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I bought Robert Jensen’s much-discussed Getting Off: (Pornography and the End of Masculinity) last night, and, prompted by this and other posts while catching up on a backlog of reading I decided to stop all that and at least read the introduction.

The first page of text, titled “Our First Glance In The Mirror: The Rowdy Boys” does not look very promising. Basically he details an promotional event at a porn convention in Las Vegas wherein a professional performer simulates sexual behavior before a crowd of maybe 50 passers by.

Emboldened by the size of the crowd, the men’s chants for more-explicit sex growing louder and more boisterous, Holiday [the porn star] responds in kind, encouraging the men to tell her what they like. The exchange continues, intensifying to the point where the men are moving as a unit — like a mob.

... It’s difficult not to conclude that if there weren’t security guards on the floor, these men would likely gang-rape Tiffany Holiday.

This is an expression of the dominant masculinity in the United States today. It is the masculinity of a mob, ready to rape.

Ok, so… as with the paradox of “The Tragedy of the Commons“ where a cooperative institution that endured for thousands of years is used to demonstrate that cooperative institutions can never endure, there’s the paradox that if the dominant male mentality is of a rape-ready mob then how were the “if it weren’t for” security guards (the male members of whom were presumably no less male than the passers by) not affected? One can both deplore the behavior of the crowd, and criticize the inauthentic construct of masculinity, without declaring even those possessed of that affectation as universally and unprovokedly prepared to commit rape.

Another paradox, what was Holiday’s standing in the matter? And not as a potential victim and/or innocent instigator but as a professional entertainer possessed of both skill and experience with the variety of rhetorical, physical, and social crowd-management skills one tends to develop when one is in such a field? One can both deplore the industrial institution of pornography, and criticize the effect its practitioners and producers has on it’s consumers, without concluding that dominant masculinity is mob/rape based.

No doubt further into the book Jensen will have detailed interviews with Holiday, participants in the crowd/mob, and perhaps certain concerned onlookers such as the aforementioned security guards, and will be able to explain exactly how uncontrollable the men became, and how unaware Holiday was of any danger she was in. And if so then heck yes, I’m willing to believe his analysis in that front section. Barring further details I’m not prepared to believe his was the only possible interpretation.

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While ferrying my children home from school and, later, while putting together dinner, I realized my beef with the ravening mob scenario Jensen paints as specifically male: this time of year one regularly encounters stories of near-identical riot/mob behavior in department stores over Tickle-me Elmos (mixed groups of men and women) or high-end “bargain-basement” sales (mainly women’s wear and therefore mainly women customers.) The point being that attributing a disturbing modern human characteristic to only one gender is problematic. And while it’s an adrenaline-squirtingly sensational way to start a book (in the same sense the average CNN or FOX news promo is sensational) the use of sensation detracts from what I think might be more subtle but also perhaps more disturbing insights about vulnerability and agency.

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And, again, perhaps I’m over interpreting a little teaser text, but as Courtney Martin hints at Feministing, does seem to suggest there may be a bit of male self-loathing mixed in with what sounds like a thorough (and, I might add, much needed) critique of masculinity, especially as it relates to masculinity and the dominant tropes of pornography.

I’ll have more to say, of course, when I’ve read more than this very short intro.

Update: Ok, got to read part of the actual book last night. He begins by talking about his discontent with the artificial construct of masculinity that can afflict men the same way “femininity” can be a problem for women. At the very least it looks like he found that for him overcoming porn culture was a way out of the masculinity trap.

One of the really great moments so far was when he said he was told he couldn’t join a Minneapolis anti-porn organization if his intention was to rescue women (which could too-easily be masculine colonizing/white-knight-ing) but to rescue himself and other men.

“If you want to be part of this becaus you want to save women, we don’t want you,” [Organizing Against Pornography volunteer Jim Koplin] said. At first I was confused — wasn’t the point of critiquing the sexual exploitation of women in pornography to help women? Yes, Jim explained, but too many men who get involved in such work see themselves as knights in shining armor, riding in like the hero to save women, and they usually turn out not to be trustworthy allies. They are in it for themselves, not to challenge masculinity but to play out the role of heroic man in a new, pseudo-feminist context. You have to be in it for yourself, but in a different way, he said.

You have to be here to save your own life,” Jim told me.

I didn’t understand exactly what he meant at that moment, but something about those words resonated in my gut. This is what feminism offered men — not just a way to help those being hurt, but a way to understand that the same system of male dominance that hurt so many women also made it impossible for men to be fully human.

Now that’s something I can really sink my teeth into! My concern about the scene in his intro was one far less of concern for the porn star who was, after all, an experienced professional exercising agency in a completely supportive environment complete with peers, mentors, assistants, employers, and security guard, but for the crowd off men so attached to porn that they attend porn trade shows and therefore unreflectively subject to be played like violins by men and women with a commercial interest in playing them. And such intrinsic and, agreed, scary-seeming weakness in the construct of masculinity is, I think, tied directly to its sense of privilege and belief in dominance and control such that, as Jensen seems to be saying, it’s necessary to overturn the cult of masculinity in order to save men from themselves and to save women from who men think we have to be.

So again, off to a bad start of what could still be a very good book.