CAUTION!!! EXPLICIT RANTING!
I found Tiffany Boulton very intersting. I like how she emphasized that women with healthy, functional breasts perceive their breasts as defective. Often, I suppose they actually make their breasts defective by augmenting them. I walked down the Red Mile stone sober, and I was very suprised to see how many women there were flashing their breasts, sometimes to no audience. In this case and others, is it women who are perpretrating their own negative of themselves.
So a split infinitive classically (I guess) is To boldly go where no man has gone before!
The infinitive is to go, and it has been ‘split’ by the adverb boldly. Split infinitives have been the cause of much controversy among teachers and grammarians, but the notion that they are ungrammatical is simply a myth: in his famous book Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler listed them among ‘superstitions’! This is from http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/splitinfin
What immediatly stuck with me from the documentary was “who is watching this and why?”. For example who wants to watch a woman being raped, see someone have sex with a child, or an innocent animal being raped? Why is there demand for this? What really scared me about the rape scene, is its not just one guy watching it, and getting pleasure from it. Many are! And by putting it on video I think it almost legitimizes the act, making it okay to be turned on by hurting and scaring a woman. It scares me that that is so many mens (or womens) fantasies. The woman who was directing the rape scene who named herself “Lizzie Borden” of Lizzie who murdered both her parents… I suppose is your first sign that she is not stable, and also violent. She didn’t even tell her best friend that she was going to be beaten and ‘killed’. And it was okay because they would go for dinner and buy a purse afterwards. Nice.
Porn also degrades women to a severe degree. I think it is mainly men who are watching/buying/downloadingit, so they want to see the man in a powerful role, I suppose. These women are being cheapen and belittled with whips, chains, anal intercourse… and many un-namable things, for little money. If the industry is making Billions of dollars and the actors are getting paid $1000.00 generally, it casts women down again. But, if one person doesn’t do it, someone else will. Once again, we have an example of women perpretrating their own negative self-image. The woman we saw in the video that was going to have anal intercourse for the first time.. WITH 6 MEN… also disturbs me. There really is no pleasureful reason for a woman to have anal intercourse, on the contrary, there are many medical reasons not to… I’ll leave it at that.
I just wish there were more postive images………… generally.
March 26, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Wow. That was a really great blog. The topic, mind you was awful, but you did a great job stating your opinion. I agree with every single thing you said. Even the split infinitive part… I read the exact same thing in wikipedia.
I struggled with trying to say something about the American Porn documentary. Lizzie definitely gave me a creepy feeling, what she is doing is wrong and she seems absolutely self absorbed and crazy. She acknowledges that she exploits people even her friend yet she doesn’t care. I also dissaprove of what she says about being a woman in the industry and getting away with degrading women because she is one.
One man in the film says that a girl could make $4500 by having sex 3 times and anal sex once. This seems like a lot of money to me but when the movie makes a million dollars, $4500 is just a drop in the bucket. But like you said, if one girl doesn’t do it, someone else will. And since this is true it is so hard to think about how to fix this problem. Women will collectively have to respect themselves and then porn will disappear… but like that’s going to happen. Everyone seems to have their price.
March 28, 2007 at 10:42 am
Wow, I did not stay for the documentary, and I must admit that I don’t think I would have been able to handle that. Mind you, you did do very well in expressing your opinion on the issue…it just makes me sick to think that this actually goes on and if Lizzie is as self-absorbed as you mention, what goes through these people’s heads? I mean where on earth do people get the idea that this is ok? Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is with porn?! I mean truly…Why is it, to some, such a fascinating thing? I mean it truly baffles me. I wish people would get their heads outta their asses and realize this. However, I agree with you that in these instances women are putting out a derogatory name and negative self-image for themselves HOWEVER this by no means applies to ALL women and people also need to realize that as well. I think that this is some of the problem is that you get certain people who view all women as “trash”, “sluts” or what have you. However, maybe it is the case that it takes a small few to create an image for the rest of us? I just wish people would not believe that. Excellent post
March 28, 2007 at 10:57 am
Awesome Blog! I actually agree with you on many of the issues you have brought up from last class. First I think that Tiffany did a great job and I know that many of my family and friends have many of their own concerns about their breasts.
Also I think that the porn movie was good but I was just as disturbed as you to find out that they were actually able to sell movies about rape. It is really distrubing to know that people are “getting off” from other people’s scripted suffering.