The Sexualized Body

and the Medical

Authority of
Pornography
The Sexualized Body
and the Medical
Authority of
Pornography:

Performing Sexual Liberation

Edited by

Heather Brunskell-Evans
The Sexualized Body and the Medical Authority of Pornography:
Performing Sexual Liberation

Edited by Heather Brunskell-Evans

This book first published 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2016 by Heather Brunskell-Evans and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-9958-5

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9958-1
I would like to dedicate this book to FiLia
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword .................................................................................................... ix

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1

The Introduction
Heather Brunskell-Evans

Part One: The Industrial Shaping of Private Desire

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 21

“There is no such thing as IT”: Toward a Critical Understanding
of the Porn Industry
Gail Dines

Part Two: The Disciplined Female Body

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 43

Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline
James Kay

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 59

The Violable Woman: Cosmetic Practices and the Pornographic
(De)Construction of Women’s Bodies
Julia Long

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 81

Normalizing Dark Desires? The Medicalization of Sex and Women’s
Consumption of Pornography
Tracy Penny Light and Diana C. Parry

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 95

Open Wide and Say Aaahh! Female Ejaculation in Contemporary
Pornography
Rebecca Saunders
viii Table of Contents

Part Three: Porno-Sexology

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 117

A Prescription for Porn: Sexology, Sex Therapy and the Promotion
of Pornified Sex
Meagan Tyler

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 139

Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times: Sexuality Mentored
by Porn Stars
Paula Sequeira-Rovira

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 155

Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women
Sheila Jeffreys

Contributors ............................................................................................. 175

 FOREWORD

In 2013-2014 I took part in a series of discussions with a biological

scientist and these formed the impetus for this book. Darwin’s thesis of
evolution was put forward as an explanation for the ‘naturalness’ of men’s
consumption of internet pornography. I was stunned by the intellectual
paucity and simplistic cause and effect form of argumentation. I had an
epiphany. As a social theorist and philosopher of the body it had never
occurred to me to research the history of the scientific endorsement of
pornography. I decided to write about the masquerade of scientific
neutrality, and the historical complicity of the medical sciences with the
pornography industry.

I wondered whether there was any current critical research about the
relationship between medicine and pornography. I quickly investigated
and discovered that a number of international as well as UK scholars were,
like myself, turning to this phenomenon as an issue to be researched,
explored and explained. The result was a conference I held at the
University of Leicester in the autumn of 2014 called Performing Sexual
Liberation: The Body and the Medical Authority of Pornography. Scholars
emerged from all over the globe to present their research, the result of
which is their contribution of chapters to this book.

Steve King (Professor of Economic and Social History and the Director of
the Centre for Medical Humanities, Leicester) made funds available for
the conference. I have learned through experience that the academy is
increasingly cautious to support critical rather than neo-liberal sexuality
studies. I am very grateful to Steve, not only because he exempted himself
from this trend, but also because he has consistently and unequivocally
championed my subsequent work on medicine, gender and sexuality.

Lisa-Marie Taylor (activist and Chair of FiLia, a Women’s Rights Charity)

has been instrumental in making this book possible. Our serendipitous first
meeting took place in the Houses of Parliament in the autumn of 2013
where a special interest group of parliamentarians and others convened to
reflect upon the sexual politics of pornography. I subsequently attended
the annual Feminism in London Conference which FiLia organises. I took
x Foreword

part in one of the discussion groups on pornography. This was facilitated

by OTTAR (a Norwegian organisation dedicated to resisting pornography
culture) and Stop Porn Culture (an American organisation now called
Culture Reframed).

In the summer of 2014 Lisa-Marie invited me to join her in starting a UK

branch called Resist Porn Culture (now a branch of FiLia]. It was at this
point my own political activism began. Friendships have flourished and
grown with Lisa-Marie, with Ane Sto and Asta Beate Haland from
OTTAR, and with Gail Dines, founder of Culture Reframed and
contributor to this book. These enduring relationships have provided a
strong support network and forum for the sharing of ideas (sometimes
under the Norwegian midnight sun).

Michele Moore (Professor of Inclusive Education and Editor of Disability

& Society) has sustained me in the past three years in ways too numerous
and private to mention. She has maintained a steadfast presence in the face
of my relentless discussion about topics she would much rather none of us
had need to discuss/know about. In preserving her own sanity, she has
helped me keep mine.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the support of my sons Justin, Jude,

and Curdie, as well as of my daughter Gudrun. When each boy was born I
rejected the idea he was possessed of a pre-disposition to ‘spread his seed
over multiple women’ which, when he was a grown man, could legitimate
his sexual use of a class of women socially designated as bodies for that
purpose. My sons’ full complement of human sensibilities such as
empathy, and my daughter’s dynamic agency and autonomy, comprise
some of the background experiences which have helped sustain my critical
analysis of pornography. The chapters in this book explore pornography’s
patriarchal, monotonous, mono-logical, biologically essentialist fantasy as
a narrative which helps construct rather than reflect our sexual identities.

—Heather Brunskell-Evans
Dept. Culture Media and Creative Industries
Kings College London, 2016.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE INTRODUCTION

HEATHER BRUNSKELL-EVANS

Some time ago I gave an interview for BBC Radio Leicester about my
research into internet pornography. The particular programme to which I
had been invited is broadcast mid-morning and intersperses popular music,
national news and discussion of local topics. I had organised a conference
at the University of Leicester in the autumn of 2014 called Performing
Sexual Liberation: The Body and the Medical Authority of Pornography. It
was this local conference that had aroused the interest of the programme
makers.

The presenter knew only two personal things about me before we met:
firstly that I am critical of the popular idea that internet pornography is
sexually liberating for women (or men for that matter); and secondly that I
am an academic. He immediately made two telling remarks across the
airwaves: he informed the listeners that I didn’t look like someone who is
critical of pornography; he proposed that pornography, particularly when
used by a couple, can strengthen the relationship. He thus called upon two
dominant discourses which he judged would be both familiar to the
audience and would spark off a debate between him and me. The first is
that someone critical of pornography must be traditional, socially
conservative, and have a negative, repressed sexuality. My demeanour,
whatever he deemed that to be, conveyed to him that I didn’t fall into the
‘prude’ category. The second discourse is that, outside of caveats such as
pornography-addiction and paedophilia, consuming pornography can be a
positive, healthy experience which can spice up a flagging sex-life.

Although the ‘pornography as sexual liberation’ discourse is dominant,

there are of course other ways of thinking about pornography. For example,
anxieties are expressed by parents, educators and health professionals that
pornography is accessible to children. Here the problem is located not in
pornography itself, but in the fact that children are exposed to pornography
2 Chapter One

before they are physically, emotionally and psychologically mature

enough to cope with it. Another set of anxieties are those expressed by
wives and partners who disclose they are devastated their menfolk lead a
more intense sex-life on-line than with them off-line. Here the problem
lies in the strange ‘virtual infidelity’ that pornography affords. Psychologists
identify a condition called ‘pornography-addiction’ and they devise
therapeutic treatments for its cure. Again the problem is not located in
pornography, but rather, like alcohol, pornography is regarded as
innocuous if it is consumed in moderation. As a population we are worried
that crime statistics indicate the overwhelming majority of men who commit
sexual crimes against children off-line are found to have consumed child
pornography on-line. Criminologists, sociologists and psychologists
produce conflicting research data about a possible relationship between
on-line ‘fantasy’ and committing sexual violence in the ‘real’ world.
Despite the myriad anxieties, explanations, and theories that abound
pornography per se goes largely unquestioned. The production and
consumption of pornography is currently ubiquitous, largely unregulated,
and increasingly normalized and mainstreamed.

The chapters in this book have emerged from papers given at the
conference referred to above. My overall purpose in holding it was to
gather scholars together who could provide a critical counter-point to
current liberal media scholarship which is aligned with the populist view
and which tends to be pro-pornography. In taking pornography as a
cultural and social phenomenon to be critically analyzed like any other, I
hoped that concepts could be brought to bear that hold pornography and
media scholarship up to analytical scrutiny. My own academic background
is in sociology and philosophy; I am informed by the work of Michel
Foucault and by radical feminists, in particular by the work of Andrea
Dworkin. I invited a range of scholars to participate in the conference who
would analyse pornography from one or both of these perspectives. The
main thesis of the conference and now the book is that, far from being
liberating or healthy for women, pornography is the eroticisation of
women’s submission and men’s pleasure in this submission. Pornography
is not ‘just’ fantasy, it is the eroticisation of gender inequality and this
matters politically and ethically: It matters in the real world as well as in
fantasy; it matters to adults as well as to children; it matters to individuals
as well as to relationships; and it matters to men as well as to women.

The focus of the book is heterosexual pornography. Whilst it is true that

there is a diversity of pornographies – heterosexual, gay, lesbian, transsexual
and so on – the book does not bracket minority pornographies as utterly
 The Introduction 3

distinct from mainstream heterosexual pornography. Firstly, the myriad of

pornographies all fall into the category of what Foucault calls ‘an
incitement to speak sex’; secondly pornography constructs and reproduces
feminine sexuality as debased and degraded by sex, and this representation
cross-cuts most if not all genres of pornography, including male gay
pornography where submissive men are feminised. Lest any male reader,
hetero-sexual or otherwise, is now losing interest on the basis the book has
nothing to do with him, the chapters constantly address the social
construction of masculinity as well as femininity. It should surely go
without saying that one can’t analyse femininity without thereby also
analysing masculinity, since femininity and masculinity each depend on
the other for symbolic meaning: masculinity signifies that which is not
feminine; femininity signifies that which is not masculine.

At this point a cry usually goes up from liberal men and women alike, as
well as from media scholars, that ‘Women enjoy watching porn too!’, as if
this fact invalidates the proposition that pornography sexualises and
reproduces gender inequality. Both Foucauldian and radical feminist
analyses are predicated on a different and more complex starting point
than the liberal one. There are three critical propositions that all authors in
this collection share: The first is that pornographic sex has little to do with
‘natural’ sex but is the orchestrated performance of natural sex; the second
is that, in that performance, rather than freeing women from patriarchal
constrictions on women’s sexuality, pornography not only reiterates and
endorses hierarchical gender norms but positively incites them; and the
third is that medicine, both historically and currently, affords considerable
legitimacy to pornography and thus to gender inequality.

I know the last proposition is counter-intuitive. In the populist view

medical knowledge is objective and rational, the very antithesis of
embodiment which is driven by needs and lusts. The separation of the
mind and body is challenged by the authors who argue firstly that medical
knowledge does not stand outside of culture but is the product of culture as
well as its shaper, and secondly that the body itself is not an independent
biological entity separate from culture but on the contrary, the body and its
pleasures are invested by culture. Medicine has been complicit in constructing
the sexed body and gender hierarchy, and in that construction, the
relationship between medicine and pornography has not been incidental
but fundamental. Sexology in particular has been the ‘science’ which has
taken sexuality as its sole object of study, and it is sexology and its
relationship to pornography that the chapters in this volume largely
address.
4 Chapter One

I have taken the liberty of pigeonholing the authors into categories on the
basis of their theoretical allegiances: Foucauldian; radical feminist; those
divided between liberal feminism and radical feminism; and Foucauldian
radical feminists. I apologize to each author in advance. Categorization
inevitably restricts, and a scholar doesn’t necessarily want to confine her/
himself intellectually by a label, especially one imposed by someone else!
I define the authors in this way not to confuse the reader but to help her or
him chart a course through the political stakes and consequences of
different theoretical emphases.

Liberal Analyses of Pornography

The now orthodox, populist way of thinking about pornography is that it
represents ‘sex-in-the-raw’. In this view, pornographic sex is sex, stripped
of the taboos, social mores, and the traditions which regulate sexual
conduct. Of course consumers are fully aware the sex is staged and that
performers are acting. However since the performers are both acting and
having actual not simulated sex, and since the consumer, in watching the
sex acts and masturbating to them, or indeed interacting with performers in
the virtual space of web-cams, is undergoing a fully embodied visceral
experience, then what pornography does, so the story goes, is touch on
some essential aspect of human sexuality for which it gives harmless
permission. To be critical of pornography therefore, is to be critical of sex
itself, and to be critical of sex itself is to be ‘sex-negative’ – to store inside
oneself sexual repressions, to be morally censorious, to align oneself with
outmoded tradition or religious fundamentalism, and to be out of step with
liberal culture.

The populist ideas described above are shared in some of their essentials
by liberal scholars who are pro-pornography (see for example: Attwood
2010; Attwood 2009; Bright 2013; Smith 2007; Smith and Attwood 2013;
Taormino 2013; Weeks 1985). The narrative that sustains this body of
work is the following: Sexuality is a dynamic, energetic and unruly
property that resides deep within us. Sexual desire exceeds our conscious
intention and rational will. Since the Victorian period sexuality has been
governed by patriarchal religious and traditional mores; everyone suffered
deeply from this punitive sex-negative culture, but particularly
heterosexual women and those with non-normative sexual identities who
were castigated and even pathologised. Thank goodness, we are told, we
no longer live in such a repressive political and ethical regime.
Pornography must be protected as an exemplar of free speech and political
 The Introduction 5

freedom alongside other aspects of democracy e.g. a free press, equal

opportunities policies, human rights legislation and so on (McNair 2013).

With the development of digital technologies, internet pornography now

affords an invaluable sexual resource for heterosexual women and
members of the LGBTQ communities. In the 19th century ‘respectable’
women (mothers, sisters, and daughters) were thought of as asexual, or as
only gently sexual, and who needed protection from men’s sexual
exploitation. However women with explicit sexualities, such as prostitutes
or women who had sex outside of marriage, were shamed as ‘other’ –
women who had little respect for themselves, or who had an over-
abundance of sexuality, or who were feeble-minded or who, at best, were
poverty stricken and exploited by men. Pornography counters the
pernicious dichotomy of virgin/whore: women can now either become
pornography performers or can be sexually aroused by consuming
pornography without paying the price of public stigma and shame.
Pornography is also a resource for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people, whose non-normative sexualities are still marginalised and
disciplined. Pornography is thus subversive of tradition and is a resource
for sexual identity and liberation.

The addendum to the liberal media scholarship approach is that any

anxiety about pornography (such as those described earlier) and any
critique of pornography per se such as those by radical feminists are
examples of highly emotive ‘sex-panics’. Sex-panics are an historical
legacy from the Victorian period when any form of sexuality other than
that of the legitimate married couple caused consternation. Pornography is
about fantasy, and as fantasy desire has no intrinsic ethical (or unethical)
value. To be critical of fantasy is effectively to be ‘the thought police’.
Pornography is not about the sexual degradation of women because it is
not ‘one thing’; it is a media form with many genres that cater for different
sexualities and different desires, thus creating a space for the
democratisation of sexual desires and freedom from the traditional
heteronormativity of patriarchy.

Foucault and Dworkin:

Pornography as Sexualized Discipline
Foucault
In the History of Sexuality Volume 1: The Will to Knowledge (1979)
Foucault historicises sexuality, but his historicism is completely different
6 Chapter One

to that of feminist media scholarship. Indeed it is the hypothesis of sexual

repression that his genealogy of sexuality is dedicated to refute. He agrees
that 19th century attitudes towards sexuality are still resonant, but he
deconstructs the liberal narrative on two grounds: Firstly, the sex about
which we are constantly urged to be positive and for which pornography
gives alleged expression – the essential human property residing at the
core of us – doesn’t exist! Secondly, Foucault demonstrates that sexuality
can’t be repressed because it isn’t “rooted in a specific and irreducible
urgency which power tries as best it can to dominate” (1979:155). The
relationship of power to the pleasures of the body does not function as
“law and taboo” but productively, through power’s “grip on bodies and
their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations and pleasures” (1979:
155).

What was responsible for the fabrication of sexuality in whose thrall, as

exemplified by pornography consumption, we are still captured, and which
we imagine can liberate us? Foucault argues that contrary to the narrative
about the silencing of sexuality, the Victorian period partook in the most
intense, loquacious “speaking-out” about all things sexual. The medical
idea arose that “there is something other than bodies, organs … sensations
and pleasures; something else and something more, with intrinsic
properties and laws of its own” (1979: 152-153). The idea of sexuality
enabled the “fictitious unity” of “anatomical elements, biological
functions, conducts, sensations, and pleasures” (1979:154). The French
neurologist Charcot was one of the first doctors to isolate sexuality. The
sexuality which medicine ‘discovered’ – the epistemological object
‘sexuality’ – isn’t an extra-discursive dark, unconscious, unruly, desiring
force whose inner truths are explained by scientific reason.

On the contrary, sexuality is a discourse, a fictitious object with material

effects in that certain desires were incited and sexual subjectivities created.
For example, when sexuality was isolated as central to the human being,
medicine described it as belonging to both men and women equally.
However men’s sexuality was valorised and normalized as the sexuality
par excellence whereas female sexuality was understood as subsidiary
and passive. If, as the legitimate wife, the woman was a compliant
recipient of her husband’s active sexuality her sexuality was normalised.
If on the other hand women demonstrated an autonomous sexually
activity she was pathologised. The knowledge of sexuality as an inherently
biological/psychological phenomenon, gained through proximity to
medicine and biology, gave the subsequent sciences of sexuality –
 The Introduction 7

psychoanalysis, psychology, and sexology – “a guarantee of quasi-

scientificity” (1979: 155).

What the Victorians experienced and what we experience is the fabrication

of ‘sexuality’, the construction of something called sexuality through a set
of representations – images, ways of picturing and describing, and of
organising, inciting and controlling pleasures – that propose and confirm,
that make up this sexuality to which we are then referred and in which
pornography has taken up a specific and powerful position. Since the 19th
century to the present Foucault argues men and women’s sexuality has
been “relayed by the countless economic interests which, with the help of
medicine, psychiatry, prostitution and pornography, have tapped into this
analytical multiplication of pleasures and this optimization of the power
that controls it” (Foucault, 1979: 48).

In attempting to resist power and its grip on bodies “we must not think that
in saying yes to sex, one says no to power” (1979: 157). As sexual
sophisticates, Foucault proposes we “congratulate ourselves for finally …
having broken free from of a long period of hard repression” (1979: 158).
The power that traditionally regulates sexuality is not so much the exercise
of sovereign power, as in the liberal narrative, i.e. the kind of power that
says No! On the contrary, the power-knowledge relations of sexuality are
productive, and in that productivity sexual subjectivities are constructed –
the sexual freedom fighter, ‘the good wife’, and the ‘whore’. When we say
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ to pornography, as if our very sexual freedom is at stake,
what we do is invoke the very sexuality that has us in its grip and we thus
proliferate power and multiply its effects.

In believing we are finally bringing sex out into the open, indeed that “our
‘liberation’ is in the balance” (1979: 159), what we are actually doing,
since sexuality is neither a natural phenomenon which power tries to hold
in check nor an opaque domain at the core of our being, is invoking the
very sexuality and the sexual subjectivities by which we are constrained
and disciplined. If we are to free ourselves from cultural norms of
sexuality and gender then it is incumbent upon us to reflect upon the
power/knowledge relations that construct sexuality in the first place and
the kinds of sexual subjects we have become as a result.

Dworkin
At the same time that Foucault was writing a genealogical history of
sexuality, Dworkin was also writing a cultural history of pornography
8 Chapter One

(1981). Dworkin is much traduced by pro-pornography media scholars.

Perhaps her major ‘crime’ is that she describes pornography as the graphic
representation of women as ‘whores’. In the pro-pornography view any
critique of pornography performers as ‘whores’ is taken simplistically as a
moral judgement about the women thus demonstrating ‘whore-phobia’.
However it is the reverse theoretical and political move which Dworkin
makes, and her thesis is both emotionally searing and intellectually
profound.

Dworkin is the inheritor of the critical mode of thought initiated by

Simone De Beauvoir in the mid-20th century in The Second Sex (1953). De
Beauvoir analysed women’s cultural and historical status as arising from
the patriarchal view of Woman as Other. Her well known assessment of
woman’s secondary sexual status is that it is not biologically determined
but manufactured by patriarchal civilization and the knowledges which
construct her: “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman”. Another
leading idea is the question of what it means for women “to assume the
status of the Other”. Dworkin looks through the conceptual lens that de
Beauvoir created by analysing pornography as partly constitutive of this
‘becoming a woman’ and of ‘othering’. She points out (1988: 204):
Pornography says that women are sluts, cunts; […] pornography shows
women as body parts, as genitals, as vaginal slits, as nipples, as buttocks,
as lips, as open wounds, as pieces; pornography uses real women;
pornography is an industry that buys and sells women; pornography sets
the standard for female sexuality, for female sexual values, for girls
growing up, for boys growing up, and increasingly for advertising, films,
videos, visual arts, fine art, and literature, music with words.

Are we so determined to disavow the language and imagery of pornography

that we can’t bear to have Dworkin bring into broad daylight that to which
pornography is dedicated? Everyone reading this book who consumes
pornography or who has had only the briefest of acquaintance with it will
know the term ‘whore’ (and other derogatory epithets) is pornography’s
lingua franca and that it is used with the greatest ferocity when overt
violence is visited upon her by the male performers.

The post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s witnessed the establishment,
growth, and expansion of the pornography industry, making possible the
global industry we recognise today. Like all other capitalist industries, the
pornography industry created optimal conditions for its expansion. It
needed to erase the seedy image of male consumers as ‘sad-losers’ who
could not sustain healthy heterosexual relationships and to rebrand
 The Introduction 9

consumers as counter-cultural freedom fighters. It also needed to rebrand

the object to be consumed – women as ‘whores’ – to women as
‘empowered whores’, thus soothing the possible conscience of the
consumer during the period when the struggle for women’s liberation was
a revolutionary force which couldn’t be ignored. The pornography
industry portrayed itself as progressive and sexually liberating; in doing so
it was increasingly successful in shaping both public opinion and liberal
academic perception.

Dworkin (1988) points out that unlike the Left’s analysis of capitalism in
shaping human consciousness and in creating the ‘need’ which the market
then supplies, when it came to pornography a strange analytical and
political silence fell in the 1970s. She asks women to question the
“intellectual and scientific argumentation in conjunction with male
history” which justifies what a woman’s body is ‘for’ (1988: 114):
The vital question is: are we to accept their world view of a moral polarity
that is biologically fixed, genetically or hormonally or genitally absolute
(or whatever organ or secretion or molecular particle they scapegoat next);
or does our own historical experience of social deprivation and injustice
teach us that to be free in a just world we will have to destroy the power,
the dignity, the efficacy of this one idea above all others?

Dworkin has left a legacy of how to think about the pornography industry
and its representation of Woman by providing concepts which simply did
not exist before the 1970s. That legacy is in some of the chapters in this
book.

The book is divided into 3 Parts: Part One describes the power of the
pornography industry and the complicity with it of much current feminist
media scholarship. Part Two is concerned with the pornographic
construction of femininity (and masculinity). Part Three describes the
inextricable relationship of pornography with sexology.

Part One: The Industrial Shaping of Private Desire

In Chapter Two, Gail Dines, a radical feminist scholar, argues feminist
media scholarship suffers from a paucity of theoretical analysis, in
particular of pornography as an industry. The earlier scholarship of the
1980s and early 1990s examined the relationship between capitalism and
the ideologies of media forms through the lens of critical theory, in
particular that of Marx, Althusser, and Gramsci. It interrogated how media
ownership created markets which shaped its products which are
10 Chapter One

“distributed and consumed within a society characterized by race, class,

and gender”. This critical approach has now died away: Where corporate
owned media were previously analysed for how they help shape
femininity, neoliberal media scholars pay scant attention to the relationship
between capitalism and social relations and analyse pornography from the
point of view of the individual, as an expression of women’s intrinsic
sexual desire.

Dines points out that the industry itself has no qualms about
acknowledging the relationship between the industry and the individual
consumer. Sophisticated marketing technologies and public relations
companies are dedicated to strategizing how to shape and manipulate our
most personal, intimate sexual desires and embodied experiences. Whilst
the pornography market grows in size and in public acceptability, few
people are aware of its scale, and the way the mainstream industry
develops, functions and intersects within the wider economic systems of
global capitalism.

Dines concludes that media scholars approach pornography less as critics

and “more like fans”, and this relationship is effectively complicitous with
the pornography industry. It is incumbent upon academics to address the
current industry’s exponential expansion, and its legitimization of the
economic and social subordination of women. If feminist scholarship does
not return to theory and to an analysis of gender politics the results will be
that “feminism becomes one more movement to be coopted by the neo-
liberal hegemony that rebrands capitulation as resistance”.

Part Two: The Disciplined Female Body

In Chapter Three James Kay, a Foucauldian scholar, argues Foucault’s
work, Discipline and Punish (1975) describes in detail the mechanisms of
disciplinary power as these began to replace sovereignty in the early 19th
century. As such, it provides a rich conceptual resource for understanding
the distinctive features of the power exercised by pornographers.

Firstly, surveillance is characteristic of disciplinary power. The pornographic

gaze is trained not so much on the complete body, let alone to a life or
personality, but rather on specific body parts. Secondly, spatio-temporal
control is characteristic of disciplinary power. The performer’s acts are
carefully choreographed to allow constant access by the camera to body
parts. The duration and manner of each act – an example of which could
be the timed sequences of anal, vaginal and ‘ass-to-mouth’ penetrations of
 The Introduction 11

the woman – are dictated by what the pornographer deems the ideal of
totally useful time to incite bodily response and pleasure in the consumer.

Thirdly, docility-utility is characteristic of disciplinary power. The

performers learn how to present themselves, speak, move and position
themselves on camera, and in particular for female performers, take bodily
suffering as it is demanded. Performers gain various aptitudes as a result,
increasing their utility within the pornographic domain and in some cases
gaining a degree of fame. Finally, the examination is a specific technique
of disciplinary power exercised by the pornographer. The body is made to
display for the viewer “its arousal, its pleasure, and its pain”. The frequent
perpetual vocalization and verbal self-narration of performers, serves the
same end “laying out an erotic consciousness for inspection and
voyeuristic enjoyment”.

Kay argues the idea that pornography disciplines performers is often

refuted by liberal advocates. In this latter view sex-work is equivalent to
other forms of labour: the performers have consented and have signed
legally recognized contracts; to suggest that performers are oppressed is to
insult their agency and intelligence. Kay insists the ideas of consent and
contract demands our “cautious and critical attention”. Disciplinary power
is fundamentally non-egalitarian and asymmetrical, and undercuts the
formally egalitarian structures of representative democracies. It is of no
matter that the performer contracts to be trained, monitored, and
reprimanded by her employer: the mechanism that disciplinary power
brings into play fundamentally distorts and exceeds the play of formal
equality manifest in the contractual agreement.

Pornography production demands asymmetrical power not necessarily

because pornographers are tyrants (although they might well be). Although
one of the major tropes of pornography is violence to women, and
although the performers are sometimes physically abused and forced to
perform certain acts, control of the performers through violence is not
generally part of the production process itself. Rather control is exercised
through the performers’ insertion into a mechanism of coercion in the
form of praise, judgement, training, surgical modification, financial reward
and so on. Pornography production requires disciplinary power for its very
functioning: it needs the ceaseless “mastery over the bodies it takes as its
object, making them more malleable and pliable for its ends”.

Kay concludes that sovereign power and disciplinary power, in many ways
opposed, fuse together. Its disciplinary techniques are “a coded display of
12 Chapter One

symbolic and real dominance, violence and triumphant power”. Its

consumers are invited to identify themselves with, feel affirmed by, and
take pleasure in the host of roles, narratives and ideals that the performers
incite. Thus pornography symbolically and in actuality reproduces and
mobilises a wide array of power structures and regimes including patriarchy
and misogyny, bio-politics, racism, hetero-normativity, and neo-
liberalism.

In Chapter Four Julia Long, a radical feminist, draws conceptual and

political links between the disciplinary subjection of performers and the
disciplining of women in the culture. She calls upon Dworkin’s thesis that
male supremacy is propped up through “a metaphysical assertion of the
self” and this self-assertion is maintained, Long argues, through cultural
permission for the “violability” of women’s bodies, a concept she borrows
from the philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

Historically women have been divided into three categories, and each is
related to penile penetration and female violability: the ‘virgin’ (the pre or
non/penetrated state); the wife who was rendered violable because of her
function in childbearing and her role as supplier of sex to the husband; and
the ‘whore’ (in Dworkin’s terminology). In pornography the “woman-as-
violable” theme is endorsed par excellence because the performer’s sole
function is her penetrability. This violability includes: vaginal, anal and
oral penetration (in combinations of various orifices being penetrated, and
by varying numbers of men, often simultaneously); gagging; as-to-mouth
penetration; and ‘bukkake’ involving ejaculation onto a woman’s body,
face, hair, eyes ears or mouth by multiple men.

Along with the dramatic rise in pornography consumption, Long charts the
corresponding rise in the numbers of women undergoing invasive and
intimate “beauty” practices. She gives two examples: pubic hair removal
and labiaplasty both of which transform women’s genitals to resemble that
of a pre-pubescent girl or ‘virgin’ When women give reasons why they
subject themselves to such practices they cite personal choice: pleasure,
cleanliness, increased confidence about their bodies in relationships with
men and so on. Long argues that women’s explanations “both pre-suppose
and depend upon a notion of women’s bodies as fundamentally violable
and in turn serve to construct that violability, thus making the prospect of
further violation – such as that of pornography – more acceptable”.

Long concludes that women’s disciplinary internalization of the male gaze

is not “caused” by pornography, rather pornography and beauty practices
 The Introduction 13

exist in a mutually reinforcing process of normalisation and legitimation –

the pornographication of society.

In Chapter Five Tracy Penny Light and Diana Parry examine some
women’s pleasure in pornography, and they also analyse labiaplasty and
other cosmetic procedures and surgeries. As feminist scholars they express
allegiance neither to a Foucauldian nor a radical feminist theoretical
approach, rather they explore liberal feminist media scholarship on the
grounds it has substantive points to make.

Liberal feminist media scholars argue that pornography helps women

understand their own desires and creates a forum to explore sexuality
without shame. Moreover new digital technologies provide a virtual space
for a broad intersection of women to produce, access, consume and discuss
pornographic literature. Blogs, fan fiction, e-books, virtual publishers,
social net-working sites, and on-line communities with special interests
increasingly facilitate more vocabularies of women’s sexual desire. With
regard to cosmetic procedures and surgery, many women report feeling
empowered by their choices to transform their bodies. In conclusion,
media scholars report that women experience themselves as self-conscious
agents of their own sexual desires and their own lives.

Light and Parry question whether a “feminist quality” can be attributed to

women’s experience of empowerment, despite assertions by women
themselves to the contrary. They are very sympathetic to the radical
feminist view that the wider sexualisation of culture constructs a new
patriarchal normal that women seek to emulate. Feminist ‘empowerment’
is inextricably bound with sexism and socio-cultural prescriptions about
female sexuality, and pornography and medical practices strengthen
traditional patriarchal views of women’s sexuality by which women self-
subjectify.

In Chapter Six Rebecca Saunders, a Foucauldian radical feminist, points

out that female ejaculation has become increasingly popular as a genre of
pornography. Countless sites are devoted entirely to its representation, and
most other sites include it as a searchable category. Moreover, in self-help
books, titillating magazine articles and scientific papers female ejaculation
is depicted as an essential but historically neglected aspect of women’s
autonomous sexuality. The woman’s newly conceived ‘right’ to her
allegedly cataclysmic ejaculation is now heavily marketed and guaranteed
through the accoutrements of dildos and vibrators which allegedly reach
all aspects of a woman’s anatomy, from clitoris to G-Spot. Indeed the
14 Chapter One

multitude of self-help books that teach women to ejaculate invariably

elevate it not only to the status of maximum pleasure but to a post-feminist
“responsibility” or an “act of politicised, feminist freedom”.

Female ejaculation can seem a rival to the male cum shot, where the man
is the powerful superior sexual subject and the woman is a submissive,
passive object for penetration. The oscillation between blow-jobs and anal
penetration, and the enthusiastic moans and endless ‘yeses’ from the
female performers culminate in the woman’s enraptured pleasure at having
ejaculate squirted onto her body or into her eyes or mouth as she gratefully
gobbles the semen. The ejaculating penis is the main driving force of the
pornographic narrative and stands as a repeated symbol of both
individuals’ pleasure.

Whilst female ejaculation seems to give female pleasure a new-found

centrality, Saunders argues it is a means by which the traditional 19th and
early 20th century medical pathologisation of female sexuality finds
current expression. Women ejaculate copious fluids the consistency and
quantity of urine, and this is accompanied by frenzied writhing, screaming
and eye-rolling. The seeming involuntary confession of feminine pleasure
does not function as a “violent assertion of female parity” but is
appropriated as an example of female pathology. Where the male ejaculate
is a metaphysical assertion of self, confirmed by the fact it is not the man
but the denigrated woman who bears the taint of semen’s viscosity, the
female ejaculate implicates her in her own waste product, and she is often
encouraged to lick and sniff it in a way unthinkable for a male performer
to do with his own semen. Pornography, either through the sub-genre
gyno-porn or in the more general representation of female ejaculation,
constructs female sexuality as simultaneously disturbing in its naturalness
and pathologically in need of authoritative male intervention.

Part Three: Porno-Sexology

In Chapter Seven Meagan Tyler, a radical feminist, tells us that after a
brief period in the early 20th century when, in order to retain its scientific
legitimacy, sexology began to distance itself from its previous relationship
with pornography (which had been strong in the 19th century), sexology
renewed the relationship. In the 1960s pornography began to achieve
respectability, and sexologists gave expert advice in the columns of
pornography magazines as these began to proliferate and which presented
pornography as sexual liberation. The relationship intensified throughout
the 1960s and 1970s when key sexologists such as Masters and Johnson,
 The Introduction 15

the founders of modern sex therapy, began to endorse pornography as a

therapeutic tool. At this point, sexology and pornography began a
symbiotic relationship which lasted relatively unchallenged for the
following two decades, and which is still with us.

There are three ways that sexology, sex-therapy and pornography became
intertwined through the latter part of the 20th century. Firstly, sex-
therapists watched sexually explicit material as a training device in order
to confront their own prejudices about certain sex-acts and therefore be
sympathetic and non-judgemental with their patients. Secondly,
pornography was used as a relatively unproblematic tool for diagnosing
sexual health/ responsiveness in individuals. Finally, pornography was
used as a therapeutic ‘cure’ to reorient the dangerous sexualities of certain
individuals, for example those with violent sexual fantasies and fetishes.
Whilst the history of pornography and sex-research can still be traced to
current training, it is in the area of therapeutic treatment that pornography
is most visible today.

Pornography as therapy for sexual dysfunction has become fairly standard,

despite almost no empirical evidence to support its use. The dysfunctions
for which it is thought to be of particular use are female inhibition,
frigidity and anorgasmia. Therapy expects women will get aroused by
images of other women being dominated, coerced and even assaulted.
Some sexologists have begun to question this and have decided that
women should be shown “women-made” or “women-centred” pornography.
Tyler points to the dubious distinction between pornography produced by
men and by women: research demonstrates that female directors produce
material with similar levels of violence and also repeat clear themes of
female submission and misogyny.

Tyler concludes that pornography as therapy is particularly problematic

for women since the version of a healthy sexual response to which the
therapy directs her involves a model of heterosexuality in which women’s
subordination is eroticised. Pornography gives women very little space to
refuse a sex life that is not infused with pornography and, in the 21st
century, gives women less not more ability to be sexually autonomous and
self-directed since a healthy female sexuality as defined by pornography is
always sex-ready.

In Chapter Eight Paula Sequira-Rovira, a Foucauldian radical feminist,

argues that the disciplinary normalisation of pornography referred to by
Foucault has been given added legitimacy through self-help books written
16 Chapter One

by ‘porn-stars’. Self-help books function as instruction manuals where

porn-stars as ‘experts’ give advice to readers on how to technically refine
certain practices/ methods in order to enrich their performance with their
partners. Where the Church, the Law and medicine once regulated
sexuality, sexuality is now increasingly directed by porn-stars and the
industry which governs them.

Jenna Jameson’s book Make Love Like a Porn Star is one of the most
successful self-help books. It is written in the form of the author’s
confession about her own deep, secret sexuality and this sexual confession
forms the basis of her authority. Her advice has some essential shared
characteristics with the expert advice proffered by sexologists: firstly,
femininity and masculinity are constituted as opposites; secondly, the male
orgasm is mandatory; thirdly, penile penetration is valorised. If performing
pornographic sex does not deliver the promised liberation of one’s true,
unmediated sexuality this is not the failure of sexuality to deliver its
promised delights, but failure to take responsibility for following
Jameson’s instructions as the “sex-expert”.

That porn-stars have become figures of aspiration and authority is

indicative of the industry’s success in reinventing pornography from
something obscene and indecent to something which is liberating. As such
porn-stars and their recommendations have become what Sequira-Rovira
calls “a new form of porno-sexology”.

The book concludes with a chapter which analyses transgender pornography.

In Chapter Nine Sheila Jeffreys, a radical feminist, places a different
emphasis on sexology than other authors. She does not analyse current
sexology as constitutive of femininity, or as a research or therapeutic
‘tool’. In contrast, she focusses on the deployment of sexological
arguments by the transgender community. What role then does she give to
the relationship between sexology and transgender pornography?

Jeffreys argues transgender activists are keen to argue that gender is a

natural phenomenon, for example that a transgender woman was born
female but with a biologically sexed male body. These current ‘scientific’
truths rest on traditional medicine and sexology of the 19th and early 20th
century, when scientists went to great lengths to explain and justify why
the genital and reproductive distinctions between biological men and
women account for gender difference. For example, traditional medical
explanations of the homosexual man classified him as possessing a female
brain, and in need of therapeutic treatment or medical intervention to re-
 The Introduction 17

align or correct him. Transgender activists resort to the same naturalisation

narrative, and support the current medicalization of transgenderism for
political purposes: it is a tactic to mobilise public sympathy, and the legal
and social policy endorsement that men can in fact be truly women. From
a radical feminist perspective the creation of gender identity based on
biology is something to be resisted rather than embraced.

Jeffreys writes against the current increasingly populist thesis that

transgender signifies the loosening of gender norms, giving transgender
individuals access to a more fluid identity than traditional masculine and
feminine gender allows. In the majority of cases, male to female
transgender masks auto-gynophilia, namely the pleasure heterosexual men
experience at the thought of themselves as women and in wearing
women’s clothing or adopting their body parts.

In conclusion, transgender pornography reproduces hierarchical gender

identity: Sexual encounters involve grotesque combinations of male and
female body parts to construct and reproduce the very disciplinary
accounts of women that radical feminism refutes – the bimbo, women as
violable, and women as subordinate.

References
Attwood, F. (2010) ‘Towards the Study of Online Porn Cultures and
Practices’ in Attwood, F. (ed) Porn.com: Making Sense of Online
Pornography, Peter Lang: London.
—. (2009) Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Culture, IB Taurus:
London.
Bright, S. (2013) The Birth of Blue Movie Chic’ in Taormino, T. et al
(2013) The Feminist Porn Book.
De Beauvoir, S. (1953) The Second Sex, Vintage Publishers: London.
Dworkin, A. (1981) Pornography: Men Possessing Women, The Women’s
Press: London.
—. (1988) Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987, Secker and
Warburg: London.
Foucault, M. (1979) The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality
Volume One, Penguin Books: London
McNair, B. (2013) Porno? Chic! How pornography changed the world
and made it a better place. Routledge: London and New York.
Smith, C, (2007) One for the Girls! The Pleasures and Practices of
Women's Porn, Intellect Books: Bristol UK.
18 Chapter One

Smith, C. and Attwood, F. (2013) ‘Emotional Truths and Thrilling Side

Shows: The resurgence of Anti-porn Feminism’ in Taormino, T. et al
(2013) The Feminist Porn Book
Taormino, T. et al (2013) The Feminist Porn Book, The Feminist Press:
New York City
Weeks, J. (1985) Sexuality and its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and
Modern Sexualities, Routledge and Kegan Paul: London.
 PART ONE:

THE INDUSTRIAL SHAPING

OF PRIVATE DESIRE
 CHAPTER TWO

“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS IT”:

TOWARD A CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING
OF THE PORN INDUSTRY

GAIL DINES

Just over a year ago, as I was selecting articles for the fourth edition of my
co-edited textbook Gender, Race and Class in Media (Dines & Humez
2015), I spent months going through the top peer-reviewed journals in
media studies. I was shocked to see how much the field had changed since
Jean Humez and I worked on the first edition in the mid-1990s. That
period can be seen as the golden age of critical media studies, with
scholars such as Sut Jhally, Eileen Meehan, Stuart Hall, Robert
McChesney, and Janet Wasko calling for a paradigm shift away from
simple cause and effect (often called the “Magic Bullet Theory” in
communications) toward a more nuanced understanding of how media is
produced, distributed, and consumed within a society characterized by
class, race, and gender inequality. Building on the insights of Marx,
Althusser, Gramsci, and the Birmingham School for Contemporary
Cultural Studies, much of the scholarship sought to interrogate the ways in
which media ownership and control serve to limit, shape, and, in some
cases, determine the nature of the media products that circulate in
mainstream culture.

By 2014 these debates had been largely marginalized, and the field seemed
to have been taken over by articles written by scholars who were openly
and uncritically celebrating media forms that in the past would have been
subject to rigorous academic analysis. This was especially true in the case
of feminist media studies. Rather than looking at how corporate-owned
media affect the way in which girls and women construct gender and
sexual identities that produce and reproduce hegemonic gender relations,
scholars were now arguing that we needed to take a more positive
approach to media targeted to women. Starting from the premise that
22 Chapter Two

media texts are polysemic (open to multiple meanings), feminist media

scholars—often sounding more like fans than researchers—began to
argue, often without any research to back up their claims, that women and
girls may actually be empowered by hypersexualized images that objectify
women because they offer a kind of pleasure that comes with being
noticed and desired by men (see, e.g., Johnson 2002).

This paradigm shift caused one of the most prolific and well-respected
feminist media scholars, Angela McRobbie, to write a 2008 article that she
termed an “intervention in the field of feminist media and cultural
studies”. Arguing that “to ignore the force field within which…cultural
forms circulate is to abandon the ethical and the political underpinning of
feminist media and cultural studies scholarship” (McRobbie 2008:544),
she called on scholars to bring back a feminist critique of how media
images shape and construct a consumer-driven femininity. McRobbie
specifically pointed to the way in which Sex and the City was hailed by
some feminist media scholars as a show that celebrated women’s sexual
power. Missing from this critique, McRobbie pointed out, is “a prior, or
old-fashioned feminist vocabulary which was concerned with the power of
these media forms, and their role in producing sexual objectification,
differentiation and subordination….” (2008:540). This results in what
McRobbie called a “complicitous critique” (2008:539) that “appears to
suspend critical engagement with the wider political and economic
conditions which shape the very existence, as well as the circulation and
availability, of these forms” (2008:539).

This article draws upon and develops McRobbie’s concept of a “complicitous

critique” to explain why so many scholars writing in the field of women’s
studies ignore the socio-economic dynamic within which porn is produced,
distributed, and consumed that shapes the very products that circulate
within the mainstream market. (For an example of this type of uncritical
analysis, see Taormino, Parreñas Shimizu, Penley, & Miller-Young 2013.)
Thus, my major concern here is how (to use McRobbie’s terms) the “wider
political and economic conditions” shape the way in which porn is
produced and distributed. This involves taking a critical approach to how
porn as an industry works within a global economic system that often
serves to define the nature of the content produced, and the way the
corporatization of porn has resulted in a monopolistic system of distribution.

Moreover, arguing that pornography operates as an industry means that we

need to examine how it uses its corporate dollars to establish legitimacy
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 23

and lobby for political and legal change. Lobbying is a central part of the
porn industry’s business plan, because any legal restrictions on content,
production, and distribution could reduce profits. Corporations abhor
regulation of any sort. As this article will show, the porn industry, despite
its efforts to portray itself as progressive and sexually liberating, is
especially aggressive in organizing against regulation so that it can
continue to grow in market size and mainstream acceptability. The
industry seeks to operate in an almost regulation-free zone and has
attempted to shred existing and proposed protections for porn performers
against injury, the transmission of STDs, and the exploitation of minors.

What is “IT”: Mapping the Porn Internet Industry

In 2011, at a plenary session of a conference in London called Pornified?
Complicating Debates about the “Sexualization of Culture”, pro-porn
scholars Feona Attwood, Clarissa Smith, and Martin Barker argued that
there is no such thing as “it”. The “it” they were referring to was the porn
industry, and their reasoning was that because there are so many sub-
genres of porn circulating on the Internet, there couldn’t possibly be a
cohesive industry. While this is a rather strange argument given the way
management scholars analyze industries—nobody would argue, for
example, that there is no such thing as a car industry because there are lots
of different types of cars on the road—it also speaks to the ways in which
much of what passes for scholarship today in the world of pro-porn studies
is little more than simplistic musings rather than rigorous research. No
attempt was made at this plenary session to explore how pornography is
produced and distributed, if indeed there is no industry actually organizing
the production and distribution of those products that are accessed when a
consumer types the word “porn” into Google. Moreover, as the conference
continued, it became clear that these scholars, by sounding more like fans
than researchers, were falling into the very trap that McRobbie had warned
against.

Ironically, the porn industry would be the first group to disagree with the
argument that a porn industry does not exist. In a 2000 interview, Andrew
Edmond, president and CEO of Flying Crocodile, a $20-million
pornography Internet business, discussed how surprising it is that so few
people understand the scale and scope of the industry. Edmond’s
explanation for this was that “a lot of people [outside adult entertainment]
get distracted from the business model by [the sex]. It is just as sophisticated
24 Chapter Two

and multilayered as any other market place. We operate just like any
Fortune 500 company” (Edmond 2000).

Indeed, since 2000, the porn industry has become even more sophisticated
and multilayered. In 2009, Steven Yagielowicz, a well-known porn
industry journalist, stated in an article for XBIZ News:

The corporatization of porn isn’t something that will happen or is

happening, it is something that has happened—and if you’re unaware of
that fact then there truly is no longer a seat at the table for you. It’s Las
Vegas all over again: the independent owners, renegade mobsters and
visionary entrepreneurs pushed aside by mega-corporations that saw a
better way of doing things and brought the discipline needed to attain a
whole new level of success to the remaining players. (Yagielowicz 2009)

So there is clearly an “it”, and this “it” requires detailed and rigorous
analysis if we are to understand the ways in which the mainstream porn
industry develops and functions within the wider economic systems of
global capitalism. One reason for this is that the scale of the pornography
business has important cultural implications. The entertainment industries
do not just influence us; they constitute our hegemonic culture, our
identities, our conceptions of the world, and our norms of acceptable
behavior. Moreover, in the absence of thorough and robust sex education
programs in schools, porn fills the knowledge gap for children and youth
and thus becomes an important player in the development of adolescent
sexual templates.

This is especially worrisome given the findings of a comprehensive

content analysis of contemporary porn by Bridges and her team (2010).
They found that the majority of scenes from 50 of the top-rented porn
movies contained both physical and verbal abuse targeted at the female
performers. Physical aggression, which included spanking, open-hand
slapping, and gagging, occurred in over 88% of scenes, while expressions
of verbal aggression - calling the woman names such as “bitch” or “slut” -
were found in 48% of the scenes. The researchers concluded that 90% of
scenes contained at least one aggressive act if both physical and verbal
aggression were combined (Bridges et al 2010). An industry of this
magnitude and reach that so blatantly produces images of violence against
women is a worthy area of investigation within feminist media studies
because it plays a role in constructing notions of gender and gender
relations.
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 25

An obvious starting point in developing a map of the porn industry is an

analysis of how porn is a key driver of technological innovations and
pioneers new business models that subsequently permeate the wider
economy (Coopersmith 2006). In turn, evolving technologies and business
techniques have shaped the content and format of pornography. A key
factor driving the growth of the porn market has been the development of
technologies that allow users to buy and consume porn in private on
almost any device with a screen, without embarrassing trips to seedy stores
or video rental shops. Porn does not just benefit from these technologies,
however; it has helped create the technologies that expand its own market.
As Blaise Cronin and Elizabeth Davenport put it, “Certainly, it is
universally acknowledged by information technology experts that the adult
entertainment industry has been at the leading edge in terms of building
high-performance Web sites with state-of-the art features and functionality”
(Cronin & Davenport 2001).

Porn has proven to be a reliable, highly profitable market segment that has
accelerated the development of media technologies from VCRs and DVDs
to file sharing networks, video on demand for cable, streamed video over
the Internet for PCs, and, most recently, video for hand-held devices
(Coopersmith 2006). Video uses vast quantities of data, and the demand
for porn has driven the development of core cross-platform technologies
for data compression, search, and transmission. A common pattern across
these various technologies is for pornography to blaze the trail, then
gradually decline as a proportion of total business as the technology
matures and develops more general commercial use (Coopersmith 2006).

The porn industry has also been a pioneer of new business models that
help to make commercial video profitable, opening the way for the
commercial viability of video-sharing websites such as YouTube and
television series downloads to cellphones and iPods. The porn industry has
been able to exploit the unregulated, freewheeling nature of business on
the web, which has made it very easy for small companies to enter new
markets with very little capital. It has also allowed them to pursue
international strategies, since the jurisdictional ambiguity of Internet
geography facilitates the avoidance of taxation and regulation. Porn has
led the way in obtaining free content from users, repackaging and then
reselling it. The porn industry has also developed marketing devices that
have been adopted by other Internet sectors, such as free “supersites” that
build traffic and cross-link to numerous providers, generating advertising
and pay-per-click revenues. It has also been a leader in the development of
26 Chapter Two

web-based subscription business models, anti-fraud security, and micro-

payment systems for pay-per-view customers (Coopersmith 2006).

Porn as a major industry engages in the normal business activities that

other industries pursue. Porn businesses raise capital, hire managers and
accountants, undergo mergers and acquisitions, organize trade shows, have
their own lobbying group (the Free Speech Coalition), and enter into co-
marketing arrangements with other companies. The Private Media Group
was the first diversified, adult-entertainment company to gain a listing on
the Nasdaq exchange (though it should be noted that porn businesses have
struggled to raise capital through public share offerings). There is now an
investment firm that deals specifically with the porn industry. Called
AdultVest, the company boasts that it brings together accredited investors,
hedge funds, venture capital funds, private equity funds, investment banks,
and broker dealers with growing adult entertainment companies and
gentlemen’s clubs who are looking to sell their business, raise capital, or
go public. Investors can utilize their AdultVest.com membership to
research a wide variety of private placements, reverse mergers, IPO’s,
public offerings, buyouts, joint ventures, and business opportunities.

While these activities are in themselves unremarkable business operations,

they signal that porn is becoming a mainstream, everyday business - a
legitimate enterprise being taken more seriously by Wall Street, the media,
and the political establishment. The porn business is embedded in a
complex value chain that links not just film producers and distributors, but
also bankers, software producers, Internet providers, cable companies, and
hotel chains. These other businesses become allies and collaborators with
a vested interest in the growth and continued viability of the porn business.
Banks, for example, make money from the porn industry as the revenue it
generates is invested in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and so forth. Indeed,
everyone in the supply chain, from production to consumption, is
complicit in building and strengthening the porn industry.

Recent Shifts in the Porn Industry

The conventional wisdom today is that porn is on the decline and
hemorrhaging money, thanks to free porn sites and increased piracy. While
profits may be down, however, it is a mistake to see this as evidence of a
dying industry. Indeed, it is actually a sign of a successful, maturing
industry that is moving from a mom-and-pop model of small, backstreet
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 27

players to a more legitimate, mainstream industry characterized by fierce

competition and increasing concentration in the hands of a few large firms.

What has happened to porn is typical of industries that grow and mature.
The Internet served to enable rapid market growth and attracted a
proliferation of new entrants eager to make what appeared to be easy
money. This led to intense competition, falling prices and profits, and, as
documented by Theroux (2012), lower pay for the performers. But the
weeding out of some unprofitable firms and a wave of acquisitions have
led to the consolidation of the industry and the emergence of a few large,
more professionally managed businesses operating in multiple market
segments through a variety of distribution channels. These big players
have gained a level of economic, political, and cultural clout that is
reshaping the industry politically, culturally, and legally.

While many people think of Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler as the

movers and shakers of the porn industry, it is actually a company that few
outside the industry have ever heard of that has played the most significant
role in reshaping the entire business strategy of porn. Originally called
Manwin, this Luxembourg-based company (renamed MindGeek in 2013
after CEO Fabian Thylmann stepped down following his arrest on charges
of tax evasion) advertises itself on its website as driving the state of
technology forward, developing industry-leading solutions enabling faster,
more efficient delivery of content every second to millions of customers
worldwide. The Company is committed to enhancing its technological
capabilities and thrives on a sustainable growth trajectory built on
innovation and excellence (MindGeek n.d.). Boasting that it has “over
1000 employees worldwide” and is expanding “with the acquisition and
licensing of some of the most iconic brands in entertainment media”, it is
impossible to know from clicking on the major pages of its website that
this company is the biggest distributor of porn in the world. However,
according to an article on the website therichest.com, MindGeek

is hands down the number one distributor of porn in the world. If you’re
surprised that companies such as Reality Kings and Brazzers didn’t make
the list don’t be. MindGeek owns all of those, to better break it down,
Reality Kings owns 38 pornographic sites and Brazzers 35. Making
MindGeek (MG) hold a strong monopoly on the industry…. They are
among the top three bandwidth consumption companies on earth, operating
more than 73 websites in all-free, paid and webcam. (DiVirgilio, 2013)
28 Chapter Two

This level of industry concentration has angered a lot of smaller players

who are being pushed out of the market by MindGeek. One of the main
reasons for this is that MindGeek owns the top eight free porn sites (called
“tube sites” in the industry) that offer an enormous amount of free porn
that is funded by ads for paid sites, live webcam sites, penis enlargers, and
so-called escort services. According to an article by David Auerbach on
the Slate website, the sites are made up largely of pirated material, and
MindGeek is notorious for making it difficult for the original producers—
often small-time, mom-and-pop shops with few resources—to get the
pirated material removed (Auerbach 2014). In addition, given their
extensive ownership of both paid and free porn sites, most major studios
and well-known porn performers have economic ties to MindGeek. The
result is that both producers and performers are in the “difficult situation
of seeing their work pirated on sites owned by the same company that pays
them” (Auerbach 2014). Auerbach continues by making the important
point that this means that few people in the industry feel comfortable about
speaking publicly against MindGeek, a situation made worse by the fact
that MindGeek also has influence over the major trade publications by
virtue of its advertising dollars (Auerbach 2014).

Thus, in a clever marketing ploy, much of the content on the free porn
websites comes from MindGeek’s paid sites and acts as a teaser to get
viewers interested so that they can then “monetize” the free porn with
advertising and by diverting the consumer to paid sites. So, rather than
destroying the porn industry, free porn is expanding the consumer base for
paid porn. Feras Antoon, CEO of Brazzers, is quoted in New York
Magazine as claiming that free porn sites have so “vastly enlarged the total
universe of porn consumers that the number of those who pay has
ballooned along with it” (Wallace 2011). Given the revenues that
MindGeek generates, it is taken very seriously on Wall Street and by
politicians and policymakers because it is a major funder of the porn
lobby. It is this concentration of economic power that is key to
understanding why any rigorous and serious analysis of the porn industry
must follow the industry’s money trail.

Porn Industry’s Wins and Losses: Using Economic Power

to Lobby for (and Against) Legislation
One of the key markers of a mature industry is that it has developed the
capacity and resources for corporate legal and political activity by
financing industry associations and lobbying groups. Chief among these is
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 29

the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), founded in 1991, which describes itself
as “the trade association of the adult entertainment industry based in the
United States” and has been active in working to change laws, develop PR
campaigns, and to promote itself as a beacon in the protection of free
speech for all. Its stated mission is to serve as an organization that “helps
limit the legal risks of being an adult business, increases the profitability
of its members, promotes the acceptance of the industry in America’s
business community, and supports greater public tolerance for freedom of
sexual speech” (Free Speech Coalition, n.d.).

In reality, mainstream positioning requires that an industry present a more

socially responsible face and pursue modes of self-regulation that try to
eliminate the more blatant abuses while fending off more unwelcome
governmental regulation. By way of exploring the role that the FSC has
played in making the political and legal landscape more hospitable to the
porn industry, I will focus on three major battles that the coalition has
undertaken in the last decade or so. These have yielded mixed results that
include some losses (trying to defeat Measure B and Holder v. Free
Speech Coalition) and a major win (Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition
2002). I will begin with the latter, since this has had the largest, most
profound impact on the content and distribution of porn in the last decade.

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002)

In 2002, the FSC brought a case to the U.S. Supreme Court designed to
change the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act, which prohibited any
image that “is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit
conduct”. Arguing that the term “appears to be” limited the free speech of
pornographers, the coalition succeeded in removing this “limitation”, and
the law’s scope was narrowed to cover only those images in which an
actual person (rather than one who appears to be) under the age of 18 was
involved in the making of porn. Thus, the path was cleared for the porn
industry to use either computer-generated images of children or real porn
performers who, although age 18 or over, are “childified” to look much
younger.

Since that 2002 decision, there has been an explosion in the number of
sites that childify women, as well as those that use computer-generated
imagery. Pseudo Child Pornography (PCP) sites that use adults (those
people defined by law as 18 years of age or over) to represent children are
never referred to as child pornography by the industry. Instead, almost all
30 Chapter Two

of those sites that childify the female porn performer are found in the sub-
genre called “teen-porn” or “teen-sex” by the industry. There are any
number of ways to access these sites, the most obvious one being through
Google. Typing “teen porn” into Google yields over 16 million hits, giving
the user his1 choice of thousands of porn sites. A number of the hits are
actually for porn portals where “teen porn” is one sub-category of many,
and when the user clicks on that category, a list of sites comes up that runs
over 90 pages.

Many of the actual sites in this category have the word “teen” in their
names—for example, Solo Teen, Solo Teen Babe, Sexy Teen Girl, Teen
Cuties, and Solo Teen Girls. When the user clicks on any one of these
sites, the first and most striking feature is the body shape of the female
porn performers. In place of the large-breasted, curvaceous bodies that
populate regular porn websites, one sees small-breasted, slightly built
women with adolescent-looking faces that are relatively free of makeup.
Many of these performers do look younger than 18, but they do not look
like children, so the pornographers use a range of techniques to make them
appear more childlike than they actually are. Most common among these
are the use of children’s clothes and props such as stuffed animals,
lollipops, pigtails, pastel-colored ribbons, ankle socks, braces on the teeth,
and, of course, the school uniform. It is not unusual to see a female porn
performer wearing a school uniform, sucking a lollipop, and hugging a
teddy bear while she masturbates with a dildo. Evidence as to just how this
victory on the part of the FSC shaped the content of mainstream porn can
be found in the fact that “teen porn” has grown rapidly and is now the
largest single genre whether measured by search-term frequency or
proportion of websites.

In original research that I conducted with David Levy (Professor of

Management at U/Mass Boston) for the Department of Justice in the case
Free Speech Coalition, Inc,. et al. vs. Holder (see below), a Google Trends
analysis indicated that searches for “teen porn” have more than tripled
between 2005 and 2013, and that teen porn was the fastest-growing genre
in this period. Total searches for teen-related porn reached an estimated
500,000 daily by March 2013, far larger than other genres and representing
approximately one-third of total daily searches for pornographic websites.
Moreover, the content of the three most popular “porntubes”, the portals
that serve as gateways to online porn, contained about 18 million teen-
related pages—again, the largest single genre and about one-third of the
total content.
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 31

Holder v. Free Speech Coalition (2013)

The Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988 (known as
2257) requires primary and secondary producers of pornography to keep
records on file demonstrating that all porn performers on a set are at least
18 years of age. The porn industry has been fighting this law for well over
a decade on the basis that such record keeping is, in their words, “overly
burdensome” for free speech. This battle reached a climax in June 2013 in
the James A. Byrne Federal Courthouse in Philadelphia when U.S. District
Court Judge Michael Baylson upheld federal regulation 2257.

Why is the overturning of 2257 such a priority for the porn industry? The
answer lies in the fact that the age documentation requirements of 2257
represent a key component of the legal struggle to prevent child
pornography from becoming widespread on free porn websites. Given that
content is loaded onto tube sites from a variety of sources, some of which
the owner of the tube site controls, and some of which are not under direct
control, it would require an investment in information technology
infrastructure to keep track of age verification documents across the value
chain, which increasingly extends internationally. Thus the distributors
(defined as secondary producers) such as MindGeek could be held
responsible for uploading child pornography that would make them run
afoul of the law. One way to avoid this is to succeed in getting 2257 struck
down.

Content can be uploaded onto these sites by any registered member of the
tube site through what is called the “content partner program”.
Membership is free; members may be non-professional individuals who
upload their personal material or affiliated webmasters who upload
material to direct traffic to their paid sites. This method of opening up the
points of production while controlling the channels of distribution has
transformed the online industry and made the secondary producers even
more vulnerable under 2257. Added to this is the fact that much of
production today is in the hands of small-time producers who, because of
the increasing conglomeration and monopolization of the industry, are
struggling to survive. Thus these producers are the ones most at risk of
going bankrupt, and the industry claims that distributors might be hard
pressed to find the original documentation.

Moreover, the production side of the pornography industry operates in

terms of an internationally fragmented supply chain in which production is
dispersed across the globe. This dispersion can be seen in the list of
32 Chapter Two

content producers on YouPorn.com, the second-largest porn site on the

Internet. As evidenced by the list of custodians of 2257 records for the 180
official content producers (see http://www.youporn.com/information/),
pornography production takes place in numerous smaller studios located
not only in the United States but also Canada and Europe, including
Cyprus, the Czech Republic, the UK, Hungary, and The Netherlands. For
example, on YouPorn.com, many of the listed custodian sites are no longer
operational. Specifically, at the time of this research (March 2013),
www.teen18.com, www.shaftuncovered.com, and http://pickupyourgame
.com/usc2257.html no longer lead to a producer site with 2257 compliance
or, in the case of http://www.loverboysusa.com/2257.html, the 2257 listing
is obscured.

While the FSC was fighting 2257 in court, it boasted on its site that it was
a member of the porn industry-backed non-profit group Adult Sites
Against Child Pornography (ASACP). ASACP was founded in 1996 by
the porn industry and claims that it “battles child pornography through its
Reporting Hotline” and is “dedicated to online child protection”. Both
ASACP and the FSC have similar membership and funding from porn
industry players across the value chain, from producers to online
distributors to webmasters. Again we see MindGeek as a major player
here, since it was the FSC Benefactor of the Year in 2012 and the only
diamond donor to ASACP. XBIZ, a leading porn industry association,
held a joint fundraiser for FSC and ASACP at its awards ceremony in
January 2013 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Century City,
California. This strategy of pursuing Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) is typical for industries facing challenges to their legitimacy and
embroiled in legal battles to protect their interests.

Measure B (County of Los Angeles Safer Sex in the Adult Film

Industry Act)
More pornography is produced in the Greater Los Angeles area than in any
other part of the English-speaking world, so it is no surprise that activists
have focused their efforts in this location when organizing to improve the
health and safety of porn performers. Without doubt the most successful of
these has been the passage of Measure B in the County of Los Angeles in
November 2012. This law, authored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation
(AHF), mandates the use of condoms in porn scenes that contain anal or
vaginal penetration and also requires production companies to both obtain
a health permit and to notify performers of the requirement of condom use
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 33

during filming. Repeated failure to do so can result in civil fines or

misdemeanor charges.

Given that the most popular porn websites depict acts that include gagging
with a penis; pounding anal sex; spitting into the mouth of a woman; ATM
(ass-to-mouth) transitions, in which the penis goes from the anus to the
mouth without washing; ejaculation onto the body and sometimes into the
eye; and bukkake (wherein any number of men ejaculate onto a woman’s
body, or into a cup that she then drinks), it is no surprise that there have
been a number of STD outbreaks, including HIV, on porn sets in the last
decade. In researching my book Pornland (Dines 2010), I watched
hundreds of scenes from the most popular porn movies, and I regularly
saw a mixture of saliva, semen, feces, and vomit on the set.

The now-shuttered Adult Industry Medical Health Care Association,

which was the Los Angeles-based voluntary organization in charge of
testing performers, had a list on its website of possible injuries and
diseases to which porn performers were prone. These included HIV; rectal
and throat gonorrhea; tearing of the throat, vagina, and anus; and
chlamydia of the eye. In a study published in the December 2012 issue of
Sexually Transmitted Diseases that examined 168 sex industry performers
(67% were female and 33% were male), 47 (28%) were diagnosed with a
total of 96 infections. Even more troubling, according to the authors, was
that the porn industry’s “protocols” significantly under-diagnose
infections: 95% of oropharyngeal and 91% of rectal infections were
asymptomatic, which, the authors argue, make them more likely to be
passed on to partners both in and out of the sex industry. These findings
led the authors to conclude that “Adult film industry performers in
California are workers in a legal industry and should be subject to the
same workplace safety standards from which workers in other industries
benefit” (Rodriguez-Hart et al 2012).

Even though there was a massive campaign against this measure—

orchestrated by the porn industry and supported by business organizations
such as the San Gabriel Valley Legislative Coalition of Chambers of
Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association (VICA),
which proudly boasts that it “promotes a pro-business agenda”, the
measure passed with 55.9% of the vote. It is worth noting that some of the
“premier partners” of VICA include Chase Bank, Walmart, Southwest
Airlines, and Vons (a Safeway company). One of the biggest contributors
to the effort to defeat Measure B was Manwin (now MindGeek). Its two
34 Chapter Two

controlling agents at the time were non-U.S. nationals: Fabian Thylmann,

whose residence is listed as Brussels, Belgium; and Andrew Link, whose
residence is listed as Montreal, Canada. Given this fact, the AIDS
Healthcare Foundation filed a complaint with the Federal Election
Commission regarding violation of the prohibition on political
contributions by foreign nationals.

According to records obtained by the AHF, Manwin not only donated over
$300,000 to fight Measure B, but also had banner ads reading “Vote No on
B” splashed across its porn sites. On its Brazzers site, the banner was
directly above an image of a woman being anally penetrated by a condom-
free penis. In addition to Manwin, questionable supporters opposing the
measure included the Coalition for Senior Citizenry, which gives its
address as 2350 Hidalgo Avenue, Los Angeles, but has a disconnected
phone number; and the Council of Concerned Women Voters, which has
no phone number and no web presence—and also resides at 2350 Hidalgo
Avenue, Los Angeles. Along with support from these purported grassroots
- or “astroturf” - organizations, money flowed in from major porn studios
such as Vivid and porn companies such as Flynt Management Group and
John Stagliano, owner of the hardcore porn company Evil Angel.
Predictably, the campaign committee against Measure B was established
through the FSC.

Diane Duke, FSC’s executive director, is on record as saying that Measure

B was not about “performer health and safety” but rather about “government
regulating what happens between consenting adults” (Los Angeles Times
2012). In place of employees being paid per scene by porn owners who
control their wages and working conditions, the industry reframes workers
as “consenting adults” having sex that just so happens to end up on film
that is distributed through the porn industry and generates profits for its
capitalist owners. As a way to further render invisible the power inequality
between the owners of porn companies and their employees, the industry
used some performers to make the case that Measure B was an
infringement on workers’ rights. Porn actress Amber Lynn was quoted as
saying that “The idea of allowing a government employee to come and
examine our genitalia while we’re on set is atrocious” (Castillo 2012).
Nina Hartley, a long-time performer and pornographer, claimed that
condoms are actually dangerous to the performers’ health because
“condom burn…can create micro abrasions in the vagina or anal canal”,
exposing them to potential pathogens (Herriman 2011).
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 35

Why was the porn industry so opposed to Measure B? It projects an image

of itself as an industry run by a bunch of cool and hip renegade artists who
are at the cutting edge of protecting our freedoms. In reality, they abhor
any government regulations that cut into profit. And there is no doubt
whatsoever that requiring performers to use condoms will have a major
economic impact on the porn industry. Porn consumers do not want
condoms. As the veteran porn performer Ron Jeremy so eloquently put it:
“Hey, dicks, it’s really quite simple…. No matter how you slice it, the
viewers don’t want to see them” (Crocker 2012.)

Why is this? The fantasy of porn is that the female performer is an object
who exists to be penetrated, dehumanized, and then disposed of. The
narrative of porn is that she is not someone to worry about, care for, or
protect from physical harm. On the contrary, porn sex is about pushing her
to her bodily limits and then moving on to the next, and the next, and the
next. Given this, it would simply make no sense for the men, during a porn
shoot, to take the time or trouble to open a condom, put it on, check to
make sure that it covers the penis so she won’t be infected, and then start
pounding away at her. Condoms mean that she matters, and porn is all
about her not mattering.

Another big problem for the industry is that a condom would ruin the
“money shot”- the term pornographers use to describe the final scene, in
which the man ejaculates onto the body, face, or into the eye of the
woman. The best explanation for this comes from the veteran porn actor
and producer Bill Margold, who is quoted as saying: “The most violent we
can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that, because they
get even with the women they can’t have. We try to inundate the world
with orgasms in the face” (Stoller & Levine 1993; quoted in Jensen
2007:69).

It is likely that the “orgasms in the face” is what led California’s Division
of Occupational Safety and Health Standards (OSHA) to propose a new
set of rules in May 2015 that are more stringent. These rules, writes
Michael E. Miller in The Washington Post (Miller 2015), could “outlaw
common porn practices” such as ejaculating onto the face and into the eye.
While these rules are still in the discussion phase, one specific new
requirement is the wearing of protective eye gear to avoid contracting
STDs such as gonorrhea of the eye. The CEO of the FSC, Diana Duke,
argued that “These are regulations designed for medical settings, and are
unworkable on an adult film set - or even a Hollywood film set”. Fearing
36 Chapter Two

that these new rules could result in “shutting down an entire industry”, the
FSC is gearing up to prevent these rules from becoming law (Miller 2015).

Conclusion
As evidenced in the discussion above, the argument made by some pro-
porn scholars that there is no “it” to study contradicts the wealth of
empirical evidence that porn has now grown into a major industry with
sophisticated marketing, technologies, and public relations companies. The
increasing concentration of the distribution end of the industry enhances
the profitability of the leading firms by generating economies of scale and
scope and giving them substantial market power over the fragmented
upstream producers and suppliers of porn materials. This market power
brings with it political power to lobby and wage PR campaigns. Like other
mature industries that generate harmful impacts, the porn industry wages
legal and lobbying strategies against existing and proposed regulations
while simultaneously pursuing CSR policies that discursively link the
industry to wider social aspirations such as sexual emancipation and free
speech, and attempt to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable
porn (child porn), reflecting pragmatic concessions while protecting key
markets, such as teen porn.

As the porn industry increasingly flexes its muscles in the economic,

cultural, and political spheres of governance in which it is embedded, it is
a matter of urgency that feminist media scholars become less “curiously
timid” (Gill 2011) in their thinking. Following Rosalind Gill’s call for a
“bigger” and “bolder” analysis that allows us to “get angry again” (Gill
2011), feminist media scholars need to bring back some of the “old-
fashioned feminist vocabulary” (McRobbie 2008) that formed the
cornerstone of an unapologetic, rigorous, and transformative feminism.
Rather than espousing views that synchronize well with the industry
perspective, feminists need to develop a research and activist agenda that
interrogates (and undermines) the porn industry’s role in legitimizing and
cementing the economic and social subordination of women. Absent such
a project, feminism becomes one more movement to be co-opted by the
neoliberal hegemony that rebrands capitulation as resistance.
 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 37

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 Toward a Critical Understanding of the Porn Industry 39

Note
1
I refer to the user in the masculine since the majority of porn consumers are men.
While it is impossible to provide an accurate breakdown of male and female
consumers, Mark Kernes, senior editor of the pornography trade magazine Adult
Video News, stated: “Our statistics show that 78% of the people that go into adult
stores are men. They may have women with them, but it is men, and 22%,
conversely, is women or women with other women or women alone” (Kernes,
2005).
 PART TWO:

THE DISCIPLINED FEMALE BODY

 CHAPTER THREE

PORNOGRAPHY:
THE THEATRE OF TERROR
AND THE SILENCE OF DISCIPLINE

JAMES KAY

Much of the previous work linking Foucault’s thought with pornography,

such as that of Albury (2009) and Taylor (2009), has focused on his
writing on the history of sexuality and ethics. However, this essay will
attempt to give a sketch of how pornography might be viewed through the
lens of Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary and sovereign power in
Discipline and Punish (1975). Although Foucault’s analysis concentrates
on these modes of power as expressed in penal institutions and practices,
what is sought here is to understand them as general forms of power’s
exercise. Utilising elements of Foucault’s analysis in this way, an
interpretation of pornography will be suggested as a meeting place of these
different modes of the deployment of power: the excessive ceremony of
the sovereign’s triumph and the quiet, calculating logic of an efficient
machine.

Foucault begins his text with an archetypal example of the sovereign

mode of power dominant in medieval punishment:
“On 2 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned ‘to make the
amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris’, where we
was to be ‘taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a shirt,
holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds’; then, ‘in the said
cart, to the Place de Grève, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there,
the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot
pincers, his right hand, holding the knife which he committed the said
parricide, burnt with sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be
torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur
melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and
44 Chapter Three

his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes
thrown to the winds’” (1975:3).

Foucault emphasises that the power imposing public torture and execution
demands that it be spectacular, that it be seen by all as the glory of the
sovereign’s manifest vengeance. The public execution was “justice as the
physical, material and awesome force of the sovereign deployed there”
(1975:50), and the cries of the guilty are the expression of this justice
(1975:34). Torture of this kind is a highly codified and organised ritual for
the expression of power. It is not the sign of power driven to exasperation
or losing control, but rather its very excess represents a political ritual of
power’s ceremonial manifestation (1975:34-35, 47).

The public execution reconstitutes the sovereign, who the crime of the
condemned has momentarily injured and placed in contempt, restoring
power through its most spectacular assertion. This ritual belongs alongside
the others serving the same purpose, such as coronation, the entry of the
king into a conquered city, and the submission of rebellious subjects. It
deploys an omnipotent force for all to see, aiming not to restore a balance
so much as to bring to an absolute extreme the dissymmetry between the
strength of the all-powerful sovereign and the subject who dares to
challenge it. The spectacle invoked is not one of measure and proportion
to the offence, but of imbalance and excess, of the emphatic affirmation of
power. The body of the condemned is seized upon, mastered and displayed
utterly broken, marked by a limitless exercise of vengeance. This
ceremony is thus an exercise of terror intended to make all aware of the
omnipresence and omnipotence of the sovereign. The fundamental aim is
not to restore justice, but to replenish and reinvigorate power in what
Foucault calls a “theatre of terror” (1975:48-49).

Under this mode of power, punishment finds both its ideal and limit in “A
body effaced, reduced to dust and thrown to the winds, a body destroyed
piece by piece by the infinite power of the sovereign” (1975:50). Relaying
an account of the torture and execution of Massola at Avignon, Foucault
writes:
“This was an apparently paradoxical ceremony, since it took place almost
entirely after death, and since justice did little more than deploy its
magnificent theatre, the ritual of its force, on a corpse. The condemned
man was blindfolded and tied to a stake; all around, on the scaffold, were
stakes with iron hooks. ‘The confessor whispered in the patient’s ear and,
after he had given him the blessing, the executioner, who had an iron
bludgeon of the kind used in slaughter houses, delivered a blow with all his
 Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline 45

might on the temple of the wretch, who fell dead: the mortis exactor, who
had a large knife, then cut his throat, which spattered him with blood; it
was a horrible sight to see; he severed the sinews near the two heels, and
then opened up the belly from which he drew the heart, liver, spleen and
lungs, which he stuck on an iron hook, and cut and dissected into pieces,
which he then stuck on the other hooks as he cut them, as one does with an
animal. Look who can at such a sight. In the explicit reference to the
butcher’s trade, the infinitesimal destruction of the body is linked here with
spectacle: each piece is placed on display” (1975:50-51).

An absolute, limitless mastery over the body is expressed here in its total
segmentation and dismantling. Power reduces the body to meat, enacting a
perfect humiliation, de-humanization and erasure through the display of
the body as the mere flesh which it now implies the victim always already
was.

Historically, the dominance of this form of power has waned, and in

accounting for this change Foucault charts the spread, from around the
seventeenth century onwards, of military techniques for the management
of bodies into various other areas of society, such as schools, hospitals,
workshops and prisons (1975:168). These techniques developed into
specialised forms of what Foucault calls ‘discipline’ in these particular
institutions, transforming each of them by enabling a precise control and
training of the bodies within them, both as individuals and as ever more
co-ordinated groups. For example, through the application of disciplinary
power the hospital ceased to be largely a building where people waited to
die, as in the medieval era, and gradually became a precisely ordered
space, separating out patients, stopping contagions, regulating the rounds
of nurses and so on. Importantly, although Foucault argues that the
disciplines developed within specific institutions, he also insists they
should not be identified with institutions but with sets of techniques,
procedures and technologies (1975:215). These techniques can be made
use of by institutions with various degrees of intensity and prevalence, and
for furthering ends particular to those institutions (1975:215).

Disciplinary Power and the Production of Subjects

Although it will not be possible here to give a full account of Foucault’s
long and detailed analysis of discipline, it is nonetheless possible to
identify a set of features distinctive to disciplinary power as it is most
relevant to pornography. Firstly, discipline does not target the body as a
whole, as in the total domination sought in sovereign power outlined
above. Instead, discipline works the body’s parts individually, exploring it,
46 Chapter Three

breaking it up, rearranging it, and applying a meticulous, infinitesimal, but

nonetheless subtle coercion to its mechanism at the granular level of its
individual elements, movements, gestures and behaviours. The regulations
of the Prussian infantry that revolutionized warfare throughout Europe
represent an archetypal example of this aspect of discipline. These
accelerated each of a soldier’s acts by breaking them down temporally into
ever more minute successive stages, and the same logic can clearly be seen
in the emergence of the production line in factories (1975:151-154).
Discipline’s particularity is not in its domination and control of the body;
other forms of power, such as slavery, feudal vassalage, and to a lesser
extent the service of apprentices to masters, had all achieved this long
before the historical advent of disciplinary techniques. Rather, what is
significant is the manner in which power addresses itself to the body,
dividing up its complex acts into singular parts and motions, and making
these the objects to be controlled and perfected for its uses (1975:137-
138).

A second major feature is that discipline seeks to establish an economy or

efficiency of activity, to integrate the body into an efficient productive
apparatus, and so to extract maximum time, force and profit from it
(1975:137). This takes place both in terms of the internal co-ordination of
the elements of the body and the efficient combination of the work of
bodies with each other. ‘Production’ and ‘profit’ are used here not just in
their most conventional sense, but also, to take Foucault’s examples, in the
sense of “the production of knowledge and skills in the school, the
production of health in the hospitals, the production of destructive force in
the army” (1975:210-220).

Thirdly, and closely related to this, discipline strives for and imposes a
relation of docility-utility upon the body, whereby its forces are increased
in terms of their economic utility, but also diminished in terms of the
body’s obedience. Foucault describes a docile body as one that is made
pliable, allowing it to be “subjected, used, transformed and improved”, and
writes that discipline “dissociates power from the body” by turning it into
an aptitude or capacity which is useful to those applying discipline, and
which can be increased while maintaining the strict subjection of those
disciplined. In short, “disciplinary coercion establishes in the body the
constricting link between an increased aptitude and an increased
domination”, making the body “more obedient as it becomes more useful,
and conversely” (1975:136-138). This ‘productive’ aim of disciplinary
power marks a key difference from sovereign power. Whereas the latter
asserts itself through the destruction of those it is exercised upon,
 Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline 47

discipline actually seeks to cultivate the bodies under its watch in specific
ways which are useful to those exercising discipline.

Fourthly, discipline is not only concerned with the end results of an

activity, but undertakes “an uninterrupted, constant coercion”, supervising
the processes of the activity, ensuring that the body not only does what is
commanded, but does this precisely as is desired, with the techniques, the
speed and the efficiency that is determined (197:137-138). Foucault claims
“Discipline is a political anatomy of detail” (1975:139), ruthless in its
application of analytical instrumental rationality to the processes under its
watch.

Finally, the blunt force of overt physical violence is the exception, not the
rule, in the functioning of discipline. Rather than resisting bodies being
crushed by excessive displays of power, they are fit into a harmonized
machinery crafted to train them into docility. Indeed, disciplinary power is
not possessed by individuals like a thing, but “functions like a piece of
machinery”. It is the disciplinary apparatus as a whole that produces this
form of power and it does so “largely in silence.” Discipline is a ‘quiet’
power which, as opposed to the form of power dominant in the medieval
and renaissance eras before it, replaces the spectacle of public displays of
violence, such as executions, with what Foucault calls a ‘physics’ of
power, which takes hold of the body and operates “without recourse, in
principle at least, to excess, force or violence” (1975:177).

Disciplinary Power and the Production of Pornography

Performers
It is my thesis that in pornography we can see a joining of these modes of
sovereign and disciplinary power, but before looking at the interface
between these opposed logics we will turn first to discipline’s role in
pornography, as this has the most prominent and easily identified
influence. Indeed, unlike in the case of sovereign power, Foucault would
likely argue discipline’s place in pornography is hardly surprising. The
porn industry’s massive output demands efficient production processes,
and Foucault comments that that the economic take-off of capitalism went
hand in hand with the development of the techniques of discipline, the
efficient management of bodies playing a key role in enabling the colossal
accumulation of capital (1975:220-221). It is my proposal that just as the
disciplines Foucault analyses each have a particular object of application
and set of aims, from soldiers and efficient warfare to students and good
48 Chapter Three

handwriting, in pornography we can see the application of a certain form

of disciplinary technique to the bodies of performers.

First, we may observe that the pornographic ‘eye’ does not give wholesale
attention to the body; rather, its objects of attention and control are
specific parts, segments, actions and moments. Pornography does not seek
to document the body, let alone a life or personality, but a succession of
body parts and acts cut out and abstracted from their living context. There
is a ruthless rationality of selection in operation which seizes on the body
as it is useful, and erases it as it is not. This segmented body is then further
trained, positioned and managed so as to efficiently extract a maximum
yield from it, and this goal demands attention to each act, gesture and pose
in its particularity, as components of the process to be carried out in
precise ways. In pornography we quite obviously do not see sex on camera
freely occurring. The order of acts, the poses adopted, the division of time,
are all quite deliberate and pre-determined, crafted with sober consideration
for efficiency, profit, and results.

The link between pornography and discipline in this regard becomes yet
clearer from a consideration of the specific techniques of spatio-temporal
control identified by Foucault as key to the classical disciplines. On the
temporal side, the timetable is identified by Foucault as a key tool with
three principle methods: the establishment of rhythms, the imposition of
particular activities, and the regulation of the cycle of repetition.
Historically, the disciplines took inspiration from monastic-religious
methods and practices of temporal regulation and altered these for their
own purposes, starting to count in quarter hours, minutes, even seconds, as
the division of time becomes ever more minute, and partitions ever more
detailed (1975:149-150). The quality of time spent is also attended to,
attempting to create periods of totally useful time in which the body is
constantly applied to its exercise through ceaseless supervision and
warding against distraction. Discipline gives individual acts precise
temporal elaboration in terms of sequence and duration, and collective and
obligatory rhythms are imposed on them. In some cases they are broken
down into their most basic elements, and sequential positions defined for
each limb, directions and durations for each movement. The examples of
infantry exercises and factory production lines already mentioned above
are very relevant here, and we can add to these the regulation of the
activities of students and prisoners according to timetables (1975:151-
154). In terms of spatial control, discipline has a tendency towards the
imposition of optimal relations between each act and the overall position
of the body, maximising speed, efficiency and quality of results. The
 Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline 49

correct use of the body leaves no part idle, the whole assembly giving
support to each act and providing an operational context for the smallest
movement (1975:152). In the case of the discipline of students, for
example, “Good handwriting ... presupposes a gymnastics – a whole routine
whose rigorous code invests the body in its entirety, from the points of the
feet to the tip of the index finger” (1975:152).

This spatio-temporal control is key in giving pornography the character it

has, allowing the manipulation of the body through a careful choreography
of bodily posture, arrangement of limbs, dress, speech, and precise
sequencing of acts. The body’s acts are shaped to allow constant access by
the camera and to accentuate those aspects of it serving the pornographer’s
aims. Likewise the duration and manner of each act is dictated from above
to fit into a timetable which seeks after the ideal of totally useful time
cherished by all disciplinary systems.

Moving on to consider the relevance of the notion of docility-utility to

pornography, it may seem strange to talk of pornographic performers
gaining aptitudes as a result of their work. However, it must be remembered
that the performances demanded by the porn industry are not, of course,
spontaneous and natural; one must learn how to present oneself, speak,
move and position one’s body on camera, and indeed take suffering as is
demanded. Performers gain various aptitudes as a result, increasing their
utility within a certain domain and in some cases gaining a degree of fame.
However, these gains do nothing to loosen their domination by the
authorities within the porn industry, those applying discipline, and rather
serve to embed performers deeper into pornography’s mechanism,
rendering them ever more useful and docile through their growing
dependency on this industry.

Concerning the final of the general features of discipline pointed out

above, it may be remarked that although acts of overt violence are clearly
featured in pornographic works, this aspect must not be confused with the
functioning of pornography as a production process. This is not to say that
no acts of physical abuse take place in forcing performers to do as is
required of them or to take away from the need for attention to such acts,
but it is clear that coercion through brute force is not the principal
technique by which the production of pornography proceeds. Sheer
physical violence is an incredibly inefficient form of power, requiring
constant reapplication and maintenance, and entirely unsuited to any
modern, capitalist, efficient enterprise. Instead, control is exercised over
performers primarily through their insertion into a mechanism of constant
50 Chapter Three

coercion in the form of praise, judgement, training, supervision, surgical

modification, financial reward, and so on. Pornography thus functions as a
disciplinary machine rather than as a kingdom of tyrants and slaves.

A further specific technique seen by Foucault as universal to all forms of

discipline, and which is highly relevant to pornography, is the examination.
We most commonly think of examination in relation to medical and
educational environments, but Foucault claims the structure of examination
is equally found in, for example, the military parade and the review of a
factory. Also contrary to how we might normally think of an examination,
Foucault contends that it does not operate only at the level of the
consciousness of the examiner and what it takes itself to know, but
intervenes in the field of objects, making possible new knowledge through
a domination that arranges bodies, rendering them legible and docile
(1975:185-188). Foucault calls the examination both “the subjection of
those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are
subjected” (1975:184-185).

The emergence of techniques of examination makes possible, and is

mutually reinforced by, the development of what Foucault calls ‘disciplinary
writing’. The examination makes individuality documentable, capable of
being captured and fixed through its situation in a network of writing
(1975:189), and this disciplinary writing homogenizes the individual
features found by examination through various “codes of disciplinary
individuality.” By this, Foucault means that individuals can be
‘formalized’ by fitting their particular features into general categories of
description, such as “the medical code of symptoms, the educational or
military code of conduct or performance” (1975:189-190). This
accumulation of documentation ultimately enables the correlation of
elements, their seriation and comparison, the formation of categories,
determination of averages and fixing of norms (1975:190-191).

The structure of the examination is made perpetual in pornography, the

body being always arranged to afford maximum legibility, and made to
display for the viewer its arousal, its pleasure, its pain, its airbrushed
perfection, its naked ugliness: whatever is demanded by the scene, whether
feigned or real on the part of the performer. The frequently featured
perpetual vocalisation and verbal self-narration of performers serves the
same end, laying out an erotic consciousness for inspection and voyeuristic
enjoyment. Thus the intervention of disciplinary technique alters the
character and logic of erotic performance from something potentially free,
spontaneous and personal, into being carefully orchestrated, sequentially
 Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline 51

determined, and centred outside itself in being guided by its visual

availability to an external observer.

The erotic body is, indeed, altered in such a way as to make it maximally
consumable. The strongest theme emerging from the range of techniques
of discipline laid out above is their emphasis on order; Foucault comments
that “Generally speaking, it might be said that the disciplines are techniques
for assuring the ordering of human multiplicities” and “one of the primary
objects of discipline is to fix; it is an anti-nomadic technique” (1975:218).
The body and its erotic manifestation do not come neatly packaged into
the lap of the pornographer, but need to be neatened, organised, classified,
unwanted aspects curtailed and desirable ones enhanced. In the patterns of
pornographic language, and the classification and description of genres
and particular scenes, we can see the employment of a certain strain of
disciplinary writing, dividing up the body and sexual acts along an
incredible number of axes. This allows the precise description of even the
blandest works, and also the safe absorption into the porn industry of
bodies and acts which do not fit into perceived mainstream taste. The
obese, those with more than a certain threshold of body hair, those acts
which are deemed to fit into BDSM and older people, to give but a handful
of examples, are all crafted into special interests, niches, ‘fetishes’, in such
a way as to bring order to the chaos of human sexuality – an order which is
not found before the intervention of discipline, but which is imposed so as
to allow and enhance its functioning. As always, discipline rejects the
logic of repression, rather seeking though this ordering to multiply and use
the body’s forces, separating out, analysing and differentiating bodies so
as to train the useless and chaotic multiplicity of human sexuality into an
efficient and profitable element of its mechanism.

But Pornography Performers Consent!

An additional insight on pornography available from Foucault’s account of
discipline concerns the legal and contractual element of the work of
pornographic performers. Foucault points out that the disciplines were
coming to maturity at the same period as the frameworks of juridical rights
and representative democracy were emerging in Europe. Indeed, he
suggests that the rise of these formally egalitarian structures was in fact
undercut by the development of the disciplines, which are fundamentally
non-egalitarian and asymmetrical. Whether we speak of a mythic social
contract or a particular written contract between specific parties, the
disciplines introduce asymmetries and exclude reciprocities in a way
52 Chapter Three

which undermines any formal contractual link that might be established. It

may be that the acceptance of becoming an object of discipline is written
into a contract, in the form of consent to being monitored, trained and
reprimanded by one’s employer. However, the mechanism that discipline
brings into play is of a non-reversible, one-sided nature, such that it
fundamentally distorts the play of formal equality manifest in such an
agreement. Disciplinary rationality always places a surplus of power on
one side, in the sense that the notion of efficiency has no limit: discipline’s
aims do not end at the fulfilment of a day’s labour, but extend to infinity,
as it constantly seeks more efficiency, productivity, profit, precision, and
so on. It is not enough to fulfil one’s contractual obligations, for discipline
extends its control to the ideal of a perfect exercise of the body, and thus
necessarily extends beyond the letter of any formally egalitarian contract
(1975:222-223).

Turning this critique of the contract towards pornography, we gain a

further argument to be added to those questioning the defence of
pornography as involving consenting adults with legal rights having
signed legally recognized contracts and consent forms. It is not enough to
point to a contract to defend pornography, for as a disciplinary machine it
ceaselessly oversteps those abstract and formal legal boundaries which
attempt to establish an egalitarian relation of power. Pornography always
seeks greater mastery over the bodies it takes as its object, making them
more malleable and pliable to its ends. The relation of performer to
pornographer is fundamentally asymmetrical, and not by accident or
individual whim, but because the disciplinary character of pornographic
production demands this for its functioning. Thus, rather than ending the
question over pornography, devices such as the contract or consent form
only provide a further object demanding our cautious and critical attention,
as with every contract and play of equality in a disciplinary society.

Having examined some of the principle ways discipline shapes pornography,

we can now consider sovereign power’s place in this dynamic. To briefly
summarise the chief elements of this mode of power, as already discussed
above: Firstly, it functions through spectacle, the visibility of its action
being essential to its efficacy. Secondly, this spectacle is narcissistic,
displaying the power of those conjuring it. Thirdly, it is destructive,
making itself manifest through the vanquishing of its object, whether that
be in the demonstration of its servility or its utter obliteration. Fourthly,
the action of power is nonetheless far from a chaotic, frenzied assault, but
adopts a pseudo-ritualistic and ceremonial character. The performers in the
theatre of terror take up codified roles, enacting familiar, scripted patterns.
 Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline 53

The Pornography Industry and the Exercise of Sovereign

Power
The key to understanding the way in which the modes of sovereign and
disciplinary power, in many ways opposed, fuse together in the activity of
the porn industry is to consider an obvious but essential feature of
pornography, namely, that it is intended as mass entertainment. As we
noted above, discipline casts off the need to openly display its power,
seeking a more subtle and calculated control of the bodies under its eye.
But in pornography the techniques of discipline are employed in the
production of precisely such a theatre of excess, a coded display of
symbolic and real dominance, violence, and triumphant power enthroned
for all to see. Disciplinary technique is employed in pornography, not with
the aim of shaping a perfectly efficient sexual act as such, but in pursuit of
a docile body trained, sculpted and sliced on the operating table into a
perfect vessel for the symbolic renewal of a wide array of power structures
and regimes, including patriarchy and misogyny, bio-politics, racism,
heteronormativity and neoliberalism. The sovereign here is no longer a
single person or ruling class, but is at once the regime of power that is
renewed through the symbolic theatre being played out (whether that be
patriarchy, bio-politics or a whole web combined), and the audience which
is invited to, in various ways, identify themselves with, feel themselves
affirmed by, and take pleasure in the host of roles, narratives and ideals
being played out.

This point may become clearer through a comparison of the relations of

vision present firstly in disciplinary and sovereign power and then their
combination in pornography. Foucault speaks of how “Slowly, in the
course of the classical age, we see the construction of those ‘observatories’
of human multiplicity for which the history of the sciences has so little
good to say” (1975:170-171). He is referring here to the development of
enclosed institutions of tight observation, such as the prison, hospital and
asylum, the architecture and organisation of which are designed to make a
great number of bodies visible to a small set of observers. Foucault
suggests this development, along with so many aspects of disciplinary
power, runs counter to the previously dominant sovereign exercise of
power, in which it was attempted to impress the brilliance and
omnipotence of a small number of individuals, such as the king, on a much
larger group (1975:216-217). In pornography, we see another observatory
of human multiplicity of a sort, though one which reverses the geometry of
visibility once more, returning to the older model in making a small
54 Chapter Three

number of individuals the object of a colossal audience. However, unlike

in sovereign power, where those employing power make themselves the
object of attention, with the aim of renewing their own power, and also
unlike in discipline, where those employing disciplinary technique make
others the objects of attention, with the aim of turning them into docile and
useful machines, in pornography these forms of power mix: the bodies of
performers are made the object of attention and shaped and trained to
serve the purposes of the pornographer, but the resulting performances
enact a theatre which ecstatically reaffirms and aggrandises the regimes of
power driving the process as a whole. The spectacle of power’s expression
returns, though now the theatre of ceremony is fully mechanized, bearing
the marks of the advent of disciplinary society and, thanks to the internet
revolution among other technological changes, possessing a massively
greater scale.

This interlocking of the sovereign and the disciplinary can be seen in a

number of aspects in which these modes of power adapt to each other in
pornography. Considering first the ways in which discipline is moulded to
the purposes of sovereign power, Foucault repeatedly emphasises the
importance of the constancy of the application of coercion, compulsory
observation, visibility and examination to the disciplinary rationality
which shaped the birth of modern schools, armies, factories, prisons and
hospitals. However, pornography largely lacks this aspect of temporal
constancy, rather applying discipline to performers in comparatively short
bursts, i.e. largely during filming. This is not to say that the involvement in
the porn industry cannot come to dominate a large portion of the lives of
performers, but this is clearly different from the total control of the life of
an individual within a prison or military barracks, for example. This points
to the presence of the logic of ceremony within pornography, in that what
is sought is not an absolutely totalising discipline, but complete
submission and control within specific spaces and times.

Similarly, we find a lack of the concern, which becomes particularly

highly developed within medical and penal disciplinary institutions, with
the intensive documentation of individuals, constituting them as
biographical ‘cases’ to be treated and corrected accordingly (1975:190-
194). The attention given to the lives of performers outside of their direct
involvement in pornography is very limited and peripheral in importance
to the functioning of the industry. Pornographic discipline has a more
blinkered character, focused entirely on the use of the body within a very
particular zone of control. What is much more important in pornography
 Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline 55

than discovering the truth of individuals is that performers play their parts
well within the theatre of power.

Finally, in the forms of discipline analysed by Foucault, the category of

the abnormal is usually created as an example to be avoided and shamed,
and is intended to ultimately disappear as the system in question is fully
harmonised. Foucault discusses the example of a school in 18th century
France in which the worst performing students were shamed in various
ways, including being made to wear different clothes and live in
separation. But this class ultimately existed only in order that it should
disappear as its members were spurred to improve by their humiliating
treatment (1975:182). In pornography, on the other hand, we find a dual
response to the abnormal. Firstly, there is an element in line with this
homogenising instinct of discipline, guiding performances into familiar
grooves, and altering the appearance of performers, including through the
surgical alteration of their bodies, to fit more neatly into expectations and
stamp out unwanted irregularities. But there is also an opposite response to
the abnormal: to enfreak and exhibit, making profit out of the bodies of the
disabled, the elderly, and other groups not usually present in mainstream
erotic consciousness. The spectacle of public torture and execution rears
its head here once again, power drawing strength from the degradation of
its other, reduced to a de-humanised plaything.

Disciplinary Power and the Production

of the Pornography Consumer
Moving on to the ways the sovereign exercise of power is adapted to the
rigours of discipline, the work of Adorno and Horkheimer (1979) on 20th
century mass culture can provide a helpful addition to the analysis here.
They interpret popular art as having been taken over by a culture industry,
tightly controlled from above, and made subservient to the ideology of
capitalism. Although their analysis is now more than half a century old, a
number of structures they identify in mass-produced and commodified
works of entertainment remain in evidence today, both in popular culture
generally and more particularly in pornography.

Adorno and Horkheimer argue the works of mass culture are meticulously
shaped to ensure their homogeneity, eliminating “every unprepared and
unresolved discord ... any development which does not conform to the
jargon” (1979:127) such that everything is guaranteed to be met with
approval (1979:128). Indeed, individual works are not only locked within
56 Chapter Three

cyclically recurrent and rigid types, but draw their content from their
adherence to these formulas, rendering the appearance of change entirely
illusory and the details of each work interchangeable (1979:125). The
dominance of formulae is such that they come to replace the works
themselves, causing any semblance of a unifying idea within them to take
the form of a rigid order which nonetheless lacks any true coherence,
possessing instead a prearranged and empty harmony (1979:126).
Mechanization has found its way deep into the production process, to the
extent that the particular content of works becomes dressing to “the
automatic succession of standardized operations.” Indeed, the form of
pleasure produced by mass culture turns quickly to boredom because it
demands no effort, instead sticking rigorously to familiar grooves of
association, expecting no independent thinking from the audience, and
prescribing every reaction through signals in the products themselves
(1979:137). The use of devices such as laugh tracks and music which
indicates precisely the emotional tone intended are clear examples of this.
Any sense of natural structure collapses upon reflection, and any logical
connection requiring mental effort is rejected in favour of the mechanical
development of each stage immediately from the previous, allowing the
whole to be grasped from any individual part (1979:137).

Alongside this tight control and repetition of content, there is a constant

pressure to produce new effects, which nonetheless conform to the
established patterns (1979:128). In truth, mass culture excludes the new
and untried as a risk: “The machine rotates on the same spot.” Yet there is
constant talk of “ideas, novelty and surprise, of what is taken for granted
but has never existed.” The works of mass culture manifest the triumph of
the rhythm of mechanical production, ensuring “nothing changes, and
nothing unsuitable will appear” (1979:134). The rule of the culture
industry is repetition, its innovations never anything more than
improvements in mass production, bringing nothing new to the system. It
is thus unsurprising that the interest of consumers is directed to new
techniques and technologies of production, or the new stars featured, and
not the contents of works, which are endlessly repeated and outworn
(1979:136). Indeed, Adorno and Horkheimer remark that “talented
performers belong to the industry long before it displays them”
(1979:122), their success owing to their fitting to its criteria of selection,
as opposed to the industry responding to and rewarding originality.
 Pornography: The Theatre of Terror and the Silence of Discipline 57

Conclusion
The collapse of pornography into formulaic series of acts, endlessly
repeated, displays a comparable structure to that described by Adorno and
Horkheimer. The aim of entertainment in pornography and its excessive
theatre do not so much curtail the influence of disciplinary power within it
as set it to work on new objects to which it applies the same ordering
rationality. Even the most extreme pornographic works fail to surprise
their consumers, since every act of violence is assigned its correct timing
within the enactment of the formula. Of course, the violence of sovereign
power has its codes regardless of the intervention of discipline: even the
regicide about to be disembowelled has their sentence read out
beforehand. However, discipline takes the codes already present in, for
example, patriarchal and misogynistic sexual violence, such as the
relations of dominance and submission and the shaping of sexuality
around male pleasure and narcissism, and accentuates, standardizes and
rigidifies them. The excess of the pornographic is channelled into fixed
patterns and types so as to make mass production and marketing easier and
the disciplinary training of the body more efficient. The sequences of acts,
the choreography of bodily posture demanded and the appearance
expected, the servile ‘personality’ to be effected, is always the same: this
is the frozen rictus of pornography, a horror repeated ad infinitum.

As indicated at the outset, what has been attempted here is but a sketch.
Much more detail is needed on a number of points if the analysis
suggested here is to be sustainable, including an enumeration of the wide
array of regimes drawing strength from the narratives and images of
pornography, the direct and indirect mechanisms of their representation
and promotion, and the nuancing of various elements of this interpretation
in relation to differences between specific forms of pornography, such as
works produced for straight men, gay men and those identifying
themselves with BDSM or ‘kink’ communities. Nonetheless, while
acknowledging these limitations, it may be hoped that this may serve,
firstly, as a provocation to consider new ways in which Foucault’s thought
might bear relevance to our understanding of pornography, and secondly,
as a reminder that we need not view pornography as either just another
industry where consenting adults sell their labour or solely a brutal
glorification of oppressive power structures. Pornography can be seen to
share in both logics: it is a theatre of terror animated by the silence of
discipline.
58 Chapter Three

References
Adorno, T. W., and Horkheimer, M. (1979). Dialectic of Enlightenment.
London, New York: Verso. p.127.
Albury, K. (2009) Reading Porn Reparatively. Sexualities. 12(5), 647-653.
Foucault, M. (1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
Penguin: London.
Taylor, C. (2009) Pornographic Confessions? Sex Work and Scientia
Sexualis in Foucault and Linda Williams. Foucault Studies. Number 7,
18-44.
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE VIOLABLE WOMAN:

COSMETIC PRACTICES
AND THE PORNOGRAPHIC
(DE)CONSTRUCTION OF WOMEN’S BODIES

JULIA LONG

In this chapter I will draw on Nussbaum’s concept of “violability” as a

way of understanding how increasingly normalised practices such as pubic
hair removal and labiaplasty - the surgical removal of all or part of the
labia minora, and sometimes other parts of the vulva - converge with
dominant pornographic narratives of penetration in order to construct
women’s bodies as fundamentally and intrinsically violable. The chapter
will consider narratives and practices of the penetration of the female body
within pornography, alongside an examination of invasive cosmetic
practices associated with the culturally demanded display of the
“pornified” female body. Ultimately, I will argue, these narratives and
practices both presuppose and construct the female body as fundamentally
violable: this violable body provides an absence the purpose of which is to
glorify and reflect the defining presence of the penis and male subjectivity
through the act of penetration.

Objectification and violability

My starting point is Martha Nussbaum’s classic essay on objectification
(1995). In this essay, Nussbaum considers the various forms that
objectification might take: the different ways in which it is possible to treat
someone as an object. She identifies seven distinct forms of objectification:
60 Chapter Four

1. Instrumentality: The objectifier treats the object as a tool of his or

her purposes.
2. Denial of autonomy: The objectifier treats the object as lacking in
autonomy and self-determination.
3. Inertness: The objectifier treats the object as lacking in agency, and
perhaps also in activity.
4. Fungibility: The objectifier treats the object as interchangeable with
other objects.
5. Violability: The objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary-
integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash,
break into.
6. Ownership: The objectifier treats the object as something that is
owned by another, can be bought or sold, etc.
7. Denial of subjectivity: The objectifier treats the object as something
whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into
account. (1995:257)

I am not necessarily endorsing Nussbaum’s entire analysis and conclusions,

some of which I find rather unconvincing and problematic. However, in
examining the nature and different forms of objectification, Nussbaum
offers useful ways of thinking about the subject of this chapter: the
representation and treatment of women in pornography, and the socio-
cultural phenomenon of specific cosmetic practices, namely hair removal
and labiaplasty. Whilst Nussbaum concludes that “instrumentalisation” is
perhaps the most morally problematic form of objectification, in this
chapter I will focus on the form of objectification most pertinent to
exploring the links between pornography and these particular beauty
practices: that of violability.

According to Nussbaum, the idea of violability involves treating a person

as violable, as “lacking in boundary-integrity, as something that it is
permissible to break up, smash, break into.” The origins of the word are
clearly captured in Nussbaum’s conceptualisation: the term violable comes
from the verb “to violate”, which in turn originates from the Latina
“violare”, meaning “to treat with violence”. Dictionary definitions of “to
violate” encompass a variety of meanings, including: to rape, sexually
assault or mistreat physically (a person); to disregard, break or infringe (a
law or agreement); to disturb (a place or moment); to treat irreverently
(something which commands respect). What each of these meanings
suggests is the forceful breaking of a boundary; a point emphasised by the
fact that in French the verb “violer” means “to rape”.
 The Violable Woman 61

Patriarchal constructions of women as violable

The idea of the intrinsic violability of women is fundamental to patriarchal
thinking. If, as Andrea Dworkin asserts, the “power of men is first a
metaphysical assertion of self” (1981:13), then the boundaries of the male
body must be respected and defended, while those of the female body, by
contrast, are subject to - indeed, defined by - violation by this male self.
Under male domination women are constructed and viewed primarily in
relation to male sexual and reproductive demands; women’s bodies are
therefore defined in terms of boundaries that must be broken in order that
these sexual and reproductive functions are achieved. The notion of
“woman as violable” is therefore fundamental to male supremacist culture
and ideology and not limited simply to pornographic representations. All
modes of sexual violence, including rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment
and “upskirting” - all of which are practised, represented and legitimised in
pornography – manifest men’s treatment of women as violable.

Pornography is obviously not the sole originator of this notion, however:

there are plenty of examples of the social construction as women as
violable across patriarchal cultures. Religious texts, doctrine and practices
construct women primarily as vessels for impregnation and childbearing;
patriarchal notions of sexuality constitute normative understandings of
“sex” as involving penile penetration of the woman, whether in
pornography or in privatised arrangements such as heterosexual marriage
(the fact that we have a term for a pre / non-penetrated state – “virgin” –
illustrates the defining power of the penis). Men habitually invade
women’s personal space and interrupt women’s speech (Henley 1977), and
women’s presumed violability is similarly illustrated by the commonplace
phenomenon of men’s violation of women’s collective or social body, as
exemplified by men disrupting or intruding upon a group of women in a
social setting such as a pub or bar. Where the women’s gathering is
perceived as feminist in intent, the violation of women’s “body politic” is
particularly necessary: as Marilyn Frye notes, attempts by women to
determine their own spaces and boundaries in ways which exclude men
constitute acts of blatant insubordination which must not be tolerated
(1983:103). This is illustrated in current efforts by men to violate women-
only feminist events, organisations and spaces through the ideology and
practice of transgenderism.

Other examples of the presumption of women’s violability are perhaps

more oblique, but will nonetheless be familiar to female readers. Within
patriarchal social, family and workplace environments, women are
62 Chapter Four

frequently expected to fulfil a “social lubricant” function - facilitating

men’s activities and interactions, for example - in ways that are generally
taken-for-granted and unreciprocated. This generally unspoken yet
powerfully-exerted expectation indicates an assumption that a woman’s
time and right to determine her own actions and priorities are both
violable: she is expected to participate in a process of self-abnegation in
order that men’s self-hood is supported and maintained. Following
Dworkin, “The first tenet of male-supremacist ideology is that men have
this self and that women must, by definition, lack it.” (1981:13)

Many forms of women’s presumed violability are naturalised through

language and cultural practices, becoming embedded as unremarkable
norms and unconsciously-held assumptions. Most beauty practices, for
example, tend to go unquestioned, even by many feminists. This chapter
will argue that these practices are patriarchally demanded, and that what is
being demanded involves women’s self-violation; such practices,
performed by women on their own bodies, therefore serve to “groom”
women – in both senses of the word - into a mindset that prepares them
for, and makes them more ready to accept, other forms of violation.

Women’s violability in pornography

While pornography may not be the sole originator of the idea and practice
of women’s violability, it is fair to say that pornographers and consumers
have embraced the theme with particular enthusiasm and an apparently
insatiable appetite for scenarios involving innumerable permutations and
variations of the violation of women’s bodies. From the Story of O and
works of the Marquis de Sade to mainstream online content, such
scenarios are evident in abundance.

Discussions of the nature of pornographic content are frequently derailed

by claims that it is impossible to make definitive statements about what
constitutes pornography, due to the supposed diversity of content produced
and disagreements over definitions. I have dealt with issues of definition
elsewhere (Long 2012:55-60) and here I would reiterate that claims as to
the diversity of pornographic content usually serve to bolster a perspective
that is largely uncritical of what constitutes mainstream pornography. In
terms of the overwhelming majority of content that is produced,
distributed and consumed, it is perfectly possible to make statements about
the nature of pornography. It is well established that the most widely
consumed material features violent and aggressive scenes as standard, and
that almost all of that violence and aggression is directed at women
 The Violable Woman 63

(Bridges et al 2010). The “most popular acts” depicted in pornography, as

identified by Gail Dines (2010), demonstrate the consistency of the
woman-as-violable theme: vaginal, anal and oral penetration of a woman
(in combinations of various orifices being penetrated, and by varying
numbers of men, often simultaneously); gagging; ass-to-mouth penetration;
and “bukkake”, involving ejaculation onto a woman’s body, face, hair,
eyes, ears or mouth (2010:xviii-xix). An examination of the most popular
porn sites supports this assessment. XHamster (billed as “just porn, no
bullshit”) and Pornhub are two of the most frequently visited sites in the
UK, with a user survey finding that in one month these sites were visited
by 2,737,000 and 2,528,000 unique UK users respectively, putting them in
the top three most-visited adult sites in the UK (ATVOD 2014b). Pornhub
is particularly popular among UK males aged 12-17 (ATVOD 2014a). The
categories of pornography featured on these two sites give a good
indication as to what constitutes mainstream content. “Straight” categories
(which comprise the overwhelming majority of categories on both sites)
common to both XHamster and Pornhub videos are titled as follows:

British; Amateur; Anal; Arab; Asian; BBW [“Big Beautiful Women”];

Big Boobs / Tits; Big Ass / Butts; Bisexual; Blowjobs; Cartoons;
Castings; Celebrities; Cream Pie; Cumshots; Ebony / Black and
Ebony; Female choice; French; Gangbang; Gay; German; HD [High
Definition]; Handjobs; Hentai; Interracial; Japanese; Latin/a; Lesbians;
MILFs [“Mothers I’d Like to Fuck”]; Massage; Masturbation;
Matures; Old-Young; Public; Shemale; Squirting; Teens.

In addition, Xhamster features the following categories:

BDSM; Beach; Cuckold; Femdom; Flashing; Grannies; Group Sex;

Hairy; Hidden Cams; JOI [“Jerk Off Instruction”]; Men; Stockings;
Swingers; Up-skirts; Vintage; Voyeur; Webcams.

While Pornhub features the following:

Babe; Babysitter; Behind the Scenes; Big Dick; Blonde; Bondage;

Brazilian; Brunette; Bukkake; College; Compilation; Czech; DP
[“Double Penetration”]; Euro; Exclusive; Feet; Fetish; Fisting; Funny;
Hardcore; Indian; Italian; Korean; Music; Orgy; Parody; Party;
Pissing; Pornstars; POV [“Point of View”]; Pussy-licking; Reality; Red
Head; Rough Sex; Russian; School; Small Tits; Smoking; Solo male;
Striptease.
64 Chapter Four

The formulaic and repetitive nature of the content and dominance of

certain themes is clearly indicated by these headings. Whilst it is beyond
the scope of this chapter to fully analyse the categories and the content
they represent, a number of features are striking. Firstly, with very few
exceptions (“Female choice”), the content is clearly directed at a presumed
male audience: a further investigation of thumbnail videos within each
category confirms this assessment. Secondly, the content is highly
racialised: categories such as “Black and Ebony”, “Indian” and “Japanese”
indicate the extremely racist nature of mainstream pornography. Thirdly,
several of the categories - “Grannies”, “MILFs”, “Teens” and “School” –
indicate a fetishisation of women’s age and age differences between
women and men, including representations of the sexual abuse of girls and
older women. Finally, and of particular relevance to this chapter,
numerous categories refer directly to the penetration of a woman by a
penis, multiple penises, other body parts or objects (“anal”, “blowjobs”,
“creampie”, “gangbang”, “DP”, “fisting”) or some other violation of her
boundaries (“bukkake”, “upskirts”, “hidden cams”). Even where a woman’s
presumed and naturalised violability is not directly indicated by the
category title, an examination of the videos offered within each category
provides content wherein varieties of penetration of a woman is standard
fare. For example, clicking onto racialised Pornhub categories such as
“Russian” and “Ebony”, video titles indicate that the violation of female
bodies is the central content feature, with racist categories, age differences
and specific practices used to vary the format by introducing additional
power differentials and inequalities into endless permutations of the
dominant theme: “Russian milf Alina rough fuck with younger dude”,
“really tight Russian [sic] teen get [sic] massage and gets fucked”,
“Abby’s anal show”, “Fat Ebony Chick Plowed [sic] by a Fat Black
Boner”, “Hot black girl getting fucked on her back” and “ebony fucking
workout facial cum shot”.

The depictions in these thumbnails certainly resonate with this description

of prostitution from Andrea Dworkin:
Prostitution is not an idea. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum,
penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, by one
man and then another and then another and then another and then another
(1992).

The same is clearly the case for pornography, which of course is best
understood as recorded acts of prostitution. An examination of the most
popular porn sites quickly reveals that violation of women’s boundaries is
 The Violable Woman 65

the stock-in-trade of mainstream content. Repeatedly, the viewer is invited

to watch men penetrating women in multiple ways, or violating women’s
faces or bodies with their semen.

Alongside direct penetration and marking with semen, this boundary-

violation is reinforced and replicated by other intrusions, such as up-
skirting, hidden cameras and the use of the camera to display intimate
body parts. The women are repeatedly “done to”, acted upon; treated, in
Nussbaum’s words, as “lacking in boundary-integrity, as something that it
is permissible to break up, smash, break into.” If, as Dworkin observes,
“[t]he major theme of pornography as a genre is male power, its nature, its
magnitude, its use, its meaning” (1981:24), then the means by which that
power is asserted and glorified within the genre is through men’s
formulaic and repetitive violation of women’s bodies and boundaries. The
violation of women is critical to pornographic practice and representation.

Women’s violability in cosmetic practices

Along with a dramatic increase in the availability and accessibility of
pornography, recent years have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of
women undergoing increasingly invasive and intimate “beauty” practices.
In the UK, there has been a distinct upward trend in such practices over
the past ten years, with over 50,000 invasive cosmetic procedures
performed in 2013, a rise of 17% since the previous year (British
Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons 2014). The same is true for the
US, where the total number of cosmetic procedures – including both
surgical and “minimally invasive” – doubled between 2000 and 2013
(American Society of Plastic Surgeons 2014). In 2014, an estimated 20
million “aesthetic” procedures were undertaken globally, of which almost
1.35 million were breast augmentations and 100,000 were labiaplasties
(International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 2015).

While it is true that an increasing number of men are also now undergoing
cosmetic interventions, both UK and global statistics consistently
demonstrate that approximately 9 out of 10 procedures are carried out on
women. This is unsurprising given deeply entrenched systems of cultural
objectification of women’s bodies and their attendant fashion and beauty
practices, plentiful evidence of which can be seen on any high street,
beauty counter, newsagent shelf or television channel, as well as in
numerous works of feminist scholarship (Bartky 1990; Wolf 1990;
Jeffreys 2005). It is my argument in this chapter that beauty practices,
particularly the more invasive procedures, both presuppose and depend
66 Chapter Four

upon a notion of women’s bodies as fundamentally violable, and in turn

serve to construct that violability, thus making the prospect of further
violation – such as that in pornography – appear more legitimate and
acceptable. If cultural norms were such that girls were brought up to
regard their bodies as fundamentally inviolable - with the expectation that
they are entitled to determine their own physical boundaries and that these
boundaries would be respected – fashion and beauty industries, including
cosmetic surgeons, would have far greater difficulty in persuading women
to purchase their products and procedures. However, within contemporary
Western culture this is clearly far from the case, with cultural narratives
instead routinely undermining any notion of women’s boundary-integrity:
for example, through fashion magazines promoting the display of various
parts of the female body, and through beauty features and articles that
promote time-consuming and invasive procedures to “correct” supposed
flaws in appearance.

While the general practice of self-objectification can be said to rely on and

perpetuate a notion of women’s bodies as fundamentally violable, two
particular practices are of particular relevance to my argument here: the
removal of pubic hair and labiaplasty. Both practices are invasive, have
increased markedly in prevalence, and both relate to the intimate, genital
area of a woman’s body: an area that is increasingly being constructed as
“public”, subject to the male gaze and therefore an appropriate object of
“beautification” and display - a project to be worked upon in order to be
acceptable to potential male sexual partners, as has traditionally been the
case with more conventionally displayed parts of a woman’s body.

A note on terminology
In analysing the ways in which the presumed violability of women is
constructed and naturalised, it is necessary to think about the role of
language in this process. Terms such as “cosmetic procedure”, “breast
augmentation” and “labiaplasty” convey an air of clinical authority and
their distinctly sanitised connotations serve to locate the practices to which
they refer within the realm of legitimate medical practice. Similarly, terms
like “hair removal” or “depilation” serve to elide and minimise the reality
of what can be excruciating pain involved in such practices, particularly
where pubic hair is removed by waxing or electrical devices that rip the
hair out by its roots. The challenge for a feminist analysis which seeks to
expose the violence and violation inherent in these practices is to not
contribute to minimising and legitimising language, while still using terms
 The Violable Woman 67

that ensure clarity about the precise acts that are being discussed. In this
chapter I use the conventional terminology in order to be clear about the
specific phenomena to which I am referring, since these are the terms
generally used in discussions of these practices. However, wherever
possible I describe the actual acts and consequences involved in these
practices, such as slicing, cutting, bleeding, bruising and so on, along with
reference to the values and beliefs that legitimise and naturalise such
practices. It is significant that where similar practices of slicing and cutting
female bodies and genitalia occur in non-Western contexts, the violence is
foregrounded, as exemplified by the term “female genital mutilation”
replacing the term “clitoridectomy”.

Pubic hair removal and violability

“Hair removal has become an essential part of the female lifestyle”,
announces the 2014 Argosi catalogue, displaying its wares of various
instruments and devices designed to facilitate this painful, time-
consuming, hazardous, costly, yet apparently indispensable aspect of
women’s lives. Pubic hair removal should be understood in the context of
a vicious cultural intolerance of all women’s body and facial hair: the
regular removal of some degree of body hair is “almost ubiquitous among
women in Anglo / Western countries” (Braun 2013:479) and women who
do not adhere to this smooth, hairless norm can expect to experience
“negative social consequences”, being viewed as “less (sexually)
attractive, sociable, positive and happy, and as more aggressive” than their
smooth-skinned sisters, subjected to “ridicule and abuse from others,
including family and partners” and pressurised to remove the hair
(2013:479). Those with “excessive” body hair can be made to feel great
shame and anxiety (2013:480). These social pressures and punishments
demonstrate the highly coercive context within which women remove their
facial and body hair. Whilst the dominant ideology explaining and
justifying beauty practices is predictably one of personal choice and
preference, the fact that women experience huge social opprobrium for not
conforming to the hairless ideal shows that such practices are in fact
undertaken within a context of substantial social control. Women are
caught in a double-bind wherein the “choice” is to either engage in a
painful, costly, self-violating practice or be socially shamed and ridiculed.
While it is also true that men, particularly in the West, may now be
experiencing pressures to remove their body hair in some areas at least,
“the scope for male body hair remains broader than it is for women, with
less social and psychological castigation” (2013:480).
68 Chapter Four

Whereas in previous decades cultural demands around female hair

removal in Anglo / Western contexts did not extend to pubic hair, recent
years have seen an increasing prevalence of its removal, with studies
finding the practice to be near universal, particularly among younger
generations of women (Herbenick 2010; De Maria et al 2014). The
practice has spawned a whole new vocabulary, with terms such as
“Brazilians”, “landing strips”, “Hollywoods” and “vajazzling” referring to
various degrees and styles of hair removal and even decoration, while the
complete removal of all pubic hair is not uncommon, particularly among
younger women: one US study found that among young women aged 18-
24, over two thirds had totally or partially removed their pubic hair during
the past month, and a fifth had been entirely hairless over that period
(Herbenick et al 2010:3325).

So, why are women – particularly young women – removing some or all
of their pubic hair? According to a 2010 study of 660 women in British
Columbia, the most common motivations were: improved appearance in a
bathing suit; feeling attractive; feeling feminine and more comfortable;
and feeling cleaner (Riddell et al 2010). The relative absence of reference
to societal pressures and shaming is striking, although reasons less
commonly cited included “men prefer it”, “my partner prefers it” and “it’s
the thing to do”. Pornography was not mentioned as an influencing factor.
However, that these possible factors are not foregrounded or in some cases
even mentioned in responses does not mean that their potential role should
be dismissed. Concepts such as “attractiveness”, “femininity” and
“cleanliness” are all obviously social concepts, constructed and
experienced within a context of social norms, values and expectations. All
of the major motivations cited seem to indicate a thoroughgoing
internalisation of the male gaze, wherein pubic hair comes to be seen as
unattractive and unclean. These understandings of pubic hair are socially
produced, within the coercive context discussed earlier. The less common
reasons given identify the male gaze more directly, citing the influence of
male partners or men in general. Given the scale of men’s consumption of
pornography and the role of pornography in influencing sexual practice
and norms, it is implausible that the hairless state of women in
pornographic videos would bear no relation to trends of pubic hair
removal in the wider culture. On the contrary, the rise in porn consumption
with its norm of hairless female genitalia, and reasons given such as
“attractiveness” and “my partner prefers it”, indicate that it is extremely
likely that norms of pornography are influencing women’s hair removal
practices.
 The Violable Woman 69

Women use a range of methods to remove pubic hair, either by themselves

or through paying for a “treatment” at a beauty salon. These methods
include waxing or similarly ripping the hair out from the roots with
electrical gadgets; shaving, with razor blades or electric shavers; trimming
with scissors; plucking with tweezers; dissolving the hair with depilatory
creams; killing the hair root with lasers or electrolysis. These methods can
be extremely costly, easily running into hundreds and even thousands of
pounds for laser “treatment” and electrolysis, or other methods undertaken
over a number of years. Neither are the physical risks and health consequences
of these practices trivial. Numerous online testimonies detail the
excruciating pain involved in using hot wax to rip out pubic hair, or the
pain and discomfort associated with other methods. A US study found
that among a diverse clinical sample of 333 women attending a public
clinic, all of whom had removed at least some pubic hair either recently or
in the past, 60% had experienced at least one health complication, with the
most common being epidermal abrasion and ingrown hairs, and others
including folliculitis, vulvitis, contact dermatitis, genital burns, severe skin
irritation leading to post inflammatory hyperpigmentation, vulvar and
vaginal irritation and infection, and the spread or transmission of sexually
transmitted infections (DeMaria 2014). By contrast, the psychological
effects of hair removal are largely understood and represented as positive
in media debates, with outcomes framed in terms of women’s increased
“confidence”, sense of “attractiveness” and “self-esteem” and often too in
academic studies, with pubic hair removal being associated unproblematically
with “more positive sexual functioning scores” and “a more positive
genital self-image” (Herbenick et al 2010). Any potential psychological
harms of pubic hair removal remain largely unrecognised and under-
researched, and the concept of violability is extremely useful here.

Overwhelmingly, the popular media discourse surrounding pubic hair

removal is framed in terms of “choice”, even necessity, with the physical
pain and harms of the practice grotesquely trivialised: “you were just
shaving away to the sounds of your shower playlist, when OMG,
blood...down there!”; “the price we pay for a beautiful hoo-ha”; “the last
thing you want is a battle scar on The Goods” (Thore 2015). However, it is
important to recognise that the undertaking of such practices involves an
act of boundary-violation - the removal of hair from an intimate and
particularly sensitive part of a woman’s body – with some of the practices
involving further boundary-violation of the skin itself, through ripping hair
out from the roots, incidental cutting or scraping, infections and rashes.
These practices, therefore, necessarily involve the internalisation and
perpetuation of the idea of one’s body as violable, and that such self-
70 Chapter Four

violation is acceptable, unproblematic and even inevitable. The psychological

impact of altering one’s genital area to resemble that of a pre-pubescent
girl – and the sexual excitement aroused in men by such an appearance - is
also of course deserving of feminist consideration and analysis. For
women, the choice within patriarchal society is either to comply with a
violation of their own physical and psychological boundaries (whilst
simultaneously paying dearly for the privilege in terms of financial cost,
time, pain, anxiety and health consequences) or to endure negative social
consequences, as cited above. The thoroughly normalised and routine
practices of waxing and shaving thus serve to naturalise and reinforce the
notion and experience of one’s body as violable. The effects of such
practices on a woman’s psyche and sense of self are therefore an
extremely pertinent issue for feminist analysis.

Labiaplasty and violability

Though the number of women undergoing labiaplasty is relatively low in
comparison to other cosmetic procedures, this procedure has, like pubic
hair removal, increased dramatically in prevalence in recent years (Lee
2011). In the UK, labiaplasties performed under the National Health
Service increased five-fold from 2000 – 2010, with over 1,726 being
carried out in the year 2010-2011 (Veale et al 2014a). In Australia,
labiaplasties subsidised by Medicare tripled over a similar time-frame,
with an estimated excess of 1,200 women undergoing surgery in 2009
(Bourke 2009). An unknown number of labiaplasties in both the UK and
Australia are also carried out in private clinics, and given the extent of
advertising and increased discussion of the topic it is likely that numbers
are considerably higher than those carried out through the NHS or
Medicare. Costs of labiaplasty at the time of writing vary from £2,000 -
£4,000, and the field is therefore proving highly profitable for those
surgeons willing to carry out such procedures (Lee 2011). In the US, the
number of labiaplasties performed increased by 55% in a single year, from
2012-2013 (American Society of Plastics Surgeons 2014). While a small
number of all these procedures would have been carried out for medical
reasons such as cancer, this does not explain the dramatic rise in the
number of operations carried out (Crouch et al 2011).

Studies cite media exposure, peer influence, relationship quality, teasing,

low educational level and fashion as influences or risk factors in relation to
women undergoing labiaplasty (Sharp et al 2014; Veale et al 2014a).
While women tend not to cite pornography as a factor, the prevalence of
 The Violable Woman 71

online pornography and its influence on the expectations and demands of

male partners and on norms within mainstream media such as advertising
would suggest that, as with trends in hair removal, arguments denying its
influence lack plausibility. The very real distress of women seeking
labiaplasties should not be underestimated (Jeffreys 2005:83-85; Land
2012), and the seeking of such a risky, mutilating and extremely painful
procedure, must be understood in the context of a patriarchal society that
severely shames and humiliates women for supposed physical
“imperfections”. The prevalence of online pornography and pornified
media such as the makeover series How to Look Good Naked provide a
mainstream context for women’s dissatisfaction with an increasing array
of once relatively private and hidden body parts, through constructing
these as subject to display and scrutiny. Significantly, physicians also cite
the increase in hair removal itself as contributing to the rise in the number
of women seeking labiaplasties, since removing pubic hair renders the
intimate anatomy of the vulva more visible (Cornwall 2014). Also
significantly, there is no difference in actual labia size between women
who seek labiaplasty and those who do not (Crouch et al 2011).

A number of arcane-sounding surgical techniques (“curvilinear resection”,

“central wedge resection”, “de-epithelialisation”) are utilised in labiaplasty,
but the point of the procedure is generally the reduction of either the labia
minora, and / or the labia majora, or the clitoral hood. The technique is
therefore highly invasive and mutilating, involving cutting, slicing, the
spilling of blood and the removal of skin and tissue. The procedure almost
inevitably therefore involves severe pain, and physical health risks include
dehiscence (the wound bursting open), hematoma, unsatisfactory scarring,
superficial infections and necrosis (Gowda et al 2015), dissatisfaction with
appearance, loss of sexual sensation and an increased risk of perineal
trauma during vaginal delivery (Creighton 2014). There are also
particularly distressing reports on online fora of malpractice during the
procedure, including botched surgery and the complete amputation of the
labia minora. Again, as with pubic hair removal, while attention is given to
psychological motivations for seeking labiaplasty, little regard is paid to
the potential psychological harms of such mutilation of the genitals.
Industry spokespeople, unsurprisingly, speak of the supposed “benefits” of
labiaplasty in terms of notions of “beauty”, “self-confidence” and
“aesthetics”: according to Michael Edwards MD, President-elect of the
American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), the dramatic
increase in labiaplasty is “indicative of much larger global trends
respecting body image, an ever-evolving concept of beauty, and self-
confidence”, while ASAPS member Christine Hamori MD states that her
72 Chapter Four

patients “want to achieve a clean, smooth look [in their genital area] as
they would with their face and underarms” (ASAPS 2014).

Whilst such comments from individuals with substantial financial interests

in promoting labiaplasty are to be expected, it is also striking that much of
the academic commentary also seems quite uncritical in its analysis of
outcomes of the procedure for women, revealing an apparently
unproblematised acceptance of the internalised male gaze. Veale et al
(2014a) conclude that the women in their study had “chosen labiaplasty
mainly for themselves rather than to please anyone else” and that
labiaplasty “is effective in improving genital appearance and sexual
satisfaction” (2014b) with apparently little regard for the coercive context
in which women seek such interventions and the potential psychological
harms of such an invasive, body-altering and permanent procedure.

To a far greater extent than is the case with pubic hair removal, labiaplasty
depends upon and perpetuates the notion and experience of women’s
bodies as violable. While the literature provides accounts of women
speaking favourably about the procedure in terms of increased confidence
– particularly in terms of sexual relationships with men – one wonders
whether in a radically transformed context of loving and respectful
attitudes to the diversity of women’s bodies, and a corresponding
intolerance of the notion of violating their boundaries, those same
women’s psychological responses might not be very different. Indeed, an
altered consciousness within a non-patriarchal context might result in a
significant sense of regret at the pain, violation, disfigurement and loss
they had endured through undergoing this procedure.

Discussion: resisting violability

In this chapter, I have explored the concept of the violability of women’s
bodies through a consideration of pornography, pubic hair removal and
labiaplasty. While the likely influence of pornography – and specifically,
male consumption of pornography – on these cosmetic practices is very
clear, it should also be recognised that the relationship is mutually
reinforcing. The fact that girls and women are pressurised and coerced into
violating their bodies through beauty practices – and are likely to
experience severe social sanctions and disapproval if they do not conform
- serves to psychologically prepare girls and women to accept further
violations as normal and acceptable. I am not suggesting a simple cause-
and-effect relationship, rather I am suggesting that the violations of
pornography and beauty practices exist in a mutually reinforcing process
 The Violable Woman 73

of normalisation and legitimisation. The mainstreaming of pornography

creates new norms which instantiate new practices; at the same time,
repetitious beauty practices make women more amenable to the violations
of porn-influenced sex. Of course, as mentioned earlier on in the chapter,
women are made to experience their bodies as violable in numerous ways:
girls and women who have been raped or sexually assaulted, including
within the context of prostitution and the production of pornography, will
have direct experience of the sexual violation of their boundaries in violent
and unequivocal ways. However, the practices I have discussed affect all
women, since they provide narratives of women’s violability that become
established as normative ways of understanding women’s bodies within
the culture. Of course, heterosexual sex is also primarily understood and
experienced in terms of violability: the penetration of women’s orifices by
the penis. Research into the practice of anal sex between young women
and men found that both young men and young women expected women
to find anal sex painful, yet the young men appeared unconcerned by this:
“mutuality and women’s pleasure are often absent in narratives of anal
heterosex and [...] their absence is not only left unremarked and
unchallenged, but even seems to be expected by many young people”
(Marston and Lewis 2014). The researchers concluded that: “Anal sex
among young people in this study appeared to be taking place in a context
encouraging pain, risk and coercion.” While the boys have apparently
learnt to view sex as primarily about their right to penetrate a woman’s
orifices irrespective of her desires or pain, my argument here is that
boundary-violating beauty practices contribute to a conducive and
coercive context within which their consent to these sexual violations is
easier to manufacture. The effects and ramifications of women’s and girls’
boundary-violation through socially-coerced beauty practices problematise
the validity of notions of supposed sexual “consent”.

Earlier in the chapter, I gave some thought to the question of terminology.

I hope that I have demonstrated the problem of using sanitising, clinical
language in relation to practices which normalise the violation of women’s
boundaries, since this language itself performs a normalising and
minimising function. I suggest that feminists need to think carefully about
how we refer to these practices, and reject legitimising terms such as
“labiaplasty” and “breast augmentation” in favour of terms that name the
inherent violence in such practices, such as “female genital mutilation”
and “female breast mutilation”. A more thoroughgoing consideration of
language in relation to all beauty practices is also necessary, and feminists
need to be assertive in naming the harms and psychological and physical
violence inherent in such practices.
74 Chapter Four

Ultimately, of course, women’s “violability” only makes sense within a

patriarchal context where men demand the right to violate women’s
bodies, time and space, and to enforce systems of women’s self-violation.
It is extremely unlikely that women living within a heterosexual matrix,
invested in sexual relationships with men, will be able to resist the social
construction of themselves as violable, since male partners routinely
demand that their orifices are available for them to penetrate, routinely
consume and masturbate to images of other men violating women’s
bodies; and in significant numbers violate women through prostitution.
Similarly, for women invested in heterosexual relationships, the self-
violation inherent in routinely-demanded “beauty practices” is extremely
difficult to reject since the objectification of women is central to hetero-
relations, and, as argued above, serves to prepare women physically and
psychologically for further violations.

It is interesting that at this point in time, in the second decade of the

twenty-first century, feminists appear to have designated certain forms of
men’s violation of women as unacceptable and appropriate for feminist
analysis and activism, while other forms remain largely beyond the realm
of scrutiny and critique. There are currently national and global campaigns
against men’s violation of women through rape, sexual harassment,
pornography, prostitution and female genital mutilation (when carried out
in the name of culture and religion, rather than as a “beauty practice”).
However, mainstream heterosexual feminists – even those who profess to
be radical feminists - seem unwilling to look critically at normalised
heterosexual practices and beauty practices, let alone reject them. I would
suggest that a misguided investment in heterosexuality is seriously
impeding women’s collective rejection of a cultural status as “violable”,
and thus impeding the potential for women’s liberation.

In order to reject the violation inherent in both pornography and beauty

practices, women need access to women-only spaces outside of the
heterosexual matrix. Through processes of consciousness-raising – sharing
and analysing experiences of these violating practices with other women –
women can develop a sense of bodily integrity and respect for their own
physical boundaries that is extremely difficult to develop on an individual
basis within the heterosexual matrix. Through supporting each other to
experience their bodies as active subjects – through the kinds of political,
creative and imaginative projects that have largely been lost since the days
of second wave feminism – women can recommence the project of the
“radical redefining of the relationship between women and their bodies”
(Dworkin 1974:116). As Dworkin argues “Women must stop mutilating
 The Violable Woman 75

their bodies and start living in them.” Such a project is unlikely to be

possible within a context where men’s demand to violate women’s bodies
is thoroughly routine and unremarkable.

It is no coincidence that the spaces where women have created a culture of

collective resistance to a status of violability have a strong history of
lesbian feminist politics. Two such spaces include the Michigan Womyn’s
Music Festival (“Michfest”) and the WANTED project (Roberts et al
2012). Michfest, over a period of forty years, saw tens of thousands of
women of diverse body types, ages, ethnicities and abilities come together
to engage in a huge range of tasks, projects, workshops and performances,
variously involving physical strength, diverse skills, imagination,
knowledge and creative talents. Although not all women at Michfest
rejected pornography and beauty practices, it was generally a safe and
welcoming space for those who did, and as a result many women were
visible and resplendent in their body hair and facial hair in ways seldom in
evidence in mainstream patriarchal contexts. As an attendee at the final
Michfest in August 2015, I had the powerful experience of witnessing
women welcoming, respecting and celebrating each other as full human
subjects, in ways that are impossible within patriarchal contexts. The
physical appearance of women at Michfest was often strikingly different to
the repetitious, formulaic images of objectified and violable women that
saturate patriarchal cultures, and in this regard Michfest and similar
women-only spaces provide a model for women’s collective resistance to
men’s objectifying, violating demands and practices.

One of the significant failures of current, mainstream academic literature

on women’s supposed “motivations” and “outcomes” in relation to
cosmetic practices is that it fails to acknowledge that it is analysing
women’s motivations and outcomes within a context of male domination.
The significance of this male dominated context remains largely
untheorised. Within feminist-informed, women-only spaces where a male
presence and male gaze is removed from women’s lives, such motivations
and outcomes tend to quickly become irrelevant and inapplicable, even
unthinkable and meaningless. This was very much what I witnessed first-
hand at Michfest. It is not surprising, therefore, that it was Michfest that
inspired another resistance project: WANTED - Invisible Women / Females
of Uncommon Beauty (Roberts et al 2012). The project involved producing
posters of photographs sent in by attendees of the festival whose
appearance did not conform to the norms of femininity, along with text
outlining their nonconformity, and the message: “You are wanted. You are
loved. And we want you to know it.” The posters, featuring images of
76 Chapter Four

women with facial hair and “masculine”/ non-feminised appearances, were

put on display in the “Over 40s” tent at Michfest. One of the most
powerful elements of the display was a poster in which the photograph
was replaced with a mirror and the space for a name with “YOU”, so that
the viewer could see herself reflected and know that the message of being
wanted and loved was intended for her. The project also produced a video
and a range of merchandise.

Michfest and the WANTED project are just two examples of the potential
of women-only environments to reject narratives of violability and to
support women’s radical redefining of our bodies. Both have their
contradictions: it was evident that some women at Michfest certainly
continued to conform to the norms of femininity; some also no doubt
consumed and championed pornography. The WANTED project arguably
fails to displace the centrality and importance given to the notion of female
“beauty” within patriarchal contexts; it perhaps simply extends or
reconfigures the concept to include women with “masculine”, hirsute
appearances, and to offer images of such women to the female gaze, rather
than the male gaze. Women-only spaces and projects will succeed in
rejecting the notion of woman-as-violable to the extent that they are
informed by radical lesbian feminist politics that reject femininity,
pornography and objectification as oppressive and harmful to women. As
the violating practices of pornography and its associated cosmetic
procedures are increasingly ubiquitous and normalised, women’s access to
such environments and collective resistance projects is urgently needed. A
vital job for feminists, then, is to ensure that such spaces are created and
sustained.

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Notes
i
Argos is a British general-goods retailer operating in the UK and Republic of
Ireland.
 CHAPTER FIVE

NORMALIZING DARK DESIRES?

THE MEDICALIZATION OF SEX AND WOMEN’S
CONSUMPTION OF PORNOGRAPHY

TRACY PENNY LIGHT AND DIANA C. PARRY

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young

entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful,
brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to
realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is
desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and
independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms.

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all
the trappings of success - his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his
loving family - Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the
need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately
physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her
own dark desires (James 2012).

Women’s mass consumption of the Fifty Shades of Grey book series (now
a major motion picture) has drawn attention to complexities that surround
women’s consumption of pornography and how they perform their
sexuality (Parry and Penny Light 2014). Our initial interest in the
consumption of the books stemmed from our fascination that women,
including feminist scholars, found themselves reading and enjoying the
material. What did this say about us as feminists and did our experiences
point to a philosophy of sex-positivity, a key aspect of third wave
feminism? Or, were we the victims of a hypersexualized culture that
infuses the pornographic into everyday life and normalizes “dark desires”
by promoting that women adhere to sociocultural prescriptions about
female sexuality, including what bodies should look like to achieve a
“healthy” sex life? (Parry and Penny Light 2014).
82 Chapter Five

Understanding what is ‘normal’ and “healthy” in a world that has, by all

accounts, become “pornified” (Paasonen et al 2007) and “medicalized”
(Metzl and Herzig 2007) is a challenge. Women are encouraged to
perform their sexual identities in particular ways, such as altering their
bodies, playing with sex toys, etc. The prescriptions suggest that doing so
can lead to sexual nirvana and we can feel better about ourselves in the
process. A key part of these social prescriptions is the increasing
acceptability and accessibility of cosmetic surgery that allows women (and
men) to “enhance” (Penny Light 2015) perceived problem areas of their
bodies and includes both surgical and non-surgical practices (Eliot 2010;
Sharp et al 2014; Braun et al 2013; Herzig 2009; Bercaw-Pratt 2012).
According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
(ASAPS), there has been a 279% increase in the number of procedures
performed since 1997 with women aged 35-50 years most likely to seek
out a cosmetic procedure (American Society for Plastic Surgery 2013).

One of the procedures becoming increasingly popular is labiaplasty, the

surgical alteration of the labia (normally a reduction of the size or
alteration of the shape) with ASAPS reporting a 64% increase in 2012
(Sharp et al 2014; American Society for Plastic Surgery 2013). What has
caused this increase in body modification? Does the ubiquitous access to
pornography in today’s media culture really influence women to pursue
cosmetic surgery to pornify their bodies? How are we to understand the
connection between medicine and pornography in the 21st century? What
does ready access to porn and the ability to consume it through digital
technologies do to shape women’s sexual identities? These questions
highlight that the links between pornography and medicine are challenging
issues. In this chapter, we consider the complexities inherent in women’s
consumption of pornography and surgical practices. In so doing, we
explore both the reproductive and liberatory elements of these
discourses/practices. We ask, what are the implications of Pornland for
women’s bodily perceptions/alterations and sexual desires? We outline
while a liberatory discourse is implied in women’s consumption of
pornography and cosmetic surgical practices, such consumption
paradoxically strengthens traditional patriarchal views of women’s
sexuality and promotes that women alter their bodies medically in the
name of empowerment, inherently limiting their sexual subjectivity. In
short, social and cultural constructions of the ‘normal’ female body are
impossible for women to escape and cannot help but shape female sexual
identity, especially as linked to the sexualization of society.
 Normalizing Dark Desires? 83

The “Sexualization of Culture,” Medicine,

and Pornography
In their studies of the role the media plays as a sociocultural factor in
influencing women’s attitudes toward cosmetic surgery, Sharp et al note
that demand for cosmetic procedures has rapidly expanded over the last
ten years (Sharp et al 2014). Celebrity culture has also served to promote
cosmetic surgery because, as Elliott argues, “celebrity culture…is
intimately woven with the spread of new technologies for making private
life a public spectacle... [that have given audiences] unprecedented
opportunities to view, examine and scrutinize their favourite celebrities in
close proximity” (Elliot 2010:464). Such viewing, some argue, reshapes
“public attitudes about identity, self-reinvention and the body.” Elliott
suggests that this view is too simplistic because it assumes that choices
about body modification are simply the result of external forces (like the
media and pornography) and neglects “deeper societal, cultural and
psychological factors propelling people into a more active engagement
with self-reinvention” (Elliot 2010:465). In broader studies of body
modification theorists have been interested in exploring this idea of self-
reinvention through examinations of the ways that the body is transformed
from its natural state using various methods that may include surgical
processes (piercing, tattooing, cosmetic surgery, etc.) or diet and exercise
regimes (Featherstone 1999:1). In the literature that explores this
phenomenon, what constitutes the normal body has been a key concern as
theorists have wrestled with body modification and identity formation to
understand how a normal or healthy body can be understood and the ways
that media influences such modifications. What emerges in these
discourses is a central question: Is there a “standard of bodyliness that
becomes “an impossible ideal” (Featherstone 1999:6)? We add “what roles
does pornography play in shaping such ideals?”

Bodily ‘ideals’ manifests in many areas, but perhaps most obviously in

labiaplasty. Studies that examine labiaplasty patients and the reasons for
their pursuit of alteration suggest women who modify their bodies in this
way do so for a variety of reasons, but “aesthetic dissatisfaction” is a
major motivator reflecting their desire for a “Barbie look” (Sharp et al
2014:2). As with other cosmetic procedures, arguments have been made to
support the provision of these procedures for psychological reasons – in
this case, to manage the negative psychological repercussions when the
perception of ‘abnormal’ genitals affect one’s life, including sexual
activities and practices (Frederick et al 2007).
84 Chapter Five

Some have argued that the increasing medicalization of sex has

contributed to an impossible ideal that women are expected to uphold,
which can lead to perceptions of abnormality. For instance, Virginia Braun
and Leonore Tiefer posit medicalization has led to a pathologization of
women’s natural bodies (specifically, their vulvas) that promotes a desire
among women for a “designer vagina,” (Braun and Tiefer undated; Braun
2009; Braun 2010) which can be achieved through both surgical and non-
surgical interventions. For instance, the removal of pubic hair is a non-
surgical intervention that many argue has contributed to the idea that
vulvas can be abnormal because the absence of hair makes the vulva more
visible (Braun et al 2013; Bercaw-Pratt 2012). In either case, the
argument has been made that it is the media and the infusion of
pornography in it that leads women to seek out body modification to
adhere to prescriptions that construct bodies in a way that suggests that
variation in genital appearance (whether in terms of labia shape/size or
amount of pubic hair) is not normal. In other words, pornography, and the
wider sexualisation of culture, constructs a new ‘normal’ that women seek
to emulate. However, not all researchers are convinced that pornography is
the primary driver of this trend (Jones and Nurka 2015). Jones and Nurka
(2015), for instance, set out to examine the relationship between
pornography and women’s surgical alterations more closely. While
acknowledging their study is preliminary and a more complex model is
needed to understand the variety of factors that might influence women’s
decisions to undertake genital cosmetic surgery, their study questions the
validity of the so-called “porn thesis” in influencing women’s decisions to
alter their bodies with cosmetic procedures (Jones and Nurka 2015). More
specifically, these scholars found women were generally satisfied with the
appearance of their vulvas and did not consider labiaplasty even if they
consumed pornography. In their words, “while pornography was
associated with openness to labiaplasty, it was not a predictor of genital
satisfaction, casting doubt on a linear framework that positions
pornography as the main driver for female genital cosmetic surgery”
(Jones and Nurka 2015). This suggests that women may not be as
influenced toward body modification as others suggest.

Gail Dines argues women are often not aware of the messages that
pornography infuses into everyday life, not only through pornography
itself, but also through the wider pornographication of society (Dines
2010). Her view, and that of other anti-pornography feminists, is that porn
is insidious and should be eliminated from society because the
“hypersexualization [of society from porn] has put pressure on women to
look and act like they just tumbled out of the pages of Maxim or
 Normalizing Dark Desires? 85

Cosmopolitan. Whether it be thongs peeping out of low-slung jeans,

revealing their ‘tramp stamp,’ their waxed pubic area, or their desire to
give the best blow job ever to the latest hookup, young women and girls, it
seems, are increasingly celebrating their ‘empowering’ sexual freedom by
trying to look and act the part of a porn star” (Dines 2010:xii). This issue
is not limited to young women and girls, however. Statistics from the
American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery note that people aged 35-
50 had 42% of cosmetic procedures in the United States in 2013. This
statistic suggests that women of all ages receive longstanding messages
about their bodies and sexuality. Porn is clearly part of the larger
“sexualization of culture” sending messages to women about how they
should look and behave – indeed, how women should perform their gender
and sexuality (Butler 2006). This social and cultural context is complex.
Indeed, many of the women that Dines encounters claim to be empowered
by their choices with regard to their bodies and assert that their cosmetic
practices ranging from bikini waxing to breast augmentation have a
positive effect on their well-being. Feminist literature exploring cosmetic
surgery has documented the ways that women exercise agency over their
bodies in the pursuit of beauty, paying attention to their self-narratives that
articulate the ways that body modification “alleviate[s] the suffering
associated with a body that fails to represent the ‘true self’” to build their
identities (Gimlin 2010:59). Long before pornography was so easily
accessible, women reported similar reasons for altering their bodies. For
instance, Richards (1973) described the case of a woman, Mrs. A.H., a
thirty-six year old “career woman” whose breasts were determined to be
clinically healthy. Mrs. A.H. insisted that they were not and demanded a
procedure to normalize her. As the report notes, “a little encouragement
brought out the statement that she felt she was fighting a losing battle for
the attention of her male colleagues and especially of her husband because
of her lack of bust endowment.” Once the patient was referred for breast
augmentation she had “been a happy woman ever since” (Richards
1973:109).

Physicians recognized early on that wider cultural beauty ideals could

shape patients’ desires for a cosmetic procedure. A 1957 study of the
“psychiatric aspects of cosmetic surgery of the nose” cautioned surgeons
to establish “an intimate co-operation between surgeon and psychiatrist in
cases of cosmetic surgery” because “the rising popularity of cosmetic
surgery in recent years makes it important to draw attention to the possible
neurotic motivations and psychiatric hazards associated with such
operations.” This, the authors noted, was because patients could be
influenced to pursue cosmetic surgery by celebrities who reported being
86 Chapter Five

happy with their surgically altered bodies (Stern 1957). The recognition by
surgeons that patients’ feelings about themselves and how they fit into
society or looked ‘normal’ was an important aspect of their practice
suggests the importance that appearance has always held in society
(Gilman 1999; Pitts-Taylor 2007; Hiken 1997).

Cultural prescriptions of normality are dynamic, however, and change

over time. For instance, in the 1950s, small breasts became an abnormality
to have “fixed” despite having been desirable in earlier time periods
(Braun and Tiefer undated; Wilson and Laennec 1997). Today, it has
become so normalized to have small breasts augmented that even if breasts
are naturally larger, it is assumed that they have been altered. For example,
porn star Jenna Jameson recalls when she first started her career at age 18,
that photographers were unconvinced her large breasts were natural
(Jameson 2004).

Being ‘normal’ is a narrative of importance to the whole being and refers

not just to physical appearance, but also sexual feelings/desires. In this,
social context matters. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that women
consumers of pornography often use identity narratives to articulate the
ways that sexually-explicit materials help them to better understand their
own sexual desires. Tisdale (1992:44) may have explained it best when
she noted “pornography tells me … that none of my thoughts are bad, that
anything goes … The message of pornography, by its very existence, is
that our sexual selves are real.” In other words, normal sexuality can
include a variety of practices and interests and, as Albury (2009:650)
notes, “can be an important part of many people’s self-recognition as
sexual subjects” that allows for the representation of an increasingly
diverse set of sexual experiences and identities. As such, she suggests that
“to evaluate pornographic texts in exclusively moral terms – that is, to
consider them primarily in relation to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ representations of
sex and gender – forecloses their potential as tools for teaching and
learning about changing sexual practices and sexual subjectivities.” As
Tisdale and others note, this ability to tap into the variety of practices
inherent in porn often opens up space for women to explore their own
sexuality without shame (Tisdale 1992).

New technologies that allow wider access to pornography increasingly

facilitate more shame-free consumption. Online blogs and zines are an
example of this. Fan fiction websites, e-books, virtual publishers, social
networking sites, and online communities of interest open up new avenues
for women’s consumption of sexually explicit materials. The most notable
 Normalizing Dark Desires? 87

recent explosion around women’s consumption of sexually-explicit

material is the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon. First fan fiction on the
web and then a published trilogy and most recent Hollywood film, this
series has garnered much popular and academic attention. Despite ongoing
questions about whether this new access is good, it is clear that women are
using technology in their leisure to move beyond the individual pleasure of
reading the books to create a collective identity grounded in a shared,
sexual fantasy world. As Sonnet explained:
The newly empowered reader of [books like Fifty Shades of Grey] utilizes
a commodified form of popular culture to signal alignment with a
collective identity which exists only through that form. By connecting
women in a shared fantasy world, the [narrative] philosophy mobilizes a
rhetoric of community and collective female identity created around sexual
fantasy. Consumption of erotica, then, works to reinforce the cultural
identity of…women (Sonnet 1999:178).

Yet, what does a “shared cultural identity around sexual fantasy” really
say about women’s sexual identities? In her examination of the Fifty
Shades phenomenon, Downing (2013:93) argues that the debates about the
value of the books have “predictably and regressively enough … turned to
the question of what its popularity reveals about the ‘nature’ of female
desire in the twenty-first century”. This is problematic because as she
points out, “belief in the ‘nature’ of female desire is propped up by the
weight of conservative investments in what a woman is – which often has
much to do with what a woman is for” (Downing 2013:97). Historical
constructions of women as passive recipients of male sexual desire rather
than sexual subjects in their own right reinforced the notion of the
“passionless” and reproductive woman that is entrenched in patriarchal
and medical structures. Second wave feminism sought to dismantle this
idea by positioning women as capable of seeking and receiving sexual
pleasure on their own terms from both men and women (Vance 1992).
New digital technologies have assisted in a new dismantling of female
sexuality because they open up space for a much broader intersection of
women to produce, access, consume, and discuss pornographic literature,
both online and in face-to-face communities. As such, it is not surprising
that some have argued (controversially) that consuming pornography is a
way to fully understand oneself (Tisdale 1992).

Accessing and discussing Fifty Shades online, as opposed to face-to-face,

can lower inhibitions and lead to more open, honest discussion. For
instance, one contributor to an online Fifty Shades of Grey book club
reported:
88 Chapter Five

I read all 3. The writing is not that good but I don’t [sic] think that is the
point. I will tell you they caused me to be more inspired in the sex dept. I
am not, nor have I ever been, plain ole vanilla but things were getting a bit
‘usual’ in the bedroom. Having 5 kids and a grandson living with us we
can not swing from the lights or anything like that but I sure was in the
mood a lot more. After being married so long it is nice to try some new
things to spice it up a bit (Parry and Penny-Light 2014)

Similar comments were made by different women on this site and others
regarding the value of the books and the opportunity to discuss sexual
desires and experiences. Participatory culture, in this regard, fuels a
“collaborative eroticism” (Van Der Graf accessed 2013) in which
sexuality becomes an important component of both individual and
group/collective definition and is intentionally used as a form of resistance
to the way that sexual activity is presented in mainstream pornography
(Attwood 2007). A collaborative eroticism is important as it recognizes
that everyone can have sexual desires. In this way, participatory cultures,
such as those created through Fifty Shades of Grey, contribute to what
McNair refers to as the “democratization of desire” (McNair 2009).
Kolehmainen (2010) suggests that the democratization of desire troubles
the dominant representations of male, heterosexuality by adding to the
public discourse different representations of sexual desire including those
of marginalized groups such as women and those who identify with other
sexualities. Sexual wellbeing (and avoidance of sexual problems) requires
access to sex-related information that contributes to new and different
behavioral skills and motivation to try them, which women get through
participatory cultures. As such, exploring these cultures is crucial if we
want to understand new kinds of cultural production and consumption
today.

While the liberatory possibilities of this consumption are appealing

Downing (2013) cautions against sex-positivism in favour of a “sex-
critical” approach to sexual discourse because of its ability to examine all
forms of sexuality from a critical perspective that carefully considers the
ideologies they uphold. Sex-critical approaches argue it is as important to
critique ‘normal’ sexual practices (heterosexual, ‘vanilla’ intercourse) as it
is “‘extreme’ or potentially ‘harmful’ bodily practices” because “the field
of sexuality is a modern invention shot through with the normalizing
energies of its constructing disciplines” (Downing 2013:95). In other
words, ‘normal’ sexual practices are as much a construction as “extreme”
practices and are equally shaped by the various discourses of sexuality. In
this way, a sex-critical lens can allow for the exploration of literature that
seeks to understand the links between women’s experiences of
 Normalizing Dark Desires? 89

consumption of both cosmetic surgery and pornography and suggests they

are empowered (not harmed) by these practices without simply being
dismissed by those theorists who feel that pornography needs to be
eliminated from society. Given that it is unlikely that society will shift
away from hypersexualization, a sex-critical approach allows for the study
of the ways that the sexualization of culture can be more critically
consumed and perhaps be empowering in the way that Tisdale suggests.

It is alleged that the concept of empowerment has been of importance to

women’s efforts to improve their sexual self-esteem in society. Notions of
empowerment are problematic because, as Gill (2012: 743) notes, they are
mediated by a cultural context wherein “we are confronted with images of
‘empowered sexuality’” that really objectify women. In other words,
empowerment is “intricately entwined” with sexism. This means, she
argues, that, “‘sexual empowerment’ – or at least its proxies:
‘adventurousness’ or ‘confidence’ – has itself become a compulsory part of
normative, hetero-sexy, young female subjectivity – part of a ‘technology
of sexiness’ that has replaced virginity or virtue as a dominant currency of
feminine desirability (whilst not altogether displacing earlier valuations
and double standards)” (Gill 2012:743). And, it should be noted that these
normative prescriptions are not only aimed at young women. As Marshall
(2012; 2014) points out, older adult or ‘third age’ identities are also
subject to such constructions. Given the discourses that promote and
reinforce these ideas, it is difficult to ascertain whether there is a ‘feminist
quality’ associated with such experiences, despite assertions by women
themselves to the contrary.

In the next section we explore this notion in light of the consumption of

cosmetic surgery and pornography, paying attention to the historical
contexts that have shaped our understanding of both in light of feminism.

Challenging Discourses: Feminism and Empowerment

in Cosmetic Surgery and Pornography
Understanding the consumption of cosmetic surgery from a feminist
perspective can be challenging and this has been a key site of debate
amongst scholars in recent decades. On the one hand, feminists have been
uniquely positioned to critique patriarchal discourses that promote a
beauty ideal for women and to urge women to push against the
objectification of their bodies in the media. On the other hand, feminist
scholarship has also worked to recognize the many ways that women
90 Chapter Five

exercise agency over their bodies and negotiate their own place within
society, paying attention to the instances where reality does not necessarily
reflect popular discourse. Given different perspectives, how are we to
understand women’s consumption of cosmetic surgical practices? Are
women victims of discourses that shape their understanding of their
identities or are they able to mediate those discourses to construct an
alternative subjectivity for themselves?

As many have argued, the construction and pathologization of women’s

bodies by medical discourses have served to reinforce and perhaps even
redefine beauty standards and ideals. The medicalization of women’s
bodies and sexuality has served to support the idea that women should
alter their natural bodies to adhere to socio-cultural constructions that
suggest they should look a certain way to be ‘healthy’ and thereby
sexually desirable. The definitions of healthy bodies are reinforced by
pornography when women’s bodies are simply objects used by men for
their own pleasure, a definition that has been reinforced by the wider
medical discourses that, over the twentieth century, evolved to address the
emerging “healthism” of everyday life – that suggests that “definitions of
health are saturated in cultural meaning. Health, therefore, has been
defined by the ability to look or act in whatever way was constructed as
normal” (Penny-Light et al 2015:4) and today, normality is inextricably
linked to the sexualization of culture in which pornography is a key
ideology.

The willingness of surgeons to reinforce this cultural construct is not new.

In 1991, the chair of the Division of Plastic Surgery at the University of
Toronto argued that the performance of cosmetic surgery was essential to
society. He noted that:
Our society places a great deal of emphasis on two things – a certain level
of physical conformity and youth. Most of our esthetic procedures fall into
those two groups. People who have a relatively ugly nose may have a
problem coping with life. They may be very well balanced and well
equipped, but they feel that the first thing everybody sees is their nose and
nobody recognizes their character. Surgeons can do them a big service. Or
you might have a woman in her 50s trying to find work in the job market.
Whether we want to or not, we often discriminate against people on the
basis of their age. These people are often extremely pleased [with the
results of a cosmetic procedure] – more thankful, it often seems, than the
person for whom you remove a melanoma (Keenan 1991:1035).

This is an important point when considering the connections between the

 Normalizing Dark Desires? 91

increasing medicalization of sexuality and the connections of these

practices to pornography and to women’s understanding of themselves in
both consuming cosmetic surgical procedures and pornography.

Conclusion
It seems to us that the issue of consuming pornography and cosmetic
surgical practices is a complicated one. While there is no doubt that the
context in which people consume pornography has changed because of the
emergence of a porn industry and the ability of technology to provide
access to 24/7, there are other factors at play. We know, for instance, that
beauty has always been normalized culturally and women have found
ways to live up to those prescriptions or transgress them and resist
dominant cultural ideologies, especially those associated with factors as
gender, race, disability, poverty, the family or sexuality. Women have
done this in myriad ways, depending on the historical moment in which
they live, as a challenge to underlying power relations. In the case of
women’s sexuality, the dominant ideology is patriarchy, which supports
cultural hegemony by creating expectations for women as a social group –
some women are able to meet and maintain the ideal while others are not.

Is the consumption of pornography and the pursuit of cosmetic procedures

evidence of transgression or conformity? The history of cosmetic surgery
seems to support the idea that women can (or should) alter their bodies to
adhere to the patriarchal conventions in pornography. For example,
surgical procedures such as labiaplasty and breast augmentation are
commonplace in pornographic bodies thereby normalizing such imagery
for women and calling into question the appearance of a ‘normal’ sexual
female body. Despite these surgically altered representations of women’s
bodies, many see their engagement with pornography and medical
procedures as positive and empowering, enabling them to acknowledge
and even celebrate their ‘dark desires’. This seems to suggest that women
have claimed sexual subjectivity for themselves. Indeed, this
contemporary context in which technologies and medicine converge
appears to fit with third wave feminist thinking that embraces women’s
individualism and ability to be empowered by their sexuality, act as sexual
agents, and identify their own sexual pleasures. As feminists, we would
like to assert that these practices are active and intentional instances of
women transgressing traditional patriarchal norms. Yet, the liberatory and
reproductive elements of these discourses and the implications for women
as a social group seem to be undone when we apply Downing’s “sex-
92 Chapter Five

critical” approach and when we apply Gill’s questions about what

constitutes empowerment. We are still left with the question of whether
women are able to truly control their own bodies and sexual desires?
While a liberatory discourse is implied in women’s consumption of
pornography and medical practices (discourses often reinforced by
feminist movements), such consumption seems to us to paradoxically
strengthen traditional patriarchal views of women’s sexuality and
promotes that women alter their bodies medically, inherently limiting their
sexual subjectivity. This is clearly an area of inquiry that demands future
attention and research.

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 CHAPTER SIX

OPEN WIDE AND SAY AAAHH!

FEMALE EJACULATION IN CONTEMPORARY
PORNOGRAPHY

REBECCA SAUNDERS

Female ejaculation epitomises the paradox of orgasm as both transcendent

and anchoring. As its infamous epithet la petite mort suggests, orgasm is
an exquisite moment not only of physical release but of moving beyond
one’s subjectivity; cultural conceptualisations of female ejaculation over
the last fifty years have borrowed heavily from this notion of “self-
shattering” (Jagose 2013: 33). In the proliferating self-help books,
titillating magazine articles, scientific papers and educational and erotic
films on the subject, it has been associated variously with emotional
catharsis and with the psychologically beneficial ability to “let go”
(Sundahl 2004: 21). Its depiction as an essential but neglected part of
female sexual identity has become bound to the notion that consumption
of the “best” types of pleasure and, concomitantly, of the necessary
accoutrements of dildos and vibrators, is an assertion of (sexual) power.
The Lovehoney Poweful Mini G-Spot Vibrator, G-Spot Waterproof
Realistic Dildo Vibrator with Triple Tickler, the G-Lover Vibrating Cock
Ring for G-Spot Stimulation, the Annabelle Knight Ooooh! Powerful G-
Spot Vibrator, the We-Vibe 4 Plus App Only Smartphone Control Clitoral
and G-Spot Couple Vibrator, the Bendable Extra Quiet 10 Function
Realistic Silicone Vibrator 6.5 Inch and the Lelo Ida Rechargeable Remote
Control Clitoral and G-Spot Massager are just a few of the products
designed to produce ejaculation. (Lovehoney http://www.lovehoney.co
.uk) The multitude of self-help books that teach women how to ejaculate
invariably link a right to procuring the “best”, most intense, “hotter,
wetter” (Jansen 2013) orgasms to a responsibility. Women should “fully
and proudly embrace [their] sexual birthright” (Pokras and Talltrees 2009:
96 Chapter Six

2) say the authors of Female Ejaculation, Unleash the Ultimate G-Spot

Orgasm. Ejaculation becomes a postfeminist duty.

Yet, its depiction as an act of politicised, feminist freedom sees female

ejaculation simultaneously gesture towards orgasm’s status not as a
fleeting suspension of existential meaning, but as a moment which defines
and anchors, that marks one’s allegiance to a political and sexual identity.
In this vein, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze consider orgasm an
instance of normative allegiance, the latter describing it as “the only means
for a person or a subject to ‘find itself again’ in a process that surpasses it”
(Deleuze 1997:190). In her summary of this post-structuralist position in
Orgasmology, Annmarie Jagose similarly calls it a “reterritorialization of
the subject disarranged by desire” (Jagose 2013:6). As female ejaculation
becomes increasingly popular in pornography, with countless sites devoted
entirely to its representation and most others including it as a searchable
category, it has been inserted into an ever more dominant cultural genre
which uses orgasm as the locus of definitive gender meanings and sexual
difference. This chapter demonstrates how female ejaculation’s very
associations with profound physical and emotional release can be co-opted
in pornography to define and control the female sexual body.

The Reappearance of the Female Orgasm

In Linda Williams’ famous claim that the male cum shot is a fetishized
sign for the un-representable moment of female orgasm, lies the
assumption that, for pornography, the existence of one’s sexuality depends
on its visibility. Pornography subsumes the multisensory physical
experience of sex into the visual alone, with the viewer expected to believe
that the man’s visual act of ejaculating onto a woman’s face or body is
preferable to the tactile experience of intercourse. The pleasure of the
penis is easy to visually capture, in its hardness, its capacity to penetrate
and its unambiguous moment of orgasm. Conversely, that the clitoris,
labia, urethral sponge, G-spot and so on are flush with or inside the
woman’s body arguably makes showing its pleasure more difficult in such
a visual genre, with the female orgasm itself shrouded in possibilities of
fakery, conjuring the dreaded spectre of the sexually inadequate man. The
tangibility of male orgasm which pornography uses to define masculinity
as powerful and superior concomitantly marginalises its female equivalent,
formulating it, in its “invisibility” as passive or non-existent. Though in
Williams’ words, pornography is “constantly soliciting and trying to find a
visual equivalent for the invisible moments of clitoral orgasm,” (Williams
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 97

1999: 113) the apparent invisibility of this event has seen pornography’s
evolution of an ever more phallocentric mode of sexual representation.

In both mainstream productions from companies such as Naughty America

and Bang Bros as well as those designed to be more representative of
female pleasure like joymii.com and X-art.com, women in heterosexual
and ostensibly lesbian porn appear to take the greatest pleasure in those
acts designed to maintain erections and ensure male gratification. It is a
criticism often levelled at mainstream porn featuring two or more women
that their behaviour demonstrates a bias towards a male viewer, with
women frequently penetrating their throats with dildos when there are no
men in the scene, in a replication of a male/female power dynamic
frequent in heterosexual products. The oscillation between blow jobs and
rapid penetration that forms the tedious staple of mainstream hard core
invariably produces enthusiastic moans and endless “yeses” from the
female performers. The ejaculating penis in particular, the driving force of
the pornographic narrative, has become an endlessly repeated symbol of
elemental sexual pleasure. In the ubiquitous money shot finale, the
woman’s enraptured closed eyes and grateful gobbling of semen defines
the man’s orgasm as proof of both individuals’ pleasure. It is extremely
common to watch a heterosexual film that features no oral sex on women
at all; if it is included, it functions only as a token nod to macho sexual
skill in no way comparing to the diegetic dominance of the blow job.
Women receiving head is not a searchable term on the free sites through
which the majority of porn is consumed, such as the Pornhub Network
which is visited fifty million times a day worldwide (http://www.pornhub.
com/insights/2014-year-in-review/). The majority of women who people
these sites appear therefore as consummate “phallic girls” (McRobbie
2009: 83), their sexual pleasure apparently deriving from the very same
lengthy blow jobs and anal penetration that their male co-stars request:
female equality is demonstrated through showing their sexual desires to be
a perfect mirror of their male counterparts. Female pleasure emerges as
both a constant and something without end and therefore without climax;
women’s apparent sexual saturation renders their orgasm an irrelevance.

If the difficulty of visually representing female orgasm is thought to

contribute to the centrality of male gratification from which the genre’s
associations with phallo-centrism and misogyny largely derive, female
ejaculation in pornography becomes extremely important. Its materiality
offers a powerful way for the marginality of female pleasure to be
overturned, constituting a vigorous rival to heteronormative hard core’s
stalwart, the male cum shot. Potentially, it can clarify and break out from
98 Chapter Six

pornography’s rigid definitions of masculinity and femininity which posits

the ejaculating man as a powerful, superior sexual subject, and the woman
as submissive, passive and porous. In its messiness and projectile
assertiveness, it is a male-identified type of pleasure; potentially, it offers a
defiant rejection of societal parameters of acceptable female sexual
expression. The visibility of female ejaculation sees female sexual pleasure
gain an aesthetic and narrative priority, with films featuring this type of
orgasm often demonstrating a shift from the customary emphasis on male
gratification. The woman receives head as well as giving it and the male
actors and director are poised, as they usually are for the man’s
ejaculation, for the now significant moment of visible female orgasm.

In Elegant Angel’s film Swallow My Squirt 4, for example, female

ejaculation is explicitly depicted as a superior ejaculatory mode which
fractures the superiority of the male orgasm and broadens the scope of
what female sexual pleasure can look like in mainstream, male-produced,
hetero porn. The film begins with Jenna Presley and Sasha Grey
aggressively instructing their male co-star as to how to make the third
woman, Sierra Sin, come: “Did you hear me, I said fuck her […] Fuck her
harder […] Put it back in [her] […] Make that pussy come!” (http://
www.pornoxo.com/videos/1804/swallow-my-squirt-with-sasha-jenna-and-
sierra.html).

Throughout the film, the man’s principal function is to generate

ejaculatory orgasms for two of the women by penetrating them from the
angles they demand, stopping and starting on their command. The
women’s shouts of “Your coming is so fucking beautiful” and “I’m going
to come all over your sweet faces,” form the film’s soundscape,
emphasising their capacity to externally demonstrate their sexual pleasure.
The man becomes a means to the women’s climactic ends, female pleasure
forming the very foundation of the film. Further, the ability of Presley and
Sin to ejaculate repeatedly sees them exceed the male orgasm, highlighting
the paucity of its finitude. Positioned triadically above Sasha Grey’s face,
Presley, Sin and the male actor ejaculate, the semen literally and
symbolically invisible in the midst of the final voluminous ejaculations of
the women. The film’s end is a powerful assertion of both the female
orgasm’s equivalence in significance and the concomitant devaluation of
the male orgasm.

Noticeable in many of Elegant Angel’s SwallowSquirt series is a taking up

too of those gestures of dominance and infliction that have become such
thoroughly embedded aspects of male ejaculation in heterosexual porn. By
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 99

positioning oneself over another’s face to ejaculate, pulling the recipient’s

hair and demanding obedience, women fracture the naturalised basis of
male sexual supremacy. In another film from this series, Annie Cruz sits
atop a sofa, shouting at Sasha Grey to “drink [her] dirty juices”
(http://xxxbunker.com/sasha_grey_and_annie_cruz_have_threesome) in an
aggressive assertion of her own physicality, taking ownership too of any
attempt to frame her overt shows of sexual pleasure as unsightly. After one
ejaculation she commands Grey to “suck it,” referring to her clitoris and
powerfully thrusts her vagina forward into Grey’s face. If women too can
assert or inflict the proof of their pleasure on another, these signs of power
which have become so tightly bound to porn’s portrayal of male sexuality,
are seen to be free floating and equally appropriable by women. Female
ejaculation can provide, then, a powerful way of overturning the male
monopoly on pleasure and power in pornography.

The Problem of Visibility

However, the very visibility of female ejaculation that can give female
pleasure this newfound centrality locates it within disciplinary traditions
that understand female sexuality as something to be definitively
understood through visual analysis. The notion that, as Elisabeth Grosz
puts it, attempts to represent female orgasm can so easily “collaborate with
those cultural forces bent on making it yield its secret truth,” (Grosz 1995:
189) is particularly pertinent to female ejaculation. The shifting
suppositions in the last fifty years regarding its existence, constituent
biochemical make up, site of issue, pleasurability and so on, have endowed
female ejaculation and the related area of the G-spot with the allure of the
evasive. Nancy Tuana demonstrates, in her comparisons between the
anatomical drawings of male and female pleasure organs, the ways in
which important elements of female sexual pleasure, such as the clitoris,
G-spot, urethral and perineal sponge and so on, are erased (Tuana 2004).
The wilfully blurred distinctions between the small amount of milky,
prostatic fluid produced by the Skene glands and the more voluminous
amounts of watery fluid produced from the bladder has similarly been
used to depict female ejaculation as ambiguously hovering between a
worrying approximation of masculinity and un-sexualised, “dirty” urine.

The controversial amendment to the UK Audio-visual Media Services

Regulations in December 2014 which banned the selling of pornography
which features female ejaculation on the grounds that it is
indistinguishable from urolagnia demonstrates the continuing juridical-
100 Chapter Six

cultural manufacture of female sexual pleasure’s incomprehensibility. It

shows too the direct link between this fabricated esotericism and the
enforced invisibility of types of female sexual expression. Educational and
erotic videos from the late twentieth century onward bolster this idea of
ejaculatory orgasms as mysterious. Self-termed sex educator Deborah
Sundahl describes the G-spot as the “missing piece of women’s sexual
anatomy” (Sundahl 2003: 3). Borrowing from its status as the “sacred
spot” in Westernised Eastern philosophies, female ejaculation’s
mysterious power has long been associated with spirituality. The Female
Ejaculation Society’s promotional video similarly instructs the viewer to
“learn to understand the hidden treasures of the vagina” (http://
isismedia.org/). This cultural construction of female ejaculation as taboo
and enigmatic makes it ripe for pornographic probing. It becomes, then, a
particularly powerful symbol of the unknowability of female sexuality and
therefore especially vulnerable to the imperative of unearthing the “secret
truths” of female sexuality. This conjunction of female ejaculation as both
emblematic of women’s profound sexual inscrutability and the only
definitively visible proof of female sexual pleasure sees it deeply
imbricated in the overlapping disciplinary discourses of both medicine and
cinema.

As Ludmilla Jordanova explores in her book Sexual Visions, from the

eighteenth century, medicine developed a particularly voyeuristic
approach to the female body. In their perceived alliance with wild,
irrational nature, women came to be viewed as “repositories of natural
laws to be revealed and understood” (Jordanova 1989: 41). Relatedly,
female sexuality was seen as profoundly defined through the developing
“principle of legibility,” (Jordanova 1989: 52) which said that the body
could be definitively understood through reading its visual signs.
Jordanova cites the bejewelled, invitingly recumbent female anatomical
wax models of the time, tellingly called Venuses, as an example of
medicine’s sexualised perceptive mode. These teaching aids demonstrated
a burgeoning perception of the female body as something to be
voyeuristically penetrated with scalpel and eye alike. The importance of
visibility in medically understanding the body deepens with the
development of the microscope, kymograph and X-ray.

The growing visuality of medicine joins with the medicalisation of

emerging visual technologies. Proto-cinematic apparatuses of the late
nineteenth century, fascinated with recording and reproducing movement,
take on medicine’s objective of visual veracity. Of the physiological
studies of photographers Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge,
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 101

for example, Lisa Cartwright says they are “deeply indebted to physiology,
both practically and ideologically” (Cartwright 1995: xii). Linda Williams
also notes that such studies of bodily movement are, like the medical
discipline with which they overlap, gendered: “[Muybridge’s] ostensibly
scientific discourse on the human body immediately elicits surplus
aestheticism in the fetishization of its women subjects” (Williams 1999:
41). The allure of female ejaculation for pornography derives from the
medico-cinematic notion that visibility produces definitive truths of the
female sexual body. Female ejaculation in pornography takes on an
indexical significance, therefore, drawing together the disciplinary
objectives of both medicine and cinema to constitute this type of orgasm
as the locus of female sexuality.

Thus, pornography’s attitude towards female ejaculation is principally

focused on its status as a sign of truth. The notion of the “real” is asserted
on every site which features this type of orgasm. RealSquirt.com describes
female ejaculate as “clear liquid flowing from the ladies like the perfect
liquid proof of pleasure” (http://www.realsquirt.com/home.php). Squirting
Chicks.com declares that “These are all 100% REAL ORGASMIC
SQUIRTS that simply can’t be faked!” (http://ww2.squirtingchicks.com).
Sabrina, an independent producer of her own films, bizarrely describes her
own experiences with a similar emphasis on veracity: “I'm the only real
18-year-old amateur who can squirt over ten feet! That’s right; my
orgasms are real and my pictures and videos prove it” (http://www.
sabrinasquirts.com). Porn’s aforementioned construction of female
sexuality as something which is entirely aligned to the vagaries of male
desire makes female sexual pleasure simultaneously guaranteed and
hauntingly uncertain. This novelty sexual number is marketed on the basis
that it provides incontrovertible proof of the woman’s enjoyment.

Pornography’s representations of female ejaculation also fall within the

medical rhetoric that has become an increasingly explicit element of
pornography, both in the medical niche subgenre often termed “gynoporn”
and in the more diffuse clinical attitude towards female bodies
characterised by the use of medical instruments and physical probing of
the body. This replicates a broader cultural perception of this orgasm as
something which should be understood clinically. The title of a 2010 self-
help book Show Me Where it Squirts!, The Hotter, Wetter, Dripping Guide
to Female Ejaculation and Toe-Curling Orgasms, aligns the sense of
ejaculation as sexy fun with a visit to the doctor. Its description – and
presence – on the NHS website also portrays it as something to be
understood medically, referred to as “an uncommon condition where a
102 Chapter Six

woman expels clear fluid from her vagina during sex […] Part of the
embarrassing conditions series” (http://www.nhs.uk/video/Pages/Female
ejaculation.aspx). This notion that female ejaculation is a phenomenon
which requires objective study is parodically replicated by pornography.

In films featuring female ejaculation, women are customarily positioned

with their legs dramatically splayed, if not on a gurney in stirrups, then
laid out in a way that hyperbolically replicates the position of a medical
exam. The title sequence of films on the site FakeHospital.com - many of
which end with the female actress being manually made to ejaculate –
feature a grainy, monochrome hidden camera recording of a woman going
to the toilet. A deep, distorted voiceover states “Trust me, I’m a doctor”
(http://fakehospital.com). In the films themselves, the male actor, wearing
a white coat and stethoscope, performs the stylized gestures of the medical
exam, feeling the pulse, peering into eyes, listening to the heart, inspecting
the throat and so on. The porn production company Brazzers makes the
clinical approach to female ejaculation explicit in one of the films from
their site She’sGonnaSquirt.com. Three men in lab coats watch the porn
performer Cytherea from inside an observation room, apparently charting
the “lighting of her cortex” (http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?
viewkey=820351725) as she ejaculates. When her ejaculate hits the glass,
the doctors shout in surprise, telling each other to ‘collect some samples of
that’ to make “ground-breaking history.” Eventually, one doctor enters her
laboratory room, saying “I had to get a closer look at this specimen.” Just
as, in Ludmilla Jordanova’s view, the “ensemble of procedures and tests”
are crucial to “corroborating the diagnostic act” and “reduc[ing] the sense
of violation” (Jordanova 1989: 179) that come with a doctor’s intimate
touching and questioning, so here they provide the medicalised
representation of female ejaculation with its titillating frisson of violation.

Pornographic representations of ejaculation often focus on quantifying or

measuring the fluid itself. The now well-known site Kink.com frequently
has women compete with each other, squirting on cardboard mats so that
the distance the fluid travels can be calculated: “whoever squirts the
furthest wins,” says the naked female umpire in one film (http://www.porn
hub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=419909666). The star of FreakyDoctor
.com often collects the fluid in measuring jugs, with vague statements
about sending them off to “the lab” for tests. The fluid itself is also
focused on as communicating the meaning of the women’s pleasure, with
close ups of wet sheets and sofas accompanied by exclamations of its
voluminousness and wetness. Such representations purposefully cast off
the eroticism of orgasm in favour of the precision of a scientific, objective
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 103

understanding. They are reminiscent of the mid-twentieth century sexological

studies of Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, where the laboratory
experiments on muscular contractions and cardio-electrical activity during
orgasm offered apparently transparent recordings that “speak, in an almost
unmediated voice, the body’s truth” (Jagose 2013: 169-70). The
implication is that an important understanding of female sexuality derives
from, albeit faux, medical analysis of the biological mechanics of sexual
pleasure. Whereas the softcore porn site Beautiful Agony is not alone in
situating the meaningful visibility of the female orgasm in the subjective,
individualised experience expressed in a woman’s face - they state on their
homepage that “[E]roticism […] rests not in naked flesh and sexual
illustration, but engagement with the face” (http://beautifulagony.com/
public/main.php?page=about) - the medicalisation of female ejaculation
seeks to strip away the act’s associations with the subjective and
emotional. Instead it offers the “capture and transcription of orgasm in an
adamantly non-arousing mode” (Jagose 2013: 171). The data gathering,
measuring and inspecting circuitously arouse the viewer on the de-
eroticised basis that they provide scientific female “facts”. Pornography’s
alliance of the visual and the medical appears to offer tantalising access to
an uncovered truth of female physicality, presenting female ejaculate as
the tangible physiology of female desire.

Disciplinary Depth
Intertwined with the medicalised notion of visuality, is that of depth,
rooted in the eighteenth century medical model of knowledge as “based on
looking deeply into and thereby intellectually mastering nature [and the
body]” (Jordanova 1989: 50). William Hunter’s illustrations in the 1774
textbook The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus testify to the
sexualised bent of medicine’s penetrative perceptive mode, Jordanova
describing it as “promot[ing] the actual unveiling of women’s bodies
[removing successive layers of organs] to render visible the emblematic
core of their sex in the organs of generation” (Jordanova 1989: 45, 50).
Female ejaculation lends itself to with particular potency because bringing
it about usually requires stimulation of the G-spot located inside the body.
Ejaculation’s links to the interior and the vaginal, rather than the external
and clitoral, sees it gain further associations with a spiritual depth of
sexual expression, attaining the status of the ultimate, revelatory issue of
femininity. In what Helen O’Connell bemoans as the psycho-morphology
which has “since classical and early modern medical mappings of the
body, persistently divided female erotic capacities against themselves,”
104 Chapter Six

(Hutson, Anderson and Plenter 1998: 159) the vaginal orgasm of female
ejaculation is presented as expressing a more profound bodily truth than its
clitoral counterpart. Where the clitoral orgasm has become associated with
greater female sexual autonomy and the consumer power of the
independent sexual woman, “exceed[ing] the reproductive economy and
heterosexualizing complementarity that privileged the vagina,” (Jagose
2013:25) female ejaculation’s popularity sees a return to the concept of
biologically embedded femininity. Borrowing from the notion of the
authoritative clinical figure who must dig down into the female body to
retrieve its hidden facts, pornography’s approach to female ejaculation
places a great rhetorical and gestural emphasis on penetration and depth.
For the visible indicators of a woman’s pleasure to be produced for the
camera, she must be excavated.

On sites such as female-anatomy.net and gyno-exam.org, a medicalised

emphasis on penetrating the depth of women’s bodies to produce
ejaculation is common. Ejaculation in the films made for ExclusiveClub.
com invariably begin with the doctor opening the woman’s vagina with a
speculum and shining a light inside, illuminating the lump of the G-spot
and the wet, pink vaginal walls. He “explains” to the woman as he inserts
a speculum, “We can see not only your vagina outside, but inside too”
(http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=2053416537).
Pornography’s preoccupation with producing readable exterior signs by
burrowing into the female body is rendered explicit. The female
performers are often given mirrors and encouraged to visually study their
own insides, suggesting that a woman’s understanding of her sexuality
should be primarily visual and biologically led. The opening up of
women’s orifices with speculums, fingers and penises is a proliferating
pornographic aesthetic of which female ejaculation is a potent expression.
As the camera zooms in to get these hyper-close up, “inside” shots of the
woman’s body, the camera and medical instruments work together to
provide infallible visible signs of female sexuality. Here, pornography’s
medicalised representation of female ejaculation makes use of the clinical
primacy of vision, positing what Foucault calls the “pure […] observing
gaze” that has “access to the truth of things” (Foucault 2003: 131-2). Lisa
Cartwright’s description of visual technologies as “extending the
observer’s epistemological domain into previously uncharted territories”
(Cartwright 1995:23), perfectly dovetails with female ejaculation’s
construction as expressing a deep and hidden aspect of female sexuality.
By bringing forth this fluid to the light of the camera, a more profound
aspect of female sexuality is apparently unearthed for analysis and
definition.
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 105

This alliance of visual recording and measuring show these pornographic

representations as regulatory, a contemporary erotic equivalent of what
Cartwright describes as the cinematic tracking of the body which did not
simply document movement, but which “regulated, disciplined, and
transformed the body studied,” conceptualising it as “in need of [medical]
regulation and control” (Cartwright 1995:20, xi). She describes cinema’s
“long history of bodily analysis and surveillance in medicine and science”
as forming its status as “a cultural technology for the discipline and
management of the human body” (Cartwright 1995:3). Photographic
classifications of criminals and the mentally ill, where visuality functioned
diagnostically, demonstrated what Joan Copjec similarly describes as the
totalizing social control of the cinematic apparatus. The development of
sexology from the nineteenth century, joins the medical and scientifically
visual with the sexual and begins the process Foucault describes in The
History of Sexuality, where orgasm emerges as a distinctly disciplinary
phenomenon of use in the taxonomical foundations of the judicial, medical
and psychological. Ejaculation as a concrete marker of sexual identity
provides the tantalising opportunity to teleologically trace the “meaning”
of a woman’s sexuality from analysis of their newly quantifiable bodily
responses; pornography’s medicalised representation of these orgasms
constitute quasi-clinical visual records that seek to regulate female
sexuality.

The Pathological Orgasm

What truths does pornography trace, then, from this projectile pleasure
and, in its search for veracity, how is the ejaculating female body
regulated? Its visible expulsion of fluid has seen it associated with healthy
release. The pornstar-cum-performer and sexologist Annie Sprinkle links
it with good mental health, describing ejaculation’s crucial role in
“personal transformation, physical and emotional healing, self-realization
[and] spiritual growth” (Sundahl 2004). With a similar emphasis on its
liberating potential, SquirtingChicks.com calls it “the ultimate release,
there’s simply nothing hotter than a girl who can cum floods and floods of
sweet pussy juice!” (http://ww2.squirtingchicks.com/1/?nats=MTAwMD
AwMjI6NjoxMjY,0,0,0,0). Pornography’s medicalised context bolsters
the notion that this type of orgasm is bound up with ideas about female
sexual health. In gynoporn as well as less explicitly medicalised films, the
woman is asked a series of questions that locate her orgasm within her
overall bodily wellbeing. On the films of the aforementioned site
FreakyDoctor.com, the “doctor” asks how much the woman drinks,
106 Chapter Six

frequency of intercourse, and whether she experiences pleasure or pain

during various probings in a way that aligns the eroticism of the woman’s
body with her general health (http://www.pornhub.com/view_video
.php?viewkey=1557917398). He will often removes tampons and take the
woman’s temperature anally and squirt water into her vagina “in case there
is an infection” (http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1860
83907) before going on to stimulate her, laying the foundation for an idea
of female ejaculation as something which must necessarily be expelled to
ensure female sexual health. “Let’s get it out of you now” (http://www
.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=571247494) is a common refrain.

However, in its very establishment as something whose emission

guarantees a woman’s health, female sexuality is constructed as something
which requires cleansing. Representations of female ejaculation make use
of and rejuvenate centuries old conceptions of female genitalia and
sexuality as pathological, the site of “rank fecundity and generation”
(Miller 1997: 103). The perception of ejaculation as expressing the
deepest, most natural aspect of femininity is used to define a sense of
innate femaleness as excessive, shockingly corporeal, abject and so,
paradoxically, fundamentally unnatural. Its representation within, as has
been seen, varying degrees of faux clinical analysis, posits ejaculation as a
bizarre spectacle. Its voluminousness and the extreme physical response it
can provoke links it to centuries-old ideas of female sexuality as
dangerously avid and unwieldy. Delving into the deepest recesses of
women’s reproductive organs, with its religio-historical associations as the
site of original sin, female ejaculation is both a sign of woman’s dangerous
sexual appetite and the means with which to temporarily cleanse her.

In a justification of its own medico-cinematic scrutiny, pornography

presents female ejaculation as out of control and hysterical. Site names
emphasise its frightening uncontrollability: Stop Or I’ll Squirt [sic], OMG
I Squirted, She’s Gonna Squirt [sic] and Squirt A Mania. Porn star
Cytherea, famous for the voluminousness of her emissions, epitomizes the
portrayal of orgasming women as frenzied, writhing, screaming and
rolling her eyes in ape demonic possession. Such performances resemble
the neurological motion studies of nineteenth century neurologist Charcot,
whose patients at the Salpetriere asylum were recorded to show the
supposed outlandish physical signs of hysteria. Pornographic representations
of female ejaculation function as such records of the ill, the emphasis on
hysterical responses offering this type of orgasm as a reflex through which
can be glimpsed women’s physiological and evolutionary hard-wiring as
sexually rapacious and unconstrained. As Linda Williams states, the truth
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 107

of the body is thought to come from those uncontrollable confessions of

pleasure, so that the more unrestrained the orgasm seems, the truer the
visual record is thought to be: “Hard core desires assurance that it is
witnessing not the voluntary performance of feminine pleasure, but its
involuntary confession” (Williams 1999:32). Such representations
constitute what Cartwright calls “cinema of repulsion,” (Cartwright 1995:14)
defined as follows:
The viewer receives pleasure from observing often aberrant and repulsive
physiological processes, [bodies] […] contorting to escape social control of
visual classification […] [and] normative bodily conventions (for example,
visual beauty and recognisability) […] pleasure in the image hing[ing] on
an enjoyment of the spectacle of this refusal of representation, or on the
thrill of repulsion. (Cartwright 1995:14)

If female ejaculation can function as a violent assertion of female sexual

parity, a breaking out of the confines of porn’s often rigid parameters of
acceptable female sexual expression, so equally the ejaculating female
body can be appropriated to exist as an example of female pathology, the
contortions of the orgasm itself placing it within a regulatory visual
classification of illness. The often exaggeratedly frenzied moment of
female ejaculation itself is contrasted with the wider medicalised context,
a flash of hysterical subjectivity in an otherwise controlled male world of
objective science. In contrast to the woman’s hysterical response, the man
remains unmoved and unemotional, an authoritative bringer about of
objective, scientific truth of which the woman can only be a passive
recipient.

The orgasm is frequently depicted as disgusting. The popular term “squirt”

portrays the act and fluid as accidental, leaky and incomplete. The male
cum “shot” is an emission of a finite fluid, an affirmation of a monolithic
sexual self. The denigrated woman takes on the taint of semen’s gross
viscosity, converting male ejaculate from a sign of the man’s orgasmic
loss of control and subservience to desire into masculine omnipotence.
“Squirting,” on the other hand, is not a cleansing Kristevan expulsion. She
does not purify herself through expulsion but is instead covered in and
implicated in her waste product, often encouraged to lick and sniff it in a
way that would be unthinkable for a male porn actor to do with his semen.
The site SwallowSquirt.com proffers its wares: “depraved girls chug down
gushes of female squirt!” (http://www.swallowsquirt.com/videos.php).
SluttySquirters.com instructs their viewers to “Get your raincoats out […]
With her big fat tits and sweet pink pussy, Felony was the perfect name for
108 Chapter Six

this hot squirting slut” (http://ww2.sluttysquirters.com/1/?nats=1003015;

10080405:schdpartners:sluttysquirters,0,0,0,0,).

If female ejaculation can potentially be used as a “refusal” of female

sexual passivity, pornography ensures that its most dominant type of
representation is one which defines the act as disgusting and laughable.
The coming woman is caught, the expulsion of fluid necessary to purify
herself is simultaneously that which asserts her innate dirtiness. The ability
to squirt defines the woman as inferior, a sign of both the weakness of her
sex made highly visible and her unbounded edaciousness. In his
fascinating work The Origins of Sex, Dabhoiwala describes how the notion
of the ravenous womb, the sexually insatiable woman is profoundly etched
into our history and culture and how, partly through the emergence of the
male libertine in the eighteenth century, this long-established notion of the
insatiable woman gives way to a new perception of women as sexually
passive and vulnerable to violent “seduction” (Dabhoiwala 2012). These
oppositional ideas overlap in the figure of the ejaculating woman, who is
seen as both dangerously sexual and therefore, necessarily, to be rendered
passive.

The depiction of the female ejaculator as hysterical and the liquid as a sign
of illness constructs a power hierarchy between the authoritative (faux-
medical) male who can read the signs of the body, and the passive, naïve
woman who is divorced from understanding the formulated strangeness of
her own sexual body. While the men are presented as possessing a
thaumaturgical healing touch of sorts - only they possess the ability to
remove the polluted fluid - pornography uses female ejaculation to deprive
the woman of jurisdiction over her own body. In an educational film for
Kink.com, a woman sits between two men. She is never spoken to directly
and, as one man introduces the other, there is no suggestion that she may
be an authority on her own body: “We brought the penultimate expert on
the topic [of ejaculation], Tommy Knox, also known as the Squirt
Whisperer. And we also have our lovely model” (http://www.pornhub.
com/view_video.php?viewkey=749285093). Wearing black latex gloves,
the man refers to which body parts he is touching and what effect it should
produce without talking to or making any reference to the woman other
than in abstract terms of body parts. When he states with one particular
gesture, “That will usually make you squirt pretty well,” the camera
anxiously focuses on the woman’s vagina, the woman masturbating
accordingly to demonstrate the correct functioning of her sexual body.
How she feels at any point during the demonstration is never gleaned; the
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 109

idea that she would lead the exploration is, in this pornographic world,
ridiculous.

The website SquirtingChicks.com describes it with a similar emphasis of

women’s ignorance regarding their own sexuality: “It’s an amazing gift
that many girls possess, but only a few actually know their bodies well
enough to do it” (http://ww2.squirtingchicks.com/1/?nats=MTAwMDA
wMjI6NjoxMjY,0,0,0,0). Similarly, the “doctor” of ExecutiveClub.com
asks one woman “Ah, I see this is your first gyno exam […] Are you
listening to your heart for the first time in your life? Do you know which
side your heart is on? […] You are learning very quickly” (http://www.
pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1235386356). This power dichotomy
and representational strategy of control is a dominant characteristic of the
pornographic representation of female ejaculation. Rather than a symbol of
female sexual autonomy, then, it becomes eroticised on the grounds that it
is a physical response over which she has no control and which she
requires male aid to experience. Like the mentally ill, criminal and
colonized in the emerging disciplines of anthropology and psychiatry,
ejaculating women are “Subjected to a scrutinizing gaze, forced to emit
signs, yet cut off from command of meaning […] rendered incapable of
acting […] for themselves” (Cartwright 1995:11).

In an ugly extension of this power division, women’s constructed

pathology is used not only as a justification for pornography’s regulatory,
visual-medical scrutiny, but for violent force. Female ejaculation is often
disturbingly co-opted as a way of asserting male sexual prowess, with men
forcing women to involuntary expel some liquid in between violent bouts
of penetration as a way of “proving” that they can by sheer force, “please
their woman”. Violently pushing on the G-spot to elicit a physical
response is a way of justifying other painful or humiliating acts which take
place during the film, a sign that, no matter what has been done to the
woman, she is still enjoying herself. The idea that a woman can also be
forced to enjoy herself is part of the threat female ejaculation is obviously
felt to pose. As a symbol of the power and parity of female sexual desire
and as a way for women to take up the visibility and attendant gestural
language of power associated with ejaculation, female ejaculation is
extremely threatening. On the website Humiliated.com, Charley Chase is
tied up in a garage, her ability to ejaculate profusely made into a sign of
the sickly insatiability of her desire and therefore, something for which she
must be punished. The man shouts throughout the half hour scene “Are
you ready to squirt for me? Give it to me! Yes, you’re a good girl; Yea
you’ve got some more squirt in there for me. I want it, give it to me; You
110 Chapter Six

just got really fucking wet, didn’t you” (http://www.pornhub.com/view_

video.php?viewkey=249155514). Because she can be made to ejaculate
despite some of the aggressive acts being done to her, she exhibits the
“sick” insatiability of female sexuality, which in turn justifies the violence.
It is her seeming displeasure that accompanies the frequent dripping of
liquid down her legs that the film eroticises, demonstrating the way in
which pornography posits ejaculation as more than a treatment: it becomes
a punishment.

Conclusion
Having constructed ejaculation as the principle way in which men define
themselves, it is highly threatening for women to demonstrate the same
ejaculatory capacity in pornography. In visibly projecting their pleasure,
they are threatening to cross the border into subjecthood, and worrying at
the now well established reliance of male sexual dominance in
mainstream, heteronormative pornography on female submissiveness.
Pornography shows its violent regulation, then, making use of the
overlapping discourses of medicine and cinema to co-opt this potentially
subversive form of female pleasure to (re)construct a binary sense of
sexual difference. Female ejaculation’s triumvirate of the visual, the
deeply hidden and its conceptualisation as a more profound and natural
expression of female sexuality, embeds this type of orgasm within the
evidentiary discourse of the medical and cinematic with particular
potency. Sharing with broader cultural depictions of female ejaculation,
pornography uses its representations to construct female sexuality as
simultaneously disturbing in its naturalness and pathologically in need of
authoritative male intervention. Though pornography’s fascination with
this visible expulsion is its promise of the “truth” of female sexuality, in
the very nature of its clinical, analytic and frequently forceful attempts to
uncover this “neutral, exquisitely detailed truth,” (Daston and Galison
1992:111) the attempt to show female sexual pleasure is warped and
elided. In this biologically reductive approach to female sexual
embodiment, the meaning of the individual’s erotic experience slips
further away, women reduced to ciphers of physiological alienation. In
pornography’s attempt to capture and understand the woman’s erotic
experience, in making the body performs its “truth,” these representations
instead fabricate a truth in which the female experience is obscured; the
woman is rendered silent and her sexual pleasure bludgeoned.
 Female Ejaculation in Contemporary Pornography 111

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0,0,0,0
 PART THREE:

PORNO-SEXOLOGY
 CHAPTER SEVEN

A PRESCRIPTION FOR PORN:

SEXOLOGY, SEX THERAPY
AND THE PROMOTION OF PORNIFIED SEX

MEAGAN TYLER

On the surface, sexology and sex therapy may appear to have very little to
do with the pornography industry, but the histories of these areas intersect
considerably. This chapter will explore the important role that pornography
has played in key areas of sexology research and sex therapy training, as
well as the current trend of recommending pornography consumption to
patients for the purposes of education and for treating sexual dysfunctions.
Ultimately, it is argued that the promotion of pornography in contemporary
therapy has no supporting empirical evidence, fails to take into account the
ubiquity of pornography and the pornographication of culture, and creates
a dangerous precedent where women are expected to be aroused by their
own subordination or risk being labelled ‘dysfunctional.’

History and Background

While the industries of pornography and sex therapy may not seem
obviously symbiotic, their histories are quite intimately intertwined. The
links between the two date back to the early 20th Century, when sexology
was only just becoming an established scientific discipline. Many early
sexological texts were seen by authorities, and even some members of the
medical profession, as obscene in much the same way as pornographic
materials. By the 1920s, sexologists were concerned that their ‘serious
books of sexual instruction’ were being circulated through the same
underground networks as pornography (Cocks 2004:465).

While the early sexologists fretted about these connections undermining

their fledgling new science, pornographers of the time were relatively
content with this relationship, as it was seen to offer them a ‘cachet of
118 Chapter Seven

intellectual seriousness’ (Cocks 2004:481). As I have argued elsewhere

(Tyler 2011), the disciplines of sexology and sex therapy still offer a
medicalised legitimacy to pornography, even today.

The desire of sexologists and therapists to distance themselves from the

pornography industry and its products, however, has waned as pornography
use has become increasingly socially acceptable. By the 1960s, during the
so-called ‘sexual revolution’, sexologists were actually trying to further
their relationships with a growing pornography industry (Collins
2003:134-164). This occurred most prominently through the adoption of
expert sex advice columns in pornographic magazines. The links between
sexology, sex therapy and pornography have only intensified since.

Key figures in sexology, particularly those who are seen to have set the
foundations of modern sex therapy such as William Masters, Virginia
Johnson and Helen Singer Kaplan, have all gone on record as being in
favour of pornography use (Tyler 2011). Kaplan even referred to
pornographic videos as ‘non-chemical aphrodisiacs’ (Kaplan quoted in
Striar & Bartlik 1999:60). Given that these attitudes were held by such
influential figures, perhaps it should not be surprising that pornography
came to have such a significant role in sexology and sex therapy. In the
following subsections I outline three key ways in which sexology, sex
therapy and pornography have been intertwined: first, pornography use as
part of standard training for therapists; second, pornography as a tool of
sexological research and diagnosis; and third, as a form of treatment for
paraphilias and sexual dysfunctions.

Training: Sexual Attitude Reassessment Workshops

One of the key ways in which pornography and sex therapy became fused
was through the adoption of ‘Sexual Attitude Reassessment Workshops’
or SARs at major training facilities for therapists. These workshops varied
somewhat from institution to institution but the basic format was to have
trainees watching sexually explicit films for several hours at a time over
the course of several days (Irvine 2005; Reiss 2006). The films were
usually a mix of materials, some produced by medical companies and
others which were simply commercial, hard-core pornography. The
materials would be shown on multiple screens simultaneously to try and
create an experience of immersion, and the focus was on having a wide a
variety of sex acts shown.
 A Prescription for Porn 119

According to sociologist Ira Reiss (2006), a world renowned specialist in

the field of sexuality studies, these SAR sessions were known colloquially
among therapists and trainees as ‘fuckarama’ and the main purpose of the
practice was to desensitize professionals to various forms of sex to which
they may not be accustomed. The idea was that therapists should confront
their own prejudices about unusual sex acts in the hope that this would
make them less judgmental with future clients. At the height of the trend
for SARs in the 1970s, the seemingly professional aims of these practices
became increasingly questioned when The Playboy Foundation began
directly funding workshops (Reiss 2006:63). The pornography screening
section of the SAR training also became extended, up to eight days in
some programs, and according to some first person accounts an expectation
also developed that workshop participants could (or even should) touch
and sexually interact with each other during the screenings (Reiss, 2006).
By the 1980s, the problems of SAR programs were becoming more
evident as was a growing feminist criticism of pornography. In this
context, the previously unbridled enthusiasm for these workshops began to
decline and some therapist training facilities removed SAR workshops
from curricula altogether.

SARs reappeared again in the 1990s, however, and the peak professional
body for sex therapists in the US – the American Association of Sexuality
Educators, Counsellors and Therapists (AASECT) – released a set of
standards to govern SAR workshops (Robinson et al 2002). Today, some
universities, as well as specialised training centres like the Kinsey Institute
and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, still use
SAR formats (Irvine 2005; Tiefer 2006). Almost a third of all practicing
sex therapists in the United States (US) report that they have participated
in a SAR-type experience during their graduate training (Ratcliffe
2008:28). In summary, the concept that pornography can be a useful, even
educative, tool is enshrined in the basics of training for many sex
therapists and sexologists.

Research: Pornography as a Diagnostic Tool

In terms of sexological research, pornography is also regarded as a
relatively unproblematic tool. It is often used to try and create arousal or
inspire orgasm in any subject being studied, either for a series of tests to
gather data, or for individual analysis and diagnosis. The assumption that
pornography will always induce these conditions in healthy people, both
men and women, is so taken for granted that it is often not even deemed
120 Chapter Seven

worth discussing. Pornography use in certain types of sexological research

is so normalised that analysing the actual content of that pornography, let
alone contesting its use, is generally seen as irrelevant (Tyler 2011).
Pornography is simply equated with sexual excitement and arousal.

Indeed, the idea that pornography will guarantee a subject’s physiological

and psychological arousal is so entrenched that researchers sometimes
express confusion when women report a lack of arousal after controlled
exposure to pornographic material. As sociologist Janice Irvine explains in
Disorders of Desire, her critique of modern American sex therapy:
A typical clinical technique is to hook up a woman to the
photoplethismograph, show her erotic material, and monitor her response.
Frequently, women who register some vaginal lubrication will report lack
of arousal. The clinician will then correct the woman, advise her that she
is, in fact, sexually stimulated, and provide her with the proof from the
monitoring device (Irvine 2005:162).

According to therapist Wendy Stock (1988:36), the material shown to

women during these kinds of tests, in the 1980s at least, was typically
commercial, hard-core pornography, or, as she put it, material that had
‘little to do with mutual egalitarian interaction and a lot to do with rape.’
Essentially, then, sexologists in these environments were expecting
women to become aroused by seeing other women being dominated,
coerced or even assaulted. Women who reported that they did not become
aroused by these materials risked being labelled ‘dysfunctional’.

However, the practice of using pornography in this way for sexological

research and/or diagnosis is now questioned by some researchers who
argue – not for other ways to let a subject become aroused in a clinical
environment – but for the use of so-called ‘woman friendly materials’
when dealing with female subjects (Tyler 2011). Some sexologists have
conceded that pornography has contained themes of women’s
subordination and exploitation. Erick Janssen and colleagues, for example,
have argued that female subjects should be shown ‘woman-made’ and
‘woman-centred’ pornography in clinical settings because they are less
likely to prompt feelings of ‘disgust, anger, shame and distress’ (Janssen et
al 2003:244).

The Berman sisters – a psychologist and urologist – who set up the first
clinic specialising in female sexual dysfunction (FSD) in the US, have also
been keen to point out that they use pornography ‘designed and produced
for women’ in their work (Berman & Berman 2001). The sisters, who are
 A Prescription for Porn 121

frequently cited as having been at the cutting edge of FSD diagnosis and
treatment in the early 2000s, give this description of some of their testing
procedures:
Nicole was given a vibrator and a pair of 3-D surround sound and video
glasses. These glasses allow for uninterrupted erotic visual stimulation.
Nicole was to watch an erotic video, designed and produced for women,
through the glasses and stimulate herself in private with the vibrator for 15
minutes (Berman & Berman 2001:7).

The goal here, as the Bermans explain it, is for Nicole to become
‘maximally aroused’ so that they can test her genital blood flow and
engorgement. Pornography is seen as a simply means to this end. The
possibility that a subject may not find this arousing is not mentioned.

It should be noted that the separation between standard hard-core,

commercial pornography and ‘woman-made’ pornography is also quite
dubious. As Chyng Sun and colleagues (2008) found, while pornographic
films directed by women often contained more female characters (and
therefore often marketed as ‘women centred’) they contained similarly
high levels of violence against women, compared to male-directed
commercial pornography. The only significant difference that the Sun
study reported was that films directed by women were more likely to
depict female characters as perpetrators of violence or aggression against
other women. Indeed, the typical ‘woman-friendly’ pornography
celebrated by groups like AASECT – for example films by Candida
Royalle – still contain clear themes of women’s submission and misogyny
(Tyler 2011:173-4). Why these should somehow be more arousing for
women to watch in clinical contexts is unclear.

Pornography is taken to be a useful tool in promoting arousal and orgasm

in research diagnosis. While the addition of interest in ‘women-friendly’
pornography has meant sexologists have had to add some nuance to the
previous understanding that all pornography causes arousal in all healthy
men and women there is little, if any, room within this context to contest
the idea that pornography causes unproblematic physiological and
psychological sexual arousal in subjects.


122 Chapter Seven

Treatment: Pornography ‘Cures’ Paraphilias

and Sexual Dysfunction
Paraphilias
Pornography consumption is not only woven into sexological training and
research it has also been used as a form of treatment for paraphilias, sexual
behaviours considered to be a-typical or harmful in some way. In various
editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM), the paraphilias range from rape and violent sexual urges and
fetishes to – most infamously – homosexuality, which was only removed
from the DSM in 1973 (Moser & Kleinplatz 2005).

In the 1960s and 1970s case studies emerged of the use of pornography to
treat paraphilias. The earliest studies were mostly focused on two,
interconnected approaches: aversion therapy and modelling. In terms of
aversion therapy, the basic concept was to make patients physically
uncomfortable while watching images relating to their paraphilia. In terms
of modelling, or shaping, a patient was told to masturbate to orgasm while
watching images relating to something deemed by the clinician to be a
desirable or non-paraphilic sexual behaviour.

Some of the studies from this time show the quite brutal nature of adding
medical authority to the use of pornography. In 1982, Maurice Yaffé
published an overview of the existing literature on the ‘therapeutic uses of
sexual explicit material’. Under the heading of ‘sexual deviations’ the
most common examples he lists are attempts made by practitioners to
‘treat’ homosexuality by either creating an ‘increase in heterosexual
arousal’ or by the ‘elimination of deviant arousal’ (Yaffé 1982:136-142).
The techniques employed range from ‘aversion relief’ which ‘involves
establishing an association between heterosexual stimuli and relief from an
aversive stimulus’ to ‘orgasmic reconditioning’ and ‘systematic desensitisation’
(1982:137-9). Almost all of the examples described involve the use of
pornography as the ‘stimuli’.

‘Shaping’ is another method listed by Yaffé. In its broadest sense, shaping

is ‘a procedure designed to induce the performance of new behaviours by
the initial reinforcement of behaviours in the individual’s repertoire which
have some similarity to the desired behaviour’ (Yaffé 1982:137). The
following outline of a pilot study from 1970, gives some indication of
what these treatments meant in practical terms:
 A Prescription for Porn 123

A pilot study where a homosexual who had already received conditioning

in relation to homosexual stimuli was deprived of water for 18 hours.
Drinks were made contingent on increased erection response to
heterosexual stimuli and it was found that the subject was able to increase
his erection significantly, measured by strain gauge (Yaffé 1982:137).

Shaping was actually considered to be among the more positive

procedures that some therapists had found to be effective. The other set of
procedures aimed at ‘eliminating deviant arousal’ refer generally to:
Punishment and aversion procedures [that] involve either the withdrawal or
reward of the presentation of an averse stimulus contingent upon the
occurrence of a maladapted sexual response. The aim is to establish a
strong association between inappropriate sexual arousal or response and
aversive reinforcement (Yaffé 1982:139).

The clinical techniques used to achieve these outcomes involved ‘chemical

and olfactory’ aversion where patients were shown pornography relating
to their paraphilia and, after achieving arousal, were given nausea-
inducing drugs or exposed to foul smells. In the studies described by
Yaffé, these experimental ‘treatments’ were all conducted on men who
had their penile erections monitored throughout so that clinicians could
assess the level of arousal. There were also studies on electrical aversion
based on delivering electric shocks to patients who were found to have
erections after exposure to pornography showing ‘deviant’ behaviours.
Another approach, ‘satiation’, Yaffé explains thus:
[I]nstructing the patient…to verbalise his unwanted fantasies while
masturbating. He is required to masturbate continually and to carry on even
if ejaculation occurs; throughout he is to constantly elaborate upon his
deviant fantasy … it is aimed deliberately at associating boredom with a
patient’s deviant fantasies. For those subjects who find it difficult or
impossible to either create or sustain deviant fantasies, appropriate sexually
explicit material would enable them to avail themselves of this promising
procedure (Yaffé 1982:142).

These accounts now read as jarring and the procedures they describe
sound outright abusive. Taking into account this history of the often-cruel
uses of pornography for paraphilia ‘treatments’ it is surprising that
contemporary sex therapists are not wary of promoting porn as a relatively
unproblematic tool for research, diagnosis and treatment today.
124 Chapter Seven

Sexual Dysfunction
Given the abusive uses of pornography as ‘treatment’ for paraphilias, it is
in some ways quite extraordinary that pornography, even today, is still
recommended by some specialists as useful in treating or, at least,
alleviating sexual dysfunctions (Ratcliffe 2008; Robinson et al 1999; Tyler
2011; see for example: Striar & Bartlik 1999). As studies like those
reported by Yaffé (1982) trail off in the 1970s (largely after the removal of
homosexuality from the DSM), we start to see an increase in the literature
on using sexually explicit materials, including commercial pornography, in
the treatment of sexual dysfunctions, particularly in women. What starts to
emerge from the late 1970s and into the 1980s is, essentially, a
prescription for controlled pornography use.

The dysfunctions of particular interest to researchers at this time were

inhibition, frigidity and anorgasmia in women. Taking into account the
heterosexism of sex therapy and how these dysfunctions are often
interpreted in practice, these dysfunctions essentially relate to women who
are anxious about or unwilling to engage in sex with their male partners,
and women who report that they have not experienced orgasm or have not
experienced orgasm during coitus (Boyle 1992; Tyler 2011).

In terms of women’s sexual dysfunctions, desensitisation was one of the

primary concepts on which the utilising of pornography for treatment was
based (Caird & Wincze 1974; Wincze & Caird 1976). There is a sense that
the dislike of particular sex acts (especially concerning to sexologists and
therapists when these acts include coitus) that many women reported,
could be seen as the result of ignorance and or fear.

The idea underlying treatment options was that women who were anxious
about engaging in heterosexual sex could be encouraged to participate by
being shown images and films of these acts. The most commonly reported
process was to provide images – sometimes still images, sometimes
moving image vignettes – with increasing levels of explicitness while the
patient practiced relaxation techniques. This process was supposed to lead
to a lessening of any inhibition about penetrative sex with a male partner.

One report, from Georgia Nemetz and colleagues (1978), suggests that one
of the more popular approaches at this time was having a list of particular
sex acts, from non-sexual (for example, having a conversation) to mildly
explicit (a couple naked and kissing), to a variety of heterosexual sex acts
depicted explicitly, sometimes in the form of pornography. Patients would
 A Prescription for Porn 125

then be asked to sort through the list of these acts, sometimes numbering
more than a hundred, and put them in order from those that provoked the
least to most anxiety. The patient would then be taken to darkened room to
watch vignettes of all of the acts, while practicing the relaxation
techniques as taught by the therapist.

A number of studies used a similar process of treatment, for the purposes

of desensitisation, but none provide conclusive evidence that the use of
explicit films in this context was helpful to patients (Court 1984; Neidigh
& Kinder 1987). Psychologists, Neidigh and Kinder argued, back in the
late 1980s, that the only real justification for the use of pornography (or
explicit ‘audio-visual aids’, as they put it) in therapy ‘rests solely upon
practical considerations such as ease of administration and savings in
therapist contact time’ (1987:70). That is, the introduction of pornography
may be of practical use for the therapist, but it is of no advantage to the
patient.

Other studies, which attempted to test the use of pornography in the

treatment of women with anorgasmia have also produced lacklustre results
(Jankovich & Miller 1978; Kilmann et al 1983; Nemetz et al 1978).
Almost all of these studies found that there was no sustained change in the
vast majority of female subjects subjected to desensitisation style
treatments for anorgasmia. Perhaps as a result of these less than
encouraging results, the reporting of similar research trials falls away in
the late 1980s.

Current Practices
While the history of pornography use in sexology and sex therapy can be
traced into current practices in terms of training and research, it is in the
area of treatment that pornography use is still most visible. As the
following sections outline, however, the dominant approach of
recommending pornography to patients seems out of touch in an era
where, anecdotally at least, therapists are also concerned about the
ubiquity of pornography and increasing rates of consumption and,
arguably even addiction (Maltz 2009). Contemporary sex therapy
therefore has a troubled and complex relationship to pornography, even if
this is largely unacknowledged within most sexological and therapeutic
literature. In this section I outline the widespread practice of
recommending pornography to patients, explore debates about the
differences between pornography and ‘sexually explicit materials and
126 Chapter Seven

therapists’, and examine the rationale for prescribing porn. In the next
section, I address the missing context of pornographication.

Prescribing porn
There have only been two in-depth studies in the last twenty years asking
practitioners about the use of pornography in sex therapy and sexological
research. The first study (Robinson et al 1996; Robinson et al 1999) was
conducted by a group of researchers from the US and the Czech Republic
in the early 1990s. The second study (Ratcliffe 2008) was conducted by a
Masters student at Kansas State University in the US in 2008. Both find
the use of pornography in contemporary sex therapy is extremely
common.

Robinson et al (1996) carried out a survey on 610 ‘mental health and

health’ professionals from the US and the Czech and Slovak republics.
The majority identified as therapists, counsellors or sexologists.
Participants were recruited at a number of conferences dealing with
sexology, marriage and family therapy and psychology in 1992 and 1993
(Robinson et al 1999:105-6). Of these participants, 62 per cent (n=279)
also answered a qualitative questionnaire specifically on the perceived
usefulness of ‘sexually explicit materials’ in their professional work
(Robinson et al 1999:106).

Ratcliffe’s (2008) study is somewhat smaller, involving 99 clinicians. All

participants were members of AASECT, the peak body for sex therapists
in the US, at the time of the survey. This qualitative survey focused on the
views of participants regarding the use of ‘sexually explicit materials’ in
their professional work, but also asked about general feelings towards
these materials and the most and least helpful aspects of using these
materials in therapy. It should be noted that the language used in both
these studies – ‘sexually explicit materials’ (usually shortened to SEM)
rather than ‘pornography’ – is an important issue in and of itself and I will
return to the issue of terminology again further on, highlighting, in
particular, that there are sound reasons for treating SEM and pornography
interchangeably in most contexts.

Both the Robinson et al (1996, 1999) and Ratcliffe (2008) studies

produced very similar findings. The most prominent of these findings is
that the vast majority of therapists practicing in the US direct at least some
of their patients to watch pornography. The larger study by Robinson and
colleagues found that about three quarters (74 per cent) of those surveyed
 A Prescription for Porn 127

reported using ‘sexually explicit materials’ in therapeutic contexts

(2008:106). Ratcliffe found almost all (92.6 per cent) of his sample
reported using SEMs (2008:29).

Robinson et al (1999) also asked about whether or not there were instances
when professionals believed it was either inappropriate or ineffective to
prescribe SEMs to patients. They report that ‘most simply said they had
never experienced a problem’ (1999:109); ‘a few’ professionals even
defended those instances when prescribing SEM had been a problem for
patients, noting that ‘a client’s discomfort can be a learning experience’
(1999:110). A certain percentage of those surveyed also reported that there
were no circumstances that rendered the use of these materials
inappropriate.1 Others reported that they believed people suffering from
psychosis were not good candidates for treatment involving SEM. A
handful of respondents, six in total, reported a history of sexual abuse as a
reason that SEMs may be inappropriate. Only a single respondent
indicated that these materials were ‘never useful’ (1999:109).

Ratcliffe (2008) presents similar results, although these are perhaps even
more skewed towards the view that the use of SEMs in sex therapy is
generally unproblematic. Almost a quarter (22.5 per cent) of participants
reported that they use SEMs with more than half their patients and 8.2 per
cent reported that: ‘there were not instances in which they would not
recommend using SEM’ (2008:34). There were slightly different reasons
provided by Ratcliffe’s cohort, however, including: client discomfort or
opposition, religious or cultural beliefs; a history of sexual abuse or
trauma, and where there were, issues of sexual compulsivity (2008:35-6).

It is clear, therefore, that ‘sexually explicit materials’ are a pivotal part of

modern sex therapy. The use of SEMs is both widespread and common,
both in the US and parts of Europe, at the very least. What is particularly
extraordinary, however, is that there is almost no evidence base to support
this practice. As discussed above, older studies on various forms of female
sexual dysfunction have shown the use of pornography to be either
ineffective or not more effective than other measures. Even studies from
the 1970s and 1980s that reported some positive response in patients after
being exposed to SEMs, often used this in conjunction with other
treatments so it is impossible to distinguish the separate effect of the
explicit materials (Ratcliffe 2008). After the 1980s, there are extremely
few studies on using pornography in therapy reported in the sexological
and therapeutic literature. Instead, when pornography use is mentioned,
sometimes as a focus (e.g. Striar & Bartlik 1999), sometimes in passing
128 Chapter Seven

(e.g. Heiman & LoPiccolo 1992:228; Zillbergeld 1993:113), it is

completely normalised. That is, the practice of prescribing pornography
consumption to patients has become fairly standard practice despite almost
no empirical evidence to support its use.

Defining Pornography
To return to the issue of terminology, it must be noted that the general
preference in contemporary sexology and sex therapy is the catch-all term
‘sexually explicit material’, or SEM, rather than what is seen as the
narrower term of ‘pornography’. The category of SEM is seen to cover
sexually explicit ‘educational materials’ (usually made by medical
companies or specialists), erotica and commercial, hard-core pornography
(Ratcliffe 2008; Tyler 2011). While there may be pragmatic reasons for
wanting to roll all of these types of explicit representations of sex into a
single category, the use of SEM terminology obfuscates what is really
being used in these treatments and adds an unwarranted sense of
legitimacy to the practice of prescribing of pornography.

Firstly, the use of the term ‘sexually explicit material’ bestows a veneer of
scientific legitimacy on the use of pornography in sexology and sex
therapy. In Ratcliffe’s (2008) study, for instance, clinicians were asked if
they used sex education materials, erotica or pornography. In this research
the difference between ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’ was defined by the
absence or presence of ‘violent, dehumanising or sexist content’ (Ratcliffe
2008:5); erotica was defined as explicit material without any of these
elements; and pornography was defined as explicit material containing one
or more of these elements. Even with these definitions, Ratcliffe found
that almost a third (29.5 per cent) of his sample reported using
pornography specifically, in their therapeutic practices. That is, a sizeable
proportion of therapists acknowledge recommending ‘violent, dehumanising
or sexist content’ to patients. By referring to pornography under the
broader banner of SEMs, the possible negative connotations of
pornography, and the problems associated with prescribing ‘violent,
dehumanising or sexist content’, are made much less obvious.

Secondly, the distinction between the categories of educational materials,

erotica and pornography is blurry at best. For example, therapy-based sex
education videos are considered by many therapists to be substantively
different from commercial pornography. However, most sex educations
videos are filmed with performers working in other areas of the
commercial pornography industry (Tyler 2011). In addition, the only
 A Prescription for Porn 129

discernible difference between mainstream pornography and many of

these so-called ‘educational materials’ is simply the presence of a qualified
sex therapist appearing intermittently between explicit sex scenes, scenes
which are often taken straight from commercial pornography productions
(Eberwein 1999; Irvine 2005; Kleinplatz 1997; Monet 2005). As therapist
Jules Black (2006) argued in Sexual and Relationship Therapy some years
ago, the bulk of the sex education genre is invariably an ‘excuse for soft
porn’ (2006:117).

If we adopt a practical, working definition of pornography similar to that

proposed by Jensen and Dines (2004:65) that pornography is material sold
as pornography for the purposes of producing arousal for mostly male
consumers, then all of the SEMs used could easily also be understood as
pornography. They include the exact same material as commercial
pornography (that is materials sold as pornography) albeit sometimes
marketed or packaged differently for a therapeutic context. As I have
argued elsewhere (Tyler 2011), it is therefore more accurate to refer to
what is included under the category of SEM in therapy as pornography
rather than create false distinctions between categories of education,
erotica and porn.

Indeed, an investigation into what kind of material is actually

recommended to patients shows the ubiquity of standard, commercial porn
films. In 2007 for example The Sinclair Intimacy Institute, well known in
the area of sexology for its production and sale of explicit ‘sex education
materials’, recommended (among others) the following films as ‘sex
positive productions’: The New Devil in Miss Jones, Jenna Loves Pain and
Deep Throat (Tyler 2011; 2013). These films all include scenes of
violence: from bondage, discipline and sadomasochism to piercing and
flogging and, in the case of Deep Throat, documentary evidence of the
rape of Linda Marchiano (Dworkin 1981).

Even in 2015, the offerings at The Sinclair Intimacy Institute are a similar
mix of the seemingly more legitimate ‘educational films’ and standard
hard-core pornography. Alongside the Institute’s own Better Sex series are
films from mainstream porn companies such as Wicked, Adam and Eve
and Penthouse (Sinclair Intimacy Institute, 2015a). These videos are, in
the words of The Institute, about ‘helping couples overcome barriers that
can affect the quality of sexual relationships’ (Sinclair Intimacy Institute
2015b). The content of many of the videos listed however seems to have
more to do with reinforcing inequality than introducing quality. Titles
recommended include: Daddy Did the Babysitter; My Surrender; Wife
130 Chapter Seven

Switch 14; BJ Suck-a-thon; and Anal Asian Assassins. These videos

display a potent mix of eroticising inequalities based on social position,
age, sex and race. Even at what is supposed to be the lighter end of the
spectrum, with women’s or ‘couple friendly’ pornography, for example
Candida Royall’s My Surrender, themes of men’s dominance and
women’s submission are clearly evident (Tyler 2011).

Why Prescribe Pornography?

In order to provide further context, some explanation of how these
pornographic materials are used is required. Given the widespread and
common recommendation of pornography by sex therapists, there is
relatively little literature attempting to provide best practice guidelines, or
even research detailing how therapists currently use these materials in their
work. Ratcliffe (2008) provides some of the only data in this area. His
respondents gave a variety of reasons justifying their use of pornography
in sex therapy, but the three most common were: education, desensitisation
and stimulation. In terms of education: ‘evident in the responses was the
belief that clients often had a lack of knowledge about sexuality and that
increased knowledge and/or understanding would benefit the client’
(2008:32). Responses included the importance of patients ‘learn[ing] new
things’ acquiring ‘healthy knowledge’ and that pornography may help to
demonstrate ‘sex acts they have probably never been exposed to’
(Ratcliffe 2008:33). Other clinicians have gone on public record extoling
the virtues of pornography as a teaching aid. Dr Judith Seifer, one of the
therapists involved in developing the Better Sex series for the Sinclair
Intimacy Institute explains that couples should use these materials: ‘like a
textbook’ (quoted in Eberwein 1999:193).

While pornography may indeed prove to be educative, especially in a

scenario backed by the medical authority of a therapist, the question then
arises, what exactly is it supposed teach? As Donevan (2015) has recently
argued, far from promoting notions of a health and safe sexuality, the use
of pornography in the context of sex education is likely to simply reinforce
cultural norms regarding unprotected sex, sexism, racism and the
eroticising of violence against women. On a broader level too, it does
seem rather incongruous that in purportedly encouraging ‘healthy
knowledge’ about sexual experience, that therapists would choose a
medium in which people are paid to fake their own sexual enjoyment
(Levy 2005). This seeming contradiction of using ‘like a textbook’
materials which depict practices that may not actually be pleasurable, is
 A Prescription for Porn 131

not addressed in the literature. Indeed, the commercial nature of the

pornography industry is generally not acknowledged.

Desensitisation is another prominent explanation that is still used by

therapists to justify the use of pornography in treatment. Some clinicians
believe that pornographic material can assist in ‘increasing comfort’ and
‘reducing anxiety’ for some patients (Ratcliffe 2008:33). In one of the few
peer-reviewed academic articles that focuses the use of pornography in
contemporary therapeutic contexts, Striar and Bartlik (1999) explain that
one of the benefits of pornography is that it ‘can be used to introduce a
partner to a new mode of sexual experience that he or she might otherwise
find distasteful or unacceptable’ and that it gives ‘the viewer permission to
model the behaviour’ (2008:61). They intend this to be seen in a positive
light, ignoring decades of feminist opposition to the use of pornography in
‘grooming’ and coercing women into sex acts that they do not wish to
perform (Tyler 2011; 2013; see also: Dworkin & MacKinnon 1997;
Russell 1998).

Stimulation is the final major reason given by the participants in

Ratcliffe’s (2008) study, which included responses from clinicians about
enhancing arousal and helping patients ‘get in touch with their sexual
desire’ (2008:33). To some degree this simply overlaps with older ideas
about treating women’s inhibition and anorgasmia with the aid of explicit
representations of sex. One respondent in the Ratcliffe research even
mentioned that pornography was useful in helping clients with desire
issues ‘especially women’ (2008:33). Striar and Bartlik (1999) also
support stimulation as the primary reason that pornography should be
recommended to patients, highlighting that pornographic materials should
be seen by therapists as useful in ‘adding diversity to a monogamous
relationship’ (1999:61).

In all of these representations of pornography by therapists, it is the

implicit assumption that by telling patients to watch pornography, they are
directing people to do something that they are not already engaged in. In a
pornifed culture, where pornography is increasingly accessible and
acceptable and pornographic imagery is increasingly ubiquitous (Boyle ed.
2010; Dines 2010; McNair 2002, 2013; Tyler 2011), it does seem as
though the field of sex therapy is somewhat out of step with the current
context of many people’s sex lives.
132 Chapter Seven

The Changing Context of Pornographication

The cultural conditions of pornographication have drawn significant
academic and popular interest over the last decade (Dines 2010; Tyler
2011). The rise of internet pornography, in particular free-to-access
internet pornography, has changed the dynamics of porn consumption.
Pornography is now more accessible than ever before, it can be accessed
with relative anonymity (as compared to physically buying pornography
from a shop) and its use is increasingly seen as socially acceptable in
many parts of the West, particularly among those under 30 years of age
(Carroll et al 2008; Dines 2010).

For example, almost 9 in 10 (87 per cent) college men in the US, and
almost a third (31 per cent) of college women, report using pornography
(Carroll et al 2008). Approximately half of those young men consuming
pornography do so once a week, or more often, and two thirds (67 per
cent) agree that viewing pornography is socially acceptable (Carroll et al
2008). While pornography use is not thought to be as widespread among
older populations, the largest single consumer group of internet porn is
men aged between 35 and 42 (Weiss 2013). All of this suggests that many,
if not most, of the patients that sex therapists treat will be consumers of
pornography.

Despite the high levels of pornography consumption, particularly among

men, and the prevalence of pornographic imagery in everyday life, porn is
surprisingly absent from prominent areas of sexological literature. That is,
while there are occasionally specific studies or mentions of pornography
as a form of therapy, there is little, if any, acknowledgement that
pornography use actually forms a significant part of the context in which
sexual relationships now take place. Open discussions of pornography are
still strikingly side-lined in many parts of the discipline.

Take, for instance, the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, one of the
peak peer-reviewed journals in the field of sex therapy. In its entire online
archives, dating back to the mid-1970s, it has published a total of 123
articles mentioning ‘pornography’, and only 39 of those appear in the last
10 years. 2 In addition, the vast majority of these articles only mention
pornography in passing. That is, the term is used but pornography itself is
not the main focus of the research.

A typical example of this is an article from 2010 titled ’18-Year

Experience in the Management of Men with a Complaint of a Small Penis’
 A Prescription for Porn 133

(Nugteren et al 2010). The term ‘pornography’ appears in the article as

part of a discussion on recent surveys showing that 45 per cent of
American men would like a ‘larger penis’ and only 0.2 per cent would like
a ‘smaller penis’. The authors state that:
These figures suggest a profound lack of knowledge in the population
about physical normality or average size of the male genitals. This result is
likely to have been caused by exposure to pornographic materials
(Nugteren et al 2010:110).

This is the only time that there is a reference to pornography in the entire
article. The fact that 123 results are returned in an overall search of the
journal’s archives is therefore likely to be misleading in suggesting there is
a larger body of research focusing on pornography than actually exists.

Indeed, the term ‘pornography’ only appears in the title of six articles
published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy in the last ten years3
and three of these instances are accounted for by book reviews. One of the
most prominent and well-regarded journals in the field of sex therapy has
therefore only published three new research articles in the last ten years
which actually concentrate on pornography. This is during the same period
when there has been intense public and academic discussion about the
mainstreaming of pornography and the pornification of culture but, in this
prominent therapeutic journal, there is almost complete silence.

This situation leaves the older studies from the 1970s and 1980s, which
largely operate from the premise that viewing pornography will be a new
experience for patients, still standing as the dominant discussion of
pornography use in sex therapy. This persists even though, in reality, there
is a growing body of literature documenting a sizeable cultural shift in the
West that means, not only have most women and men now been exposed
to pornography by the time they reach adulthood, but that many men, in
particular, have become consistent consumers.

There is not much in the way of any formal acknowledgement of this

change in the sexological and therapeutic literature. This is a significant
gap, as the ubiquity of pornography constitutes a substantial change to the
cultural context in which sexual relationships form and sexual ideas and
norms develop. The only real hint that is given regarding this change are
increasing references to concerns about the compulsive use of pornography
and the possibility of pornography addiction (e.g. Maltz 2009).
134 Chapter Seven

Conclusion
The context of pornographication and the mainstreaming of pornography
make the recommending of pornography to clients in sex therapy seem, at
best, very out of touch. Many, if not most, of those presenting for
treatment will already have some familiarity with pornographic materials,
so even on its own terms, the idea that porn is introducing something new
to a relationship is questionable. Also, there are the more deep-seated
questions about whether or not it is advisable to encourage patients to
mimic people paid to fake sexual enjoyment in their own day-to-day sex
lives. It makes sex therapy seem much more about the performance of
‘good sex’ rather than the actual experience of ‘good sex’.

There is also a certain incongruence in the claims of older sexological

research that on the one hand, ‘deviants’ should be punished for their
arousal at particular pornographic materials in treatment, but then, on the
other hand, that any pornographic materials are suitable for causing
arousal in healthy human beings. In addition, at the centre of therapeutic
and sexological literature on the use of pornography in research and
treatment, there is an ever-present confusion about what pornography
actually is. There is very little discussion of what is actually depicted in
the pornography used, and almost no acknowledgment of the decades of
feminist criticism about the role of pornography in the oppression of
women (e.g. Dworkin 1981; Dworkin & MacKinnon 1987; Dines et al.
1998; Itzin ed. 1992; Russell 1998).

However, these critiques are still relatively generous about what is

happening at this particular intersection of the pornography and therapy
industries. The history of using pornography in the ‘treatment of deviants’,
including attempts at forcing gay men to become heterosexual, should
certainly be reason enough for the practice to be questioned by therapists
and sexologists today. Later attempts at treating women with sexual
‘dysfunctions’ should be similarly held up to scrutiny, especially as they
provide virtually no evidence to support the use of pornography in
therapeutic practice.

In terms of current practice, it is also important to point out that the power
dynamics of therapy are likely to make it difficult for patients to refuse the
‘porn as treatment’ method, when it is recommended by a qualified
therapist or expert. This process adds medical authority to pornography
use and, ultimately, makes pornography the ultimate arbiter of ‘good sex’,
the kind of sex that patients are supposed to want to attain.
 A Prescription for Porn 135

In this sense there is a very real element of coercion in trying to get people
to use pornography as some kind of training device. This is particularly
problematic for women, as it sets up a scenario where a woman could be
deemed ‘dysfunctional’ if she reports not being turned on by watching the
use and abuse of other women, or reports not being willing to act out that
use and abuse with her own male partner. This is a type of training that
almost completely removes any room for women to voice as valid any
objections to the use of pornography in heterosexual relationships and
have those objections accepted by therapists or their partners.

A prescription for pornography creates a version of ‘good sex’ where it

becomes increasingly difficult for women to say ‘no’. It makes it
increasingly difficult to refuse a sex life that is infused with porn. It makes
it difficult to refuse a model of heterosexuality that eroticises women’s
abuse and subordination. It makes it difficult to refuse unwanted sexual
demands from a partner. Surely a system in which women have less ability
to refuse sex that they do not wish to participate in is the very opposite of
what ‘good sex’ should be all about? It is high time that therapists
confronted and critiqued these problematic uses of pornography at the
heart of their industry.

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138 Chapter Seven

Porn Inc.: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry.

Melbourne, Aust.: Spinifex Press.
Weiss, R. (2013) The Prevalence of Porn. Psych Central. 22nd May.
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/sex/2013/05/the-prevalence-of-porn/
Accessed: 02/04/2015
Wincze, J. & W. Caird (1976) The Effects of Systematic Desensitization
and Video Desensitization in the Treatment of Essential Sexual
Dysfunction in Women. Behavior Therapy, v7: 335-342.
Woodard, T., K. Collins, M. Perez, R. Balon, M. Tancer, M. Kruger, S.
Moffat, & Diamond, M. (2008) What kind of erotic film clips should
we use in female sex research? An exploratory study. Journal of
Sexual Medicine, v5 (1): 146-154.
Yaffé, M. (1982) ‘Therapeutic Uses of Sexually Explict Material.’ In M.
Yaffé & E. Nelson (eds.) The Influence of Pornography on Behaviour.
New York: Academic Press. 119-150.

Notes


1
Robinson et al. (1999) do not provide a single figure for this category as they roll
together responses that deemed SEMs to be “always useful” and “useful” (a total
of 34 per cent) but they do indicate that there were responses for both.
2
This is based on search through the database of the Journal of Sex and Marital
Therapy available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/usmt20/current#.VSd1Y7oxHx4
The search for these results, using the search term ‘pornography’ was carried out
by the author in October 2014.
3
Again, this is based on a database search conducted by the author in October
2014. This figure includes all full issues from July 2004 to July 2014 (the most
recent full issue available online at the time that the research was conducted).
 CHAPTER EIGHT

PORNOGRAPHIC ASSISTANCE
IN BIO-POLITICAL TIMES:
SEXUALITY MENTORED BY PORN STARS

PAULA SEQUEIRA-ROVIRA

This chapter aims to analyse from a Foucauldian perspective, some of the

relationships between pornography, sexuality and bio-politics. In order to
do this, I will examine what I call ‘self-help pornography books’. These
documents offer tips to help ‘improve’ the sex lives of readers through a
technical refinement of certain practices or methods meant for the
enrichment of their sex performance with their partners. These books are
typically written by male and female pornography performers whose
supposed wisdom is gained through experience of working in the
pornography industry. These books suggest the idea that any person, who
reads them, will improve their performance and will gain sexual skills,
similar to those developed by actors in pornography movies. As discussed
later, such documents are quite recent and are mostly developed in the
United States, although they are also written in Latin America and Spain.
Many are only found in English, while a few others are translated to
Spanish. None of these books have been as famous as the one written by
the well-known pornography star Jenna Jameson, which was published
originally in English in year 2004 with the suggestive title: “How to Make
Love like a Porn Star: a Cautionary Tale”.

Where sexologists were once the only legitimate figures to offer advice
and instruction on matters of sex and sexuality, nowadays the performers
of the so-called “adult movies” are also invested with the authority to give
advice as they claim to be skilled technicians of sexual matters.

In this chapter, I argue pornography is a fundamental part of the disciplinary

and bio-political society we live in. I will explore Michel Foucault (2009)
140 Chapter Eight

in order to discuss this further.

Self-Help Books
In Western culture, people have learned to consult self-help books as a
support source on a range of issues, hoping to find in them a series of
suggestions or formulas that help them cope with situations of personal,
family or couple crisis. Titles like “Chicken Soup for the Soul”, “Who
Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work
and in Your Life”, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” or the
famous best-seller suggestively titled “The Secret” have sold millions of
copies around the world, leaving huge profits to the publishing houses and
their authors.

Self-help books are texts that through an often psychological or spiritual

approach, seek to inspire the development of expert-level skills and
abilities on a group of readers who need to change their behaviour, an idea
or a need. It is assumed that the authors of these books identify a
“problem” in people – difficulties in coping with cancer, managing
relationships, controlling the amount of food eaten, handling techniques to
have an efficient use of money, or even learning to be happy- and they
teach people how to handle or solve that situation through a system.
Today, thanks to increasing popularity of the genre, it is very common to
find bookstores with shelves, specifically labelled for this type of material,
making it easy for consumers to find them. Rimke (2000:62) points out
these texts focus on the self and are based on ideas such as freedom,
choice, or autonomy, all aimed at improving people´s lives. She describes
this phenomenon as the creation of “self-help citizens”.

Self-help books are often based on what is known as positive thinking.

According to Barbara Ehrenreich (2011), this perspective was an
American invention of the nineteenth century that quickly gained
popularity and became increasingly rooted in the mentality of Western
countries. For Ehrenreich, this kind of thinking is part of a post-Calvinist
reasoning, which also served as a demonstration of being chosen to enter
the kingdom of God. In her book, Ehrenreich narrates part of her approach
to positive thinking, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The
author shows how this trend dominates most of the discourses related to
this disease, not only by those who live it in their own flesh but in other
areas such as those participating in health campaigns. Anyone who
expresses a different point of view or articulates frustration is explicitly
 Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times 141

disapproved. Ehrenreich suggests that overexploitation of positive thinking

can have undesirable effects like refusing “a series of feelings as
comprehensible as anger and fear, which should be buried under a
cosmetic layer of happiness” (Ehrenreich 2011:50).

Positive thinking suggests that those who read and are instructed with
these materials may attract positive events. On the contrary, the attraction
of negative events by negative thinking would be one of the aspects that
these texts seek to avoid. Here, the ‘power of the mind’ is highlighted as a
basic mechanism to improve or promote a range of desired conditions.
Freedom (a liberal value par excellence) consequently becomes a quality
of supreme importance. Phrases like ‘Be yourself’ ‘You can get anything’,
‘Live your fullest potential’ advocate for personal autonomy in order to
achieve whatever a person wants, where the main obstacle is, of course,
within oneself. Commercial advertisements also function as a booster for
this type of thinking; this can easily be seen in advertising slogans such as
Visa credit card: ‘Life is now’ or Nike's ‘Just do it’. Freedom immediately
appears as a cardinal value of life for any person or consumer. The limits
of freedom are set by the actions, feelings and thoughts of the individual;
in this equation, society almost disappears from the reference map.

Along with freedom, the idea of choice appears too. It is not only to
choose, but more importantly the idea of ‘having the right to choose’ that
has become a tool used as a political slogan by different groups; an idea,
otherwise, very attractive in our culture. Salecl (2011) criticises what she
calls “the tyranny of choice.” She points out that the idea of choosing has
been presented in our societies as a purely rational issue, mainly driven
towards the middle class in developed countries. She outlines four reasons
why people usually perceive the act of choosing as a traumatic event: a)
they want to make a perfect choice; b) they wonder about what will others
may think of their decisions and what those people will choose; c) they
think that no one is in charge of society; d) they are afraid of not making
free decisions. This way of thinking makes people anxious when deciding
their own choices in different matters of their lives such as love, children,
marriage, work, or even in scenarios where someone buys food in a
supermarket or restaurant.

As confirmed by Rimke:

“Self-help techniques operate not so much by way of negative prohibition

but by the way of positive, productive application: the self-helper must be
skilled in his or her own subjection, in organizing and sustaining some
142 Chapter Eight

stable operative unity among the multitudinous, divergent effects of the

techniques that produce intelligible selfhood. By marshalling the concept
of responsibility, popular self-help discourses provide an example of how
the operations of power in everyday life can incite governance of the self,
thanks to expert pronouncements about both success and on morality”
(2000:63).

Self-help books are appealing because they promote ideas of freedom,

happiness and choice. These expectations are promoted as realisable in the
books written by pornography stars.

Porn stars: the new sexologists influenced

by the self-help perspective
For some years now, pornography -related titles have entered the self-help
book market. Not all of these texts have been written by pornography
performers but the topic of pornography is used as a hook to increase
sales. For example: “Porn Star Secrets of Sex. Over 100 mind-blowing
tips, tricks and games you wish you knew” written by Jenni West; “The
Ultimate Sex Guide: Secret Strategies Uncensored (For Men) to Seduce
and Fuck Like a Pornstar All Day Long”, by Daniel Marques; or “How to
Get Your Wife to Act Like a Porn Star: 30 Days to a Sexier Marriage” by
Alice Cash and Jane Cash.

Many texts are actually written by people who work in the pornography
industry including “Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex” by Nina Hartley;
“The Porn Star Guide to Great Sex”, by Mr. Marcus; “How to have a XXX
sex life. The Ultimate Vivid Guide”, written by Anderson and Berman
(2005) - this last title is a compilation of sexual tips and stories from male
and female pornography stars. While this tendency is more pronounced in
books written in the U.S., in English of course, the Spanish-speaking
world has also reproduced this trend with texts that mostly appear to be
autobiographical, for example: “Nacho Vidal: confesiones de una estrella
porno” (“Nacho Vidal: Confessions of a Porn Star”); “Historia de un
Porn Star: Biografía de Martin Mazza” (“Story of a Porn Star: Biography
of Martin Mazza”); “Los secretos sexuales de Nacho Vidal: conversaciones
con Simón Posada” (“Sex secrets of Nacho Vidal. Conversations with
Simon Posada”); all written between 2004 and 2011, and only this last one
is a compilation of sex tips.

None of these books have been as famous as the one written by the well-
known pornography star, Jenna Jameson, which was released in the
 Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times 143

English-speaking world in 2004 with the title “How to Make Love like a
porn star: a Cautionary Tale” and a year later was published the Spanish
version titled: “Cómo hacer el amor igual que una del estrella porno”
Jameson appears on the cover, in a clear attempt to imitate the look,
hairstyle, posture and clothing of the famous mid-twentieth century
actress, Marilyn Monroe. This book has slightly more than 500 pages,
including several photos where Jameson appears at different moments of
her life since she was a baby, through her childhood, adolescence and
especially her journey through the pornography industry.

The images shown are not only of Jameson, but also of her family, friends
and the occasional boyfriend or girlfriend. The text is divided into six
books named after the sonnet of the English writer and poet William
Shakespeare (which are also divided into chapters). This mixture of classic
literature (Shakespeare) with the light literature of Jameson is suggestive.
It seems the author attempts to give the book a sense of higher intellectual
level by highlighting a figure of international literature. The use of
Marilyn Monroe as a reference on the cover and other parts of the book
could be an attempt to provide an iconic sensuality to the world of
pornography very different to that which is normally associated with
pornography. Her book has been translated into several languages
including Spanish, German and Swedish. In addition to this, it was listed
in The New York Times Best Seller for six weeks, becoming a success in
the United States. However, it is difficult to find out how successful this
book has been in Latin America or Spain, but the fact that it has been
translated into Spanish and other languages, shows the sales potential
publishing houses saw in it.

The book is an anecdotal compilation from various stages of Jameson’s

life. It includes extracts from her childhood diary, photographs, interview
transcripts, sex tips and some chapters are presented in comic strips.
Jameson's book exposes her stories of love with men - and women also -
which appear to be taken from a cheesy romantic movie. In fact, the story
she tells goes something like this: after a difficult childhood, her mother's
death and the indifference of her father, she was raped and later escapes to
the house of an abusive boyfriend. To earn some money she first enters in
a strip club and later into the pornography industry. Part of the book
narrates her drug addictions, the multiple rapes she was victim of (at least
three, at different times in her life), the loves she lost, her family issues,
etc. Almost at the end of the book and after a lot of suffering, she meets a
male pornography star with whom she falls in love, marries and hopes will
144 Chapter Eight

become the father of her babies. The storyline ends when the problems
with her family and friends are solved. Even though Jameson decides to
continue in the pornography industry, she will only do scenes either with
women or her husband, because he feels jealous whenever she makes
scenes with other men. There is very little sex advice when compared to
the title of the book but there are some recommendations to ‘improve’
sexual life and suggestions for those who desire to get involved in the
pornography industry.

This phenomenon of male and female pornography performers giving

advice based on their sex lives and their own experience is quite new; it
seems that this editorial line was inaugurated by Jameson's book in 2004.
Jameson's book is a combination of autobiographical narrative with sex
advice in which pornography is portrayed from a favourable and positive
view. In contrast, Linda Lovelace (2003), the star of the 1980’s
pornography hit called Deep Throat, has written a book which is similarly
an autobiography of her experiences in the pornography world. Lovelace
does not offer any sex advice, instead, she warns people about the
suffering and harassment she experienced in the world of prostitution and
pornography.

These books make us think about the new social legitimating forms that
begin to appear when pornography becomes normalised. In previous
historical periods priests had the power to make people confess about
sexual behaviours, desires or moments and to direct people to accept or
avoid certain sexual activities. Over the course of time and with the
emergence of sexology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, clinicians were
invested with scientific authority to proclaim on sexual matters and what is
morally right and wrong (Foucault 2009). Although doctors and
sexologists still maintain high levels of authority, it is also true that little
by little, pornography performers and their pedagogical experience have
also become figures of authority on sex.

Jameson's book is written in confessional form: “The following is a true

story. It is more naked that I have ever allowed myself to be seen. Neither
my father nor my husband have been privy to these experiences; they have
been a burden and a blessing for me to carry alone. Until now.” I argue
this demonstrates Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary power whereby
sexuality is “the truth, the most secret part of ourselves, only “asking” to
come to light” (2009:63). Jameson boasts this supposed repressed secret
part of herself, once confessed, helped her write ‘hot’ memories in the
 Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times 145

book. Confession is almost like a cathartic moment (“It is more naked that
I have ever allowed myself to be seen”). According to Foucault, the
confession has a primary role in Western culture as well as in the
management of sexuality, religion, medicine, relationships, and so on.
Self-help pornography books are examples of how the confession of
sexuality has altered over time; now pornography incites confession of the
sexual self as appositive good rather than something to be ashamed of.
Confession is now experienced not as a disciplinary requirement but as the
most intense feeling of self-control and freedom. For example, there is no
coincidence that the book of the Vivid pornography performers displays
on its first page a dedication directed not specifically to a person, but to a
part of the U.S. Constitution which refers precisely to freedom: "To the
First Amendment, without which this book would not exist" (Anderson and
Berman 2005).

Self-help books promote pornography as the expression of a free,

autonomous, self-possessed individual. In this world view, the social
context of sex and sexuality disappears and the individual is responsible
for their own improvement. Therefore, it is assumed that the advice of a
pornography star who has written a self-help book can be equally useful in
Costa Rica, London, Malaysia, or China.

Sex tips from pornography performers to the world

Pornography is still tainted by ideas that it is vulgar, offensive or indecent.
But it is also true that pornography has reinvented itself and achieved a
new cultural status of normalcy and acceptability. McNair (2002), has
developed the category of porno-chic to refer not only to pornography
itself, but to the ways in which the ideas, values and language of the
pornography industry have become part of popular culture. For example,
the emerging figures of reality shows like The Girls Next Door reinforce
the status of pornography performers as international celebrities with
everything that implies (fame, money, clothes, becoming a role model, and
so on). These sexualised media representations mitigate the idea of
depravity that has been associated with pornography. The books written by
pornography performers, as well as other authors of pornography, function
to elevate the new status of pornography. The presumed authority
pornography performers claim to possess enables the popular belief that
they have the right to provide advice to anyone who wants to improve
their sex life. Their recommendations can be seen as a new form of porno-
sexology. For example, Jameson argues:
146 Chapter Eight

“I know about sex the way some people know about music or computers.
It’s my livelihood. Where women in other professions talk about the
interest rate or comp cards, we talk about shaving pubic hair (using
Neosporin instead of shaving gel helps reduce shaving bumps) and getting
menstrual blood out of your panties (try hydrogen peroxide). But what
women ask me about most often is how to give a good blow job” (2004).

The advice of pornography performers is issued as a series of instructions

that place them as figures of authority (moral, religious, political or in this
case sexual) to encourage others to learn from them. Gradually, their
pieces of advice turn into commandments. Jameson, in fact, uses religious
terminology such as the Ten Commandments twice: when she talks about
oral sex (according to her this is one of the subjects that most concern
women) and later when she refers to the ten deal-breakers (that a man
must not do). The sexological book titled Sex for Dummies (Westheimer
and Lehu 2008), uses this same format: "Ten tips for safer sex"; "Ten
things women wish men knew about sex"; "Ten things men want women to
know about sex"; "Ten Tips to be a great lover."

These prescriptions begin with exhortations based on the following words:

“You shall not ...” or “You can ...” In this particular context, the
commandments about oral sex (female-to-male) according to Jameson
(2004) are:

1. You shalt establish eye contact,

2. You shalt start slowly,
3. You shalt use thy hands wisely,
4. You shalt spit before swallowing,
5. You shalt watch him spank,
6. You shalt use thine tongue
7. You shalt shield thy teeth
8. Honour the scrotum
9. You shalt experiment with facials and swallowing
10. You shalt not get it in your eyes.

Jameson uses friendly and funny language to hide the authoritarian

function of her role as an advisor in the sexual arena. Jameson’s Ten
Commandments also hide the unpleasantness that comes along with a
prescription. It appears that in the words of a pornography performer a
command is experienced as less disciplinary than if it was presented by a
priest saying: “thou shalt not have sex before marriage” or “Anal sex
should be avoided”. Jameson offers advice as very easy to follow step-by-
 Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times 147

step guidelines everyone can use to improve their level of sexual

excellence. However, while Jameson notes that: “If a girl wants to keep a
man in her life she can read The Rules, or she can learn how to give killer
head he'll never forget” (2004), the stories of her many partners
throughout the book, only confirm the obvious: the success of a couple or
relationship is much more complicated that learning a ten-step techniques
about oral sex.

The meteoric rise of pornography performers based on their experience in

the industry makes people view them as some kind of ‘sex deities’,
referred to as ‘experts’ who supposedly know everything related to sex.
This reification of the pornography star figure makes it almost impossible
for mortals to be like them. The first part of the book by a well-known
Spanish pornography actor, titled “Nacho Vidal’s Sex Secrets:
Conversations with Simon Posada” shows the following:

“How to postpone ejaculation? How to kiss a woman? How to seduce?

What to say during sex? How to give good oral sex? All these questions
are more or less answered in this document. Here's another explanation: if
you believe that when buying this document you will be as good in bed as
Nacho Vidal, forget it. He is a machine of nature designed for sex, a real
human stud, unique and unrepeatable. Maybe one of his children, -of
which he is devoutly obsessed with- will genetically inherit his sexual
prowess, but becoming Nacho Vidal is impossible.” (Posada 2011).

In any case, the hyper-sexualization of pornography performers is essential

in the production and reproduction of their image as sexually voracious;
this factor transfers to the reader the idea that they too will become highly
desirable lovers and thus facilitates sales of these books. An example of
this can be seen in the Vivid Girls book: “And, perhaps most important of
all, the Vivid Girl always gets her man. Once she sets her sights on
someone she desires, there´s no turning back” (Anderson and Berman
2005:x). This fantasy of sexual prowess is mirrored in soap operas and
romantic movies, where the idea prevails that such women are capable of
holding their men and keeping other women away from them. Porn and
more recently, self-help pornography books, have become the basic
teaching material for ideas, tips, tricks and sex advice. This mentorship is
not spiritual, but basically mundane and is essential to many readers.
148 Chapter Eight

Pornography, Sexology and Bio-politics

The concept of bio-politics is still relevant today. In the eighteenth
century, nations became concerned about their births, pregnancies,
illnesses, deaths and therefore, their sexuality becomes a valued aspect
(Foucault 2009:26-27): classifying sexual behaviour, evaluating healthful
or insalubrious practices, controlling incestuous relationships, and so on,
were necessary actions taken by the states to monitor people living under
their jurisdiction. These classifications had to be analysed, and turned into
statistics, that later functioned as resources for research and decision
making. Bio-politics main interests are “forecasts, statistical estimates,
global measurements” (Foucault 2000:222-223).

Rose (2012) points out that bio-politics have some features resulting from
historical changes in this area. These are: a) Molecularization: that is to
say, medicine has a special interest in molecules and the microscopic, such
as genes, DNA, and so on; b) Optimization: the interest to cure
abnormality is not isolated, nowadays, science and medicine seek to
maximize biology or human vital processes; c) Subjectification: health and
everything associated with it, became one of the core values of modern
societies; d) Specialized somatic knowledge: a whole new group of
specialists have been created to address health issues and human
improvements; e) Economies of vitality: in order to fulfil all these
requirements it is necessary to purchase a whole series of expensive
technological equipment but countries also have to make heavy capital
investments in health.

Self-help books are part of the bio-political world and they fit in with the
processes of optimization, subjectification and specialized knowledge. All
of these aspects will also have great importance in the books written by
pornography stars: it is no longer about settling for satisfactory and
acceptable sex lives, it is more about the pursuit of perfect, healthy and
mind-blowing sexualities through experts’ advice and techniques.

It should be noticed that, both pornography and medicine are important

bio-political tools. Despite their attempts to differentiate, both disciplines
share some similarities. Retana (2008) believes they both entail
normalizing discourses; they both control and have an interest in sexuality.
“Medicine and pornography seek order, the symmetry in a field where the
pursuit of an opposite disorder challenges freedom” (2008:106).
 Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times 149

To some extent, the books analysed here are similar to the ones written by
sexologists. It cannot be denied that there are similarities between the
documents written by sexologists and those written by pornography stars.
Both have very similar strategic lines. The same discourses reinforced by
sexology and presented by Paula Nicolson (cited by Potts 2002:32-34) can
also be found in self-help pornography books. These discourses are related
to: a) biological or reproductive model of sexuality: the idea of masculinity
and femininity are reproduced as opposites and the notions of instinct or
nature are central when explaining issues related to sexuality; b) the
orgasmic imperative: in these texts, the orgasm is essential and it appears
as categorical and mandatory; c) the coital imperative: penile-vaginal
penetration is heavily promoted as part of healthy sexuality.

Nevertheless, these are some of the identified coexisting differences:

a) The use of writing in first person. In the content written by

pornography performers, they frequently set themselves as
examples to describe or promote different behaviours or practices.
Anyway, their teaching has value as far as they have practiced sex a
considerable number of times and their advice-related comments
take a similar approach as the following: “I had my nipples pierced
and it made then sensitive. I love to watch the lips of my partner on
my nipples” (Savanna, in Anderson and Berman 2005:62) or
“Ultimately I can only seduce women who want to be seduced ...
When I first meet a woman, I look deep in her eyes. I want to see if
her gaze is open and welcoming or guarded and watchful” (Mr.
Marcus 2010: 49). Sexology aims to use certain language to present
itself as “scientific” and therefore the references made are usually
in third person. As the book of the well-known Costa Rican
sexologist, Mauro Fernández says: “Many men consult, because
they fail to get an erection with a specific partner and with another
they can” (Fernández and López 2002:47). A sexologist legitimacy
to offer advice is not based on their own personal amount of sexual
experiences, in fact they may not even have an active sex life or
may not be as sexually active, and it hardly matters; what matters is
the supposed scientific nature and the counselling provided on their
consultations.
b) Terminology used. The use of non-specialized terms is common on
this type of document and the use of a more colloquial and informal
language is preferred. Words like blowjob, balls, dick, ass, fuck,
pussy are commonly found in self-help pornography books: “Don´t
150 Chapter Eight

forget the balls. I always touch the balls somehow” (Kira in

Anderson and Berman 2005:98). On the contrary, the books written
by sexologists are provided with a medical language and constant
scientific references creating a detachment between the author and
its readership. For example, when Mauro Fernández speaks about
ears and the eroticism associated with them, he states: “Based upon
the knowledge provided by medicine, we know the vagus nerve
creates a whole intricate neurological wire that connects this area
with the visceral nerves of pleasure” (Fernández and López
2002:30). Such a statement is unlikely to appear in the books
written by pornography performers as their authority is derived
from personal experience; their language is populist, they are not
interested in a “scientific approach” based on academic studies and
herein lies their appeal.
c) Porn as an educational reference: The authors of these books
usually advise people to watch pornography or discover sex lessons
through their films. Their work is presented as a required
foundation for sexual lessons they offer: “Movies [porn] are great
to get you excited, but they can also give ideas and inspiration to
do things you hadn´t even considered before” (Dasha in Anderson
and Berman 2005:120). Porn performers do not use scientific
research as a resource for their advice; instead, the importance of
their profession determines the capacity to provide reliable ideas,
tips, positions, dress codes, and so on. Sexology as an academic
discipline has a rather ambivalent relationship with pornography.
Clinical sexologists sometimes advise couples to turn to
pornography as a possible source of pleasure and inspiration and as
a means to cement their relationship. On the other hand, they also
warn people that pornography holds some limitations and can cause
harm to a relationship because of its addictive properties and the
possibility that it may actually undermine intimacy.
d) Mood presentation: A very important difference between sexology
and self-help pornography books is that sexologists write with a
more serious and formal tone, while pornography performers are
humorous, relaxed and funny. References in sexology books not
only convey scientific knowledge, they also include reflective
content, creating some distance between the writer (the expert) and
reader (the learner). Although this relationship is no different in the
self-help pornography books, such books shorten the distance
between the pornography performer-turned-author and their
readership. In order to mask the abuses embedded in the pornography
 Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times 151

industry these books frequently incorporate comic strips, when

describing painful situations. Jameson (2004), for example,
attempts to use humour to illustrate painful situations that many
female pornography performers experience in the pornography
industry from men who exploit them economically and physically.

Conclusions
In The History of Sexuality Vol. I, Foucault (2009) argues sexuality should
not be addressed through the concept of “repression”. He asserts that in
Western societies, in contrast to the prevalent idea that sexuality is
repressed and that pornography will release it, there is a permanent
incitement towards sex and that pornography is one of factor in that
incitement. I have argued in this chapter, following the ideas of Foucault,
that self-help pornography books do not free sexuality but are an example
of the multifarious disciplinary discourses, positive technologies, bio-
political strategies that fictionalise popular truths about sex. Since the
nineteenth century the combination of sexology and pornography has
slowly produced a ‘pornification of the self” where sexual life is subject to
pathologization in relation to the ideals of pornography. Pornography sets
the standards for both men and women: the appropriate penis length; the
amount of time erections should last; acceptable contours for the vagina;
female availability and alleged continuous desire to have sex; instant and
intense orgasms; acrobatic sexual performances and so on. Everything that
lies outside these parameters can be experienced as a disability or
deficiency.

If pornography has become one of the educational tools par excellence

then questions arise about what happens to men’s self-esteem if they have
erections that are not as strong as the ones pornography actors have? How
do women cope with the sadness of not having orgasms? How can you
help people who feel their sexual encounters are boring in comparison to
people in pornography movies? Not achieving standards set out in self-
help pornography books, or those prescribed by sexologists as necessary
for sexual health, is deemed a problem that is located in individual failure.
There is no recognition or understanding of the generic and historical
power relations that shape people’s individual subjectivities and sexual
experience.

From the standpoint of these instructional documents it is easy to

standardise sexual experiences through recommendations or commands
152 Chapter Eight

resembling a manual used to assemble furniture: one step leads to the other
and then to another and so on. Here, pleasure becomes available to anyone
and everyone if you comply with the guidelines.

This loss of historicity makes people think of sexual relationships as if

they are de-contextualised. According to the logic of pornography
performers or writers, if their advice is literally followed a person’s sexual
life will be dramatically improved. These kinds of ideas prevail in what
has become a hyper-sexualised everyday culture. Recently, a Costa Rican
morning show included a several-minute segment to teach housewives the
necessary pole-dancing techniques to give their husbands a sexy
performance at home.

Lovelace and Jameson’s publications are two decades apart yet their
narration of their experiences in the world of pornography are worlds
apart: the former describes the exercise of sovereign power and the latter
reveals disciplinary power. Lovelace (2003) describes her experiences as a
series of abuses, maltreatment and enslavement by her partner, including
being forced to be a prostitute and the lead actress in several pornography
films, among them the famous “Deep Throat”. Lovelace says she never
felt like a real actress, she never gladly performed sex work and it was
hard for her to understand why people pay for sex or watch pornography.
Jameson (2004) is proud of her profession, claiming that she is an expert
on sex, arguing pornography movies set her free from sexual repression.
Jameson claims pornography is much more than a livelihood; it is about
her sexual liberation. She insists we cannot deny that self-help
pornography books are creators of knowledge and instigators of sexual
freedom. Currently, we have become people whose sexualities are
constructed through pornography. It seems we have become more and
more dependent on “experts” telling us what is right and wrong, and
whether or not one day we will achieve so-called ‘normal’ levels of hyper-
sexuality that the authors have promised us.

References
Anderson, D. and Berman, M. (2005) How to Have a XXX Sex Life. The
Ultimate Vivid Guide. Harper Collins Publishers Inc.
Fernández, M. and López, H. (2002) Manual de Almohada. Editorial
Ginita Linda, San José Costa Rica.
Foucault, M. (2000) Defender la sociedad. Curso del Collège de France
(1975-1976). Fondo de Cultura Económica, Argentina.
 Pornographic Assistance in Bio-political Times 153

—. (2009) Historia de la Sexualidad I. La voluntad de saber. Segunda

edición, tercera reimpresión, Siglo XXI, Madrid.
Jameson, J. and Strauss, N. (2005) Cómo… Hacer el amor igual que una
estrella porno. Trad. Martín Arias. Ediciones Martínez Roca, Spain.
Jameson, J. and Strauss, N. (2004) How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: a
Cautionary Tale. New York: Regan Books, Kindle Edition.
Lovelace, L. (2003) Garganta Profunda. Memoras de una actriz porno.
Trad. Gerardo Mendoza. La Fábrica, Madrid.
Mr. Marcus (2010) The Porn Star Guide to Great Sex. St. Martin’s Press,
New York.
McNair, B. (2002) La cultura del striptease. Sexo, medios y liberalización
del deseo. Trad. Escarlata Guillén Pont, Editorial Océano, Barcelona.
Potts, A. (2002) The Science/Fiction of Sex: Feminist deconstruction and
the vocabularies of heterosex. Routledge.
Rimke, H. (2000) Governing citizens through self-help literature. Cultural
studies 14(1) 61-78.
Retana, C. (2008) Pornografía: la tiranía de la mirada. San José: Arlekín.
Rose, N. (2012) Políticas de la vida. Biomedicina, poder y subjetividad en
el siglo XXI. Trad. Elena Luján Odriozola. UNIPE: Editorial
Universitaria, Argentina.
Salecl, R. (2011) The Tyranny of Choice, Profile Books.
Westheimer, R. and Lehu, P. (2008) Sexo para Dummies. 3era edición.
Editorial Wiley, Estados Unidos.
Žižek, S. (2009) Sobre la violencia. Seis reflexiones marginales. Trad.
Antonio José Antón Fernández. Ediciones Paidós Ibérica, Barcelona.
 CHAPTER NINE

TRANSGENDER PORNOGRAPHY:
THE BIMBOFICATION OF WOMEN

SHEILA JEFFREYS

Materials directed at men who cross-dress and transgender constitute a

significant segment of the industry of pornography. The makers of
pornography serve a market. They provide the porn that the buyers want
and these materials can therefore give valuable insights into the sexual
proclivities of the male consumers. Male transgender activists
determinedly deny that their adoption of what they consider to be female
identities and appearance is related to their sexual excitements. Rather,
they argue, they are somehow innately female despite their male biology.
This chapter will examine transgender pornography in order to illuminate
the kinds of sexual interests that underlie this practice for a large
percentage of the men who cross-dress and transgender. The idea of
womanhood that such men possess is not a positive one. One sub-genre,
for instance, called bimbofication, relates to the degradation and
humiliation of both men and women by turning them into intellectually
challenged sex objects with titles such as, ‘From boardroom to bimbo’.
Other forms of transgender pornography serve the interests of men who
like the male actors in porn to have penises as well as breasts, or like to
see such actors sexually assaulted by ‘real’ men, or even by ‘transmen’ i.e.
women who identify as male. In all cases, the image of womanhood that is
portrayed is deeply insulting to women. Transgender pornography is
inextricably linked to other forces that eroticise women’s subordination
and enforce harmful appearance norms that infantilise and sexualise
women.
156 Chapter Nine

The development of transgenderism

Though contemporary transgender activists argue that transgenderism is an
innate condition, feminist critics argue that it is a social construction
(Jeffreys 2014; Hausman 1995; Raymond 1994). In the late 19th and early
20th centuries, the scientists of sex, sexologists, believed, as many do now,
that men’s and women’s brains were biologically quite distinct and caused
very different forms of behaviour, i.e. masculinity and femininity. They
believed, as many still do, that these gendered brains could end up
mysteriously in the wrong body. In particular they argued that homosexuals
were innately possessed of the brains of the opposite sex (Ellis 1927 first
published 1897; Jeffreys 1985). Early sexologists believed that homosexuality
was the result of a biological fault which gave female homosexuals, or
sexual inverts as they called them, the brains of men in the bodies of
women and male homosexuals the brains of women in the bodies of men.
From the 1920s onwards doctors sought to physically change men, and a
few women, who sought to ‘change sex’. The development of sex
hormones, anaesthesia and plastic surgery made it possible to change the
outward appearance of bodies to resemble those of the opposite sex.
Homosexuals who wished to avoid the social opprobrium associated with
their sexuality, and men who cross-dressed for sexual excitement and
considered that they would gain satisfaction from impersonating women
on a more permanent basis, were able to gain simulacrums of female body
parts as well as just adopting ‘feminine’ clothing (Jeffreys 2014; Hausman
1995). These men were first called transsexuals but today would be
included in a rapidly expanding category identified as ‘transgender’.

From the 1990s and the age of the Internet, men interested in impersonating
women have been able to network internationally and develop a language
and politics to assert that they are somehow essentially and innately of the
opposite sex. This assertion is important as it defends their practice from
being stigmatised as in any way sexual. They recognise that their demands
that they should have free hormones and surgery, be recognised legally as
women and get rights to enter women’s spaces, might be less easily
accepted by a gullible public if they were understood to be motivated by
sexual fetishism. This new language calls men and women who seek to
change sex ‘transgender’ and frequently includes male cross-dressers,
butch lesbians, drag queens and others (Devor 2002). Persons who
transgender cannot change their sex, because that is biologically fixed.
They can change their ‘gender’ because this consists of socially
constructed behaviour and appearance norms. The dominant way in which
the term ‘transgender’ is understood is in relation to persons wanting to
 Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women 157

impersonate the opposite sex in a permanent way, and the word will be
used here to refer to men who wish to create such a change. The more
temporary version of the practice will be called cross-dressing. The
difference between these categories, cross-dressing and transgenderism, as
some transgender blogs put it, can be two years, i.e. the one behaviour
forms the foundation for the other (Cross-dressers.com 2011).

The majority of the medical profession today accepts that transgendering

men, women and children by the use of surgery and hormones is a
reasonable form of ‘treatment’ for what they diagnose as ‘gender
dysphoria’ (Jeffreys 2014). There is, however, also an increasing number
who are critical of the practice. The critical psychiatrists and psychologists
do not accept that those who transgender contain an essence of the
opposite sex in their brains. The American College of Pediatricians, for
instance, issued a statement in 2016 against the transgendering of children
which makes it clear that they reject the ideology of the feminine essence
entirely (American College of Pediatricians 2016). They say, ‘No one is
born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an
awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and
psychological concept; not an objective biological one’. They were
founded in opposition the American Academy of Pediatrics which
considers that ‘gender’ as they call it, is innate, and that children are born
with it, ‘Research suggests that gender is something we are born with; it
can't be changed by any interventions’ (American Academy of Pediatrics
n.d.). The critical sexologists argue that the men who seek to transition can
be divided into two categories, a minority who are homosexual and a
majority who are ‘autogynophiles’ (Blanchard 1991), i.e. heterosexual
males sexually interested in adopting women’s body parts as well as
clothing.

Women have historically formed a small minority of adults who transgender,

and the majority of them are lesbians before they transition (Jeffreys
2014). Their motivations are completely different from those of male
autogynophiles as their behaviour has no relationship with sexual
fetishism. Today, however, there is a surge of young girls seeking to
transgender through clinics that specialise in transgendering children, so
that girl children now form two thirds of those who are being referred in
the UK (BBC News 2016). This phenomenon may be the result of the
rejection of femaleness that is a common part of childhood for girls as they
reject the sexualised and degraded nature of the state of ‘femininity’ which
they are expected to enter (APA Task Force 2007). Girls grow up in a
culture of misogyny which is increasingly toxic to their ambitions for full
158 Chapter Nine

human status (BBC Woman’s Hour 2016). Unlike the boy children who
may begin their journey to transgendering by wearing the clothing of their
mothers or sisters for sexual excitement from the onset of puberty at
around 11 years old, the girls have no such history. Unfortunately, the
transgender pornography that men have created to serve their fetishistic
interests depicts quite faithfully the image of womanhood that increasing
numbers of female children are seeking to evacuate, and in this way helps
to create the misogynistic culture in which girls can find it hard to survive.

Feminist critics have pointed out that the practice of transgenderism is

harmful in a number of ways. In particular it depends upon and serves to
promote harmful sexual stereotypes, and the idea that these represent truth,
instead of a socially constructed hierarchy formed from male domination
and female subordination. There is considerable evidence that human
brains are not ‘gendered’ and the ‘female’ brain does not exist (Fine
2010). Thus ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ are not behaviours created by
gendered brains but represent the behaviours that are required of the
inhabitants of a hierarchy. Femininity is the behaviour of subordinates and
masculinity the behaviour of dominants (Jeffreys 2014, first published
2005). The concept of feminine ‘gender’ that practitioners of transgenderism
and cross-dressing adhere to is one which is rejected by feminists as
degrading, infantilising and sexualising, featuring high-heeled shoes, short
skirts, breast implants, the showing of much cleavage and promotion of
body parts, humiliating positions and sexual servility. This is very clear
from the pornography that they consume as we shall see. They are
masochists who not only eroticise women’s subordination, as men who
consume porn ordinarily do, but seek to gain a more powerful sexual
excitement through their practice of impersonating women and thus
representing women’s lowly status through their own appearance or even
acquired female body parts.

Both the sexologists and the feminists who are critical of the practice of
transgenderism and the idea of the ‘feminine essence’ are likely to find
themselves harassed and traduced by transgender activists who seek to
harm their careers, close down their research and prevent speaking
opportunities (Dreger 2008; Jeffreys, 2012). The idea that there is a sexual
motivation for men who transgender is anathema to male transgender
activists who consider, perhaps correctly, that there will be less social
acceptance of their practice and less determination by legal systems to
support their rights to be women legally, if their sexual interests are
exposed to scrutiny (Ekins 2005). It is to this task, the examination of the
 Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women 159

sexual interests of men who cross-dress and transgender, that this chapter
is directed.

The shape of the transgender porn industry

A substantial part of the pornography industry is dedicated to men’s
masochistic interests in cross-dressing and transgenderism. An article in
International Business Times states that ‘the demand for transgender porn
has steadily increased since the 1990s’ (Herman 2015). It quotes Jeff
Dillon, the Vice-President of the company GameLink the ‘self-styled
‘Amazon of Porn”, stating that. “Over the past 15 years we’ve watched
viewership of content featuring transgender performers skyrocket"
(Herman 2015). The majority of consumers are, the industry acknowledges,
heterosexual men. This year, 2016, the 8th Awards night for transgender
pornography took place in Hollywood (Transgender Erotica Awards
2015). The 2015 TEA show, which is on YouTube, shows both male and
female performers receiving awards. The women in the videos, whether
they are regular porn actors or women who have transgendered, are very
much shorter than the men, about two thirds of the size. The men who
impersonate women are often very tall and may be standing next to a very
small woman who has transgendered, the man in a glitzy gown and the
woman in a minute suit. Industry entrepreneurs, bearded middle-aged men
with pot bellies, are also recognized with awards. There are a number of
porn companies and websites that specialise in transgender porn including
Grooby and Shemales.porn. Industry representatives assert that this genre
is increasing in popularity at a rapid pace, from a small industry niche
whose enthusiasts were likely to be secretive about their fetish to a
mainstream specialism. They put this down to the greater social
acceptance of transgenderism, reflected in law and popular culture
(Herman 2015). Porn focussing on women who have transgendered also
caters to men, but not necessarily heterosexual ones. Buck Angel, a
‘transman’ who has been working in ‘trans man porn’ for 12 years, says
that this variety of porn is for gay men, ‘It's gay men who watch trans men
porn, for the most part’ (Herman 2015).

The porn industry, which is gaining increasing profits from transgender

porn to the extent that it is worth engaging in public relations spin on the
issue, posits that it has decidedly positive results through creating greater
social acceptance of the phenomenon of transgenderism (Herman 2015).
This suggests that industry representatives sees transgender porn as
inextricably linked to the practice of transgenderism, and see nothing
160 Chapter Nine

negative to the public image of the practice from the sort of materials I
describe in this chapter. Pornographer, Steve Volponi, has produced titles
such as ‘Transsexual prostitutes’, ‘Transsexual Cheerleaders’, and
‘Transsexual babysitters’, with, as he puts it, ‘an outlier like Transsexual
Glory Hole Surprise’. Transgender pornography, like almost all other
forms, includes cruel, body-punishing staples such as gang bangs, as
Volponi expresses it, ‘Every once in a while, we also try to put in a
Transsexual Gang Bangers-two scenes, one girl and four guys in each, and
one girl against the other. … I get lot of girls bugging me… They all want
to do a gangbang. It’s pretty crazy’. Volponi, like other porn entrepreneurs,
puts the boom in transgender porn and the extreme forms of sexual
violence the actors are prepared to accept down to the positive influence of
the celebrity sportsman Caitlyn Jenner who came out as a female
impersonator in his sixties (Rutter 2016). Men like Jenner who have
decided to impersonate women in recent times are likely to have had
access to transgender pornography. An examination of the descriptions of
transgender porn videos on the Internet provides a useful insight into the
way in which men with this particular sexual interest experience and
practice their proclivities.

Transgender video porn

In regular transgender video pornography the action is about men who
have either just penises, or penises and breasts, sexually using women or
being used by ‘real’ men or women who have transgendered who are
called, in this genre, ‘transmen’. The appeal of men with two kinds of
sexual appendages is described thus on the House of Sissify website,
‘Shemales exist in the best of both worlds. Feminine as can be, yet
packing a present for their lovers that is unmatched by standard genders’
(House of Sissify n.d.). Typically, the action includes the staples of
contemporary porn, featuring large penises and a focus on anal sex as in
the example described here, ‘Director Jay Sin’s signature style — extreme
anal perversions presented with an inviting sense of playful delight — is
the perfect view into the sensuous world of hot T-girls. TS Playground #20
delivers hard-core fun with these gorgeous, ultra-feminine she-males and
their big, juicy, fully functional cocks!’ It should be noted that the great
majority of auto-gynophiles keep their penises when they transition and
want them to be ‘fully functional’, as they need them for their sexual
pleasure (Jeffreys 2014). Transgender activists use terms to refer to their
penises which suggest they can be an ordinary part of women’s anatomy,
calling them lady sticks, for instance. The men’s penises in the pornography,
 Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women 161

too, are described as ‘female’, using terms such as ‘she-cock’, and ‘she-
cum’ for ejaculate. They also, of course, have ‘tight buttholes’, and ‘big,
round boobs’. The actors engage in the cruel practices of ‘double anal’, in
‘a gender-bending party with ass-to-mouth action and an anal daisy chain!’
There is much mention of ‘futa’, which is an acronym for ‘fucked up the
arse’, a practice particularly popular here. This kind of porn is likely to
have an audience beyond hard-core cross-dressers and fans of trans-related
material. It provides men who like to think of themselves as heterosexual
with material that portrays men who are pretending not to be women,
which may make them more comfortable about viewing the staple
offerings of male on male anal intercourse and other more usually
homosexual activities. Whilst much video transgender pornography
focuses simply on the usual body-bruising cruelties of mainstream
pornography carried out with more unusual combinations of body parts, a
large tranche of this material is concerned with forced feminization.

Forced feminization is a subgenre of BDSM, bondage, discipline and

sadomasochism. The excitement of this subgenre is the sexually titillating
humiliation and degradation of men by forcing them to don the ‘feminine’
costume seen as befitting the underclass of women. A sample of the
shoutlines for videos at one website devoted to this kind of porn makes
this clear. They include the following: three mistress and two slaves
feminization, kinky sissy gets feminization and ass-fukced (sic) by a strap-
on armed gal, I want someone to treat me like a total sissy slut, Guy gets
sissification punishment, Stuff your balls in these tiny little lace panties,
I'll dress you as a sissy and whip your ass, Put these panties on you little
sissy bitch boy, and many, many more (Fox Porns n.d.). The motivations
and aspirations of the consumers are provided in more detail in the
literature of forced feminization.

Forced Feminization
The form of porn which provides the clearest representation of the image
of womanhood that fills the imaginations of cross-dressers and men who
transgender is written pornography, sometimes called erotica, devoted to
‘forced feminization’. One hundred recent examples of the genre are listed
under Amazon Bestsellers. The writers of this material usually adopt
women’s names but it does seem likely that work directed specifically at
men who are interested in impersonating women is written by men who
are doing just that. In some cases it is quite clear that the writers are using
pseudonyms, as in ‘Candy Banger’, ‘Naughty Wife’, ‘Lexi Lust’ and
162 Chapter Nine

‘Candy Socks’, though in other examples more usual women’s names are
used. In this material men are forced to put on women’s clothing and
makeup or have it put on them by forceful women. The excitement of the
porn for the male consumer lies in masochism. The accoutrements
associated with women symbolise women’s subordinate status, and when
the male victims in the porn are made to don them they experience the
sexual excitement of being forced into submission.

A good example of this genre is The New Girl: A Forced Feminization

Novel by Holly Sharpe (Sharpe 2016). The hero of the novel has high
status as the CEO of a ‘major oil company’ but is about to lose his job. He
applies for a new job as assistant to a CEO which is advertised as,
‘Stockings optional. Ready to assume the position? Submit your resume
today!’ The plot description is as follows: ‘It concerns male-to-female
cross-dressing, male submission, forced feminization, as well as oral and
anal sex between a man and a feminized male’. The cover photo shows a
man in heels and a short skirt taking something from a filing cabinet, i.e.
in a subordinate female servicing role. Forced feminization can be used in
the books to create the sexual excitement of being punished. This is the
theme of A Day at the Feminization Factory: 2 Transgender Transformation
Tales (Flyth 2014). In the tale entitled Orientation, the action is described as
follows: ‘A cruel man forced his Asian girlfriends to dress up in
schoolgirls outfits for his kinky thrills, but now he finds the tables have
turned and it's his turn to get schooled’.

In the above story another staple of malestream porn is employed,

eroticised racism and racist sexual stereotyping. This is a common theme
as in another story which is listed as fitting into the genre of ‘race change’.
It features ‘Myra and Amanda, two alluring, sadistic ladies who use weird
science to change unwilling men into women and girls. Breast expansion,
race change, even age regression is all just part of the job’. The subgenre
of forced feminization has specialities within it to satisfy the diverse
dressing up fantasies of its devotees. What is called ‘age regression’, for
instance, can extend as far as men dressing up and acting the part of
babies, a speciality called ‘adult babies’.

Another speciality focuses on men being forced to be pregnant. Mindi

Flyth is an author who caters to these different constituencies of men with
a range of titles. In relation to forced pregnancy, sometimes called
‘mommyfication’, Flyth provides the following: ‘The Pregnancy Plague
and The Town of Pregnant Women are about men who find themselves
knocked up, suddenly transformed into girls with big, bulging bellies.
 Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women 163

Now Flyth has expanded these stories in her new book ‘Mommyfied:
Transgender Pregnancy Tales’. Flyth also provides stories in the category
called ‘Age Regression’ as in He’s Stuck as a Schoolgirl: a Novel of
Transgender Sugar and Spice (Flyth 2015).

Often the themes of the books relate to science fiction, magical realism or
gaming. Men and women become subject to the effects of a magic ‘spell’
or a magic pill which transforms them into feminized women whether they
like it or not. The science fiction element is illustrated by the title Gender
Swapped in Space: Gender Swapped by Aliens, in which a man is taken
aboard a spaceship and forcibly feminized, ‘Now that Casey’s body is
bursting with fertile desire, she’s everything the aliens need’ (Skye 2016).
In some cases the heroes use magic, as in Everybody’s Valentine by
Maxwell Avoi, where a man decides to ‘use magic to become his ex-
girlfriend’s ideal lover so that he could win her back and they could live
happily ever after’. Instead, he becomes a woman and, ‘the lonely men
around him started to look awfully good…and he found himself changing
into their ideals!’ (Avoi 2016). Once they have been ‘feminized’, the men
resemble porn models, with breast implants, corsets or showing their
bottoms. Not surprisingly they don’t get ‘feminized’ into ordinary middle-
aged women holding down jobs in schools and offices because that would
not be sexy.

Much of this literature is placed under the heading ‘sissification’ on

websites. Sissification material provides the sexual satisfaction of
humiliation of men by forcing them to adopt clothing associated with the
underclass of women. The definition provided by the urban dictionary for
the word sissify is ‘To feminize a man, most often by forcing him to wear
women's clothing, typically gaudy and overly feminine to enhance his
humiliation’ (Urban Dictionary: sissify n.d.). Websites devoted to
sissification relate closely to the ordinary practices of sex industry BDSM
in which prostituted women are required by male customers to dress up in
leather corsets and boots and wield whips. Photos on sissytranserotica, for
instance, show women dressed in leather corsets and boots standing with
their high heels on the backs of men kneeling at their feet (sisstranserotica
n.d.). Men who see themselves as ‘sissies’ are able to extend their
pornographic fantasies into real life visits to women in prostitution who
will act as dominatrixes and pretend to force them to wear the female
clothing of submission, often maid’s clothing, and perhaps to engage in
dusting the kitchen whilst showing their bottoms. The sex industry BDSM
website universebdsm advertises dominatrixes who will provide forced
sissification, training and discipline to male customers and advertises the
164 Chapter Nine

services of Mistresss Luna, for instance, a professional dominatrix in

London (universebdsm n.d.). Sissification websites and porn, such as
House of Sissify and sissytranserotica, are for all men who are sexually
excited by the idea of wearing the clothing of the subordinate sex for the
purpose of humiliation. Their cross-dressing fantasies may be imaginary,
they may cross-dress occasionally or they may be men who fantasise about
transgendering or actually go on to do so. Their interests seem to shift
seamlessly from one category to the other. The websites do not just
provide erotica, but also training materials similar to those on the other
very numerous websites for such men, i.e. how to speak like a woman,
walk like a woman, and apply makeup like a woman. One set of
instructions advises ‘How to walk in heels and look super sexy’
(sissytranserotica n.d.).

The male consumers seem to have a treasured wish that their wives will
take on the role of dominatrix and force them to feminize. The
sissytranserotica website pretends to be advising wives in how to this,
‘Wives are If you are feminising your husband, you will need to remove
all his male clothes before commencing with full feminisation, that is,
have him living 24/7 as a girl’ (sissytranserotica n.d.). In fact men’s
demands that female partners pander to their sexual fetishes in this way are
most likely to create considerable distress, and may lead to marriage
breakdown (Jeffreys 2014 and websites). In the world of porn, however,
the wives fulfil the men’s desires, and this may contribute to the way in
which men who transgender express a sense of entitlement to the
compliance of reluctant or horrified wives. The men may believe that the
porn expresses women’s real feelings rather than their own fantasies.

The erotica features status reduction from prestigious ‘men’s’ occupations

to the humiliating servicing jobs seen as suitable for the subordinate sex.
One such story is called The Feminization of Mickey, The Secretary, which
is described thus, ‘Now that he was just a humble secretary, Mickey soon
discovered that one of his jobs was to keep the clients happy. If a man said
bend over and pull down your panties, Mickey dutifully obeyed like a
good little sissy’ (sissytranserotica n.d.). The serious issue of sexual
harassment which has subordinated women in the workplace and been
campaigned against by feminists for decades, is made into jolly sexual
excitement in this example of feminization.

Another genre of forced feminization porn provides useful information

about the nature of the excitement the male consumers gain from the
degradation of women through its title, ‘bimbofication’. This literature
 Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women 165

promotes the idea that reduction to sexualised object status is the highest
point of women’s aspirations. Bimbofication is defined in the online
Urban Dictionary as, ‘The process of transforming into an airheaded slut,
perfectly happy to be used and degraded’ (Urban Dictionary:
bimbofication n.d.). The term bimboization is sometimes used as an
equivalent to bimbofication. The language does not seem to be fixed. One
signification difference between sissification and bimbofication is that
sissification is restricted to the forced feminization of men, whereas in
bimbofication literature men can get excited by the degradation of actual
women to ‘airheaded sluts’, as well as the degradation of men to the status
of women.

The huge enthusiasm for cutting women down to size by reducing them
from their professional jobs to service men as bimbos, for instance,
suggests a considerable rage in the male consumers at women’s temerity
in demanding and even achieving some of the opportunities rightly
belonging to men. In Boardroom Bimbo, for instance, ‘Penelope’ is cut
down to size by taking a drug that turns her into a bimbo so that instead of
being able to make a presentation to a group of Japanese businessmen she
is taken to their quarters to be sexually used (Fade n.d.). In Becoming
Barbie: a Bimbofication Story a woman is bimbofied thus, ‘Cassie is a
brilliant physics major, but she's not happy - guys don't notice her, and
she's tired of her boring, plain looks. She'd give up her intelligence to
become a human Barbie doll in a minute. And after discovering a strange
infomercial on TV, Cassie orders some pills that promise to make this
dream come true…. What will Cassie do when she becomes a living
Barbie doll?’ (DiMarco n.d.).

Some authors in this genre are quite prolific. Valentina DiMarco, the
author of the above gem, has 73 titles on Amazon which are all dedicated
to the degradation of women, rather than men, through bimbofication. All
are helpful in demonstrating clearly the ideal of womanhood that bimbo
implies. In the novels plastic surgery and breast enlargement are much
used to create perfect bimbos for husbands and male bosses. One variety
of bimbofication literature focuses on wives who are bimbofied to their
husbands’ specifications and their own, apparent, glorious satisfaction, as
in Dimarco’s story Trophy Wife: a Bimbofication Story (DiMarco n.d.).
Through bimbofication fantasy the male consumers can get the wife they
imagine would be satisfactory, submissive and with enormous breast
implants, ‘And when he gets a big promotion at work, he can't wait to put
the money towards Marissa's plastic surgery makeover. She's willing to do
anything to make her husband happy, even if it means dumbing herself
166 Chapter Nine

down and turning herself into a slutty sex object. When Marissa unveils
her new and improved body, will Steve finally be satisfied?’ It may be that
the men who consume such material are consumed by the same fierce
resentment at women’s emancipation as the men who buy in male order
brides. Male order bride websites entice their customers with pictures of
women in high heels and aprons from the 1950s and explain that the
buyers can acquire a woman from the Philippines or Russia who will never
have the power to say no (Quek 2016).

Bimbofication literature does also, however, include the bimbofication of

men. In an imprint called ‘Bimbo Transformation Novellas’, Anything for
the job, the hero takes a drug called, appropriately, bimbacic, that turns
him into a bimbo (Thatcher 2016). The book is described as ‘a gender
bending bimbo transformation story’ which ‘contains descriptions of
masturbation, oral sex and body alterations including male to female
transformations and breast enlargement. It also includes light BDSM
themes.’ The imposition of massive breasts on men and women through
bimbofication drugs or breast implants is a common theme in the forced
feminization literature. In Steampunk Gender Swap (Saint-Luc n.d.),
classified as ‘Bimbofication Feminzation Genderbending Erotica’, the
Captain of a ‘flagship of Her Majesty’s Air Ship Squadron, gets injected
with ‘Strumpetification Serum’ and becomes ‘a true blonde bimbo whose
erotic cravings can’t be satisfied!’ The proliferation of language referring
to the degradation of women in this porn, ‘strumpet’ means ‘a debauched
or unchaste woman; a harlot, prostitute’ (Shorter Oxford Dictionary 1973),
is inventive in its redeployment of ancient and modern terms of
disparagement towards women.

The female impersonation fantasies in this porn provide men who go on to

cross-dress or transgender with models for the sort of women that it would
be most exciting to impersonate. The wives and partners of these men
complain that when their husband transgenders they do not wish to
become women like themselves, i.e. working women of a mature age, but
sexualised teenage girls. As one wife in a collection of accounts from the
wives and partners of these men expressed it, ‘I, who had never cared
much about clothes and resented the “Barbie doll” image of women, had a
husband who seemed obsessed with clothes and was helpless while his
nail polish was drying’, all this resembled the ‘teenage primping I have
never wanted to do’ (Erhardt 2007:193). Another wife who was
interviewed for my book Gender Hurts explained that her husband was not
interested in his wife’s clothes because they did not feed his fantasy, ‘He
doesn’t wear my clothes – not “feminine” enough. He likes to wear short
 Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women 167

skirts, low cut tops, high boots. He calls it a “rock-chick’ look’ (Jeffreys
2014:93).

Men who cross-dress and transgender and the other male fans of
transgender porn, demand niche subgenres which sometimes replicate the
niche markets within malestream porn. In malestream porn, for instance,
there is a niche which services men who are sexually excited by lactation,
which is not a comfortable thought for women who wish to express their
right to breastfeed in public without being subject to men’s voyeurism.
Transgender porn on the other hand, offers material in which men lactate.
The transgender message boards and blogs discuss how men can lactate,
and discussion of how sexually exciting this can be (Milkjunkies 2013).
They talk about the drugs it is necessary to take to make it happen. In the
pornography, lactation is combined with the usual menu of swollen
penises and the everyday cruelties of the industry. The videos on just one
of the specialist transgender porn websites, shemales, have shoutlines as
follows: blonde, busty shemale with lactating tits, shemale lactating,
lactating Tgirl jizzes, Hot Blonde Brazilian Tranny lactating and getting
fucked, amateur ladyboy showing how she lactates, lactating Tgirl plays
with her big cock, sexy lingeried lactating ladyboy, Sexy Lactating
Shemale Squirts Milk and much more (Shemales n.d.). Eroticised racism
is employed in this porn too, with Thai ‘ladyboys’ and Japanese and
Brazilian men suffering the humiliation and physical punishment of being
used and abused therein.

Just a fetish?
The scale and sweep of transgender pornography suggests that dressing in
clothing associated with women and acquiring female body parts is
sexually exciting to a sizeable section of the male population. It would be
surprising indeed if there was no relationship between this pornography
and the acting out of feminization fantasies by heterosexual men in the
form of cross-dressing and transgenderism. This throws doubt on the
ideology of transgenderism on the part of heterosexual men, which states
that that their desires are innate and nothing to do with sex. Indeed, despite
the considerable attempts by male transgender activists to ensure that there
can be no suspicion that their transgenderism is in any way related to
sexual fetishism, cracks are beginning to show in the ideological façade.
There are increasing numbers of websites being set up by men who are
realising they are not happy with having transgendered and are de-
transitioning, and there are an increasing number of men who have
168 Chapter Nine

transgendered who are stating their opposition to the idea that they are
possessed of some kind of essence of womanhood (Gender Apostates
n.d.). Amongst these men there is a previously heretical acceptance that
their interest in transgenderism is an extension of their fetishistic cross-
dressing. TWT (Third Way Trans) who transgendered at 19 and then, as he
puts it ‘re-transitioned’ at age 39, posits that transgenderism may indeed
be sexually motivated (Third Way Trans 2016). Recusants, such as
Ozymandias, say the same thing (Ozymandias 2016). One blogger argues
that there is indeed a ‘slippery slope’ between cross-dressing fetishism and
transgenderism (Grieve-Smith 2016). Angus ‘Andrea’ Grieve-Smith
explains very well on his blog how the slippage from fetishistic cross-
dressing to trangenderism can take place in a post called ‘The Slippery
Slope’. He describes what he calls a ‘ratchet mechanism’ by which the
interest in and desire to transgender increases. One factor in this is that
cross-dressing behaviour can become boring, despite buying more extreme
feminized clothing, or starting to have body modifications, ‘Some trans
women have a routine that they repeat over and over again in exactly the
same way for years, but many of us like progress. Doing the same thing
over and over again can get boring. Like the model train collector who is
always buying new pieces of equipment, or the singer who is always
learning new songs, we like to achieve things’. At this stage, a further
level of stimulation can only be achieved by going on to transgender
through drugs or surgery.

These bloggers, however, are concerned with their own welfare and not
with the political implications of their sexual interest in women’s
subordination and how it may be relevant to women’s emancipation. There
is no criticism of the content of transgender porn and erotica, presumably
because they still use this material as the basis of their sexual lives and do
not intend to change that. Third Way Trans (TWT), for instance, says that
people cannot help what they fantasise about, though they can help
whether they choose to act out fantasies, such as going on to transgender,
‘Fantasy itself is not harmful, and also cannot be controlled. We fantasize
about what we fantasize about, and lots of people have all kinds of strange
and wonderful sexual fantasies’ (Third Way Trans 2016). TWT is quite
assertive about this, saying, ‘Fantasy itself is never a problem ... fantasy
itself doesn’t harm anyone’. But of course pornography does harm. The
reformed cross-dressers and transgenderists do not recognise that the
degradation of women in pornography could be problematic politically
and have social impacts that harm women. The excitement that men get
from eroticising the subordinate status of the underclass of women is not,
in their view, sexist, and they see no connection to the harms that the
 Transgender Pornography: The Bimbofication of Women 169

epidemic of transgenderism and acceptance of transgender ideology bring

in their train. These include the transgendering of children, abolition of
safe spaces for women, and homophobic conversion therapy through the
transgendering of young lesbians and gay men (Jeffreys 2014).

One form of harm to women associated with men’s cross-dressing behaviour

is sexual violence, because these men can have sexual fantasies that
endanger women’s lives in the world outside pornography. Feminist
bloggers have assembled long lists of male sex offenders who cross-dress
or have transgendered (e.g. The Truth about Autogynephilia 2015;
Pantypopo 2013). Two examples of male cross-dressers who murdered
women in order to express their sexual fantasies show this to be so. One
problem is that male cross-dressers may not just want to imitate women in
general, but a particular woman, and may be prepared to kill her in order
to become her. A man named Edmonds Tennent Brown, who calls himself
Katheryn Brown, has sought treatment in prison to transgender. He raped
and murdered Mary Lynn Witherspoon in 2003 in South Carolina. After
being released from a prison sentence imposed for breaking into her home
and stealing her underwear, he bound, raped and strangled her. When
arrested he was found to be wearing her trousers and underwear (Smith
2016). In 2016 a Russian punk rocker who called himself Pussy was found
insane after decapitating his girlfriend and then using her severed head as a
masturbation aid whilst wearing her clothes (Stanton 2016). These men,
both cross-dressers and one of whom saw himself as transgender, are
likely to have fantasised about their eventual acts with some satisfaction
for some time before they carried them out. It simply is not correct to say,
as men who have fantasies of degrading and even committing terrible acts
of violence against women often do, that fantasies are harmless and have
nothing to do with reality.

Conclusion
It is men who transgender who have led the epidemic of transgenderism in
the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The cause of this
phenomenon is not the mysterious intrusion of a ‘feminine essence’ into
the brains of otherwise unremarkable middle-aged fathers and husbands.
The majority of these men, critical sexologists suggest, are heterosexuals
who are sexually excited by the thought of themselves as women. The
evidence from pornography lends weight to this analysis. The increase in
transgender porn and the increase in the epidemic of transgenderism are
taking place in tandem. It is not possible to prove that the porn provides
170 Chapter Nine

motivation for men to become cross-dressers or transgender but it is likely

to contribute to the ‘ratchet mechanism’ that makes men seek to progress
into more extreme forms of female impersonation.

The creation of rights for men who transgender which enable them to
pretend they are women in women’s spaces, and all the public and media
respect for even the most extremely unconvincing impersonations of
women might be undermined by a greater awareness of where the
behaviours of cross-dressing and transgenderism come from for the
majority of male practitioners. There are many other genres of pornography
that supply niche markets of men with masturbation material, such as adult
baby porn, an extreme form of what the porn industry calls ‘age
regression’ (Rouse 2015; Lucas 2015). A search with the words ‘adult
baby porn’ returns more than 2 million hits. Adult babies are men who are
sexually excited by fantasising about being babies and dressing up as such.
There is no rush by governments to establish in law the rights of these men
to dress as babies in workplaces and to get nursery places. But, rather
surprisingly, the masochistic sexual excitement that some men gain from
sexualising women’s subordination has led governments in the western
world to provide protections and opportunities to such men to impersonate
women. This is despite the fact that this ‘essence’ on examination of
transgender pornography turns out to be grossly insulting to women and
the product of vicious sexism.

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 CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Heather Brunskell-Evans is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the

Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries, Kings College
London, UK. She has published widely on sexual and gender politics,
including Internet Pornography: Disciplining Women through Sexual
‘Freedom’ (forthcoming). She advises on the Nordic model of prostitution
and is a founder member of the organization Resist Porn Culture. She is a
trustee of the charity FiLia, and its Director of the section Stop Violence
against Women and Girls.

Dr. Gail Dines is Professor of Women’s Studies at Wheelock College,

USA and president of the NGO, Culture Reframed. She is a recipient of
the Myers Center award for Human Rights and author of Pornland: How
Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality. Her work is featured in a Media
Education Foundation documentary called Pornland: How the Porn
Industry has Hijacked our Sexuality.

Professor Sheila Jeffreys recently retired from her position in the School
of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia
and moved back to the UK. She is the author of nine books. The most
recent is Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of
Transgenderism. She has been involved in feminist activism since 1973 in
the UK and in Australia.

James Kay is a PhD student at the University of Warwick, UK. His

research primarily concerns Hegel and Spinoza's philosophies of nature, as
well as continental rationalism more generally. He also has a secondary
research interest in Foucault's work on power, history and the body

Dr. Tracy Penny Light is Associate Professor of History at Thompson

Rivers University (TRU), Canada. Her current research explores how gender
and sexuality are represented in and constructed by the medical profession
and the media. In 2015 she co-edited two books, Bodily Subjects: Essays on
Gender and Health, 1800-2000 (with Wendy Mitchinson and Barbara
Brookes) and Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and
Practice (with Jane Nicholas and Renée Bondy).
176 Contributors

Dr. Julia Long teaches sociology at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. She
also works at a specialist refuge supporting women who have been
sexually exploited. She is a lesbian feminist activist with a longstanding
commitment to women-only organizing, to ending male violence and
rebuilding lesbian feminist community. She is the author of Anti-Porn:
The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism as well as various
chapters and papers on pornography and male violence against women.

Dr. Diana Parry is a Professor in the Department of Recreation and

Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Utilizing a feminist
lens, her research explores the personal and political links between
women's leisure and women's health, broadly defined. Her research
privileges women's standpoints and aims to create social change and enact
social justice by challenging the medical model of scholarship.

Dr. Rebecca Saunders completed her MA in English Literature and PhD

in Digital Humanities at King’s College London, UK. She teaches in the
same institution on literature and digital culture. She has published on
sexuality in the twentieth and twenty-first century and, most dominantly,
on pornography in digital culture. Her research interests are focused
particularly on contemporary capitalism in digital contexts.

Paula Sequeira-Rovira is Associate Professor at the Women’s Studies

Institute at the National University of Costa Rica. She received her
Bachelor's degree in Sociology in 2002 and her Master's degree in
Women's Studies in 2009. She is interested in topics related to sexuality,
gender, pornography, bio-politics, and health.

Dr. Meagan Tyler is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at RMIT

University, Australia. Her research focuses on gender equality, men’s
violence against women, feminist theory, and the sex industry. Her book
Selling Sex Short: The Pornographic and Sexological Construction of
Women’s Sexuality in the West analyses how pornography and sex therapy
have produced harmful and mutually reinforcing constructions of women’s
sexuality.