I wonder if he has really looked into pornography. I find it difficult to accept it is, in general, degrading and humiliating towards women when not only are their male porn actors (what about them?), there are also porn companies ran by women who make porn for women. Porn isn't just for men, and to think women need protected from it is, at best, chauvinist.
I don't think one can vouch for or accuse the other. The bad stuff isn't excused by the good stuff, and the good stuff isn't stained by the bad stuff.
You raise a good point about males; even when they're playing the alpha role, even while degrading someone else, they're degrading themselves, too: even a successful rapist is still a rapist, and a rather sad thing in the big scheme of things. (don't take this to mean that they're "the real victims", or anything like that -- I just think that yes, they're victims too, they're lacking something and are compensating). And then there are of course submissive male roles, too. But if Chomsky was aware of that, I'm sure he'd include it. As he says in the end, he doesn't enjoy
anyone being degraded, it's not really about women at all. I would also assume Chomsky is more into self-defense than "protection", but that's just a guess
Random thoughts:
Are people who are posting videos of mutilating themselves in rather extreme ways just making informed adult choices, or are they acting out extreme distress and confusion? It's impossible for me to think about this stuff without crossing the line to being patronizing sometimes. "Yes, I know that is what you
think you want, but that is only because you are not aware of things I am aware of." I often feel similarly about much more harmless stuff, and I find it hard, if not impossible, to know where I am merely projecting my own biases, or where I actually am seeing through rationalizations. But not everything that may effectively be patronizing or chauvinistic is meant that way, some opinions form for better and certainly more loving reasons than that.
