15 Unconventional Facts About Me

Do you ever say yes to something when you really want to say no?  Isn't it the worst?

I have a hunch we are better at spotting this on the small scale (I wish I'd said no to this event,) than the large scale, where it really matters (I wish I'd said no to this major life choice.)  Some of those major life choices just seem predestined, handed down to us in such an expected way that we forget we have a choice at all.

When we remember we have a choice, we are empowered.  When we choose something "unconventional" or "nontraditional," we exercise power over our own lives.

I didn't write this list to brag or show off, although I can see how it might come off that way.

I simply believe that by being honest about the ways I've chosen to do the unexpected, it might help someone else feel OK about making the "weird" choice.  (Or being in the "weird" situation, as not all of these are conscious choices exactly.)

So I guess what I'm saying is... Here's to being unconventional!

OK, here goes:

1.  I had my first child when I was 19.
2. I've been with my partner, Jason, almost 8 years.  We don't own property together.  We don't share any bank accounts.  We're not married. We don't ever plan to get married.  However, I would still like to come to your wedding. I think they're fun!  Please invite me.
3. Jason and I don't have any kids together, and we don't plan to, but he has been around since my youngest was 1 year old and my oldest was 7.
4. After my divorce, I didn't go back to my maiden name. I chose a new last name from my maternal grandmother's side of the family.
5. Jason, the kids, and I all have different last names.  So there are 4 on our mailbox.
6. I don't send Christmas cards. I think they're just a total pain at an already crazy time of year.  However, I like getting your Holiday cards, so please keep sending them.  If you want.
7. I didn't finish my bachelor's degree until I was 30. It took me 10 years and I changed schools and majors several times, until finally settling on a self-designed Women's Studies major from Lesley University.
8. I have performed in burlesque shows (for fun, and sometimes dressed as a dude) and worked at strip clubs (mainly to pay the bills when I was young and poor.)
9. I saved up and bought my own condo at age 22.
10. I don't have any tattoos.  It's a commitment thing.  However, I love your tattoos.  Very much.
11. I never dyed my hair until I was in my thirties and now I cannot stop putting rainbow colors in it.  In fact, I refuse to stop.
12. Highly mentholated products such as Altoids mints make me sneeze.  There's nothing anyone can do about it.
13. I have been through domestic violence.  It was awful.  Sadly, I don't think this is "unconventional," but talking about it definitely is.
14. I play the ukulele.
15. I consider myself a feminist, and enjoy using the "F" word shamelessly.  (I also enjoy saying "fuck."  It helps me express myself.)

You're still here?  Nice!  What fun facts don't I know about you yet?  Will you share them in the comments?

Also, would you like to see any of the topics above expanded into its own post?  Let me know!

Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism & neo-burlesque part 6

bearded lady

Author's note: If you haven't already done so, please read part 1 - 5 of Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism & neo-burlesque!

Playing Gender Roles

From its very first incarnation, burlesque has always played around with gender norms.  As Robert C. Allen (1991) explains in the seminal Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, “taking on the markers of masculinity, the burlesque performer was licensed to act in a very unladylike fashion” (p. 148).  He goes on to explain,

“Burlesque produced not the unproblematic sensual display of the ballet dancer but a monstrosity, a ‘horrible prettiness,’ that provoked desire and at the same time disturbed the ground of that desire by confusing the distinctions on which desire depended” (1991, p. 148).

This tradition can still be found in the burlesque performances of today.  UnAmerika's Sweetheart Karin Webb performs one strip tease in which she enters the stage in character as “Rico,” a mustached, swaggering male who smokes a cigar and directly addresses the audience with condescension.  Rico declares that anyone can do burlesque and decides to show the audience that he can outdo the female performers at the art of striptease.  He begins putting on stockings and high heels, removing his army jacket, tank top and jeans.  At some imperceptible point during the striptease, the lines blur, and by the time he has applied a wig and unwrapped the ace bandage from his chest, he has become an attractive woman.  As the viewer watches this performance, it goes from ridiculous, even grotesque slapstick, to provocative erotic display.  The performance challenges the audience to ponder their own reactions, causes discomfort and encourages questions.

By behaving in ways not traditionally considered feminine, female burlesque performers are “able to transcend the social boundaries of [their] own gender, and therefore to say and do things of which so many other women would not dare to conceive” (Fargo 2008).  For many, this is the exciting potential of resurrecting the art form.

The old-time “‘stars’ and ‘queens’ of burlesque were perhaps the first female performers to realize the influential power of the mass media as a tool for pulling in the crowds and promoting transgressive modes of ‘femininity’ that seduced and tantalized precisely because they broke existing moulds” (Willson, 208, p. 40-41).

In his book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (2007), anti-porn writer Robert Jensen asserts that the real problem with our society is masculinity itself.  He says that, “traits commonly associated with masculinity – competition, aggression, domination, and repression of emotion” cause them to subjugate women as a response to their own insecurity and fear of inferiority (p. 138).  For Jensen, attempts to reinvent masculinity in more positive terms will not suffice.  He radically asserts that masculinity should be “abolished" (Jensen, 2007, p.138-139).

After all, Jensen asks, doesn’t encouraging positive masculinity actually serve to keep men separate from women? And aren’t all positive masculine traits such as bravery or assertiveness simply positive human traits?  Jensen criticizes a campaign which used the slogan “real men don’t rape” on the basis that it “entrenches a commitment to masculinity” that assumes some moral or psychological difference between men and women, positioning masculinity as a biological trait rather than a social one (Jensen, 2007, p.145).  These campaigns don’t challenge men’s sense of themselves as dominant (Jensen, 2007, p. 146).  Even the seemingly positive masculine quality of protectiveness is steeped in patriarchy and control. As Jensen (2007) puts it, “Women and children don’t need to be protected by men – they need to be protected from men” If men want to help, he says, they should take their place within the feminist movement. (p. 147).

pole dancer

According to Jensen, while we can never rid the world of sex categories in the biological sense, we would do well to eliminate gender: the psychological and social differences commonly associated with one’s sex.  To be more precise, he does not take issue with the existence of femininity, which he doesn't see as causing harm to anyone, only with masculinity; however, he acknowledges that one would hardly exist without the other.

“It’s likely there are other differences rooted in our biology that we don’t yet understand… but making claims about deeper intellectual and/or emotional and/or spiritual differences between males and females based on those physical differences… should be quite controversial” (Jensen, 2007, p. 140).

The fact that our biological differences have allowed patriarchy to be constructed does not speak to our ability to “construct a society that mitigates the effects of such differences” (Jensen, 2007, p. 140).  He says that it is impossible to blame biology for the havoc wrought by men when patriarchy has been in place to explain their behavior the whole time.

Co-opting Masculinity

If traditional masculinity impedes the development of an equitable society, why are modern women trying so hard to be like the guys?  In her book Female Chauvinist Pigs (2005), journalist Ariel Levy explores what she calls “raunch culture,” a climate where “women…make sex objects of other women and of themselves” (p. 4).  The popular Girls Gone Wild soft-core porn films are made by a traveling camera crew who visit college campuses and popular spring break locations.  For nothing but a Girls Gone Wild T-shirt, young women eagerly flash their breasts and engage in sexual acts with each other in the hopes of getting into one of the films.

Why do these everyday women want to be porn stars?  Some might say that in a post-Madonna world they are able to acknowledge their sexual appetites and indulge them.  They are sexually empowered, proud of their bodies, and want to show the world.  However, if the friend they are kissing for the camera was previously just a friend, and not a sexual partner, then it would seem that they are not acting out their own fantasies, but performing for some other reason; the sexual act is a performance, designed to prove their sexual adventurousness, or perhaps to render impotent one of the common weapons of patriarchy – sexual exploitation of women.  In other words, perhaps these young women are trying to convince themselves and men that they enjoy this kind of display in order to save face and avoid looking like they’ve ‘been had.’

Part of the reason for women to embrace what Levy refers to as “raunch” may come from this desire to co-opt patriarchal power and use it ironically, rendering it meaningless.  Metaphorically speaking, we women are invading the gentlemen’s club, putting up our feet, and lighting a cigar.  We have had the one-night-stands, and we can boast about losing the poor guy’s phone number afterward.  Just as Hip-Hop culture appropriated the word “nigger” and made it their own, “nigga,” girls make a joke of calling themselves and their girlfriends “sluts” (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 210).

Unfortunately, these young women may simply be acting out old stereotypes while convincing themselves they have chosen these roles to avoid seeing themselves as the victims of a misogynistic culture.  Levy argues that these “Female Chauvinist Pigs” find it “cooler” to take a one-of-the-guys approach than to appear uptight, or admit to feeling defeated.  “Why try to beat them when you can join them?” Levy (2005) asks (pp. 90-92).  The women on the hit TV series Sex and the City frequently acted out modern women’s attempts to have casual, guilt-free sex ‘like men,’ and the results were often painful for them, because for the most part, they were not just looking for sex, they were looking for relationships.  It is time, Levy (2005) says, to admit that “The emperor has no clothes” (p. 197).  Instead of trying to be more like men, we should just try to be more like ourselves.  The medium of burlesque seems to provide an avenue for this because it does not cater to popular expectations of what is sexy, but allows each performer explore and express an individual statement.

Girls and Girly Girls

Among some of the “Female Chauvinist Pigs” Levy (2005) studied, she found that the concept of the “girly girl,” had an extremely negative connotation, and was regarded with contempt by some women (p. 101).  However, there are many third wave feminists who embrace their femininity.  In the seminal third wave text ManifestA (2000), Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards wrote about what they called the feminist “Girlie movement.”  Although the term “Girlie feminism” has not become widely used, the characteristics they describe are familiar traits of many modern feminists.

As Baumgardner and Richards (2000) put it, “Girlies are girls in their twenties or thirties who are reacting to an anti-feminine, anti-joy emphasis that they perceive as the legacy of Second Wave seriousness. Girlies have reclaimed girl culture, which is made up of such formerly disparaged girl things as knitting, the color pink, nail polish, and fun” (p. 80).

This embracing of the “girlie” is only possible because of earlier feminist movements.  Women today have benefited greatly from the efforts of feminism’s First and Second Waves.  We can vote, we have access to birth control, legal abortion, and crisis centers, for starters.  Because of this, “Girl Culture assumes that women are free agents in the world, that they start out strong and that the odds are in their favor” (Ann Powers, as cited in Baumgardner & Richards, 2000, p. 134).

While Girlies are not ashamed of their femininity, they also want in on the territories of men such as rock and roll and yes, porn (Baumgardner, Richards, 2000 p. 80).  Richards and Baumgardner (2000) note that feminist publication Bust magazine, at the time only a “zine” in 1993, was printing “buxom images from vintage soft-core porn, images now in the control of women.  In Bust, porn was demystified, claimed for women, debated” (p.133).

They go on to state that “Girlie culture is a rebellion against the false impression that since women don’t want to be sexually exploited, they don’t want to be sexual…against the anachronistic belief that because women could be dehumanized by porn…they must be” (p. 137). The problem with Girlie culture, according to Baumgardner and Richards (2000), is that it is just a culture, not a political movement (p. 141).  There are still women’s issues worth fighting for, and not enough young feminists are organizing to promote the changes that are still needed.

burlesque troupe

Conclusion

Because sex has been so literally perverted by those in our culture who would use it as a tool to oppress, it is easy to write off public displays of sexuality altogether, but then we risk reinforcing the stereotype of the anti-sex, anti-fun, anti-male feminist.  We also miss out on a valuable opportunity to teach people that women are sexual beings and we are more sexually empowered than ever, and that it is not a certain low, ‘other’ woman who possesses sexual desires.

In the past, feminists were vocal about their positions on topics they felt passionate about, such as sexual objectification.  The feminist movement needs more sex-positive feminists to have an intellectual voice, to speak not only with passion but with rational debate. We need thoughtful analysis on the issues surrounding sexuality.

We must not simply react, turning away from feminism because we disagree with the views of our mothers’ generation.  We need to create a space where like-minded people of this generation can feel included in feminism too.

Puritan attitudes which make sex a shameful thing are dangerous to women.  We need to be willing to be seen as whole women, and that includes publicly acknowledging our passion for sex as well as our passion for feminist politics.

Collectively, feminists need to look at terms like ‘sexually empowered,’ and figure out what they mean.  One of the most important things that can happen is that we shift toward a concept of sexuality that recognizes the whole woman, her feelings, passions, and identity, rather than allowing women to be mute sexual objects.

Burlesque provides a venue where sexuality can be performed without shame in a woman-centered, non-exploitative environment.

Not every burlesque performance seizes on this opportunity.  Nor can every performance, no matter how well-intended, be guaranteed to deliver the experience to the audience that the performer envisioned.  No performer can know how each audience member will experience their art.  Modern feminism is based in individual choices and preferences, and new burlesque is just one of many ways we can make our voices heard.

Thank you for reading Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism and neo-burlesque.

References

Allen, R., (1991). Horrible prettiness. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Baldwin, M., & Evans, D. (2004). Burlesque and the new bump-n-grind. Denver: Speck Press.

Baumgardner, J., & Richards, A. (2000). Manifesta. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bergner, Daniel (2009, January 22). What do women want?. The New York Times, Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?_r=2

Brumberg, J. (1998). Thebody project, an intimate history of American girls.  New York: Vintage Books.

Buszek, Maria. Pin-up grrrls. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Celizik, M. (2009) Her teen committed suicide over ‘sexting.’ Todayshow.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29546030/

Clements, A. Power to the penis or viva la vulva? The Feminist Stripper, Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www.geocities.com/alysabethc/feministstripper.html

Comella L. & Queen, C. (2008). The necessary revolution: Sex-positive feminism in the post-Barnard era. The Communication Review, 11.

D'Amato, A. (2008). Porn up, rape down. Northwestern University school of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013

Dworkin, A., (2006). Intercourse. New York: BasicBooks.

Ensler, E. (2004). The good body. New York: Random House, Inc.

Etcoff, N. (1999). Survival of the prettiest. The science of beauty. New York: Random House, Inc.

Fargo, E.L., (2008). The fantasy of real women. Master’s thesis, Ohio State University.

Goldwyn, L., & Augustyn, J. (2006). Pretty things. New York: Regan Books.

Hartley, N. (1997). In the flesh. Whores and other feminists. Nagle, J. New York: Routledge.

Jensen, R., (2007). Getting off. Boston: South End Press.

Levy, A., (2006). Female Chauvinist Pigs. New York: Free Press.

Lykins, A.D., Meana, M., Strauss, G.P. (2008). Sex Differences in Visual Attention to Erotic and non-erotic stimuli. Archives of Sexual Behavior 37(219-228).

Meana, M. (2009). Elucidating women’s (hetero)sexual desire. Manuscript in preparation.

Merriam Webster Online. Definitions retrieved March 17, 2009. Web site: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Nagle, J. (1997). Introduction. Whores and other feminists. Nagle, J. New York: Routledge.

Nevid, J., a., S., & Greene, B. (2007). Abnormal Psychology in a Changing World. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Rand, A. (1961). Pride. The Objectivist Ethics. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from Ayn Rand Lexicon Web site: http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pride.html

Sarracino, C., & Scott, K. (2008). The Porning of America. Boston: Beacon Press.

Siegel, D., (2007). Sisterhood Interrupted. New York: Palgrave MacMillan

Timmons, D. (Director). (2009). A wink and a smile [Documentary]. USA: First Run Features.

Tyler, C. (2009). Personal interview. See Appendix C of this document.

Urish, B. (2004).  Narrative striptease in the nightclub era. (Received via personal communication December 2, 2009.)

Willson, J., (2008). The Happy Stripper. London: I.B. Tauris.

Wolf, N. (1996). Thebeauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. New York: Doubleday

Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism & neo-burlesque part 5

Author's note: If you haven't already done so, please read part 1 - 4 of Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism & neo-burlesque!

honey suckle duvet

Politics in Performance

Michelle Baldwin (2004) aptly defines burlesque as “the divine mixture of the sexy and the satirical” (p. 38.)  One of the things I wanted to find out in my interviews was whether my assumptions were correct:

Were the people performing burlesque the feminist intellectuals I had imagined them to be, and did gender and social politics play an important role in their performances?

I found that yes, in fact this was often the case, but not always.  Many in the burlesque community, such as UnAmerika's Sweetheart Karin Webb, feel it is imperative that burlesque performance make a statement, staying true to the old tradition of burlesque as social commentary even in its modern reincarnation.  Fargo (2008) points out that, “In our sex-saturated modern society, public display of the body can no longer be counted as inherently transgressive, so performers have to seek more extreme means in their quest to question mainstream social norms and gender roles."  Honey Suckle Duvet (2009) explained:

For me doing a dance in front of people who don’t look anything like me or… people who have not necessarily historically appreciated me… that’s making a statement.  And I think that a woman who’s coming from a place of needing to overcome things or having a back-story that’s... ingrained in really deep issues when she gets up there and she’s doing something that’s 'just cutesy...' for her that’s a statement and there’s power in that.”

Still many others are not troubled by whether or not there is a message to burlesque and are content with what Jacki Willson (2008) calls “politically naïve” performance (p. 2).

During the second wave of feminism, “the personal became political” (Siegel, 2007, p.2).  This concept meant that the private issues with which women struggled actually tied in to the larger social structure in which they lived.

Today, “for many women in their twenties and thirties, ‘politics’ refers to elections or politicians – not necessarily the underlying currents that shape their personal lives… Individualism seems to have trumped collective action – not just among women, but throughout American culture more generally throughout the past thirty years” (Siegel, 2007, p. 5).  During the seventies there was backlash against protestors and people began to lose faith in political structures.  They ‘went internal,’ seeking out new age religions, meditation and fitness, and self-help (Siegel, 2007, p. 27) (Baumgardner and Richards, p. 62).

Three of the five burlesque performers I interviewed, when asked if their personal politics played a role in their performances, did not connect this question with ‘feminism’ until further prompted.  Only two had ever heard of pro-sex or sex-positive feminism.  One, Honey Suckle Duvet (2009), who runs workshops entitled “Burlesque for Better Body Image,” surprised me by answering that she did not consider herself a feminist, stating, “I don’t want to be a part of any group...  I don’t want a label because there’s a weight to that, and there’s an expectation with that.”

When pressed to elaborate on why many modern women might choose not to self-identify a feminists, she stated,

I think that something that turns people off from feminism and something that I’ve found, not with feminism on paper but the way that I’ve seen it in my life is a pressure for me to redefine myself and not accept or respect things that I’ve grown up with as a part of my culture that I choose to still have.  And there’s a pressure for me to… be offended more than I feel I am, and to fit a mold because the old mold was bad so the answer is to find a new one (Duvet, 2009).

As Siegel (2007) points out, there has never been a time when all feminists universally agreed on everything, including labels.  However the one point that has been particularly sticky is the topic of sexuality.

Mary Dolan

Jill Gibson, a comedic burlesque performer and female-to-male drag actor who does not perform striptease, spoke of the significance of her character, burlesque emcee “Mary Dolan,” an eighty-six-year-old woman whose character is loosely based on Gibson’s late grandmother, who had been a vaudeville performer.  Gibson (2009) pointed out that she can say things to an audience through Mary Dolan that Jill Gibson could never say, that people responded better to Dolan’s maternal presence than they would a “raging dyke waving a rainbow flag.”

When asked what role burlesque is currently fulfilling in American society, Gibson (2009) responded,

“I hope its role will be to inject some sex into modern culture, because right now our culture is afraid of sex.”

While anti-pornography feminism has sought to protect women from sexual abuse, it has served to reinforce the lack of openness about women’s sexuality.  Jill Nagle (1997) writes that it is “time to stop reproducing the whore stigma common to the larger culture.  These practices dilute much of feminism’s radical potential” (p. 2).

As long as women continue to be fearful of expressing their sexuality, the few who do will continue to appear to be the exception, rather than the rule, exposing them to stigma and abuse. Our culture could use more sexuality.

The media and popular culture have an incredible influence over American culture, but what we need is more authentic expression of women’s sexuality, not a continued dependence on the stereotypical, voiceless images of women we have traditionally been served.

Subversive Voices

Our feminist foremothers might have taught us to “downplay [our] sexuality in order to be taken seriously” (Goldwyn, 2006, p. xiv).  However, many intelligent, independent women choose to do just the opposite.  As Maria Elena Buszek points out in her book, Pin up Grrrls (2006)“although feminist thinkers have consistently drawn upon women’s sexuality as a site of oppression, so too have they posited the nurturance of women’s sexual freedom and pleasure as an antidote to the same” (p. 4).  Burlesque serves as a platform for “opening up a dialogue between the private and public sphere,” honoring the feminist tradition of seeing the personal as political (Willson, 2008, p. 161).

 A burlesque dancer is able to breathe life into the stereotypical sex-object image, to animate her and allow her to be seen as a whole sexual being.

The intelligent burlesque sex symbol asserts that, contrary to what Dworkin says, sex does not erode us, we are self-posessed, “not broken, and our desires aren’t simply booby traps set by the patriarchy” (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000, p. 137).

Perhaps the most famous queen of the old burlesque, Gypsy Rose Lee, marketed herself as the “literary stripper” or “striptease intellectual,” and engaged in witty repartee and intellectual commentary as she disrobed (Fargo, 2008). During the last two decades of old burlesque (1945–1966), there emerged a tradition called “narrative striptease” (Urish, 2004).  Narrative striptease does not necessarily refer to performances like those of Gypsy Rose Lee using spoken word, rather it refers to dancers finding their ‘voice’ by telling a story with the performance.

With stages often set like plays, narrative striptease was striptease with a plot worked in – the performer would undress because she was getting ready for a date, because a mouse had run up her leg, and so forth.  The narratives were often about heterosexual relationships and used a surrogate male to assert the performer’s authority over the male, and by extension, her audience.  Sometimes the male figure was a puppet, sometimes an empty chair, or an imagined person on the other end of a telephone.  As these women performed, they “became paradoxical entities, ‘active objects’ in the process of undercutting their objectification as that very objectification was performed. They may have been forced to play the patriarchal game, but they were finding ways to subvert the game as it was played” (Urish, 2004, p. 160).  Emily Layne Fargo (2008) talks about the subversive power of the burlesque performer:

A scantily-clad, or even unclad, female was socially acceptable on a public stage so long as she remained still, functioning as a static piece of art to be contemplated. But the moment she began to exercise physical mobility and vocal subjectivity in addition to her physical charms (as burlesque performers did), she became a serious threat that had to be stopped and silenced. The female burlesque performer thus brought together two controversial components – an eroticized body and an outspoken voice.

The tradition of narrative striptease is quite popular in today’s burlesque as well, and it is one of the elements that truly distinguishes burlesque from strip club performance.

Please stay tuned to this blog for the conclusion of Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism and neo-burlesque. As always, thank you for reading!

References

Allen, R., (1991). Horrible prettiness. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Baldwin, M., & Evans, D. (2004). Burlesque and the new bump-n-grind. Denver: Speck Press.

Baumgardner, J., & Richards, A. (2000). Manifesta. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bergner, Daniel (2009, January 22). What do women want?. The New York Times, Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?_r=2

Brumberg, J. (1998). Thebody project, an intimate history of American girls.  New York: Vintage Books.

Buszek, Maria. Pin-up grrrls. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Celizik, M. (2009) Her teen committed suicide over ‘sexting.’ Todayshow.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29546030/

Clements, A. Power to the penis or viva la vulva? The Feminist Stripper, Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www.geocities.com/alysabethc/feministstripper.html

Comella L. & Queen, C. (2008). The necessary revolution: Sex-positive feminism in the post-Barnard era. The Communication Review, 11.

D'Amato, A. (2008). Porn up, rape down. Northwestern University school of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013

Dworkin, A., (2006). Intercourse. New York: BasicBooks.

Ensler, E. (2004). The good body. New York: Random House, Inc.

Etcoff, N. (1999). Survival of the prettiest. The science of beauty. New York: Random House, Inc.

Fargo, E.L., (2008). The fantasy of real women. Master’s thesis, Ohio State University.

Goldwyn, L., & Augustyn, J. (2006). Pretty things. New York: Regan Books.

Hartley, N. (1997). In the flesh. Whores and other feminists. Nagle, J. New York: Routledge.

Jensen, R., (2007). Getting off. Boston: South End Press.

Levy, A., (2006). Female Chauvinist Pigs. New York: Free Press.

Lykins, A.D., Meana, M., Strauss, G.P. (2008). Sex Differences in Visual Attention to Erotic and non-erotic stimuli. Archives of Sexual Behavior 37(219-228).

Meana, M. (2009). Elucidating women’s (hetero)sexual desire. Manuscript in preparation.

Merriam Webster Online. Definitions retrieved March 17, 2009. Web site: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Nagle, J. (1997). Introduction. Whores and other feminists. Nagle, J. New York: Routledge.

Nevid, J., a., S., & Greene, B. (2007). Abnormal Psychology in a Changing World. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Rand, A. (1961). Pride. The Objectivist Ethics. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from Ayn Rand Lexicon Web site: http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pride.html

Sarracino, C., & Scott, K. (2008). The Porning of America. Boston: Beacon Press.

Siegel, D., (2007). Sisterhood Interrupted. New York: Palgrave MacMillan

Timmons, D. (Director). (2009). A wink and a smile [Documentary]. USA: First Run Features.

Tyler, C. (2009). Personal interview. See Appendix C of this document.

Urish, B. (2004).  Narrative striptease in the nightclub era. (Received via personal communication December 2, 2009.)

Willson, J., (2008). The Happy Stripper. London: I.B. Tauris.

Wolf, N. (1996). Thebeauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. New York: Doubleday

Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism & neo-burlesque part 3

Author's note: If you haven't already done so, please read part 1 and 2 of Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism & neo-burlesque!

porn-industry

The Porn Wars

Pornography is an issue that has dogged the feminist movement for decades, causing feminists to split into warring factions and ultimately weakening the impact that could be achieved through greater solidarity. Second wave feminists fought against pornography on the basis of what they believed to be harmful and objectifying treatment of women.  Today, many women who consider themselves sexually empowered are not only consuming pornography, they are emulating adult film stars in their clothing and behavior, and calling it freedom.

How can this one topic produce such opposite reactions among those whose shared ideals are women’s liberation and equality?  For one thing, not all sexually explicit material is created equal.

There is nothing necessarily misogynistic about sexually explicit content; if women are to be truly free to enjoy sex without guilt or judgment, they should feel free to participate in and consume this material if it appeals to them.  However, there is a great deal of pornography which does in fact exploit women by erasing their identities and using them as sexual objects, and much worse in some cases, violence and degradation being sold under the guise of entertainment and pleasure.

Our conflicted feelings about porn reflect part of the struggle of the Third Wave to find “a new approach to feminism that acknowledges women’s sexuality, and even the desire to be sexy, while at the same time remembering the fine line between sexiness and objectification” (Sarracino & Scott, 2008 p. 183).  Condemning all pornography will not do us any good.  Porn and its derivatives abound on the internet, television, and throughout popular culture, and would be nearly impossible to expunge.  Besides that, it can be downright unattractive for the feminist movement to present an excessively prudish or restrictive image if the goal is to have men and women self-identify as feminists and to contribute to the movement's goals.

A History of American Pornography

It is shocking to think that the most violent and degrading pornography today may have had its roots in a seemingly innocuous staple of childhood: the comic book.

During the 1940s and 1950s comic books were hugely popular, and were actually read primarily by adults, not children.  Roughly 30% of women and 40% of men were regular comic book readers (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 61).  Popular storylines featured patriotic themes, and the American male was the hero often sent to save the helpless “good girl” from the enemy ‘other’ (Nazi or Japanese soldiers were often the villains in these stories).

Rosie the Riveter

When American men returned from World War II, they found that ‘Rosie the Riveter’ had come along and changed society, reducing men’s economically dominant position.  Women in the workforce caused a “crisis of American masculinity” (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 67).

The resentment we can imagine these men experienced is exhibited in the comic books of the time.

The danger presented to female victims gradually took the place of the hero as the focal point in the typical comic book plot.   Sexual brutality toward women in comic book stories increased.

wonderwoman_large

One very noteworthy exception was that of Wonder Woman, a comic book heroine who was created around this time by William Moulton Marston.  She was designed explicitly as a feminist superhero and never made into a sex object.)  In other comics though, for sins such as infidelity, maternal laxity, and choosing career over marriage, women were punished by such fates as stabbing, strangulation, decapitation, electrocution, and suffocation (Sarracino & Scott, 2008).

In 1954 the government cracked down with the Comics Code Authority to rid comic books of “sex, violence, gore, sadism, crime, and horror” (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 62).  Afterward, comic books fell out of favor with men, and were replaced by men’s adventure magazines, something of a mix between pulp fiction and a literary magazine.  For fifteen years, these popular magazines offered stories and illustrations, often featuring women in lingerie being menaced by various threats, and by 1960, the reader was no longer associating with the thrill of heroism, but with the sadism of the villain.

Women were often whipped bloody on the covers of these magazines, when they were not being dismembered, dipped in acid or molten metal, or beheaded (Sarracino & Scott, 2008).

Men’s adventure magazines, which sold “fear and anger” with stories like “The Homosexual Epidemic,” were the opposite of the glossy, hip, Playboy, which debuted in 1953, and sold “pleasure and joy” with advertisements for the latest stereo equipment and interviews with intellectuals and celebrities (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, pp. 13,72).  Another important figure of the nineteen-fifties was the famous Bettie Page, who appeared in many photos and short films involving themes of BDSM (bondage/domination/sadomasochism.)

bettie

Bettie Page's images were fairly harmless and playful, even tongue in cheek.  There was always a certain knowing smile and agency in her work.  She was “both an active participant, enjoying acting out the erotic scenario with other female actors, as well as blatantly communicating to her viewer the absurdity of the whole scenario” (Willson, p. 149).

Much of the burlesque and some porn of the mid-century showcased the women’s identities and relied on their performances; however, Playboy has always favored an uncomplicated and arguably vacant though decidedly non-violent portrayal of women.  As Playboy founder Hugh Hefner put it in a 1967 interview:

vintage playboy

We are not interested in the mysterious, difficult woman, the femme fatale, who wears elegant underwear, with lace, and she is sad, and somehow mentally filthy.  The Playboy girl has no lace, no underwear, she is naked, well washed with soap and water, and she is happy (Hugh Hefner, as cited in Levy, 2005, p. 58).

This ‘girl next door’ image is still the one favored in the ever popular Playboy today.

The floodgates of pornography opened in 1972 with the unprecedented success of Deep Throat, the first Hollywood-like pornographic movie.  The ‘plot’ was based on the premise of a woman whose clitoris was located in her throat.  The film used humor to “tell us to lighten up, not to take it seriously” (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 15).  Linda Lovelace was its star (a.k.a. Susan Boreman, who later went on to join the feminist movement and described her experience in Deep Throat as riddled with hard drugs, spousal abuse, mobsters, and threats at gunpoint).  Another popular porn film followed, called Behind the Green Door which also featured a new star, Marilyn Chambers.  This film used hip music and made a celebrity of its leading lady to make people feel more comfortable.  These new, glamorous films helped open the door for pornography to work its way out of the fringes of American culture and move toward the mainstream (Sarracino & Scott, 2008).

Backlash Against Pornography

Pornography has always come under fire by patriarchal religious groups still espousing puritanical attitudes toward sex.  Ironically, these views of sex can still be found in modern porn – sex is ‘dirty’, ‘nasty’, the women who engage in the sex acts are often referred to as ‘sluts.’

In addition to religious groups, feminists too have taken issue with pornography since the 1970s, for its treatment of women as ‘sex objects,’ the questionable treatment and safety of its performers, and for the effect it may have on the society that consumes it.  However, for some years feminists were more concerned with issues like abortion, leading up to Roe v. Wade in 1972.  In 1975, when Susan Brownmiller wrote Against our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, she commented that “There can be no ‘equality’ in porn…[which,] like rape, is a male invention, designed to dehumanize women, to reduce the female to the object of sexual access, not to free sensuality from moralistic or parental inhibition” (Brownmiller, as cited in Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 173).  The movement at the time believed that violence was inherent to working in porn films, and they assumed that pornography represented rape.  Feminist groups, such as Women against Violence against Women, Women against Pornography, and Women against Violence in Pornography and Media rose up against this threat.

In 1983, feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin led the anti-porn crusade.  They drafted an ordinance in the city of Minneapolis that would make porn a civil rights violation against women, arguing that pornography should not be protected under free speech, because it was not just speech, but an action carried out on female victims.  The ordinance was shot down, but the conservative politicians of Indianapolis soon asked for their help in cleaning up their own city.

Although these Reagan-era Republicans opposed abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, feminist leaders Dworkin and MacKinnon aligned themselves with them on the pornography issue.

The ordinance was signed into law in 1984, but it was soon overturned by federal courts on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.  They had succeeded at raising awareness about the darker side of porn; unfortunately they had produced rancor and dissention within the feminist movement by getting into bed with the right-wingers.

The politics of Dworkin and MacKinnon were too severe for many feminists, even prompting the use of the term “MacDworkin extremism” (Sarracino & Scott, 2008 p. 179.).

dworkin

The message in Dworkin’s book Intercourse, published in 1987 was widely interpreted as ‘all sex is rape,’ although Dworkin has said that her intent was to point out that domination is always an aspect of sex in an unequal society.

Below is an excerpt from Intercourse:

Intercourse occurs in a context of a power relation that is pervasive and incontrovertible.  The context in which the act takes place, whatever the meaning of the act in and of itself, is one in which men have social, economic, political, and physical power over women.  Some men do not have all those kinds of power over all women; but all men have some kinds of power over all women; and most men have controlling power over what they call their women – the women they fuck (Dworkin, 2006, p. 158-159).

Another harsh passage reads:

[W]omen feel the fuck… as possession; and feel possession as deeply erotic; and value annihilation of the self in sex as proof of the man’s desire or love, its awesome intensity….sex itself is an experience of diminishing self-possession, an erosion of self.  That loss of self is a physical reality, not just a psychic vampirism; and as a physical reality it is chilling and extreme, a literal erosion of the body’s integrity and its ability to function and to survive…  This sexual possession is a sensual state of being that borders on antibeing until it ends in death. (Dworkin, 2006, p. 84)

In her lifetime, Dworkin had been a sex-worker, as well as a feminist activist and academic, and suffered from a great deal of abuse in her life, much of it sexual abuse.  This wide range of experiences would lend credibility to her words, but they seem to describe what a person might feel regarding rape rather than consensual sex.  Applying these ideas to include all sex between men and women is to grossly overstate the point.  Given the irrational nature of her sweeping claims, it is hard to believe her words could have had as much impact as they did.

This kind of exaggeration not only contributes to a stereotype of hysterical and paranoid feminists, it would have been difficult for many women to relate to such statements.  Therefore, not only did this approach alienate those outside the movement, it also scared away existing sympathizers and cost the movement the loss of some potential new supporters.

Feminist conferences, such as the Barnard Conference of 1982 got ugly as factions formed (Comella & Queen, 2008).  Feminists who did not support the anti-porn movement felt they were “being denied space and credentials to speak for [them]selves” (Comella & Queen, 2008, p. 280).

They began using the term ‘sex-positive feminist’ to differentiate themselves from the anti-porn movement, despite the fact that anti-porn feminists were thus incorrectly categorized as ‘anti-sex’ by default.

Since this controversy, sometimes called the ‘sex wars’ or the ‘porn wars,’ feminism has never been as unified as it once was.  By the end of the 1980s, feminism was greatly dispersed. The anti-porn feminists who have carried on are still sometimes dogmatic and intolerant of others’ opinions, such as at a recent national conference where anyone not identified with the anti-porn stance was excluded (Sarracino & Scott, 2008 p. 181).

American Porn Thrives

As the feminist movement lost momentum, porn gained it.  Since the boom in the seventies, pornography has crept further and further into the mainstream.

Today, porn is a ten to fourteen billion dollar a year industry (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 9).  Certain popular media have helped make porn seem more ordinary and acceptable, such as the sexed-up music videos featured on MTV.  Arguably, the pop culture icon who has had the most influence on sexual attitudes was Madonna.  Whether or not you are a fan of her music, her public persona, or her political antics, it is difficult to deny Madonna credit for all she did to shake up ideas about women’s sexuality during the heyday of her career in the 1980s and 1990s.  Madonna associated herself with the gay community before it was considered cool.  Gender-bending has been a popular theme in Madonna’s work.  “I think I have a dick in my brain.  I don’t need to have one between my legs,” she has said (Madonna, as cited in Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 96).  She brought highly sexualized images into mainstream culture through her music videos, live performances, films and books.  She created an image of empowered female sexuality, even domination.  In 1990, feminist dissenter Camille Paglia wrote “Madonna is the true feminist.  She exposes the Puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode” (Paglia, as cited in Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 94).

Madonna

Madonna’s brand of feminism helped shape the attitudes of third wave feminists, prompting such proclamations as that of Elizabeth Wurtzel in her 1998 book Bitch, “These days putting out one’s pretty power, one’s pussy power, one’s sexual energy for popular consumption no longer makes you a bimbo.  It makes you smart” (Wurtzel, as cited in Baumgardner & Richards, 2000, p. 141).

Sarracino & Scott (2008) cite Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” video as a prime example of this sexual power, where she posed as a peep-show performer.

Yes, she seemed to be saying, you can view my performance, you can even thrill to my body, but in doing so you give me control over you…The audience…must pay to keep open the panels through which they gaze… The power…is completely unshared.  It is Madonna’s alone (p. 95).

Another strong media presence to push the sexual envelope was radio talk show host Howard Stern.  Stern’s show, which was nationally syndicated for many years and is still available on uncensored satellite radio, regularly featured adult film stars as guests.  It was Howard Stern who gave porn star Jenna Jameson the publicity that would eventually lead her to have the most successful career of any adult film star.

Jenna Jameson has become famous for ‘crossing over’ into mainstream pop culture, by appearing in guest spots on the E! Channel and in films like Howard Stern’s Private Parts (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 105).  Her industry peers laud her abilities as an actor (Morgan, 2006), and her autobiography was a bestseller in 2006 (Levy, 2005).  Her unique career has made her a much-discussed figure in the study of porn’s increased public acceptability.

One of the things that might make Jameson more likeable in the mainstream is that her work does not feature blatantly cruel treatment of women, and she typically looks like she is enjoying herself onscreen.  Surprisingly, her films also tend to contain themes of female self-empowerment (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 108).  In 2005, Jameson starred in a remake of The New Devil in Miss Jones where the main character’s damnation is based on her failure to take control of her personal, professional, and sexual life.  This theme is actually quite popular in high-end pornography, and would seem to suggest there is some progress being made in these areas (Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 112).

Gays and lesbians have helped pave the way to changing the range of what is represented in porn.  LGBT activists have used pornography as an important tool in their activism as sexuality is central their politics.  Now feminist porn has emerged, and is growing with companies such as Candida Royalle’s Femme Productions.  Today, there are even Feminist Porn Awards.

Feminist porn is characterized by things like beautiful settings, attractive lighting, more seduction with less mechanical-looking close-ups of penetration, more real orgasms, and more average body types.

Of course, most importantly, feminist porn does not feature women being treated badly. A history of porn would lack integrity if it did not acknowledge the existence of a deplorable side to pornography.

Merriam Webster offers three definitions for pornography:

1:  the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement 2 : material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement 3 : the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction <the pornography of violence>

(Merriam Webster, 2009)

The 'dark porn' that falls under the third definition has little, if anything, to do with the first two definitions.  It is not sex that is being sold here, but the truly obscene: violence and degradation.  Dark porn actor Bill Margold offers this insight:

My whole reason for being in the Industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don’t much care for women and want to see the men in my Industry getting even with the women they couldn’t have when they were growing up… I believe this.  I’ve heard audiences cheer me when I do something foul on screen.  When I’ve strangled a person or sodomized a person, or brutalized a person, the audience is cheering my action, and then when I’ve fulfilled my warped desire, the audience applauds (Margold, as cited in Sarracino & Scott, 2008, p. 117-118).

Gory horror films sell the same brand of ‘pornography,’ even when explicit sexuality is not a factor.  If porn is becoming more mainstream, does this mean that the darkness of violent porn will follow suit?  One could say that it already has.

Going back to the comic books of the midcentury, we could follow the trail of sensationalized violence up through the ‘slasher movies’ that have been selling out box offices for decades.

The overall effect on society is difficult to measure; however no study has proven that porn causes increased violence toward women (Jensen, 2007). In fact, strangely, between 1993 and 2005, rates of reported sexual assault dropped anywhere from sixty to eighty-five percent, despite the increased availability of porn via the internet (Sarracino & Scott, 2008) (D’Amato, 2008).  It has even been suggested that this decrease in rape may be attributable to internet pornography (D’Amato, 2008), but no one has convincingly proven any correlation between the two.

Please stay tuned to this blog for parts 4-6 of Fleshing it out: sex-positive feminism and neo-burlesque. As always, thank you for reading!

References

Allen, R., (1991). Horrible prettiness. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Baldwin, M., & Evans, D. (2004). Burlesque and the new bump-n-grind. Denver: Speck Press.

Baumgardner, J., & Richards, A. (2000). Manifesta. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bergner, Daniel (2009, January 22). What do women want?. The New York Times, Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?_r=2

Brumberg, J. (1998). Thebody project, an intimate history of American girls.  New York: Vintage Books.

Buszek, Maria. Pin-up grrrls. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Celizik, M. (2009) Her teen committed suicide over ‘sexting.’ Todayshow.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29546030/

Clements, A. Power to the penis or viva la vulva? The Feminist Stripper, Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www.geocities.com/alysabethc/feministstripper.html

Comella L. & Queen, C. (2008). The necessary revolution: Sex-positive feminism in the post-Barnard era. The Communication Review, 11.

D'Amato, A. (2008). Porn up, rape down. Northwestern University school of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013

Dworkin, A., (2006). Intercourse. New York: BasicBooks.

Ensler, E. (2004). The good body. New York: Random House, Inc.

Etcoff, N. (1999). Survival of the prettiest. The science of beauty. New York: Random House, Inc.

Fargo, E.L., (2008). The fantasy of real women. Master’s thesis, Ohio State University.

Goldwyn, L., & Augustyn, J. (2006). Pretty things. New York: Regan Books.

Hartley, N. (1997). In the flesh. Whores and other feminists. Nagle, J. New York: Routledge.

Jensen, R., (2007). Getting off. Boston: South End Press.

Levy, A., (2006). Female Chauvinist Pigs. New York: Free Press.

Lykins, A.D., Meana, M., Strauss, G.P. (2008). Sex Differences in Visual Attention to Erotic and non-erotic stimuli. Archives of Sexual Behavior 37(219-228).

Meana, M. (2009). Elucidating women’s (hetero)sexual desire. Manuscript in preparation.

Merriam Webster Online. Definitions retrieved March 17, 2009. Web site: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Nagle, J. (1997). Introduction. Whores and other feminists. Nagle, J. New York: Routledge.

Nevid, J., a., S., & Greene, B. (2007). Abnormal Psychology in a Changing World. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Rand, A. (1961). Pride. The Objectivist Ethics. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from Ayn Rand Lexicon Web site: http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pride.html

Sarracino, C., & Scott, K. (2008). The Porning of America. Boston: Beacon Press.

Siegel, D., (2007). Sisterhood Interrupted. New York: Palgrave MacMillan

Timmons, D. (Director). (2009). A wink and a smile [Documentary]. USA: First Run Features.

Tyler, C. (2009). Personal interview. See Appendix C of this document.

Urish, B. (2004).  Narrative striptease in the nightclub era. (Received via personal communication December 2, 2009.)

Willson, J., (2008). The Happy Stripper. London: I.B. Tauris.

Wolf, N. (1996). Thebeauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. New York: Doubleday