Wednesday, September 23, 2009

On Porn, Sex And Pincushions



It has been much on my mind because the recent let's-bash-women happiness study did not analyze the impact of the enormous increase on Internet porn on women's and men's happiness gap. And because of something Amanda (from whom I stole that pincushion part in the title) at Pandagon wrote recently:

With that in mind, I want to link this excellent post by Becky Sharper, who has a wonderful sense of irreverence in the face of people who are going to give you the least generous read imaginable when you suggest that perhaps porn isn't all roses and fountains of gold. I hesitate to open this can of worms, because when I pointed out that the facial exists in porn as a symbolic marker of female degradation, many, many, many people deliberately misread me, claiming that I said that coming on the outside was wrong, or that if any touched your face, it was wrong, or that you're a bad person if you like being degraded in bed. All I said was that it's funny to me that something that is overtly about employing the "this slut deserves to be humiliated" trope in porn gets to send its message to an audience that wants to hear negative things about sexual women, and the rest of us will pretend that they just didn't say that.

Even though, from my perspective, the implicit argument---that women who have a lot of sex, or with a lot of men are sluts who deserve humiliation---is anti-sex. In other words, for all the sex in porn, much of it adheres to the "family values" narrative, where a sexual woman is used up and deserves nothing but abuse. Being truly pro-sex, in my view, means believing that women who have sex, a lot of sex, or a lot of partners do not forfeit a single ounce of their dignity or humanity.

Becky notes that the heavy use of anal sex in porn has resulted in an uptick in anal sex in real life. And though I know a good half of the commenters will pretend I didn't say this: This isn't, in and of itself, a bad thing. Just like coming on the outside is a fine way to spice things up, anal sex also can be a lot of fun for straight couples in the right circumstances. But porn morphs rather mundane sex acts into tropes about hurting and humiliating women, and then those tropes are repeated in bedrooms for that purpose. The problem with this is that many of the women engaging in these deliberately humiliating behaviors don't get off on being submissives or being degraded. They're doing it just because they thing that's what sex is.

I repeat: like coming on the outside, there's a way to do anal sex that isn't about hurting, humiliating, and punishing a sexual woman. (If only I knew the secret number of times to repeat to avoid being misread!) There are entire excellent books about it, and whole lines of sex toys that exist solely to exploit the sensitivity of that area of the body. In fact, straight men can put things up their butt and like it, too! This is not being questioned. (I predict 5 comments before someone suggests I questioned this.)

But porn doesn't show anal sex in the pro-woman way that many practice it, where there's an attempt to warm you up, make you comfortable, go slow, and stop if there's any discomfort. Like Becky says:

Problem is, hetero mainstream porn isn't depicting the kind of careful, attentive interaction that makes anal sex pleasurable. In fact, in porn there's no attention paid to the woman's pleasure--or even her comfort--at all. The male actors just plunge in and start pounding.

Emphasis mine.

Isn't it awesome how anyone criticizing porn must now explain very carefully why that criticism is not being anti-sex? But Amanda is brave, so she does the necessary work anyway.

I have written about some of my concerns earlier, but they are worth repeating, especially as I'm a little bit clearer about what I don't like when it comes to the extremely wide-spread use of porn. Here's the list:

1. I worry that too many confuse porn images with real actual human sex, that especially young viewers of porn go away with the expectation that real sex will be like porn. Yet porn is called porn and not art, say, for the very reason that it cuts out everything but the purely instrumental use of another person (or persons) for the purpose of getting an orgasm. I'm sure many people can make that distinction, especially among older users of porn who have also had real-life sex. But what happens if porn images are, in essence, your education in sexuality? What if you grow up believing that women should enjoy sperm in their eyes, to be sexual beings?

2. Hence my concern over the male-centeredness of heterosexual porn. That market is geared towards men and the women in the porn are there to do things that will get men off. If some men like humiliating women in bed, then that's what the female porn actors pretend that they will like. No, you don't need to use lube before plunging into my anus (a vulnerable part of the body, by the way, in the medical sense). Yes, please, urinate all over me. And so on.

That you can find all kinds of porn, even feminist porn, doesn't negate this problem at all. Because if most men, including the very young men, watch male-centered porn (and not feminist porn, say) then that's what their idea of sex will become: Something in which women don't have to be asked what they want, and in which women who don't want anal plunging or sperm all over their faces are somehow anti-sex or frigid. Because the women in porn like it!

3. If I am correct about all this, the impact of porn might be to make both young men and women to equate sex with what goes on in male-centered porn. I don't know if I am correct, but I see something of this sort taking place in discussions about sex on the Internet (and in the insults on political comments threads: Swallow, bitch, swallow). To even suggest that what is being talked about is male-centered heterosexual porn and not sex in general labels you as an anti-sex prude.

To re-frame this in feminist terms: I worry what porn is doing to the way young heterosexual women learn about sexuality. Is it just a service you provide men? Suck a lot of cock, let them come on your face or in your ass? Even if this is not what your body actually likes to do?