So Anja says to me, this morning, as we walked the dogs on a sunny, crisp winter’s morn in our New England woods, she says, “So when Robert Jensen masturbates, he doesn’t think of any pornographic images?” “Nope,” I reply, “maybe some erotic ones.” “You mean like a lovely breast instead of that breast swaying while he ‘hits it’ from behind?” “Exactly.” We don’t say anything for a while. Then Anja says, “And when he makes love to a woman, because he doesn’t “fuck,” of course, does he do it all earnestly and gently all the time?” “I suppose so, you’d have to ask him.” “Ew,” she replied. Then I called her a slut and slapped her around a little before bending her over a log. (kidding!)
I’ve been meaning to write more about Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity – I only got as far as the introduction in my last post, weeks ago – but I find the book so depressing/infuriating, that I keep just putting it back down after a page or two. So here’s my response to some stuff in the first couple of chapters.
Not one to pull his punches, Jensen dives right in with the story of how he gave a three hour workshop on pornography to 40 women at a “center that serves battered women and rape survivors” and how much it hurt them to hear of the hate behind the images. His conclusion: “Even these women, who have found ways to cope with the injuries from male violence in other places, struggle with that pornographic reality. It is one thing to deal with acts, even extremely violent acts. It is another to know the thoughts, ideas, and fantasies that lie behind those acts.” Am I misreading here, or is Jensen saying that porn not only leads to violence against women, it’s worse than violence against women? Women, how do you feel about that? Fellas, do you think your fantasies are worse than rape? I must admit, I used to really beat myself up over my fantasies, but I never thought I was worse than a rapist.
Maybe I’m just not a polemic guy and everything in this book is polemic to the point of melodrama, rife with sentences such as, “Mirrors are dangerous, and pornography is a mirror.” He then goes on to describe some of the most hateful porn he can find. Again, the polemic problem. What he describes as “porn” throughout the book isn’t porn, it’s very specific, particularly heinous porn. But even given that, I often have trouble going with him. In Dan’s initial Jensen Post, he wrote:
I won’t quote the really bad stuff, but consider this tame-ish passage, in which Jensen describes one of the DVD extras from 65 Guy Cream Pie, starring the notoriously “nasty” Ariana Jollee [that’s her in the photo, above. -jb]:
When it’s all over, Jollee goes into a bathroom, which viewers can see on the behind-the-scenes feature of the DVD. After six hours and 65 men, as she roams the bathroom looking for the appopriate cloth to wipe herself off with, Jollee talks to the man operating the camera:
Jollee: Oh my God, wow. You ever see anything like that? What did you think?
Cameraman: I think you wore those guys out.
Jollee: They wore me out. I won’t fucking deny that. Look at me. I’m about to pass out.
[She pauses briefly and then looks at the man with the camera, with a very vulnerable expression.]
Jollee: Good gangbang?
Cameraman: Yes, it was very intense. Very good.
Jollee: Thank you. I tried.
This nastiest of the filthy women in pornography, this woman about to turn 22 years old, turns to a man who makes his living in the pornography industry and asks for his approval, asking if her sex with 65 men was a “good gangbang.” The questions—not her question, but larger questions that her comment suggests—hang in the air, unaddressed. What kind of world is this, in which a 21-year-old-woman has sex with 65 men in one day to produce a movie that thousands of other men will masturbate to for years to come?
Dan’s response to this passage is smart and sensitive and sensible, and I use none of those adjectives with the least bit of sarcasm:
I have some significant theoretical qualms with Jensen, who is a down-the-line radical feminist, but the basic thrust (if you will) of his book seems pretty unanswerable to me. Most pornography is made for men—millions and millions of them—who are aroused by scenes of women being degraded and dominated.
It’s awful from just about every angle (if you will), and although we can argue, if we want, about whether or not it should be legal, there’s really no argument about whether or not it’s damning evidence of what a fucked-up, woman-hating society we are. Or, if that’s too strong, it’s evidence of how many millions of American men really hate women, and of how little the rest of our society cares, because if we cared as much as we should then we’d be thinking and talking a lot more honestly, and a lot more often, about what we need to do so that far fewer of our men are getting off on dominating and degrading women.
BUT I guess, unlike Dan I do think that even this passage is indeed “answerable.” Ariana Jollee turns to her cameraman and asks him if it was good because it’s what she does for a living and she wants to do it well to continue to be paid for it for as long as she can. Am I being callous, here? Sure. But Jensen just pushes me to it time and time again. He describes only the worst of the worst and says it represents all porn, all men, all of society. And even if it does, I know men who watch the worst of the worst porn who are respectful, considerate, and loving to the actual women around them. And I see pious, bottled up real misogynists (good Christians and Muslims) who deny their fantasies (or indulge them secretly) and take that denial out on real people.
I guess, as I’ve written here before, I’m just not an idealist. I see porn as an evil, but for many, an almost necessary one, an outlet, in a society that I just don’t see changing within my lifetime, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to support censorship, which will/would surely come mostly from men, of women (and yes, this makes me want to bring up the argument that it’s the women that make most of the money on camera in straight porn and on stage in strip clubs).
In the next chapter, Jensen shows his own macho side, telling of how he confronted a young man in a bar who was talking to his buddies and a woman about “how to maneuver women into bed, including tips on the use of alcohol and a little bit of force when necessary.” His concern, though, it seems to me, isn’t with educating the man, but with the woman in the group. Chivalrous Robert steps in and offers his critique to their table, and nearly gets into a fight. This strikes me as just the kind of behavior Jensen addresses in his introduction as unacceptable, men who think they’re feminists but are really just wanting to be traditional masculine heroes and protectors. Sure, as I’ve written here, the hardest part of being a feminism-supporting man is stepping up in all-male situations – the locker room, the bar – and saying that sexist behavior and talk is unacceptable, but confronting strangers in a bar whose conversation you eavesdropped on? That’s just a dick-size contest. Jensen writes of the young men being drunk and aggressive, but his story makes me wonder just how many he’d had that night, or whether it would even take much, since he’s probably a total lightweight. (Kidding, Bob, I’m just kidding.)
I’ll wrap up here by tempering my distaste by quoting a paragraph that I found, if seemingly obvious, also worthwhile:
There’s one gendered term associated with males that’s far more prevalent than the corresponding term for females: “manhood.” In this culture, we talk in everyday conversations about manhood and what it means. We talk of womanhood far less frequently; both words are in the dictionary, but only one is part of routine vocabularies. We rarely hear someone challenge the womanhood of a female [unless that woman happens to be Hillary Clinton]. We routinely hear males challenging each other’s manhood. Why is that?
But, even here, I have to add that, while I do think Jensen’s point is a good one, his tone and rhetorical technique, that cute little “Why is that?” nearly ruin it, nearly send this and I’d imagine nearly every reader running the opposite direction. Please consider the following edit and whether it would have helped Jensen make his point without, well, without seeming like such a little shit:
There’s one gendered term associated with males that’s far more prevalent than the corresponding term for females: “manhood.” We talk in everyday conversations about manhood and what it means. We talk of womanhood far less frequently. We rarely hear someone challenge the womanhood of a female [unless that woman happens to be Hillary Clinton]. We routinely hear males challenging each other’s manhood.
As I said previously, maybe I’m in a temporary backlash phase, but maybe it’s not more Jensen’s style than his substance that just makes me want to scream and go running to my local strip club with a fist full o’ singles.
