porn: good or bad? the simple answer is, it’s not so simple
Why, oh why, do I end up being the staunch defender of porn? I don’t even like the stuff most of the time. And yet here I am, like an insistent mosquito in your ear, saying once again that naked people fucking on camera is not inherently a microcosm of every bad thing the patriarchy has ever done.
OK, so we start by referring you to a recent anti-porn post on I Blame the Patriarchy, a blog whose title I can definitely get behind. The problem is that while I do definitely blame the patriarchy for a whole frickin’ lot, and while I don’t in any way wish to minimize its effect on women and the world at large, I also don’t think it’s so all-powerful that it removes all options for free choice. That’s just attributing way too much power to it - and the patriarchy is intent on claiming as much as it can in the first place, so let’s not give it the rest on a bloody silver platter.
I patently refuse to believe that I live in a world where my agency, consciousness and desires are entirely dismissed in favour of bowing down to the god that is patriarchy. And it bugs the shit out of me when other feminists want me to do that. Talk about sleeping with the enemy! I just don’t buy it when otherwise articulate, engaged and intelligent feminists stand up for the idea that they themselves can’t be making free choices - particularly sexual choices, but I don’t see how you can draw a line in the sand to separate those ones from all the rest - because those choices are all so deeply dictated by the very patriarchy that feminists otherwise seem to be capable of actively critiquing. What the fuck kind of feminism is that? It plays right into the hands of the people who really do want women to be nothing other than two boobs and a few fuckable holes. Crikey.
There’s another element of frustrating complicity that’s also endemic in this kind of thinking, and that’s when feminists tar all porn with the same man-on-top-of-woman brush. Statements like this one boggle my mind: "Porn — gay, straight, bi, live-action, animated, or ‘feminist’ — is the graphic representation of the oppression of the sex class. Until the sex class is liberated from male oppression, porn can be nothing else, no matter how many fun feminists claim it empowerfuls them."
(On a side note, I really do hope that IBIOTP has invented the word "empowerfuls" on purpose, because I’m gonna have a hard time taking her seriously at all if it’s not ironic and she really does have that poor a command of the English language.)
So let me get this straight, so to speak: gay porn is oppressive to women because it’s a graphic representation of the oppression of the sex class? Hmmm. Last time I checked, man-dick up man-ass didn’t have all that much to do with women, the so-called "sex class."
How about lesbian porn? (Note that IBIOTP has not mentioned lesbian porn specifically; perhaps she is conflating it with gay porn. Never mind the whole penis thing.) Oh, yes, I forgot, we clueless apolitical dykes have so deeply internalized patriarchal values that now we’re oppressing each other. In small underground independent DIY collectives of avant-garde radical sexual art-makers with little or no commercial financial backing, of course. But never mind the incongruities there; clearly the patriarchal values are still strong enough to completely invalidate our made-for-us-and-by-us erotic entertainment. Gosh, it’s too bad, we were enjoying it until the reify-the-patriarchy’s-power people came along and pooh-poohed our (highly politicized) fun.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the systems that produce most heterosexual commercial porn are pretty heinous, and some of the women in those porn movies may very well be there through some process that doesn’t involve them having a lot of agency and choice. Porn is not always empowering for the participants, and it’s produced in a consumerist system within a racist, sexist world, and it’s certainly not always consumed by people with a politically appealing agenda. But then again, there’s not always a ton of empowerment in, say, working at McDonald’s for seven dollars an hour, or even for that matter working as a cog in the corporate-office wheel.
We could debate ad nauseam the relative merits of various sorts of employment and the empowerment and agency that come with them, but my point is simple: I don’t think it’s accurate, useful or politically astute to equate, say, a drug-addicted 19-year-old who’s in service to a threatening porn producer, with someone like Montreal’s independent amateur-porn star Seska, who has built her own little private porn enterprise with her husband and whose website features well-researched essays on various sexuality-related topics as well as statements about her personal politics on subjects as diverse as veganism and polyamory. I mean, really - any analytically-minded person, feminist or no, should be able to see that there’s a wide range of circumstances that may lead a woman (or a man, or a trans person) into the world of porn, and a wide range of experiences once a person gets there.
And that’s what, in the end, bugs me the most about the tired old feminist argument against porn. It oversimplifies what is in fact a very complex phenomenon involving multiple influences from all areas of the political spectrum, of which patriarchy is only one. Anytime we rely on black-and-white, binary-minded defenses, we’re obliterating reality, which is never that conveniently simple. As a feminist, I want to actually think about things, analyze them, pick at the nuances until I truly understand - not that I think understanding is a finite goal in the first place. And I resent it when people of any stripe try to dismiss that entire process in favour of a by-rote, inflexible answer. As a feminist, I declare that just isn’t good enough for me.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Yes, IBTP’s use of “empowerfuls” is deliberate - it’s part of an ongoing critique of the way patriarchal mandates are repackaged and sold to women as a form of self-expression and empowerment. Most of that critique is spot-on - when a new toilet cleaner is marketed as “empowering”, you know your rhetoric’s been severely co-opted.
I think there’s a distinction between making a truly free choice, and exercising free will and autonomy, that Twisty glossed over in her post and that you are blurring here. Struggling to think of a good example, perhaps this will do: in high school I bought into the idea that a girl could be smart, or hotty hot hot, but not both. I thought I had cleverly escaped from the patriarchy because I saw and rejected the idea that I should strive to be hot, and focused instead on being smart. Was I acting on my own agency, consciousness, and desire? Yes. Was I making a truly free choice to ignore fashion and appearance? Not really.
As I understand Twisty’s views, she sees patriarchy as effectively inescapable. I get that you’re more optimistic than she is (and so am I) but your argument doesn’t seem to be limited to whether or not Twisty’s pessimism is realistic. I’m reading you as saying that whether or not her opinion is sound, such pessimism is illegitimate because espousing it will embolde^H^H^H^H^H^H reify the patriarchy. Is this an accurate description of that part of your critique, or have I missed your point?
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:46 pm
I guess my big point is that attributing that kind of overarching, omnipotent power to patriarchy only serves to invalidate pretty much any and every choice a woman makes. It’s hypocritical to stand by that kind of viewpoint and still maintain that women make any real choices at all. If that sort of fatalistic paradigm is true, we might as well all just throw in the towel and forget about feminism altogether - what’s the point, if the patriarchy makes all our decisions for us anyway and that’s utterly inescapable?
I’m not much one for fatalism. I’m all right with seeing patriarchy as hugely influential in our worlds, and as a major factor in defining the systems within which we hope to make choices, absolutely. But I just can’t get behind a politic that glorifies that influence and defining force to the point where it insists that every sentient creature on the planet is brainwashed and powerless to resist, change, co-opt, subvert, reappropriate, or otherwise do something different. I look to feminism to show me *how* to resist, change, co-opt, subvert and reappropriate… not to tell me I can’t do it because of the very system that created a need for feminism in the first place. It’s completely circular thinking.
Plus, it pisses me off that feminists fall back on this old argument anytime the question of porn comes up, because it’s easy to get on a moralistic high horse and dismiss the choices made by sex workers - when those same feminists would never aim that kind of invalidating logic at, say, a woman firefighter (she’s brainwashed by the patriarchy into thinking masculine heroism is the ideal, so her career choice isn’t valid)… a woman teacher (she’s brainwashed into thinking teaching is one of the only valid professions for women, so her career choice isn’t valid)… a woman cosmetician (brainwashed, beauty myth, etc.)… a woman financial consultant (brainwashed, capitalism and financial services are male-invented and male-dominated fields, etc.)… and so forth. It’s a weak and convenient argument that purports to paint a broad picture but in fact falls apart when applied more broadly.
It’s not so much about the patriarchy becoming emboldened by this argument per se, but reified, yes - by spouting the idea that we can’t make our own choices, feminists are in effect doing the patriarchy’s dirty work. And I’m not interested in helping out with that particular project.