Smut, Porn, and Misogyny in the Mainstream
Via a rather long and circuitous route, I found myself today looking at this article. (WARNING: Contains mentions/descriptions of rape, abuse, and sexual humiliation of women. BE THE CHAMBER SO ADVISED.)
This article, for those of you who did not click on the link above, describes what the writer sees as an apparently paradoxical correlation: A)To a greater and greater degree, "mainstream" pornography (defined by proportion of items on sale) features rape, increasingly graphic violence against women, public humiliation of women, verbal abuse, and generally treating women like complete and utter scum; B)To a greater and greater degree, "mainstream" pornography is acceptable in our culture (=American culture).
The writer's conclusion is that, whether pornography is the cause or the effect, degrading sexual attitudes toward women are becoming increasingly mainstream.
And I believe it.
I haven't been alive, much less capable of comparing views on pornography, for long enough to say anything about point B). However, about point A) I think I can speak. Before I do, however, a few things must be taken as given:
1. Text-based pornography (henceforward known as "smut", because it's one of the few words related to images-of-sex that isn't being used much by the visual porn market right now) will tend to demonstrate the same tendencies as porn, because
a)It is written by people, especially young people, who have been exposed chiefly or exclusively to the current ideology on sex and sexuality;
b)It is written frequently by people who do not think about their views on sex and porn much, and who therefore possess a culturally acclimated view;
c)It is written (in English) chiefly by young Americans or people exposed heavily to American culture.
2. Smut heavily consists of people's unconscious concept of or fantasies about sex.
3. Poorly-written smut is more likely to conform to the above points, because
a)It is more likely to be written by young Americans who are fully culturally acclimated;
b)It is more likely to be the product of a semi-conscious view, since less thought was spent over it;
c)It is less likely to be written from a literary perspective, and therefore corresponds better to the purely sexual content of porn.
These being the case, I can talk about smut, porn, and what both say about our attitudes toward sex.
I like reading smut. When no good smut presents itself, I even enjoy reading bad smut about characters I don't know well enough to be burned by the OOC. I like reading bad slash smut, even--which is relevant to this discussion of porn and smut in general, in that it is generally the same as bad het smut, but with a slightly different cut-and-paste sex scene. The characters and buildup are structured the same, which is my point.
In my perusal of bad smut, I came across a fair number of rape or dubious consent stories. Meh, it's a thing you either like or not, right? Wrong. What bothered me, since I do not happen to like that kind of thing, was how often something that I considered non-consensual was not warned for or presented as such. It went like this: "No! No! Oh, wait, that's hot. Yes! *mewl*" And this was, over and over, the progression of the "romantic relationship". These were romance stories.
Even then, I mostly just thought, "Oh, well, next please." And off I went on a search for a story in which the characters are in a relationship before having sex, or at least both decided to have sex at the same time. Something without the complete dichotomy of pursuer/pursued, something to indicate that both characters involved had (metaphorical as well as literal) balls. I was about to compose a rant on "Seriously, whatever happened to dating and then having sex?"
Then I read this article, and my annoyance struck me in a new light. You mean I was sitting here wondering why it has to be so hard to find smut containing consensual sex? In the same way I was bemoaning the lack of various esoteric pairings? You mean freely given prior consent to sexual contact is something I have to look for carefully? (And I am not looking for much here; I am looking for "Hey, want to have sex?" "Yeah, okay." That's it.)
Since when was "consenting adults" a fetish?
Don't believe me? Go the Fanfiction.net section for any fandom with an average fan age under twenty. Go through the M-rated fics. When you reach the first scene of dubious consent (harassing, molesting, not taking no for an answer) presented as the start of a romantic relationship, stop. If you were on page two or farther, I'll be surprised.
An issue of vocabulary I think is associated with this idea of "Sex is hot and not at all kinky when one partner didn't ask for it": apparently the verb "have sex" is no longer "in". These days, smut writers always use "fuck". Why is this an associated issue? Because someone either fucks someone else or is fucked by someone else, while you can only have sex with someone else. Fucking (as it is usually used, in badfic land, to refer to penetrative sex) is done to. There is one active party, and one passive party, and never the twain shall meet. (Did I mention that switching in bad-slash-smut-land is another of those things you find so rarely it feels like a fetish?) Even the bad romance writer's alternative verb, "make love", has a transitive aspect: one person makes love to the other. Not so coincidentally, when I see it used like this, it is invariably the man/top who is making love to the woman/bottom. You cannot "have sex" someone, and you cannot "have sex" to someone. You can only "have sex" with someone.
Do I think that really makes a difference? Well, yes, or I wouldn't have mentioned it. The issue here is the objectification of women. The fundamental meaning of the verb "objectify" is to make someone an object. Notice how the two verbs above make the woman the object of the verb? Notice how the third one doesn't? Which verb is used more often these days, the one that makes the woman into an object or the one that doesn't?
That's what I thought.
I'm not sure what we can do about it (except write a lot of completely consensual smut), but when the problem is cultural conditioning, at least we have to be aware of the problem. And, uh, seriously: nonviolent, non-degrading sex can be hot too.
This article, for those of you who did not click on the link above, describes what the writer sees as an apparently paradoxical correlation: A)To a greater and greater degree, "mainstream" pornography (defined by proportion of items on sale) features rape, increasingly graphic violence against women, public humiliation of women, verbal abuse, and generally treating women like complete and utter scum; B)To a greater and greater degree, "mainstream" pornography is acceptable in our culture (=American culture).
The writer's conclusion is that, whether pornography is the cause or the effect, degrading sexual attitudes toward women are becoming increasingly mainstream.
And I believe it.
I haven't been alive, much less capable of comparing views on pornography, for long enough to say anything about point B). However, about point A) I think I can speak. Before I do, however, a few things must be taken as given:
1. Text-based pornography (henceforward known as "smut", because it's one of the few words related to images-of-sex that isn't being used much by the visual porn market right now) will tend to demonstrate the same tendencies as porn, because
a)It is written by people, especially young people, who have been exposed chiefly or exclusively to the current ideology on sex and sexuality;
b)It is written frequently by people who do not think about their views on sex and porn much, and who therefore possess a culturally acclimated view;
c)It is written (in English) chiefly by young Americans or people exposed heavily to American culture.
2. Smut heavily consists of people's unconscious concept of or fantasies about sex.
3. Poorly-written smut is more likely to conform to the above points, because
a)It is more likely to be written by young Americans who are fully culturally acclimated;
b)It is more likely to be the product of a semi-conscious view, since less thought was spent over it;
c)It is less likely to be written from a literary perspective, and therefore corresponds better to the purely sexual content of porn.
These being the case, I can talk about smut, porn, and what both say about our attitudes toward sex.
I like reading smut. When no good smut presents itself, I even enjoy reading bad smut about characters I don't know well enough to be burned by the OOC. I like reading bad slash smut, even--which is relevant to this discussion of porn and smut in general, in that it is generally the same as bad het smut, but with a slightly different cut-and-paste sex scene. The characters and buildup are structured the same, which is my point.
In my perusal of bad smut, I came across a fair number of rape or dubious consent stories. Meh, it's a thing you either like or not, right? Wrong. What bothered me, since I do not happen to like that kind of thing, was how often something that I considered non-consensual was not warned for or presented as such. It went like this: "No! No! Oh, wait, that's hot. Yes! *mewl*" And this was, over and over, the progression of the "romantic relationship". These were romance stories.
Even then, I mostly just thought, "Oh, well, next please." And off I went on a search for a story in which the characters are in a relationship before having sex, or at least both decided to have sex at the same time. Something without the complete dichotomy of pursuer/pursued, something to indicate that both characters involved had (metaphorical as well as literal) balls. I was about to compose a rant on "Seriously, whatever happened to dating and then having sex?"
Then I read this article, and my annoyance struck me in a new light. You mean I was sitting here wondering why it has to be so hard to find smut containing consensual sex? In the same way I was bemoaning the lack of various esoteric pairings? You mean freely given prior consent to sexual contact is something I have to look for carefully? (And I am not looking for much here; I am looking for "Hey, want to have sex?" "Yeah, okay." That's it.)
Since when was "consenting adults" a fetish?
Don't believe me? Go the Fanfiction.net section for any fandom with an average fan age under twenty. Go through the M-rated fics. When you reach the first scene of dubious consent (harassing, molesting, not taking no for an answer) presented as the start of a romantic relationship, stop. If you were on page two or farther, I'll be surprised.
An issue of vocabulary I think is associated with this idea of "Sex is hot and not at all kinky when one partner didn't ask for it": apparently the verb "have sex" is no longer "in". These days, smut writers always use "fuck". Why is this an associated issue? Because someone either fucks someone else or is fucked by someone else, while you can only have sex with someone else. Fucking (as it is usually used, in badfic land, to refer to penetrative sex) is done to. There is one active party, and one passive party, and never the twain shall meet. (Did I mention that switching in bad-slash-smut-land is another of those things you find so rarely it feels like a fetish?) Even the bad romance writer's alternative verb, "make love", has a transitive aspect: one person makes love to the other. Not so coincidentally, when I see it used like this, it is invariably the man/top who is making love to the woman/bottom. You cannot "have sex" someone, and you cannot "have sex" to someone. You can only "have sex" with someone.
Do I think that really makes a difference? Well, yes, or I wouldn't have mentioned it. The issue here is the objectification of women. The fundamental meaning of the verb "objectify" is to make someone an object. Notice how the two verbs above make the woman the object of the verb? Notice how the third one doesn't? Which verb is used more often these days, the one that makes the woman into an object or the one that doesn't?
That's what I thought.
I'm not sure what we can do about it (except write a lot of completely consensual smut), but when the problem is cultural conditioning, at least we have to be aware of the problem. And, uh, seriously: nonviolent, non-degrading sex can be hot too.