Can You Have Your Cake and Eat It Too?
Last June I made a post, What’s In a Name?, about the different names that people use for sexually explicit material, the different names that people use to try and label what we do here at Comstock Films, and the reasons that I don’t feel a particular affinity with any of them.
Well today I made the mistake of clicking on a link at Erosblog which took me to The Biting Beaver, where Ms. Beaver is playing an actuary game:
“Acceptable losses are something we deal with every day. I, like most of us, drive a car. I do so with the understanding that even MY car, a little Dodge Neon, causes environmental issues. Even MY car emits nastiness into the air. I have weighed this in my head and have decided that I will continue to drive a car but I will do so knowing that I am contributing to ozone issues and global warming. My hands are not clean. I have determined that there is “Acceptable Losses” because the benefits of driving my car outweigh, for me, the risks involved. I must drive a car to support my family, and, supporting my family is more important than the damage my car is doing to the environment. Therefore, I drive a small car that gets good gas mileage and I do my part to help out, even though I understand that I have made a concession. I drive my car knowing that I am contributing to Global Warming…
“In my life I have come to realize that, for me, there are no acceptable losses as it pertains to women. I hear the screams of the raped women. I hear the howls of indignation from women like my mother, women who have lived a caged life. I hear the shrieks of fear and terror from the abused women, the sobs of the drug-addicted prostitutes; I hear the confused babble of the young girl lifting her shirt for Girls Gone Wild. I hear the chaos of their screams. I empathize with them, I feel with them, for them. Their voices are so near to me and my body shudders and my stomach flips when I hear of another sex slave released from her masters. My mind hears her terror and my head shows me her torture and I get physically ill over her pain…
“I have never been able to figure it out. And it terrifies me because we, as a society, have determined that there are Acceptable Losses to orgasm. And that thought scares me shitless, because I have hope that I can someday live in a world in which the screams are gone. And that is the reason that my ASSHOLE post came from such rage and anger. That’s the reason that I am so adamant and why I harp so loudly and so rudely on Pornography. Because I don’t accept rape, and I refuse to accept the logic that it’s worth it, that there are Acceptable Losses for me to achieve my orgasm.”
From Biting Beaver I clicked over to Dr. Diane Russell, who is kind enough to provide a definition not only of pornography, but of erotica as well, presumably so that we can confine ourselves to be aroused by, and possibly masturbate to erotica, while avoiding exploitive and damaging pornography. Says Dr. Russell (emphasis hers):
“Proponents of the anti-pornography-equals-censorship school deliberately obfuscate any distinction between erotica and pornography, using the term erotica for all sexually explicit materials [1]. In contrast, anti-pornography feminists consider it vitally important to distinguish between pornography and erotica, and support or even advocate erotica.
“Although women’s bodies are the staple of adult pornography, it is important to have a gender neutral definition that encompasses gay pornography, as well as child pornography. Animals are also targets of pornographic depictions. Hence, I define pornography as material that combines sex and/or the exposure of genitals with abuse or degradation in a manner that appears to endorse, condone, or encourage such behavior.
“This article will focus on adult male heterosexual pornography because most pornography is produced for this market and because males are the predominant abusers of women. I define heterosexual pornography as material created for heterosexual males that combines sex and/or the exposure of genitals with the abuse or degradation of females in a manner that appears to endorse, condone, or encourage such behavior.
“Erotica refers to sexually suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and respectful of all human beings and animals portrayed. This definition takes into account that humans are not the only subject matter of erotica. For example, I remember seeing a short award-winning erotic movie depicting the peeling of an orange. The shapes and coloring of flowers or hills can make them appear erotic. Many people find Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings erotic. But erotica can also include overtly or explicitly sexual images.”
I can’t help wondering if Ms. Beaver’s actuary argument doesn’t also apply to Dr. Russell’s erotica. If the joys of looking at, enjoying, and masturbating to any porn is simply not worth the risk that somewhere, some porn might be being made using kidnap victims held at gun point, must we also rule out enjoying erotica, lest we run the same risk? Of course I’m being factious. But Ms. Beaver’s and Dr. Russell’s respective treatises get to something that lies at the heart of why I want to make sex films.
On one hand Ms. Beaver tells us that, while some impingement of other people’s lives (however great or small that may be) is worth the convenience that using a car brings into her life, no amount of pleasure that watching naked women getting fucked brings into the viewer’s life is worth any degree of impingement to anyone anywhere ever (”You CANNOT know if the girl you are masturbating to is, in reality, a sexual slave from Austria who has a gun pointed at her head just off camera”). On the other hand, Dr. Russell tells us that we should “support or even advocate erotica”.
I know I’m not being entirely fair; I’m commingling Ms. Beaver’s words with Dr. Russell’s. But I’m not being entirely unfair either. Ms. Beaver calls Dr. Russell’s website “an amazing resource for all your pornography-bashing needs!” I’m not unsympathetic to Ms. Beaver’s rage either. (When looking at this page with Ell, she said, “The Biting Beaver is almost as angry about porn as you are, TC.”) There’s certainly plenty, both in the product and the process of making porn to make any thinking, feeling person shake with rage.
No, what bothers me about Ms. Beaver is how cavalierly she denigrates any pleasure that I might experience from looking at (let alone making) pictures or movies of naked women. Having a car is worth the price (that other people pay), eating the crab special at Red Lobster might be worth the price, but jerking off to sexually exciting pictures is not, not ever, under any circumstances. Driving her car to get groceries is worth the Exxon Valdeze and Iraq and all the other awful things that happen so she can run her car (”acceptable losses”). Me pounding my pud to pictures of a leggy blonde is not worth a single human life. Not one, not ever.
Ironically pornographers are often no less contemptuous and dismissive of their audience’s desire to enhance their masturbation by looking at the very images pornographers provide them; and I am frequently shocked by what people will tolerate to see what they want (need?) to see. Apparently when it comes to sex, there’s no shortage of shame, self-hatred, or hypocrisy.
Of course maybe I’m reading Ms. Beaver wrong. Maybe jacking off is fine, just as long as you’re jacking off to erotica, and not porn. If so, then how lucky we are to have Dr. Russell to help us learn to see the difference.
-TC
October 25th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
The saddest thing is that she is not the only one who holds such sexphobic beliefs with regard to sexually prurient material.
Some of my fellow authors feel this way and not too very long ago a heated debate brewed in our community about this very thing.
You see, there are authors like me who feel like if my writing makes you hot and leads you to want to masturbate or seek out your partner when you’ve finished that I’ve done my job.
On the other hand, there are authors who are quite literally horrified that anyone might use their sexually graphic romance to get off with.
To me, this is the height of hypocrasy. If I’m a big enough girl to write pussy and cunt, I’m certainly big enough to understand that when I connect the two in a heated sex scene, that it might just turn someone on.
But some people have bigger hangups than porn and they feel the need to drag that out and apply it to the rest of us.
If porn makes you feel dirty/icky/bad/wrong - here’s a solution: don’t watch. There are some of us, who like to watch your movies and feel dirty.
October 28th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
Seems like the richeous are really out in force just now. And it`s payback time for those sick governments who wooed their votes.
Personally, I object to these people trying to remove my rights.
And is there such a big difference between `erotica` and `porn`?
As an erotic artist, I really don`t think so. One of the best reviews my site ever received was one which said,
“add your own white!” ….I loved that.
Like Lauren, I want people to be sexually aroused by my work….if I didn`t, then why do erotic art in the first place?
So much hypocracy out there.
Sex is natural, those who have problems with that should seek counselling for their own puritanical little hang-ups.
I personally consider these people to be dangerous. They are attempting to impinge on human rights.
If I want to see porn, I will, no-one is going to stop me.
The sooner they wake up to that fact, and get a life, the better
November 2nd, 2005 at 9:37 am
I think of sites like Mick and Dee’s Luvbight or even sexandsubmission.com.
How do Dr. Russell’s definitions apply when women participate willingly and even enthusiastically in what looks like “abuse” or “degradation”?
How can men be the bad guys and women the victims in such contexts, which at first glance certainly look like porn?
Let’s come at this from another angle. No matter how hard porn-bashers try to push it, female sexuality will not fit into their pigeonholes. but—just like men’s sexuality (surprise!)— it will include all sorts of nastiness and kink that women can now, finally, with the internet, choose to express in a global forum, in all sorts of still and moving imagery.
I’m not denying the existence of exploitation and victimisation of women in the porn/sex industries. Where that exists, it’s offensive and it’s criminal. But let’s not tar it all with the same brush. Let’s admit complexity and subltety to the discourse.
The fact of participation, by choice, of women in sexual expression on their own terms makes mincemeat of traditional definitions and perspectives. Porn is no more hard and male-oriented and anti-woman than erotica is soft and female-oriented and pro-human.
So Dr Russell et al, can we please get past this nonsense and try to initiate some fresh unblinkered thinking on the place and role of creative sexual expression in our society?
DTG xxoo