As I’ve mentioned before, this semester I’m teaching my Humanities course on “Beauty and the Body in the European-American Tradition” again. I’ve only taught it once before, four years ago, and frankly, it feels as if I’m teaching it for the first time. I always love the rush of a new course; as much as I enjoy my core Western Civ and Women’s Studies courses, the material is so familiar to me that I long for new challenges from time to time. “Beauty and the Body” certainly brings that.
We’re using a variety of texts in the course, including Susan Bordo’s The Male Body. Her first full chapter, famously, is about the penis. Not the phallus, mind you, that phantom symbol of patriarchy that haunts courses in psychoanalysis and literature. (In the underworld, I will be forced to sit in a Lacan seminar for four hours on Friday afternoons. Ask me how I know that this constitutes hellishness). Bordo is talking about the “real” penis, that flexible appendage which is a source of so much desire, anxiety, pleasure, distaste, and sheer bafflement. And so yesterday afternoon, we had what I rather roguishly enjoy referring to as “penis day # 1″. (My lecture schedule calls for two more over the course of the semester.) More below the cut (hah), and though there are no images, the topic is obviously a, uh, sensitive one.
Bordo writes quite consciously as a woman who grew up in a certain era (the 1960s). Though she’s one of our leading cultural theorists, especially where the body is concerned, her writing is delightfully free of jargon. And as she herself points out, a woman can write about the penis with a degree of distance (and sympathy) that a man cannot. She doesn’t claim to be an expert through personal experience; she notes that growing up without brothers and with a very modest father, she didn’t see a “real one” on a grown man (flaccid or erect) until she was well into her teens. Like many girls, she was intensely curious — a curiosity tinged with that strange mix of desire and revulsion so familiar to adolescence. Bordo blends together personal anecdote with cultural analysis, and her first full “penis chapter” is an easy read.
The point that Bordo makes obliquely, and that I make more explicitly in my lecture, is that cultures conceal what they fear. Anyone growing up in American society knows that female nudity is commonplace in art and film; full-frontal male nudity is much rarer. Though penises have begun to appear in more Hollywood productions in recent years, they are almost invariably soft ones — and the camera rarely lingers on that part of the male anatomy, as it so often does on a woman’s body.
In class, I mentioned two Oscar-nominated films of recent years that have penis sightings: “Brokeback Mountain” and “Eastern Promises.” In the former, the two lovers played so expertly by Jake Gyllenhaal and the beautiful Heath Ledger stay clothed throughout much of the film; the one nude scene we are permitted is when they leap playfully into a river. The glimpse is fleeting. The penises here are non-sexual; they represent not desire or potency but carefree boyishness. Though the actors (and the characters they portray) are adults, their genitalia only appears when they acting like children. The penises of little boys are permitted to be displayed publicly on beaches, of course, because they have no sexuality, no threat. In “Brokeback Mountain” (and most other films in which men appear fleetingly fully nude), the exposure of the penis represents puerile playfulness, not sex.
In the under-rated “Eastern Promises”, Viggo Mortensen (who received a well-earned Oscar nod) has a now-infamous naked fight scene with two Chechen mobsters in a bath house. The scene is brutally violent, and the audience is awed by the way in which this naked, unarmed protagonist fights off and ultimately kills his two dressed attackers. We are treated to a lot of Mortensen’s body (props to his nutritionist and his trainer), but the point of the nudity is unmistakable. Here, male nakedness — and especially, the soft penis — is used to represent radical vulnerability. What better way for the director to make a point about his lead character’s extraordinary skills as a fighter, a killer, and a man than to have him win a battle without any protection whatosever? The message is obvious: even when he is at the most vulnerable a man can be, the Mortensen character is formidable. It’s a memorable, if bloody scene.
Of course, it’s dangerous to make sweeping generalizations about how most men feel about their penises. We’re mostly familiar with the rough humor, and most of us can catch the anxiety that underlies all the joshing. And we’re aware that most men tend to judge their penis less upon its aesthetics than upon its function. Men are conditioned to worry far more about performance than appearance; this is the exact opposite of how we teach women to feel about their bodies. To stereotype massively, young women’s greatest anxieties revolve around the answer to the question “How do I look?” Their brothers’ fears tend to constrict around “How did it (or will it) work? How did it — I — make you feel?” It’s obvious enough that the pharmaceutical industry makes a fortune off of male anxieties about function, just as the cosmetics industry makes an even greater fortune off of female anxieties about appearance.
But this isn’t all of the picture. Long before most young men become concerned with sexual performance, they become aware of two things about their genital region: that they are particularly vulnerable to injury “down there”, and (unless they were raised in an exceptionally enlightened family) that their penises are “dirtier” than other parts. After all, when a little boy scratches his arm in public, he’s going to get a very different reaction from his parents than if he starts absent-mindedly (or deliberately) rubbing his genitals. Much of the time, the “Don’t do that, that’s dirty” will only come from mom or dad when he touches himself in one particular spot. Most little boys don’t see their testicles and their penises as entirely separate entities. By the time a boy is six or seven, he’s surely felt the sickening pain of being kicked or hit in the former; by the time he’s that same age, he’s probably learned from his family that “down there” is dirty. All of his bravado with his friends, his exuberant peeing in public places, doesn’t change the reality that he’s nearly certainly aware that this is a place where he can be hurt physically and (through the disgust all-too-often made evident by parents) emotionally. No wonder he’s going to be anxious about keeping it concealed.
I am very strong in my views about pornography, leaning towards the Robert Jensen and (oft-misrepresented) Catherine Mackinnon camp on the issue. Those of us who tend towards the zealous in our opposition to smut are often accused of misrepresenting the content of pornography. But I do not think I exaggerate when I say that a rather significant subgenre of mainstream heterosexual porn involves the “facial”, in which men ejaculate on women’s faces after intercourse or oral sex. The “facial” is a recent innovation; the “money shot” of the 1970s and 1980s usually involved men “cumming” on women’s stomachs or buttocks. Indeed, the “facial” has become such a staple of modern pornography that it may be silly to call it a subgenre; it has become the standard protocol for ending a sexual encounter on film.
The easy feminist analysis, which certainly has some weight, is that this obsession with ejaculating onto women’s faces is about degradation and a demonstration of power. There’s much to recommend that analysis. But I’m convinced there’s something else at play here: men’s desperate desire to have their bodies validated. We live in a culture in which women are trained, far more than men, to avoid what is “dirty”. In particular, we teach our young girls (and, to a lesser extent, our boys), not to put anything “dirty” in their mouths. From a feminist analysis, it’s easy to see men’s eagerness to have women take the penis into their mouths and cum onto their faces as evidence that the man wants to “dirty” the woman, marking her like a dog marks its territory. There’s no question that in pornography, there’s an ugliness to many of these sorts of scenes. But from the standpoint of those of us doing men’s work, there’s another side to the extraordinary appeal of the “blowjob and the facial”: it represents radical acceptance.
It is almost axiomatic that in our sexuality, we seek healing. To one degree or another, when we shed our clothes and tumble into bed (or onto the kitchen counter) with a new lover or a beloved spouse, we are looking not only for mutual pleasure and delight but also for reassurance that we are good, desirable, and, in a transcendent sense, clean. There’s a wonderful bit in the Vagina Monologues where a woman describes her first experience with a man who doesn’t just want to have sex with her, he wants to gaze at her with love and desire and wonder. The sense that she is beautiful — down there — is revelatory for her, and of course, his willingness to “go down” with such awe and delight shows her a new side of herself. If it is true that pornography represents fantasy, then the centrality of the “blowjob and facial” trope functions less as a way for men to work through their rage at women and more as a visceral representation that his body is not as dirty as he imagined. Rather than seeing the longing for the facial as an impulse to denigrate, it might be better to view it as a longing for validation. In other words, the penis in the woman’s mouth and the cum on her face doesn’t make her dirty — it makes him clean. It undoes the messages of his childhood.
This should not be construed as my way of pressuring women to do something they don’t want to do. Folks, no one “owes” anyone else any particular act in the bedroom (or the backseat, kitchen, etcetera). Good sex can heal old psychic injuries; indeed, that is one of its many functions. But when we pressure someone into fulfilling a fantasy primarily for our own healing, we usually end up inflicting new injuries on top of old ones. That’s no good.
We laugh about penises; we worry about penises, we medicate penises, we fantasize about penises. We don’t talk about them nearly enough, in all their splendor and fragility, in their capacity to give and receive pleasure — and their capacity to inflict many different kinds of pain. My class is not a “penis” class, but we cannot “look” at masculinity in all of its complexity without “looking” at the penis. As long as we see the penis as apart from ourselves as men, as long as we see it as an instrument and a tool, as long as we see it as essentially dirty or ugly, we will remain incomplete.
And the shame and anxiety we feel, all too often, will be displaced onto our lovers, girlfriends, and wives. Enough.
This may be TMI, but what else to do with post?
My partner and I just had a conversation about oral sex and spitting vs. swallowing. He feels that swallowing represents radical acceptance.
I have only had one partner ask if he could “give me a facial.” The rest have prefered that I swallow.
All I have is anecdotal evidence and my gut feeling of a woman being disrespected when I see a facial. However, I’m not convinced that it is based in anything more than submission. The woman submitting to the man.
p.s. I have also had two partners who asked that I “sit on their face” in order to perform oral sex on me, which I see as similar to a “facial”. They prefered it also because of a sense of submission. In this case, they were “submitting” to me.
We live in a culture in which women are trained, far more than men, to avoid what is “dirty”
Uh, yeah, we also live in a culture where women are trained, far more than men, to know that THEY ARE dirty. Women are the ones who habitually turn down oral sex, not because they think they won’t like it, but because they’re afraid their partners won’t like it.
So, you understand that when you say,
But from the standpoint of those of us doing men’s work, there’s another side to the extraordinary appeal of the “blowjob and the facial”: it represents radical acceptance.”
you are affirming that men in pornography feel entitled to rub their effluvia all over women’s bodies and faces while other men watch, unlike women, who adopt such stances and use of their bodily fluids only in specialized fetish porn, and this is because it makes them feel super good about themselves. This is not reframing. At all. You are saying that men really want something (”acceptance” rather than power, sure, whatever) and that this explains why they do this. Because they have to get what they want, because it’s really important to them, see. They have to do stuff to women, not because they want the women to feel a certain way, but because they just really really want to, and getting what they want matters most.
Um. Yeah?
In other words, the penis in the woman’s mouth and the cum on her face doesn’t make her dirty — it makes him clean.
I do agree with you here to a degree. Even when she’s choking on it, it’s not about her at all. You’re not even there, bitch.
it represents radical acceptance.
Yeah, but no, it doesn’t. You’ve seen the porn you’re referencing, right? When it’s not about humiliation, it’s about surprise. The point is that she has no chance to say no or yes. Being forced or tricked cannot lead to or represent acceptance. It’s kind of the opposite of it.
Well put, Hugo.
Or, to put it a simpler way without any of the naughty words that get me stuck in moderation, you have offered a long and detailed explanation of why men might want what they want from women. I am happy to suppose that every word is true, just for the sake of argument.
But the problem and the question has always been, why men feel entitled to get what they want from women.
That’s a good question, Sophonisba, and why I emphasize, passionately, that anxiety does not translate into entitlement. And now that your moderated comment has appeared (I was lecturing for the past hour on metaphor in the Old Testament), let me stress that I see how degrading this porn is. I don’t deny that the intent to degrade is very much part of a great deal of it. You know how anti-porn I am.
That said, I’m a great believer that the urge to degrade is connected to the kind of shame about which I am writing. I’m not just writing in order to encourage greater sympathy for men who feel disconnected from their bodies; I’m writing in support of those women who get to cope with the desperate need for validation that men feel as a result of their shame.
I was told not to touch myself “down there” when I was a kid, and (in true Freudian manner) I’m sure it was the origin of a couple of personal issues, non of which were about performance, some were about looks, by the way. But -
My initial reaction to this was similar to the reaction I got from a girl when she wanted to kiss me and I was telling her about all my feminist-literature induced anxietiy, my uncertainty to try whether she really wanted to kiss me. Wise girl. She just said ‘you’re thinking too much. Kiss me.”
Accepting my body is not tied to a particular sexual act, and interpreting certain sexual acts in the manner you do is simply reconstructing the dichotomy between mind and body you’re referring to, just in different way. Apart from that, if the “facial” were indeed some kind of male carthasis, why were there different climactic fashions in porn before? Have men grown more distant to their penises recently? Is there a higher need for “radical acceptance” than there was in the 70s? Is a blowjob more “radically accepting” than ejaculating inside a woman? The argument hinges on so many problematic assumptions; I’m by no means an expert of porn, but I’m pretty sure this is much more related to fashion than anything else.
I won’t comment on the “standard” feminist analysis of “facials”, but accepting the “degradation” and the “facial as carthasis” claims (and disregarding my fashion hypothesis) for the sake of the argument, if anything, to me, such porn would be proof that men do not feel entitled to get what they want from women. They would possibly *like* to be entitled, but since they know they aren’t, they put the stuff in a movie.
As an aside, I do positively know that there are women who must like this particular practice, or at least (in the end, we’re not able to look into another human’s brain - hey, standpoint epistemology, makes my comment much more fun already ;)) use the insinuation of liking it as a tool for seduction.
Hi, Hugo! I was going to delurk on the official thread, but what I have to say fits better here.
Thanks to you, I rediscovered the poetry of Sharon Olds. I had only read one of her poems before coming to your blog, but the poem I’d read made a lifetime kind of impression on me.
It was “The Connoisseuse of Slugs.”
//My partner and I just had a conversation about oral sex and spitting vs. swallowing. He feels that swallowing represents radical acceptance.//
I’ve sometimes felt that having a partner climax inside me represents something similar, but I’ve never been able to say exactly what. Despite being a serious user of birth control, I dated one guy who just would NOT orgasm inside me due to his own paranoia, and every time he would pull out at the last second, and sometimes it was really frustrating.
“Rather than seeing the longing for the facial as an impulse to denigrate, it might be better to view it as a longing for validation. In other words, the penis in the woman’s mouth and the cum on her face doesn’t make her dirty — it makes him clean.”
And it makes her dirty. You forgot to mention that.
Ginger, I’m sure that’s the impulse for many men. My point is not to defend degradation and misogyny. My point is that shame and self-disgust are connected to a longing for acceptance. That longing for acceptance manifests itself in a specific way. I’m trying to help folks understand the why behind the appeal of this particular act, and I’m suggesting it may be rooted in something other than power and the desire to dominate and degrade.
That doesn’t change the reality for the woman who doesn’t want her boyfriend ejaculating in her face, of course, and I’m not trying to make a case that she ought to be cheerful at the prospect of washing semen out of her hair.
I get you, Hugo, but the vast majority of people who abuse are full of self loathing. Is that really news? Degrading someone else is wrong; I don’t care what the reason is, so when I hear an argument like this, I don’t feel very much sympathy, although I fully understand your good intentions. You’re missing something here, which is that a lot of women put a tremendous amount of effort into understanding why men do what they do. The ‘men who degrade women are crying on the inside!’ rings hollow for me, because I know men who suffered serious abuse as kids who would never consider degrading a woman, who are grossed out by that kind of porn. You’re an adult; you make a choice; no matter what your baggage is, no one else should bear the brunt of it. You’re responsible.
Fair enough, Ginger. And I’m not writing to elicit sympathy so much as I’m trying to get folks (especially men) to consider what they don’t normally consider.
Hugo,
I’ve started to read through your archive a bit. And I will read more. I have to say that I’m intruiged by your writing, meaning that I can connect to a lot of individual elements thereof. I’m not a feminist, although I would call myself pro feminist on a lot of issues, but that’s just because in my view definitions of feminism concerned with gender justice are merely “pop culture”, while feminism as an ideology is far more problematic. I’m not just exactly Peter Pan, but I can connect to that feeling. For me, it’s more existentialist, more rational. But maybe that’s a rationalisation, too - when I first kissed a girl it was more meaningful than any philosophy book I had read before or after.
But there are quite a lot of posts - like the series about male transformation (which should be “transformation of masculinity”, no?) and mens’ ability to “emotionally connect” with themselves and others, to find what they “want” and be only then legitimately permitted to say so - where I’m not quite sure what you’ve actually managed to say in the end. It sometimes feels like you’re teasing endlessly, including yourself, without finally connecting the dots you’ve put into your articles.
Maybe that’s because you’re so radically personal (something I admire very much, I’d never be able to put myself out there like you do), maybe because of different perspectives on a lot of issues, beginning with porn (and thus “free will” and the problematic nature of group rights ideologies and relative positions on the nature/nurture continuum), maybe because I’m not as literate in this area as you are, and maybe it’s because I don’t seem to be blaming masculinity or my masculinity for everything that’s wrong with me or the world while I’m not as forgiving of the (partly unintended) negative effects of feminism (for both women and men) as you seem to be. But still.
Your last reply to Ginger in this thread is, as I think, quite typical of what I’m referring to - as I said I don’t think the facial as carthasis element has a lot of merit - but how do you square Ginger’s assumption that “degradation” is the default motivation - wanting to make women dirty just in order to make women dirty (to which you reply “Ginger, I’m sure that’s the impulse for many men.”) with your argument that men may want to make women dirty but NOT to make them dirty but to clean themselves by having their desire accepted (”I’m trying to help folks understand the why behind the appeal of this particular act, and I’m suggesting it may be rooted in something other than power and the desire to dominate and degrade.”).
What is it you’re actually saying here? It can’t be both, can it? Assuming that we agree that no sexual act between consenting adults is as such degrading, it is impossible to degrade in order to be accepted by the degraded person, isn’t it? Thus, if acceptance is the motivation, that effectively rules out degradation as a motivation.
Goodness, Sam, most folks seem to feel that I am too emphatic rather than insufficiently so. It’s not like my stance against porn is difficult to discern!
As for the bit about facials: yes, of course, the same act can have multiple meanings. I can be looking for acceptance, and at the same time, angry about the lack of acceptance. How often do we act with mixed or confused motives? More often than not, I think.
And by the same token, two people can participate in the same act (this is often true of sex) and come to two radically different conclusions about what just took place. From the standpoint of perception, they were both right. If a woman feels degraded, then the act was degrading — period. If the man was looking for acceptance, then he was looking for acceptance, even if the way in which he did so fell short of the mark.
I’m not trying to please myriad constituencies, and therefore engaged in jesuitical word games and navel-gazing. I’m recognizing that when it comes to gender and sexuality, a lot of issues are tremendously complex, and to do this work well, we’ve got to be willing to be comfortable with contradiction and with holding seemingly two seemingly irreconciliable ideas simultaneously. It won’t work in logic class, but it’s sometimes necessary in the messy world of gender.
Hugo,
Interesting. I’ll have to think about this. Usually, if something doesn’t work in logic class, it doesn’t work, period. But the way you put this, it doesn’t seem completely absurd…
No, it’s really not ;) … I’ve bookmarked a couple of your posts to read on that topic, too. As critical as I am, I’m really enjoying a male perspective on all this :).
“As for the bit about facials: yes, of course, the same act can have multiple meanings. I can be looking for acceptance, and at the same time, angry about the lack of acceptance. How often do we act with mixed or confused motives? More often than not, I think.”
Hugo, that’s true, but that’s not the case in porn. The point of facials in porn is humiliation. That’s what guys who watch it are jacking off to, that dirty whore getting what she deserves. Sorry, but it’s true, and you have noted as much (with more flowery language, of course) in previous posts. I understand you’re trying to get a message out to men, but like Sam, I can’t tell what that message is.
Okay, I’m done. This is your blog, and I don’t want you to think that I’m attacking you, when I quite enjoy most of your writing. You do tend to argue in circles, though.
Just wondering… if anyone knows. Are there facials in gay porn? I still think this is fashion and I don’t think it’s anymore or less humiliating than ejaculating on any other body part. If you think that porn as such is humiliating, sure, facials are humiliating, if not, what’s the difference? Moreover, Ginger, if you believe in mixed motives, why not mixed motives in porn? Specifically, why cannot porn be a vehicle for this kind of “transcendence”, acceptance seeking? It’s a human externalisation, after all.
As for women wanting it and men seeking to do it, when I was younger a girl scared me off by suggesting just this kind of thing (of course, at the time I was a “nice guy” who totally bought into the humiliation story and probably wouldn’t even have touched her (or any other woman for that matter) anyway because I was afraid she might feel sexually harassed. I’m just saying, there are women who dig this). So in this respect I’m with Hugo, lots of mixed messages here ;).
I’ve been reading this discussion and I think there’s an element here that’s being ignored. This discussion has a decidedly heterosexual bent - not in a negative way mind you, but as a natural outcome of the topic.
Among gay men, mutual oral sex is engaged in with a kind of joyous abandon. The issue of the “facial” just doesn’t seem to appear - not because it doesn’t happen but because it is seen as no big deal. Between gay men ejaculating onto one’s partner seems to fit Hugo’s model of validation extremely well. Because the affirmation comes from another man, it may even more powerful. The sense of “dirtiness” about the penis and its natural functions seems to disappear. Ejaculating onto one’s partner’s face or body does not have negative overtones, perhaps because the power imbalance between the genders is absent.
Perhaps this is a case of the exception proving the rule. Just as a lesbian couple can deal more openly and matter of factly with menstruation and its accompanying processes, so a gay male couple would be inclined toward a less emotionally fraught relationship with ejaculation.
I also think that it might be worth exploring if there is a distinction between semen and, as sophonisba put it, “women who adopt such stances and use of their bodily fluids” arising from the process by which we arrive at the end point? (How’s that for circumlocation?). I’m trying to think this out as I type so I may need some help. Women’s bodily fluids (generally) are automatic - the body doing for itself without our prompting it while, frankly, semen (normally) requires intentional work.
“If you think that porn as such is humiliating, sure, facials are humiliating, if not, what’s the difference? Moreover, Ginger, if you believe in mixed motives, why not mixed motives in porn? Specifically, why cannot porn be a vehicle for this kind of “transcendence”, acceptance seeking? It’s a human externalisation, after all.”
(First time commenter…)
Sam,
I’m a largely anti-porn feminist. I personally object to facials in porn (and most heterosexual porn in general) because in porn the intent of the man cumming on the woman’s face is obviously to degrade the woman and to support male domination of women. However, I do not believe facials are inherently degrading. There are very few sexual acts I’d label as inherently degrading (such as scat, for instance). I, as a woman, personally am not against engaging in facials with a man I know and trust. I’m actually more than happy to let a man cum on my face for exactly the reason that Hugo is trying to express in this post. If I trust a man and know that he respects me, there isn’t much that I will absolutely refuse sexually. That is just as much because I want him to enjoy himself and feel good about himself as it is because I enjoy sex in damn near all its forms.
All that being said, I’m not one of the feminists who believes that there is just no hope for a healthy portrayal of sexuality via porn. The problem (for me) is that currently a healthy portrayal is just almost entirely non-existent. I have been so traumatized by heterosexual porn that I nearly swore off of sex with men completely. That vast majority of it (particularly online porn) really is completely misogynistic and disgusting.
Hugo,
This is one of the very few thoughtful blogs on this subject, I’d guess. It made for interesting reading — and gives me an opportunity to add my own thoughts — thanks for that, and to Faith who sent me the link.
I was never told as a boy or young man that there was anything dirty about my genitalia. Because of that, in part, I always felt comfortable being seen naked, masturbating when I wanted to or with nearly all sexual acts. I also never felt women’s bodies or genitalia were in any way dirty; to the contrary, as a heterosexual man, I found them desirable whereas I did not find men’s bodies desirable sexually at all.
Since I was unaware of any shame or guilt about my own body, finding “acceptance” with a woman was not on my list of needs. Women in my family already accepted me. As for blowjobs, it never occurred to me that a woman who chose not to swallow, for example, could in some way be rejecting me. I just figured she didn’t want to swallow cum, simple as that. So as for seeking acceptance by cumming on a woman’s face (or body, for that matter), it was also never in the picture. Doing so would have been by request of my partner — not by choice or need.
What I do see missing from this blog, and what Faith brings home in her comments, is more commentary on degradation. At summer “sleep away” camp from 8-12, the all boy campers there and our male counselors (18-25) spoke very little about girls other than in naive, childlike and shallow jargon (”she has big boobs” or “she loves to do it”). It wasn’t until I went to military school at 13 that I observed older boys speaking in more macho terms and acting like assholes (”let’s go out and fuck some girls” or “she really wants to suck my dick”) which all seemed to be code for “Now I am a man so let’s act like one.” I rejected such bullshit and was quickly labeled “queer” or “a pansy” although the terms rolled off me like water on a duck’s back. I had no interest in boys — and a strong attraction to girls, so I felt I was neither queer nor macho — I was somewhere in the middle.
The soft porn (Playboy) I discovered in my older stepbrother’s drawer helped relieve my surging testosterone, although I did not see the degradation in those pages as much as I appreciated the raw desire they enhanced. It would be years before I saw any hard porno at all, and by then I was sexually active enough to have become more interesting in Tantra than money shots — discovering the link between sexuality and spirituality one will never find in porno — there’s an oxymoron if ever there were one.
So reading this blog was interesting more for your understanding of and reflections on fantasies than for anything that struck a chord with me about my penis. I like my penis — always have — and doubt I’ve ever used it to degrade or hurt anyone. If only I could say the same thing about my language or unconscious actions, I’d practically be a saint. Finding a woman who loves my penis like I do, and who allows me to adore her breasts, vagina and clitoris (not to mention her neck, lips and earlobes….etc…..) sort of takes the lion’s share of degradation out of the picture. Hopefully, any remaining idea of “intent to degrade” goes out with it.
I’d like to read what more you can offer on that subject — men’s degradation of women — and how you might directly relate it to a man’s image of his sexual organ.
GT
Faith,
thanks for taking the time to reply - as you rightly noted, I’m new here, so please bear with me if I’m not getting all the coded language right…
I’m not sure what to do with your comment, to be honest. If I understand you correctly, you feel that the degradation is not in the act itself, but in its depiction. Which, in some sense, it seems to me, is close to what I said: “If you think porn is degrading, facials (in porn) are degrading.”
I’m not saying that porn cannot be misogynist, I was merely wondering why it could not possibly be considered to be part of sexuality, of the transcendence that Hugo is referring to with “acceptance”, as I understand it. You seem to believe that, too, when you say that “healthy” porn is a (theoretical) possibility.
Well, I’m not sure what “healthy” is supposed to mean here, to be honest. Just as much as I’m not sure “individual degradation” cannot be part of that “healthy portrayal”, if it can be part of a healthy sexuality as such (this is dangerous territory, linguistically, and I’m not a native speaker). If I’m not mistaken, there are a lot of women who have sexual fantasies and not the slightest intent of ever realizing them, some of which do involve things that would be commonly referred to as “degrading”, as I understand the term. I suppose the same is true for men. What’s inherently wrong with putting that in a movie? Media of all kinds has always been a projection of human fears, dreams, anxieties, desires, and in many cases particularly for the kind of emotions we do not want to discuss literally, or sometimes, not even openly.
I’m sorry to hear that. And I’m sure porn can have a very traumatizing effect, because it takes intimate acts out of an interpersonal context, just as it can have a stimulating effect. And I’m sure there’s porn out there that is intended to degrade women - I just don’t think it is ever done with a “political” intent. And I don’t think it usually has a political effect on the consumer, man or woman. If you trust your man enough to have him ejaculate on your face, would you no longer trust him should he watch the same act performed by two porn actors? Would you feel he’s degrading the woman in the film?
Sam, I think something to keep in mind about porn, that’s helped me navigate some similar discussions: There’s two rather distinct levels on which to view porn.
One, as a sexual fantasy played out by two fictional characters. That’s the level you seem to be speaking on when you say, “What’s inherently wrong with putting that in a movie? Media of all kinds has always been a projection of human fears, dreams, anxieties, desires, and in many cases particularly for the kind of emotions we do not want to discuss literally, or sometimes, not even openly.” You’re dealing with porn-as-fictional-sexuality.
Two, there’s the level of porn as a sexual act actually performed by two human beings, within the context of an industry that’s historically been sleazy, exploitative, illegal, and misogynist. The forces that drive people to perform in porn, and the forces that keep them there, don’t tend to be very uplifting or empowering. (There are many people in the industry who claim to be exceptions, but I’m pretty confident in saying the vast majority of porn actors are not doing it simply for their love of having sex, and the healthy empowerment they get from having sex.)
So, I agree with your point that putting people’s fantasies into fiction is not inherently degrading, even if the fantasy has some power imbalance. However, when we use real people to recreate that actual fantasy with their actual bodies, then we start tapping into all the power imbalances and degradation entrenched in the porn industry. And when you’re creating a work that’s resting on rotten foundations, it doesn’t matter how stable and healthy you intend the work to be — it’s rotting from the inside.
Hi Occhiblu,
Is this different from what I said above (”if you think porn (as it exists) is degrading, then even otherwise not-necessarily degrading acts become degrading by association)? I just wondered if there is something inherently degrading in the particular sexual act referred to in this post. But what I understand is that there is not - it all depends on the context (what you refer to as ‘power imbalances entrenched in the porn industry’).
I don’t really want to get into a general pro/con-porn discussion at this point, as I’m new here, and I feel that would be derailing the issue at hand a little. If browsing the archives gave me the right impression, the topic will come up again in a more general context… (I will add to this, though, that I have yet to hear an argument against porn (between consenting adults) that I find convincing. I can logically follow the power-imbalances argument, and it’s probably factually true to a significant extent, but its application to deny individual agents a free will (”consent”) in the way you (and some feminist strands) suggest will (for me) always smell of a misapplied marxist analogy, often based on logically inaccessible standpoint epistemology.)
Delurking here… I would actually argue that facials are inherently degrading, whether a woman is with a partner she loves and trust or not. Throwing a drink in someone’s face is an act of contempt or derision. Slapping someone is an act of contempt or anger. So, cumming in someone’s face is imbued with the same feelings and so to have a partner who wanted to do that would make me think that they didn’t have the respect for me that I’d assumed they did.
Having said that, Hugo’s comments on multiple factors underlying the facial phenomenon sound possible to me. However, two points:
I don’t actually know if men do think their genitalia is dirty. Cunts are culturally seen as dirty but, at least in my country, penises aren’t. I’m sure in some families it might be different, but I can’t identify that sentiment in my community.
If men have internalised that their genitalia is dirty, I wonder if it’s not so much a ‘I feel validated’ feeling on the part of the male so much as a ‘I may be dirty, but this women is even dirtier’. Because most porn doesn’t depict sex within the context of a relationship, but a dynamic that often casts the women as a nympho, whore, virgin etc I don’t see that the facial in porn can be realistically interpreted as men seeking acceptance. It all comes back to the patriarchy and it’s hiearchy again…
I don’t see that the facial in porn can be realistically interpreted as men seeking acceptance. It all comes back to the patriarchy and it’s hiearchy again…
I guess I kind of think of it like the kid from an abusive home seeking power by bullying his classmates. He’s grown up in an environment in which the only kind of power in play is abusive, he’s powerless at home, and so in an effort both to get power and to relate to others in the only way he’s learned how, he abuses the power he has over other kids. I think most people would look at that kid and say that while it’s unacceptable that he’s being a bully, they can understand his motivation is to find connection but he just doesn’t have a model for how to do that in a healthier way (in fact, we often invoke this idea when we tell little girls that the boys who are picking on them are doing so because they like them).
So yeah, I think it does come back to the patriarchy and its hierarchy, in that if we tell men (or anyone) that they shouldn’t need acceptance, shouldn’t need connection, should be rugged self-sufficient individualists on whom other people depend, then they’re often going to find themselves flummoxed and awkward when they feel the need (as all human beings do) for connection. So the ways in which they express that need may come out extremely warped, because they’re embarrassed by the need.
“I would actually argue that facials are inherently degrading, whether a woman is with a partner she loves and trust or not. Throwing a drink in someone’s face is an act of contempt or derision. Slapping someone is an act of contempt or anger. So, cumming in someone’s face is imbued with the same feelings and so to have a partner who wanted to do that would make me think that they didn’t have the respect for me that I’d assumed they did.”
If the act is imbued with feelings of contempt or degradation, then it is degrading. Any sexual act has the potential to be degrading if the intent of the person performing the act is intending to degrade. If a man cums on my face because I enjoy it, and he enjoys it, it is a mutually pleasurable act. If you do not wish to have a man cum on your face, you are more than welcome to decline such an act and believe that the act is personally degrading to you. However, arguing that it is inherently degrading is severely problematic (to say the least).
I know I said I was done, but wow, a lot has happened here since I posted Friday.
Let me just say a few things:
1. Do whatever turns you (and your partner) on in your own bed. You like facials? You think it’s totally ok with somebody you love? I would not and have never, but hey, enjoy and God bless! I have my own little quirks that I’m sure other people think are weird. We all do. Because we’re human.
2. Facials are MEANT to be degrading in porn. That’s the turn on, and unfortunately, some men take performance-based, paid sex and copy it in real life, for their own satisfaction, regardless of how their partner feels. Those guys are douchebags, not hurt little puppies who need understanding.
3. We seem to have gotten on a porn kick, when what we’re really talking about are men and their motivations, with porn as an example used to make a point. The reason that I originally posted was because, while I understood Hugo’s explanation self-loathing, I saw no follow-up discussing men’s responsibility for their own issues. Inner Pain (which we all have), is no excuse for being a giant asshole. Your partner’s body is not your canvas on which to project your issues.
I totally agree with Hugo’s statement “But when we pressure someone into fulfilling a fantasy primarily for our own healing, we usually end up inflicting new injuries on top of old ones. That’s no good.” I just would have liked to see more than one or two sentences.
I just would have liked to see more than one or two sentences.
hah. That’s why I stick things in bold.
“However, arguing that it is inherently degrading is severely problematic (to say the least).”
I’m not sure that I think it is problematic to argue that it is an act based on degradation. What would be problematic would be to say that therefore I somehow want to enforce some kind of ban on people performing facials in their private sex lives:) Just as we are talking about how men work through issues of feeling dirty by performing a facial, women could be be working through other sets of issues by receiving facials. The motivations behind sex are never simple and I really resist the tendency to shut down analysis of sexual behaviours based on notions of ’sexual freedom’. It leads to a stalemate where you can’t discuss anything because someone, somewhere will say ‘but I loooove that’ and then we all have to shut up in case we offend them. I find it much more interesting to accept as a given that some people will like sexual practices that can seem problematic and remaining aware of that when talking about the cultural meaning of sexual acts.
“If a man cums on my face because I enjoy it, and he enjoys it, it is a mutually pleasurable act”
I was not arguing it couldn’t be mutually pleasurable (although I indicated it wouldn’t be for me) but whether it was a degrading act. The actor in question doesn’t have to be consciously feeling contempt because in our culture throwing something in someone’s face is widely understood as an act of contempt. The action itself has a cultural loading. The question is why is an act remniscent of other cultural acts of contempt pleasurable (either to give or receive) for some men and women?
I can’t help but think that, even if a notion of ‘radical validation’ informs the facial, its performance reinforces a dominant/submissive dynamic. As others have said, we shouldn’t assume that men (or women in a parallel situtaion) therefore get sexual carte blanche to work through their issues without considering whether their chosen means to do so is simply transferring their issues onto their partner’s body.
Ginger,
“1. Do whatever turns you (and your partner) on in your own bed. You like facials? You think it’s totally ok with somebody you love? I would not and have never, but hey, enjoy and God bless!”
I actually believe it’s perfectly acceptable to engage in facials even without someone that an individual woman loves if that is her preference. But thank you for validating my and other women’s right to have a man cum on our face should we enjoy the act under circumstances that we enjoy and do not feel as if we are being degraded.
“2. Facials are MEANT to be degrading in porn. That’s the turn on, and unfortunately, some men take performance-based, paid sex and copy it in real life, for their own satisfaction, regardless of how their partner feels. Those guys are douchebags, not hurt little puppies who need understanding.”
Agreed. Completely totally 100%.
“Inner Pain (which we all have), is no excuse for being a giant asshole. Your partner’s body is not your canvas on which to project your issues.”
I didn’t read Hugo’s post as attempting to excuse men for “being a giant asshole”. I actually read his post as being exactly the opposite. I read it as him attempting to give an explanation for why some men might enjoy facials and blowjobs without having any desire to degrade the woman they are having sex with.
Lilly,
“I was not arguing it couldn’t be mutually pleasurable (although I indicated it wouldn’t be for me) but whether it was a degrading act…The question is why is an act remniscent of other cultural acts of contempt pleasurable (either to give or receive) for some men and women?”
Understood. And I was stating that if I know for a fact that the act is not inherently degrading due to the fact that I have engaged in the act in question without being or feeling the slightest bit degraded. The act in and of itself is not inherently degrading. As far as your question, cumming on a woman’s face is only an act of contempt if the man intends it to be an act of contempt and/or is doing it without consent (or any real desire) from the woman in question. I honestly believe that you are seeing contempt where contempt may or may not be there. Facials can in fact be a quite intimate experience. As I said before, stating that it is inherently degrading is absolutely problematic.
“Just as we are talking about how men work through issues of feeling dirty by performing a facial, women could be be working through other sets of issues by receiving facials.”
Under certain circumstances, such as past abuse, sure. Or they could just enjoy having a man cum on their face.
“I can’t help but think that, even if a notion of ‘radical validation’ informs the facial, its performance reinforces a dominant/submissive dynamic. As others have said, we shouldn’t assume that men (or women in a parallel situtaion) therefore get sexual carte blanche to work through their issues without considering whether their chosen means to do so is simply transferring their issues onto their partner’s body.”
I absolutely believe that facials can be an act of domination. But, to be quite frank, I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to accept that it’s really any different from a man ejaculating on any other part of a woman’s body if his -intent- is simply to ejaculate on her face because the woman enjoys it and he enjoys it. It’s only a culturally loaded act as you stated if you - or the people engaging in it - turn it into a culturally loaded act. Otherwise, it’s just a man ejaculating on a woman’s face.
“As others have said, we shouldn’t assume that men (or women in a parallel situtaion) therefore get sexual carte blanche to work through their issues without considering whether their chosen means to do so is simply transferring their issues onto their partner’s body.”
Agreed.
As another woman who enjoys it, I second the idea that it need not be degrading. To me it’s an act of intimacy. The trick is convincing my partner, who cannot believe that I actually would enjoy it. He sees anything to do with male sexual parts as shameful; unfortunately, no particular practices seem to speak of acceptance to him. I wish we as a culture could get over our collective horror about bodiliness.
I still don’t see how the facial is a greater sign of acceptance than fellatio. In this post, you seem to have put them closer together than you did in class, but the emphasis is still on the facial. I believe the ultimate point of acceptance of the penis is at the decision to spit or swallow. Perhaps I’m just projecting my dislike of messy sex, but as someone above pointed out, the facial by definition makes the receiver dirty while cleansing the man. Fellatio, in my opinion, should be something that is done not out of obligation, but of choice (and ideally a genuine desire to perform the act), and that act of choosing to take a man’s penis inside the mouth and swallowing his semen is the pinnacle of acceptance. Having him release his anxieties and personal issues on my face, however, is another ballgame. I see that as more of a release of these issues but no one is dealing with them, and neither accepting nor rejecting the penis.
Well my initial gut reaction to porn “facials” is negative and I equate the act as probably intended to be degrading to the teenager/very young woman. It paints a picture of sex used as a means to hurt and degrade. Since I don’t watch porn (it is the very antithesis of sexuality/sensuality) my introduction to that particular word for acts in porn was in this blog. (I haven’t read other feminist’s viewpoints on the subject). Prior to that my association with the use of the word facial was very innocent and painted a picture of an indulgent and enjoyable activity that was positive and relaxing. Anything depicted in porn is pretty suspect to me, because its purpose is driven by money, fashion and escalating novelty. The focus of porn is obsessional, just like drugs and alcohol and its purpose is about numbing and desensitizing. I don’t view an obsessional focus as being about freedom. I think it more about enslavement and it constricts a person’s thoughts, emotion’s and feelings to a very narrow focus. It’s difficult for me to view porn “facials” as being about sensual, erotic connection. I can think of scenes in movies which are far more erotic and sensual than anything in porn. I think a lot of people would react, quiet instinctively and negatively to being sprayed in the face by anything (startle response), even if one were anticipating it. I agree with GT and it would never occur to me that a man needing to cum on a woman’s face is about needing her to accept him or that a woman choosing not too is about rejection. I would hope that a man would find my acceptance of him in just the act of intimate, erotic connection.
“Or they could just enjoy having a man cum on their face.
… I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to accept that it’s really any different from a man ejaculating on any other part of a woman’s body.”
I’m going to make this my last comment simply because I’m thinking the two opinions never shall meet:)
1. ejaculating on the body is not the same in my opinion as ejaculating on the face. While in Western cultural touching someone on their shoulder, arm, hand, back is not for most people an act of intimacy touching someone on the face is. I don’t go up and touch my workmate’s cheek because it’s too intimate. Conversely if I wanted to cause my workmate to lose face because they had done something offensive I might throw a drink in their face or slap them or point to them in their face and tell them how I pissed them off. All the ‘offensive actions’ involve an element of surprise designed to catch the recipient offguard and often cause them to lose their composure, even if just momentarily. Facials involve a similar element - so despite the potential for intimacy given cultural norms around the ‘face’ I think this is where the dominant/submissive dynamic is inerasable. I don’t believe we can leave our culture at the bedroom door - sex is invested with cultural beliefs surrounding lust, love etc. Ideas about what is sexy are informed by cultural norms, the appeal of breaking taboos etc. To say that this act doesn’t have to have any connection to culture would logically have to make all sex culture-less, make it all just a matter of physiological sexual response when the range of sexual behaviours in society clearly show this is not the case.
2. This leads me to my second point that sex is (obviously I know) both psychological and physiological. There’s no physiological sexual reason to get off on having someone cum on your face (and there’s a learnt cultural reason in Western society to find it at least mildly offputting) but there are psychological ones related to renacting adominance/submissive dynamic, or seeing this as expected sexual behaviour thanks to porn, a selfless act of love for a partner and I’m sure a host of other reasons I haven’t thought of. So I don’t buy the whole ‘just enjoyment’ factor - there’s more to it than that.
I am guessing the sticking point might be my use of ‘inherently’ but I don’t believe an action has any meaning outside of our culture/society and we can never truly leave our culture/society. So in Western culture I think facials are inherently degrading - their whole evolution and performance mimics other non-sexual actions performed that are designed to make the receiver ‘lose face’ and the giver feel that they have gained power.
As one who’s never been sexually active, I still have thoughts on this subject. Thanks, Hugo, BTW, for not using any dehumanizing terms for “penis” and “testicles.” The clinical words work just fine…
Why do we see more female nudity than male nudity in films? One reason — not necessarily the chief one — is that the male genitals are often more visible than are female ones; if a naked man and a naked woman stand, facing the camera, you will almost definitely see his, while hers may be obscured. So, perhaps, the sense is that “you won’t see as much” with a fully nude woman than you will with a fully nude man.
Of course, this is just one reason; another is that most writers and directors are male. And the male body — not just the genitals — is often seen as gross, no matter how muscular or fit it may be. This is hurtful to both genders, of course: women, I’m sure, become frustrated at seeing a naked woman in a scene when a man (or many men) are fully clothed, whereas men wind up getting told that their bodies are ugly, and therefore that male nudity only “works” within the confines of comedy — think of Will Ferrell, for example.
“Most little boys don’t see their testicles and their penises as entirely separate entities. By the time a boy is six or seven, he’s surely felt the sickening pain of being kicked or hit in the former…”
Good grief, Hugo! I certainly hope this isn’t true.
GT: “I was never told as a boy or young man that there was anything dirty about my genitalia. Because of that, in part, I always felt comfortable being seen naked…”
One need not consider his/her genitals to be “dirty” to wish not to be seen naked Some people are just naturally modest, and modesty isn’t the same thing as shame.
I agree with Lily’s comments - that’s where I stand. I can’t see physiological reasons why a woman would like to have a ‘facial’ (or perhaps even perform oral sex), or why a man would want to give a woman a ‘facial’. Beyond that, when I think about doing either from a woman’s point of view it seems messy, gross - I just can’t see why she’d want to. But I know a number of woman have comented saying they enjoy receiving facials - could they please try to explain what is it that they enjoy about them?
Having never had any form of sex I can only write in a somewhat ‘detached/objective way’, I can’t know what pleasure etc a woman might get from oral sex or a facial: I think about both in a way a young girl might think about both. I think it’s important first understand oral sex etc from how a child might see it, and then see if, and how, it could be justified as good and non-degrading.
A girl who learnt about ‘normal’ VIP sex would probably first react with thinking it an equally gross thing do for the man and for the woman. But a girl learning about oral sex, or a facial, would (I think) see it as extra-gross for the woman, as something extra-dirty for the woman to do(penis/vagina=unclean/for urinating. Mouth=for clean food, not for anything unclean). So from a girl’s perspective a facial, or oral sex, would be worse and more gross/degrading/humiliating for the woman than for the man (but VIP sex would be equally bad for both).
Beyond that, when I think about doing either from a woman’s point of view it seems messy, gross
Oral sex and facials really aren’t that close to the same thing. Oral sex is, a) very frequently reciprocal, and b) usually a situation where you have great control. Facials, I can’t imagine having as much control. So, there are plenty of reasons a woman might be quite happy to do one but not the other. Everything from details like wanting to protect your eyes to getting more out of doing things actively that turn another person on than out of passively submitting, to associating the one and not the other with degradation (like the difference between kissing and being spit on - there are other things that drive degradation/humiliation associations besides the whole “genitals are dirty” thing). They aren’t really one combined degradation/humiliation.