Since the pro-sex side of feminism, or at least the brand that defends all pornography, hasn't been adequately represented here aside from Zephira's brief defense of consensual pornography, I thought I'd provide this article and engage in a sort of schizoid dialogue with the author, Wendy McElroy. Hopefully this will give others a fairly good idea of where each side is coming from in the debate.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/mcelroy_17_4.htmlIn one section of her blanket defense of all pornography McElroy responds to the charge that pornography is degrading to women.
Degrading is a subjective term. I find commercials in which women become orgasmic over soapsuds to be tremendously degrading. The bottom line is that every woman has the right to define what is degrading and liberating for herself.
The assumed degradation is often linked to the "objectification" of women: that is, porn converts them into sexual objects. What does this mean? If taken literally, it means nothing because objects don't have sexuality; only beings do. But to say that porn portrays women as "sexual beings" makes for poor rhetoric. Usually, the term sex objects means showing women as body parts, reducing them to physical objects. What is wrong with this? Women are as much their bodies as they are their minds or souls. No one gets upset if you present women as "brains" or as spiritual beings. If I concentrated on a woman's sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics, is this degrading? Why is it degrading to focus on her sexuality?
True, "degrading" is a subjective term. But nevertheless, there's got to be a few things most or all feminists can agree are indeed "degrading." Can we agree, for example, that the Book of Genesis, with its claim that the first woman was fashioned out of a spare rib, degrades the value of the first woman in that story? Why should this be so? I believe it to be so because it reduces the first woman's humanity by presenting her as a thing to be molded by and for third parties. I feel comfortable enough with this bare bones definition of "degradation" to use it as a basis for interpreting what I see in pop culture.
Eschewing sex and all its complications for a moment, let's see what happens when we do concentrate on a woman's sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics. We'll probably end up with mental visions of Ellen Degeneres, Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr, or another randomly selected comedienne. Is a comedienne going to tell a joke she herself doesn't believe to be funny? Ah, yes -- we're focusing on
her -- her what?
Sense of humor. We are not focusing on the audience's sense of humor, but her own. When she tells a joke, regardless of whether we think it too baudy and distasteful to our own sensibilities or if we laugh right along, we expect that the joke reflects her unique, perhaps quirky brand of humor. And that furthermore, she takes internal pleasure in telling the joke and making others laugh. Even though she gets paid to do this, she is still sharing something that is hers and no other's.
Let's step back and qualify this observation with a definition of "humor." I think most of us would agree without too much quibbling: it's that certain unidentifiable something that makes us laugh.
Now let's turn to sexuality. Let's work backward and ask ourselves first what sexuality is. Again, we could probably produce varying definitions, but we could probably agree that sexuality is at least that certain unidentifiable something that gives us sensual pleasure.
So to reduce a woman to her sexuality is to focus on
her -- her what?
Sexuality. For a pornographic actress to take immense pleasure in confidently showing off her amazing, goddess-like curves for the enjoyment of both men and women is possibly no bad thing. For a pornographic actress to take immense pleasure in any number of sex acts for the enjoyment of both third party men and women is possibly no bad thing. Since the pleasure is internal to herself, it is her sexuality being shown off. Hundreds of thousands of people, feminists and non-feminists, conservatives and liberals, may think she's weird or unscrupulous for doing this, but maybe it doesn't matter because she really enjoys all this. And viewers can take heart that what they're seeing is this woman's sexuality.
But if we may examine critically what's actually happening in this industry for a moment: not all women enjoy the same things; female sexuality is incredibly complicated and varied, probably moreso than male sexuality. We have conflicting reports about whether women enjoy specific sex acts. For example, some women may very well enjoy ingesting various bodily fluids; and yet, at the same time, there is a curious report according to which
"...few women praise the taste..." of a certain bodily fluid consumed in the great majority of today's hard core pornography (take a wild guess, again, NSFW factor just for written content -- no pics).
We don't have to go into all this grodiness; in many cases we can use our own senses to evaluate what the actors and actresses are participating in, inasmuch as we share basic aspects of humanity with them. For example, JM Productions' "Donkey Punch" featurette -- referenced earlier on the previous page -- involves the penetrating actor striking the back of the actress' head during intercourse. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't particularly like being hit. We usually call that "abuse," or even if it's consensual, "harm." It's not sensual, unless the person receiving the injury happens to associate injury with arousal.
So, we might give JM Productions the benefit of the doubt and think that they have a fantastic research team capable of locating masochists for their "Donkey Punch" featurette. But would a masochist reflect on her participation in that production with the following quip?
"Donkey Punch" was the most brutal, depressing, scary scene that I have ever done.I don't think any of us who are generally willing to support the existence of pornography in principle expect a pornographic actress to undergo a brutal, depressing, scary experience. Those things were not in the basic definition of sexuality I offered earlier. Even a masochist at least wouldn't be
depressed, seeing as he or she should be aroused and exhilerated by the pain and frightening shocks by very definition of being a masochist.
I think we can reasonably conclude that the woman involved in that specific porn shoot wasn't living her own sexuality -- she was being shaped to the sexual preferences of her viewers. True, as Wendy says, in a humanistic sense it is impossible to have a "sexual object." Yet a nonsexual physical object can be used to foment the pleasure of another without experiencing any of its own. Thus, I believe it fair to say that many of the men and women who participate in pornographic sex acts are reduced -- "degraded" -- to nonsexual objects inasmuch as these scenes aren't accurate representation of what really pleases them.
We shouldn't need to deconstruct every single scene like this; we know intuitively that, because most of these men and women are being paid for what they do, sensual pleasure -- and therefore sexuality -- is often times immaterial to their decision to carry on with the work. There are a number of motives that could be at play behind any pornographic depiction: money, real physical or psychological coercion, etc. It's sad.
It's sad not because women are being reduced to their own sexuality, but because in many cases women are being reduced to the sexuality of people who are not them. And in that way, yes, a widely agreed upon definition of degradation is possible within the context of pornography, and probably happens far more often than a pro-sex feminist should be comfortable with.
I'm probably outstaying my welcome at this point and I'd just be repeating myself in most cases by highlighting McElroy's paper point-by-point like this, so just a few more brief observations:
Pornography benefits women...
*It gives a panoramic view of the world's sexual possibilities....
*It allows women to "safely" experience sexual alternatives and satisfy a healthy sexual curiosity. The world is a dangerous place. By contrast, pornography can be a source of solitary enlightenment.
*It offers the emotional information that comes only from experiencing something either directly or vicariously. It provides us with a sense how it would "feel" to do something.
...Perhaps it is flattering to imagine a particular man being so overwhelmed by her that he must have her. Perhaps she is curious. Perhaps she has some masochistic feelings that are vented through the fantasy. Is it better to bottle them up?
How can these observations about women's empowerment possibly justify the defense of JM Productions (the producer I've personally been haranguing on most as an example of mainstream porn)? Can I really sit back and say, "Hmm...I wonder what it would be like to be hit in the head. I wonder if I'd feel aroused by it. Hey, you! Yeah, you! Stand there and let that guy hit you! You're being paid for it of course...ouch, oh, that
did look painful. I guess I wouldn't like that after all."
This thought experiment is nothing short of sheer victimization for my curiosity, especially when the person I'm addressing lives in a society in which economic and social pressures constrain their choices. Compared to a life of poverty, getting hit in the head for money might not be so bad. The person being struck might find the prospect of being left out in the cold so horrible that he or she even signs a legal contract tossing away his or her right to sue the production company for harm. I might very well have some lurking curiosity about masochistic possibilities, but I'm not willing to make someone act those out just to satisfy those curiosities. There are certain minimal things it is okay to bottle up. For those that need to be bottled up, it is better to spend money seeing a psychologist than spending money on vicarious fulfillment of violent curiosities.
The sheer fact of the matter is, as the industry currently exists, much of the material does little to promote the empowerment goals McElroy is claiming in order to shield the entire body of the world's legally produced pornographic library. A woman having two men on top of her doing who-knows-what, shouting sexist obscenities at her, flinging things at her we wouldn't normally want flung at ourselves, does nothing to teach women what their sexual possibilities are. The only information we're getting is often what the audience is looking for, or often what the producers think the audience wants.
Pro-sex feminists shouldn't feel forced to offer blanket protection to productions that may or may not be degrading to women depending on the actresses' own subjective experience; to offer blanket protection to pornography isn't Pro-Sex as much as "Pro-what-may-or-may-not-be-Sex-depending-on-the-specific-circumstances." Given the amount of abuse we know to happen within the porn industry, we should feel no compunction with excising those aspects of it most feminists can agree upon.
I feel the major failing of the "anti-Porn" movement within feminism was its decision to band together with the political Right instead of having a constructive dialogue with self-identified Pro-Sex feminists. From that point forward, Pro-Sex feminists have probably suspected "anti-Porn" feminists of trying to subvert women's freedom under a new guise, and "anti-Porn" feminists have probably refused to admit the valid considerations Pro-Sex feminists offer.
Where this all becomes so truly heartrending is that I think both McElroy and I, though we identify more with opposite sides of the divide this post attempts to highlight, would quickly reach an agreement that JM Productions' "Donkey Punch" featurette was blatantly abusive. We would also probably, eventually, maybe agree that a lot of pornographic actors and actresses go through things that aren't really sex even by the actors' and actresses' own subjective standards of pleasure, and that other factors are producing real coercion.
Because, even though we give full credit that women in this society are responsible for themselves and their own bodies, and exercise sole decisionmaking responsibility over their lives, we know this not to be yet the perfect world we're going for. Hundreds, maybe thousands of women are pressured every day into having abortions against their will, or prevented from having abortions against their will. Hundreds, maybe thousands of women are successfully coerced into unwanted physical contact with men. Why is the pornography industry any different from other male controlled aspects of society? Why treat it with kid gloves? Just because we want women to exercise control over their own lives, we ignore the damage that results from women daily having things thrust into them, and thrusting things into themselves that they don't really enjoy? What kind of screwed up feminism is this?
What's even more heartwrenching is, as things stand, if I or even a more authoritative figure like Prof. Robert Jensen (who wrote the commentary I linked toward the bottom of the previous page expressing his concerns) were to stand up and call for a raid on JM Productions, JM Productions would invoke the First Amendment and Wendy McElroy would come to their aid. How many more "donkey punches" must be delivered to (probably underpriveleged) women on film before we wake up and start taking our collective humanity back?
And that's the major problem with the current feminist movement. Because we're not willing to compromise and reach agreements on basic standards, we spend more time fighting one another than fighting sexism.
How exhausting.
