Obsessing about my place in Google once again I found a rather long winded feminist essay about women’s porn, entitled: Rape Culture: Renegotiating Sexual Subjectivity on Porn Sites for Women. The piece takes a rather large philosophical stick to Sssh.com, which is an adult site for women that’s been around for roughly the same time as For The Girls. It does this in an attempt to make a general point about porn for women, which is that it somehow upholds the patriarchal “rape culture.”
Unfortunately the author, Caroline Godart, does not bother to define what “rape culture” actually is so I was confused from the very beginning about what point is being made. I can only assume that it’s the same ol’ same ol’ – that women’s erotica, in the form of adult sites like Sssh.com and FTG, reinforces gender roles and stereotypes. At least, I think that’s what she’s saying, although the piece is so full of academic-sounding references to Foucault, the Panopticon, the Lacanian Symbolic order, “haptic space” and other obscurities that I started to glaze over a little. I may call myself a feminist but that doesn’t mean I’ve done any study or serious reading on the topic, and this means I get kind of bored with extensive critical academic discussions about feminist theory.
Yes, I’m a philistine. What do you expect from an evil pornographer?
In any case, what did get my attention was the bizarre argument the author uses to conclude that Sssh.com reinforces “rape culture.” She says that because Sssh.com does not depict any rape fantasies, which many women have, it’s essentially not empowering women to fight against patriarchy and thus helps to perpetuate rape. So, no rape on the site equals rape.
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I can almost see the logic here… but then it eludes me. Especially when the author is using descriptions like these:
Far from being traitors to their own kind, women who indulge in rape fantasies disguise themselves and poly-identify; they transform and appropriate a prototypical narrative that inherently dismisses the possibility for them to access power, especially in order to reach sexual satisfaction. They enable the fantasizing subject to use an oppressive culture over which she has no agency, by a clandestine appropriation of cultural “products,” i.e. the omnipresence of rape.
Hmmm. But of course. It’s far more complicated than I thought.
My understanding of the idea comes from Nancy Friday’s original research into women’s sex fantasies. In My Secret Garden (1975), she first discovered the prevalence of rape fantasies among the women she interviewed and concluded that they were primarily about women escaping sexual guilt by having pleasure forced upon them. In Women On Top (1991) she found that rape fantasies had actually declined among the younger generation because the guilt about sex was not nearly as prevalent.
In any case, in pondering the rather confusing idea that no rape = rape I found myself wanting to defend Sssh.com and, by association, FTG. While I don’t mind a good philosophical feminist argument about what constitutes porn for women and what it means for feminism, I’d like to at least be able to understand what the hell the critics are on about.
How do you depict heterosexual sex in a feminist way? That’s the big question here folks. Because for some feminists, any depiction of hetero sex is about men oppressing women. They can only see a negative power exchange and patriarchy in the act of penetration – this may be the “rape culture” the author speaks about.
But an awful lot of women don’t buy that. It’s why you get so many young chicks disavowing that they’re a feminist. I’ve argued before that women shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed of their fantasies or desires if they are “stereotypical” or sexist… what gets you off may be seriously politically incorrect, but it does the trick, giddy up.
So who is Caroline Godart to applaud rape fantasies but reject the “normative” depiction of hetero sex? If porn’s intent is primarily to arouse, then you need to consider that fact when making a critical judgement of what’s being depicted.
I also want people to remember that, in the end, it’s just a porn site. That means it essentially exists to make money. In doing so, a site like Sssh.com aims itself at as broad a market as possible and tries to make the majority of surfers happy. Usually that means catering to middle class women who are keen to indulge in a little porn without all the offensive crap. They also want to feel comfortable with their sexuality and not alienated or threatened. This means that you’re probably not going to find cutting edge sexual representations on that kind of site.
I like to think that FTG has a strong feminist ethic and we do feature a range of perspectives and ideas within the site. At the same time, we still rely mainly on the stuff that others brand as “stereotypical” because that’s what our members (and we the site owners) want to see.
I like to think we could feature a rape fantasy within our Wicked Ways (letters) section at some time in the future although that would depend on someone actually submitting one. I acknowledge that women do have rape fantasies and that they should be expressed. But even making sure it’s in context may cause problems. We have to deal with our credit card processor who occasionally does a scan of our content and orders us to change certain words or content if it is deemed offensive. Thus, I once had to change an article discussing rape so that the “r word” became “sexual assault.”
As with a great many things, commercial factors do come into play and they do make a difference to the final product. I’m well aware that I straddle a line between my feminist philosophy and my desire to make a living from porn. No doubt I could sit down and produce a adult site that ticked all the boxes when it comes to critical feminism but I’m not sure it would be very sexy, or that it would make much money.
I agree with much of what you say here. One thing about the “rape fantasy” issue is that the phrasing really bother me, and is indicative of our cultural misunderstanding of rape. Rape is an act of violence, where sex is the weapon. It is the absolute absence of consent. If a woman has what we call a “rape fantasy”, she desires it-rape fantasy for women is an oxymoron. A woman can’t desire rape because as soon as it’s desired, it’s no longer rape. So that phrasing just has to go. It’s a dominance fantasy that isn’t the same as BDSM. The fact that it’s called a “rape fantasy” is proof that it’s ultimately designed for men, because for the male viewer, it is a rape fantasy, and something I find very problematic.
Also…
No doubt I could sit down and produce a adult site that ticked all the boxes when it comes to critical feminism but I’m not sure it would be very sexy, or that it would make much money.
I’m not so sure about this…it might not at first, but desires come from what already exists (i.e. without knowing that soda exists or what it is like, you don’t really crave it), and more about what exists in proliferation, so without a wide exposure of non-sexist porn in sex culture, we really have no way of knowing whether such porn would make money. And with greater exposure, people may find they like it more.
I think that we are very conditioned by tropes of what’s “sexy” and reproducing the typical tropes in porn limits sexuality rather than expands it, and I think this is especially true with regards to women. Women clearly crave sexual material, and what we’ve been given for so long was very male-centric. Obviously this has been changing, and FTG is part of that, but porn is still overwhelmingly male-centered. I think this limits male sexual desire too by being given the same-old thing and always in terms of their expectations. It means that what is considered erotic is limited for them too. Just because porn is non-sexist doesn’t mean that it’s only “for” women…anyway, the vast majority of porn out there is for men and nearly all free porn online is for men too. When that’s all we’ve been exposed to, and we (women) like sexual material, so I think our desires too have been shaped by the already existing tropes and assumptions in porn, just like men are.
But without more exposure of non-sexist material in mainstream contexts, people probably won’t seek it out and then it’s doomed to not be profitable. I don’t think anyone woke up and said “I’d love to cum on a bleach-blond woman’s face”…and I never thought I’d like gay male porn until I actually watched it and it’s pretty great. Then I found out a lot of women like it because it eroticizes the male body (which isn’t done in mainstream porn) without having to deal with the idealized porny women. I’d have to agree. Another thing I discovered accidentally that I like is guy/girl strap-on sex, for several reasons, including male vulnerability and female control. Both experiences were accidental, and I would have never thought of it otherwise.
I apologize I’m soapboxing on your blog, but I am so passionate about how to influence the content of mainstream porn. I don’t think it as a medium is “bad” but it’s content at present is so problematic, and while it will never be 100% non-sexist, a different landscape of representations can make what we currently think of as “sexist” less so since they become just one of many sexual representations available. But the immediate profitability of certain porn isn’t a reason to not pursue it for ethical reasons…and I have to think doing women’s/feminist porn has to be a mixture of profit and ethics.
I also like to think that I am both a theory junkie, an ardent feminist, porn-industry critical, and a fan of non-sexist sexual material and I think they’re absolutely compatible!
My impression is this:
If male centric pornography revolves around the pursuits of men on what is thought to be attractive and desirable of their female counterparts, often incorporating domination and bordering (sometimes even being) oppression, than I would assume, the only counterbalance is to do the same with men.
An interesting experiment is to see what kind of pornography properly objectifies men in a pleasurable way for women. At the same time, a wonder is as to what is the capacity that women have for dominating men in order to achieve sexual pleasure.
Often times in male centric pornography, women especially have to make excessive sounds as they are “pleasured” by men, often allowing multiple orifices to male initiated pleasure (anally, vaginally and orally).
I wonder what would be the reaction of women desiring that men be the receivers of female initiated pleasure (anally, penilly-sp? and orally.
To have a woman as the stoic initiator of pleasure upon a man–to me–is something rare and unseen in most adult material.
Usually adult non-BDSM heterosexual film has the habit of portraying overly stoic men perpetrating sex upon overly emotional women who moan and whine for more male initiated pleasure.
If anyone wants balance, I’d think a new tradition of the opposite has to be made, i.e. overly stoic women perpetrating sex upon overly emotional men who moan and whine for more female initiated pleasure.
On the note of rape, because quite often society mores allow men and women to perpetuate physical inequality, women tend to easily be the victims of males.
I wonder about the instances of stronger, larger, or aggressive women preying upon men who are weaker, smaller or submissive. People say there are physiological differences that make it “impossible,” but where are the studies of victimized males that support this?
Rape fantasy IS an oxymoron… and one that’s used to try to rationalize women’s fantasies of being pleasured sans the “guilt” of actually consenting… since as we all know, any woman who actually likes sex is a slut of the rankest degree (eyes rolling heavily).
For anybody who hasn’t figured this out already, let me explain it: When a woman is told, taught, shown, indoctrinated, etc. all her life that sex is something to which she has no right (“good girls don’t”… “there are two kinds of girls – those you screw and those you marry” – with the clear delineation that the twain never meet), then OF COURSE for a woman to express any kind of sexual desire, she must therefore couch it in a way that relieves herself of the guilt of desire and/or consent – she must be”forced” to enjoy sex… which she does… and can still keep her “Good Girl” label. This is the origin, purpose and rationale for the so-called rape fantasy. What it really amounts to is a woman’s attempt in a sexist and female-negative society, culture, country etc. to give herself permission to yes, experience orgasm through sexual fantasy… thus on that front, the so-called rape fantasy IS about empowerment – a woman giving herself permission, but in a screwy backhanded way….
I despise the term “rape culture” for this same reason; I don’t envision vast hordes of males running rampant through the streets looking for women to rape (not that that doesn’t happen, unfortunately – I’m just saying it usually doesn’t on an average American day). I also see the whole notion of men “keeping women down” as patently ridiculous; oh, they can try… and surely do… but really… are we as women so utterly incapable of playing with the big boys that we have to attribute our difficulties to some boogey-man (emphasizing the MAN part, of course). Come on, women; we’re the stronger of the genders and you know it! If it weren’t for women, guys would still be eating raw rats and hanging out in dank, dark caves, shitting in the corners until they filled up that cave at which point they’d just move to another; ever seen a man who’d rather wash a dish than eat off a paper towel?! Yeah, me, neither. (And yes, I admit that was a stereotype….)
My point is… those feminists like the lady mentioned above (and yes, lady is an assumption on my part) always put me in mind of the old debate ploy – if you can’t win on the facts, throw so much bullshit at ’em you confuse the hell out of ’em!
As for the so-called rape-fantasy, it’s impossible for a woman to have a rape fantasy; she may very well have a fantasy of being coerced or forced to enjoy sex… but the power of the fantasy itself is ALWAYS within her; she can start, stop, modify, repeat, etc. whatever she likes as many times as she wants… change the “assailant” to be anybody she wants… and feel nothing but satisfaction afterward. Rape is the exact opposite; it’s a sexual assault forced on a woman WHETHER SHE DESIRES IT OR NOT… completely taking her choice out of the question… she rarely if ever, has any choice of who her assailant is… and afterward, satisfaction is the very last thing she’d ever feel!
So, you wanna call it something… this fantasy of a woman being forced to enjoy sex by a studly assailant? Call it what it really is – the “I-wanted-it-but-couldn’t say-I-did- ’cause-doing-so-would-brand-me-a-slut” fantasy… which clearly shows how pathetic it is that women are denied/allow themselves to be denied (nobody can make you fell inferior without your permission, remember?) the right of all human beings to be free, fully-realized and ethically-inclined sexual beings.
Now that said, I recognize there are certain areas of the world where a woman can be killed for expressing any hint of sexuality… and I’m not talking about them; what I’m talking about is those of us who lived in supposedly enlightened societies… and yet allow ourselves to be shackled in regard to our sexuality. To quote a favorite line of mine from an old Eagles’ song – “Oftentimes it happens that we live out lives in chains and we never even know we have the key….” The key of which I’m speaking right now is the doing away with of both terms “rape-fantasy” and “rape culture” and speak the truth… the plain unvarnished truth….
I’m a woman… and I have every right to autonomy over my body (where it causes no harm to another – note: this is my personal POV here), every right to a free, responsible and ethically-inclined exercise of my sexuality and the determination to defend those rights from all who think they have the right to curtail or dictate them…. whether male, female or Venutian.
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