Porn and the tools of oppression

Judith Butler troubles gender and feminism in Gender Trouble. She asks, who is a woman? What is a woman? And, who is the subject of feminism?

Gender haunts feminism in paradoxical ways. A critical theory that challenges gender, strangely also normalizes and reinforces gender. Woman are oppressed. We all know that men do the oppressing. Feminism is about liberating women. We all know who women are. It is obvious; and in the worst cases MTFs need not apply. Not all feminism does this but certainly the most popular and mainstream forms do.

An extreme example of this form of feminism is "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: 'Pleasure under Patriarchy,'" by Catherine A. MacKinnon. According to MacKinnon's one-dimensional account of porn, women are victimized by porn even when their own bodies betray them and they get wet watching it. For men though, porn is sex: 'What do men want? Pornography provides an answer. Pornography permits men to have whatever they want sexually...It connects the centrality of visual objectification to both male sexual arousal and male models of knowledge and verification, connecting objectivity with objectification. It shows how men see the world, how in seeing it they access and possess it, and how this is an act of dominance over it. It shows what men want and gives it to them .'

So porn is the essence of masculinity: 'No pornography, no male sexuality.' And the essence of porn is this truth: 'Women are in pornography to be violated and taken, men to violate and take them.'

Ok, maybe this is internally consistent but then what about this statement on the role of porn: 'Pornography is a means through which sexuality is socially constructed, a site of construction, a domain of exercise. It constructs women as things for sexual use and constructs its consumers to desperately want women to desperately want possession and cruelty and dehumanization. Inequality itself, subjection itself, hierarchy itself, objectification itself, with self-determination ecstatically relinquished, is the apparent content of women's sexual desire and desirability.'

Now, it is hard to read this whole essay by MacKinnon as anything but a diatribe against men and male sexuality. That is a problem not because it is anti-male but because it is so obviously discriminatory. MacKinnon doesn't care what porn does to men, she is only interested in women. She takes a constructionist view of women's sexuality but then seems to naturalize male sexuality--how else do we explain her point that porn is sex for men? Without then going to how it constructs male sexuality in an equally oppressive way?

MacKinnon told us that sex is constructed. Doesn't that mean for both sexes? Porn does men as much as it does women. It is clearly part of the gendering process.

If men are made as much as women are, then men are not identical with the system of gender oppression. 'Compulsory heterosexuality' (in Adrienne Rich's terms) is not just a negative regime for women. Men are also subject to it. Feminism, however, often sees men--all men--as oppressors or as the tools of oppression. But what if that is part of the mystique of the regime? It blinds both men and women to what is actually happening: men are constructed in a certain way, so that they can be used as the tools of oppression.

Think about the porn you've watched recently--and I know you have!!! What does it tell us about gender? Recall all that humping and pumping and sucking and fisting and licking and rubbing in pose after pose like a fucking circus act of fucking. What was all that contortionist display about, really?

Porn is not about pleasure--even male pleasure. It is about performance, endurance and gymnastics. The sexual positions used in porn are about as much fun as yoga. Porn is a grueling extreme sport; and one of its roles is to discipline men as much as women. It is about setting men up for failure and training them in sexual and sex-role anxiety and sexual overcompensation.

Can you stuff her until she is raw and sore? Can you spread her to the breaking point? Can you hold back until she begs for it to end in a massive cascade of cum across her face? If you can't, then you aren't a real man. But we've got an app for that. We can help you learn how to do it like a man. We can help you make up for any of your manly deficiencies.

Porn presents the cartoon version of manliness. But for men, it is a serious form of indoctrination into the right way to do masculinity, the right way to act and fuck and love--the right way to treat the other.

Porn oppresses men as much as women. It isn't male sexuality that is behind porn. It helps construct male sexuality in a particular and negative way.

So if men are not inherently the oppressors but only the fabricated tools of oppression, then maybe they can be re-tooled. And maybe feminism can be part of the re-tooling process.

How is one of the many things we'll look at, my pretties.