11/20/2006

How to be a real man OR The joys of In-ur-endo

Okay Meester Jensen, you are now a toolbag.

Do not, I repeat do not write these words just before presuming to tell women what they can and cannot do:

The problem with privilege, I said, is that it so often leads to incredible arrogance


...Because Irony will be along shortly with a huge bill.

Also, this is very stupid line indeed under any circumstances:

Lest we float too far away from the real world of pornography


Yes folks, the Real World of pornography, where several random whacky strangers from a variety of ethnic and class backgrounds (who are all very telegenic, and not fat in any sense of the word) take pictures of each other naked, or something. IF this is evidence of your wit, I suggest that you keep it locked in a cellar and abuse it regularly with a poked bear, lest it continue to have ideas above its station.

To put no too fine a point on the whole thing, the essay leaves me feeling deeply squikced out basically because you read it, and you start to realise that this guy has basically just spent several days of his free time purchasing porn and watching it, and that his SO possibily caught him at it so he had to write up this utterly shambolic essay.

Another thing is this passage as well:

I don’t remember exactly how I answered the question that evening, but I remember clearly what I wanted to say to him. I wanted to suggest to this privileged young man at one of the United States’ most elite universities that we conduct an experiment. I wanted to ask him to come to the front of the room and take off all his clothes in front of the group, lie down on his back, put his legs up, and make his anus as open and available as possible. Then we would ask other men could volunteer to do a double anal on him, and he could then report back to us about whether that experience felt degrading.

It would have been inappropriate for me as an older man with a professor’s status to be so harsh to a student, and I was more measured in my response. But that’s what I wanted to say to him: Why don’t you come up here and we’ll let two of the biggest guys in the room fuck you in the ass at the same time so that you can tell us from direct experience whether a double anal is inherently degrading.


Now this highlights what Jensen's fundamental problem is: Jensen finds sex to be inherently about degradation. Not DPs specifically you understand, but sex in general, sex is, to him, a method by which dominance is inherently asserted by men, over whoever they need to assert it over.

What is the distinction between double anal and someone anally penetrating themselves with some sort of wide girthed dildo exactly? Aside from Extra Testicles I mean.

None really, it's an orifice Jensen, it is not a magical penis reactive hole into nevernever land, if you stick one huge dick in there or two medium to small sized ones, the difference is only how wide it has to get to accomadate the size, it will not explode if it comes into contact with multiple penises.

But that's not the point, the point is that Jensen is married, quite monogamously to the notion that sex is degrading to women, and rather than trying to figure out something productive, like how men might have sex with women without degrading women (psst, try actively asking women about this stuff rather than only speaking to men who you can safely degrade with sexualised mental imagery), he's just trying to find further evidence to support his conjecture that sex is inherently degrading to women so as to evangelise his position that sex is, basically, Teh Icky.

The problem with privilege, I said, is that it so often leads to incredible arrogance


See Digby, Jane Hamsher, Trex, Amanda, Marc, Lindsay and others on this stuff, you are no less privelaged and therefore no less prone to thoughtless arrogance just because now you are on the supposed side of Truth, Justice and American Express Air Lingus (or something), what being on the side of Truth and Justice Means, fundamentally, is that you are no longer allowed to get away with being thoughtless arrogant.

Because you are now obligated to not be thoughtless arrogant.

Hence your first, entirely reactionary, relationship to sex within a patriarchy is completely wrong, let me give you a little Sex positivist secret Jensen: Sex is not inherently icky, it is inherently deeply amusing.

This means that, instead of holding porn up as "inherently degrading", as nasty, as evidence for "men's" inhumanity to women, porn needs to be held up for what it is: Crap, utter and complete shite being peddled as something dark and forbbiden and raw and real.

There is no "real world of pornograph", there is nothing of hte kind, it is a sham hidden behind a facade of representative media, and a sham that deconstructions such as your peice Jensen end up enabling by repeating.

And when you talk of "men" in that generalised way, you are basically talking about yourself aren't you, your own lack of empathy, your own basic arousal at seeing women being degraded because you cannot think of sex outside of the very straight jacket of patriarchy's conception of sex as inherently degrading.

Degradation is sex, that's what patriarchy tells you, and, Oh lookie here! That's what you still believe and tell people, even though you're a so called feminist.

And while you can put the word "patriarchal" before the word sex, to try and qualify it, but we know what you really mean because you watch porn that is degrading and nasty and misogynistic, and you see The Act, not the way the act is filmed and performed, not the language, oh no, there, right there in black and white:

Is a DP inherently degrading to women and therefore sexist? I don’t know, and I don’t have to know.

Is a DP inherently degrading in the minds of men? That’s a much more important question, and that answer is much more disturbing.


You don't talk about how the act is portrayed in mainstream pornography, you talk about the act it self "is DP inherently degrading" you ask.

Do you not get how important a qualifier it is, after convincing men how degrading porn is to women by pointing out the way porn frames sexuality within a portrayal of sex as something that is, always and evermore, degrading to women? You don't notice how porn always verbally describes women who it wishes to degrade and abuse?

No of course not, the important point of pornography always calling porn actresses "sluts" and "whores" and "bitches" is to degrade them, no further analysis is required there of course!

But what is a "whore", or a "slut"? A woman who has sex (with more than four other men in a single life time, according to the WHO if really you want to be precise about it), so the patriarchy degrades women in porn, by accusing them of sleeping with more than four men, and then some guys fuck them.

Uhm.

Sorry, but did you not understand what is happening there? You're being conditioned, ffs, to think of sex as an act that must, inherently, be degrading to women, so that either you fuck women, but in a crappy way that involves the degradation of women, or that you don't fuck women, because sex is degrading, and as it takes two to do the horizontal mambo... and so you have this bizarrely anti-sex 'tude that is really all about you refusing to be degradated by nasty icky patriarchal sex, and in the mean time women find it that much harder to find someone who isn't a jerk to sleep with.

Let me treat you a bit more genuously than you treated that guy who tried to be a cheeky snook cocking radical conservative at the dinner party you and some friends held for the palestinians, let me explain to you a solution, one that isn't a solition of 2 parts water, one part semen (though to be fair, your sublimated issues with being a closet Bi do need to be worked out at some point) Do you know what is a healthy attitude to this culture of degarding sex? A healthy attitude rests on being able to laugh at the inherent humor of two sweaty bodies locked in mutual squirtiness.

Bascially Professor Jensen, you need to be fucked up the ass.

And that's not as glib a statement as it may first appear either, if you did say to your SO: "Pray tell shall you fuck me up the ass, mayhaps with a strapon?" (faux-Shakespearian dialogue can be an important part of getting the joke inherent to sex, because that funny little bearded man from elizabethan england got the joke of sex, and in fact included it in all (or most) of his plays), and she actually felt like going in for it (femdom buttplay is a good way to explore gender roles within a relationship btw) you would have to go shopping with her for the devices and tools neccesary for the act, and that is where you would get a real education.

Because there is little to no doubt that you would discover a thing that cannot, or should not, exist, for you would discover that greatest of all sacrileges, the strapon designed to be used for the act of penetrating a woman in the ass and the vagina at the same time, a device designed with two phalluses situated one above the other, and with a little bumpy bit on the inside of the harness for added mutuality.

Now mr jensen, I'll let you guess what sort of untermenschen wears such an EVIL and DEGRADING device, and on whom they are used.

Yes! That's right! Lesbians are into DPing each other!

I love that everytime I start to feel like an idiot because I've never got a degree in anything, someone like you or mike adams pops up and showsm e how mindboggling unable to even notice your own cultural and social biases when making wild and barely supported suppositions.

Okay, and about your constant assertion that, "I am not a woman, and so I obviously cannot experience a DP", why then do you then entertain this brief sexual fantasy in which one of your male students is sexually degraded through the act of being double penetrated by the "biggest" guys in the class?

So do you know what Professor Jensen, if I'm ever in austin texas, I'll brave the fierce, and no doubt quietly vibrating, dildo police of Texas and make sure I carry a discrete DP ready strapon about my person at all times on the off chance I see you bending over someplace during my wanderings.

Because what empathy basically boils down to is this: being able to understand what it's like to be in someone else's shoes, and you constant refusal to even try to think what being DPed, or just plain penetrated for that matter, in a non-pornographic, non-degrading or generally patriarchal manner, show that ultimately, the man who can't empathise in your essay is none other than yourself.

14 comments:

Anthony Kennerson said...

Damn.

Just. Plain. DAMN.

And to think I was so mad with you for that blast at Rachel over at Punkass some time back.

I hereby retract all the smack I threw at you...and wholeheartedly bow to your feet in penace.

I couldn't have whacked Jensen better than that on my best day.

Well done, RM...and welcome back to the blogosphere as a free agent.

:-)

Anthony
http://redgarterclubwebsite.com/SmackChron_Blog/index.php

Anonymous said...

Hell, J****n's whole shtick is so rife with irony. Back when I was in Austin you could buy those puppies right down town. In fact the once I was in the store with a friend hanging a flyer for his band, one of those sales girls grabbed my ass when she walked by. I felt - let me see if I have this right - soooo degraded.

belledame222 said...

Once a toolbag, always a toolbag.

apparently some pals maaaayyyyy be heading up to Boston for the anti-pr0n conference in March, in which case they'll get to see him in the chastened flesh. i may even join them. muhahahaha. yeah, i'll probably think better of it, but i gotta say: i'm now morbidly curious to see his "slide show."

by the way, you will be pleased to know that google translates your blog into German as

Cuntensquirten - das Blog
currrently nicht ein broadway hauptsächlichmusikal

belledame222 said...

>
Okay, and about your constant assertion that, "I am not a woman, and so I obviously cannot experience a DP",>

He also conveniently forgets he has another orifice: the one he talks through. I mean, the OTHER orifice he talks through. Scratch that. (ew) The one he presumably eats with, okay.

i'm sure the people around him haven't forgotten it, though; they aren't -allowed- to.

it's a constant wonder to me how male radical feminists don't seem to consider that if they -really- wanted to renounce male priv, respect women, yadda, they might want to, like, shut the fuck up and let the women speak for a while. Even the ones that don't agree with them. -Especially- the ones that don't agree with them.

Renegade Evolution said...

well said, RM, well said.

antiprincess said...

righteous.

Anonymous said...

R Mildred,
At first I read through this post and wanted to immediately agree with you, even though I am anti-porn I don't necessarily like Jensen's articles. There's just something that doesn't sit well with me. He sounds too much like "papa knows best" to me.

However, I think you've selectively read this piece.

You say something along the lines of "Jensen doesn't talk about REAL porn, or the language used in porn to sell it"...

but then what's all this?

“This blonde slut is in serious double penetration hardcore sex. She is getting her pussy and asshole destroyed by two fat cocks that will enter her holes and make her cry. Her pussy and asshole were tight a long time before, but now this slut is ready and willing to do anything like double or triple penetration hardcore sex scene. Her holes are destroyed and she cannot be satisfied with one cock so we give her two cocks for the beginning!”

Also you keep talking about lesbian DP and gay DP (but fail to mention whether you are talking about a threesome or a twosome - which), when in fact the first line of Jensen's article explicitly states the following:

"Is the sexual practice in which two men penetrate a woman anally and vaginally at the same time — a “DP,” or double penetration in the vernacular of the pornography industry — inherently sexist?"

Furthermore, you critique Jensen's question (the one above) assuming it's his question - when it's not! It's a question that one of his student's asked. To which Jensen responds "I don't know"...

which is an honest answer. Most of the time anti-porn feminists do go out on a limb to validate their answers - when sometimes you can say "I don't know" to stupid hypothetical questions. It's honest.

These quotes are directly off of the article you linked to.

I think it's fair to say Jensen really plays up the 'well-meaning white patriarch' role, but you've failed to honestly dissect this particular piece.

AradhanaD said...

Oh geez, I don't know how that happened - the message was from me - not anonymous.

R. Mildred said...

You say something along the lines of "Jensen doesn't talk about REAL porn, or the language used in porn to sell it"...

No, I say something along the lines of "If jensens actually was interested in answering the question "is DP inherently degrading to women?" he would have examined the tacit assumptions made by both himself and the questoin asker as a result of pornography's own conditioning."

So where you say "real", I don't mean for him to examine the actual literal advetisement blurb written to sell pornography - though that must form part of such an essay, as it in fact did - I mean for him to look at how the blurb and pornography define the act of sex as something that is inherently degrading, and at how he and the original asker of the question have, by the very act of asking "is DP inherently degrading?", accepted the pornographer's own definition of DP as inherently degrading.

He also just handwaves the existence of women who like DP recreationally out of existence entirely, and that's pretty much exclusively becuase if he didn't erase them he'd have to admit that the answer to the question should be "it depends" rather than the staunchly negative "maybe" he ends his essay so lamely with.

Anonymous said...

This morning I was reading along in that new Pynchon novel, and, over breakfast no less, I hit two pages where the daughter of an anarchist dynamiter has (un)knowingly married the man who killed him on a contract from the mine owners. Shortly after the marriage, her husband's sidekick and co-murderer moves is. She soon finds herself shared serially, then simultaneously, in both variants, liking it, wanting it, finally eliciting it. Leading to the point where she asks, "Why don't you boys just leave me out of it and do each other for a change?" They don't. If this were not bad enough, for the special pleasure of the sidekick, she has to wear green "gauntlets, baby bonnets, men's bicycle hose, hats trimmed and plain, didn't matter long as it was some shade of green."
No, I am not covertly soliciting anyone on behalf of the publisher tobuy it. I was just wondering if we could take up a collection and have them send a copy to J****n.

Anthony Kennerson said...

Responding to Aradhanad/Anon, writ:

You say something along the lines of "Jensen doesn't talk about REAL porn, or the language used in porn to sell it"...

but then what's all this?

“This blonde slut is in serious double penetration hardcore sex. She is getting her pussy and asshole destroyed by two fat cocks that will enter her holes and make her cry. Her pussy and asshole were tight a long time before, but now this slut is ready and willing to do anything like double or triple penetration hardcore sex scene. Her holes are destroyed and she cannot be satisfied with one cock so we give her two cocks for the beginning!”


First off, that latter description is nothing more than a gross exaggeration of a typical real life DP sex scene; in which the more "gruesome" language is used for shock value and to attract a certain audience. It should NOT be taken as literally as Jensen and other antiporn feminists take it; but seen as simple hyperbole.

As much as Jensen may deny it, there are indeed REAL women who freely engage in DP sex (both in and out of porn) and who not only live to survive the experience, but who actually come out enjoying the experience.

(BTW...before most folks gross out, "triple penetration" sex refers simply to a woman taking pwnises anally, vaginally, and orally simultaneously.)

It is more than legitimate to question the safety of DP sex (especially since the butt isn't quite made naturally for the larger dicks that usually are featured in most such porn); and no woman against her will should be forced or coerced into such acts (they do require plenty of preparation, plenty of relaxation, a lot of lube, and total trust in the partners not to go too far)....but for Jensen to use that example as the means to slam DP as innately sexist and degrading (as he has openly opined of ALL sex acts not meeting his narrow antiporn standards), and to merely dismiss the real-life experiences of women -- including FEMINISTS -- whose experiences do not merge with his own principles, is cynicism at best and outright Puritanism and fascism at worst.

AradhanaD said...

Anyways, the whole bloody point is - why use shock value to sell porn then? Why use derogatory language at all?

Marketing is complex. There are a few golden rules, one of which is to make a 'product sound way better than it is, creating a need essentially'.

Now, when you use the operative marketing word in this porn vid, that word is DESTROYED. Oooohhh how lovely is it to 'destroy' a woman's body.

going back to my golden marketing 101 textbook, "destroying a woman's orifices - is better than lovingly inserting a penis into it. Destroying a woman's pussy is necessity I did not feel before - but now want to watch on video"....

Anyways - you're going to peddle your porn any which way you want to (as you've done all across the blogosphere), I think R. Mildred here understands the value of language in marketing.

AradhanaD said...

that response was to anthony - I missed the other posts prior to posting. buggers.

R. Mildred said...

Now, when you use the operative marketing word in this porn vid, that word is DESTROYED. Oooohhh how lovely is it to 'destroy' a woman's body.

The marketing is so overblown though, I'm seriously intrigued as to how it got so satirical, were there ads for porn in the 1910's that read "come see a lady of ill repute made mildly uncomfortable in several of her unmentionables by well proportioned gentlemen"? And did it some how escalate from there?

I think it's more a case of it having to compete, remember that porn is about 90% of all internet traffic, so any particular pornsite has to make itself visible and notable compared to the rest, and they use shock/hyperbole to do this because everyone loves a good freakshow.

Jensen fucked up in another way by focusing on the language of porn ads to try to prove that men who watch porn lack empathy, porn is not the advertising, if it was it'd be wall to wall snuff movies, and apart from repentrator, most porn is so depressingly dull and uneventful, the same three positions, the same cheesy dialogues, the same beginnings, middles and ends, that I'd personally much more reeadily accept people blaming porn for the rise of contentless news programs, having prepared the men of the nation for the utterly dull repetitiveness of it all, rather than rape or misogyny.