According to this article, Arab internet surfers make a significant percentage of visitors to Israeli porn sites. What struck me is that the most popular porn for them is that featuring Israeli women as soldiers and Mossad agents. Some of them even inquire if these women are the real thing; i.e. real soldiers and agents and not just hired porn actors.
What's the psychology of desire operating here? Is it something along the lines of if you can't beat them, "do" their women? In the case of Palestinian men, who are apparently among the customers, is it a chance to reverse power relations for an imaginary moment? The female soldier that humiliates the man at a checkpoint is now available to be consumed, dominated, and objectified. Or does it simply reflect an attraction to the power of the Other?
Of relevance see my post "Sex and the Nation"
4 comments:
Although your article is interesting, i find the photo you included at the end offensive and inappropriate. I don't see the point of including this photo here.
If i wanted an example, i can find it easily through Google without striking me at the end with this thing.
bilal,
I'm interested to know why you find the picture offensive and inappropriate to include. Obviously, I do find it offensive but I wonder if for different reasons than yours.
BTW, neither of the pictures were taken from porn sites. The top one is from an Israeli army site and the bottom one from a BBC article. In other words, the sexualizing of Israeli female soldiers takes place in more mainstream places than porn sites.
oh yes, i've seen quite a few sites of real photos of IDF girls doing their thing, but they seemed to have a largely russian audience. i can't say this is really a surprising phenomenon as the girls with guns image is generally pretty popular in porn, but i wonder if the article is trying to imply something here.
This reminds me the story of the 'Stalag' booklets, porn literature published in Israeli in the 1960s, describing sexual abuse of American male soldiers at the hands of Nazi female campguards. Allegedly translated from English, but later it was discovered that they were written in Hebrew, at the time of the Eichman trial. You probably couldn't think of something more sick but it was a commercial success (check wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag#Israeli_Literature)
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