I'm a woman. I participate in a photography site advocated as safe for workplace and school environments.
I spent the day yesterday with a computer forensics consultant that in a former life was an FBI agent who worked child porn cases. The occasion for our meeting was unrelated to his former career, but knowing what it was generated some interesting discussions about the proliferation of sexual material via the internet, which led to discussions about freedom without restrictions, freedom with responsibility, censorship, who considers what arousal material, how we depict woman and children in a societal context, democracy, freedom of speech issues. We didn't quite get around to the international trafficking of woman. Time didn’t permit it.
We talked about how predators "groom" their subject into accepting the unacceptable as the norm.
It's not only predators who groom us to accept the unacceptable, it’s society, it's media, it's the internet. We live in an age when girls as young as 14-16 get breast implants, CD covers show sexually explicit acts, we have computer games where woman get raped (embedded, I understand, in Grand Theft Auto). Sexuality in all its forms is prevalent and pervasive. We've all been groomed to accept it. We've all received various levels of innoculation to it depending on our age, circumstance, culture, socio-economic group, ethnic group, education level, and so on.
Regarding a particular representation of a woman in a teddy: It's not just a photograph. It's a provocative image loaded with sexual innuendo. Many adults are sensitive to that. It is not admiration or love of a woman, nor do I personally know of any women who sleep in garter belts, stockings, high heels and a teddy with a bodice that has wire stays in it to push her breasts up. It's just not a very comfortable way to sleep. That's not how woman generally dress. Except to provoke or incite sexual arousal in a man. That is the sole purpose. That is the point. Some of us come here to get away from that because this is one of the few places left that you can.
Marylin Monroe may have thrilled millions, yet her death seems to pronounce the amount of satisfaction she personally obtained from her symbology.
There is power in being provocative, in being a woman. Many use it to exploit and manipulate men, to advance careers, precisely because they know its power. Younger woman adopt it because they see it depicted in magazines such as Cosmo and think it harmless, but you won’t see Helen Gurley Brown’s photo plastered across cyber space in one of those outfits. Some of us feel this is abuse, not use, of both men and woman, and when used this way, debases both and Gurley Brown herself begins to resemble the female version of Howard Sterns. It has it's place, but the public arena is not one.
And if you think it's "just a photograph" think of this. When explaining to me how pornographers generally get caught, he said "what's the most important thing to him, the thing that outweighs even the risk of getting caught? It's his pictures”. That's the impact a photograph has. Particularly those images that are intended and designed to evoke arousal.
Years ago a friend who worked in a medical lab once related to me how over a period of 3-4 months, men were frequently unable to produce urine samples. The mystery was solved when one man, back for his second try, rather embarrassedly explained..... "well, you have directions and diagrams posted on the wall for how a woman should give a sample, and when I read them......" They took the signs and visual aids down; the problem went away.
Humans are visually dominant, both sexes taking in more information with the eye than any other sense. Men are more visually stimulated, as measured by blood pressure, heart rate, pulse when looking at provocative images. Woman know this. Believe me, woman know this. Marketers know it.
When Dennis Rader, the BTK strangler was arrested, he had thousands of pictures, cut out from magazines, of woman and children scantily dressed. They are not "just pictures"... they are tools others utilize to feed fantasies. That's the big deal.
Are all fantasies and tools unhealthy? No. Absolutely not. Is a woman depicted in a diaphanous gown, her body silhouetted, intended to arouse a man? No. It may be a byproduct, but that's not it's intention. Is it a big deal to me? No. Does a man's desire for these visual images render him perverted. Of course not. Or beastly? No.
A woman with garter belt, high heels, metal stays, lanquishing on a bed.... that has an intent. There are risks in feeding those fantasies, there are risks in exploiting a man’s 'natural hardwired response'. Some of these results are harmless and intended, some not so harmless. The risks are never given voice; only the pleasures. Woman of experience know this. They’ve learned to see around the corners to what’s on the other side. They use their sexual power judiciously, appropriately, in the right circumstance.
What's the big deal? I hope you are one of the lucky ones who never has to face some of the real risks associated with deliberately dressing, acting, behaving, provocatively. Strippers know. They often have security walk them to their cars, or have boyfriends pick them up. Do I not understand a man's dilemma? It's precisely because I do understand it that I, and others, react the way we sometimes do.
It's precisely because the impact is so well understood that it is capitalized on so very very much. But the risks.... ahhh. the risks lie in broken marriages, empty relationships, eliciting not just lust, but rage when lust remains unfullfilled or unsatisfied, and the bar keeps getting higher and higher.... and eventually, can no longer be jumped. Helen Gurley Brown's generation and the sexual revolution did not live up to its promise. Antidepressents, not intimacy, mediates our emotional needs. Disease, not health, infects our relationships if recent crime statistics are to be our guide.
It's a big deal. To me. Because I really do love all of you. Because I've seen around those corners. Sometimes it leads to a pleasant path. Sometimes to an abyss. It's a big deal if you don't know which corner you are turning.
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