Trigger warning for mentions of rape. Moderation Note: In this thread, please refer to the ideas of “Jensen” or “sex-negative feminists,” not the ideas of “feminists” or “the feminist movement.” Sex-positive feminism has been a major force in the feminist movement for several decades now and it’s a bit silly to erase us.
I have recently read Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, partially because a reader sent it to me (thank you, Denny, you are the best) and partially because at a certain point one gets tired of making fun of Twisty Faster and wants to engage with an extremist radical feminist with some real intellectual content.
The premise of Getting Off, for those who haven’t read it, is that pornography is oppressive to women: it encourages men to objectify, degrade and even be violent against women, corrupting male sexuality away from intimacy and towards a, well, “pornified” sexuality. This part will address male sexuality as degrading in the book, part two will address the critique of pornography and part three will consider what Jensen got right.
The meat of Getting Off, as a book, is a long description of all the kinds of degrading porn that exist out there. Double penetration! Verbal humiliation! Spanking! Throatfucking! Interracial porn! Gangbangs! Anal to mouth! Pissplay! A veritable storm of sex acts most people do not want to participate in.
The problem with this analysis, I think, is most cogently shown when Jensen describes a porn star’s responses as “difficult to interpret… as anything other than expressions of pain.” He then quotes the DVD commentary of the video, which features the cameraman saying “you see the expression on her face, like, you know what, ‘I’m really, I’m really enjoying this.'”
The point is that it is impossible to ascribe a single meaning to a particular sex act and, in particular, it is impossible to consider a particular sex act inherently degrading and unpleasurable.
Consider missionary-position heterosexual sexual intercourse. It can be a beautiful expression of love and connection. It can be an expression of contempt and hatred. It can be a fun way to spend an afternoon, no more meaningful than a roller-coaster ride. It can be a rape, a violation of a person’s inmost self. It can be a way of affirming life. It can be a rite of passage, gone through with eagerness or far too soon. It can be a way of cementing a relationship. If “regular” sex can be anything from a moment of purest joy to something sad and desperate and kind of pathetic, how could anything else be true of “kinky” sex?
If there’s a chick out there who thinks double penetration is hot because anal stimulation is hot and vaginal stimulation is hot and together they are double-hot, and a gentleman out there who thinks double penetration is hot because he likes the idea of giving her double pleasure, then in what sense are their double-penetration adventures degrading? Fun, mutually pleasurable, mutually happy sex is not degrading if you want the term to continue to have any meaning whatsoever.
I mean, fuck, it is weird to read a dude describing this horrible, degrading, objectifying, abusive sex that no woman would freely consent to and expresses the hatred the viewers have for women and be like… “huh. That was Friday night.”
Given that Jensen would have found this out if he, um, asked anyone who enjoyed participating in comeshots (seriously, comeshots are fun!), it makes me wonder about the source of Jensen’s preconceptions about sexuality. Presumably some of it is the natural human tendency to decide that sex acts the human in question doesn’t like are gross and no one should participate in them ever. (See also: homophobia.) However, I do think some of it has to do with people viewing male sexuality as inherently degrading.
The view of male sexuality as degrading is endemic in our sex-negative culture. Just look at abstinence-only education: women are considered to be precious flowers until the application of a penis, at which point they become lollipops everyone had sucked on or tape ripped off a lot of people’s arms or whatever disgusting and nonsensical analogy the teacher thought up this week. One of the most common forms of slut-shaming is calling a woman “dirty” or “filthy,” presumably because once a woman has had sex with a man she is ruined forever. Women are considered “pure” until they have sex with too many men, at which point they become “impure.” A “gentleman” doesn’t ask a woman to have sex too early on.
Jensen, and the Dworkinite strain of radical feminism he derives from, do the exact same thing. Why is a gangbang, freely and enthusiastically consented to, degrading? Well, because, uh, penises! More than one penis! In a vagina! And lots of men are getting off on it! And the woman is apparently enjoying it, says she is enjoying it, but we know she isn’t because, um, penises! In a vagina!
I see.
Porn shows a bunch of women who really, really enjoy sex. They crave and need cock. They call themselves “sluts” because they’re so full of sexual desire. Their enthusiastic consent could not get any more enthusiastic. And Jensen says it’s rapey because it creates the notion that all women are really like that deep down.
First of all, dude, it’s porn. They kind of have to show sex, it’s their job. However ethical it is, a man respecting a woman’s “no” to sex is not very good pornography. As long as they’re showing it, defaulting to showing women who are enthusiastic about sex is way less rapey than the other option.
Also, Jensen is not stupid. I’m sure he knows that most people are fully capable of telling apart reality and porn. Much as the average slash fan doesn’t think every man in real life is gay, and the average consumer of female dominiant porn is fully aware that women are not actually superior to the worthless worms that are men, the average vanilla porn consumer doesn’t think that all women are secretly gagging for his cock. That makes me wonder why he thinks that showing women who are enthusiastic about sex with men is so terrible.
Is it possibly because he thinks that women can’t really desire sex with men? Is it because he views male sexuality as degrading, and so the desire for male sexuality as more degrading still? Could the radical feminist possibly have some unexamined patriarchial narratives going on?
Not read the book but I thought the traditional feminist position (as it were) on porn was not that there is something inherently wrong in the acts carried out (though there may be) but that by definition it objectifies by separating the people in it from their humanity (only their sexuality can be acknowledged), and separates sex from intimacy (for the very reason that the viewer is only a viewer). I think the question of consent is problematic as there is no way of knowing whether the participants have consented, or whether they have/ feel they have no other options.… Read more »
“However ethical it is, a man respecting a woman’s “no” to sex is not very good pornography.”
The problem is though, it seems to be quite common in porn for the woman to very clearly say “no” (especially to anal), but for the man to persist and persuade her then for her to end up enjoying it. These are generally presented as if they are real events, even if they are probably acted. What kind of message is that giving out?
OK, to get back to the porn (sort of), I’m astounded that a cultural meme can exist for millennia and never be objected to except by women and people objecting on behalf of women, but when the exact same meme is presented from the other side, so to speak, suddenly it is not only considered oppressive towards men, it is also immediately assumed to be made up by misandrists who worship women. Seriously, women have been told to cover themselves up in order to not tempt men for millennia, and it has always been used to blame women who got… Read more »
Ozymandias:
Divorce has absolutely nothing to do with porn?
Are you sure everyone agrees with that?
I go to a traditionalist Christian blog sometimes. They are rather divided on that issue. Of course they all agree it’s a sin but most are civil libertarians of one sort or another and some see use of porn by married couples as not necessarily sinful, depending.
I’m sure you know there’s plenty of religious fundamentalists out there who totally abhor porn.
Take it to the Open Thread. Divorce has absolutely nothing to do with porn. 🙂
Fault would mean that the faulty partner would lose certain privileges, no fault means you can’t do a thing about the reason for the divorce.
“And now you want mothers who’re unhappy in their marriages to have to accuse their partner of abuse in order to justify divorcing them?”
You might want to consider that fathers are also abused, a lot, often, but don’t divorce because it would probably mean not seeing their kids ever again – and abused or not, would not mean one iota in their custodial proceedings.
Also, they have no place to go if abused and with children, without being outright accused of kidnapping.
AB:
I’m tempted to dismiss your entire argument for just this one part alone: “1) Judges should force potentially abused people to stay married to their potential abuser until concrete proof can be found or 2) Judges should rule in favour of the accuser in case of a divorce even if the abuse can’t be proven?”.
Instead, I’ll need an hour or two to make a longer post as I must leave my computer. What I want you to do is tihs:
Go back, and re-read your number one there and think of the logical hole there.
@Clarence: “No where did I say that all marriages that end in unilateral divorce do so for bad reasons. I said “in many cases”, heck, perhaps there could be an argument for it being “most” cases (though there could never be an argument for it being “all” cases), but I never made that argument, so kindly respond to what I did write, please.” It’s not about reasons. If one person does not feel good about the marriage, they don’t need a reason, it’s still a bad marriage. And chances are that trying to keep them in that marriage would only… Read more »
Btw, they were together for 4 years, and a high-profile lawyer here, Anne-France Goldwater, argues it’s sexist to not marry (a social trend here that is part anti-religious, part indifference, part choice to not marry) against women.
Anne-France also says that women should get paid to remedy the difference in income from basically all relationships they get involved in. Her alternative is one night stands, or abstinence.
“Thanks for bringing that case up, but to be fair that’s a rich person’s divorce settlement.”
Except they weren’t married. Only cohabitating.
It is taken as law that kids, wether from a marriage or not, will get child support, but alimony for the spouse is only for the married – her case seeks to change that, by saying it’s discriminatory to not have married her, depriving her of the payment she asks for, for herself (50 million + 53k a month).
@Clarence
“I maintain my position that it would be better if marriages involving children went back to a “fault” basis for divorce. Since abuse would still be one of the faults that allowed a breakup, I really don’t see what your complaint could be.”
Ehhhh… I want to agree with this, but considering how often abuse is falsified when it’s *not* neccessary in order to be granted a divorce, I’d really hate to think how often it would happen if it were.
Schala: Thanks for bringing that case up, but to be fair that’s a rich person’s divorce settlement. In the US to cover for the bad effects of our unilateral divorce policies we put most of the expectations on the non-custodial parent (usually they were not the ones seeking the divorce) and then pretend that someone who had trouble paying a mortgage for a single house (with or without help from the other spouse) is able to afford that beach house in the Hamptons. Rich people (even Tiger Woods!) can usually get divorced with impunity because much as it might chafe… Read more »
For example of a ‘amount of financial support in the same kind of lifestyle’, see Guy Laliberté’s “Eric” vs his ex-girlfriend, nicknamed “Lola” in Quebec province (media here don’t have the legal right to divulge the real names, and how I know it’s Guy, is because the US have no such problem, and internet – and this was high-profile enough for New York media to want in on it). The kids have a couple millions worth manor, a nanny, a butler, a driver, a cook, two weeks vacations anywhere in the world per year, a limo, and 36,000$ a month.… Read more »
AB: No where did I say that all marriages that end in unilateral divorce do so for bad reasons. I said “in many cases”, heck, perhaps there could be an argument for it being “most” cases (though there could never be an argument for it being “all” cases), but I never made that argument, so kindly respond to what I did write, please. I don’t know where repeating the fact that its usually better for children if they have the more stable financial and emotional support of an intact family (note the word “usually”) than if not became sexism, but… Read more »
@Clarence: “The living standard thing is part of excessive chivalry and it’s also done as a sort of phrase that’s used as a verbal cloak over the true costs of our unilateral divorce system. The standard rhetoric would say that both people wanted the divorce and children shouldn’t suffer because of the selfishness of their parents. Of course in many cases both parents did NOT want the divorce, but one simply had no say whatsoever. Supporting two households is a tremendous drain and downright impossible for working poor or lower middle class men, and society and children suffer when one… Read more »
Schala: The living standard thing is part of excessive chivalry and it’s also done as a sort of phrase that’s used as a verbal cloak over the true costs of our unilateral divorce system. The standard rhetoric would say that both people wanted the divorce and children shouldn’t suffer because of the selfishness of their parents. Of course in many cases both parents did NOT want the divorce, but one simply had no say whatsoever. Supporting two households is a tremendous drain and downright impossible for working poor or lower middle class men, and society and children suffer when one… Read more »
@Cheradenine: “Sure, but as constructive commenting goes, you could have done a little better than wandering in to a discussion about [concept] that has a few dozen posts already and simply asserting “bah, nobody even believes in [concept]!” with no actual evidence or justification… I mean, you might want to privately consider what your own reaction might be to a comment like: I’ve never understood the idea of the Madonna/Whore complex. It’s not like anyone actually believes it, and yet it’s blindly repeated everywhere, as if people can’t think of any human relation that isn’t centred on women. Especially if… Read more »
You can’t prove a negative Sure, but as constructive commenting goes, you could have done a little better than wandering in to a discussion about [concept] that has a few dozen posts already and simply asserting “bah, nobody even believes in [concept]!” with no actual evidence or justification… I mean, you might want to privately consider what your own reaction might be to a comment like: I’ve never understood the idea of the Madonna/Whore complex. It’s not like anyone actually believes it, and yet it’s blindly repeated everywhere, as if people can’t think of any human relation that isn’t centred… Read more »
You can’t prove a negative. I probably wouldn’t be able to find many quotes about people NOT believing that cows shit moonstones, but that doesn’t mean it’s a common belief either. The belief that male sexuality is degrading is often attributed to various people, but I haven’t actually heard that many of them say it. I will recant and admit that there are probably some who believe it, but it is by no means a common belief. I think the issue is more that people seem to believe that in every sexual relationship, there needs to be a subject and… Read more »
Citation needed.
I’ve never understood the idea of male sexuality being degrading. It’s not like anyone actually believes it, and yet it’s blindly repeated everywhere, as if people can’t think of any human relation that isn’t centred on men.
But yeah a “let’s keep the living standard the kids had before” judgement have always puzzled me.
I mean, by all means, let’s keep the kids fed, clothed, and going to school. But the standard of living? They had no such entitlement.
Oops 160 hours, but that’s 4800$, yeah close to 5k
“A man who earns $30 an hour is paid about $5K a month, therefore his child support payments per month average out to $1.7K a month (using the 33% average.)”
30$ *120 hours a month = 3600$, before taxes, social security, unemployment. Not sure where that 5k comes from. Maybe he does overtime as a matter of course year round?