Hardcore pornography vs Playboy, Penthouse, and Maxim

[elfs]

I wish I could find again. A few days ago I came across an essay that had an interesting thesis: softcore pornography is more detrimental to men's attitudes toward women than hardcore pornography.

Softcore porn, so the argument goes, presents women alone. They're dressed up and photoshopped and all that, but they're alone. They are not just objects: they're commodities. The idea is that softcorn porn presents women as something you could have or buy, if only you had the right resources-- usually money.

In contrast, hardcore porn usually presents women with other partners. The men might treat them as objects or might not. Porn frequently follows one or a few woman through a number of encounters, implying that she has some control over the sequence.

The conclusion was that softcore pornography presents a woman as a commodity: something you could buy. Hardcore pornography, in contrast, shows you something you could do if you already had someone with whom to do it.

I don't know that I buy the whole of the argument, but it does present something to think about. Omaha's counter-argument is that in softcore, all the man needs is money, but in hardcore, the guy needs that dick, and since most of us don't have that dick, we're never gonna get the girl.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

There might be language differences getting in the way, but I think it depends a lot, as well, on the cultural background to the porn. Maybe it's just that Japanese porn doesn't need to demonstrate some attitudes, rather than I can't read the words that reveal the blatant misogyny I see attched to American porn.

Anyway, I sometimes get a sense of something dark lurking in the softcore image, which isn't countered by a sense of achieving any sort of pleasure.

And when the woman is obviously enjoying something, there often seems to be a need to make her out to be somehow unworthy. You need to be Hef to get the centrefold, but the hardcore girls are cheap.