(Let’s call this part two of three, shall we?)
By some freak coincidence, I had occasion to watch An Officer and a Gentleman the other week after not having seen it since 1983.
Believe it or not, this is pertinent to our (fantastic) ongoing conversation — and my internal one — about the issues I’m seeing this generation have with pornography, the influences I’m seeing it have on them, and how incredibly different things have gotten between me at 13 and my Scarleteen users around that same age.
In 1983, when I had been sexually assaulted twice already, when I had slept on a park bench or under an El heatlamp more than once, when I had just started to find ways to get the bouncers at the Metro to let me into over-18 shows, when I had already had a girlfriend, already had a boyfriend, had already become a habitual smoker, was living with intense verbal and emotional abuse from my stepparent, my father was watching this film one weekend visit I had with him and had no problem with me watching it, too.
Thinking nothing of it myself — to my thirteen-year-old self it was a nice enough movie, but kind of boring — and having NO idea what this would incite, when I came back to my mother’s house post-visit, I mentioned having seen it.
And she FREAKED OUT. (I really hope she isn’t reading this: my intent isn’t to embarass her or to make a public spectacle of our family dysfunction, which I rarely talk about publicly.) I overheard the telephone arguments about it, I wasn’t allowed to see my father again for months, which given the dynamic at my mother’s house, was a terrible, terrible punishment to ME, not my father.
What was all the fuss about? There was some sex in it (so barely: really, there was the suggestion of sex, and rewatching it, the suggestion of the woman getting off, not the guy). There was also some issue about there being breasts, which apparently, it was scandalous I saw, even though I’d been looking at my own since I was ten, and had my hands (unbenownst to my mother) on a set other than my own as well before this time. Most of my experiences to date listed above were also either unbenownst to my mother (and some to my father), or living in the land of deep denial.
So, I rewatch these sex scenes. Mind, this film is a fairy-tale romance: it is an old-school film. While I’d not say it’s misogynist at all (and it does actually have some thoughtful examinations of machismo), it’s certainly not a feminist film. However. The sex and interpersonal interplay in this film is sensitive, pretty darn realistic, and really…well, intimate and tender. I’m not even sure that we see suggested sex scenes like this on film much anymore, and it’s really a shame that we don’t. Debra Winger is a drop-dead gorgeous woman, but not in an inaccessible, unattainable way. Those breasts were real, looking like natural breasts do, gravity and all. There was not just physical but emotional chemistry in there (it helps that this wasn’t porn, it was a film with actors in it capable of acting).
It was nice.
But from my mother’s perspective — and given, I inherit my libertine tendencies absolutely from my father and my life experience, NOT from my mother, with whom my nature and hers have always been in constant conflict — my viewing of this was completely inappropriate and potentially traumatizing.
Setting aside the fact that that perspective was completely out of whack with the actual trauma I’d dealt with and was dealing with, I think we can safely say that we’re very unlikely to find many parents these days who would freak out about their teenage kid seeing a film like this. And obviously, I don’t have a problem with that: I don’t think we’ve taken some sort of cultural fall from grace because we’re now ever-so-slightly more accepting of, you know, breasts. I think it was a silly, out-of-touch and totally uncalled for freakout that had a lot more to do with control than protection.
But I do think it’s really interesting to see how different things have gotten.
I mean, I’m not a TV watcher. Until Mark and I moved in together, I hadn’t had one in my own home since 1990, and I grew up watching movies, not TV. But now that it’s here, I flip it on now and then, either out of an anthropological sort of curiosity, or because I managed to get myself hooked on those damn Bravo shows. It was only on the last few months that I was up late enough to discover those Girls Gone Wild infomercials.
I have to say, it is a very, very strange experience to find yourself, at the ripe age of 36, having had 20+ years of a sort of in-person sexual field research to a degree no one really seems to do anymore (ah, the 80’s and early 90’s), having sat nude for artists and photographers since high school, having reviewed pornography as a gig, having done all the sorts of things I have to find yourself sitting slackjawed, scandalized and incredulous at what is on publicly viewable television.
I confess, my first response TO my response was, “Fuck all, I’m my mother.”
I’m not, of course. But the divide is so great in some respects between my generation and this one (more, I think, than it was between my mother’s and mine) that even someone like me can feel like they’ve been living in a dream world when it comes to some of this stuff. And my shock and awe at something like this isn’t about me thinking it’s terrible for anyone to see the female body or sex, about feeling somehow lesser or insecure because of — or in some sort of competition with — these girls, about concerns or beliefs that I have to mimic a media dynamic in my sexual life, or about the idea that sex is somehow less sacred and important if it’s outside the private sphere.
When Jenny and I were talking about these issues privately the other day, she shared something that I think is relevant and also part of the common experience some of these girls posting worries about porn are having. Namely, that she’d come of age with it so drilled into her head that you had to be okay with porn, that she’d gone ahead and taken that tack — fiercely, even — before she’d actually SEEN any. And when she did, and really started to see the gamut, it was a big-time shocker as to what she had been saying was okay, or she was okay with. I think some of the feelings these young women finding their partner’s porn are having are akin to mine at the GGW commercials: they didn’t even realize what porn WAS, and weren’t really prepared for it. So, when they do, it’s a sort of double-betrayal: they feel betrayed by their partners (especially if they’ve got the sort of strange ideas about monogamy and love talked about in the last entry), and may even feel betrayed by themselves. Even if they weren’t pro-porn, but engaged in any sort of denial about it, or didn’t set limits up with partners about what level of it (if any) they were okay with, or accepted that they had no choices per who they partnered with so far as partners who used porn (because, as they often tell me, in their minds, all men do), they may feel trapped by their own choices/stances. And this’d be all the more prevalent with young women whose esteem is intrinsically linked to sexual/romantic partnership.
My concerns with pornography are about exploitation of those in porn and some avenues of sex work when it occurs, about the way pornography seems to be creating even further divides between women and about how it may be problematic for women as a class, about the misrepresentation and objectification of the bodies and sexualities of straight, queer and/or transgender women, about the commodification and capitalization of sex in general, about how sex work can/may play a part in keeping the wage gap as wide as it is, about the ever-more-pervasive amounts of violence conflated with sex, about how scripting sex to death can inhibit a satisfying sex life and so forth.
And about how it’s being processed by younger people, and what effect it is having on their sexual lives, sexual identities, relationships and sexual esteem. It wigs me out that almost daily, I talk to girls with ongoing or possible infections who, for the love of Pete, have GOT to get their butts into a gynecologist but who are often completely mortified by the idea of showing a doctor their genitals or having a doctor touch them; or who steadfastly state there is no WAY they can masturbate in front of a partner (or alone), ask them to use lubricant when their vaginas are so dry, condoms are tearing, or consider talking about the fact that receptive, satisfying sexual activity that’s also about THEM would be kind of a nice thing.
These are often the same young women who are NOT at all reticent to engage in scripted bisexual performances at a party, or have some guy’s penis in their mouth unprotected who they’ve only dated for a couple of weeks, or consider breast implants or labiaplasty, or learn pole dancing or play little french maid or let a partner tie them up.
It’s these kinds of huge divides and mismatches that confound my mind. Okay, so they don’t confound my mind, I’m a constant observer, a complusive reader and an analytical thinker: I get why they’re there. But I don’t know the magic trick to help them bridge these gaps. I’m not even sure that’s possible at this juncture, because that same divide exists in culture-at-large, not just with them.
But many of MY concerns about pornography, and the concerns of young women the same age or younger than the GGW girls, are usually very different, and that’s another bridge I’m not sure how to cross. Effectively, some of what I am seeing is that their concerns are much more like my mother’s concerns were back when about Ms. Winger and her breasts. That they’re about control — control of partners, control of self — ownership/possession of a partner’s sexuality (which often it seems like they want/claim greater ownership of than their own sexuality — though I think body image issues come into play here; I’m always amazed that older people freaking out about young women giving blow jobs and not getting back don’t bear in mind that giving a blow job means you don’t have to get naked or have a partner see your genitals), and about feeling like their limits and boundaries are or must somehow be dictated by media. (And as one reader observed in the previous big entry on this, I’d posit that levels of intelligence and education and economics come into play here: let’s be frank and accept that there are a LOT of people out there, especially younger people, who do not have the critical thinking skills or self-posession to NOT have limits, boundaries and ideals separate from media mandates.)
They’re not concerned about women being exploited in porn: not because they don’t think they are, but because many of them feel those women DESERVE to be exploited. They not only often do not care about those women, they despise them: they are their enemy. To them, those women are sluts, slags, whores, throwaways. This is one attitude that scares the holy hell out of me.
They don’t seem concerned about the inauthenticness of pornography and what effects that may have because — it often seems — they don’t SEE any inauthenticness, save in the physical appereance of the actresses. This scares me, too, because while it’s a given that there is no one sexuality for all of us, nor any one way we enact that sexuality, so I think we can safely agree that for some people, with some porn, there are levels of authenticity that match, there is also clear and obvious gendernormativity and heteronormativity in most porn, even when you run the gamut, that very much does not represent the incredible diversity that exists in human sexuality, especially when we’re talking about women’s sexuality, and that also includes that of lesbian, bisexual and genderqueer women.
(And obviously, most aren’t concerned about issues like how it may effect women and economics because that’s just outside most of their life experience at this point. Expecting those sorts of concerns in women college-age and younger just strikes me as an unreasonable expectation. I was paying my own bills at 16: they aren’t.)
Because I still want to think and talk more on this, I don’t feel the need to tie this up right now with any sort of conclusion or shiny red bow, so I’ll head off to more book work for now and see where this takes us. Again, I’m really digging the CR going on, so please, by all means, discuss!
November 30th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
I am digging it as well. Very interesting stuff.
One thought regarding this statement:
“I’m always amazed that older people freaking out about young women giving blow jobs and not getting back don’t bear in mind that giving a blow job means you don’t have to get naked or have a partner see your genitals.”
Based on my experience and the emails I receive from readers/viewers, it seems common for young women to be able to orgasm alone, but not with their partners. They feel too embarrassed to let their guard down and let their partner see them experience arousal and orgasm. Maybe this fear plays a role in the “servicing” trend.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:25 am
Big yes to the comment about how these young women view the women in porn, and that’s something that’s been depressing me a lot about the Scarleteen threads.
And I wonder if it ties into something else I’ve been noticing - the sense of helplessness/passivity. They keep saying very insistently that porn is a deal-breaker for them, that they *can’t* be in a relationship with someone who uses porn, that they get upset even thinking about it - yet they seem totally unable to *act* as if it’s the deal-breaker they keep saying it is.
It’s as if they see their only options as being to somehow police their partners’ thoughts or behaviour more successfully, or to “compete” more effectively with the women in porn.
Actually holding their partners accountable for their choices, making their own choices, and deciding that if said partner is doing something they find truly unacceptable, they’re going to end the relationship - that isn’t on the menu.
There’s all this insecurity and hate directed at themselves and at the women in porn, but at the same time they’re making excuses for these guys - that maybe it’s some mystic thing about “being a guy” that they can’t understand, they must “need” porn or be “addicted” to it, or it’s because of their excess testosterone.
I mean, they maintain very definitely that their partners have hurt them and it’s all their fault, but (completely leaving aside how justified that is or isn’t), there’s some sort of weird dissociation between that and their ability to act.
Or maybe this is just me trying to analyse on the basis of too little coffee ….
December 1st, 2006 at 5:27 am
You know, I am still amazed at the difference in approach to sex on tv/in movies in different countries. Growing up in Germany, I saw breasts on TV quite often. They were in afternoon series, in commercials, in 8 o’clock movies - everywhere. Of course, actual sex scenes were off-limits until 10pm or later and male genitalia was never seen, but nuditiy and the fade-to-black kind of sex scenes were absolutely commonplace. The thing that was totally off limits - was violence. Movie ratings are based more on violence than on nudity and you’d never see graphic violent scenes on TV before 8. (Accordingly, the movie my mom would not let me see was “Scream”, but she’d had no objection to my seeing “Titanic” repeatedly. When she found out I’d seen “Scream” anyway at a friend’s house, I was grounded for a week.)
Then I came to the US at 13 and noticed that the absolute opposite was the case and I was just amazed. I remember a conversation with my 8th grade science teacher, who’d been to Germany on vacation, and who was just absolutely scandalized when she saw a commercial on German tv that featured a pair of breasts.
I am not sure where I am going with this, because here’s the thing: Aside from a few differences (sex ed is a given, abortion and bc are givens and no one’s going to try and contest that anymore), we have the same damn problems over here. I am not entirely sure how this plays out. You’d think that, growing up with nudity and sexuality being the most normal thing on earth, we’d be able to treat it as such. But apparebntly, we still can’t.
December 1st, 2006 at 11:52 am
I thought that my mother really didn’t care about sex scenes. She never made a very big deal about them. I mean, it’s not like we had Mickey Rourke movies just lying about or anything, but Mom had no issue with Pretty Woman or topless shots or Patrick Swayze’s ass in Diry Dancing.
Then we saw Rising Sun in the theater. Apparently, Mom’s line in the sand was homocidal erotic asphyxiation. To this day, I’m still impressed that she managed to cover three sets of eyes with just two hands.
December 1st, 2006 at 6:27 pm
I grew up with the Rocky Horror Soundtrack being as familiar to me as The Sound of Music.
I didn’t actually see the Rocky Horror Picture Show until I was in my early teens, I think, but I knew all the songs (though I didn’t understand much about many of them when I first learned them!) I don’t think being exposed to Rocky Horror at a young age hurt me at all, and I certainly experienced partnered sex later than most of my peers.
It’s interesting though, Heather, in relation to how you were talking about the different reasons that people object to pornography. When I first saw the movie I was a bit disturbed by the scene in which Frank’n'Furter seduces Janet, mostly because I really thought it was so horrible that Brad was not going to be her “first.” I felt all sordid. It didn’t take me long to get over this– I watched it again, reflected on WHY I’d felt so disturbed, and in the long run came out with a much healthier view on concepts like “virginity.” Now when I watch that scene though, I feel disturbed for another reason– because Frank’n'Furter is deceiving Janet, and then cohercing her into sex that she says she doesn’t want. Sure the idea is that she really does want it, but of course, that’s one of the biggest myths of rape culture– that it’s okay to keep harrassing and assaulting a woman, because it’s quite likely that she’ll enjoy it in the end. Looking back on it, I have to wonder if there was an element of that in my original dislike of the scene, but that due to the stupid magazines I’d been reading, this came off as a concern about virginity, rather than a concern about personal bodily autonomy.
December 1st, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Oh, I hear you logic, caffeine or no.
And it seems to me that passivity affecting damn near everything, not just relationships. Even something like getting breast implants is just another form of passivity; a friend of mine is talking about this but instead of examining why she doesn’t like her breasts or cutting the media that tells her she’s not good enough out of her life or something else that, while not easy, might actually be beneficial in the long run, she wants to go with the flow and make her appearance more acceptable to . . . someone or another.
I think it’s fear driving this feeling of powerlessness. Obviously in far too many cases women do lack control but too often we’re just not exercising what power we do have. The only solution I’ve been able to come up with is having a strong community to provide support when we do take control and make the decisions that are in line with our wants and needs. So many women, especially from what I see at ST, lack that community though and it can be hard as hell to create it from scratch.
They’re not concerned about women being exploited in porn: not because they don’t think they are, but because many of them feel those women DESERVE to be exploited. They not only often do not care about those women, they despise them: they are their enemy. To them, those women are sluts, slags, whores, throwaways. This is one attitude that scares the holy hell out of me.
I’m guilty of thinking along those lines too. It was the realization that those women are in fact people, leading their own lives and making their own choices that helped me see my own worth. While I didn’t realize it at the time, it was hard for me to truly expect other people to show me respect (and impossible to demand it when I didn’t receive it) when I felt a completely unjustifiable disdain for someone who was not harming me. One of my first feminist acts was to stop hating other women.
December 2nd, 2006 at 5:58 pm
I never understood the frightening or damaging aspects of Girls Gone Wild until I read this article about founder Joe Francis, which includes a first-person account of rape, so beware of triggers.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
I haven’t read your earlier post yet, Heather, so I hope I’m adding to the conversation and not just repeating someone else.
You know, I wonder if this discussion about passivity, powerlessness, and fear is really a result of not feeling worthy of being a part of a romantic (for lack of a better word) relationship. I have been realizing lately in my own life how frequently I am fed the idea that I am _so_lucky_ to have the partner I have, the children I have, the work I have. I’m not lucky. I’ve worked damn hard to get to this place in my life, to build these relationships, to be qualified to pursue work I enjoy. I think this feeling of not being worthy of good things in our lives is very common, especially in girls who feel powerless, who fear being alone, and who choose passivity (which allows them to remain comfortable) over assertiveness (which requires them to stand out from the crowd). Amen, Jill–we are absolutely guilty, in many instances, of not asserting the power we do have, whether that’s by choice or by failure to make the choice. And we are continually fed on this diet of body image expectations which make us doubt ourselves and remind us how unworthy we are.
I can tell myself every day in the mirror that I am fine just the way I am. I can tell every woman I meet that they are lovely exactly the way they are, right now, in their very own beautiful, unique bodies. I can choose not to have a TV (haven’t had one in years). But it doesn’t stop the assault of daily images and suggestions that women have to look just so in order to garner that worthiness we’re all looking for. And it seems that without that recognition of perfection that we subconciously strive for, many women never get to the point where they become comfortable in their own skin. (My husband tells me daily how beautiful I am, but that hasn’t stopped me from wondering if I should lose ten pounds, or eat that last cookie.)
I’m wondering where that affirmation has to come from before we can accept that we are good enough and learn to like ourselves? It’s a question I have been unable to answer. I’m aware that I have to like myself for myself first, but how do you jump start that process in these girls? I worry about all of these wonderful young women out there who may never even be aware that the process exists.
On another note, more related to the discussion on porn at the top of the thread, I recently was on a business trip where I stayed in a hotel that had porn on their pay-per-view channel (but then, which one doesn’t?). I flipped over to the PPV channel to see what the porn was. There was one with a title that suggested it was lesbian porn, which seemed more okay than most of the offerings, but then I realized it was produced by Hustler. (HA! If you’re not laughing, you should be.) I paid for it anyway to see just how bad it was, because I had never seen any mainstream porn that billed itself as “porn for lesbians”. I wasn’t gullible enough to believe that it would actually be what it claimed to be, but even I was shocked–probably like you were with the GGW ads, Heather–at how BAD and incredibly male-directed this porn was. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. It was Hustler, after all. But wow. The soundtrack sounded like women artificially sighing in ecstasy every thirty seconds (perhaps in an effort to convince some guy to LEAVE HER ALONE, she’s already orgasmed, thankyouverymuch). The visuals always involved three women (at least) and ALWAYS required dildos (I suppose to replace the men and to make the average viewer feel involved). Nothing even came close to portraying anything accurate. Long story short, if that’s what girls are seeing, they’ve got seriously messed up ideas about what kind of sex is okay or typical. And while I can’t say any of it shocked me much, I was horrified to realize that it was so superficial and inaccurate and just, well, GROSS. Not only was it inauthentic, it was just SCARY. No wonder girls think porn actresses are throw-aways. They act as if the only thing that matters in these films is the sex. They are impossible to identify with because they’re so stereotypical and single-faceted. I’m aware that this is kind of the point of porn, but if I was a teenage girl watching this stuff, I would feel the way you described, Heather.
I wonder: Does all of this have anything to do with catching them before they’re old enough to doubt their worth? With encouraging positive body images in very young children?
So that’s my dollar’s worth.
December 5th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Jennifer -
I think what you have to say about girls not feeling they -deserve- relationships/sex/committment/not-abuse is really on target. Of course, this is so tied to self-esteem issues, but I think that feeling of “you are lucky to have this” or “you should be grateful” implies that they don’t DESERVE good things. If you don’t deserve something you’re recieving charity and should be grateful and accept the situation you’re given (or so the rhetoric says). Hmn - I’m going to have to do some thinking on this.
On a more personal note, I was writing an email to a friend yesterday, and wanted to tell him how much his friendship means to me. I thought of using the words “I’m lucky to . . . ” but stopped. I’m NOT lucky. I deserve this, I’m so his equal, and he benefits greatly from this relationship too. Instead I used the words “I’m blessed to . . .” I don’t know if that helps your thoughts, but it was a really good clairification for me.
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