A lesson in pornographic ethics from Kate Taylor

Who should you look to for an intelligent discussion of modern feminism? Well, Kate Taylor of course, who can boast on her CV that she once wrote the sex life column for GQ. Apparently women who criticise the raunch culture are all wrong, because some women were made to be packaged up as sex toys for drooling men. I’m feeling a sense of deja vu… it’s almost as if I’ve heard this shit all before!

Men, you can relax. You are no longer the enemy. Instead, judging by recent events in America, modern feminists have a much shapelier target in their sights – other women. Specifically, scantily clad women who use their sexuality to get ahead.

First cliche of the piece: feminists hate men (or used to). Second cliche: criticising an exploitative culture which reduces women to sexual playthings is equal to treating women as the enemy. I guess Kate would think that I’m about to prove her right, as I’m about to ‘go after her’. But it has nothing to do with how she dresses. It’s because she’s an idiot.

The answer is, labouring to look like Pamela Anderson is not empowering. We’re not trying to be empowered. The twentysomething women I know don’t care about old-style feminism. Partly this is because they already see themselves as equal to men: they can work, they can vote, they can bonk on the first date. For younger women, raunch is not about feminism, it’s just about fashion.

Apparently the feminist movement ceases to exist once women have the vote, are allowed to ‘bonk on the first date’ and can work. After those important and worthy goals are achieved, everything is magically ‘equal’ and therefore to rights. Sexual slavery, poverty (especially the feminisation of poverty), violence against women, the lack of redress for survivors of sexual violence are all acceptable, and are not to be taken as signs of injustice and inequality. In fact, Taylor seems to think that young women ‘don’t care about Old-style feminism’, despite the enormous gains it made for them. I would suggest that that is actually Taylor’s own attitude, and remind her that today’s ‘Old-style’ feminists are eternally grateful to their foremothers. Continuing to oppose inequality and oppression is part of that respect.

[W]omen are rediscovering the joy of being loved for their bodies, not just their minds.

Or, they are aware that their appearance is the standard by which they will be judged, and thus identify with the maintainance of oppressive beauty rituals, and submission to the demands of culturally male sexuality. And the ’lads’ mags’, which (as shall be seen) Taylor rates so highly, hardly celebrate women’s minds.

[Men now] tend to listen to what women have to say, and when they marry they don’t consider sharing the housework to be castrating.

Studies have shown that the majority of housework is still done by women.

She [Ariel Levy] claims that boob jobs and crop tops “don’t bring us any closer to the fundamental feminist project of allowing every woman to be her own, specific self”. But what if a woman’s “own, specific self” is a thong-wearing, Playboy-T-shirted specific self who thinks lap-dancing is a laugh and likes getting wolf-whistled at by builders? What if a woman spends hours in the gym to create a body she is proud of?

I find that unlikely, because no person is an empty body with nothing more. Because women en masse find street harrassment humiliating and frightening. Because Playboy t-shirts arise from female poverty and suffering. Because ‘boob jobs and crop tops’ are not indicative of a ’woman spends hours in the gym to create a body she is proud of‘, but of a woman who has been taught that she as herself is not good enough. Because women aren’t trying to make themselves healthy, but instead they are trying to conform to a (deliberately) unattainable ideal.

I’ve worked for GQ and the Sun, and in neither place did I see women being exploited.

If Kate Taylor didn’t see it happen, then that means it doesn’t happen! 

Does [Rachel] Bell [from the f word] have any idea how much money women make when they take their clothes off? How much freedom and independence these girls can earn in an hour? Abi Titmuss and the new breed of totty generally own the copyright to their naughtiest photos, so with each publication they rake it in.

What the hell has the price got to do with it?! It’s still the sale of human flesh, and for every rich Abi Titmuss making a fortune there are many more poor women suffering violence in prostitution and pornography because our society maltreats women and puts a price on their flesh. Buying and selling a human body makes the person attached to that body a thing that can be used and stolen. Money doesn’t wipe out exploitation, and it doesn’t make it okay. Making money is not a moral justification for doing anything. Abi Titmuss and the girl trafficked in to be raped in the brothel are linked.   

Abi’s photos are ‘naughty’ because ‘naughty’ comes from sin, and women’s bodies are deemed sinful and dirty in Western culture. The ‘naughty’ becomes nice through the woman’s degredation- it is not feminists who condemn nudity, but the mores of society to which pornography owes its existence.

Look at lads’ mags from a different perspective and you see that what’s being exploited are men’s sexual responses, to give money to women.

Who gives the money to women? Men. Who has the money in the first place to give to women? Men. I think equal pay for equal work would be preferable.

It has always been like this, and it always will be, because men’s achilles heel [sic] is that they go to pieces when a woman drops her top. Old-style feminists never understood this.

It will always be the same, announces the omniscient sex columnist. So feminists, stop trying to change bad male behaviour, because men are actually pathetic animals who cannot act rationally after seeing a pair of bared breasts. It is this revolting and dehumanising stereotype that allows the rapist to claim his victim provoked him and he couldn’t help himself, and for the jury to agree with him.

We should be working together to support women in this country and across the world whose rights are still ignored, instead of squabbling and catfighting.

What are you doing to help, Ms Taylor? And how many stereotypes can you pack into one paragraph? Let’s see…

Men are great at working together; they are self-congratulatory and supportive. We are not. That is our true weakness, and feminism exemplifies this flaw – witness the countless factions, all fighting for different things, from sex-positive feminists, who believe nudity is OK, to third-wave feminists, who think eyeliner is misogynistic.

Note ‘women are bitchy and disagreeable’, ‘men always work together and never begin wars’ and ‘feminists have differences of opinion and therefore are in permanent conflict’. Feminist critique of sexual exploitation is morphed into a prudish dislike of nudity. And nice extra touch in ridiculing feminist criticism of beauty rituals.

For one thing, men in the office waste whole afternoons staring at your bottom, placing bets on whether you’re wearing underwear. Let them.

Give me a break! 

Use that time to take over the company. But even if you wear naughty lingerie for you, for no other reason than it makes you feel good, that is reason enough to keep it on.

So long as you make money, everything’s fine. Don’t complain about sexual harrassment because that makes you divisive and nasty and not a high flying sexpot. The degradation of your sisters is irrelevant, of course.

True feminism should celebrate femininity, and make you feel wonderful to be born a woman. It’s a shame some feminists today can’t do the same.

Feminism seeks to tell the truth about femininity, and Ms Taylor has missed Feminist Lesson No.1- female and feminine are not the damn same. One is biological, one is cultural. It’s not rocket science.

This ridiculous article completely ignores the very exploitative, violent and callous base upon which FHM and its ilk are built. Taylor is blind to the women suffering from the denigration of the female to a despised sex object and the behaviour of men who enjoy degrading them. Abi Titmuss registers with her; the rape survivor does not. She clearly either knows nothing about the treatment of women as a result of this patriarchal ethic, or she does not care. But then again, she’s not likely to want to piss off the pornographers who pay her salary.