 Hello, I'm Crystal, welcome to Crop Talk on Think Tech. This morning, Tuesday, we have a relatively disturbing topic. Why is it disturbing? Because it's so incredibly enticing and attractive to a certain type of an audience, and it creates a lot of consequential concepts of sexuality. We're talking about porn, online porn. Porn and sexuality, you know, where's it gone, because the whole internet has just taken over our lives. So today we have a very important topic we're going to go into, and you're thinking, ooh porn, we can talk about all this stuff. Yes, we will, but you have to know that there are a lot of issues that we bring out there that may be not appropriate for some people to be watching, but then again, porn isn't appropriate. I mean, everyone's going to be doing it anyway. So we're here to talk about this. I've got an amazing guest here, and she is just, I'm going to let her introduce herself. She is a associate professor at the Women's Study PhD, has an incredible background in women's studies, and you're, I don't know if it's a fascination, or is it obsession, or is it just a pure interest in your research in this? Yeah. So my background is in women's studies, and because sort of like growing up I see all of the sort of like differences between how boys and girls were raised, even in my family. So for example, I was not allowed to eat more than I should, so that I should stay slim and all of that, versus my brother would be encouraged to eat whatever he wants, and he can stay out as late as he could, or have a stay over, or sleep over, but me I have to be backed by like what, eight or six, you know. But you grew up in Indonesia. So do you think that's a cultural thing? It's a cultural thing, but the same thing as well here, that's happening here. Sure. So it's a dress code for students, right, girls versus boys. We do have double standard there as well, right. And so this idea of what girls should look like, boys should look like, and how we raise them differently, and particularly in terms of sexuality. Yes. It's okay for boys to be naughty boys, but when it's a girl, when they're naughty, it's all about she's a slut, she's this, she's that, right. And so girls and women can't experience and express their sexuality, even in the US, versus boys, they can play around and check out porn, that's the cool thing to do, and that's why I'm so fascinated by this, and fascinated by the issue of porn because people may think or feel that this is a trivial issue, but that's why it matters, because people think that it doesn't matter when in fact, that regulates how we desire, right, it teaches us how or what, how to love. And it's been a big problem, it's been in the media for a long time where the influence or the misuse of porn and how that miseducates a lot of younger teens now. So let's do a little background on the whole kind of beginning of internet porn, and where it's taken us today. So the internet is really a game changer in terms of the porn industry, because before if you had to go to a certain newsstand and ask somebody to buy that for you, or you have to sort of go to a certain video rental, right, to watch these videos, now you can watch or access any of this at the comfort of your own home. Yes, can I just tell you this morning doing my research? I clicked on, I didn't want to, but it's just for my research, I had to click on, I clicked Asian women porn, and poof, oh my God, I couldn't even look at all of them, as I was having my coffee, I couldn't believe I was watching this stuff, it is so in your face. Yes, yes. So, but the internet in some ways has, I don't want to say positive or productive, but it really does change literally the face of porn, right, because before we see a particular kind of face, particular kind of narrative, that if we want to go and see porn, that's like very typical of what a particularly heterosexual porn looks like, right, and now that people can upload their own sort of amateur porn or whatever you want to call it, and different people can sort of create their own fantasies in some ways, and now we can even be interactive with the webcam, you know, and that stuff. It really changes what, how we experience even porn, but what is also just as important is that how porn actually influences the internet, right, so if you have, now you go to all these websites to buy and shop shoes and whatnot, but what's interesting is that the secure, the payment system that is now more secure is thanks to the internet, right, I mean so thanks to the porn industry, because people wanted to buy or like to have access to these videos, and they wanted to make sure that their credit card is safe, and so porn allows the internet industry or like forces the internet to sort of like have a more secure payment system, so that's one thing. The other thing is I don't know if you remember or young enough or old enough in some ways to remember when I was growing up, I remember wanting to download just one image, one image. It was a dial-up, you know, you remember that sort of like you have to wait a few minutes, just to download one image, and talk about porn, right, when you're all horny and then you're going to like download one image that takes 10 minutes, you kind of like okay that's it, I mean like I'm not gonna remember. But how many, or is there like a study on how many women actually go and use porn to? There are, I don't have the number, but what is interesting the difference between porn for women, porn for heterosexual women versus porn for men shows that porn for heterosexual women actually allows for space for women to be more playful, more sort of experimental with their sexuality, versus for men in some ways. It's really a similar narrative, right, because if you look at porn, I don't know if this morning you actually, no I didn't go that far, or any of that, but heterosexual porn usually ends when the men ejaculate. So what does that tell us about women's pleasure versus men's pleasure, right? So what we learn from porn then, that men's pleasure is more important than women, because everything ends when men sort of need a desire is satisfied, right? But we don't really learn about what does women want. But in a lot of porn don't they have the woman climax or they pretend to because of the sake, but it's also for the men, the fake orgasm. Exactly, and even if you look at the sort of videos, I don't know why I do this, but women who are masturbating on this online porn sites, we see them enjoying themselves and then looking at the camera, because it is the gaze of the man, exactly, right? So in other words, even in terms of pleasuring themselves, right, they're pleasuring themselves because there's an audience there's this presumably a male audience who's watching them. So again, it's not their own pleasure, because it maybe they want to touch themselves in different ways, right? But because there is this sort of expectation to touch yourself a certain way so that you can pleasure yourself while still looking sexy, right? That is kind of hard. You want to pleasure yourself. You want to have an orgasm sort of like face, but you have to look pretty at the same time. So it's acting, it's really. It is, it is work, right? But how is it not pleasuring the woman maybe because they like to be gazed at and to feel like somebody spying on them? Isn't that a sexual pleasure in itself? Absolutely. So here's my take on that. I'm not arguing that we should ban or censor sort of all this porn, right? But what I am saying is that there is only particular narrative. There is a dominant narrative out there about porn, right? And this is what we need to challenge, right? So we need more variety. And what the internet allows us to do is to have a little bit more access to let's say queer porn, right? Non-heteronormative sort of porn, right? And so different kind of porn. And so what would it look like to have a heterosexual porn that doesn't, again, sort of just, you know, come on women's face or do this or that, right? And so what is, what does that even look like? Big black penis. That's like the main thing I see. Absolutely. Absolutely, right? And so even porn, and this is, my areas of specialty is actually race and gender and sexuality, right? And so my study actually looks at Asian women in particular, but you're absolutely right. Because this idea of black manhood, right? Black masculinity is being hyper-sexualized, right? And so again, we learn about race also from porn. And this is why earlier we think that porn, oh, you know, it's just porn. But we actually learn about, you know, race, about gender and sexuality. Interesting. I mean, is that the chicken and egg thing? Because culturally, if you're talking about Asian women and the suppression, you know, the image of the repressed and suppressed woman submissive is something culturally, just, you know, in Asia where if you see it in the porn, is, you know, they're ticking from the cultural relationships. Or you're saying that maybe porn is kind of reflecting or not reflecting. They're the ones who are representing what it really is in real life. Yeah. So I'm less concerned about which comes first, you know, the egg or the chicken and that sort of question and focusing on the consequences, right? Okay. Regardless of which one comes first, the egg or the chicken, right? What matters now is that that porn does, in some ways, affect the ways in which we think about gender, race and sexuality, right? Yes. It helps us think about what are possible in terms of our fantasies, right? This is why one of my sort of, you know, motto or like slogan or whatever when I talk about porn is that the more you watch porn, the less creative you are when it comes to making love, right? Because that's actually what people think, you know, when we go and see a porn because we want to experience this kinky or this different sort of like sexuality. But when you actually studied porn, which I did, you look at very similar narrative in terms of the formula. This is what's going to happen, this is what's going to happen, this is what's going to happen. It's not like watching a mystery movie and you kind of like, oh, who is like going to kill this? Who's going to kill this? And you look at a teenager, let's just say like a 14-year-old boy who doesn't have any experience with sex, they go on and they educate themselves from these videos or, you know, clips and they, their concept of sexuality are these twisted, over-fantacized images that dictate what he thinks he should be doing to his partner or should be done to himself. Absolutely. And I think there is actually a study that shows that 14-year-old boys actually think that growing up women don't have pubic hair. Oh, God, amongst other things. Yes, right. And so because if that is what you see everywhere, right, in all of this sort of, not only, and here's the prevalence of porn is that it's not only within the porn websites or whatnot, right, but if you think about some of our music videos, right, are directed by porn directors. Oh, really? Right. And also if you look at magazines for women that teach women how to have sex, how to have Brazilian wax or whatnot, right, that in other words, even though you don't watch porn, right, that porn industry, porn culture spills over. Exactly. It still influences how you live, how you interact with others, how you have sex with another, right. But it's already, it's just so out of control that how do you even start to think about, you're talking about the consequences of it. How do you even, you know, start to find your way around this? Absolutely. So that's why you need to take women's studies classes, for example, right? Or we have this conversation, right, about, you know, what porn does and what porn does not do, right? Because I think it's always important to question, what does it do? Let's leave this question to the audience. What porn does and what porn doesn't do? How does that inflict pain? And how does that affect the, you know, the image of the Asian women? And we have so much to talk about. Let's take a breather. Let's come back, talk about all these questions and we'll come back. And by the way, this is only part one because it's just the tip of the iceberg. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon, tune in to Stand the Energy Man at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Think Tech Hoy. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to Batchi Talk. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm your co-host. And we have a nice program here every Friday at one o'clock on Think Tech Studios where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can. Thanks. Aloha. Hi, I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm the host of Center Stage, which is on Wednesdays at two o'clock here on Think Tech. On Center Stage, I talk with artists about not only what they do and how they do it, but the meat of the conversation for me is why they do it, why we go through this. A lot of us are not making our livings doing this. And a lot of us would do this with our last dying breath if we had that choice. And that's what I love to talk to people about. I hope you enjoy watching it. And I hope you get inspired because there's an artist inside G2. Join us on Center Stage at two o'clock on Wednesday. Bye. So why porn? We're talking about porn here with Professor Seraswati, or IU. And you know, and like I said, it is disturbing because it's just such a huge market out there. You're talking about businesses changing because of the demand on it. And yet we're talking about the effects of the image of women and how boys are educated or miseducated to treat women and vice versa. So, okay, so tell us where we should go with this. Yeah. So first of all, we have to understand like as for the first rule is that it's not about censorship, right? Because what I would like to sort of support here is spaces where women can express and experience the sexuality, right? And so that they're like more spaces for us to experience that or to express that. Rather than say, okay, enough about porn, right? And so that's the first step is to understand that, right? And the second step is to ask sort of like women to begin to listen to their bodies. Because for as long as I've been on this planet, right, how many times do people actually ask you if you're in a romantic relationship, let's say that day, that night, let's say your partner asked you, how would you like to be touched by love? Right? How do you like, how would you like to be touched? If you're lucky enough to have a partner to ask you? Yes. Right? But but that's part of that education, right? Because here's the thing. When you've been with someone for 20 years or 10 years or five years or two years, you'd say, Oh, you got it down. I got it down. I know. I know what she likes. I know what he likes. But here's the thing. You're living, breathing, doing exactly human being that that have like different emotions every day, right? Right? And so last night, you might want to have it rough, right? But today or tonight, you feel like you want something soft, right? And so you need to listen to your own bodies, right? First of all, and stop sort of like, Oh, let me think about that porn sort of video. What should I look like? You know, how should I moan to look, you know, right? You're saying that this porn is affecting the way women think they need to please them and even more so? Of course. Pornography is a form of media, obviously, I don't need to tell you that. But all forms of media influences how we experience the world, how we understand the world, right? And how we want to be in this world. It teaches us how to be a man, how to be a woman, what it means to be rich, what it means to be poor, what it means to be healthy, what it means to be sick, for example, right? And so if you look at any forms of media, what are some of the dominant representations of sick people there, right? Because in some ways, there's only one way to experience sickness, right? It's all about pain, it's all about misery and all of that. Let's talk about pain. Now that you mentioned that, because we need to get to that. Otherwise, we're never going to touch on that. I know. Porn and pain was our original kind of theme, but it's so much to lay out the ground rules for. Again, the connection between the Asian women and the image of them receiving pain, is that something cultural or is that something that porn has produced to feed to the male audience? Do you think women actually like to look like they're in pain? Is that part of the fine line? So what I did was I did a study of online porn videos under the category of Asian. Now, if you go to online porn websites, there are these filters, right? So one, for example, is most viewed videos or most recent videos, let's say, right? Because even when you click on the Asian category, there are bound to be more than 10,000 videos. And obviously I'm not going to be able to watch all of them. Nobody can study all of them, right? And so what people do is they use these filters. Now, here's what's interesting. When I click on the most recent videos, the videos that appear tend to be more diverse. There's the college girls. There's the Kamasutra girls, right? And there's like all this different narrative. It's more diverse. But when I click on the most viewed videos, all of them seem very similar, right? In their sort of facial expression, right? And in their sort of like audio in terms of I'm not going to make that noise, but because I don't know how my students will look at me. It's not even the fake orgasm, but it's sort of like squealing of pain, kind of. But that's Japanese culture, isn't it? The no means yes culture, right? So that's what's interesting about this is that why is it that when it's most viewed, right? That these are the kinds of things that show up, right? These are like women and Asian women in pain, right? And so what that means is that when they click on that Asian category and they when they choose all of you know like maybe 20 out of like 20 videos that they tend to click on those thumbnails, right? That show this woman in pain rather than all the other ones. That's how they became the most viewed. So subliminally they are associating pain with the Asian woman's face. Yes, so that's one of my arguments is that Asian as a racial category, right? Becomes experience and express through these emotions and that emotion is pain. In other words, when you click on something you kind of expect or want to see this particular experience, right? And so it's interesting that when you click on Asian category that what you want to experience is to see women in pain. And this is also what's interesting about when you click on the Asian category, it didn't say Asian woman, does it? Right? It only say Asian. But what's also interesting in my study as well is that it translates into Asian women. Out of the 100 videos that I analyze only one that shows Asian men with a non-Asian sort of partner, right? But all of the other videos are Asian women. So the category of Asian already means Asian women. It's an assumption, right? Right. And not only that it's Asian women, but Asian women in pain, right? Do you think that, again, this is a male-driven industry, obviously? For the heterosexual porn, I have to say yes. Okay, right, we're focusing on that. And so do you think that these Asian women reluctantly do it or do they feel like, because again, going back to the culture of Asian women, is that it's okay to be submissive and passive. It's not like I'm losing my ground. It's the yin-yang, you know? And again, it is okay to express yourself in whatever way you want. So if you personally really, really love to perform pain, and that is that what gets you, you know, makes you happy, you personally as a woman, and that's okay too. Because we are not here, again, to even censor you, to even tell you this is how you're supposed to experience sexuality, right? But the problem becomes when that is the only way, the only way you can experience yourself. In other words, today, like I said, you know, maybe I don't want to perform pain, but tomorrow maybe I want to. If it just, if pain becomes only one of those things in that repertoire of sexual experiences. Do you think that that's the lack of education or the lack of conversations that that's happening with the Asian women as a reason for this? Yes, so it's called patriarchy. It's a pee, the dirty pee, right? Not the dirty pee word, but in some ways, it's dirty. Anyways, but that's what it does. That's what patriarchy does. It's a male dominated society. And porn is male dominated though, right? Exactly, exactly. So that's part of that, right? So that's the problem, right? So if we can just slash that patriarchy, right, imagine what porn can look like. What is porn for women? What is porn for women? Yeah, so there's one study that says that the porn industry for heterosexual women failed. And they failed because they used the formula for male and just sort of translate that into women. So for example, you know, instead of focusing on intimacy and connection and storylines, they focus on this dude, this really handsome, really sexy and all of that. And which is, you know, again, could be one story, but not the only story of that. And what does that mean? Because what does it mean for women to be aroused, right? Because we're never really asked that question, right? So if somebody actually asked you, like, what is it that turns you on right now? But again, this is something it's so subtle. Like if we're talking about something that's so non-tangent, how do you translate into into a porn industry where porn in itself is so masculine? How do you, is it a different medium? Is it not possible to have porn for women because it's not the right medium? It is possible in some ways because there are people who call their products as feminist pornography, right? There are people who call their products as queer pornography, non-heterosexual, gay pornography, lesbian pornography, right? And so in some ways, porn itself can be porn itself is just like money in some ways, right? In other words, it doesn't have anything unless you put meanings onto it, right? So porn is just a platform for you to... Yes, yes. So earlier days sort of feminists would differentiate between pornography and erotica, right? Of course. And so pornography means it's sort of like degrading sort of like toward women, it's not sort of celebrating women sexuality, it's all about men and men's pleasure and men's sexuality. I know Fifty Shades of Grey is a little passe now, but do you think that that kind of accentuated that problem? Well, ironically... One of the biggest problem with Fifty Shades of Grey, people say, is that it doesn't allow that sort of conversations about consent, right? And so BDSM, one of the other chapter in my book, also talks about BDSM, right? And so one of the most important things about BDSM is consent, you know, it's about being safe, sane and consensual. There's some roles that you have to play with. Right, and so when it is, so when it is not about consent, and when it is again the sort of fantasy of rich man, you know, versus this sort of young women and having that kind of violent or this sort of roleplay, right, that that could be problematic. But when BDSM or roleplay is experienced in that very consensual and very playful way, that could be really, really fun. So what is also interesting is that the author is also a female, right? And so again what does that mean that we attack that, that sort of, you know, work or text because it is a woman sort of expressing her sexuality, but again another sort of criticism of that work is that it's, you know, badly written and all that stuff. But anyway, what was that inner goddess say? Oh my god, it's just like, does not go there. We only have a short time left. You mentioned your book several times. Is this the book in the making? You want to talk a little bit about what that's about? Yeah, it's a book in the making. This book focuses on Asian women's sexuality in cyberspace and how the notion of pain is really attached to the understanding of what Asian woman and Asian woman sexuality is. And I'm working on the last chapter of it. Hopefully we'll, you know, get it done before the end of the year and then we'll let you know. Well, before that though, we have part two, so you're not going away. That's right. And then that's right here. I'll be more than happy to come back. And what do you want to focus on then and how do you think we should lead this people kind of dangling with how we should wrap up or we'll never wrap it up, but this concept of porn and pain? Yeah, so I really think about the pain that is circulated through and within the porn industry. What that means is that when you watch porn, do you actually feel the pain? Can you feel the pain of the workers, right, who are there to work, right? Because one of the ways in which we can only find pleasure in pain is when we experience porn is that when we distance ourselves or detach ourselves from the pain that is circulated within the porn industry. So let me just stop right there and, you know, raises more questions than answers. I think that's exactly what you did. You opened up a can of worms, kind of juicy worms to talk about. You know, again, this is a typical topic for a lot of people because we don't want to go there. So hopefully next time when IU comes on again is we will talk about this why it's in our face and why it's part of our daily lives in a way it's so affecting and how we can deal with it if people have children out there including myself. How do we approach this topic with them and how do you engage in this healthy conversation about what's out there, what's appropriate and not appropriate and pleasures for ourselves. I think I like that one on the women and pleasure. I think that's a huge one. IU, thank you so much for sharing all that for us. Part one only. I'm not saying goodbye to her. She's got so much rich details about women's studies. We'll be back next time. Thanks for tuning in today.