Playing Top and Bottom: Reciprocal Abuse Marketed as Equality
It has also been argued that any inequalities evident in straight pornography are undermined in gay male pornography because the men in gay male pornography, and gay men generally, have the ‘option’ of participating in a role reversal not normally afforded women – that is, they can ‘take turns’ being top and bottom. As a result, they further challenge the idea that gender roles are fixed or immutable and thereby question the assumption that men must always be on top (see Burger, 1995).
Central to arguments of this sort is the idea that you can somehow subvert gender’s harms if you simply ‘play’ with it. You can’t. If gay men and men generally were willing to give up male privilege, then maybe playing with gender would work. But they are not. Accordingly, many gay men seem obsessed with getting, and taking advantage of, that which their straight counterparts have had all along, including pornography. For many, gender and male privilege promise a great deal in a world in which being a man still means something. As such, any medium that promises validation through gender conformity tends to lose its subversive potential and, on the contrary, ensures that those constructs that constitute and construct male supremacy, that make it what it is, remain in place. For many gay men, pornography is not a game. It offers them something very reaclass="underline" power. Over men, as men. There is nothing particularly challenging about this bit of ‘theatre’, regardless of the biological attributes of those who ‘perform’ it.
What this focus on role play and role reversal as a means of undermining gender hierarchies overlooks is the fact that the pleasure found remains the pleasure derived from dominance and submission. Although these roles can be reversed, there are still clearly defined roles. There is always a top and there is always a bottom, articulated along gender lines so as to differentiate between those with and those without power. Hierarchy – inequality – thus remains central to the sex act. While there is mutuality, it is in the ‘pleasure’ found in shared degradation – the pleasure derived from controlling or being controlled by someone else. Mutual abuse does not eradicate abuse. It doubles it and risks trivialising it through sex.
Conclusion
Pornography tells gay men that they too can be real men. But at what cost? Becoming ‘a man’ does nothing for gay male liberation. It does, however, do a lot for male supremacy. It ensures that the rejection of male dominance, necessary for gay male liberation, will be more difficult and that those of us who do choose to do so will face more hostility from both straight men and those in our community who have sold out. It ensures that the ‘groveling faggot’, aware that he can never be the man he is supposed to be, will be just what gay male pornography and society says he should be: the object of scorn and male aggression. It ensures that the closeted youth, already attacked for being different, will stay closeted, afraid to express any ‘difference’ that might reveal his secret and make him the target of more hatred.
While pornographic reality, cloaked as fantasy, might promise the gay male vindication because he too can be on top, the struggle to become that top will only reinforce a social hierarchy straight men have supported all along – the result being gay male silence and subordination, male superiority and female inferiority. And any liberation strategy that normalises this inequality in the name of freedom is not really a politic worthy of celebration, despite the considerable efforts of those who continue to promote it.
Bibliography
Burger, John (1995) One Handed Histories: The Erotic-Politics of Gay Male Video Pornography. Harrington Park Press, New York.
Kendall, Christopher N. (2004) Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver.
Kendall, Christopher N. (2004) ‘Gay Male Pornography and Sexual Violence: A Sex Equality Perspective on Gay Male Rape and Partner Abuse’ McGill Law Journal 49 (4) pp. 877–923.
Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v Canada (Minister of Justice), [2000] 2 SCR 1120.
R v Butler. [1992] 1 SCR 452 (SCC).
Little Sisters Trial Exhibits (January 1990) Exhibit number 49, MACII 19: A Drummer Super Publication, Volume 19, published by Desmotis Publishers, USA (no longer in existence).
Little Sister Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 192, Film: Headlights and Hard Bodies, A Zeus Video Production.
Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 200, Sex Stop: True Revelations and Strange Happenings From Wheeler, Volume 3.
Little Sister Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 216, Mr SM 65.
Little Sisters Trial Exhibits (1989) Exhibit number 197, Bear: Masculinity Without the Trappings, Issue 9, published by COA Publishers, USA (no longer in existence).
Little Sister Trial Exhibits (1990) Exhibit number 48, Dungeon Master: The Male SM Publication, No. 39, published by Desmotis Publishers, USA (no longer in existence).
Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 262, Oriental Guys, Issue 4, Spring 1989 at 10.
Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 6, Oriental Guys, Issue 6, Spring 1990 at 10.
MacKinnon, Catharine (1989) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Harvard University Press, Boston.
Men Against Rape and Pornography, Looking at Gay Porn (1993), available from MARAP, PO Box 8181, Pittsburgh, PA 1517.
Willcox, William (1995) ‘That Old Time Religion’ Manscape Magazine 10 (11) pp. 15–18.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
(USA/New Zealand)
Pornography and Animals
Some things are incomprehensible. Why would anyone derive sexual pleasure from seeing a video of scantily clad women in high heels squashing, stomping, and torturing small animals (including puppies and kittens) who squeal in horror as they die? How could that be ‘sexual’ in any way where the word makes sense? Perhaps just as incomprehensible is the far larger number of people who insist that such videos are, or can be, ‘art’, or are examples of freedom of expression which must be defended even if, and perhaps especially if, we personally do not like the content.
These are snuff videos.[55] But how, one might ask, can anyone find this ‘sexy’. There is a wide body of feminist literature over the past 30 years that answers this question in detail. I merely wish to make some common-sense observations. Such as the fact that we go to zoos, and rodeos and circuses where we see animals exploited in ways that are not as obvious as in snuff videos. We may not find sexual pleasure in watching these animals forced to behave in ways that are completely unnatural, but something about the total control over them appeals to us. Or we would not attend such spectacles. (As people become more aware of the harm to the animals, attendance is falling off, I am happy to say.)
Some men obviously take pleasure, sexual pleasure, in control, sadistic control. If they cannot exercise it themselves, they want to see other men exercise it. Pornography involving animals satisfies both the urge to see women as animals, and to see animals as under the control of a dominating male. Some males wish to see both suffer. This is true even when there is a cover, for example pretending that the woman or the animal likes the suffering or in some sense deserves it. This is also behind the inexplicable suggestion that human/animal sex is consensual, that the animal chooses to have sex with the human and enjoys it. Again, male fantasy is at work. We see this in the whole genre of ‘incest’ or intra-familial child sexual abuse pornography where grown men rape young girls (or young boys) and insist that the children enjoy it. They have ‘chosen’ to have sex with these men. Some animal rights activists, notably Peter Singer, are on record as saying that there are some animals who freely ‘choose’ (or at least are not forced) to have sex with humans. But a moment’s reflection reveals that animals cannot make such a free choice, any more than can a child. The very words ‘free choice’ lose all meaning when we apply them in such situations. In law, but also in common sense, we recognize that a child is not free to make any such decision, because children cannot be expected to foresee all the ramifications of such an act, including physical, emotional, mental and social harm, a sexually transmitted disease, or even, for older children, pregnancy.[56] And of course, needless to say, the very power imbalance makes ‘no’ often impossible. The animal in question, of course, is even less able to understand the consequences of the act. Here is what Peter Singer wrote (Singer, 2001):
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1 They are similar to those far more dangerous, illegal and hard to find snuff films of women being killed for sexual pleasure of the person who watches the film. Just a rumor, some will say. Others call it an urban myth. But I have no reason to doubt that such films exist, are produced by killing real women and are watched by men (pretty much exclusively the audience for such films) from all walks of life. Much like incest, this is not something that happens only in the poorest of neighborhoods. Businessmen, lawyers, doctors, college professors and other elite members of society throughout the Western world pay to see these films in private showings. People who say there are no such things are being willfully blind. Even the daily news brings proof that they exist. Even as I write these lines the commander of Canada’s largest Air Force base, Colonel Russell Williams, who once flew prime ministers and served as a pilot to the Queen during a 2005 visit, pleaded guilty to 2 first-degree murder charges, 2 sexual assaults and 82 breaking-and-entering charges. Prosecutors warned the court that details of the killings were horrific before explaining how Williams bound, beat, raped, photographed, videotaped and asphyxiated Marie Comeau, a 38-year-old corporal, and Jessica Lloyd, 27. No mention is made of the purpose of the videotapes, but it is beyond doubt that such ‘movies’ are made-for-profit films and can be ordered on command, just as can animal crush videos.
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2 I would make the same point about the sexually suggestive photographs by Sally Mann of her young naked children. There is no way for a child to know how they will feel about such photographs when they are adults. It is disingenuous to claim, as Sally Mann and her supporters do, that her children, now adults are ‘fine’ with the photos and even proud of them. That may well be. But it cannot be known in advance. And what if those same children, as adults, eventually change their mind? The photos cannot be recalled. There is no meaningful way to speak of ‘consent’ for young children who are being viewed in ways they cannot yet understand. I really don’t care how good the photographs are. That would be like saying the crush videos of the animals have nice color composition. Tell that to the dead animals. And what of the children of the children? How might