Friday, August 27, 2010

Dr. Phil comments on pornography

I tend to avoid watching shows like Dr. Phil, but for some reason it was playing in the background the other day. He was talking with a couple and the wife was upset that her husband was watching internet pornography. When I heard Dr. Phil's response, I had to rewind it and write it down.

He said
You have a daughter, right? Well, that's somebody's daughter that you are leering at on the computer.
Although I like the idea of humanizing women in pornography rather than further objectifying them, and I like the idea of seeing them as actual human beings with families, friends, jobs, histories and aspirations, I do not like this comment at all. To me, Dr. Phil may as well be saying that these women are another man's property. It is reminiscent of criminal laws in Feudal and early industrial Western Europe, where rape was a crime of property against a husband or father, and not seen as something that was harmful to women.

Stop watching pornography, not because your wife is very uncomfortable with it and not because many of the images are objectifying (note- I'm not saying that pornography is innately objectifying, as I don't think this is the right post to get into that pornography debate), but because you are somehow offending the father of the woman in the movie.

Edited to Add
I just saw this related post. The author explaines that Montana Fishbourne is not a possession of her father, and her decision to do pornography should not be looked at as something she did to her father.

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