Archive for the 'Porn' Category

Is porn any more defensible when women use it? A response to Eric and Daddyslittlegirl

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 14, 2007
in Favorite posts 2007, Feminism, Porn and Relationships
. 22 Comments

I got an email a few days ago from someone named Eric:

After reading this post over at Ilyka Damen’s blog, I have to ask, what would be your perspective on the idea that it is okay for women to look at porn of men, porn in which the men are objectified? From being a fairly long-time reader of your blog, I know you are very strongly against porn (a sentiment I share), so I have an idea of what your response will be, but still I am curious.

For example, one of the pages linked from that post shows pictures of a man naked in an outdoor picture with clouds blocking his face. Is this not the same objectification and dehumanization (removal of thoughts, simply the portrayal of people as bodies for the viewers’ pleasure) of humans which leads us to believe that porn (featuring women) is morally wrong? I am not trying to waste your time with this question and I am not an MRA (though I am worried that is how I will come across in asking this), I really am trying to find an answer to reconcile this discrepancy. To say that the objectification of women for the pleasure of a man is wrong, but the objectification of men for the pleasure of a women is okay seems to be going against my notion that all humans are entitled to the respect and dignity of not being objectified in such a way.

The post at Ilyka, by the way, is from someone with the handle “daddyslittlegirl”, and yes, the links she puts up are indeed not safe for work. Frankly, for some of us, they may not be “safe” for home or Starbucks either. There’s more than one definition of safety, people, and the freedom to surf without being monitored by an employer is only one.

Perhaps facetiously, perhaps candidly, “daddyslitlegirl” writes:

…once I saw all the pictures of those hot naked guys on the page, I sorta lost track of what anyone else was talking about.

Let me see if I can work through some thoughts here.

One basic tenet of feminism is the refutation of the lie that women don’t have a “visual sexuality.” A great many men I know comfort themselves with the falsehood that “most women don’t like to look”. If men knew how often women were looking, one feels, a great many more men would feel considerably more anxiety. Because we live in a culture where women are shamed for openly lusting, fewer women — obviously — admit to doing so. But that doesn’t mean that women don’t have strong libidos that can be reinforced by various examples of eye candy, including those found in pornography.

Wearing my feminist hat, I can say that there’s a small part of me that responds positively to a woman publicly asserting her own sexual appetite. We live in a culture where women’s sexuality has been denied, suppressed, hidden, and repressed for, well, eons. Though we’ve certainly seen eras (think Puritan America) where men were held equally accountable for controlling their sexuality (Hawthorne got that wrong), in living American memory we’ve seen a culture where men have enjoyed tremendous leeway when it comes to living as sexual beings. The “sex industry” largely caters to men and reinforces the sense that male sexuality is not only powerful, but often uncontrollably so. We aren’t there for women, not by a long shot. So when a woman of any age talks openly about her own lust, she’s doing something countercultural in a way that a man who speaks the same way isn’t. In that sense, there’s something redemptive about the sort of frank post that daddyslittlegirl (I’m not commenting on her handle) has put up.

If you read through my “porn archive”, you’ll see that I object to porn on a number of levels. I object to it because of what it does both to the subject and the object in the visual transaction. I object to it because I believe that most women (and men) who work in the porn industry are exploited, placed at great risk, and generally undercompensated. The fact that a few porn stars become famous and rich, the fact that a few loudly trumpet their own sense of contentment with their work, doesn’t change the fact that a great many more young people (mostly women) suffer physical, economic, and psychic injury. In this sense, my veganism and my anti-porn stance are analogous: they are both based on the assumption that using another being’s flesh for my own pleasure is deeply and profoundly sinful. That’s a radical stance, but it’s one rooted in the best instincts of both the Christian and the feminist traditions.

Again, let me be clear: I’m not a killjoy. Neither were my Puritan ancestors! I’m not against lust or sex. Lust has a tremendously positive aspect; like any other hunger, it teaches us we’re alive. Desire, in and of itself, is neither bad nor good. But whatever our desire — for a new Mercedes, for a steak, for someone else’s ripped and toned body — when we act on that desire without regard for how our actions affect the world around us, we sin.

I’m also against porn because of what it does to the viewer. Even if every sex industry performer was well-compensated, emotionally well-adjusted, and receiving health benefits with a pension plan, I’d still be troubled by porn. I’m troubled by it because porn disconnects lust from commitment and responsibility; it teaches the lesson that the bodies of others are ours for the taking. I am convinced that spiritually and psychologically, “porn consumption” makes us a little less compassionate, a little less sensitive, a little less likely to connect our own pleasure with our responsibility to share joy and pleasure with another. Because I live as a heterosexual man, I’m more intimately familiar with how this works in the lives of men. But I’m well aware that a growing percentage of “porn product” is consumed by women. While some women surely pretend to enjoy porn in order to please their male partners, there’s no question that a great many others actively delight in viewing it and masturbating to it. And Eric is absolutely right that when he assumes that I find it no less troubling when women do it.

As a feminist, I rejoice that we’ve come so far in our struggle to get the world to acknowledge the reality of women’s sexuality. The “sugar and spice and everything nice” (read: asexual) ideal deserves to die a quick death. The stereotype that women trade sex for what they only really want, love (while men do the reverse) fails to capture both the potential power of the female libido and the potential depth of the male soul. But when it comes to pornography, when it comes to consuming the bodies of the young and the economically vulnerable with our eyes, I see no reason to believe it’s any better when the viewer is a woman and the object is a man. My anti-porn stance is hard, fast, and gender-neutral. (If that line seems vaguely subjective to you, for shame!)

I need to prepare a lecture on Esau, Jacob, Rebekah, Isaac, and birth order.

Why pornography bothers me more than depictions of violence: a response to Dethboy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 31, 2007
in Movies, Porn and Sexuality
. 62 Comments

In addition to this long one from yesterday, the other post I’ve had percolating in my head is about porn and violence. It comes in response to something I hear quite often from folks: why is it that so many Christians seem so concerned with pornography, and less concerned with violence. For example, in response to my post on “anxiety and arousal” last week, “Dethboy” writes:

…the dirty secret of porn (is) that most of it is actually not that bad…

The most graphic pornography I have ever encountered entailed a woman having needles inserted, one by one, into her breasts, and then extracted. There was a trickle of blood, and it was expressed that it was painful, but overall, the atmosphere was erotic but clinical, precise. Compare this to Saw II, or Hostel, or Turistas. Is seeing someone have sex as negative an impact as seeing someone get thrown into a pit full of needles, have their kidney cut out while their awake, or have their eye torn out in graphic detail? Is seeing a woman get facialed as upsetting as seeing a man impaled on a spike? Would you rather have your children see a woman having sex, or a man being shot in the face? Hugo stands in the middle of a burning house, demanding that, right now, the candle be put out on the night stand, because it’s the *real* problem, not the walls catching fire or the ceiling caving in.

I’ve missed the horror films Dethboy references, but I get the point. “Porn is just about sex”, folks say; “violence is so much worse.” Surely it’s misplaced puritanism to get so worked up about pornography and to be less concerned about violence. There’s a thoughtful response to that, one that others have made (one that my brother Philip makes quite eloquently), and in this post I want to get to it.

Let me be clear that I have little stomach for graphic violence. I hated pictures like Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction because of the violence — bloodshed so relentless that it vitiated any redeeming artistic qualities the films had. I went through a brief period in early adolescence where I liked scary movies, but that ended by the time I was old enough to drive. I view the current revival of low-budget horror films as a cynical attempt by Hollywood to maximize profits by working with C-list actors and D-list writers to produce films that can generate quick and massive returns.

I’m willling to sit through heavy violence as part of a larger story; I actully liked last year’s “A History of Violence”, and I’ve sat through my share of war movies in the “Saving Private Ryan” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” vein. And of course, I’m also comfortable with sex scenes in movies, particularly when those sex scenes serve the primary purpose of advancing the plot and providing a depth to the characters, rather than serving merely to titillate. (The graphic sex in “A History of Violence”, for example, fit that bill.) I’m not by nature prudish! I am reluctant to see the bodies of others exploited on screen for my pleasure, whether that pleasure comes in the form of chills (as in a slasher film) or arousal (as in porn). When bodies tell a story, that’s somehow radically different than when they serve only to arouse or shock.

But the thing about depictions of violence in films, television, or in print is simple: it is the graphic depiction of something that we know to be fundamentally bad. To use Dethboy’s example, everyone recognizes instinctively that throwing someone onto a bed of needles is wrong. There is never an instance where to do so is good and loving. In certain instances, killing a bad guy might be justifiable, but most of us are aware that violence itself, while perhaps necessary, is never an a priori good. The violence we see in these films is violence of the sort few of us will ever engage in, Lord willing. The violence we see depicted is what the vast majority of us would never want done to us, and would never want to do to another.

But sex is different. Most of us will have sex at some point in our lives, with ourselves or someone else. Most of us want to have sex, and most of us (it is to be most fervently hoped) will have very good sex at some point with someone we love very much. Sex is, at its best, spine-tinglingly, earth-shatteringly, transcendently good. And most of us know that, or very much want to know it!

Porn lies. Porn misrepresent sex. It takes something that is fundamentally good and joyful and mutual and makes it selfish. It teaches a strong connection between the bodies of others and one’s own pleasure without demanding an iota of concern for the well-being of the other. Ask women whose husbands and boyfriends regularly use porn: are they better lovers as a consequence? Though they might pick up a “trick” or two, they are also far more likely to be distant, remote, and concerned with their own pleasure as a consequence.

Pornography is ultimately more harmful than depicted violence because of the far greater likelihood that those who watch porn will want to imitate what they see. Dethboy refers to “facials”: the ubiquitous habit in modern porn of ejaculating onto a woman’s face. When I was growing up, facials weren’t common in porn. And none of my male friends with whom I talked in great detail about sex talked about the practice; now, I hear frequently from young women whose boyfriends are eager to “try it”. Most of the women, understandably, are at best ambivalent about having their faces and their hair splattered! “Facials” are just one example of a “learned behavior” from porn.

When we see axe murders in the movies, only a tiny fraction of us (thank heavens) will say “Gosh, I’d like to try that!” When we see porn, and particularly when the young watch porn, they are far more likely to draw inspiration from what is shown. (Think about it, people: A young man, watching “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” with his girlfriend, is very unlikely to have an insatiable urge to trundle down to Home Depot, buy a Husqvarna*, and dismember her. Watching the male star of “Cum Bunnies of Cleveland VII” ejaculate on the faces of his co-stars may spark a more imitative response!) For those who watch porn regularly, particularly in adolescence, their sense of what sex is and of how it is supposed to work is deeply affected by what they see. And what they see is almost never loving or mutual. What they see, alas, is a lie.

So yeah, porn bothers me more than violence. And while watching a horror movie might give a teen a night of bad dreams, watching porn may help shape a whole worldview about men, women and pleasure. I’m pretty clear which is more harmful.

*Though you wouldn’t think if of effete little OKOP me, I know quite a bit about chainsaws, having spent much of my childhood on a ranch, clearing brush with an enthusiasm that would put our president (a famous brush-clearer) to shame. And based on years of experience, I’m a great and loyal believer in Husqvarna saws, another fine product from the socialist democracy of Sweden. This is the one I currently covet.

Anxiety and arousal: the lessons porn teaches

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 23, 2007
in Favorite posts 2007, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Porn, Sexuality and Youth
. 27 Comments

If you are so inclined, you can download and listen to an MP3 of my appearance on Broadly Speaking last night. Click where it says “Listen Now to the Latest Broadly Speaking”. I’m on for for a full thirty minutes, and have a good discussion with the show’s two Canadian co-hosts about feminism, pornography, the Suicide Girls site, and larger issues around the objectification of women. I enjoyed the experience very much. I’m a multi-tasker; if you listen closely, you might hear me folding laundry in the background as I chat.

Both of the hosts of the show are college-aged feminists. One (I can’t remember which, alas) remarked that she first visited the “Suicide Girls” porn website when she was about sixteen. And we had an all-too brief digression into some of the various reasons why so many young women are curious about pornography, even porn that is produced primarily for the male gaze.

Those who defend pornography against the charge that it exploits women invariably point out that a sizeable number of women pay for and view pornography. Depending on who you talk to, and what statistics they claim to have, anywhere from 20-40% of viewers and subscribers to porn sites are female. While those numbers are hard to verify, and might be exaggerated for ideological reasons, I’m not a statistician and I don’t have contrary evidence, so I’ll take the claims at face value.

It is to be hoped that it is no longer revolutionary to declare that women have a visual component to their sexuality! Only a true troglodyte would claim that “women don’t like to look”. The evidence is clear that a substantial number of women do find porn arousing. Of course, that doesn’t make it feminist! It’s no more inherently feminist for a woman to pay for porn than it is for a woman to pay another woman to clean her toilets. The fact that a financial exchange takes place between women doesn’t mean it is completely free from anti-feminist implications. The problem of porn, from a feminist standpoint, involves both the impact on the “product” and the “consumer”.

But as the co-host last night remarked, a great many young women don’t look at porn merely to be sexually stimulated. As we talked about on the show, one of the things young women — particularly those just entering adolescence — look for in pornography is not their own arousal but cues to the nature of male arousal. Over and over again, we hear stories from young women who discovered their father’s Playboys (or, today, his browser history). We hear them talk about a mix of disgust and fascination with what they found. And I’ve heard from countless young women stories of how they carefully studied the centerfolds and the models, asking themselves “Is this how I need to pose? Is this what I should look like? Is this what I need to do to be desirable?”

Nothing could be more anti-feminist than having porn used as a teaching tool for young women. As we see with Suicide Girls, even porn that claims to be feminist-friendly is usually under the financial control and artistic direction of men, produced for a primarily male audience and reflecting primarily male sensibilities. Leaving aside the issue of how it impacts male viewers, leaving aside the issue of whether or not the women who pose are exploited, feminists ought to be troubled by the role that porn plays as a teaching tool for young women.

So many young women recall encountering porn just as they were in the process of beginning to discover their own sexuality; what porn too often taught was that they needed to think about their sexuality in terms of their visual appearance and their desirability to men rather than their own subjective wants and needs. I’ve often led discussions — with both college and high-school aged boys and girls — about the “first time” they saw porn. To generalize enormously, two very different words characterize their responses. From the boys, the stories I hear about the first time they encountered porn tend to revolve around arousal – most, but by no means all, confess to having been powerfully turned on by what they saw. On the other hand, while arousal is not an unheard of response from young women either, the most common theme I hear from them, over and over again, is anxiety. For many of these young women, their first experience looking at porn is shocking, even frightening. “This is what men think about? This is what they want?” It’s an experience that leaves many, many young women vaguely disheartened, confused, and often profoundly anxious.

I recongize that the plural of anecdote is not evidence. I’m not a social scientist, and this is not a refereed journal. I write about porn on many levels. I write as a Christian, concerned at the commodification of one of God’s greatest gifts. I write as a man, worried about the power of pornography to shape the fantasies and expectations of my brothers. I write as a husband who longs for his wife; I write as a husband who knows just how glorious sex can be and just how great the lies are that porn tells about it. I write as a feminist, deeply troubled by the frequent (if not universal) exploitation and abuse of those women who work in the porn industry. And I write as a teacher and youth leader whose heart aches for those young women who look in porn for clues about male desire, and who take from porn their cues as to how they ought to look and act and think.

I’ll be on the radio talkin’ ’bout Suicide Girls

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 22, 2007
in Feminism, Porn, Sexuality and Vanity
. 32 Comments

…tonight. I’ll be a call-in guest on a Canadian feminist program called “Broadly Speaking”. The show airs on CHRW, London, Ontario. You can listen live here. The show will also be audio-archived.

It should air between 4:30-5:00PM Pacific time, 7:30-8 Eastern.

I’l be talking about the Suicide Girls, alt. porn, and feminism. My original post on the subject somehow didn’t get transferred over from my old blog, so I’m reposting it here:

The Suicide Girls site (I won’t link to it, but you can figure it out yourself -it is not “work safe”) is the pioneer “alt-porn” center on the web. Begun in 2001, the idea of Suicide Girls was to provide women-friendly erotica with a counter-cultural sensibility. Many “Suicide Girls” were tattooed and pierced, relatively few had bodies that matched the surgically-enhanced proportions of women in mainstream porn. The “girls” had their own photos on the sites, and kept journals as well — often including cultural and political commentary that went far beyond what might be found in, say, Playboy. The attitude was one of a certain kind of youthful, feminist edginess.

It turns out that Suicide Girls is controlled by a man, Sean Suhl. Apparently, he’s accused of underpaying some of his models (the site now has over 800 young women on it); here’s an insider’s account (quite work safe and non-pornographic). He’s also tied Suicide Girls to Playboy (paying members of the latter’s site have access to the SG women); it would be nearly impossible to make the case that Playboy is advancing a feminist agenda!

I’ve made it clear that I am deeply troubled by pornography. The fact that I insist on making the unfashionable claim that visual erotica has a corrosive and destructive influence on society does not mean, however, that I can’t make distinctions! Different kinds of porn trouble me for different reasons. Obviously, pornography/erotica that emphasizes the humanity and the agency of the people depicted in it is preferable to porn that treats women or men as disposable objects. By the same token, porn that has a broader and more inclusive range of body types is, in some sense, less objectionable than porn that provides examples of only one unattainable ideal. But “less objectionable” is thin praise indeed, at least as far as I’m concerned.

On the other hand, one of the things that I find even more objectionable about sites like the Suicide Girls is that they’ve dressed up porn in the language of rebellion and female empowerment. In a sense, this is where I find the likes of Larry Flynt (publisher of Hustler) to be less offensive than men like Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls. Flynt doesn’t pretend he’s empowering his models; he embraces raunch with a bracingly candid enthusiasm that even his detractors often find to be — almost — winsome. Fellas like Suhl are out to make money off women’s bodies in much the same way Flynt is, but in Suhl’s case, greed seems hidden behind the rhetoric of edginess, alternative culture, and a rather shallow feminism. It’s hard to respect that. And if many of the women of Suicide Girls have caught on to what’s going on, then I can’t say I’m not pleased.

I’ve had three students in the past few years tell me, through journals in my women’s studies classes, that they were among the hundreds of Suicide Girls. (No, I didn’t verify their claims by visiting the site.) As I’ve written before, I’ve had a number of both current and former sex workers of one kind or another in my classes. Some have described their experiences as horrific; others as exciting and empowering; others as “just a job.” Of course, I’ve probably had far more than I know of, as it’s not the sort of thing everyone feels comfortable disclosing. I’m respectful of those whose experiences in the “industry” have been positive. There are few things more absurd than a pro-feminist man trying to convince an adult woman that she’s being exploited when she’s quite convinced she’s not! I won’t try and play that game.

But to be a feminist is about more than individual empowerment. Young women who defend certain niches of the porn industry as woman-friendly must be willing to ask hard questions about who really controls sites like the Suicide Girls. They also have to be willing to consider not just the impact on the individual models/performers, but on the broader culture. The fact that doing a shoot for Suicide Girls makes you feel empowered doesn’t mean that the audience masturbating to your pictures is going to recognize you as any more of a human being than if you had done a shoot for, say, Hustler! Authentic feminism asks us to consider how others might interpret our actions. Our good intentions are not enough. We have to be mindful of the broader context, of the repercussions, of everything we do. I’ve posted often on porn and accountability; the main archive is here, and recommend this post in particular. And though I recognize that many women turn to sex work out of financial necessity, others (like many of the Suicide Girls) seem to have a wider range of motives. I’m hopeful that the fallout from this latest controversy will cause at least some of them to think more deeply about porn and feminism.

Ampersand, male bloggers, selling out: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 10, 2006
in Blogging, Men and Masculinity and Porn
. 26 Comments

I’m feeling a tiny bit better.

Warning: explicit language ahead.

I learned this evening from Lauren (who is working with me to create a new wordpress blog, about which you will all learn soon) about the serious news regarding Barry (Ampersand) and Alas, A Blog.   Amp has been one of the most important voices in the pro-feminist men’s blogging community; indeed, he might well be the best-known male feminist blogger.  (Cuz it sure as heck isn’t me.)  I’ll always be grateful that Amp called in to the Glenn Sacks show when I was a guest in January 2005. (Bored?  Download the free MP3 of that broadcast.)

Anyhow, Violet summarizes what has happened:

I’m just now discovering what some of you may already know: Barry sold his domain to a pornographer, so now his blog is hosted alongside hard-core porn reviews. The deal is that the huge traffic to Alas — feminist traffic, generated by people who have built up that readership over years — drives up the search engine rankings for the pornographer. (Heart has a fuller explanation of the deal.)

Barry didn’t bother to tell any of his readers about this until someone discovered the links and asked him what the fuck was going on. Even now I’m not sure most of his readers are aware of it, since Barry’s explanatory post didn’t allow comments and so rapidly sank to the bottom of the list.

I think this is absolutely vile.

Lauren has more:

Some may think this is small beans, but in a community where sexual politics are so very personal, as well as political, this is an enormous business gaffe of exceeding irony. Of all the things one can do to save a buck, making money off the backs (and mouths and pussies) of women is not one that I encourage for a feminist man.

I do understand that hosting a popular blog is expensive.  I don’t criticize my fellow bloggers who accept advertising or who market shirts, caps, and other blogware.   This (NSFW), however, goes well beyond the acceptable.

Men who blog as pro-feminists are –rightly or wrongly — under a microscope.  Anti-feminists and feminists alike are frequently suspicious of our motives.   Is our feminism a strategy for sexual conquest?  Is it a manifestation of self-loathing?  Are we for real, or are we frauds?  Lauren’s right: in the feminist blogosphere, sexual politics are personal as well as political.  How we live our lives matters.  What we do for money, what we do for pleasure, what we do in private must be congruent with what we profess in public. 

The feminist community is split over the porn issue.  Some of us are hostile to all forms of visual erotica, at least in commercial form; others are more ambivalent; still others of us are enthusiastic proponents of helping women become more active, discerning consumers of pornography. All of us, however, are concerned with the impact that the male-dominated, male-centered commercial sex industry has on our lives.  All of us are concerned with the impact on the women who work in the "industry."  Alas, A Blog was a forum for discussing this very topic.  But it is impossible to see Amp’s blog as "safe ground" for that discussion when it is sponsored and supported by pornographers.

I’ve forsworn the "good feminist", "bad feminist" game.  (See Jill today for more on this aspect of the topic.)    I gave up discussing the whole idea of "feminist credentials" after this debacle.  But I do think that it is important that feminists in general, and pro-feminist men in particular, talk about our communal obligations.   Given that we daily tread on very personal ground, given that we write about our intimate lives and advocate for radical changes in how we and others live those lives, we have a huge responsibility to be clear and honest and gentle with each other.  ("Honest" and "gentle" are not mutually exclusive.)  And quietly selling a prominent feminist blog’s domain name to someone who will use it to drive traffic to porn sites is a hurtful, bewildering, and — until I hear more — frankly inexplicable act.

If what I do for money, or what I do in my marriage, or what I do in my church, or what I do in my classroom doesn’t match my professed beliefs, my friends, family, students, colleagues and readers had better call me on it.  And right now, a lot of us are calling Barry (Amp) on this one.  Barry, you owe your readers a public forum where you can further explain your decision, and offer those who are stunned and hurt an opportunity to express that to you directly.

It’s the right thing to do, and it needs to happen right now.

UPDATE:  Amp has responded swiftly with a new post, further explaining his decision and his regrets.  He has also wisely and bravely opened that thread up to comments.  It was indeed the right thing to do, and I commend him for it.  Thanks to those of my commenters who pointed this out.

Yves Magloe and “Guy Candy”: two PCC updates

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 28, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, Feminism, Pasadena City College, Porn and Sexuality
. 6 Comments

An update on two Pasadena City College-related stories I’ve blogged about recently.

First off, I had a good meeting yesterday morning with the college’s brand-new VP for Human Resources.  We discussed the Yves Magloe situation (see here and here)   It was our current VP’s predecessor who chose to fire Yves after his mental break-down; the new VP assured me that he agrees that that was a very poor decision from both a moral and a legal standpoint.  Our new VP has met with Yves and is committed to creating an environment here on campus where Yves can continue to teach, continue to enjoy job security, and receive the help he needs. 

The veep and I agreed that we need to create a more open atmosphere on campus for the discussion of mental health issues as they relate to employment and teaching.  I told him I was very grateful for his support.  Bottom line: the good guys won on this one, folks.  Yay.

Second of all, I posted two weeks ago about the student newspaper, the Courier, and its brand-new weekly column Eye Candy, featuring Playboy-centerfoldesque interviews with young attractive PCC students. The first three "eye candy" models were women.  But today’s issue has (for the second straight week) a young man for us to gaze at.  The paper, mustering all the cleverness and excellence that might be expected of student journalists, calls it "Guy Candy."

Will this cause the complaints to die down?  I worry that it will.  Far too many folks assume that the solution to a culture that primarily objectifies women is to create a culture in which men are also objectified.  If there’s equal opportunity ogling, then there’s no problem.  I don’t share that view for a couple of reasons:

First off, being perceived as sexually attractive — particularly for young community college students — is quite different for men and women.   Hot "guy candy" dudes  are less likely to be sexually harassed than their equally attractive sisters.   They are unlikely to have their (mostly male) teachers staring at their well-defined chests and ignoring what they have to say.  There’s little sense that being perceived as hot hurts a young man’s professional or academic aspirations.  The same cannot be said for young women who are perceived as very attractive.

And more importantly, I’ve always despised the notion of "fighting fire with fire." The fact that men can be made into sexual objects doesn’t lessen the pain of women who have to live with the consequences of their own objectification every darned day.  The fact that some men get raped by other men doesn’t mitigate the suffering of women who are also survivors of rape.

Belatedly including men in the newspaper’s Eye Candy section  is clearly designed to deflect feminist criticism.  In the minds of some, perhaps, being an "equal opportunity offender" is better than singling out one sex.  But committing a second murder doesn’t lessen the pain inflicted by the first; insulting first blacks and then Jews doesn’t mean that the former should be any less enraged because they’ve been attacked by someone whose bigotry applies to all, not merely to some.  And similarly, objectifying men doesn’t lessen the offense of objectifying women.

I think it was Audre Lorde who said "You can’t dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools."  And fighting fire with fire will only burn the whole house down.

Another note on trust, parents, blogging, and youth ministry: a response to Rob

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 15, 2006
in Blogging, Family, Porn and Youth ministry
. 8 Comments

In a comment below yesterday’s post on sex in marriage, Rob at Unspace provides a link to a post of his: Sex, Christians, Blogs, and Youth Group.

Like me, Rob works with a high school youth group in his church.   In both his church and mine, the youth programs got underway this week, replete with introductions.  Rob wrote:

Last night, we handed out contact information to the kids in our chatroom. Mine used my gmail address, which is a mess and happens to include my paramedic con-ed number. Like I said, a mess. Not something easy to remember. I realized I dare not mention my blog to my 7th and 8th graders.

I’m not hiding it because of the copious amounts of profanity on this blog, or all the photos of sexual organs (some of those insect shots had to include sexual organs). For crying out loud, kids in this age group have seen harder pornography than I have. Given that I regularly do medical searches, that frightens me. But that’s not why I dare not mention this blog.

I am afraid a parent or someone at the church will find this blog. See, I say what I believe. Ok, so maybe I’ll soften it a bit and put some spin on it or explain it in subtle ways to get past watchful dragons. But I say things that are the truth, even if they will get me in trouble. 3

The church I go to is mostly conservative. In the 2004 election, the whole "Christians vote for Bush, because we’re selling our soul to the Republican Party" schtick got on my nerves. I’m actually not the most liberal person in the church. But can you imagine what happens to the head of the youth group if someone goes screaming to the head minister with the URL for this blog?

In his comment below my post yesterday, Rob asks if I ever get grief from parents because of my blog.

Most of "my kids" know about my blog.  Some have found it on their own, or been told about it.  Some came only for pictures of my chinchilla, others to read more about their youth leader.  Most don’t read regularly.  "Your blog is boring", I’ve been told by more than one of the kids in my youth group.  They tell me this apologetically, and usually urge me to go back on Myspace.  (A topic I dealt with here.)

A number of parents do read my blog.  One of our pastors at All Saints, Susan Russell, blogs; she’s linked here for quite some time.  I only occasionally blog about issues in the Anglican Communion, but I blog regularly about sexuality, adolescents, and my experiences as a professor and veteran youth group leader.  I’m fortunate that no parents have, to my knowledge, complained to church authorities about the sexual content of this blog.   They have, however, complained about some of my views; when I wrote words of praise about conservative Anglican Kendall Harmon, I apparently ticked off some liberal parent.  It says something about All Saints Pasadena that my cordial relationship with Christian traditionalists is more worrisome to some parents than my frank blogging about human sexuality!

I walk a fine line at church.  On the one hand, as a youth leader, I feel a tremendous responsibility to be a good shepherd to "my kids", knowing that they belong to their parents and to our God more than to me.  I am humbled by this opportunity to work so closely with these teens, to share with them so much of their lives.   With many, I see them every week of their high school years (save for vacation times); I watch them grow and change.  I’ve been with them through a lot: coming to terms with their own homosexuality; going through their parents’ divorce;  losing their virginity; unwanted pregnancies; the suicide of close friends; heartbreak; bad prom dates; abortions; drug addiction; legal troubles; anorexia; the anxiety of college applications.    And I’ve been with them through a lot of joy as well — I’ve gone to concerts and plays and basketball games and graduations. 

I always try to get to know the parents of my teens.  They need to see me, have a relationship with me, and they need to know they can approach me with their concerns.  They need to trust me, because, like any youth leader, I’m going to hear things from my kids that I can’t repeat to their parents.   My teens share a lot with me.  I meet with them in groups, but also one-on-one.  (Always on church grounds in a place where we can be seen but not heard.)  Frequently, kids tell me things that they don’t want their parents to know.  Sometimes, I encourage them to bring the issues they are struggling with to their mother or father. Other times, I acknowledge that that kind of disclosure is not for the best.  I keep confidences well, knowing that only in a few very specific instances (like an admission of suicidal thoughts) am I obligated to disclose what I have been told. 

Obviously, parents need to trust that I have their kids’ best interests at heart.  If they discover this blog, I would hope that they would gather that I am, at my core, fundamentally safe.  Yes, I’ve had a colorful background with a lot of pre-conversion chaos.  But my transformation is real, and enough years have passed that there need be no fear of Hugo relapsing into old, irresponsible behavior.  My past is now a resource for me to tap into to use with troubled teens.  I know what it’s like to get someone pregnant in high school.  I can roll up my sleeves and show the scars from years of serious self-mutilation.  Those are tools for me to use to connect with frightened, overwhelmed, and alienated teenagers. 

I could probably be a youth minister at very few places besides All Saints Church Pasadena.   At many places, my past and my persona would be obstacles to putting me in a position of trust with so many teenagers.  But at All Saints, I have earned that trust with seven years of transparency, seven years of accountability, seven years of retreats, lock-ins, dances and intimate discussions.  I’ve earned it by hearing, hugging, and holding hundreds and hundreds of kids in a way that is both respectful and exuberant.    My boundaries are excellent, but I won’t let fear hold me back from loving the kids the way Christ calls me to love them.  And I won’t let worry about what parents might think hold me back from blogging about my past, my present, and my myriad, contradictory views about the world.  Because though I change my politics like I change my socks, my commitment to feeding His lambs is unrelenting.  And if you’ve spent time with me, you know that.

I hope that all youth ministers can be as fortunate as I have been and continue to be.

Reprint: Porn, HIV, Freedom, Responsibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 25, 2006
in Porn
. 13 Comments

This will be my last reprint before resuming regular blogging on Monday, August 28.  I’m reprinting the post that first drew significant attention to this blog — this was, for better or worse, the "break-out" post that ended up quadrupling my number of visitors.  I’m grateful for that, and though the Lara Roxx story is now nearly two and a half years old, I stand by everything I wrote back on April 17, 2004.

Okay, folks, time for Hugo’s long Saturday night rant:

The adult entertainment industry in Los Angeles (the porn capital of the world, thank you) has been hard hit by news that two of its stars have recently tested positive for HIV. Some companies have shut down production entirely, others are continuing business as usual, some are shifting to a "safer-sex" format.

Some folks might respond to this story with schadenfreude, or at the least, with a certain lack of compassion for the people involved. "What else should they have expected?", a reasonable person might ask of those who perform in porn; "they are reaping the consequences of their actions",others might — with some justification — say.

The one woman known to be infected with HIV is an 18 year-old porn actress (who has only worked in the business three months) named Lara Roxx. She contracted HIV through unprotected anal sex with two men during the shooting of one particular film in March. What she was doing was perfectly legal, as it was in the workplace and she was over 18. No one — least of all the producers of the film — showed the slightest regard for this young woman who is still, for all psychological and spiritual purposes, very much in adolescence. (For obvious reasons, I’m not going to link to any porn sites — all my information about her has been gleaned from mainstream, non-x-rated media.) Brian Flemming, who apparently works close to the industry, put it best in his blog:

Lara Roxx had zero protection by government agencies. There was no cop on that set. No fire marshal. No doctor. Nobody had a license. And nobody broke the law by paying a teenager to accept the uncovered penises of two men into her anus.

Roxx showed poor judgment, yes. She isn’t blameless. But there are plenty of neophyte stunt performers in L.A. who would also be delighted to show some poor judgment and get themselves hurt or killed on a Hollywood movie set–but the government regulates those sets. I’ve auditioned plenty of eager young actors who would no doubt be willing to do their own dangerous stunts if it meant getting a good role and getting paid–but the LAPD, the LAFD and the Screen Actors Guild would all have something to say about that.

The 18-year-olds flooding into the porn industry have just about nobody. The porn companies label them "independent contractors," so the performers don’t even have the workplace safety protections that fry cooks at Burger King do.

Lara Roxx, who is too young to legally drink in a bar, has HIV not just because she participated in a dangerous sex act. She also has HIV because there was nobody to stop the producers from dangling money and other inducements in front of this young woman to get her to take that risk.

It’s important for porn to be legal. The government has no business outlawing sex or sexual fantasy. But this principle is not so sacred that we need to allow an industry to exploit and endanger its workers. There’s no fundamental right to express HIV. There’s no right to pay someone to play Russian roulette for your entertainment.

But we Californians have decided that the sex industry is the one industry that is allowed to lure young women and men and use them as it pleases. No politician speaks for these workers. No union imposes conditions on their employers.

The mainstream film industry, while making billions from distributing porn on the QT, doesn’t have any use for the dirty people who actually make it.

The porn industry has become increasingly mainstream, so much so that on the same day that the HIV story broke in LA, the New York Times did an "at home" feature in its House and Garden section on porn star Jenna Jameson’s 6700 square foot palace in Arizona. But this increasingly accepting attitude towards pornography is still another example of how our society is abandoning its responsibility to care for and protect all of its citizens.

(In the earlier version of this post, not all of the above paragraphs were correctly highlighted to indicate that they were Flemming’s).

I know firsthand how destructive porn can be. I cannot say I have not enjoyed looking at it; I can also say with confidence that exposure to it has invariably left me feeling ashamed, alienated, and sad. That may not be a universal experience, but it is certainly a very common response! Like in so many other areas (abortion, plastic surgery) we frame the debate about pornography in terms of choices. Women should have the choice to work in porn. Men should have the choice to work in porn. Women and men should have the choice to consume porn as well. As long as everyone (performer, producer, marketer, consumer) is over 18, where is the harm?

The harm is in my soul when I view it. The harm is in Lara Roxx’s body right now. Lara Roxx no doubt has another name, which we in the public don’t know. Porn stars, almost without exception, change their names when they work in the industry. "Lara Roxx" is not a person in the male porn consumer’s mind, she’s an object for fantasy and objectification. But beneath Lara’s violated and brutalized flesh is a young girl who has what I imagine is a far humbler name (a Nicole, a Jennifer, a Maria, an Elizabeth perhaps). I don’t know her, but I’m pretty damned confident that in 1996, when she was TEN, the little girl who would become Lara Roxx (HIV-infected porn actress) did not dream of becoming famous and wealthy for having anal sex with two men on camera. Her hopes for herself were, I suspect, simpler, warmer, and filled with infinitely more longing and promise.

The fact that Lara is 18 and consented to the making of this film means no crime was committed under California law. I’m not interested in ranting about the law. I’m grieving because Lara’s story reminds me of how much damage porn does to so very many lives. Lara’s very life is now in jeopardy. You can say she has some culpability, and I agree, she does. But the only reason the money is so good for young women in porn is because men are willing to pay quite a bit to see girls like Lara naked and exposed and penetrated. I confess that in the past I have been guilty of that very sin. My dollars have fed an industry of death, and I grieve that. And I know that I too — and countless other men — have been damaged. When men like me lust after girls like she who is called Lara Roxx (she’s 18, I’ll be damned if I’ll call her a grown woman), we scar our spirits and tarnish our relationships with all the other women in our lives as a consequence. I have worked hard to make certain that when I see teenage girls and young women (and I work with them daily), I see them as people worthy of my respect, friendship, and — yes — my protection.

I know there are women who work in the porn industry (the aforementioned Jameson chief among them) who are proud of what they do, who refuse to see themselves as exploited, who have reaped large financial rewards. While I accept their experience as valid, I am convinced that they are rare and over-hyped exceptions. I am convinced that the reality of the porn industry — for performers of both genders — is pyschically, physically, emotionally and morally far bleaker than its few superstars will ever admit.

As a man, I am called to do the hard but essential work of looking beneath the hyper-sexualized surface image that young women so often adopt in our society today. I owe it to myself, to the woman with whom I share my bed and my life, and to these young women themselves. The fact that many young girls and women choose to make themselves objects of desire does not lessen for one second my obligation to look past that veneer and see them as my younger sisters whom I need to honor, love, and care for. The girl who is called Lara is sick today. I imagine that tonight she’s scared beyond words, filled with regret and fear. I’m praying for her, and I ask God for forgiveness because I know that in some small way, my money has in the past helped to fuel the industry that has done this to her.

Porn kills many things: innocence, hope, trust, health, bodies, spirits. I know it is hip today to proclaim it harmless, but the unfashionable fact is that this is an industry built on distorted fantasy, loneliness, and despair. And we on the left need to stop hiding behind the First Amendment issues and articulate this untrendy but vital truth.

Originally posted April 17, 2004

More on men, women, hazing, and why we should avert our gaze

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 22, 2006
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Porn, Sexuality, Sports and Youth
. 16 Comments

Third post of this birthday day.

I’ve posted both here and at Inside Higher Ed on the brouhaha over women’s sports teams and hazing. I’d like to revisit two other aspects of the issue.

On Friday, Jill linked to this dreadful Kathryn Jean Lopez essay at National Review Online.  Lopez reacts to the news that Catholic University of America’s women’s lacrosse team has also had its hazing rituals revealed in online photos:

Young men shouldn’t be getting sloppy drunk and doing childish things and paying for a stripper. But young women really shouldn’t. There is something more disconcerting about the latter—and it is even more disturbing that we won’t all have that reaction. It’s not beyond the call of duty for women to encourage men to be gentlemen. It’s women’s work.   (Bold is mine)

Jill takes that apart very well, but I’m going to add my two cents.

The notion that women ought to hold themselves to a higher standard than men is a profoundly upsetting one to those of us who care deeply about issues of faith, feminism, and gender.  Jill, and other articulate feminists, rightly point out that making young women responsible for civilizing men is a cruel burden to impose on women.  But of course, what’s also so infuriating is the implication that men can’t be civilized and restrained without the active intervention of women.

A key thrust of the pro-feminist men’s movement (a movement to which I happily belong) is to empower men to escape the "myth of male weakness" (the notion that at their core, men are sex-crazed brutes who need women to soothe, nurture, and restrain us.)  In my life, one of the most liberating discoveries of all was the discovery that I could control my actions, and I could challenge other men in all-male settings to hold themselves accountable.  It’s a fine thing indeed to discover that possessing a penis (even an erect one) does not vitiate the ability to reason, nor does a rush of testosterone automatically override compassion and common sense!

The CUA lacrosse team hired a male stripper (photos are on the internet to prove it).  So too did the Duke men’s lacrosse team, with infamous results.  But the two actions aren’t comparable, largely because of the enormously reduced threat to a male stripper as opposed to his female coutnerpart.  Zuzu writes below Jill’s post:

The dynamic is very different than when you have a bunch of men hiring a female stripper. There’s no expectation of sexual acts with the stripper for a little extra cash, for example, and the fun is in being naughty with your friends and letting loose for once, with no men around but the bouncers and the stripper. There’s no real menace, because no matter how much they’re whooping and hollering and drinking, women aren’t going to, say, gang-rape a male stripper. Even if he does a little lap-dance type of thing for you, the goal is not for you to get off; the goal is for you to have fun (and for your friends to have fun watching you).

That’s exactly right. I don’t want anyone hiring strippers, period.  But I’m not going to pretend that what the CUA women’s lacrosse team did is remotely equivalent to what the Duke men’s team.  Zuzu’s right: women don’t rape male strippers.  The man may take off his clothes for money, but he can be reasonably certain he won’t be forcibly violated.  And though some women may respond sexually to his gyrations, the real pleasure for most young women in hiring a man to strip is in the role reversal.   Look at the faces of men watching a woman strip — the men look hungry.  Look at the faces of women watching a man strip — they’re contorted with often hysterical laughter.  There’s often a sordid, deadly seriousness beneath the raucousness when a group of men watch a naked woman dance for them; there’s usually a kind of embarrassed silliness among the women when a man in a thong cavorts in front of them.

Lopez has it exactly backwards.  While I don’t want any college team stripping or hiring strippers as part of an initiation ritual or celebration, I think that it’s far worse when men do so. It’s not that I hold men to a higher standard — it’s that the threat of potential violence and violation is infinitely greater to a female stripper with a male audience than with a male stripper in front of a female audience.  Young men worthy of carrying the name of their university on their chests or backs ought to know this well enough, and college administrators — and conservative pundits — would do well to keep this in mind.

I also want to reiterate my strong feeling that we shouldn’t be looking at the photos circulating on the internet from these parties.  Inside Higher Ed (as well as most other websites and many national papers) already linked to the site, and thus I mentioned it in the version of the post I wrote for that webpage.  But I’m not linking to any of the pictures here.  I’ve seen a few of them — once. And there are numerous photos available on the web and linked to by major publications that I have avoided viewing.  And I am adamant that I think we should all avert our gaze from these photos.  The people who snapped these pictures of young people in various states of undress and intoxication did upload them to various photo-sharing communities.  But they never intended the photos to be discussed, analyzed, and quite possibly drooled over by millions of folks across the country.

Of course the young people involved should have known better.  Yet I suspect that many of the young women involved in the most noteworthy of the hazing incidents,that of the Northwestern soccer team, had no way of stopping the photos from being taken.  (When you’re being hazed, how do you tell the juniors and seniors who are running the show not to take a picture of you drunk and in your underwear?)  But even if they put the photos up there deliberately and intentionally, even if they want us to look, we still shouldn’t.

I wrote in February that I gave up my Myspace account for many reasons, not the least of which that I thought it was inappropriate that I be exposed to the (frequently) revealing and embarrassing photos that teenagers post of themselves on that site.   I understand the temptation that young people feel to share their amusing, silly, and mildly shocking pictures with their friends and the broader world.  But I know full well that what one considers funny and daring when one is 18 and smashed may be humiliating and painful at 28 — or heck, even the next day when sobriety arrives with a brutal reality check.  Those of us who ARE old enough to know better must do more than simply shake our heads and bemoan the poor judgment of "kids these days."  Yes, we need to mentor and counsel and supervise.  But we also need to avert our eyes, both out of a healthy and loving respect for the young people involved as well as out of a sense of what is healthy and good for us to see. I don’t need to see a photo of some eighteen year-old soccer player giving a drunken lap dance in her bra and panties — and I’m pretty damn sure that given the time to reflect on it, she doesn’t want the likes of me to see that picture either.  Out of respect for both of us, I’m not going there.

And yeah, I don’t think of any of you should be going there either.

The lie of everlasting novelty: a different take on the case against porn

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 19, 2006
in Men and Masculinity, Porn, Relationships and Sexuality
. 79 Comments

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.

Another really long one on pro-feminism and the sex industry: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 27, 2006
in Men and Masculinity, Porn and Sexuality
. 45 Comments

I’d like to respond to some of the comments in my post below about stripping.

One of the important things I need to remember is to articulate a specifically male pro-feminist perspective on issues like stripping and sex work.  Rather than just respond one by one to all of the criticisms of my strong anti-porn, anti-strip club stance, let me offer an overview of where it is that "I’m coming from" on this issue.

First off, it is damn near impossible for a man to take an anti-porn, anti-stripping stance without being perceived as being anti-sex worker.   Some of this is my own fault.   Either I’m construed as arguing that all female sex-workers are victims who need to be rescued, or folks assume that I see them as selfish narcissists who are "letting down the feminist side".  I’m trying to avoid taking either stance, and I’m not doing a very good job so far.  So while I regroup and prepare for another post on that subject, let me deal with the aspect of this issue where I do feel far more comfortable: writing about men who "consume" porn and other products of the sex industry.

If you do a Google search for "overcoming porn" or "stop going to strip clubs" on the Internet, you’re going to find that virtually the only organized groups challenging men to change their behavior are religious organizations.  There are dozens and dozens of Christian ministries in this country calling men to sexual accountability; Promise Keepers chief among them.  They do important work, and I have many friends in these groups.  Heck, I’ve even belonged to one or two of them.  What these groups do get right is that they understand that the sex industry doesn’t just hurt those who are the paid workers within it; it has devastating consequences for the consumer and his family.

But outside of the religious blogosphere, there is very little male writing about the problem of the sex industry.  Furthermore, I almost never read posts about porn addiction/sex addiction on feminist blogs.  We debate legalizing prostitution, and we all wax eloquently (or not so eloquently) about "gazes" and "subjectivities" and "perfomativities" and "agency."  We all sound very sophisticated!  But the reality is that millions and millions of American boys and men are spending hours staring at porn and masturbating to it, they’re spending a fortune at strip clubs, and they are experiencing very real consequences.  When feminist blogs do address these consequences, they understandably approach them out of concern for the women who are negatively impacted by men who use porn or visit strip clubs or consume sex workers.

But as a man who cares deeply about other men, I am grieved by how few non-Christian resources there are for men who are struggling with issues of sexual compulsion.  (If that seems too strong a word, please understand that I’ve met a lot of guys in my day — and I’ve met very, very few whose sexual behavior around porn/prostitutes/strippers wasn’t compulsive to one degree or another.  The power of sexual imagery and fantasy is so great that it tends to to turn folks who are remarkably self-controlled in other areas into embarrassed, ashamed addicts.)  As a Christian, I have lots of resources if I choose; my friends who don’t share my faith commitment (and are not likely to convert) have far fewer.

One conversation pro-feminist men need to have with each other revolves around our own feelings and experiences with the sex industry.  If you’re a pro-feminist man, you can’t live your life in compartments. I simply don’t believe it’s within the range of human possibility to see women as autonomous agents of worth and value, with desires and wants of their own on the one hand — and at the same time be viewing images of hundreds of images of women on your computer  or gazing hungrily at a naked stripper gyrating on a stage. If sex touches us so deeply, it defies reason to suggest that any of us can keep our private behaviors from bleeding over into everything else we do.  That’s not just a Christian notion, that’s sound psychology.   But before we can all agree on that, pro-feminist men need to share their stories around the sex industry, not to shame ourselves but to see how universal our experience has been — and to see the damage it has done.

What I don’t like about the state of the male pro-feminist blogosphere is that so many folks spend a lot of time deflecting the conversation away from their own behavior.   Lots of men comment on lots of feminist blogsites, and because these men hold solid opinions on reproductive rights and other public issues, their pro-feminist credentials don’t get challenged.  Now, I’m the last person to challenge anyone’s credentials about anything, but I do believe that there’s got to be more to being a pro-feminist man than holding a certain set of political and social convictions. To put it another way, I don’t just want to know what you believe, I want to know what you live out in your private life.  And if you’re a heterosexual pro-feminist man, I want to know if your sexual behavior with women (in reality or fantasy) matches your public commitments.   Tom, Dick, and Harry can wax eloquently in the comments sections of dozens of blogs about egalitarianism and justice.  But I want to know, what do they look at on their computers when no one is around?  And, even more importantly, how does what they look at affect their relationships with women? 

To put it really bluntly, if you want to be a pro-feminist man you’ve got to honor your commitments with your mouth, your mind, your heart, your hand, and your penis.  Few of us will do this easily at first; learning to live with that kind of integrity (or wholeness) takes a long time.  But once you do get there, you become a resource for other men who are leading double or triple lives, filled with shame and embarrassment and a deep sense of their own weakness.  Through a hell of a lot of work (and even more grace), I’ve created a life for myself where there is no discrepancy between my public pronouncements and my private behavior.  I have accountability partners who know every website I visit; I like knowing that I will be challenged if they see something on my browser report that doesn’t seem right.  If my students, my blog readers, my friends could watch me on a hidden camera, they might see me singing silly songs to myself, or talking to my pencil or picking my nose, but they wouldn’t see me directing any of my sexual energy anywhere other than towards my wife.  And even if — God forbid — I were to be single again, I am confident that my commitment to staying away from the sex industry would remain firm and absolute.

That last paragraph sounds boastful.  That’s not my goal!  Look, without getting into hurtful details, I’ve made a huge number of mistakes in this area.  I’ve lived a quintuple life based upon privately objectifying the very class of human beings whose dignity I was publicly defending.  That didn’t work so well; heck, it nearly killed me to know what an absolute and utter fraud I was.

So the upshot of this very long post is this: men who care about feminism need to be willing to match their language and their lives.   When it comes to discussions of sex work and sexuality, we mustn’t hide behind academic jargon. We can’t issue sweeping defenses or condemnations of the sex industry without first being honest about our own personal responses to that industry.  That doesn’t mean that every male pro-feminist blogger has to go public about his private life (not everyone has tenure!)  But it does mean that when it comes to something so profoundly powerful as sex, it’s absurd to pretend that any of us can discuss this without our own experiences, fantasies, and sense of shame coming into play.

UPDATE:  As always, some folks just don’t want to discuss this issue head on.  This is not a thread to discuss the role of women in sex work.  This is a thread focusing on men as consumers, as customers, as clients — and how the sex industry (stripping and porn in particular) shapes their lives.  This is not a male-only thread, but it is a thread that focuses on the impact on the male consumer and those around him.  If you want to comment on the impact on female sex workers, the earlier post is the place to be.

“What I’m doing and what I have failed to do”: a long and personal meme on anti-sexist work

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2006
in Feminism, Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Porn and Teaching
. 14 Comments

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day.   Appropriately, the latest Carnival of the Feminists is up with many good things to read.   It’s also been declared "Blog Against Sexism" day, and I intend to do my part this morning;  let me first also recommend the "grid blog" against sexism at Thursday PM.

I’ve been getting a lot of queries recently about my use of the term "pro-feminist", as well as other terms from the broad men’s movement.  I tried to post a summary of the various strands of the men’s movement back in June 2004, and I still think it’s a fairly good thumbnail sketch of what I believe to be the "four branches".

As a man who teaches women’s studies as well as courses on men and masculinity, I have a personal and professional interest in the struggle against sexism.  As I was thinking about what topic to blog on for today, I thought about a general re-hashing of my oft-repeated views on the role of men in the broader struggle for gender justice.  Somehow, everything that popped into my head seemed hackneyed; I didn’t want to write another long post in which I called once again upon my brothers to be "visible allies" in the fight against sexism.  I’m sure I’ll write such a post again in the future, just because I tend (like most teachers) to repeat myself every term!  But I’m not in the mood on this Wednesday.

Years and years in what is generally called "recovery", combined with many years in countless Christian small groups as well as many wonderful spiritual retreats, have led me to always frame discussions about sexism (or any other social evil) in terms of what I — and other individuals — can do.  Maybe it’s just what my Marxist friends would call "bourgeois navel-gazing" (a charge to which I have gleefully plead guilty lo these many years!)  Useful or no, I want to ask two questions this morning of my readers, and of myself:

1.  What are three ways in which I (you) am (are) working to end sexism in your personal life and in the broader world?

2.  What are three ways in which I (you) am (are) continuing to "fall short of the mark" in terms of embodying your ideals?

You can have a go in the comments section.

I could answer the first question by proudly trumpeting the number of courses I teach from a pro-feminist perspective; I could boast of my volunteer work with boys and girls at All Saints Pasadena, and the anti-sexist lessons I teach ‘em.  But that would be too easy to write about, and y’all have heard it all before.  Here’s what comes to mind for me in terms of the steps I’m actively taking today:

1.  In my marriage, I’m constantly thinking of ways to push myself out of my culturally determined comfort zone.  Like so many men, I have to fight the overwhelming cultural and psychological forces that want me to treat my wife like my mother.  I am convinced that one of the most essential things that heterosexual men can do — as part of anti-sexist work as well as just plain growin’ up — is not play any part in creating a mother-son dynamic within their relationships with their lovers and wives.   One of the nastiest things about sexism is that it teaches us to see men and women largely in terms of specific, prescribed roles that they fulfill.    Wives must resist the urge to mother their husbands, because when they do so, they rob their husbands of the chance to develop the vital skill of learning to soothe themselves; husbands must resist the urge to defer and accept the lie that men are "domestically incompetent".  Even after years and years of counseling and study and work, after several marriages and a couple of conversions, I still must be vigilant not to give into the temptation to play the part of a little boy who wants his mommy.  And from what I hear from the women in my life, I know damned well I’m not the only guy who has to fight this tendency — but fight it I am.   My credentials — indeed, my usefulness to the struggle — hinges on it.

2.  I am living out my commitment to stay away from pornography and the rest of the sex industry.  We’ve debated porn many times on this blog; I remain firmly in the anti-porn camp.   I don’t believe that one can simultaneously fight against sexism in one’s public life while commoditizing women’s bodies in one’s private fantasies.  None of us compartmentalize as well as we imagine; no man can, I believe, seamlessly transition from masturbating in front of his computer to images of "exploited teens" to seeing his female co-workers, students, bosses, friends, and lovers as full and complete human beings with needs and desires of their own.   Most of the men I know use Internet porn, or have used it in the past and given it up. Some of those who still use it do so openly and proudly; a few even insist that lusting over images of the young and the economically vulnerable is not inconsistent with pro-feminist commitments!  One of my goals is to not only continue to stay away from pornography myself, but to couch an anti-porn message in a way that will more effectively resonate with the young men and women with whom I work. 

3.  I’m committed to expanding the network of people to whom I am accountable for my spiritual growth and my anti-sexist actions. Yes, I’m an extrovert.  But regardless of our personalities, I think we all need other folks to inspire us, to encourage us, to challenge us. My wife is a tremendous resource in my life, and I have many other men and women to whom I turn with a variety of issues and concerns.   But I’ve slipped a little bit recently.  I learned years ago that healthy growth required that I talk to three types of people a week: older and more experienced folks who could role model for me what I hoped to become: peers who are going through my same set of experiences; younger people for whom I can be a role model.  This is a good practice in recovery, in Christian community — and in anti-sexist work.  I’m great at working with peers and kids — I need to recruit some solid older advisers into my camp to kick my butt a bit.

Whew.  Still reading?

Three ways in which I’m falling short of the mark:

1.  I have the most remarkable difficulty controlling my mouth.  I don’t use sexist profanity, but dang it all, I often find myself calling every  man "buddy" and every woman "darlin’" or "sweetie." (Yesterday, I did it to one of my female colleagues in the hallway: "Hey, babe, what’s up?"  This colleague and I are good friends and both tenured as equals, but to use that kind of familiar language in front of our students was, well, unacceptable.)  I’ve never had a complaint, and no, I don’t do it in the classroom; but honestly, it still comes out in some whoppingly inappropriate places.  I do it, of course, as a shortcut to good-humored intimacy.  I need to work on some more lovingly gender-neutral ways of creating that!

2.  I’m still struggling with my tendency to protect women.  I’ve posted about this habit before; many men come to pro-feminism because they see anti-sexist work as a modern and enlightened way of living out a "knight-in-shining armor" fantasy!  Even though I know that’s the number one classic pitfall for pro-feminist men, darn it all, I still find myself thinking in ways that are more chivalrous than egalitarian.  As a result, I end up minimizing women’s agency and autonomy — the exact opposite of my intentions!

3.  In my classes and in my assigned readings, I still tend to teach women’s studies from a white middle-class perspective. That doesn’t mean I don’t talk more and more each year about issues affecting non-white women; it does mean however that I still see those issues as additions to the curriculum rather than the foundations of the curriculum.  I still focus the contemporary portions of my course on issues of body image, the media, sexuality, and the struggle to balance career and motherhood.  Too often, what we read and discuss about these issues is overwhelmingly from a white, middle-class female perspective.   I need to do more than just throw in some token readings from the perspective of radical women of color; I need to rebuild my syllabus from the ground up. I’ve been saying I’m gonna do it for years, and I haven’t done it yet.  Now, I’m letting you all know I need to get off my butt and get crackin’ on creating a more inclusive course.

So there they are: three things I’m doing, and three things I need to work on still, not just in the fight for women’s equality, but in the even larger struggle to build a kinder, more just, more loving world.  If you feel inspired, share your lists.

Pro-feminist responses to the “Queen for a Year” problem

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 11, 2006
in Class, Clothing and Fashion,