Wealth and fame she&#39;s ignored.

I read that torture article. Interesting stuff. (I'm still processing, so I'm not exactly sure what I think about it yet. It's definitely there to think about, though.)

What the foo? Do you think it's some kind of "prime directive," no-interference policy on the part of NG? Fear of ethnocentrism? I wonder what, in their minds, makes it okay to present a practice that's clearly a gross human rights violation without comment. *sigh* It's been a very depressing week, news-wise.

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Imagine the outcry if they had done an article on a FLDS "tribe". So, why the difference in perception? Is it a race thang?

Yes. And no. Sort of.

1. There is sort of outcry about our sisters in different cultures. But it's hard to not be utterly racist about it. So we focus on education and opportunities rather than OMg UR LIEK SO OPPRESSED.

1b. See campaigns against female circumcision and older campaigns against foot-binding. Education for girls campaigns in Afghanistan. Gynecological medical help for young women in Iran. Radio soap operas in Africa that raise these marriage issues. Preferably grass roots so we don't get our Western Imperialist bootprints all over it, but largely (I think) funded by donations globally rather than locally.

2. Erm. Insert thing where I complain we only really get outraged about white girls because everything else is too far away/too large to comprehend/too black.

3. Within the US, this is a fairly unusual situation that society can disapprove of and fix within existing laws. But in all honesty I've been reading about the FLDS thing for *years*. And actually first came across it wrt the boys that were surplus and exiled. That doesn't suggest outrage so much as... finally the media in general got round to scandalising it enough for people to care en masse.

4. Also in all honesty, FLDS - not so unusual. Intense, localised, ritualised and you have someone to blame, but check out any closed religious community and you will find this behaviour.

4b. About fifteen yrs ago I read an article (unbiased and non-accusatory) on Kentucky mountain women and really aside from the religion aspect can't see much of a difference.

Wow, that is too long already, sorry about that.

I agree with the JW thing, he does eroticise male torture. I do have lots of thoughts about that but mostly I think fictional male torture can be quite hot. So nothing too deep.

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Interesting that I feel differently about polyamory and polygamous communities in general.

And there's a definite gap between abusive cults and cultural freedom. Not so huge a gap between cultural freedom and abusive societies. It's all about availability of choice.

(I will stop typing, it's just I've been thinking about it and it's your bad luck you happened to post on it :D)

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Polyamory and polygyny are really different animals. The former... I don't want to try and say much about it because it is such a varied practice, other than that the people involved seem to have the resources to choose something else if they want to. The latter seems to be all about men with power taking advantage of men and women/girls who don't.

Which... is exactly what you said in your much shorter paragraph. :|

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I have mixed feelings. For example, friends of mine in (insert religion that allows limited multiple wives here) are rich enough and educated enough that it's a very definite choice for them to be a second, third wife.

They'll tell you it's advantages - less sexual pressure, more freedom, ability to choose a love marriage where an arranged marriage exists.

OTOH, two of my friends in the same religion had horrible experiences with it. One was made to marry her childhood rapist at age 13 because he got her pregnant and it was considered the best all round solution. Another thought she was buying into the situation above and it turned out not to be so.

So I don't think entire cultures can be generalised but I do see how the situation could do with being... scrutinised?

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So, yes to all that stuff. :) I've also been aware of the FLDS thing for years. I think part of the reason they are only now getting the attention they deserve is that they were originally in Utah where apparently the political will to crack down on these folks is not what it would be in say, Texas. But, eventually, enough was too much even in Utah (or was it? Maybe it was the Feds that cracked down on them there) so they went to other places that turned out to have a much lower tolerance level.

Yes, fictional male torture can be quite hot. :) I have to admit that fictional female torture makes me a bit fidgety, but I have to just bite my tongue on the matter.

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Probably the way to go is to say that statutory/child rape is BAD. Abusive relationships are BAD. How many people the abuser is married to or having relationships with is kind of beside the point. Certainly abuse/rape is hardly unknown from singleton relationships.

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There's a general unwillingness to investigate Amish communities too, people get all antsy about culture and whatever.

The whole thing reminds me of a sketch on a comedy show that has an Asian (Indian) woman running into a women's crisis center begging to be saved from her abusive husband and the hippy woman calmly and Zen-ly explaining to her that she couldn't possibly interfere in her cultural norms.

Female torture has such a different context. Although men *are* tortured frequently in real life, it isn't a cultural trope that leads to more frequent RL violence against them, I think.

Unless you believe all violence brutalises society. But that's vague, and hurt/comfort Spike is *specific* in it's hotness.

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Yes. Although I sincerely disagree with the age of consent in the US. It's just ridiculously high.

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I think it is fear of ethnocentrism. And also racism. I think their fear of ethnocentrism might go out the window if they were taking pictures of little blond girls crying as they are about to be sent off to their new husband's village.

Sorry to be depressing. :( It's a mad, bad world out there. I feel fortunate everyday to be born when and where I was. I luxuriate in my hot, running water; my effective birth control; my children whom I have every reason to expect to outlive.

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that would be 'outlive me'. gah!

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I would guess it varies from state to state. No doubt it's rather frightening in some states. Really though, unless you are going to say that girls under a certain age are not legally able to be parents, it's hard to say that they are not able to be married.

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It's probably useful to have an age of consent because the law is inflexible that way. But I don't approve :D

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Female torture has such a different context. Although men *are* tortured frequently in real life, it isn't a cultural trope that leads to more frequent RL violence against them, I think.

See, this is where female equality seems to fall apart. No matter how I come at it, the notion that fictionalized torture of women is reprehensible and fictionalized torture of men is not worthy of note always seems to come back to: men and women are fundamentally different such that women should be protected from men by their society.

I see what you are saying in that the notion that female torture might be OK is a cultural thing that could be reinforced by fictional torture, but clearly the notion the male torture is OK is pervasive as well, as it is so darn frequent, and could certainly be reinforced by entertainment. Am I missing something?

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Although men *are* tortured frequently in real life, it isn't a cultural trope that leads to more frequent RL violence against them, I think.

YES. And I think that's about who has the institutionalized power. I personally don't think you can really have "reverse sexism"; sexism is a systematic framework of institutionalized oppression. I can stand on a street corner all day and say I hate men, but without that power behind me, I'm just going to come off as a crazy bitch who's prejudiced towards men.

Holy crap! Did that make sense?

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No, you aren't missing anything. If you reduce the logic even a little bit it's patronising and un-feminist, and you have to be careful with it.

It's a really fine line, with nuances beyond what I'm ever going to type in a comment. But pretty much:

Society is male dominated and historically serves to abuse women in order to reinforce sexual, emotional and physical subservience. Everything in it, from work to advertising to architecture needs to be seen through this gaze to ensure that we don't continue to build our castles on sandy ground. (in all seriousness, I'm not particularly radical and I feel the same about race)

This is especially true in the media.

Given the thousands of ways women are treated unequally already, anything that reinforces that needs examining for a)motive and b)perpetuating what already exists.

It's like... why do we need black history month? because the other eleven are already white history months. Why do we need to examine torture of women in the media? because our entire society is *based* on subtly reinforcing womens lack of agency already.

Men on an individual or community level are tortured and society agrees this is correct (Guantanamo, gay-panic lynchings). And this is also Very Bad and you can argue that brutality in fiction exacerbates that. And I'd agree, actually, to a certain degree.

But pornographic violence is treated differently and has different results for men and women. I don't think, though if you disagree I have no stats to prove it, that *sexualised* male violence begets sexualised male violence or a shift in attitude towards men in general.

I'm very pro-porn by the way, even women-in-bdsm-situations. And sexuality is so complex that I don't have as many issues with women writing rape or non-con fic.

But I do have an issue with constant, blatant, everyday, sexualised violence against women in the media.

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Hahaha! Yeah, that first version had me raising an eyebrow for a moment there.

I tend to agree with you--it's racism masking as cultural tolerance.

Oh pish, you don't depress me! It's all these Bad People. *grump*

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Yes, it made sense :D

The only exception I can think of, off the top of my head, is 'terrorists'.

Torture of terrorist suspects in the media, I do believe leads to a)acceptance of such in RL and b)an increase in racist attacks.

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Yep, that sounds about right. You're a smart smarty, you are. :)

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I'm just clarifying a thought here.

I'm talking about eroticised violence. Violence is another thing. Racial violence, male children being eroticised, I also have separate thoughts on.

Sexual abuse of male torture victims is well documented but I think it's sexual/humiliation/violence and not necessarily eroticised.

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Yes, but sexism is not a systematic framework of institutionalized oppression. That framework exists because of sexism. It's my understanding that sexism is having a prejudice against someone because of their sex.

A person can say that we need to oppress fictionalized female torture in our culture in an effort to reduce widespread sexism and misogyny in men. Presumably they would be able to express these fantasies openly again when/if the misogyny situation improves?

It may be that the shaky intellectual foundations I wonder about are just different. Do men torture women more often than other men? If they torture other men more often, and have always historically been more violent towards other men than women, why are we more concerned about violence against women? Isn't the whole idea behind feminism that all people are of equal value regardless of their sex? Do we believe that women should receive greater protection from violent men than other men?

You defend this greater concern as being a antidote to inappropriate lack of historical concern, and to counteract the fact that men have institutionalized advantages. But, does the assumption that women have historically had things so much worse than men bear real scrutiny? While positions of power have almost always been held by men, that is a very small slice of the population. Entire generations of men have nearly exterminated at the command of a few men in power in the pursuit of more power. I honestly cannot think of similar acts of such astounding violence and magnitude perpetrated against women. I may be that 99.9% of women have been historically powerless and oppressed, but it seems like that may be in comparison to 98% of men.

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But pornographic violence is treated differently and has different results for men and women. I don't think, though if you disagree I have no stats to prove it, that *sexualised* male violence begets sexualised male violence or a shift in attitude towards men in general.

The thing is, I'm not sure we have stats on any of this stuff. Are men more likely to act on violent fantasies than women? Nobody really knows. I suspect yes, but then I think men are more likely to be violent than women because their biology is more likely to incline them that way. Even if they are more likely to be violent, are men more susceptible to suggestion? Does the prevalence of eroticised violence against women in media mean wide-spread misgyny, or does it just mean that there are mostly heterosexual men making the entertainment choices and men find sexualized violence just as exciting as women do?

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I agree completely, but we're talking here about everyday social life, not war or law or anything else.

And in everyday social life, women are at a disadvantage when it comes to sexualised, eroticised violence.

So I'd like to separate the 'who gets more killed' thing and 'men get raped too' - both of which are true and bad, from 'there's a consistent barrage of images in the media that reinforces the idea that women lack agency in sexual situations and it's okay because they look pretty all fucked up on film'

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Well in the first place as a pro-porn person I really couldn't argue that.

And basically what I'm saying is, there is an inequality in the *direction* of this sexualised violence.

Which *happens* to match an illogical imbalance in real life.

The question is, what to do about that. To me it is unreasonable to ban pornographic violence. Because as with porn itself, there's no provable correlation.

It is also unreasonable to increase male erotic violence to give us an equal playing field.

BUT. It is also unreasonable to sit back, relax and say 'well men rule the tv world so obviously that's just the way it is and so what'

So for me, the answer is to not support tv shows/media/fiction that reinforce all this.

Just like I don't watch racist tv shows. Racists own the media so we get racist stuff. It's logical, but it ain't *right*

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