Feminism Friday post. It takes me awhile, but this post is more about the concept of masculinity than about porn, really.
Courtney Martin has an interesting review up of Robert Jensen’s new book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. I really like the review, and she captures a lot of the thoughts I had when I saw Jensen give a speech on pornography—basically a combination of knowing he’s right on one hand, but also feeling he overplays that hand. He’s absolutely right that there’s a huge market for misogynist porn that feeds both a serious anger a lot of men feel towards women in light of declining male power. Watching a lot of the kinds of porn he describes, you get the general idea that the theme is, “Well, you may have a right to compete with us in school and work, but in the end, you’re just a fucktoy.” He’s right that the porn he is describing is wildly racist and a lot of it isn’t even remotely erotic, unless you’re conditioned to find misogyny arousing.
He’s also right that guys who watch this stuff and downplay its impact need to own their shit, and realize that even if they don’t necessarily want to believe they are hating on women, they are in fact getting off on just that and until they get out of denial, things won’t get better for them. Martin assumes her shock at the stuff he describes stems from her lack of contact with pornography, but I’ve seen more than my share of the two-dicks-up-one-ass-spit-in-her-face-make-her-cry stuff and I still flinch to read stuff like this:
I won’t expose you to his analysis at length here, but suffice it to say that he reports such dialogue as this being heard: “Can these fuck toys be any dumber?”
When I say “fucktoy”, then, I’m not employing hyperbole, but a direct quote.
Where I draw the line with Jensen is my feeling that he’s a tad unfair to men who look at porn, a large and diverse group. A lot of them—enough to drive the market, I think—really enjoy the “see bitches get theirs” aspect of porn. Others look at that stuff, but try to concentrate on the fucking, and less on the hate, which is problematic and they need to rethink their behavior, but it’s a much different beast than openly seeking hate. Sort of like the difference between watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or “Gone with the Wind” and openly enjoying the racism vs. watching those movies while trying to tune out the stuff that offends you. The two groups are very different in significant ways. He also ignores some of the counterevidence that popular porn isn’t always tainted by brutal misogyny. Dan Savage has written about the growing popularity of the “cuckold” fantasy, which absolutely dominates written porn for men. Some of it has anti-woman tropes, but by and large it seems this fantasy seems to be a way for straight men to resolve some of their internalized attitudes (specifically the virgin/whore complex) in ways that genuinely celebrate women’s freedom and pleasure.
I won’t belabor the point, since Courtney covers it well, but there is one thing she writes that I need to argue with.
This is where I keep getting snagged in Jensen’s analysis. He is utterly convinced that we live in a culture that—by and large—wants to see women humiliated, submissive, and in pain. He argues for totally eradicating, not reforming, masculinity: “I cannot escape a simple conclusion: If men are going to be full human beings, we first have to stop being men.” His prose reeks of self-hate and desperation.
I’m not sure why eradicating masculinity offends Courtney, but I can’t help but think maybe she’s confusing it with eradicating maleness? I’ve seen Jensen speak; he struck me as someone who is quite full of confidence and conviction, far from the self-hating weasel his critics try to paint him as. When he talks about eradicating “masculinity”, he’s talking about eradicating the social construct of masculinity, especially as it’s defined in America. Think about how masculinity is constructed in America: violent, hateful, out of touch with “softer” emotions like love, irresponsible, stupid, willfully ignorant, and of course with a sexuality based around violence and conquest, not around pleasure and the sharing of it. (Today’s example—how anal sex is only “fun” if it’s a coercive process—is just one of many to add to the mind-numbing amounts of misogynist porn out there.)
The construct of masculinity is largely responsible for everything from rape to the propaganda push leading up to the invasion of Iraq. But masculinity victimizes the true believers, as well as women and men who find themselves on the wrong side of dudes on a masculinity trip. Men die younger than women for a myriad of reasons that relate to the construct of masculinity, from the idea that overeating (especially of fatty red meat) is a proof of masculinity to the unnecessary risk-taking that accompanies displays of masculinity. Masculinity is extremely stressful to men, since it’s not something you ever get to have, but something that you’re always fighting to prove, a battle that’s never completely won but has to begin anew every day. Men sacrifice a lot for masculinity, often destroying their ability to have truly loving and intimate relationships with their friends, family and romantic partners in order to maintain the facade. Feminists have invested a lot of energy into showing how the construct of femininity—from feigned helplessness to restricting ambition to the endless beautifying tasks—cripples women and clips our wings. Isn’t it possible that the construct of masculinity does the same thing to men? Masculinity is a burden; surely men would be better off without it.
You can say what you like about Jensen in a lot of areas, but I think his belief that we need to eradicate masculinity is hardly anti-male. In fact, I’d say it’s fundamentally pro-man, because it’s about letting men out of this cage and setting them on a path to genuine freedom.
Hugo has a post up about pornography; he and I have different opinions on whether or not porn itself is the problem, or just the worst of it. (Which is sadly often the most popular of it.) I’m linking it because it’s interesting, but also because he promises a second part where he’ll address what I’m mainly tackling in this post, which is the construct of masculinity. There are some good quotes in the piece that make it clear that Jensen’s talking about men who buy into masculinity that are the issue at hand, but again, I think there’s reason to think that some of the men who don’t buy into the hardcore masculinity construct are still drawn to porn for boring old erotic reasons. And some of those men put real effort into sorting through the hateful stuff to find pieces that speak to a sexuality about playfulness and pleasure, not about hating women.
This comment especially from Hugo is hard to get around:
The fact that some pornography is produced by and for women, the fact that some explicit material features sexual activity that is truly mutual, doesn’t mitigate the harm done by the industry as a whole. Many defenders of porn cry “But not all porn is like that”, and they point to obscure websites or specialty magazines that occupy a small niche within a much larger, thoroughly misogynistic industry. But it makes no sense — and does women no service — to deny the deleterious impact of mainstream porn on our collective humanity merely because a few tiny sectors of the “adult entertainment industry” produce material that is genuinely egalitarian and redemptive.
Good point, and we shouldn’t turn away from the reality of mainstream porn because we’re defensive of non-mainstream stuff. But I do think there’s a value in bringing up the egalitarian stuff, which is that the existence of alternatives gives people a way to both value the right to a sexual imagination and to offer a critique of the hateful stuff that dominates the industry. If you make hand-waving criticism of just porn, people hear that you’re attacking their fantasies, and that’s not going to sit well. But arguing that erotic materials are just fine, but hate propaganda against women is another ball of wax, you are going to get across to people much better.
Still, read all of the post, since Hugo has some pretty realistic and sad examples of how, in fact, ordinary “good” guys are getting their sexuality warped by the masculinity construct in mainstream porn. He uses the example of facials, which I find fascinating, because what I see that happened is this: Once facials became so popular that people were trying to pretend that they were just sex and not, as they obviously are, a magnified version of spitting in someone’s face, a lot of porn movies began to feature spitting in the women’s faces, just so you couldn’t miss the point even if you wanted to. I’ve never had a guy ask me to do that. I’d probably ask him if I could spit in his eye first if he did.
194 Responses to “An end to masculinity =/ an end to men”
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Yeah, I dunno too much about the porn issue, but I do know about the masculinity. I attended this talk once entitled “Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World.” It was interesting, but I disagreed with the presenter/author’s opinion that voluntary risk-taking was a useful outlet for men.
It’s funny for me in that I’m often viewed as a pretty traditionally masculine guy, but only by people who don’t know me more than superficially. I love doing things that are traditionally “feminine” (amongst other things, I love cooking for my family. It makes me feel good to provide healthy food), as well as things that are traditionally “masculine.” It just shouldn’t matter, and these ideas of masculine and feminine are largely arbitrary in this day and age. But I suppose I’m preaching to the choir on that one.
Okay, here is where we should establish something in advance. “masculinity” can be defined either as
“1. The quality or condition of being masculine.”
or
“2. Something traditionally considered to be characteristic of a male.”
Just watch. This thread will populate with at least a few people like Jensen who try to conflate the two.
“2″ is the outdated models of behaviour. “1″ is the mere state of existence of being male. It seems to me that Jensen errs badly when he says that “I cannot escape a simple conclusion: If men are going to be full human beings, we first have to stop being men.” I can and should stop being “masculine” in that I can and should stop accepting certain outdated and pernicious attitudes, or stop considering that certain positive characteristics (strength, honour, etc.) are restricted to men. But I can’t stop being a man. It’s ludicrous nonsense.
Maybe we need to start referring to the negative masculinity concept as Masculinity(TM) like Nice-Guy(TM)-ism.
Thanks, Amanda, I’ll have part two up on Monday, especially dealing with the whole shame/guilt/self-hate bit.
A lot of them—enough to drive the market, I think—really enjoy the “see bitches get theirs” aspect of porn.
I doubt it’s even a majority of the men who view porn but, more to the point, I suspect those particular men are the most obsessive consumers of porn, so they’re buying it in much larger amounts than guys who don’t particularly enjoy the creepy/abusive undertones. The regular consumers of a product will always drive the market more than occasional consumers, even if the regular consumers are a numerically small portion of the market.
It’s not a workable solution, but in a weird way if you encouraged occasional consumers to buy more on a regular basis and to buy the less degrading stuff, the market issue in and of itself would probably be resolved. It wouldn’t solve the underlying problem of having that underlayer of creepy guys, though.
So seeker, are all males masculine by virtue of being male? Can females be masculine?
Thanks, Em, exactly my point. The culture uses the same word to describe two wholly different concepts, which is why Amanda chose maleness to describe the sense of being male, and left masculinity to cover the social construct.
There was a long thread about this more than a few months ago, and part of the debate, as I recall, turned around stealing “masculinity” as a phrase. Some (myself included, iirc, argued that ceding such a powerful, totemic word to the mouthbreathers and misogynists was an error, and that we should aggressively redefine “masculine” to incorporate modern and sane concepts to replace the dated and knuckle-dragging ones. Others argued that the word was too closely tied to the negative construct and should be abandoned.
These are parts of the construct of masculinity, but it also includes things like self reliance, self-sacrifice, and innovation. Certainly one can argue that these qualities are expressed in anti-social ways when combined the other, or that these qualities are not emphasized in culture as whole enough. However, the notion that masculinity — as a cultural construct — is responsible for violent porn seems a bit of an over-reach, as violent porn has continued to exist across multiple cultures for several thousand years. The nature and extent of violent porn tends to ebb and flow with upheavals in societies - often as a reaction to particular moral movements. For instance, one can see the increase in child and rape oriented porn as the Victorian era reached its peak. These images wained, though did not disappear completely, after WWI. Porn tends to be a hyper-reaction to social fores - at least that’s my opinion.
this post is fantastic. in my (intro level) gender studies class my prof spent a fair portion of time making clear the differences between “sex” amd “gender” (as the class is called “sex, gender and power) and basically the point she made was the same you make here. being male is your sex, its what youre born, being “masculine” is gender expression, its how you present yourself to the world. as we dont live in vacuums (sp??) our ideas of what is masculine and what is feminine are socially constructed ideas. i dont think theres anything problematic about changing/eradicating “masculinity” as we kno it, same as all the efforts made thus far to change/eliminate the simplistic traditional notions of “femininity” have only furthered women’s abilities to fully express themselves and experience life. if jensen had called for the complete eradication of men, that on the other hand would be problematic and would clearly place him in the self loathing category.
i had never put much thought into “masculinity” or to the pressures men experience in our culture until i read “the will to change: men, masculinity, and love” by bell hooks. if you havent read it i cant recommend it enough.
Re: masculinity vs. maleness. You have this same problem in the general public with the term femininity. In the feminist blogosphere (and presumably women’s studies departments, I wouldn’t know, I got my education at I Blame The Patriarchy), we generally understand the term “femininity” to apply to female drag, all the things we do to be socially acceptable women, and not anything inherent to being an actual woman. But that’s not how the average person understands these terms. And that’s kind of an issue in the general public. How do you discuss these issues when most people associate a lot of positive qualities with both femininity and masculinity? Those are really the only terms I know for gender constructs, but even the concept of gender vs. sex is foreign to large sections of the population.
I’ve mostly gotten out of watching porn, after being introduced to the whole “bang bus” and the variations of “my daughter’s f*cking a n*gger” genres of porn and after trying to watch henti, which is basically just one rape scenario after another.
I think what also plays into a lot of the more degrading porn is that people feel the sex needs to be “dirty” because we’ve been brought up in a culture that for hundreds of years taught that sex and sexual pleausre was “dirty”. When you can rent something like Basic Instinct or Shortbus, I think a lot of these gonzo pornographers feel they keep having to up the ante in order to keep porn something that needs to be hidden, or something that is dangerous and still “dirty”.
Two people (or more) just mutually having sex and enjoying it can be boring for a lot of the male audience, so there has to be that one extra thing that sends the porn into “naughty” territory and it’s often the degradation of women, which plays into the whole “women don’t really want sex until you, the man, SHOW them with your big manly cock how much they really do want the sex you want them to want,” attitudes of a lot of mainstream porn.
But Steve, self reliance, self-sacrifice, and innovation are not qualities exhibited only by men. And it’s because of that that the concept of “masculinity” is harmful; it’s essentialism. While both “femininity” and “masculinity” include positive characteristics, the binary model means that those characteristics are assigned to either men or women, not both. Both men and women are capable of self-sacrifice (”masculine”) and sensitivity (”feminine”).
I think what’s missing in a lot of these types of discussion is that we’re not really talking about individual choice so much as we’re talking about social and cultural forces en masse. It’s pretty obvious that pornography as it exists today largely has as a major theme the subjugation of women. Does it have to be this way? Well..no. It really doesn’t.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. To me, this type of subjagational porn is the equal and opposite reaction of the anti-sex movement. As things are radicalized they get more radical. It’s the way it is.
There’s a lot of things that in reality, most people “don’t” believe, but in group that’s what they’re expected to believe so they believe it. That’s why studying cultural forces and memes are much more important than individual beliefs.
Is pornography the chicken or the egg? In the end, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes you need to do both at the same time to stop the cycle. I wouldn’t suggest further radicalization though, for obvious reasons. Those that suggest mainstreaming non-subjagational porn as a part of a sex-positive culture I think have the best idea
In the last 48 hours on Drudge, I have seen:
2 girls, 1 cup (just leave it alone for the love of christ)
“What a caning feels like”
“Kill her, Kill her”
“Coach accused of filming sex act.”
You don’t need to look to porn to see the destructive effects of this kind of masculinity.
BTW. I’m a guy and I’ll put in my vote for masculinity must die. It doesn’t mean that I’m any less of a male, in fact the theory put forward by the feminist thinkers/writers around the blogosphere.
It’s not elimination. It’s freedom.
I’m not perfect. I try but sometimes it’s hard to not fall into the social expectations. But it’s best not not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Progress is a road, not a toggle switch.
In Israel, Nazi Porn is popular. The porn depicts jewish men being tortured sexually by nazi women, jewish girls being raped, etc.
That doesn’t mean jews who watch it are anti-semitic. Rather, it means that sexuality is linked to culture. It’s a mirror of what is in our culture’s collective unconscious.
I think this porn reflects sexism as a mirror of a terrifying sexism in culture, not because it’s consumers necessarily are misogynists themselves, in the exact same way that isreali’s who watch nazi porn aren’t anti semites.
but you arent looking at the power dynamics here. you cant compare jewish people watching other jewish people being subjugated and abused to men watching women being subjugated and abused. men watching women being subjugated and abused is more akin to neo-nazis watching the anti-semitic porn, becos then its the same power dynamic, the person who has the power watching a fantasy of an expression of that power. the jewish people watching the anti-semetic porn is akin to women watching porn where women are degraded to get off, which changes the entire dynamic of the experience. its about who in the porn you identify with. people fantasizing about being abused is a whole ‘nother can of worms, but its not the same and someone fantasizing about perpetrating the abuse.
oh, and to be 100% clear, i don’t actually mean that all men are akin to neo-nazis, in case i came off as some crazed misandrist. just feeling the need to clarify.
No, jessilikewhoa, you are correct. The roles must be reversed in the Israel example in order for the comparison to make sense.
How you be so awesome?
I just wanted to submit my eternal gratitude for your elegant elucidation of my feelings on the matter.
I hope you’re happy. I’m way frisky, and i can’t stop at the site for a few days til those nearly naked men are not on my screen any more (or until I get some nookie)….grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
But Jeff, doncha know that Canadians are the best hockey players?
I always come away from these discussions of porn a little bewildered. I am definitely not well versed in the trends and evolution of porn as a genre; I haven’t studied it from an academic point of view, and I have consumed far too little of it to know from experience what it’s like overall or what it’s becoming. But… from what very little I know about it, what I consider “garden variety” porn for guys almost always features very horny women who really love sex for its own sake. This, I thought, was the central fantasy expressed in most porn for guys: women who want sex even more than they do, with women aggressively pursuing them. This is the basic premise for the cliched “pizza delivery boy” scenario and “pool cleaner with the horny housewife” type scenarios. So… is this kind of simplistic porn just not done anymore? Or has it been relegated to a small niche or specialty market in favor of the gross misogyny described here?
But as to the main subject of the post, about masculinity itself, Amanda is dead on as usual. I would absolutely love it if the current definition of masculinity would die a quick death. “Masclinity” as a stereotype is a nasty bit of work, and something men would be so much better off without. Ask any man that’s ever been picked on as a boy on the playground about that… and trust me, that’s most of us.
I think you dissect it way too much. Guys watch porn for about four minutes at a time, to accomplish a very specific goal. And they (we) don’t decide what turns us on. We don’t think to ourselves, “I want to see a bitch get treated like a piece of trash.” It’s more like trial and error. You look at one first, and you know what – the plain, vanilla sex with a young looking redneck girl isn’t doing it for me. So you look at the next one. Again, the hot, blonde lesbians aren’t my thing. You look at the next one, and it’s three guys standing around doing gross things to a woman, and, hey, look at that, I’m getting the reaction in my underpants that I was looking for. Am I “hating on women” such that I need to “own my shit” for watching this stuff for three minutes while I masturbate (hypothetically, of course – I don’t watch porn or masturbate)? Outside of that three minutes, we’re not sitting in our offices during the day thinking “Man, I’d like to own some bitch like I saw in that movie last night.” There are probably guys who do this, but most of us don’t look at the women in our office and think “I bet she’d like to take it from three guys like that whore in the video I saw last night.” It’s fake. We don’t project those scenarios on reality. It doesn’t even enter our consciousness, until the next time we want to masturbate and we’re looking for something that stirs our hormones. Shock and novelty excite guys. I really don’t think it’s misogyny.
I’ve noticed a rise in misogynist spam stuck in my filter lately. There’s a definite increase in subject lines that are some variant of “get a bigger dick so those bitches won’t laugh at you anymore” or “my girlfriend can’t handle my big dick now”. I was wondering how much overlap there is between the “penis enlargement spam” industry and the misogynist porn industry; maybe they are both capitalizing on the same “anxious masculinity” issue?
To get back to Jensen himself and the nit that Amanda rightly picked with Courtney’s review: I’ve heard him speak and also had the pleasure of eating lunch with him and a few of my colleagues the next day. I don’t think he’s self-hating at all, based on these admittedly quick impressions.
At lunch, we mostly talked about food, not porn or sex. The upshot of the conversation: I do think he’s got an ascetic streak. I do think he gives short shrift to pleasure. He’s also a bit of a Boy Scout, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, speaking as a gal who grew up in North Dakota, as Jensen did, in the 1960s and 70s.
As a result, I think he has a hard time imagining porn that really caters to female desires and pleasures. Now, unlike Jensen, I haven’t written a book on porn, but I know I’m capable of being turned on by images of men I’ll never meet. So I believe that an erotics centered on women’s desires is possible, even if it’s rarely what we see.
Jensen also really seems like he wants to do the ethically right thing, which means he’s mostly concerned with criticizing abuses that are already out there in the culture, whether it’s misogynist porn here in the U.S. or the conflation of sex and violence at Abu Ghraib. This tends to crowd out any discussion of positive depictions of sexuality.
That’s a problem even for people who see porn as always and inherently corrosive (and obviously not all of us do). We have almost no chance of eliminating misogynist porn. We’d have a better chance of crowding it out of the marketplace with porn that acknowledges women’s desires as well as men’s.
If a man saying that masculinity (as it’s used in terms of gender role) needs to be eradicated is self-hate, aren’t we accusing women who say that (i.e., feminists) of man-hating?
Personally, my own mantra about masculinity is “I’m male. Therefore everything I do is by definition masculine, because someone who’s male is doing it.” In other words, it’s explicitly rejecting a prescriptive, rather than descriptive, definition of what it means to be male. And it should be noted that this usage isn’t intended to be opposed to “femininity”. If I say that cooking is masculine because I do it, I’m not saying that men are better cooks; rather, I just mean there’s no conflict between the act of cooking and maleness.
One of the ways I think that the type of masculinity Amanda describes is really corrosive is the way that it prevents working class men from uniting around so-called “soft” issues like anti-racism, immigrant rights, and even obvious, really basic aspects of human decency like anti-domestic violence campaigns. I think a lot of men would like to support anti-domestic violence campaigns but are scared to because it will make them seem unmasculine (this was my experience in Australian campaigns of this sort, anyway).
Many of these types of campaigns help workers gain solidarity with each other, and even sexist working men would benefit. But they shy away from seeming soft or weak, and the right especially use this to divide and rule working men. To whatever extent the “white men don’t vote democrat” claims are true, I think those men are being affected by this type of machismo.
(And for my 2 cents worth, to the extent that men and women are fundamentally different, feminine and masculine refer to those differences. So I think we can reform masculinity and femininity, but we can’t abolish them entirely - even if they end up simply meaning “the physical difference between men and women”, such differences will always exist and need to be defined. As I understand it there is some kind of post-modern feminist view which supports that theory, but I’m buggered if I can remember even a single name to attach to it in defense of my view…).
So seeker, are all males masculine by virtue of being male?
The basic trope behind masculinity is “strength”. At the naive level, it’s muscles. At its worst, it’s domination of others and resorting to violence. At its best, it’s strength of will, responsibility, doing the difficult but necessary tasks.
Can females be masculine?
Yes. Or to be more exact, to be worthwhile people, male and female, we have to be both “strong” and “caring”.
Am I “hating on women” such that I need to “own my shit” for watching this stuff for three minutes while I masturbate (hypothetically, of course – I don’t watch porn or masturbate)?
1. Yes.
2. You’re almost certainly lying about the masturbation. More than 95% of men with functional sex organs masturbate, no matter age, marital status, sexual orientation, &c. I masturbate, and assume so does every single man I know, and the vast majority of women.
Continuing. You see, when you say that you’re looking for the stuff that “gets a reaction”…well, fine, but why is hateful pornography what gets a reaction? This is why you have to own what gets you off — because it’s a window into your psyche. I know what I find erotic, and I know what it says about me, because I took it out, unpacked it, looked at it, shuddered slightly, and accepted it.
Hate porn doesn’t work for me; never has, never will. I’m no less abnormal than everyone else when it comes to sex and sexuality, but I never found women being degraded to be an exciting scenario. Indeed, one of the reasons I’ve found written erotica to be infinitely more stimulating that actual movies is that in a written story, you can actually find well-rounded, quasi-realistic characters, and that’s important to me, because I’m attracted to actual women, not “fucktoys.”
That said, in a society as deeply misogynistic and racist as ours, it’s no surprise that porn comes out that is misogynistic and racist. If hate porn gets you off, well, de gustibus non est disputandum…but then again, why it’s what does it for you is a legitimate question, one that you’ll be better off exploring than ignoring.
To be fair, there’s plenty of badly written smut (using the smut/porn distinction here to mean written vs. visual) that’s not much better than the sort of porn being complained about.
To be fair, there’s plenty of badly written smut (using the smut/porn distinction here to mean written vs. visual) that’s not much better than the sort of porn being complained about.
Indeed. The Signal-to-Noise ratio is about 1:100000, unfortunately. Written erotica has a lot of bad about it, but you’re more likely to find something decent there, as opposed to vids, where the S-to-N is approximately 0:infinity.
SarahMC, yes - that is my point. Masculinity and Femininity are cultural constructs, not necessarily bound to a particular sex. If we are going to engage in the notion that one of those constructs is worse then the other, then we must recognize the positive aspects in that construct. If however, we wish to pull apart those constructs and state that de-humanization is bad and empathy is good, that too much passivity is as undesirable as too much aggression, then we need to remove those attributes from the constructs.
As I said, I do not believe that violent porn is anything new — though it may seem more brutal due to technological changes — nor do I believe it is inherent to the construct of masculinity — though I believe it gains prominence during times of social upheaval which effect attributes adjacent to the construct.
“I’m male. Therefore everything I do is by definition masculine, because someone who’s male is doing it.”
Ditto. The funny thing is the same people who want to confine male behavior with proscriptive norms of stereotypical masculinity say that gender behavior is innate. If being masculine comes naturally to us, why worry and self-monitor in order to maintain it? If, on the other hand, there is very little innate difference between men and women (which seems likely), I don’t see a reason to artificially create differences. Don’t differences just tend to separate people?
I heard somewhere that the current porn market is becoming increasingly dominated by amateur porn. My experience with amateur porn is that it’s mostly just couples fucking (although it is more stylized and with more physically ideal partners than the average couple-fuck); do the studies that note the prevalence of degrading porn take into account the amateur stuff?
I actually admit that it’s hard to find good porn sometimes because the hateful to women stuff is so common.
It’s really annoying as it’s a GIGANTIC turnoff for me.
I mean seriously, if the women is crying, etc, then it’s actually pretty disgusting.
How could someone enjoy that???
It boggles my mind and makes me sick.
“It was interesting, but I disagreed with the presenter/author’s opinion that voluntary risk-taking was a useful outlet for men.”
Physical risk? Insane risk? What kind of risk? The sentence doesn’t make much sense by itself. Can I assume some sort of extraordinary risk is being suggested? Both men and women need to take risks to live their normal lives. Having a child or starting a business both entail risk. Not sure how to parse the above sentence.
It really depends what you mean by “amateur.” I’ve encountered the following very different uses of it:
1. Homemade porn produced for a narrow audience
2. Homemade porn produced for a wide audience
3. Industry-produced porn featuring women who don’t have “name recognition” (”gonzo” porn, Girls Gone Wild type stuff, etc.)
Thing is, while category 1 is often (not always) relatively non-degrading, a lot of the stuff in category 2 is heavily influenced by “mainstream” industry porn (e.g., women are referred to as “bitch,” “whore” or “slut,” and the acts tend to imitate those found in mainstream porn), and category 3 is where you find a lot of the really horrible misogynistic material.
I suspect a statement about “the current porn market” is referring to categories 2 and 3 (and possibly only category 3.)
SarahMC, thank you! Although, based on reading your posts over on Feministing, I think we agree on 95% of the stuff being discussed. (I’m not even sure there’s a 5% that we don’t agree on, I’m just assuming since we aren’t the same person…as far as I know.) And thank you so much to Amanda for this post! Again, over on Feministing, there seems to be so much bizarre defensiveness around this subject. I, as a feminist, would love to obliterate this gender binary/essentialist thing, including our whacked out definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine. It’s just silly to deside that something is just manly or just womanly. And, I really do like the differentiation between maleness and masculinity as a way to speak to what is innate (your maleness) and what is constructed (my femininity).
Beyond that, Wallace, you are either woefully naive or just don’t want to deal with the guilt that comes when you have to admit to yourself that misogyny gets you off on occasion. That’s a scary thing to have to own, but you can’t make positive change for yourself or for the women in your life until you do. I say woefully naive, b/c I assume from all the “we’s” in you post that you are a man, and have thus, not been on the receiving end of sex from a man who does in fact let his porn preferences leak into the bedroom, or even just into his behavior towards women in general. I, on the other hand, have. And not just once with one guy who took it all a little too literally. And talking to other women has shown me that my experiences were not freak occurrences. Deal with that. When you do, everyone will be better for it.
SarahMC, thank you! Although, based on reading your posts over on Feministing, I think we agree on 95% of the stuff being discussed. (I’m not even sure there’s a 5% that we don’t agree on, I’m just assuming since we aren’t the same person…as far as I know.) And thank you so much to Amanda for this post! Again, over on Feministing, there seems to be so much bizarre defensiveness around this subject. I, as a feminist, would love to obliterate this gender binary/essentialist thing, including our whacked out definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine. It’s just silly to deside that something is just manly or just womanly. And, I really do like the differentiation between maleness and masculinity as a way to speak to what is innate (your maleness) and what is constructed (my femininity).
Beyond that, Wallace, you are either woefully naive or just don’t want to deal with the guilt that comes when you have to admit to yourself that misogyny gets you off on occasion. That’s a scary thing to have to own, but you can’t make positive change for yourself or for the women in your life until you do. I say woefully naive, b/c I assume from all the “we’s” in you post that you are a man, and have thus, not been on the receiving end of sex from a man who does in fact let his porn preferences leak into the bedroom, or even just into his behavior towards women in general. I, on the other hand, have. And not just once with one guy who took it all a little too literally. And talking to other women has shown me that my experiences were not freak occurrences. Deal with that. When you do, everyone will be better for it.
SarahMC, thank you! Although, based on reading your posts over on Feministing, I think we agree on 95% of the stuff being discussed. (I’m not even sure there’s a 5% that we don’t agree on, I’m just assuming since we aren’t the same person…as far as I know.) And thank you so much to Amanda for this post! Again, over on Feministing, there seems to be so much bizarre defensiveness around this subject. I, as a feminist, would love to obliterate this gender binary/essentialist thing, including our whacked out definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine. It’s just silly to deside that something is just manly or just womanly. And, I really do like the differentiation between maleness and masculinity as a way to speak to what is innate (your maleness) and what is constructed (my femininity).
Beyond that, Wallace, you are either woefully naive or just don’t want to deal with the guilt that comes when you have to admit to yourself that misogyny gets you off on occasion. That’s a scary thing to have to own, but you can’t make positive change for yourself or for the women in your life until you do. I say woefully naive, b/c I assume from all the “we’s” in you post that you are a man, and have thus, not been on the receiving end of sex from a man who does in fact let his porn preferences leak into the bedroom, or even just into his behavior towards women in general. I, on the other hand, have. And not just once with one guy who took it all a little too literally. And talking to other women has shown me that my experiences were not freak occurrences. Deal with that. When you do, everyone will be better for it.
I seem to be having some posting problems, but I’ll try one more time, and if I end up quadruple-posted, I’ll hang my head in shame tomorrow:
SarahMC, thank you! Although, based on reading your posts over on Feministing, I think we agree on 95% of the stuff being discussed. (I’m not even sure there’s a 5% that we don’t agree on, I’m just assuming since we aren’t the same person…as far as I know.) And thank you so much to Amanda for this post! Again, over on Feministing, there seems to be so much bizarre defensiveness around this subject. I, as a feminist, would love to obliterate this gender binary/essentialist thing, including our whacked out definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine. It’s just silly to deside that something is just manly or just womanly. And, I really do like the differentiation between maleness and masculinity as a way to speak to what is innate (your maleness) and what is constructed (my femininity).
Beyond that, Wallace, you are either woefully naive or just don’t want to deal with the guilt that comes when you have to admit to yourself that misogyny gets you off on occasion. That’s a scary thing to have to own, but you can’t make positive change for yourself or for the women in your life until you do. I say woefully naive, b/c I assume from all the “we’s” in you post that you are a man, and have thus, not been on the receiving end of sex from a man who does in fact let his porn preferences leak into the bedroom, or even just into his behavior towards women in general. I, on the other hand, have. And not just once with one guy who took it all a little too literally. And talking to other women has shown me that my experiences were not freak occurrences. Deal with that. When you do, everyone will be better for it.
Fingers crossed that this goes up!
I actually admit that it’s hard to find good porn sometimes because the hateful to women stuff is so common.
So what the hell is the deal with all the female-authored and -targetted vampire-erotica all of a sudden, ranging from the fairly tame to the completely explicit?
Honestly, as a man deeply disturbed by degrading porn and wholly uninterested in the breathing realdoll side of mainstream porn, you have no idea how rare non-degrading porn with women who seem to actually be enjoying themselves is. NO. IDEA. We’re talking less than 1% percent here.
Lawrence Krubner: Unnecessary physical risks. Not necessarily terribly dangerous ones though; things like what he did. Paddling across Canada in a birch bark canoe, re-creating the MacKenzie expedition, or doing an insane 1-month aikido course that the Tokyo riot police do (and it really is insane. Literally. Not at all healthy to train like they do in that programme). There was more to it than that, but that’s what I was talking about for risks.
“I think there’s reason to think that some of the men who don’t buy into the hardcore masculinity construct are still drawn to porn for boring old erotic reasons.”
I’m actually not too sure about this sentiment. As a feminist guy who has watched a lot of porn (a lot of it is “mainstream”, as in I haven’t watched anything that is violent intentionally, just stuff that is more along the lines of indulging the nympho fantasy, which is still misogynist along a “fucktoy” line, certainly) in my eleven years of internet use and periods of having a channel that shows porn movies at midnight every night, I have seriously started doubting the erotic aspect of masturbation. I mean, really, masturbation is a thrill when you discover it, and certainly feels pretty good. But I’ve seriously begun seeing it as more of a habit quite disconnected with sex in any meaningful term (I realize, of course, that trying to define troubling aspects of sexuality out of sexuality is a fool’s errand in that it is more likely to blind us to the problems).
I started feeling, a few months ago, that masturbation was simply something I did when I was bored, not for sexual gratification. It felt, in short, like my penis had by and large been co-opted by watching porn rather than sex. It has certainly influenced my views on women as related to sex in some ways, but I wonder if the bigger impact isn’t on in effect to lessen, in some ways, the “worth” of my self-gratification. Porn-watching is a bit fucked up, but I think it’s a bit more complicated than misoginy on screen -> misoginy in the mind. I think it’s more that mandatory porn watching for men leads to a disconnect with their own sexuality, which naturally forms a very effective breeding ground for misoginy.
As for masculinity, there is nothing at all anti-male of wanting to tear down that particular perversion of humanity.
2. You’re almost certainly lying about the masturbation.
Jeff Fecke: Actually, I think Wallace was joking.
gah, this might be a repost now:
“I think there’s reason to think that some of the men who don’t buy into the hardcore masculinity construct are still drawn to porn for boring old erotic reasons.”
I’m actually not too sure about this sentiment. As a feminist guy who has watched a lot of porn (a lot of it is “mainstream”, as in I haven’t watched anything that is violent intentionally, just stuff that is more along the lines of indulging the nympho fantasy, which is still misogynist along a “fucktoy” line, certainly) in my eleven years of internet use and periods of having a channel that shows porn movies at midnight every night, I have seriously started doubting the erotic aspect of masturbation. I mean, really, masturbation is a thrill when you discover it, and certainly feels pretty good. But I’ve seriously begun seeing it as more of a habit quite disconnected with sex in any meaningful term (I realize, of course, that trying to define troubling aspects of sexuality out of sexuality is a fool’s errand in that it is more likely to blind us to the problems).
I started feeling, a few months ago, that masturbation was simply something I did when I was bored, not for sexual gratification. It felt, in short, like my penis had by and large been co-opted by watching porn rather than sex. It has certainly influenced my views on women as related to sex in some ways, but I wonder if the bigger impact isn’t on in effect to lessen, in some ways, the “worth” of my self-gratification. Porn-watching is a bit fucked up, but I think it’s a bit more complicated than misoginy on screen -> misoginy in the mind. I think it’s more that mandatory porn watching for men leads to a disconnect with their own sexuality, which naturally forms a very effective breeding ground for misoginy.
As for masculinity, there is nothing at all anti-male of wanting to tear down that particular perversion of humanity.
So what the hell is the deal with all the female-authored and -targetted vampire-erotica all of a sudden, ranging from the fairly tame to the completely explicit?
Firstly if you think that has a hope in hell of coming close to the disemination of “porn” (as in the direct industry) you’d be wrong, and secondly of all of this the most popular and mainstream is in many ways hateful towards women and deals quite badly with female desire.
If you take a look at the critiques of Laurel K. Hamiltons later works you can see fans complaining about the fact that she only writes female characters being forced by circumstance into having sex and in at least one case outright rape (it was re-written for the paperback but it’s still there in the original).
(My comment doesn’t seem to be showing up, I’m unsure whether it’s this “modern technology” or just me. Here we go again.)
So what the hell is the deal with all the female-authored and -targetted vampire-erotica all of a sudden, ranging from the fairly tame to the completely explicit?
Firstly if you think that has a hope in hell of coming close to the disemination of “porn” (as in the direct industry) you’d be wrong, and secondly of all of this the most popular and mainstream is in many ways hateful towards women and deals quite badly with female desire.
If you take a look at the critiques of Laurel K. Hamiltons later works you can see fans complaining about the fact that she only writes female characters being forced by circumstance into having sex and in at least one case outright rape (it was re-written for the paperback but it’s still there in the original).
Steve, seeker, and others who suggest we ought to reclaim the label of “masculinity:”
If we reform the definition of “masculinity” to refer to genuinely positive human qualities, why would we expect any of these qualities to be more typically or more properly found in men and less in women? Whereas of course “masculinity” as it is currently defined by our society does include, indeed demands, clearly negative qualities such as being prone to aggression, emotional insensitivity, etc–and then, in our society’s conventional scheme, “properly feminine” women are expected to do the hard, and unrewarded and unhonored, work of cleaning up after the predictable social messes these qualities could be expected to make, unchecked. Women are given the responsibility of restraining men from their designated “nature” without the authority.
Fundamentally, the whole notion that men should be “masculine” and women “feminine” is a demand for a social division of labor, which, if it is not founded in strict biological fact, would mean (I say, it does mean) that everyone is required to neglect aspects of their own characters they are perfectly capable of developing, in order to obsessively develop others they may or may not be individually good at, all for the sake of perpetuating a fundamentally divided society. And division almost certainly means inequality as well. “Separate but equal” as an abstract possibility seems mighty unlikely to happen in real life, and real history has thoroughly discredited the idea.
So, while no one wants to erase the human qualities that defenders of “masculinity” claim (when defending themselves against humane criticisms at any rate) are “masculinity” at its best, it is hard for me to imagine why any of these qualities would be found more in men than women, and still less why they should. Nor is there any reason to think that men developing the qualities commonly called “feminine” would become less capable of exercising “masculine” virtues insofar as they are truly virtues Vice versa women have long mastered the art of being as “masculine” as they need to be, without thereby becoming less female in any reasonable sense.
The division fundamentally exists to put both genders in a straighjacket, limiting everyone.
It’s hard for me to see what value there is in keeping the divisive labels, instead of just admiring people for their strengths and accomplishments without regard to gender at all. If we must label them we can call them human virtues.
I always equated masculinity with stoicism.
These are parts of the construct of masculinity, but it also includes things like self reliance, self-sacrifice, and innovation.
I’d argue that there was this part of masculinity in the past, but it’s mostly a nostalgia trip now for wingnuts who love old school patriarchy. Self-reliance has maybe been a fantasy, but not really much of the construct of 20th and 21st century masculinity that relies so heavily on unpaid female labor to maintain itself. The stereotype of the filthy bachelor pad implies that missing female presence to make the man in question function properly. Self-sacrifice? Men in our culture are seen as taking even the mildest barely-sacrifices (like the sacrifice of the distant and utterly improbably sacrifice of theoretical sex with hundreds of nubile women in the future in order to get married) with temper tantrums that women are supposed to patiently indulge. Innovation? Eh, only if it comes at the price of anti-intellectualism—increasingly, in our culture, the gentleman scholar is disappearing as a stereotype, because women are increasingly academic. Rule #1 of masculinity is that it’s absolutely Not Female. Now that women are becoming intellectual movers and shakers, men attached to masculinity are rejecting intellectualism.
Also, what SarahMC said. Because masculinity is Not Female, whenever women try to participate in an activity that is considered “masculine”, people flip out because they realize that if women infilitrate, then the masculine men will feel the need to exit stage left. So women’s increasing opportunities are, in this model, a direct assault on male opportunities. That’s why there’s so much hostility towards Title IX—if sports truly become associated with women, then a lot of men will leave in a masculinity-protecting huff. I say better to abandon the masculinity than to abandon things like books and sports.
Mark Foxwell NAILS it. This gender straightjacket model ruins it for everyone. I know I don’t find it hard to be ‘masculine’ because, as a freaking human being rather then a rigid set of skills and attributes, I have the ability to be self-sufficient, to protect others, to be ambitious and to be innovative. No sweat. I’m human, these things are part of me.
And, conversely, it’s isn’t that hard to be ‘feminine’ since being empathic and helping others is also, yeah, a thing that *humans* have, not just humans with vaginas.
This stuff pisses me off. It’s criminal the way we take bright, creative human beings and demand that they destroy whole parts of themselves. I know I get the predictable hostility and hatred when I ‘dare’ to use the parts of myself that are marked as ‘for men only.’ FEH.
I’m with Jensen. And Amanda got it right too- it’s not about human beings, you or me or my boyfriend or my dad or whatever. It’s about the construct. It does nothing but create misery. Lets kill it with fire.
Speaking of unnecessary physical risks, there’s this creepy article from MSNBC on heroism, specifically Chub Armand. Basically, it says;
1. Heroes are saps.
2. Because they don’t pass on their genes.
3. Only men can be heroes.
4. Because 8 out of 9 nominees for the Carnegie Medal are men.
5. “Chub” Armand was a sap.
6. Because he has no son.
7. And his daughter and grand daughters don’t count for squat.
But… from what very little I know about it, what I consider “garden variety” porn for guys almost always features very horny women who really love sex for its own sake. This, I thought, was the central fantasy expressed in most porn for guys: women who want sex even more than they do, with women aggressively pursuing them. This is the basic premise for the cliched “pizza delivery boy” scenario and “pool cleaner with the horny housewife” type scenarios. So… is this kind of simplistic porn just not done anymore?
Not as much as it used to be. But it’s worth noting that the “insatiable female” was in itself a humiliation fantasy. It’s never just a woman who really likes sex; it’s someone who’s got a veneer of desperation, who begs for it. But I suppose in a sense it was a harmless enough power fantasy, because it was a direct reaction to real women’s socially-mandated reluctance to have sex (lest you be called a slut), which we’re all aware can help create a reaction in men that’s best described as “pathetic (think: Nice Guys®). The nympho fantasy is a way of turning the tables, making women the ones who have to beg this time. It’s telling that as society relaxed a little and made it seem not-humiliating for women to like sex, porn had to up the humiliation ante.
Indeed, one of the reasons I’ve found written erotica to be infinitely more stimulating that actual movies is that in a written story, you can actually find well-rounded, quasi-realistic characters, and that’s important to me, because I’m attracted to actual women, not “fucktoys.”
I love your comment Jeff, but this part was especially telling. You’re 100% right that the fictional characters on the page tend to be more “real” seeming than the real women in porn videos. What does that say about how much mainstream porn degrades women’s basic humanity? (Well, everyone’s in this case, since the men don’t seem like human either, just robots with two functions: be assholes and hump.)
As someone who has consumed his share of porn, I would like dearly to believe this, but I have my doubts. I leave it to each individual man to determine for himself what exactly draws him to porn (although I do reserve the right to find some explanations more plausible than others), but in my case something more than an innocent, easily-disclaimable pursuit of the “erotic” seems to be operating. A big part of Jensen’s project, which I support, is collapsing the distinction between “good” and “bad” men, and while an avowedly pro-feminist male like myself might be troubled by even an accidental resemblance to the kind of guy who “really” gets off on woman-hating porn, the possibility of such hasn’t prevented me from consuming large quantities of the stuff just the same. If all it takes is me saying that I don’t “openly” seek the worst of the worst, who could ever call me a liar? While I appreciate you giving borderline cases like me the benefit of the doubt, I’m just as willing to be confronted by those who would hold me to a tougher standard.
Although it’s true that mainstream porn intersects with the erotic (almost trivially, as if by accident), it is more crucially about men fucking women, and its propagandistic triumph lies in its conditioning even us “good” guys to conflate the latter (men fucking women) with the former (the erotic itself). The bulk of pornography posits a dreamt-of world in which access to women’s bodies is simply there for the asking, and it’s pure self-flattery for me to entertain the idea that it’s simply a matter of blocking out the bad parts, let alone expect others to uncritically accept such an argument. Not that you would let me off the hook that easily, but I think it’s important not to encourage the sort of special pleading that would-be “allies” often use to avoid being called on their shit.
Imani I don’t think you could accurately say that I was ever “drawn into porn”, it was more of a deliberate leap on my part, starting at age 6 or so, produced by a sincere desire to see lots of naked women.
Porn exists for masturbation, plain and simple. Aside from academic studies, and the occasional “let’s put on a porno and eat popcorn” party, people don’t watch porn for non-mastubatory purposes. I think we could safely say that 99% of porn consumption is directly related to masturbation, because let’s face it, porn is tremendously boring from any other context.
As for masculinity, I’m all in favor of demolishing the concept. The bad stuff is, well bad, and the good attributes ascribed to masculinity are hardly restricted to men, as has been pointed out by dozens of other people here.
The problem with saying that is people who will confuse a desire to eradicate the social construct “masculinity” with eleminating the actual male sex.
Men on the right apparently live in a state of constant pants wetting terror of something bad happening to their penis, they will take any opportunity they can find to scream their castration-fear induced rage, and proposing an end to masculinity is really going to trigger that. Sounds like fun, actually, I always like watching the right wing talking heads grab their crotches protectively…..
I find it puzzling that you see Jensen as ignoring the existence of men who “try to concentrate on the fucking, and less on the hate.” I don’t have the book handy at the moment, so can’t cite pages, but for instance, I know that at one point he draws a distinction between men for whom the misogyny is the attraction, and men for whom it clearly *does not impede* their arousal and orgasm. (And that’s true whether or not they’re in some sense trying to screen it out.) If a man is even capable of watching a woman be humiliated and getting off — if such images do not immediately cause him to go limp and feel really depressed, rather than aroused — then the misogyny is already running pretty deep there, and the getting off can only reinforce it.
So I don’t think it’s fair to say that Jensen ignores these differences, but rather that he is disinclined to let men in the “not actually *seeking* the misogyny” camp get very far off the hook at all.
I haven’t read Jensen, so all I’m going on are the descriptions of his project, but I’m skeptical if I understand it correctly. You can’t ‘kill off’ a specific gender construction. They don’t die - sadly, perhaps, or perhaps not - they evolve over time. That is documentable - just as different notions of what it has “meant” to be a woman - or to be acceptably feminine - have changed over time (with great wild swings, easy to thrill undergraduate audiences with - the sexually insatiable women of Shakespeare’s world to the frigid non-orgasmic women of late Victorian imagining), so have popular notions of what it has “meant” to be a man - or to be acceptably masculine for that time and place.
Besides the slippery terminology that is unfamiliar to most outside academia (maleness =/ masculinity), there is the difficult jargon laden world of studies that point out that there are at any one time several versions of masculinity (or femininity) to choose among, mostly divisible along the obvious lines of race and class, but also region and ethnicity.
Which version of masculinity is Jensen trying to ‘kill off’? And why?
The two versions that get the most public criticism these days are the working class white male/urban lower class black male versions. Those versions have already been culturally isolated and those men increasingly cut off from socially sanctioned access to the traditionally powerful and appealing words associated with positive maleness - bravery, honor, nobility, courage - and left with only the nasty baggage. Lots of reckless violence to no particular purpose.
With lots of victims, especially women and children.
From the review, it sounds a lot like Jensen is part of that pile on. Not that the violence doesn’t need criticism and defusing and refocusing. But I’m not sure that violent porn is so much a cause as a symptom.
The bulk of pornography posits a dreamt-of world in which access to women’s bodies is simply there for the asking, and it’s pure self-flattery for me to entertain the idea that it’s simply a matter of blocking out the bad parts, let alone expect others to uncritically accept such an argument.
What if it’s not an ‘argument’, or even exactly self-flattery (though much of it includes flattery), so much as it’s just fantasy pleasure? (Which admittedly has a whole bunch of misogyny admixed.)
The whole concept of ‘facials’ is, indeed, stupid, and an example of the aforementioned self-flattery, and misogyny. Who is actually into having semen all over their face? Very few people, I bet.
I’m not sure why eradicating masculinity offends Courtney, but I can’t help but think maybe she’s confusing it with eradicating maleness?
This confuses me as well. Frankly, this plan sounds threatening to me as well. What is ‘masculinity’ to you, if not a form of maleness? Just a sense of machismo? A tendency to be agressive and competitive? A desire to be dominant over the ‘feminine’?
What is the ‘masculine’ to you, so I have an idea of what is to be eliminated? And why not, instead, try to get the ‘masculine’ to change into something less pathological, rather than straight-up killing it?
This notion that the penis has no connection to the mind is just denial.
It’s not possible to be turned on sexually by an image your mind does not find appealing in some way. It may not be a conscious attraction but it is there. Just ‘cause you don’t know about your issues doesn’t mean you don’t got issues.
Even if masculinity is somehow morphed into something less pathological, something that embraces more positive qualities, there is still a problem.
No matter what it means, there is one thing about masculinity that never changes: it is the opposite of “femininity.” If you say masculinity means X, then it necessarily follows that femininity is not X. Whether X is a good quality or bad quality does not matter.
So, masculinity and femininity are oppposites. Why is that a problem, exactly?
Personally I think theres a time for masculinity, and a time for femininity. Desiring to eradicate either isn’t going to do much good. And taking either to its stereotypical extreme is unhealthy.
As for the porno thing, does this exist in gay porn too? You know, is there one “submissive” guy or whatever thats humiliated?
Oh, and the pic at the top reminded me of one of the most hilarious 1960s PSAs I’ve ever seen.
PERVERSION FOR PROFIT!
Well, gee, all of this an no mention of how much this sounds like Stoltenberg’s, “Refusing to Be a Man?”
Granted the link to Courtney Martin’s review is borked at this time, but Stoltenberg’s position (from memory) was that manhood was not just a state of biological being, but a constant struggle for dorminance, and that refusing to engage in that struggle marks one as “not a man” in our dominant culture. Rejecting male privilege means accepting the risk that comes with the loss of status.
atheist: Well, one objection is that for many of us, our experience and our desires don’t fit neatly into such restrictive binaries.
Thank you, Jeff.
Both men and women can get off, if that’s really the goal, using nothing but their own bodies–ask any teenager.
Fantasy is fantasy, and one’s not automatically a monster for getting off to a violent scene in one’s head (if they’re not doing anything to anyone else). But if something violent or demeaning was usually what did it for me, I’d be pretty worried about myself and want to know why. (This is about ME, not picking on anyone else).
As things stand now, it’s so normalized that people who don’t think much about anything just shrug, accept the misogyny as status quo and pat themselves on the back because they don’t really DO that shit to real people (even as they’re fantasizing about it when they have sex with a real person). I’m not worried about those people who actually DO think about why something turns them on.
I agree that masculinity and femininity as constructed sex roles should be thrown out. They’re not useful to individuals at all, unless you like being shoved into a box and told to stay there.
Please, let’s stop calling the glorification of tyranny (Might is right!) and bigotry against women and girls “masculinity.” Please.
I agree that we’re way too “polite” when it comes to the sexualization of violent hate in the media, especially porn (We can condemn film fiction like Birth of a Nation and not this?). Mainstream porn exploits the awesome power of sex to fuel violent hate. However, unlike religion or other forces vulnerable to exploitation, sexuality is a biological tour de force. These images that document actual behavior–not “fantasy”–are designed to provoke strong emotional reactions. We’re all biologically wired to be aroused by images of nudity and sex, so any exposure will warp you. Combine that with masturbatory conditioning and you’ve got the ultimate indoctrination device.
You’re 100% right that the fictional characters on the page tend to be more “real” seeming than the real women in porn videos. What does that say about how much mainstream porn degrades women’s basic humanity? (Well, everyone’s in this case, since the men don’t seem like human either, just robots with two functions: be assholes and hump.)
You’re overanalyzing. It’s basic economics and math.
The average (story-style, not just all-sex) porn movie runs, what, just over an hour? Say 75 minutes. In that 75 minutes there will be, on average, say 6 sex scenes (at least that’s what I recall from the days when I watched it). That’s 12.5 minutes to do the sex scene and set up the bare minimum of plot. That’s not a huge amount of time for character development. More or more complicated sex scenes leaves, of course, even less time.
Everyone has to be a sex machine because that’s all they have time for.
They do make films that run longer and take the time to do character development and have something of a plot, but as those films actually start costing real money to make there are a lot fewer of them. As a result most porn ends up being the mindless compilation of sex scenes.
Something written has the luxury of having more time to spend on the non-sex stuff because the sex itself takes up less time than it does on screen. “He worked his magic with his tongue for a few minutes.” takes a few seconds to write and a second to read while it would take, well, several minutes to see on film and a lot longer than that to shoot (resetting cameras and lights, retakes because something went wrong, yadda yadda).
A writer therefore has the luxury of being able to do more.
atheist: Well, one objection is that for many of us, our experience and our desires don’t fit neatly into such restrictive binaries.
Right, but the argument wasn’t “I refuse to participate in masculinity because it’s too restrictive”, the argument was, “Masculinity should be eradicated”. These two positions seem very different to me.
It’s been noted here and elsewhere that the explosion of free porn available through the Internet has forced professional pornographers to more and more “X-treme” levels to distingush themselves in the market place. As a 39-year-old straight guy who hasn’t gotten tired of looking at and masturbating to photos of women happy to pose naked, it’s been all-too-easy to avoid the degrading drift of what is apparently considered “mainstream porn,” and when I’m exposed to it (either by accident or in sociological critique), I don’t feel a lot of ownership of it.
Nevertheless, I still have enough residual shame of sex that I don’t discuss my porn consumption with my male friends, but if I did I’d contribute to a (re-)construction of masculinity by asserting that “real men don’t pay for porn.” There’s simply too much amateur porn for free to bother supporting an industry that needs to debase its participants (producers and consumers) to stay in the black.
I don’t have a lot of exposure to “kids these days,” but I’m as skeptical of anedotal evidence of teenage boys demanding facials as I was of earlier reports of the widespread trend of “rainbow parties.” I do, however, think everyone suffers from American society’s dreadful neglect of sexual education, which wasn’t any better 25 years ago before “Girls Gone Wild” and bukkake.com. As long as we’re afraid to tell our children the truth about sex, they’ll take any information they can get.
Any helpful reclamation of the concept of “masculinity” would include sexual education that isn’t just about how to prevent (or initiate) pregnancy and to avoid disease, but also (as Amanda has written previously) how to have fun. Because it is, for everyone.
Yup. It’s not for lack of trying to find it. It’s just.not.there.
From that base, it’s impossible not to follow that man and woman are opposites, and from there arises oppositional sexism.
Amanda, I’m sorry, I respectfully disagree with you. You are suggesting that attributes which may be classified as ‘bad’ are all that comprise the construct of masculinity, and that other ‘good’ attributes may deconstructed to show how they reinforce the prior ‘bad’ attributes, or are construct neutral. The constructs are far more complex and pervasive then this. The classification of attributes as good or bad are always a response to social-political shifts - at a time of war, violence and aggression are considered culturally ‘good’; after wars stability and nurturing are ‘good’.
You are conflating the economic and political system of patriarchy with the social construct of masculinity. While certainly they influence one another there is no reason to believe that one requires the other to exist. Patriarchy can easily exist with a significantly reduced definition of masculinity - one which say only encompasses peers of a realm. Masculinity may survive outside of a particular power structure as simply a series of cultural attributes - a linguistic signifier.
My point remains that it is the attributes that need reenforcement and criticism, not the construct. I do not believe, as some have suggested, that Masculinity needs to be reclaimed; rather, that it, and Femininity, need to be reduced as prominent constructs. Elimination of these constructs is nearly impossible, due to strong socio-linguistic forces; however, by reducing the import of the constructs we may increase the value of the ‘good’ attributes across culture as a whole. By simply saying masculinity is bad we arrive at a point of contention as to what masculinity is comprised of. By stating that de-humanization is bad we make a more universal statement.
But, on some level we are “opposites”, and it’s unavoidable. To me, the problem is when someone decides that opposites must fight, and one must dominate.
What is the ‘masculine’ to you, so I have an idea of what is to be eliminated? And why not, instead, try to get the ‘masculine’ to change into something less pathological, rather than straight-up killing it?
Atheist, the idea that what’s “masculine” is opposite to what’s “feminine” needs to die. It’s only purpose is to keep everyone insecure to make them more pliable to those in power.
Unless you’re talking about what one body can do as opposed to another (like bear a child or father one) there’s just no damned reason to say any particular attribute is “masculine” or “feminine”. Men and women both have strength (or not), both are self-reliant (or not), both have integrity (or not), etc.
Also, if sex roles were really so binary, transsexuals would be applauded for knowing their true selves. Instead they (often) get a lot of crap. This implies that it’s less about there really being a difference between the sexes’ brains (as far as society’s concerned) and more about keeping everybody in neat little compartments because they’re easier to control that way.
Sex roles are prescriptive, not descriptive. They’re not really describing the way the sexes are–they’re telling people of both sexes what they must be to be a true man or woman.
Dammit. I meant to say “if the sexes and their emotional attributes were really so different”. Sex roles are binary, that’s their whole reason for existing.
Interesting. If you think about it, that is also a summation of the dynamic faced by people trying to live a pure Christian ethic. Most of life is a struggle, either for yourself or for your social group. Pure Christianity implies walking away from a position of strength and privilege and dealing with all others as equals.I’m not making any particular point, nor do I hold a brief for Christianity. I merely find the parallel interesting.
atheist: But masculinity in regards to the dominant culture is normative and prescriptive to such an extend that I think there is serious doubt as to whether one can have masculinity in any form that would be recognized as such today, and the freedom to refuse to participate in it without social consequences.
If you present yourself as a man, you have two choices. Engage in masculinity or risk being identified as “queer” and therefore become a legitimate target for discrimination, harassment and violence. Masculinity isn’t some fashion like Disco that you can try on for a decade and then move on the next. It is central for defining patterns of dominance.
Remove those patterns of dominance and what do you have? Little more that a set of vague platitudes.
steve: I draw a different lesson from socio-linguistics. Not too long ago, the second-person pronoun in English was a major vehicle for expressing class dominance. If I choose to address thy arguments using the thou pronoun form, I would imply that thou art in a significantly lower class position compared to me, and I could address thee as if one was a servant or subordinate.
As it is, both the language and the class divisions that the language emphasized have changed over time, such that the t-v distinction in English has become archaic.
As culture changes, so does language. But I think Stolternberg’s point and I suspect Jensen’s is that masculinity and gender liberation are mutually incompatible with each other as compasses for behavior, because participation in oppressive norms of behavior are necessary if one is going to be accepted as “masculine” in the dominant culture.
No matter what it means, there is one thing about masculinity that never changes: it is the opposite of “femininity.” If you say masculinity means X, then it necessarily follows that femininity is not X. Whether X is a good quality or bad quality does not matter.
I would argue pretty strongly that this isn’t the case. In fact I think a strong case has been made that the idea of masculinity as the opposite of femininity is itself a very modern construct.
In Europe and its western colonies (this is the world I know best and I cannot speak to Asian or African norms here), manhood (masculinity is itself a very modern word and concept) was culturally and socially constructed as the opposite of *childhood* and not of womanhood until almost the end of the 18th century.
Women and men weren’t thought of as opposites or even as binary pairs. In the west, anyway, they tended to be thought of as entirely different life forms. (That’s part of where one of the basic assertions of feminism comes from - insisting that women *are* human and not something weird and not quite the same comes from combatting this idea that women truly aren’t human in a world where man=human.)
It isn’t an exact analogy by any means - but think of mules. A mare (female horse) can give birth to more horses - with stallion sires - or mules - with donkey sires. Mules and Horses aren’t the opposite of each other - they are just really, really different, despite the shared bloodlines.
I’m noticing that many of the posters who identify as male seem (to me) very nervous about the idea of “ending masculinity”.
I can’t see a woman (who’s already posting on feminist blogs) being upset about losing “femininity” as a construct. In fact, most feminist women I know define “feminine” for themselves as “whatever the hell I feel like doing”, unless they’re deliberately putting the word “feminine” in quotes and talking about the sex role definition that’s pushed on us.
I wonder if it’s internalized misogyny on our part (the “feminine” as inferior, so why not get rid of it). Or maybe it would feel threatening if men were saying, “We need to get rid of femininity, it’s useless.” (Also, it’s hard to distinguish between what’s constructed and what’s instrinsic when they’re all lumped together under “feminine”).
Just curious. Do those who identify as male think they’d be losing anything if they just said, “Masculine means ME because I’m a guy; now bug off, I’m late for my needlepoint class”? It seems if one’s already reading a feminist blog, that should kind of be the whole point.
If you’re saying people should be judged and treated as individuals based on who they are rather than what set of chromosomes they have, then I don’t have a problem with what you’re saying.
I think it really depends on what you mean by “market”. I don’t think anyone else here has started posting links to their favorite non-degrading porn, so I’m not going to break the seal, but a lot of amateur porn is traded by the people who make it, not for any profit other than exhibitionism, the validation of people telling them they’re hot, or in return for other porn. I doubt there’s any way to tell to what extent this complements or replaces industrial porn production. As well you should. If there’s one place in which we let our guard down and honestly seek what we want, it’s in porn–hence the usually-hidden racism so ingrained in our culture is right up front in porn. Despite that, porn viewers, especially those getting it for free, are very forgiving–it’s not that they want to see hate and violence, it’s that they’re pretty good at ignoring it if it’s not what they want to be seeing. The degree to which it affects the viewer regardless of this filtering process is, it seems, Jensen’s main point.Amanda, I’m sorry, I respectfully disagree with you. You are suggesting that attributes which may be classified as ‘bad’ are all that comprise the construct of masculinity, and that other ‘good’ attributes may deconstructed to show how they reinforce the prior ‘bad’ attributes, or are construct neutral.
Not really. I accept that masculinity used to be a concept that justified male superiority by attributing all these good qualities to men (and saying women don’t have them). But the feminist revolution has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that was is deemed “masculine” is largely Not Female, and as women begin to claim good masculine traits as human traits that women can have, those traits drop away from masculinity. Even though, for instance, a lot of people demand masculinity to be an attribute in a President, it’s not a very good kind of masculinity. Bush’s masculinity was established by his beer-drinking immature jovial nature, his asshole tendency to give people shallow nicknames, and his willingness to replace a general bullying attitude for the more traditional (and used-to-be masculine) attributes of responsible diplomacy.
So, masculinity and femininity are oppposites. Why is that a problem, exactly?
Simple. Say we define something as “masculine”, like participation in sports. In order to preserve the construct, we must oppress women, and deny them the right to play sports. One or the other has to go, the construct or women’s rights. I’m for the construct going.
“Bush’s masculinity was established by his beer-drinking immature jovial nature, his asshole tendency to give people shallow nicknames, and his willingness to replace a general bullying attitude for the more traditional (and used-to-be masculine) attributes of responsible diplomacy.”
If that’s a working definition of today’s masculinity, good riddance - the sooner the better…
Also whether they’re ignoring their own hidden desires, maybe? “It’s not my fault–I can’t find “nice” porn so I have to watch this”? (Never even considering the wild idea of just NOT watching it, and instead getting off using their own brains for stimulation).
If it really grossed them out, they’d wouldn’t watch it–they’d say “Okay, ugh, forget this” and turn it off. If they CAN filter it out, what does that say?
industrial porn is not erotic, period. Watching five minutes of some aging bodybuilder’s ball bag sway back and forth as he pistons some pimply butted girl’s vagina is not stimulating.
By convention, the male lead must pull out and stroke his dong to climax because the schmuck consumer is reduced to stroking his dong to climax. Ejaculation also provides visual confirmation that this is a real hardcore film, and not some Skinemax simulation. I guess if you’ve never had sex, when you finally do you want to imitate the porn conventions, but they are porn conventions that have little relation to satisfying partner sex. Coming inside feels so good I have never wanted to pull out and stroke myself to release. I learned eons ago that coitus interruptus was not effective birth control.
We get it. Men and women are different. This is not a mystery. No one is missing this point. Here’s the thing: masculinity and femininity are taken to be gendered expressions of character, linked to our biologies. This is what we aren’t buying into. What is more particularly male about strength of will? What is more particularly female about meekness? Is there a biological basis to these classic tropes of the masculinity/femininity binary?
There are those of us who have become extremely skeptical of any “difference” between the sexes that cannot be directly and definitively linked to biological differences. Men are better at math and spacial reasoning. Women are better at verbal and emotional intelligence - c’mon! Is it really true that men’s brains just happen to be better suited for tasks that grant greater economic rewards? Of course it isn’t. But the socialization of the “attitude binary” runs deep: men are thinkers, women are feelers. What we’re trying to point out is that there’s nothing organic about it, and the masculine/feminine binary is a trap for all of us.
It’s a problem when it’s a folder, not a tag.
The problem isn’t so much that “masculinity and femininity are opposites,” but rather that they’re considered one of the most *fundamental* opposites. One of the first things you do when you interact with someone is try to determine what set of bits they have, even when it has absolutely no relevance to the interaction. (Not that I’m advocating gender blindness. In a patriarchy, gender blindness means assuming everyone is male.)
It also (and this is why I use the folders vs. tags metaphor) means that the same concepts get looked at very differently . It’s as if, in the “male” folder you have folders labeled “strong,” “weak,” “studly,” “asexual,” etc., and in the “female” folder you have folders labeled “bitchy,” “nice,” “slutty,” “frigid,” etc. - and the contents of the folders are the same.
Not as much as it used to be. But it’s worth noting that the “insatiable female” was in itself a humiliation fantasy. It’s never just a woman who really likes sex; it’s someone who’s got a veneer of desperation, who begs for it. But I suppose in a sense it was a harmless enough power fantasy, because it was a direct reaction to real women’s socially-mandated reluctance to have sex (lest you be called a slut), which we’re all aware can help create a reaction in men that’s best described as “pathetic (think: Nice Guys®). The nympho fantasy is a way of turning the tables, making women the ones who have to beg this time. It’s telling that as society relaxed a little and made it seem not-humiliating for women to like sex, porn had to up the humiliation ante.
I think you’re on to something here. Perhaps the “garden variety” porn I described was originally intended to be demeaning to women, but now that it’s much more “ok” than it used to be for women to actually enjoy sex for its own sake, this “garden variety” porn is no longer demeaning on its face… therefore, it’s no longer as marketable as it once was. How shitty.
As I think on it, to me, the thing that makes any kind of porn hot is seeing people really enjoy themselves. That old chiched porn, whatever its underlying demeaning or misogynist intentions, generally did depict very happy people. It’s depressing to hear that that’s no longer marketable.
I would suggest that ugly porn probably has a usefull role to play somehow. Humans in general are pretty fucked up, even when they are tolerant and nice and all.
On the one hand, the world is becoming less and less violent; meanwhile we get anime tentacule child rape, 2girls1cup, etc. Seems like a trade off.
I appreciate your point, but I disagree somewhat with the premise. As a man, I appreciate people who point out that the cultural definition of “manliness” is constricting, as it is. But I disagree that it should be eradicated. Rather, it should be expanded. Men should be free to be men, whatever that means. Some men may choose to ride around in tanks, fire guns, blast heavy metal music, and watch hardcore porn all night long. So should some women, if they want. More power to them both. But men should also be allowed to be sensitive, caring, emotional, if they want to. As should some women. And more power to them as well.
We shouldn’t be talking about “destroying masculinity” or “destroying femininity.” We should be talking about expanding what those labels mean and accepting people who want to act one way or another.
I appreciate your point, but I disagree somewhat with the premise. As a man, I appreciate people who point out that the cultural definition of “manliness” is constricting, as it is. But I disagree that it should be eradicated. Rather, it should be expanded. Men should be free to be men, whatever that means. Some men may choose to ride around in tanks, fire guns, blast heavy metal music, and watch hardcore porn all night long. So should some women, if they want. More power to them both. But men should also be allowed to be sensitive, caring, emotional, if they want to. As should some women. And more power to them as well.
Neither set of traits is sex specific. It’s all culturally defined. Maybe women are more likely to prefer one or the other, and men might prefer different things in general as well. And that should be okay. We shouldn’t be talking about “destroying masculinity” or “destroying femininity.” We should be talking about expanding what those labels mean and accepting people who want to act one way or another. The solution isn’t to try to destroy part of our human nature, it should be to expand our acceptance that people are different, and that’s okay.
I appreciate your point, but I disagree somewhat with the premise. As a man, I appreciate people who point out that the cultural definition of “manliness” is constricting, as it is. But I disagree that it should be eradicated. Rather, it should be expanded. Men should be free to be men, whatever that means. Some men may choose to ride around in tanks, fire guns, blast heavy metal music, and watch hardcore porn all night long. So should some women, if they want. More power to them both. But men should also be allowed to be sensitive, caring, emotional, if they want to. As should some women. And more power to them as well.
Neither set of traits is sex specific. It’s all culturally defined. Maybe women are more likely to prefer one or the other, and men might prefer different things in general as well. And that should be okay. We shouldn’t be talking about “destroying masculinity” or “destroying femininity.” We should be talking about expanding what those labels mean and accepting people who want to act one way or another. The solution isn’t to try to destroy part of our human nature, it should be to expand our acceptance that people are different, and that’s okay.
Another thought: one typical way the misogyny did overtly manifest itself in that “garden variety” porn was in the comments often made by the male actors: “Ooh, you like that, don’t you… you’ve done this before, haven’t you… You’re such a slut, aren’t you” type comments. There’s no getting around the fact that these are misogynistic comments, no matter how much the people appear to be enjoying themselves.
But as I think on it, the women actors in these movies reacted very well to these comments: for the most part, they would shrug, laugh, and smirk as if to say “well, yes… and what the hell is it to you, anyway?” Kind of like the “getting over being called a slut by being a slut” gambit.
I know, I’m way over analyzing this.
The whole “end to masculinity” bit seems to contain a catch-22. Negative attributes tacked to masculinity–violence, domination of the weak, laziness and incompetence at housework–are, of course, negative and should be stricken. But when positive attributes–courage, competence at ‘manly’ tasks–are tacked to masculinity, that’s also bad, as it implies that women, lacking masculinity, lack these attributes. Looking at it in this way, there really isn’t anything good that can be done with the concept of masculinity.
Do you know of anyone actually masturbating to 2girls1cup? I’m sure someone’s done it to prove they could… That kind of thing never bothered me, because that’s only an insult if you think “you like that” is an insult. (That is, you can pretend it’s not misogyny if you turn your head and squint.) On the other hand, calling women stupid or worthless is unmistakably misogynist; there’s really no way to squint so that it’s not. And I have seen porn that calls women stupid and worthless, not just sluts.
I don’t think that the reasons for industrial porn not being erotic have much to do with the performers being aging or pimply-butted. In fact, hasn’t industrial porn been the subject of a great deal of justified criticism for its cartoonish body standards?It’s a problem when it’s a folder, not a tag.
*sigh* Oh, don’t get me started on this. The whole folder vs. tag metaphor is seriously screwed up in talking about HCI because people make the mistake of assuming that data can only live in one folder, an assumption that hasn’t been true since the early 70s. To put it simply, a folder is simply an arbitrary tag that allows a person to manipulate sets of data.
If someone can get aroused by a bicycle…
I think there is a place for “cum shots” in that, at least in the safer sex environment when I started experinmenting sexually, penetrative activities including oral sex were considered to be of a higher risk, and activities such as mutual masturbation, play with toys, and varieties of frottage were considered to be hot and sexy alternatives to penetrative sex. “Cum on your partner, not in them,” was the motto of at least one man who had lost more than a few friends to the plague.
Of course a problem is that I’ve only encountered one film that had a focus on safer sex and alternatives to the traditional pattern of necking-cunnilingus-fellatio-vaginal-anal that dominate porn.
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This is where I keep getting snagged in Jensen’s analysis. He is utterly convinced that we live in a culture that—by and large—wants to see women humiliated, submissive, and in pain.
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I am not impressed by Jensen. He struck me as a self-hating moralist when I heard him speak.
Quite frankly I enjoy certain types of erotica Jensen would no doubt be appalled at, generally scenes involving mild dominance - a little dirty talk, a little spanking, maybe some anal sex thrown in. But I don’t ‘hate women’; I have a happy fulfilling relationship with my wife and the other women who are my friends.
It’s fantasy, people! Not reality! Get over it. Erotica is representation, an opportunity to escape into the mind from the ordinary everyday life for a few minutes.
Human beings share with many other mammals the instinct to admire and obey certain individuals who become leaders through strength of will and personality, to lead or follow, and to submit or dominate. This kind of erotica is a reflection of primal tribal behavior, where some members of the tribe are leaders, and some are followers. Like it or not, regardless of gender we are all dominated and we dominate others at some point in our lives.
I submit.. er I claim that this type of erotica is not specifically about women, it’s a reaction to deep feelings and anxieties we have about about power over another person.
If I want to see a representation of an adult woman being spanked, I should be able to enjoy this without facing a wad of insults and having my character questioned. Or for that matter, if I want to be at the other end of the paddle. People need to be able to explore their fantasies in a safe and consensual way without being spat on (metaphorically) by the likes of Jensen.
What percentage of the porn industry is gay male porn?
What are the similarities and differences between gay porn scenarios and straight porn scenarios?
CBrachyrhynchos: I know (a little bit anyway) about symbolic links and stuff. I also know that most people don’t use ‘em, so I think “folders” is a good enough metaphor for rigid hierarchy.
I’m late to this thread so I’ll just shorten my long story by saying that I fell in to the trap of proving my masculinity when I was younger. I broke up w/my girlfriend of 2 years to prove a point and had to act like it didn’t matter to me. Guess what. It did matter and I realized too late what a huge asshole I was.
“I actually admit that it’s hard to find good porn sometimes because the hateful to women stuff is so common.”
Quite true. It’s pretty sad that today some of the most popular porn is of the “we tricked this bitch into fucking us!” variety. Even softcore stuff like Playboy is almost exclusively women with extremely fake bodies, which is still hateful to women in a less overt manner.
The funny thing about porn is that it has almost nothing to do with hot women having sex, which you would naively figure is the entire point.
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More to the point of the original post, Jensen didn’t say men need to stop being boneheads, he said they had to stop being men. I like my penis, balls and Y chromosome just fine the way they are.
Um, would someone explain why we need to hold onto a set of masculinity and femininity concepts that are not inherently linked to biological phenomenon? Gender roles are useful for the same reason pack hiearchies in wolves are useful: they help allocate resources and duties for the group. We don’t need those roles anymore, and haven’t needed them for a very long time; perhaps even since presentience. Is there anything to indicate that these separate roles are no different than the irrational compulsions we supress all the time — jealous wrath, violence, theft? In other words, perhaps our present gender roles are really just poor instincts we need to get under control.
It’s not easy to see things this way. We think of “bad” instincts as “antisocial” and gender roles are often considered to be positive for society; e.g., “social.” But if the very existance and maintenance of gender roles is net harmful, why bother with them?
I ask because, after a lot of thought, I can see no purpose for a male that is not a purpose for a female. Women should take care of children. Men should take care of children. And they should do pretty much the same things with them, with, again, the differences being mostly biologically madated. I certainly concede, advocate even, that the majority of males may be more suited for certain tasks and the majority of females for a certain set of others, but that doesn’t mean shit. What about the outliers? Plenty of females are better at lifting large weights than some males — what do our roles say now? Biological truth is greater than social truth, imo, and biology seems to suggest that we should assign roles to individuals, if we assign them at all, and not to sexes.
So why do we need masculinity? Another way: describe a concept of masculinity that is a) useful for society to adapt (presents a benefit that allays its cost of role-enforcement) and b) presents characteristics that females should not have?
And don’t include peeing standing up. Some women can do that, too.
“I actually admit that it’s hard to find good porn sometimes because the hateful to women stuff is so common.”
Quite true. It’s pretty sad that today some of the most popular porn is of the “we tricked this bitch into fucking us!” variety. Even softcore stuff like Playboy is almost exclusively women with extremely fake bodies, which is still hateful to women in a less overt manner.
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More to the point of the original post, Jensen didn’t say men need to stop being boneheads or that masculinity has to be changed or eradicated, he said they men had to stop being men. I like my penis, balls and Y chromosome just fine the way they are.
Amanda is substituting in “masculinity” but the actual word used was “men.” Being a man and being a full human being were posed as mutually exclusive. Does seem rather self-hating.
That men aren’t full human beings simply by nature of being men is not a concept I’m on board with. I am however on board with men not acting like boneheads or eradicating the negative traditional aspects of masculinity.
Jensen didn’t call for that though; he called for an end to men. Poor word choice on his part.
I suspect a double post is incoming. Sorry ’bout that. The first is a subset of the second. I fail at the internets.
Here’s another male voting to eliminate “masculinity.” The only way “masculinity” — however multifaceted and overlapping-with-femininity we make it — is meaningful is if there’s something in it that is either required for men or prohibited to women.
I don’t like the “I did X, I’m a man, therefore X is masculine” idea. Not everything I do is a validation/expression of my Y chromosome.
It’s a masculinity thread, and no one’s mentioned it yet. I pretty much have to, now.“Turn in my penis? How will I open jars?”
Firstly if you think that has a hope in hell of coming close to the disemination of “porn” (as in the direct industry) you’d be wrong,
Didn’t say that. I was wondering what the attraction was for women with vampires as an erotic trope. I like the genre, but the female-orientated erotic bits seem questionable.
If you take a look at the critiques of Laurel K. Hamiltons later works you can see fans complaining about the fact that she only writes female characters being forced by circumstance into having sex and in at least one case outright rape (it was re-written for the paperback but it’s still there in the original).
Oh, I gave up on Hamilton a while back when they wound up as nothing but erotica - I haven’t read her later stuff at all. But Hamilton is hardly the only writer riding this particular pony - at the moment, I have a couple of Tanya Huff’s stuff on the reading pile, and I’ve just gone through a pretty awful collection of short stories by various authors that blatantly rewrote the vampire myth for the purposes of sexual fantasy.
Vampires have been an erotic trope ever since Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel. The symbolism of penetration, exchange of bodily fluids, and the effect Dracula has on his female victims (or vice versa with the Brides and Jonathan Harker) all have extremely sexual subtext. It wasn’t until society managed to throw off the sexual norms of his day that other authors took that subtext, ran with it, and made it text. All in all, not really that suprising. Scholars of the original novel have been examining this for years; you’ll probably be able to easily find discussion via google.
But, on some level we are “opposites”, and it’s unavoidable. To me, the problem is when someone decides that opposites must fight, and one must dominate.
No, the “masculine” and “feminine” virtues exist as a dialectic, not as a simple opposition. An individual cannot develop one far at all without incorporating and dealing with the other.
Strength without caring is essentially selfish, and unable to uphold any goal past the person’s ego. It is weakness. Caring without strength is essentially ineffectual, and unable to do any good. It is weakness. A person cannot afford to regard either set of values as alien to them.
Vampires have been an erotic trope ever since Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel
In conjunction with Victorian attitudes towards female passiveness, and then from the male perspective.
But now? In primarily female-orientated literature? With such demand?
There’s something going on, but I don’t know what it is. Call me Mr Jones.
“Masculinity is extremely stressful to men, since it’s not something you ever get to have, but something that you’re always fighting to prove”
I don’t buy that argument, like the fighting to prove thing is only something men experience. Being a woman is extremely stressful. Just look at the treatment most women blogging get that men don’t experience. You are minimized at work, especially when you get beyond the entry level jobs. You are always in danger of being “too.” Too loud, too quiet, too large, too old, too unfeeling, too feeling, too…something.
And you are ENTIRELY responsible for all sexual feelings a man has. If he desires you, it’s your fault. If you deny, you are a bitch. After all. It’s your fault. If he wants your job and you are in the way, you’re a bitch. If you indulge, you could be a slut. If desire declines, it’s your fault and you must fix it. It’s also your fault that you age. The laws of space, times and physics are your fault. After all. It’s your fault. It can’t be anything internal to the man.
I don’t buy that being a man is the most stressful thing, stress being exclusive and special to men.
Also whether they’re ignoring their own hidden desires, maybe? “It’s not my fault–I can’t find “nice” porn so I have to watch this”? (Never even considering the wild idea of just NOT watching it, and instead getting off using their own brains for stimulation).
If it really grossed them out, they’d wouldn’t watch it–they’d say “Okay, ugh, forget this” and turn it off. If they CAN filter it out, what does that say?
A fair point to make, Cara, but I would say that using our brains for stimulation depends at least somewhat on some sensory input and experience out of which we can construct fantasy using our brains. I might be misunderstanding you here, but it’s difficult for me to figure how I could fantasize a priori; what we see, hear, feel, etc. is the raw material of our fantasies.
Which is not to say that that’s a sufficient reason to excuse misogynist pornography. It’s not. What I am saying, though, is that I think that’s one reason of several why people are drawn to and like sexually explicit media.
Nick writes: “It’s fantasy, people! Not reality! Get over it.”
Actually, it’s not even simulated but the actual documentation of graphic sexual interaction. You do realize that, right? Even if it was simulated it doesn’t make it immune from expressing bigotry. If fiction in film and literature can be used to fuel bigotry, which can’t even supposedly “fantasy” sexuality?
Also, if anything, Jensen is desperately trying to attack the strongly “moralist” POV of porn, in that it is a manifestation of our puritanical streak, which like all religious fundamentalism is utterly defined by the bigotry of misogyny (Notice how the most “devout” cultures are the most open in their celebration of rape and femicide?). Sexuality is a reflection of this “morality” that claims females are inherently evil and, thus, deserve to be punished.
Mind you, for men to morally condemn femaleness on the basis of sexual “immorality” is transparently anti-female considering the glorification of even worse male sexual behavior (the notorious double standard). Hence, the casual use of misogynistic slurs as synonyms not only for women in porn but for all women and girls, regardless of their behavior and its justification of anti-female violent extremism. All hate groups exploit the power of religion to sanctify their reign of terror (ex.: The Klan considers themselves a “Christian” organization). Why should a misogynistic industry be any different?
I don’t buy that being a man is the most stressful thing, stress being exclusive and special to men.
Yeah, if someone said that, it would be a stupid argument. Thank god no one did say something that stupid. There’s nothing about saying men experience stress that precludes believing women do. Why would it?
We can talk about the problems of men without it implicitly meaning women don’t count. I see this fallacy all the time on the internets, that if you’re talking about Y right now, that means you don’t care about X. It’s the definition of a strained argument.
Michelle you missed the point. We are discussing masculinity, not maleness. Masculinity has, as has been pointed out two dozen times plus on this thread, fuck-all to do with the biological status of maleness. It’s simply a combination of viewpoints and attitudes that a man is “supposed” to have else he not be worthy of his Y chromosome. The very fact that women can easily emulate it without biological/physical consequence is reason #763 why our traditional gender roles areirrational bullshit.
I think I finally understand that whole “Kwisatz Haderach” thing now. Thanks, PiatoR!
I really liked the way Chet Hawkins put it:Thank you, mds, for an uncalled-for Dune reference. I approve.
Phoenicians is right. To take it further: the entire masculine/feminine dichotomy is bullshit. What would you call a dad that doesn’t care about his kids? A monster. If he cares about his kids, he’s feminine?
I don’t buy that being a man is the most stressful thing, stress being exclusive and special to men.
The patriarchy is bad for men. It’s worse for women than men. But it’s bad for men. In seeking to redefine “masculinity” (and I’m in favor of redefining it out of existence), we seek to undo the damage it does to men and women alike.
The damage soi disant masculinity does to women is obvious and pervasive, evident in everything from pornography to promotions. But it’s useful to point out the damage soi disant masculinity does to men as well, to give men an incentive in tearing down masculinity as a social construct, in the same way that feminists have attacked the traditional view of femininity.
It’s important to do this because, unfortunately, only men can end the cult of masculinity. In order to do that, men will have to be shown why it’s destructive. And make no mistake: it’s destructive for men; every man I know has had his worth as a man called into question, every man I know has been accused of being gay (the ultimate betrayal of masculinity, according to its current construct), every man I know has had to talk tough when he didn’t want to, in order to not be seen as backing down, because real men don’t back down. If you want to know why we’re engaged in a war in Iraq, all you have to do is look at masculinity as it’s currently constructed.
That is not to say there is nothing worthwhile about masculinity to salvage: the ideals of duty, loyalty, self-sacrifice, honor — these are good and powerful things, but they’re good traits for humans, not just men, just as the ideals of nurturing, caring, loving, and helping are good traits for humans, not just women.
The end of masculinity would be better for women than men, because it hurts women more than it hurts men. But it still hurts men. And pointing that out is not a bad thing; indeed, it is the best thing we can do to end it.
1. I would have to agree that masculinity and feminity are mostly social constructs.
2. I think you would have to make a distinction between “most pornography” and “most-watched pornography” to draw any firm conclusions about what pornography reveals about anything. I imagine that like Hollywood, there is much little-watched stuff and a few mega-hits.
3. Whether you’re male or female, character is more important than the m/f norms. Be trustworthy, strong, self-reliant, independent, kind, honest (and many other virtues) - “femininity” or “masculinity” cannot then lead you astray, but will lend you color. That is, if you never sacrifice the greater values to the lesser, you will transcend your social conditioning.
I think I finally understand that whole “Kwisatz Haderach” thing now. Thanks, PiatoR!
Actually, if you want a sf example, consider both Metzov and Cavilo from Bujold’s “The Vor Game” (male and female characters, respectively) as examples of the masculine virtues gone badly wrong. Cavilo in particular is possibly the strongest character in the entire book and lost precisely because she didn’t care about *anyone* but herself.
“”Vampires have been an erotic trope ever since Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel”
In conjunction with Victorian attitudes towards female passiveness, and then from the male perspective.
But now? In primarily female-orientated literature? With such demand?”
Interestingly, and to tie this into the wider discussion, a critic says that “…there is a demonic force at work in the world whose intent is to eroticize women. In Dracula we see how that force transforms Lucy Westenra, a beautiful nineteen-year-old virgin, into a shameless slut.”* That sounds to me a lot like the play of masculinity that has been discussed here - the part where an all powerful show of masculinity is supposed to turn good girls into sex fiends.
So maybe part of this trend is simply rejection or subversion of that masculinity play, and especially the accompanying feminine passivity that’s implied. This ties in well with the move from subtext toward text I mentioned: it’s removing the Victorian context from the sexuality, bringing it out into the open, and re-telling it from a female perspective.
Or maybe a bunch of girls who thought Lestat and Angel were hot have just been coming of age in the publishing world. Either way.
*Not a literal demonic force, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Literary_significance_and_criticism
“”Vampires have been an erotic trope ever since Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel”
In conjunction with Victorian attitudes towards female passiveness, and then from the male perspective.
But now? In primarily female-orientated literature? With such demand?”
Interestingly, and to tie this into the wider discussion, a critic says that “…there is a demonic force at work in the world whose intent is to eroticize women. In Dracula we see how that force transforms Lucy Westenra, a beautiful nineteen-year-old virgin, into a shameless slut.”* That sounds to me a lot like the play of masculinity that has been discussed here - the part where an all powerful show of masculinity is supposed to turn good girls into sex fiends.
So maybe part of this trend is simply rejection or subversion of that masculinity play, and especially the accompanying feminine passivity that’s implied. This ties in well with the move from subtext toward text I mentioned: it’s removing the Victorian context from the sexuality, bringing it out into the open, and re-telling it from a female perspective.
Or maybe a bunch of girls who thought Lestat and Angel were hot have just been coming of age in the publishing world. Either way.
*Not a literal demonic force, of course: wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Literary_significance_and_criticism
I can’t remember who on this thread said it, and I’m too lazy to look, but porn is not just fantasy. As many sex workers on many different blogs have pointed out before, the spanking you like to see happen? It happens to her. Not in your head. Not as a simulation. It actually happens. Women who get the joy of having two penises stuffed into one orifice? It actually happened. So saying, “It’s just a fantasy!” is so arrogant and insulting…and so…so…privileged, I guess. It’s frustrating, b/c you’ve removed yourself so much from the people who’s bodies carry the burden of your fantasy.
There was another poster who mentioned s/he would have trouble using her/his imagination for stimulation without an outside influence, or something along those lines. When I was 12, I managed to concoct all manner of fantasies about things I’d never done and had no reference for, and never had any trouble with that. I’d never been kissed and had certainly never had any sort of sexual contact, but didn’t have any trouble coming up with fantasies that helped me to get off.
But Arun, the gender norms contradict the virtues. Intelligence is a virtue, but intelligence is treated with disdain in males in many contexts. Cunning is a virtue, but a cunning woman is called a bitch — primarially because she threatens the security of rather pathetic males around her. And, oh, by the way, personal maturity and self-confidence are virtues, but a male is expected to resort to aggression due to minor slights.
These priorities contradict.
So the gender “norms” are actually not norms at all but immoral tripe OR virtues are, in fact vile. You can’t have both.
Put me down as one more “big deal” on the subject of people who enjoy BDSM or rape porn or whatever. Frankly all the men in this thread congratulating themselves for being attracted “to real women, not to fucktoys” - like your hyper-enlightened dick and immaculately vanilla subconscious strike a real blow against the patriarchy - are vastly more obnoxious.
Also? Degradation is a sub-genre of porn. It exists in straight porn and in gay porn, and both encompass representations of people of either sex both dominating and being dominated. Likewise, there are men and women both who get off on imagining themselves in either role.
To cast a fetish as some kind of social ill, or even a representation of hate, is lazy, reductive, stupid feminism. And my tastes are actually pretty vanilla.
Lest this comment be taken as excessively negative, though, I’d like to say that Pandagon usually rocks and the picture on top of this post is totally hot.
(This might be a double-post, but I’m pretty sure Firefox just ate the last one)
Put me down as one more “big deal” on the subject of people who enjoy BDSM or rape porn or whatever. Frankly all the men in this thread congratulating themselves for being attracted “to real women, not to fucktoys” - like your hyper-enlightened dick and immaculately vanilla subconscious strike a real blow against the patriarchy - are vastly more obnoxious.
Also? Degradation is a sub-genre of porn. It exists in straight porn and in gay porn, and both encompass representations of people of either sex both dominating and being dominated. Likewise, there are men and women both who get off on imagining themselves in either role.
To cast a fetish as some kind of social ill, or even a representation of hate, is lazy, reductive, stupid feminism. And my tastes are actually pretty vanilla.
Lest this comment be taken as excessively negative, though, I’d like to say that Pandagon usually rocks and the picture on top of this post is totally hot.
Cara, #80: I’m noticing that many of the posters who identify as male seem (to me) very nervous about the idea of “ending masculinity”.
Heh, not me*. I hate the social construct of masculinity. Actually, this whole post seems to be a wake up call for me. It seems to me that one of the least used approaches for a man to fight for feminism is actually to fight against patriarchy-in-the-form-of-masculinity. I suppose I already knew that, but this post is really giving me a better perspective and new ways to be effective in that fight.
Just curious. Do those who identify as male think they’d be losing anything if they just said, “Masculine means ME because I’m a guy; now bug off, I’m late for my needlepoint class”? It seems if one’s already reading a feminist blog, that should kind of be the whole point.
No, you’re exactly right. That’s the whole point. The day I can wear makeup in public and my big breasted brothers can wear a bra is a day I’ll probably never see, but it sure would be nice to get there.
And for what its worth (not much because I was actually never very good at it), I actually did learn to cross stitch from my grandma. And I can’t think of the last time I told anyone that.
* I know you weren’t directing that comment at me. But I wanted to say my bit anyway.
No One of Consequence,
You do not sacrifice intelligence to the gender norm in places where the gender norm is to play dumb. In some places, intelligence and eloquence are considered feminine qualities, and so there, great, if you have those, it adds to your feminine luster.
If I want to see a representation of an adult woman being spanked, I should be able to enjoy this without facing a wad of insults and having my character questioned.
Why, exactly, “should” you be able to see this, Nick? Just curious.
Chris, calling the number one theme in the vast majority of porn a “subgenre” is deceitful rhetoric. It’s not a boutique fetish if it’s the vast majority of stuff out there. Why the urge to minimize? Maybe you think we got a point? That’s usually what causes defensive minimizing. We’re not actually talking about BDSM, but the stuff that pretends to be “vanilla” but is actually about hating women. BDSM advertises itself as a fetish, which puts it in a different category, deliberately marks it as different and belonging to a different thing entirely from what we’re talking about. Pretending that we’re talking about something we’re not? Another form of deceitful minimizing. Why so defensive?
If I want to see a representation of an adult woman being spanked, I should be able to enjoy this without facing a wad of insults and having my character questioned.
No one is saying you don’t give compartmentalization the old college try. And no one is going to force you by law to examine yourself. But why do you feel that it’s so blatantly obvious that you should live the life unexamined? Do you really want such a thin, unworthy existence?
Chris: “people who enjoy BDSM or rape porn or whatever.”
First, thank you Amanda for responding to that.
Second, as a sadomasochist, BDSM community norms are about consent. Meaningful consent between partners who trust each other. Misogynists have started leveraging our hard-won social position to excuse what we do, but they ignore our norms.
Third: in that regard, fuck you Chris. Don’t you ever conflate us with them.
Um, Arun — what if you’re male? Adding to your feminine luster would be bad if intelligence is a subset of femininity because, as has been pointed out, the masculine IS what the feminine ISN’T. So now you’re out of role:
• Maintaining gender roles is virtuous.
• You are male.
• You are intelligent.
• Intelligence is feminine.
• Masculine is, whatever-the-fuck-else it is, not feminine.
• You are feminine.
• You are not masculine.
• You are an unvirtuous male.
And then —
• Intelligence is a virtue.
• You are intelligent.
• You are male.
• You are a virtuous male.
This, Arun, is where the Star Trek android freezes up, smokes, and explodes. Nah good, friend.
Chris,
Define “rape porn.” Is this actual rape or do you believe she’s just “playing,” which of course assumes not only are porn stars extremely talented actresses but also that there’s a strict anti-rape ethos and protection of the women on porn sets, rather than an extremely lucrative incentive to sell actual rape videos (If there’s a multi-billion dollar black market for videos of child rape, why not adult rape?).
Even if it was just a simulation, you’re still enjoying the anti-female abuse and torture (”consent” doesn’t cancel the effect). Scores of men condition themselves to not only find misogynistic violence, but enjoyable (How is that truly any different from bigots enjoying online videos of Russian neo-Nazis beating immigrants and homosexuals?). It could only be no “big deal” if you assume that the basic human rights of women are some sort of technicality–at best.
When males legitimize the dehumanization and demonization of females, it creates a culture that sanctions open season on women and girls–even if these males do not commit violent anti-female acts themselves. For ex., male consumers of “rape porn” who are jurors in rape cases, which are notoriously difficult to prosecute, will obviously be compromised in their ability to be objective, instead of assuming the alleged rapist was justified or that rape is either trivial or good.
“Vampires have been an erotic trope ever since Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel. The symbolism of penetration, exchange of bodily fluids, and the effect Dracula has on his female victims (or vice versa with the Brides and Jonathan Harker) all have extremely sexual subtext. It wasn’t until society managed to throw off the sexual norms of his day that other authors took that subtext, ran with it, and made it text. All in all, not really that suprising. Scholars of the original novel have been examining this for years; you’ll probably be able to easily find discussion via google.”
Actually, J. Sheridan Lefanu’s “Carmilla” was the “breakout” vampire story, with a huge influence on Stoker. Carmilla’s a female vampire, but she *is* all about desiring and corrupting the innocent female victim. The problem with Carmilla is that she *appears* to be a pure, virtuous girl–but is actually a blood-drinking, lustful slut. So the weird part of the “making these virtuous women slutty” is whether the sluttiness is imposed on them externally–or whether it’s “awakening” the internal slut because *every* woman really, secretly wants it.
Um, carry on with the discussion of modern pornography.
Great post, but I’m finding the facial/face-spitting analogy at the end a bit simplistic. Cunnilingus almost invariably leaves the giver with a messy face. Does that mean it’s like face-spitting? Is it like face-spitting if you like seeing your bodily fluid on your partner’s face afterwards, if you think it’s a pleasantly filthy reminder for a few minutes afterwards, like having to change the sheets.
So if I may be so crude, why is cunny-face any less wrong than semen-face? Is it because it’s unavoidable? If so, does that mean real feminists swallow, or what? I don’t get how you can make judgements regarding where the sperm goes after a bareback blow.
Moving away from merely misogynistic porn to rape/domination porn. Hopefully this doesn’t screw the thread up. . . I apologize in advance if this veers off.
Didn’t want to pile on, and I REALLY don’t want to unduly prejudice this issue, but I have to say: by Chris’ logic, images that involve sex with minors should be noncriminal (so long as no sex with minors occured in their production; e.g., they have to be complete fictions, unlike typical porn where the deed is actually done). We say that pedophiles are deviant even if they don’t advocate for, encourage, indulge in, or even indirectly support child molestation. If a person draws a picture of him or herself having sex with a child we call that pedophilia on the spot and we call that person sick.
Basically, our society believes that there are some things that shouldn’t be enjoyed, even in fantasies. And I have to admit I don’t think this line is rational. Lucky for me I’m repulsed by rape porn and peddy-crap. But I happily play games where I murder hundreds of people. I don’t mean kill, I mean _murder_. You kill people because they’re there. (Hey, remember Rampage? Classic, baby.) Any FPS allows you to slaughter your way to victory.
Not sexual, obviously. I would reject the game if it became sexual, certainly if it became misogynistic.
So where is the line here? Though I think some of the laws on pedophilia violate the constitution (you’re committing a crime if you have images on your hard drive even if you didn’t put them there and didn’t know they were placed there) my revulsion to actual, straight-up pedophiles causes me to be alarmingly sympathetic to law enforcement. This revulsion is not shared with purveyors of rape porn. Actresses aren’t really raped, but the same could be said for peddy cartoons — no one really got hurt. But my emotional reaction is vastly different, and, thus, my tolerance level. I dislike both, but rape porn isn’t something I’d legislate against.
Is there any way this position is rational? Protecting kids seems to be a red herring. If peddy fantasies encourage pedophilic acts, then rape porn must, by the same token, encourage rape.
Here is the problem, I think.
A rapist is someone who rapes, NOT someone who has an urge to but, being civilized, never comes anywhere close to doing it.
A pedophile is someone who wants to have sex with kids, even if he or she never indulges in the urge and, in fact, consciously rejects it.
Is that second definition irrational? Is the first wrong?
If the second definition is wrong then the existance of misogynistic porn isn’t a huge problem because people that like rape porn aren’t necessarially people that are sympathetic to rapists. The converse is definately true: there are people who hate rape porn but may be sympathetic jurors for a rapist at trial (say, a religious male who’s a juror for a religious defendant).
If the first definition is wrong then the government is obligated to regulate a lot more free speech. I don’t need to point out the problems with that conclusion.
Amanda:
Your description of masculinity and its harmful effects hits the nail on the head, imo. I have a handful of male co-workers who fit your description to a “T.” They are either multiply-divorced or have bad marriages. They grumble all the time about how “men do/like X, women do/like Y” (where X is often sports, cars, electronics, dogs and Y is often shopping, fashion, chocolate, cats). They are constantly proving their masculinity to others by making jokes or performing “gender police” roles–if you’re a guy and come in wearing a pink or purple shirt, you’ll be the butt of jokes for the day.
And they’re sad, broken men imo. They see the entire world through a distorting lens. Everything must fit into the masculine/feminine dichotomy for them. And the act of forcing everything into 1 of 2 little boxes destroys their ability to grow and learn. The one who is twice divorced hasn’t learned anything from either of his marriages–he’s simply decided that men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
There’s no getting through to him–even when I bring up that I’m male but like cats, am disinterested in sports, couldn’t care less about cars, etc. he still somehow fits me into his preconceived mold about what men do. I represent an anomaly to him and the best effort he can give to resolve this is that I’m a unique, special exception to the rule (and the only reason I don’t get “probably gay” label is that I’m engaged and am very large, masculine-looking, and assertive).
I honestly feel sorry for the guys.
How is [misogynistic violence] truly any different from bigots enjoying online videos of Russian neo-Nazis beating immigrants and homosexuals?
This is an interesting parallel, because of course no one justifies their enjoyment of such bashings by claiming that if you just look past the racism and homophobia then you’ll see that really, beating people up is all about fresh air, exercise and hanging out with friends.
Cara wrote:
—
>If I want to see a representation of an adult woman >being spanked, I should be able to enjoy this without >facing a wad of insults and having my character >questioned.
Why, exactly, “should” you be able to see this, Nick? Just curious.
—
Because it is consensual sexual activity between adults who are role playing, or it may even be a drawing from an artist’s imagination. It is most unfortunate that you feel the need for you to insert yourself into that social relationship or the relationship with their audience with a claim that something’s wrong. If it offends you, no one is forcing you to watch.
What I suspect is that there is very little sexual activity that could be described here without facing the wrath of someone who characterizes it as misogynistic.
Just to recap the posters on this site have claimed:
- any activity that could be construed as degrading is a priori misogynistic: presumably that rules out a large number of positions, anal sex, and fellatio, BDSM where a man is the top
-today’s porn is misogynist, and way worse then 70’s porn which was misogynist anyway
- any activity that portrays women as mean: that rules out any BDSM play with a female top
- activity that portrays women as insatiable is ‘humiliating’ and therefor misogynist
- activity that draws on racial stereo types is racist
Exactly what kind of sex meets a consensus view of acceptable behavior at Pandagon? Sounds like it would be pretty narrow.
What we have here is an extremely slippery slope, and I’d argue the best solution is to back off instead of lecturing each other about what their porn fantasies ought to be. Why not worry more about people’s relationships in the real world? instead of worrying about what people pay to see actors do or artists draw?
i am a girl and i personally like to watch “ball breaking” videos, you know where a strong lady kicks a guy hard in the balls a lot, or stands on them etc. i know hes really hurt but dont you think its ok? so much porn out there is for guys and shows girls hit spit on etc, this type of porn really cant come close.
who is fredmercury why cant i write on my name? it doesnt let me log in -stronggrrl
–
i am a girl and i personally like to watch “ball breaking” videos, you know where a strong lady kicks a guy hard in the balls a lot, or stands on them etc. i know hes really hurt but dont you think its ok?
—
Sure, as long as the video was made consensually by actors, why not? You haven’t forced anyone into participating or viewing this activity.
You say that you ‘know he’s really hurt’ but that’s a dubious assumption on your part. Cock and ball torture videos are a subgenre of BDSM, and if I’m not mistaken most of the consumers of this are men.
Did I say anything like that? You sound a bit defensive, Nick. Did I say one word about stopping you from looking at porn?
All I asked was, why do you feel ENTITLED to such a representation (since you said “if that’s what I want I SHOULD HAVE IT”). It was more that expression of entitlement I was curious about than anything. (I don’t care what floats your, or anyone else’s, boat; for you to assume I do based on my question makes me wonder what really IS happening in your head).
Offhand, I’d say it depends on whether your partner LIKES having the stuff on their face, or would rather keep it off of them. Also, the actual “facial” stuff in the movies, from what I can gather here, is INTENDED to be humiliating for the woman (along the lines of Amanda’s “only dirty sluts like it” idea).
If one’s partner intends to humiliate or upset or just play a little “joke” along those lines, it’s demeaning, if only because one’s lowered oneself to sleeping with such an asshole without knowing it.
think i got the name worked out now.
i am with you on that nick the actors probably knew what they were getting in to. well yes you can tell it hurts when they arent wearing any clothes so no protection there! i wonder if a lot of guys like this? it sure seems like it
arrr i loggedin and it still shows fredmercury what gives! -stronggrrl
Yes, part of it is that it’s unavoidable.
The other part of it is the social context, which you conveniently ignored. In pornography, ejaculating on a woman’s face or breasts or whatever is never just “what happened”. It’s an integral part of the scene. The subtext is usually, “yeah, that bitch has my cum on her face”. The purpose is humiliation.
That’s typically not the case when someone has a messy face after going down on a woman. I’ve never really seen this happen in porn, I’ve never really noticed it at all with any of my partners. And I certainly don’t consider it a “filthy” reminder, as I prefer to consider my sexuality fun and exciting, not filthy.
Chris, calling the number one theme in the vast majority of porn a “subgenre” is deceitful rhetoric.
Cite, Amanda? Serious question - do you have an actual source for the bit about “number one theme in the vast majority of porn”?
there finally got the name fixed i hope! just noticed someone talking about cunnalingus juice on faces. there is actually some sites that has women squirting all over guys faces and humiliating them it is great!
Cara:
That’s why I mentioned it in a relationship context - Amanda seems to be assuming that no one would like having sexual excretions on their faces, let alone both halves of a hetero couple who both enjoy performing oral. As for ‘only dirty sluts’, I think Pandagoners are usually the last people to find there anything wrong with regular enthusiastic sex, so yes, dirty sluts love it and we love being dirty sluts. What does ‘dirty’ refer to if not to lovely sexual excretions?
Denise:
I didn’t use ‘filthy’ [and also ‘dirty’, above] in a moral sense, but simply a physical one - hence why I referred to changing the sheets. The physical, visceral, liquid aspect of sex is fun and exciting. Sex isn’t sanitised, our bodies aren’t made of plastic, and that’s brilliant. If you think sex is fun and exciting but semen is humiliating, well, I hope you’re a very happy lesbian.
I didn’t ‘ignore’ the context so much as that I’m not aware of the social context pornwise - I don’t watch porn. All I know of facials and their I’ve learned in real life, where I’ve not encountered ‘that bich has my cum on her face’, just ‘hey, he finds it really hot being able to see the messy, visceral result of orgasm in that way, and it’s fun enough and has no physical effect on me, plus I get that fun every time he goes down on me, so let’s go with it!’ I don’t think you can know that ‘the purpose is humiliation’ unless you’ve spoken openly about it with the men who do it - not the men who watch it in porn, but the men who do it (or desire to do it) within happy long-term relationships.
Strongrrl: I don’t personally find that ‘great’, but as they say: your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay. (YKINMYBYKIOK, for acronym fans.)
kissmypineapple:
That poster was me. Let me try to explain further what I was getting at.
Like you, when I was 12, 13, 14 I had no trouble concocting all sorts of fantasies of things I’d never done. But I put them together out of data I had: things I knew people did, what I found attractive or arousing, etc. I don’t think I did it completely de novo.
Let me reiterate that I’m not trying to justify misogynist pornography. I’m saying, though, that sexually explicit material is something that a lot of people seek out, and it does become part of the raw material out of which we (in the general sense) build fantasies.
Hmm, I’m a little confused about the comments about how almost-impossible it is to find non-misogynistic porn. In my experience that simply isn’t the case.
Maybe it’s because I don’t purchase full-length pornos, but though I do have to avoid some stuff (I can usually tell it’s trouble right when the cameramen open their mouths, if not from the website itself), it isn’t insanely difficult to find stuff that isn’t at all degrading in the straightforward sense (if you want to argue more subtley, such as female dominance in porn being a mockery and reaffirming real-life male dominance, or the old tropes of only “sluts” really liking it, it gets more complicated.)
I might have gotten a carried away in my previous comment - I apologize, first of all, for using the words lazy and stupid, which are obviously inaccurate. (Reductive I still feel pretty good about, though.)
Amanda @ 136:
I’ll admit that my experience with straight porn as such is fairly limited. Maybe it really is all about degradation and violence. I commented on the assumption that it’s not, because the claim that the majority of vanilla hetero porn involves simulated rape, men spitting on women, etc, is a pretty extraordinary one (and doesn’t square with the snippets I’ve actually seen), and I’d like to see some proof. Which is probably what I should have said in the first place rather than, as you put it, “getting defensive.” If in fact the porn industry operates on the assumption that men are only aroused by simulations of violence against women, then I agree with you that it’s fucked up.
Vanilla gay porn, by the way, I can say pretty confidently is about sex, with various forms of degrading sex being mostly labeled as subgenres, whose existence I honest don’t believe is an expression of some kind of sublimated hate. The closest thing I can think of is the rather hackneyed plot in which a homophobic jock/frat boy is raped and ends up liking it. I truly get that this scenario - that any scenario that depicts violence as arousing - is distasteful. I just don’t think it tells you anything meaningful about the biases of the sub-set of gay men who find it arousing.
Thomas @ 137:
First, sorry I offended you. I didn’t mean to imply that actual BDSM doesn’t presuppose consent. (I also don’t think I said anything of the kind, but that’s neither here nor there.)
I used BDSM porn and simulated rape scenes as two examples of fetish porn that involve degrading situations and/or simulated violence. Which both objectively do. If I thought they were the same thing I would hardly have named them both.
It seems you completely ignored my second paragraph about the intent of either the partner doing the secreting or the intent of the guy in the porn video coming on the woman’s face. “Dirty slut” is a complete non sequitur to my own mindset as far as sex is concerned.
Sex is only dirty if you’ve accidentally wound up with a partner who thinks you’re inferior for some reason. Then a perfectly lovely pastime is turned into something gross.
If the guy you love comes on your face and it’s fine with you (for instance), it’s not a problem. If the guy’s secretly a fucking pig who’s watched so much filthy, woman-hating porn that he can only pretend to relate to you as a person and is fantasizing about your humiliation (real or not) as he “accidentally” comes on your face, it’s a problem.
Cara - I kinda included that in my response to Denise (”I don’t think you can know that ‘the purpose is humiliation’ unless you’ve spoken openly about it with the men who do it - not the men who watch it in porn, but the men who do it (or desire to do it) within happy long-term relationships.”) - I typed that first because I was reading bottom-to-top. You are assuming the most morally repulsive porno interpretation of the act is the one that applies to every couple that does it - and I’m sure it does apply to some of them, but it would be truly surprising if it applied to all. If you can achieve that level of mind control with pornography alone, why aren’t the Republican party making it?
He’s an actor. What’s the ‘intent’ of the guy playing Macbeth when he murders Duncan? His intent is to play the part required, and I daresay that that part often requires portraying a humiliator. But if you don’t think the guy playing Macbeth is necessarily intending to murder, then the guy making the porno is not necessarily intending to humiliate.
No ‘for instance’ about it. It is fine with me.
what a stupid sockpuppeteer.
He’s an actor. What’s the ‘intent’ of the guy playing Macbeth when he murders Duncan? His intent is to play the part required, and I daresay that that part often requires portraying a humiliator. But if you don’t think the guy playing Macbeth is necessarily intending to murder, then the guy making the porno is not necessarily intending to humiliate.
Is there some reason you’re playing dumb here? Obviously the porn actor probably isn’t doing anything more than what he’s being told to do. However, as you’ve acknowledged, he’s playing a part, which is the part of a humiliator, and the part he’s being asked to play is what people object to. For some reason, you conflate the porn actor with “the guy making the porno,” which, if we were discussing non-porn film, would be a writer or director. Porn has directors, as far as I know, and it might even have writers. In any case, it’s telling a story, and the discussion here is about what that story is, who responds to it, and why. Duh.
Chris’s logic is apparently quite popular, as that’s the way the law has been for some time (though it’s in flux at the moment; more below). Sure, you can call that person sick, but they haven’t done anything illegal, so long as no actual minors were harmed in the production process. There have been some court cases on the topic; look up “Mike Diana”, “lolicon” and the “Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996″.In short, the CPPA made virtual child porn illegal; it was overturned by the Supreme Court. The PROTECT Act of 2003 was another attempt to do the same, but that provision was only successfully used once (against a guy who’d also received real child porn, thus dissuading civil rights types from defending him); it’s been overturned by the eleventh circuit, and will be making its way back to the Supreme Court shortly.
Er, Grendelkhan, much as I hate to jump to the defense of pedophilia, what kind of prison term would you recommend for someone convicted of drawing pictures that depict minors in sexual situations? How does one determine the age of a drawing?
And how about written narratives that include sexually explicit material involving minors? Harry Potter fanfic? Lolita?
Or am I misconstruing your position?
How is “simulated” rape porn merely a “fetish” rather than an overt incitement of hate? Honestly, if the Klan had bothered to masturbate while they beat blacks senseless or “simulated” lynchings and taped it, would we call it “fetish” porn? It seems as if society assumes male sexuality is a magical elixir that mitigates any hint of bigotry, no matter how blatant or violent.
Dominators have always practiced getting into other people’s heads, trying to shape (actually dictate) what they think, feel and believe. It seems to me that those who, like Robert Jensen, claim to understand and want to change what goes on inside men’s heads want to take over this concept and use it in the service of goodness and niceness. I have a radical idea: maybe we could do without this kind of power altogether. Maybe affirming the dignity of the individual, giving up any claim to the power to shape each others’ inner thoughts, actually rejecting the primary tool of the imperial and the patriarchal, rather than trying to shape it to our purposes, would actually make a more profound change.
To anticipate two objections:
1) Pornographers abuse women.
They shouldn’t. Freedom of thought does not give you the right to express that thought by abusing other people. And, as an aside, the abuse perpetrated by pornographers might prove just a bit easier to address by someone who clearly affirms freedom of speech and thought.
2) Men’s attitudes spill into their behaviour.
I didn’t say we have to tolerate bad behaviour. Politics stops at my skin. That doesn’t mean I have any right to mistreat people outside my skin.
“Obviously the porn actor probably isn’t doing anything more than what he’s being told to do. ”
And sometimes, as documented on the nopornnorthhampton site, what he does on camera goes beyond what the woman agreed to participate in and you can hear her say, on camera, things like “stop it” and “don’t”. Which means in those cases that the people trying so hard to justify watching hate porn are viewing and getting off on an actual woman being actually raped on film.
Spin it any way you like, it’s not okay, it’s not excusable and it’s not justifiable.
Hi Amanda - while honestly as a non-consumer the porn debate doesn’t interest me much, this statement seems to suggest a distinction for which I cannot identify a difference: “I’m not sure why eradicating masculinity offends Courtney, but I can’t help but think maybe she’s confusing it with eradicating maleness?”
A commenter then rightly points to the definition of masculinity:
1. The quality or condition of being masculine.”
or
“2. Something traditionally considered to be characteristic of a male.”
The claim is made that men could choose to own the first and reject the second, but a) the first definition is self-referencing and thus tautological, b) there are few models for such self-transformation, and c) surely not ALL of the latter are inherently negative? If so, then to the person asked to transform their identity this is a distinction without a difference, since masculinity has been definitionally de-identified with all that is traditionally male. At a minimum, perhaps Courtney (and myself) can be forgiven for not fully grokking this hair-splitting distinction between masculinity and maleness.
I enjoyed getting to meet you that day at lunch with Kuff, btw. Hope you have a great holiday. best,
Perhaps they use a plethysmograph and a reference pedophile. The Justice Department has prosecuted at least one woman on those grounds, though I doubt they got a conviction. It was in the same spate of prosecutions that got Max Hardcore, who was, of course, back up and banging for donations shortly, as he’s not just some guy running a site out of his basement, as the woman who ran red-rose-stories.com was. If you construed one, you did wrong, as I didn’t express one.I fully defend people’s anti-porn positions and the reasons why they have anti-porn positions, especially Mr. Jensen’s.
I will stop defending anti-porn opinions if they impair my ability to access porn. I like watching people have sex. And sometimes sex is one-sided and cruel and unfair and strange. But just as often, it is beautiful and heart-lifting and creative and loving.
I don’t want porn to disappear. But I am aware that porn has been used justify as well as record ridiculously unjustifiable actions.
So how about instead of all of us slinging about our opinions, we start slinging about ideas that can be used to change this industry in a way that would be productive for everyone?
Its perfectly fine to feel the need to justify a pro-porn or anti-porn stance, but is it helpful to anyone else but you? How can we make things better?
People have already mentioned completely getting rid of porn. There has also mention of accelerating diversification of porn and the inclusion of women-produced porn in the mainstream. These are all good ideas, even if I don’t think that any of them have any particular chances of being implementable any time soon. Anyone else have any ideas?
Notl33t,
I think a good start would be to increase the ability to prosecute porn producers for sexual assault and rape. Though I haven’t read any studies on the specific subject, based on rape cases I have heard about, I’d imagine that it is currently next to impossible for a victim who is an actor in porn to find justice.
Blue Jean @53: Did you notice from that article that both Chub’s granddaughters are adopted? That makes no difference to being a loving family, of course, but in the narrow Darwinian sense of passing along one’s genes that the article was discussing, adopted kids don’t count. Chub’s daughter is the last of his direct genetic line, and his genetic contribution will die with her.
Of course, in this same narrow Darwinian sense (actually more like the Dawkinsian sense), adopting kids is also altruistic behavior undertaken on behalf of another’s genes. If you add adoptive parents to the heros, I bet the sex ratio balances out a lot more. If there were an “altruism gene” (a somewhat dubious proposition), you could argue that Chubb’s daughter is also expressing that gene, just in a different way from her father.
More likely, though, is that altruism is primarily a human cultural phenomenon rather than a genetic one. A society that promotes an altruism meme is more likely to survive and propagate itself, regardless of the genetic relationship between its members. And the propagation of that meme from Chubb’s action is evident throughout the final paragraph. Think about all the people who have been influenced, one way or another, in all the forms of the retelling of the story, to cherish and value altruism. Compare that to Chubb having one or two more genetic descendants, and ask yourself which would have the larger impact on society. In that sense, the whole article, and in particular the final paragraph, is a colossal example of missing the point that was staring the reporter right in the face.
I think you just contradicted yourself, there. And nobody’s opinions are stopping you from accessing porn, unless you find yourself limp when you discover that your previously faptastic entertainment is build on a large pile of raped and maimed women–in which case, I think your priorities are just a bit skewed.Brandon:
Imagining is just that - imagining. If you could link to anything involving assault or rape on porn sets - studies or even a good set of news items - your view would seem more grounded in reality. I have, however, read one eye-opening piece on the subject: Interviews With Women In Porn from Wendy McElroy’s XXX. Perhaps you’d assume McElroy was being incredibly selective in her writing, or that the women she spoke to were either lying or being kept unaware of abuse. But it’s a wide, thorough chapter and she asks about abuse again and again and finds none.
I doubt that the women in a “pile of raped and maimed women” really have any interest in whether anyone gets or does not get an erection. I expect them to want us to concern ourselves with preventing their abuse.
In specific: United States law already requires proof of model’s age for renditions of nudity and sex acts. I see no reason the laws cannot require evidence of uncoerced consent. Simply specify that for any scene or set of photographs exposing the genitals of the performer, a distributor must file a consent signed before an accredited witness and away from the producers both before and after the production/photography. I don’t think that would impose an impossible burden on producers, and it would make it much harder for pornography to engage in abuse.
I think this is a profoundly important point, and I wanted to reiterate it, since it’s gotten a bit lost. Because of the oppositional pop-psych nature of masculinity vs. femininity, much of what is considered “masculine” in modern pop culture is also considered mandatory. Porn is part of the mix. Sexual objectification of women is part of the mix (in porn, in advertising, in all sorts of ways). Hypersexuality is part of the mix.
What happens when men are raised on porn and its fantasies of compliant women but don’t know how to deal with real women who have independent desires? What happens when men get a constant stream of porn that hurts women but then try to have mutually-enjoyable sex with women they love and don’t want to hurt? Do we think that these completely contradictory and bizarre messages might account for the multi-billion dollar market for erectile dysfunction drugs? Why, if men are so well served by porn and mandatory masculinity, do so many men need medical assistance to get hard and stay hard?
I know a lot of men don’t seem to think that masculinity and porn disserve men, but I strongly suspect that their need for ED medication provides some evidence to the contrary.
Why, if men are so well served by porn and mandatory masculinity, do so many men need medical assistance to get hard and stay hard?
Mostly it’s to counteract the effects of disease, medications, and smoking:
http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/impotence/#cause
You are assuming the most morally repulsive porno interpretation of the act is the one that applies to every couple that does it - and I’m sure it does apply to some of them, but it would be truly surprising if it applied to all.
Thene, I’m afraid you’re entirely mistaken here. I never said or implied that any “assumption” about porn necessarily applied to regular couples (?). All I did was answer your question, basically saying that the if they’re intended to degrade, they’re degrading. That information is in the mind of the secreter. I’m not sure why this is even up for discussion; I was perfectly clear.
I am glad to live in a world where I can get myself some BDSM porn AND be questioned on why I’m doing it.
If I/you/we are going about and getting a hold of images of women getting beaten (regardless of context), shit, it really behooves me to ask myself “why do I want to see that?”.
Of course, most people don’t get asked.
A small but growing amount of net porn these days has a little “compliance” screen, and will give you a custodian of records and address to which you can send your inquiries/complaints/accolades. I like this.
I really like porn where people appear to be enjoying themselves, but I’ll settle for porn where you slowly realize that, obviously they’re just there to get paid.
also, the article header says “masculinity =/ an end to men”… uh, isn’t that supposed to be !=, as in “not equal”?
i havent seen C++ in a long time, but I think =/ would be some sort of weird division command.
As nice as it would be if that was up there as an expression of the site owners’ civic virtue, it’s up there because of 18 U.S.C. 2257. It’s been struck down by a circuit court, though, so keep an eye out. If you cross your eyes slightly (as I’m kind of doing right now, due to the paper I really should be working on), it becomes a ≠. It kind of makes sense, though, as you point out, “is not equal to” is written as != in plain text. That would be /=, as in “a=10; a/=2; return a;” returning “5″.These discussions always have a surreal quality to me, because they include two paradoxes.
In any feminist discussion of pornography, the question of the mistreatment of performers (or at least of women performers) comes up, but rarely with any concrete proposals for preventing this mistreatment (see above for my modest proposal). At the same time, we have a parallel set of people talking about the effects on men. The overall message, then, goes something like: I believe that pornography producers engage in rape and abuse in studios from the San Fernando Valley to the Ural mountains. But if you would rather talk about viagra, OK, cool.
The second paradox has less to do with the practical than the theoretical. The argument against pornography and masculinity rests, in the end, on the obnoxious nature of male supremacy. But to make the changes that he wants, Jensen has to try to get inside people’s heads ad dictate how they think and what they feel. In other words, he and those they agree with have to establish their own domination system. We already have male supremacy and white supremacy; do we need another system to try to dictate how we live?
FYI, I never, ever said ban porn. It’s fascinating how some men are told, “Own your shit, think about your habits, how is masculinity constructed, etc.” and they hear, “I WANT TO BAN YOUR PORN!!!” It’s almost as if they’re avoiding the discussion.
Amanda: I don’t hear anyone wanting to ban anything. As for thinking about my habits: if by thinking about them you mean making a conscious effort to make sure what I do doesn’t harm other people, or encourage someone else to harm other people, I try to do that.
But I have come, more and more, to reject that confluence of politics and therapy which suggests that a political movement can make us happy or make us good. If you want to address the effects of my actions, from owning a cell phone to drinking coffee to what I do online, we can talk about that. But the politics stops at my skin. I’ll account for the effects of what I do, say, and buy. But don’t talk about what I do or don’t feel or think. All our enlightenment freedoms begin with the freedom of individuals in our own heads, and I will not give that up.
Amanda,
I think John has a point. For some of the guys I think the defensiveness comes from telling them what they’re feeling or thinking “deep down”.
Some of the comments go beyond “Own your shit, think about your habits”, to “If you consume porn at all you feel this way about women/your own masculinity/etc. and if you claim otherwise you’re either lying or in denial.”
It’s not that anyone’s claiming to know what’s going on in men’s heads. It’s that many of us women can plainly SEE the effects of the pornification of our culture. Porn normalizes certain behaviors and attitudes; how can you deny that it affects how people relate to others sexually?
Men begin to believe (consciously or subconsciously) that the women in their lives must “measure up” to the women in porn. Pubic hair is a good example. These days, to have hair on your pussy is practically subversive. And what constitutes “large breasts” has been totally warped. Not to mention those men who treat women the way they’ve seen porn actors treat porn actresses in the bedroom, assuming that “this is how sex works.” ACTUAL women feel the effects.
This is the most reasonable, well thought out statement on porn I’ve seen anywhere.
SarahMC would you differentiate between “misogynist porn” and just plain “porn”? I’m not trying to be an asshole. I think it’s an important distinction about what’s being portrayed being the problem.
Also if you get naked with somebody and they leave because of your pubic hair… that’s just not a high quality human being.
Yes, I would differentiate between misogynist porn and plain old porn. Both affect men’s expectations of women.
Sarah:
I don’t dispute that mainstream pornography has a world view, and not a good one, which its writers and producers relentlessly promote. Although I don’t completely agree with you about some aspects of the “pornification” of culture (a glance at history, to say nothing of 19th century painting, shows that pornographers did not invent the idea of portraying women without pubic hair), I agree that pornography has generally had what I would call a bad influence on our culture.
But plenty of other cultural products have a similarly distorting effect on our perceptions. Social researchers have found, for example, that people who use police procedurals, by consuming TV shows such as “Law and Order” or NYPD Blue”, have a significantly distorted view of the prevalence of crime. Researchers found that police procedural users tended to assume they faced twice the threat of violent crime that they actually did. And those assumptions, of course, fueled a panic that helped drive the push for mandatory sentences and the boom in the prison industrial complex.
I part company with you over one word: subconscious. Unlike the discussion of pornography, the discussion of products like police procedurals assumes that the consumers have moral agency: we can reject the misinformation about the prevalence of crime, deal with the sadism (see Orwell, Raffles and Miss Blandish, for comments about that), and still consume “Law and Order” for its interesting plot twists and good acting. In short, the solution to the defects in most art, from opera to rap, fantasy to tragedy, lies with educating consumers. Somehow, in these discussions, the ideal response to pornography always end up sounding more like therapy.
None of this means we should not also work to protect the rights of the performers and models in pornography.
Also: what Banisteriopsis said about pubic hair.
grendelkhan: I think you just contradicted yourself, there. And nobody’s opinions are stopping you from accessing porn, unless you find yourself limp when you discover that your previously faptastic entertainment is build on a large pile of raped and maimed women–in which case, I think your priorities are just a bit skewed.
When I say that I fully defend people who are anti-porn, I mean that I stand up to people who attack those types of views. Its not a contradiction to say that I will stop defending an opinion/point-of-view if my own freedom’s are impinged upon. In fact, its not a contradiction. Its a statement of fact: I defend anti-porn views, but I will stop defending them if they impinge on my own way of life, which definitely includes porn. I can stop defending things if I want, that’s my right: I used to defend the Iraq War, but at this point, its so fucking ludicrous that I can’t even pretend that there was a logical reason for going there in the first place.
Have I mentioned that I’m a woman? Because I am, and I like porn. I’m not a big fan of raped and maimed women. But that’s something that can be changed within the industry and using law.
And nobody’s stopping me from accessing porn? Truly, that’s not a statement that I know how to answer without a long, long diatribe about laws. Let’s just say that in lots of parts of the US, the government can stop you from accessing anything in completely legal ways: porn, vibrators, birth control, condoms. And if you don’t believe me, you can search on Google. They can stop you from getting anything. And they can send you to jail for it.
Brandon: I think a good start would be to increase the ability to prosecute porn producers for sexual assault and rape. Though I haven’t read any studies on the specific subject, based on rape cases I have heard about, I’d imagine that it is currently next to impossible for a victim who is an actor in porn to find justice.
I agree that this is something that would be a good idea. I think mostly, awareness is needed. Once an actor/actress signs a contract or agrees to be in a movie, I’m not sure if they really understand what they’re agreeing to. I’m not sure if they know that they can still prosecute whether or not they’ve been paid. This is something that needs to be addressed somehow, and I’m pretty sure that at least parts of the porn industry are trying to keep up the effort.
Thene, I have read Wendy McElroy’s XXX. I think it is a pretty good read, as well as pretty reputable. However, I think that most of the women she interviewed had already “made it.” In other words, these were the women with managers, handlers and support within the industry. They are probably much less likely to be abused because they’ve got a great network and are more confident.
The bottom line for me and for other people who love porn is that as long as anyone hints that men or women are raped or maimed in order to make porn, no matter how unreputable or unresearched that opinion or fact may be, those of us who love porn will have to shoulder the burden in order to keep sex performers safe. Because otherwise, where is the porn going to come from?
I think that anytime we hear that anyone, man, woman, child, will or may get raped, maimed, exploited, violated, humiliated, for anything, we have an obligation to do something about it. I believe exposing and prosecuting abusive producers does work; I do not think that many of the people who actually watch dirty movies want the actors abused. I suspect reasonable measures to prevent abuse will get support from the pornographers’ audience.