This is part three of my series responding to Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Part One is here, Part Two is here.
At the end of this short, powerful book, Jensen muses about sexual ethics. I was struck by what he has to say about heat, light, and pleasure:
Another common way people talk about sex, especially in the past decade, is in terms of heat: She’s hot, he’s a hottie; we had hot sex. In the world of hot, it’s natural to focus on friction, which is what produces heat. Sex becomes bump-and-grind,; the friction produces the heat, and the heat makes the sex good.
But we should take note of a phrase commonly used to describe an argument that is intense but which doesn’t really advance our understanding; we say that such an engagement produces “more heat than light.”… So what if our sexual activity — our embodied connections –could be less about heat and more about light? What if instead of desperately seeking hot sex, we searched for a way to produce light when we touch? What if such touch were about finding a way to create light between people so that we could see ourselves and each other better? If the goal is knowing ourselves and each other like that, then what we need is not really heat but light to illuminate the path.
I read that and leaped to my feet, crying “Yes!” At its best, I am convinced sex not only brings pleasure but helps to transform the people who are participating in it. I am a better teacher, better friend, and better mentor because of the light that my wife and I reveal when we have sex with each other. After three divorces and countless short-term relationships, I understand what Jensen is talking about here, because my wife and I are living it out. Make no mistake, I don’t think marriage is the only arena in which this kind of light can be created. But a relationship in which one or both parties is expending sexual energy on pornography and fantasy is one in which there is very little chance of light indeed.
Jensen is smart enough to know that this high-falutin’ talk doesn’t always translate into the real world easily:
This talk about mystery and light is all well and good… but in the real world it’s not so easy to keep sex in such a lofty position. People in long-term relationships may have kids, jobs, and other stress in their lives that may lead their sex lives to become routine and unsatisfying for one or both partners. In such a situation, why not use an outside stimulus such as pornography to jump-start the sexual aspect of the relationship?
I loathe the phrase “jump-start”. I am not a car, and neither is my wife, and my libido is not a battery to be charged. Anyhow, Jensen’s answer is counter-intuitive but spot on:
When sex becomes boring, when a couple even stops having sex, why must we assume that the goal is to immediately resume sexual activity? If the goal is intimacy, sex is not the only route to that. If for some reason the sexual path to that connection is no longer open in the way a couple has known it in the past, would not a period of trying to understand that change be appropriate? When one doesn’t rush to reestabish sexual activity, other ways of knowing another person and oneself have time to emerge.
Word, brother Robert, word. One of the many lies pornography tells is that if we aren’t feeling sexual, something is wrong; low desire is medicalized and becomes a problem to be treated. Rather than asking someone the question “Why don’t you feel like having sex?”, why not ask far better and more interesting questions: “Why should we have sex? What is its purpose, its meaning? Why should I be expected to want it?” And the answer to these questions has to be better than “But it’s natural” or “We’re in love, so we’re supposed to.”
Jensen’s concluding section on sexual ethics is entitled “Beyond Pleasure”:
By suggesting that we need to go beyond pleasure, I am not suggesting that feeling good is a bad thing, that the pleasures of our physical bodies are suspect. Indeed, feeling alive in one’s body requires the ability to feel those pleasures. But “pleasure”, in the sense of purely physical sensations, does not meet our needs in the same sense as does the experience of “joy”, in the sense of a deeper experience of the mystery of sex.
I’ve written before that “mutual pleasure” is, by itself, an inadequate standard to use in judging the “rightness” of sex. In a post about Mary Kay Letourneau a few years ago, I wrote:
“One of the most common misconceptions about the sexual abuse of children and adolescents is that only the adult abusers experience sexual pleasure. We assume, often wrongly, that female victims of sexual molestation never experience arousal or orgasm as a result of their abuse. Certainly many, perhaps even most, young women who are molested — particularly those who are forced into intercourse — find the experience painful and completely unpleasurable. But the literature suggests that a certain number were excited by their abusers. Indeed, I’ve been told by my friends who work in this field that this often makes things worse: a child who experiences some degree of pleasure at the hands of his or her abuser may be all the more likely to blame themselves for what happened. Those who experience excitement as a result of their abuse may be particularly likely to re-enact abusive situations when they become sexually active as adults.
For too many of us, pleasure and orgasm seem inconsistent with sexual violation. But to assume that pleasure and orgasm are always acts of volition is to defy practically everything we know about adolescent development, sexuality, and power.”
There’s a lesson here about pornography, too. When we masturbate to orgasm while watching pornography, we experience pleasure. It would be an odd orgasm indeed that didn’t feel good! But it’s very unlikely that we feel joy or connectedness as a consequence of using pornography. We may feel guilt, we may feel shame, or we may simply feel cheerful relief. Guilt is useful, shame is useless, and cheerful relief is, well, just that. But pleasure, as lovely as it is, isn’t all we are called to have in our lives. What’s missing is joy, which can of course accompany orgasm — but too rarely does.
Jensen writes something I could have written (he does that a lot, darn him):
I have experiened pleasure in my life. For me, pleasure has been a mixed bag. It feels good, but it often doesn’t feel like enough. I have experienced joy in my life. For me, joy is pretty much always a good thing.
I take such a strong stand against pornography for many reasons. I think the conditions under which a great deal of pornography (not all) is produced are exploitative to the performers involved. I think there is credible evidence that long-term pornography consumption leads to a decreased ability to empathize with others, and in particular, a decreased ability to connect intimately and openly with real-life sexual partners. I’ve made that case before in many posts, just as Jensen makes it so cogently in this marvelous new book of his. But the central reason why I find pornography so troubling is that it deceives us into surrendering the chance for genuine joy.
I am not a naive virginal adolescent writing rapturously about what he or she imagines sex to be. I am not a shame-ridden middle-aged convert, either. (Okay, I’m on the cusp of genuine middle-age, but that’s as far as I go.) I think sex is pretty darned dandy, and I think pleasure is a fine thing. I like an orgasm as much as the next person, frankly. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that pleasure that comes at the expense of another living creature or of our own humanity can never lead to joy. The deepest joy comes from pleasure + connectedness, from revealing light as well as creating satisfying heat. And as strong as my libido is, my longing for joy is stronger still. And that’s why I hate pornography.
I wish I could print this out and hang it up in giant posters all over the city. As a teenager who is, at present, constantly exploring my sexuality, I can honestly say this post is absolutely definitive for me. (We have a word for it in Hebrew–mehonen; life-shaping.)
I’ve been suspended in a gray area regarding this subject for a long time, but I feel more confident in my opinions now. It just make so much sense. Thank you, Hugo; thank you so much.
Thank you, Ella.
This post is wonderful.
I have been struggling recently with low sex drive, and feeling like there is something ‘wrong with me’, and found reading this post amazingly freeing.
Thankyou.
You nailed it Hugo, and this I know from my personal experience. And the Jensen quotes you used make me doubt my opinion of him.
I’m uncomfortable with the idea of shutting out fantasy, either of your own or aided by erotic materials. Part of the joy of intimacy for me is the meeting of two people who are separate people with separate minds and separate sexualities. And by bringing fantasy to the bed, talking about it, joking about it, exploring what is doable and what is not, you learn about yourself and your partner in ways you wouldn’t if you just shut that down and tried for this melding kind of sexuality. Fantasies change over time in this way, but as long as you value fantasizing both as an individual experience and something that can be shared, I think it aids intimacy.
What’s fantasy if not just another word for narrative? We are story-telling creatures; the mind slips into another way of understanding when an idea is presented in narrative than in a dry treatise. I see sexual fantasies as telling stories to yourself and to others that addresses sex the way other stories might address love or terror or joy even.
Where porn bothers me is not that it is a fantasy, but that most of it is variations on the same fantasy, where a man imagines himself as a mini-tyrant over barely human women whose main functions are to have no will of their own and to be humiliated. When the same story you tell yourself over and over is one so dehumanizing, that says something—I think Jensen’s right that the mind-numbing sameness of the story speaks more about how much women are hated in our culture than anything else. But other fantasies, fantasies that tell different stories, that bring possibilities to mind, that expand the heart and the head as well as excite the genitals are out there, and I think they have a lot of value. 90% of everything is crap, but I’ve read some slash stories, for instance, that exposed a fun-loving view of sexuality that was quite the benefit to me.
I am also uneasy with the easy dismissal of pleasure as “just” pleasure. Genuine pleasures are hard to come by—-we all know how women are denied the sense that we deserve to feel good, but so do men. Men are just denied a separate set of pleasures, especially in the porn version of masculinity. The pleasure of being slowly stroked, of being held, of being hugged and kissed, of taking your time, of looking in someone’s eyes, hell of even caressing a breast. (I’ve found the non-touching of breasts in porn particularly telling.) Pleasure is easy to dismiss, but I think that feeds the craven misery of our culture that creates the desire for these outlets. Our problem is not too much pleasure, but the fear of giving ourselves permission to really sink our teeth into it. To give yourself permission to really experience pleasure is to say that you are valuable, to get back in touch with yourself, and to give pleasure to another is incredibly valuable in that way, too. No need to rewrite it as “joy”, which implies all these not necessarily true caveats about what makes pleasure real.
Pleasure is easy to dismiss, but I think that feeds the craven misery of our culture that creates the desire for these outlets. Our problem is not too much pleasure, but the fear of giving ourselves permission to really sink our teeth into it. To give yourself permission to really experience pleasure is to say that you are valuable, to get back in touch with yourself, and to give pleasure to another is incredibly valuable in that way, too.
I think that’s fair, Amanda. And perhaps it would be better to say that the pleasures porn promises are poor, inadequate substitutes for deeper richer ones of the very sort you list. And not only substitutes, but obstacles.
As for fantasy, I agree at least in part. Desire of any kind — whether for food or for sex or for sleep — is hard to experience without some kind of fantasy. But the substance of the fantasies does matter; what I’m rejecting (and what I think you also find troubling) is a specific set of fantasies that porn kindles.
I also think those of us who advocate “light and joy” owe something to the folks who think that we’re being hopelessly vague. Ethics are great, but without specifics for praxis, we send folks in search of porn for guidance. So what “joy-centered”, frank, honest, sex advice would look like is a question for me to ponder.
From my perspective, the very nature of intimacy means it’s almost impossible for me to suggest what might lead to, or inhibit intimacy, between others. When I think intimate, I think uniquely and distinctly personal. I can’t imagine general rules about it.
From my perspective, while porn and fantasy can be pleasurable for me, they lead to an emotional dead end, and the loss of a far greater good. I’ve been fortunate to have moments like Hugo described, but it is futile for me to use tools like porn and fantasy to chase them. Two completely different orders of pleasure, for me anyway.
I can’t speak to whether porn and fantasy are essential obstacles, but they can be used and are being used to reduce sexuality to a commodity–and encourage us to judge others, on some level, based on how well they fit our fantasies.
I have always seen sexuality as an instrument of intimacy, a means to a greater end, and not as something worth pursuing on its own merits. That’s why I practice abstinence. Not necessarily until marriage (truth be told, I’ve lost most of my respect for marriage as an institution), but certainly until I find myself in a relationship where sex can be a tool for greater intimacy. And unlike sex-based relationships, intimacy-based relationships are relationships that you have to build. You can’t just go out and pick them up as if they were pleasurable commodities.
What scares me, to be honest, is not that people get off on porn and fantasy. That, in and of itself, isn’t something that concerns me very much–I think the porn industry is exploitative but most industries ultimately are and, as brownfemipower so eloquently put it, “there’s more than one way to get fucked.” What concerns me more is that the 21st-century Western ideal of what a relationship is has been built around porn and fantasy, and the shallow, mechanical relationships that result from that dynamic are destroying our culture, and that young women (and young men, for that matter) are literally killing themselves over it. We’ve had the sexual revolution; now we need a love revolution. And I don’t see one on the horizon.
We’ve had the sexual revolution; now we need a love revolution.
Oh, what an amazing sentence! Yes, yes we do.
I thought this was an interesting alternate take on Jensen’s book.
http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/bookreview/getting-off
I read the review, Martin, and it is an interesting one — except that the accusation that Jensen “cherrypicked” the most offensive porn doesn’t hold. He did pick the most popular DVD rentals and sales as reported by the adult industry. Suppose someone wrote about hip-hop and confined the discussion largely to the likes of 50 Cent, the Game, and Kanye West — and left out Mos Def. The Mos Def people would be complaining, what about our guy? But if the mission of the article was to talk about what is most likely to be consumed, it makes sense to focus on the best-sellers. Same thing with porn.
I was pleased, however, to be lumped in in the comments section with Robert Jensen and John Stoltenberg. That was pretty darned cool.
One of the many lies pornography tells is that if we aren’t feeling sexual, something is wrong; low desire is medicalized and becomes a problem to be treated. Rather than asking someone the question “Why don’t you feel like having sex?”, why not ask far better and more interesting questions: “Why should we have sex? What is its purpose, its meaning? Why should I be expected to want it?” And the answer to these questions has to be better than “But it’s natural” or “We’re in love, so we’re supposed to.”
i’m a little confused by this, in light of your previous writing about how you think regular sex is a crucial component of any healthy marriage. (that post generated a very interesting comment thread, btw!) how does the idea dovetail with the assertion that sex is a vital part of a marriage? i don’t ask snarkily - i’m really wondering if/how that works.
I don’t think, Kate, I’ve ever said “regular” sex was crucial, and if I have, I was typing in haste. I do think sex matters, but as I’ve said time and again, eros and obligation are mortal enemies. The moment we start trying to define “regular”, we get into heaps of trouble.
It’s important, I think, for couples to be able to talk openly and honestly about what sex means to them. They need to ask and answer the question “What does sex mean to you?”, as well as the questions I pose above. Please understand, that my belief that every marriage/long-term relationship “needs” an erotic component isn’t a recommendation of regular intercourse. Taking some time away from conventional intercourse to explore other ways of being sexual, or even to explore non-sexual ways of feeling close and intimate, can be very good - not as a cure for low desire, but as an equally valid way of establishing and nurturing a bond.
I recently purchased this book and was sooooo pleased to read in print many of my own feelings about what is happening in our society regarding sexuality. I think sex is probably the greatest physical gift we have to enjoy - body, mind and spirit. Light is a perfect word and it can be truly transforming when two people are completely naked in all three aspects.
I personally feel that people fight letting go of porn because they don’t realize the reality is there is something that is far more satisfying and fulfilling - true connection with another through our sensuality.
The argument that porn is healthy is out there for me. If it is healthy then why do porn stars claim to have the least satisfying sexual relationships? Many of them report having to dissociate during sex scenes in order to make it through it. The women claim to experience pain and often get their insides torn up. When people bring up Jenna - this is laughable. All that money has not brought her a bit of happiness. Read her book and you will hear her horror stories. 90% of all prostitutes, strippers and porn stars ADMIT to being sexually abused prior to getting into the industry. Not all women that are sexually abused get in the sex industry but the majority that are in have been abused. Most are addicted to drugs and alcohol if not to start with, eventually just to get through their job. I challenge people (men especially) to read how these women truly feel about what is done to them in these videos. It is so easy to dismiss these women as “whores”, “sluts” and less than human but their not and most have very painful histories prior to and during their time in the sex industry.
Last but not least……since when did it become healthy and acceptable to make sexual activity a spectator sport? Are we so uncreative and disconnected from our own sensual selves that we need to watch someone engaging in sex in order to access our own? Pretty sad.
Love the post Debby, I agree with every thing you’ve said. Sexuality is an amazing and powerful thing, and something we can’t afford to fake.
If [porn] is healthy then why do porn stars claim to have the least satisfying sexual relationships?
Probably because the people they end up dating expect them to act like porn stars all the time. I view that as a fantasy/reality issue rather than one intrinsic to porn, but I expect you’ll disagree.