Please note: This piece discusses my personal sex life and sexual fantasies in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don’t want to read about that stuff, please skip this one. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Is it valid to criticize rough-sex porn for perpetuating misogynist images of women?

Or, to look at the question from the other side: Is it possible to critique rough-sex porn without marginalizing kink?

If you’ve been around the porn wars, you’ve almost certainly run across a particular form of anti-porn critique. “Erotica may not be inherently bad… but look at how misogynistic so much commercial porn is! Look at how it portrays degradation and violence against women as sexually pleasurable! Women being slapped and treated roughly during sex! Women being called sluts and whores and sex toys! Women being given forceful deep-throat blowjobs that make them choke and gag! Is that a vision of women and sexuality we want to accept?”

I was reading one of these screeds the other day (somebody linked to it in a Facebook conversation)… and I started spewing out a seriously annoyed mini-manifesto/ rant.

You know who finds that imagery hot? You know who gets turned on by images of women being slapped and roughed-up? You know who gets turned on by images of women being called sluts and whores and sex toys? You know who gets turned on by images of women having hard cocks forced down their throats until they choke and gag and cry?

Me.

I do.

And I am bloody well done with being told that I’m a bad person, or a bad feminist, for finding this imagery hot.

I am a kinky person. I am a consensual sadomasochist. And I am bloody well done with having my desire to see kinky imagery, consensually engaged in as an acted-out fantasy, treated as a desire for actual, real-world degradation and oppression of women. I am bloody well done with having kinky sexuality marginalized by well-meaning concern trolls who supposedly have my best interests at heart.

When critics point to rough or kinky sex in porn as evidence of its misogyny, I think they often fail to realize that they’re marginalizing kink, and people in the kink community. Including — need I say it? — women in the kink community. Kink is already seriously marginalized: plenty of people see it as sick and sad at best, abusive and destructive at worst, self-evidently and by its very nature. Kinky people are already made to feel ashamed and guilty about what we do and what we like to think about. And it troubles me greatly when progressive, feminist people — people who are normally sensitive to a fault about marginalized communities, people who would passionately decry any attempt to say that (for instance) gay and lesbian sexuality is inherently sick and sad — are this tone-deaf about how their ideas are contributing to the guilt and shame and demonization of yet another sexual minority.

(And yes — the fantasies depicted in rough and kinky porn are consensually acted out. The myth of people being forced into the porn industry is just that — a myth. There are plenty of people who are willing to do this work for money. There’s no earthly reason for porn producers to force anyone into it at gunpoint. Sheesh.)

Okay. So that’s the manifesto/ rant. Which I was all ready to make the focus of today’s column.

But then I started thinking. (Always a danger.) And I started asking myself, “Is it really that simple?”

Here’s the conundrum.

I do, in fact, think it’s valid to critique popular culture — including porn — for the cultural messages it conveys, about gender or anything else. Regardless of whether those messages are being conveyed intentionally or unconsciously. Hell, I do it myself all the time. I criticize movies, TV shows, music videos, advertising, etc. — and porn — for perpetuating sexist and misogynistic imagery.

For instance. As a film critic and social critic, I might point out that action movies commonly perpetuate some very common sexist tropes: e.g., weak helpless women who need rescuing by strong male heroes. Now, someone who likes action movies might reply, “Hey, it’s just a fantasy that I enjoy. I’m not saying that I want a world in which strong men rescue weak helpless women, or that the world is really like that. It’s just an escapist fantasy.” And yet I think it’s valid for me to critique this trope and how common it is — even though it is just a fantasy, consensually participated in by the actors as well as the audience. The fantasy is exactly what I’m critiquing — that, and how ubiquitous it is.

So how is that different from someone critiquing rough or kinky porn for perpetuating sexist imagery of women?

Or similarly, as a film critic and social critic, I might criticize the “Sex and the City” movie for depicting women as vapid consumers whose emotional lives center on possessions. But someone who likes that movie might say, again, that it’s just a fun fantasy that doesn’t imply anything about the people who made it or the people who enjoy it. Why is it valid for me to critique these depictions of women in “Sex and the City”… but it’s not valid for someone to critique, say, “Rocco: Animal Trainer 5″ for depicting women as subjugated sex toys who exist to be used roughly by men and have cocks forced down their throats until they gag?

So if I’m going to defend my social criticism of the fantasy images depicted in action movies or “Sex and the City” — even if those images aren’t meant to say, “This is how the world ought to be,” or even, ‘This is how the world really is,” even if those images are simply saying, “This is a fun and entertaining thing to think about as a distraction” — why is it not valid for someone else to critique the fantasy images depicted in rough or kinky porn?

I want to be very rigorous here. I want to be sure I don’t reach my conclusion first and then contort my ethical thinking so I can get there from here. I don’t want to have my rationale be, “I like kinky porn, therefore it’s okay; I don’t like “Sex in the City,” therefore it’s not.” I don’t want my ethical thinking to just be a rationalization of my personal likes and dislikes.

So I’ve been thinking about this carefully and at length. And here’s what finally occurred to me. (Or, to be more accurate: Here’s what finally occurred to Ingrid. I chewed over this idea in my head for days without a solution; I ran it by nearly a dozen people who all came up with interesting questions and thoughts, none of which actually resolved the conundrum… and Ingrid thought about it for ten minutes and came up with the answer. I love being married to a philosophy major.)

Here’s what it is.

The problem isn’t with critiquing kinky or rough-sex porn for perpetuating misogyny.

The problem is with critiquing rough-sex or kinky porn for perpetuating misogyny… simply because it’s rough or kinky.

The problem with the “rough or kinky porn perpetuates imagery of women as sexual victims” trope is that it shows absolutely no awareness of consensual kink. It shows no awareness of kink as a consented-to activity among equals, in which fantasies of inequality or non-consent are played out with the willing and enthusiastic agreement of everyone. It shows no awareness of the complex layers and meta-layers of kinky fantasy and the acting-out of fantasy: the ways that kinky people can experience themselves simultaneously as victims/ perpetrators and as caring, affectionate partners giving each other what we most dearly want… and the fact that we often enjoy porn which acknowledges that experience and caters to it. It shows no awareness of the fact that there’s oodles of rough and kinky porn in which women dominate men. (Not to mention rough and kinky gay male porn — Loki knows there’s plenty of that — and by-lesbians-for-lesbians porn — there’s not a ton of that these days, but the rough stuff definitely makes up a solid chunk of what there is.) It shows no awareness of the fact that plenty of women enjoy these fantasies every bit as much as men… and that while men are more likely to be consumers of video porn, including rough or kinky video porn, women are avid consumers of these fantasies in other media. (Most notably fiction — especially in the blurry and increasingly non-existent line between romance novels and erotica.)

And it shows no awareness of how this reflexive criticism of rough and kinky porn plays into the marginalization of kinky people.

If people want to critique sexism in porn, I’m all for it. I’ve done it myself, more than once. And if people want to critique sexism in rough or kinky porn, I’m all for that as well. But the critique needs to be better-informed, and more nuanced, than just, “Look! Women being dominated and humiliated and slapped around! It’s so sexist!” It needs to not just reflexively say that any depiction of rough or kinky sex in which women are the bottoms is sexist… simply because it is rough or kinky sex in which women are the bottoms, purely on that basis alone.

Thanks to Ingrid, Ben, and the folks at the Center for Sex and Culture salon for helping me think this one through. This was a tough one, and I couldn’t have gotten here alone.

Good news, everybody! Skepticon — the totally awesome, free- of- charge atheism/ skepticism conference — got the bigger venue they were working on. Which means they have room for more speakers. Which means I’m going to be speaking!

Hosted by the MSU Chapter of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Skepticon 3 will be happening Friday November 19 through Sunday November 21, at the Springfield Expo Center in Springfield, Missouri. Other speakers include PZ Myers, Amanda Marcotte, James Randi, Debbie Goddard, Dan Barker, D.J. Grothe, Rebecca Watson, Victor Stenger, Joe Nickell, and more. (Here’s the complete speakers’ list. I am so proud to be on that list and in that company, I can barely stop wriggling.) Registration is free — did I mention that this conference is free? — but you’re advised to register in advance, since it may be a full house. There’s pretty cheap lodging available as well, in the Universal Plaza Hotel right next to the conference center, at the special Skeptical Rate of just a night.

I don’t yet know what date and time I’ll be speaking, or what exact topic I’ll be speaking about. I’ll let you know as soon as I do. In the meantime — wa-hoo! Come join me in beautiful Springfield, Missouri, buckle of the Bible Belt, and raise some non-existent hell with your fellow non-believers!

Please note: This piece discusses my personal sex life and sexual fantasies in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don’t want to read about that stuff, please skip this one. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Why does porn matter?

In my career as a sex writer, I’ve written many times in defense of porn. I’ve written about why it’s morally defensible. I’ve written about why it’s legally defensible. I’ve written about why it’s a valid thing for people in monogamous relationships to enjoy. I’ve written about why it’s feminist… or at least, why it can be feminist, why it’s not automatically and by its very nature sexist (even though a fair amount of it is).

Today, I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about why porn matters. I want to talk about what porn contributes: to individuals, and to a culture. I want to talk about why porn has redeeming social importance… even the “no redeeming social importance” stuff, the sleaziest, skankiest, artistically shabbiest, porniest porn you can imagine. I want to talk about why porn, simply by its nature as porn, has value.

(Quick clarification: When I say “porn” here, I don’t just mean “porn videos.” Past experience has taught me that, for some reason, when you say “porn,” many people automatically think “video porn.” That’s not what I mean. I mean any porn, in any medium: fiction, photography, drawings, comics, videos, video games, campfire stories, cave paintings, whatever.)

So we went around the circle… and the first person confessed, with great trepidation, that he fantasized about having sex with two women. The second confessed, with obvious reluctance and embarrassment, that she fantasized about having sex with her husband’s best friend. Etc. There were a couple more which I now don’t remember: I just remember that they were all more or less along these same lines — extremely common fantasies that filled these people with shame, distress, and fear.

And then it was my turn.

If there had been a hole in the floor under my chair, I would have crawled into it.

My wildest sexual fantasy — that week, anyway — involved being initiated into a group sex cult. In this fantasy, I was first tied up and forced to watch the members of the group perform a series of kinky acts — being sexually displayed, tied to a table, whipped, fucked in the ass, forcibly penetrated at once in multiple holes, etc. Then, the next day, I was forced to participate in each of these acts myself, in the same sequence, for the entertainment of the group. The sexual performance I was being made to watch was behind a curtain of gauze, so I could only see the silhouettes… which somehow enhanced the intensity of the performances in my imagination. And I knew when I was watching the performances that I’d have to repeat them the next day: so the “watching” part of the fantasy was fraught with shock at the knowledge that I’d soon have to do all of these things myself… and the “performing” part was fraught with anticipation/ dread, remembering with each new humiliation that something even kinkier was just around the corner.

So it was my turn to share. And I thought, “Oh, fuck. What on earth are these people going to think of me? If they’re this freaked out by their own very standard fantasies — hubby’s best friend, doing it with two girls — how on Earth are they going to react when they hear what my twisted sexual imagination has come up with? They’re going to think I’m mentally unstable. At best. A moral degenerate at worst.” I was very attached to this group at the time, and the thought of being alienated from it was quite upsetting.

But it was my turn, and I’d promised to be honest during this process. So I told.

Here’s what happened.

First: The people who’d confessed, with deep shame and fear, about sex fantasies that approximately 90% of the population shares… they weren’t horrified by mine. They were actually sort of impressed. One person expressed admiration for my imagination; all of them said they were impressed by my honesty. Some of them even seemed to be getting ideas from hearing my fantasies: either they’d never thought about going to these places but now had gotten their horizons expanded, or they’d already been having fantasies like mine and now felt like they had permission to explore them. And the people with the more conventional fantasies were clearly relieved at how normal their own fantasies suddenly seemed in comparison to mine.

Admittedly, these were special circumstances. The consciousness- raising group fostered a strong bond of trust and acceptance, and I have no idea how any of these people would have reacted if they’d heard about this fantasy at a cocktail party or seen something about it in a movie. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that revealing a somewhat unusual and fairly kinky sex fantasy, rather than alienating people, could not only generate trust and respect for my own sexuality, but could make people feel more comfortable with their own.

So that’s the first thing that happened. Here’s the second.

When I revealed my “initiation into the sex cult” fantasy, the next person in the circle looked at me with tremendous relief. His own wildest fantasy — that week — was something roughly as freaky as mine: something involving a memory from an orgy he’d had in college, where they’d put a tarp on the floor and greased it up with oil and went at it in a big slippery bisexual puppy pile. He was clearly a fellow-traveler, a giant horny sex freak with a wild imagination and a strong taste for erotic adventure.

And he had been having the exact same freak-out I’d been having. He’d been listening to the distressed, shame-faced confessions of almost absurdly normal fantasies… and had been feeling intense apprehension about telling his own fantasies and being seen as weird and depraved. And he was immensely relieved at the fact that I’d gone first, and had broken the sex-freak ice. My story made it that much easier for him to tell his story.

I think you see where I’m going with this.

I am well aware of the deep flaws in porn. I’m aware that way too much of it, far from exploring the wide possibilities of sexuality, simply mines the same predictable, easily- marketable veins, over and over and over again. I’m aware that way too much of it, far from alleviating people’s insecurities about their sexuality, actually exacerbates them. I’m aware that way too much of it is sexist, perpetuating screwed-up stereotypes about both women and men. (Unlike, say, every other aspect of our popular culture, like TV and movies and pop music and video games and books and magazines and news reporting and so on, all of which are bastions of feminist thought. ) And I’m very, very well aware that way too much porn is just bad: mediocre at best, embarrassingly shabby at worst. Sturgeon’s Law — “90% of everything is crap” — applies to porn as much as any other human endeavor, and possibly even more so, since the stigma surrounding it makes many good writers/ artists/ actors/ etc. avoid it like the plague. As porn consumers, I think we deserve better, and I think we should demand better.

But even given all of that, I passionately believe that porn has value.

I think that porn can, and often does, accomplish everything that telling my fantasy accomplished in that consciousness- raising group so many years ago. (Which was, in its own way, a form of porn.)

I think that porn can normalize sex. It can make sex seem more familiar, and less scary. It can remind people that sex is a natural desire, one that all or most of us share. It can remind us that, no matter what our sexual thoughts and desires are, chances are someone else is having them, too. It can make us feel more comfortable with our sexuality. It can make us feel like we have permission to explore our sexuality, in fantasy or in the flesh or both. It can expand our sexual horizons: exposing us to possibilities we might never have considered, and making our own sex lives richer. It can make people with fairly standard sexual desires feel more connection and understanding for those of us whose desires are on the fringe. It can make people with fringe desires feel like we’re not alone.

If the only thing porn accomplished was to create sexual excitement and pleasure… that would be plenty. Sexual excitement and pleasure are positive goods, valuable simply in and of themselves. If that’s all that porn contributed to the world, I’d still be defending its value, simply on that basis alone.

But I think that porn does contribute more.

Porn is a way that, as a culture, we tell each other our fantasies.

I think that matters.

And I’d like to see it get some respect.