Sexual Revolution

Broadly speaking, feminists who see pornography as a problem tend to come from sexual and domestic violence activist backgrounds. They point to research like Michael Flood's 2009 review of children and young people viewing pornography:

Especially among boys and young men who are frequent consumers of pornography, including of more violent materials, consumption intensifies attitudes supportive of sexual coercion and increases their likelihood of perpetrating assault.

I’ve supported women whose rapes were filmed, and later made available as porn. Who found naked pictures taken by pimps online years later, advertising commercial sex. Who were taught how to work in the sex industry, after being trafficked from another country and held captive, by being forced to watch pornography. Who have been raped, often repeatedly, by men who used porn to prepare themselves to cause pain.

And the largest category, women who have been pressured into particular sexual activities because their male partner has seen porn featuring that activity. Often these experiences were painful and/or unpleasant. Sometimes they were sexual violation.

Broadly speaking, feminists who see censoring pornography as a problem tend to come from sexuality rights backgrounds or anti-state censorship backgrounds. They point to research which suggests the causal relationship between rape and viewing pornography is not established.

Feminists in this camp are concerned about what happens when sexuality is repressed. When we teach young people to wait until they are married, and rates of sexually transmitted infections increase, or when the first books about sex taken out of schools are those featuring queer identities. They point to sexually explicit material in which participants were explicitly consenting, narratives did not demean women (or anyone else), and exploring the erotic was sexy. They also ask us to pay attention to how demeaning narratives about women are found in Hollywood movies, or music videos, or advertising, and they argue that pornography can be re-fashioned, made feminist, if we make it ourselves, talk about what turns us on, don't harm or exploit in making it, and produce a range of images.

Many feminists today tend to believe feminist porn is possible, desirable, sexy and fun. I think this is positive and hopeful - if sometimes naïve to the realities of sexist objectification for women with less structural power.

Positive because unless women believe we can live in a world in which we are free sexual beings - people able to decide what turns us on, explore that with lovers, take part in not just consent but enthusiastic mutual agreement - then I don’t think those changes will happen. We don’t live in that world now - but in all the examples of my own work I gave above, pornography is not the problem. Sexually explicit material with degrading narratives about women is part of a package of women hating behaviours, supporting, encouraging and providing a site for violence against women. It is also, critically - but far from uniquely - a part of our culture that reduces women to “just sex."

Paying attention to the stories porn tells, just as we might pay attention to the stories music videos, or advertisements, or Hollywood movies tell, is, I think, the critical issue.

We live in an era in which sexualised imagery of women and girls seems all pervasive. Exploitative, heteronormative, damaging to our senses of what we should look like, how we should behave. Damaging to men, especially young men, who learn how to be sexual from watching images in which women are often active beings only in their desires to please men.

This isn't porn - it's MTV. Or how about this Guinness ad from 2008? Trigger warning for women-hating.

The issue is the narrative, the story, not the medium.

What we need are narratives, in every medium, that explore enthusiastic consent. That treat our bodies as beautiful parts of whole people, in which the choices we make to explore different activities at different times are freely given and joyful. We need to know about sex - not from stories which are only interested in male pleasure - but because sex can be fun, may be about as meaningful a connection as we have to others, and is, for many of us, an area of our lives we enjoy.

We also need narratives, in every medium, in which sex is not the only reason women are there. At the moment, we see sexualised images of women in all kinds of contexts. What we don’t see enough are women living our lives with all the humdrum realities that come with working, parenting, having friendships, playing sport, singing, making art, shopping for groceries or climbing mountains.

Women, like men, have a wide range of interests, concerns, areas of expertise, not all of which are reducible to our breast size, how short our skirt might be or whether we perform particular sexual acts. Sex is important - but it’s not, ever, all we are - and increasing acceptance of sexualised, and only sexualised, images of women is no kind of sexual revolution.

Sexual freedom - the freedom to be sexual in the ways which turn us on - has to include the capacity to not only, not always, be sexual.

What's wrong with watching porn?

NB: This post is my own view, not a Hand Mirror view.

Cross posted

Now that the Labour party caucus has castigated the people concerned, and some MPs have been sin-binned, and it might be possible to be heard above the rapidly subsiding roar, I'm going to add my tuppence worth.

For people reading in Australia and further afield, New Zealand has been having its very own little ministerial and MPs expenses scandal. But being New Zealand, it's all very small beer. No moat cleaning or duck houses or pricey toasters as there were in the UK. In NZ, it's been a matter of ministers having a few drinks on the taxpayers' tab, or getting a massage, or putting some purchases on the Crown plastic instead of a personal one (notably some golf clubs and a bike). Even then, the money was refunded almost before the bill came due, but the minister in question nevertheless thought that the taxpayer was a jolly good source of short term credit.

The biggest offence seems to have been one minister who spent his lonely nights in hotels watching pay-per-view porn, and putting it on the Crown tab. Again, it was all repaid, well before the minister left office, and several years before the press got wind of it. He tried in the first instance to pretend that he was just a movie buff, but when a little bit of press digging revealed that his movies cost $19.95 each (the standard price for porn) and regular movies cost $14.95 each, he had to change his tune. To his credit, when his cover was blown he fronted the press, admitted his misdeeds, made his apologies, and asked for forgiveness.

The issue in the NZ press and the NZ blogosphere has been whether or not it is appropriate to put private expenditure on taxpayer funded credit cards, even if the private expenditure is subsequently repaid. The answer is no. I agree with that answer.

Everyone has very very carefully said that watching porn is not an issue. Oh no, what a person does in the privacy of their own room is their business and its private and there's no public interest in poking our noses in there and people's sexuality is their own affair.

Hmmm....


In general, New Zealanders aren't really concerned with what consenting adults do. Some politicians have been pilloried for hypocrisy - for example, Don Brash, who allowed himself to be portrayed as supporting traditional family values, but had an affair on the side - but usually, the New Zealand press gallery don't report on pollies' private affairs, unless they begin to think that those private affairs are having a public effect. Even then, they err on the side of caution. New Zealanders have happily elected gay and lesbian and transgender MPs. Sex and sexuality is very much regarded as a politician's own business, thank the FSM.

However, I think that watching porn could be an issue.

I see two potential problems with porn. The first is to do with the extent to which it involves consenting adults, and the second is to do with the narrative about women that it may contain. Because porn may not involve consenting adults, and because porn may portray demeaning ideas about women, it is ethically risky. Not necessarily ethically wrong, but ethically risky.

Please be very clear about the distinctions I'm making here. I am not saying that porn infringes against morality. If morality consists in precepts about who is permitted to have sex, and in what position, and with whom, then I'm just not interested. Take your tired shibboleths, do what you will with them, in the privacy of your own bedroom, and stay away from mine. And anyone else's. Really, just f*ck off.

I'm also not saying that watching porn is necessarily wrong. Rather, I'm saying that it is risky. It may be that the porn that you are watching does not involve consenting adults. And that's a problem.

Remember that the gold standard in sexual activity is consenting adults. It's not just the gold standard - it's the minimum standard. If the porn you are watching is not made by consenting adults, then you are watching rape. You may not be getting your rocks off by watching rape, that is, by participating vicariously in scenes depicting rape, but your jollies come at the expense of the actors in the scene. Because that's what they are. Actors. Those big smiles, the sounds and words of consent and delight: they're an act. Just because the actors look like they want to be doing what they're doing, doesn't mean that their consent is real.

Equally, it doesn't mean that the actors haven't consented either. Just as plenty of sex workers say that they enjoy sex work, and it's something they freely choose to do (see for example, this great post from Hexy: Accessories, Australian sex workers, and Sheila Jeffreys and Claire Finch's story in The Guardian: I ran a brothel in a country village), plenty of actors in porn are happy to do the work. But just as plenty of sex workers are cruelly exploited, trapped into sex slavery, plenty of performers in porn movies are forced into it. And if you think Linda Lovelace was the only person ever forced into performing in porn, then I've got a very nice bridge that crosses Sydney Harbour that I'd like to sell to you. As a viewer, you just don't know whether the actors you are watching have consented, and are continuing to consent, to perform in the movie, or whether they never consented, or consented initially, and then withdrew their consent. If they have not consented, if they have withdrawn their consent, then what you are watching is rape. That's why porn is ethically risky.

Even if all the actors participating in the movie consented, and you're sure about that, then there's still the problem with the narratives contained in porn. Porn contains narratives that suggest that underage girls want sex ("barely legal" movies, using actors of legal age, but made up and dressed to look adolescent), that women like being raped, that the only way sex should end is with a money shot all over a woman's face. They are narratives of aggression and derision towards woman. Domestic and Laboratory Goddess Dr Isis has a great post about the aggression towards women in porn, complete with edited photos. Go take look, unless you're my mum or Ms Eleven, in which case do yourself a favour, and don't look. Those narratives disturb me. Sure, it's only fantasy, but they are fantasies which involve the degradation of human beings.* That makes them, to my mind, ethically risky.

There is at least some porn that is made ethically. Fair trade porn, if you will. No, I'm not going to include links to it in this blog, but if you google say, "feminist porn", and do a little research and exercise a little judgement, you should be able to come up with some porn that doesn't involve exploitation of women, and doesn't contain nasty narratives about women. In other words, take some responsibility for what you're viewing. Mutatis mutandis, for gay or lesbian or bi or trans or wev, really.

I suppose that given that the minister in question purchased his movies through a hotel, they probably weren't too extreme. Perhaps that might give us some reassurance, because the business retailing the porn might have taken some care about what it was offering to its customers. However, given what Motella (who'd have thought you could write a blog about motels?) tells us:

Most major hotels seem to offer adult pay movies. Why do they do this? Simply, because their guests demand it AND it generates huge profits! It has been reported that up to 50% of the hotel guests purchase the material and it is estimated that between 70 -80% of the hotel's in-room profit come from adult movie viewing.

...I wouldn't be counting on that.**

I think we ought to be worried about pollies purchasing porn on the Crown tab. The reason that we ought to be worried is not because porn is necessarily immoral - it isn't. If it passes that gold standard consenting adults criterion, then it's probably okay. Maybe not great, given the concerns about nasty narratives, but almost certainly there are worse transgressions. But it's ethically risky.

We make ethically risky purchases all the time. I eat chocolate, drink coffee, wear clothes, use a computer and a mobile phone and watch TV. All of these products may be made with child or sweated labour, and I haven't made the effort to find out. Where I do find out about ethically dubious practices, I sometimes stop buying the product, but even then, it's not necessarily the best thing to do: "fair trade" is rife with anomalies.

More than that, who manages to live an ethically perfect life all the time? I don't, even though I do try to get it right. But I am no moral saint. Nor do I expect ministers and other parliamentarians to be moral saints. However, I do expect them to demonstrate a reasonable degree of judgement. They are, after all, in the business of making judgements about how to run the country.

I suppose that I think that porn is more likely to come closer to the point of being ethically wrong, because people may have been harmed in the making of it, because the making of it may be a crime, because it may contain narratives that demean people (I really do recommend reading Dr Isis' post in respect of this last point). We need to be cautious about porn, to consume it, if that's your thing, with care and with discretion. And that's why it may be reasonable to be rather more concerned about ministers who consume porn than we are about ministers who simply consume.

* And those fantasies are pretty minor. I came across some sites while I was researching this post that made me feel nauseously ill. I don't even want to begin to describe them.
** I've not linked directly to the post where Motella makes this claim, but you can go find it for yourself if you like. It's just not something that I really want to link to from this blog.

agreeing with rosemary

i find that i often disagree with rosemary mcleod's op-ed pieces, but she has written a couple lately that i completely agree with.

the first can be found here, and while i don't completely agree with the first half (ie that groping is mostly harmless and seeking justice for it is "revenge" rather than empowerment), the main point she makes about unfairness in sentencing is a very good one:

But it's another comment by the judge that I find troubling: that publicity was not required in his case because none of the offensive images were of New Zealanders.

Setting aside how he could possibly know that for sure, isn't it enough that vile images were spread of any women and young children, whatever their ethnicity, and wherever they might be? They were images of real people; that is their charm for people who enjoy such cruelty.

I don't buy any argument that looking is so different from acting, or that geography waters down a crime. It's in our minds that we first become evil, before we act, and in our minds that we give ourselves permission to be brutal by proxy, as both these men have been.

the second piece doesn't appear to be online yet, but covers some appalling behaviour by ACC towards a sexual abuse victim. the concluding paragraphs of rosemary's piece are as follows:

According to Labour's victims rights spokesperson, Lynne Pillay, just 32 people were approved nationally for sexual abuse counselling in the first two months of this year, compared to 472 in the same time last year.

What's that supposed to suggest?

That the other 440 were lying or that, although they were traumatised enough to seek help, they were not "mentally injured"?

If this is economising, it's short-sighted.

Victims won't go away because bureaucracy wants them to; harm doesn't evaporate spontaneously, though we wish it did; and one way or another we're bound to pay for our lack of belief in "rehabilitation and all that other babble".

News bites: Hippity Hop Hens

An article by Kate Ellis on the Australian On Line Opinion website:

Apparently post feminist women are reinventing hen’s nights in order to (re)claim a male activity while men are becoming more “classy” with spa visits and golfing days. Yet for Hannah Pool, the hen’s night is a traumatic, humiliating experience where feminists are expected to disregard their political beliefs. Pool contends that the first step in reducing the “very specific tyranny” of a hen’s night is to make them bunny ear free.

My cousin just got married and I was invited to his fiancé’s hen’s night:

Yes, its dress up PLAYBOY BUNNY!!! Ears provided for those who think they are not the dress up type ...

*Groan*

...Although still partial to a halter neck I’m feeling a bit troubled by Third wave feminism’s evolution into post feminism. I feel like girl culture is letting us down.

The current crop of girl bands, such as The Pussycat Dolls as they sing “don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me”, has got me depressed. There are so many contradictions regarding empowerment, girl culture, consumerism and the same old subjugation.

My soon to be cousin’s Playboy-themed hen’s night was a great text to think these ideas through. The Playboy bunny has become a ubiquitous symbol in modern life and has taken on new meanings of sexual self possession...

Click through for the whole article.

UOA Gender & Psychology Symposium: Sexualisation & Pornography

Thanks to Leonie for sending this through!

Gender & Psychology Symposium - Sexualisation and Pornography: Research, analysis, change?

Pornography is perennially controversial. Some defend it as a domain for free sexual expression and enjoyment for all; others point to the misogyny displayed in its portrayals of women. In this age of so-called ‘raunch culture’, pornography is no longer just hidden away in the bedrooms of boys and men. Women and girls are invited to share the gaze, and are told that it is empowering to do so. Beyond the consumption of pornography, pornographic images, styles of embodiment, and modes of sexual engagement have become ‘mainstreamed’ into advertising, music, and popular cultural fashions. Relatedly, an overtly sexualised style is increasingly promoted to younger and younger girls in the form of toys, activities, clothing and accessories. These cultural shifts have already become largely normalized and naturalized. Do they amount to harmless fun? Or do they contribute to the cultural production of forms of masculinity and femininity that ultimately work against girls’ and women’s choices and wellbeing?

In this symposium, which showcases some of the best undergraduate student work in Gender and Psychology at the University, young women will present research, critical analysis, and their creative ideas for change. We hope to generate wider discussion and debate, and foster constructive connections between people interested in these issues.

Date: Friday 11 December 2009
Time: 10am – 1pm
Venue: Room 604, Level 6, Human Sciences Building, 10 Symonds Street, University of Auckland

PROGRAMME
10am Welcome & Introductions - Nicola Gavey

10.15am Sexualisation and Children - Hazel Albertyn, Katie Malone, Courtney Ross, & Natalia Samorow

11.15am Tea Break

11.30am Pornography and Society - Alex Antevska, Danielle Hay, Lisa Paz, & Jaimee Robinson

12.30pm Panel Discussion:
Caroline Fergusson, Women’s Rights Officer, AUSA
Denise Ritchie, Stop Demand
Melanie Govender, Psychology Student, University of Auckland
Chair: Virginia Braun

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ALL WELCOME

This symposium is free and open to the public.

Please rsvp for catering purposes to Meena Sadera m.sadera at auckland.ac.nz

For further information, please contact:
Nicola Gavey, Department of Psychology, The University of Auckland, n.gavey at auckland.ac.nz

Steve Crow's philanthropy gets rejected

Steve Crow, pornographer and Boobs on Bikes organiser, has had his offer of a donation to the NZ Breast Cancer Foundation rejected. Magnanimously, Steve had offered the Foundation $5000 if he could get 100 ladies to take their tops off at the next BoB parade, and another $2,500 if 100 blokes would do the same. He didn't think to tell the Breast Cancer Foundation what he was up to; and when they found out and rejected his offer he publicly attacked them, implying they don't care enough about the women served by the Foundation. Cheers, Steve.

The rights and wrongs of porn have already been debated on THM. My chief concern with Boobs on Bikes is not to do with porn per se, but the fact that crowding a public place with topless women means that those women who don't like it can't escape.

Porn aside, there's another serious issue here: Crow has tried very cynically to buy legitemacy for his business ventures using the plight of women with cancer as a vehicle. And his public attack on the Breast Cancer Foundation shows just how deep his concern for these women runs.

Commenters on Stuff (in keeping with their proud redneck tradition) seem to agree with Steve, telling the Foundation to get off it's high horse. I find this really objectionable. I doubt very much that the Foundation have rejected Steve's donation lightly. My guess would be that they've weighed up the issues very carefully, and have concluded that they'd do more harm to the dignity and comfort of the women they support by accepting Steve's cash. I'm sure that, just like women in the general population, those with breast cancer feel divided on the issue of porn, and some will find it confronting, offensive or upsetting. When someone's got cancer, it's not a good time to have an argument about false consciousness and sexual repression with them.

Steve seems unperturbed by the rejection, though - he says he's going to donate to a UN organisation for halting genital mutilation instead. The horrific exploitation of female children will now buy Steve the street cred he feels he needs.

Sex sells hearing aids?

Bothered by Widex's ridiculous billboards? You're not the only one, and, thanks to reader Leonie for the info, you can complain directly to Widex by emailing Lynn Miller LMiller@widex.co.nz.

Here's Leonie's list of concerns about this billboard campaign:

1. It is a pornographic image; the young woman is in a pose frequently used
in pornography, i.e. naked underneath a coat, wearing stockings - stockings
are frequently used in pornography

2. The photo of her conveys the message that women are sex objects - a
harmful message to women and girls.

3. Because it is a billboard - this harmful message will be seen by people
of all ages, including young children.

4. The slogan "To hear no evil would be a bit of a shame" so that a
pornographic photo of a half-naked young woman is alongside the word evil.

5. Widex is using sex to sell a product that has nothing to do with sex.
This is a breach of the People in Advertising Code which says they will not
use "sexual appeal simply to draw attention to an unrelated product".

6. Widex claims to practice corporate social responsibility yet this Widex
advert reinforces the idea that women are objects for men's pleasure. This
is one of the ideas that underpins the high incidence of sexual assault in
New Zealand, where one in 4 women in NZ will be sexual assaulted in her
lifetime.

Some people are taking their message straight to the billboards themselves:


Leonie sent in this one, and I've seen another one with the words "Child porn your shame" added too. Feel free to email me, julie dot fairey via gmail, if you have any others to add.

fiona's story

i was going to post about this on monday night, but got distracted with the 60 minutes interview. i watched the sunday theatre on tv1, which was called "fiona's story". if you didn't catch it, it was about a woman who's husband is charged with owning child pornography. the story is fictional, but very well told and much of it would mirror what many women in similar circumstances went through.

there were so many issues that were raised really well, but the ones that stood out for me were:

• the fact that her husband was so absorbed with the pornography that it damaged their sex life. he was no longer interested in her. this resonated with me, because i've recently heard that complaint from someone who is now separated. she said "i was right there, i was a ready and willing partner, but he gave more attention to the computer screen than he did to me." i think the damage done to some relationships by pornography is really sad.
• the way that husband's behaviour was trivialised and excused by his family members. in particular, there was one scene with the couple and (i think) the husband's brother where the latter couldn't really see the problem with viewing stuff that was "already out there".
• and sort of related was the way that fiona didn't want to mentally deal with the reality of what had happened - you could see a kind of denial in the way that she accepted the husband's initial excuse that he was a victim of identity theft; and even after he admitted what he had done, she still seems to shy away from the details and the implications of his actions.
• the consequences that the wife and children would have to face had the charges been made public - the anonymous threatening phone calls, the shunning of the kids etc. and the way that this was used by the husband to ensure that fiona ended up him even when she was appalled by what he did. if the film had a weakness, it was that the full impact on the wife and children of public naming and shaming through a trial and sentencing wasn't shown.
• the financial stresses that the family would have faced had the husband been jailed.

i don't know that we have any kind of formal system for supporting women and children who find themselves in this kind of situation. they have to suffer for actions that were not theirs, and the destruction of relationships is probably the worst of the problems they face.

this is a good review of the film, but i really want to share one of the comments at the bottom of it:

I was looking forward to watching Fiona's Story, I thought it would help people like myself who have been in the horrible situation Fiona found herself in. I was very dissapointed with the drama. I didn't think the BBBC covered the real effects it has on the wife, the children, friends and family. My children and I have been to hell and back. The impact it has on the children, knowing what their dad has done this terrible crime and viewed children their age is heartbreaking. Seeing your child being singled out at school, trying to protect them from the local headlines and billboards outside the newsagent. Trying to explain the crime their dad who has never commited an offence before was going to spend some time in prison. The visits of the social services, who stopped my husband seeing his children unsupervised immediatly after he had been charged. Telling the children they cannot be alone with their dad anymore, they couldn't understand because he had never abused them, he was their kind loving dad, yet he chose to see other children being hurt and abused. I was off work I couldn't leave the house I felt so ashamed and guilty somehow because I felt I should have known, yet had no reason to suspect for two years. My life now six months after he was given a six months sentence suspended for two years. I still fear people finding out and do my children, although I am seperated from my husband yet we still remain friends. He is on a sex offenders course and I am taking each day as it comes. There is very little help for the internet peodophile wife and their families yet lots of help for the peodophile! I wish the BBC had helped situations like mine and other families that are torn apart and shown the reality of a husband who was sentenced, the humiliation and guilt the wife has and the effect it really can have on the children!

Guest post: Allowing men to control our sexual imagination – an argument against pro-woman porn

Further to our ongoing discussion about pr0n, Anita from Kiwipolitico has offered this addition to the divergence of views we've been hosting. Big thanks to Anita for sharing.

In the midst of the posts debating porn a few weeks ago I offered Julie a post showing an anti-porn perspective from a sex-positive third-wave point of view. This is a somewhat challenging exercise for me as I believe that women who want to can and should make empowering pro-women porn, but my views remain conflicted.

This is my strongest area of conflict: can we reclaim porn for ourselves, or do we just give men another control over our sexual imaginations?

Imagine, if you will, your best case scenario for positive respectful pornography made by women for women. Perhaps that scenario requires that all profits are returned to the actors, or that there are no profits; perhaps that it is distributed only to friends and acquaintances, or free all over the net; perhaps that the actors as doing it as an act of empowerment, or that the stories are deliberately those of strong women; perhaps the set is full of laughter and joy as the make it, or what they make is really hot. Whatever it takes, imagine your best case scenario.

Then think about how those women will be constructing the shots, thinking about the lighting, the angles, the narrative, the sets, the stories, what to show and what to hide.

Their thoughts, however politically conscious they are, will be rooted in the male pornography paradigm. The male porn industry is so dominant it frames everything we think about porn. Even when we consciously work to construct something different it is framed as being not-like-that: the male paradigm remains the dominant force. A quick look at the photographers' guidelines of Filament demonstrate this: every explanation is grounded in a shared understanding of stereotypical male porn, every difference is an exception worth mentioning, every similarity unmentioned.

So the dominant exploitative anti-woman porn provides the frame for all pro-woman porn, either by providing norms we accept, or by being the norms we react against. So whether we want it to or not, by making porn we allow that destructive paradigm to control our sexual imagination.

It's an easy and obvious argument to make, but answering the question it poses is much harder: how then do we create pro-woman sexual images for us to share?

Rather than trying to bridge from anti-woman sexual images, perhaps we would be better to bridge from other pro-woman forms. There is a long tradition of strong pro-woman writing, and a younger tradition of pro-woman written erotica, perhaps we need to strengthen that tradition, then move from there to more explicit images of that erotica, then build out from there. Or strengthen our young tradition of pro-woman movies, then add more sex, and build from there.

Perhaps we wouldn't end up with something like the current male dominated porn, but isn't that the point? It's not so much that I'm arguing against porn altogether, as that I'm arguing against porn being the starting point to our development of pro-women sexual images, and against assuming that porn will be the end point.

The female sexual imagination at its truest and most powerful is not the exploitative imagination of the male porn industry, and we shouldn't be controlled by their damaging dominance.

Anita

Monday Funday with lol kitteh

From here.

Mostly I thought I'd put this up because I read an article in Canvas on the weekend about the modelling industry and a documentary coming out soon based on five years' footage from behind the scenes. Given our recent discussions about pornography (which I haven't written about yet because I tend to think people who write about porn should be those who have actually seen enough to know what they are talking about) I was thinking about how blurry the line is at times between the modelling world and the porn world. I don't have anything more substantial to offer on that right now, maybe if I win Big Wednesday I'll be blogging full-time from Thursday! ;-)

Talking about talking about pornography

“If I go to the debate on pornography, I’ll just fume about the fact that everyone’s got stupid analysis but me.” I said that a couple of months ago, and I was joking, but only a little bit.

Feminist discussions on sexually explicit material tend to be heated, and change no-one’s mind. The latest discussions on The Hand Mirror have followed this pattern. I want to explore why.

Media that has been created for the purpose of sexual arousal and produced to be bought and sold (which is a mouthful, but I think more precise than ‘pornography’) sits at an intersection: Desire, sex, the construction of men’s sexuality, the construction of women’s sexuality, bodies, work, the role of the state, objectification, the creation of rape culture and commodification (and much more, those are just what’s on top for me).

It only takes small differences in feminists’ analysis, weighting or experience of a couple of these before they’re coming at the issue that we call ‘pornography’ from completely different angles.

As well as making the issue complicated, these many facets also mean that those no such thing as a disinterested party. Everyone has a stake in what is being discussed, but what is most triggering about the discussion about sexually explicit material varies widely.

To simplify one example more than is really justified: discussions of sexually explicit material may trigger some women’s experiences of having their sexuality and desire denied, while the same discussion might trigger other women’s experience of having other people’s sexuality or desire forced on them. (I don’t mean this as a dichotomy, just an example of the sorts of talking past that can happen in these discussions).

I think it’s very difficult even to talk about, or articulate any of this, because the vocabulary we have around sexually explicit media is so limited. The distinctions I think need to be made about are numerous and complex:
Was it made by an individual expressing their personal desires?
Was it made to be bought and sold?
Did everyone involve in making it give genuine consent?
Does it normalise misogynist ideas about women, women’s sexuality, women’s bodies, or sex?
Do they normalise racist ideas about any group of women or men, their bodies or sexuality?
Does it normalise a limited view of human sex or sexuality?
How do the ideas it contains interact with rape culture?
Does it normalise a particular type of body?

Now the answer to most mass-produced mainstream pornography from Ralph to are yes (or no depending on the question). But my point is that these are different questions, and they’re different again from:

What do we do about it all? What do we expect other organisation, or the state to do about it all?

Those are just my questions, I’m sure other people have different ones (I’m sure I’d have different ones if I wrote them on a different day, after reading different material). Unless we are clear about what exactly we’re talking about, unless we actively try and overcome the difficulties I’ve outlined, we’ll never have anything useful to say.

I wrote this post - I decided to continue talking about pornography, despite my cynicism, because I think it’s important. I think untangling these threads, understanding the role of sexually explicit material in women’s oppression is vital. I think the first answer to the question: ‘what is to be done?’ Is that we have to figure out how to talk about this.

I'd like the comment thread on this post to remain focused on the specific issues I raised. I see the issue in this post discussion of sexually explicit material within the feminist movement. If you don't consider yourself within the feminist movement I'm asking you not comment on this post.

Guest Post: Pornography: fostering and perpetuating demeaning attitudes toward women

Many thanks to Caroline Ferguson, Women's Rights Officer at AUSA, for this contribution to our recent debate about pr0n, in particular in the context of the recent concerns raised about Issue 12 of Craccum.

I'm the WRO at the University of Auckland and I have just spent huge amount of time and energy dealing with this issue on campus. The recent Craccum at Auckland Uni which was full of pornographic content has been heavily penalised by the Students Association. Following this battle, I was extremely dismayed to find this pro-porn post on THM. The editors of Craccum didn't even bother to raise a pro-porn argument when defending their publication - I thought post-"Female Chauvinist Pigs", sex-positive 'liberating' 'stripping-is-empowering type feminism had been pretty clearly debunked - pornography has not 'benefited' women, and is no triumph of feminism (as Hugh Hefner argues). How is it that this argument is still continuing among feminists? It leaves us open to being viewed as an incoherent, vitriolic movement, undeserving of respect.

When we look at the issue of pornography, why not accept the distinction made by Dworkin and MacKinnon between porn and erotica. In this distinction, porn is defined as:

“the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and words, that also includes women presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities; or women presented as sexual objects who enjoy humiliation or pain; or women presented as sexual objects experiencing sexual pleasure in rape, incest or other sexual assault; or women are presented as sexual objects tied up, cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or women presented in postures or positions of sexual submission, servility, or display; or women's body parts — including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks — exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or women presented being penetrated by objects or animals; or women presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual.” (Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 176.)

This is distinct from erotica (and this is more than the 'semantic' difference which Enid writes it off as), which they define as "sexually explicit material premised on equality, which depicts women as genuinely equal and consenting participants in sexual encounters." If we then accept the reality that most mainstream sexually explicit material falls within the category of pornography, and not erotica, then its hard to see how a feminist who believes in the moral equality of men and women can write a post which, in general, does not recognise the reality of an oppressive and degrading industry ("being anti-porn is much like being anti-television").

I'd like to quote part of my submission to the Media Complaints Tribunal, which is the body responsible for penalising Craccum:

"Some people argue that pornography directly contributes to the scourge of violence against women, an unspoken national shame in New Zealand. Even if such a causal link cannot be irrefutably established, it is difficult to deny that pornography cultivates and perpetuates the view of women as sexually submissive and morally inferior citizens. In this way, pornography can be understood as violating the rights of women to equal status within the University. The seriousness of Craccum’s failures in publishing Issue 12 is rendered even more acute by the fact that Craccum is ultimately published and funded by AUSA. An important part of AUSA’s mandate is to promote an environment in which all students can educate themselves without fear of discrimination or harassment. For AUSA to be party to the publication and distribution of pornography on campus is oppressive, degrading and a serious betrayal of the student body it represents.

It has been argued that the frightening spectre of wholesale censorship outweighs the harm done to women by pornography. However, on closer analysis, it is revealed that the above view prefigures its own conclusion by denying that women have the right to free speech in the same measure as men do; pornography is censorship insofar as it fosters the public perception of women as somehow politically and morally deficient citizens. Thus, pornography violates women’s right to freedom of expression. If women are to participate in student affairs, including student media, in a meaningful way, it is important that AUSA matches its formal policies with clear directives and clear action designed to ensure that the dehumanising perception of women as merely sexual objects is overturned."

Sexual objectification is not the fundamental issue. Sexuality does not need to be premised on female submission, as the mainstream would have us believe. If mainstream pornography did not depict women as inferior the vast majority of situations, I would not have felt the need to respond to Ms Enid, but given the reality that I perceive, Ms Enid's pro-porn position is actually very insidious and damaging.

To quote Ariel Levy:

"the proposition that having the most simplistic, plastic stereotypes of female sexuality constantly reiterated throughout our culture somehow proves that we are sexually liberated and personally empowered has been offered to us, and we have accepted it. But if we stop to think about it, we know this just doesn't make any sense. Its time to stop nodding and smiling uncomfortably as we ignore the crazy feeling in our heads and admit that the emperor has no clothes."

all i want is the ability to opt out

yeah, so um, ms enid threw down the gauntlet, and put forward a very interesting post, about which there has been some very interesting discussion. and i did say that i'd think about it and provide a response. let me say that i'm feeling a little squeamish about that, and the source of of my squeamishness most likely lies in the fact that when feminists put up arguments against porn, there seems to be quite a vocal opposition to it.

and it's not really surprising that this is the case. because if there's one thing we know about a patriarchal (or any other kind of) society, it is that it rewards those who uphold its values. those who play along nicely fare much, much better than those who challenge the status quo. that is the context in which feminists work, and i don't believe that this discussion can happen outside of that context. that's why i'm feeling shaky about putting this post up.

also, i know ms enid is one very clever and totally amazing woman, and going head-to-head in a debate with her is enough to make anyone shake in their shoes! i don't know that i'm entirely up to the task, but i'll give it a try.

the whole discussions began with filament magazine, and whether or not the hand mirror should have hosted an interview on this blog. to which i responded thusly:

i read emma's post and wasn't too impressed with this new magazine. yes, it's trying to do something different, but it's still doing it in a society that's strongly objectifying women & my own personal belief is that you don't solve the problem by doing the same thing to men, no matter how "tastefully" it's done nor how much you supposedly treat the person as a whole human being by writing up a nice article about them.

ms enid's first response (and i'm eagerly awaiting part 2) is to discuss objectification and porn outside of any social context. to discuss porn as stand-alone concepts. i'm agree with some of the commentors on that post - porn can't be divorced from social context. because it is our socialisation and our environment that determines whether or not we objectify, when we objectify, where we objectify, and how we objectify others.

when i read ms enid saying "objectification is perfectly fine",
it takes me straight back to one gordon gecko standing up and saying "greed is good". and he provided all the nice, rational and very logical sounding reasons for why greed is good. he totally believed it, and because greed is something we feel guilty about even though we still totally want to indulge in it, we take on board the message so that we can keep on being greedy without having to feel guilty about the harm it might cause others. if we're being self-serving, it's for the greater good after all! it's an argument we're seduced by because we're so desperate to be seduced.

now, i'm not equating ms enid's arguments with mr gecko's, i'm just saying that they take me to the same place. and i can just see myself trying to argue with mr gecko without having anything coherent to say, except "but, but, but... that's just so wrong. i can't explain why it is, but it just is". it's exactly the same way i feel about objectification, it's just wrong to divorce someone from their humanity, to treat them as an object without feelings, desires, dreams and all the other aspects that make us human. it's wrong even if the person consents to it, because in dehumanising themselves they not only dehumanise the objectifier, they also serve to dehumanise others who are perceived to be in the same group as themselves.

that it's wrong is a moral judgement. and i have no problem with that. we make moral judgements all the time. that's why we have laws. every statute is a moral judgement of one kind or another, because it restricts a particular behaviour. we are happy to make moral judgements about things that have no legal context as well, eg many of us believe that telling a lie is wrong, cheating on your spouse is wrong, etc. so i see no reason for suspending all moral judgement when it comes to matters of porn. that makes no sense at all.

so, what i've established after so many words is that i think objectification is wrong. that's my view, and if you don't like it, that's too bad. it's not going to be changing any time soon & it certainly won't be changed by watching "the right kind of porn".

a couple of things flow from the fact that i think it's wrong. first is that i don't want to be objectified. i don't give anyone the right to objectify me without my consent. to which you say "there's no way you can police that, there's no way you can stop people objectifying you because you have no control over their thoughts". that is correct, i have no control and do not want to have control over their thoughts. what i can do is make it more difficult for them to objectify me. one of the ways i do that is by the way i dress. another way is by making it clear where and when i can that i don't consent to being objectified. yet another way is to be an activist in this area and challenge prevailing views. maybe i won't entirely solve the problem, but i can and will do my best to minimise it as it relates to me.

the problem i see with the "objectification is morally fine" argument posed by ms enid is that she does not limit it in any way. ergo, if our cultural norm is that objectification is fine all the time, where does the person who doesn't want to be objectified go? for example, i don't see why i should have to be objectified in my workplace; i want to be judged on my skills and performance. but under the "objectification is fine" model, i get no choice about that and have to face the consequences of objectification whether or not i like it. under this model, the only way to avoid objectification is to not have a job. and similarly the argument goes for any other sphere i move in. ultimately, the only way i can avoid being objectified is by shutting myself in a room and never meeting anyone. i don't accept that as fair.

next you'll say to me that this is just how human beings are, and we can't change our nature. just accept that this is the way of the world because there really isn't anything you can do about it. to which i say phooey - well, i'd more likely say f**k off, but i'm trying to be polite here. if i accepted that argument, then i'd never have done a lot of the things i do. it's because i challenge many of the prevailing norms and expectations of certain parts of my community that i am able to do what i do. i have had to fight every inch of the way for certain freedoms that many of you take for granted. so many times, i'm told about my feminine nature, and told what sphere i should restrict myself to, and told that this is just the way God made the world.

well i've never accepted that argument, and i never will. don't bother saying "that's just the way it is" to me, because i know that humans evolve and people who are willing to agitate and take a lot of flak can change the way things are. there is nothing that is set in concrete. any aspect of culture, environment or humanity is subject to change. i dont' have to accept that men are naturally violent and that's the way things are. i don't have to accept that men will sexually harass me and i should just harden up and tell them to f**k off. i don't have to take any of the evpsych or venus/mars nonsense as if it's some kind of gospel truth. i don't have to accept that men generally have a higher sex drive than women. and i don't have to accept that objectification will happen to me and i am powerless against it.

if ms enid were to at least posit that objectification should happen in certain spheres, so that people who don't want to be part of it they can opt out, well that's an argument i could live with. if you were to say "if you go to to such and such place, you're going to encounter people who are in to objectification. so if you don't want to be part of that whole scene, just don't go to said place". at least then, i'd feel like i had some safe spaces left to me. but the way the argument has been presented, there is no room for safe space. that's not good enough.

another thing flowing from my belief that objectification is wrong is that i don't want to participate in the objection of others. which means that i don't want to be looking at images which objectify, i don't want to be watching films, tv, or looking at magazines which objectify. i don't want to be looking at live people to objectify them. i want to be able to have that choice to not objectify.

yesterday, i was driving down the main street of hamilton, on the way to picking up my child from school. in front of a me was a vehicle with a covered trailer attached to it, and the trailer was covered with pictures of nude women as it advertising some kind of strip joint. i had no choice. if i didn't want to cause an accident, i had to look at that image. last year a similar incident on the road with real-life strippers driving pillion on a motorbike with very little on, and i was left without any choice but to look. they might be quite happy to be doing what they were doing, but i want the choice to not have to look at it.

increasingly, i'm feeling that the choice is being taken away from me. there are increasingly fewer public places where i can avoid images that i disagree with, and that bothers me. those who think objectification is good also seem to think that they have the right to impose that objectification on others whereever and whenever they choose. should i dare to complain, i'm immediately faced some pretty harsh negative consequences.

it's ok, i've almost run out of words now. i just want to throw in the fact that i'm little impressed with president wahid's justification for ogling ms bardot. it's like the whole erotica/porn division, of which i think there is none. it's just an attempt by individuals to elevate what they're doing as being somehow above what everyone else is doing, because supposedly they're doing it with "taste". i have more respect for people like ms enid, who are honest about what they're doing & are unapologetic rather than people who want to convince you that they're doing something else altogether.

Report back on the pornography debate at Vic's Womensfest

Reader and commenter Hugh attended and has written about it on his livejournal. Here's a couple of his observations to whet your appetite and encourage you to make with the clicky to get the rest:

Rachel Wright opened for the pro team and I have to say I was impressed by her. Rachel is/has (I'm not quite sure on the details) a sex worker and porn actress who feels that her own work has done nothing to disempower her as a woman - indeed, that it has done quite the opposite. Although I felt a little sorry for the opposing team, who obviously can't match her personal experience in the area, it did make a pretty forceful point. One of the main issues that both sides repeatedly touched upon was the empowerment of sex workers. Nobody on either side wanted to do anything to impede the ability of sex workers to be able to choose their own destiny, which is fair enough, but I felt that the anti-porn side's attempts to express this were tokenist. They didn't really have an answer to Rachel's charge that their condemnations of sex work were disempowering for her and her co-workers.

And

The anti-porn side tended to talk exclusively about pornography as it is now, focusing on the male dominated nature of the industry, the formulaic nature of sex scenes, etc. The pro-porn side tended to talk about pornography as it could be - they acknowledged that there are problems with the industry as it exists, but that they are not universal and that the best thing to do is improve pornography, not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is defensible, since focusing the debate on features of the industry that could be changed with relatively trivial effort does not make for a strong critique, but I'm not sure it's decisive - to base one's advocacy of pornography on some idealised future pornography is to avoid the question of exactly how likely that idealised future pornography is, and why, with pornography in its modern form having co-existed for so long with an active feminist movement, this hasn't happened yet.

Haven't clicked through yet? Now is the moment!