Lydia Lunch and thoughts one whether sex is degrading to women
There's a good interview with Lydia Lunch, of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks fame, over at Alternet. I get a big kick out of Lunch because she doesn't pull her punches and she has a really dark sense of humor. She's also very in-your-face about sexuality and female sexual desire, which makes her my kind of feminist icon. Anyway, I read this article shortly after finding a bunch of emails in my inbox frantically warning me about the dangers of pornography. I should know better than to wade into this debate, but I just can't help myself. So I'm gonna kick off with a quote from Lunch, who says it way better than I ever could:
"I think the problem with pornography is not the pornography itself," Lunch asserts, "but rather the type of pornography that gets the most attention. There are so many different kinds of pornography floating around now, but I still think we need more different kinds of it. Because the kind that gets attention is that made by middle-aged white guys or asshole frat boys for the same audience. We need more diversified pornography made available to us, because people have and want sex. We can't pretend that they don’t. One of my lines in In Our Time of Dying' argued that things were better when we had blow jobs in the White House. A president with a blow job is a happy man. Now we have a man in the White House who wants to butt-fuck the entire planet. It's obvious as hell."
Inevitably when discussing the porn debate with someone who is adamantly anti-porn, they will point to some of the ugliest, most misogynist scenes in porn movies. And I hate to sound callous, but I can't help it. But material created to cater to people's sexual fantasies is going to reflect what those fantasies are, and in a misogynist culture, you're going to have huge numbers of men with misogynist fantasies. Criticize it all you want, but if you do so in the way that implies that all porn is gross and sexist, or that porn is inherently gross and sexist, then you're going to get the question--Why? Why is showing a sexual act inherently degrading to women unless you assume that sex itself is inherently degrading to women?
People who jump all over me about this seem to be under the impression that I've never seen Hustler or watched porn with guys coming all over the actresses' faces or whatever. I've seen it, and stuff that I found far more repellant than all that. I've also seen a lot of "tame" stuff with people just fucking. No degrading context, nothing. Not really male- or female-centered. And it seems to me that if there was just more porn made that was deliberately drained of woman-hating material, then it would give the uglier stuff some competition.
What really upsets me about the urge to censor is this--if in fact we could get the government to censor porn that's "degrading" to women, my money is that our conservative government would interpret that to mean that any sexually explicit material that shows empowered female sexuality is the first to go. Why? Because the vast majority of people think that women who want sex, who are open with their desires instead of buried in shame, are sluts. And it's widely believed that "sluts" are the ones who really degrade women in men's eyes, after all. Remember, most people think that men would be angels if women would just control them. By that logic, the most "degrading" images of women are those that show women taking the most control of their sexuality.
I mean, look at how the conservatives tried to shame feminists into getting all riled up about a consensual sexual encounter between Clinton and his intern. Lewinsky's forwardness degraded her in the eyes of the general public. Sex is degrading to women to many people. End of story.
Of course, as I've said many a time before, my punk rock, rebellious, DIY instincts incline me to think that the best way to rebel against images I find oppressive or degrading is not to censor but to offer alternatives. To my mind, the people who are doing the best work at chipping away at the monolithic, offensive porn industry are the women who are creating space for women to express themselves--there is already a slew of woman-friendly, non-sexist sex toy shops and written erotica. The best way to stand up against a culture that views women as sex objects is to empower women to be subjects themselves.
And I probably need to back off this subject before everyone thinks I spend all my free time watching trashy porn videos.
posted by Amanda Marcotte at
1.2.05
51 Comments:
Outstanding post, put in the context of what's wrong with people to make the sick stuff more popular, not what's wrong with freedom...
nice
2/01/2005
I agree with your post as a whole, but I do think that Monica Lewinsky degraded herself through the consensual encounter with Clinton, not because of sex, but because she MUST have known that Bill was married to Hillary, she knowingly abbetted in helping someone break obligations he owed to his wife. The main responsibility -- and hence the bulk of the degradation -- falls on Bill Clinton's shoulders, as the person who made the vows, but I do think she did something wrong too. I think we *do* degrade ourselves when we lie, cheat, & steal.
Julian Elson
2/01/2005
>>Basically, we concluded the male fantasy is grounded more in a desire for radical acceptance than a desire to humiliate. To let you come on her face is to accept you utterly as you are. OR so we thought.<<
The humiliation theory is just too simplistic imho. I find facials neither degrading, nor in any way (i.e. in 'normal' scenarios of sexual practise) even remotely related to any cascade of male complexes. A lover having an orgasm over my face - as opposed to my genitals - is a highly flattering compliment to me as a woman. I find it disturbing that anyone would read humiliation into this scenario. As a feminist and a woman who enjoys her body and her sex, I don't quite understand the discourse. I don't hear any men whining about how "humiliating" it is when I come in their face. Nor do I hear any men analysing female oral practises along the lines of "well, it must be some kind of desire for acceptance..." Wouldn't that be hilarious?!
2/02/2005
Honestly, I fail to see how Ms. Lunch aggressively selling her Suicide Girl sexuality to sell herself (and really that's what the article is about, not her MUSIC) is any different than Madonna, Britney, Beyonce, Christina, Janet, Shakira, etc. doing the same.
Remember when musicians interviewed talked about the music they were making instead of pornography? *sigh* I miss those days.
2/02/2005
Honestly, I fail to see how Ms. Lunch aggressively selling her Suicide Girl sexuality to sell herself (and really that's what the article is about, not her MUSIC) is any different than Madonna, Britney, Beyonce, Christina, Janet, Shakira, etc. doing the same.
Remember when musicians interviewed talked about the music they were making instead of pornography? *sigh* I miss those days.
2/02/2005
Honestly, I fail to see how Ms. Lunch aggressively selling her Suicide Girl sexuality to sell herself (and really that's what the article is about, not her MUSIC) is any different than Madonna, Britney, Beyonce, Christina, Janet, Shakira, etc. doing the same.
Remember when musicians interviewed talked about the music they were making instead of pornography? *sigh* I miss those days.
2/02/2005
I agree with a lot of what you say and it needs saying. My only quibble is about the Clinton/Lewinsky thing: there was such a power asymmetry that it was always going to be a messy situation. Not that it's automatically the same thing as non-consensual or degrading, but it does throw up a few red flags.
Nick Kiddle
http://www.livejournal.com/~ksej
2/02/2005
Certainly, there is no contradiction between defending sexual expression from censorship and criticizing the porn on offer.
The market for porn (broadly defined) is so multi-tiered that it can't be discussed as a monolith. At the DIY level, where small operators run websites and post video and such, there's plenty of diversity. There's the alterna-porn, lesbian and other porn tier, with a few magazines and websites, etc., and nerdy quasi-art-porn.
Then there's the big 800-pound gorilla that is commercial porn. So much of the conversation that goes on is about what is represented in this area. I have to admit, as a straight man, mainstream commercial porn doesn't offer what I want, and I have given up on it as a consumer.
The smaller end of the market is responsive to demand. The audience can get right to the producers and say what they want. If we want to have a voice as consumers, in that market we can have an impact. We can also criticize -- I'm not sure how much good it would do, but it might get someone's attention to write to a relatively small web site operator and say "I pay money for stuff I like, but I'm not subscribing to your site because ..."
I expect the commercial porn market is really not all that responsive to demand. I suspect that there is really bad information flow, and that the "industry" hears mostly form an echo chamber of its own participants, and some fans that really identify with the industry. They may view all criticism as just complaining about porn, not complaining about their porn, and therefore ignore it.
Does anybody have good ideas about being active consumers of porn -- and whether it is possible to get a better mousetrap built?
Thomas
2/02/2005
most people miss what i think is a far more important issue regarding pornography, aside from the unresolvable emotional debate as to whether or not it "degrades women" as a form of propaganda much like nazi/kkk pamphlets stuffed in people's mailboxes degrades people of color/jews/immigrants/etc. i can see both sides of that. i can also see lydia lunch's side of it. people like her, karen finley, annie sprinkle, diamanda galas, etc. understand it better than i do.
i think a more worthwhile way of framing it is as a labor issue. in other words, pornography is frequently an example of the capitalist exploitation of labor. so when you have unionized and/or women-owned and managed strip clubs, whorehouses, porn magazine publishing houses, video production companies and web sites, you basically solve the exploitation issue. exploitation of children, sex slavery, etc. are all federal L & I issues and well covered by existing labor laws as well as child welfare laws, kidnapping & false imprisonment statutes, etc. i think if we do the following things: (1)fully legitimize sex work as an american INDUSTRY and organize it, fully empowering the men and women who work in the field to control the means of production, and (2)defeat the WTO and similar organizations' imposition of their violation of our labor laws (imagine trade sanctions against imported porn that does not recognize our labor standards for example. give tax incentives to porn that has the Union label, etc.) - in other words, take porn out of the closet and get rid of the stigma attached to it that keeps their labor standards in the dark ages - shouldn't someone get paid a decent wage and have some kind of job security and health care benefits working in porn? is that only the right of the super-pornstar? - if we do all of these things the exploitation issue is fairly reduced. we generally don't have as much forced or child labor in this country as we used to, except perhaps in agriculture in southern california, and in territories like guam which we protested about at the WTO demos...to tell you the truth i think that work in general, having to go to work in order to eat, is obscene enough. i think that sex workers should be our pagan high priestesses and priests, not the child molesting priests and pastors who run things now.
i think that a woman who wants to post naked pictures of herself on the internet isn't degrading herself UNLESS she isn't getting paid what she deserves for it.
2/02/2005
I don't buy it.
Your thesis sounds as implausible as saying the because there are a few co-operative businesses that corporations aren't really the 'monolithic' sexist, racist, greedy bastards ruining this Earth that they are.
Me playing my guitar in my basement with a band is not a reason to deflect criticism of corporate control of music because to criticize how the music industry works, how 99% of music comes from them, would be casting a too broad sweep at the music-makers.
I prefer not to dwell on the 1% of porn that doesn't show women humiliated, inhumanized, animalized, and generally made less-than-men instead focus on the 99% that does.
Besides Amanda, your theory doesn't account for why the sex industry explosion in the past 15 years has led to a steady increase in gonzo, BangBus, Max Hardcore, Extreme Associates, child porn and rape porn. According to you, the mainstreaming and increased female participation should have led to a decrease of such woman-hating porn, yet these misogynistic forms of porn are actually more widspread than ever and there are no signs of this trend slowing down any time soon. An enlisted woman named Lyndie England didn't reform the US military by her female participation, the US military is a cultural behemoth that reformed her. Likewise, I think the behemoth of commercialized product-making of sex 'reforms' women's thinking about sexuality much more than individual women signing on reform porn.
2/03/2005
"no one objects to criticizing corporate control of music"
That was my point, that debates on how 99% of music is made aren't railroaded by undue focus on garage bands the way debates of porn are unusually focused on the 1% of questionably not misogynist porn.
"talk of the eeeevils of porn does in fact help to put empowered female sexuality in the closet."
This is just dumb. Feminist discussion about the obvious woman-denigration in mainstream pornography is bad for women's sexuality? Here I thought critique and discussion of how women are presented in media was a big chunk of feminist inquiry, but such conversations are feminist oppression of women's sexuality according to you.
If anyone suggested more women should enter the military because women are inherently more egalitarian, moral, and respectful than men and their presence would make the military less misogynist, it would be derided as the Victorian gender myth of women's obligation to 'enculture' men that it is. Suggest that women should enter the porn industry more because their inherently more egalitarian, moral, and respectful presence will rub off on the male pornographers around them making them less misogynist, and it's considered a viable strategy for feminist change.
Why can't we as feminists just say to the pornographers who titled a popular porn series "A Stupid Little Whore Named..." that such titles are unacceptable as they reinforce negative stereotypes of women's sexuality and disrespectfully diminish sexual women instead of doing nothing more than crossing our fingers and hoping one day male pornographers might be influenced enough by a handful of female pornographers (who are morally superior to male pornographers) to willingly stop putting forth such volumes of anti-woman propoganda?
How many times have women been told to just wait a little longer for the respect, dignity and equality they deserve right now because some day soon men are going to catch on and things will be better for women? I have a problem with porn titles like that, and porn titles using the most creatively put-together slurs against women I have ever seen, and I'm going to say something about it now and not wait for a hypothetical legion of female pornographers to "civilize" (feminist-ize?) male pornographers.
2/03/2005
I don't think women are superior to men. I just think that women's presence and power affects men's attitudes dramatically. It's easier to perpetuate stereotypes on people who are powerless or absent, but it's difficult when they are right there. Visibility does make an enormous difference in attitudes.
1% can be a lot if it gets the proper focus. If people single out the good stuff and tell others about, then demand for it will rise. In fact, indie scenes that stand against the corporate infrastructure do make headway, but only if there's a significant amount of street buzz to sustain them. Witness the rapid rise of indie film-making in the 90s or the dramatic, seemingly out-of-nowhere explosion of punk rock, both in the 70 and in the late 80s/early 90s.
2/04/2005
BTW, Anon. Lydia Lunch isn't your average musician. She is an artist who works in many different fields, including poetry and performance art. In fact, her music is pretty terrible, if weirdly compelling.
2/04/2005
"It's easier to perpetuate stereotypes on people who are powerless or absent"
Women have been present in pornographic filmmaking for as long as there have been pornographic films and I haven't seen their presence and power affecting diddly. Your theory still doesn't account for the rise in gonzo and extreme porn that has accompanied the mainstreaming of porn. What does account for it, as Katha suggested over at Feministing, is the humiliation of women being the central point of 99% of pornography. Under that flag more gonzo, granny, gigantic asses porn makes sense.
"Witness the rapid rise of indie film-making in the 90s or the dramatic, seemingly out-of-nowhere explosion of punk rock"
If this year's Sundance is an indication then indie films have been almost entirely co-opted by corporate media, and even my homegirls Le Tigre were forced onto a major label. The corporate tidal wave sweeps up everything in its path, and human sexuality is no different.
re: Lydia Lunch- I've heard her music and I know why it's preferable to focus on her nudie pics, personal sexual preferances, and porn-affirming talk. Women musicians much more talented than she who don't toe the Suicide Girl wannabee line don't get profiled in leftist media much, whereas Courtney Love can release shitty album after shitty album so long as she keeps bringing strippers onstage and calling Larry Flynt one of America's heroes.
2/04/2005
" I don't hear any men whining about how "humiliating" it is when I come in their face. "
But you don't see women coming in a man's face in porn, either (at least not 99% of the time). His head would block the crotch shot. For that matter, you rarely see a man's face at all. Which proves that the entire purpose is to film from the man's p.o.v. You're looking through the male actor's eyes - never the woman's.
And that's the problem with the vast majority of commercial porn. The cum shot is the viewer's proof that the male actor was really enjoying the experience and that he is there willingly (to put it lightly).
With very rare exceptions, you don't get the same assurance about the actresses. First, there's no such medical condition as a displaced clit at the back of your throat. The vast majority of women do not get off on giving their partners blowjobs. Though they might greatly enjoy giving pleasure, it's usually with the understanding that their partner will reciprocate with an unselfish act in return. Which you never see. All segments end with male orgasm. Unless it's a lesbian or female masturbation film. Period.
And most women don't get off on pure anal or vaginal intercourse. Any sex therapist or poll published in Cosmo will tell you that. The vast majority of women require clitoral stimulation to orgasm and you don't see that in 90% of porn. What you do see are a lot of women pretending to enjoy acts that MEN are guaranteed to get off on.
A woman can spot another woman faking it a mile away. And when you see a woman on the receiving end of a marathon intercourse session with no clitoral stimulation in sight - you know it's not legit. And then you start to wonder why the actress is doing something she's clearly not enjoying. And the answers aren't pretty. Teenage runaway or drug addict with no other alternative. Probably combined with physical threat by glorified pimp/managers/ boyfriends/husbands.
Which, if you're a woman kills your enjoyment of the film. Besides the fact that any potential lover who gets his education from porn is bound to be a huge disappointment.
And if male fantasy (especially of the facial) is not grounded in a desire to humiliate, then why is all the advertising for most porn so humiliating? It's all about how much physical action (I won't say abuse though I believe a great deal of it is) a woman (or girl - barely legal/ virginal is a big draw) can "take" (whether it be # of partners, # of acts, # of orifices or size of object)in as many combinations thereof... with absolutely no believable claim that the pleasure/ orgasm of the women/girls in question is of any importance whatsoever.
It's all about what she can tolerate or is willing to do in order to guarantee the orgasm of men... and nothing about what she, personally finds satisfying. And no - a slimy producer advertising a flick as "girls who LIKE being degraded" is absolutely not believable. Quite the contrary, in fact.
But I tend to agree with Amanda – if you took out the degradation in porn it wouldn’t be so bad. If it you had more of it that was tailored to female audiences it wouldn’t be so bad. And she’s absolutely right – women who insist on their own orgasm are labeled sluts by society and that REALLY has to change. Women getting more involved in the industry and producing material that isn’t degrading is a huge start. But men who don’t personally like the degrading aspects of porn but who partake of the degrading shit anyway are a huge part of the problem. If there wasn’t such a demand for that stuff the producers would start trying different formulas.
I have some hope that the DIY stuff now becoming available on the internet might offer a more honest picture of women's sexuality, but it also concerns me quite a bit. If a pro uses kids or films a rape there's at least a camera crew there to witness it. Maybe stop it. At least testify. But anybody can set up a webcam and record themselves engaging in illegal activity in their own homes.
2/11/2005
Amen, Mustang Sally!
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To really get the full picture on this debate please check out these sites, www.bangbus.com and wwww.gagonmycock.com. A friend of mine (a male who consumes a lot of pornography) recently commented that all the sex has basically disappeared from the latest porn - now it is mostly distilled male power. These women are called stupid sluts, brainless reptacles who deserve the ill and agressive treatment that they receive. As earlier posts have commented - this is a refelction of repressed desire and we must pay attention to the warning that it sends. Women's increased power in society has angered men who now do not understand their role. THe backlash is building. We need a full critique of sex and power. We need to understand where desire is born and how our culture feeds misogyny.
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