Cartoon “Anxiety” by Randall Munroe of XKCD. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In comments to my previous post about TSA’s spanky new groping policy for those who refuse to pose for their backscattered nude photos Holly of The Pervocracy, who’s so brilliant she should have her own blog (oh wait!), said

The part that really scares me is that it’s fairly clear the pat-down has been made more invasive not so it’s more effective, but so it’ll serve as a deterrent to keep people from opting out. It’s a creepily sexualized retaliation for being disobedient, not an actual security measure in itself.

And in comments Sungold of Kittywampus (who’s been all over this story) added

Yes, Holly is exactly right. If the “enhanced” pat-downs are so essential, why weren’t they implemented in January, right after the Underpants Bomber incident, instead of waiting until now, when many airports have the strip-search scanners? They’re being used to bludgeon people.

This should not be a left-right issue, but so far it’s gotten the most coverage among libertarian and right-wing media. The left is only beginning to stir. In the feminist blogosphere, I don’t know of anyone besides Melissa McEwan and me who have called much attention to it – which is why I’ve been blogging up a storm about it.

...

Those of us who care about bodily autonomy and social justice face a lot of intractable issues. We are not, for instance, going to stop sexual violence. But we can stand up and protest a brand-new government policy that mandates searches that feel to many of their recipients like sexual assault. A policy that is centrally decreed can also be withdrawn in a single stroke. If people refuse to be sheeple, we might have a chance to win here.

Another commenter, Ms. Inconspicuous (who I wish still had a blog) recounts her own recent experience where the prospect of groping was expressly raised as a reason for complying with radiation-based porn.

I just went through the new body scanners a few days ago.

It was absolutely and fundamentally clear that TSA agents were using full pat-downs as an intimidation tactic to dissuade you from trying to opt out of going through the scanners.

“If you refuse to go through the scanners, be aware that you will be subjected to a more thorough full-body search and potentially lenghty delays.”

Ms.I adds, relevantly, that

HOWEVER—were I a survivor of sexual assault and I knew that my body image were being projected to a stranger I would feel absolutely violated and vulnerable. And a thorough pat-down is a good answer? No. It’s not.

But it’s by an agent of the same gender! (Baffling how even TSA security measures assume that all sexual assault and abuse takes place between people of opposite genders… and that no one could possibly feel threatened or assaulted by a person of the same gender. Gimme a freakin’ break.)

And I’ll just close with what I said over at BoingBoing after finding the relevant image for my previous post. It’s also why, incidentally, I chose the… intrusive XKCD comic to illustrate this post.

What’s sickening, of course, is it’s not about perversion — they’re probably as humiliated to do it as we are to receive it. What’s sickening is that they do it anyway. Same thing and maybe worse when they do it to little kids.

I’m pretty confident that pretty much every last floor member of the TSA would really rather not be fondling passenger penises and vulvas, with or without rubber gloves, and with or without consent. In fact I’m pretty confident that for all the snarking and invective we’re leveling at them the very, very last thing any of them wants if for passengers to get the idea that either TSA or the passengers should find the procedures either sexually abusive or erotic. Which is why the XKCD notion of a culture hacker calculatedly selling Viagra to prospective passengers is excellent resistance.

Do I think people really should take Viagra and present their clothed erections to TSA staffers? No, absolutely not. (Because just as one can’t assume passengers are free of triggerable sexual trauma you can’t make those assumptions about all TSA staff either.) Instead what’s effective is the accusation of sexualized conduct.

Nor am I suggesting all this because a) I’m a sex blogger or b) because I’d prefer less security theater (shoes, underpants) and more actual, less-intrusive security. Instead I’m suggesting it because…

Y’know? Just because TSA doesn’t want adults or children to associate blue-gloved hands in their groins as sexual… And just as TSA doesn’t want adults or children to associate backscatter imaging as voyeurism or as adult and child pornography… and just as TSA agents themselves would probably rather think of anything else on earth besides sex when they’re manipulating the folds of a small child’s testicles or vulva or hefting a pregnant woman’s full breasts, the fact of the matter is they have no fucking say over how the recipient is going to interpret that. M’Kay?

On the offhand chance you’d like to hear just how often I can say “um” in a single sentence, Maymay of KinkForAll.org has posted an audio version of my first public presentation in several years (and only about my third public presentation ever!)

Here’s a link to the audio version.

And here’s a link to the possibly less-caffeinated post I wrote in conjunction with it: Define Your Terms Before Debating: The Social Construction of Porn and Erotica

Also, now’s as good a time to add something I didn’t say either in the presentation or its accompanying post. To determine or even adopt one’s opponents terms in a debate is not the same thing, at all, as unilaterally compromising with one’s opponent. Nor does it have to be a giant ordeal — for instance you could just say “Before we go any further when I say ‘porn’ I mean all materials with erotic or sexual content of any kind. What do you mean when you say ‘porn?’”

[Hmm. I haven’t gotten much work done, or all my homework, let alone my correspondence, let alone replies to comments. But for whatever reason (maybe that two-page paper I started writing around two in the morning) posts are flying out. Including a very rare second HNT post. Oh well, sometimes it’s sunshine, other times you need an umbrella. —fl]

Quick question: I’m not sure if you’ve thought about it much, but have you ever considered how most activities that require a lot of body strength don’t usually involve standing or working in the poses and postures we most often associate with bodybuilding?

Well, it being Half-nekkid Thursday and all I was struck this morning about the difference in some of the poses we associate with manly or womanly sexiness and… it occurred to me… that an awful lot of the cliché poses we associate with sex would actually be terrible positions to be in during actual sex.

At this point I ought to make clear that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t noticed that most HNT participants — the ones who are clearly feeling sexual in their photos — are in positions that do make sexual sense. So while I’m pointing fingers I’m generally pointing them at the light/cheesecake/advertising and heavy industrial porn industry and at the subset of “amateurs” who emulate them. In other words, if you’re an HNT participant, not you. :-)

You probably know what positions I’m talking about, right? The classic porn pose, one that drives a lot of people crazy, moralists and immoralists alike, is the woman naked in high heels who’s squatting so low her knees are around her ears and she has to lean back to support herself with her hands behind her back. Cliché as the dickens, and certainly sexualized beyond mere gynecology (gynecologists are almost never need that much space to work) but… not at all practical for any kind of sex at all.

Not even for a nice, unreconstructed patriarchal man! She’s too low and leaned back for a blowjob, to well-braced to push over and violate, way, way too low to easily caress, and more strenuously acrobatic than classically vulnerable. Yet over and over we see that and countless other poses in men and women that again are unquestionably sexualized but not sexy in any practical sense of “hey, let’s have sex like this!”

Now I happen to think this is probably another one of those things like “O-face” where, mostly through unfamiliarity and insufficient time to develop affection for it, people decide real orgasmic faces are just too goofy and so they make all those weird-assed romanto/porno grimaces of agony and ecstasy and outrage that, in turn, make us feel even more self-conscious about our authentically orgasmic faces. Well, same with real sexual poses and positions.

Well, for the most part I think we probably look a little awkward, bracing our legs, pressing our pelvises up or out or down or in effectively but not very gracefully, to give ourselves and our partners the best contact with our (hidden from view if we’re doing it right) genitals, and often-asymmetrically leaning here or there in ways that feel wonderful but look (if we weren’t too self-conscious to let others look) awkward as pre-teen cousins forced to dance together at a relative’s wedding. But (rather pointedly unlike being forced to dance at someone else’s wedding) oh my does what we really actually do feel nice. Even if it doesn’t look as nice as the made-up stuff people do for photographs.

Anyway, without dismissing or decrying porn (or advertising, or Hollywood, or romance-novel covers) I suddenly feel very comfortable pointing out that the create a very unfortunate impression of what we generally experience as very fortunate experiences, and likewise our attempts to create fortunate impressions we, like porn stars, Hollywood talent, and cover models, may end up with unfortunate experiences. Just something to notice next time you’re thumbing, or browsing through photos.

Anyway….

Let’s just say that were we ever to do more together than drink coffee and shake hands you might find me taking you by the hand, or shoulders, or by the hips, or thighs, or even hair and moving you to our mutual best advantage I can guarantee that even if for some reason there was a camera or audience in attendance we’d still be arranging ourselves for feeling, rather than necessarily looking, our best.

Once again, Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Ok, this isn’t really a post about semiotics of semen, at least not in Saussure’s sense of signs deconstructed into signifier and signified. Although I’m sure if I’d just taken that dang course back in 1984 or so, instead of just backyard seminaring with a bunch of roommates who did, I’d be able to take a pretty good crack at the real thing.

Instead I just liked the alliteration in “semiotics of semen.” :-)

But seriously. I keep getting reminded of semen because any time I try to look at pretty much any kind of pornography involving heterosexuality then sooner or later semen’s going to show up. Which people have been remarking upon for going on two decades now.

Not that semen isn’t a perfectly laudable substance but the way it’s presented in pornography is kind of odd. I mean, for one thing it is presented. Placed. Precipitously. In plain sight. (If I may again alliterate.) And that’s the thing. Most of the time if you’re having sex with someone you don’t put semen where everyone can see it because it doesn’t feel as nice.

You know what feels really, really nice? To be locked in a passionate embrace with your partner, sometimes after barely enough time to rip each other’s clothes just loose enough, but preferably after what at least seems like hours of increasingly steamy, turgid, creamy, dreamy kisses and caresses, till your partner’s breath is hot and short against your cheek or ear and at least one of her hands is locked in your hair, pulling your face into the crook of her neck where you’ve been ravishing her throat with lips and tongue and teeth, your own hands less coordinated, yes, but still purposefully able to ruck her hem up to her hips, to crook them under her knees and pull them up and wide somewhere between your hips and her shoulders (a process that she’s perfectly capable of, of course, but you might both enjoy), and then perhaps with her hand, perhaps with yours, she glides your cock deep inside her not in one quick gulp but in sweet, increasingly slickery, increasingly deep sips. And then as your hips surge down into her and hers rise up to meet yours, and you feel her aiming her blood-hard clitoris to bump, bump, bump against your pubis, and her ankles cross against your lower back with one heel in the cleft of your ass pulling you tight, tight into her and the base of your rocks and grinds against her and her inner rings of muscle milk, milk, milk the length of your cock, and as both your pants break down into near-confused oh, oh, oh’s and she bites down hard on the muscles high above your collarbone and from your belly to the cheeks of your ass you feel deep wrenching, clenching squeezing of familiar but no less mysterious for it muscles pumping once, twice, in rhythms older than our species before you first collapse against each other, breath slower but far, far deeper, confused fingers unclenching as self-consciously as they earlier had clenched unconsciously, aftershock quivers against your bellies, murmured mmm’s, and woah’s and the sort of solemnity-breaking giggles that follow before one or the other of you leaps or reaches for a cloth (if there’s upholstery to be rescued) or maybe just wet, splishy wiggles (if there’s still room for two somewhere else on the bed.)

That? That feels great! Really great! As you can imagine. As you might not even need to imagine because, after all, that’s so often how things work out.

Or work out in life…

...but not in porn.

In porn, if you’re a man, you can get maybe to where your partner begins to dip and slip you inside, to where you and your partner begin to badminton your cock back and forth between you, until you and… who knows… maybe even she is on the verge of something warm and close and wet and wonderful happening and… in porn…

you stop! And then, in porn, you remove yourself from where you were and, usually, wait while the camera zooms and refocuses before… using, usually, your own hands you ejaculate. A “money shot,” to be sure, but an orgasm? Meh… and while the camera’s attention is elsewhere your face can reflect your true feelings your partner, her face usually very close to the camera, must continue looking pleased, even eager, for… however long it takes you to do by hand what you’d almost surely rather do some… any... other way.

Yes, indeed one might wonder why, and many, including me, have speculated endlessly.

Here’s a new possibility I hadn’t considered: most hetero porn and quite a lot of gay and/or lesbian porn is made for men, right? And mostly what men do with it is watch while they masturbate, right?

Which brings up an interesting bridge for men between masturbation and porn.

There’s certainly a story about (heterosexual) men’s distaste for looking at other men’s cocks but, unlike women who ordinarily don’t see their own vulvas, or even the vulvas of other women, at at least some points in their lives most men, certainly most American men, see cocks in abundance in lockerrooms if nowhere else and, of course, whenever they masturbate or even pee, see their own cocks, soft and hard, easily a dozen times a day. And when we masturbate, and when we ejaculate, we very often see it spring forth from our bodies whether in dribbles or jets.

And so, perhaps contrary to expectation, I think maybe the appeal of the “money shot” for porn viewers isn’t so much a demonstration that it’s “the real thing” but that one sees in images the reminder, the cue, the proxy for their own masturbation which, being masturbation, must inevitably fall without rather than within.

Maybe so. Or maybe no.

What I do know, though, is that being aware of the agency of actors in porn no less, obviously, than the actresses, is that however much such aerial ejaculations might encourage, or inspire, or comfort, or (if my thesis is mistaken) merely entertain the average customer the leave something to be desired for the actors themselves and thus only distract me with how little I’d like to do that.

Again that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy masturbating for a partner, of showing her even as, perhaps, she showed me. And if instead it’s she who’s plying me with hands or mouth or other parts of herself then it’s obviously her prerogative to direct my expression wherever she will. But neither of those special circumstances carry with them the relentless inevitability of male orgasm ejaculation semen production in porn.