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What Do Top Model and Hard Core Porn Have in Common?
What do hard core porn and reality show, Top Model, have in common? Hard core pornography often gets the viewer off on women’s suffering. So does Top Model.
In the first episode the models underwent Brazilian bikini waxes on camera. As Jennifer Pozner described it, “Cameras flitted back and forth from their pained facial expressions to their nearly nude legs spread wide in the air, while the audio lingered at length on the models’ blood-curdling screams as hot wax was spread over their genitals and their pubic hair was ripped off.”
The only thing missing was the close-up.
Pozner went on to describe how contestants have been asked to drop from platforms onto surfaces with little cushioning, or to sit on ice sculptures in freezing temperatures. One model was asked to pose in a pool of icy water – shaking, shivering, and begging for a break – until her body began to shut down from hypothermia and she was rushed to a hospital.
If pain and suffering isn’t imminent, models are asked to act as though it is, coached to look “scared! Something’s chasing you! Something’s coming to get you!” Scared, “but pretty,” that is.
Host, Tyra Banks, has also asked models to act like they are in pain: chest pain, fingers slammed in a door, strangulation… A signature pose was suggested for one model, “Look like you’re getting punched.”
Beautiful, sexy women in fear and pain. All reminiscent of hard-core pornography: In the popular video, “Two in the Seat #3,” an actress is asked by an off-camera interviewer what will happen. She replies, “I’m here to get pounded.” In other pornos women are hit or raped. Too-large objects are inserted as actresses scream out. Sometimes pain is registered in penetration. Even when suffering isn’t purposely placed in the script, directors don’t bother to edited it out, suggesting viewers’ taste. More and more, the new edge in porn involves cruelty.
I worry about a society that develops a taste for women’s torment. Or for anyone’s distress. As pain becomes eroticized, some develop a desire for their own suffering. My students sometimes talk of getting turned on by a little D/s in the bedroom. This is no surprise. We’re so bombarded with eroticized images of dominance that I suspect few in this culture fail to get turned on by it.
Still, depending on how far it goes, violent sex play can lead to broken skin, bruising and infections, even as the point of pain is to warn us away from doing what it is harmful to the body.
We worry about women being battered. Should we worry when women come to crave their own abuse?
And, surrounded by images of eroticized dominance and violence, and sexily submitting to such acts, does male domination, itself, become sexy?
First posted on November 22, 2010 by BroadBlogs
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Pleasuring A Woman
Men get much of their sex ed from porn, which has little to do with pleasing actual women (porn stars are acting ecstatic, after all, and the focus is often on pleasing the man). So WebMD asked reputed sex educators, Tristan Taormino and Lou Paget, to talk
about some common sex mistakes men make. Go here to see the full text. We’ll also look at research from Cindy Meston and David Buss, who researched and wrote, Why Women Have Sex.
Men imagine that women feel something parallel to what they feel, says Paget, leaving a “huge disconnect” about what feels good to women:
When a man has intercourse with a woman, and his penis goes into her body, that sensation is so off the charts for most men, they cannot imagine that it isn’t feeling the same way for her. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
The vagina is actually less sensitive than the clitoris and the surrounding parts for most women.
And a vibrator can help. So don’t be insulted, thinking something is wrong if that’s what she needs, say the authors. “Some women can’t have an orgasm with less than 3,000 rpm, so think of a vibrator as your assistant, not your substitute.”
But many men continue to believe that women should be able to reach orgasm from vaginal penetration. Taormino says:
I still get letters from people who say things like, my wife can’t [orgasm] from intercourse unless she has clitoral stimulation — please help. I want to write back and say, ‘OK, what’s the problem?’
And then there’s the myth that bigger is better. It all depends. Length is great for women who enjoy having their cervix stimulated, say Meston and Buss. But the same stimulation can be painful for other women. And if the penis is too long, “it feels like you’re getting punched in the stomach,” Paget explains. “It makes you feel nauseous.” Still others feel neither pleasure nor pain—and often not much of anything.
Generally speaking, width is more important than length. But depending on the woman, some prefer larger and some smaller.
And men should not assume they know what a woman wants based upon what other women have wanted. Taormino points out that:
You develop a repertoire as you mature sexually, but you should never assume that what worked for the last person is going to work for this person.
So open the lines of communication. But consider: If you constantly ask her if she’s coming, do you really think she will? The badgering can move her from erotic to just feeling pressured. So don’t overdo it.
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Should Women Give Men The Porn Star Experience?
A lot of guys have come to expect P.S.E. [the “Porn-Star Experience”] … and plenty of women are more than happy to provide. A few might enjoy it, but for most it’s harrowing. I think there’s a fear that if they can’t make it happen, their boyfriend will retreat online.
That’s from Sadie, a real estate agent, talking about what women do for men who find “normal” sex dull after extreme online porn.
Davy Rothbart blames porn for his own difficulties enjoying real sex with real women:
For a lot of guys, switching gears from porn’s fireworks and whiz-bangs to the comparatively mundane calm of ordinary sex is like leaving halfway through an Imax 3-D movie to check out a flipbook… (So women) willingly play along by a new set of rules in order to keep their men interested.
Should women give men the porn star experience?
If they’re both loving it, why not?
But should women undergo pain to supply their men over-the-top pleasure?
Robert Jensen, a University of Texas professor and feminist who speaks on pornography, says women frequently ask him whether they should fulfill their guys’ disturbing requests. Or they ask why men want them to perform acts that they find upsetting, whether
ejaculating on her face, anal sex, a threesome with another man or woman, rough sex or role-playing that feels inauthentic to her.
“I love him,” they say, “and I want to be a good partner. Should I do it?”
Here’s the perspective of this thoughtful feminist man.
Some women are game, he recognizes, but those who are not are under no obligation, no matter the level of commitment, to participate in any sexual activity that causes pain, discomfort or distress.
It’s great to honestly discuss desires and be open, he adds, but partners should also be clear about what crosses the line.
Asked, “Why does he want to do that to me?” Jensen points out that, “In patriarchy, men are socialized to understand sex in the context of men’s domination and women’s submission.” Pornography, he says, isn’t “images of ‘just sex,’ but sex in the context of male dominance” that includes “little recognition by men of the potential for pain, discomfort or distress in their women partners.”
Ejaculating on a woman’s face is largely about humiliation. Rough sex often enacts male dominance, and threesomes can be seen as male ownership of sex-object women who fawn over him.
Next, women wonder why their men can’t understand that they don’t want to do certain things.
Jensen says strong sexual desire plays a role. But so does an absence of empathy – the ability to imagine what another person is feeling. These men think the acts sound exciting and they can’t envision their partners not feeling the same way.
A lack of empathy may be a warning sign when people are unwilling to grow, for healthy relationships require it.
Jensen recommends a vision of equality and moving away from objectifying women to overcome these problems.
Bottom line for women: Stay true to your values and to who you are.
Men and women might also want to have a conversation about what they want in their relationship and how these sort of experiences fit into that – or don’t.
And, I’m guessing that most men are into sex enough to be able to enjoy things that their partners also enjoy, even if that doesn’t include threesomes, facials, etc.
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12-Year-Olds Wanted Rape, Judge Says
Six British soccer players confessed to gang-raping two 12-year-old girls last March. But an Appeals Court recently freed the men because, “The girls wanted to have sex,” explained Lord Justice Moses.
They wanted sex? Even Moses admitted, “They had pretty miserable, fleeting sex in a
freezing cold park.” Now that sounds like what girls want.
Apparently one of the 12-year-olds had been texting the players, and she and her friend agreed to meet them in a park. There, five of the men gang raped one girl while a sixth assaulted the other. When they didn’t return home, one of their mothers called the police, who found them wandering alone in the early morning hours.
At the least this looks like statutory rape. The girls were only twelve after all. They claimed to be sixteen, but shouldn’t adults use some judgment?
Most importantly, the men admitted to rape.
Yet those “frank confessions” convinced the judges of the soccer players’ “positive good character,” suggesting they had been duped into sex.
Huh?
Colin Horgan, a regular contributor to The Guardian, looks to Men’s Studies professor, Michael Kimmel to consider why men sometimes side with rapists over victims.
In some men’s eyes a girl is seen as offering herself for a sexual encounter just by “being there.” The men feel entitled to sex because, deep down, they all “know” that’s what she wants. So gang rapes end up being seen as something the victim actively did or encouraged, and not something done to her.
Horgan says porn plays a role, not as an instruction manual but as a projection of the fantasies and validation of the feelings of men who consume it. Some studies do suggest that certain types of porn promote the myth that women secretly want to be raped.
Meanwhile, Stephanie Hallett, over at Ms., observes that rapists are continually let off the hook because, “The girls were dressed provocatively, the women were drinking, women lie about rape, there was “sex in the air,” yet:
Research has shown that most rapists are serial rapists–and those serial rapists commit 90 to 95 percent of all rapes. What’s more likely–that these repeat perpetrators just happen to get “tricked” by underage women or receive “mixed messages” from unconsenting women, again and again–or that the overwhelming majority of rapes aren’t really committed “by accident”?
She makes a good point.
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Does Sexual Objectification Lead to Bad Sex?
Turning women into sex objects heightens the erotic experience, right?
A growing body of research indicates the opposite: for women and, surprisingly, men.
A new longitudinal study out of Pennsylvania State found that when women lost their virginity, they lost self-esteem, too. Before they had sex, the body image of the women in the study steadily improved. But after a first sexual experience it dropped. Why? The study found that in bed women became self-conscious and critical of their bodies.
Tracy Clark-Flory over at Salon.com points out that this loss of self-esteem likely spells a loss of sexual pleasure. While women are supposedly enjoying sex, an awful lot of us are distracted, worrying that we don’t meet sex-object standards. Breasts are too small? Butt is too big? Cellulite, anyone?
Or as Clark-Flory puts it, “You think, ‘Do my breasts look OK from this angle’ instead of, ‘Wow, this position feels fantastic.’”
Even if you are proud of your body, self-scrutiny can distract from lovemaking. Caroline Heldman, assistant professor at Occidental College, writes that women who are hyper-aware of their appearance see sex as an ‘out of body’ experience, but not in a heavenly way. They view themselves through an imaginary camera lens, focusing on how they look in one position or another, as if they were porn stars. And their sexual pleasure suffers.
Heterosexual men should pause at this news. It’s likely they would enjoy themselves more if their partners were present and actively engaged, instead of dealing in distraction.
But objectification of women can also interfere more directly with straight men’s enjoyment of sex. Men who consume porn often say they come to objectify women in a way that has them expecting a particular body type, leaving them disappointed if their partner looks different from the images they’re used to.
“I prefer women with a C- or D-cup, full-figured but definitely not overweight. I don’t want some small spindly girl either,” a young man explained in Pamela Paul’s Pornified. “Briana Banks is the ultimate. She’s not only blonde, she’s got the right chest size.”
In Pornified, psychologist Gary Brooks explains that he is concerned that many of these men lose the ability to be aroused by their partner’s positive features, and try instead to “re-create the images from porn in their brain when they’re with another person in order to maintain their arousal.” Adds Mark Swartz, clinical director of the Masters and Johnson clinic in St. Louis:
You’re making love to your wife, but you’re picturing someone else. That’s not fair to the woman, and it’s miserable for the man.
Some men may think objectifying women is a harmless pleasure, but the Penn State study and others suggest it’s a buzzkill. Think this information could spur a movement to end objectification?
I originally wrote this piece for the Ms. Magazine Blog, where it appeared May 10, 2011
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Virtually Attack Women, But No Nudity
A gamer creates an avatar resembling himself and plots to kill a three-dimensional, lifelike woman. The avatar grasps an axe and raises it to strike. He hears the thud as the axe slices her head. He hears her cry out in pain. He sees her split skull and feels the sensation of blood on his hands and face.
I’ve just paraphrased one part of Supreme Court Justice, Samuel Alito’s opinion on whether video games of this sort should be protected as free speech in sales to minors. Yes, he uncomfortably concludes.
In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wonders why Playboy is off-limits to thirteen-year-olds, yet interactive games that allow those same boys to actively, if virtually, bind, torture and kill a woman are perfectly fine – so long as she’s not topless.
Justice Antonin Scalia counters that violent scenes have long been part of the American tradition.
True enough. One Super Bowl Sunday America went ballistic over Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple. Justin Timberlake’s choreographed battering beforehand went unremarked. No nudity on the national networks, but Law & Order: Special Victims Unit weekly dwells on the rape, battering and torture of sex victims.
Developmental psychologist James Prescott looks to America’s preference for sexual violence over sexual pleasure with wonder. “Apparently, sex with pleasure is immoral and unacceptable, but sex with violence and pain is moral and acceptable,” he reflects.
But why?
New York Times columnist, Timothy Egan sees prudery at base. “Ultimately, the back-and-forth by the high court reinforced the notion of a nation that will always be a little skittish about sex, while viewing violence as American as apple pie,” he writes.
Naomi Wolfe’s The Beauty Myth adds insight. In the 1960s pornography portrayed beautiful women playfully and joyfully enjoying sex. By the 70s this sort of imagery suggestively seeped into popular culture.
As Wolf described it, mainstream beauty pornography looked like this:
The woman lies prone, pressing down her pelvis. Her back arches, her mouth is open, her eyes shut, her nipples erect. The state of arousal, the plateau phase just preceding orgasm… for Triton showers, a naked woman, back arched, flings her arms upward… for Opium perfume, a naked woman, back and buttocks bare, falls face down from the edge of the bed… The reader understands that she will have to look like that if she wants to feel like that.
But later, something shifted as beauty pornography was replaced by a glorification of violence against women. Again Wolf highlights the imagery in advertisements, which sound very much like those we see today:
In an ad for Obsession perfume a well-muscled man drapes the naked, lifeless body of a woman over his shoulder… In an ad for Hermès perfume, a blonde woman trussed in black leather is hanging upside down, screaming, her wrists looped in chains, mouth bound.
By the 80s violent sexual imagery centering on abused females had surged. Film titles like Dressed to Kill, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and 9½ Weeks filled movie theaters while female corpses, in sexy bras and panties, piled up in thrillers. By ‘89 The New York Times was discussing sadomasochism in kids’ comics.
Why the shift? Wolf maintains that sexual imagery follows politics. As women gained power as a result of the feminist movement, male anger and female guilt about taking power created a backlash. Something “needed” to be done, like socialize and eroticize male dominance.
On the one hand, depictions of women’s freely given and enjoyed sexuality was restrained. On the other, men were reassured that women weren’t so powerful. And everyone got the message that women were most attractive when they were dominated and powerless.
Wolf points out that court rulings have enforced these values from the top-down. Women taking pleasure in sex has been named obscene, while sexualized violence against them has not – so long as they are clothed.
Wolf makes an interesting argument.
Oddly, even as more and more women and men today have taken on values that support women’s equality, this way of seeing has become such a taken-for-granted part of American life that it has come to seem natural and normal to most of us, including many feminists.
Something to think about.
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Sexy Weiner?
This week Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted sexting a picture of his package to a young woman, in the tradition of Brett Favre, Kanye West and assorted flashers everywhere.
What are these men thinking?
Tracy Clark-Flory over at salon.com put out a call on Twitter to get women’s reactions to this sort of sexting. Plenty of women wanted to see a man’s chest. But with few exceptions the response was complete repulsion. When asked whether crotch shots “do it” for them, one tweeter replied, “If by ‘do it’ you mean ‘send me to the toilet retching,’ then yes, they do.”
Flashers seem similarly clueless. Flasher message boards suggest that these men expect women to get turned on. At least one man finally “got it,” saying, “I simply can’t do it anymore… I found that I was basically just offending woman after woman.”
Men love looking at lady parts, so they think women must love the sight of man parts, too. Surprisingly, “penis” is a common web search among men, straight or gay, and they are as likely to “google” penis as vagina. No wonder they think women want to look at theirs, too. Of course, porn depicts women going wild at the sight of the male member. But porn is a wildly inaccurate instructor on women’s sexuality.
Some believe the flaunting is tied to evolutionary psychology. After all, “Male monkeys and apes routinely display their penis (usually erect) to females to indicate sexual interest,” says cognitive neuroscientist Ogi Ogas. The move may make female monkeys and apes swoon. But among women, retching seems an unlikely process by which to pass on ones genes.
But I think women’s reactions also run counter to Freud’s contention that women experience “penis envy” (this being the supposed cause of our feelings of inferiority: “His is so big!”). I know my first reaction to seeing a penis was a huge relief that I, myself, was streamlined. Looks like others might feel the same.
Women may appreciate a man’s package in the context of “wanting” and/or loving a particular man. But this sort of sexting? Not so much.
It seems men are a bit more obsessed with the sight of their penises than women are.
Georgia Platts
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Homophobes Aroused by Gay Porn
You’d think homophobic men would be the least likely to get aroused by homoerotic images. Think again.
Researchers at the University of Georgia surveyed young men on the degree of homophobia the felt, as measured by their self-described levels of aversion to gay men, and specifically, the intensity of “dread” they experienced interacting with them.
Then they wired them up and showed them gay porn, lesbian porn, and straight porn. Eighty percent of the homophobes experienced arousal at the homoerotic screenings. The non-homophobic men did not.
Are these men unconsciously deceiving themselves? Or are they consciously trying to draw attention away from their homosexuality? Who knows?
One gay man told a story about attempting the latter. Writing for Scientific American, Jesse Bering said, “My earliest conscious tactic to hide my homosexuality involved being outlandishly homophobic. When I was eight years old, I figured that if I used the word “fag” a lot and on every possible occasion expressed my repugnance for gay people, others would obviously think I was straight. But,” he continued, “although it sounded good in theory, I wasn’t very hostile by temperament and I had trouble channeling my fictitious outrage into convincing practice.”
Maybe it helps to be mean and angry, too.
Jesse went on to cite the Freudian concept of reaction formation which occurs when repressed desires become manifested in sharp emotional reactions and hostile behaviors toward the thing desired.
Plenty of gay homophobes screech against the so-called “sins” of the orientation, but end up outed, anyway: Evangelical Ted Haggard, George Rekers of the Family Research Council, and anti-gay megachurch pastor Eddie Long are a few who come to mind. The whole scene is reminiscent of the homophobic gay man from American Beauty attacking what he feared – his own gayness.
“Thou dost protest too much,” to paraphrase the bard, Shakespeare.
Really, who are you trying to convince?
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Rape: As If Female Sexuality Were Male Sexuality
“It’s just he said, she said,” opined one of the ladies of The View, discussing IMF Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Khan’s alleged rape of a hotel maid.
That is true. We don’t know for sure whether Strauss-Khan committed the crime. But sometimes it seems that talk of rape allegations sees female sexuality as if it were male sexuality.
Strauss-Khan admits to having sex with the housekeeper but insists it was consensual. Yet the scenario he asserts hardly matches female sexuality, as it is typically manifested in the Western world.
Just to note a few recent studies, which I have written about in greater detail in other posts:
Women are rarely interested in having sex with a stranger. Men are much more likely to accept a stranger’s proposal. For women, it doesn’t matter whether the offer comes from someone they know and trust or from someone they don’t. Most times they just aren’t interested. Unless the offer comes from Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. Maybe it’s just me, but Dominique Strauss-Khan seems a bit lacking in Depp/Pitt appeal.
Women and men typically watch different types of porn, too. Men like the sort that matches Strauss-Khan’s version of events. Something to the effect of: “She saw me naked when I came out from the shower and we had amazing sex.” Yet women who watch porn usually like a story line with a little character development.
Women are much more likely to read romantic erotica than to watch porn, anyway. Even more story and character development! Sex is not for its own sake, and not with impersonal strangers. And this matches most women’s interest in the real world, where they unconsciously scrutinize all evidence about their lovers, with sexual arousal igniting only when everything is in place.
Even when they go to bed with a man, women are likely focused on how they, themselves, look – “So hot!” if they are proud of their appearance, or “Does my butt look too big?” if they aren’t – than great sex.
Why the difference? For one, women don’t learn to objectify men in our culture, leaving us less likely to get hot at the mere sight of a naked male. In fact, one study found women getting more aroused by a nude woman than a nude man, when measuring blood flow to the vagina. Perhaps due to lopsided objectification?
Meanwhile, women’s sexuality is more repressed. Women are more likely to be labeled sluts for enjoying sex, or seen as “giving it up” while men seem to be gaining something, like status. Products that aid women’s sexual enjoyment are less likely to be advertised, as with Viagra versus vibrators.
Not surprisingly, women report less sexual interest and enjoyment, on average.
Plus, women need foreplay.
All said I find Strauss-Khan’s version of events unlikely. Of course, not all women are the same. Some enjoy sex with strangers and seek the kind of porn that men enjoy.
But most don’t.
I’m not saying this proves that the hotel maid was raped. But when people think it is just as likely that she made wild love to this unfamiliar man, it feels like male sexuality is being projected onto women.
Georgia Platts
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The Perfect Islamic Porn Stash
The perfect Islamic state was Osama Bin Laden’s stated goal. The Taliban’s too.
In the name of Islam, women under the Taliban (who still control large parts of Afghanistan) are forced to cover themselves, head to toe, mesh hiding their eyes. Women may be punished even for laughing or walking too loudly and drawing attention to themselves. In the home, windows may be painted over to protect men from unwittingly catching sight of an unveiled woman.
All this to keep men pure.
And now we learn that Osama Bin Laden had a porn stash.
In like hypocrisy, a U.N. report says the Taliban has forced women into prostitution.
So is the concern really that women will trample all over men’s purity? Or do Bin Laden and the Taliban just want to control women? And feel empowered, themselves?
The so-called Islamic state the Taliban fashioned when fully in power didn’t seem to have much to do with Islam. The Quran gives women the right to work. Not the Taliban. The Quran gives women the right to consent to marriage. And yet young girls were (and still are) married off before they had even begun to menstruate.
Meanwhile, the Taliban forbade all sorts of things without any scriptural backing: educating girls, television, radio, movies, or even the keeping of birds, whose chirping is unduly musical.
Most people don’t know that the only thing the Quran tells women to cover are their bosoms. Something Bin Laden went out of his way to see uncovered. Perfect Islamic Bin Laden? I think not.
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