Gonna Start the Revolution From My Bed

Via Yglesias, I came across a critical review in the Nation of some guys book about sex. The nut of which goes like so:

"And herein lies the gravest problem with Margolis's erotic agenda: In wanting to keep sex unencumbered by emotion, morality or mysticism so that we can have as much of it as easily as possible, he altogether depletes it. He makes it dull and small--at best an agreeable snack for the sensations and at worst a forgettable hiccup, but never a sublime experience.

And that is tragic. For sex is a powerful force; if harnessed rather than simply sprinkled hither and thither, it can take us places. It can burst through barriers that would otherwise remain unbroken, accomplish in one explosive clap what decades of whittling away at someone else's or our own defenses could not. It can throw us into the core of a Strange Other or into the still center of our own souls. At its best it is two things Margolis disdains: mystical and transgressive."

And you probably think you know what I'm going to say about this. A staunch advocate for the demysitification of the punanny, you think I'm going to bitterly decry the Nation's attempts to imbue sex with some kind of superfluous transcendental powers. But you're wrong. I'm going to go with a far more nefarious technique of persuasion. I'm going to agree with the main point, and then use elaboration and nuance and what the hell, possibly a metaphor to make my point of view seem reasonable, even dare I say it, persuasive. Just watch me.

Because, my loyal friends, sex is a beautiful beautiful thing, and sometimes the physical union of two animals - two raunchy raunchy animals in a sensual embrace of heat and flesh - really does achieve something wonderful and bonding and even transcendant and sublime, of a more powerful experience than even the run of the mill orgasm.

Just not always.

And when it's not, you know, that's okay. Sex doesn't have to be so... so... so very meaningful and enrapturing all of the time. An orgasm, in and of itself, is good enough, and it completely justifies the experience. I like to think of it like music, whether it's something you play or something you dance to or something you just appreciate the joys of. A group of musicians can get together and play some tunes just for the hell of it. And there's a simple joy in that, and that's great, even if they only produce a mindless little tune like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," or something of that ilk, simple and fun. And that's great. It makes people happy. They dance and they get their release.

But every once in a while, a group of truly special musicians come together and produce something truly magical and awe-inspiring, like "Wonderwall," for example. And more than just providing that simple joy that music can bring, it brings us closer to what we might call "god" if we weren't a bunch of godless communists, though sentimental we may be. Sex is exactly the same way. Sometimes you're rocking with John and Paul, and you just get a nut, and that's cool. But sometimes, with someone like Liam and Noel, you not only get your nut, you get something truly special in the bargain.

And you know, when you're wistfully crooning in your car to "don't look back in anger," Liam and Noel don't even really care that just the night before you were playing "And you're bird can sing," while you were getting a quick handjob from your old lady.

When I started this post, I thought I'd figure out a fairly easy segway to this post I found via Rox Populi about some woman's retrospective about having written about burlesque. But damn, it didn't happen. Not smooth at all. Fuck it though. Am I right?

Anyway, it covers a good bit of interesting observations, but the part I want to address, I'll quote, for the ease and convenience of my readers, aka you.

"And then there is the other question, the one about whether striptease performers in the pre-porn era were exploited or empowered. The question also arises out of the porn-antiporn debates; that is, whether pornography exploits women or can potentially empower them. In reviews of books about pornography, there often is a puritanical suspicion of pleasure and also reflexive talk about exploitation versus women's self-reinvention as autonomous beings taking charge of their own lives. There is simply no good way to answer the question of whether old-time strippers were empowered or exploited."

I want to focus on the question of whether pornography is empowering or exploitative. I don't expect to have reached a conclusion by the end of this post, but who the fucks knows, I'm rolling on the fly here, and I may figure it out to my satisfaction. Cause I'm awfully fond of myself and the brains I HAD went to my head.

As a consumer of pornography, the question of empowerment verses exploitation isn't very relevant. That is, I'm going to consume pornography that appealls to my fetishes and tastes and that's entirely independant of the desires of the performer. That is, I'm paying (let's pretend like I pay for pron for convenience sake instead of downloading it for free, though in the sense of like opportunity cost I am foregoing other things and other types of pron to consume pornography even if I'm not parting with my money) the performer of pornography here to fulfill my desires, my fantasies. She's not being paid to enjoy the act the way she might enjoy the act. And it's important to note here, that talk of female friendly pron aside, that the vast majority of pornography is consumed by men. Why this might be the case being outside of the scope of this discussion. This kind of thinking, from the perspective of the consumer tends to make me believe that it's exploitative, or at the least is kind of neutral in a contractarian sense, but probably tends toward the exploitative.

But the perspective of the consumer is not definitive I don't think. We could ask how the performer feels about the experience of being involved in pornography, and though this is not definitive either, I think you'd find that it has the potential to be both exploitative and empowering from this perspective. But even for those women who find pornography empowering as performers, is that really the case? I could find joining the army and shooting at arabs personally empowering, but is it really? Or am I really being exploited by powers greater than my own, though it may put me in a better position than had I not joined the army?

I think that the segment of feminists who find pornography empowering, find it empowering because puritanical attitudes about sex tend to be used as weapons against women. They tend to be about keeping women in certain roles and in affirming prevailing understandings of womanhood that are very limiting. And that feminists asserting a woman's right to recreational sex without stigma, asserting a right to enjoy sex as a casual matter, can find something very liberating in pornography, and yes, empowering, as a way to celebrate sex, and celebrate female sexuality. Even if they don't consume it, or they don't consume it nearly as often as men do.

I think that's the really troubling part of the issue. As long as pornography is basically about paying women to gratify men, and appealling to male understandings of sex, it's going to tend toward the exploitative to my way of thinking. I guess it could be conceptually transformed, if women started consuming more pornography, and pron thereby became more egalitarian conceptually. But as it is, I guess I tend to think that the empowerment arises from pornography is a bit of a chimera. I mean the empowerment doesn't seem like much if it's empowerment derived by filling male desire within a male framework. I don't know. It's like being a corporate lawyer. You might feel good about that salary and the seeming importance, but you're really just a flunky for the people with real money and power.