A few years ago, I wrote a post about healthy competitiveness, fantasy, and violence. I’m revisiting that post this morning in light of some of the recent posts I’ve had up about both relationships and pornography.
In July 2005, I wrote about running with my friend Mark:
When I race my friend Mark down the front stretch of the track at Arcadia High School, I’m not thinking “I’m going to kick his ass!” I’m thinking “Damnit, I’m going to keep up with you if it kills me!” Of course I love beating him (which happens one time in five, mind you), but after every hard interval together, we touch fists and say “Good job, brother.” I don’t want to dominate or humiliate him; our competition is a friendly rivalry. Deep friendship — even love — can comfortably co-exist with a real desire to defeat the very person one loves in a game or athletic competition.
The point I only made obliquely then, and would like to make more explicitly now, is about the way in which this anecdote displays that “love-of-self” and “love-of-other” can be fundamentally compatible. When I race Mark, I want to defeat him. I want to win, which will require him “not winning”. He and I have crossed the line together a time or two, and that feels great, but like most sports fans, I don’t consider a tie to be the grandest of accomplishments. What I want, when I race Mark, is to surpass him. He wants to do the same to me, of course. (It took me years to get comfortable with competition, and I still only fel safe being “ruthlessly competitive” with the folks whom I love and trust.)
Is it a failure of empathy on my part that leads me to want to beat Mark? If he is going to be disappointed even in the slightest by his failure to win, shouldn’t my regard for his feelings trump my own desire for victory? Of course not. After all, each of us has beaten the other many times in our workouts (he has the better record); each of us knows the disappointment of the loss is slight. But if one of us were to “throw” an interval to the other out of charity, the one who was the recipient of the gift would be angered and betrayed. To concede a race is not generosity, it is condescenscion at its most appalling. It says to the other “I think you’re too fragile to handle defeat.” It fails to honor the maturity and the dignity of the other. “Friendly competition” is that where each of us each believes three things about our rival:
1. He is playing by the same rules
2. He is capable of distinguishing between competition on the track and animoosity off of it
3. He is sufficiently emotionally resilient to handle defeat.
Unless I know these three things about the person I’m racing, I don’t feel I can give my maximum effort.
What on earth does this have to do with pornography? In my review yesterday of the Price of Pleasure, I noted that the anti-pornography documentary makes a compelling case that contemporary erotica is more and more likely to be focused on violence and degradation. (Even when I did regularly watch pornography, I found the harder, BDSM-oriented stuff to be distasteful. Without offering too much information about my own inner world, for all of the darkness I’ve put myself through, I’m clear that power imbalances are not particularly erotic for me. Power exchanges in the bedroom haven’t, in my experience, been either particularly healing or particularly interesting. Light-hearted reciprocity tends to be what makes my socks roll up and down. Your mileage may vary.)
I wonder something this morning: is it possible that we in the anti-porn movement sometimes impose our own prejudices onto what it is that we’re seeing? A casual observer, watching Mark and me race along the track, our faces contorted into masks of pain and aggression, our elbows rubbing and our shoulders colliding as we angle for the inside, might think “Boy, those two dudes really don’t like each other.” In fact, we’re enjoying each other and our race enormously. We’re playing, even if it looks violent. When we look at a naked woman, tied up, and see a hooded man penetrating her (there are edited images of exactly that in The Price of Pleasure) the initial reaction most of us have is “She’s being abused and wounded. This man hates women. And any man who enjoys watching this hates women. And any woman who enjoys watching this, or fantasizes about having this done to her, is filled with self-loathing.” And of course, some of the time we might be right. But isn’t it possible that we’re completely misreading something? Just as my experience with Mark has taught me that I can long to beat a man I love in a race, isn’t it possible that two people could, with mutual enthusiasm, not only enjoy but feel safe and whole as part of enacting a scene charged with themes of aggression and domination?
I wrote last year of how inspired I was (I still am) by the conclusion of Robert Jensen’s Getting Off. Jensen writes:
So what if our sexual activity — our embodied connections –could be less about heat and more about light? What if instead of desperately seeking hot sex, we searched for a way to produce light when we touch? What if such touch were about finding a way to create light between people so that we could see ourselves and each other better? If the goal is knowing ourselves and each other like that, then what we need is not really heat but light to illuminate the path.
That’s so fundamentally right. Indeed, it goes to the very heart of the kind of sexual ethic I embrace in my own life and which I argue for in conversations with others. When two people do something together that is genuinely mutual, that is life-affirming, that is risky in the sense of pushing them out of their fear-based comfort zone, then surely they reveal light together. But what postures are adopted, and what roles are played, are not the factors which determine whether sex is “light-filled” or merely “hot.” What matters is consciousness — the awareness of the self and of the other person in relationship, even if that relationship is neither permanent or monogamous. And I hear from friends of mine, people I respect and admire, that that kind of consciousness and caring and light-revealing can happen during sex that seems, outwardly, to be deeply violent and reactionary. The presence of restraints, the use of rough play, is not in and of itself an inhibitor of the light — just as doing it on Friday night after midnight in the missionary position, in the dark, with one’s spouse offers no assurance that the light will be present. What matters is whether one really “sees” the other person — or not.
As I’ve written before, BDSM sex has, I’m convinced, redemptive possibilities. The “rules” of BDSM, with “safe words” and acute awareness of the other person’s comfort zone, actually may do more to focus the mind of the participant on light-filled sharing with one’s partner than “vanilla” sex where precise and careful communication is not required. A great many people I know and trust have told me that they never felt safe sexually until they entered the “scene”, and found men and women there who had a keen, almost reverent respect for boundaries. Again, this is not my cup of tea. But I’ve learned enough from both sports and from my friends in the BDSM world that we cannot assume that the outer appearance of an act reflects its inner reality. On the track, the desire to defeat the opponent can coexist quite happily with deep love and trust; in the bondage room, the desire to push the other person to his or her farthest threshold of pain and pleasure can coexist happily with that same love and trust. Indeed, in both cases the thrill of the competition and the restorative nature of the sex act are contingent upon a profound respect for the other.
But as much as I am willing to acknowledge the redemptive possibilities in the seemingly violent, I remain troubled by pornography. Two (or more, I suppose) consenting adults can do things to each other which, while employing tools of torture like whips and chains, are in fact liberating and life-affirming (even light-revealing) for all. But when they film what they do, and place that film on the Internet or on a DVD, they invite others to witness and to enjoy vicariously what they have done. And the chances that each and every viewer will understand what they are seeing is limited. A BDSM scene might be joyous and light-revealing for its participants; they may know the difference between the props they use and the reality they are creating amongst themselves. But the viewer, perhaps a teenage boy frantically masturbating to the images he watches, is unlikely to be able to grasp the complexity and richness of what’s taking place. He doesn’t know the “safe word.” He’s not in a human transaction with the performers on the screen, who aren’t even aware of who he is. All he sees are the props — and I fear he will too easily misinterpret what it is that takes place before his eyes. The fact that in the filming of a scene the performers may be mutually fulfilled does not guarantee a healthy response in the viewer.
I care about sex workers, which is why I’m rethinking a lot of my views on decriminalization and censorship. I care about the humanity of everyone involved in pornography — and that means the pornographers as well as the actors, the consumers as well as their families and friends. And I’m working very hard, double time, to listen to the voices of those on the other side. As I’ve said here, I know that there’s often a huge gap between what other people see happen in an act (like a race between two rivals, or a BDSM scene between two lovers) and what those actually participating feel and experience. At the same time, I’m keenly aware that the problem of pornography is about much more than the well-being of the performers. It’s about the lessons learned by the viewers.
As every teacher knows, the student doesn’t always hear the lecture the way the professor intended it to be heard. When I was first teaching, I learned a valuable lesson: good teachers focus as much on the student’s reception as upon his or her own delivery. And as for teachers, so too for writers and artists and advertisers and pornographers. When we put something “out there”, whatever it is, we have an obligation not only to have it reflect our own deep values. We have at least some obligation to consider how it will be perceived. I do that everyday in my blogging and my teaching, though I am deeply imperfect; we must ask the same of those who give us the news, the commercial advertising, and the erotic stimuli for our fantasies.
But in the end, we can also admit that there will always be gap between what is felt and what is seen. I love my friend Mark. But if you see us 100 meters from the finish on the track, you would not see that love reflected in the fury etched onto our sweating faces.
I am in a dominant/submissive relationship with my boyfriend (he’s the submissive one). He looked at a lot of bdsm porn in his adolescence (more stories than images, but those too) and the main effect he feels it had on him was to reassure him that he was not alone in his strange desires. He was pretty easily able (he thinks) to sort out what was realistic or healthy from what was pure fantasy or would be crazy or bad in real life.
A lot of the videos from kink.com have segments at the end where the performers are shown after the shoot, feeling good, talking about what they liked and disliked in the scene, what worked for them and what didn’t. It might help with that need to be reassured that someone wasn’t being harmed.
I still can’t really figure out what I think of porn in general. I don’t use it very often. I do write a blog about what we do, but, although some of it might be erotic (for people who like the same stuff we do), it’s mostly about the emotions and complexities. BDSM, as you noted here, requires a lot of negotiation, communication, and caretaking (on both sides).
Well said.
But isn’t that true of anything we produce? Take art or poetry, for example. Is an artist beholden to what any particular viewer of his/her art thinks? Will not each viewer bring with them their own preconceptions, unique interpretations, blind spots, etc.? Is the same not true even of blog posts, or a million other things we produce on a daily basis? The way we dress, for example?
Yes and no, Amber. Obviously, we are not responsible when someone takes what we’ve done and misconstrues it. But producing art — or literature, or any creative product — is essentially didactic. It sends a message about how to live even when we don’t intend to send one. I’m not arguing for censorship, but I am arguing for using the “reasonable person” standard. What, we might ask ourselves, would a reasonable adult person conclude when they watched our video or sat in our classroom? Would they come away with an impression that violence against women is somehow acceptable? If so, how can we, the artists, take measures to make certain that playful consensual performance is at least less likely to be misconstrued?
The folks at Bang Bus seem to be the ones who need to hear this message, not folks producing authentic BDSM material.
I understand what you’re getting at, Hugo, and I think it’s a fine line… I think in some situations impact is certainly more important than intent, *but* I am VERY wary of shifting boundaries and responsibilities so that, say, I am responsible for another person’s actions. I am not. I am responsibly for myself. I cannot control another person’s actions. And I will not limit things that bring me joy, and harm no one, because someone else might see them an “misinterpret.”
Also, I think it’s a bit insulting and condescending to think that men who view porn are just mindless automatons who are “learning” from the porn and cannot think for themselves. Figleaf had written about this… and I believe you have, too. The myth of male weakness, didn’t you call it?
It is s fine line, and what we need are more conversations in which we distinguish between performance and reality. Like it or not, a great deal of porn is consumed by very young men on the cusp of adolescence; it seems unlikely that porn plays no part in shaping their sense of women and sexuality. Pornographers are not the scapegoats, but they need to be part of the conversation about what we can do differently.
The first thing to do differently (which I know a lot of pornographers *already* agree on?) Provide better, more comprehensive and accessible sex ed!
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Not exactly – wanting to win, which requires beating Mark, is not the same as wanting Mark to lose. “I want to win” means that Mark losing is the side effect, not the goal. That’s the difference between healthy competition and dominance issues.
Agreed, Amber, on a way to start.
Mythago, let me be more specific: I take no pleasure in watching someone lose. I take pleasure in watching me win. But in order for me to win, it requires Mark to lose.
I want Obama to win, and hope and pray (but do not yet know) that he will. But I will take no pleasure in seeing the disappointment on the faces of my conservative friends; I am not an “In Your FACE!” kinda guy. But I will take great satisfaction in seeing the faces of those who have worked so hard to elect him.
“In fact, we’re enjoying each other and our race enormously. We’re playing, even if it looks violent.”
Hugo,
I’ve been thinking a lot about this since adopting a puppy some months ago, who loves to wrestle quite roughly with other dogs. What she does is go into a “play bow” and then, when the other dogs respond positively, rough-house with them, pin them, etc. The bow basically means “This attacking, chasing you, jumping on you, and biting? It’s for fun. I won’t actually hurt you.”
She plays roughly with such energy that it took us a while to actually be able to determine whether she was fighting or playing.
“But what postures are adopted, and what roles are played, are not the factors which determine whether sex is “light-filled†or merely “hot.†What matters is consciousness — the awareness of the self and of the other person in relationship, even if that relationship is neither permanent or monogamous.”
Also, I totally agree with this.
Hugo, this reminds me very much of your caution about distinguishing between form and content in your series on sexual ethics not long ago. Maybe that framework helps shed some light on this issue?
Yes, I think it does indeed, Tom. Thanks for making the point that I ought to have made that more explicit.
I’m too prolific sometimes to remember what I said three months ago. Sheesh.
At least one complaint about TPoP use of scenes from Kink.com that I’ve read, although I havn’t seen the documanry, is that Kink.com is very careful to include interview with all the participants and especially the women in their videos talking about what they get from BDSM and the scenes they did and consent and so on. None of these were talked about or even shown in the documentary.
Something I’m wondering about is that yes, I can see your point about playing and who what is not intended to be destructive can look that way to the outside world, and I see the connection you make between competition and role play. However, in mainstream porn women always seem to be on the loosing side. I think the competitive analogy only works if there is an equal arena – women don’t get to act out their agressive impulses on men in porn in the same way you and your friend get to compete.
But I do get what you mean, I think a good example in main stream cinema would be the sex scenes in ‘Broke Back Mountain’ in which tenderness and equality are combined with very rough playing. It looks very different to the violence and bullying in mainstream heterosexual porn, there are two participants for a start.
Amber Rhea: I meant the vast majority of mainstream porn, sorry if that wasn’t clear.
“But producing art — or literature, or any creative product — is essentially didactic.”
Do you seriously believe this?
I think that not only is art not inherently didactic, typically the most didactic art fails miserably as art.
The most obviouslydidactic art fails miserably. But everything teaches — everything created communicates a message about how the creator sees the world and imagines it ought to be, even if he or she (playwright, pornographer, painter, professor) is unaware of what they’re doing.
But everything teaches — everything created communicates a message about how the creator sees the world and imagines it ought to be, even if he or she (playwright, pornographer, painter, professor) is unaware of what they’re doing.
Yeah, I think this is true, but then the question is: teaches what? If I make a piece of very obscure art, and the person looking at it gets a very different message than I intend, what do we think of that and me?
I remember once years ago I wrote a poem about BDSM that was intentionally kind of twisted/creepy/uncomfortable, and no one could figure out what it was about. I listened to a room full of people’s comments who didn’t know it was my poem, and they didn’t get much out of it at all other than the uncomfortable vibe, until one said “This is what abuse is like; some people stay with abusers because they’re exciting.” Suddenly everyone had a framework for understanding my poem, but it wasn’t at all the framework I’d intended. I was going for a kind of “slick Hollywood villain” sexiness, and instead people took from it not that it was sexy but that I was making some comment about abuse. Is that my “fault?” I suppose one could say that it was and perhaps the writing was just bad, but at the same time, I was intentionally ambiguous because that’s part of the fun of poetry.
Years later in a class I wrote another poem intended to satirize some of the feminisms I disagree with. I was trying to be fairly didactic, meaning people to get a message like “liberation can only come second to personal freedom.” (At the time, I was far more of an absolutist about that than I am now. And kind of a jerk about it.)
The satire was apparently poorly executed, because everyone took it to be my personal, very radically feminist, manifesto. They took the unhappiness I portrayed the character as having to mean that she was upset that women were still unequal to men, rather than what I’d intended, which was to demonstrate alienation that comes from putting the good of the group first.
Some people, if I remember right, found it inspiring. And so they finished their comments on the poem and opened it up to me to comment and I was, you know, “no, no, NO! I’m trying to say that person’s misguided!” And they’re all staring at me like “Then why’d you put this on this piece of paper?”
And yeah, part of the reason that poem utterly failed was that it was, indeed, one of my more poorly written poems. Failure as art, as the previous comments say.
But while I’m responsible for my bad writing, yes, am I really responsible if someone reads something of mine and “learns” the exact opposite of what I intend?
Absolutely not – at least, that’s my view. To me, anything else blurs boundaries and responsibilities in a way that makes me EXTREMELY uncomfortable. It’s the type of thing that lets an abuser say “porn made me do it” (or “the devil made me do it” or “my bad childhood made me do it”) rather than having to accept the full blame him/herself.
Interesting about the race, Hugo. I often think such things about various mainstream, acceptable behavior, and athletics is one area. Also, those folks yelling on the stock market floor–they scream like maniacs; they look irrational and possibly insane. They aren’t–they are working. But I wouldn’t work at a job where I had to scream and yell, I just wouldn’t. I also would never race anyone (as you blithely admit you do, and enjoy) or wrestle anyone. I would never play Dungeons and Dragons. I would never jump out of an airplane. I have never sat through a whole episode of CSI, and have no plans to do so.
The difference is, I don’t assume my aesthetic values are the same as everyone else’s. I assume people are getting something out of it or they would not do it. Why is porn or BDSM any different?
The most obviously didactic art fails miserably.
I don’t buy that at all. Plato’s dialogues have a high artistic value, so does De Rerum Natura, and yet all are thoroughly didactic.
Thanks, Amber — that’s pretty much how I feel about it. Heck, I value some things as art that I think really do send horrible messages, precisely because I can enjoy the story or appreciate the work while vehemently disagreeing with the message. I think we do people a real disservice when we strive for a world where all its art — OR ALL ITS MEDIA — are not problematic.
Just as an aside: any teenager who hasn’t learned from 13+ years of life, and 8+ years of the academic study of human history, that the human species has huge issues with power, freedom, and equality, and that those problems seep into every area of our lives, most definitely including our sexuality, seems to me a perfect example of John Milton’s …fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race….”