sexual exploitation

The Game of Thrones and Sex-Positive vs. Non-Sex-Positive Depictions of Sex and Nudity in Contemporary Culture

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2012-04-12 04:56

Image from Sodahead.com. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
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Summary: This post uses a quote from a review of the HBO series The Game of Thrones to distinguish a major divide between sex-positive and non-sex-positive presentations of nudity and sexuality in media.

Stokes, of Overthinking It, nicely overthinks the use of gratuitous nudity in HBO's The Game of Thrones. The piece overall is about the thematically different ways sex is used in the books vs. the HBO series, but as one would expect from a blog called Overthinking It, Stokes points out the thematic similarities between the gendered manipulation of sex in the HBO series and the equally-gendered manipulation of sex by HBO itself.

But when you start thinking about what’s actually going on in that scene, it gets weirder and weirder.  The girl desperately wants to escape her current life of drudgery, and she sees performing sexual acts on Theon as the easiest way to make that happen.  She likes him, a lot, and is overawed by him, but she essentially views the sex as a contract:  she’ll do X, Y, and Z, and in return, not only will she get good treatment from him in the short term, she’ll escape to a more pleasant job in the long term. It’s made more explicit in the book that her goals are modest. She doesn’t expect him to marry her.  She’d be quite content with a job in his kitchen at Pyke. Theon, for his part, knows what she wants, and doesn’t plan to give it to her. Nevertheless, he continues to have sex with her, and to let her think that something will come of it.  It’s our first real look at the character’s dark side:  he still seems to want to do the right thing for his friends (at this point), but he’s incredibly callous towards anyone who falls outside of that circle. He takes what the girl offers, and then casts her aside.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an actress who goes in to read for a part in a high-profile HBO series. She knows that it’s a one-episode gig, but careers have begun with less. It’s a speaking part! She gets a whole scene! Clearly, this is a stepping stone to bigger and better things.  And so what if nudity is required?

Source: Overthinking It

This is probably a parallel HBO in particular but the industry of pop culture in general would probably rather not have drawn for them.

 

Let's put it this way, because I think it provides a nice distinction for folks who don't really get the sex-positive approach to porn: a sex-positive person is likely to say that gratuitous depictions of nudity and/or sexuality, i.e. nudity or sexuality intended "only" to arouse or enhance arousal is fine because to the extent it "uses" sexuality it does so to further sexuality! On the other hand non-gratuitous nudity and/or sexuality as employed by HBO in The Game of Thrones is employed not to forward viewers' sexual enjoyment but (superficially) to signal dramatic intensity and (more deeply) to distract viewers from plot and character-development corner-cutting.

The former (calculatedly enhancing sexual arousal for people who's intention is to be sexually aroused) a use of sexuality, the latter (calculatedly deploying sexual signifiers for their non-sexual utility) is an abuse of sexuality.

Or even more fundamentally, depending on other factors including consent and working conditions "gratuitous" sexuality in porn may or may not be sex-positive, but regardless of factors such as consent and working conditions the overt sexuality employed in the HBO series is inevitably sex negative.


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Sexual Harassment of Fundraisers by Donors is Very Difficult to Report, Deal With

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2010-07-17 17:09

So a couple of years ago I ran into a neighbor when I was taking a bus downtown for a tech seminar. I knew she worked for the local university alumni office fundraising department so I asked what her current project was. She said she was researching “the giving habits of those who donate $250,000,000.00 or more.” She said it was… different.

I was reminded of this when Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors mentioned serious but very difficult to address issue

Earlier this week the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article called “The Wrong Type of Solicitation” about the sexual harassment of higher education planned-giving personnel.  

“Sexual harassment can occur in any job, but certain aspects of fund raising make it more likely. For one thing, women now dominate the profession. Three-fourths of the 30,000 members of the Association of Fundraising Professionals are female.

In many cases, those women are appealing to older, powerful men for large donations. To succeed, fund raisers must build long-term relationships with donors. And they often visit donors in their homes or meet them in social settings where alcohol and personal information are plentiful.”

Read the whole post and follow Crawford’s links here.

The impression my friend gave me is that the fraction-of-a-billion-dollar donors rarely involve themselves directly with fundraising staff. But there are plenty of others who may be willing and able to play bullshit/bullying games that go beyond asking to have buildings or departments named after them. And there are very, very few fundraisers who’s agencies are in a position to decline a donor who’s being an asshole, let alone out them.


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The Social and Verbal Problems With "Sufficient" Equality, and the Expected Benefits of Actual, Complete Equality

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2010-07-01 11:34

Years ago a friend of mine went to the local, rural-county courthouse to file some sort of licensing request. It was an uncommon request — something like wanting a temporary trailer license so he could tow an antique truck behind his car or something. Anyway, when he got to the county clerk’s office he was told “well, it’s legal if you do it this way, but it would be more legal if you did it another way.” Which left my friend to ponder how one thing could be more legal than another thing that’s also legal.

That’s what came up for me while reading a post by Irin of Jezebel points to a false dilemma in gender perceptions. Particularly male perceptions. (Emphasis mine.)


A 22-country survey found that while both men and women value gender equality, they differ widely on whether it’s been achieved. In the U.S., many more men believed sufficient progress had occurred, whereas women thought more action was required. [NYT]

She said it here.

WTF is “sufficient progress” when it comes to equality? You’re either equal or you’re not.

I happen to believe, correctly, that there’s been incredible progress, sure. But sufficient? WTF does that even mean? Just as something’s either legal or it’s not, you’re either equal or your not. And I think “sufficiently” in this case means “closer to my comfort level” rather than “closer to equal.”

Which is a shame. The social transformation that comes with equal would be pretty profound.

A little bit ago I posted about Scott Adam’s contention that we’ll be better off overall when technology advances to the point that there’s no cash and no privacy, and how our current situation where we’re 95% cashless and about 50% no-privacy is actually particularly bad. Well, I think men’s reservations about 100% equality derive from a similar fallacy to the one that no cash or no privacy would be worse than where we are now.

The reason, I think, is that when men say there’s “sufficient” equality they tend to mean “if there was any more equality I could never ‘get’ sex from women.” Because in a transactional model of heterosexuality men believe they have to get sex they have some sort of leverage, in the form of flowers, sincerity, offers of security, or more ominously, alcohol, drugs, or money, or even more ominously, blackmail, threats, or violence. And in each case the assumption being that women can always subordinate their libidos for material, social, or interpersonal gain.

In the transactional model of heterosexuality, sex is currency, a resource, of more interest and importance to men than to women and therefore subject to arbitrage. Inside that model women mustn’t just be junior parters in the equality patrol, they also literally embody the medium of exchange!

In that model full equality cuts off both opportunities for leverage but also eliminates the currency altogether.

Which is sort of similar to what Adams says would be a consequence of eliminating cash

In particular Adams posits that without cash and without privacy

Violent crime will greatly diminish too, because so much of society’s violence happens in the context of criminal enterprises that will no longer be profitable or practical.

He said that here.

The other big component of violence, of course, is sexual violence. And virtually all sexual violence is about a) equality and/or power imbalances in relationships or b) exploitive reduction of human beings to their sexual exchange value*. Which, again, goes part and parcel with the transactional model of heterosexuality**.

It’s a dumb model.

It’s not that in a truly equal society heterosexuals will have that much more sex, any more than we’re likely to have less. Instead, when it really isn’t a currency we’ll value it less. That we’ll also almost certainly enjoy it more, however much that turns out to be, will be just one of myriad beneficial side effects of actual rather than “sufficient” equality.

* Note: while I agree with Susan Brownmiller and Co. that rape and other forms of sexual assaults are abuses of power and not sex itself, I also believe that sex is the chosen vehicle for power abuse because of the object-value of women’s sexuality.

** The transactional model of heterosexuality obviously often extends into non-heterosexual interactions as well.


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Polanski Defenders, Hollywood, and the Use of Unwanted Sex as Currency

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2009-10-15 17:37

Jill (formerly Twisty) of I Blame The Patriarchy takes on the peculiar cast of characters defending convicted rapist Roman Polanski has an aura of childlike naivete. She says the answer is that basically all the nominal progressives who called for him to be left alone are all just really bad people and we’ve just been too dumb to notice. Taking aim at Whoopie Goldberg

Wait! No! Not Whoopi, the affable Center Square who’s black enough to be hep, but not so black that she scares the honkys?

...

Possibly Whoopi views Polanski’s violent crime in this seriously fucked-up way because in Hollywood — patriarchy’s primary misogyny propaganda unit — rape is nothing but a plot device

She said it here.

I think that’s going both a little too hard but also way too easy on them.

Instead I think it’s because in Hollywood people use, um, “leveraged” sex as even more of a medium of currency than most other places do. It’s not just about the “casting couch” thing but an outright demonstration of a combination of power, fealty, and “committment” to a person or project. Where it’s sort of a given that giving a producer a blowjob when it’s known you like giving them or even just don’t mind isn’t nearly as valuable as giving one when it’s the last thing on earth you want to do.

And so by that way of thinking, which I’m guessing Goldberg just sees as the cost of doing business, what Polanski did to a 13-year-old was just “over the line” and not “rape-rape.”

And I’m just thinking that unusual suspects are standing up for him not so much because they like the system or look forward to being on the receiving end themselves but because to acknowledge it in Polanski’s case would mean having to confront what they themselves have submitted to, or at least steeled themselves for in case they had to, as their own “cost of doing business” in Hollywood.

And by the way, that’s not to excuse the “rape as a plot device” business they grunt out on a daily basis. Quite the opposite. You see a lot of the same sordid plot devices in regular print and comic publishing, but you don’t see that “if you want it you’ve got to show me how badly you want it” sort of thing that goes on in Hollywood.

Bottom line: it’s not so much “rape-rape” culture as a culture of sexual harassment on an industrial scale. For an insider to stand up to it requires acknowledging that he or she has participated in, and possibly “benefited” career-wise from it, as aggressor or victim or both.

%@!#%W

For the record I think sex is just great. And while I’m not a fan I’m not opposed to fee-for-service sex. I seriously have it in for sex as leverage or obligation of any kind, though.


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Joanie Knoxville's Jill-ass

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2007-10-23 09:26

Susie Bright Steen, a writer for Susie Bright’s Random Honest Porn Review provides an example of the agency in pornographic performance vs. agency in the eye of the consumer issue I mentioned late last week.

Sometimes, porn just doesn’t make sense. I realize it doesn’t have to, in order to be arousing, but in the case of Filthy Fucking Cum Sluts 2, I find it more absurd than arousing.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would consider the scenes particularly sexy, as they are more circus-type sex scenes, which some might find interesting, but I certainly find difficult to masturbate to, since they are so ridiculous.

Gia Paloma starts the film by deepthroating and fucking rubber chickens and a rubber pig, before shoving an large dildo up her ass. Two guys assist her with the dildo and then fuck her, ejaculating on a baseball bat for her to lick off. Gia is hot, but the scene was destroyed for me, when she stuffed the rubber chickens into her ass.

...

The most interesting thing is the fierce pride the girls show in the face of these extreme acts; they refuse to give in or deny doing any of these things. They take everything thrown at them, and still act aroused and perform very well. It stops the scenes from seeming abusive or degrading, and instead displays the ridiculous lengths porn producers (and consumers) are willing to go to, in order to come up with something new and different.

Good review of a loser movie here.

Now yes, yes, this sort of “pornography” really does seem to be serving up a variety of Johnny Knoxville Jackass-style entertainment where — as with everything else in Jackass-style productions sexuality is introduced, and consumed, merely for its John Waters’ Pink Flamingos “nastiness” extremity rather than any genuine erotic appeal.

But I’d add to the mix the two points that the stoicism implied in Brights line that the performers “still act aroused and perform very well” plays to a) the traditional expectation of “women in glad duty to men” as well as the “no-sex” class trope of women ultimately unmoved by sex.


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When amateur pornographers strike

Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2007-10-19 19:22

Oh yeah, following up on an earlier post about the way YouPorn.com and other free are undercutting industrial pornographers, here's a fascinating example of the kind of high-quality non-traditional amateur/art pornography. (Note: The video itself is quite NSFW but following the link to Vimeo, the site that hosts it, tends to be safe for work.)

How to get a leg up in porn from German Kraut on Vimeo.

What's interesting about it is that it's light-hearted, pretty clearly non-coerced, mockingly aware of the tropes of industrial porn including risk, exploitation, and misogyny, and also its seemingly endless obsession with "facials." And yet it's definitely pornography with nudity, fellatio, and what might or might not be actual ejaculations and intercourse.

I found the film short thanks to Violet Blue of tiny nibbles who first saw it at Seattle's amateur porn competition HUMP, about which she said

It was really interesting to see such an open call for porn, by the people, for the people, under the guarantee of anonymity, and see the results. The ideas and interpretations of porn were all over the place -- beautiful and arty, way too arty like a Calvin Klein commercial, scary swinger Renfaire in the tract home come fetish porn, full-on scripted shorts, animated shorts, montages of stills set to music -- some of these things were shockingly well done. Like the second place winner, which blew my mind: Getting a Leg Up In Porn is a laugh-out-loud hilarious black and white homage to 16mm documentary/short instructional/industrial films, where the female protagonist is warned about the pitfalls of a career in porn in order to be successful. It's crazy-funny watching her practice for facials with a squirt gun and mayonnaise packets... among many other super-smart satirical scenarios based on porn's S&P's.

She said it here.

One other subtle jab at industrial porn is the format itself. At least if you've had entry-level, say, food-handling, fishing, or shipping jobs in Washington State then chances are you've been subjected to Washington State Department of Labor and Industries films just like the one parodied in this video. The irony that a similar safety film for entry-level industrial porn performers wouldn't really be *that* far fetched should not be lost on anyone.

Anyway, one of the hallmarks of the original YouTube is that over time it's evolved from a site that simply hosted rehashed commercial programming and do-it-yourself stupid pet tricks to a genuinely startling, often better than real television resource for everything from freely-generated first-aid education to breaking-news, on-the-scene muckraking. Amateur entries like "Getting a Leg Up in Porn" represent the sort of creativity that might be unleashed when people finally give up on the vast industrial wasteland that is contemporary DVD-based short-format porn.


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Trophies for whom, trophies for what?

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2007-09-29 00:05

And since I’ve been passing along short, pithy quotes (sometimes with too much extra commentary) I ought to mention Blue Gal’s brilliant insight into the problem with “trophy wives” and other forms of turning real live partners into commodities:

There are men who think they need arm candy in order to impress other men. They are actually engaging in homoerotic dating, pleasing other men rather than themselves.

Read that and more here.

I’m not quite sure “homoerotic” is exactly right but her point that while beauty is all well and good (really, it’s well and it’s good) when beauty stops being whatever it is in its own right, becomes a proxy for some other form of competition between others of one’s gender then yeah, not so healthy.


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Turning the tables on photo blackmailers

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2007-07-23 11:32

I’m going to guess that since the earliest days photography young women and men have agreed, for any number of reasons, modeled for nude or sexual photography, and then years later been confronted by blackmailers, enemies, and/or sensationalists who seek to embarrass them or worse.

Just off the top of my head there was Miss America Vanessa Williams, movie star and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, right-wing radio host Laura Schlessinger, and most recently Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo have been inconvenienced at the least. Some have lost their titles or positions.

We have no idea how many have successfully submitted or succumbed to their blackmailer’s demands, but the Schwarzeneggers and Polumbos are surely only the thinnest layer of frost on the tip of the iceberg.

But here’s the deal: Since he became a credible star in the 1970s Schwarzenegger had to go to untold effort and expense to suppress photos he posed for to support himself when he was only an aspiring body builder. In 1984 when William’s photos appeared there was no question that she would have to resign and so, following a fairly dispirited defense of what was then still indefensible, she did. In 2007, though, when pressed by blackmailers Polumbo simply took her photos to the press herself. (Pretty easy for her since the anonymous group called “Committee to Save Miss America had found the photos on her Facebook page.) At least two of the five Miss America arbitration board think the photos aren’t a big deal.**

And into this evolving context comes word from Art of sexblo.gs about an entry in Documenta, a major contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.

In 1987, film director Hito Steyerl was 19 and agreed once to be a model for a bondage photo shooting in Tokyo. Lovely Andrea (dubbed “A La Recherche du Cul Perdu”) narrates the search for that photography in the Tokyo bondage scene. Helped by self-suspension performer and guide Asagi Ageha, Steyerl and her team find the image in a sex archive and set out to meet the photographer.

This is just an excerpt of a much larger post that you can read here.

Now there are actually a couple of twists to Hito Steyerl’s story that I’ll try to get to in a follow-up post, but for now I’d just like to say that her move seems like a predictable development in the process of acknowledging that a) humans are sexual, b) humans are visual, c) humans take photos, d) humans take photos of sexual situations, e) photos of sexual situations document us as we are (e.g. “orgasm face,” sticky body parts) rather than as we wished we appeared and f) consequently if those photos are discovered it’s a problem only to the extent we continue to deny or fail to get over items a-e.

But here’s what I see is the most important part of what Steyerl has done. By inverting the age-old procedure outlined in the paragraph introducing this post, by taking ownership of the process of uncovering her early photos, she’s turned the tables on the pornographers who, in 1987, often exploited the economic or social vulnerability of young people like her. (And even 20 years ago pornographers took extreme psychological and sexual as well as economic advantage of their models.)

If, as Polumbo demonstrates, there’s no longer a penalty for having posed naked in one’s youth (even when, as in Polumbo’s case, you’re still a youth!) then scrutiny can finally turn from the subjects of the photography to the potentially exploitative original photographers and/or, even better, any potential blackmailers who have unquestionably seek to exploit them.


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