>>10
As I said in my own post, I share your instinctual intense dislike of the website in question. The "complaints procedure" they offer does indeed sound like a cynical attempt to con the girls into giving out even MORE information about themselves and I'm sure whoever runs the place is some sort of despicable character who is in it, I imagine, in the last analysis, for the money (not sure how that works, but I suppose sites like that make a packet from advertising or something).
I can't see what good is served by dragging "feminism" into this, though. There are plenty of areas of activity still, even in 2012, where women are simply trying to operate as autonomous, self-directed human beings and are not being allowed to do so because of their sex or gender. But allowing yourself to be filmed on your knees sucking your boyfriend's large pierced cock with an expression of blissfully agonized submission on your face is not one of these areas of activity.
Girls like Kayla mostly did such things when they were very young, depressed, hungry for affection etc. and nobody should try to "slut-shame" them for it. But neither should anyone pretend that an activity like the one (a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old) Kayla is shown engaging in in the photo that opens this thread has anything to do with "women's freedom of action and self-expression" etc. The photo - like most of Kayla's videos - plays up to millenially ancient fantasies of female subservience and submission. Defending women's "basic human right" to do this sort of thing, as if it were comparable with the right to equal pay, or the right to be listened to in a conversation, is self-defeating. What the girl is doing here has to do with the excitement and the pleasure that arises from being DEPRIVED of rights and from being made LESS than human.
It's not inconceivable that that excitement and that pleasure COULD perhaps one day be made a workable part of a project and programme of human emancipation. (Michel Foucault was probably working in that direction, with his reconceptualization of the meaning of "power" in the light particularly of his researches on "the history of sexuality", when he died of AIDS in 1984). But to try to do that already TODAY - and particularly to apply it to WOMEN in their present situation - is an entirely unworkable - and, as I say, self-defeating -idea. We really aren't clear enough, just yet, about what exactly is going on in scenarios like those represented in Kayla's videos. Are her private, internal feelings as she does these things in fact nothing at all to do with the apparent feelings of sexual arousal that she projects? Is she prompted to do this by feelings of intimidation and need for non-sexual affection that the viewer knows nothing about? Or does she genuinely feel excited by herself as she does these things and by the idea of being watched doing them? But then, ANOTHER layer of questions: even if she IS genuinely excited "inside" as she does these things, how much of even that "inside" is something that the "outside" - i.e. patriarchy - has "put into" her? What would it really MEAN and TAKE for a girl or a woman to be "free" in these matters?
These questions - being questions dealing with the dark and terrible roots of human Being in the "foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart" that is sexuality - are MUCH more complex than the relatively simple and straightforward questions of women's right to equal pay, right to free speech etc. and to confound the two sets of questions is destructive, not progressive.
To call for a "banning of slut-shaming", indeed, in the way the previous post does is a positively ANTI-feminist position, since it implies acceptance of a culture that derives intense pleasure from actions like Kayla's on the one hand and piles contempt on them on the other. What we see in these videos, as I say, is nothing to do with anything that we can defend as a "right". But it's not something that we are justified in pretending to hate and despise, either. Precisely because NOBODY - man or woman - is "emancipated" at this point in history, we should admit that we are ALL deeply psychologically and emotionally involved in the universe in which the "slut" forms the central figure of obsession. If a girl adopts that persona, that should be no reason to despise her or for her to despise herself. If THAT were accepted, then "slut-shaming" sites would not HAVE to be "closed down". They would become celebrations, without cynicism or hypocrisy, of something that one part of us all already celebrates.
As I say, even if it were purified of the cynicism and hypocrisy, the "celebration" of this "something" would still be morally and humanly problematical, as it is the celebration of a "something" that is deeply entangled with violence, sorrow, submission and domination. If we find joy in it, we find joy in something torn and riddled by contradictions. Maybe one day, centuries from now, these contradictions will be resolved in a genuine emancipation and reconciliation of both sexes. But we will not build such a world by fooling ourselves that we have ALREADY as good as built it. And until then, the best we can ALL do, men and women, is have some mercy on one another in all our terrible confusion, desperation and need.
