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?
About ozyfrantz
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:
Especially if it was posted by an MRA on a feminist site. Just as, you know, a thought-experiment.
I would suggest that the example you provide weakens, rather than supports, this viewpoint. After all, lesbianism doesn’t seem to carry the same baggage — maybe I’m just lucky, but I’ve never heard someone describe one woman as making another woman “her bitch” by penetrating her with fingers, for example. Apparently, it takes penetration by an actual icky male penis to be degrading. At least, that seems to be the narrative. Do I believe it? No, but that’s not really the point.
Because, addressing whether anyone “believes” it, I suspect it’s rather like photoshopped magazine covers or drug-abusing catwalk models: “everyone knows” covers get photoshopped, “everyone knows” people are supposed to come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
But that doesn’t mean that in the real world, everyone got the memo, and it doesn’t mean that, in the real world, people don’t still have body issues, or anorexia, or fears lurking in the dark recesses of their mind and affecting them even while knowing intellectually that they’re bullshit.
Clearly, Jensen didn’t get the memo. Hugh wrote, above:
So, clearly someone believes it, falsifying your literal “nobody believes it”, and the fact that Jensen seems to have a following suggests he’s hardly alone.
And he’s married, so it isn’t about the Magic Wand of Matrimony as you suggest… I think you’re mixing up those who are sex negative with those who seek to use sex as a tool of social control (eg many churches, which have traditionally sought to limit both males and females to sex-within-marriage, which — since the church performed the marriages, gave the church leverage over people).
In fact, for Jensen, male sexuality is so degrading he even foreswears diddling himself. I don’t see how this can be linked to the whole “being placed in a traditionally female and submissive role without being female and married” thing, as you seek to.
(Indeed, it reminds me again of the body-image thing: using rigid willpower to deny oneself basic physical needs due to cultural narratives of “sin” sounds a lot like the mental processes of some eating disorders, to me.)
@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 it was posted by an MRA on a feminist site. Just as, you know, a thought-experiment.”
I haven’t seen that many feminist discussions about a feminist issue that didn’t start off with a concrete example of said issue, but as I’ve said before, I don’t waste my time trolling feminist boards for issues I will never agree with any of them on anyway, as seems to be the standard around here. In this case, I would just really like to see all these people in mainstream society supposedly claiming that association with maleness is automatically degrading for anyone, rather than listening to even more accusations from people here.
“I would suggest that the example you provide weakens, rather than supports, this viewpoint. After all, lesbianism doesn’t seem to carry the same baggage — maybe I’m just lucky, but I’ve never heard someone describe one woman as making another woman “her bitch” by penetrating her with fingers, for example. Apparently, it takes penetration by an actual icky male penis to be degrading. At least, that seems to be the narrative. Do I believe it? No, but that’s not really the point.”
In which case we’re talking about penetration by a penis, not maleness itself. Sorry to break this to you, but men are more than their penises. If it’s not degrading to get oral sex from a man, and it’s not degrading to anally penetrate a man, and it’s not degrading to have a guy give you a handjob, and it’s not even degrading to be vaginally penetrated by a man under many circumstances, etc., etc., then obviously it’s not degrading to have sex with men because they’re men.
And it has always been my impression that men who get penetrated by women are subject to even more ridicule and contempt than women getting penetrated by men, which contradicts the idea that it’s the act of having sex with a man, rather than being in the position typically associated with women, which is degrading.
“Clearly, Jensen didn’t get the memo. Hugh wrote, above:
A claim he repeats is that “sex is fucking,” and that fucking is linked to domination, degradation, aggression, and violence by men [...] Consequently, Jensen swears off heterosexual sex, homosexual sex, and eventually masturbation.
So, clearly someone believes it, falsifying your literal “nobody believes it”, and the fact that Jensen seems to have a following suggests he’s hardly alone.”
I would be a lot more convinced if the first thing that popped into mind for you was an actual quote from someone who believes it, not a quote from someone who believes someone else believes it. I think plenty of people believe certain acts are degrading to be subjected to, but there is a considerable leap from that and to believing that the degradation stems from the people doing the degrading being inherently dirty and unworthy.
For instance, many people find it degrading to be spat on, and even more people find it degrading to be urinated upon, but so far I have yet to see anyone suggest that this is because the spitters and urinaters are degrading in themselves. Naturally the degradation can be enhanced, such as being spat on or urinated upon by people normally considered one’s social inferiors, but it is the act which makes it degrading, the people doing it merely enhances it. That might also be why it is considered worse for a man to be penetrated by a woman than vice versa. In this case, the penetration itself is seen as degrading, and who the penetrating partner is merely modifies the perceived degradation.
Usually, when people are considered unclean, they object. This has been the case with the lower classes, the lower castes, and whichever race has been deemed inferior and unclean in pretty much every society. But in the case of men (at least in my experience), many of those who have the highest thoughts about their own sex, and lowest opinion of women, are also the ones who perpetrate the idea that when it comes to sex, women who don’t resist strongly enough are dirty sluts who’re degrading themselves and thus deserve no respect. It’s the complete reverse of what would be predicted if the meme of women dirtying themselves by having sex was caused by maleness being seen as wrong or inferior.
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 parent is thrown in jail for not being able to pay Disney World money. it’s part of the reason I’d make divorce “fault” when children are involved.
@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 parent is thrown in jail for not being able to pay Disney World money. it’s part of the reason I’d make divorce “fault” when children are involved.”
Children in bad marriages also suffer, so not wanting a divorce is not automatically making the right, or unselfish, choice for them. Assuming that marriage is always the best choice just because most of the people who don’t think so are women, and punishing parents for getting the children out of an unhappy marriage just because those parents are usually women, is nothing but sexism.
If you have already agreed before that the best choice for your children is that you provide them with a majority of the money, because that’s what you do/like the best, and the children’s mother should do most of the actual rearing, because that’s what she does/likes the best, then there needs to be a good explanation for why that’s suddenly not in the best interest of the children any more (provided you’re even still supplying most of the money).
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 if that’s your definition of “sexism” , then needless to say I disagree.
And providing the amount of support necessary to sustain life, health, and education, does NOT equal providing the amount of financial support necessary to sustain them in the kind of lifestyle they would have had assuming the divorce never happened. That’s just not a realistic expectation for most marital breakups , but such considerations are often part of child or spousal support.
If I recall correctly you are British or Australian or otherwise not an American citizen so as we are discussing US law, you may be forgiven some ignorance.
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.
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. I’m sure Guy chose to bonify the stuff by providing the staff himself, but the 36,000$ was probably decided by a court. Because every kid should have 500k a year…
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 them rarely are their lifestyles impacted unless they have multiple payments going out to multiple wives or husbands or the divorcing spouse for whatever reason gets an unusually high settlement. That’s not the experience of the (usually it’s a guy) normal spouse making 30 to 70 thousand a year in the US and if he gets one of those “lifestyle support” type orders he’s usually reduced to living with a roomie, living with mom, or even in a relatively few cases living in a car. A military guy or gal can at least choose to live on base as long as they are active duty, civvie’s don’t have that protection, nor do they have much legal protection from being thrown in jail for failing to pay “child” support for whatever reason.
@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.
“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).
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.
@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 lead to more conflicts and unhappiness.
“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 if that’s your definition of “sexism” , then needless to say I disagree.”
It’s sexism because you assume that what men usually are supposed to want, no divorce (though in reality, we have no clue as to how many divorces initiated by women are also wanted by men), is also what is best for the children. Or alternatively, that those dysfunctional marriages don’t really exist, and that women just unreasonably and irrationally decide to split up their family out of pure selfishness and spite.
“And providing the amount of support necessary to sustain life, health, and education, does NOT equal providing the amount of financial support necessary to sustain them in the kind of lifestyle they would have had assuming the divorce never happened. That’s just not a realistic expectation for most marital breakups , but such considerations are often part of child or spousal support.”
I’m not talking legally as much as morally. If people become physically unable to provide the same material benefits for their children after a divorce as before it, that’s fair enough. But if people just don’t want to continue providing it because they no longer get the perks of marriage, that’s selfish.
“If I recall correctly you are British or Australian or otherwise not an American citizen so as we are discussing US law, you may be forgiven some ignorance.”
I’m Danish. It’s a small country in southern Scandinavia, bordering to Germany by land, and Sweden and Norway by sea (and bridges). And I’m not speaking from ignorance, I’m speaking from a less conservative perspective. Most people I’ve met here are of the opinion that divorce is preferable to a bad marriage. And while Danish men seem a lot more involved with their children than American and British men in many ways (e.g. they often take parental leave), we aren’t quite as caught up in the idea that a heterosexual nuclear family is a must.
I’ve just now found out that the man who was our prime minister in the 90s was divorced and lived with his second wife who had children from a previous marriage, and most people didn’t even know any of them had been married before, because the media (like everybody else) just didn’t care. I have a very hard time imagining a president of the USA pulling that off. So while I might be unfamiliar with US law (though I’m more familiar with complaints about it than I care to be), I’m intimately familiar with US morality as seen from the perspective of an outsider. And sometimes I seriously think your country needs to get its head out of its ass, and its ass out of the fifties.
“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.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you one of the MRA types who keep complaining about how the wrongness of men being falsely accused of abuse is one of the most wrong wrongnesses of all the wrongs in the world? 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? It doesn’t exactly add up. And what exactly do you suggest in the many, many cases where no concrete proof of abuse can be found, but no concrete proof of a false accusation can be found either? 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?
I don’t have to go any further than wikipedia to find out that before no-fault divorce, it was common for people to make up false charges (often together) in order to get a divorce. I also don’t have to go further than a google search to find the first study showing that girls at least benefit more from a divorce than a troubled marriage: http://www.proactivechange.com/responsibledivorce/children/florida-study.htm
So yes, making it sound like women who seek a divorce are selfishly taking children away from a marriage which is ultimately good for them IS sexist in my book. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. I don’t believe a man who doesn’t divorce his wife even when the marriage goes badly is automatically an insensitive and potentially abusive control-freak who wont let go, and I don’t believe a woman who initiates a divorce is automatically a selfish and irresponsible mother who hurts her children for the lulz. Even though both actions are potentially harmful for the children involved.
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.
“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.
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.
Take it to the Open Thread. Divorce has absolutely nothing to do with porn.
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.
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 sexually harassed and molested. Then some people start making the obvious observation that if it’s really true that women need to cover themselves up to avoid attacks, it must indicate something very unflattering about men, and perhaps women shouldn’t be made to suffer for men’s supposed lack of self-control, and suddenly they’re accused of misandry. It’s gone so far that people will even accuse them of inventing the idea that women need to cover up and stay at home for fear of men in the first place.
And in the same vein, being associated with femininity has been considered degrading for millennia. The old double-standard that penetrating is good and strong, and being penetrated is weak and wrong, is utterly patriarchal. I recently checked up on several of the blogs linked to from here, and Manboobz showed yet another quote from an MRA shaming women for having sex (calling them used-up whores). I live in a country which is practically a matriarchy by certain standards, and yet that MRA quote is the first time in the past month I’d heard any kind of claim that women are being degraded (or are degrading themselves) by sleeping with men.
And it’s the same again and again, the most misogynist and patriarchal people, be they male or female, are also consistently the ones portraying women as worthy of less respect if they have sex (especially if it’s not with the men these people think they should have sex with). But the moment someone stops seeing it as a case of degrading and nasty stuff which women should avoid having done to them, and start seeing it as a case of degrading and nasty stuff men should avoid doing to women, people completely lose sight of the fact that it’s just a natural consequence of the first meme.
I’m all for stopping the ridiculous view that informed and consensual sex between sane and adult equals is in any way degrading for anyone, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it’s not made up by progressives for the sole purpose of disguising the fact that they’re misandrist prudes. If the typical consumers of porn weren’t also prone to using slurs like slut or whore about women, it would be a lot easier for me to justify the idea that they had no interest in degrading women (or alternatively, that they acknowledged that their interest in degrading women had no place outside the bedroom).
And if I could, say, tell those same kind of people that the female characters in the comics they read looked like strippers (because they fricking DO!), do without offending them (or alternatively, offending them because they don’t want the word ‘stripper’ to be used as a slur, which I actually agree with) and having them assume I’m using it as a slur because that’s what they would have done, I might find it easier to buy their claims of sex-positivity.
But we don’t have the kind of world where this happens, and for me to start assuming that we do is not only beyond my emotional capacity, it is also mind-numbingly stupid. I decided long ago that that I wouldn’t identify as sex-positive until the sex positive movement actually showed itself to care about more than just wanking material for straight men, and people like Robert Jensen (and the bashing he receives) doesn’t change that. The change, imo, need to come from the porn consumers and porn advocates themselves, because I’m completely in favour of porn and I still can’t stand them.
“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?