Being Amber Rhea

Yesterday this post by Hugo Schwyzer showed up as a referrer in my StatCounter: Bridging the Porn Divide: sex, feminism, empathy, and the commitment to stop pathologizing the other side.

It’s a long post, and I suggest you read it all before reading my response to it, so you’ll be sure to have the full picture.

(I suggest you not read the comments on his post, unless you aren’t quite as harrowed by such things as I am; more than a few of them provoked this response from me.)

Anyway.
Read the full post »

As a precursor to my eventual full book review of Robert Jensen’s Getting Off, I wanted to post an excerpt from the chapter entitled “Pornography as a Mirror,” in which Jensen colorfully describes scenes from several porn movies in order to drive home the point of how awful and misogynistic all porn is.

With all the porn Jensen has watched (for research purposes, you understand), one can only assume that he summarized these particular movies because they’re the most effective at validating his thesis - and the most likely to garner a reaction of shock from readers. So what’s the deal with this…?

A scene from Delusional, a 2000 release from Vivid:

Lindsay, the film’s main character, is a woman slow to return to dating after she caught her husband cheating on her. She says she is waiting for the right man - a sensitive man - to come along. Her male coworker, Randy, clearly would like to be that man but must wait as Lindsay explores other sexual experiences, first with a woman named Alex, whom she meets online and assumes is a man. Later, after Alex and Lindsay have sex with a man in the kitchen of a restaurant, Lindsay is finally ready to accept Randy’s affection. He takes her home and tells her, “I’ll always be there for your no matter what. I just want to look out for you.” Lindsay lets down her defenses, and they embrace.

After kissing and removing their clothes, Lindsay begins oral sex on Randy while on her knees on the couch, and he then performs oral sex on her while she lies on the couch. They then have intercourse, with Lindsay saying, “Fuck me, fuck me, please” and “I have two fingers in my ass - do you like that?” This leads to the usual progression of positions: She is on top of him while he sits on the couch, and then he enters her vaginally from behind before he asks, “Do you want me to fuck you in the ass?” She answers in the affirmative. “Stick it in my ass,” she says. “I love the way you slide into my asshole. … Deep in my ass. … I’m coming on your cock in my ass.” After two minutes of anal intercourse, the scene ends with him masturbating and ejaculating on her breasts.

So, wait. Where’s the degrading part in that scene?

It just sounds like sex. And by some people’s standards, pretty vanilla sex. Even for people who would consider it at the kinky end of their personal spectrum, due to the dirty talk and assplay, I really can’t imagine anyone finding it degrading who didn’t have bigger hang-ups about sex in general. In fact, the only part of that excerpt that I see as degrading to women in any way is this:

Lindsay lets down her defenses

Note, that’s not a line from the movie. Those are Jensen’s chosen words to describe the onscreen events. I find it very telling that he uses language which casts the woman in the passive role, and the man in an active, even conquering role, with the implication of sex being a conquest and women having “defenses” which must be “broken down” by men.

This is, of course, the sexual script that’s reinforced by the dominant culture day in and day out, to the detriment of everyone. This skewed view of gender roles (as Figleaf would say, women as the “no-sex” class) is exactly what Jensen claims to be opposing. Yet with a few words, he’s revealed volumes about how entrenched he still is in sex-negative cultural norms.

So, Robert Jensen has a new book out, called Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. If you’ve been paying attention to this sort of thing, you already know my feelings about Mr. Jensen. But now, with the release of his book, plenty of people who call themselves progressive or liberal are falling all over themselves to praise him. And it makes me sick.

I don’t know if I want to read the book or not. On the one hand, I feel like I should, because of the “understand your enemies” thing (which is why I suffered through Female Chauvinist Pigs and Pornified), and also because I think if you talk about a book without having read it, you’re talking out of your ass (this was one of my main gripes about the Full Frontal Feminism fallout).

On the other hand, I don’t know how much head-desking I can take. I’ve read enough of his articles to know what Jensen’s M.O. is. And would a fisking of his book really accomplish anything? If it would, then I might be convinced to read it. But also, Chris Hall has already posted an excellent, thorough review at Sex In the Public Square. Here are a few key excerpts:

I can go on for hours and hours about what irredeemable psychic flotsam the great mass of porn is, and could probably fill several volumes thicker than Jensen’s on the mediocrity, body fascism, poor production values, labor abuses and sexism that dominate mainstream porn. These are all things that people of good conscience should find troubling about porn as it exists today. And yet, even as I calculate all the sins of pornography to the nth degree, and catalog the ways that I find it disappointing and trivial in taxonomies so detailed that the Library of Congress would have to invent a whole new indexing system, there’s something else: I think that in porn lies our salvation. For those of us who hate the ugly gordian knot of fear and loathing that our society ties our sexualities into, porn is essential. We need a genre of literature and art devoted to sexual arousal just as much as we need those that make us laugh, cry, or cringe in fear. And at the same time, we need to develop a critical language that we can use to think and speak about pornography. Without these things, we’ve resigned ourselves to remaining forever mute about our sexual desires.

[...]

By using this thin sliver of pornography to talk about the whole, Robert Jensen has eliminated alternative genders and sexualities entirely. He doesn’t have to wonder what it means to have a transgendered man like Buck Angel making a good living billing himself as a “man with a pussy.” Dykes who make porn for other women, like the Cyber-Dyke network, are not even acknowledged. There is not even a whisper of the thousands of web pages and videos and magazines that focus on women dominating men, or cock-and-ball torture, or any other of a million practices. These sexualities do not even exist in Robert Jensen’s cosmology; he has written them out of existence as neatly as a respectable family who resolutely doesn’t speak the name of the cousin living as a “confirmed bachelor.” But all of these identities and practices come with legal and social consequences. To simply discard so many lives in a book that claims to honestly explore the nature of desire in our society is not only intellectually dishonest, but hateful.

[...]

Robert Jensen’s passion is reserved for visualizing women’s sexual pain. Never once does he turn that passion the other direction to look at the possibilities for women’s sexual pleasure. There is not, in the end, so much difference between Jensen and the most misogynist, exploitative porn director; neither can imagine the sexual role of men as being anything other than to fuck, nor can they imagine women’s roles as being anything other than to be fucked. And that’s why, regardless of my doubts about mainstream porn, I can never, never imagine aligning myself with Jensen and his ilk. Because at the heart of his arguments, I see the same misogynist bullshit that I want to excise from pornography.

[...]

One of the things that keeps misogyny a thriving monster in our society is sexual shame and guilt. Violence against women and gays comes not from people who are comfortable being open about their desires, but by those who feel that their desires are somehow wrong. People have a limited capacity for accusing themselves. There are only so many times that a man will look at women and feel guilty about his lust before those thoughts whip around like a serpent devouring its tail. Then, the problem isn’t him. It’s that bitch in the short skirt, the whore who’s tempting him and who deserves whatever she gets. And then, we know the rest of the story. We’ve heard it too many times to forget. November 19 was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and December 17 will be 5th Annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers precisely because we know how the story of people driven by sexual self-hatred turned inside-out ends.

So what do you think? Should I bother reading this book and posting a review?

Yesterday I mentioned Robert Jensen’s latest act of caring and empathy - yeah, the part where he says DP (double penetration, for those not in the know) is inherently sexist. And how does he know? Well, he’s watched a lot of sick, terrible porn (for research purposes, you understand!) and talked to some men. Which men? Well, it’s not really important; would you stop trying to distract from the main point here?? Listen: there are some men out there who like to watch DP because they think the women don’t want to do it. They get off on the idea of women suffering. Isn’t that awful? And, well, it goes without saying, women don’t want to do it. How could any woman possibly want to do such a sick, terrible thing??

Ahem. I could shit a more nuanced argument.

Actually, let me rephrase… -oh, and let me be pre-emptive, too. First of all, there is no doubt in my mind that there are some men out there who get off on the idea of a woman doing something against her will, or being physically harmed. And there is no doubt in my mind that there are plenty of instances of DP in porn that depict just such a scenario. Fuck those men and fuck that noise. Porn should never involve coercion; and I really wish I could say I gave a shit about people who get off on actual suffering, to make myself sound all humanitarian or something, but I really don’t. As far as I’m concerned they can take a long walk off a short pier.

Where was I? Ah yes, rephrasing! See, it’s not just that Jensen’s argument lacks nuance. It’s that instead of listening to what actual women are saying, he appears to steel himself against all dissent because The One True Theory must be preserved! (The irony of this article being published on a site called “The Dissident Voice” is not lost on him, surely?) Let nothing penetrate his ideology! What he’s saying is for the good of women, after all. He really cares about women - so much so that he’ll be damned if he’s going to listen to what they’re saying!

Um. And this is feminist, how exactly?

What’s most perplexing of all is the radical feminists defending Jensen, and Stan Goff (who was also defending Jensen). Antiprincess was even called a troll on Stan Goff’s blog! Does not compute. I can’t grok the cognitive dissonance. Because, see, no matter how you slice it, what you end up with is this: a MAN dictating to WOMEN what their sexuality must look like. A MAN defining for WOMEN what is sexist against them.

A man speaking for women. A man silencing women. (Because he cares.) Hmmm.

Oh and then there’s the whole heterosexist aspect of it too, which I already mentioned in a comment (responding to Russ, who dared to suggest that fingers and toys might also be employed in DP).

It’s really all just too much for me - I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen such feats of contradiction! My heart is all aflutter. Oh, what will the Radical Feminists of Blogland say next, how will they jump to Jensen’s defense as he silences women hither and thither?? It’s really a fun game at this point - come, join in! I’ll make the popcorn.

(See also: Renegade Evolution, I Shame the Matriarchy, and Fetch Me My Axe.)

Maybe it’s the weather, I don’t know. But even though today is sort of a “calm before the storm” day at work and I technically have time to do some blogging, I feel supremely unmotivated. And yet restless at the same time. I know you care.

Let’s see, what has been going on around the blogosphere today that I could write about? Well, Robert Jensen, that self-avowed lefty radical d00d - who only has our best interests in mind! - thinks DPs are inherently sexist. (That’s not “domestic partnership” or “Democratic party.”) OJ Simpson has written a super creepy book, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it all over the internets. Some random blogger I’d never read before thinks the only possible “empowering” naked moments can’t involve teh s3x, and certainly not pole dancing. The MRAs continue to be insane on RenEv’s blog.

And, eh. I just can’t get motivated about any of it. I can’t even get motivated to write a post for Download Squad, where I’d get paid. Crazy isn’t it? This kind of weather just makes me want to sleep.

Maybe later I’ll dig up some comments I posted on a really long thread at RenEv’s about porn. I actually said some smart stuff, and wouldn’t be embarrassed at repeating it.

Okay. Back to my day of ennui.

Update: Here’s something else I learned on a blog just now! “DP and face shots and BDSM and gang bangs, these are all inherently degrading.” O RLY!