Status Updates From Sexual Solipsism: Philosoph...

Solipsism is a yikes moment. Either you believe in it, and you treat objects as people believing you are the only person. Or you disbelieve it, and treat people as objects by projecting your beliefs onto them. The power of friendship allowing an escape is an interesting and joyous concept though.

It just keeps getting worse. Pornography as an extension of men’s beliefs about women within a patriarchal structure that self-fulfills reality and makes it even more difficult to understand objectification and how it harms autonomy. It’s actually really despair inducing how much there is to know and how little care/attention is paid to this phenomenon. So much pain.

The essay on projection and how it may obscure objectification is also relevant to the symptoms of my addiction. Projecting desires informed by porn that one has internalized had the consequence of teaching one to objectify without even knowing it.

The essay on Kant and Herbert was a gut punch in more ways than one. Made me realize that I had lied about my situation to my partner after all.

The language game section is very useful for explaining implicit communication and how the meaning of something accommodates who is saying it and what is said in a social game.

More like Ronald Dork-in haha. This section isn’t as pertinent to me and my situation but it is still interesting how a prohibitive policy toward porn is in harmony with liberal values.

This Dworkin guy is a goober.

The refutation of Butler’s reading of MacKinnon was confusing; mostly bc I don’t really see Butler’s point. From my point of view pornography is obviously authoritative and influential in the silencing of women. It gains this authority through a patriarchal cycle, a reinforcement mechanism of the social structure within which we live. And an insidious one at that.

The shade thrown at the counter arguments is so decisive, I love it. The proof that freedom of speech includes freedom of illocution really does strengthen the case that illocutionary disablement is an element of the porn industry that silences a woman’s ability to communicate.

The first essay was so compelling, so elegantly written and easy to understand and reference. Demonstrating that speech is an act, that it can silence in a myriad of ways, and that pornography is speech that silences women by disabling illocutionary action and frustrating perlocutionary effects was so alarming and pertinent to my experience. I’m looking forward to the rest.

Already helpful.