
What is or should be considered “extreme pornography”?
There is a spectrum between soft-core, hard-core and extreme pornography. I think we should outgrow “real pornography” as a way to progress to a more equal and thus more mature sexually promoting “virtual pornography” over “real pornography” no matter where these sex acts lie on the continuum/spectrum. Extreme pornography, in my view, is in BDSM and sexual humiliation: BDSM and sexual humiliation merely refracts, ‘reflects’ and reproduces the highly abusive relationships we are mired with and normalised by and in the external world. Of course, this becomes more socially exploitative when technologically captured and reified when filmed and shared/diseminated (which is transformed into “real pornography”).
How do prevailing social norms around ‘good sex’ and ‘bad sex’ shape our understandings of pornography and its potential harms?
I would say that we live in a “porno culture” as a norm, which is sometimes at the expense of “true love” monogamous sexuality, which, is held to be the ideal intimate/sexual expression – this is often thought of as ‘good sex’ by conservative sexual ideology/morality (see Rubin 1984, p. 160), against the permissiveness practices inherent to the late capitalist sexual commoditization culture(s), often viewed as ‘bad sex’ by conservative sexual ideology/morality. The dominant ‘sex culture’ is at a cognitive dissonance – commoditized sexuality is taboo (‘bad sex’) yet liberally engaged in and consumed largely through internet pornography – notions of ‘good and bad sex’ are often hypocritical in today’s sexual climate. From the more conservative sexual moralities, and the norms which they attempt at making hegemonic, is that all pornography is seen as an intrinsic “sinful” evil and corruptingly deviant (against having good moral scruples) and thus is seen as acutely harmful. An unlikely alliance is found between the anti-pornography radical feminism (like MacKinnon’s position on porn) and Christian conservative morality.
Pornography has and can enrich sexual imagination, and help sate the human need for emotionally and psychologically safe sexual experimentation. The human need for sexual experimentation and the full spectrum of legitimate sexual fantasies and imagination can be sated and expanded through the creation, development and consumption of animation pornography (not virtualizing real people engaging in sexual acts), if people choose to this kind of non-exploitative pornography (single people or persons who gain consent of their partner or couples who mutually consent to consume). That way we don’t break with “real monogamy”, “real micro-monogamy within polyamory”, and break with, or a better term – socially outgrow – the sexual surveillance culture that real pornography entails. This is a “Buddhist middle-way” between the opposing camps of pro-porn and anti-porn positions.
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