Mornin SAM.
Well I was going with the thought, that feminists aren't into Women being exploited for their Sexism. Or to be made out as sheer sex objects and fantasies.
As to the opinion.....it was taken from a feminist. Do you think these feminists were being demeaning to women's intelligence?
Why Are Feminist Critics Hung Up on Playboy?.....
In a time when free online media poses an existential threat to print magazines and traditional pornography, 60-year-old softcore monthly Playboy is having a weirdly controversial moment. Evaluating the anniversary issue in Time, Peggy Drexler railed against the magazine’s portrayal of Kate Moss as a “man’s fantasy at the ready.” “It is no longer every man’s fantasy to dominate a woman dressed as a furry woodland creature,” she wrote. “It is no longer every woman’s fantasy to oblige.”
Despite her insistence that times have changed, there was something almost retro in her indignation. There are now websites for couples who both fantasize about dressing up as furry woodland creatures (or adult babies or cartoon characters), not to mention sites where adults can share photos surreptitiously taken of young women’s asses. Playboy, with its almost-40 celebrity cover model, her pubic hair, and a well-meaning feminist panel featuring Erica Jong and Naomi Wolf, seems kind of quaint by comparison.
Why Are Feminist Critics Hung Up on Playboy? -- The Cut
(clipped for length)
I think the bit I bolded pretty much nails it. It's "retro," and an opinion they share with some extreme social conservatives.
There were some number feminists who shared that opinion back in the day -- 60's, 70's. Not so much now.
That makes sense to me, historically. The industry was so much worse for women than it is now. Perhaps they didn't believe there could be a coexistence of sex work and decent humane working standards. In some corners of sex work, we still haven't quite gotten there (especially with the ones that are illegal still).
But it is also a patronizing position to take regarding women's intellects, and feminism has had to grow out of that just as much as mainstream society has. You don't just hit the ground with perfect logical consistency in the early days of a movement -- you have to spend time thinking and talking and learning, and refining your thoughts. Today, the belief that porn is somehow inherently degrading is very rare in feminism.
Are there little hints to some kind of sexist stereotypes in some of Playboy's work? Yeah, I'm sure. But we still have an entire aisle "for girls" in most stores, which revolves around nothing but teaching you that leaving the house without beating your face like Ru Paul means you're ugly. So I don't think aiming this at sex work alone is terribly in touch with reality. We still have sexist stereotypes everywhere, even aimed directly at little girls. So, who's really surprised that adults take those ideas on board?
Also, the mainstream of porn is not the only porn there is. There is a lot of really good "politically minded" porn out there. I know what you're thinking, and no, that's not what it is. :lol: It's still porn. They haven't watered it down or take anything out of it.
A lot of it just revolving around using people with more diverse, less surgically altered bodies, and if the porn has actual sex acts in it, without going to such extreme lengths to fake pleasure in performers who aren't feeling it -- both the man and the woman. And I genuinely find it a lot better quality than mainstream porn. Because there's something really unsexy about watching someone who obviously isn't into anything that's happening. That's why amateur porn is so popular on the mainstream internet sites.
Imagery changes a lot when you just change what's going on around it.
Then, there's the debate about whether our sexual fantasies can be influenced by sexism. My opinion? Well, obviously -- how could they possibly not be?
But that doesn't mean the solution is to tell people they're bad for liking certain things. Most of us have little control over our sexual fantasies, like we little have control over our dreams. Yet society improves. It is possible that sexuality is one form of "play" we use to get it out of their system without manifesting it into our lives, and women have this just as much as men do if not more. To me, it's a really complex subject with no obvious answer.