pornography
14 Mar 2008
To Each Their Own
Consuming porn will not turn you into a violent degenerate. Helen Razer is living proof
Let's begin with a performative statement. Or, if you prefer, an account of the bleeding obvious.Voila: I am typing.
For the most part, typing is a blameless act. It most commonly fulfils the sacrament of great boredom in workplaces. Persons press their keyboard into the service of curt, CCed self-aggrandising memos and requests for office supplies. Gainfully underemployed individuals, such as your correspondent, use less sanitary keyboards to write curt, self-aggrandising Op Ed. In most cases, typing is an innocent work. But not today.
I am typing and as I survey the clumsy collision of fingers with letters, all I can think of is filth. In fact, I am reminded of an entertainment I viewed last night. As bratwurst digits fail and occasionally succeed to meet their chosen target on a delicate instrument, I can think only of the glowing Hindenburgs that crashed into Jenna and Tyler. These ladies, incidentally, appear in Down and Dirty with Jenna and Tyler.
Yes. I am a moderately smutty person with a modest pornographic collection.
Unlike fellow Matildas, David Corlett and Maree Crabbe, I have no dispute with most pornography. Unlike fellow Matilda Jessica Friedmann, I have discontinued my subscription to the scopic airs of The Suicide Girls. (Really. There are only so many pierced labia one can take in a single afternoon.)
I enjoy my modest pornographic collection. And I do so not because I regard it as a radical gesture. Unlike the refined authoress of The Porn Report, it is not my hope to subvert the dominant hokum. I do not suppose that in calling myself a "grrl" or similar pop-feminist designation I am somehow elevated from my authentic intention: to masturbate productively.
It seems to me there are two dominant leftist views on porn. Neither of which adequately addresses the important topic of productive masturbation. In short, these are (a) the Corlett and Crabbe view wherein pictures of vaginas and sundry pleasure parts are best reserved for medical journals and (b) The Catharine Lumby-esque standpoint that holds: You Go Girl. Ugh.
Personally, I'm intimate with the chastity belt of second wave feminism. Once, I genuinely believed that rape was the inevitable by-product of pornography. And I believed that pornography was, in turn, a document of rape.
In fact, as a peppy young militant, I would wear the dungarees reserved especially for Action and attend my local newsagent. I'd amass a veritable rainforest of porn, take it to the counter, wait for it to be rung and then say, "They're not for me. I refuse to pay for the violation of my sisters."
Ken the newsagent, an old friend of my family, became quite used to my ritual. If things weren't too busy, he'd stockpile a stack of Juggs, Knocked Up and Horny et al, hand them to me and say, "There you go, young Helen Pankhurst. Strike a blow against the patriarchy." This diminished the radical savour I took, of course, in seeing Ken hit the No Sale button. But, I told myself, I was doing my bit against the naturalised and systemic violence against women. Because, surely, pornography was the training manual of rape and brutality.
Then, for a brief flutter in the 1990s, I became a Pro-Porn Third Wave Feminist type. I'd like to tell you this shift was motivated by intellectual rigour. It was not. It was my libido that presented itself in an odd and embarrassing way.
Perhaps you have heard of Andrea Dworkin. The departed radical feminist, I'd argue, had a great deal that was good to say. It troubles me that her appearance, which I personally regard as quite striking, has become the register of her work. (And, yes, I know. Here I am about to defend my right to masturbate within the visual economy while decrying the primacy of the visual. But, whatever, really.) Dworkin did more than provide a punch line to a joke by wearing her formless dungarees. She gave some of us some useful tools for decoding a gendered world. But she also gave us this really annoying book, Pornography: Men Possessing Women.
As an upright sister, I read this joyless polemic and tried to believe every word. But I found that the passages that aroused my attention most were those that explicitly "unpacked" literary pornography. Vast tracks of Dworkin's work dealt critically with texts by Bataille, de Sade and The Story of O author Anne Desclos. "Isn't it terrible?" Andrea asked as Bataille inserted goddess knows what into a lissom, young French cyclist. "Isn't it violent?" she demanded of her reader as de Sade tied up Justine again. "Isn't this the document of our oppression?" she wanted to know.
I tried to answer yes. But I was far too busy strumming, ahem, my flesh mandolin to make any sound other than "euugghrh".
By the reading of my own adult libido, it was feminism that led me to pornography. Pornography did not lead me to participate in violence or abasement. It led me to (a) French literature and (b) efficient and more productive masturbation. And despite an early penchant for the wonderfully dark and beautifully structured perversions of Bataille and de Sade (how can I ever thank you, Andrea?) I've never wanted to insert an egg into anybody's anus nor engage in water sports. Polite spanking and aesthetic, gentle bondage remains my connubial limit.
I am, of course, plainly very sane. Further, I'm white, middle class and have seven eighths of an arts degree. Our sort can be trusted with everything including Jenna, Tyler and de Sade. And branded Jeff Stryker lubricant. Anyone darker and less educated cannot be depended upon to maintain self-possession in the face of PORN.
Dressing the brutality of censorship up doesn't convince me that porn is wicked. Claims that the consumption of visual material will end in violence doesn't convince me that porn is wicked. Clive Hamilton's brisk research, which I believe to be mired in prejudice, doesn't convince me that porn is wicked.
And claims made by other thinkers that the production of porn is by nature exploitative still don't convince me that the genre will send us to hell. (If one views entertainments featuring drug free white European adults, which I do at least weekly, the question of exploitation is fuzzy. Most of my X collection does not depict any worker getting anymore resolutely f-cked than they would in, for example, a call centre.)
Pornography, as you're doubtless aware, is a multi-billion dollar business. Further, it's delivery innovations continue to buoy the digital economy. Plainly, a lot of people watch it. A LOT. While I'm not particularly proud to be among this self-groping assortment, nor am I particularly ashamed
As our Government's forlorn experiments with internet filters demonstrated, the censure of pornography is a rather Sisyphean task. Jenna and Tyler are not to shortly disappear. (Unless it's to see the pizza delivery boy.) A strict regulation of the production of porn is needed to address the potential for exploitation.
And a liberal regulation of its consumption is needed so I am no longer forced to visit Canberra to make legal purchase.
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But porn is mostly sex, and therefore nasty, atheistic and bad for the economy.
Get it?
If there is a difference between erotica, which both Helen and at least one other person (to my knowledge) get off on, and pornography, it is surely that pornography is NOT just about sex, or perhaps it is not about sex at all: it is about power, control, selfish gratification for one person regardless of the pleasure or pain of the other (or others), including the voyeur. Anything which demeans, especially the demeaning of women, is close to pornography, or actual pornography ? Erotica involves a sort of implied consent of the parties involved, and their tacit mutual pleasure (or at least non-intrusion, non-force), while pornography disregards and devalues the right of at least one party to consent- how is that for a definition ?
I’m not sure what atheism has to do with it. How can pornography be atheistic ? As an atheist, I’m a bit baffled by that one.
Joe
A better definition is Porn is visual images looked at by Males
Erotica is visual images looked at by Females
Perhaps a little thin, Neil: so Hello! and OK! and New Idea! are all porn if a guy looks at the pictures ? But not if a woman does ? Perhaps we cal build up a useful definition from your thought-provoking foundation ?
Joe
As distinct from a definition that porn =power, control, selfish gratification for one person regardless of the pleasure or pain of the other (or others), including the voyeur
and Erotica implies consent.
Would you prefer a definition that the difference between the two is lighting and/or budget.
As for No-idea, Hello! or OK! well you defined them as porn Anything which demeans, especially the demeaning of women, is close to pornography, or actual pornography .
There is no difference between Porn and Erotica it is simply a matter of semantics.
I think we are getting somewhere:
Porn implies power, control, the use of another’s body regardless of their consent or how the Other may be demeaned, with optional poor lighting/focus and low budget;
Erotica implies mutual consent and/or non-intrusive enjoyment, with good definition and lighting, and expensively made.
Cheers,
Joe
That’s not what either of those words imply to me, Joe. I don’t think they imply that to anyone, really; people just don’t like to admit they like porn, so they call their preferred porn "erotica".
Helen’s call centre line is a good one; does your average porn producer exploit people any more than your average telemarketing firm or fast food giant?
Yes, and almost all of us has a border-line to what we regard as erotica, before it morphs into what we would call porn. And participants’ unequal power and control over the situation is usually what makes the difference, at least to me. I don’t know how anyone can enjoy looking at anybody who is not enjoying the situation, or who has had to demean her/himself (and you suspect, for a living) - quite apart from the power of being the viewer over the powerless object. But cultural studies and feminist studies would surely have done this topic to death by now, one would think.
Joe
Hi Ben,
I’ve had a long day and it’s 1.05 am, but your question: ‘does your average porn producer exploit people any more than your average telemarketing firm or fast food giant?’ deserves an answer:
Yes, not just financially, but physically, spiritually, viscerally - if porn implies the diminution of a person, rather than a focus on the exultant beauty of the human body or the beauty and fulfilment and mutual satisfaction from the act of making love. I’m assuming that some crude but generally accepted definition of pornography (as distinct from erotica) involves unequal relations between the parties involved, unequal measures of enjoyment.
Of course, this includes the watcher, the voyeur, the spectator, the priviliged outsider who gets something out of the spectacle at the expense of the object. Inherently, the voyeur has more power, more control, than the object of the spectacle, usually the woman. Historically, the woman has been the object, the passive object in a sexual pornographic encounter. Of course, some women may get a kick out of the encounter - but still, it is an inherently unequal one.
I’m no expert in all this and, as a male, never can be, (and, as an old fart, never will be able to again, but hope springs eternal) and I’m sure that women’s studies and feminist studies people have happily written vast theses on the subject, point out ad nauseam that all men are bastards. They’re probably right.
The point surely is that we all have a limit to what we regard as acceptable ? From the other direction, a limit on what we think is acceptable or objectionable on what can be done to a (usually a woman’s) body and still maintain mutual human integrity and dignity between the parties involved ?
Joe
I have no such "border-line", and if there is a distinction between erotica and porn, I certainly don’t see "unequal power" as having any part of it. The unequal power thing seems to be a little obsession of yours. There is no "generally accepted definition of pornography" that involves unequal relations. I think that’s just something you’ve made up out of whole cloth.
Porn implies the diminution of a person to you - that’s your own subjective view, there’s nothing inherent in the concept that necessitates such a diminution.
And you didn’t explain HOW porn exploits people more than other industries - you just answered "yes".
Come on, haven’t we all realised by now that the whole thing is, (as the nipple pierced husband of a friend once self described his piercings to me), "a disease of exposure".
Of course it seems a bit of harmless fun if our first contact with pornography is as sexually mature individuals among a group of same sex folk having a laugh about their own sexuality. That sort of interaction with pornography is at one end of the spectrum, that and a married couple getting a dirty video out because the man needs to touch base with his fears before he wants to know about touching his wife, or that she might need him to notice her.
This spectrum is not defined by a moral distinction between erotica and pornography, it is defined on a case by case basis, by who sees what in what social context and at what age.
Sure plenty of folk have seen things which we found to be defined by the sort of over-exposure which conditions the pornography label, and not all of us are dim wits.
But as an equitably intelligent person to Helen Razor, I can commend that pornography is all the more offensive if it succeeds in causing bodily arousal. Well, let me condition what I have just written, with saying that I also have not seen any of the sort of pornography which shows criminal behaviour; and I can say that it is an offence to my sensibilities even to know that it exists. The offence of it is that it potentially tricks the mind into evaluating the sitution as though we ourselves have any pleasure to gain from another person’s weaknesses being exposed.
I regard my self as fortunate that my mind is rarely able to be so readily tricked, and I can actually say that the pleasure is more likely to be from anticipation of a man’s response in my company, than of my own witness.
But I neither have any grudge against those who, like Helen watch the stuff, even though I had my fill of pictures of pierced labia after the first few I saw, which were all in public art galleries, and well before seeking out any more of the images.
It is the disease of exposure all right, because those of us whom do not expose ourselves, sustain a more finely attuned sensitivity, such that we have no want for the pleasure seeking behaviours that more exposed individuals might seek.
The gripe I have with the phenomenon of pornography, is not that it is watched by folk like Helen Razor, but that my own son’s father, (some four years after our seperation and in his new relationship) was so addicted to it that he let my oldest son witness some pictures of naked bodies, well before he had the maturity to know how to relate to what he was looking at.
Those who support the porn industry ought to wake up to how frightened children are who witness it too young. My children’s father witnessed his own father using pornography when he was only four years old, and I can categorically say that the effect has been somewhat catestrophic for life. So just be careful about where you promote the idea of having a gawk at naked bodies behaving ridiculously.
The article is alike to Helen Razor’s personal porn soap, and distasteful for New Matilda standards.
I for one am sick of the ideals of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and free speech, being associated with an industry in which the sexual exploits of idiots are being sponsored as though such behaviour has a rightful place in becoming anybody’s business. How many times can a bunch of idiots watch another bunch of idiots, while imagining to obtain pleasure from the sins of the other bunch of idiots.
Pornography is a bad as watching Parliament for goodness sake.
A friend who is had been a prostitute for many years, (a non-drug user putting herself through uni so she could work in health policy), once said to me that what her customers want is defined by it having been forbidden in other contexts. That is, they want it because the recognise it is a sin, even if their concept of sin is very secular. Same story with pornography, the more you look, the less it seems a problem to be looking. But my own hope is that most folk who look at the stuff, realise that pattern and let it put themselves off looking (like most diseases of exposure, once you yourself become over-exposed, even if only by eyeball exposure, then it looses all its appeal), before that accidently let children see the stuff. Children have an immediate need to not be exposed to things which their own mind has not already begun to question. So even if Helen might not mind, if that child she is not likely to be having, grew up as a witness to pornography, it ought to always only be witness borne in real, independently minded, curiosity.
Sure let it be had by those who want it, but we have to know that many folk might never have wanted it, or have needed to want it, if it were not for undue exposure too young.
Maybe we should put the Catholic Church in Rome onto Helen’s honesty?
Word Sword Sworn
At Hath
That Hat
Inshallah no poetry farce
By Solomon’s Seal will my past
No word not true can last
Hell, I’m not particularly worried about how Ms. Razer chooses to float her boat, but I do draw the line at bad writing. Doesn’t the New Matilda employ editors? For me, this article was sunk by self-congratulatory over-writing, clumsily-forced whimsy and an ignorance of the rules of sentence construction.
Montreux
Hey Helen. You Go Girl.
Well quite frankly I am shocked.
Get your gear off… show us your mammary glands.
I grew up believing that women did’nt like sex, they did it to 1.propagate the species, 2.Keep hubby happy, 3.Earn income in their spare time, (still not enjoying it)
Then along came (sorry) along (entered) whoops, along emerged (snigger) Germaine Greer’s,"The female eunuch", "The happy hooker", .
"The myth of the vaginal orgasm"…whoever.the authors were,
Yes they have genital organs. Ladies why on earth would you want to be like men?
Try being a man, you get aroused and well, no hiding it!
Viagra, you’ve got to be joking, give me a blocked prostate any day of the week and be rid of the infernal erection.
"Sniff and Stiff", my bottom.
Women if you really want it… my number is …ah better not, Surely for Pete’s sake, using the inernet for sex, I’ll never touch another lap top (desk top) mainframe, internet or LAN for fear of what I might catch from it.
Do they make condoms that fit over computers?
OK now they can even sell the mug IT consumer a wank.
See how far we’ve come.. Is’nt technology marvellous.
Instead of little Johnny studying brain surgery or rocket science on the information highway, guess what, he’s using the computer monitor as a shooting gallery to fire his wad at.
Sheeit, what am I wasting time logged on to NM for, when I could be switched on to, plugged in with, throbbing along to Uporn and ejaculating into utube.
Lock me up in ebay please!
Far out. If I have’nt offended anyone I am sorry I really tried, maybe you can just reread Helen Razer, i.e if you have’nt got a life.
I’ll be off now to get my MBA (masturbater’s bachelor award) from the internet.
It seems strange to me that everyone seems to focus on the ‘customers’ in this debate.
If the actors who produce these movies are forced into it, then clearly ‘public’ rape is as heinous a crime as ‘private’ rape.
It seems more reasonable to assume that most -hopefully all- of these actors are simply exhibitionists -as all actors must logically be- who not only enjoy sex, but enjoy having sex in public.
From that perspective, it is probably better for the faint hearted that they have the outlet of film, rather than actually getting it on in public.
The voyeur is from this viewpoint, a consenting partner in an extended sex act.
I see no victims, therefore no crime.
thecomensalist.com
God I’ve missed you
Q