I’ve complained a great deal about the way in which all sexually explicit material of any sort is called ‘pornography’. And I’ve often insisted that what I write is not pornography. Because of this, I often worry that I leave my readers with the impression that I am anti-porn. I want to stress, categorically, that this is not the case. However, I think the definition and usage of the word of ‘pornography’ is problematic. We are careless about how we define it and the way we use the word as a blanket term for all sexually explicit material. So, I’d like to start in a very dry way. A definition, please:
pornography, n.
Etymology: < Hellenistic Greek pi (adjective) that writes about prostitutes ( < ancient Greek pi- (see porno- comb. form) + – -graph comb. form) + -y suffix3 (compare -graphy comb. form), perhaps after French pornographie treatise on prostitution (1800), obscene painting (1842), description of obscene matters, obscene publication (1907 or earlier).
1.
a. The explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity in literature, painting, films, etc., in a manner intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic feelings; printed or visual material containing this. [1. “pornography, n.”. OED Online. December 2011. Oxford University Press. 22 January 2012 <http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/148012>.]
This is the OED entry, and definition (a) is the one which most people use. I find the very definition to be problematic because I challenge the distinction between ‘erotic’ and ‘aesthetic’ feelings. Many feelings regarding representations of desire and pleasure are often both erotic and aesthetic. Also, inherent in the definition is an implication that erotic feelings are shallow and aesthetic feelings are deep.
I find it helpful to reach back to the etymology of the word from the ancient Greek porno-graphos: writing about prostitutes. It allows me to draw a broad distinction between the commercial and non-commercial arenas of eroticism. So this is where I’d like to draw my philosophical line. My working definition of pornography is any material – written, photographic, filmic or interactive – that involves the exchange of money for material solely produced to elicit sexual arousal. And, I’d like to include in this any material that attempts to mimic pornography: i.e. certain types of amateur porn in which memes common to commercial pornography are obviously present.
Why do I focus on the ‘commercial’? Am I simply anti-capitalist?
No. Please don’t get me wrong. Sex has always been a commodity. Sexual gratification could always be purchased for a going rate in almost every society throughout history. I don’t, on principle, have anything against it.
However, the involvement of money brings the transaction into the public arena. Money, by its nature, is a public thing. Something that can be purchased for money is a product in the marketplace, and entails the civic and legal attributes that all public affairs do. The minute anything is ‘for sale’ is the moment it begs to be judged on solely economic terms. We can begin to discuss fair market value, value for money, fair exchange. Marketized sex becomes, then, fundamentally quantifiable. If I pay for an hour with a prostitute but do not have an orgasm, I have a right to complain that I did not get what I paid for. If I purchase a porn video but it doesn’t arouse me enough to facilitate masturbation, I can complain that it wasn’t worth the money. Quantification has an interesting effect of decontextualizing whatever is being quantified.
What I find particularly problematic is that so many people have a problem keeping the paradigms straight in their heads.
A prostitute exchanges sexual pleasure (to their client) for money. They get the money, their clients get the pleasure. Porn movies make products to sexually arouse their clients in exchange for money. The actors in porn films get paid. They have sex that is recorded and consumed by others for a fee. Pornographic magazines take pictures of sexually arousing situations and sell copies of the magazine. There is no mutuality of pleasure involved here. There is a transaction of pleasure for money.
It may be in the marketing interests of many types of commercial sex retailers (prostitutes, pornographers, strippers, cam-sex providers, etc.) to pretend that what they are doing involves mutual pleasure (and at times, it even might be true) but the fundamental structure of the transaction an economic one. Otherwise, they would not be in business.
People who have sex together, or get each other off, without the exchange of money are working on a different paradigm. It may indeed be just as transactional – pleasure for pleasure, pleasure for affection, pleasure of admiration – but it is fundamentally private because it doesn’t involve the transfer of capital.
This also means that, because money is not involved, the experience doesn’t naturally devolve into the quantifiable, which means it’s less likely to be decontextualized.
So, although I do write extremely explicit material at times, and there are portions of my writing that are written to be arousing to the reader, it is never pornography. Because I do not write erotic fiction for money.
‘Aha!’ you say, ‘but you sell your books! Your stories appear in anthologies that are for sale!’ This is true enough. My work may end up in an object that can be purchased for money, but its birth was never predicated on the payment of money. I did not write it for the purpose of receiving money for it. No piece of work I have subsequently had published has not first appeared on my blog for free. So, if you’ve been my textual lover by visiting my blog on a semi regular basis, you have had the opportunity to consume everything I’ve ever written, free.
I have stumbled across readers who are so used to seeing their own sexual arousal as transactional, that they leave nasty little comments about how something I wrote didn’t turn them on and they’ve ‘wasted’ their time. They are so used to viewing sex within an economic model, that even a reading experience that is absolutely free must, somehow, represent ‘good value for money’ to them, even when no money is being exchanged.
For a very long time, I’ve tried to understand why I write and post my work. At it’s most basic, it might easily be described as a form literary exhibitionism. I write to be read in the way some women take off their clothes in public for the pleasure of being looked at. But I’m not, by nature, an exhibitionistic person. In fact, quite the opposite: I am essentially voyeuristic.
So, it is a bit more complicated than that. If being read was my only goal and gratification, I could write much more explicit and immediately sexual things. I’d have a far larger readership. Being ‘read’ is not enough for me. I need to feel you are engaging with me over the landscape of the story.
It is rare that I write anything that does not, at its core, have questions attached: why is this erotic to us? How does desire come to constitute our sense of self? How does pleasure/pain become a transcendental experience? Where is the line between rage and lust? The list of questions I am asking in my fiction goes on and on. Sometimes I proffer possible answers, sometimes I don’t. But there is an intense gratification for me in the communion I feel with readers when I know we are both drawn to and perplexed by these questions. It is a type of pleasure I feel. Especially when readers comment.
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