Harper Valley PTA Report

[Andrew Dinn]

Diana York Blaine writes:

> In response to your devil's advocacy Chris, I'll say yes of course "every
> fantasy about the opposite sex" involves objectification, but pornography
> is an industry, not an abstraction or a private mental construct. And, as
> an industry, it involves male control of female sexuality--not the other
> way around.  This plays into centuries of historically-contextualized male
> control of female sexuality, so I'm hard-pressed to generalize about it as
> an accident of human sexuality.  The "somebody viewing the image" is
> almost always male or at least let's say the production of pornography is
> geared towards masculine spectacle.

Yes, sex porn is an industry and, like most industry, is almost
totally in the control of men. It feeds a male market because i)
that's where the spending power is and also, thanks largely to those
men, ii) women have only recently been in a position to communicate to
men and to each other that they have any interest in sex let alone
make it a central enough concern (in the eyes of those men who hold
all the ace cards) that an industry should be devoted to it. If we had
a society where women were not treated as property. their sexual
activity tightly regulated, where they had leisure time, wealth and
opportunity to flex the muscles of their sexuality, then we might also
have a sex industry which produced female-centred porn (or just
people-centred porn). Indeed to a degree exactly such a change is
happening to women's position in the US and UK an dlo and behold it is
mirrored by a corresponding change in the `women's magazine' market
and with the rise of women-centred pornography produced by feminists &
lesbians.

But look at the obverse side of this coin. Can you argue that porn is
evil per se because it *reflects* the oppressive nature of male-female
relations?  Well, only if that is yardstick by which you delineate the
pornographic from the erotic. Only if it *has* to be used to maintain
this power imbalance in order for it to be porn. Clearly, the problem
is not necessarily porn per se but the sorry state of sexual relations
between male and female and its (quite to be expected) manifestation
in most current porn.

If you want to argue that this sexism is exactly the thing that is so
evil, so essentially pornographic about `porn' then I'll readily
agree. But I think there is still a question to answer about whether
there can also be such a thing as `good porn', erotica, call it what
you will. Whether images of naked people, having sex, are
intrinsically problematic. Are you implying that I must be sexist and
abusive of women if I get pleasure out of looking at *any* pictures of
them having sex with men? What would you say if I was to get off on
pictures of men having sex with other men? Where does oppression come
into that?

And what if my reaction to sexist porn is slightly more sophisticated
than merely to drool and slaver over the helplessness and social
inferiority of the poor little woman tied up naked on the page in
front of me. What if I use her nakedness, faute de mieux, to fantasise
about a loving, caring relationship with a girl I love and respect
deeply? What of sado-masochistic fantasies where partners willingly
place themselves in ritualised positions of powerlessness in order to
test their trust and willingness to accept control of their partner?
Are they not responsible enough to be acceptable? What if I fantasised
about being controlled or abused by a woman in the same way as the
woman depicted was controlled and abused by a man? which of these
activities is `wrong' and why and how do you draw a line here? I think
there is (or can be) a lot more to pornography and its use than your
description of it as a `masculine spectacle' suggests.

To come back to Pynchon, he certainly does use sexist pornographic
imagery in his books. No doubt about it. Lots of fetishistic imagery
and objectification. Lots of characters bypassing each other's hurt
little souls like ships in the night while their bodies manage to
connect big time. Why? Why would he do that? Perhaps because he knows
how sexism articulates itself in sexual relations and is showing it to
us so we too can see it? (maybe it's not actually so unobvious as you
think). Or is it just that he can't help but betray himself and his
oppressive sexuality, what with all that hegemony at his disposal, by
throwing in a wank fantasy every now and again?

And why does he present the reader with this sexual imagery in such
spangly, ritualised detail? Why does he expend a not inconsiderable
amount of ingenuity in trying to get the reader all steamed up? Could
it be that he is trying to show you how easily we (men *and* women)
can be seduced? How much we have been corrupted by our evil, selfish,
abusive `culture'? Or is it just that he thought the odd orgy scene
would help his sales figures?

And not all the sex scenes are oh so sexist. Look at the final scene
between Gottfried and Blicero. The sexual element of it is central in
that it is fundamental that the communication effected between the
pair is achieved alongside a gay sexual act, since the latter's
sterility, its wasting of potential for new life is critical. But the
sex is only important because it is a metaphor. This is not `porn' but
a carefully worked out use of a sexual transaction as a mirror of a
much bigger theme - meeting, touching but failing to communicate - to
transfer anything in the touch, then failing, falling away into
separation and isolation and death.

In other words, much as I agree that there are things very wrong in a
world where magazines like Hustler sell in the amounts they do I don't
believe that it rules out constructive use of sexual imagery and, in
particular, I don't see that harping on about it tells us much about
Pynchon. I suppose I could have said much the same thing if I had
followed your comments with `yeah yeah yeah, blah blah blah'. You seem
to regard men as neanderthals who, as soon as they see a female bum
raised in the air, are incapable of analysing the stimulus, their
response or the mechanisms which give rise to and help connect the
two. Really!

> . . . While both Cosby's son and JeanBenet
> Ramsay are featured in the evening news, for example, the image of the
> little girl has been shown hundreds of times and is on nearly every
> magazine cover in America.  Where's Ennis Cosby?  The image of a slain
> black man working on a PhD in special ed. simply doesn't fit into any
> masculine pornographic fantasy like a beautiful dead little girl does so
> we're just as likely to see his father's image featured as his.
> Bottom line? These things are not gender-neutral.

Nor are they always `gendered'. Race also provides its opportunities.
As do the many other pornographically tainted elements of our culture.
This is special pleading. Recall Pynchon's line about everything being
negotiable, `Jews, cunt, hershey bars'. Well, he was right. Only you
seem to keep on harping on about `cunt'. Have you ever looked at TV
adverts recently? (actually just as much the soaps and game shows
which fill in between them). Ever thought how many different ways they
try to seduce you? No, I mean *you* as a female, Diana. Not just sex,
using slimy males with perfect teeth, plastic hair and bulging
pectorals. No, also food porn, keeping up with the Joneses porn,
confirming your superiority to bungling but lovable males porn, etc
etc. We've come a long way in the manipulation stakes since the ad
agencies dropped their tired old formula of `2 Cs in a K'. Look at a
newspaper and read the `opinion formers' who bluster in its centre
pages. Check out a broadcast by a political party. These too are
pornographic - or if you want to quibble about words ok, these too are
about large scale, institutionalized manipulation of one part of the
populace by another part of it. Keep your eye on that sexism ball all
the time and you are not going to notice all those other ones hitting
the floor.

> As for the attempt to silence this discussion (which is of course only one
> of hundreds on the list not directly related to TRP) by depicting it as
> "PTA" gibberish--we feminists are quite used to being told what we say is
> irrelevant, unimportant, untrue, unrealistic, uninteresting or
> inappropriate.  You'll have to do better than that. 

I don't think it was an attempt to `silence this discussion'. I
suspect it was intended, like my comments, to point out that your
contribution was based on a partial, simplistic view of what was at
stake in a very complex and important issue. Meant along the lines of
`You'll have to do better than that', perhaps?


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.