Pornography

The following is an entry that I never posted over the summer, here it is for you now:

Main Entry: por·nog·ra·phy

Pronunciation: \-fē\

Function: noun

Etymology: Greek pornographos, adjective, writing about prostitutes, from pornē prostitute + graphein to write; akin to Greek pernanai to sell, poros journey —

Date: 1858

1 : the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement

2 : material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement

3 : the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction

There are perks to having attended a college where the students have continuously voted down the instillation of cable hookups on campus, such as the inability to channel surf. I watch TV, but because I have to do so online I only watch shows that are important to me and follow consistently. The problem is my parent's have cable and since returning home for the summer my propensity towards mindless station flipping has increased by 100%, (which also means that my IQ has also gone down by about 100 points too).

While mindlessly flipping through the stations it's happened that I've settled on a show called "The Hills" (feel free to judge), it's a show about nothing really, just some privileged people's drama. Well, while walking by my dad stopped short in the doorway, paused and exclaimed "This shit is worse than pornography! At least with porno you know what you're watching!" He then promptly walked away and I was left feeling dirty and disgusted with myself; he was right. I'm not defending porn here, I could have a separate diatribe on the need for feminist porn, but what's of importance here is that we are all being exposed to the same sort of misogyny in disguise!

These television producers appeal to our natural voyeuristic tendencies and using them to exploit women, (isn't it so often that voyeurism is directed towards women in particular?) In these shows women are portrayed as vapid, petty, Barbie-like beings - and you know the worst part? These shows are marketed towards women! They are not even committing these myths about "the female" to men... "ohh and ahh at the female, the mysterious other, how different she is than me!" They are dispelling these troubling falsities about women to women.

'll leave you with this question, how are we ever going to be able to transcend gender when this anti-feminist propaganda has permeated so much into our culture that we don't even realize that the show we are watching on cable T.V at 8:00 p.m on a Monday night, is actually pornography?