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Legitimate privilige?
SophieSophie
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Registered User regular
In trying to put together a student association policy on recognizing privilige, one of the examples that was submitted was 'access to porn that you find arousing'. I don't think this is a legitimate kind of privilige, but wanted to ask whether anyone else had come accross this claim. Thanks!
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What do you mean by a policy on recognizing privilege?
However, given it seems that you've possibly presented this question to a group of college aged students. It was probably not meant to be presented as a legitimate kind of privilege so much as someone goofing at your expense. I'm assuming the survey submissions were anonymous?
"Porn is by definition harmful to women"? I know the porn industry (in the US at least?) is supposed to have a lot of problems re: sexism/misogyny/abuse/etc. But that's different than what you're saying here.
I'm just curious if you have any articles or information on that. I've never thought porn conceptually should be stigmatized as much as it is (as in, porn isn't not a bad thing in and of itself), so my advice was possibly going to be very different before I came upon this comment
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Yeah, I'm not really wanting to get deep into this particular minefield... but, because there are certain types of pornographic content that is explicitly illegal and therefore not accessible, especially because the creation thereof is harmful to its participants (not just women), access to particular types of pornography is not a right.
But I find it hard to believe that any person with such proclivities would ever try to argue such a thing.
This person was just messing with you, and really trying to include such a line of commentary would interfere with more meaningful statements that could be made regarding privilege. I would just disregard it.
If you need examples of this, I suggest looking to audio, literature, and comic forms of porn, and consider that fan fiction is often written by women and heavily erotic. You can pull apart each individual piece of media for its downsides, but saying that someones desire for representation in porn is something to be dismissed as illegitimate is not great.
Not really, and that is central to the whole point of the concept of privilege, as I understand it. A privilege is a benefit that a person can enjoy by virtue of being part of a particular group (or by not being part of a marginalized group). Many of the forms of privilege described in the famous invisible knapsack article have nothing to do with rights.
It's a little thing, I admit, but I think that if you're going to be talking about privilege, you should spell it correctly.
Two Is, two Es. No third I.
As to the original topic/question - as a cishet male, I can definitely see and agree that accessing material that I find arousing has been almost effortless since the advent of the internet, to the point that one might be unaware that not all are so fortunate. It's not so much that anyone has a right to it, as that it's harder to find some kinds than others, and those whose tastes align with the majority of what is provided may not be aware of that, and thus their privilege in that regard.
(Of course, it's an old joke that in the Before Times, before they literally piped it into your house, even we had to go looking for the stuff... and usually found it in places like catalogs, surreptitiously-acquired nudie mags, and the once-infamous National Geographic. Though some of that was due to being minors, and legally restricted/prohibited from access.)
I don't think the perspective needs to be illegal things.
I don't really know for sure, but if the OP's question was not a joke, I would have assumed it wasn't so much illegal that was a problem, but "not heteronormative, relatively mainstream" stuff.
I agree with most that it was probably a joke, though.
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I also believe that literally the only types of porn that one wouldn't be able to have easy access esp. these days is of the illegal varieties... but uh, yeah. Kind of neither here nor there.
Maybe, but this is actually totally a thing. My fiancée decided (on her own) early on when we were dating to try and find porn that had people shaped like me. After all, lived experience is hot, it'd be neat to have porn that shows sex similarly to what you have.
It turns out porn involving trans women is horrible. So she (and I) are basically just locked out of having easy access to porn that really approximates how we have sex.
In short, it seems you're asking us not to help you, but to agree with you, or argue the point.
So, to answer your question: no, I have not come across that claim before.
However, whether it is appropriate to bring up in your policy is a judgment call. By college, undergrads should be able to maturely discuss adult sexuality. But the prurience of it might be distracting.
I would rephrase it to make it a little more mundane. For example:
"Easy access to entertainment that represents your sexual orientation or gender identity."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Also we aren't going to do your homework for you.