Porn Practical
by Eta Dixon

     My blue pleather pants are one of my favorite possessions.  I love wearing them to the 
Court, to class, to sit around in.  When my Mom first saw me in these pants she raised her 
eyebrows and asked me "How can you wear something like that and also claim that you 
don’t want to be objectified?"  Her question highlights a dilemma faced by many women: 
how do we sexually express and empower ourselves within the social framework of  
objectification and inequality?   While time we are taught to be innocent and passive, we 
are at the same time taught to gain love and self-esteem through the objectification of our 
bodies. Too often the only spaces we find and/or create for our sexuality within these 
double binds are poorly lit, cramped, and a long-ass hike from the places we normally 
inhabit. 
     Those who try to reclaim and reshape these spaces by openly expressing and 
enjoying their sexuality as an integrated part of their personality often face a negative 
response.  This response is sometimes a backlash to empowerment, sometimes confusion 
on the part of the responder, and often a mixture of the two.  This confusion is easily 
understood, as, alas, there is no qualitative benchmark to distinguish between actions of 
objectification and those of  healthy sexual expression.  Instead, the difference lies in the 
nature of the actor’s sexuality, which for many of us is somewhere on a continuum 
between objectification and expression.   
     Men as well face the difficulties of sexually empowering themselves within the 
social structure of inequality.  One difficulty is the pressure to fulfill the role of the 
sexually knowledgeable and experienced partner.  Men often turn to pornography, both in 
the search for knowledge to fulfill this role and in some cases to escape this role.  Indeed, 
pornography is one of the main spaces society gives men to explore their sexuality.  
Herein lies another difficulty in the sexual empowerment of men: the need to overcome 
the inequality embodied in pornography, to whatever extent such inequality is 
internalized.
     The word pornography is derived from the Greek roots porne (harlot, prostitute, 
female captive) and graphos (writing about or description of) (Steinem).   Indeed, the 
basic framework of pornography--the male consumer as the sexual actor and the female 
model  as the passive sexual object--legitimizes and perpetuates sexual inequality ( I am 
assuming the typical gender roles in heterosexual pornography).   Men who frequently 
use pornography internalize the ideology of inequality to various extents.  This variation 
exists because the dynamics of the space are influenced by the nature of the occupant. 
For some men, their sexual relations are an extension of this space, as they approach 
sexual relations from a conquest and/or violent-domination type mindframe.  However, 
for many men the space of pornography is merely visited, as their sexuality has a 
grounding in a more egalitarian based ideology and/or experience.  Even in these cases, 
the visitation of this space is likely to have an influence on the visitor, however subtle the 
influence may be.  In the words of Marsha Dolesky, "You do not live in the belly of the 
beast without at least getting a bad case of b.o."  
      In order to explore the dynamics of the space of pornography,  I spent a couple of 
hours looking at porn on the web.  In addition to the basic softcore Playboy-type porn and 
basic hardcore Hustler-type porn, which sexualizes dominance, many sites sexualize 
overtly violent forms of dominance.  For example, many showed penetration with a wide 
array of objects, "golden shower" sites show one person urinating on another, and many 
sites claiming to be torture chambers showed bondage.  In all sites, models typically were 
smiling seductively or displaying some other variation of what Gail Dines calls the "fuck 
me look."  These looks of desire and enjoyment encode two dangerous messages. With 
regards to basic porn, the message is that women enjoy being objectified. With regards to 
the violent sites, the message is that women enjoy being dominated.
     I imagine it would be very easy for a male to assume that the lustful looks 
indicate the enjoyment of the model and her conscious choice to participate.  Perhaps 
modeling could even be assumed to be a sexually empowering choice for the model.  
However, these assumptions negate the socioeconomic context of such a "choice."  
Behind these lustful looks lie many tales of economic desperation and sexual abuse.   
There exists the power structure and dirty politics of the pornography industry, in which 
models are lured into a cycle of participation and paid salaries incomparable to that of 
Jenna Jameson (a multi-million dollar porn star).  There exists the frequency of  amateur 
videos and shots being made without consent and/or in the context of an abusive 
relationship (Russo).    
     Thus, I find the possibility of erotic subversion to be unlikely within the context 
of the pornography industry.  However, the print and video mediums associated with 
pornography can be a space in which we create images based on sexual equality, images 
which affirm our sexual identities and offer us opportunity for sexual empowerment.  
Can you imagine the looks we would get from the ATC if we formed An Erotica for 
Sexual Equality Club?