Today's Bondage Tempest In A Teapot

India's got 999,999,999 problems but this ad ain't one of them. Image source: almost every news site on the Web yesterday. Maybe broadcast TV, too, but who watches that any more?
A recent ad not run in India by Ford's advertising agency has got the Web media in a furor.

Wait ... not run? That's right, Ford never ran the ad, the ads "somehow" got leaked to the media. So, at some point someone said, don't run this ad. So in essence all this furor is over something that did not happen. But in another respect, it's something that did happen ... that Ford has no responsibility for.

But what's wrong with the ad, you wonder? It looks like a goofy, funny play on damsel in distress themes as seen in SO MANY TV shows and movies and such, with former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi driving around with three bound, gagged women representing his political troubles (the hot, ball-gagged policewoman is especially nice, looks like an Alazar damsel) in the spacious trunk of his Ford.

The ad is arousing a furor because it comes on the tails of the infamous Delhi rape, in which a gang of young men attacked a young couple on a public bus, severely beating the husband and raping the wife to death. To. Death. They used something described as an "iron rod" to sodomize her. The horrific case aroused an international furor, and much of Indian society, especially female Indian society, was as furored as anyone else.

Apparently there is a huge rape culture problem in India, which I presciently covered before the Delhi rape. It's fueled by a large population of uneducated, poor, often illiterate young men who have little prospect of finding a decent place in Indian society (and by all accounts, you REALLY don't want to live in any of the indecent places in Indian society) and with little or no prospect of getting laid, as India has sadly absorbed the memes of sexual prudery from the Muslims and the Victorian Brits.


These Indian temple sculptures represent the distant past of Indian culture. Sadly, it's easy to understand how a culture which was once so vigorously, happily sex-positive as represented here, could turn into a rape-infested festival of prudery one billion strong. Image source: the Web.
India needs to deal directly with the social, political and other factors that made this rape happens, and the perpetrators (who have been found) need to experience the full extent of justice for their crimes. (I am anti-death penalty but some criminals do things so horrible that I can't be bothered to care about them, no matter what their fate. The New Delhi rapists fall into that category, for me.)

Maybe it's not a good idea to have a culture that ensures you will have a large population of young men (and women) that can't make money or get laid or get some basic respect in their culture. Four hour movies full of dancing and singing happy people might not be enough to make up for that, y'know?

But here's the thing. The ad images are fantasy imagery. Fun, lighthearted fantasy imagery. The Delhi rape was real life. They're not the same thing. They should not be conflated. Cartoon Silvio Berlusconi driving around with cartoon hotties bound and gagged in the trunk of his car is not about the Delhi rape, though to judge from the many, many pearl-clutching posts about it that I've read, you'd think that the Ford ad (which never ran) was virtually a CELEBRATION of the Delhi rape.

Come on, people, stay on the sane track. Reality, fantasy, two different things. Not the same! How many times do I have to tell you this?


There's also this ad showing Paris Hilton driving around with the Kardashians bound and gagged in the trunk of a nice Ford car, which ALSO did not run. There's even an ad with three men bound and gagged in the back of a car, which not only did not run, but did not get covered. Well, at least the media is getting something right. Image source: every damn news/celebrity website in existence.

Back to the Eighties: The Right Responds To 50 Shades With Lies

"Ladies! Ladies! Don't you realize you're constructing a false idol there? No, it's not the name of a new sex position, its ... never mind ..." (BTW, that's James Deen helping them construct the idol.) Image source: Sex and Submisssion.com.
I'm feeling the right wing crank up their anti-sex machine with regard to the success of 50 Shades of Gray. I've already written about the cheap attack on 50 Shades by an almost certainly fictional "expert" which was initially made on an obscure right wing blog. Now Fox News has got an actual "expert" on the attack, albeit in a different way, with more sophisticated techniques, in an article entitled How Women Made Porn Fashionable.

The interesting thing is that both articles make extensive use of lies and misdirection for their attacks. It's like lying has become a habit so engrained in the right that they use it whether they need it or not. So I thought I'd administer a good old-fashioned Straight Dope forums-style beatdown on this article right here on my blog.

To start with:

Women are consuming and endorsing porn such as ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ -- a book recognized as ‘mommy porn.’ Poorly written, it is not a how-to-manual and it’s not poetic erotica.

So it's not a how-to manual, and it's not poetic erotica (whatever that is) so it's porn. Never has the middle felt so excluded!

Then we get:

Pulp/romance novels transformed into a new genre embracing porn as literature - explicitly sexual scenes featuring bondage/discipline, dominance/submission and sadism/masochism

He's way oversimplifying to make his point here. Romance novels still exist. It's obvious that a lot of their readership have shifted over to the erotic romance genre, especially in ebook format, which is what 50 Shades is an example of. But erotic romances are not really the same thing as porn, either. I was EIGHT CHAPTERS into the Fifty Shades before Ana got so much as a kiss. Eight chapters! Who ever heard of porn that went eight chapters without any sexual action? 50 Shades is erotica, not porn, dude. Not that you know the difference, or care to.

More than 20 million copies have sold in the US (40 million worldwide), and it is yet another example of the way porn is becoming more than socially acceptable amongst women. Moreover, it is becoming an aspirational target for women.

Women and the media have linked consuming porn or behaving like a porn actress with instant money, fame, power, glamour, prestige, respectability and social acceptability. In other words, if you become a porn actress or behave like one, you will triumph with all of these things. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian became famous and rich for making a sex tape, and they spun off empires of TV shows, fashion lines, perfumes and paid appearances. The message is: one leads to the other.

This is complete bullcrap. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian did indeed make sex tapes and they were indeed leaked to the Internet, but so have many other women. Yet only Hilton, Kardashian and a few others got rich and famous. Why just them? Could it be that Hilton and Kardashian's sex tapes took off because they were ALREADY rich and famous and had the connections to make the media sit up and take notice? Why yes, I believe it could be that. You'd have to be a complete dumbass to think that making a sex tape all by its lonesome was the gateway to fame and fortune. Then again, this article is aimed at women who read FoxNews. So ... I guess warning them is probably a good idea.

Using sex for money and fame, women have found a new way to feel powerful and secure without a man or even necessarily a family – Octomom has openly become a porn actress and stripper.

I would really like to see some statistics that this is being done by women generally, which is how he phrased it. I'm betting the truth is, it's being done by a FEW women, and the rest are watching with an unholy mixture of glee, schadenfreude, and envy.

Mothers, too, are now sexualizing their daughters and dressing them up as sexual candy for the world.

Yet another totally unsupported assertion, save for a few media types. How 'bout some stats, dude? Most women I know think this sort of thing is ridiculous. This unsubstantiated bloviating is getting annoying, but then, that's is why I don't follow Fox anything anywhere.

Porn could never have become mainstream and socially acceptable without the support and endorsement by women.

I guessed you missed the 1970s and 1980s, when porn did exactly that, without the support and endorsement of women. It wasn't mommy that made XXX videos a billion dollar industry, it was daddy. Try to pay some attention to, well ... anything, dude.

And women and the media have linked consuming porn or behaving like a porn actress with instant money, fame, power, glamour, prestige, respectability and social acceptability. In other words, if you become a porn actress or behave like one, you will triumph with all of these things.

Yeah, that's why you see porn actresses on breakfast cereal boxes nowadays. "Wheaties will let you take on three guys at once without breaking a sweat, just like Mindi Boytoy!" Do you not ever check any of your thoughts against reality to see if they make any sense at all, dude?

Accordingly, girls are more fascinated and driven by the desire to become famous than they are to become an engineer, doctor or scientist: Kim Kardashian has 14 million followers on Twitter.

I would like to see some evidence that the set of women who have a realistic shot at becoming an engineer, doctor or scientist overlaps with the set of women who follow Kim Kardashian on Twitter to any degree.

The paradox is that women are becoming more educated than men as women surpass men in attendance and graduation rates – for every two men who get a college degree, three women will do also. But, women are failing to realize the dangers of falling for porn or promoting porn as the new fashionable profession and path to fame, riches and glory. This is the antithesis of female empowerment as MTV, Kim Kardashian and Octomom are teaching young girls to gain power over men by using sex.

So, they are getting the college degrees so they'll get all the good jobs, AND they are learning to gain power over men by using sex? We're TOTALLY boned, guys! And not in a good way! And ... who watches MTV any more? Is it even still on? Did this guy's brain set like cement back in the early 80s?

Women have now created false empty idols and have lost their real sense of self-worth, value and significance, replacing it with fleeting pseudo-power and artificial values and relationships, leaving them feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied.

I had wondered what all those statues of Moloch were doing in the parking lot at Target, Walmart and most shopping centers ...

I appeal to women to beware of being deceived and betrayed into the world of porn and sexual objectification the same way that women were tricked into smoking cigarettes in the 1920s.

Let's see ... how did it go ... a woman who'll chew gum will smoke cigarettes, and a woman who smokes cigarettes will drink alcohol, and we all know what a woman who drinks alcohol will do ...

In April 1929, a PR expert, Edward Bernays, working for a US tobacco company, hired young models to march in the New York City parade and alerted the press that they were fighting for women’s rights by lighting "Torches of Freedom" as they lit up and smoked cigarettes. The media publicized the event and it helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public.

So that's why women took up smoking. I had thought they just wanted to get laid! (Some evidence that this PR event and others like it led to women smoking would be nice.)

Renowned physicist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Dr. Jeffrey Satinover says porn is “a form of heroin, hundred times more powerful than before.”

Not believing a word of it. I'm betting this fellow works at one of those Institutes of Wacky Science that ideologues go to when they need an alarming quote. Had no idea porn was an opiate!

Forensic psychologist, M. Douglas Reed and renowned pharmacologist Candace Pert reveal that pornography is like a drug that triggers the brain to release a psychopharmacological flood of “epinephrine, testosterone, endorphins (endogenous morphine), oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and phenyethylamine,” which can lead to addiction and various other behavioral disorders.

More wacky science. But it would explain why I have to put a needleful of Kink.com images into my arm every few hours. But at least here we are told that porn is LIKE a drug, not that it IS one as in the previous quote. I like the way endorphins are described as "endogenous morphine." Does my brain have to go to a dealer located somewhere disgusting like my intestines to get it, I wonder, and pay it off with ... ideas?

Gal Dines, professor of sociology and women's studies and chair of the American Studies Department at Wheelock College in Boston, has written about and researched the porn industry for over two decades. Professor Dines, author of “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality,” believes porn is a public health issue with documented negative effects on young people, distorting "the way women and girls think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships."

I'm betting Professor Dines has some very strong opinions about how women and girls should think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships. Note the "public health issue" bit ... it's the approach that Catherine MacKinnon took to attack porn and try to get it banned back in the 80s. Still harping on the same old saw. Hmm, I sense a trend here.

Pornography is equally damaging to adult relationships and social bonds – men are struggling to develop close, intimate relationships with real women with some men now preferring porn to sex with an actual human being.

Because looking at images of other people doing something is just as much fun as doing it yourself. That's why no one bothers to go on vacation any more, too.

Bottom line: porn does not promote love or sex but rather cruelty and hatred to women, and so, while women continue to endorse and make porn fashionable or a new ideal, they are foolishly robbing themselves and undermining all of the positive strides and triumphs they have made in their quest for equality.

Bottom line: get those pillbox hats and white gloves on and go back to church ladies, or you won't be feminists any more! I'm pretty sure that's where this guy is headed. It's a sad day when pornish bloggers have to give political writers savage beatdowns for lying and misrepresentation, but I guess that is where the right has gone with its political discourse.


Now THIS is a bottom line worth looking at! Image source: Training of O.com.