This week, on Ozy Is Annoyed At A Radical Feminist…
Critique of Porn, ur doin it rong.
It’s a common idea that sex-positives think porn should be exempt from gender egalitarian critique. Of course it shouldn’t be, any more than commercials or action movies or romantic comedies or any other area of popular culture should be exempt from gender egalitarian critique. All forms of media have sinned and fallen short of the glory of Social Justice, and it is our job to call them out on it when necessary.
However, it’s important to distinguish between critiquing the popular culture and critiquing the person. Action movies are not exactly what one would call excessively masculist; however, that won’t stop me from sitting down in front of Captain America with a big bowl of popcorn, ready to inform the world that everyone in the movie is secretly having gay sex. The distinction is especially important to make for issues of sexuality, which can be a very private and important part of a person’s life.
It is not wrong to get off on fantasies of non-consent. How could it be? The imaginary people in your head have no meaningful ability to revoke consent, and they’re hardly going to be traumatized for life. The only consequence is your orgasm. As long as you don’t actually want to rape people in real life, fantasies of non-consent are not wrong and can even be enacted with a consenting partner (and a safeword!). Sexual fantasies are almost impossible to remove. Shaming someone for getting off on non-consent (or humiliation, or degradation, or kink, or whatever) has only the effect of making them feel like shit for something they can’t help.
Which is not to say that it is wrong to critique porn. There are lots of very problematic aspects of mainstream porn. It presents a single body type as the most desirable. It shows sex acts that look good on screen more than sex acts that people actually enjoy. It presents unrealistic and exaggerated expectations of men’s sexual attainment. It left at least one boy of my friend’s acquaintance with the idea that women were naturally hairless.
Porn often reflects the sexism of the society that it’s a part of. Since society often views male sexuality as degrading, porn too often depicts value-neutral sex acts like double penetration as degrading. Since society shames sluts, porn too often depicts sluts as awful and worthy of shaming (hello, BangBus, how are you doing?). The objectification of women as tits and ass and vaginas and mouths and men as giant ever-erect penises is a concern. That’s not even getting into porn’s awful racial, queer and trans politics.
In addition, the industry itself has often had abuses. All you have to do is read the life story of Linda Lovelace to realize that, all too often, the porn industry has not adequately valued consent. Many amateur porn videos are leaked by one partner without the consent of the other partner, perhaps after a bad breakup. The straight porn industry almost never uses condoms, leading to several STI scares.
However, it is possible to critique these abuses without critiquing the concept of pornography itself. People are always going to be interested in watching other people fuck. It has been going on for several thousand years at this point– just look at ancient Greek vases! It is possible to develop a sex-positive porn ethos that values consent, safety and mutual enjoyment. Much critique of porn seems extremely sex-negative. After all, action movies are at least as sexist as porn, yet no one suggests that gender egalitarians should stop watching action movies.
One of the primary problems with pornography is that, all too often, given the woeful state of even comprehensive sex education, porn is treated as sex ed. Porn is a fantasy; learning about sex from porn is like learning about guns from action movies. (No, I will not stop with this analogy ever.) But the problem is not with the fantasy, the problem is with the lack of education.
I’m not suggesting people teach how to have anal sex in schools. However, I am suggesting that educational websites such as Scarleteen, sex ed books like the Whole Lesbian Sex Guide (fondly recalled from my middle-school tiny-confused-queer days) and sex-positive blogs that show how sex actually works need to become more prevalent. That way, porn can keep its true purpose– wank material– without interfering in people’s ideas of how sex actually works.
About ozyfrantz
@Flyingkal, that definitely also sounds like an “aaaaugh” situation.
I just remembered, I also once leaned down to give my boyfriend an enthusiastic kiss as he was scooting up to kiss me. We bonked heads so hard it was like a Marx Brothers routine.
Cheradenine, that is absolutely fascinating!
I get off on being spat on, but as a submissive; I’m pretty sure if someone pulled it out during vanilla sex, I’d be really annoyed.
Debaser, I think it’s awesome that you’ve realized “good for me” doesn’t mean “good for everyone.” Most people (including me, sometimes!) have trouble with that for their entire lives.
I’ve personally found the phrase “Your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay” to be good in reaffirming to myself that I can’t expect the world to frown on the things that squick me. Heh. The concept of fisting squicks me to the extreme, but I know I have one kink that is pretty damn out there. I don’t begrudge people their kinks, even if it’s wearing a diaper and screwing in a fursuit with a sideorder of scat. Your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay, as long as it’s safe, sane and consensual. I can’t approve of some kinks taken literally. Like vorarephilia *shudder* If you have a strong stomach, you can look up on wikipedia a man named Armin Meiwes for what I mean, there. In short, cannibalism as a sexual kink.
@f. “Nobody springs up from the bed mid-thrust and dashes to the computer because iTunes Shuffle just switched over from Marvin Gaye to an obnoxious NoFX song about drinking till you puke.”
“I just remembered, I also once leaned down to give my boyfriend an enthusiastic kiss as he was scooting up to kiss me. We bonked heads so hard it was like a Marx Brothers routine.”
Hilarious. I reckon a thread for funny sex stories like this would be pretty excellent.
Just a mention here since Ozy said this in the original article. There is a reason that they do not use condoms that much in the porn industry. There was a huge scare on feministing (a year ago?) and the porn industry answered. Have to seek that one, I think that got close:
“Condoms are fine for ordinary folks, but they’re not suited to porn. I allow two and a half hours to shoot a typical boy-girl sex scene. With constant stops and starts, condoms frequently tear—and abrasion on female performers’ vaginas make them vulnerable to STIs.”
“Even condom-only female performers eventually abandon condom use—not under pressure from producers, but because of the constant rawness and endless bacterial infections.” -> http://www.opposingviews.com/i/porn-vs-condoms-%E2%80%94-should-the-porn-industry-require-protection
Feckless, that’s odd, given that gay male porn usually has condoms. I wonder what the difference is…
Responding to these comments from way up…
[W]e shouldn’t judge competence based on someone’s desire to look or act girly.
Cuteness IS their sexyness.
…because, boy is my face red! I didn’t mean to imply people who display ‘cuteness’ or ‘girlishness’ shouldn’t be taken seriously! I was worried about ‘childlike’ being sexy to the extent that ‘childlike’ means naive, or emotionally immature, or submissive. It’s a real cultural problem if sexiness, for one gender, becomes incompatible with assertiveness, or expertise, or confidence.
I possibly shouldn’t have mentioned Japanese culture in that regard since I’m not really — oops, I mean, really not — qualified to comment on it, and it falls dangerously close to judging other cultures for being different without really understanding anything about how those differences play out.
Ozy:
Maybe its where they are putting that thing in the condom?
Vaginas are much more likely to get bacterial infection than anuses are. Vagina’s also tend to be rather naturally lubed esp if the woman is horny, but then you know all about that.
“It’s a real cultural problem if sexiness, for one gender, becomes incompatible with assertiveness, or expertise, or confidence.”
AFAIK, the ideal wife in Japan is submissive and stays-at-home and quits her job upon marrying or at least having kids. It’s possible to have a career, but the ‘mommy’ narrative is much stronger than the US.
I doubt the cuteness caused the submissive ideal.
Oh and the ideal husband? He never shows emotions, never tells his wife he loves her (even if he, in fact, does), and has a near-worship level of interest with work stuff, including after-work parties/dinners – if you don’t do that and aren’t your own boss…your prospects are rather bleak.
*giggles* Ozy thinks gay porn usually has condoms. That’s HILARIOUS. It may have been true in the nineties, but nowadays? Bareback is everywhere. The AIDS scare is over (though AIDS isn’t) and most gay men my age aren’t nearly as scared of AIDS as they ought to be.
Okay, most gay porn I have seen has condoms.
I read a while back that one of the reasons for the man almost always coming over the woman in porn is that there is a percieved risk (wouldn’t know if the perception is real or not) that coming in the woman increases the risk of her catching an STI.
I love this thread sooooooo much.
“Sexual fantasies are almost impossible to remove”
I have to challenge this from my own experiance, though I think, rather than being “removed” they can sometimes be “processed”.
I’ve had a various issues around sex over the years, sometimes I’ve known about them and sometimes it’s taken time for them to come to the surface. But these issues have manifested as different sexual fantasies, which have changed and evolved over the years as I process the various layers of crap we all have dumped on us from living in a culture that is scared of healthy sexuality.
I’ve also heard interesting theories that enacting and experiancing recuring sexual fantasies can be a very healing thing to do and can help process trauma or move emotional blockages.