Category: Raunch Culture

I’ve been contacted by Anne Sabo, an academic who is researching women’s porn, and the changing face of gender relations within pornography.

She’s co-hosting an academic conference at the University of Oslo in Norway in June entitled Heterosexual desire in gender equality discourse: A point of trouble?

Now, don’t let the title put you off. This is actually an important roundtable discussion about women and porn, new and alternative porn, feminism, female sexuality and all sorts of good academic-y, porny-discussy stuff. Never mind all that new Victorian, oh-so 2005 “raunch culture” business. Those Norwegians have well and truly moved on and are looking at the whole vast issue in a more expansive and accepting way.

Here’s some of the lecture topics:

* Cheap, tough, or exposed? Framings of young women’s sexuality in three generations

* Masturbation: Female freedom, male loneliness?

* Turned on by Pornography – Still a Good Girl? Young women’s talk about pornography

* Invisibility and desire: Masculinity and the soft-porn approach to gender

* The Vanessa sexzine and PostPorn film production: a feminist DIY approach to porn

* The Perils and Potential of Porn from a Gender Equality Perspective (Anne is the keynote speaker)

Now, if you HAD to go to an academic conference, wouldn’t you just love to go to this one? Especially since Anna Span was going to be there?

The blurb at the bottom of the conference page makes for fascinating reading and raises a lot of important questions.

I like this last bit:

“Erotica and pornography have been accused of solidifying a phallic patriarchal order. However, isn’t it possible that these discourses could attempt to show resistance to this order, to break out and away from it, only in different ways than the discourses of feminism and gender equality? Seeing the significance erotica and pornography play as discourses on sexual desire, would we not cut ourselves short if we dismiss them rather than consider their potential to expand the room and possibilities for desire?”

Good point.

From what I can gather, the title of the conference relates to questions about whether what arouses hetero people (especially women) gets in the way of gender equality.

“The challenge for today’s women is, it seems, to embrace and promote their sexuality as strong independent subjects without appearing to submit to the media’s exploitation of their bodies as sexual objects. An even “worse pitfall” would be to confess relying on erotic fantasies that play on traditional subject-object relations between men and women.”

The blurb at the bottom goes on to question whether it’s possible to form a new female sexuality without those “pitfall” fantasies. For some reason that bit stuck out at me because it raises that whole “official feminist sexuality” issue. Is it so bad to indulge in those “old fashioned” fantasies? Especially if they result in female pleasure? Do we have to reconstruct our fantasy lives to be politically correct?

It’s actually a huge question because so much of what turns people on is subjective and politically incorrect (and one person’s stroke material is another’s horror movie). The whole thing is, in the words of the Norwegians, “problematic”.

But it’s well worth discussing.

In any case, I hope the issues broached in Norway make their way to the US, Britain and Australia. It will be nice to see more academia broaden their approach to feminism and porn beyond the well-worn boundaries of Dworkinism vs Hefner.

The SF Weekly has a very long article on the Cake movement… and bits of it have me shaking my head. Overall, it gives a negative view of the Cake women, and suggests that they’re not “real” feminists.

Having just written a huge post about the way some feminists make assumptions about other women’s motivations and intelligence, I now see a fine example of this mindset in that article.

Take for example this comment by Pamela Paul, author of Pornified:

“I think it’s a very twisted way of looking at women’s liberation to assume that every step towards aping men is a step forward,” Paul says. “I think women are kidding themselves. They talk about owning something, empowering yourself. You can talk about all of that, but if I go out and eat 20,000 Big Macs, am I owning McDonald’s? Am I empowering my body by co-opting it myself? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Erm, Pamela… has it ever occurred to you that women might be doing something off their own bat? That they may not necessarily be “aping men” – or if they are, it’s done in a very self-aware, possibly ironic way? Again, we see this awfully condescending attitude, this “academic feminist knows best” platform.

And I’m kind of disturbed by this statement from author Rebecca Whisnant:

“Feminism is not necessarily about doing what’s good for you — hopefully it will be good for you. But it’s about considering the implications of your choices and everybody’s choices for women in general.”

Wow, I can’t wait until the anti-abortionists get hold of that one.

So… feminism is all about choice – unless its a choice that conservative feminists don’t consider to be truly feminist.

What next? All feminists are equal, unless of course you don’t really know your own mind, are “aping men” and aren’t following the official script as to what constitutes correct female sexuality.

There’s also this parting shot by the article’s author:

“…It may be that we’re not as far along in the story as Gallagher thinks, and that when real female sexual empowerment comes along, it will look quite different.”

Ah yes. REAL female sexual empowerment.

As decided by whom?

Violet Blue had this to say:

“The article wasn’t really about Cake, but was instead a grandstand for the writer to promote her views on women and porn, her extremely negative perceptions about sex workers, and make some seriously sweeping judgments about women who go to (and enjoy) events like Cake parties.”

And Rachel Kramer Bussel said this:

“The way this writer and Ariel Levy make it sound, you can’t have your CAKE and be a feminist too; it’s one or the other, stripper or President, as opposed to viewing a little more accurately how our sexuality and sexual self-esteem can actually empower us in other areas of our lives. Even if they don’t, we’re all entitled to a healthy, fulfilling sex life, and the idea that there’s some way “feminist sex” should or shouldn’t be is outdated and ludicrious and almost always close-minded.”

The SFWeekly article hints at a new war among feminists about porn and female sexuality, and it is a discussion that’s worth having. The unfortunate thing is that I think we could be covering old ground. Books like Rene Denfield’s The New Victorians successfully pointed out this puritanical, rigid way of thinking among the old guard of anti-porn feminists, and the arguments I see in that article look wearily familiar.

In any case, the best response to this article is from Cake founder Emily Kramer in SFist. It’s all worth reading, but I really liked this comment:

“If you only see “raunch” in this new generation of sexually expressive women — you give credence to conservatives who believe that women shouldn’t have access to the HPV vaccine because female sexuality is a dangerous thing to promote.”

Last week For The Girls published my review of the book A Piece of Cake: Recipes for Female Sexual Pleasure. Written by Melinda Gallagher and Emily Scarlet Kramer, the book is essentially the manifesto of the five-year-old CAKE movement. It tells the real-life stories of women’s sexual experiences and fantasies.

A while ago I posted about CAKE in my old blog. CAKE parties feature porn viewings, male and female strippers, fantasy sharing and general socialising. Basically it’s all about women enjoying sex – in any way, shape or form that they desire, and to buggery with what anyone else thinks or says. I rather like that philosophy, so the CAKE ladies have me onside to begin with.

The other thing about CAKE is that I heard about them via negative comments from Ariel Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs. Levy argues that the rise of “raunch culture” and the elevation of porn stars into role models is bad for women, and that talk of “empowerment” in that context is a perversion of feminism.

I will admit – I still haven’t read Levy’s book. Reading it sounds unpleasant, to be honest. But I keep seeing hundreds of opinion pieces based on it, all of them nodding sagely along, fretting and beating their breasts about all these naughty women wearing Playboy T-shirts and going to pole dancing classes.

And I can kind of understand their concern. It’s really not a good thing that 10 year olds are wearing g-strings or that Paris Hilton gets in the news so much.

At the same time, Levy’s basic argument has sat very uncomfortably with me for a long time and it’s not only because her definition of “female chauvinist pigs” is off the mark. I kept thinking there was a serious flaw in her logic, but didn’t give it enough consideration to put my finger on it.

Now, thanks to the CAKE book, I can nail the issues. Thus:

Levy’s paints a picture of modern female sexual expression as one that is completely influenced by men. No matter what we do, no matter how much we think we’re making our own choices, patriarchy is behind it. If a girl puts on a Playboy T-shirt, or enjoys porn, or goes to a strip club, it’s because she’s been duped. Poor silly women, huh?

This is THE BIG ONE in terms of “where feminism when wrong when it comes to sex.” It’s the pervading attitude of Mother Knows Best and it’s awfully, frustratingly insulting. Who is Ariel Levy to suggest that a woman who engages in these activities is confused or deceived? How does she know what motivates women to participate in “slutty activites”?

And that’s the other thing. Levy’s philosophy seems to echo a generally conservative viewpoint of what is acceptable when it comes to sex. Her criticism of CAKE parties, pole dancing, porn and “raunch culture” in general is made from a position wherein such things are inherently wrong. She doesn’t question the Dworkinite concept that “porn objectifies women”, and thus concludes that any acceptance of porn or overt sexual behaviour in the “male” way is against the ideals of feminism.

Which raises the questions: What is acceptable female sexual behaviour? Exactly what can a girl enjoy that’s sexy yet not influenced by the all-pervasive patriarchy? And how do you know when you escape from the “bad” mindset and start engaging in good feminist sexuality?

The CAKE book, and the philosophy behind it, refutes those aspects of Levy’s argument well.

To quote from my review:

“According to one kind of feminist sensibility, we must demand we be subjects and avoid identification as sexual objects. Fine. However, women are brought up with our sexuality tied to our experience as objects. Our ability to feel sexy in many ways is rooted in our ability to be desirable i.e. to play the object role.” – Erin, 22

Denying this kind of sexual sensibility is just another way to oppress women, the CAKE authors say. So, they introduce the idea of “the CAKE Gaze: women choosing to be subjects, objects, or both at the same time… The crucial point is that we knowingly choose this role as part of an equal sexual interaction.”

The CAKE girls know where it’s at. Being self aware means that a woman can choose any kind of sexual activity she likes, and that will be empowering for her.

Now, I will accept Levy’s argument insofar as it’s unfortunate for women to engage in sexual activities without being self-aware. Certainly this applies to teenage girls, who are less mature and more likely to be influenced by a sexualised pop culture. At the same time, such behaviour may be part of a journey to awareness – a learning experience, if you will – so who are we to say it’s a bad thing?

Incidentally, a reviewer at Amazon brings up the idea that maybe pop culture – in the Paris Hilton guise – would be better referred to as “moron culture” and raises the question of how much influence our media-heavy culture has on young people. If, as Levy suggests, women are being duped into aping sexist behaviour, where is this influence coming from? Why is it happening now?

If I accept Levy’s concept, then I would suggest the two main culprits for the sexualisation of pop culture are the easy availability of internet old-style mainstream porn, and the popularity of rap music – in which all women are skanks, hos and bitches. If this kind of media is out there, easy to obtain, and a lot of it is offering only one view of female sexuality, then yes, that’s going to have an influence. At least, it will have an effect on those confused people who think that mainstream men’s porn and rap are a real representation of sex and black culture respectively.

On the other hand, perhaps women are increasingly asserting their sexuality in overt ways because 35 years of feminism, complete with Cosmopolitan sex articles, Hitachi Magic Wands, increasing sex education and contraception have meant that sex is on the agenda, and women are ready to step out from under the missionary position.

If that’s the case, I think it’s extremely unfortunate that some feminists are denouncing what could well be a fine example of women’s liberation.