Pornography and the Sensitive New Age Guy

It was sort of a funny place to find myself, actually. I mean, not that many years ago I was the sort who was at home at all-women gatherings and who considered any group in which men much outnumbered women vaguely “oppressive.” But there I was at the California Men’s Gathering, an eclectic get-together of people who affiliate with the national men’s movement—sometimes also called feminist, anti-sexist or “changing” men. CMGs, as insiders call the gatherings, are held two times a year, in late spring and early fall, and while the spring CMG is a men-only event, each fall the Gathering is also host to a few women. In my earlier history, I would not have been caught dead anywhere, much less in a group of mostly men, presenting a pro-pornography workshop—but that’s exactly why I went to the thirteenth CMG.

The theme of the Gathering was “Unmasking Ourselves,” and so my pro-porn stance and my perspective—that of a “post-feminist” trying to deal with the issues of all people as sensitively as I was once prepared to deal only with the issues of women—seemed altogether appropriate. As a sex educator, sex-industry insider and unrepentant porn aficionada, I was at the Gathering prepared to come out and discuss it all with a group of men who are encouraged to feel, both within the men’s movement and by their feminist allies, conflicted and guilty if they enjoy porn at all.

The men’s movement has several factions. All seem to share the perspective that traditional gender roles have hurt men as well as women.

This is especially true of those affiliating with the Father’s Movement. These men feel angry and ripped off by what they perceive as society’s anti-male, chivalrous-toward-women policies, especially those that leave men emotionally and financially decimated upon divorce—she gets the kids and he pays support. That child custody almost automatically goes to the mother helps shore up the social image that fathers are less important as parents, and until recently there’s been little support for the man whose family breakup breaks his heart.

Many also note that Western, especially American, culture’s emphasis on masculine “virtues” like toughness and the work ethic causes stress-related ailments that cut short the lives of those men who adhere to them (if one of the true tools of machismo—a car, gun or knife—doesn’t take them out while they’re young).

Others in the men’s movement are followers of poet and male guru Robert Bly, who laments the traditional separation of men from one another. Estranged from intimate relationships with their fathers (because Dad’s a slave to the aforementioned work ethic), guys are left emotionally rootless and obliged to get most of their validation from women. Men then tend to shape themselves according to women’s expectations, and Bly argues that the civilized man, who is acceptable to women, is not being true to himself as a man. To remedy this, a man must connect with other men for support, and in their company, rediscover the “wild man” who dwells within even lifelong mama’s boys.

And of course there are the pro-feminist men, whose politics are based on the feminist analyses of the women’s movement. Some (à la Bly’s critique) are trying to be the kind of men that feminists want to relate to. Others embrace feminism as a theory that helps explain, and hopefully provides the tools to dismantle, homophobia. Still others simply believe that the current power imbalance between men and women is wrong. Sort of the Fellow’s Auxiliary of the feminist movement, they are banding together to redress the grievances that have kept men and women from relating happily.

Not that all the men at the Gathering are concerned chiefly with their relationships with women. Over half the men at the CMG are gay or bisexual, many of whose primary interest is in building a genuine men’s movement, exploring issues of maleness on a relational scale and beyond. Some of these guys were the sissy kids we went to grammar school with, the ones who were later labeled faggots. Their critique of gender roles is very personalized, springing from having been castigated as too feminine. Now a few have transmogrified splendidly from faggots to faeries—Radical Faeries, that is, the progressive version of the drag queen, who don’t wear skirts and chiffon scarves and glitter so much because women do as because, really, why shouldn’t everybody wear everything ? They flamboyantly tweak the prevailing notions about gender roles that caused them such strife growing up.

As time ticked by at the four day CMG, more skirts and scarves came out—first a few, hesitantly, and then a few more bright colors and flows of chiffon dotted the camp. Some men came to see them not as the trappings of effeminacy but as play—they remembered the since-shamed fun of boyhood dress-up, when you could play any kind of game, not just the boy-appropriate ones, with winners and losers, whose function was to prepare you to grow up to be “A Man”…not a human.

More than anything, I think, the men’s movement is about support. The “stiff upper lip” ethic of traditional masculinity is cast aside, and men who have subscribed to it (as well as those who never stood a chance of fitting in) recognize how little permission it gave them to just be.

So we all came together to cast aside our masks. I found almost at once that it was a marvelously comfortable environment. CMGers are extraordinary men, for the most part emotionally open and truly concerned with the sometimes volatile issues surrounding gender and anti-sexism. I walked around the camp sometimes hyper-aware that I was a woman among men—but remarkably, entirely comfortable—and sometimes not aware of gender difference at all. My friend and colleague David Steinberg was there to present the pornography workshop with me. David, in addition to being a longtime activist in the men’s movement, is also interested in the ideological issues surrounding pornography and erotic material (as well as being interested in the stuff itself): He edited Erotic By Nature, a marvelously creative and sexy compendium that challenges the formulaic, often dull version of pornography that our sex-remedial culture churns out. Just as I know (and have strong opinions about) porn issues from a feminist perspective, David is closely familiar with the porn-related arguments and antipathies of feminist men. We designed our workshop, “Feminism, Pornography and Prostitution: Sharing the Same Bed,” to allow our audience of feminist men to look at their feelings about the sex industry from as safe, honest and nonjudgmental a place as possible. We wanted it strong on heart and low on hype.

This was an especially important perspective for us to take at the Men’s Gathering, for we knew we would have a nemesis there. John Stoltenberg, longtime associate of Andrea Dworkin and founder of Men Against Pornography, had been invited to the CMG to be the keynote speaker. His recent book, Refusing To Be a Man, inspires some feminist men and alarms others with what they perceive as his hatred of maleness, which he seems to internalize as well as project onto others. “Nonjudgmental” is not a description that fits Stoltenberg, especially as regards his views on pornography. I felt very strongly that Stoltenberg’s perspective, presented unchallenged to a group of men whose ideological base gives them no support for a positive view of sex work, would result in a lot of well-meaning converts to the antiporn cause—and would increase the feelings of conflict in those who do get an occasional hard-on from dirty books or movies. The common feminist line about such things, of course, is that all of it—book, movie and erection—is part of the social basis of the oppression of women. The guy who gets a bone from the “objectification” of women is a rapist waiting to happen. (Anti-pornography feminism fails to report what will become of the women who find such things a turn-on.)

Feminists are not across-the-board anti-porn; indeed, neither is feminism. The women’s movement that I was attracted to as a rebellious teen got my attention as much for its promises that it would support my right to do what I liked with my body (and that definitely included my clit, cunt and brain, thank you very much) as for championing my right to equal pay for equal work. These days my strap-on dildo is as much a part of my politics as my right to make up my own mind about any given issue, and I say if porn gets me hot and wet and frisky, what’s antifeminist about that?

Unfortunately, the exciting politics that promised me sexual freedom twenty-five years ago have veered toward dogma, and many feminists, male as well as female, have shown themselves to be little more than Calvinists where sex is concerned. Stoltenberg, as it turns out, fits that mold exactly: somber, even dour, most of the time; he sublimates his hormones into fiery preaching when he gets warmed up.

Stoltenberg presented his workshop, “What Makes Pornography ‘Sexy’?” before ours, so I had the opportunity to check out his perspective and get a sense of the issues people might bring to our discussion. His formula was simple. He randomly picked several men (no women) and gave each of them a preselected picture of a nude woman, provocatively posed. He had chosen images from Hustler, Penthouse and Playboy, and the subjects were particularly contorted in ways only the bodies of the young, lithe, supple and incidentally photogenic can be. The bodies of his recruited male “volunteers” were not all so in-tone. The men were then instructed to assume the positions of the women in the pictures. The resultant attempts lacked the eroticism of the originals, I’m afraid, but then they also owed more to the energy of being embarrassed in front of a fifth-grade Phys-Ed class than to any pornography, professionally produced or amateur, I’ve ever seen. As each man in turn struggled to give us a pussy shot, the rest of the group directed him in how to place his body so he’d most resemble the model: “Chin up. Close your eyes a little. Arch your back. C’mon, spread ’em!” Each was essentially asked to present himself sexually to a male crowd—and as a woman, yet! Discomfort in the room was thick as the men struggled with their bodies, their body image, their homophobia and their shame at presenting themselves as female.

Then each of our centerfolds was asked to tell the group how it felt to assume a porn pose. Predictably, most of them responded that it had been humiliating. A couple wailed, like violated ingenues, that they’d felt like “pieces of meat!” And this, of course, was to be the deep message of the workshop—that posing for porn was humiliating and dehumanizing.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait for my workshop to put in my two cents’ worth. Stoltenberg then asked each participant to share his or her feelings about how it had felt to witness the transformation of our fellows from sensitive new-age guys to split beavers. Again, predictably, nobody had felt very good about it, except for one brilliantly ingenuous gay man who thought we were all being much too serious; it had been kind of fun, like dress-up. Of course, playful genderbending was not the point Stoltenberg was trying to make.

When it was my turn to speak, I was buzzing with adrenaline. I said that, first, I felt angry that only men had been allowed to participate in the exercise, and then, “Of course, it’s always painful and infuriating to see people being nonconsensually manipulated into humiliating themselves to make someone else’s point—especially when they’re being asked to assume the trappings of a sexual orientation or behavior that’s not their own.” My point was that posing for porn and acting in dirty movies are primarily sexually exhibitionistic behaviors that are not for everyone; asking a non-exhibitionist to strip or pose might certainly leave them feeling humiliated, but the exhibitionist would probably be turned on.

Stoltenberg led his audience into assuming that erotic models feel the same uncomfortable emotions his shanghaied assistants felt—this is like showing a straight man what it’s like to be gay by asking him to imagine a prison rape. That, of course, is the kind of tactic right-wingers use all the time. Because it’s a less common ploy outside fundamentalist Christian churches, Stoltenberg’s audiences don’t always understand that he is using shit to describe roses…and that they are being royally manipulated. Further, this logic leads them to believe that the voyeur—the natural partner of the exhibitionist—is participating in the humiliation of the model, not her appreciation. Since most of us have a touch of the voyeur in our erotic makeup, and since our sex-negative culture shames this impulse (although it is encouraged everywhere, from MTV to Hanes stockings billboards), in the end, Stoltenberg’s workshop makes most participants feel just as bad about themselves as they now do about pornography.

While many in the circle tried to address the way in which they instinctively knew their sexuality was under attack (“I enjoy erotica,” “I think nudity is beautiful and natural”), they seemed to be struggling to phrase things in a politically correct enough way that others in the group wouldn’t actually suspect they enjoyed turning to a Playboy (or Blueboy) centerfold once in a while to dream about (or jack off to) the loveliness they saw there. I figured that, with all the stories that the anti-porn activists tell about Linda Lovelace making her movies at gunpoint, it would help folks to hear that some models and porn stars actually like their work.

But Stoltenberg’s next question illustrated our true schizophrenia: “What did you see in those pictures? What did I show you pictures of?”

I still don’t know whether I heard the participants’ ideas of the politic thing to say or if I got the true feelings of the sensitive new-age men and women who were assembled there. Their answers suggested that people hadn’t been looking at women but at things. “Body parts,” said one man, even though the pictures had been of whole bodies. “Slaves!” spat one woman in a voice that said she thought a slave was a contemptible thing to be. “Shells without souls.” “No heart. No personality.” “Roadkill!” (This from the guy who’d found the exercise most upsetting and humiliating.)

I know porn is a stretch for a lot of people, but roadkill? No wonder anti-pornography folks try to convince us we’re dehumanizing the people in the pictures—they’ve dehumanized them already. What do the women whose images constitute much American porn have to do to win back their personhood from these critics? Don pink gingham dresses with Peter Pan collars and teach Sunday school? Don Birkenstocks and teach radical lesbian separatism? Only the ones who embrace the victim role, like Linda “He-Had-To-Put-A-Gun-To-My-Head-To-Get-Me-To-Fuck-That-Dog” Lovelace, are allowed to become human again in the eyes of the anti-porn crusaders—and, apparently, to the masses who are ambivalent about the way explicit sexual images make them feel. I’d much rather put naked pictures of myself into the hands of guys who jack off on my paper tits and dream about what kind of noises I make when I come than give them to people who’ll say, “She is an exploited victim with no soul of her own.” I mean, who’s throwing around demeaning concepts here? Better to have completely anonymous sex with a person I’ll never meet than be dehumanized and lobotomized at the service of someone else’s politics.

So, off with the mask. It was time to come out, to try to get through to the roomful of nice people whose good sense had been tied in knots by everything from their upbringing to the manipulations of John Stoltenberg. I told them that, in spite of the pains taken to make the CMG a safe space for everyone, I didn’t feel safe in that room then, because I had in fact done modeling and a movie or two, and I was hearing people make assumptions about erotic entertainers that were hard not to take personally. Please, I said, don’t assume you know what someone else’s experience has been just because you can’t imagine liking to do it yourself. Please don’t require that all people be one certain “politically correct” way. Please don’t assume I can’t make my own decisions, that my exhibitionism somehow makes me a victim (or, I might have added, that it makes me want to be exhibitionistic all the time, with everyone). Don’t tell me I don’t have a soul.

Stoltenberg remained impassive throughout, and it was impossible to guess what was going through his mind. Some people seemed affected. Others had already determined which side they were on, and looked through me as if my disclosure had made me seem printed on the magazine pages they’d taken as their enemy.

After seeing a roomful of people driven through John Stoltenberg’s hoops, it seemed even more important that our pro-pornography workshop be permissive and honest, devoid of bullshit. We had no fancy tricks, no exercises, no pictures to pass around. We were simply going to facilitate a discussion in which men and women could feel safe telling their truths about pornography and the sex industry.

Twenty people gathered in a circle with us. David and I began by introducing ourselves and talking about our relationships to pornography and commodified sex, both as consumers and producers (here he talked about editing Erotic By Nature, I about the somewhat more traditional sex work I’ve done). Of course, it’s not seen as traditional at all for a woman to consume porn, in spite of the fact that the video revolution has enabled women and couples to view more pornography than ever before.

I very deliberately shared the fact that I was once as anti-porn as Stoltenberg, in order to show that no one’s perspective on this difficult issue is cast in stone. I had for years sniffed that porn “insulted either my politics, my intelligence or my sense of the erotic”—some, of course, insulted all three. Those judgments came from trying to take my politics to bed with me, like all good dykes were supposed to do back then; from expecting uniformly intelligent work from an industry laboring under the twin handicaps of repression and the profit motive; and from viewing work produced almost exclusively by men, whose assumption was that it would be viewed, in turn, largely by men.

Also, I’d seen about three pornographic movies in my life—some film critic! Actually, I haven’t entirely divested myself of those criticisms today. But two things have changed: First, I no longer expect perfection now from a harassed and obviously very imperfect art form, and second, I’ve gotten in touch with how porn pushed my buttons and made me defensive about my own sexuality. I studied sexology, I watched a lot of porn, and my judgments about my own erotic impulses and those of other people—and, not incidentally, their portrayal in porn—began to melt away. Porn let me come to terms with what I was uncomfortable about. Watching a lot of it introduced me to the best-quality stuff. And an amazing thing happened to my politically correct uptightness—it turned into wet panties and multiple orgasms. I discovered the purpose of porn: to produce and enhance sexual feeling. Deconstructing it makes for interesting mental masturbation, but it can’t hold a candle to the old-fashioned kind.

The next discovery couldn’t have been made without the first—porn wasn’t only sexy to watch or read, it was sexy to produce. Whether writing, modeling or having sex in front of a camera, making porn put me in touch with my exhibitionistic self much more clearly than theater or public speaking ever did! Seeing my sexuality captured on videotape was the kind of leap in sexual development that having my first orgasm or tasting my first pussy had been. It gave me a whole new sense of myself as a sexually powerful being.

I don’t want to deny the experiences of the women and men (doubtless more of the former) who have felt bad about, or exploited in, their work in porn. Porn is an unregulated industry (unless you count the RICO laws)—no nice union official to keep things fair, nothing to stand in the way of profits to be made. But exploitive conditions have been historically seen in all sorts of businesses, and the response, however outraged, is rarely to do away with the business! What might attract “nice” people into pornography production in a society that is even willing to set aside its reverence for freedom of expression to see it stamped out? Porn is not a job that everyone is cut out for. It’s not the only such job in the world…only the one for which you’re most likely to hear that no one is suited.

Another argument made by the anti-porn folks is that commodified sex produces alienation in not only the providers—the prostitutes, porn actors, peep-show girls and boys, models and masseuses—but in their clients and customers as well. Of course it does, if you confuse porn with partnered sex and prostitution with a love affair. Prostitutes provide specific services for a fee. Satisfied customers have reasonably good negotiation skills (so they stand a chance of getting precisely what they want) and a good attitude about attaining their thrill through a business exchange. Customers who find prostitution alienating ought to be on the lookout for an appropriate relationship, while prostitutes who don’t like their work ought to consider another profession.

As for porn, it does not document sex as it should be had, or even the way porn stars have it on their days off. (The one exception to this statement I can think of is the new wave of “amateur” porn, but even there a star system is beginning to emerge and bodies must meet some sort of standard of “attractiveness” before a video is released.) People who complain that porn doesn’t portray people who look like them, having sex the way they do, are right! Of course, the number of these folks willing to put themselves on the line and invite cameras into the boudoir is far smaller than the number of complaining voices. The pornography industry needs more diversity, less restriction—and besides, the real function of porn is not to document real life but to illustrate or jump-start fantasy. Here, too, more variety is better, but it’s pro-pornography voices—the consumers—who will effect change in the relatively narrow focus of most commercial porn. They ain’t gonna change a thing for you if you don’t intend to buy it in the first place.

Furthermore, I think alienation in a sex-work context can be positive. The person who feels it should know that her or his needs are not being sufficiently met; it’s an emotional alarm bell. Once we realize that we want more than pictures on a page, we are readying ourselves to find out what we do want—and to begin to seek it out. The porn industry serves few as a substitute for real relationships or even real sex (whatever those things might be), but for most consumers, it’s either a supplement or simply a form of entertainment.

It seemed especially important to acknowledge the persistent sex-industry myths: that sex workers are victims, while consumers are victimizers or pathetic, unattractive men. The reality is in fact so broad as to make these images into caricatures, though of course some victimization does go on, and a minority of clients are men who can’t find partners elsewhere. A much more important point, though, is the diversity of sex workers and their patrons, especially for men whose self image has been affected by accusations that if they occasionally consume porn or see a prostitute, they’re turning themselves into losers or, worse, oppressors.

The most pressing point for me to get across, though, is rarely part of the “porn wars” discussion. Using pornography, whether as entertainment, enhancement or substitute, is above all a way of acknowledging desire. It’s a way of thinking about sex, a means of asserting to oneself that sex is good—or, if that’s going too far, that one wants it anyway. People read or watch porn for the same reasons they read poetry or philosophy—to enhance a way of looking at the world. And I think a crucial question to ask the anti-pornography partisans is whether, in fact, they honor desire. If they answered honestly, I bet we’d learn that many do not.

Not all kinds of desire, anyway.

The men (and the one other woman) who formed a circle for our workshop had a lot to say. Their honesty exceeded my expectations. They were gay, bi and heterosexual; most had used porn, some had patronized prostitutes, and all seemed to have strong feelings on the subject—if only of confusion. A few were there to express their anger at Stoltenberg’s manipulations and the antiporn cause in general, but most kept their remarks away from politics. And most went right past porn into their feelings about sex.

More than anything, we talked about desire and confusion. Men had used porn as adolescents, both to assuage curiosity about sex and to dream about the day when they would have a partner. They had used it between relationships, to tide them over. More than one said that, far from losing themselves in fantasies of anonymity, they usually imagined a past or current lover in the role of the woman (or man) in the picture or on the screen. They had used it during relationships, often with feelings of guilt, usually hiding it from their partners. Using pornography was for them a way of wanting things more often than a way of avoiding things, though a few acknowledged that they’d used porn instead of forming relationships. Many men associated pornography with emotional pain precisely because they had used it as a substitute, and what it brought up for them was what was lacking in their lives.

Men who use porn because they’re not getting enough sex can become embittered, and the same can be true of women, although in this culture women are more likely to be using romances the way men use porn. Using porn may be about wanting it, but porn itself is about getting it—to paraphrase the phone sex ads, “what you want, the way you want it, when you want it.” Who really gets enough of either pleasure or love? Who ever fully outgrows the fantasy that someday s/he’ll have everything s/he ever wanted? It’s not really so surprising that a common reaction to porn is anger or sadness that the real people in one’s life don’t behave that way—the underside of desire. Still, some men in the circle honored pornography and/or prostitutes for being there for them when no one else was: “water in the desert,” as one put it. I’ve heard some women express disapproval that men would want to consume pornographic images, and that men would want variety in sex or partners or even think about such things. Being down on another’s desire (even a partner’s) gets us nowhere, and men often contribute to the miscommunication by failing to understand how differently most women are raised with regard to sex. Feminism often finds fault in men, while the older forces of social misogyny have for years been blaming women for their “prudishness.” Neither perspective helps facilitate the understanding and acceptance that are the sexes’ only hope for cleaning up the mess.

Ironically, I think a lot of women mistrust and feel vulnerable about porn because they perceive it as a rival. Men’s fear of their partners’ responses often makes them keep their interest hidden, and the secrecy feeds their sense of guilt—and their partners’ paranoia. After the second or third man in the workshop talked about feeling bad about using porn while they had a lover, I told them what my lover and I do: We share it. We watch it together and masturbate or make love; we watch it while apart and share stuff we like with one another. We learn more about each other’s turn-ons, get new ideas, get sparked into really hot sex; we use it to strengthen our bond. That’s a far cry from hiding it and sneaking away to enjoy it. One of the most important gifts of feminism has been to expose all the lies we’re told about how the sexes feel and behave; why perpetuate this sex difference by naming pornography a male evil? The least we can do is turn it into an evil that both sexes can share!

Women might, in fact, be surprised by the range of things their partners like about porn. One married man at the workshop shared that he had recently acquired a video featuring our own local sex goddess, Nina Hartley. Did he go for the sucking and fucking? Did it inspire infidelitous dreams? No, he liked the most how obvious it was that Nina loved sex. The activities didn’t get him off so much as the enthusiasm. Another man confessed that he had a hard time finding videos that were romantic enough. Like discovering the existence of lesbians whose favorite meat is nasty gay male porn, telling the truth about our relationship to porn can uncover little surprises.

One young man had negative things to say about porn because he was a recently diagnosed “sex addict.” His clinician had helped him come to the conclusion that he masturbated too much, and that masturbation was keeping him from finding a permanent relationship. Another man spoke up on behalf of not seeking a permanent relationship until one felt ready. While the first man said he did indeed feel he wanted partnered intimacy now and was working on being ready, the second guy’s point was worth expanding: Society’s tendency now, greatly spurred on by the addictionologists, is to give gold stars to monogamous relationships and label everything else “dysfunctional.” Worse, these folks tend to see masturbation as pathological, rather than everyone’s inalienable route to sexual satisfaction, self-nurturance—hell, just plain fun. Many of the feelings of conflict expressed by the group about pornography boiled down to strong feelings of conflict about masturbation—was it okay? Did they do it too much? Wasn’t it second best? Until everyone honors masturbation the way the powers that be are honoring monogamy, the arguments of anti-porn activists will have a toehold even in the psyches of many confirmed porn consumers.

But the bottom line, I am convinced, is the need to honor desire. Why else take dick or pussy in hand? Whether it’s a thought-out fantasy of the perfect partner or a hormone surge, we’ve got to shed our cultural blind spot about the healthy uses of desire. Anything less is thought control of the worst order, and as the assumptions and tactics of the anti-porn crowd show, thought control is with us right here, right now. It was present at the California Men’s Gathering masquerading as concern for the oppressed. It is rampant and organized on the left as well as the right. As long as the anti-pornography partisans want us to see fewer, not more and more realistic, explicit images, as long as they want to deny the heat and succor of sexy pictures and dirty words to all who can appreciate them, as long as they insist upon calling consensual work (and play) a form of abuse, the rest of us are going to have to be partisans of desire.

I don’t know about you, but I am proud to take up the flag. Those people are lying to—and about—us; they are hurting us. It’s up to us, with our wet panties and hard dicks, to tell the truth. There’s nothing wrong with sexual joy. If it comes illustrated…so much the better.