Pornography

Two new books have recently come onto my radar, both too good not to share.

The first is by Jo Paoletti, Associate Professor of American Studies at University of Maryland, and is titled Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. I’ve been a fan of Jo’s since reading (and rereading) her previous and excellent book, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America. Here’s more about her new one, published by Indiana University Press, and now available:

Notorious as much for its fashion as for its music, the 1960s and 1970s produced provocative fashion trends that reflected the rising wave of gender politics and the sexual revolution. In an era when gender stereotypes were questioned and dismantled, and when the feminist and gay rights movements were gaining momentum and a voice, the fashion industry responded in kind. Designers from Paris to Hollywood imagined a future of equality and androgyny. The unisex movement affected all ages, with adult fashions trickling down to school-aged children and clothing for infants. Between 1965 and 1975, girls and women began wearing pants to school; boys enjoyed a brief “peacock revolution,” sporting bold colors and patterns; and legal battles were fought over hair style and length. However, with the advent of Diane Von Furstenberg’s wrap dress and the launch of Victoria’s Secret, by the mid-1980s, unisex styles were nearly completely abandoned. Jo B. Paoletti traces the trajectory of unisex fashion against the backdrop of the popular issues of the day—from contraception access to girls’ participation in sports. Combing mass-market catalogs, newspaper and magazine articles, cartoons, and trade publications for signs of the fashion debates, Paoletti provides a multigenerational study of the “white space” between (or beyond) masculine and feminine.

You can read more about Jo’s work on “gender mystique” at her website, www.pinkisforboys.com.

The second is an anthology edited by my pal and former Girl w/Pen blogger Shira Tarrant, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Long Beach.  Gender, Sex, and Politics: In the Streets and Between the Sheets in the 21st Century (Routledge July 2015) isn’t available yet, but you can sign up here on Amazon to get notified when it is. Here’s a descript:

Gender, Sex, and Politics: In the Streets and Between the Sheets in the 21st Century includes twenty-seven chapters organized into five sections: Gender, Sexuality and Social Control; Pornography; Sex and Social Media; Dating, Desire, and the Politics of Hooking Up; and Issues in Sexual Pleasure and Safety. This anthology presents these topics using a point-counterpoint-different point framework. Its arguments and perspectives do not pit writers against each other in a binary pro/con debate format. Instead, a variety of views are juxtaposed to encourage critical thinking and robust conversation. This framework enables readers to assess the strengths and shortcomings of conflicting ideas. The chapters are organized in a way that will challenge cherished beliefs and hone both academic and personal insight. Gender, Sex, and Politics is ideal for sparking debates in intro to women’s and gender studies, sexuality, and gender courses.

 Happy reading, Penners!

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This interview originally appeared in the Ms. Magazine Blog and is re-posted with permission.

In Part I of my interview with Gail Dines, the self-described anti-porn feminist discussed sexual freedom, coercion, safety and harm. Part II continues the conversation. And this time, porn actors respond.

Shira Tarrant: Your new book, PORNLAND: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality (Beacon Press), is out this month. When readers pick up this book, what do you want them to know by the time they put it down?

Gail Dines: I want people to understand that porn is a business with considerable political clout and the capacity to lobby politicians, engage in expensive legal battles and use public relations to influence public debate. Like the tobacco industry, this is not a simple matter of consumer choice; rather, the business is increasingly able to deploy a sophisticated and well-resourced marketing machine, not just to push its wares but also to cast the industry’s image in a positive light.

These are not fun, creative, playful images that feed our sexual imaginations but instead are industrial products that depict a type of sex that is formulaic, generic and plasticized.

ST: I know you’re concerned about harm to women. In Pornland you describe on-the-job injuries sustained by some porn actors–for example, HPV, genital bruising and HIV. All forms of work involve exploitation and risk, whether it’s dying on an oil rig, developing carpal tunnel syndrome or being exposed to asbestos–what makes risks in porn any worse than other workplace dangers?

GD: HPV or genital bruising are generally not listed as job hazards. Women who do porn talk about anal prolapse and surgery [for repair]. The injuries in porn leave long-lasting emotional impacts. The level of abuse and violence to women in porn stands out. There is the psychological trauma of having one’s body treated in this way. It is a very intimate form of abuse. Articles from the porn industry press reveal how difficult and demanding the job is and that women can’t last that long in the industry because of injury.

*****

I asked folks in the porn industry for their responses to Gail Dines’ claim that porn physically traumatizes women. Beth Brigham disagrees. (Brigham was formerly Dines’ research assistant and worked in porn.) She reports:

There’s no emotional trauma from a sex act that you’re prepared for. If you know in advance what you’re going to be doing, you are ready. If I have a day where I’m doing seven penetrations, I know what to do to insure that my body remains healthy. Sex acts don’t happen by accident in porn and you know how to deal with them in advance.

April Flores, a BBW adult actress, adds:

“There is no doubt porn is a very physical job. However, it is also a very individualized profession. Each performer is responsible for their own physical health. A performer always has the choice of not doing something they are not comfortable with. All of my peers are doing work they feel proud of and that enhances and expands on their own sexuality. Gail Dines thinks all performers are victims and this couldn’t be further from the truth.

I also need to point out that many people outside the industry are having rough sex by choice. I’ve heard quite a few stories of people [in the general population] going a little too hard and hurting themselves.

Dines worries about increasing rates of anal sex caused by men who watch gonzo and convince women to bend over–never mind the missing data, non-het sex or women’s sexual agency. It’s unclear that porn is behind this alleged trend, and the tone implies there’s something wrong with human proclivity.

Then there’s the matter of spanking, teasing, topping or switching. Here’s what Dines says:

Pornographers are controlling sexuality. Sexuality is coming out of an industry not imagination. Porn contributes to more BDSM because [it] appeals to bored and desensitized porn users. This isn’t about sex but about corporatizating desire. It’s not an accident that there’s more BDSM activity now.

Again, there’s the question of evidence. And didn’t Dines say that private sex is a personal matter?

By phone, Dines tells me that what people do sexually is none of her business. “I’m not talking about constraining sexuality, but creating sexuality that is based on respect and equality. I’m not against sex,” Dines says. Her concern is about “the business of porn, not the practice of private pleasure.” But perhaps that line is blurry.

To be continued in Part III …

Above image: “Three Nudes and Reclining Man” (1934) by Ernst Kirchner, public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.

This interview originally appeared in the Ms. Magazine Blog and is re-posted with permission.

Move over dot-com, dot-org, and dot-gov. There’s a new domain on the block: dot-xxx. With 370 million sites and $3,000 spent for online porn every second, the industry’s revenues surpass earnings by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined.

This is author Gail Dines’s point: Porn is about profit, not pleasure. Some people make a buck; many more are harmed, argues Dines in her new book PORNLAND: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality (Beacon Press).

Gail Dines calls herself an anti-porn feminist, but she is quick to clarify that she’s not anti-sex. Unlike Dines—and in the interest of full disclosure—I am not anti-porn. I oppose censorship and unproductive arguments pitting sex-positive feminists against anti-porn activists. This keeps rival groups in far corners of the Sex Wars boxing ring. We need more conversation—not less—which means asking tough questions across ideological divides. To that end, I interviewed Gail Dines, curious about our agreements and differences on The Porn Question.

Ms./Shira Tarrant: You wrote Pornland for a mainstream audience. What is your primary hope for this book?

Gail Dines: I wrote Pornland to raise consciousness about the effects of the contemporary porn industry. Many people have outdated ideas that porn is pictures of naked women wearing coy smiles and not much else, or of people having hot sex. Today’s mainstream Internet porn is brutal and cruel, with body-punishing sex acts that debase and dehumanize women.

Pornland looks at how porn messages, ideologies, and images seep into our everyday life. Whether it be Miley Cyrus in Elle spread-eagle on a table dressed in S&M gear, or Cosmopolitan telling readers to spice up their sex lives with porn, we are overwhelmed by a porn culture that shapes our sexual identities and ideas about gender and sexuality. Pornland explores how porn limits our capacity for connection, intimacy and relationships.

ST: What is it about Miley Cyrus in S&M gear that bothers you? Is it her age? Or simply that she’s wearing pseudo-bondage gear?

GD: The problem is that women in our culture have to conform to very narrow definitions of femininity and it’s defined by porn. Miley Cyrus’s performance is not about creativity but dictated by capitalism. She aged out of Disney and this is the carefully planned-out launch of the new Miley Cyrus.

My issue is about the market and about how pornography frames femininity. Women are either fuckable or invisible. Miley Cyrus wouldn’t make any money [with an unfuckable image].

ST: Are you opposed to consensual BDSM sex in real life? Or do you see this as a harmful and exploitative relationship?

GD: What people do outside corporate forces, or outside capitalism, is none of my business.

I’m critiquing the commodification of sex. That gets confused with the idea that I’m telling people what to do in the bedroom. It’s a much easier argument to make [but] it’s a refusal to take seriously a radical feminist critique of the culture.

ST: Some people working in the business argue that porn is a legitimate way to earn a living. I know you disagree, but that keeps us stuck in an us-versus-them sex war. Do you see a way to move past that stalemate?

GD: The industry frames the work as a choice, because otherwise that would ruin porn. Choice is built into the way men enjoy porn. Men I interviewed are convinced the women in porn really choose this and enjoy their job.

Increasingly, women are drawn to porn by the glamorization of the industry. Some women have made porn work for them—Sasha Grey, Jenna Jameson. Jenna Jameson was on Oprah, who was gushing about her. Oprah went to her house and showed the audience Jameson’s expensive cars and private art collection. This looks attractive to women with limited resources. Capitalism can only succeed if there are people around who will do the shit work. Women with law degrees are not lining up to do porn. The vast majority of women doing porn don’t make it and don’t get famous. They end up in low paid work as well as the brothels of Nevada.

We need a world where women have real options to make a living. This is a class issue and a race issue. To talk about choice is to ignore how people are constrained by their social and economic situations.

To be continued in Part II …

Above: pornographic film set, 2007. Photo by Larry Knowles for The Naughty American website licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.