This isn't going to be a long and intellectual post, as I'm rather tired from working hard this week and playing hard this weekend. But, since I know from recent posts that some people from the anti-pornography crowd are watching this blog at the moment, I've got a question for them.
I understand that you feel that some sexual acts and interests involve degrading people, usually women. But what do you think is happening when someone who likes rough sex is begging for more -- or even getting irritated with his or her partner because it's not rough enough? Because last night I heard a whole lot of "More!" and even "That's not enough."
Is this only a problem if it's a depiction in pornography? Is this only a problem if the person who wants to be treated more roughly is female? A woman? Transfeminine?
It really puzzles me. I don't understand what the word "degradation" means when it's connected to acts or to kinds of sex or fetishes. To me, one person degrades another if he regards that person as lesser and intends to treat her in a degrading way.
Can that happen on a porn set? Sure. Do some people have fantasies about very harsh treatment? Sure, and yeah, there are genres of porn centered around it. (Though I do have to say I've used porn for a fairly long time and I didn't know about the very rough stuff the anti-porners always mention until I met Ren. Was I aware it existed? Yeah, but only vaguely. While it's true that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I do find myself wondering just what percentage of consumers are big fans of that subgenre, what percentage occasionally use it, and what percentage don't.)
But, well, Ernest mentions in his response to the Price of Pleasure trailer that the scene on which he puts a collar on a woman is affectionate because that's where they were in their relationship at the time. Porn revealing something about an actual relationship? Smiley affectionate tenderness and D/s? Say it ain't so!
Anyway... is that "degradation?" If we take what Ernest is saying at face value -- that they were in a relationship, that this was intimate nice stuff for them -- where's the "degradation?"
I can't engage with the worry that pornography is degrading -- or the definition of pornography as depictions of degradation -- until I know what we mean by degradation in the first place, and why degradation doesn't depend on context.
A sanctuary for supporters of sexual free expression and the adult sexual media.
"but I do find myself wondering just what percentage of consumers are big fans of that subgenre"
ReplyDeleteOh, oh,...Raises Hand!
heh.
Love it at its best. Go Bella. Go Rocco.
ReplyDeleteBut then i like some other stuff that's completely different.
Regardless of what we do or do not like in specific, I completely agree with the central premise here, which is that degradation is in the mind of the recipient. It's one of those choice things that some people don't consider important but that mean a whole lot to most everybody else.
Consenting adults. Enjoying themselves. No one else involved. If done for pictures, viewers include only consenting adults as well.
Fine by me.
Degradation, like misogyny, is some more of that devalued rhetorical currency. It just means an image that skeeves somebody out now, as opposed to a truly harmful thing that happens in the world.
That thing does not happen in the bedrooms of consenting adults or on the sets of porn shoots where only consenting adults are present.
Ernest,
ReplyDeleteI didn't intend to imply that I think gonzo is bad, actually. I just meant that, well, when I started using porn I really wasn't aware of that stuff at all because it's not what I was using. I brought that up not to say "ZOMG I'D NEVER WATCH BELLA OMG EW" (which is totally not true), but rather to counter the claim I often hear tossed about that everyone uses it, that you can't use porn without being sucked into the evil vortex and loving ATM or whatever have you.
(Of course, I'm into heavy SM, so I'm probably already IN the evil vortex. :)
"Degradation, like misogyny, is some more of that devalued rhetorical currency. It just means an image that skeeves somebody out now, as opposed to a truly harmful thing that happens in the world."
Yeah, that's how I feel too. And it makes me sad, because degradation actually could be a very useful moral concept. But it really does seem to me that some people have reduced it to "anything that bothers me."
That's why I'm asking them to come out and tell me exactly what they think "degradation" is. Because if I'm wrong and that's not what they're doing, they're big boys and girls, right? If that's not what they're doing, surely they can explain what they do mean.
Also E, I miss your emails! Email me, damn you. :)
ReplyDeleteTrin,
ReplyDeleteNo implications inferred. I was really just offering some back-up to Ren's daring admission that, like a lot of other women I know, she likes the kind of porn that even some people who claim not to hate all porn still tut-tut about.
And what you like would get tut-tutted at even worse. You like BDSM. Of course, it doesn't matter whether women or men play the dominant roles, because it still reprises the patriarchal themes of dominance and subjugation. It's still about power, and sexuality must be separated from power in the name of liberation.
I've been hearing that for about thirty years. It certainly does become tedious, doesn't it?
Nope, you don't have to be a fan of gonzo to be a victim or a perpetrator of the many different "harms" of pornography. Even if you prefer the soft and fluffy kind they put out from the biggest companies in the industry (biggest - you know, sell the most, make the most money, etc.), you're no less reduced by a pornified culture than you would be if you consumed a steady diet of Max Hardcore.
Actually, your tastes and mine are probably very similar in some respects. I do like some gonzo because, frankly, it has some overlap with BDSM. But I really prefer a more explicit connection between the two in my personal sexual universe.
One thing with which I agree is that it doesn't matter much who is on top in a D/s situation. One of the nice things about BDSM is that it is - horror of all horrors - essentially gender-neutral. Those who engage in it decide for themselves what roles they choose to play, and even go back and forth between those roles, blithely indifferent to what the culture or the anti-culture dictates should be right and proper for men or women.
As to the broad premise that porn is a progressive addiction that inevitably leads to the consumption of ever more brutal and hateful content, the facts don't fit the case. No matter how often the other side insists that gonzo rules all, in fact, it's still a much smaller market segment than more conventional fare. The richest and most influential companies in the industry don't make it and the vast majority of consumers don't buy it.
If you live out here, the proof of this is strikingly obvious. Vivid is headquartered in a giant former bank building in Studio City. LFP has its HQ in a Beverly Hills skyscraper. Adam&Eve operates out of an idyllic, green campus down in NC.
The biggest gonzo companies are still working out of cinder-block warehouses way out in Chatsworth and Canoga Park.
The sales charts reflect the same reality. Yes, there are gonzo titles on them, but if you check out the new postings on AVN every Friday, you'll find that the top ten is heavy-laden with feature porn.
In fact, there is a visible counter-trend away from ultra-hardcore circus sex toward slightly less edgy content that's better crafted, with higher production values and more broadly appealing ways of framing the sex.
All the buzz right now is about the coming release of the sequel to Pirates, a totally un-gonzo feature that spent almost two years on the best-seller list. The new one is expected to out-sell its predecessor.
But how can this be happening? It fucks up the whole theory!
What i've noticed is that consumers tend to explore a variety of different porn genres, including some extreme material, before finding a level that suits their individual tastes (individual tastes - what a concept), which lie somewhere in between the hardest material and the Playboy Channel. Once they find what they like, they stick with it. Sorta like with BDSM. You try a lot of things until you discover what works for you and then generally stay with that.
One thing I can tell you for sure from all my experience is that the money is in the middle. I may prefer to make much more challenging, BDSM-themed porn - and I get to do so in the two magazines I edit for Larry Flynt - but in video, I bring a bit of that fire to what is otherwise pretty and unthreatening material. It's just edgy enough to be neither boring nor offensive. And I sell a ton of it. My very romantic Story-of-O-based feature franchise has sold seventy thousand of its first title so far and I hope and believe that the follow-up I have coming out in November will do even better.
As for degradation, I agree it could be - still is in the right context - an important concept, but one that has little to do with sex. Degradation is what is inflicted on the victims of class struggle by their economic overlords. It is not chosen, nor is it something subtle that anyone can argue about. It's easy to recognize and pretty much beyond debate where it occurs.
What's happening in Darfur? Degradation. What happens in a porn studio? Performance. Impoverished patients bleeding out in the squalid hallways of L..A's overcrowded ERs while waiting hours to see a doctor? Degradation. ATMs and DPs done by consenting adults on video? Sex play.
Seems pretty clear to me.
Sorry I haven't emailed recently. We were on deadline at Taboo last week and I just couldn't come up for air.
But I can now and will write soon. Got some fun stuff to chat about.
That's the thing thou, isn't it? To some people a woman in the missionary position is degrading. On her knees, going at it hard? Perish the thought, even if she does not feel degraded in the least or gets off on being in that headspace, doesn't matter, because it's bad bad bad. No matter what.
ReplyDeleteThat's the mentality we're dealing with here.
"And what you like would get tut-tutted at even worse. You like BDSM."
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I didn't think they tended to care as much. Not because they're OK with BDSM. but just because their big issue at the moment is OH NO GONZO!!!
"I've been hearing that for about thirty years. It certainly does become tedious, doesn't it?"
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz *snerk* what?
:)
"What i've noticed is that consumers tend to explore a variety of different porn genres, including some extreme material, before finding a level that suits their individual tastes (individual tastes - what a concept), which lie somewhere in between the hardest material and the Playboy Channel. Once they find what they like, they stick with it."
Yeah, that makes sense to me. Sounds like what I did, really.
Though I do wish I'd known a bit more back then about what BDSM stuff was available.
"The sales charts reflect the same reality. Yes, there are gonzo titles on them, but if you check out the new postings on AVN every Friday, you'll find that the top ten is heavy-laden with feature porn."
That's what I always figured, yeah. I can't say I've ever heard the standard APRF line about "well, no one likes stuff that's not rough any more *yawn*." I have heard individual people say they like and collect rough stuff, but I've never heard or seen anything that suggests that MOST porn users are bored with standard fare because there's not enough humiliation in it.
"It's just edgy enough to be neither boring nor offensive. And I sell a ton of it. My very romantic Story-of-O-based feature franchise has sold seventy thousand of its first title so far and I hope and believe that the follow-up I have coming out in November will do even better."
That actually sounds pretty cool. What is it called? :)
(Oh no, the evil pornographer corrupted me...oh wait, never mind.)
"But I can now and will write soon. Got some fun stuff to chat about."
Yay! I figured you were busy, but noticed you surfacing on blogs so I figured I'd nudge you a bit.
Good luck getting the anti-porn crowd to answer that question. IMO, the person in the sex act is the only one who gets to decide if an act is degrading or not, period. Someone else doesn't get to decide what is or is not degrading for me. If I don't find it degrading, then there's no way someone else can legitimately find it so.
ReplyDelete"but I do find myself wondering just what percentage of consumers are big fans of that subgenre"
*raises hand with the others*
"I understand that you feel that some sexual acts and interests involve degrading people, usually women."
ReplyDeleteNot one of the anti-porn crowd, obviously, but usually I see two sets of responses from these folks: 1) old school radfem, basically, – its degrading period, and you're either a perpetrator, brainwashed, or making negative 'adaptive preferences' if you think otherwise; or 2) relative progressive "second generation" anti-porn feminists – you can do what you want in your own private sex life, but as soon as money changes hands, its no longer fully consensual or voluntary. The second is where I think SKL comes out, at least, that's the way I read what she has to say in her more anti-porn moments.
Having been an anarchist, I'm pretty aware of all of the arguments around capitalism and commodification, but it really doesn't strike me as a good-faith argument if you apply that critique of capitalism and commodification selectively to the sex industry and leave everything else out of it. (Or simply tack on, "Oh, I'm an anti-capitalist, too", while directing pretty much all of your rhetorical energy against the sex industry.)
However, when it comes to issue of the legality of sex for pay, I still think the George Carlin argument really sums it up best:
"Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal? Why should it be illegal to sell something that's perfectly legal to give away?"
(Regarding the "Swedish model", I'd add, "Buying is legal".)
Thanks for your thoughts, IACB. But I think it says volumes that these people will read us and post about us -- and jump to the defense of, say, SKL, when
ReplyDeleteyeah, I didn't read the whole book. But the parts I did read and didn't like were all about how she rejected the whole nice-and-safe paradigm, how she dared herself to be as sleazy and dirty as she could. And then she'd turn around and say the sex industry is horrible for women. And it just made me go "Yeah, maybe so, but what should I think of what you picked to do? What part of this is the evils of the Industry, and what parts of this are your own quest to see how low you can go?"
I guess the radfem explanation might be that she never had a sleaze fetish, that it was just a part of The Porny Downward Spiral or whatever. But that's not what she SAID! Unless I remember it totally wrong, or missed some bit where she claimed she never liked sleaze until...
It wasn't so much that she did that that bothered me, as it was that she spoke about liking being in the cesspit, about wanting that, and THEN kept, from what I read, saying nasty shit about her coworkers and clients.
That bothered me. If you're intentionally choosing the seamier life, and the edgier stuff, you fucking deal with the risks you take. I know that many people would call me a victim-blamer for this, but... meh. I read her as saying "It's cool when I'm sleazy; everyone else is horrible."
And that doesn't sit right with me. It's like... getting off on being mean to everyone around you, and not in a consensual and hot for everybody kind of way.
I'd think if I were the kind of very sensitive person Demonista is, SKL's book would honestly be disturbing or triggering. So I'm really surprised to see her, specifically, rallying so intensely around SKL.
Might be that she's never actually read the book, or might be that she actually is more fond of edgy snark than she seems. I dunno. Just strikes me as very, very odd.
Trinity- You read correctly.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ren. :)
ReplyDelete'That bothered me. If you're intentionally choosing the seamier life, and the edgier stuff, you fucking deal with the risks you take. I know that many people would call me a victim-blamer for this, but... meh. I read her as saying "It's cool when I'm sleazy; everyone else is horrible.'"
ReplyDeleteThat's the reading I get too, based on what I've seen of her work, and I find that kind of feminism pretty problematic to say the least. Its basically saying that women have the right to be as adventurous, or "sleazy", or otherwise risk-taking as they want to be, but men basically need to behave like perfect angels no matter what the circumstance. And unless you're talking about something like rape or other outright assaultive violence, which is obviously not justified regardless of the circumstances, I'd say that, yeah, if you're going to be in a certain kind of environment or voluntarily assume certain kinds of risks, you have to take the bad with the good, or not do it.
She also comes across with a kind of "I hate this work, but the money's too good for me to leave it" line. I'm not terribly sympathetic there either – taking on a crappy or difficult job because its financially rewarding is very different from taking a crappy job on because circumstances have forced you into it. In the latter case, I'm very sympathetic with the need for exit strategies, and alternatives which keep people from going into sex work out of desperation to begin with. In the former case, there is an element of choice – one could choose to work at a less demanding job that doesn't pay as well. You could say the same thing about a lot of stressful non-sex industry jobs.
In any event, it now seems like SKL has left stripping for good to become a professional writer. More power to her, and I hope she's happier with that.