(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

Not long ago, I went looking online for porn for the first time ever. I was, uh, doing research, yeah, that's it. For the most part I have never been particularly interested in visual porn and have much more strongly preferred written smut, especially literary erotica.

I have to say I was rather shocked by what I found. I mean, not literally shocked shocked, as in my eyes bled and my jaw hit the floor, but I was really disconcerted to see the degree to which it was difficult or impossible to separate images from a context of degredation and humiliation.

Now, I know porn doesn't have to be that way. I've seen many examples of positive, non-dehumanizing porn. But I wonder if there isn't something about the medium itself, or the common-denominator reaction to it, that tends to inspire dehumanization. I'm don't think so, though, because there's evidence that it is this society in particular that inspires dehumanization in pornography.

For a while now I've been examining the anthropology of sex, in particular the use and mis-use of sex in militaristic cultures. An article I quoted here last year argues for a strong correlation between violence and restriction of pleasure. Today, in this exchange with alobar, a few more pieces of the puzzle fit into place for me.

In primate society, a male's access to sex is restricted according to his place in the social hierarchy. A male who is not the alpha knows his place because of restrictions on his access to sex. It is my theory that this works in reverse -- that men act in a subservient way if their access to sex is restricted. If so, there is a strong incentive for the leaders of a militaristic society to repress healthy sexual expression.

Some species of primates use homosexual sex to defuse potential conflict. I believe that it has this effect on human males, too.

My theory also proposes that in militaristic societies, in which large numbers of men are expected to take up arms in wars of conquest, a healthy relationship to pleasure is thwarted, by means of sexually repressive memes, but also by association of pleasure with dehumanization. Those who can provide outlets for healthy sexual expression -- women and homosexually-passive men (and male-to-female transsexuals), especially if they work as prostitutes -- are marginalized.

This may explain, for example, why some cultures had traditions of "sacred prostitution" -- because women and some men could contribute to social welfare and peace by providing sexual services. In a culture where peace is valued, prostitution could easily turn into a sacred task because it contributes demonstrably to public peace. In contrast, the militaristic authors of the Old Testament forbade any Israelite from becoming temple prostitutes (in fact, several of the anti-homosexual passages in the OT are actually proscriptions against male temple prostitution), which were a feature of life among the Canaanites and certain other Semitic societies.

This article to which alobar linked had some interesting thoughts on the possible influence of dehumanizing pornography on the torture photos from Abu Ghraib:

In fact, most of the torture photographs have a sexual theme, as in those showing the coercing of prisoners to perform, or simulate, sexual acts among themselves. ... [M]ost of the pictures seem part of a larger confluence of torture and pornography: a young woman leading a naked man around on a leash is classic dominatrix imagery. And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet --- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate.

What formerly was segregated as pornography, as the exercise of extreme sadomasochistic longings - as in Pier Paolo Pasolini's last, near-unwatchable film, Salo (1975), depicting orgies of torture in the Fascist redoubt in northern Italy at the end of the Mussolini era - is now being normalized, by some, as high-spirited play or venting. To "stack naked men" is like a college fraternity prank, said a caller to Rush Limbaugh and the many millions of Americans who listen to his radio show. Had the caller, one wonders, seen the photographs? No matter. The observation --- or is it the fantasy? --- was on the mark. What may still be capable of shocking some Americans was Limbaugh's response: "Exactly!" he exclaimed. "Exactly my point. This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time." "They" are the American soldiers, the torturers. And Limbaugh went on: "You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people. You ever heard of emotional release?"

Our psychology is not far off from the egregious displays of torture and violence which were taken as entertainment by the Roman public. Emotional relief for the masses -- to sublimate the terribly dehumanizing pressures of living on the bottom tiers of a decidedly cannibalistic society.

Comments

[alobar.livejournal.com]

> it was difficult or impossible to separate images
> from a context of degredation and humiliation.

You doing research with free porn, I take it? Paying for anything gains access to higher quality. No matter what it is. But yes, there is a lot of mysogenist crap out there. Adam Smith might be startled to discover his old adage about bad money driving good money out of circulation applies to porn as well as coins.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Paying for anything gains access to higher quality.

I don't doubt that. But it begs the question; why should even the free porn be so formulaic and misogynistic?

As an aside, part of me wonders if it isn't a side effect of the internet as a medium. Hmm, more to come on that.

That kind of speculation aside, one can see easily the power dynamics of our society at play in the porn which is widely available.

Bad currency vs. good.

[beowulf1723.livejournal.com]

Adam Smith might be startled to discover his old adage about bad money driving good money out of circulation applies to porn as well as coins.

Actually, this is usually called "Gresham's Law" after Sir Thomas Gresham, a Tudor merchant and financial adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, though the concept predates him by centuries.

Nor does it apply only to currency. See the quote from Aristophanes' The Frogs in the Wikipedia article.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Which also explains why the current militaristic regime, and its supporters, are also so homophobic and sex-negative in general. Reminds me of a short story I once read. In a not too distant future, when this country was on the brink of an un-necessary war, the peace movement realized that the solution to peace was piece, and used sexual freedom to reduce the will of the army to fight. I wish I could remember the author or title.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I think there has to be a caveat here, because not every militaristic culture has fitted the pattern of our modern misogynistic and homophobic culture. Sparta and Athens come to mind. Most cultures seem to fit this pattern, though. I think it is more of a correlation than a causation.

Even so, there seems to be a pattern of stylized (and therefore dehumanizing) sensuality and/or violence in most empires. The Aztecs had the only openly cannibalistic empire I'm aware of, the rest of them seem to cannibalize only subliminally.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

True, but one thing to remember about Sparta and Athens is that while they were militaristic, they were not empires, and they both existed within the context of the larger Helenic culture, so there were other cultural forces at work to compensate.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I thought Athenian women got locked up in their houses pretty much, though...

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Athens was misogynistic but not homophobic (within certain contexts).

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

So it had the same thing, just not extending to homophobia. (Although, if I have my facts straight, young boys were seen to fulfill the same purpose as women, until they were grown enough to be soldiers?)

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I don't think that young boys ever held the same status as women. I could be wrong though.

I seem to recall though that Arthur Evans wrote about a class of women in Athenian society who never took husbands and were allowed to act almost like men (except in the legal and political spheres).

[igferatu.livejournal.com]

>that men act in a subservient way if their access to sex is restricted. If so, there is a strong incentive for the leaders of a militaristic society to repress healthy sexual expression.

I think that you are on to something there, but in my experience it seems that it is peer groups which control sexual expression. For instance, in the US Nixon was re-elected by a landslide in 1968 and the Vietnam War went on for years while at the same time sexual liberation continued to expand until the arrival of AIDS.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It would take more than a decade or so for the effects to be felt; the sexual revolution may have been a kind of protest against the repressive culture, but the people holding the reins of society were (as they have been) the older generations. Note, too, that much of the sexual revolution reflected the attitudes of the culture at large, including misogyny and homophobia.

"Government conspiracy theories" are way off, in that they assume that dictatorship requires top-down regulation of minute details in people's lives. Actually I think the reality is more sinister -- in that the people themselves are active participants and architects of dictatorial regimes and their cultural correlatives such as sexual repression.

[igferatu.livejournal.com]

>Actually I think the reality is more sinister -- in that the people themselves are active participants and architects of dictatorial regimes and their cultural correlatives such as sexual repression.

Sure. I mean who is more evil, the lone maniac barking German in a beer hall, or the millions of 'sane' public who support him?

Tangential musings...

[c3fyn.livejournal.com]

I too have been disturbed by the prevalence of degradation/humiliation themes in pornography. Also disturbing is the correlation with such attitudes in otherwise seemingly nice friends of mine. While I think the militarism has something to do with it, I believe that in our culture it is the combined effects of patriarchal/militaristic Judaism and Christianity, which, contrary to the apologists, has historically been one of the most virulently sex-negative memes of the last 2000 years.

I have wondered whether exposure to porn (which tends to glorify the sex-negative) has warped the overall approach to sex, and strengthened the degradation/humiliation element in the populace at large. I note that the cohort born in the 80's (and thus effectively "always" having had the Internet) have decidedly callous attitudes regarding sex, and that many people's bedroom repertoires seem entirely informed by detached things such as "technique" and focus less on really paying attention to the particular person they are with. The idea seems to be that good performance in the bedroom has less to do with reading your specific partner's body and more to do with some universal template which is supposed to work with everyone. Not incidentally, this template seems to come directly from our sleazy, lowest-common-denominator porn industry. This creates some dissonance for me, as I am all about sexual liberation, so this topic is difficult for me to sort out--to be "pro porn" in the face of the current "industry" (says it all, really) seems to be a position which is ironically supporting a sex-negative stance.

I agree that the common mentality is frightfully analogous to that of the Romans. It seems to me that the public discourse is dominated by an exceedingly compassionless perspective--a brutal, imperialist perspective, in fact. Dehumanization seems to be the rule of the day. The Black Iron Prison has reasserted itself with a vengeance.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

When I was 16, I read my first written porn novel. A boy I knew, a friend of mine, let me read it, and he assured me that "even nice boys" read this stuff. From beginning to end, the book was filled with scenes of rape and torture. And the primary female character who gets raped over and over again enjoys it, of course. It's the only way she can feel sexually liberated.
I've since seen many other little porn novels like this, both in print and on line, and they are all eerily the same - virgins being raped and learning to enjoy it, smart uppity career women being raped and learning to enjoy it, college girls being raped and learning to enjoy it, etc. Except for the ones in which the female character is a horrible manipulative voracious person who gets off on degrading men (although they are usually men who are shown to be "inferior" in some way - skinny, foreign, young, etc). She usually gets a comeuppance by the end of the novel though, by a "real man".
Perhaps the Lyndie England story was just a real life story such as this - domineering (bad) woman gets off on punishing inferior (foreign brown) men, but eventually gets put in her place by Real Men (US Miitary tribunal).

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Or as you said last night (to clarify): Lyndie England became news because it fit that pattern, whereas the other participants were barely mentioned in the media.

The media are a big part of this whole pattern, and they buy into it and reflect it and therefore perpetuate it.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Mass media has created a mythology out of current events that is as "unrealistic" as the ancient mythologies "modern" people sneer at as "superstitious" and "ignorant". The Lyndie England story is mythology, a morality tale.
But what is the moral here?

Questions I am not supposed to ask:
Why was Lyndie England's face portrayed all over the news to the exclusion of any other upright young American soldier/torturer?
Why did no one ask "Who held the camera?"