Porn and the patriarchy

I am supposed to be doing other work (as, you know, always), but my head, it is in a funky place.

I am working on the unending, starting-to-be-a-little-soulsucking porn presentation that my friend R. and I are giving in Feminist Legal Theory class this week.  And, here's the thing: I am not ok with porn.

DON'T START COMPARING ME TO ANDREA DWORKIN.  I have no plans to team up with Rightwingers to go on a censorship crusade.  I just don't think porn can ever really be progressive, or transgressive, or feminist.  As I just explained to someone on email:

Do I think anyone can create transgressive, feminist porn?  No!  Actually!  I don't!  For a couple of reasons, some very heavily rooted in theory but mostly: 1) Nothing can be transgressive without continually referencing whatever "line" it has crossed to be so.  Thus, all transgressive porn actually reifies what is "normal"  and polices the line between "acceptable" and not; 2) Women are made into a sex class in this culture, and all sex is about dominance and submission.  We cannot conceive of sex outside these bounds.  Thus, we are always playing out the same oppressive narratives. See more here and here; 3) Because we have not grown up in a vacuum, our desires are always dominated by the heteronormative, hegemonic white male gaze.  My concept of "sexy" is never my own - it's been fed to me.  I have no idea what I think sexy would look like if I grew up isolated in a nunnery or some shit, but I doubt it would include things like really uncomfortable 4 inch heels that mangle the feet and back, or being tied up and dominated (and I know I like the latter because I am sexualizing my very real and actualized fear of rape and assault upon my body.  Would I find those things sexy without having been a victim/victimized?  I wonder).  I know people like to play, "But that's just my thing-ism" when it comes to sex, but no one gets a pass, and everyone's desires are fair game for deconstruction, and when it comes down to it, why are our desires always not liberatory? 

That being said, if anyone asked me whether porn or Vogue Magazine was more damaging for women, I would be hard-pressed to come up with an answer.  For part of our presentation, R. put together this kickass slideshow of pictures, and everyone has to try and guess whether it is from a porn or a fashion shoot.  Or a Michael Bay movie.  It is pretty impossible to tell the difference.  It all looks the same.  And it's all fucking violent against women.

Anyway, we dug up some really good articles on porn, one being on porn and race, the other being on how banning porn isn't really fixing the problem.*  Because, of course, the problem with porn isn't porn, the problem with porn is that people don't look at porn and think, "Wow, that is some really heinous and degrading and inhumane stuff.  That's not sexy AT ALL.  Turn that shit off."   But SADLY, people do not do this, and so I have been looking at porn and Vogue photoshoots and and a documentary on porn that includes a porn with a rape scene that is pretty fucking triggering for two days, and now I am all disassociated and having a crap night. 

Especially because: I have reached the point where I can't even look at arty black-and-white slightly grainy hipster-y pictures of sex anymore. 

Let's tell a story.  About a month ago, some dude came to visit me.  Some of you know may know this dude from the internets!  The internets are an AMAZINGLY small place, actually; perhaps you have realized this too.  Anyway, this dude got a little obsessed with me because of the words I write here (I did not know this bit until after).  He decided, not the first dude to have done so, that he wanted to "conquer" Gayle.  You also have possibly met those dudes who like to conquer and control ladies.  Especially ladies who are a force of nature.  It's like they get a big manly gold star for putting those ladies in their place.

So, this dude flew across the country to satisfy his obsession.  He harangued me to sleep with him from the very moment he got here.  "No," to him, only meant he should keep asking.  I should point out here that this dude read this blog.  He knew my issues with sex.  He was fully aware I'd been raped.  When I finally agreed to fuck him, it was because I was exhuasted and drunk and had had one of those weeks where I was stretched so thin I had no energy to keep defending myself.  However, there was no way I was doing anything I wasn't comfortable with, no matter the fact my clothes were now off.  This made him mad.  So he decided to throttle me during sex - literally, he put his hand on my throat and squeezed, with no warning or discussion - to punish me for demanding my consent mattered.  Then he told me, after I freaked out, it was my fault.  Because I kept being "difficult."  For "changing my mind" about what I was ok with doing with him.  For saying no.  For keeping myself safe and demanding my boundaries be respected. 

After the whole thing was over and he flew home, he told me by text it was STILL all my fault, but now it was because I had hurt him.  When I asked how I hurt him, he said it was because I had asked a painful question about his childhood.  And I had "made him answer."   And this is when I realized I was dealing with a sick person.  I cut all ties, and ties to anyone who may also know this person and continue to be friendly with him.  And then I spent two weeks petrified that he would retaliate against me, fly back here because he had my address, hurt me in some way.  Because that is some genuinely sociopathic shit right there.

But the point of this story is: why do so many of these arty black-and-white photos of sex involve a man with his hand around the throat of a woman?  I cannot look at these pictures anymore.  Because that isn't sexy now.  I know the control and domination a little too well, that goes with that.  And it's upsetting, when I think about it, that I ever found men throttling women sexy at all.  Fucking patriarchy, man.  It sucks.

Anyway, that's what I am grappling with at the moment.  Porn: not the most fun topic to research, it turns out!  Whenever I get my head back on straight, I will add to my list of saving-the-world topics the goal of making porn obsolete.  We here at Unnatural Forces only take on the most achievable goals!


* These articles are:

- Gail Dines, The White Man's Burden: Gonzo Pornography and the Construction of Black Masculinity, in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 18 Yale J.L. & Feminism 283 (2006).

- Carlin Meyer, Sex, Sin, and Women's Liberation: Against Porn-Suppression, in the Texas Law Review, 72 Tex. L. Rev. 1097 (1994).