how do this week’s readings prompt us to expand how we discuss and

Please respond to the question below with at least 500 words.

Then respond to at least 2 of your peers with comments containing a minimum of 150 words.

How do this week’s readings prompt us to expand how we discuss and imagine pleasure in the social imaginary?

first response 

From this week reading we can see that pornography has strictly banned in the past, from the article “ Introduction Brown Sugar Theorizing Black Women’s Sexual Labor in Pornography” the author Jeannie Pepper asserts that “in the nineteenth century, pornography has been powerfully regulated as the explicit, obscene edge of acceptable forms of sexuality”(Jeannie Pepper p.6). It reveals the social phenomenon of sex and pornography. Which led people to think about maybe pornography isn’t appropriate for the outsider world, assume it as dirty secrets. But on the other hand, pornography not just a creature of sex, but something can represent without desire. In the co-author Penley, Shimizu, Young, and Taormino their article points that “ Feminist porn creates alternative images and develops its own aesthetics and iconography to expand established sexual norms and discourses”(Penley p.10). It really depends on who we focus on in pornography, most of the people by focusing on the surface by the judge for their actions. Pornography can show more than that, for example, people’s body is not only involved when it comes to sex, it the gift we all have for mangy use, it could be art and instrument, people can use for music for dancing for enjoying. Another factor that prompts us to expand how we discuss and imagine pleasure in the social imaginary is positive thinking. The author Juana María Rodríguez claims in the article “Pornographic encounters and interpretative interventions: Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior” about the way people thinking sex,“sex-positive feminist porn does not mean that sex is always a ribbon-tied box of happiness and joy. Instead, feminist porn captures the struggle to define, understand, and locate one’s sexuality”(María Rodríguez, p.329). It expands our thinking about the positive thinking too, for many people have different thoughts it could generate different feelings about the pornography, it might relieve the deep thoughts inside the people, at that time they will be the only judgment about their sexual orientations. Apparently, females have always targeted by pornography, truth is not, it could involve everyone in society. The pornography is not s a shame thing anymore, we should embrace the good side them represent, it reminds us to love our body and thoughts, no matter with any shape.

At the same time, we also have to worry about the side-affect pornography can bring, that will be only a caution. From the article “ Constructing a crisis: porn panics and public health” the authors Valerie Webber and Rebecca Sullivan points that “ Diseases of over-consumption are quintessentially moral, not health crises” (Valerie, Rebecca p.193). if we want to think and exert the good side of the pornography, we have to use it appropriately, understand the disease and overwhelming they can bring people. Moreover, we should embrace that we all human, pornography belongs to human nature, nothing that belongs to human nature is bad. It makes us realized everything has culture and stereotype behind it, we should break the wall that disguises things ugly.

second response 

From this week reading we can see that according to feminists, the problematic nature of pornography is not a question of morality, nor of its sexual explicitness, but of its sexism. Feminist argument puts pornography into the focus of gender oppression, claiming that pornography subordinates women. Antipornographic feminists have identified pornography as the cause of male violence against women and the low status of women in society. Rendering pornography is not nice in many cases. Who should be dominant? Who should be submissive? How does this sex look like to our liking or other people? Scenes in pornographic videos often revolve around the fact that a woman is tamed first by a man, and that is attractive to many men. Even more than depicting nonviolent sex. In my opinion, the world around us is divided into black / white, good / evil and other binary oppositions, active / passive or dominant / submissive. And feminist pornography disrupts this established order. Thus, the most beneficial in feminist pornography is not so much to find the answer to a woman’s desire, but to ask what / who a “woman” is and to question the usual answers.Pornography evokes various feelings in women. Many women are attracted to pornography, others are repelled.

It is often presented in society that for feminists pornography is synonymous with violence against women, discrimination, abuse, dehumanization, etc. It should be remembered that rejecting pornography is not the attitude of the whole feminist movement, but only one part of it. The feminists’ opinion on pornography is therefore not uniform. Their view depends on the degree of radicality of feminism they advocate. Feminists perceive pornography very negatively, as I already mentioned. The main problem is not sexual explicitness, but gender oppression. According to them, a woman in pornography is put in a sort of oppressed position. As I have read earlier, I have found an interesting thing that antipornographic feminist groups use this argument to promote the notion that pornography is the cause of male violence against women and because of it, women achieve low status in society. According to them, pornography is based on a masculine character. The man is depicted in a position where he has the power to command, whereas the woman is a victim who must obey.

The subordinate position of women in our culture has been explained by feminists as a function of violence, and especially of sexual violence against them.According to some feminists, pornography, which at least contributes to a cultural climate that accepts aggression against women, is one of the strongest institutions that promotes and makes violence against women.From the point of view of radical feminists, what is called sexuality is a dynamic of control and control. Pornography shows how men see the world and how they seize through this way of seeing the world, how their way is an act of world control. I feel like sometimes, every type of violence against women – rape, abuse, prostitution, sexual exploitation of children, sexual harassment – is presented in pornography as the ‘real’ nature of women.