My blog post will be in response to a previous post by Molly titled "Feminist Sex Workers," which links to an article from a Duke freshman porn star. My post takes a different approach to viewing sex workers than the author took, so I thought it may merit its own post.
I would like to take an inflammatory stance. While I agree with pretty much every statement the author says in her article with regards to how we view and treat sex workers (which is primarily what the article is concerned with), I would like to hold the position that most types of sex workers reinforce and further sediment patriarchal views by entering and engaging in the profession itself. Thus, in the end I am condemning her actions as many of the inflammatory comments to the article did, albeit for different reasons. It is worth noting that I will be discussing only heterosexual sex, since this type of porn has the most widespread influence. Yes, there are hundreds of subniches of porn that undermine my argument, but I think the "norm" of porn is very telling of the society it is embedded within.
My first argument is that sexual attraction and in turn kinkiness and other related categories are structurally influenced to a very high degree. Of course there are exceptions such as facial symmetry and pheromones (scent) being good subconscious indicators of overall health and immunological diversity, respectively, but overall what is attractive is socially determined. One does not need to do much past cultural research to find cultures that find unique aspects attractive: creating bodily morphisms (forehead shaping, neck elongation), being overweight, being cross-eyed, small feet, etc... However, one aspect is commonly found attractive in patriarchal societies, namely a power dynamic, which continues to the bedroom. This is very much exemplified and exaggerated in western porn.
Obviously (living in the patriarchy and all), this power dynamic consists of men being the dominant partners and the women being the submissive ones; again, I would like to reinforcing that this dynamic is not absolute in most cases of real sex but is strongly emphasized in western porn. Furthermore, these ideas are propelled into everyday life and vice-versa. Man up. Grow a pair. Be a man. These are all phrases associated with not only competency but also the prerequisite for competency to take place within, namely control of a situation. Being submissive in any group dynamic requires following orders given by the dominant to achieve the priorities the dominant has deemed important through controlling and understanding a situation, such as a boss/worker dynamic for example. In porn, this dynamic is ingrained quite deeply, having the submissive woman primarily catering to the implicit orders (read desires) of the dominant man, namely his pleasure. The submissive does not have agency to fulfill her own sexual desires and thus becomes "objectified," dehumanized, and a tool to appease the desires of the dominant, similarly to how heads of large corporations might view employees many ranks below them.
But how is this allowed? Doesn't it violate so many of the principles of "equality" we cherish? Well, precisely because porn primarily displays these women thoroughly enjoying being submissive. This display of enjoyment creates a possibly false reality of these women having agency in achieving sexual pleasure and manifesting said agency by being submissive. Being submissive is what they like. Is this a true reality? As previously stated, this bedroom power dynamic influences everyday life and vice-versa, causing its messages to become internalized. So this may very well be a true reality to an extent, even if it is a learned one. However, if we lived in a non-patriarchal society, I don't think this type of reality would be depicted. I would be very hesitant to argue that submissive nature is intrinsic. Thus, I would argue that mainstream porn implicitly imposes a power-dynamic that becomes internalized by its viewers, giving them a learned reality.
But who are the main viewers of porn? Men. It kind of makes sense why porn is depicted the way it is. Porn after all is a commodity and corporations obviously maximize profits by catering to their demographic. So this learned reality is given primarily to men. These men then have certain tastes which must be met by the porn industry and so the cycle continues. Under a patriarchy, this can be very problematic, considering that the class in power in any hierarchical system then imposes values on the rest of the system.
With the introduction of a globalized internet and the porn industry's capitalization of it, much of our youth achieves their first conceptions of sex and develops their respective notions of roles in the bedroom through porn. The continued use and/or influence of porn continuing through adulthood only serves to sediment the posed realities given. Furthermore, it has been extensively studied that long histories of exposure to porn desensitize individuals, primarily male, to sexual themes, forcing them to strive for more extreme themes (often times exaggerated power relations) to achieve previous levels of sensitivity (read: turned-on-ness). Since the widespread availability of free internet porn, this phenomenon can be further demonstrated through the rapid increase in acquired erectile dysfunction among young adults since real sexual encounters can no longer compete, often times because they are not extreme enough.
Yes, theoretically there should be no problems or moral sigma against becoming a sex worker. However, sex workers enter the field as a profession; they want to make money. How do you make money? You cater to demand. Unfortunately, demand in our society happens to be skewed away from a completely neutral way of viewing sex. By engaging in the field and catering to general demand, a porn star unintentionally is reproducing everything feminism stands against. I think the only way porn stars can partially avoid doing so is to exclusively perform his or her own individual sexual preferences. I say partially because no one's view of what is attractive, sexy, or a turn-on can be independent of the influences society has ingrained in them throughout their lives.
I find that last statement to be the most troubling to me. I really believe we generally have sexist turn-ons (to a degree) because some of them are learned. But even if these turn-ons reproduce and further sediment oppressive structures, would it really be reasonable to deny individuals engagement in their sexual preferences and sexual fulfillment to create a better society for people tomorrow? I believe Phong mentioned several classes ago the idea of banning (penetrative?) sex all together; I believe he had a similar view of sex in mind and was referring to a hypothetical means to achieving this goal. But as we all know, this obviously is not reasonable. I find this question to be in parallel with the butch argument against transsexuals: transsexuals do not truly transcend gender but rather redeem the traditional binary roles and maintain the system that both parties are oppressed within. So back we are to the original question posed in class (formulated a little differently). How do we deal with the fact that perceived autonomy is not truly autonomous? Specifically how do we deal with the fact that any preference is mediated by and reproduces the context that said preference had genesis and development within? In an ideal world, such preferences would not be an issue because the context would be neutral. But in an oppressive context, such preferences are bound to be problematic.
Aditya,
ReplyDeleteFirst, could you cite the studies arguing viewing pornography desensitizes individuals, leading to more extreme themes of sexuality as well as increased rates of acquired erectile dysfunction? Although intuitively reasonable, I am interested to see empirical evidence of this phenomenon of this correlation. (I am also inclined to think that the movement for sexual liberation promotes marginal sexualities as well.)
Second, I am going to use Elisabeth Badinter's arguments in Dead End Feminism to oppose the notion that autonomous heterosexual activity – even acts like BDSM, which relies on themes of domination and subordination – contributes to the patriarchy and to the detriment of women. While Badinter does not take a direct stance against patriarchal structures informing sexuality, she asserts that these do not necessarily reproduce the context, for modern norms of sexual practices too frequently contradict male dominance for that to be the case.
She establishes that post-1970s feminism has led to a new sexual reality characterized by multiform practices and new sexual freedom for women – not reinforced oppression – as seen in the right to contraception and abortion that has reclaimed women's power for procreation and allowed women to enjoy sex without limits, in increased rates of fellatio, of cunnilingus, of women's masturbation, in the increased number of sex shops aimed at women, in increased productions of female sex toys, in increased directors of pornography aimed at women and frequent pornographic films subverting the “man gives orders and rides the woman” model. Badinter asserts that these exhibit evidence of morality stripped from sex that have trivialized sexuality to a playful activity, leading to a liberation from taboo, dedramatization, and legitimation of desire that has removed guilt from female pleasure. While she mentions problems with this sort of mechanization of sexuality, the point is that it is far from the male-dominant model. While there are many instances of women assuming the roles of disposable objects as well as female humiliation (which Badinter and I would not necessarily defend as a good thing but rather as a consequence of the trivialization of sexuality), there are contrasting images of female pleasure and agency as well as male humiliation and males as disposable objects and increasing instances where the female sex drive is seen as permissible, having a right to express itself, and a legitimate component of a woman’s nature, which is strikingly different from the previous century’s denial of the existence of a female drive.
Furthermore, Badinter argues that the aforementioned view limit sexuality to the delicate and faithful and thus is inherently contradictory, as on one end feminism seems to extract morality from sex and on the other hand resacralizes sexuality with “the old moralizing accents of Judeo-Christianity” and a “renaissance of sexual stereotypes” in its assertions that ““the so-called liberated ones, those who considered a good fuck to be no more important than a good meal . . .[and] the prostitutes that dares called themselves free . . . were contributing to the vulgarization of the image and the body of woman (just like the striptease artist, the porn start, the bimbo, or the model turned into a sex object to help sell mustard).” That is to say, this view of ‘victim feminism,’ where modern sexual practices are actually a pseudo-liberation that multiplies the effects of men imposing their sexuality on women in instances of dominance and violence, reeks of moralizing intension and puritanical causes that actually align radical feminism with the traditional moral order regulating female sexuality by establishing a myth of female domesticated sexuality and female purity. Arguing that the modern sexual practices inherently contribute to the vulgarization of women relies on a perception of sexuality characterized by predatory men motivated by pleasure juxtaposed against female victims, where a woman risks leaving her dignity in the danger zone of sex, and thus strikingly resembles old moral views of sexuality where women’s drives were inexpressible. Furthermore, extending the definition of ‘sexual offense’ to pornography and prostitution further allies the two ideologies.
ReplyDeleteHowever, this is not what we observe in modern norms. Rape is not the paradigm of heterosexuality. The call to free sexuality from the relationship of domination and submission, from the power of money (talking about sex workers), and from obscure ambiguities of desire (discussing the rigidities of defining consent) necessitates a democratic, contractual, innocent, gentle, transparent sexuality featuring the domestication of instinctual drives. Drive-led and financially-transacted sex is illegitimate in this context, which implies that “sexuality separated from the threat of rape that hovers over all heterosexual acts is defined in four words: intimacy, tenderness, cooperation, and emotion” (read: feminized) however, “Intimacy and tenderness are not the alpha and omega of desire. The violence of the drives is not exclusively male and does not necessarily end in rape.”
In a sense, the conversation is wrong. Eroticized dominance and subordination do not entail the social subordination of women, and when we discuss this we are really speaking about the cloistering of traditionally masculine sexuality (which imposes a domesticated sexuality on women who enjoy such roles as well) and not the sexual freedom of women.
"Who are the main viewers of pornography? Men." Interestingly, it actually depends. Without taking any particular stance on this issue, here's an article about Sexually Explicit Material (usage and content) and its relationship to men and women and other variables therein.
ReplyDeletehttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=psych_facpubs&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D10%26q%3Dsexually%2Bexplicit%2Bmaterials%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C43%26as_vis%3D1#search=%22sexually%20explicit%20materials%22
the effects of patriarchal bias may not be as far reaching as either you or the author suggest, although it is undeniably present.
E