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@Gillitrut @nomenym @faceh @HereAndGone2
I was following the discussion here on a recent scandal regarding AI-generated fake nudes with mild interest and went down into a bit of a rabbit hole in other earlier discussions that were linked. As a member of the he-man-woman-haters club and someone who used to follow Manosphere / Red Pill and dissident rightist sites, it appears to me that discussion on the wider context of this phenomenon is a bit lacking so I’ll offer a short overview myself.
It seems that there are multiple overlapping phenomena related to this issue:
#1 – High school boys creating fake nudes of their female classmates with or without AI and distributing them online among themselves; we can assume the individuals creating such content are a small minority and are usually of low social status, even practical outcasts otherwise
#2 – Some high school girls are sending real nudes of themselves to particular boys, which technically equals the production and distribution of child porn / CP; this is occurring in the larger context of a post-patriarchal, post-monogamist society where women are normally trying to out-slut one another in various ways to compete for the sexual attention of high-status men; sometimes such images get publicly distributed in the form of so-called revenge porn; obviously all of this is freaking out the adult women who are red-pilled enough to realize how self-defeating this entire sexual competition is
#1 and #2 are also occurring among college students and other adults but supposedly to a lesser degree, especially the fake nudes part; all this generates a relatively lower level of attention as the girls are all adults; it’s usually the revenge porn part that generates outrage, especially among feminists and their so-called male allies
#3 – there’s something that’s basically a subset of revenge porn, namely the private nudes of female celebrities getting publicized through hacking and content theft; fake nudes of them also obviously exist
#1, #2 and #3 are basically overlapping issues in the minds of normies, providing fodder for lipstick feminist and social conservative culture warriors.
We should look at the even wider social context of all this. What is the overall milieu that is shaping the attitudes of high school students?
#1 – Female sexuality itself has become a culture war issue in a particular way. What do I basically mean? Look at the usual preferences of anti-feminist toxic dudebros for a start: the women appearing in movies and video games to be smoking hot and scantily clad; their own girlfriends to be modest and demure in public but otherwise be their own personal sluts in private, while at the same time not even thinking about becoming OF/porn girls or “sex workers”. Culture-warring feminists look at all this with anger and naturally go on to loudly promote the exact opposite of all this by all means. This is basically a significant driver of the culture war altogether, and probably generates a level of resentment among young men towards feminists and feminist-adjacent women in general, a sort of resentment that never existed before feminism.
#2 – It has become completely normal for slop-creating female pop musicians, female celebrities altogether and female “influencers” to show their bare butts and thighs, cleavage, midriff etc. both online and offline; however, all of this is pointedly not done for the purposes that average men would prefer it all to have, namely a) providing simple entertainment / fanservice for dudebros and their male gaze without any feminist BS attached b) utilizing eroticism in order to attract high-value men into relationships with the promise of hot sex (which has basically been normal female behavior for thousands of years) c) showing off the goods as prostitutes if you are one. Instead, these women are normally open feminists, more or less loud ones, treating the “male gaze” and “unwanted attention” with disgust, loudly declaring that it’s not like they are trying to cater to icky men or anything, and are supposedly engaging in all this virtual whoring / thirst farming with a sort of weird irony in mind, where this is all simultaneously an act of female empowerment and a display of girlboss agency while at the same time some sort of critical commentary on the sad state of a shitty society that treats women like sex objects or whatever. Naturally, none of this is generating one ounce of male sympathy towards these women and their female fans.
#3 – Online porn has been normalized to such an extent that pretty much the only people receiving any unstated and limited social permission to complain about women engaging in it are the so-called sex negative feminists. Otherwise it’s all seen as another expression of female empowerment as long as the pretension is there that somehow none of it is done to please or benefit men. It has become an accepted social reality that average women will happily suck dick, swallow cum, do gangbangs online for the money, and it’s all normal, because it’s not like they are doing anything objectionable or whatever. We’re also seeing the spectacle of young women taking the usual route of doing hardcore porn, milking their career for all the money they can, then retiring and having some sort of fake-ass epiphany later, crying their butts off in online videos claiming regret, stating that they’re the victims of some evil patriarchal regime that ostracized them, appearing on anti-porn podcasts etc., demanding that their videos be removed from the internet, complaining about their young children being bullied etc.
Again, I leave it to your imagination to decide what attitudes towards women are all this driving among young men.
I've seen a number of comments below discussing porn. I initially planned to respond to these comments individually, but it's a substantial enough line of thinking that I figured a second-level comment on my part was appropriate.
It seems the commentariat here is fixated on the apparent contradiction between feminism and porn use - that porn clearly produces negative outcomes so it is ludicrous that modern feminists support it. How could pornography be "empowering" when it makes men sloppy lovers at best and dangerous sex pests at worst? I spent an inordinate amount of time with well-educated feminist women while at college, so I feel decently qualified to paraphrase what they've told me.
I'll preface with an important premise: pornography is not a single stimulus, but rather a diverse palette of erotic visuals that are lumped together under the umbrella term porn. The gap between studio produced porn and amateur content is as vast as the latest Marvel blockbuster and a limited run Criterion release. In high production porn, much like many professions, it is not uncommon to work under a domineering, unrealistic boss that overworks you and underpays you. These pornographic outlets are also the epicenter for most of the abuse in the industry. On the other hand, OF and amateur porn has a significantly flattened authority structure, and the performers no longer need to engage in unrealistic and demeaning sex acts to mold themselves into a male-gazey superstimulus. At least not to the degree of studio porn. This distinction is important: many of the women I spoke to advocated that studio content be eradicated, as the industry has problems. That does not implicate porn in general. This is also where the idea of empowerment begins to creep in. It is not empowering to be tossed around like a commodity by a profiteering pseudo-pimp. However, it is empowering in some sense to create your own erotic content because it represents a kind of authentic choice, especially when compared to traditional sexual norms and the prevailing idea that men can be sexually open with fewer social consequences. It is empowering precisely because of this contrast. In a world where men were not sowing their wild oats, I'm unsure if notions of empowerment would have really taken off.
Second, porn is not the be-all end all of sexual depiction. The thinking was that porn, much like alcohol, is clearly a vice that can be enjoyed responsibly when it is consumed in the appropriate quantity and with the appropriate precautions. Yes, alcohol (porn) can cause problems. Yes, alcohol (porn) is probably bad for you in excess. But the alternative of banning it is paternalistic and likely to produce its own crop of negative outcomes. This is another part of the empowerment angle: freedom to consume and choose. You could probably track down a gallon of Everclear and chug it, and few would come clamoring to ban alcohol. The relationship one has with alcohol is on them - some are teetotalers, some are social drinkers, some probably flirt a little close with alcoholism, but it's still a conclusion they came to. The same can be said with porn. It was often suggested that if porn was illegal, it would drive the industry underground and prompt even more abuse toward the women performing in it, as their employers would no longer be accountable to the legal system, per se. So porn ought to be at least tolerated. Bonnie Blue and those like her were considered unrepresentative morally questionable aberrations, more a product of our outrage-driven media landscape rather than exemplars of feminism in practice.
The last prong of this argument involves sex education. Some of the negative behavioral outcomes in porn, particularly the way it "teaches" men to have unhealthy sex, can be prevented by appropriate, candid sex ed. Their idea of sex ed wasn't simply putting a condom on a banana, but discussions about consent, love, and intimacy. Further, if porn use and sexuality in general are made to be more "normal," young adults could feel more comfortable discussing these topics with parents and trusted adults. I'm reminded of the perennial toaster-fucker greentext. I can imagine a world where /r/ToasterFuckers exists and a parent successfully guides their child away from it with the appropriate support. The mere existence of /r/ToasterFuckers is not the problem. While porn may be particularly tempting, I don't see how it is entirely immune to guidance. This is the classic "if you're going to drink, you're going to do it in my house." Is it effective? It's hard to say, and it's certainly a tall order compared to the status quo. But on its face it is at least logically coherent.
And, of course, there were plenty of discussions about age restrictions. It seems trivially true to me that a 21-year-old can handle porn better than a 12-year-old. Is there such a thing as an effective age restriction online? I'm not sure.
I think there are still problems with this argument - namely, that women choosing to make porn are often compelled to do so out of financial need which makes it unempowering at times. It also doesn't address moral arguments about porn's existence, like if porn is fundamentally immoral or disrespectful to human sexuality. It addresses most of the consequentialist points well, though, and I wanted to provide it the best I could to flesh out some of the positions that may not be as well-represented on this forum.
Yes, and for Onlyfans in particular, only 1% of the women make 99% of the money (or a similar ratio), meaning the overwhelming majority of women on there are selling their dignity and trading away immeasurable respect and status for pennies on the dollar. I consider this exploitative.
That's just true of any kind of showbiz?
How many musicians make real money? How many starlets make it big in Hollywood? Are you going to bite the bullet and call those industries exploitative too? So exploitative that they deserve to be shut down? What is the competition ratio and Gini-coefficient worthy of concern?
The difference is that musicians aren't selling pictures of their genitals online, and if you stop being a musician there aren't lasting negative consequences from your past career as a musician.
Well Billy Squier will never be rid of that music video.
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