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The Lady Garden
Tea and Strumpets
Talking About Talking About Pornography
Posted by on May 16, 2011
Hopefully, in the coming weeks, we’re going to talk about pornography. No, seriously. Well, not entirely seriously, but still… I want to talk about the history of sexual imagery, moralism, sexism, and what I think of as The New Pornography, but which is more commonly referred to as “porn for women”.
But as I was putting together my first post, I realised I need to do something first. I need to say what I’m NOT saying, and clarify some terminology. I don’t want to have to be saying the same things over and over. My intention for this post is that I’ll link all the other posts to it, so if there’s anything I haven’t mentioned that you think I should, or that needs clarifying, please raise it in comments, and I’ll see if I can accommodate it.
1/ I’m using the term “pornography” to refer to “sexually explicit material”. Any sexually explicit material, regardless of medium. Yes, that includes stories. I’ll try to avoid using the word “erotica”, and here’s why.
If I sent you, one by one, into a room with a hundred animals and told you to sort them into cats and dogs, you’d all do the same. All the dogs together, all the cats together, left with the guinea pig and a slightly annoyed expression. But if I did the same thing with a hundred images and said, “Sort them into pornography and erotica,” I’d quite likely get a hundred different results. There’d be images at either end you’d all agree on, and a big mess in the middle. I don’t think there’s any meaningful distinction between the two terms.
2/ I am not saying that “all porn is good”. What I am saying is that there really isn’t anything that ALL porn is, except sexual. Nor am I arguing for an unregulated free-for-all for pornography. I’m trying to highlight less typical porn, but I’m not saying that alternative, or goth, or indie or LGBT pornography is all the porn there is.
3/ I know there are individuals who have real problems with pornography, just as some have issues with gambling or alcohol. I know dealing with those people can be hugely distressing, and that they can do enormous damage to the lives of the people around them. I sympathise. But as with gambling and alcohol, the vast majority of users don’t have those problems. So any unqualified statements about “porn users” must be applicable to, say, me.
4/ The content of these posts is bound to get TLG blocked by some web filters. I’ve done the same thing to Public Address. (Russell: “We’ll never get PA unblocked at the Titirangi Public Library now!”) I’m sorry about that.
5/ I will never post anything I consider too explicit directly here on the site. I will link to it in other places, with appropriate content warnings. However. I can’t see inside your head. I can’t tell exactly what you will find uncomfortable or distressing. Please know you’re under no pressure to click on any link, and you can stop watching anything at any time. While I want to give some idea of, say, what The New Pornography actually looks like, I don’t want to make anyone feel horrible.
6/ However, just assume that anything I label as any degree of explicit is R18. When it comes to things like paintings and historical artefacts, you’ll have to make your own judgements.
7/ Any unqualified statements you make in comments about “pornography” must be applicable to gay and lesbian porn, or a person at home filming themselves masturbating. If they’re not, you need to be specific about what kind of sexual material you’re talking about. The same goes for me.
8/ If you’re going to mention or quote the work of a prominent anti-porn feminist, it’d be helpful for you if she wasn’t on record as making horrific, shaming, erasive, or borderline-abusive statements about: trans* people, sex workers, porn actors or BDSM practitioners. So, not so much Gail Dines, Sheila Jeffreys or Julie Bindell. At least be aware that I have no respect for them based on things they’ve actually said.
9/ I’m not trying to pressure anyone into viewing porn (I really don’t like the term “using”, I think it’s loaded) or pretending to be okay with it when they’re not. What I’m aiming for is to have a discussion which is informed.
10/ The Dworkin-MacKinnon definition of “pornography” is personally offensive to me, because it’s erasive of BDSM women. It’s fostered a culture of censorship that cannot acknowledge the existence of consensual sexual violence – which, in fact, diminishes the importance of consent. They object to women being depicted as enjoying pain or humiliation – they’re not allowed to LIKE it. I like it. Ergo, I don’t exist, or I have false consciousness. Fuck, not to put to fine a point on it, that shit.
11/ Admitting to viewing or liking pornography is a huge risk, as is admitting to a non-vanilla sexuality. Please bear that in mind when dealing with commenters who are prepared to do that here – including myself. Shaming or abusive comments will be removed.
Okay, I know discussing this is going to be difficult to start with because you can’t tell what’s going to be an issue before I start posting stuff, but I intend this post to be an on-going work. Raise points and issues. Also, if you have sexual material you like that you’d recommend to others, give me links. What I have is naturally biased towards my own tastes, so more lesbian and BDSM.
54 responses to “Talking About Talking About Pornography”
Leave a reply to tallulahspankhead Cancel reply
The Lady Garden 
Yay! Also I would like to discuss pornography and cultural identity, particularly NZ vs Australia vs Japan.
Awesome! Guest post? I’m familiar enough with the gestalt in Australia, but I never feel like I know enough to talk about Asian cultures.
Willing, will research. I know my Balinese friend is shocked I’m bisexual, so I’m guessing girl on girl porn isn’t really heard of there. Only a guess though…
I greatly admire your ability to identify and structure issues. I usually can’t do do that until after I’ve written what I’m writing. Good work, best of luck.
I have been writing these posts in my head for about two years. And, y’know, the argument never changes, so it’s not like I can’t see it coming.
I think it’s also the academic in you – defining terms and structuring parameters.
I think the best definition of ‘erotica’ is ‘porn I approve of’. If I approve of it, it can’t be nasty, therefore it’s not porn, it’s erotica.
Just to be clear, I am agreeing with Emma’s point about porn vs erotica. The distinction is all in the mind, and the definitions are often deeply self-serving.
Great post, Emma.
“I think the best definition of ‘erotica’ is ‘porn I approve of’”
+1.
I am really looking forward to reading what you have to say based on this post. I look forward to interrogating my assumptions further!
“The content of these posts is bound to get TLG blocked by some web filters.”
Darling, the site has naked ladies down the side, and I have used the word slut about 15 times in posts. Do you really think we haven’t already been block by the Auckland Public Library System?
I would like to make a plea, echoing what Emma has already said, for none of our lovely commenters, to not automatically jump to a “but all porn is bad!1!!1” stance. We can be feminists and like porn. We can be feminists who don’t like porn for ourselves, but respect others’ right to use it. We can also think that there are issues within the industry, but recognise that that’s no different to the beauty industry, and we still like lipstick.
I guess, in short, treat us like adults, who know what we like, and we will treat you the same. Talking about this stuff isn’t easy, for a lot of people, but we’d like to foster a conversation, because we think it is an important discussion, that’s worth having.
Proposed:
12. You get points for referring to or quoting from Susie Bright.
More seriously, you might want to make some comment about the treatment of illegal porn (e.g. porn featuring children, animals or urination is all illegal in NZ) in this discussion.
Also illegal in NZ: porn featuring female ejaculation – possibly because censors can’t tell it apart from urination?
That puzzles me. The concerns about children (especially!) and animals make sense to me, because they break a ‘consenting adults’ criterion, but urination seems different. If it’s consenting adults, then no matter how much I feel squeamish about it, that’s all there is to it.
I am working on getting a couple of different guest posts about this very subject.
” I’ll try to avoid using the word “erotica”, and here’s why. … If I did the same thing with a hundred images and said, “Sort them into pornography and erotica,” I’d quite likely get a hundred different results. There’d be images at either end you’d all agree on, and a big mess in the middle. I don’t think there’s any meaningful distinction between the two terms.”
I agree that “erotica” is pretty much meaningless, at least as something distinct from “porn”. Also pretty meaningless is the distinction between art and porn: some art is pornographic, some porn is artistic, and most images are neither. That doesn’t stop me following the “Art or Porn?” tumblr, though: supposededly, it invites readers to think about where their own boundaries are, but really it’s just a nice collection of pretty porn.
Yet such distinctions are often used to make a distinction, to say that something’s acceptable if it has artistic merit, or on the other hand if it’s not design to titillate. All of which raises the question: what the hell is wrong with reading or seeing something that’s designed to turn you on?
Absolutely. And I’ll be looking at societies where there was no line between “art” and “sexually-explicit art”.
I mean, I don’t think there’d be too many people who’d object to the painting of Lilith in our side-bar, but when it comes down to it, it’s a naked woman with a snake twined around her. It’s not much different in composition from Julie Bell’s Golden Lover. Is the pre-Raphaelite version okay because it’s old? Because it’s well-executed?
It quite possibly wouldn’t have been okay at the time. Melbourne’s infamous Chloé seems pretty tame and “artistic” today.
I don’t know, but off the top of my head, is there not an idea that with porn, that ‘titillation’ (SUCH a great word) is the point, whereas, with art, there’s another, ‘higher’, meaning?
I am not sure whether that holds though.
It doesn’t hold up, any more than the erotica/porn division does, because it’s an individual value judgement. It also requires you to be able to read intention into an image, to gauge the artist’s “point”. And then you end up with situations like the Bill Hensen controversy in Australia.
Let me first bravely say that I view and enjoy pornography. Of various kinds. And I have one extremely strong opinion on our censorship laws.
Utterly agree with Emma here. Any attempt to distinguish between porn and erotica comes down to polling a room of people and going off their preferences. And it’s normally a room full of people at an RSA or Women’s Institute.
I think Tallulah is talking about ‘redeeming social importance’. Yankee idea, which doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad, but isn’t a good start, given their censorship history. I like the definition ‘Pornography is whatever gives a judge an erection”.
Stepping out of lurkdom to say: is there a reason why members of an RSA or Women’s Institute would be uninterested in sexual imagery? IIRC, there was plenty of porn circulating amongst soldiers in the WWI trenches, for example. Also, I have to say I am unfond of the implication of “Pornography is whatever gives a judge an erection” that the entire judiciary is male.
While I doubt you recall the trenches correctly, there was indeed porn circulating, though not much of what most of us would think of as porn nowadays. There is no reason members of an RSA or Women’s Institute wouldn’t be interested in porn, though many, pretty obvious, reasons they wouldn’t say so, in that capacity. Mostly to do with the average age of the members and the culture of the places. It might help if I say I am a member in good standing of the Returned and Services Association, and my fellow members are largely quite keen on that sort of thing, but not keen on expressing that publicly.
It’s actually a quote, and that implication isn’t what I was thinking of as the worst thing about it, but fair enough.
“Porn is whatever turns a judge on”
I’m torn on the question as to whether it’s worth distinguishing between art and porn. I don’t think there’s a moral difference and I don’t think there should be a legal difference but the context in which I encounter something and any knowledge I have of the maker’s intent (which I freely admit I don’t always have) can make a very large difference to how I react to something intellectually and emotionally and sometimes that *is* important.
“‘titillation’ (SUCH a great word)”
Which reminds me: how do you titillate an ocelot?
I feel like I am walking into a trap, here. But how?
Oscillate its tits a lot.
I’ll get my coat.
Oy.
If there’s no meaningful distinction between “pornography” and “erotica”, why did you choose to talk about “pornography” not “erotica”? Just wondering.
Partly, I will admit, to piss off people who use erotica to mean “porn I like”.
But also, because a lot of the stuff I’ll be linking to, like the work of Erika Lust, Anna Span, Candida Royale, etc, IS porn. Its makers consider it pornography, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable describing it as erotica. Now, yes, I know that’ll mean I’ll be calling stuff porn that its makers call erotica, but on balance I think I’d be doing that less, given the kind of stuff I’ll be looking at in the main. I’ll always be offending someone.
“Admitting to viewing or liking pornography is a huge risk” – really, today, in this place? My experience of both feminist and lefty circles in Aotearoa at the moment is the reverse – that talking about discomfort around sexually explicit material in terms of how it depicts women (as opposed to because you don’t want to see pictures/stories which show sexual activities) is almost impossible without being shouted down. Liberal feminism rules, ok.
As for the rest of the world, I’d say porn is completely mainstreamed as expected activity for young people these days. Yep, some gender differences – but sexual health services will tell you that many young people using their services learnt everything they know from porn.
Can you say a little more so I can get my head around this?
Hmmm…. I realise that the question is directed to Emma, not me, but I do have something to say about it. My experience is a little different, and it’s to do with people generalising from their own experience to an assumption that everyone feels the same. I have seen women shouted at (metaphorically, on blogs), for saying things like, “Why would any woman enjoy x?”, and referring to their own experience as a justification for it. There was a classic example of this (in the other direction) at Feministe a few weeks back, when Jill managed to imply that there was something wrong with women who didn’t enjoy sex, because she enjoyed sex (yes, it was much more complex than that, but that’s the gist of it).
And I realise it is also not directed at me, but until Emma emerges, I will answer from my own personal experience.
I will admit to viewing porn. But it makes me tremendously uncomfortable to do so. Not because I feel like I am going to be particularly shamed, but because it is, to me, largely private. Even talking about it with someone I have shared a bed, and many of my fantasies with, makes me blush.
There is a very big difference between talking about pornography generally, and its various goods and ills, and saying “I like looking at pictures of people doing X”. Which is not to say I can’t, or won’t talk about it, but I think Deborah is right that we all come to this from our own experiences. More broadly, I think any discussion around sexuality is that way, because we are all so very different. Because:
“talking about discomfort around sexually explicit material in terms of how it depicts women (as opposed to because you don’t want to see pictures/stories which show sexual activities) is almost impossible without being shouted down.”
I have had completely different experiences. I’ve been shamed for admitting I like sex, and that I like it a little bit kinky. I’ve been implicitly called a slut on so many occasions I’ve lost count. I’ve been screamed at (online) for daring to link to a definition of sex-positive feminism. I would not say “I like porn” in a place that I didn’t feel completely safe.
I’ve also been told that (and I am paraphrasing) that until I have had a relationship with a porn-addicted person, I am not qualified to understand how hurtful porn can be. And that all porn is abusive in some way – because its influence is so pervasive.
I’m not saying you can’t hold those opinions, just that your own personal experiences absolutely has a bearing.
Hey Tallulah,
ta for this. Many things you’re describing here are my experiences too – especially around being active in my insistence that sex is beautiful and an important part of my life, and that I don’t want other people telling me what that should mean. And, oh yeah, that slut thing 😉
While explicitly saying that wasn’t what she was saying. That comment thread was incredibly depressing.
I actually went back and read it, to check that my recollection was correct. It made me frustrated all over again.
Thanks Deborah, that makes sense, and get, I think, what you mean.
It’s one of the reasons that I’m using a pseudonym here. I’m generally happy for most of my friends to know that I like porn (not to a degree that I suspect would be unusual, but that would be unusual to admit), but I don’t want my name linked by Google to the phrase “I like porn”. I want to be able to comment here so that I can get a better understanding of various forms of feminism, and feminist understanding of sexuality (and because some of my friends write bloody well on the topic) without potential future employers or acquaintances making judgements about me.
Even among men of my generation (not quite young), while casual mention of porn or general naughtiness will invoke a “phwoarr!” reaction, if one admitted to regularly viewing it one is likely to be thought of as a sad tosser (literally). Perhaps with men it’s admitting to masturbation that’s difficult, rather than liking porn per se.
In this place, right here, The Lady Garden? No. That’s one of the reasons we set it up. Sex-positive people wouldn’t still be making safe spaces if we “ruled okay”. But sex-positivism also means accepting that everybody’s boat floats differently. If you make huge generalisations like I’ve outlined above, you will get shouted down. Or at least have it pointedly pointed out to you that some “sexually explicit material” doesn’t depict women at all.
You seem to be saying that porn is destigmatised. To me, after watching two rounds of the Porn Wars on US feminist blogs before I couldn’t take it any more, that idea is just so obviously untrue I’m not sure how to argue against it.
In putting together source material for the next couple of columns I’ll be doing, I had four days last week where I didn’t feel I could, because I had workmen in the house or one of my children was home sick. And I was embarrassed – beyond embarrassed – to have someone see me looking at the fairly tame stuff I was sorting through.
And if we were ruling feminism, Gail Dines wouldn’t still be selling out. (In, I hasten to add, the “running out of tickets” sense.)
Hey Emma,
thanks, and do understand that sexually explicit stuff doesn’t necessarily include women (or men), def not making with the heteronormative, I think that’s a misreading of my point.
I am saying that I think porn is destigmatised, to the point of saying you’re not into it is less than socially acceptable in many contexts – though the example you’ve given and some of the comments above contextualise that for me in useful ways, so ta.
And I am saying that feminist arguments which problematise the ways some porn tells stories about women’s sexuality (and yep, I’m referring here to porn which has women in it) rather than what I would describe as moralist arguments which struggle with explicit narratives about sex (which means for me, here, the myriad ways in which people can choose to be sexual), can be very difficult positions to explore, discuss, speak from – in New Zealand, in “progressive” circles, for young people at all. I’m talking about liberal feminism ruling here in New Zealand – Gail Dines popularity or otherwise is about as relevant to discussions about NZ feminism as Pat Califia’s or Jill Nagle’s imo. But then I had to look up who she was 🙂
“I think that’s a misreading of my point.”
It’s not a misreading of your statement “discomfort around sexually explicit material in terms of how it depicts women”. What I’m asking is for people here to be actively inclusive and specific. So if you’re talking about het porn, SAY you’re talking about het porn. And if, in fact, you’re only talking about a sub-set of het porn, that needs to be specific too. And then you get a lot less of people butting heads over generalisations and a lot more space where people can find agreement. So “some porn” is fine, and I don’t think you’ll get any argument there. I really, really mean this, I think it’s absolutely essential to having any kind of constructive discussion about pornography.
Gail Dines was linked to from The Hand Mirror three days ago:
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2011/05/slutwalk-another-point-of-view.html
But I wasn’t talking about het porn. I was talking about porn which depicts women. Take your point about specificity though, and will do my best to comply.
Hadn’t read that article past noting a fundamental disagreement over being able to reclaim slut, and hadn’t noticed who’d written it. But maintain Ms Dines hasn’t been hugely influential in Aotearoa debate to date. Should I be embarassed a blog I’m writing on had linked to an article I hadn’t read…..nah, life’s too short…
“talking about discomfort around sexually explicit material in terms of how it depicts women”
I think this really is important to talk about, and without lumping all “sexually explicit material” together. For instance, the ways that certain aspects of dominance, submission and humiliation are treated in mainstream and explicitly kink-oriented porn. In the former, those aspects can seem to be more about male revenge fantasies than anything pleasurable or sexual, and I find that disturbing and ugly. But in the latter some much more painful and degrading acts are portrayed as fulfilling the desires and fantasies of the submissive partner, and thus ultimately loving. I used to also find the latter uncomfortable, wondering whether women would really ever be into that of their own accord, but since then I’ve met and/or read the writings of several strong, independent women who are proudly into kink. Misogyny squicks me out, but if a woman really wants to be tied up and spanked into ecstasy, then who am I to say no?
Of course, there are plenty of grey areas inbetween and the very presentation of women’s bodies, actions and roles within most porn, but it’s important to investigate the distinctions.
That’s a biggy for me. I have seen some really ugly mainstream porn that I find unwatchable because while it’s apparently not meant as dom/sub humiliation porn, that’s what it looks like. I’ve gravitated to kink porn because much more of it seems to be both explicitly with consent and genuinely sexually pleasurable for the participants. Maybe I don’t watch enough mainstream non-porn video to tolerate the really bad acting (is it still acting if someone looks like a sulky teenage forced to attend a family function?) but some porn “actors” make Arnie seem brilliant.
As well as the issues already mentioned another reason for caution when discussing porn is that what someone likes to watch or read about may be very different from what they like to do and there are many reasons why people might want to protect themselves from assumptions.
That’s a really important point. I am trying to articulate something about the BDSM stuff I read, and consent issues, but I can’t quite get there in my head. It might be a separate post.
Yeah, I think there’s sometimes a basic failure to grasp that porn is fantasy, and that people can have sexual fantasies they genuinely enjoy that they actually don’t want to do in real life. Now, that blurs a little because porn can also be one way – sometimes the only way – to explore something you think perhaps you would like to try and see how it’s done. But still. One of the most common female sexual fantasies is non-con – the “rape” fantasy. That doesn’t mean women actually want to be raped.
It’s not so much the rape fantasies, as the ones where the woman is all “no, no, no…oh wait, that feels really good”, that I am thinking of. So not non-con so much, as “reluctant”.
Like I say, I am still having trouble articulating this, but when I read those stories (because that is what I do, for the most part), I’m often really uncomfortable, and think ‘imagine if someone searched my browser history and found this’.
It’s not that I have trouble with the fantasy, or understanding it at all – pushing those limits is interesting – but it’s certainly a reason I don’t talk about it in public. Or, to be honest, in private that much.
Well, surely if somebody is having sex with a woman who’s saying “no”, that’s rape, right? No matter how she feels. I mean I’m not saying it’s wrong to have or pursue or even act out rape fantasies, but that doesn’t mean they’re not rape fantasies.
Emma, I’m really looking forward to reading your upcoming porny posts! I’m already totally enamored with your tackling of the Dworkin-MacKinnon definition.
Just wanted to say this is brilliant, and brave. Pornography is a subject that can generate really strong opinions.
For me, personally, the difference between porn and erotica is that the former is purely about the sexual imagery, whereas the latter is primarily about the art, the words, the relationships, the emotion. Neither is necessarily bad.
One of the great difficulties here is that as with violent imagery, pornography can be beneficial to people, or it can be destructive. Not now, but I used to enjoy watching violent movies because to me it was an outlet for the aggression I know is always latent within me. Others might take it as an incentive. I like sexual imagery. But I think I prefer it in context and with a touch of reality.
And to me, if the variety of porn degrades or even incites violence to any particular group of people, then it represents a danger to the social mindset, regardless of the viewer being able to “handle it”.
One thing I would like to hear comment on. I kinda grew up with the idea that women are more likely to receive negative comments about enjoying porn than men would. Dunno if it has already been mentioned – tried to read it all carefully but may have missed.
Thanks again – this is an important discussion.
Hey, interesting question, and I’ve been pondering it. I think people are more surprised and shocked when they hear that a woman watches porn. Then there’s either the search for a reason – pressure from a man, attempting to please men in general, false consciousness – or the assumption she’s a ‘slut’.
With men, particularly young men, we have a whole set of behaviours that, while not really approved and not something you’d want in an employee or a son-in-law, are kind of expected. Stupid driving, binge drinking, getting into pointless fights, and I think porn watching goes in there. So maybe there’s stigmatising of both, but in different ways.
Firstly, I just want to say THANK YOU to Dee for linking me to this post. I am looking forward to engaging regularly with you all on a subject that is so near and dear to my heart.
A little about me. I love porn and am not ashamed to say it. I work in the adult industry (editing porn/making censored cuts to it/filming some/graphics/etc). And I LOVE to talk about it.
Not really sure where to start in regards to responding to some of the things said in this stream of comments… as there are a lot of different ideas going on.. so this will just serve as a bit of an intro.
Hey!
Hey Amie! I’d love to see either you or the Fabulous Dee knock us up a guest post. Perhaps after I’ve done a couple of posts and you can see where the gaps are that you can fill in from your perspective?
Hi Emma! That sounds fantastic.