#reviewsdaytuesday: Tyger Takes On... Porn (BBC3)

As I think you might be able to tell from the title of this post, this programme shows some sexually explicit content. If you are under the age of 16 and feel comfortable witnessing and hearing about this, or if you're over the age of 16 (and similarly feel comfortable to do so) I would urge you to go and watch the show. I will also warn you that there is a mention of rape and rape fantasy towards the end of the show, so, if that is triggering for you, skip from 43 minutes to 46 minutes.

The show was broadcast on 15th May and is available on iPlayer for the next 3 weeks.

Similarly, this post will be discussing the explicit content of the show, so if you are uncomfortable with this, you can read my last post about what I do to my hair!

This show comes from a slightly 'laddy' perspective - not so much in the information it's giving (although, I'd say it tends to focus on boys watching porn and the female porn stars, rather than girls watching porn) but rather in the little clips of Tyger which appear to be there because the writers of the show are aware this could be an awkward topic and are trying to play it for laughs. This irritated me, particularly at the start of the programme as I was afraid that this was going to be a show which was created as an excuse for the BBC to showcase a 'cool' star, and these clips felt very self conscious.

Happily, however, the main content of the show was, for the most part, very thoughtful, insightful, and, most importantly, well-rounded. Throughout the show, Tyger was very open and frank about his own experiences with porn, as well as his own sex life, and how he thinks the former may have influenced the latter. I should also mention that Tyger grew up in a home very open about porn, as both his parents worked in the industry. Aside from the 'put your cock away' jokes with his Dad, I thought this was an interesting and insightful aspect to the show, as not many teens can say they grew up in a house that was open to porn. I certainly didn't (although, I should mention that porn has no appeal to me, and I've never really watched it except from when a guy put it on at a house party - much to the disgust of most of the party goers). 

The show did a relatively good job of interviewing both men and women equally when it came to the broader surveys about porn consumption, however when it came to the effects porn has on an individual’s sex-life there was a definite focus on men. This might be simply because it is men's expectations of sex which are most heavily impacted by porn - although this being said it takes two to have sex and this show was entirely focused on heterosexual porn and relationships, so you would think it would impact on women too (and the one occasion when he did interview a women about the impact of porn on her relationship it was particularly disturbing and troubling). The interviews he did with some of the men whose sex-lives had been most heavily impacted by porn were very revealing: they were only turned on by the porn-star look, they expected porn-style sex, they expected their sexual partners to do all the things porn stars would do and they weren't very good as discussing sex with their partners. I was particularly interested when he re-evaluated his own porn consumption and subsequent sexual expectations, as this opened up for a discussion of what is 'too much porn' and made the suggestion that if you say 'I watch porn once a week' that is still an addiction.

However, the moment in the programme which I most enjoyed was Tyger's interview with Cindy Gallop, founder of the 'Make Love Not Porn' campaign. Cindy's discussion was the real turning point in the show for me, and opened up the discussion I was most looking forward to - we need to equally blame the porn industry as well as society’s reluctance to discuss sex when we are looking to explore the negative impact of porn on my generation's experience of sex. Sadly, this discussion wasn't taken much further in the programme, though I think it is the most important discussion the how had, and I partly feel this was because they wanted to keep their audience profile entertained, so decided instead to show porn being filmed. 

Whilst showing the porn being filmed was helpful to de-romanticising porn, I wonder whether or not the show could have found the time to more fully discuss the how impact of sexual education (or lack thereof) works in tandem with an ever expanding porn industry and ever increasing availability of porn. I also was expecting to have a fuller discussion of how the online free to view porn sites were impacting on the professional porn industry, which never really became fully realised.

Over all, the programme was useful as a springboard for discussion, and I'm looking forward to seeing the next in the series of Tyger Takes On. 

#reviewsdaytuesday: BBC2’s Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes.

After a long weekend away from any and all internet, I finally got round to watching BBC2’s one off show about sexism and the media Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes, and I have to say it was rather good.

The show covered a lot of ground, including sexism in comedy, sexism in journalism and sexism online, with the premise that it would uncover to what extent the new media had allowed a new kind of sexism or misogyny to breed. Before I go any further, I am going to outline my personal definitions of the terms feminism, sexism and misogyny. These are not dictionary definitions, but simply what I understand the words to mean.

Feminism: The belief that there has been, and continues to be, a systematic oppression of female/women identifying individuals due to the social structure of ‘patriarchy’ – or the dominance of men in society (specifically, cis, straight, white, middle-aged, middle-class men*). Feminism wants to remove this structure from society, and replace it with a system which benefits male indentifying and female identifying individuals equally, of any race, ethnicity, weight, mental or physical ability, or sexual orinetation.

Sexism: Behaving in such a way that assumes that one sex is lesser than the other, specifically that female identifying individuals are lesser than men. A prejudice against female identifying individuals based on their indentity as female.

Misogyny: A hatred of all female identifying individuals, and an active attempt to oppress them and an internalised prejudice against them.

I hope those definitions are clear to everyone. If you have any questions, or need further clarification, feel free to contact me here in the comments, or on my twitter @VickiMaitland. Please note, however, any abuse I experience on any of these social media platforms will result in report.

* I use the term ‘female identifying individuals’ in order to be as inclusive as possible towards the struggles of transwomen and intersex women. I did not use the term ‘male identifying individuals’ in this instance because patriarchy also systematically oppresses transmen and intersex men. The discussion in this post, however, will be primarily focussed on the experiences of women, however, as this was the main concern of the BBC2 programme.

On the whole I believe this programme did an excellent job of showcasing the various forms of sexism and misogyny that women experience in their everyday lives, as well as the mountainous problem we have to face in order to begin to break down this sexist and misogynistic society. It did this primarily by showcasing  the (frequently ridiculous, and, frankly, mostly irrelevant) opinions of middle-aged, middle-class, white men. Unsurprisingly, many of their opinions were concerning, particularly the one of a comedian, who stated that once women were equal they became ‘fair game’ as a punchline – seemingly forgetting that after centuries of oppression by men it is completely unfunny for men to mock them. Comedy only works provided it is poking fun at the oppressor, not the victim of oppression. Making a rape joke in which the victim is the punchline is wholly comparable to making a slavery joke in which the slave is mocked. It is disgusting and inappropriate in a society when the balance of oppression has not been redressed, not to mention highly triggering.

The idea that ‘women should be able to tell when something is a joke’ was another opinion which stormed its way through the programme in various different forms, along with its sidekick ‘it’s not my fault if you get offended by something if I meant it as a joke’. We all need to take responsibilities for our words. Whether or not offence was meant, if offence is taken it is only right to apologise and learn. This links to another worrying view which was expressed: the idea that words on the internet do not matter, as if the internet were this magically fairy land where you can say anything without consequence. The internet, as the programme stated, not only reflects our world but also shapes it. It is just as real as the words in a newspaper, or the words spoken during conversation. Just because something is not tangible does not make it any less real. Just because threats and discrimination can be made anonymously doesn’t make them any less serious. It was particularly worrying as this argument came directly after the interviewer had presented evidence that mild, inferred sexism from journalists on and offline turns into extreme misogyny on social media platforms, which in turn becomes validated in the media.

Interestingly, however, there was also evidence to show that non-sexist men are not made sexist through an exposure to sexist media or comedy. Sexist men, on the other hand, are validated in their opinions and are made more sexist by this. Laughing at a sexist joke only serves to validate the opinions of sexist men. A wonderful quote ran roughly as follows: ‘Sexism is like air pollution. We’re not all producing it, and not all in equal quantities, but we’re all breathing it in.’ This quote is so fabulous as it not only articulates how everyone is effected by sexism (men and women alike), but also forms a wonderful backlash to the cry of ‘not all men’ which is so often heard in debates over sexism. Yes, obviously not all men contribute towards sexism, but all men (and all people) need to be part of the solution.

I’ve spoken quite heavily on the different views of the white, middle-class, middle-aged men which were interviewed, and you may be wondering where my commentary on female opinion will begin. This was one of the main flaws of the programme. It tended to give far more airtime to the views and opinions of those whom it was arguing against than those it was arguing for. Rarely we got to hear about the female experience from a woman (other than words given to us by the presenter Kirsty Ward), and although Germaine Greer and Mary Beard were fascinating to hear from not once were we given the voice of a person of colour, or an obvious member of the LGBTQA+ community. This was a programme wholly encompassed with an old fashioned idea of feminism, the type of feminism which only concerned white, middle-aged, middle-class women. I had hoped, since this programme was directly addressing new media, and today’s sexism, that it would give voice to all female identifying individuals. For me this was the programmes major failure.

The programme also attempted to cover a lot of ground – which sadly meant it didn’t really fully deliver on many of the things it said it would in the opening preview. There was very little discussion of music and music videos. Similarly there was minimal discussion of gaming and the ‘geek girl’. This is not necessarily the fault of the programme itself, but rather the fault of the BBC, as this could easily have been a series with each episode focussing on a different aspect of sexism and the media, rather than a one off, one hour long show.

I'm sure there are plenty of elements of the programme I could have gone in distinctly more depth with, as well as there being many ares I have not covered at all. If you have seen the programme, and do want to contribute to this discussion, I would love to hear what you have to say. If you want to contribute but have not yet seen the programme, I would prefer you check it out first. It should still be here on iplayer for the time being. 

All in all I was impressed with the show, and for me (a cis, straight, white, middle-class woman) I felt my experiences were relatively represented and recognised. I just wish so much of the programme hadn’t been based around the opinions of white old men telling me how I should or should not feel.