Normally at this hour on a Friday, I’d be at boxing class. My trainer has called in sick, however, so I’ll sneak in a post before getting on with the day.
There’s a good post up at Feminist Mormon Housewives this week about women married to porn users. I read it in conjunction with an email I received from a man I’ll call "Billy". Here’s an excerpt from what Billy wrote:
Neverland is a complete fantasy, however it is based on children’s natural desire for freedom and autonomy, as well as people in generals desire to avoid the pains of adulthood and/or revert to childhood. Candyland is a silly fantasy, but its based on our understandable love of candy and sweet things. Romance novels and movies may not be the most accurate portrayals of relationships, but they are based on what women find desireable in romantic interactions. Likewise, whatever else can be said about pornography, it is a symbol, a representation, of mens deepest erotic desires, wishes, attractions, and fantasies. Now, some fantasies/wishes/desires of some men, which are represented by some porn, are innately violent and misogynistic. Note the use of the word some, SOME AND ONLY SOME. However, porn does symbolise male erotic natures which I consider to be… well….. natural! And some elements may not be caveman natural, but at least they have nothing directly to do with hurting women, and they can be natural in the sense that they are a powerful part of a guys erotic makeup, for lack of better words. And this leads to why anti-porn sentiment has me so disturbed.
Just what is the erotic nature of the ideal feminist man? Where exactly is the line between healthy positive sexual attraction and pleasure and hurting womankind?
I realize that many of my most effective arguments against porn use have been couched in explicitly Christian terms. That’s not surprising, given my faith commitments, but those arguments aren’t going to carry any weight with non-Christians like Billy, whose letter makes clear that he does consider himself a feminist man — but one who regularly uses and enjoys pornography. Billy also makes it clear that he is single, which makes him different from the husbands described in the FMH post to which I linked above. And he asks a thoughtful question — why shouldn’t a single, pro-feminist man use pornography?
I’ve made the case time and again that the porn industry is destructive to women, that while a few performers achieve wealth and success from the work, most end up embittered and alienated. No, I’m not interested in trading anecdotes or competing studies. In fact, I don’t want to focus on this aspect of anti-porn arguments at all.
Rather, I’d like to talk solely about the impact of porn use on the men who use it. (Pace, dear readers, I know there are plenty of women who use porn. Not the topic of this post.) Billy claims, as do many men, that in some sense porn captures something "natural" about men’s erotic nature, presumably the desire to look at lots and lots of naked women. And I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with Billy! I’m not a biologist or a psychologist, but it seems perfectly plausible to me that the desire to look at lots and lots of naked women isn’t just a function of culture, but may also be a function of physiology.
But so what? Lots of things are natural — and natural is not, despite the claim of some health food stores, invariably a synonym for "good." It’s natural for us to defecate on ourselves; using the toilet is a learned behavior that involves controlling an instinctive urge. I think we’re all deeply grateful to have learned to control this natural instinct. I’m not interested in suggesting that feminist men shouldn’t want to look at porn; I’m suggesting that he should overcome what may be for him a very basic instinct. In other words, what makes a man a pro-feminist is not the absence of desire, but his commitment to work to redirect that desire.
Ultimately, the great tragedy of porn is that it teaches the men who use it to pursue "everlasting novelty." Ask any man who uses porn — does he want to see the same pictures over and over again of the same women? No. If looking at one beautiful naked woman was enough, Playboy could put out one issue a decade. Internet porn sites could update annually instead of daily. But as most porn users admit, what was an intense turn-on the first time quickly becomes stale and boring. The seductiveness of internet porn in particular is that some brand new woman, one you’ve never seen before, is just one or two clicks away on your computer.
The pursuit of everlasting novelty is the enemy of actual relationship. Real relationships are built on a very different premise from porn — the notion that what is really sexy is not "new skin" but radical connection with one other person. Porn says that happiness is found by having the same experience over and over again with lots of different women; true eros says that happiness is found by having different experiences over and over again with the same person.
We are creatures of habit, Billy. Everything we do trains our bodies, trains our minds. Using porn as a single man may seem a very different thing from using it as a husband. But when you do find a relationship, Billy, do you imagine you will seamlessly transition from a fantasy world to the very human, beautiful yet flawed and familiar reality of your girlfriend or wife? You’ll know that countless naked bodies in an infinite number of poses are only a few quick clicks away. Their demands are few (perhaps your credit card), their youth eternal, their willingness to expose themselves to you unconditional. The chances that you will be able to effortlessly leave behind years and years of porn use for the far more challenging (though ultimately far more rewarding) reality of sex with an actual partner are, frankly, minimal. Ask the wives who are quite ready and willing to be intimate with their husbands, but their husbands are more interested in the endlessly novel images on their computer screen.
To be a pro-feminist man, I submit, is to see women as precious and valuable rather than disposable. But if your porn use is like that of most men I’ve known, it’s the endless pursuit of the new and the previously unseen. The old images get archived, the old magazines stacked away to be glanced at in the future. Many men build impressive porn collections, but they do so for the thrill of acquiring so many women — not because the same old images retain their power to arouse indefinitely. And though you will surely claim that there’s a difference between the images in magazines or on the ‘net and real life women, I’m not at all sure that’s clear to all aspects of your consciousness. My experience, and the experience of countless other men, has been that the use of porn leaves one less able to truly see the humanity of real-life women. It’s simply not easy to transition from hours of fantasizing and masturbating at one new image after another to actual relationship, even if it’s only friendship with a co-worker or classmate.
Yes, I think porn does real damage to the women who work in the industry. Yes, I think porn use is antithetical to the most basic Christian understanding of sexuality. But I also think a case can be made that porn damages the consciousness and warps the generous humanity of pro-feminist men. Whether it’s a natural or culturally conditioned instinct to want to stare at so many pictures and movies of so very many women is irrelevant. What matters is the lesson that porn (be it Playboy or something far harder) always teaches: someone new is always coming, and the new and previously unseen is always, always, always more exciting than the old and the familiar. That’s a message about women’s disposibility that goes right to the core, and it is a message that is diametrically opposed to the feminist insistence that women are valuable.
Here’s an experiment I offer to young men who insist on using porn. Try using just one image, one photo, for a month. See if you don’t get bored quickly. See if you don’t find yourself craving the new and the unknown. My hunch is that what turned you on last week will have lost its power by Memorial Day! Consider what that longing for novelty will mean for your future relationships.
Though I have problems, as a Christian, with masturbation, I think from a secular feminist standpoint that there’s a real distinction between masturbation with and without porn. If you find the former too dull and inspiring, what does that tell you about your sexuality? Surely your dependence on an unending supply of new images should give you pause. Is your imagination so barren, your arousal so contingent on the culture, that you need a broadband connection and a furtive trip to the newsstand to feel something real?
Can you be a feminist man and use porn? Well, why not? I mean heck, I insisted at the beginning of this week that I could be a feminist man and rejoice that my wife had become Mrs. Schwyzer! Having insisted on big-tent feminism on Monday, I’d be a hypocrite to insist on an exclusive definition on Friday. Trying to live out a feminist life is hard work; it’s about letting go of old habits, it’s about challenging social norms about the "natural" and the "normal", it’s about a commitment not only to real equality but to a world where women are truly seen and not merely gazed at. None of us lives this life perfectly every day, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t always strive to be better, more consistent, more effective at reconciling our language, our life, our libidos.
“If looking at one beautiful naked woman was enough, Playboy could put out one issue a decade.”
Very true!
I had never made the connection between pornography and advertising (marketing to create a need, to enhance a desire or appetite to sell products). Really there is a planned (or inherent) obsolesence in porn; no need for half-assed quality control, for the erotic product must be constantly reproduced, remade, remarketed.
(Warning: Long but respectful rant follows; apparently I’m on something of a roll today. You are welcome to ignore, although I’m sincerely interested in anything you might have to say on the matters that follow.)
Hmmm. It would appear that you are safe to put on my all-too-short working list of folks who are capable of engaging in thoughtful discussion regarding the sex industry/pornography, rather than just picking one of the popularized viewpoints (pro- and anti-, as viewed through ideological, dualism-based filters of the Christian/secular, conservative/liberal, feminist/anti-feminist varieties), selectively referencing only that data which best illustrates the selected view. “Death by agitprop” is how I’d characterize a lot of my own misadventures in terms of activism on this issue, where debate so often leaves behind the women (not to mention the youth) who are used in pornography, which only compounds their objectification.
I’m curious as to what you think of this bumper sticker, which I saw a few years ago and haven’t since been able to shake, which read, “Porn Rapes The Mind.” Although I didn’t physically act on it, the knee-jerk reaction I envisioned myself having was to jump out of my car (this was in slow downtown traffic), pound on the no-doubt-well-meaning individual’s windshield, and shout helplessly through the glass: “No, asshole! Porn rapes the women in porn!”
Thing is, the person in that car was probably closer to being on the same page with me on this issue than anyone else who was in front of that traffic light with us, insofar as he or she (I couldn’t see the driver) at least recognized there was any element of harm.
No right or wrong answers here, and I promise I would never pound on your or anyone else’s proverbial (or actual!) windshield over it… but still, what do you think of this “rapes the mind” bit? Is that a helpful analogy at all, in terms of reaching the porn-consuming public (who as you acknowledge are mostly, but not exclusively, men)? Or is it too far out there?
I’m really not being rhetorical here… I’m in the process now of working to form a cross-disciplinary community task force on sex trafficking here in Richmond, Virginia, and I’m frankly scared. To say the least, in order to move any kind of positive action forward in my community, I’m going to have to deal with people for whom the humanity of the women in porn isn’t even an afterthought, much less their primary concern - but they might be “reachable” when considering other factors (e.g., the collateral damages to neighborhoods after strip clubs and pornography stores set up shop). Is this a helpful conceptualization, which, for strategic reasons at least, I should consider embracing (windshield-pounding instincts notwithstanding)?
Hugo - I don’t know if my experience is typical, but it does not support your statements about porn.
Most pornographic and erotic images don’t hold my interest very long, though a few I can keep coming back to again and again. (Eric S. Raymond’s essay, Why does porn got to hurt so bad?, has some interesting insights into why only a few pornographic images remain interesting.)
However, when it comes to real women, those who catch my sexual interest can continue to do so over the years. The extreme case for me is probably a woman I met when I was 19 and she was about 22. I’m now 39, she’s now 42, and I still have a crush on her, despite what changes 20 years and having three children have made to her body and personality. But nearly every other woman I’ve dated, or been sexually attracted to, that I still run into once in a while, still holds my interest, despite the passage of time.
Perhaps it’s because images are unchanging, while an actual person can grow and change, and actually responds to existing circumstances, rather than just glowing on one’s monitor or laying there on the printed page. The experience of any particular piece of porn is the same *every single time*, while the experience of a particular person can be different and ever-changing, even if only in small ways.
Anthony, I won’t dispute your experience. If all men were as you are, my friend, the porn industry in this country might not be wrecking lives and making the fortune that it does.
Victoria, I don’t like that sort of bumpersticker either. Men who are porn users will rarely react well to that kind of challenge. But they may be willing to consider honestly the impact of porn on their own lives when approached thoughtfully and respectfully. And you’re right — anti-porn crusaders are often woefully unconcerned with the real stories and lives of women “in the industry.” It’s why I never claim that all women in porn are “victims” or in need of rescue (though the stories of abuse are legion indeed). I like to think of myself as “pro-sex worker” and “anti sex-work”.
Troy, thanks for the validation.
While you make some interesting points here, I think you’re conflating pro-feminism and monogamy to an extent that I, for one, am uncomfortable with. While feminism can certainly be used to justify the claim that one should be respectful of one’s sexual partners and treat them as human beings, I’m not sure it follows that “seeking novelty” is anti-feminist– IMO, your secular feminist argument against porn is much stronger when it focuses on the potential to contribute to the objectification of women than when it focuses on “oh, you won’t be satisfied with your wife/girlfriend.” The two arguments aren’t identical or interchangeable– wanting new experiences with new people doesn’t automatically imply disrespect for anyone involved, just as staying with the same person doesn’t automatically imply respect for that person. If the real gist of your argument is that pornography threatens monogamy (and that monogamy is the only way to avoid treating women as “disposable”), I can’t say that has much to do with my perception of secular feminism.
I know this isn’t really the main point of your post, and that you’ve made it clear in the past that you think monogamy is the ideal condition for a relationship; still, I can’t help being bothered by the implication here that the only “real relationships” are monogamous. You’re free to have your preferences and opinions about what’s best, of course, but it seems awfully disrespectful to the preferences/opinions of others to proclaim that relationships that don’t conform to your ideal standards aren’t real.
Though I have problems, as a Christian, with masturbation
Why should a Christian have problems with masturbation? (If you’ve explained in an older post, you can just give the link.)
Keri, frankly, I’d argue that porn could have the same distorting impact on polyamorous relationships. If a man is committed to three women, and masturbating to images of three hundred, the problem is still surely the same. But to seek endless novelty (from different people) is inherently anti-feminist because it devalues the humanity of the woman or man who is no longer "new."
I can’t help but think of the Tori Amos song, "Tear in your Hand." The famous lines directed to a man who has moved on in his search for new flesh:
"All the world just stopped nowSo you say you don’t wanna stay together anymore
I think it’s that girl And I think there’re pieces of me you’ve never seenMaybe she’s just pieces of me you’ve never seen well"
But you’re right, I do conflate monogamy and feminism much of the time, probably indicating the degree to which my faith continues to inform my understanding of sexuality.
Here you go, Allison. My position is nuanced and conflicted to the extent that I don’t see masturbation as a major sin — but I do think it falls short of God’s best. Most of my reasons are in that post.
“However, when it comes to real women…” [emphasis added to Anthony’s comment - VM]
OH MAN. And without so much as a trace of irony! That says it all right there.
Yes, women are only “real” until they are A) naked, and B) on the business end of a pornographer’s lens. Poof! Instant “non-real” women!
Amazing: that anyone even questions whether pornography is objectifying.
Not as amazing: that it was this same Anthony, an “amateur photographer” according to his website, who recently opined, right here on your blog, that
To which response your was quite apt:
*exasperated sigh*
I know there are plenty of women who use porn. Not the topic of this post.
Except that you talk about “porn”, full stop, not “mass-market porn targeted at and almost exclusively used by heterosexual men”–which means that your generalizations about that kind of porn may not well fit any other kind.
I really get the strong feeling that “Billy” has never bothered to look at a romance novel. He might be in for a surprise about their explicitness.
Ask any man who uses porn — does he want to see the same pictures over and over again of the same women? No.
You flogged this point pretty hard. I very much enjoy going back to the old stuff even though I haven’t seen some of it for 20 years, and some of it I’ve never seen at all.
David, that’s the point — if you you haven’t seen it all, it doesn’t matter if it was produced in 2006 or 1976 — it’s new to YOU.
Thanks for the link — off to read, with me.
Hi Hugo, this is (I think) the first time that I’ve commented on your blog.
Firstly, can you define what you mean by “porn” for us? Some people use the term to refer to any text that is designed to be sexually arousing (whether it be writing, a drawing, a photograph, a video etc). Some people distinguish between “porn” and “erotica,” based on a variety of different standards (one of which is that “porn” is by definiiton misogynistic), while I’ve known people who consider photographs and videos of real people “porn” but not any other erotic material. It’s a bit difficult assessing your position without a definition. :)
Also, I have a problem with the following statement:
To be a pro-feminist man, I submit, is to see women as precious and valuable rather than disposable.
I don’t think this is an effective definition for feminism or pro-feminism, because there are plenty of anti-feminist men and women who do see women has highly precious and valuable, in the same way that a diamond necklace is precious and valuable. Personally, I find that this attitude is still just as degrading, because it still makes us objects and possessions. While this might not be your view, I think you need to come up with a better definition of what it means to be “pro-feminist” or you’re simply not distinguishing yourself from men who do simply treat women as precious objects. I suggest something like “to be a pro-feminist man is to see women as full and complete human beings.”
I have no problem, Beppie, with the notion that pro-feminism ought to embrace women as precious and valuable human beings.
I’m referring largely to the visual porn industry that offers photos/videos/computerized images of women and girls.
” I like to think of myself as ‘pro-sex worker’ and ‘anti sex-work’.”
As respectfully as possible, I’d like to know how this works. To me, it sounds like “pro-selling cocaine” and “anti-buying cocaine.”
“Yes, women are only ‘real’ until they are A) naked, and B) on the business end of a pornographer’s lens. Poof! Instant ‘non-real’ women!”
I doubt that’s what he meant. By “real” I think he meant “someone you know and with whom you are in contact regularly,” not “an actual human being, unlike the non-persons whose pictures you see in pornography.”
Hugo, if men didn’t want to see “the same women,” porn stars wouldn’t have fan followings. Bettie Page would have no name recognition.
Of course novelty is part of the attraction of porn; it’s part of human sexual attraction. It’s not the only part, as every happily married couple can attest.
b, buying and selling sex are not comparable activities. We ought to have the right to do with our own bodies as we please — but we do not have the right to do with other’s bodies as we please. An exchange of cash vitiates real consent.
Practically, outlawing buying but permitting selling would ideally dry up the demand for prostitution. But it would do so in such a way that allowed prostitutes to seek protection from the authorities without risking arrest.
Hugo, I’ve never commented on you blog before so here I go (whee!).
I get where you’re going, and I like the idea of bringing fresh perspective into the porn debate, but I gotta say, I have a problem with this sentance:
“Porn says that happiness is found by having the same experience over and over again with lots of different women; true eros says that happiness is found by having different experiences over and over again with the same person.”
Why are those mutually exclusive? As a woman in a open relationships with another woman, I’ve never found that having lots different sexual experiances with lots of diffferent men and women has ever diminished the happiness I get from having lots different sexual experiances with the love of my life. And I’ve never felt that her different sexual experiances with lots of diffferent women has ever diminished the happiness I get from having lots different sexual experiances with her. I don’t see why this has to be a zero sum game where the gain of other partners (in real life or in porn) is automatically a subtraction from other partners.
It just seems like your opposition to porn doesn’t really work unless you buy into a monogamy=best framework and it kinda leads into me feeling like you would think that polyamory and porn are the same thing and both bad.
“it’s new to YOU”
Except that it’s NOT new to me.
I have no problem, Beppie, with the notion that pro-feminism ought to embrace women as precious and valuable human beings.
With the “human beings” on the end, it’s all well and good. My point was that seeing women as “precious and valuable” can’t effectivley define pro-feminism or feminism because plenty of anti-feminists also see women as “valuable.” Please understand that I wasn’t accusing you of treating women as objects, just noting that your terminology didn’t distinguish you from those who do. :)
As far as the porn issues goes, this is a tough one for me right now. I believe (or perhaps hope) that it’s possible for erotic images to exist that don’t harm women, because I feel that we represent just about all aspects of our lives in texts, and don’t think that sexuality should be any different. However, you have to admit, that when 90% of the internet is porn, that’s way out of proportion in terms of the importance that sex has (or should have) in terms of human experience. When 99% of that porn is totally misogynistic (and certainly not representing anything positive about female sexuality, suggesting instead that our sexuality should be defined by men), is there really room for the other 1% to be interpreted in any other way? Sadly, I think it’s overwhelmingly the case that the idea of “men using porn” pretty much always equates to men thinking about women in a way that is degrading, and men defining their own sexuality (not to mention defining women’s sexuality) in a way that is degrading to women. Part of me still really wants to cheer for the other 1%, but well… if you had a bunch of cells, and 99% of them were cancerous, would you simply sit around hoping that the other 1% of cells would start having a good influence?
As to how this relates to pro-feminist men and porn– if you had a person who, say, claimed to be heavily involved in the conservation of the environment, then you went to their house, and discovered that their bookshelves were full of books that were 99% “I hate the environment,” “The joys of fossil fuel,” “The glory of George W. Bush’s environmental policies” and “The myth of global warming,” and if this person had anti-environment posters up all over their house, and this person claimed that he really enjoyed reading these books and looking at these posters, because it helped him relax, you’d think that something funny was going on. I find it hard to believe that most pro-feminist men who use porn aren’t refering to mainstream misogynist porn, and if this is the case, you have a man whose (figurative) sexuality shelf is filled with titles like “Women are Objects” and “Women are there to Give Men Sexual Pleasure” and the walls of his mind are plastered with posters that say “Women enjoy it when I use them” and “Sex is better with big titties.”
I do believe that there are very rare erotic images that don’t give these messages– but I very much doubt that this is what the vast majority of “pro-feminist porn users” refer to when they discuss porn-use (though many of them may be blind to the misogyny in most/all porn– depending on how you define “porn”). Its doubly scary when you think that in terms of mainstream porn, there is really no way of telling whether or not the women involved were really consenting, and furthermore, if they were consenting, if they only did so out of desperation. If you’re pro-feminist, why even risk getting pleasure from an image that could easily be an image of a rape?
(That “you” is hypothetical, obviously, as I know that you Hugo don’t use porn. :))
Sarah, here’s where the experience of heterosexual men may be vastly different from those in the polyamory community. To me, porn and relationship are in a zero-sum game; the more energy I put towards the former, the less I will have for my spouse.
To use the Greek words:
Agape is not a pie, meaning the more love that one child gets the less another does. Philia is not a pie. But eros? Eros has always been understood in the Western tradition to be a pie, and if one is parceling out pieces of one’s sexuality, the bigger a slice I give to porn or fantasy the less that will be available for my partner.
I am convinced that for most folks, porn use is a zero-sum game indeed.
I really get the strong feeling that “Billy” has never bothered to look at a romance novel. He might be in for a surprise about their explicitness.
Except for those that aren’t. The extremely chaste variety was the only kind I had the opportunity to see as a teenager, so for years I thought that super-chaste heroines who finally kiss the hero for the first time on the last page were a hard and fast rule of the genre.
Of course, most of them are racier than that, and some of them are very racy indeed.
Careful, Hugo.
Sarah, here’s where the experience of heterosexual men may be vastly different from those in the polyamory community.
I assume you meant “monogamous heterosexual men.”
Eros has always been understood in the Western tradition to be a pie…
As a feminist historian, you should know better than anyone that just because an idea has a long history in the Western tradition doesn’t make it true.
Coming out of lurkdom to respond to a few things I saw in the comments.
I consider myself a feminist and I have very mixed feeling towards porn. I disagree with Hugo’s assumption that a varied fantasy life is an obstacle to a real relationship, monogomous or not.
At the same time, I have a huge problem with the constant degregation of women in porn. I believe that most people have a variety of sexual fantasies, but that porn generally only caters to a dominant male/submissive female fantasy. While I’m sure this is a common fantasy for both men and women, it disturbs me that this is the mainstay- it trains men and women to see this as the norm and I don’t consider that healthy. If porn showed a greater variety of sexual fantasies and humanized the actors just a tiny bit, it wouldn’t bother me so much.
There has also been research done showing that exposure to extremely degrading porn makes men less sympathetic to rape victims. Porn has begun to shape our expectations of sex and that bothers me. Porn doesn’t realiztically show female arousal and is always pushing for the most extreme practices and I do not believe that is in the best interest of either men or women.
A few of Mythago’s comments are the real reason I’m posting:
“I really get the strong feeling that “Billy” has never bothered to look at a romance novel. He might be in for a surprise about their explicitness.”
Romance novels are often extremely sexually graphic, but the men are neither dehumanized or degraded. I know Hugo’s argument was for novelty, which romance novels do offer to a degree, but it is unfair to equate the two. Romance novels show sex as part of a greater human interaction, there is not a new man on every page and men and women’s sexual satisfaction is given equal play. If porn were sexually explicit but did not degrade women as a matter of course and somewhat realistically showed female arousal on occassion, I would equate the two and have no problem with porn.
“Hugo, if men didn’t want to see “the same women,” porn stars wouldn’t have fan followings. Bettie Page would have no name recognition.”
Betty Page was a pin-up, not a porn star, so its not the quite the same thing. She was idolized, not degraded. Her face was shown, not just her parts. While she was naked, she was also unattainable, so she was more memorable than the many disposable porn stars we have today whose every orrifice is known. And there were many pin-ups with no following, Betty Page was an exception. There are still some women in porn with a following, but in general they are disposable, their faces barely shown in favor of their parts.
(I have to run and don’t have time to read all the comments- sorry if any of this stuff has already been discussed/dismissed already.)
This is the first time I’ve come across a direct summation of your theory of ‘radical relationships’. It’s a nice, efficient model that sums up a lot of spacey thoughts I’ve had one the subject for a while. It’s very nice to see the idea crystallized this way.
Anyway, as for the more direct topic:
I’ve read elsewhere that sex without love or emotional intrigue of any kind gets boring and mechanical real quick. This idea was then built into a hypothesis that hardcore porn uses violence and hatred towards women to put some emotional spark back into the proceedings. Hate does pack a pretty good emotional whallop. (I’ve also heard the term ‘hatesex’ around lately.)
However, I wonder if what’s really going on with this clickthrough porn use is that constant novelty is being used to keep the thrills coming, rather then any emotion at all. It seems semi-plausible to me that you *could* possibly find emotionally disconnected sex with a constant stream of new people interesting. This may have been more or less what you meant by the pursuit of ‘everlasting novelty’.
Kicks from newness would seem preferable to kicks from violent misogyny. But it could be interpreted as a desire to feel absolutely nothing for women at all, too.
I do notice that porn for men (as opposed to porn for women- romance novels, slash fiction, etc) does seem to have zero interest in emotion at all. While I have been in a long term relationship for ages- and I know first hand that het men are capable of and interested in having an emotional connection to their female partners- I still find the absolute lack of it in porn to be a bit weird. If porn is the golden standard of het male desire, wouldn’t it follow that het men therefore don’t care about emotional connection at all?
Hope that wasn’t too uneducated/stupid and irrevlent. I never took women’s studies at all, so this stuff is all shiny and new to me.
(and sorry for the double post, but this bit got left out):
If this is all reasonably true, then I wonder if porn would really be so incredibly more seductive then a real living, breathing person. *Unless*, of course, the het dude in question has no emotional connection with his girlfriend and wife, and either doesn’t want one, or finds it too much work to have one.
Does porn teach men to distain that kind of connection, or does it cause them to forget about it entirely, like some kind of narcotic?
I could see how a reasonable guy with a nice, close relationship with his wife could find some momentary pleasure in looking at a pretty woman naked. But it would just be like any other aesthetic pleasure.
..and all of that may have been said better in your post, but I didn’t see how it was explained that an abundance of new pretty naked ladies automatically trumps a deep and fufilling relationship. Except, maybe, in the implicit way that a twinkie would trump a exquisite but complicated dessert that you have to help make. Sitting on one’s ass is sometimes flat out easier.
A commenter questioned Hugo’s statement that he was ‘pro-sex worker’ and ‘anti sex-work’, asking if that wasn’t rather like being ‘pro-selling cocaine’ and ‘anti-buying cocaine.’
The flaw in the logic here is in the assumption that the commodification of human beings can possibly be equivalent to the commodification of illegal drugs. For an excellent example of this principle (decriminalization of the persons used in prostitution, with the criminalization of persons involved in pimping and in purchasing), you might look at the case of Sweden.
Interestingly, this same person took issue with my statement, which I’d made in response to another’s comment referencing women in porn vs. “real women”:
. The individual observed:
I’ll just clarify that I was speaking to an issue that goes beyond the literal. Pornography dehumanizes the women it portrays (or those women would not be compared to drugs, or inanimate objects of various sorts). To police departments who mark case files of unsolved murders of prostituted women as “NHI” for “No Human Involved,” my working assumption is not that they don’t actually think the women are at least nominal members of our species, but rather that they have accepted the caste-branding of such women as “prostitutes,” which (I think rather obviously) dehumanizes them.
To me, porn and relationship are in a zero-sum game; the more energy I put towards the former, the less I will have for my spouse.
Yes: to you. Not everybody has this problem.
Kate, I agree with you that an awful lot of porn–perhaps the majority of mass-market heterosexual porn–is sexist and degrading. Why, in a sexist society, would it be any different than the non-porn media?
You’re not really following my point about Bettie Page. Hugo proposed that men get tired of looking at the same women. If that were so, there would be no famous pin-ups, no famous porn stars.
Hugo,
This is a great post, and I would say it applies to us gay men as well. The novelty of another man every day in fantasy in pornography or in reality is harmful to settling down to the hard work of love. It also lends itself to body image problems, a promiscuous mindset, and secret judgment of our mate as inadequate. My own limited experience of porn is that it tends toward consumption of one’s time to the detriment of everything and anyone else. And after a while, it’s downright boring and repetative. As I wrote in reply to Amba at Ambivablog in February:
Is it simply in the absence of the female or the absence of any moderating faculties whatsoever? After all, as a gay man, I don’t seek anonymous sex, nor do I understand casual sex to be the only gay lifestyle (another discussion I’m pondering again); I don’t see this as the most pure male sexuality (unless by pure we mean male without relational and communal considerations—but then, is that human?), and yet, the female is absent from my gay male sex life altogether–until I read the linked article, I thought that was par-for-the-course. In a word, I’m a gay man who can say “no” without the need of women to put on the brakes for me. We called that accountability and taking responsibility when I was a fundamentalist Pentecost growing up. On that score, the Promise Keepers are on to something.
In my opinion and limited experience, the most pure sex, and frankly, much of the best sex, is sex within the context of committed loving relationship. All of the secrets of giving pleasure to one’s beloved and receiving pleasure from one’s beloved are learned over time. The ability to be naked with, to be vulnerable to, and to play and delight in has time to take root and be nourished. Sometimes tender, sometimes hot, sometimes fierce, sometimes playful, and yes, sometimes hurtful. Hence, a promised committed context in which escaping facing one another is not encouraged. The morning after arrives with the one you’ve hurt sleeping next to you or in the couch in the front room. One of the things our culture continually fails to consider is the risk of the ring. The ring is risky. To commit to being formed by another is high-risk behavior.
And on The Feast of St. Valentine this year:
“The ultimate Mystery of being, the ultimate Truth, is Love. This is the essential structure of reality. When Dante spoke of the ‘love which moves the sun and the other stars’, he was not using a metaphor, but was describing the nature of reality. There is in Being an infinite desire to give itself in love and this gift of Self in love is for ever answered by a return of love….and so the rhythm of the universe is created.” (Bede Griffiths, OSB)
The other morning, I noticed cherry trees unfurling their lacy pink rosettes along my drive to work. Some pigeons courting in the street, each motion in their dance perfectly stepped. Eros erupts everywhere.
The other evening, we were in the Castro for a beer and fries at a local pub surrounded by mates and dates. Amidst the hustle and bustle, tourists gawking and ordinary life, hookups and odd sights, we were surrounded by a mix of couples, flirtations, and everyday love delights. Eros erupts everywhere.
I once listed among my hopeful accomplishments in life before I die to be able to hold hands with C in public. This may seem silly, but to walk down the street, hand-in-hand or arms around shoulders, was to experience again the warmth that binds us and to return to those first days of our dance as if for the first time, knowing now what most experience on their first date…and not…
For we both could feel that our touch was tempered by an eros cultivated and tilled and carried by long-suffering and forgiveness, arguments and making up, meals together and long nights, and all of those things that couples/families/communities walk through in life. This wasn’t the hots. At least not in the same way. The fevered frenzy of first nights has obtained another quality besides over six years: The passionate vulnerability of best friends. This wasn’t simply PDA, though it was, but fratrimonial embrace hand-in-hand down the street.
“In God, eros is outgoing, ecstatic. Because of it lovers no longer belong to themselves but to those whom they love.” (St. Dionysius the Areopagite)
You spoke of heterosexual men and the zero-sum of of porn and relationship; I’d say that it’s about the same for those of us in monogamous homosexual relationships. I might add that no matter how you try to get away from it, the assumption of monogamy, which is a quite Christian assumption still attends, not that I’ve a problem with this as I’m not sure I can separate out my faith from my values entirely.
I might also add that there are several strands of thinking on eros, philia, agape, in the Christian tradition. Some of the best recognize that eros bridled grows us agape-ward. The Greeks often used eros and agape interchangeably and still do, and St. Maximos used eros as the preferred term in his Trinitarian opus. Lately, we’ve idolatrized storge and eros without recognizing that our relationships to mates and family should grow us in agape and xenia. I wrote in thinking about St. Aelred of Rievaulx:
In reading St. Aelred’s writings, I am always struck by the iconic nature of his thought (which shouldn’t surprise given his Celtic roots heavily influenced by Eastern Christianity) and by the overall focus on movement toward God in all of our relationships; we do not escape the flesh and bodies to find God, but in good Benedictine fashion, we find God present as if in windows in those before us.
There is something though in St. Aelred of Rievaulx’s writings that seems especially to speak to the heart of same sex configurations (his texts end up in union ceremonies a lot), perhaps, because St. Aelred gets friendship, and friendship is a paradigm for how God relates to us as shown in Christ (in John) every bit as powerful as the marriage analogy (in Ephesians). Indeed, I would say that the two actually are one, but reveal different aspects of our union to God in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
As I’ve written here and recently commented on Gay Erasmus’ thoughts on Queer Friendship, as Foucault has suggested, a charism of homosexuality is friendship, and perhaps our greatest gift to the world. Some note with criticism or disdain that we blur the lines between friendship and romance, but I think such thinking quickly moves toward hardened categories where there are in fact softer lines, permeable bounds, and subset groupings. If not, how can they in the same stroke refer to husband and wife as brother and sister as early Christians did, or heterosexual married folk as friends, which many do? Hard and fast categories tell lies and half-truths.
Our partnerships are in many ways a subset of friendship, but it is indeed fascinating how the loves which we have tended to keep firmly separate in our modern discourse were not quite so clearly separable to our ancestors (though there were always some willing to do so; sick spiritualities were often a result): eros (passionate/desirous/romantic), filia (friendship/companiote), agape(unconditional/universal), storge (familial), xenia(hospitality). Were that we focused on xenia today in all of relating, greeting all before us as Christ. We forget that in Greek thought, the categories were never so hardened, and that in both ancient and modern Greek agape was and is used both for passionate love and uncondiational love. I would suggest that iconic thinking is at play. At our best we come to the unconditional through the passionate, the companionate, the familial, the hospitable.
“b, buying and selling sex are not comparable activities.”
Of course they’re not comparable, but it’s impossible to have one without the other.
“We ought to have the right to do with our own bodies as we please — but we do not have the right to do with other’s bodies as we please. An exchange of cash vitiates real consent.”
But who initiated the offer for cash in exchange for sex? It isn’t as though men go around town asking random women if they’ll accept money for sexual favors. And even if they did, they’d be consenting, right?
“The flaw in the logic here is in the assumption that the commodification of human beings can possibly be equivalent to the commodification of illegal drugs.”
No…prostitutes are selling a service (sex) rather than a good (themselves). It’s the commodification of sex, not human beings. None of this is to say I’m endorsing it, of course. Since you’re apparently new here, I should reintroduce myself. I am a 33-year-old male who a.) cares about the rights of men and women alike and b.) has never been sexually active, and doesn’t wish to start — even in a loving relationship, and ESPECIALLY with a stranger via a money exchange that I think degrades them both.
“To police departments who mark case files of unsolved murders of prostituted women as ‘NHI’ for ‘No Human Involved’…”
That would be news to me, and I’d disagree with such a description, of course. I’m comparing the sale of cocaine to the sale of sex, not the sale of human beings.
This is simply untrue (not to mention patronizingly stated).
Women and youth held in brothels and/or in “stables” controlled by pimps - a far more common scenario for prostitution than is generally thought, in great part because those who are trying to survive those brutal conditions are forced to represent their own situations as “consensual” - would, if they could, beg to differ. When a woman or child is being prostituted, it is not simply their sexual organs that are in that situation. It’s their whole lives. To imagine otherwise is to be a) naive, b) incredibly gullible to the madam and pimp propaganda (which often wears a disguise of “feminist sex workers’ rights” ideology) which represents the majority of prostitution as consensual, and/or c) selfish, conditioned as you are to your privilege as a person who can stand aside and issue pronouncements, as if you had the authority to do that, about what prostitution is and isn’t.
If it had been your ass out there (or your sister’s, or your daughter’s, or your mother’s), you would know.
The average age of entry into systems of prostitution is around 14 in this country, and lower in many other countries. Do you think the kid (usually sexually abused in his or her home, who then either runs away from, or is thrown away by his or her parents), who ends up in this situation ever really had a choice? Do you have any clue whatsoever about the aggressively well-organized networks of pimps in this country, who do things like sending one of their girls into a Greyhound station, having her scout around for runaways, having her offer the kid “a safe place to stay” for the night, which ends up being the first night of that kid’s life in prostitution, which they are rarely able to escape from? Earlier this month, I attended a week-long training held by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children on this very subject, and over and over again, I heard cops, FBI agents, prosecutors and advocates telling their own excruitiatingly well-documented versions of this story. The kid gets brought home to the stable, is violently raped, and the rape is filmed; that film (while also being marketable in its own right on the enormous child pornography market) is then used as blackmail against the child: “Try to escape and I’ll send this to your mother.” Or, even better: “Try to escape and I’ll do this to your mother (or your little sister).”
A National Institutes of Justice study in 1982 comparing adults with a history of child sexual abuse to those without that history, found that members of the first group were 28 times more likely to have been arrested for prostitution than the adults who had not been sexually abused as children. That speaks volumes even if you’re only considering the psychological component of abuse (and not, for example, the overt abductions and manipulations of kids by pimps - including family members who pimp them out, as is also not uncommon): really, how much “choice” do they have? Where can they go from that experience? Except, usually, further and further into the underground of prostitution, where you’re lucky if you make it past the age of 25 before being murdered, or dying of a drug overdose and/or disease, or becoming physically disabled after years of abuse.
My ex-lover, who, at the age of 16, was a well-trained part of a stable, whose pimp sent her into many of the allegedly “glamorous” and supposedly less dangerous venues for prostitution - namely, hotel outcall prostitution - had a literal script she had to memorize and repeat to the strangers who rented her body, her entire person (it wasn’t just her sexual organs in those hotel rooms), for an hour or so at a time. She had to lie about her age (which is not to say that the tricks didn’t know or at least suspect she was underage). And of course, she had to represent herself as a free agent, calling her own shots, “working on her degree,” etc. When in truth she had been kept out of school since she’d first been put down on the stroll by her mother, and had subsequently been recruited by a pimp, when she was 14. She had a goddamned (sorry for cursing on your blog, Hugo) prolapsed uterus at the age of 16, after one too many gang rapes. But in certain light and in certain company, she could represent herself as being on her own, and indeed, consensually and quite happily selling a “service.” She had to; she would have been killed if she hadn’t. In fact, this pimp had killed one of the women in her stable a few years earlier (she had run away), and then did a year - a year - for the crime. (Years later, he would end up doing a much longer sentence for a robbery, which I think pretty well demonstrates the value of women as commodities in this prostitution equation.)
I sunk four years of my life into working like hell to get her into a new life, safe from all of her previous pimps (she was traded among a few, once on an actual auction block - ever heard of the “Player’s Ball,” or did you just think that was urban legend/hype?). (Incidentally, this effort nearly got me killed.) And she is only one of numerous survivors of prostitution whom I have been privileged to know, who have told me their stories. Flap around these falsely authoritative notions all you want - prostitution is merely a service, etc. - but that doesn’t make your notions “facts.”
And no, I’m not actually new here - I just haven’t posted comments very often. And no, your bit about how much you care about the rights of women also has no bearing on this matter. Nor does the fact that you have not been sexually active. (Really, why on earth would that information have any relevance here? I couldn’t care less if you’d had sex with 300 people, or none; mind you, a great number of my friends, whose political thinking, even when I’ve disagreed with it, is nuanced and mature, fall all over the “chaste” to “promiscuous” spectrum. Who cares?)
I want you to know this: I am not ripping on you out of any kind of malice. There was a time when I thought many of the same things you’re spouting right now, and that was because I live in the same culture that you do, which has so normalized the commodification of women and youth that it’s no longer recognized as commodification. If you have courage (and I tend to think that Hugo’s readership may be drawn from a population which possesses more of this, rather than less), then you’ll be open to questioning the beliefs you hold, which you acknowledge are not based in any real data (either through personal experience, witnessed experience, or study). You don’t have to get turned out to figure this stuff out, I swear.
But the courage that kind of careful re-examination would require is, indeed, enormous.
Peace - V.
“…I didn’t see how…an abundance of new pretty naked ladies automatically trumps a deep and fufilling relationship. Except, maybe, in the implicit way that a twinkie would trump a exquisite but complicated dessert that you have to help make. Sitting on one’s ass is sometimes flat out easier.” That comment is dead on.
I am new, believe it or not, to this type of discussion regarding porn. Although I was somewhat naive and in denial, I had no idea to what extent my husband of 30 years was addicted to internet porn. I now have a better idea how common that is.
Sad to say, porn turned out to be the ruin of a man with a great deal of potential. He lost his job, his home, and his wife because of it. His relationship with his now-grown children, as well as his family of origin, is minimal - and that’s not because they aren’t trying.
Fantasy truly was more exciting to him than the familiar - and he lost touch with the real world. He lost the desire to work at and maintain real relationships - instead, spending days and nights at the computor or talking to women on the phone. That is the other scary part. After while even the internet cannot provide enough novelty. Nor can the phone.
Somehow the public needs to be educated - involvement in porn can be extrememly risky business. And this site is one of the ways to get the word out. Thank you!
It isn’t as though men go around town asking random women if they’ll accept money for sexual favors.
Are you kidding?
I suppose you’d say that the men who just yell things like “how much for a blowjob?” at passing women are just trying to humiliate and harass them, and wouldn’t take them up on it if they gave them a figure. I wonder how you’d explain away the times guys slow their cars to a crawl next to women walking on the sidewalk, late at night, and ask them if they’d get in, and how much.
Jesus Christ, bmmg. Yes, men go around town asking random women if they’ll accept money for sexual favors. Yes they do. Welcome to the world. Sometimes they even take one “no” for an answer. Aren’t we lucky?
But who initiated the offer for cash in exchange for sex? It isn’t as though men go around town asking random women if they’ll accept money for sexual favors. And even if they did, they’d be consenting, right?
Yah, I have to agree with sophonisba. I have been randomly asked to enter into the realm of prostitution a total of 7 times in the past 10 years: not a huge number, but also not never. Not that it should matter one way or the other, but I’m a blue-jeans and boots or sneakers woman; usually devoid of makeup; pretty much never in revealing clothing.
Also, I had a boss offer his customers the honour of me sitting on their laps so they could rest their head in my bosom as a purchasing perk; I was the accounts receivable person, not a lap dancer, so that was pretty random. (He had a customer tell him not to be an ass which shut him up: he never listened to me.)
I’ve also worked retail and had my butt grabbed, pinched, and slapped; I’ve been frotterized on the bus; and I had a guy reach his hand down my shirt and into my bra.
Assholes, sure. But there’s a pretty consistant message behind their assholery.
Ahh. The big city.
Hugo,
While I’m not totally unympathetic to your views here, I think it rests on an unfounded notion that one’s relation to porn necessarily reflects ones relation to women. I mean, you wouldn’t say the same thing about any other form of fiction. “Try watching the same movie over and over for a month”, “Try reading the same novel over and over”. Why not? Because we don’t assume a relationship between a movie or a novel and the kinds of relationships we have with people in our day-to-day lives. We don’t think that watching “Bladerunner” or “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” will make us be cruel to either replicants or were-rabbits; we don’t think that reading “Hamlet” or “Asterix and Obelisk” will make us kill a king or thwart the Roman Empire. Or the the need for novelty in reading or movie-going reflects some sort of dysfuntion in our ability to, say, hold the same job day in and day out or stay married to the same woman (even if her name is “Gertrude”). Yet I don’t see any tenable grounds for asserting that watching porn is any less (or any more) related to fantasy and escape than watching “Star Wars” or reading “The Plot Against America”. Why should novelty in porn have such a deep impact when novelty in other activities (not just fiction, really — try playing the same game of tennis twice!) is accepted and not even given much thought?
I think it rests on an unfounded notion that one’s relation to porn necessarily reflects ones relation to women. I mean, you wouldn’t say the same thing about any other form of fiction.
My (foggy, somewhat hungover) thoughts are that the issue with porn is firstly whether you can tell the difference between fantasy and reality- as with all these other cool sci-fi things.
However, secondly, fiction does shape your attitudes to a certain degree. If replicants were a real-life disadvantaged group, you may very well come away with a politically harmful bias against them from being a huge Blade Runner fan. Porn is a special case above and beyond Star Wars et al. because it works in concert with extremely hateful and cruel attitudes towards real life women.
I do personally believe that if you can be intellectually aware of both of these factors, then you can probably enjoy looking at a few naked porn ladies without doing much harm.
However- I think violent and hateful porn that takes pleasure in abusing and hurting women is another beast altogether. I wouldn’t want to censor this kind of ‘expression’ (no artist would), but I would certainly wonder about any man who had a great enthusiasum for this kind of material.
I think it rests on an unfounded notion that one’s relation to porn necessarily reflects ones relation to women
Hugo’s right that it often reflects one’s relation to women. But, again, that’s more a function of what you bring to porn than what you get out of it.
Mythago and Random Lurker make good points, but there’s two issues here and maybe I wasn’t so clear in separating them. First is the issue of representation, which is a complex one and which I tend to agree with mythago about — I think porn (and other forms of popular culture) are more a reflection of the misogyny in our society and personalities than a shaper of our society and personalities (but that’s an open argument). But then there’s the “meta-content” argument that Hugo’s specidifically making here — that moving from movie to movie to movie (or pictorial to pictorial to pictorial) either causes or reflects an attitude towards women that leads to a need for novelty that can only be satisfied by jumping from bed to bed to bed. Now, I’d be the last to discount the novelty-factor in our modern, consumption-driven society, and I’d be the last to discount the importance of consumption to either our viewing of porn or our sexual attitudes (whether we or our partners are male, female, or other). But I don’t see this novelty-seeking as either exclusive to, constitutive of, or definitive of pornography, and I think Hugo’s argument lies on a shaky chain of assumptions that start with the argument that our relation with porn-as-porn (*not* our relationship with the women and men being filmed, which is the assumption of the “other” argument, the one from representation) is linked with our relationships to women. I can kinda see it — but I could say our relationship with laundry detergent (which is always promising new and more exciting stain-fighting experiences, a whiter white and a fresher fresh) shares exactly the same relationship.
Wow, I said “specidifically”!
Victoria, you are talking about women and girls being FORCED into prostitution; I am talking about women whose prostitution is completely of their own volition — not sixteen-year-old runaways who are exploited, but rather Heidi Fleiss. I would think that would go without saying, but I suppose I was wrong.
“Flap around these falsely authoritative notions all you want - prostitution is merely a service, etc. - but that doesn’t make your notions ‘facts.’”
I condemn prostitution and I resent your implication that I’m equating it to an oil change. It’s NOT “merely” a service; it’s one that degrades human beings.
“Nor does the fact that you have not been sexually active. (Really, why on earth would that information have any relevance here?)”
It’s relevant because when males question the “arrest the john, not the prostitute” idea, they’re dismissed as “typical men” who wish to get laid at any cost, and resent the idea of being arrested while the person they had sex with is not. And, guess what, your post moves in that direction, by suggesting that I don’t see these women as human beings.
I am talking about women whose prostitution is completely of their own volition — not sixteen-year-old runaways who are exploited,
And these women are virtually non-existant. The overwhelming majority of women involved in prostitution (and many in porn) are coerced, manipulated, and exploited. To pretend that the woman who participates in Cum Loving Sluts 9 is some sort of free agent is pretty damn disingenuous. Also, Heidi Fleiss, to take your example, was a madam (talk about a weird choice of words…). What about the other women she exploited and abused? Being a pimp and being a whore are not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
Even the examples of women who insist that they like doing porn and aren’t exploited, but in fact empowered (i.e. Jenna Jameson) aren’t remotely representative of what’s going on in most porn.
Dustin-
I actually disagree with your assesment that movies don’t change people’s perceptions. For instance, a study of fans of Star Wars (fans being described as someone who has seen all six movies and has viewed them multiple times in the theatre and/or own more than one of the films) show that 55% of them have ACTUALLY tried to use the force (actually, I’m one of them *Shrugs* it was worth a try). And I’m quite sure that most of them (or at least, I hope most of them) can tell the difference between fantasy and fiction, (I know I can…realistically, I knew that pencil was never going to move), but movies do alter your perception.
And, the whole “novelty” aspect of it does as well: see sequels. Movies used to be enjoyed over and over again: now we need to see our heros in different (but yet very similiar) situations to feel sated. Much like how people treat porn stars.
I mean, you wouldn’t say the same thing about any other form of fiction. “Try watching the same movie over and over for a month”, “Try reading the same novel over and over”. Why not? Because we don’t assume a relationship between a movie or a novel and the kinds of relationships we have with people in our day-to-day lives.
Agreed. I think the links made here between porn and how men treat women are spurious. As Dustin states, we don’t all go out on a shooting spree after watching Rambo or playing Grand Theft Auto.
And how do you define porn? Everybody has sexual fantasies that often don’t involve the apple of their eye (if they have a partner). Are they being perverted by their own fantasies? When somebody masturbates alone in a darkened room, you think they are not having vivid fantasies being played out in their mind to get them closer to orgasm? Does the viewing parlour of the mind also pollute the mind further? What’s the difference to the viewer between watching porn on a screen, or porn in the mind? Aren’t these images just a means to an end (the end being the big O).
Also I don’t see many women in porn being forced into doing it. They have a heavily regulated industry. Not only that, there’s a well-known large amateur porn ‘communities’ with active female members as well as male. Online communities are everywhere. There’s no money in that at all (seriously). They’re doing it for free. Isn’t it none of our business what women want to do with their bodies? I thought ‘my body my choice’ was all about that kind of freedom in principle.
OK, I have tried to use the Force — “you don’t want to give me a ticket”. I got a ticket. But that’s content — I’ve also tried having sex. Actually, I’ve tried rolling them into one ball of Jedi Sex goodness, but that’s beside the point. The argument about content is not really addressed in this post — I know Hugo has dealt with it before, as have a number of us and others. But the argument presented here is “meta-contentual” — it’s not, so far as I can tell, about what happens in any particular movie, but about the sheer variety available. That’s why I brought in the issue of consumption — we are, after all, living in a culture in which we define our selves by the choices we make, and in which there’s incredible pressure to constantly be choosing, for constant novelty. The system collapses if we are ever 100% satisfied with the clothes we buy, the cars we drive, the movies we’ve seen, or the porn we watch. What I question is the singling out of porn to criticize what is really a much more deeply rooted social arrangement, one that is shared by people who would never in a million years watch porn as much as by regular porn viewers.
I’m also worried by the attitudes expressed by evil_fizz, above, and many others in this sort of debate. To take one representative statement: “To pretend that the woman who participates in Cum Loving Sluts 9 is some sort of free agent is pretty damn disingenuous.” This flied pretty damn close to, if not wholly within, the discourse of false consciousness. These women can’t possibly know what they’re doing, and if they claim to, they’re wrong. And who does know? Why, of course, the exact people who would never do porn (or prostitution, or exotic dance, or whatever), who have never experienced the lives of porn actors, who wouldn’t even stoop to watching pornography. Because the porn actor’s experience is one of false consciousness, s/he cannot speak for her/himself, and must be spoken for by folks like evil_fizz, who “really know”. I find that reprehensible, especially in a feminist context. While the position of any particular performer or class of performers (say, those that view their work as empowering vs. those who view their work as misfortune vs. those who view their work as a job like any other) can certainly be critiqued, their voices certainly deserve to be listened to and respected, not dismissed — especially when the only grounds for dismissal is their failure to conform to the Outsider’s moralistically-grounded perceptions of what those experiences should oughtta be.
I agree with Dustin. The way I understand it, talking about the content of movies/books/porn/whatever and how it affects people’s minds is an entirely separate issue– thus, whether or not Star Wars fans think the Force is real is irrelevant. What Hugo’s saying is that regardless of the porn’s content, the fact that porn viewers aren’t satisfied with the same images over and over means that they won’t be satisfied waking up next to the same person over and over. The responding argument, then, is that people in general don’t tend to be satisfied consuming the same examples of any form of media repeatedly– we’re always seeking out novelty in books, movies, television, video games, sports, etc. Somehow, though, no one attributes the same attitude-warping powers to that sort of novelty-seeking, or claims that it’s going to fundamentally damage our ability to live healthy lives.
Honestly, Hugo’s “novelty” argument could as easily be applied to romance novels as porn (not that I buy into the gendered divide between those two forms of entertainment, but it’s in the original post so I’ll run with it). Romance novel readers tend to amass large collections of books, most of which they probably don’t reread very often. Presumably they’d grow bored and dissatisfied if they had to read the same book about the same relationship between the same characters over and over. In fact, the demand for new and different romance novels is so high that publishing companies like Harlequin put out a large number of new books on a monthly basis. Doesn’t it follow, then, that those who regularly read romance novels, who get their entertainment from a constantly changing array of stories about different kinds of romantic relationships, are less likely to be satisfied with staying in one romantic relationship?
Either the above is accurate, or there’s something particular about porn that makes seeking novelty more harmful to one’s psyche than it is in the case of any other form of media. I’m not saying that isn’t possible, but I don’t think Hugo made a compelling argument for the difference between novelty in porn and novelty in anything else, which is one of the reasons I consider the novelty argument very weak (the other being that I don’t necessarily see a problem with wanting novelty in the first place, but I already commented on that).
These women can’t possibly know what they’re doing, and if they claim to, they’re wrong.
No, when those women talk about the abuses that go on in the industry, I tend to believe them, actually, and the existence of other women who avoid those problems doesn’t make their experiences disappear or not matter.
And how, exactly, does “not being a free agent” imply “not knowing what they’re doing”? That’s quite a leap.
Why, of course, the exact people who would never do porn (or prostitution, or exotic dance, or whatever), who have never experienced the lives of porn actors, who wouldn’t even stoop to watching pornography.
Do you think you can accurately identify the people in this thread who have never watched porn, stripped, or prostituted themselves? Because I really don’t think you can. I’m certainly getting the strong impression from your post that you’ve never been a prostitute, but I could easily be wrong, so I wouldn’t attempt to build an insulting argument around that impression.
In the larger context of feminists who critique various aspects of pornography and prostitution, it’s easier to pick the “Outsiders” out, of course, because the ones who’ve worked in the industry or still do work there usually say so, loudly and often. Not that this obliges you to notice or acknowledge them, of course.
These women can’t possibly know what they’re doing, and if they claim to, they’re wrong. And who does know? Why, of course, the exact people who would never do porn (or prostitution, or exotic dance, or whatever), who have never experienced the lives of porn actors, who wouldn’t even stoop to watching pornography.
Oh for crying out loud. I’m not pretending that I know what’s going on in the head of every porn performer out there, or every prostitute. But there are hundreds of first person accounts of these kinds of things, the manipulation, the coercion, the drugs, the abuse. Or is that irrelevant because I haven’t actually been a commercial sex worker?
Because the porn actor’s experience is one of false consciousness, s/he cannot speak for her/himself, and must be spoken for by folks like evil_fizz, who “really know”. I find that reprehensible, especially in a feminist context.
Wow, you are reading into this too much. My point is that it’s damn foolish to assume that everyone working in porn is making free choices. Because they’re not and there is tons of evidence on this point. I’m pretty confident that Jenna Jameson is making her own choices and controlling her life, but I still think she’s in the overwhelming minority.
While the position of any particular performer or class of performers (say, those that view their work as empowering vs. those who view their work as misfortune vs. those who view their work as a job like any other) can certainly be critiqued, their voices certainly deserve to be listened to and respected, not dismissed — especially when the only grounds for dismissal is their failure to conform to the Outsider’s moralistically-grounded perceptions of what those experiences should oughtta be.
Ugh. I’m not saying that women who work in the sex industry should be miserable. Or that they should be judged for their work or enjoying it. What I’m vehemently opposed to are people who insist that those experiences somehow negate the people who are victimized and abused.
OK, fizz and sophinisba, now we’re getting somewhere. I’m not objecting out of hand to any criticism of any particular argument, what concerns me is how easy it is for debates about pornography, especially when the lives of women in porn become one of the issues involved, to totally dismiss the experiences — or even the claimed experiences of — women in the industry who tell a different story. The bottom line is, women in the sex industry (and men in porn, and women in other industries, and men in other industries) live complex lives — if we are going to deny their free agency, we have to do so for, say, those who work for corporations that pollute, or those who work in corrupt governments, or those who work for Wal-Mart. But we don’t — we give all other workers in all other fields a free pass.
No, sophinisba, I’m not a prostitute — I’m an anthropologist. (Same diff, some’d say!) I sell my body, when I sell it, for an hour 20 minutes at a time, and I get to keep my clothes on. But my argument isn’t that only sex workers can speak about sex work, it’s that it is not fair to discount the experiences and testimonies of one class of persons — especially when it’s the class you disagree with — while privileging the voices of another. And it’s especially unfair to minimize the voices you disagree with as being informed by false consciousness in any of its disguises: ignorance, public relations, coercion, etc. I have no doubts that some women encounter abuse in the porn industry; I also have no doubts that some women find fulfillment in the porn industry. I would even wager that sometimes, they are the same women. But it does *neither* of them any good to deny the complexity of their experiences, to marginalize them from the debate over their own lives.
Now I’ll admit — we get hung up on the issue of agency and free choice. I doubt many of us have made many free choices today. I’d argue that this has little to do with agency, but that’s an argument for another time, I think. Still, until the NSA releases its records of its secret thought-monitoring program, the only thing we have to go on to indicate what goes on inside sex workers’ heads is their own testimony, and if a woman says she loves what she does, I don’t think it’s right to discount her experience as “not representative”. That’s not the feminism I learned, anyway. Likewise for those women who see their own involvement in sex work as something akin to rape. We as a society, though, have been far more willing to listen to the testimonies of those women whose experiences have been unmitigatedly bad. I think it’s fair to ask why.
I’d like to tell of something that happened to me today that often brings out cries of feminists imposing “victim mentality” on prostituted women but is nothing of the sort.
I’m presenting a workshop at a prostitution conference in a few months and I asked a survivor to co-present with me, but she refused because it would be too stressful and she doesn’t feel she can deal with pro-prostitution people attacking her in person among other things.
It’s easy for the best-intentioned people to forget that roughly 3 out of 4 prostitutes have the debilitating mental illness PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, but in my anti-pornstitution activism I can never forget it. There are exceptions, but most people with PTSD are not always the most reliable of people to co-organize with and they often cannot speak in public as easily as those without PTSD because they are suffering the consequences of what has been inflicted on them and those effects are real.
There are a few formerly-prostituted people I love, including my junior high school best friend who’s been tricking since a teen and ran a Manhattan escort agency complete with false books and police bust, but they are not always mentally “there” and it hurts me deeply to see the effects of PTSD preventing them from living the lives they want. I am not a patient woman by nature, but I find limitless patience for prostitution’s victims even when they send me the same email four times, or neglect to feed my cats like they said they would, or fail to show up at a city council hearing they promised they would attend. They’ve been seriously fucked with by men, and seriously fucked with people can’t just brush that abuse aside and decide to go on with their lives exactly as they wish. It’s not fostering a “victim mentality” or denying anyone’s agency to admit that being subjected to systemic sexual violence has repurcussions for prostituted people beyond the social stigma of prostitution that keeps them silent about what was done to them.
If you can understand why rape victims usually prefer not to go through with a trial that makes their rapes publicly-available government record, then you should be able to understand why most victims of pornstitution usually prefer not to stand in front of cameras, conference-goers or city councils to talk about their rapes and other sexual abuses they suffered. One of my favorite articles on prostitution was written by a Suicide Girl-dismissing prostitute who wrote, “You know you are doing real sex work when you can shut the fuck up.”
if a woman says she loves what she does, I don’t think it’s right to discount her experience as “not representative”. That’s not the feminism I learned, anyway. Likewise for those women who see their own involvement in sex work as something akin to rape.
Her as a person, no. But if we’re talking about porn *as an industry*, it most certainly matters if her experience is representative. But more to the point, it matters that women are being abused. Just because Jenna Jameson, Belladonna, Janine, et al. aren’t being abused doesn’t mean other performers aren’t. I’m not trying to be dismissive, my point is that porn as an industry is verifiably toxic to plenty of women who are involved in it. And there are men watching it and getting off on it. Do you know that the women in Cum Sucking Sluts 9 *aren’t* being abused/manipulated/coerced? Because I don’t. And I think it’s an awfully dangerous assumption to assume that what you’re buying is made freely and happily by the women involved.
I don’t think you’d dispute that terrible things happen in the porn industry and in prostitution. Why start with the baseline assumption that what you’re watching is kosher?
Fizz, I’ve rarely watched porn and haven’t bought any, so I’m not starting from any baseline assumption of what I’m watching. My main point is similar to yours — we live in a society that as a whole is verifiably toxic to plenty of women who are involved in it. We don’t single out porn (or sex work in general) because it’s verifiably worse, though — more women die working retail than have ever even worked in pornography. I’ll agree that it does pay to be aware of what you’re watching, and if you can’t be sure what you’re watching reflects your values, it probably is best to assume it doesn’t — but that should apply across the board, whether we’re talking about watching porn or going to church.
My other main point is that women who work in porn (or any other type of sex work) have lots and lots of reasons for what they do. Some are trying their best to get by in a world that doesn’t value women all that much, some are severely traumatized in their relations to their bodies and their sexualities, some love the attention and the celebrity status porn can offer, some just love being paid to have sex, and I’m sure there’s dozens of other reasons I might not even have imagined. And, again, all of these reasons might characterize a single performer’s reasons. I recently watched two social scientists, both of whom had worked as exotic dancers, talk for over an hour about the complexity of their experiences, about the lowest lows and highest highs they had experienced, about the variety of relationships they had with other dancers and with their regulars and with their other clients, and about the way their work is stigmatized by the society they live in — both their work as dancers and their work as social scientists. The very first question in the Q&A session was “So is exotic dancing good for women or bad for women?” People simply refuse to believe that the answer could be “yes”.
Sam’s comments bring to light something else, here, and remind me I need to apologize — we’ve gotten into the effect of porn on the woman who make it, which is not what Hugo’s post was about, and I apologize for my part in that. The subject here was not the effect on women, but the effect on men. Not women who watch porn, and really not gay men who watch porn (an exclusion that, as always, demands closer attention) but on straight men who watch mainstream pornography. Hugo admirably shifts his attention away from blaming the women who make porn — which is the basic gist of arguments about the performers — but still feels compelled to blame porn for the harm it causes, which still casts blame back at porn workers. But in doing so he does raise the question of demand, at least — why do men watch porn? why should novelty be important — and it clearly is, in an industry that makes many, many times the number of films that Hollywood does. Hugo would like to see the demand for porn reduced, and though I disagree pretty much with both his justifications for that desire and his arguments on behalf of that goal, I think it still raises pretty interesting questions that are rarely even asked, and when they are are almost always answered with reference to a threatening and unbounded male sexuality.
Dustin, I appreciate how you redirect the thread back to the original point. What is lacking in all of this is an honest conversation among men about why it is that they use porn, how it enhances or detracts from their lives and their relationships, and whether or not they consider their use to be compulsive or not. Shifting the discussion on to women dodges that aspect of the issue.