Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography (10/10)

Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography / David Loftus


"The Public Debate: What Did Everyone Get Wrong About Pornography?

Objectification
Alan Soble, a professor of philosophy, notes that eye contact between the model and the viewer is often staged in photos and videos, which is a kind of communicaion— the expression and recognition of intentions.” He describes the interchange thus:

'The model who poses and licks her lips knows how the photographs are to be used, and she acts in that way in order to arouse the viewer. The viewer, in turn, knows that the model is acting in order to arouse, recognizes her intention to arouse, and is aroused by recognizing her intention to arouse. Despite the time and space between the two people, the model also appreciates that the viewer’s recognition of her intention to arouse will contribute to his arousal, and she knows this while she is acting so as to arouse.'...

When Dworkin asserts that “Objectification, in fact and in consequence, is never trivial,” she is simply wrong. If objectification is a process that occurs in our heads when we look at someone (or a picture of someone)—seeing and making a snap judgment about that person without complete information about his or her nature—then we objectify other people many times a day. When we accord automatic respect to someone in a white lab coat or someone who steps up to a lectern, we have objectified that person. When we shy away from an unkempt character on the street, this is an act of objectification. On further investigation, the person in the white coat may be an actor or an escapee from a mental institution, and the street person is actually Howard Hughes or the Messiah; the point is that our initial act of objectification does not freeze the person in stone now and forever—we can respond to further input and continuously modify our judgments.

Soble observes that people regularly “dehumanize” one another for casual sex in a one-night stand, but it is a mutual transaction, so some forms of dehumanization must be, in his words, “morally permissible” I do nothing wrong, he suggests, if I fail to smile or say anything to a ticket-taker at the theater—and thereby treat the person like a ticket - taking machine—but there are limits: I cannot therefore step on her foot or cough in his face.

Antiporn analyses also neglect the issue of context. This means that, and only that, their arguments run. Nudity means loss of power (rather than an attempt to impress and evoke awe), the male gaze can only be degrading and acquisitive (rather than admiring and respectful), and women who enjoy performing fellatio and being squirted with ejaculate (let alone simply posing naked for men) must be deluded, brainwashed, and coerced...

“Until the day women’s bodies are no, used to sell cars, cosmetics are not a necessity to the success of a woman’s image, and we are not humiliated and tortured for men’s pleasure, women will have no rights,” MacKinnon declares. The idea that women have no rights is hyperbole, of course, as is the implication that women are routinely coerced into dressing provocatively. Note how casually MacKinnon equates having to wear cosmetics with being tortured. This statement appears in a book whose cover photograph shows the author wearing earrings. Is this a demonstration that even MacKinnon cannot escape the tyranny of social objectification of women? (One also wonders whether the healthy glow of her skin was enhanced by makeup: Did MacKinnon choose this herself, was she merely encouraged to look more attractive, or did Harvard University Press coerce her into donning rouge by threatening to hold up publication of her book if she didn’t?)...

As Ann Snitow remarks, 'Not even in my most utopian dreams can I imagine a state in which one recognizes all others as fully as one recognizes oneself (if one can even claim to recognize oneself, roundly, fully, without fragmentation). . . . the antipornography campaign introduces misleading goals into our struggle when it intimates that in a feminist world we will never objectify anyone, never take the part for the whole. . .'

Subordination
Exhibit One for the antipornography activists is Linda Lovelace, the star of the top-grossing pornographic film of all time, Deep Throat... In fact, as some commentators have noted, Lovelace states in her book that working on Deep Throat provided some of the first happy and relaxed moments of her marriage. “Something was happening to me, something strange,” Lovelace writes of the first day of filming. “It had to do with the fact that no one was treating me like garbage. And maybe it was just the chemistry of being part of a group. For the first time in many months, I was thrown in with other people, other people who weren’t perverted and threatening.” (Remember, these are porn actors end filmmakers she is referring to here.)

Although no one came to her aid when her husband beat her up, and i hey continued to make use of her performance for the movie, she could tell even at the time that no one approved of his treatment of her. Her book strongly suggests that if she had not appeared in Deep Throat and thereby become a minor celebrity known to many other people, she would have remained an unknown, abused wife and perhaps never gotten away from Traynor alive. Pornography did not put her in that mess; it helped her to get out of it, and may have saved her life...

MacKinnon complains that the film “is protected speech” even though Ordeal “makes clear that thi film documents crimes, acts that violate laws in all fifty states.” Perhaps it does, but the video of the Rodney King beating and the Fox network cop shows depict actual crimes too, and we do not prosecute the people who made or broadcast them. MacKinnon tries to pretend that the ordeal of Linda Lovelace is somehow every woman’s story: “It is what men experience as our sexuality. What connects Linda’s ordeal and the success of Deep Throat with the situation of all women is the force they are based on.” Somehow I doubt MacKinnon means to imply her life has been one of unmitigated humiliation and coercion.

There are several basic problems with the subordination argument. or one thing, women in pornography are often assertive and sexually agressive. Sex appears to be their idea: They tug at men’s clothing, move into position, and initiate various sex acts. Rarely does anyone have to tell them what to do. These women are not acting the way opponents of pornography say they do, nor are they acting like women often do in public life...

The truth of the matter is, when you are in the submissive role, things are “done to” you; you get to lie back and concentrate on the sen sations rather than have to run the show. When you are in the sub missive position, the other person is taking more responsibility lot the success or failure of the sex; whatever “doesn’t work” is not your fault. Even what does work is not your fault, which is a convenient excuse if you have mixed feelings about it. This has been suggested as the reason behind women’s historic rape fantasies. In the fantasy of being taken by someone who is so overpowered by desire for you, because of his lust or your beauty (preferably both), you make him responsible for whatever happens—for good or ill. It’s not your fault if anyone gets hurt, or (god forbid) you actually enjoy yourself...

Sex workers and therapists know the truth of the matter. “In general I’d say it’s nine to one that men want to be dominated,” says Barbara, an escort worker in Britain:

'When you think, “What is the ideal girl that the client wants?” you mighi think: someone who is pretty, sweet, and submissive. And yet in actual fact, if you play that role with clients, nine times out of ten you wont see them again. Clients genuinely don’t like submissive women. They want women who have spunk and who have a sense of humour. They don’t just want you to roll over and put your legs up in the air. They want that spark. to get the repartee going. They really like it when you criticize them.'...

I think most people intuitively understand [that porn eroticises male fears], even if they don’t realize it. Women who have no interest in porn or actively dislike it tend to regard men who use it as pathetic. Why would they do this if porn depicts “the reality of male power and privilege”? If pornography really expressed the power and privilege of its viewers, most women would be clamoring to see porn with naked men in it, because then the women would be in the power position. Yet when women do see nude males, they often feel silly or embarrassed. Far from expressing the power and privilege most men “actually” possess in society, porn more likely expresses what the viewer feels he lacks or is missing out on . . . and that’s why even ignorant and unsympathetic women regard masculine interest in porn as pathetic rather than a threat.

What sort of man most routinely shows disrespect toward women, and speaks of women coarsely, and draws pictures of female privates on bathroom walls? Usually a young, unformed male—one who does not enjoy great knowledge of women or power in the social or business world. Laura Kipnis theorizes that pornography is about transgression:
mapping the borders of culture’s decorum and stepping over them. Naturally, teens who are searching for identity—straining at adulthood—try to locate and sometimes transgress those boundaries, whether it’s through smoking cigarettes, sneaking alcohol, learning to drive as soon as possible, or looking at pornography (as well as experimenting with sex itself). This is not a reflection of their personal power, but their relative powerlessness. Says Camille Paglia:

'The dominance of woman’s image in pornography is not about the sub ordination of women—it’s the opposite. It’s about male anxiety. It’s about the male mind trying to confront and take control of this enormous, mys terious power of female sexuality.'

A man longs to know what a woman looks like when she is willing, when she wants to do everything he desires, because too often he does not have that experience in real life. This is no dillerent from the long. ing that drives women to romance novels, where the heroes are unreal (or at least atypical) mirrors of feminine desires.

Degradation
Most men in my survey would object to someone treating a woman as sexually dirty or inferior, too... Women in pornography don’t often take orders from men, because they understand them completely, know what they want, do what they want, and themselves want what men want. That this is unrealistic - a fantasy - is precisely the point...

Susan Cole is a surprising exception when she faults Canadian law for its presumption on [facials]: 'But ejavulating onto a woman's body does not have to be degrading. It could also be a method of birth control.'...

Perhaps to read facial cum shots as inherently degrading may be unfair to male experience. It imposes women’s feelings on men. In the typical “facial cum shot,” the woman is rarely coerced or restrained. In fact, she rushes to position eagerly; she invites the event. She almost never looks as if she is suffering or upset by the result; often, she smiles approvingly or continues to make orgasmic sounds as if getting semen on her face is a thrilling experience. She savors the semen, lets it run out of her mouth, down her chin, and over her chest. She may look up gratefully into the man’s face, or smile at the viewer. She may take the slowly deflating penis in her mouth again, and smear the semen all over it with her lips. If degradation and humiliation were the viewer’s goal, ouldn’t his pleasure be heightened by expressions of fear, disgust, and distaste on the woman’s face, resistance on her part, and the necessity of holding her down? If pornography is an expression of raw male power md violence, how come there is so little evidence of it in these “disgusting” tableaux?...

I would suggest that “facials” in pornography are one of the ultimate expressions of a woman’s acceptance—her celebration—of male sexuality and orgasm... when a woman smiles and invites the explosion on her face— the part of her that gets the most public attention, the portion she assiduously washes and paints for presentation to the world—it may he the ultimate “I love you,” or at least “you’re okay, fella,” for the man who has had to hide, clean up, and dispose of his semen most of his life...

Friday... concludes about men who look at nude women:

'Seeing only degradation in the eyes of men who masturbate while looking at women’s bare breasts and genitals, angry feminists miss the point altogether. “The uninitiated think that men look at naked ladies to disparage them, or that the women hate the men and only do it to make a buck,” says [Friday’s psychologist friend] Richard Robertiello, who used to frequent burlesque theaters. “But it’s a love fest. We men worship. These women see the adoration in the guys’ eyes. The men think the women are goddesses for letting them look. Their wives don’t care enough to show them their bodies. These women live out the guy’s suppressed dreams of exhibitionism.”

“No catcalls?” I asked him.

“The few times that happened, the men were so disapproved of by the rest of the audience, they were thrown out of the theater. The stripper/audience relationship is a love affair, maybe even more important than a sex affair.”'

Hatred of Women
None of this sounds like hatred. Anxiety, sometimes. And fear—of women, of failure at sex, of not knowing what to do—perhaps. When they feel these feelings, men may go to pornography not to stoke them, not to build up hatred, but to allay them. To feel good about women To worship their beauty. To imagine what it’s like to have one want you To pretend that sex is not so mysterious and complicated after all."

Towards a New Theory of Men and Pornography

"Appreciation of Women's Beauty
It may be some part of a woman's physical being that attracts a man's eye: the way she has done her hair or the way it falls and bounces; the way she has chosen her clothing to present herself, the way it falls lazily across the contours of her body or grips her curves; the lines of her torso, the length and smoothness of her legs, the delicate purity and wistfulness of the nape ofher neck, the beguiling shape and bounce of her breasts, the equally heart-stopping globes of her derrière and its rolling grind as she walks. Each of these pieces forms a portion of a woman's entire physical presence, but any one of them alone can be beautiful.

A woman's beauty also lies in how she carries herself and the way she walks... Men's appreciation of women's beauty in all its variety carries over, to some extent, to pornography... Some of pornography's biggest stars don't conform to the stereotypes...

Neither Nina Hartley nor Ginger Lynn, two of the most popular performers in pornographic videos, was surpassingly gorgeous in her prime... the fact that the women acted as if they truly enjoyed sex and the company of men played a major role in their popularity...

[Men] say, in effect, Thank you for allowing me this look at your nude body... if she looks like she's enjoying herself, she doesn't necessarily have to resemble the models in Vogue and Cosmopolitan (who are only a little less naked, after all)...

*Very emotive experience*

Until Andrea Dworkin Or Catharine MacKinnon can account for an experience like this and incorporate it into their theories about what “does” to men, they will remain hopelessly ignorant about men and what pornography means to us. When men who look at pornography feel tenderness, vulnerability, affection, and gratitude (as well as I’desire and lust), to be told that what they feel is only a desire for power and the need to humiliate and degrade women is inaccurate and insulting. No wonder we have been loathe to speak up: What men have to say seems utterly and literally incomprehensible when put next to much of what has been said tip to now."