Via Jessica Valenti (here and here) a couple of post have turned up about “facials” in porn and real life. (One by Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon’s Broadsheet, one by Amanda Hess at Washington City Paper)

The politics of facials in particular and external ejaculation in general are… interestingly complex.

• On the one hand it’s, seriously, not nearly as physically enjoyable for men to ejaculate outside their own partner. On the other hand there’s this business where men are supposed to enjoy the psychological aspect of “marking” their partner with their semen.
• On the one hand it’s more “natural” for the man to ejaculate inside his partner’s body. On the other hand external ejaculation drastically minimizes risks of pregnancy and STI transmission.

• On the one hand so-called “money shots” can be constructed as masturbatory conclusion to sex-with-a-partner-as-porn self-stimulation. On the other hand a very large number of women require manual stimulation to have orgasms when “sex” is defined as intercourse.
*On the one hand women are perceived to be the passive recipient of external ejaculation. On the other hand women are very often directly rather than passively involved in the stimulation leading to ejaculation.
• On the one hand people (men and women) are criticized for being overly fastidious about women’s bodily fluids. On the other hand people are criticized for not being sufficiently fastidious about men’s bodily fluids.
• On the one hand many women are either unable to register male ejaculation (vaginal intercourse) or to find its taste or texture disagreeable. On the other hand droplets of body-temperature liquid landing on the body is easily felt and, depending on the circumstances, pleasant. (For instance warm oil dripped on the back, face, legs, or torso during a massage is uncommon but feels heavenly.)
• On the one hand internal ejaculation is just about as (Biblically) Patriarchal as it gets. On the other hand external ejaculation violates virtually every principle of traditional Patriarchal heterosexuality.
• On the one hand it’s supposed to be very bad for semen to land on a woman’s body. On the other hand during masturbation semen routinely lands on men’s bodies.

• And so on…

All these different hands leave aside entirely the very real and not necessarily contradictory notions that external ejaculation is demeaning and/or empowering.

My point is that by combing through the very broad range of reactions and responses one can produce (a.k.a. construct) meanings towards which one is predisposed. If one is disposed against it one misses quite a few interesting patriarchy-subverting and risk-mitigating possibilities. If one is disposed in favor one must overlook some deep (lower-case p) patriarchal elements.

If I may sound deeply cynical, if you really object to external ejaculation of any sort, especially in porn, the best way to reverse the trend is to advocate strongly feminist constructions of it. To the extent porn is reflexively anti-feminist that ought to sharply reverse the trend. :-(

As for the porn thing: given that everything in the kind of porn you’re talking about, including use of the words “and” and “the” are presented as subjugating of women I’m unpersuaded by arguments that facials are uniquely degrading because they appear in porn. To give up everything that happens in porn, and that’s presented as subjugating, would be to give up everything. Including elevator rides, pizza deliveries, and masturbation at home alone. That doesn’t mean that porn is hunky dory. It’s very often the opposite. It does mean that just as one shouldn’t rely on porn as a model for appropriate sexuality one also shouldn’t use it as the basis for one’s approval or disapproval.

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Note: once again this isn’t an argument for but also certainly not against penetrative sex. Instead it’s a set of observations about the pros and cons of different constructions of non-penetrative sex.