Photo by Flickr user Niffty. Used under a Creative Commons license.

[Note: I’m on vacation in what may what’s proving be very limited internet service. I’ve been mostly relying on pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing posts. I’m taking the opportunity to use (limited) access here in a car-repair waiting room to try to catch up on a couple of ideas, but I may not still won’t have much opportunity to reply to comments but you’re comments are still very welcome. I’ll reply as soon as I can. You’re some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you’re always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other’s comments while I’m away. —fl]

Quoth the Monty Python sketch

Second Bruce: Here! Here’s the boss-fellow now!

(Enter fourth bruce with English person, Michael)

Third Bruce: ‘Ow are you, Bruce?

First Bruce: G’day, Bruce!

Fourth Bruce: Bruce.

Second Bruce: Hello, Bruce.

Fourth Bruce: Bruce.

Third Bruce: How are you, Bruce?

Fourth Bruce: G’day, Bruce.

Fourth Bruce: Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce a man from Pommyland who is joinin’ us this year in the Philosophy Department at the University of Wooloomooloo.

EveryBruce: G’day!

Michael Baldwin: Hello.

Fourth Bruce: Michael Baldwin, Bruce. Michael Baldwin, Bruce. Michael Baldwin, Bruce.

First Bruce: Is your name not Bruce?

Michael: No, it’s Michael.

Second Bruce: That’s going to cause a little confusion.

Third Bruce: Mind if we call you “Bruce” to keep it clear?
Source: University of Adelaide Library; Monty Python script for “The Bruces”

Amanda Schaffer, Slate.com’s Medical Examiner column, has a nice article debunking a pair of books in the evidently bottomless genre of “mars/venus” pseudoscience. This time by “reluctant” feminists but that’s almost beside the point. We already know that people want there to be a difference, preferably large ones, nevermind how surprisingly little supporting research there might be. (I think it would be a lot more interesting if someone would just write a book about that.)

Given the radical proposition that both men and women are people, it should come as no surprise that roughly equal numbers of men and women are anorgasmic and/or asexual. But it perpetually surprises us as much, maybe more, as the news that except maybe in childhood men and women have virtually indistinguishable verbal skills and word usage.

And therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that men and women, people all, should be equally eroticized by sensations associated with submission and masochism.

I mean, compare the difference between the following snippets, first from Holly of The Pervocracy, who says

Submission’s easy to explain. Pain’s hard. It’s not just about giving up control, it’s about giving up control and being betrayed. If D/s is a trust fall, SM is a trust fall where you hit the ground. Still thrilling, and with a competent top still safe, but… fuuuck, it hurts.

I’ve heard people say things like “masochists transform pleasure to pain,” or “it’s not pain, it’s intense sensation.” Really? Is that what it’s like for you? Maybe it is. But for me, there’s a lot of real, no-euphemism pain in the experience. Certain types of pain are straight-up pleasurable: very mild slap ‘n tickle, pain during sex, and sometimes pain that’s sufficiently severe and extended that I get a little out of my head. The meat of a scene, though, hurts me.

So why? Dunno. I don’t think it’s any kind of negative or self-destructive impulse; hitting makes me happy! I do get a little high afterwards, but it doesn’t happen every time and I don’t think it’s the primary motivation. Ascribing it to The Patriarchy is too ridiculous for words. Maybe it’s just one of those random oddities that people are born with. Like an eleventh toe.

Read the quote in context here.

As opposed to Richard of Down On My Knees who says

That people who aren’t gifted with masochism can’t grasp it never surprises me. They don’t have our special superpower that transforms “Ouch!” into something rewarding.

This afternoon I thought of one aspect that is especially obscure.

If, like me, you are a certified pain slut then pain can feel good in itself as it happens. Well, sometimes. Not necessarily when you push toward the edge. At least not straightforward obvious pleasure. I’ve yet to evolve the vocabulary for the experience.

Or not at the time. Certain pains don’t lend them to immediate gratification: a hot ointment, like IcyHot, that causes a terrifying tingle. Nor when you endure a quality or level of pain solely to please the top. The reward comes later. I remember evenings when the happy afterglow to a series of a demanding scenes didn’t kick in until the following morning.

Read the quote in context here.

Oh wait! There’s not much difference there at all is there? Oops!

Which brings me to a point Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon brings up (all emphasis mine, but note especially the bold text)

Not too long ago, a friend of a friend joking-aggressively asked me while we were out and about what the difference between misogyny and sex is.  Mind you—-we were sober.  So I kind of blinked at him and was like, “Come again?” I know the game Bait The Feminist, but this one didn’t even make a lot of sense.  He tried to clarify, but it wasn’t helping.  I kept thinking he was trying to imply that feminists think straight male sexual desire itself is somehow anti-woman, but he knows that I can’t possibly think that, so I was confused.  Later I thought about it and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt—-maybe there are men out there who really do struggle to find a way to desire women that doesn’t have a backlog of misogyny and resentment towards women.  God knows that our culture doesn’t do much to help men out in this regard, and in fact encourages men to resent women for being desireable, and to rectify the dissonance between feeling vulnerable towards women because you desire them and feeling superior to women because of your social station by making the act of intercourse a symbolic conquering of the female body.  In case that sort of heady language is confusing, a good deal of porn simplifies things by making women choke on cocks, look generally uncomfortable, get double-pronged in painful-looking ways, get spat upon, and get called names like “slut” and “whore”. 

Read the quote in context here.

Here’s the deal. You can’t look at Holly’s post without recognizing that there’s some foundation to all the popular tropes of androcentric porn: women women really, even really really get off on pain even though it just hurts. I’ll go even further and say that anyone who denies, for instance, Holly’s experience or fails to support her is denying not only her sexuality, or her gender, but denying the radical proposition that she’s a person. So for someone to say I’m denying, or disputing, or disrupting, or disrespecting those women who get off on pain, humiliation, and submission, no matter how “extreme” I could in all fairness accuse them of deliberately misreading my position. (Not that I would, of course, I’m just saying I could.)

But here’s the other deal. You can’t look at Holly’s post next to Richard’s virtually identical post without recognizing the deep truth of Amanda Marcotte’s post: Women have no monopoly on masochism, men are equally equipped to be enthusiastic masochists and bottoms, no more women than men overall are masochistic and/or subservient and yet… the bulk of popular porn in terms of downloads, in terms of rentals, in terms of “most favorited” on upload sites like YouPorn or RedTube, in terms of “have to see it to believe it” blooper sites specializing in sexual and nonsexual pratfalls… are about hurting, humiliating, and dominating women to one degree or another.

In keeping with the Monty Python sketch at the top I’m tempted to call it the “all women are named Bruce” fallacy. And, while we’re at it, the “no men are named Bruce” fallacy. Except, of course, that someone would point out that no women are named Bruce, and that not that many men are either.

One might be excused, however, for assuming that a disproportionate number of porn producers, let alone consumers, are named Bruce.

It would certainly explain the data better than the next 80 best-sellers claiming men and women are from such different species it’s a miracle of both Church and Science that we can interbreed at all.

[Note: Note also the thuggish homophobia mocked in the Python sketch. Although note also the not-too-veild colonialist contempt by Englishmen for Australian erstwhile colonials.

Also note: I highlighted the text in Marcotte’s post, “I kept thinking he was trying to imply that feminists think straight male sexual desire itself is somehow anti-woman, but he knows that I can’t possibly think that…” Yeah, that would have confused me too. Most feminists I know really don’t think straight male sexual desire is anti-woman. I think that would actually be *anti-feminist” attitudes towards straight male sexual desire are anti-woman instead. After all they’re the ones who think men are just so flipping superior we can ruin women just by touching them with our pee-pees. All the more reason to prefer feminism, eh? —fl]