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Mar. 6th, 2006 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaIn the past i have written about guiltless pleasure as a radical act against authoritarianism. When one's relationship to pleasure has been damaged, one is more pliable to follow authoritarian schemes. At the base of this pliability is a certain kind of proneness to violence (especially in men) resulting from this damaged relationship to pleasure which can be channelled into the currency of rulership.
Some of us have the instinctive idea that a cadre of 'sacred whores' can lead the way by demonstrating the pleasure-positive life in ways that bring goodness to people individually and society as a whole.
However, there's a difficulty here which is subtle and not easy to articulate. But i think a few pieces of the puzzle are coming into view for me.
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imomus gave one important piece in his post about "raunch feminism," which he says defines the 'lewd choreography' of raunch as empowerment:
If a woman wants to be sexual on her own terms -- especially if she understands the psychology and politics of freeing oneself and others from restrictions on pleasure -- she faces a gauntlet of social censure, taunts, jeers, and occasional violence, for being a 'traitor' to patriarchal demands for chastity. (It is important to note that a woman cannot be safe from sexual mistreatment by choosing to be chaste instead.) To free yourself of these fetters and be unabashedly human can feel empowering.
But the patriarchal catch-22 is that women are also rewarded for making themselves sexually available. Sexual availability on demand is, after all, what patriarchy ultimately demands of women. So the empowerment of being sexual on one's own terms can be lost to the financial rewards available for playing to men's desires and commodifying one's sexual availability. You run from one demon right into the arms of another.
Being rewarded for doing something one enjoys can seem empowering... but once sexual availability has been commodified, this empowerment is lost. (Consider, for example, the points made here byginmar on the link between prostitution and rape.) The momentary praise one receives from individual men for giving them easy access to sexual gratification is a cheap substitute for true self-determination. (Trust me on this.)
Think about it: if patriarchy were easy to undermine, a matter of straightforwardly doing one thing or another, women would have figured out how to undo it centuries ago. But patriarchy traps women in a sexual maze, where they are undervalued for being too prudish and simultaneously undervalued for being too brazen. One institution sings the praise of chaste women, while another, very different institution sings the praise of sluts; and together both build a maze around women.
It is not possible to "reform" social sexuality within this maze. Asimomus suggested, quoted above, it is not possible to empower women without undermining patriarchy.
So if we are to liberate ourselves from sexism and authoritarian pleasure-restriction at the same time, we must have a clear understanding of when we are trapped within the maze and when we have managed to transcend it.
I'm inspired here by an extensive piece which Aleister Crowley offered on this topic. In this quote, Crowley proclaimed the victory of women's equality achieved by loosing her from bearing the brunt of social strictures on sex, and the commodification of sex:
I don't know that there's a particular guideline that will ensure beyond doubt that one's efforts as a sacred whore have not been subverted. It seems to me that on this path one must look to one's will for guidance and avoid doing that which one does not wish to do. But what does this mean, to wish to do something, when one needs money to eat? What does this mean, to wish to do something, when one is starved for affection and approval?
Some of us have the instinctive idea that a cadre of 'sacred whores' can lead the way by demonstrating the pleasure-positive life in ways that bring goodness to people individually and society as a whole.
However, there's a difficulty here which is subtle and not easy to articulate. But i think a few pieces of the puzzle are coming into view for me.
imomus gave one important piece in his post about "raunch feminism," which he says defines the 'lewd choreography' of raunch as empowerment:My main objection... to raunch feminism is this. Feminism as a project has two sides: the dismantling of patriarchy, and the empowerment of women. Raunch feminism proposes that women can be "empowered" without dismantling patriarchy... in fact, by embracing "the male gaze" entirely.
If a woman wants to be sexual on her own terms -- especially if she understands the psychology and politics of freeing oneself and others from restrictions on pleasure -- she faces a gauntlet of social censure, taunts, jeers, and occasional violence, for being a 'traitor' to patriarchal demands for chastity. (It is important to note that a woman cannot be safe from sexual mistreatment by choosing to be chaste instead.) To free yourself of these fetters and be unabashedly human can feel empowering.
But the patriarchal catch-22 is that women are also rewarded for making themselves sexually available. Sexual availability on demand is, after all, what patriarchy ultimately demands of women. So the empowerment of being sexual on one's own terms can be lost to the financial rewards available for playing to men's desires and commodifying one's sexual availability. You run from one demon right into the arms of another.
Being rewarded for doing something one enjoys can seem empowering... but once sexual availability has been commodified, this empowerment is lost. (Consider, for example, the points made here by
ginmar on the link between prostitution and rape.) The momentary praise one receives from individual men for giving them easy access to sexual gratification is a cheap substitute for true self-determination. (Trust me on this.)Think about it: if patriarchy were easy to undermine, a matter of straightforwardly doing one thing or another, women would have figured out how to undo it centuries ago. But patriarchy traps women in a sexual maze, where they are undervalued for being too prudish and simultaneously undervalued for being too brazen. One institution sings the praise of chaste women, while another, very different institution sings the praise of sluts; and together both build a maze around women.
It is not possible to "reform" social sexuality within this maze. As
imomus suggested, quoted above, it is not possible to empower women without undermining patriarchy.So if we are to liberate ourselves from sexism and authoritarian pleasure-restriction at the same time, we must have a clear understanding of when we are trapped within the maze and when we have managed to transcend it.
I'm inspired here by an extensive piece which Aleister Crowley offered on this topic. In this quote, Crowley proclaimed the victory of women's equality achieved by loosing her from bearing the brunt of social strictures on sex, and the commodification of sex:
In vain will bully and brute and braggart man, priest, lawyer, or social censor knit his brows to devise him a new tamer's trick; once and for all the tradition is broken; vanished the vogue of bowstring, sack, stoning, nose-slitting, belt-buckling, cart's tail-dragging, whipping, pillory posting, walling-up, divorce court, eunuch, harem, mind-crippling, house-imprisoning, menial-work-wearying, creed stultifying, social-ostracism-marooning, Divine-wrath-scaring, and even the device of creating and encouraging prostitution to keep one class of women in the abyss under the heel of the police, and the other on its brink, at the mercy of the husband's boot at the first sign of insubordination or even of failure to please.
Man's torture-chamber had tools inexhaustibly varied; at one end murder crude and direct to subtler, more callous, starvation; at the other moral agonies, from tearing her child from her breast to threatening her with a rival when her service had blasted her beauty.
I don't know that there's a particular guideline that will ensure beyond doubt that one's efforts as a sacred whore have not been subverted. It seems to me that on this path one must look to one's will for guidance and avoid doing that which one does not wish to do. But what does this mean, to wish to do something, when one needs money to eat? What does this mean, to wish to do something, when one is starved for affection and approval?
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-06 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-07 07:01 pm (UTC)That does not mean that other forms of pleasure are without value. But the psychology of authoritarianism does seem to focus on sexuality in a strong and precise way, and this is because (in my opinion) humans have an innate understanding of the reaction to someone above you in the social hierarchy restricting your access to touch and touch-pleasure.
I do not think that the focus of conservatives in our society on sex can in ANY way be called sex-positive.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-07 07:10 pm (UTC)I totally get what your saying, and used the term sex-positive in an ironic/provocative way. The power-elite are playing a double-game with sex, one they might not even conciously realize they are playing, but which nonetheless has effects which further their agenda. TO summariaze - restriction on sex keep people fixated on it, to thier ultimate detriment.
By being so ostensibly sex-negative, they keep society as a whole quite infantile in their relationship to sex, and focus people all the more on it, simply because it's got all sorts of restrictions about it, and is so taboo. By keeping people infantily fixated on sexual gratification, all the while putting the breaks on it, it helps keep people internally distracted and programmed. In specific terms, people spend so much time feeling bad on a base level, they're constantly looking for a hit of something to simply alleiviate the pressure, to make them feel good for just NOW. Consequently, they never get to rise beyond that and discover other types of pleasure that could have a more profound/transfomative impact on thier own conciousness, and our society as a whole. The same thing goes with drugs, but to a slightly lesser degree.
Basically - keep the experience and expression of pleasure shallow and infantile through restriction and taboo, in order to enforce the status quo.
PS: I don't think sex is infantile or am in any way prudish or precious - I do however think the fixation of our culture on sexuality is indicative of a deep-seated problem that has a definite political/power facet to it.