Impure relations: feminism, pornography and ethicalheterosex

Author:Albury, Katherine

Publication Date:2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/19383

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Impure Relations: Feminism, Pornography and

Ethical Heterosex

Katherine Albury

PhD, School of Media, Film and Theatre

2006

ABSTRACT

This thesis engages with feminist and queer theory to assert that heterosexuality can be understood not as a fixed, unchanging and oppressive institution, but as changing combination of erotic and social affects which coexist within public and private bodies, discourses and imaginations. Drawing on the work on Michel Foucault, William Connolly, Eve Sedgwick and others, it examines the multiple discourses of heterosexuality that are already circulating in popular culture, specifically, representations of sex and gender within sexually explicit media. It examines the fields of polyamory, ‘feminist porn’, amateur and DIY pornography and ‘taboo’ sexual practices to demonstrate the possibilities offered by non-normative readings of heterosex. These readings open up space not only for queerer, less oppressive heterosexualities, but also for models of ethical sexual learning which incorporate heterosexual eroticism and emphasise both the pleasures and dangers of heterosex.

Keywords: Heterosexuality, Pornography, Sexual Ethics, Feminism

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Surname or Family name: Albury

First name: Katherine

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: margaret

School: SAM (previously EMPA)

Title: Impure relations: Feminism, pornography and ethical heterosex

Other name/s: Margaret

Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This thesis engages with feminist and queer theory to assert that heterosexuality can be understood not as a fixed, unchanging and oppressive institution, but as changing combination of erotic and social affects which coexist within public and private bodies, discourses and imaginations. Drawing on the work on Michel Foucault, William Connolly, Eve Sedgwick and others, it examines the multiple discourses of heterosexuality that are already circulating in popular culture, specifically, representations of sex and gender within sexually explicit media. It examines the fields of polyamory, 'feminist porn', amateur and DIY pornography and 'taboo' sexual practices to demonstrate the possibilities offered by non-normative readings of heterosex. These readings open up space not only for queerer, less oppressive heterosexualities, but also for models of ethical sexual learning which incorporate heterosexual eroticism and emphasise both the pleasures and dangers of heterosex.

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Acknowledgements and dedication I have been writing this thesis for a long time, and am deeply grateful to everyone who has assisted and encouraged my (distracted) progress. Special thanks are due to my three supervisors: Gay Hawkins, David Halperin and Sue Kippax. I am also appreciative of my friends and colleagues in the School of Media, Film and Theatre, UNSW; The National Centre for HIV Social Research, UNSW; the Media and Communications Program, and the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, both at the University of Sydney; and all my friends and partners–in-crime in the incredibly fertile fields of Cultural Studies and Sex Studies. Too many friends, lovers and drinking buddies have held my hand over the years, and in the interests of sanity and brevity I can only name a few here. I would especially like to thank Michael Finucan, Linda Jaivin, Catharine Lumby, Alan McKee, Elspeth Probyn, Clif Evers, Fiona Giles, Lamia Dabboussy, Pete Minter and Paul Kylstra for backing me up when I was at my best…and at my worst. Thanks also to Michael Wall for editing and proofing. Much love and thanks to my family (biological and chosen), particularly Alicia Albury, Ian Schofield, Jack Schofield, Jessica Schofield, Randall Albury, Barbara Albury, William Albury, Rebecca Albury, Graeme Barwell and Tobin Saunders. Special thanks and love to Sean Goodwin.

This thesis is dedicated to my grandma, Katherine Jane McClure, with much love.

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Contents

Introduction: Dirty talk 3

Chapter 1: Problematising heterosexuality 30

Chapter 2: Impure relations: The ethics of heterosexuality 64

Chapter 3: Sex in public: Raunch culture and feminist porn 99

Chapter 4: Out of the bedroom … heterosexuality in amateur porn 135

Chapter 5: Abject masculinities 165

Chapter 6: The trouble with anal sex 208

Chapter 7: Conclusion: queer learning and ethical Heterosex 239

References: 259

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Introduction: Dirty talk

What I want to ask is: Are we able to have an ethics of acts and their

pleasures which would be able to take into account the pleasures of the

other?

Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics

Since the late 1960s, feminists in Australia, the US and Britain have drawn links between

men’s and women’s everyday sexual and emotional relations; and the broader issue of

institutionalised homophobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity.1 The exact nature of

these links, along with the question of how they might be broken, has been hotly

contested. This thesis seeks to both engage with, and depart from, feminist thinking on

the representation of heterosexuality in media and popular culture, specifically (but not

exclusively) representations that might be considered ‘pornographic’. I will seek to

explore the arguments feminist and other theories of heterosexuality have offered to

explain the oppressive aspects of heterosexuality as an institution; and ask why these

arguments have, as yet, been unable to propose a model of ethical heterosexuality that 1 In her history of Australian left-wing movements (including feminism), Verity Burgmann notes that while feminism is often discussed in terms of a discrete ‘first wave’ and ‘second wave’, the work of feminist historians such as Marilyn Lake (1999) points to a great deal of organised feminist activity between the First and Second World Wars – that is, prior to the official second wave. She observes, however, that sexuality was a key area of conflict that shaped the emergence of the second wave (as we know it). However, similar conflicts had existed within earlier (first wave) feminism. While some had called for sexual equality in terms of demanding male chastity and temperance, others championed ‘free love’ and sex-radicalism (see Bland 1985). The double standard of sexuality was opposed by feminists of the late 1960s and 1970s, just as it had been by earlier feminists. However the goal here was not male purity, and the protection of the sanctity of marriage, but an undoing of the institution of marriage which demanded virginity and monogamy from women, without enforcing the same restraints on men (for more on 19th and early 20th century approaches to the politics of women’s sexuality see Bland 1983, Bland and Mort 1997, DuBois and Gordon 1992, Epstein 1984, and Walkowitz 1984).

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encourages both eroticism and an ethos of care between men and women? In response to

this question, I suggest that theories of heterosexuality have not paid sufficient attention

to aspects of popular accounts of heterosexual practices. These texts, I will argue, offer

fertile possibilities for modelling ethical forms of heterosexuality that do not rely of the

sanctification of political, moral or religious norms.

Given that I am exploring the limits and potentials of heterosexuality, it is valuable to

define several terms I will be using to describe it within this project. The term

‘heterosexuality’ is, in some ways, vague. It can describe sexual attraction between a man

and a woman, sexual activity between men and women, or a broader political institution.

I use the terms ‘institutional heterosexuality’ to distinguish between everyday sexual or

relational interactions between men and women, and the social and political structures

that both assume and enforce an ideal of heterosexuality as universal norm. As an

institution, heterosexuality does not just exclude sexual partnerships between same sex

partners (or, indeed, partners who do not identify as ‘male’ or ‘female’), but actively

penalises individuals or groups who do not conform to heterosexual norms. These norms

are defined not only through inclusion, but by means of exclusion. They consist of (but

are not limited to) an insistence that sexual contact is legitimate between married,

monogamous male/female partnerships, but not between unmarried or same-sex partners;

a presumption that men are sexual aggressors, and women are sexual objects (and hence

targets for male aggression); a reification of reproduction and childrearing as the proper

realm for women; and the exclusion of men from childrearing. Normative heterosexuality

then, is dependent of an assumption of difference between men and women, that extends

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not just to biological differences but to all aspects of life – that is, to the gendered

practices of everyday masculinity and femininity (see Butler 1990, 1993).

Within the normalised framework (which Butler (1993) has dubbed “the heterosexual

matrix”) heterosexuality is dependent on the assumption that morally and politically

hierarchised gender difference is the foundation of legitimate eroticism. As Sigmund

Freud puts it: “You cannot be what you desire; you cannot desire what you wish to be”

(quoted in Segal 1994: 124). Within institutionalised or normative heterosexuality, social

and sexual roles are considered direct consequence of biological sex. In the most

restrictive and oppressive cases, these roles are considered to be timeless, innate, and

beyond question. Male social and sexual superiority over women is assumed, and may

legitimately be policed by means of coercion or force. Heterosexuality becomes not just

one aspect of human sexual expression, but becomes, as Adrienne Rich puts it

“compulsory heterosexuality” (1980). Within this framework, it is assumed that men and

women must become sexual partners by default, rather than by choice. In a regime of

compulsory heterosexuality, same-sex partnerships are not just considered deviant, but

are actively penalised by educational, political and religious institutions.

If normative heterosexuality relies on the hierarchical ranking of men over women, and

male/female partnerships over same-sex partnerships, does a non-normative

heterosexuality (that is, a heterosexuality that doesn’t depend on punitive hierarchies)

require the complete dissolution of these categories? For my purposes, the answer is no.

Both heterosexuality and homosexuality rely on categories of sex and gender: there can

be no same-sex partnership without recognition of a sex that is ‘the same.’ As Butler puts

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it, there is no outside of sex, or for that matter gender (1990, 1993). If Butler’s proposal

that gender is a copy for which there is no original is extended to its limit, it is fair to

suppose that sex and gender differences (that is, the biological and behavioural variations

that we understand as masculinity and femininity) are strongly eroticised, and even

fetishised. However, this does not necessarily impose a model of men and women as

‘opposites’. Since there are many possible permutations of sexed and gendered

expression that do not necessarily bond hegemonic masculinity with biological maleness,

and hegemonic femininity with biological femaleness, I prefer to adopt Jonathan

Dollimore’s model of sexual proximity (1991), or Eve Sedgwick’s axiom: ‘people are

different from each other’ (1990). These queer perspectives embrace multiple possible

combinations of sameness and difference within the fields of sex, sexuality and gender

(1991). Of course, in some cases this less restrictive view of sex between men and

women will appear exactly like the eroticisation of difference that is recognised as

normative heterosexuality. In other instances, sameness might be eroticised between male

and female partners. However, an ethical approach to heterosexuality does not privilege

sameness over difference, or vice versa. Rather, it foregrounds an ethics of care of the

self, and care of others. Since ethical heterosexuality is not bounded by the rules of

institutional heterosexuality, with prescriptions for correct gendered, sexual behaviour,

and penalties for misbehaviour, it is harder to define. Ethical heterosexuality, unlike

institutionalised heterosexuality is not bounded by political or religious laws, but instead

is made up of practices of freedom.

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Within this thesis I will engage some long-running arguments that I believe are still not

only relevant for contemporary feminists, but are also implicitly built into many

contemporary discussions of sexuality, particularly heterosexuality, as it is represented in

media and popular culture. My interest is not that of a historian; that is, I am not claiming

to unearth or reassemble lost or archival documents. I am more interested in the way

feminist critiques of heteronormativity and institutionalised sexism have come to be

organised in particular ways. I am concerned with what I see as a dissonance in

contemporary popular feminist (or feminist-inflected) critiques of sexuality in media and

popular culture. I do not deny that there is a proliferation of images of sexuality, and that

the majority of popular or mainstream images focus on women in an eroticised,

heterosexual context. However, these images are not homogenous in their representations

of sex, sexuality and gender. They do not uniformly objectify or degrade women, nor do

they all represent men as unyielding phallic ‘masters of the universe’. Instead they reflect

a wide range of sexual activities and subjectivities, male and female. In addition, they

reflect changing cultural attitudes to sexuality, sexual agency and sexual norms.

Many contemporary sex media can, in fact, be read as direct products of a ‘successful’

feminist project. However, they can only be recognized as such if representations of

sexuality are viewed in the context of ethics, rather than morals, and if gradual,

micropolitical shifts are recognised as ‘real’ political change – a recognition which, I will

argue, has been limited in the highly moralised context of certain feminist popular

discourses on public and/or commercial sex. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault

and others, I will argue that the normative constructions of heterosexuality which have

been replicated within some feminist critiques have produced a theoretical dead-end in

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relation to heterosex. That is, they foreclose on the possibility of non-normative

heterosexualities by refusing to recognise shifts and changes in certain contemporary

sexed and gendered practices. In addition, a moralising tendency within feminism has

limited understandings of popular media representations of sexuality (particularly

pornography) to dichotomies of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ images, without seeking to explore the

specific contexts in which these media texts are produced and consumed.

I will suggest that, in opposition to this tendency, there is a more contingent, and indeed

queerer, reading of both past and present modes of producing and consuming sexually

explicit media that opens up a space for rethinking heterosexualities. I will contend that

heterosexuality can be understood as a changing combination of erotic and social affects

which coexist within public and private bodies, discourses and imaginations, rather than

as a fixed and oppressive institution. In examining the multiple discourses of

heterosexuality that are already circulating in popular culture, I will demonstrate the

possibilities offered by non-normative readings of heterosex. That is, I will offer readings

that open up space not only for queerer, less oppressive heterosexualities, but also for

models of sexual learning which incorporate heterosexual eroticism and emphasise both

the pleasures and dangers of heterosex.

While I will acknowledge the history of feminist debates around pornography, I am not

seeking to completely retell this history. Although it could be argued that by using

pornography as text for analysis I am implicitly supporting what might be considered an

‘anti-censorship/pro-porn’ feminism, this is not my sole intention. Certainly I am not

‘anti-porn’, but that is not so much because I am a supporter of ‘free speech’, but because

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I am interested in looking carefully at what porn actually is, and what kinds of stories it

tells about contemporary sexualities. Since I am specifically interested in heterosexuality,

and porn is one of the most widely circulated ‘public’ textual representations of sexuality,

it makes sense to look closely at heterosexual porn. Who features in it? Who makes it?

What do they do? What might it mean? I do not ask these questions in order to determine

whether pornography is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for women, but to open up an ameliorative

discussion of contemporary heterosexuality that does not interpret all sexually explicit

images as simplistic tracts preaching heterosexism, homophobia and misogyny. Instead, I

will suggest that not only have popular sexual images and texts changed significantly in

response to feminist and queer critiques, but that these texts can and should be deployed

and engaged with by theorists, activists, writers and educators, so that, as Eve Sedgwick

puts it, ‘the future may be different from the present’ (2004:146).

In Chapter 1, I will consider the history of feminist responses to heterosexuality, as an

institution and as a sexual identity. As I will argue, early second-wave feminists offered a

strong critique of heteronormativity, and challenged not just public conduct, and publicly

circulated images of heterosex, but also the role that the privatised ‘family’ played in the

reinscribing of sex and gender inequities. However, by the mid-1980s, the critique of the

family had become quieter, and less radical, while critiques of commercial sex and

pornography were becoming louder and more intense. I will argue that this reflects the

limitation of feminisms shaped around moralistic rather than ethical understandings of

sexuality, and suggest that a certain double standard took hold in both feminism itself,

and in the work of sociologists such as Anthony Giddens who drew on feminism as a

framework for thinking about sex and relationships. In contrast to this moralistic

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framework, I will offer William Connolly’s model of ‘micropolitics’ as a useful tool for

thinking about the ways that everyday discourses of sexuality can be read as tools of

social change.

In Chapter 2, I will extend this consideration of morals versus ethics to examine queer

and feminist debates about the role that alternative relationship structures play in

challenging or perpetuating heteronormativity. Drawing on Foucault’s thinking on

‘ethical sensibilities’, I will explore the contemporary relationship style of polyamory (or

ethical non-monogamy) as a means of unpacking some of the benefits of applying ethical,

rather than moral, thinking to contemporary heterosex.

Chapter 3 will shift the focus somewhat to contemporary complaints about the

‘sexualisation’ of women in popular culture, and the supposed ‘co-opting’ of feminist

discourses of sexual freedom and empowerment by porn producers and others. Again I

will draw on Foucauldian thinking on the deployment of sexuality by means of a

normalising opposition of ‘public sex’ and ‘privatised sexuality’. Engaging with Michael

Warner’s overview of feminist critiques of the ‘public/private’ binary, I will argue that

boundaries are not only very difficult to discern between public and private sex, but

boundaries between ‘feminist’ and ‘anti-feminist’ female sexual display are also quite

hard to determine in some contexts. I will offer a brief history of contemporary feminist

pornography, and look at the ways that sexually explicit texts and erotic objects (such as

vibrators) have been adopted by feminist and gay educators in specific ways.

In Chapter 4, I will extend this discussion to examine the ways that heterosexual

amateurs have adapted domestic media technologies to become DIY (do it yourself)

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pornographers. I will consider the role that ‘becoming a pornstar’ might play for

everyday producers and consumers of pornography, and explore some of the literature

which links this to changing understandings of gender and sexuality.

Chapter 5 looks specifically at heterosexual men’s engagement with pornography, and

the ways that heterosexual men’s bodies (including their ejaculating penises) are both

addressed and represented in pornographic and non-pornographic media texts. Drawing

on Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject and Sylvan Tomkins’ work on affect, I will argue

that contemporary pornography can be seen to reflect a male bodily engagement with

‘messy’ corporeality that can be productively engaged with elsewhere – for example in

safer sex education.

My last chapter looks at the way that pornographic and non-pornographic texts have

engaged with the ‘taboo’ topic of anal sex, and the ways that heterosexuality can be seen

to be ‘queered’ in these engagements. In conclusion, I will offer a case study of a

research and education program focused on ‘ethical heterosex’, and suggest other

possibilities for engaging with the damaging aspects of heteronormativity that do not seek

to impose moralising or normalising models of sex and gender. In doing so, I will support

an understanding of heterosexuality that accepts, rather than rejects, humour, messiness

and eroticism as tools for sexual learning, and represents sexual ethics, in Foucault’s

words, as ‘practices of freedom’.

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Sex, theory and popular media

Since I am not only a commentator on but also a producer of popular discourses of

sexuality, I am wary of claiming detachment or objectivity. When asked to describe my

academic work in a nutshell, I tend to say that my research focuses on ‘representations of

sexuality in media and popular culture’ – specifically, representations of heterosexuality

in media and popular culture. This description, although factually accurate, is deliberately

vague. It is easy enough to describe my objects of study: television programs, women’s

magazines, popular films and videos, pornography, journalistic reporting and so on. But it

can much harder to contextualise the means or methods I use when reading these texts.

Following the Foucauldian position that suggests that ‘researching sexuality’ is in itself a

means of producing and reproducing certain ‘truths’ about sexuality, the academic who

researches sex is already part of the field of her own inquiry. This realisation is even

more strongly evident when the academic is also actively involved in performances of her

own ‘expertise’, both in mainstream media, and in alternative or parodic forums for ‘sex

education’.

I am unable to even pretend to stand outside of ‘representations of sexuality in media and

popular culture’ when I am actively, and willingly, involved in the production and

proliferation of texts that claim to represent sex in particular ways. I am, at once,

producer and product. Just as my media appearances necessarily demand that I draw on

my experience in the performance of ‘academic expertise’, this thesis is saturated with

my experience as a media producer and my experience as a media product/sexpert

intellectual. In addition, I am a consumer of both theoretical and non-theoretical texts and

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mediated performances. My own output is a synthesis of both my media consumption and

my more ‘scholarly’ consumption of theoretical texts (and participation in discussions of

the ways diverse texts intersect). Underlying all of this is my own mundane experience of

sexuality in its various public and private manifestations.

These everyday experiences and practices, too, have impacted on the way I ‘do theory’.

Although it could be argued that I am attempting to ‘queer’ heterosexuality, in fact my

project stems more from a lack of faith in the processes of normalisation than it does

from a desire to transgress. Popular representations of the ‘trouble with normal’ are

everywhere. From the gossipy discussions of anal sex and golden showers on Sex and the

City to advice columnists responses to porn consumers, the boundaries of normalised

heterosexuality are constantly being tested. Feminism has been popularly linked with ‘the

sexual revolution’, and it has often claimed that both have ‘failed’. It seems to me,

however, that both feminist and non-feminist changes in sexual politics and sexual

relationships have been quite successful. In fact, I argue that the ongoing public debate

around feminism and sexual pleasure is not simply a ‘backlash’ but a sign of feminism’s

success. Success here is not a moment of arrival, or closure, but an ongoing openness to

debate, to conversation, to dialogue that allows for reappraisal, rethinking, and a

willingness to undergo the discomfort that the process of ‘becoming’ can provoke. This

process, however, is written (or spoken) of quite differently in different contexts.

I concede that my aims and methods of analysing, unpacking and theorising media texts

may be different to those of a researcher who does not produce these texts herself (and

different, too, from those who do not enjoy participating in pop culture as a reader, or

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consumer). I am not looking for signs of ideological manipulation or exploitation, nor am

I looking for ‘hidden meanings’ in popular texts. Rather, I am trying to achieve what Eve

Sedgwick (2004) terms ‘reparative readings’ of both my theoretical and non-theoretical

sources. That is, I am trying to avoid the ‘paranoid’ trend Sedgwick identifies within

critical reading and writing whose political project seems to centre on a) interrogating

theoretical (and popular) texts for signs of false consciousness and/or secret doublespeak

and b) triumphantly revealing and denouncing the same. While I may disagree strongly

with some of the arguments I engage with, and/or argue that an interpretation can be

contested, my main aim is not to ‘expose’ veins of hidden or private meaning in texts.

Nor am I aiming to disprove or dismiss the arguments of any particular theorist or

theoretical tendency (although, as it will become clear, I may position myself strongly in

relation to certain theorists).

Like Sedgwick, I appreciate the valuable contribution that paranoid critical reading and

writing has made to my own development as a scholar, particularly in the case of

Sedgwick’s exemplars of paranoid theory, which include her own Epistemology of the

Closet (1990) and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990). My aim here (and in Yes

Means Yes) is to avoid paranoia in so far as it is possible to do such a thing within a PhD

thesis. Hence, my primary task as I see it is not to unpack or interrogate popular and

critical texts in such an exhaustive or multifaceted manner that I can insure myself

against all possible criticisms of my interpretations and arguments. Nor am I aiming to

‘call for’ an entirely new mode of thinking and interpretation of popular texts addressing

sexuality. In addition, I will not offer definitive prescriptions for the best or most useful

modes of feminist sexual theories or practices. Instead, I will try to read and write about

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sexuality and popular texts in an ameliorative or reparative fashion, which, in the terms of

my project, implies reading and thinking about texts in terms of the ways that they

already demonstrate the shifts and rifts in discourses of heteronormative sexuality.

In order to read this way, I am trying to be open to possibilities of different meanings

within singular texts that are not just the results of different audiences and contexts but

may also be produced within the ambiguity of what I see as an already unstable and

imperfect structuring ‘normative’ framework. That is, I am not trying to impose

‘resistant’ or ‘subversive’ readings onto ‘dominant’ texts, but am instead looking for the

possibility of surprises and contradictions within the way texts are produced, read,

circulated and used. I agree with Sedgwick that this mode of reparative reading, which is

easily dismissed as overly optimistic and utopian, is in fact a form of political strategy. In

Sedgwick’s terms, reparative readings involve flexible and open, non-paranoid relations

to existing texts, even if the same texts can be seen as potentially damaging (even

‘murderous’, ‘partial’ or ‘broken’). Through reparative reading (and by extension,

reparative writing) these pre-existing, admittedly imperfect, texts can be reworked,

rethought and rewritten into objects of hope, comfort and even love, even when they are

flawed or contain practical or theoretical ‘mistakes’. It is this acknowledgment of the

productive, queer potential of such mistakes that Sedgwick offers as one of the most

promising aspects of the reparative turn in critical thinking:

Because the reader has room to realise that the future may be different from

the present, it is also possible for her to entertain profoundly painful,

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profoundly relieving, ethically crucial possibilities as that the past, in turn,

could have happened differently than it actually did. (2004: 146)

Since my thinking is informed and underpinned by feminism, queer theory and cultural

studies, my examples are explored through these theoretical frames. However, I do not

aim to provide an exhaustive history of the debates within any of these theoretical fields.

My methodology could be described by Paula Ahmad’s term ‘theory shopping’ – a

process that involves trying ideas and theoretical programs on for size, in a hopefully

responsible and dialogic fashion. For Ahmad, ‘theory shopping takes advantage of the

skills of browsing, seeing and not seeing the products, according to the specific

situatedness of one’s needs’ (in Hartley 1995: 6-7). As John Hartley describes it, this

interdisciplinary approach to the study of media and culture involves as much respect for

the cultural object as for the theorist or theoretical tendency being worked with. Theory

shopping, as Hartley puts it, is not an orthodox approach to media and cultural studies,

but provides a means of thinking about media and popular culture in terms of ‘the radical

producer and the unknowable consumer’ (1995:7).

The ‘theory shopping’ approach is not uncommon in queer or feminist discussions of

popular culture, although it may appear in different forms in different research projects.

And of course ‘shopping’ is only one description of the process. This mode of strategic

thinking and working with ‘theory’ reflects Michel Foucault’s notion of “theory as a

toolkit” (Foucault 1980: 145). For Foucault, theory is valuable when it is allows the

thinker “to analyse the specificity of mechanisms of power, to locate the connections and

extensions” (1980: 145). It is, he argues “not a system but an instrument”, which allows

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investigations to be “carried out step by step on the basis of reflection…on given

situations” (1980: 145). It is this process of reflection which allows for a reparative (or at

least less paranoid) reading of popular texts, and the processes by which they are

produced. Joshua Gamson describes the writing up of his research with queer guests on

US talk shows (published as Freaks Talk Back) as a process of ‘banging’ ideas, texts and

observations of the processes of media production together:

… I banged ‘discourse’ and ‘institutions’ against one another for a bit, and

started to see how paradoxes of visibility were structured, often

unintentionally, by the everyday practices and routines of television

producers, working within organisational and institutional constraints.

Strange things started to show up: how producers in search of both novelty

and familiarity wound up with the queerest kinds of shows I had seen, how

for their own reasons producers regularly set up anti-gay bigots as ‘freaks’.

The discourse of sexuality was not just out there, floating along in

disembodied texts of various kinds – talk show episodes, novels, gestures,

whatever – but produced through concrete, mundane activities of cultural

producers (and given new shapes by cultural audiences with their own

tools). (2003: 38)

In my case, I have sought out the ways that popular texts have produced new ways

of thinking, talking about and ‘doing’ heterosexuality, that deserve to be

interpreted not just via a lens of ‘theories of sex and gender’, but with respect to

the contexts in which they are produced, circulated and consumed.

19

Like Hartley and Gamson, I see popular media production (including print, radio and

television journalism) as one of the primary ‘sense-making’ fields of modernity. Since

‘sexuality’ as we know it in the West is itself a product of modernity, I would extend

Hartley’s argument to claim popular media as one of the primary grounds upon which

sexuality itself has been textualised (1995). As Ken Plummer observes, sexual stories, or

intimate narratives of personal experience, are fundamental to the academic study of sex

and gender. Yet, while sexologists, sociologists, criminologists, epidemiologists and

demographers solicit these stories as ‘data’ for their studies, they do not always ask

where the stories ‘come from’ (Plummer 1995). As Plummer puts it, the content of the

stories themselves may not always be as intriguing as the motivations, influences and

impulses that compel both interviewer and interviewee:

… why do people tell these sexual stories – or not tell them? Indeed, why do

they turn what was once a private, secret world into a public one? How do

they choose their language to articulate their concerns – where do the words

come from? What sorts of situations enable people to find a voice, and what

happens to people once they give voice to their sexual story? What gets left

out of the story? How do I ‘hear’ the story, and what do I hear when I hear

it? Again, it is not simply what people say that is my concern, but the

complex social processes involved in the telling. (1995: 13, original

emphasis)

20

I argue that media culture provides one of the primary realms in which to shape

and refine our individual and collective sexual stories. This is quite different to

arguing, as recent feminists critiques of mediated sexuality have done (e.g. Levy,

2005; Jeffreys, 1990, 2005) that the media performs a sinister process of

indoctrination or ‘sexualisation’. Firstly, I reject a “media effects” model which

views media content as forms of “repressive state apparatus” (in Althusserian

terms). I agree that media representations are certainly, in Teresa de Lauretis’s

(1988) terms, “technologies of gender”, and indeed form one kind of “technology

of sex”. But, like many cultural theorists, I argue that we do not know the forms

and effects these technologies may take in the context of everyday media

consumption. After all, the most ‘negative’ or ‘stereotypical’ representation of

sexuality could be someone’s sign that ‘there are other people like me’; that is,

one woman’s ‘stereotypical bimbo’ may be another’s exemplar of sexual

autonomy or agency.

I also contest the tendency within sociology to read media images of sexuality in

limited terms – as simple ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ messages about sex, sexual

health and identity that are primarily understood and valued as vehicles for social

engineering such as public health campaigns (i.e. as a manifestation of

governmentality). I argue that representations of sex in media and pop culture are

valid forms of data, as useful as surveys, questionnaires and focus groups in terms

of understanding how changing, nuanced ‘private’ experiences of sexuality are

contextualised in ‘public’ terms. So, although sociological thinking on sex, gender

and the media has underpinned a great deal of my thinking, and I do draw on

21

sociological method indirectly for some of my analysis, I do not draw a distinction

between media texts and ‘real life’. Consequently, I am not concerned by mixing

texts produced by journalists or other professional producers of sexual discourses

with those produced by ‘amateurs’ (such as interview transcripts). Plummer, for

example, goes to great lengths to contextualise his exploration of mediated

accounts of sexual experience in Telling Sexual Stories as not only media texts but

also as ‘socially produced in social contexts by embodied concrete people

experiencing the thoughts and feelings of everyday life’ (1995: 16, original

emphasis). In contrast, I see media texts themselves as socially produced, in social

contexts. Quoting John Hartley, I argue that

… images, discourses, texts, media and so on are quite real. They can be

observed and investigated empirically … and they are all too real in their

modes of industrial production, their social force, their political effects and

their cultural power … it is not a question of contrasting a real public [or

individual experience] with an illusory media … it is about showing how

pervasive the textualisation of public life has become, and how it works.

(Hartley 1992: 2)

Of course, the conventions of academic speech are different to those of popular

news or entertainment media. The academic voice allows for complexity, paradox

and contradiction in a way that popular discourses may not. In his defence of

Judith Butler, Michael Warner suggests that new or difficult ideas require

22

particularly complex or difficult forms of writing (Warner 2002). While I am not

particularly a fan of Butler’s style, I can accept this argument. Theoretical

discussions should not (and often cannot) be expressed within journalistic

conventions of ‘plain English’. However, I suggest that theories of sexuality are

directly applicable to everyday understandings and experiences of sex and

sexuality. In a project that aims to explore the ways that feminist and queer

understandings of sexuality are manifested within popular culture, I am reluctant

to oppose ‘theoretical discussion’ on one hand to ‘examples from media texts’ on

the other. Inspired by writers such as Warner (1999, 2002), Hartley (1992, 1995),

Plummer (1995) and Catharine Lumby (1997, 1999), I hope to write (and

consequently ‘speak’) in a voice that does not simply demonstrate my academic

scholarship ‘in the field of media and popular culture’, but actively engages with

that field. Having accepted the role of ‘public intellectual’, ‘sexpert’, ‘porn

researcher’ and even ‘university-trained pervert’, it would be disingenuous of me

to pretend to stand outside of cultural conversation I have actively engaged with

for almost ten years.

I am indebted to the Australian tradition of political writing for niche media, in feminist

publications such as Refractory Girl, and gay and lesbian community forums such as the

Sydney Star Observer. Over the past 20-plus years, Australian activists and theorists have

responded to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in many ways. My entire project owes a debt to the

rethinkings of ‘natural’ categories of sex and gender that have been so much a part of

queer and feminist responses to the epidemic. This response has been conducted in

public, via community forums and niche media. As a result, academic researchers such as

23

Gary Dowsett, Sue Kippax, Kane Race and Michael Hurley, to name a few, have

constantly engaged with interdisciplinary audiences. HIV conferences have, by necessity,

involved educators, grassroots community activists, epidemiologists, social scientists and

cultural theorists trained in textual analysis. In these conferences, and other forums,

research findings (even those highly informed by ‘difficult’ theoretical concepts) have

been presented to very mixed audiences. Often, too, they have been immediately

reworked by researchers, translating them directly or indirectly into community education

programs, social marketing campaigns, and articles for niche media.

As Foucault has observed, the first-person sexual confession is a staple of modern

pornographic writing, from the fictional ‘whore’s confessions’ of the seventeenth

century, to the truth-telling of the narrators of ‘My Secret Life’. Running parallel to this

confessional voice is the voice of the scientist, or classifying expert, who speaks not with

the voice of experience but with the measured voice of the objective observer. Embedded

within the voice of expertise is the reported speech of the case study’s subject, such as

Freud’s Dora, or the Wolf Man. Within a professional, disciplinary context, expertise and

authority is demonstrated in specific ways.

Nikolas Rose (1990) has argued that, from the 1930s onwards, general populations have

been encouraged towards self-surveillance, with the aim of creating a normalised climate

of self-help in regards to physical and mental health. Since sexuality is central to the

experience of modern subjectivity, understanding the truth of one’s sexuality is essential

to understanding oneself as subject (or citizen) within contemporary culture. Although

many may hold that sex is ‘natural’, experiencing oneself as an informed ‘sexual citizen’

24

can be a demanding process, requiring outside guidance. As Rose puts it, ‘even pleasure

has become a form of work to be accompanied with the aid of professional expertise and

under the aegis of scientifically codified knowledge’ (1990: 239).

Popular media has played a significant role in disseminating and popularising new

discourses of ‘healthy’ (in both a personal and collective sense) sex. This role is not,

however, always clear cut, since media producers are required not only to inform but to

entertain. The objective voice of authority has its limits in entertainment terms. And

herein lies the problem of speaking the language of ‘sexpertise’. As Hartley puts it, “there

is … a politics of knowledge, a struggle between intellectual culture and popular culture,

for the creation and education of citizen readers.” Academia is presumed to be a place

where groups of thinking, rational subjects join together in a spirit of collegiality to solve

problems, question orthodoxies and both produce and consume texts with a sense of

respectful obligation and duty. In contrast, media audiences are presumed to be passive

and unthinking “publics … created in the name of pleasure and voluntary entertainment

during leisure time” (Hartley 1992: 10).

These publics are created, and serviced, by what Hartley terms ‘the ‘smiling professions’

– visually attractive journalists, actors, presenters and so on ‘whose relationship with the

public is based on mutuality and participation, not on duty or coercion’ (1992: 10). These

smiling professionals provide a kind of bridge between the public sphere and the private

world of intimacy, home and family. Smiling professionals may be talented, hardworking

and knowledgeable within their field, but they must invite an audience’s attention, rather

than command it. Whether they are male or female, Hartley argues, they perform a role

25

that has traditionally been feminised (and therefore undervalued). Like mothers, the work

smiling professionals do must be concealed or subsumed within the appearance of

effortless ‘service delivery’. Interestingly, Hartley draws attention to the sexualised

nature of the smiling professional, observing that:

The historic binary distinction (taboo) between mother and sex partner has

not survived this transition from private to public; motherly there-there care

is now rented out by visually attractive people; wiping up mess and not

minding is now a sexual not maternal service. Functions are feminised; even

if they’re not occupied by women, opposites are ambiguated, which indeed

appears to be the general cultural function of the smiling professions. (1992:

135)

These functions are not restricted to the realm of media culture, however. Hartley

argues that ‘smiling professionals’ are certainly part of contemporary ‘service-

oriented’ academia, but they are more likely to work at lower levels of

institutions. They are tutors, demonstrators and production assistants, rather than

professors. Where ‘smiling’ is encouraged within academia, the field or discipline

is more likely to be seen as feminine, or feminised, regardless of the gender of its

workers. Moreover, the disciplines that Hartley names as the “enemies of smiling”

(law, medicine, philosophy and so on) have, he argues, “retained a straight-faced

craggy-jawed masculinism, especially in their higher echelons. So the distinction

between smiling and non-smiling is not watertight” (1992: 135). Within this

context, those academics like myself who assume the feminised role of ‘smiling

26

sexpert’, or even are more willing than most to provide a media ‘grab’ or appear

on a current affairs or breakfast television program, may be condemned in

traditionally sexualised terms from within the academy.

Popular culture has integrated aspects of intellectual discourse in the guise of

‘expert commentary’, but this is not the only space where popular media assumes

an explicitly or implicitly ‘educational’ role in regards to sexuality. Pornographic

texts, and even less explicit popular texts such as music videos, are widely

regarded as ‘textbooks’ for sexual attitudes and behaviours. For critics of sexually

explicit media, the ‘lessons’ in erotic or suggestive media are bad ones. I agree

that some sexually explicit texts eroticise misogyny, and the question of sexual

pedagogy and sexual learning in popular media deserves serious critical attention.

However, simply naming an image (such as pornography), practice (such as anal

sex) or group (male porn consumers) ‘sexist’, ‘oppressive’ or even ‘hegemonic’

seems to me to be a frustrating political strategy. I am more interested in looking

at the ways that feminist critiques of sexually explicit media have been taken up

by both ‘alternative’ and ‘mainstream’ porn producers. Though I discuss the ways

that women have explicitly or implicitly deployed reversal of sex/gender norms –

for example in celebrations of sexual behaviours traditionally defined as ‘slutty’, I

do not wish to suggest that these practices are inherently liberating. I am less

concerned with pronouncing a moral judgement on these texts or practices, and

more interested in the ways that popular sexually explicit or sexually suggestive

texts might be seen to both represent and reflect changing political and personal

attitudes to sexuality and gender, particularly heterosexuality. Finally, I am

27

interested in thinking of ways that feminist/queer activists and educators might

strategically apply existing images and discourses to promote cultural change.

I am aware that the same texts or series of events I see as evidence of productive

or progressive attitudes towards sexual and erotic difference (not to mention

sexual learning) can be read by critics as evidence that hegemonic heterosexuality

will always co-opt and devour anyone who seeks to use its discursive tools and

strategies. For example, in chapter four I discuss the recent history of feminist

porn production, arguing that feminist and queer women’s contributions to the

field of pornography have significantly impacted on the ways that mainstream

heterosexual industry represents female sexual pleasure. I offer SIR video’s film

Hard Love and How To Fuck in High Heels as an example of the ways that the

codes and conventions of classic ‘male’ pornography can be adapted by

filmmakers who consciously deploy ethical production practices, in order to create

a product that is both erotically entertaining and a pedagogically useful

demonstration of eroticised verbal communication and sexual negotiation. In

observing that this film won the 2001 Adult Video News award for ‘Best Girl on

Girl’ scene, I conclude that the film represents a successful cross-over of

queer/feminist sexual ethics and aesthetics into a ‘straight’ mediasphere.

The argument against my proposal might be summarised as: porn itself is

intrinsically patriarchal and masculinist, and any porn producer (or porn theorist)

who seeks to demonstrate otherwise is only apologising for, and enabling the

hetero-masculine world-view. Yet this response not only negates the perspectives

28

of the women who produce and consume pornographic texts, but also denies the

possibility of diversity and change within heterosexual masculinity. This is not to

say that feminist/queer porn is inherently subversive or liberating. Indeed, the

insistence within some feminist or left critiques of popular media that seek to

define texts as either hegemonic or subversive are, as Sedgwick observes,

precisely the kind of moralising framework the Foucauldian rejection of the

‘repressive hypothesis’ seeks to avoid (Sedgwick 2003). To reject all feminist or

queer attempts to shift or even colonise classically ‘patriarchal’ cultural spaces

and texts in new or different ways is a paranoid strategy. On one level the strategy

makes perfect sense, since it insures against loss or disappointment if the attempt

‘fails’. On another it shuts down the possibility of acknowledging partial shifts,

rifts and changes within institutionalised spaces and texts. To me, this thinking

can only lead to a political dead end, where anything other than complete social

change is rejected. To paraphrase Sedgwick, even if we are certain that girl/girl

porn scenes like those in the SIR film can be read by heterosexual men as a

confirmation that lesbian sexuality is primarily an erotic entertainment for straight

men (in contrast to gay male porn which can only pose a threat), so what? What

does this reading of men’s responses to porn tell us that we don’t already know?

What does it offer those who strive for social change, other than the consolation

of ressentiment? (see Chapter 2). My aim is not to deny that even politically

dissident texts can be co-opted into dominant paradigms, but to ask what else

popular texts can tell (or teach) their popular and academic readers about sexuality

and gender? Given the intensity and diversity of popular discourses of sexuality, it

29

seems to me that these proliferating modes of sexual story-telling have a great

potential for strategic deployment as activist or educational tools. As I will

demonstrate, these popular texts do much more than convey ‘good’ or ‘bad’

messages about sex and gender. By actively provoking affective responses in the

forms of arousal, disgust, fear and excitement they offer avenues for

micropolitical change, presenting multiple possibilities for sexual identification

and sexual practice.

Sexual practices and sexual identity are topics that excite, inspire, produce anxiety and

provoke conflict. The question of how identities and practices intersect in everyday life,

and why these intersections might matter, are central questions in popular culture.

Representations of sexual interactions fuel media industries. Although it has been argued

that media and popular culture is becoming increasingly ‘sexualised’, I would argue that

representations of sexual norms are a central aspect of popular culture because, as

Foucault has argued, they have become central to our understandings of our ‘selves’. The

mediated voices of sexual expertise and experience in popular culture are an important

part of many people’s self-recognition as sexual subjects. Far from presenting a cohesive,

seamlessly normalised image of sexuality, the media and popular culture increasingly

represent a diversity of sexual experiences and identities. To evaluate popular texts in

exclusively moral terms – that is, to consider them primarily in relation to ‘good’ or ‘bad’

representations of sex and gender – forecloses their potential as tools for teaching and

learning about changing sexual practices and sexual subjectivities.

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Chapter 1

Problematising heterosex

It is only through the radical toleration of experimentations that these can be

tried out and measured against experience, and it is only through continuous

dialogue that these can be properly tested. The condition for this, in turn, is

the recognition that the best means of continuing the dialogue is the

endorsement of the values both of belonging and difference. Practices of

freedom require no less. (Weeks 1995:153)

Can heterosexuality be remade without being completely undone? If so, can small shifts

and changes in heterosexual practices and identities (since there are many

heterosexualities) be seen as evidence of this remaking? Heterosexuality is clearly more

than a matter of object choice. As it currently stands, the institutionalisation of

heterosexuality is widely seen as naturalised. Yet I assert that many heterosexuals are

already actively participating in the deinstitutionalisation of heterosexuality, through the

self-artistry of their sex and relationship practices, which are not ‘organised around the

repudiation of homosexual unions’ (Connolly 1999: 144). As William Connolly argues,

following Foucault and Nietzsche, self-artistry is not necessarily a self-serving or self-

indulgent act. In fact, self-artistry is an integral micropolitical process, a key factor in

creating constituencies which support macropolitical change. For instance,

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‘heterosexuality’ is layered with political meaning for those who do, and do not, identify

as heterosexual. Broadly, heterosexuality may be defined through its assumed

participants (male/female romantic couples), assumed sexual practices (vaginal

intercourse), or assumed social status and associated privileges (superannuation benefits,

etc). However, it may also be seen as an undesirable and pervasive political force to be

vigilantly avoided, whether this avoidance takes the form of refusal to participate in any

act of penetrative sex or refusal to open a joint bank account (Weeks 1995).

There is a widespread demand for the deinstitutionalisation and destabilising of

compulsory heterosexuality. Yet feminist writing has been less than constructive when it

comes to suggesting how these changes might take place. Feminists of the 1970s sought

to deinstitutionalise heterosexuality by adopting particular styles of self-presentation and

‘feminine’ behaviour while avoiding others. As some feminists identified penetration as

heterosexual (and therefore heterosexist) sex, many heterosexual and lesbian feminists

sought to not just privilege other forms of sexual contact but to proscribe penetration of

any kind as anti-feminist. By the mid-1990s, however, there were very few feminists (or

feminist-inspired sex advisers) recommending or proscribing particular practices.

However, as I will explore in Chapter 3, various forms of self-presentation and sexual

expression were still politicised and subject to considerable popular feminist debate.

Throughout this thesis I will argue that it is counter-productive for feminists to continue

to insist that certain images or practices are incontrovertibly or transparently sexist or

heterosexist while others are not. Rather than ranking or hierarchising sexual practices

according to politico-moral categories, I will argue that heterosexuality can be, and is

32

currently being, denormalised through a diverse range of everyday practices. In making

this argument, I will rely not on an unpacking of the differences between men and

women, or straights and gays, but on an exploration of the proximities and similarities

between these groups.

It seems to me that both feminists and anti-feminists have united in calling for an

idealised, institutionalised model of ‘good’ or moral sexuality, which is defined as

private, monogamous, non-commercial, long-term, and genitally focused. However, I see

a space for an opening up to deinstitutionalised heterosexuality in the kinds of practices

and images that are often rejected by moral understandings of sexuality. As I will

demonstrate, many heterosexuals behave in non-institutional fashion: they have public or

commercial sex, they are not monogamous, they have short-term (even fleeting)

relationships, and they are fetishistic and non-genitally focused in their sexual practices.

That is, they are not ‘normal’.

These practices are not in and of themselves ‘pro-feminist’. However, I will argue that

they are as worthy of respectful, ethical feminist consideration as changes in practices of

marriage, partnering and child-rearing. Even partial, imperfect changes are changes. In

addition, I will argue that sexual representations are as worthy of ethical consideration as

‘real-life’ sexual interactions. In making these arguments, I am not trying to claim that

these micropolitical shifts are ‘revolutionary’. Clearly, they do not represent complete

and utter shifts in mainstream sexual attitudes, and those who indulge in alternative

heterosex practices may be conservative and/or reactionary in terms of their personal

33

politics (as, of course, can gays and lesbians). However, the increasing visibility of non-

compulsory heterosex represents not just a ‘queering’ but a distinct denormalisation of

heterosexuality, and heterosexuals.

Yet, although there has been some limited recognition of the capacity for men and

women to practice non-normative forms of heterosexuality, the most popular

theorisations of these changes have reinscribed normalisation even as they conceive of

change. Anthony Giddens’ concept of the ‘pure relationship’ has been highly influential,

yet it contains very little recognition of the diversity of heterosexual sex (as opposed to

heterosexual relationships). Although he explores the notion of ‘plastic sex’, he does so

largely in the context of gay and lesbian relationships. In this chapter I will consider the

feminist critiques of sex and relationships which I believe have contributed to Giddens’

‘blind spots’, and suggest different models of thinking about shifting heterosexualities.

Drawing on William Connolly’s examples of Foucauldian ‘self-artistry’, I will argue that

it is possible to recognise moderate shifts within heterosexual representation and practice

as significant aspects of micropolitical process. Viewed through the lens of micropolitics,

the meanings of sexually explicit texts are open to contestation, and offer possibilities for

productive reworkings. However, in order to explore these possibilities, I will first revisit

the history of feminist theories of heterosexuality in general, and sexually explicit media

in particular.

Heterosexuality and feminism

34

While early second-wave feminists certainly challenged commercial sex media, they did

so in the context of a much broader critique of institutionalised heteronormativity. As the

slogan ‘the personal is political’ indicates, early feminist opponents of sexism argued that

power imbalances between men and women existed both in ‘public’ (media

representations, workplaces, public policy, etc) and in ‘private’ (within the home and the

family itself). Both public and private manifestations of this power imbalance were seen

as the product of various social circumstances, and as subject to change. Importantly,

public and private manifestations of institutionalised heterosexuality were seen not

simply as oppression imposed on women, but as sites in which women themselves had

invested a great deal of energy and resources.

Strategies and proposals for change varied according to political affiliations and trends in

theory and activisms. However, by the late 1980s, feminists who organised under the

banner of ‘radical feminism’ were most identified with the position that opposed public

expressions of sexuality (particularly in commercial pornography). As with sex work,

feminist opposition to pornography, and other forms of sexual representation, was (and

continues to be) framed largely in moral terms. Small changes in the nature of public

sexual imagery, or differences within pornographic genres, are minimised. Images and

texts are considered to be both direct evidence of broader social power imbalances and,

more dangerously, instructional material that perpetuates these imbalances by not only

normalising but eroticising them. Campaigns against pornography have been so

popularised that opposition to sexually explicit material has come to represent the

feminist position in the popular imagination. However, there have been, and continue to

35

be, many feminists who wonder why, as Carol Vance put it, “the hyperbolically described

multi-million dollar pornography industry called for a single-issue protest campaign and

eradication in a away that the multi-million dollar bridal industry did not” (1992: xix).2

But, although opposition to sex work, sexual experimentation and sexually explicit

imagery has come to stand for the ‘feminist party line’, this has not always been the case,

nor, of course, is it currently the case that all feminists support this position.

Paradoxically, it seems to me that it is the success of feminism that has created this

misunderstanding. In arguing that feminism has been ‘a success’, I am not claiming this

success has been complete or uncontested. Yet when so many previously ‘radical’

demands have been adapted as sensible or moderate issues for popular discussion it is

impossible to discount feminism’s impact. In the broadest terms, feminism’s critique of

heterosexuality has had an impact on almost every level of Australian life. As Verity

Burgmann puts it, the once-radical feminist demands for “equal pay; equal opportunity in

employment; access to affordable, good-quality childcare; access to safe and legal

abortion; equal opportunity in education; and an end to sexism … in society generally”

have, in the main, become ‘reasonable’ (2003: 103-104). Although sexism has not been

vanquished, the other demands have been adapted (in various forms) into recognisably

‘moderate’ policies by all major political parties in Australia.

The women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s was deeply concerned with

critiquing the structure of the family and marriage itself (including, but not restricted to,

divisions of domestic and emotional labour, such as housework and childcare). These

2 Ellen Willis’ 1992 collection No More Nice Girls makes a strong case for a radical feminism that doesn’t require an anti-porn stance.

36

challenges to the structure of heterosexuality included a critique of sexual relationships

which involved questioning the basis of heterosexual and lesbian women’s ideals and

experiences of pleasure, desire and relationships. Influential texts such as Kate Millet’s

Sexual Politics (1970) and Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex (1970) aggressively

critiqued the naturalising of sexist heterosexual relations, which were seen to occur not

just in fiction, philosophy and media representations but, crucially, in everyday practices

of mating, marriage and childrearing. Radical feminists particularly challenged the

system of what came to be known as ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich 1980), in which

women were forced to either contract their unpaid sexual, reproductive, emotional and

domestic labour to one man through marriage, or be outcast and condemned as ‘fallen

women’ or ‘whores’ (whose sexual services were implicitly the property of any man who

chose to access them).

As Ellen Willis (a 1969 co-founder, with Shulamith Firestone, of the New York-based

Redstocking collective) observes, early radical feminists (among other cultural radicals)

were adamant that the ‘nuclear family’ was a key aspect of heterosexism. In addition to

challenging men’s rights to access women’s bodies sexually, feminists called for

alternative family models that offered women and children more autonomy, without

forcing reliance on a patriarchal male provider. Writing in 1985, Willis invoked the

(already, in her words, ‘forgotten’) 1970s debates around the family as follows:

All kinds of radical ideas got a serious hearing: that children should be

considered members in the community, rather than wards of their parents;

that they are properly a collective responsibility; that every child ought to

37

have a guaranteed right to be supported and genuinely cared for. Some of us

envisioned a society organized around communal households, in which

adults as a matter of course were committed to sharing childrearing, whether

or not they had biological children. (1992: 88)3

It was not just the nuclear family and childrearing conventions that were open to critique.

Romantic love and monogamy (even outside of formal marriage and family structures)

were subject to critique and interrogation. As the contemporary slogan ‘You begin by

sinking into his arms, and end up with your arms in his sink’ indicates, love and

monogamy were viewed by many feminists as snares or lures that lead women to collude

with the patriarchal institutions.4 And these lures were not only recognised within

‘mainstream’ relationships; alternative or counter-cultural models of heterosexual

relationships were also open to challenge.

While the Left (in Australia and elsewhere) had championed sexual liberation (primarily

via the ideas of Freud and Reich), politically active women in the late 1960s and early

1970s experienced increasing dissatisfaction with their male comrades and lovers. While

access to the Pill allowed women the freedom to be more sexually active without the fear

of unwanted pregnancy, the feminist attention on the power within even ‘alternative’

experiences of domestic life, reproduction and sexuality led to increasing rifts between

radical men and women.5 Consciousness-raising groups sought to explore the everyday

3 This article was written in 1985, but is part of Willis’ collected essays published in 1992. 4 In her 1983 book The Hearts of Men, Barbara Ehrenreich observes that men in post world war two America were also critical of romantic love and monogamy – for quite different reasons. 5 For more on the 1970’s Sydney women’s movement’s attempts to engage with, and differentiate itself from the sexual politics of broader Left and bohemian/libertarian movements see Coombs 1996. For

38

realities of women’s sexual experiences. As the institutional structure of ‘sexism’ was

identified and critiqued, the taken-for-grantedness of heterosexual relationships was

called into question. At the same time, the role of lesbians within the women’s movement

was challenged by those who sought to protect or redeem the image of feminism from

those who sought to pigeonhole all feminists as ‘man-haters’.6

Lesbian feminists understandably reacted angrily to homophobia within feminism, and

feminism in Australia and elsewhere increasingly became divided on the politics of

sexual identity, sexual conduct and relationships. As the movement progressed, these

divisions became more and more apparent, as feminists identified less with a generalised

‘women’s movement’ and more with particular distinct ideological strands within

feminism (these were heavily influenced by work of feminists in the UK, and particularly

the US). Although not every self-identified feminist allied herself with these groupings,

the primary strands throughout the 1970s and 1980s came to be known (in Australia at

least) as liberal feminism, radical feminism and Marxist or socialist feminism (Burgmann

2003). While there were, of course, numerous similarities among the various groups,

there were substantial differences in their approaches to the politics of sexuality, coupling

and living arrangements.

In an attempt to isolate (and move away from) sexist or ‘male-centred’ sexuality,

feminists sought to identify particular sexual practices (such as penetration) as

metonymically standing in for broader institutionalised heteronormativity. Drawing on

diverse critiques of the broader popular ideologies of the ‘sexual revolution’ see Altman 1992, Segal 1985, 1994, Jeffreys 1990, Willis 1992. 6 Accounts of conflict between lesbian and heterosexual feminism are offered in Segal 1994 and Smart 1997.

39

Anne Koedt’s pamphlet The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, feminists of the early 1970s

increasingly identified penetrative sex as “the glue that holds up the patriarchal order”

(Campbell in Wilson 1985). This led to a difficult and often painful situation for

heterosexual and lesbian feminists, in which sexual practices and desires (even when

practised exclusively between women) were proscribed and restricted by appeals to a

political morality which defined penetrative sex, butch/femme roleplay and BDSM

(bondage and discipline/dominance and submission/sado-masochism) sex between

women as ‘heterosexual’ and therefore male-identified.7

Some parties in the debate (particularly in the 1970s) judged heterosexuality harshly,

publicly denouncing it as anything from sleeping with the enemy to legalised prostitution,

masochism and/or patriarchal brainwashing. In this context, heterosexual women became

identified as ‘traitors’ to the cause of feminism, or at best ‘dupes’ of patriarchy, as in Rita

Mae Brown’s statement:

Straight women are confused by men, don’t put women first. They betray

lesbians and in its deepest form, they betray their own selves. You can’t

build a strong movement if your sisters are out there fucking with the

oppressor (quoted in Echols 1983).

7 These issues became central in what came to be known as the ‘Lesbian Sex Wars’. Pat Califia 1992 offers an extended, and quite bitter account of the US version in the Samois collective’s Coming To Power. Other accounts are offered in Vance (ed) 1992, and in Anne Snitow, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson’s introduction to their 1983 collection Desire: The Politics of Sexuality. The Australian version of the ‘sex war’ is not quite as extensively documented, but Kimberly O’Sullivan offers an account in her 1997 article ‘Dangerous desire: lesbianism as sex or politics’.

40

Of course, numerous feminist writers proposed an alternate view of heterosexuality,

pointing out the ways that men and women can and do relate sexually without

reproducing ‘normal’ gendered power relations. But, in contrast to lesbian writing on

sexuality, many heterosexual theorists seemed to be almost wistful in their evasion or

denials of any real, embodied attraction to or desire for sex with men.8 Heterosexuality’s

‘supporters’ seemed defeated by the confusion and conflict which heterosexual

relationships provoked for feminists. As British writer Carol Smart puts it, there were

times (particularly in the early 1980s) when “it was as if there were really only two

available positions; one which seemed to gloat over the mistakes of heterosexual women

and one which seemed to apologise for being heterosexual” (Smart 1996: 168).

Writing in 1983, Alice Echols observed that the position of heterosexual feminists

had been transformed within the women’s movement to the point where they were

“defined now as victims, rather than traitors” (1983: 58). Feminism, for Echols, was

at this time largely dominated by those she termed ‘cultural feminists’, whose

definitions of sex and gender reflected traditional ‘feminine values’. According to

Echols:

... cultural feminists distinguish between patriarchally-conditioned femininity

which they associate with passivity and submissiveness, and female nature

which they assume to be nurturant, tender, and egalitarian (1983:51).

8 As lesbian writers such as Joan Nestle and Pat Califia have pointed out, this disavowal of female/female desire de-sexualised lesbians, by defining them as ‘political lesbians’ or 'women-identified women', rather than women desiring women.

41

Among cultural feminists, Echols lists contemporary anti-porn activists, such as Andrea

Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon and Robin Morgan, whose writings suggested any act of

sexual penetration (between any combination of partners) could be (and should be)

constructed as simultaneously heterosexual, heterosexist and degrading.9 For these

feminists, pornography represented a literal template for heterosexual oppression, in the

form of the sexual degradation of women.

In her introduction to her overview of the sexual revolution, Anticlimax, radical feminist

Sheila Jeffreys leaves no doubt as to her version of this argument:

Sex as we know it under male supremacy is the eroticised power difference of

heterosexuality. As a political system heterosexuality functions more perfectly

than the oppressive systems such as aparteid [sic] or capitalism. In heterosexuality

what we have accustomed to see as the wellsprings of our pleasure and happiness,

love and sex, are finely tuned to depend on the maintenance of our oppression ...

The last chapter considers how we can move beyond heterosexuality as a political

institution and the form of desire, heterosexual desire, which derives from it

(1990: 3-4).

Like Dworkin and MacKinnon in North America, Jeffreys has had significant input into

legislative debate. Interestingly, all of these feminists have publicly lobbied against

‘sexual violence’ rather than heterosexuality per se. However, they have not always made

their theorisation of the interconnectedness of ‘conventional’ heterosexuality and sexual

violence entirely clear. These feminists were successful in gaining support from

9 See Cole 1992, Dworkin, 1982, MacKinnon 1994.

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legislators precisely because their public voice was not framed as a general opposition to

heterosexuality, nor did they threaten to challenge heteronormative family structures, or

inequitable workplace or childcare practices. Any opposition to heterosexism was framed

only as an opposition to ‘bad’ or ‘public’ sexual practices, rather than the broader

problem of institutionalised heterosexuality.

While radical feminists of the 1970s had opposed heterosexism across a number of fronts,

the anti-porn campaigners from the 1980s onward presented a moral opposition to

pornography, sex work and other forms of public sex that meshed well with the more

conservative ‘family values’ legislators of their day (particularly in the Reagan and

Thatcher administrations). They argued that images of sexual practices were harmful in

and of themselves as both representations of, and incitements to, further violence against

women. While they may have linked these forms of harm to institutionalised

heterosexuality, they did not challenge the central institution of heteronormativity: the

nuclear family.

Consequently, in the late 1980s, radical critiques of love, monogamy, nuclear families

and privatised childrearing were no longer seen as central to feminist concerns.10 Clearly

the bulk of heterosexual women (even those who identified as feminists) were continuing

to negotiate sexual relationships with men, including those that involved cohabitation,

childrearing and even legal marriage. It was recognised within feminism that, although

feminism had not managed to smash sexism, it had opened up options for many women

10 As I will discuss in the next chapter, many lesbian feminists were vocal critics of compulsory monogamy and the ‘nuclear’ family, even after the critique of monogamy had become a fringe issue within feminism. Celeste West’s 1996 Lesbian Polyfidelity presents a politicized self-help model of lesbian theories and practices of non-monogamy, including an extensive reading list.

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to live their heterosexuality differently. While not all choices met feminist ideals, there

were no public calls to ban marriage or the family. Even though feminists continued to

challenge institutionalised violence or the abuse of women and children within marriages,

they did not argue that women had ‘colluded’ with their oppressors by choosing to enter

into heterosexual relationships and have children. Nor were women who spoke publicly

about their happiness within marriage (or dyadic, monogamous love relationships outside

of marriage) derided as apologists for patriarchal institutions. Marriage and other

normative family structures are certainly still questioned by contemporary feminists.

However, there seems to be a much more generous acknowledgment of the context of

everyday relationships, and recognition of the small shifts and changes through which

normalised relations are reshaped. In contrast with ‘all or nothing’ feminist moral

oppositions to commercial and public sex, ‘private’ or ‘domesticated’ heterosexuality and

the nuclear family (which is of course still ‘public’ in a very real sense) are addressed in

ethical terms. However, as I will demonstrate, the space through which changes in

everyday practices of heterosexuality are understood is still relatively narrow, and

dependent on the frame of moral outsider categories. It is interesting to contrast feminist-

inflected theoretical and popular discussions of ‘relationship’ and ‘family’ with

theoretical and popular framings of ‘public’ or ‘commercial’ sexuality. In the first case,

even fairly conservative theories are relatively generous and open to diversity, or

deviation from traditional heteronormative frameworks. In the second case there is far

less space for recognising modest adjustments to relationship structures, or partial shifts

in ‘acceptable’ attitudes and behaviours. As I will demonstrate, although feminists from

the 1970s onwards actively produced and consumed sexually explicit material, it was the

44

queerer feminist theorists who were most concerned with resisting moralising in order to

challenge normativity.

Queer theories of heterosexuality

Queer theory draws on feminism to argue that heterosexuality has been normalised to

such a degree that it functions as an oppressive, unspoken ‘centre’. In order to maintain

its sense of ‘silent majority’, however, this centre requires others (lesbians, gays,

bisexuals, etc) to function as marginal minorities. These margins are constructed and

understood in symbiotic relationship to the centre. That is, the centre must understand its

identity as centre by virtue of its difference to the margins. Likewise, the marginalised

may embrace these perceived (or actual) differences as markers of identity. So, the

institution of ‘normal’ heterosexuality is constructed, in Gayle Rubin’s terms, as a

“charmed circle”, which marks and is delineated by sexual and social practices, and by

codes of speech, and silence.11 Unlike ‘cultural’ feminism, queer theory does not posit

‘patriarchy’ as the organising and overriding source of sexual and social inequality.

Instead, it considers the means by which inequalities are structured through the tendency

to normalise ‘difference’. In the process of normalisation, differences between men and

women, or between hetero and homo, are overinscribed by discounting any and all

similarities; and these differences are then hierarchised. As Eve Sedgwick argues

compellingly in The Epistemology of the Closet, “people are different from each other”,

and there is a great deal more to sexuality than one’s gender, or one’s preferred “object

11 In her influential article Thinking Sex, Rubin specifically takes up feminist framings of sexuality as primarily structured through gender, and suggests that sexual practices and identities may have a greater impact on the ways that sexualities are hierarchised in the context of Western ‘systems of sexual judgment –religious, psychological, feminist or socialist’ (1992: 282).

45

choice” (1990: 22). As Sedgwick observes, while the male/female and hetero/homo

binaries are seen as the signifying structures in western discourses of ‘sexuality’, there

are many others that could be posited as ‘primary’ differences. Sedgwick observes, for

example, that, “For some people the possibility of bad sex is aversive enough that their

lives are marked by its avoidance; for others, it isn’t” (1990: 25).

Yet within both psychoanalytic and feminist frameworks of thinking sex, the differences

between man/woman and straight/gay are presumed to stand in for, and erase, all other

possible differences (or combinations of difference and sameness) that might exist

between sexual partners. Even where significant changes in the structure of heterosexual

relationships are recognised, the possibility of samenesses and differences between

straight and gay sex may be overwritten by these binaries of man/woman and

straight/gay.

The project of queer theory could be defined as ‘anti-dualistic’ (although, as Sedgwick

(2003: 2) wryly observes, such a stance in fact creates a new dualism – the pro and the

anti). As Michael Warner puts it “queer theory offers a way of basing politics on the

personal without acceding to pressure to clean up personal identity” (1993: xxvii).

Inconsistencies, shifts of register, paradoxes and contradictions of sexed and gendered

identity and self-presentation are not ‘problems’ that obscure ‘authentic’ gender/sex

identity, since, as Butler famously observes, all representations of gender and sexuality

are in themselves performances or copies for which there is no authentic original (Butler

1990, 1993). Rather than seeking to understand sex and gender by means of a series of

boundary mapping exercises (male sexuality versus female sexuality, heterosexuality

46

versus homosexuality), queer thinking allows a space for thinking through the multiple,

overlapping aspects of sexed and gendered subjectivity. In this context, the work of

theorists such as Judith Butler or Eve Sedgwick offers a means of thinking through the

specificities of heterosexual practices and identities which does not require a constant

moral/political weighting of ‘good’ (feminine or feminised) versus ‘bad’ (masculine or

masculinised) sexual practice. This approach is particularly useful when considering the

various samenesses and differences that constitute not just sexual practices, but modes of

conducting sexual and/or romantic relationships.

The pure relationship

Sociologists such as Jeffreys Weeks and Anthony Giddens have utilised feminist and

queer theory to argue that postmodern (or late modern) western cultures have allowed a

shift in the structure of the relationship itself. This has been linked to many factors, from

feminism to industrialisation, but is broadly recognised in terms of its results: an

increasing resistance among both heterosexuals and homosexuals to institutional

heterosexual marriage, particularly in relation to gendered divisions of domestic and

emotional labour. Instead, many are aiming for a ‘pure relationship’, which does not

feature reproduction, obligation and duty as central or compulsory ‘family values’.

There is a widespread cultural acceptance of what Giddens terms ‘plastic sexuality’, or

sexuality that is understood to take place principally for the purposes of pleasure rather

than reproduction. As Giddens notes, plastic sexuality is similar to the psychoanalytic

model of ‘perverse’, or non-reproductive sexuality, specifically defined in Freud’s Three

Essays on Sexuality (1992: 112). For Giddens, plastic sexuality is a modern phenomenon,

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that “has its origins in the tendency, initiated somewhere in the late eighteenth

century…to limit family size” (1992: 2), and is linked to the spread of reproductive

technologies such as the contraceptive pill. Plastic sexuality, Giddens observes, “can be

moulded as a trait of personality”, and thus forms a precursor to the “pure relationship”

(1992: 2). According to Giddens:

A pure relationship is one in which external criteria have been dissolved:

the relationship exists solely for whatever rewards that relationship itself

can deliver. In the context of pure relationship, trust can be mobilised only

through the process of mutual disclosure. Trust, in other words, can by

definition no longer be anchored in criteria outside the relationship itself –

such as criteria of kinship, social duty or traditional obligation. (1991:6)

The pure relationship, then, does not depend on, or answer to, outside authorities such as

church or state in order to define or perpetuate itself. The status and role of each partner

is negotiated and adjusted according to the needs and desires of the partners themselves.

Since the primary aim of the pure relationship is the mutual satisfaction of all partners, it

is, by necessity, entered into (and dissolved) voluntarily. This factor leads Giddens to

propose that such a relationship represents a “democratisation of the interpersonal

domain” (1992: 3) affording women significantly more agency and power than the

traditional marriage contract. Giddens argues that the ideal of romantic love both enables

and restricts the pure relationship. On one hand, it can be argued that romantic ideals

undermine women’s ability to negotiate the circumstances of a relationship, tied as they

are to narratives of traditional marriage and ‘homemaking’ (see Chapter Two for further

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discussion of feminist debates around romantic love). On the other, Giddens argues that

romantic love can be viewed as “active and radical”, since in the context of a pure

relationship, such a love “presumes that a durable emotional tie can be established with

the other on the basis of qualities intrinsic to that tie itself” (1992: 2).

According to Giddens, pure relationships are possible between men and women as a

result not only of feminist critiques of traditional marriage and kinship structures, but also

as a result of heterosexual men’s willingness to surrender to the “realm of intimacy”

(1992: 45-47). This openness allows the ideals of romantic love to be translated into what

Giddens terms “confluent love”, a more “active” and “contingent” condition, in which

“love … only develops to the degree to which intimacy does, to the degree to which each

partner is prepared to reveal concerns and needs to the other and be vulnerable to the

other” (1992: 62). Unlike romantic love, Giddens argues, contingent love depends on

erotic reciprocity, and thus “develops as an ideal in a society where everyone has the

chance to become sexually accomplished” (1992: 63).

Plastic sexuality is a core component of the pure relationship, since it not only allows for

sex to be uncoupled from the process of reproduction, but foregrounds the role of sexual

pleasure as a bond within intimate relationships. As Weeks describes it:

… the ‘pure relationship’, dependent on mutual trust between partners, is both a

product of the reflexive self, and a focus for its realisation. It offers a focal point

for personal meaning in the contemporary world, with love and sex as the prime

site for its attainment (2000: 214).

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Giddens’ terms and definitions, drawn from feminism and gay and lesbian theory, are

indeed useful frameworks for discussion of contemporary heterosexual relationships.

They do, however, reflect some feminisms more than others – Giddens’ views on sexual

practices show a strong liberal and radical feminist influence, with leanings towards a

very Oedipal psychoanalytic perspective. His opinions regarding the role of ‘alternative’

modes are tempered by these influences, despite his efforts to approach what he presents

as specifically gay and lesbian sexual practices from a non-normative and non-restrictive

perspective. So, gay men who have sex with multiple partners are considered to be

different to heterosexual men who practise ‘episodic sexuality’ (or serial sex outside or

instead of a one-to-one relationship). Straight men are considered to have this kind of sex

in “an unconscious effort to reclaim and subdue the all-powerful mother” (Giddens 1992:

141), while “among homosexuals non-monogamous sex is typically carried on with the

knowledge and acquiescence of the partner or very quickly comes to the other’s

awareness” (1992: 142).

In Giddens’ terms, “a pure relationship has nothing at all to do with purity [but] refers to

a situation where a social relation is entered into for its own sake” (1992: 58). It seems to

me that the crucial factor here is not the motivation behind non-monogamous practice,

but the degree of negotiation and adjustment which is entered into. After all, Giddens

asserts that the pure relationship “is continued only in so far as it is thought by both

parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it” (1992: 58). If

plastic sexuality assumes equality between partners, then is it not possible that both men

and women may negotiate alternative sex practices? Giddens does recognise this

possibility in his discussion of lesbian relationships, and most positively in regard to gay

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men’s “everyday experiments” with bathhouse sex. “By its very nature”, he argues,

plastic sexuality “permits power only in the form of sexual practice itself; sexual taste is

the sole determinant” (1992: 147). By this I understand Giddens to mean that power

games are acceptable in sex, but not in other aspects of intimate relationship.

Putting aside the question of whether any relationship can ever exist outside of power,

there seems to be a kind of double standard at work when only same-sex partners are

recognised as moving into the realms of plastic sexuality through their sexual practices.

Giddens’ discussion of pornography, for example, clearly relates exclusively to

heterosexual pornography, which he links to the “turbulence and troubles” of

heterosexual masculinities and the problem of women’s “complicity” (1992: 118).12 In

contrast to troubled hetero eroticisms, Giddens presents various gay male erotic personae

(“the macho gay, the leather queen, the denim groupie”) as “a visible deconstruction of

maleness”, affirming that “in modern social life, self-identity, including sexual identity, is

a reflexive achievement” (1992: 147). By following this line of argument, Giddens is, in

a sense, splitting his theoretical loyalties. He adheres to a ‘classic’ radical-feminist-

influenced analysis of heterosexual sex and gender, while taking a more postmodern

approach to gay men – that is, crediting them with the ability to ‘perform’ masculinity

rather than be performed by it.

I do not seek here to deny the political power of contemporary gay and lesbian sex

culture, but I do see a problem if heterosexuality is to be pathologised in psychoanalytic

terms using the same argument through which homosexuality is depathologised and

12 Unsurprisingly, Giddens credits Andrea Dworkin in this chapter

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depsychologised. It seems very shortsighted to argue, as Giddens does, that episodic

sexuality offers a potential for “pleasure and fulfilment” solely to gay men and lesbians,

who are somehow immune to, or unaffected by, any of its “compulsive characteristics”

(1992: 147). Likewise, it seems naive to insist that fetishised gay performances of

masculinity are always free from the ‘trouble and turbulence’ which apparently dogs

heterosexual relations. I would argue that Giddens finds it easier (and possibly safer) to

‘see’ knowing gender performance and pleasure in ‘perverse’, plastic sexuality in gays

and lesbians, where he is able, perhaps, to imagine relationships that are free from

‘power’. In fact, he makes this ambivalence explicit in his discussion of gay and lesbian

BDSM, which, he argues, represents “the return of the phallus ... in a somewhat

obnoxious form” (1992: 143). But where radical feminists such as Sheila Jeffreys and

Andrea Dworkin might insist that even same-sex powerplay is inherently ‘heterosexual’

(since, according to Jeffreys (1990), heterosexuality itself is the eroticisation of a power

imbalance), Giddens takes on a kind of Foucauldian understanding of BDSM, seeing it as

a way to play or experiment with an “instrumental control of formal power” which would

otherwise be “prohibited in pure relationships” (1992: 144). How, then, are we able to

determine if and when relationships between men and women are pure? Giddens is open

to the idea that same-sex sexual practices may not always mean what they may appear to

mean. At the same time, The Transformation of Intimacy is not exclusively an

exploration of same-sex relations – many of Giddens’ examples of pure relationship and

plastic sexuality refer to heterosexuals. It appears that ‘perverse’ heterosex (gender play,

SM, multiple-partner relationships, porn, commercial sex, etc) is excluded from pure

relationships, and always (only) represents “the return of the phallus”.

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There is an assumption underpinning much of Giddens’ work that the pure relationship is

implicitly non-commercial, and completely ‘privatised’. Without reference to outside

authority, there is an understanding that the plastic sexuality of those engaged in pure

relationships takes place almost exclusively within the home (although Giddens does

acknowledge non-monogamous lesbian couples, and gay men who have beat or bath-

house sex). The heterosexual couple in a pure relationship, however, reflects Foucault’s

model of ‘the Malthusian couple’, whose sexuality is private and unspoken (in contrast to

the disgraced and disgraceful ‘public’ sexuality of the criminal or pervert). Where

Giddens acknowledges ‘desexualised’ forms of sex or gender play (among gays and

lesbians), he views these in Oedipal terms as a “re-inscription of the phallus” (1992: 143).

Like his feminist antecedents, Giddens is relatively optimistic and generous in his

thinking on monogamous, dyadic heterosexual relationships, even though he

acknowledges that they may be brief and imperfect. His arguments, however, seem to be

troubled by heterosexual relationships which incorporate aspects of previously

marginalised practices such as episodic sex, ‘perversion’, sex work and public sexual

display.

Thinking ethics

Giddens is limited by his reliance on the normalising frameworks of psychoanalysis and

Dworkinesque feminism, which view heterosexuality in moral, rather than ethical, terms.

But what does it mean to think about ethical sex in relation to everyday heterosexual

practices? William Connolly’s model of ‘micropolitics’ is particularly useful and

productive here. In contrast to Giddens, I assert that these forms of non-reproductive (but

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not anti-reproductive) or impure relationships represent a gradual shift in public

discourses of heterosexuality. They are forms of what Connolly has termed micropolitics,

or practices of self-artistry which reshape heterosex in relation to queer sex and queer

identities without repudiating either straightness or gayness. Connolly (1999: 145)

emphasises that micropolitical practices are by definition “modest and experimental”,

evoking Week’s and Giddens’ description of the “everyday experiments” of pure

relationship and plastic sexuality. These experiments in the practices of everyday life,

Connolly argues, are never fixed or finalised, but constantly vary according to “the

settings and distinctive materialisations already in place” (1999: 145). Thus, ‘new’ modes

of heterosexual practice necessarily reflect the old. Heterosexual practices can never be

completely ‘different’ to the institutionalised or compulsory model, but neither are they

the same. When practised consciously, these everyday experiments in heterosex represent

what Connolly calls “the selective desanctification of elements in [one's] own identity”

(1999: 146, original emphasis). They represent a willingness to rethink the essence of

identity, and to relinquish the privileges of the centre. (Of course, this willingness can

certainly coexist with self-righteousness, guilt, and/or bloody-minded revolutionary zeal

– in both straights and gays).

Certainly, heterosexuals (like homosexuals) can be sexually outrageous while clinging to

reactionary political views, and I am therefore wary of claiming all sexual experimenters

as either burgeoning or closeted heterosex radicals. Yet, as Connolly makes beautifully

clear, micropolitical changes do not necessarily take place in a conscious or

predetermined fashion. Sometimes self-artistry is a ‘ripening’ process, where a fixed

assumption such as “monogamous heterosexual coupledom (with a limited range of

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permissible sexual expression) is not only natural, normal, but ought to be the desirable

organising model for all human relationships” is undermined and shifted, but not through

a process of revolutionary consciousness raising, or via macropolitical legislation. Rather,

this shift takes place gradually and reflexively, as “one part of [an individual’s]

subjectivity ... begins to work on other parts” (1999: 146, original emphasis).

Connolly illustrates this process through the example of an individual’s personal ethical

shift from opposing euthanasia in all cases, to support of the right to die, and in order to

fully explore the potential offered by Connolly’s model, I will cite his discussion at

length. In this example, the shift is not immediate, nor is it entirely prompted by political

pamphleteering, campaigning or proselytising (although these strategies certainly have

their place in political struggles). In fact, the subject in Connolly’s example is initially

shocked and morally confronted by campaigners calling for doctor-assisted euthanasia.

Yet, as “the shock of the new demand dies away ... concern for the suffering of the dying

... opens a window to new possibilities” (Connolly 1999: 146). Importantly, Connolly

notes that this consideration of new possibilities proceeds cautiously. The individual’s

concerns opens the individual to alternate viewpoints: from “a film in which the

prolonged suffering of the dying becomes palpable” to “friends who have gone through

this arduous experience with parents who pleaded for help to end their suffering” (1999:

147). This exposure precipitates a reconsideration of personal beliefs regarding “divinity

and nature” (1999: 147), and, even where firmly held personal beliefs continue to be

‘persuasive’, a curiosity regarding the foundations of others’ beliefs creates spaces and

opportunities for “uncertainties and paradoxes” to emerge (1999: 147). These

uncertainties in turn may allow for a reconsideration of previously incontestable

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assumptions, and a conflict within the self. As a result, “what was heretofore

nonnegotiable may now gradually become rethinkable” (1999: 147). Importantly, the

subject who has gone through this slow, cautious process of reappraising their attitude to

euthanasia continues to interact with others, “seeking to spur them to similar bouts of

reappraisal” (1999: 147).

In Connolly’s example the new political stance is not seen as ‘opposite’ to the old. It is a

product of a process which can always be read in terms of the original point of departure,

where a belief or sexual practice was considered to be non-negotiable yet became open to

renegotiation. The previously homophobic or misogynistic subject who becomes open to

sexual difference through a process of dialogue will always retain the memory (and

possibly an understanding) of the thoughts and feelings which made up the original

sensibility. They are not their ‘old’ self, but they are not entirely ‘new’. An ‘ethos of

engagement’ is formed, where stances are no longer seen as natural, universal or eternal.

In fact, the reshaped identity itself is not fixed – it is still and always becoming, “and

always in need of repair or revivification along one dimension or another as new and

surprising issues are pressed upon it” (Connolly 1999: 156) For example, a subject who

has come to sufficiently desanctify their heteronormative identity to accept gays and

lesbians as colleagues and friends may still be shocked or confronted by same-sex

marriages, or by reports of a rise in reported instances of unprotected anal sex among gay

men. However, where cautious, modest experiments are acknowledged as valid political

moves, then it seems to me that the desanctified heterosexual is more likely to “listen

more attentively to a new and disruptive claim” (1999: 151). While this is not the only

possible strategy for social change, it is a strategy which has been undervalued in the

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more extreme feminist debates around sex, gender and heterosexuality. As Connolly

argues (following Foucault), “the goal of self as modest artist of itself needs to be neither

to discover a true self underneath ... sedimented layers nor to create the self anew entirely

by oneself” (1999: 150). As Connolly also comments:

The key thing, the thing that makes this an example of self-artistry in the

interests of critical responsiveness rather than merely reformation of an old

pile of arguments, is that it involves movement back and forth between

registers of subjectivity: working now on thought-imbued feelings, then on

thought-imbued intensities below the reach of feeling, now on received

images of death and suffering, and then on entrenched concepts of divinity,

identity, ethics and nature (1999: 147-148).

This process presents a productive model for a process of rethinking feminist analyses of

heterosex practices. The subject (or self) moves through different levels of thought, affect

and action. Connolly does not hierarchise these movements, or promote one stage of this

movement as being fundamental to the next. Nor must the movement be ‘complete’ or

final. In emphasising the cautious approach the self takes to these ‘modest shifts’ in

position, Connolly presents a model for a complex and personal engagement with the

ambivalence and paradox of sexual politics which contains an inherent generosity

towards the self and others.13

13 Rosalyn Diprose uses the term ‘corporeal generosity’ in her re-thinking of both liberal and radical feminist thinking of sexual relations. Diprose argues that “not only is generosity most effective at a carnal level, rather than as a practice directed by thought or will, but the injustice that effects its organisation is governed by the way social norms and values determine which bodies are recognized as possessing property that can be given and which bodies are devoid of any property…”(2002: 9).

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Shifts in thought are moderated by shifts in feeling. Intense and sometimes surprising

reactions may occur in relation to seemingly minor reappraisals. As Connolly notes, the

subject practising this form of micropolitical self-artistry must review “the effects of

previous experiments before going on” (1999: 148). As with Connolly’s example of the

right to die, debates around sexual practices and sexual representations occur “on several

registers” (1999: 148) and are never simply the product of some abstract form of pure

thought. Emotions such as arousal, fear, shame and disgust underpin our political

sensibilities: “Since thinking operates on several registers of being, and because each

register is invested with a set of feelings or intensities, to change your thinking is to

modify to some degree the sensibility in which it is set” (1999: 148). Therefore, these

modest shifts offer less a model of ‘being’ a different kind of heterosexual, and more a

mode of ‘becoming’ – a process which does not have a clear before or after.

So, to echo Connolly’s model, a subject may be deeply attached to a particular model of

heteronormativity which depends on homophobic and/or misogynistic contempt for

particular kinds of sex and relationship. They may express this position in an abhorrence

for all forms of ‘deviant’ behaviour, which could be represented by anything from anal

eroticism to single parenting. Yet this subject’s thoughts and feelings can shift over time:

an advice column in a magazine, a news commentary on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, a

group discussion of Sex and the City in the pub, a private conversation with a gay co-

worker – all these various cultural influences may begin to produce exactly the kind of

‘critical responsiveness’ that Connolly refers to. As the subject’s thoughts and feelings

Diprose observes that women’s bodies, and consequently their capacity for corporeal have been devalued. However, she does not argue that women cannot be acknowledged as having the capacity for erotic generosity in the context of sex-work.

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shift, they may also be drawn to representations or personal expressions of

heterosexuality which are not conventionally ‘straight’. The previous rigidity of the

heterosexual identity is eroded as the subject moves “back and forth across the zones

because each infiltrates the others” (Connolly 1999: 148). Each new exchange or

conversation is influenced by previously held convictions, but these are being gradually

modified as the subject opens to new pleasures and suffering; and is affected by the

reported or observed experiences of both pleasure and suffering which are evident in

others. This is not an overnight conversion but a gradual relational shift in which

perceptions of self and others interact to create unpredictable outcomes in personal and

political sensibility.

As Connolly observes, once this political becoming has commenced, there is no way of

predicting (or controlling) the ripples of change through “school, army, office, church,

corporation, neighbourhood, or family” (1999: 148). The heterosexual who has begun to

question, and accordingly desanctify, their identity will not necessarily go on to write

letters, organise rallies or draft legislation. However, having questioned a previously

‘sacred’, central mode of being, they are able to recognise difference as something other

than a threat to their identity and become part of a micropolitical movement which will

allow both grassroots activism and formal legislative change to take place. New ‘rights’

cannot simply be enforced by acts of parliament. Micropolitical changes must prepare the

ground so that demands for new rights, and other forms of social change, can take root.

This model of micropolitical change through self-artistry offers a way out of the

frustrating cul-de-sac presented by many feminist arguments (particularly as advanced by

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Dworkin and MacKinnon) where both representations and actual sexual practices are

read as transparently ‘demeaning’ or ‘degrading’, and women who enjoy these practices

are said to ‘collude with their own oppression’. It also sidesteps the cycle in which each

new claim of ‘transgression’ is discounted as incomplete, or disallowed as ‘patriarchy

under another guise’. As I will explore in my case studies, popular representations of

heterosexuality need not be read in moral terms as transparently positive or negative

images. They can be seen as evidence of shifts that have already taken place, or

challenges to entrenched sexed and gendered identities. It is not necessary for every

consumer to understand the image in the same way. Indeed, it is not necessary for every

consumer or audience member to have a rational or cognitive reaction to a particular

image. Images and texts can be understood affectively (and cumulatively), in context

with other texts, events and feelings. Their impacts are not always clear or

straightforward.

My endorsement of modest experiment is not by any means a call for conservatism or

respectability. On the contrary, I consider ethical commercial and/or non-commercial

sexual experimentation to be a valid (but not essential) form of micropolitical self-

artistry, whether or not the participants (or producers/consumers) consider themselves to

be pro-feminist, anti-homophobic or sex-radical. The way heterosexuals perform (or

perhaps just do) sex and gender is explicitly political and ethical – not in the sense that

radical feminists might argue that particular practices or sex roles have concrete, fixed

meanings in terms of politicised moral codes, but in the sense that sexual practices are

practices of the self. If non-normative sexual activities are practised with “a curiosity, or

desire to know that is motivated and captured by differences” (Gillan 1998: 42), but

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without a desire to establish a fixed centre (which can only be defined by excluding

difference), then it is possible to see them as ‘practices of freedom’ in the Foucauldian

sense. From this perspective, it is possible to argue that domestic exhibitionists, amateur

pornstars and other non-normative heterosexuals are indeed part of a micropolitical

movement which is desanctifying and decentring heterosexual identity through

heterosexual practices.14

As Weeks (2000), Plummer (1995) and others have argued, sexual communities and

sexual identities are shaped by the stories we tell about ourselves. Although relatively

few non-normative straights could be definitively said to be consciously working against

the institutionalisation of heterosexuality, they are publicly telling new stories about

themselves and their specific heterosexual identities. These stories, whether told in

words, in photographs, or on video, are changing perceptions of straight ‘sexual

citizenship’ (Plummer 1995). It is more than coincidental, then, that these new stories of

heterosex are proliferating in what Giddens (1992) has called “the transformation of

intimacy”, where “the relationship, whether marital or non-marital, heterosexual or

homosexual, becomes the defining element within the sphere of the intimate, which

provides the focus for everyday life” (Weeks 2000: 214). Where heterosexuality is

presented differently – as queer, as perverse, or simply non-normative – it can serve to

undo the ‘legitimacy’ of heterosex, which was, according to Foucault, given the right to

‘more discretion’ in response to the pathologisation of gays and lesbians in the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries (1991: 38).

14 Although some of these practioners may be misogynist and/or homophobic.

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When a camera is brought into the Malthusian couple’s most private space – the bedroom

– and sexual activities are performed explicitly for an audience (on the internet, or

through amateur video swap clubs), the scene is no longer that of Giddens’ pure

relationship. Another person, or persons, has been invited into the supposedly private

relationship, whether or not actual physical contact takes place. The heterosexual couple

can no longer define itself in relation to deviant others (sex workers, gay men at beats,

etc) who have ‘paraded’ their sexuality in public, and therefore forfeited their rights and

legal protections. This change is not, of course, complete, nor does it guarantee explicit

support for the rights of hitherto discriminated against and despised sexual identities. In

fact, lines may be very carefully policed to ensure a domestic pervert’s difference from

the ‘real whores’ or the ‘real queers’. Yet the wide dissemination of images and

discussions of different heterosexualities cannot be explained away as the emperor’s new

clothes. As Connolly explains, “micropolitics works at the level of detail, desire, feeling,

perception and sensibility” (1999: 149), and, at this level, change is already taking place.

At the present time, ‘deviant’ heterosexuals are not always willing to drop the ease of

‘passing’ in order to come out as a despised minority within the so-called centre.

However, the blurring of private and public sexualities and gender identities which is

evident in news groups, on sex sites and in swingers magazines marks the kind of

micropolitical shift which allows organised activism to take place. As Michael Hurley

points out, “Mardi Gras didn’t begin in the boardroom or Stolichnaya’s marketing

department, just as transgender rights, hate crime legislation and anti-discrimination laws

didn’t begin in the caucuses of political parties” (2001: 245). The Stonewall riot, widely

considered to be the formative moment of gay liberation, was itself a micropolitical

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revolution. After all, the drag queens and trannies that resisted the police raid on the bar

did not intentionally go there to fight for gay rights, or protest against the policing of

unjust laws. They had gathered to drink, socialise, and mourn the death of Judy Garland.

Yet in a moment of crisis they made the political decision to fight, rather than submit to,

police action. What does this represent, if not the political importance of sexual

community in the slow development of “feeling-imbued thought, and thought-imbued

feeling”?

Many seem to concur with Jeffreys Weeks’ proposition that “the dominant belief in the

non-heterosexual world is that lesbian and gay relationships offer unique possibilities for

the construction of egalitarian models” (2000: 220). Yet same-sex couples (like different-

sexed couples who wish to develop egalitarian modes of relationship) have been raided in

a world of institutionalised heteronormalcy. Although, as Weeks puts it “many lesbians

and gay men have consciously shaped their relationship in opposition to assumed

heterosexual models ... there is plentiful evidence as well, inevitably, that egalitarian

relationships do not automatically develop” (2000: 221). In the words of one of Weeks’s

interviewees, “Everything has to be discussed, everything is negotiable” (2000: 221).

Same-sex couples are never ‘the same’; there are always differences of age, class,

education, cultural capital, income and ethnicity which must be recognised and

negotiated, not to mention different expectations regarding day-to-day divisions of

emotional labour, childcare, and/or household maintenance. Nor, of course, are the sexual

imaginations, needs, desires and expectations of a same-sex couple ever guaranteed to be

‘the same’.

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It is this queer critique of the exclusionary model of family and community which in turn

offers heterosexuals a way out of institutionalised heterosexuality. As Weeks points out,

“despite all the hazards, and the force and weight of institutionalised pattern, people do

create relationships of mutual care, respect, responsibility and love” (2000: 244). While

there is no general heterosexual community (since heterosexuality is assumed to define

‘community’), microcommunities of heterosexuals are by necessity specific.

Heterosexuals who wish to actively desanctify their heterosexual identity and form

ethical engagements with other communities may develop cultures along non-normative

models, but these cultures will always contain elements of the normative. However,

radical or alternative sex cultures present opportunities to de-essentialise gender, and

decentre normative models of sexual pleasure and practice. These sex cultures have the

power to become ‘necessary fictions’ – specific micropolitical communities. These

communities in turn are not closed, but form relationships with other communities

through the multiple, overlapping micropolitical practices of the self described by

Connolly:

… films, family memories, social movements, dietary regimens, marches,

dream work, medical techniques, gossip, medications, curriculum

organisation, talk shows, identity performances, material disciplines and

rewards, sermons, leadership techniques and rituals (1999: 148).

In this context it is not only possible but probable that public heterosex presents a form of

ethical engagement. The privacy of the heterosexual couple’s domestic space is being

made public on the web. Heterosexual ‘amateurs’ (and celebrities) are emulating

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pornstars by creating home-made porn for public display. The sexual story of

heterosexual citizenship is shifting, revealing more and more evidence of what might

more accurately be termed ‘impure relationships’. These forms of heterosexuality are by

no means explicitly politicised, nor are they adequately described by theories of

‘transgression’ or ‘liberation’. However, traditional theories of sadistic male gaze, and

deluded female complicity, of the ‘reinscription of the phallus’, are also inadequate in

many cases. Heterosexual pleasure and desire is not deconstructed by these cultural

phenomena, but it is certainly decentred and desanctified. The very publicness of this

eroticism – the creation of online communities of amateur pornographers, the growth of

‘pro-am’ porn, the deprivileging of gender roles in BDSM subcultures play – indicates a

‘fall from grace’ for normalising institutions of heterosexuality. In order to think about

what these different sex cultures might be able to do, it is necessary to break the reliance

on moral systems for understanding sexual interactions, and think about the ways that

these cultures might reflect and encourage ethical sensibilities among heterosexuals. In

the next chapter I will revisit feminist debates around heterosexual relationships, and look

at the ways that old debates around the role of monogamy can be reframed in the move

from moralism to ethics.

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Chapter 2

Ethical sensibilities of heterosexuality

Opposite sex bonding per se is not the complete package. Even if we are

in a heterosexual relationship there are many other social conventions we

are expected to build upon it: marriage, house-owning, children, tax

incentives, dinner parties, social success and being ‘normal’, being able to

join in everyday conversations (Rosa, quoted in Van Every, 1995b: 40).

To acknowledge the ‘social conventions’ of heterosexuality reveal is to also acknowledge

that straightness is not as normal or straightforward as its positioning in some feminist or

queer arguments might imply. For some, heterosexuality is defined by socially

recognised privileges and conventions, such as the right to have a partnership recognised

administratively as marriage, resulting in benefits such as shared superannuation benefits.

For others, heterosexuality is recognised as the right to display affection in public. For

others again, heterosexuality is implicit in shared domestic life, and financial

interdependence. This creates immense difficulty for those in same-sex relationships who

are “not necessarily avoiding dyadic relationships, but trying consciously to do them

differently in opposition to assumed heterosexual models” (Weeks 2000: 221). One

couple interviewed by Jeffreys Weeks in the context of his research into gay and lesbian

families, for example, avoided opening a joint bank account, claiming it would be “too

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heterosexual” (2000: 222). For many gay and straight couples, however, “house-owning,

children, tax incentives, dinner parties, social success and being ‘normal’, being able to

join in everyday conversations” come (to a degree) with the territory. Despite the

assertions of sociologists such as Anthony Giddens (see the previous chapter) and Jo Van

Every, same-sex partnerships do not automatically imply an unproblematic financial or

social ‘equality’. In fact, Weeks’s interviewees cited inequality of income (and earning

capacity) as “the most divisive factor” in their relationships, particularly when it came to

home-owning and sharing expenses (2000: 222).

This chapter draws on the thinking of Michel Foucault to consider the ways that the

limits of ‘liberationist’ models of sexual relating can be pushed and expanded if sex is

refigured as a question of ethics rather morals. In exploring the sexual ethics of the

Greeks and Romans, Foucault aimed not to reveal a prior, better mode of subjectification

that modern sexual subjects might imitate or emulate, but to explore the historical

changes in ethical and moral understandings “which might suggest possibilities in the

present” (Rabinow in Foucault 1994: xxvii). While not entirely rejecting the politics of

liberation, Foucault pointed to liberation’s limits. Where practices of freedom were (and

are) prevented by “economic, political and military means”, then part of the political

project must be resistance to, and liberation from, these existing conditions. This

liberation, however, is a necessary preliminary. It does not provide ‘an answer’ but a new

set of questions. As the second-wave feminists discovered, it was not enough to become

‘liberated’ from traditional heteronormative constraints. Having, in their own terms,

“turned [themselves] inside out in efforts to shed ideologies of the family, monogamy,

jealousy, romantic love and dependence” (Campbell & Charlton quoted in Van Every

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1995a: 2), 1970s feminists and political activists were frustrated by “the lack of rules and

criteria available to help negotiate the new contexts in which traditional relations,

expectations and modes of behaviour had been called into question” (Nava in Van Every

1995a: 2).

As Sue Cartledge writes, the feminist/socialist attack on monogamy was not made on

pragmatic grounds, in that it did not work, but on moral grounds. Monogamy “was

ideologically wrong, for all sorts of reasons”, and not just among heterosexuals

(Cartledge 1983: 174). While rejecting many aspects of the leftist ‘sexual revolution’,

some advocates of ‘political lesbianism’ also “took over unchanged from the [1960s]

counter-culture a vehement opposition to monogamy” (1983: 189). This resistance to

“possessiveness, jealousy, couples and exclusiveness” was, according to Elizabeth

Wilson, based in a de-emphasis of the role of sexual desire and pleasure in lesbian

relationships. This “rejection of romantic love and its basis in intense sexual passion”

aimed to replace the closed romantic dyad with a more communitarian “revolutionary

comradeship” (1983: 189). This comradeship too became idealised, argues Wilson,

operating as a moral imperative at times. This moralism provoked “immense guilt, rage

and pain” in those women who were unable to conform (1983: 189), as is illustrated by

the following extract from Cartledge’s consideration of her own attempts to grapple with

feminist approaches to monogamy:

1980: Cathy and I are locked in a fruitless argument about morality. She

accuses me of selfishness, consumerism towards other people, that

wanting to sleep with others is behaving like a man (worst of crimes). And

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I scream back that she is a narrow-minded moralist, what could be more

male than her possessiveness, wanting to tie people down and own them?

(1983: 176)

While it is clear from Cartledge’s example that moralism was considered the antithetical

to feminist sexual liberation, 1970s discussions of sexuality tended, she argues, to

become moral debates “about how everybody should act” (1983: 177). The external

standard was not ‘god’ but ‘feminism’, or even the abstract concept of ‘liberation’ itself.

According to Foucault, liberation “paves the way for new power relationships, which

must be controlled by practices of freedom” (1997: 284-285). That is to say, non-

monogamous couples cannot liberate themselves from feelings of jealousy, and

heterosexuals cannot simply liberate themselves from heteronormativity by proclamation,

or force of willpower. They must practise freedom on a daily basis, by asking and re-

asking themselves the questions that emerge in everyday life. It is this constant process of

reflection and readjustment which constitutes a Foucauldian ethical sensibility, given that

“ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection”

(1997: 284).

Good and bad sexualities

While few feminists would agree with Sheila Jeffreys that heterosexuality is, by

definition, “the eroticisation of a power imbalance” (and all such eroticisations are

heterosexual), there are many who still seem to theorise heterosexuality as a moral

struggle of female sexual ‘good’ against male sexual ‘evil’. And if good and evil seem

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too strong to be used in the context of liberal and/or feminist discussions of heterosexual

behaviour, then, as Foucault demonstrates, other terms may be comfortably substituted:

[W]hen a judgement cannot be framed in terms of good and evil, it is

stated in terms of normal and abnormal. And when it is necessary to

justify this last distinction, it is done in terms of what is good or bad for

the individual (quoted in Connolly 1993: 367).

And should an individual woman protest that it is up to her to decide what is good for her

sexually, then she is very likely to be reminded of her duty to the collective moral and

political category of ‘women’.

In this way, feminist opposition to heteronormativity and/or compulsory heterosexuality

has been framed in primarily moral terms. These moral terms are not necessarily

religious, or even scientific; the higher authority which is appealed to is as likely to be an

abstract political principle such as ‘equality’ (which is not to say that religion and science

are not in themselves political). This political appeal to moral principles does however

rely on the assumption of an absolute authority, a fixed marker against which

relationships, sexual practices and other forms of everyday conduct can be measured. So,

for example, a feminist moral understanding of sexual practices may demand an

externally measurable equality between partners. In order to measure the equality of

differing relationships, a hierarchy of practices and subject positions must be determined,

and fixed in place to facilitate comparison. For example, a practice such as vaginal

intercourse must be hierarchised to determine the ‘fairness’ of the act – the insertive

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partner is deemed ‘active’, and therefore dominant, the receptive partner is deemed

‘passive’, and therefore submissive.

How might an ethical heterosexuality be crafted? How could it be recognised and

developed? Connolly (1993) argues that a Foucauldian ethical sensibility is politically

productive precisely because it confronts our commonsense understandings of 'good and

evil'. The challenge within this ethical framework is to understand ‘evil’ not as the act of

individual criminality or deviance, but as “the undeserved suffering imposed by practices

protecting the reassurance (the goodness, purity, autonomy, normality) of hegemonic

identities” (1993: 366). Clearly, the institution of heterosexuality functions precisely in

this fashion, and it is for this reason that it must be opposed. But the difficulty for

feminism has been the seeming contradictions and tensions which arise when particular,

specific heterosexual relationships must be negotiated in the context of this opposition.

How can these relationships and interactions be seen as both part of and separate to the

overreaching institution? The challenge is, as David Halperin puts it, to:

divert our attention from spectacles of transgression which agents of

normalisation routinely stage ... and instead to dramatise, as Foucault did,

the conventionally more discreet operations of the disciplinary mechanisms

themselves. (1995: 145)

Following Halperin (and Foucault), I argue that the success and utility of gay and

lesbian critiques of heteronormativity is not due to any intrinsically liberated or

liberating sexual subjectivity, but rather that gay/lesbian/bi/trans identity

represents “a strategically marginal position from which it might be possible to

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glimpse and devise new ways of relating to oneself and to others” (1996: 68).

When seen from these marginal positions, ‘compulsory’ heterosexuality is not a

monolithic edifice or unified whole; rather it is the sum of a number of parts

which can be explored, unpacked and renegotiated. The more ‘discreet operations’

of heteronormativity must be examined in their specificity; it is not sufficient to

assume we know what heterosexuality is now, and what its ‘opposite’ might be

(as if such a thing were possible in the first place). If oppositions to

heteronormativity are always partial and incomplete, perhaps this is a result of

heterosexuality’s own ‘phantom’ existence. What is heterosexuality, after all? Is it

the sum of any number of closed, isolated couples, or nuclear families? Is it

comprised of all breeders (even parents in same-sex relationships?) Should all

those who propose to resist heterosexism follow the lead of Weeks’s interviewees

and eschew joint bank accounts? Must all sex be ‘equal’? Is penetration out of the

question?

Queering heterosexuality?

My suggestion that heterosexuality might be ‘queered’ is not without precedent. It draws

on Halperin’s definition of queerness as “an identity without an essence, not a given

condition but a horizon of possibility, an opportunity for self-transformation, a queer

potential” (1995: 79). It might seem that this is a call for straights to jump on the

‘alternative’ bandwagon (after all, everyone knows the queers throw the best parties).

This is not my intention. As I see it, the queering of heterosexuality demands a conscious

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relinquishing of what has been termed ‘heterosexual privilege’. I am suggesting that

heterosexuals who subject their desires and practices to an ethical interrogation lose their

rights to pass as ‘normal’. The process of ‘becoming’ ethically heterosexual demands a

certain sacrifice of moral certainty, a relinquishing of the right to appeal to a higher

authority of sexual and relational ‘order’. For feminist politics, the challenge is to avoid

replacing old moral certainties about men and women with new ones. As Connolly

argues, “to reach ‘beyond’ the politics of good and evil is not to liquidate ethics but to

become ashamed of the trancendentalization of conventional morality” (1993: 366).

While morality presents an ordered set of rules, which may be prescriptive or

proscriptive, the concept of ethical sensibility offers a more ambiguous model for

heterosexual relations. Morality relies on the possibility of an appeal to an abstract

authority, be it God, equality, government or real feminism. To behave in a moral fashion

is to know what is allowable and what is forbidden, and to be able to measure eone’s

conduct against an external scale of possible actions. Morality is, above all, a process of

judgement – of the self, and of others. Moral orders are “implicitly installed in narratives

of nature, identity, gender, sexuality, agency, normality, responsibility, freedom and

goodness” (Connolly, 1993: 366). Thus, sexual moralities provide clear external

boundaries around sexual and emotional conduct, and assist in distinguishing acceptable

sexual practices and partnerships from those that are unacceptable. With their inherent

promises of rewards for the sexually virtuous, and punishments for the sexually corrupt,

religious and political moralities bring with them a comforting certainty. The very fact

that alternative (or ethical) sexual practices and partnerships do not and cannot promise

certain fixed outcomes is, for the adherents of moral codes, proof of the failure of ethical

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sensibility. However, both the demand for and promise of guaranteed rewards and

punishments are in and of themselves part of the structure of moralities and moral orders

(Connolly, 1993: 372).

Interestingly, Connolly argues that to move from the certainty of moral judgement

towards the ambiguity and contingency of ethical sensibility is “to subject morality to

strip searches” (1993: 366). As Connolly notes, the strip search is not without cruelty.

Strip searches are invasive, seeking to reveal what has been hidden not only on the body

but within it – in the most private, shameful, pleasurable places. The move towards a

politics based on ethics rather than morals is exceptionally cruel (from the moralist’s

point of view) because morality itself is designed to place its political adherent in a

position of absolute safety, beyond all shame, ambivalence and reproach. Within

differing moralities, the ‘obvious’ outcomes may of course be quite different. For

example, a particular kind of moral feminist may choose to avoid identifying as

‘heterosexual’, but still have sex with, or live with, a man (e.g. Andrea Dworkin’s

partnership with John Stoltenberg). Another may call herself heterosexual, and have sex

with men, while carefully avoiding particular immoral (or demeaning) sexual practices,

which may be variously defined.

Why ethics of heterosex rather than morals?

In Connolly’s (and Foucault’s) terms, an ethical sensibility is that which shapes, and is

shaped by, a politics of care and curiosity. The ethical self does not assume to already

know the other. So, for example, while a heterosexual moralist might reject a particular

sex partner, sexual practice or mode or relationship in accordance with an understanding

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of hierarchies of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sexualities, a heterosexual operating according to

ethical sensibilities is more likely to proceed (with caution!) beyond the borders of moral,

political or cultural certainties. That is to say, they are less likely to reject non-

monogamy, BDSM or sex work as ‘patriarchal’ or ‘oppressive’, although they may still

reject them for other reasons. As Connolly puts it, an ethical sensibility relies on the

ethical subject’s willingness to take what they know and look at it differently,

interrogating moral and political categories of “good/evil, normal/abnormal,

guilt/innocence, rationality/irrationality, autonomy/dependence, security/insecurity”

(1993: 379). In terms of a contemporary queer/feminist ethical sensibility, one could add

the willingness to interrogate dualities of egalitarian/exploitative and erotic/pornographic

sexualities, and indeed the moral/political categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’.15

In order to develop an ethical feminist sensibility regarding heterosex, it is necessary

abandon some of the modes of feminist identity politics which have been strategically

employed in the past. De-hierarchising sex/gender identities means giving up the morally

privileged position of ‘oppressed minority’, and the ‘will to powerlessness’ that goes with

it. From this position, as Wendy Brown puts it, “truth is always on the side of the damned

or the excluded; hence Truth is always clean of power, but therefore also always

positioned to reproach power” (1995: 46).

Hierarchised categories of sex, gender and sexual practice, after all, do not simply serve

to prop up institutionalised heteronormativity and white male privilege. They also support

feminist (and gay and lesbian) politics grounded in ressentiment: “the moralising revenge

15 I am thinking here of the moral outrage professed by the likes of Janice Raymond (1979) against trans people who dare to transgress the moral category of ‘woman’.

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of the powerless”, or “the triumph of the weak as weak” (Nietzsche in Brown, 1995: 66-

67). True, heteronormativity causes a great deal of suffering. However, as Brown argues,

where sexual/social freedom for women is envisaged either as freedom from men or

freedom from sex , then such a freedom is patently informed by an engagement with

power which demands a “reversal of suffering” rather than an undoing of the

social/sexual conditions which currently produce it (1995: 7). As Cartledge argues,

feminist debates on sexuality often centre around a tension between political analysis and

moral imperative:

On one hand ... the more we are oppressed the more we are victims; the

more we are unfree, the less choice we have, and therefore less

responsibility. At the same time, an equally strong thread in feminist

tradition has been the assumption of choice and responsibility for

ourselves and each other, and endless delving and soul-searching for

correctness in motive and action (1983:178).

Cartledge’s narrative of ‘choice and responsibility’ indicates that it is not only the

positioning of women as ‘victims of oppression’ but the very situatedness of feminist

politics within particular moral discourses of liberation and equality which produces

feminist ressentiment. For, as Brown points out, liberalism promises (and incites)

individual liberty, yet also requires that all free individuals be equal in the eyes of the state

(and one another). It is the paradox of liberalism that it demands “the articulation of

politically significant differences” which must then be minimised or suppressed by means

of legislation or tolerance (1995: 67). The liberal subject must ‘make’ their own

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independent subjectivity – yet they can never fully realise the task, being never fully

independent, but always enmeshed in cultural and political systems. It is, Brown argued,

the liberal subject's “situatedness within power, their production of power, and liberal

discourse's denial of this situatedness and production that cast the liberal subject into

failure” (1995: 67).

Thus, for feminists who explored alternative sexualities in the 1970s, the promise of

liberation was found to be a chimera. Rather than locating the failure in the promise of

liberation itself, a morality based in good and bad (or female and male) sexualities was

developed “to bring the unsatisfactory present into line with the utopian future” (Dimen

1992: 138). When the unattainability of liberated feminist sexuality was or is viewed as

failure of the self, or of strength of political will (rather than the failure of a false

promise), the failed feminist sexual subject must seek to identify the site of blame, and the

failure of complete and universal liberation must be attributed to the strength of the forces

which oppress and victimise women, via the politics of ressentiment.

Within these modes of politics, it is impossible for the suffering or marginalised subject to

relinquish their position as suffering without also relinquishing their claims to redress the

harm done. As Brown (following Nietzsche) puts it, this form of political reasoning must

cling to rage, righteousness and, above all, past hurts: “it can hold out no future – for itself

or others – that triumphs over this pain” (1995: 74). Thus Sheila Jeffreys and Andrea

Dworkin (among others) must continue to insist that there is no model of heterosex (past,

present or future) that does not endanger or degrade women. And when other feminists

counter with tales of specific, different tales of their diverse heterosexual pleasures,

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theorists grounded in ressentiment must respond with the reminder that “whatever

discourses we produce [on heterosexuality], whatever fantasies we have, they offer us no

protection against the coercive power of the penis enacted as rape” (Jackson 1999: 35).16

While this may be literally true, it reflects a common moralising attempt to police claims

of sexual pleasure with ‘prior’ claims of sexual suffering, despite the fact that “the

coercive power of the penis” is itself discursively produced (and no more or less a fantasy

than heterosexual pleasure). And, as Elspeth Probyn argues, there is no reason “why the

employment of a term like ‘discourse’, for instance, should block or preclude one’s

sympathies for the bodies that are worked over by any given discourse” (1998: 133).

A feminist discussion of sexual politics which is not grounded in ressentiment must

relinquish claims of female moral/sexual superiority and political certainties based on the

‘differences’ between male and female or straight and queer sexualities. This calls for

strategies of specific, reflexive dialogue, or as Brown terms them ‘public conversations’.

Within such dialogues it is no longer possible to claim a definitive knowledge of the

‘truth’ of female sexuality (or heterosexuality) whereby one proclaims, for example, that

most straight women are demeaned (or at best bored) by penetrative sex; or that most

straight men prefer the active/insertive role, and see it as an act of sexual domination.

These conversations do not involve slanging matches in which the will to political power

is disavowed in a competition for the role of “she who has suffered most under

patriarchy”. Nor do they require a disavowal of specific experiences and cultural

positions and roles. As Brown puts it, these conversations are fuelled by an ethics of care:

16 This example is not included to single out Jackson in particular, rather it is a very typical example of a particular kind of feminist response to those who argue for the recognition of specific instances of female heterosexual's erotic agency.

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“a vision about the common (“what I want for us”) rather than from identity (“who I

am”)” (1995: 51). This is not to say, however, that the ‘I’ that speaks is ever unbiased or

neutral – after all, the claim to such a speaking position has traditionally been invoked to

proclaim a universal, non-specific identity which reinforced the legitimacy of the (white,

able-bodied, heterosexual male) liberal subject.17 Unlike the common vision put forward

by such a privileged subject (for whom all ‘identities’ are subordinated categories), the

vision Brown proposes is not beyond interrogation or debate, incorporating as it does an

understanding of diverse rather than hierarchised identities, and a necessary “conversion

of one’s knowledge of the world from a situated (subject) position into a public idiom”

(1995: 51).

Thus, an ethical sensibility of heterosex is not necessarily ‘transgressive’, nor does it seek

to ‘celebrate’, ‘empower’ or ‘break the silence’ of female heterosexuality. While it

involves a great deal of crafting and cultivation of the self, this is not aimed at

‘perfecting’ an individual or a particular relationship or family. The ethical self that is

produced is a self which is always in relation with others within a community, workplace,

polling booth or rally. This self engages not with moral certainty but with the diverse

multiplicity of other such selves, in a politics of the possible which does not promise

finite solutions or salvations. The cultivation of ethical heterosexualities offers feminists

a vision of non-normative heterosexuality through which we might, in Brown’s terms,

“learn to contest domination with the strength of an alternate vision of collective life,

rather than through moral reproach” (1995: 68). After all, the moral certainty which

underpins feminist claims that heterosexual pleasure is, by definition, male and requires

17 See Brown 1995: 57.

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female and/or queer suffering, can only be challenged if we are able to acknowledge that

cultures which encourage the cautious, curious pursuit of ethical heterosexual relations

may exist now, and in the future. As Connolly puts it, “we ... cannot pursue the ethic that

inspires us without contesting claims to the universality and sufficiency of the moral

fundamentalisms we disturb” (1993: 381-382).

Queering relationships

Gay and lesbian relationships are considered to evade heteronormativity for reasons other

than same-sex object choice. All men are not, after all, ‘equal’ to all other men; nor are

all women ‘equal’ to one another. Factors which are considered to be anti-normative

include the manner of dividing domestic tasks; an assumption (or at least acceptance) of

non-monogamy; a willingness to experiment with public sex, and alternative sexual

practices (e.g. group sex, BDSM); and a willingness to blur boundaries of ‘friend’,

‘lover’ and ‘life partner’.18 That is, gay and lesbians are often said to be more likely to

become lovers with friends, and remain friends with a network of ex-lovers. An

expectation that a couple will interact with an alternative ‘community’ based around

strategic alliances, shared tastes and sexual practices is also seen as part of a specifically

non-normative mode of relating.

In a 1981 interview entitled ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’, Michel Foucault addressed the

challenge of creating an ethical sex/love relationship between men outside of the

18 Weeks (1995) is one of the major proponents of this argument within sociology. However Warner 1995, Califia 1992, Easton and Liszt 1997 and others have advanced models of ‘queer family values’ within different discursive frameworks.

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contractual obligation of the ‘marriage institution’.19 Along with many feminist thinkers,

Foucault observed that classical heterosexual marriage can only function where the

assumption of gender roles is a given, and the wife “accepts it and makes it work”

(Foucault 1997a: 135).20 The ethical task for gay male relationships, according to

Foucault, was the formation of a partnership based on “love where there’s supposed to be

only law, rule or habit” (1997a: 137). That is, it could not (and should not) be assumed

that an older man would be the ‘senior partner’ in a relationship with a younger man, or

that the partner with higher income would (or should) assume the role of breadwinner.

Each individual partnership would negotiate the allocation of tasks and responsibilities in

affinity not just with one another but with a broader network of gay men. To this end,

Foucault called for a ‘gay culture’ based not solely on the reassertion of sexual identity

(or on the celebration of same-sex encounters) but on a continuing process of ‘becoming

gay’. This (potential) ‘becoming’ would demand a continuous reworking of sexual and

political selfhood without reference to normative heterosexual institutions. The process of

becoming gay would, Foucault argued, aim to create:

a culture that invents ways of relating, types of existence, types of values,

types of exchanges between individuals which are ... neither the same as,

nor superimposed on, existing cultural forms. If that’s possible, then gay

culture ... would create relations that are, at certain points, transferable to

heterosexuals (1997a: 159). 19 Carol Pateman's The Sexual Contract (1990) offers another version of this argument. 20 Foucault referred particularly to the work of lesbian feminists Lillian Faderman and Gayle Rubin in this, and other interviews conducted in the early 1980s, and later collected in the 1997 volume Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth

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Foucault argued that the key questions to ask of oneself within this process of becoming

were not the highly subjective (and perhaps even Oedipal) “Who am I?” and “What is the

secret of my desire?”, but “What relations, through homosexuality, can be established,

invented, multiplied and modulated?” (1997a: 135). The same questions might also assist

those in the process of becoming an ethical heterosexual. What relations can be

established, invented, multiplied and modulated through the ethical practices of heterosex

and relationships, and how might these differ from compulsory heterosexuality and/or

heteronormativity?

An ethical sensibility of heterosex is political, but it is also embodied, with all the

pleasures and pains that embodiment brings. In crafting or cultivating an ethical

heterosexuality one seeks pleasure, yet this pleasure is not guaranteed. This is why I

reject concepts like ‘transgression’ or ‘celebration’ when describing the process – the aim

is not simply to ‘transcend’ the boundaries of hegemonic heteronormative culture but

instead to consciously work on the contingencies of the emerging self that exists in

relation to the culture. The cultivation of an ethical heterosexuality is not, therefore, a co-

opting of a queer or marginalised identity. Queering heterosexuality is not simply a

matter of saying “hey, we’re queer too”. It demands a thoughtful decentring of

straightness, and constant modest advances and acknowledgments of one’s position in

relation to others. Through the process of ethical cultivation one relinquishes the security

of transcendent categories of identity, but it is still necessary, as Connolly puts it, to

develop a “generous sensibility that informs interpretations of what you are and are not”

(1993: 367). Importantly, an ethical heterosexuality does not claim that ‘we’re all the

same deep down’, condescend to the ‘less sexually enlightened’, or assume that all sex

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and gender differences should and can be resolved in a concrete and final way. Nor is a

liberal ‘tolerance’ of difference required. An ethical sensibility calls for mobile strategic

alliances, not an absolute contract grounded in quantifiable, legislatible equality between

all men and all women, at all times.

Ethical work of this kind offers an opportunity for what Connolly terms “a political ethos

of agonistic care” (1993: 383), where opposing viewpoints and problematics can be

approached through ongoing, adaptive strategies of “interrogation, engagement, and

negotiation, not a political doctrine of intrinsic identity, consensus, and resolution” (1993:

383). In this way, differences not only of sex and gender but also of class, race, age and

physical ability can be negotiated, rather than “overlooked” or legislated into “a purely

formal or procedural equality” (Halperin 1995: 85). In engaging and negotiating with

differences, one aims “not only to prevent them having damaging side effects, but also to

transform them into vehicles of mutual assistance and of communal as well as individual

strength” (1995: 85).

How can these negotiations take place in everyday heterosexual interactions between

men and women? In an anti-normative heterosexuality, sex and love can no longer be

understood primarily in terms of obligation, obedience, duty or compliance. However, it

can be difficult to depart from the model of compulsory heterosex which teaches us that

sex is something that men want, and women must say yes (or no) to, in order to support a

‘relationship’. Although heterosexuality is assumed, the specifics of heterosexual

experimentation and exploration of straight desire and pleasure are not taught particularly

well in our culture, even in formal ‘sex education’. As Ine Van Wesenbeeck puts it:

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Most young women do practise saying yes or no ... but are much less

skilled in actively shaping sexual practice once they decide on it. They are

often totally nonplussed if ‘nothing happens’, or the boy does not take the

initiative. They have learned to say no, but are much less likely to have

learned to negotiate the sexual encounter to their liking once they say yes

(1997: 177).

In contrast, gay (and lesbian/bisexual/transgender) culture offers models of sex, love and

friendship where sexual pleasure and desire are expected, but not taken for granted.

Negotiation and ‘everyday experiments’ are both supported and encouraged. It is not

surprising, then, that queer sex culture has been highly influential on those heterosexuals

seeking to form ethical relationships.21 As Catherine Liszt demonstrates, gay male culture

offers many ostensibly straight women a strong sense of identification, even where there

is no sense of gay male identity:

I must have been eight or nine, but even then, I understood the subtext of

what I was hearing – that these men didn’t belong in my comfortable

suburban environment, that they had sex with each other in spite of the

fact that many people thought it was wrong for them to do so, that they

didn’t necessarily get married and only have sex with one person, that

21 I do not mean to suggest that it is only gay men who point to the gaps in normative understandings of sex/gender where alternative models of heterosex become imaginable. Since the 1970s lesbian sex radical writers have presented generous discussions of active, desiring, pleasurable female heterosex, notably Joan Nestles 'My Mother Liked to Fuck', which attracted the approbation of radical lesbians (see Nestle in Snitow et al 1983). More recently, Theresa de Lauretis' The Practice of Love (1994) offers a theorisation of 'femme' lesbian desire presents a rare theoretical opportunity for the heterosexual woman to perform her desire in a perverse, 'apparently heterosexual ' context.

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they had their own communities where they hung out together and took

care of each other because regular people didn’t want them around. And I

immediately had this strong sense of ‘Oh, people like me’ (Easton &

Liszt 1997: 6-7).

Liszt’s recognition of gay men as ‘people like me’ suggests an alliance with

particular practices (city living, non-monogamy, defiance of suburban

conventions of respectability) rather than gayness or maleness. This is not to say

that all gay men live in this way, but rather that ‘gay culture’ or ‘community’ is

clearly recognised in reference to certain practices or modes of conduct – many

explicitly physical and/or sexual.

What might ethical heterosex look like?

In the early 1980s, Foucault asserted that “recent liberation movements ... cannot find any

other ethics than an ethics founded on so-called scientific knowledge of what the self is,

what desire is, what the unconscious is, and so on” (1997: 255-256). The rise of ‘queer’

sex cultures in the 1990s worked against this search for scientific certainty to such a

degree that, by 1997, Catherine Liszt and fellow San Francisco-based author Dossie

Easton were able to write a sexual how-to book which operated within an entirely

different paradigm. As a self-help guide, The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual

Possibilities could be said to directly meet Foucault’s challenge to political sex culture,

where “the problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex, but rather to use

one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships” (1997a: 135).

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While some heterosexuals (and non-heterosexuals) seek to meet this challenge by

developing alternative models of sexual ethics through non-Judeo-Christian moral or

spiritual value systems (such as Paganism, Taoism or Tantra), others have chosen to

experiment with more secular but no less complex ethical frameworks for sex and

relationships, such as BDSM or polyamory.22 These lifestyles may appear ‘liberated’ in

many ways, but they are certainly are not ‘amoral’ and/or free from rules and boundaries.

Instead, they present challenging, complex frameworks for constructing ethical

sensibilities in regard to sexual and emotional relationships. The parties in the

relationships may indeed feel that they have added ‘freedom’ – to be non-monogamous,

or to experience extreme forms of physical or emotional contact. With that freedom,

however, comes a degree of ethical reflection and personal responsibility which is almost

unheard of in traditional ‘compulsory’ heterosexual relationships. Polyamorists also

acknowledge the need to attend to the tensions which arise post ‘sexual liberation’.

Where the utopian ideals of the early 1960s and 1970s often produced a climate where

the ideal of ‘open marriages’ really translated into “no admission of jealousy” or “the

appearance of no jealousy” (Slomiak 1995: 13), self-help books such as The Ethical Slut

and Deborah Anapol’s Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits (1997) focus

extensively on the potential complications and conflicts of ‘open’ sexual practices. In

fact, it is this focus on the everyday adjustments and negotiations required to practise

non-monogamy (as opposed to liberating oneself from marriage) that makes polyamory

22 The term polyamory was coined by neo-pagan Church of All Worlds founders Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, as a replacement for the longer and more unwieldy term 'responsible non-monogamy'. See Zell- Ravenheart in Kaldera (2005). Kaldera offers a useful (although fairly subjective) explanation some of the subtle but significant differences between polyamorous relationships in pagan, tantric and BDSM contexts.

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particularly interesting as a case study of ethical heterosexuality (although it should be

noted that not all polyamorists are heterosexual). As Weeks puts it:

We all know how difficult it is to live up to standards we have

communally set ourselves. Erotic desire can undermine the firmest

resolutions. Fear and jealousy and betrayal are not abolished because we

disapprove of them. A commitment to safer sex has not stopped unsafe

practices. Friendship can turn to hate, and love, like desire, can die ... So

as well as celebrating eros and the possibilities of community, we need to

begin to spell out what an art of life, an ethos based on reciprocal

independence, means in practice …(2000: 187).

Polyamorists have developed shared vocabularies and community networks that allow

them to attempt this. Although a full discussion of every permutation of the polyamory

movement is not possible here, I offer this discussion of some key self-help texts as a

case study that offers a model of sexuality (including heterosexuality) that values ethics

over morals.

What is polyamory?

Although I have presented sacred/Tantric sex, BDSM and polyamory as distinct entities,

in practice there are those who combine, say, an interest in sexual ritual and spirituality

with bondage and discipline within polyamorous relationships. For the purposes of my

argument, however, I will focus largely on the ethical sensibilities of the polyamorous

and polyfidelitous specifically as they are reflected and constructed in the most popular

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publications and primers produced by US polyamorists: Polyamory: The New Love

Without Limits, The Ethical Slut, and Loving More Magazine.23 While Anapol’s book

primarily presents advice from a Tantric/philosophical perspective, Easton and Liszt’s

framework of sexual ethics for polyamory or polyfidelity draws heavily on observations

of gay cruising/group sex and BDSM etiquette.

Although all three authors are therapists (Anapol has a PhD in clinical psychology), their

approaches are markedly different to traditional moral/scientific sex/relationship advice

(and its contemporary ‘Mars and Venus’ manifestations – see Potts, 1998). It could be

argued that these texts should be approached with critical suspicion, given that they can

be read as a re-iteration of the normalising, confessional imperative of tradition

psychotherapy identified by Foucault in his History of Sexuality Volume One (1978).

However, given that therapeutic or self-help discourses are (with pornography) the

primary modes of representing sexual practices and sexual subjectivity within

contemporary Western popular culture, I am unwilling to dismiss these examples out of

hand. Partly, this is due to my preference for the reparative strategy, which encourages

me to move beyond the recognition that these texts could and perhaps do cause sex to be

“put into discourse” in ways that potentially limit or constrain the groups or individuals

described within them (Foucault 19878: 11). I accept that there is no ‘outside’ of

discourse, but having acknowledged this fact, I have to ask what else might these texts

23 LovingMore's website www.lovemore.com also informs my arguments – particularly the debates on the LM bulletin boards. The discussion boards reflect the debates in LM magazine, however, the latter seems to be considered by participants to be private, while the former is public. Given the ethical gray area presented by on-line support groups and bulletin boards, I have chosen not to quote directly from the community posts themselves, but only from the more 'public' areas of the site.

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do? In addition, I believe that there are some significant differences between poly self-

help texts, and the medicalised discourses of scientia sexualis documented by Foucault.

These differences do not simply stem from the obvious resistance to compulsory

heterosexual monogamy, but from a major shift or relocation of subjective sexual ‘truth’

from fixed sexual identities to fluid, changeable sexual practices.24 Relationship models

such as ‘play partner’ or ‘fuck buddy’ (which might at one time have been seen as

exclusively relevant to gay or S/M culture) are presented in The Ethical Slut as easily

translatable, and not specifically linked to particular psychological ‘types’ or sex/gender

identities. While Anapol’s explanation of polyamory reflects her experiences of spiritual

teaching and psychotherapy, Easton and Liszt (1997: 55) attribute their ethical framework

to a broad queer culture of “ancestors and antecedents”: lesbians, gay men, transgendered

people, bisexuals, swingers, sex workers and ‘sacred sluts’ or practitioners of Tantra.

These forms of ‘alternative’ sexual relations are of course not new among heterosexuals,

particularly heterosexuals who came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The

authors of The Ethical Slut freely admit to being ‘ageing hippies’, partial to good old-

fashioned free love. These strategies are of course not twentieth-century developments –

they have antecedents in the utopian political and religious movements of nineteenth-

century Europe and North America (see Ramsdale & Dorfman 1985; Snitow, Stansell &

Thompson 1984).25 These movements continued to influence small intellectual and

24 Not that this very optimistic aim is always achieved. 25 As Ellen Carol DuBois and Linda Gordon note, there is a considerable feminist history of 'sex-radicalism'. Notable 19th century feminists such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger were among those who ‘slept with men without marrying...took multiple lovers...became single mothers...[and]...had explicitly sexual relationships with other women' (1992: 41). British socialists and working class 'agitators'

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radical communities into the early twentieth century. Greenwich Village ‘bohemians’, for

example, openly conducted and documented the open multiple-partner relationships (as

opposed to clandestine affairs) in which they sought “sexual fulfilment combined with

personal intimacy” (Trimberger 1984:170).

Contemporary models of ‘alternative’ heterosexuality have benefited not only from this

sex-radical history but also from the increasingly ‘coalitionist’ sex communities which

have emerged from queer sexual politics. Under the umbrella of polyamory, alliances are

formed which cross traditional boundaries of gender and sexual identity. So, for example,

a man who self-identifies as bisexual and polyamorous within the context of a 20-year

monogamous heterosexual marriage finds himself at a Tribe Seekers conference where

“many of the other folks were transgendered, seriously into the S/M scene, and bedecked

with various piercings and tattoos” (Cobb 2001:17).

In Polyamory, Anapol describes what she calls “new paradigm” relationships based on

flexible ground rules. These rules are not laid down by an outside authority (such as

church, state or guru) but are established in practice, through the interaction of each

individual partner’s needs and wishes (Anapol 1997). While the terms ‘polyamory’ and

‘polyfidelity’ (sometimes described as group marriage)26 were coined as convenient

descriptors for a broad set of behaviours, they are sometimes discussed within poly media

as if they were prescriptive identities. Given that poly identity politics seem to have the

potential to become as entrenched (and potentially restrictive) as those based on sex, also drew a connection “between sexual monogamy and the acquisitive mentality fostered by private property” (Snitow, Stansell and Thompson 1984: 6). 26 Anapol defines polyfidelity as “A lovestyle in which three or more primary partners agree to be sexual only within their family. Additional partners can be added to the marriage with everyone's consent” (1997: 9).

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gender or object choice, the somewhat New Age descriptor ‘new paradigm’ seems to

offer the greatest opportunity for a multiplicity of relationship styles, even within

monogamous dyads. As a correspondent to Loving More magazine describes it, to call

these alternative forms of relationship ‘new paradigm’ rather than specifically ‘poly’ is to

allow “autonomy inside a world of many options for intimacy, each of which is valid and

respectable”.

In Anapol’s terms, old paradigm relationships are often grounded in what Foucault might

term ‘quasi-judicial’ morals; that is, there is always an ‘ideal’, whether it is based in

church, state or leftist political principles, to which one can appeal if things go wrong.

Old paradigm relationships are “intended to maximise security, stability, predictability

and control”. In contrast, “choosing the new paradigm means giving up attachment to

having your relationship adhere to a particular picture of ‘how it’s supposed to be’”

(1997: 30). (Policing the boundaries of the new paradigm can, no doubt, become as

dogmatic as any other political pursuit.) Whether they are described as new paradigm or

polysomething, the relationship and sex models in The Ethical Slut and Polyamory are far

from normative, and the elements of a Foucauldian ethical sensibility are clearly evident

in many polyamorous ‘how-to’ manuals.

What is ethical about polyamory?

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In The History of Sexuality Volume Two: The Use of Pleasure, Foucault proposes four

elements which make up an ethical sensibility.27 The elements may be considered

independently of one another, yet in many cases two or more elements will be present,

and link into one another. The first element is the determination of ethical substance, or

the will to truth, which poses the questions, “How does one conduct oneself as an ethical

subject?” and “Which part of the self is ‘the material to be worked on’?” (1991: 26). For

example, if a moral code prescribes marital fidelity, is the moral task simply to abstain

from sex with other partners, or to enjoy sex with the conjugal partner? Is one required to

feel and exercise desire exclusively with that partner (forbidding not only sex with other

partners but solo sex such as fantasy/masturbation)? Is it acceptable to feel desire for

others, as long as the desire is never acted upon? Is the exercise of self-control itself the

marker of good ethical conduct?

Within the poly movement, the part of the self that is to be worked on varies widely.

Some seek “monogamous marriage with a wall bumped out to embrace just one more

person” (Nearing 1995: 32), while others seek multi-partner polyfidelity, with the

intention of forming ‘intentional families’ or ‘tribes’ with whom they share communal

resources and childcare. Some polys consider themselves to be single, aiming to engage

in multiple parallel relationships. Some straight polys pursue relationships previously

restricted to gay and lesbian or queer culture – that is, long-term, non-romantic,

sexualised friendships. Some combine a live-in partnership with outside lovers, and some

live up to every negative stereotype of the non-monogamous drama queen. As US writer

27 Foucault himself relates the discussion to morality in The Use of Pleasure, however his explanation of the elements in the interview 'On the Genealogy of Ethics...' (1997) makes it clear that he is referring to an ethical sensibility (in Connolly's sense) rather than morality as it has been defined here.

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Eric Francis puts it, “polyamorous relationships often have the same confusions and toxic

issues as monogamous relationships, just spread out among more people” (2001,

OrganicLove.html).

Generally speaking, however, the determination of polyamorous ethical substance is

based in the desire to deal honestly with one’s desire for multiple partnerships, whether or

not one chooses to act on the desire. Where heteronormative relationships explicitly or

implicitly demand the denial or disavowal of ‘extramarital’ desire, polyamorous

relationships incorporate such desires within the space of legitimate relations. Crucially,

those who describe themselves as polyamorous often emphasise their openness to loving

more than one partner (whether or not there is sexual contact) and their willingness to

negotiate any emotional obstacles thrown up by that openness. A key factor of poly is the

openness with which relationships are conducted. Rather than ‘having affairs’ or

‘cheating’, polyamorous people engage in multiple relationships with the full knowledge

of all participants. People practising polyamory (or ‘responsible non-monogamy’) do not

pretend to be single, or even monogamously inclined, when they are not. Each new

partner is therefore offered the opportunity to make an informed decision to take or leave

the relationship.

The second element of Foucault’s ethical sensibility is the mode of subjectivation. As he

puts it, the mode of subjectivation describes “the way in which people are invited or

incited to recognize their moral [or ethical] obligations” (1997: 264). The question which

arises here concerns how one recognises oneself in relation to an ethical code; for

example, does adherence to the code offer a secure marker of identity in relation to a

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group? Is it a sign of spiritual mastery? Is the code practised “in response to an appeal, by

offering oneself as an example” (1990: 27), or in pursuit of an aesthetic ideal or

perfection?

Again, polyamorous practices and responses vary widely. There are those (Deborah

Anapol included) who view poly as a mode of developing an ideal of unconditional love,

and would consider their sexual relationships to be in keeping with their spiritual path

and psychological self-development. Others see poly as part of forming alternative

models of community or family (including models popularised in utopian sci-fi and

fantasy novels such as Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing or Robert Heinlein’s Stranger

in a Strange Land). Some see poly very much as an identity, similar to hetero, homo or

bisexuality. Regardless of their sexual identity, polys tend to use gay and feminist

terminology to describe their processes of self-recognition – there are many discussions

of the social and political implications of coming out, and many ‘origin’ stories which

reflect Ken Plummer’s observations on sexual storytelling and the formation of sexual

citizenship (1995). For others, the process of becoming poly is part of a rejection of

heteronormativity (Easton and Liszt fall into this category), a commitment to sex-

positivity, and a desire to expand sexual experiences.

Many poly coming-out stories tend to assume a poly identity that was repressed, hidden

or misrecognised before the coming out; for example, there are many who echo the words

of the Loving More personals advertiser ‘Female, 48, bi single’, who proclaims she ‘has

always been poly without knowing a nice word for it’ (Loving More Personals 2000: 36).

For Foucault, however, “being” is “given through problematizations and practices; it is

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not prior to them” (Rabinow 1997: xxxvi). The third element, then, of the ethical

sensibility is the actual ethical work that one does “not only in order to bring one’s

conduct into compliance with a given rule, but to attempt to transform oneself into the

ethical subject of one’s behaviour” (Foucault 1991: 27). Large parts of both Polyamory

and The Ethical Slut are given to the discussion of the ethical work of poly relationships,

which may range from sexual etiquette in multi-partner or group sex situations and

guidelines for discussion and negotiation with one’s partners, children, family members

and workmates to the language employed when thinking about or describing one’s

actions.

Polyamory demands constant ethical work. A poly couple may be completely

monogamous (at one stage in their relationship), or perhaps open in principle but

monogamous in practice. At another time they may renegotiate the relationship so that

one or both of them have other lovers. This agreement too may be renegotiated. There

may be a phase where one partner has several ‘outside’ lovers, but the other does not.

They may formulate a ‘right of veto’ agreement where one partner has the right to request

that a specific outside relationship does not become physical, or that physical contact

does not progress beyond a certain stage (e.g. no penetrative sex, no overnight visits, or

simply ‘not in our bed!’). With this level of potential emotional and sexual complexity

(the traditional titles ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ are not very helpful here) many polys

(particularly those who communicate online) have developed their own subcultural

descriptive vocabularies. For example, a ‘committed’ couple who share a home, child-

rearing, household expenses and so on may refer to themselves as ‘primary’ partners.

Their other lovers may be referred to as ‘secondaries’. Three-way relationships or

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ménages à trois can be defined variously as ‘triads’ (all partners are sexual with one

another) or ‘vees’ (one partner is sexual with two others, but those two are not sexual

with one another). These triangle relationships are not exclusively heterosexual; in many

cases they allow bisexuals to relate sexually and emotionally to both men and women. As

a writer in Loving More explains it:

Even on the poly frontier, you need some kind of a map. One couple

operates with a three-page typewritten contract ... This contract stipulates

such items as: initial interviews and probation periods for prospective

secondary and tertiary partners; how secondary and tertiary partners

should be expected to behave around the couple’s daughter; the issuance

of ‘hunting licenses’, for occasions when one person is going away for the

weekend and wants to keep open the possibility of a fling. Such licenses

are a privilege, not a right; they can be withheld if the other partner does

not feel comfortable with the idea; and if the fling develops into a longer

term relationship, the whole thing goes back to square one, with initial

interviews and probation (Cobb 2001: 17).

Polys also use specific jargon or shorthand to redefine emotional interactions. The

‘limerence’ or ‘infatuation’ stage of love (with its accompanying rush of blood to the

head – and other places) is referred to as ‘new relationship energy’ or NRE. NRE is

widely discussed among polys, most commonly as an exciting but fleeting stage during

which no major decisions should take place. In contrast, compulsory heterosexuality has

depended heavily on this ‘true romance’ stage where both parties are ‘swept away’ into

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the serious business of marriage. While polyamorists certainly do not reject the pleasure

offered by this experience, poly discussion boards and how-to manuals advise a great

deal of caution and self-reflection during this period, particularly in regard to pre-existing

relationships.

NRE is not the only stage subject to intense ethical examination. While standard wisdom

tells us that sexual jealousy is ‘proof of love’ (or simply something horrific to be avoided

at all costs), polyamorous approaches to jealousy are complex and varied. Jealousy may

be seen as a potential ‘teacher’ or indicator of ‘issues’ or ‘needs’ to be met. Jealousy is

not considered to be an inevitable consequence of non-monogamy; in fact many polys

aim for a state of ‘compersion’ (another poly jargon term, coined by an ‘alternative

community’ in the free love era). Compersion is not simply an absence of jealousy, it is a

positive emotion which is the opposite of jealousy. As Anapol (1993: 64) describes it,

compersion is ‘delight in a beloved’s love for another. Compersion tends to be especially

strong when we find that two people we love feel affection for each other.’

Above all, the advice offered regarding poly ethical work reflects that offered by the

Greek philosophers. Anapol and Easton and Liszt incite the would-be polyamorist to

follow the command of the Delphic Oracle and ‘know yourself’ (Easton & Liszt 1997:

64; Anapol 1993: 32). As Easton and Liszt describe it:

…to truly know yourself is a constant journey of self exploration, to learn

about yourself from reading, therapy, and most of all, talking incessantly

with those who are on similar paths. This is hard work, but well worth it

because this is the way you become free to choose how you want to live

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and love, own your life, and become truly the author of your experience

(1997: 65).

Despite the therapeutic language employed by Easton and Liszt, it is clear that the aim of

knowing oneself through polyamorous work is not to simply develop a perfected

individual identity. Polyamorists necessarily knows themselves in relationship with

others – lovers, families, communities. One purpose to becoming a ‘radical slut’ is

certainly to expand sexual pleasures and contacts. But this is not seen as being separate

from the aim of ‘uprooting’ sexism and sex negativism (Easton & Liszt 1997: 65). As

Foucault puts it, “ethos ... implies a relationship with others, insofar as the care of the self

enables one to occupy his rightful position in the city, in the community, or interpersonal

relationships” (1997: 287). Interestingly, Foucault observes that, for the Greeks, ethical

work also necessarily included what we might currently term ‘self-help’, involving

consultation with experts, and support networks, requiring:

…conversation with, and response to, the lessons of a 'master'... a guide, a

friend, someone who will be truthful with you ... Thus the problem of

relationship with others is present throughout the development of the care

of the self (1997: 287).

Through this process of conversation and reflection, each action, thought and sexual

encounter can be understood in terms of the fourth element of the Foucauldian ethical

sensibility: the telos. Through a telos of ethical (or responsible) non-monogamy,

individual and seemingly unrelated acts are contextualised as part of an overall pattern.

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Within this framework, the would-be ethical slut considers how each act, conversation or

gesture might advance “a mode of being characteristic of the ethical subject” (1991: 28).

In this chapter, I have offered a model for ethical heterosex within what might be

considered ‘privatised’ (although non-monogamous) relationships. But what of public

manifestations of sexuality? If the influence of feminism and gay and lesbian political

movements is easy to observe within ‘alternative’ heterosexual relationship styles, what

of popular, public and ‘commodified’ forms of sex. In the next chapters I will explore

some recent moral critiques of popular sexuality, and consider how these, too, might be

reframed in ethical terms.

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Chapter 3

Sex in public: Raunch culture and feminist porn

In this chapter, and those that follow, I will explore the changing aesthetics of

‘mainstream’ porn production and consumption. In addition , I will explore the ways that

both feminist critiques of heterosexism and queer communities’ deployment of explicit

sexual language and images in media designed to promote sexual health and ‘community

pride’ have impacted on mainstream heterosexual media in interesting and at times

surprising ways. While some (notably US journalist Ariel Levy) have claimed that the

public acceptance of sexually explicit media and ‘raunchy’ female behaviour represents a

weakening of feminism, there is a strong history within feminism which has both

supported and encouraged these kinds of representations and behaviours. In fact, ‘blatant’

sexual imagery has been used within both queer and feminist activism as a means of

building erotic and political communities, and as a form of political protest. This is not

surprising, considering that one of the primary motives within heteronormativity is to

police sexualities and sexual identities in such a way that only some may speak

‘legitimately’ about sex and pleasure.

Before I examine the links between early second-wave feminist thinking on sexuality and

contemporary popular culture, however, I will digress slightly to explore the challenge

that these explicit representations of sexual practices and ‘sex education’ offer to

normative models of sexuality, particularly female sexuality. The nervous and troubled

response to ‘raunch culture’ or proliferating is, to a degree, a response to the

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popularisation of commercialised or ‘commodified’ sexualities. But it is also, I would

argue, the product of considerable anxiety over forms of sexuality that challenge norms

established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, via what Foucault has

termed the “deployment of sexuality”.

The problem with public sex

Given that public language for explicitly discussing sexuality has been traditionally

restricted to the heteronormative male-dominated realms of medicine (or science) on the

one hand and pornography on the other, it is not surprising that feminists and queer

theorists have sought to adapt both to their own ends. Given the adaptability of

capitalism, it is also not surprising that ‘fringe’ expressions of sexuality have been folded

into commercial marketing discourses. The criticism of porn and other forms of public

sex culture often focuses on the profits made by pornographers (although, as I will

discuss in Chapter 4, not all porn is commercially produced, or designed, for the purposes

of profit).

However, many of the arguments against public sex culture seem to be as troubled by its

seemingly unfettered ‘publicness’ of sexual discourse as they are by their

commercialisation. Why should this be the case? In his essay “Public and Private”,

Michael Warner (2002) links queer and feminist theorising of bodies and sexuality to the

way boundaries are constructed to define public and private spaces. Warner is not the

first to observe that the liberal ideal of ‘sex as private’ relies on very unstable definitions

of public and private, since “[a] private conversation can take place in a public forum; a

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kitchen can become a public gathering place; a private bedroom can be a public and

commercial space, as in a hotel; a radio can bring a public discussion into a bathroom,

and so on” (2002: 27). In fact, public and private realms blend and overlap in various

complex ways. The ‘couple’ (and ideally the ‘family’) is often offered as the ultimate site

of privacy. Yet it is strictly regulated, and subject to public scrutiny at all levels, from

public health campaigns to governmental legislation to reality television programming

and talk-show commentary.

Since the 1970s, feminists have argued that the liberal insistence on ‘non-interference’ in

the private sphere means that many forms of real violence and domination, such as

domestic violence and child sexual assault, were regarded as ‘family matters’. And, as

Warner argues, concepts of the public and the private are intrinsically interwoven with

embodiment and gender. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, Warner observes that

everyday habits of embodiment, from hygiene and grooming practices to clothing and

deportment, manners and conduct, all rely on understandings of boundaries between the

public and the private, to the extent that “some bodily sensations – of pleasure and pain,

shame and display, appetite and purgation – come to be felt … as privacy” (2002: 23).

It is this conflation of embodiment with privacy that has been challenged by queer

activists seeking to resist what they consider to be the ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ of

the public sphere. A fundamental cliché of liberal sexual tolerance is ‘I don’t care what

people do ... in the privacy of their own homes’. A parallel principle to this sentiment

dictates, therefore, that the state should ‘stay out of the bedroom’, that is, that legislators

should not be concerned with the sexual practices of citizens, as sex somehow occurs

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‘outside’ of the social. However, this facade of tolerance can only exist if standards of

heteronormativity are accepted as ‘the’ standards of sexual and domestic behaviour. The

‘privileges’ of heteronormativity are not a given; they are contracted in exchange for the

normative heterosexual’s implicit agreement to maintain a position of centrality in

relation to marginalised sexual ‘others’. As part of this agreement, it is understood that,

while heterosexuals may display physical affection publicly, they will not ‘flaunt’ the

details of their sexual pleasures and practices. The bedroom is the discreet zone of

heterosexuality; indeed it is the ‘right and proper’ place for sex to take place (as opposed,

for example, to public toilets, parks and saunas).

As David Bell observes, the ‘privacy’ of the bedroom is only available to those whose

sexuality is not subject to legislative surveillance, since queer ‘citizens’ may be punished

both for ‘public’ sexual acts and for those that occur ‘in private’. The tenuousness of

queer sexual privacy is nowhere more evident than in the 1998 Operation Spanner case,

in which home videos and bondage equipment were seized by police as evidence of

‘criminal’ sexual activities – yet these acts had been consensually negotiated by all the

(gay male) participants. As Bell argues, the Spanner case implies a legalistic construction

of all ‘bad’ sex as potentially ‘public’, particularly if the sex is documented in any way,

or if erotic props and costumes are involved. According to Bell:

... the law’s eruptions into the private begin a process of reducing or even

erasing the private as a site of pleasure, rendering pleasure a public – and by

that a political – issue (thus transforming intimacy by removing it from an

entirely private sphere). For sexual dissidents, there is an obvious tension

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between the desire for privacy and the need to be public, while state and law

must draw things into the public only to thrust them back into the same

(reduced) private space (1995: 313).

It is clear, then, that, while the bedroom is considered to be a ‘private’ sexual space, it is

subject to certain kinds of surveillance. Since ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ prescribes

certain kinds of sex while proscribing others, even the most normal heterosexual requires

‘outside’ help in assessing their behaviour. It is not surprising, then, that the ‘private’

realm of the bedroom is normalised in public discussions which emphasise the ‘personal’

nature of sexual activity, even as they standardise and classify it according to

‘impersonal’ norms. As Bell, Rubin (1992) and others have observed, the position of the

‘good’ heterosexual is extremely tenuous in this context, particularly that of the ‘good’

heterosexual woman. The introduction of any elements of ‘dissident’ sexuality into the

idealised hetero dyad must be done carefully, and framed by tropes of domesticity, love,

intimacy and commitment. Otherwise heteronormativity is threatened.

As Jane Juffer observes in her study of women’s ‘everyday’ use of pornography, expert

discourses which offer advice regarding heterosex and relationships, “from John Gray to

... erotic education videos”, have a tendency to discuss the home and, more importantly

the bedroom at the valorised centre of heterosexual practice (1998: 170-71). Like the

early sexologist who apologised for the ‘necessarily distasteful’ aspect of their

investigations, Juffer notes that by:

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…merely by invoking the bedroom, the videos, books, and many articles on

sex in women’s magazines acquire a certain sanitised voyeurism that both

links to discussions of privacy and divulges the secrets of [this] most ‘private’

space (1998: 170).

The tone of much ‘sanitised’ voyeurism assumes that heterosexuality is indeed ‘private’,

and only to be examined in the interests of its own health and reconstitution – and then

only briefly. Yet, historically, the ‘threat’ of perverse sexuality has not been imposed

from outside, but has actually emerged from within the privatised domestic space itself.

The deployment of (hetero)sexuality

In History of Sexuality Volume One, Foucault tracks what he terms ‘the deployment of

sexuality’, which occurred as mechanisms of power and surveillance shifted from church

to state in the eighteenth century. Prior to this time, he argues, both Christian and civil

law focused on defining and scrutinising ‘matrimonial relations’. As he puts it, “the sex

of husband and wife was beset by rules and recommendations”:

…the marital obligation, the ability to fulfil it, the manner in which one

complied with it, the requirements and violences which accompanied it, the

useless or unwanted caresses for which it was a pretext, its fecundity or the

way one went about making it sterile, the moments when one demanded it ...

its frequency or infrequency, and so on (1990:37).

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Marital sex was the biggest ‘problem’ of governance, and was consequently the subject

of the most intense civil and religious policing: “if [married heterosex] was found to be

lacking, it had to come forward and plead its case before a witness” (1991: 37). In

contrast, the rules governing sexual behaviours which took place outside of marriage

were confused and vague – the practice of sodomy was forbidden to married and

unmarried people, but it was grouped in with disparate sexual practices that were not

clearly defined, other than their being ‘debauchery’ or acts ‘against nature’ (1990: 37).

As Foucault puts it, “to marry a close relative or practice sodomy, to seduce a nun or

practice sadism” was considered roughly equivalent. There were legitimate sexual acts,

and there were acts ‘against the law’ – one’s sexual practices did not, as yet, determine

one’s different, or individual identity or subjectivity (1991: 39).

However, as discourses of medicine, psychiatry and social science developed new means

of mapping and classifying ‘populations’, the focus of sexual regulation shifted. There

was, in Foucault’s evocative words, “a centrifugal movement with respect to heterosexual

monogamy”, in which the massive array of prescriptions and proscriptions governing

marital behaviour were compressed and compacted (1990: 38). Male/female reproductive

sex was still regarded as both ‘natural’ and desirable, and thus:

…the array of pleasures and practices continued to be referred to it as an internal

standard; but it was spoken of less and less, or in any case in growing moderation.

Efforts to find out its secrets were abandoned; nothing further was demanded of it

than to define itself from day to day. The legitimate couple, with its regular

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sexuality, had a right to more discretion. It tended to function as a norm, one that

was stricter, perhaps, but quieter. On the other hand, what came under scrutiny

was the sexuality of children, mad men and women, and criminals; the sensuality

of those who did not like the opposite sex (1990: 38).

From this point on, marital heterosex was assumed to be ‘normal’ unless proven

otherwise. It no longer had to account for itself in the same way as before, since

‘sexuality’ was now an intense problem of those outside of heteronormativity, as “the

natural laws of matrimony and the immanent rules of sexuality began to be recorded on

two separate registers” (Foucault 1990: 40). It was not marital sex, but sexual deviance

which had to make an account of itself in order to be mapped and classified – “if regular

sexuality happened to be questioned once again, it was through a reflux movement,

originating in these peripheral sexualities” (1990: 38).

Heterosex had become a ‘private’ matter which took place in the marital bedroom, and

was thus not a matter of public discussion – in theory at least. However, while the

deployment of sexuality intensified the focus on ‘other’ sexualities, it did so as part of a

grid of power relations in which ‘private’ heteronormative domestic space was absolutely

enmeshed. The new incitements to discourse which constituted the deployment of

sexuality did not replace but instead were interwoven with pre-existing concerns about

the reproductive couple and the ‘family unit’. Hetero sexuality might not have been as

central a concern, but families, children, parenting, and household economy certainly

was. There was an overlapping of what Foucault terms the “deployment of alliance”,

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which was largely concerned with the “fixation and development of kinship ties, of

transmission of names and possessions” (1990: 106) which had been “built around a

system of rules defining the permitted and the forbidden, the licit and the illicit” (1990:

106) and the more subtle deployment of sexuality which “operates according to mobile,

polymorphous, and contingent techniques of power” (1990: 106).

In fact, the four elements that Foucault identified in the deployment of sexuality can be

seen as defined in direct relation to ‘normal’ heterosexuality. “The hysterical woman, the

masturbating child, the Malthusian couple and the ‘perverse adult’” were the “targets and

anchor points” for the new incitements and classification of sexual knowledges precisely

because of their dangerous closeness to the privileged centre of ‘regular’ sexuality – the

family home (1990: 105).

The hysteric was defined by her reproductive function, “thoroughly saturated with

sexuality”, and pathologised as a result. Yet her ‘natural’ role was to be “placed in

organic communication with the social body ... the family space ... and the life of

children” (Foucault 1990: 104). Children’s sexuality was both ‘natural’ and ‘contrary to

nature’. Since children were ‘untainted’ by adult sexuality yet also dangerously prone to

corruption and perversity, parents and other caretakers were encouraged to monitor both

individual children and institutional or communal spaces (such as schools or shared

bedrooms) (1990: 104). Married couples were ‘responsible’ to the social body, which

then, as now, either “had to be limited or on the contrary reinvigorated”, depending on

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the prevailing current of cultural anxieties (1990: 105).28 Children’s ‘private’ sexual

functioning was a matter of public interest, not only in the name of ‘nature’ but in the

name of a greater social good: public health, hygiene and population control. Finally, the

perverse adult was the clearest site of a new delineation between normal biological

‘instinct’ and desires for deviant pleasures which emerged from the psyche. As “the

young homosexual who rejects marriage or neglects his wife” or perhaps “the impotent,

sadistic, perverse husband” (1990: 111), he posed a clear threat to the heteronormative

family unit. He was therefore the legitimate subject of the medical or psychiatric “process

of normalisation or pathologisation, development of ‘corrective technology’” (1990:

104).

While the heterosexual couple ostensibly had a right to sexual discretion, in practice “the

family, parents and relatives became the chief agents of a deployment of sexuality which

drew its outside support from doctors, educators, and later psychiatrists” (Foucault 1990:

110). Given, however, that ‘regular’ heterosex still functioned as the norm, there was

(and still is) a widespread insistence that sexuality was a problem that emanated from

‘others’, who threatened the family from the outside by negatively influencing or

corrupting husbands, wives and children. That is not to say that there was no

acknowledgement of a domestic sexuality. The major conflict for the Malthusian couple

was reconciling the economies of social (reproductive) responsibility with the various

28 I cannot help but compare Foucault's descriptions of the anxieties that surrounded and constituted the 'Malthusian couple' with contemporary pronouncements by Australian politicians and public policy analysts regarding declining birthrates and the changing make-up of the population. The social 'problems' of 2002 – from aging baby-boomers, to 'illegal' immigrants, working mothers, and single women and lesbians seeking IVF – can all be seen to reflect back on this eighteenth century construction of the ideal productive heterosexual couple...who are fit to contribute their sexual and social energies to the 'right' kind of population.

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‘economies of pleasure’ which might have no bearing on reproduction at all (1990: 154).

So, while marital sex was a private matter, it is not surprising that ‘responsible’ couples

sent up “a plea for help in reconciling these unfortunate conflicts between sexuality and

alliance [in which] the family broadcast the long complaint of its sexual suffering to

doctors, educators, psychiatrists, priests and pastors, to all the “experts” who would

listen” (1990: 111).

It is easy to see the contemporary heterosexual couple in these descriptions. Heterosexual

relations are ‘normal’, yet they are constantly threatened with encroaching sexual

‘abnormalities’ which, paradoxically, are seen to be both threats from outsiders and

insidious (or in Freudian terms unconscious) threats from within. Heterosexuality was

normalised via regulation, precisely because heterosexual claims to normativity were so

tenuous. Even the most virtuous woman might fall prey to hysteria, even the most

innocent child was corruptible, and even the most demonstrative husband might carry

within him the seed of perversity. With this tension, the role of the heterosexual woman

is particularly important. As Foucault puts it:

…in the process of the hystericisation of women, ‘sex’ was defined in three

ways: as that which belongs in common to men and women; as that which

belongs par excellence to men and hence is lacking in women; but at the same

time, as that which by itself constitutes a woman’s body, ordering it wholly

(1990: 154).

The heterosexual woman was defined as normal by virtue of her potential for

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reproductive function, rather than her desire for sexual pleasure – but, as Stephen Heath

observes, the definition of ‘woman as hysteric’ forms the nucleus of psychoanalytic

theories of sexual identity (1982: 43-49). Hysteria can be read as the 'problem' of

femininity, however feminist theorists such as Elizabeth Grosz present excellent

arguments that hysteria may serve as “resistance to the demands and requirements of

heterosexual monogamy and the social and sexual role culturally assigned to women”

(1995: 158), it can also be read as a 'normal' feminine response, in a way that female

heterosexual desire cannot. I argue that a hysteric's 'control' of her cultural situation is

'quieter', more 'feminine', and much less politically and socially volatile than the 'control'

exerted by a desiring woman. Within normalised institutional heterosexuality, a woman’s

desire to perform her ‘healthy’ reproductive function is both incited and pathologised. In

contemporary terms, I would argue that heterosexual women’s sexuality is still a

‘problem’ unless it is channelled, if not into family life, then at least into the ‘committed

relationship’. Pleasure for the sake of pleasure (including erotic display, fantasy and

masturbation) are only deemed healthy within proscribed limits. As Louise Kaplan points

out, even the most ‘perverse’ (non-reproductive) sexuality can be seen to support a

normalised, masculine desire for erection and orgasm (see Kaplan 1999). Certain ‘bad’

sexual activities such as the use of pornography, fetish objects and sex toys have been

considered within various normalising frameworks, from feminism to psychoanalysis, to

be inherently masculine, and therefore may be ‘naturally’ practised by heterosexual men

but not heterosexual women (see Rubin 1992). The ‘normal’ heterosexual man may

indulge in ‘bad practice’ and still remain indisputably heterosexual, and a male. When

women pursue similar forms of sexual expression, they are deemed to be either ‘male-

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identified’ or simply duped.

In this historical context, it is not surprising that heterosexual women’s public expression

of sexual desire or even sexual knowingness provokes considerable unease. Although the

contemporary version of Foucault’s Malthusian couple can be seen as individualised

agents in a ‘pure relationship’, that relationship is at once privatised and subject to

external temptations, pressures and expert scrutiny. As feminist historians such as

Gordon (1983) and Matthews (1985) have observed, both sex workers and other sexually

active ‘fallen’ women have traditionally been viewed as a threat to the family. That is,

sex workers have been represented as vectors for venereal diseases, which men then

transmit to their wives and perhaps their children. In contemporary feminist terms, sex

workers have been perceived as a different kind of threat, in that their participation (and

apparent pleasure in) ‘bad’ or ‘male-identified’ forms of sexualised dress, grooming and

behaviour are seen as encouragement for men to demand similar forms of sexual

performance or self-representation from their romantic or domestic partners (i.e. the

‘good’ women).

In 2005, New Yorker journalist Ariel Levy received considerable attention for her book

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. In it, Levy describes

what she terms ‘the female chauvinist pig’, who is, according to the back cover blurb,

“the new ‘empowered woman’ who wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, pursues

casual sex as if it were a sport, and takes off her bra to win favour from the boys”.

Although Levy was presented in many of her Australian interviews (notably the Seven

Network’s Sunrise) as something of a prude, her actual arguments are not anti-sex per se.

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What Levy opposes is what she calls ‘raunch culture’ (which others have called ‘porno-

chic’) on the grounds that it represents a new form of compulsory heterosexual

expression which demands that women adopt particular forms of sexual expression and

sexual identity which have traditionally been seen as marginal and male-oriented. That is,

she argues, the bulk of popular culture (in the US at least) demands that women perform

their sexuality in ways that are not just male-identified (in classic feminist terms) but

defined by models of heterosexuality as defined by the commercial sex industry.

Unlike some commentators, I am unwilling to dismiss Levy’s entire argument. While I

disagree with Levy’s assertion that raunch culture has become the dominant mode of

acceptable femininity in the West, like Levy I am perplexed by the tendency in US

popular culture to represent sex workers and sex industry aesthetics as aspirational

symbols of sexy rebelliousness in a period in which abstinence education and virginity

pledges are being promoted by the US government as valid alternatives to safe sex.

My views on feminism and the aesthetics of the sex industry are somewhat different to

Levy’s, however. While Levy acknowledges that feminists have actively participated in

the sex industry as not only performers but also producers, her main concern seems to be

that sexual exhibitionism and participation in public sex culture is an ‘inauthentic’ form

of sexual expression for women that results, by and large, from an overexposure to the

male-dominated media’s co-opting of feminist arguments. Her opening case study, the

reality soft-porn series Girls Gone Wild, certainly seems an example of unethical media

production. The series producers travel to resort bars and beaches, inviting young women

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to flash and/or simulate solo or group sex for their cameras. The participants are unpaid,

but are rewarded with branded clothing, and, as Levy observes, while some participants

seem to be subject to ‘peer pressure’ there is no shortage of young women volunteers.

Certainly, in Levy’s description, the Girls Gone Wild producers come across as

exploiters. One tells Levy that the aim is to attract not ‘girls-next-door’ but ‘tens’, who

are described as “100-110 pounds, big boobs, blonde, blue eyes, ideally no piercing or

tattoos” (Levy 2005: 12). Although the series is primarily marketed to heterosexual men,

only women appear onscreen, and same-sex kissing and fondling is encouraged.

It would be easy to dismiss Levy on the basis of class bias. Throughout Female

Chauvinist Pigs she disparagingly describes the middle-class women who participate in

raunch culture in derogatory terms: they are ‘skanky’, ‘kitschy’, ‘slutty’, ‘tacky’,

‘tawdry’ and ‘bawdy’.29 As Laura Kipnis (1992) has argued in her study of Hustler

magazine, porn has not traditionally been designed to appeal to middle-class, university

educated women. On the contrary, pornographers from the Marquis de Sade onwards

have explicitly opposed bourgeois notions of ‘good taste’. The visual language of raunch

culture is, by definition, the ‘downwardly mobile’, white-trash aesthetic of ‘bad’

femininity: visible g-strings, big bleached hair, fake tans, obvious fake nails and breast

implants, midriff tops, mini-skirts, tight hipsters, platform shoes and belly-piercings.30

Levy is right when she observes that the popularisation of these fashions among middle-

29 Levy makes it clear that she doesn’t support the ironic use of these terms, and is not deploying them in a camp or ironic sense. 30 For a (rare) detailed academic feminist exploration of the intersections of gender, race and class within porn narratives and aesthetics.see Constance Penley ‘Crackers and whackers: the white trashing of porn’ in Williams (ed) 2004.

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class women is a recent phenomenon – until the 1990s this ‘more is more’ sexual

aesthetic was exclusively limited to professional sex workers and working-class ‘sluts’.

While Levy claims that Girls Gone Wild “is not extraordinary, it’s emblematic” (2005:

17), I would argue that the popularisation of the sex industry aesthetic is not as

homogenising or bleakly heteronormalising as Female Chauvinist Pigs suggests. Her

case studies are worth unpacking, since they represent broader contemporary concerns

around public and mediated representations of sexuality. These concerns are not

‘censorious’, and are grounded in popular feminist and Marxist critiques of media culture

and sexuality, particularly in regard to ‘public sex’. They are interesting examples of

what I see as a tendency to encapsulate or cocoon normative assumptions of ideal

gendered sexual conduct within discussions of ‘corrupt’ media or cultural practice.31

Certainly, the increased availability of porn online has resulted in a destigmatisation and

demystification of porn in popular culture. Pornography is no longer ‘marginal’ – it is

recognised not only as a major industry in most western cultures (and a major US export)

but also as a major aesthetic influence on popular culture. I would argue, however, that

the increased acceptability of sexual media is not simply a sign of patriarchal capitalism’s

triumph over feminism, or, as it’s often explained, a simple proof that ‘sex sells’.32

31 Naomi Wolf’s 1997 Promiscuities is a notable example of this tendency, but it occurs frequently within general non-academic feminist inflected commentary on mediated sexuality. It also appears in conservative or right-wing discourses around sexuality. 32 As Linda Williams (2004) observes, even the most ‘mainstream’ pornography has responded to its critics in significant ways. Rape and coercive ‘seduction’ is no longer a feature of mainstream pornography, nor are the ‘violent’ aspects of Hollywood cinema, such as gunfights or fistfights. The ‘extreme’ porn genre represented by filmmakers like Max Hardcore and Rob Black, which feature activities such as spitting, name-calling and ‘swirlies’ (flushing a sex partners head in the toilet during sex) is considered ‘fringe’ in the US, and such videos are not permitted for sale in Australia under the X classification at all.

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Along with media theorists and sociologists such as Ken Plummer (1995), Catharine

Lumby (1997, 1999) and Brian McNair (2002), I argue that what Levy describes as

raunch culture is one aspect of a changing popular discourse of sexuality and gender that

is manifested in diverse forms, including (but not limited to) changes in the reporting of

sex scandals, talk-show confessions, changes in fashion and grooming, and the

availability of DIY media technologies such as digital cameras and blogging software. In

fact, I agree with McNair that these changes are evidence of a ‘democratisation of desire’

(2002). Within this culture, public performances of ‘sexiness’ are indeed commodified.

While this can involve the reinscription of dominant heteronormative modes of gendered

sexual expression, it can, as I will argue, be seen as a reworking of discursive

understandings of what it means to perform gender and sexuality. It can also allow

potentially challenging queer or feminist refigurings of sexual pleasure and gendered

behaviour to circulate in ways that can coexist with or even replace hegemonic

heterosexualities.

By claiming that the mainstreaming of raunch culture is a product of queer and feminist

politics, I am not arguing, as Levy puts it, that “the feminist project [has] already been

achieved” (2005: 3), and that misogyny is no longer a relevant force in women’s

everyday lives. Instead, I am arguing that raunch culture represents something more

complex than women deciding that they are, as Levy puts it, “empowered enough to get

Brazilian waxes … and join the frat party of pop culture” (2005: 4). The changing

popular discourses of sexuality reflect changing modes of femininity and masculinity,

and involve changes in the way men, as well as women, are representing themselves

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within these discourses. In addition, these discourses reflect the way that popular cultural

producers, including those in the sex industry, have responded to feminism and queer

politics.

Who said porn was feminist?

While Levy cites interviews with Erica Jong and Susan Brownmiller to support her thesis

that feminism and commercial porn aesthetics are (or ought to be) dichotomous, the

history of feminist involvement with, and attitudes towards, public commercial sexual

expression is more complex than these interviews suggest. While it is true that many

second-wave feminists opposed the sex industry, and regarded female sex workers with

pity or scorn, others did not draw such clear distinctions. As diverse feminists such as

Amber Hollibaugh (1992) and Pat Califia (1992) have observed, many feminist activists

were themselves sex workers in one capacity or another (albeit often closeted). Some

theorised feminist opposition to sex work as an expression of class privilege that could

only be exercised by those who were in a position (by virtue of family background or

educational opportunity) to be able to afford to fund their everyday expenses (including

volunteer or activist work) with the income from well-paying jobs or inheritances.

Others, such as Susie Bright, took up the critiques of radical feminists such as Andrea

Dworkin and interpreted them as a challenge to create new representations and stories of

female (and feminist) sexuality. If pornography (and indeed any public discourse of sex)

was seen as a site of male privilege, these women reasoned, then it was time for women

to claim these privileges for themselves. As Bright put it:

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Here’s the irony ... every single woman who pioneered the sexual

revolution, every erotic-feminist-bad-girl-and-proud-of-it-stiletto-shitkicker,

was once a fan of Andrea Dworkin. Until 1984, we all were. She was the

one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye, she made you feel like

you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for

inspection and a bonfire …We saw the sexism of the porn business ... but

we also saw some intriguing possibilities and amazing maverick spirit. We

said, ‘What if we made something that reflected our politics and values, but

was just as sexually bold?’ (Bright 2005a).

The ‘politics and values’ Bright refers to were those of the women’s health and self-help

movements, in which women sought to create discourses of female health and sexuality

that were not based on male-dominated models (Loe 1999). As pornstar-turned-feminist

porn-producer Candida Royalle put it:

We were reclaiming who we were as women, our true essence, what we

deserved as human beings. We were shedding our political preconceptions.

These efforts [running a women’s café and free clinic] highlighted a

wonderful sisterhood, and the right to sexual pleasure (Royalle in Nagle

1997: 157).33

The early 1970s saw a proliferation of popular feminist non-fiction texts which

aimed to ‘demystify’ female sexuality and promote female autonomy in

33 Royalle was part of the feminist pornstar support group ‘Club 90’, which also included well known performers and activists Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera.

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reproductive and sexual health, including autonomy in sexual pleasure. These

texts, which included the Boston Women’s Health Collective’s Our Bodies, Our

Selves (1974), Lonnie Barbach’s For Yourself (1975), Nancy Friday’s My Secret

Garden (1974) and Shere Hite’s The Hite Report (1976), drew on Masters and

Johnson’s sex research to promote masturbation and sexual fantasy as a prime

source of women’s sexual independence.34 Betty Dodson’s Liberating

Masturbation (1974) (still in print as Sex for One) promoted masturbation as an

antidote to heteronormative romantic ideologies and personal neuroses. Dodson

was influential in promoting vibrators as reliable devices for self-pleasuring, and

while these were available in some department stores, in the main they were sold

in male-oriented sex shops. Consequently, when feminist health worker Joani

Blank opened the first ‘feminist sex shop’, Good Vibrations, as a mail-order

company in 1977, vibrators and erotic fiction formed a major part of her stock.

As Meiya Loe explains in her study of the history of Good Vibrations as a form of

‘feminist capitalism’, the ‘ideology of sexual empowerment’ was an implicit aspect of the

Good Vibrations branding and marketing strategy. While Blank, who no longer runs the

business, was heterosexual, and reflected a fairly conservative feminist approach to

sexual expression, later staff members such as Susie Bright, Shar Rednour, Jackie Strano

and Carol Queen (still ‘resident sexologist’) brought a queerer sensibility to the store and

its products. As Bright put it in a 1992 interview:

34 This movement within feminism was not universal, however, even among feminists who were ‘pro sex’ in other respects. In her 1983 article ‘Sensual uncertainty, or why the Clitoris is not enough’ Lynne Segal questioned what she saw as an uncritical overreliance on the behaviorist psychology of Masters and Johnson .

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We had a big controversy with the owner of the store, Joani, who didn’t

want to have dildos in the store because she was so exasperated with

everyone adoring ‘the phallus’; she just wanted to get the phallus out of her

store entirely. And I had to say to her, Look, I’ve got lesbians banging down

my door for dildos. I know that’s not supposed to be what lesbians want, but

that’s just because we’ve accepted this dishonesty that there’s nothing

physically pleasurable about fucking-and there is! ... It’s very stimulating.

People aren’t just doing it because they’ve been brainwashed by the

patriarchy; it feels good! (Juno & Vale 1992: 215)

Although feminists had been producing explicitly feminist erotic writing and imagery

since the 1970s, it was not until 1984 that feminists began to produce and distribute

sexually explicit imagery in the traditionally ‘masculine’ domains of magazine and video

pornography. It could be argued that these productions were a direct response to feminist

challenges to the broader commercial sex industry, and to the ‘lesbian sex wars’ in which

butch/femme and BDSM sexual play were opposed as ‘violence against women’ (for

accounts of these debates from the ‘sex-positive’ perspective, see Vance, 1992, and

Califia in Samois). Lesbian partners Nan Kinney and Debi Sundahl met at a Women

Against Violence Against Women meeting, but believed that feminist targeting of the sex

industry as a prime site of protest against male oppression was based on classed

prejudice. As Sundahl put it, “Why, when abuse happens across class and race lines did

we choose to march in poorer sections where the sex theatres were, and where poorer

women made a living?” (Sundahl in Nagle 1997: 159). The pair used Sundahl’s earnings

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as a stripper to fund the lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs, whose title was a direct

challenge to the anti-porn tendencies in the feminist magazine off our backs. Their

company, Blush Entertainment, also included Fatale video production and distribution

companies.35 According to Sundahl, she started the company “because both gay and

straight men had tons of sexually explicit material, and lesbians had zero … Fatale

created the genre of authentic lesbian erotic videos, directly challenging the ruling

stereotypes of lesbians created by men for men through their girl-on-girl videos”

(Sundahl in Nagle 1997: 163).

At the same time, Royalle, who had worked as a porn performer from 1975 to 1981, was

rethinking her involvement in the industry. According to Royalle:

I decided there was nothing wrong with the concept of sexual entertainment,

but most of the actual films reflected a sexually shame-based society and its

negative attitude toward women … I decided that the answer was to create

materials that bespoke a more loving and healthy attitude to sex and women.

Were women exploited? Yes, because while we were essential to the

production of porn and in fact what drove the sales of pornography, our

sexual needs were not addressed: we might as well have been blow-up dolls

(Royalle in Nagle 1997: 157).

Royalle’s videos for Femme Productions are widely credited with pioneering the now

mainstream (and commercially successful) genre of ‘couples porn’. Neither Royalle’s

35 For detailed account of the development of North American lesbian and dyke (as opposed to ‘girl-on-girl’) pornographic film and video see Butler 2004.

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heterosexual videos nor Sundahl’s lesbian films were seen as marketable in the

mainstream porn industry until they had established their own distribution networks

(Nagle 1997).

In offering these examples I am not seeking to advance the claim that female-produced

porn is fundamentally different from (or better than) porn made by men. I am, however,

seeking to counter the implication in Levy’s complaints against raunch culture that

mainstream porn producers have conjured the idea that porn can support feminist

principles out of a simple desire to expand audiences. The assertion that women can

enjoy watching (and making) porn comes from within feminism, and reflects not just a

venal marketing claim but an expression of political activism.

By the late1990s, ‘alternative’ sexual imagery depicting queer and feminist porn was in

fact gaining a mainstream audience, as it was adapted by music icons like Madonna, and

by designers like Vivienne Westwood, Thierry Mugler and John Paul Gaultier, who

appropriated elements of queer/fetishistic sexuality into fashion designs and illustrations.

As McNair observes, “if the anonymous near-naked girls who decorated Duran Duran

videos … were clearly doing it for the boys … Madonna was just as clearly in control of

her own sexualised image” (2002: 67).36

36 McNair makes the interesting point that contrary to the mundane assertion that ‘sex sells’, Madonna’s Sex book and Erotica CD were actually seen as ‘too threatening’ (i.e. too queer) by many markets, and it was not until the release of her 1998 Ray of Light CD that her sales returned to the levels she achieved prior to the Sex/Erotica package.

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While the above examples have focused on US feminists, the women’s health movement

in Australia from the 1970s onwards, as Kimberley O’Sullivan observes, encouraged

sexual exploration as feminist praxis. As O’Sullivan explains, the Leichhardt Women’s

Health Centre (a feminist inner-city clinic) ran evening courses on women’s bodies and

sexuality which:

consisted of intense discussions of bodies and sexual self-images and

always included a genital self-examination … The Centre also promoted a

leaflet on tips for reducing painful periods, one of which was to have an

orgasm. It cheerfully advised that if you don’t feel like sex with a partner,

use a vibrator, which was strongly recommended for the sexually self-

sufficient woman (1997: 116).

The Australian context for the production and consumption of ‘feminist/women’s porn’

was fairly similar to that of the US, although it took place on a much smaller scale. Debi

Sundahl’s On Our Backs and Fatale videos achieved limited distribution in Australia in

the 1980s, and are credited by O’Sullivan as a catalyst for the formation of various

underground lesbian sex publications and parties in Sydney in the 1990s, notably Wicked

Women magazine (which was launched by Jasper (Francine) Laybutt and Lisa Salmon in

1988) and the Wicked Women parties (O’Sullivan 1997).37 As Kerry Bashford observes,

from the late eighties onward, Sydney hosted a small but thriving sex-radical and

coalitionist culture, which encouraged sexual exhibitionism, ‘fetishistic’ sex and political 37 An anthology of writing from Wicked Women contributors was published as Kink in 1994. A fictional, but highly evocative account of the 1990s sex-positive queer sex party scene occurs in Fiona McGregor’s novel Chemical Palace, published in 2004.

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affiliation between feminism and gay and lesbian activists (Bashford: 1993). Certainly in

my undergraduate years in the early 1990s, Madonna’s more popular work was seen by

my fellow students as existing in a kind of continuum with the smaller, more

underground Sydney scene.38 The idea that sexually explicit images and texts were being

made by and for women seemed tremendously exciting, even if most of us were less than

enamoured with Candida Royalle’s slightly tame take on ‘couples porn’. At the same

time, the Riot Grrl movement in popular music was adapting the punk DIY ethos for

contemporary feminism. This movement was fairly small, yet it was highly influential in

reshaping the feminist aesthetics of sexuality. Originally it was US based, loosely

comprised of bands and fanzines (or ‘zines’) which deployed the values and rhetoric of

punk in the name of feminism or, as the slogan put it, ‘revolution girl-style now’.

However, with the parallel rise of online networks it quickly became a global movement.

For example, Rosie Cross, the creator of the online zine GeekGrrl, was based in Sydney

but her zine had readers around the world.39

In addition to adopting a DIY attitude towards cultural production and distribution, young

women who organised around, or identified with, the Riot Grrl ethos adapted the punk

subcultural strategies of parody, appropriation and subversive repetition/reinscription of

‘conservative’ iconography to both mock and pay loving tribute to forms of feminine

38 Sydney lesbian photographer C.Moore Hardy, who documented this scene, notes that this period was one sexual celebration, erotic performance and coalition between gay men, lesbians and other queers. She draws parallels to the cabaret scene in 1920s Berlin, and notes that mainstream media texts such as Black & White, Vogue, and Australian Women’s Forum promoted the subcultural aesthetics of latex, leather and fetishware in a somewhat sanitised form. (Hardy 1997) 39 See Bail (ed) 1997)

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expression that had been rejected by many second-wave feminists.40 As Martina

Ladendorf (2000) has observed, the young feminist producers of the zines like Bust,

Bitch, Disgruntled Housewife and Smile and Act Nice favoured the ironic juxtaposition of

retro cheesecake pin-ups with ‘cute’ graphic images such as ‘Hello Kitty’ to illustrate

their discussions of body image, employment opportunities, bands and other traditionally

feminist topics. The deployment of ‘cute’, pink or feminine images was, Ladendorf

argues, analogous to the use of the term ‘girls’ rather than ‘women’ within Riot Grrl

texts. Tiaras, slip-dresses, high-heels and make-up were adapted by straight and queer

women in a kind of ‘high-femme’ feminism, as described by Bust editor Debbie Stoller:

Unlike our feminist foremothers, who claimed that makeup was the opiate

of the misses, we’re positively prochoice when it comes to matters of

feminine display …We’re well aware, thank you very much, of the beauty

myth that’s working to keep women obscene and not heard, but we just

don’t think that transvestites should have all the fun. We love our lipstick,

have a passion for polish, and, basically, adore this armour that we call

‘fashion’. To us, it’s fun, it’s feminine, and, in the particular way we flaunt

it, it’s *definitely* feminist (Stoller in Goldberg 2001).

This combination of language and imagery was designed to address young women who

were, at this point, feeling alienated from the second-wave feminists, who were

appearing more and more like authority figures and less like peers. Sexuality and gender

40 As Dick Hebdidge (1979) famously observed, this process of collaging cultural objectsand images was prevalent within various punk cultures from the 1970s onward.

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were core issues within Riot Grrl culture. Performers like Kathleen Hanna appeared on

stage with the words CUNT, SLUT and RAPE written on their bodies, in a provocation

designed to confront issues of constraints placed on women’s sexuality. The sex

industry, including porn and stripping, was discussed extensively, particularly in the

writing and music of young women who worked within the industry itself.41 Sexuality

was represented within these texts both as a site of risk or fear and a site of sexual

power. Sex-positive ‘pioneers’ like Betty Dodson, Annie Sprinkle and Susie Bright

were represented as ‘she-roes’ and teachers within feminist subcultures, even by the

same young women who attended ‘Reclaim the Night’ rallies. As journalist Michelle

Goldberg explained:

Full of images of campy 50s pin-up girls and downtown rocker chicks and

stories about strong, brilliant women alongside first-person narratives both

humorous and heart-rending, [girlzines felt] like the coolest slumber party in the

world (Goldberg 2001)42.

While early forms of alternative media production were extremely underground, by the

late 1990s the ‘girl revolution’ had become sufficiently popularised (particularly through

the music and videos and associated media texts generated by and around artists like

Courtney Love, Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette) to be worth ‘co-opting’ on a larger

scale. By the time the Spice Girls emerged with their calls for ‘Girl Power’, it was widely 41 Kimberly O’Sullivan notes that she and other Australian feminist sex activists also combined feminism with sex work in her ‘25 years on the left’ O’Sullivan 2002. 42 Given the fragility of zines, there are few hard-copy or online versions from the nineties still in circulation. However, two collections of US zine articles were published in book form in the late 1990s, and offer a great sampler. See Karp and Stoller 1999 and Taormino and Green 1997.

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considered that the ‘real’ Riot Grrls had moved on. However, their legacy continued in

the form of popular media that represented female sexuality in aesthetic modes that were

playful but still confronting in heteronormative terms. As Ladendorf notes, Janice

Winship’s 1987 study of British women’s magazines strongly argued for the merging of

pleasure and aesthetics with feminist writing, and called for a new feminist media form

that seems to have a great deal in common with the girlzine genre that was born in the

1990s, and continues in various forms:

I’d like a new magazine to strive to create non-oppressive visual forms of

indulgent pleasures and fantasies …. Unless we try to do that it is difficult to

see how the nexus of femininity-desire-consumption which commercial

magazines and their adverts trade in can be broken or how a different visual

vocabulary around femininity and masculinity can be developed. Such a

visual project would have to give high priority to colour, glossy paper and to

advertising. It would probably involve re-using, making fun of and

commenting on the colour and stylistic conventions customarily used by

women’s magazines rather that wholly breaking away from that format ….

The post-modern reliance on retro styles which raid the past for its images

and re-present them in contemporary contexts makes such a design and

visual project more feasible (Winship 1987: 162).

Contemporary media representations of ‘empowered’ female sexuality may not

meet with the approval of feminists who eschew the overt performance of

sexualised femininity. There is no doubt that an image that seems to one viewer to

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be fun, parodic and subversive can represents the reinscription of a repressive

‘norm’ to another. It is important, however, to acknowledge that audiences

interpret texts quite differently in different contexts. The imagery of girl zines was

assembled by girls themselves because it spoke to their own understanding of

sexuality in specific ways. As such, they offer a model of reparative reading,

writing and media production, by adapting media forms that previous feminists

had previously identified (and in some cases dismissed) as repressive

‘technologies of gender’ (see de Lauretis 1980). The eroticised imagery and texts

in girl zines both acknowledged the pleasurable aspects of popular culture’s

representations of female sexuality and critiqued and challenged elements within

these representations. By the turn of the century these alternative aesthetics, which

often combined iconography drawn from old Hollywood films and burlesque

posters with signs of contemporary sexual rebelliousness (such as tattooing and

body-piercing), had crossed over from queer and other sexual subcultures to more

mainstream media imagery, such as pornography.43

At the same time, an increasingly open mediasphere (facilitated by the Clinton/Lewinsky

sex scandal) was allowing discussions of sexual behaviour and sexual conduct to move

from the problem pages to the mainstream news and entertainment media. In crude terms,

the genie of ‘blatant’ sexuality was out of the bottle.44 The production of explicit or

blatant sexual texts and imagery was not limited to ‘alternative’ feminist subcultures. Just

as the women’s health movement influenced early producers and distributors of feminist

43 For an expanded discussion of girls’ adaptation of the punk ethos see Leblanc 1999. 44 For more on the ‘feminisation’ of the mediasphere see Catharine Lumby 1997,1999.

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sexual material, individuals and groups within queer subcultures (particularly gay men)

also produced pornography in politicised contexts. In the UK and Australia, and to a

lesser degree the US, gay men’s health organisations responded to the HIV epidemic by

producing texts and images that eroticised both safer sex practices and affiliation with

gay communities. As Paul Sendziuk observes, as early as 1985 the Australian response to

AIDS included images and texts designed to convince gay men “that safe sex was not

only possible but that it was fun and pleasurable” (2003: 111). Early campaigns included

the ‘You’ll Never Forget the Feeling of Safe Sex’ poster and brochures that mimicked a

mainstream media advertising campaign (featuring a toned, naked man laying back

seductively in bed) for Sheridan sheets that was current at the time.

As in the women’s health movement of the 1970s, Australian peer educators sought to

demedicalise and demystify their constituency’s understanding of their own bodies, and

their healthcare. Consequently, educational material aimed at gay men used explicit

language like ‘don’t get cum up your bum’ (Sendziuk 2003: 113) and presented explicit

eroticised narratives of negotiating and practising safer sex.45 By the 1990s, campaigns

were more blatant than suggestive, and included detailed, colour images (in some cases

photographic) of sexual scenes with close-up images of erect penises. These were subject

to censorship in some cases (particularly in states that had stricter classification

guidelines, such as Queensland) and a distribution policy document was drafted to assist

45 The Terence Higgins trust in the UK also promoted safer sex through sexually explicit comic books and other graphic styles (McGrath 1993).

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educators who had to field complaints from both offended citizens and concerned

politicians (see Leonard & Mitchell 2000).46 As Jeffreys Weeks noted in 1998:

One of the crucial things about the gay community is that it has been

explicitly organised around sexuality, which makes it easier to talk about

sexuality in relationship to the AIDS crisis. Other communities are not so

explicitly organised around sexual issues and therefore have been more

reluctant to discuss issues about unsafe sexual practices and changing sexual

behaviour (Weeks in Sendziuk 2003: 113; see also Patton 1990, 1996).

It makes sense, then, that women who were both comfortable with sexual explicitness

and affiliated with queer and other sexual subcultures would want to adopt these

strategies. Annie Sprinkle (who was at that time still primarily a ‘straight’ sex worker)

was employed by Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1987 to make a lesbian safer sex video,

Current Flow, which was designed to both demonstrate and promote the use of latex

barriers in woman-to-woman sex. Sprinkle, who had lost several friends, lovers and

fellow sex workers to HIV, believed that “if everyone in porn started using safer sex,

people could see exactly how to do it and see that safer sex could be hot sex” (2001: 56).

Although Sprinkle herself practiced safer sex in all subsequent films she played in or

produced, the heterosexual porn industry was slow to pick up the message.47 However,

46 For an account of Australian safer sex promotion material an artwork that eroticised no just ‘protection’ but also positive men’s sexuality see Gott 1997. 47 Sprinkle has described her move from ‘hardcore’ to ‘new age’ sexual exploration as a direct response to the grief and loss she experienced in the 1980s, particularly during the time her lover, Marco Vassi, was dying from AIDS related illness. In the absence of clear safer sex guidelines, Sprinkle explains that she and Vassi “were forced to be more creative and experimental, to expand our concept of sex”, incorporating

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queer/feminist sex-educators and sex workers such as Susie Bright, Carol Queen, Nina

Hartley, Tristan Taormino, Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano would, from the mid-1990s

onwards, produce and distribute pornography that was explicitly designed to be

‘educational’ as well as erotic.

Alternative porn genres: edu-porn, docu-porn, community porn

Although Levy and others (e.g. Wolf 1997; Jeffreys 2005) have argued that contemporary

sexual aesthetics have been ‘corrupted’ by the popularisation of pornography, I argue that

even the most commercial image contains the possibility for an original a productive

rereading by consumers. Since there is no ‘outside’ of discourse, women must perform

sex and gender in recognisable ways. For those who wish to explore the production and

consumption of queer/feminist porn, this means producing and consuming texts that look,

in many ways, similar to ‘masculine’ pornography. For some, this production and

consumption is viewed as a form of ‘drag’, or a kind of transgression of male privilege

(see Califia 1992). For others, the production and consumption of porn is seen as a kind

of ‘outreach’, or a means of communicating non-normative thinking on sex to an

audience that might be wary of radical or avant-garde media forms but receptive to

radical content. Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano ‘trained’ at Fatale Media and Good

Vibrations respectively. In 1998 the couple established SIR video, a production company

techniques borrowed from Taoist, tantric and Native American teachers (1999: 153). She later worked with Joseph Kramer to create Erotic Massage Rituals for men and women. These rituals were designed to recreate the heightened states of pleasure gay men had been experiencing through sex and drugs, with minimal transmission of body fluids. Sprinkle offers very non-threatening straight-friendly ‘how-to’ erotic massage instructions for men and women in her self-help book Dr Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex Life Makeover Penguin (2005).

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for ‘alternative’ pornography. Their first videos, Bend Over Boyfriend (BOB) and Bend

Over Boyfriend 2, featured bisexual activist (and ex-lesbian separatist) Carol Queen and

her partner Robert Lawrence consciously and graphically instructing male/female couples

on the art of male-receptive anal sex (see Queen 1999). The BOB films were described

by one feminist reviewer as ‘a new generation of sexy sex ed, an eye-opening foray into

the taboo region of straight, male, virgin ass’ (Firefox 2002). In the films, sex worker and

qualified sexologist Dr Carol Queen (whose publications include Exhibitionism for the

Shy) comments that being communicative might be:

a ‘new thing’ for the ‘ladies’, who are probably ‘not used to’

communicating what they want or do not want from their men, but

can, and must listen, while their men voice what they want, for anal

sex obviously warrants more communication than ordinary hetero sex.

Queen even expresses the hope that this communicative effort might

have some influence on one’s regular, non-communicative sex life

(Butler 2004: 190).

Both the BOB videos, and SIR’s later films Hard Love and How to Fuck in High Heels

include explicit or implicit instruction on the use of explicit ‘dirty talk’ as eroticised

sexual negotiation. As producer and performer Shar Rednour puts it:

What we do, we do because we don’t get excited by the porn that’s out

there. Also, we know as sex educators that there’s not enough dirty talking

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out there, and we feel like communication transforms people’s sex lives. It

can transform regular people into sex stars (Rednour in Firefox 2002).

Like the zine scene, SIR Videos reflect the DIY ethos:

‘We’re like the punk rock company’, says Jackie. They [SIR] made both

Hard Love (in which Jackie stars) and How to Fuck in High Heels (Shar’s

star vehicle) in four days -- and had time to shoot a music video for one of

The Hail Marys' songs and throw themselves a benefit so they could pay for

renting the cameras, to boot (Queen 2001b).

Like the BOB videos, SIR’s dyke videos reflect a politicised erotic ethos. Hard Love and

How to Fuck in High Heels emphasise verbal negotiation as a conduit to pleasure. As

Heather Butler describes it:

Dildo penetration (or rather, the dyke who penetrates) is always concerned

with the woman penetrated; there is a constant need for affirmation. ‘Is this

ok?’ and ‘Does that feel good?’ are two questions asked repeatedly and with

apparent sincerity throughout the film (Butler 2004: 187).

In her study of lesbian porn (and the lesbian-produced BOB series), Butler states that “if

lesbians attempt to educate … the hetero mass, they not only contribute something

authentic to this world that would completely exclude them otherwise but they make their

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own desire visible as well” (2004: 191-192). While I am not entirely convinced by claims

of absolute authenticity, Butler’s argument certainly resonates with my readings of

queer/feminist-produced sexually explicit media. Like heterosexual amateur videos, these

films attempt to both document a sense of ‘realness’ in sexual experience and instruct

audiences in alternative sexual pleasures and practices. Even when these claims for

instruction are utopian or liberationist (and many of them are), I argue that their

popularisation demonstrates the potential for a more general openness to alternatives to

heteronormativity. Unlike Levy, I do not see the uptake of ‘feminist’ porn as a sign that

misogyny will always win the day. Instead I see it as a sign that quite radical sexual ideas

and languages can be readily translatable into normative cultures, and can not only be co-

opted but can actually change the cultures that incorporate them, in unpredictable ways.

Others, such as On Our Backs alumna Susie Bright see the mainstreaming of raunch

culture as part of a history of the commodification of ‘countercultural’ politics, which has

a history she tracks back to the 1960s and the popularisation of the ‘Bond Girl’ and

‘Playboy Bunny’ as ‘liberated women’:

It’s obvious to ME that the ripoff of sex positive feminism had nothing to

with its progenitors; rather it’s a betrayal. When I think of girls digging sex

w/men and cock, do I think of Girls Gone Wild? Of course not! My role

models for self-aware straight women would be the Sweet Action magazine

coven: women who doing DIY [porn with a] girl p.o.v., with no apologies,

and as you will see from their mags, no bullshit to please anyone but

themselves (Bright 2005b).

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In the next two chapters I will explore some of the ways that public discourses of gender

and sexuality have shifted in the past ten years. I will link these changes to various shifts

in popular understandings of sexuality, and argue that queer and feminist critiques of

heteronormative culture have in fact changed popular sex-related media considerably. In

particular I will examine the ways that representations of sex have been linked to

technological changes, and look at the potential for the ‘democratisation of desire’

(McNair 2002) that is offered by amateur porn websites and swingers contact magazines.

I will also look at the ways that representations of male and female-embodied eroticism

have changed in response to parallel shifts in pornography and popular sex education. In

doing so, I will make a case for an ethics-based reading of sexually explicit media that

does not look at porn (and related texts) as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ representations but instead

asks what porn is doing and what it can be made to do in the future. In doing so, I will

draw on histories that link popular sexual discourses to technological changes, and point

to some of the ways popular understandings of sexual bodies and sexual acts can be seen

to change rapidly in these contexts.

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Chapter 4

Out of the bedroom … heterosexuality in amateur

porn

Commentators such as Ariel Levy who decry the ‘sexualisation’ of the media and popular

culture tend to position the home as a refuge from sexuality, yet one which is increasingly

subjected to explicit ‘home invasions’ by television programs and pornographic websites.

This conflict around the role of sex in the home reflects the contradictions between

constructions of ‘healthy’ and ‘perverse’ sexuality, and the gendering of domestic space

as private, feminine, and therefore ‘not perverse’. In addition to this opposition of healthy

and unhealthy (gendered) sexualities, there is a tension between the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’

in the representation of sexuality, in which private, domestic sex is presumed to be more

real than mediated sex. Pornography is generally assumed to be a ‘male’ discourse and

therefore falls into the category of ‘public sex’, with the potential to threaten the stability

of the private space of domesticated sexuality. Even more than other forms of popular

media, porn is represented as contaminating (potentially addictive) substance which only

ever comes in from ‘outside’. Moreover, porn is frequently read within theorisations of

popular media as a ‘fake’ genre, despite its intrinsic links with the history of photography

and cinema as modern technologies of knowledge which reveal the truth about ‘real’ life.

As I will demonstrate, ‘real’ domestic sexual practices and ‘fake’ representations of sex

are hard to separate in a realm where images and bodies interact in complex ways.

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I am not proposing that sex within the bedroom is itself ‘normal’ as in ‘boring’ (as

opposed to transgressive sex which occurs ‘outside’), nor that pornographic sex is ‘better’

or ‘more real’ than non-pornographic sex. Rather, I am interested in the ways that the

discourses of heterosex that are produced within these ‘private’ spaces complicate

assumptions about the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of heterosexuality. Amateur and home-made

pornographic pictures, videos, websites and stories reveal a ‘domesticated’ sexuality

which does not seek to hide itself or to subject itself to ‘expert’ assessments. These are

images which are created and circulated within and between domestic spaces, via new

technologies – from the handycams and VCRs of the 1980s to the webcams of the new

century. The culture of home-made porn, I will argue, reveals the tenuousness of

heteronormativity itself, by blurring normative boundaries between private and public,

everydayness and celebrity/stardom. Unlike the normalising discourses of sex advisers

and educators, amateur heterosexual porn both eroticises and disturbs constructions of

gender difference when it comes to sex. Further, the eroticisation of sexual exhibitionism

in a non-commercial genre troubles screen studies’ theories of the ‘gaze’ and ‘reality’ in

the viewing economies of porn, by challenging the boundaries drawn between the

producer and the consumer of media texts.

The history of porn/reality

Linda Williams argues against the psychoanalytic readings of visual pleasure, such as

those proposed by Metz (1977) and Mulvey (1975), which represent the viewing subject

as a fetishist who takes pleasure not in the ‘reality’ of cinematic representation, but in his

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fantasy of a missing signifier – “the absence in the image of the materially real object”

(Williams 1989: 44). As Williams puts it, these theories are problematic in that they do

not take into account the specific technologies of visibility which cinema and

photography offer. It is as though “the effect of the cinematic apparatus [is] simply an

enhancement of perverse desires that already exist in the subject” (1989: 45). Instead,

Williams looks to the origins of cinema, particularly photographer Eadweard

Muybridge’s stop-motion studies of naked men and women in his 1887 Animal

Locomotion (popular with both scientists and the public of the day). The desire to know

the ‘truth’ of human bodies and human movement was fuelled, Williams argues, by the

development of photographic technologies which made bodies more and more visible.48

Cinema and photography were in themselves ‘transfer points’ of power/knowledge and

pleasure, enmeshing scientia sexualis in a ‘frenzy of the visible’, a desire to know and,

more importantly, to see the truth of sexual difference, of bodily movement, and bodily

pleasures. Early pornography thus developed hand in hand with early documentary

photography and filmmaking. The narrative involved was the narrative of sex itself, and

the desire to ‘reveal’ all that could be seen in sexual movement.

Women were particularly sexualised and fetishised in Muybridge’s photographs, but

Williams argues against the psychoanalytic model, advanced by Mulvey, that this

fetishisation places women outside of the ‘patriarchal’ agency of the masculinist

narrative. Instead, Williams proposes that Muybridge’s ‘artistic’ depiction of women

twirling, flirting with fans, and lying down on beds (rather than simply running, jumping 48 Williams also discusses Thomas Edison's unreleased 1893/94 Kinetoscope film Fred Ott's Sneeze as an example of the earliest cinematic attempt to represent the truth of bodies in motion, noting that Edison originally wanted an attractive young woman to 'perform' the sneeze, but settled on a male subject due to time restraints (1989: 51-52).

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or posing with tools as his male subjects did) seems to act as an almost plaintive ‘call for

narrative’, a narrative of elusive bodily ‘truth’ that evaded the camera’s gaze. Williams

does not deny that photography and cinema have largely constructed and represented

women’s bodies as objects, rather than subjects. However, she breaks from feminist

naturalising of this tendency as an essential feature of ‘masculine’ genres of

representation, to present a more Foucauldian argument—that the desire to uncover or

capture the truth or ‘realness’ of bodies (and sexualities) is indeed embedded in the very

origins of cinema and photography. This is not, however, the result of inherent drives

within the male (scientific) psyche, but rather results from a psychic, social and

technological apparatus which coincided at a particular place and time, “working together

to channel the scientific discovery of bodily movement into new forms of knowledge and

pleasure” (1989: 45). For Williams, then, the history of photographic and cinematic

pornography should be examined in Focauldian terms, not as evidence of “the eternal

nature of the perverse pleasures of the apparatus, but their specific historical and social

construction” (1989: 45).

From Muybridge’s studies of female nudes to Charcot’s photographs of hysterics’

‘paroxysms’, the ‘truth’ of women’s bodies was solicited as a source of both knowledge

and pleasure for male audiences. The incitement and ‘interpretation’ of sexualised

display was (like the incitement to ‘speak one’s sex’ to the confessor or analyst) “not

simply a mechanism of power and control, opposed to pleasure, but a mode of pleasure in

and of itself” (Foucault 1990: 71). It was a short step from these scientific studies to the

coin operated Kinetograph and Kinetoscope, and the primitive ‘stag’ or ‘smoker’ film,

which Williams (and others) have argued served not only to entertain and arouse but to

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drum up business for sex workers in the brothels in which such illicit films were

screened. These films tended to take the form of what Williams terms a ‘genital show’

(i.e. women stripping, bending over, spreading their legs for the camera) or a series of

randomly connected ‘genital events’ or discontinuous sex scenes, rather than offering the

narrative closure which contemporary professional porn offers in the ‘money shot’

(Williams 1989).

It was not just the technology of cinema that linked the clean, public world of science

with the dirty counter-public world of commercial sex and sexual entertainment. Since

‘good’ women have not, historically, publicly displayed their naked bodies, let alone their

genitals, the performers in scientific or ‘educational’ films have traditionally been

recruited from the sex industry. The traditional poses of the artist’s model, as played out

by Muybridge’s models, were often assumed by women who also worked as actresses,

dancers, and/or part-time prostitutes. That is, they were considered very much outsiders

to the private, heteronormative family home of the time, yet their images were part of

‘everyday’ or domestic explorations of technologised entertainment.

As Terri Kapsalis points out, the role of the woman who performs her sexuality in public,

even in a ‘scientific’ context, is still a highly tenuous one. Public performances of ‘real

sex’ are always ‘tainted’ by the pornographic, even (especially) in settings which

scrupulously defend themselves against the possibility (Kapsalis 1997). Kapsalis quotes

from a medical training text which specifically asks the question, “What kind of woman

lets four or five medical students examine her?” (Blithe in Kapsalis 1997: 93) The

answer, by implication, is ‘a whore’. Drawing on her own experience as a ‘gynaecology

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teaching associate’, that is, a live teaching tool who talks medical students through the

pelvic exams they are learning to perform on her body, Kapsalis explores the uneasy role

women’s sexualised bodies continue to play in scientific documents and practices. She

recounts two anecdotes which indicate that the boundaries that separate scientific images

from pornography are still fragile, and easily threatened: one in which a nervous medical

student is given a Penthouse to prepare him for his gynaecological exam, another where

the illustrators of a medical textbook seek out photographs by pornographic performer

and photographer Annie Sprinkle. In the first, a medical ‘expert’ who has never actually

seen a ‘real’ woman’s body is instructed through pornography. In the second, textbook

editors specifically seek out photographs taken by a ‘pornographer’, but reject one of

Sprinkle’s photographs – a woman spreading her labia to reveal an enlarged clitoris –

because the model is wearing red fingernail polish (1997: 83).

While, as Kapsalis observes, the discipline of gynaecology is able to preserve its

boundaries by privileging images of ‘pathology’ (hence the importance of the enlarged

clitoris), sexological illustrations and videos have more difficulty. As Janice Irvine

(1990) points out, ‘modern’ scientific sexology, as pioneered by the work of Kinsey and

Masters and Johnson, was completely interwoven with illicit sex and commercial sexual

performance. Both male and female sex workers were employed to answer questionnaires

and perform solo and coupled sex in front of laboratory cameras. As with the scientia

sexualis of the nineteenth century, private, heteronormative sexuality was redefined and

reclassified by means of ‘expert’ surveillance of those who were considered to be way

outside the norm. As Irvine puts it, “from Masters’ descriptions, it seems his relationship

to the prostitutes was not that of researcher to subject, but essentially that of collaborator

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– an interesting departure from the tradition of early sexologists” (Irvine 1990: 82).49

It is interesting to consider whether the attitude of the researcher to their research subject

is ever ‘visible’ in the resulting sexual documentation, or whether a film produced by a

collaborative or ‘friendly’ researcher appears to be exactly the same as one produced by a

researcher who condemns the subject. Although it is beyond the scope of this thesis to

fully explore this issue, it does raise interesting questions in relation to arguments about

whether the intentions or attitudes of ‘pornographers’ can be interpreted through their

products – that is, whether the same act filmed by a ‘good’, ethical pornographer and a

‘bad’, exploitative pornographer will look markedly different from one another. In his

history of the ‘sexual revolution’ in the late twentieth century, John Heidenry describes a

1958 medical education film of a woman masturbating (wearing only the significantly

unscientific red nail-polish) to orgasm on a hospital bed while a speculum allows an eight

millimetre camera to film the interior of her vagina.50 The film, he observes, is “the

original low-tech Story of O, an earnest and clumsy cross between an industrial training

film and a stag movie” (Heidenry 1997:18). Despite a pedantic voice-over and white

arrows superimposed to draw attention to flushed cheeks and swollen areolae, the film is,

Heidenry suggests, as ‘pornographic’ as it is ‘scientific’.

When the ‘truth’ of a woman’s body is publicly revealed, the image must be classifiable,

49 Interestingly, Irvine notes that the ‘respectable’ (and largely heterosexual) volunteers who performed for Masters' cameras were largely recruits from the 'metropolitan, academic community', and as such were largely 'white, upper-middle-class, and highly educated' (1990:82) Waugh (1996) specifically compares the videos made for Kinsey's research by heterosexual couples with those made by gay males. While some gay sex workers were paid by Kinsey for their 'demonstrations', other amateur men (including a young Allen Ginsburg and his lover) embraced the opportunity to perform sex for science. 50 The sexual 'truth' revealed by this film is particularly confronting to the accepted wisdom of the day – the woman masturbates by rubbing her clitoris, but orgasmic contractions are evident inside her vagina – thus revealing that clitoral and vaginal orgasms are not separate occurrences (see Heidenry, 1997).

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either as art, medical illustration (or case study) or pornography. As in the case of

Sprinkle’s photograph, the most minimal costuming in the form of red nail-polish on an

anonymous, disembodied hand can cause a photo or video to be instantly classified as

‘porn’ rather than ‘science’.51 Sex can never be objectively represented as a set of ‘facts’.

The facts themselves are always subject to interpretation, according to context and

prevailing discourses. As Foucault has argued, sexuality forms the ‘core’ of modern

subjectivity. Sex is supposed to be the most authentic, most intimate, most individual,

most real of all human experiences. The truth of sexuality is both mysterious and

obvious. Yet the truth of the body, and the authenticity of its pleasures, are so easily

displayed or faked in pornography. In ‘legitimate’ cinema and photography, the truth of

sex may be explored through conventions of storytelling and performance, but genitals

must be discreetly concealed, and the truths of the genital show or genital event must be

implied through simulation only.52 The technology of pornographic photography, and

later cinema and video, is paradoxically claimed to both reveal the truth of human

sexuality and to dehumanise the most human of all activities. As Gertrud Koch puts it:

the aesthetic of the pornographic film relies on an underlying metaphor of the

body as a machine: editing makes it possible to replace tired bodies with fresh

51 The Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) has created a particularly interesting system of 'reading' genitals in the context of the classification system. In order to sell a magazine in newsagents, without a sealed plastic wrapper, photographs must contain only 'discreet genital detail'. Given that most women's internal labia protrude beyond their outer labia, soft core porn magazines such as Picture and People must digitally manipulate photographs of vulvas and vaginas, removing the inner labia, which are deemed 'too explicit'. In 2000, the editor of the now defunct Australian Women's Forum , Helen Vnuk, was told by the OFLC that she could not run explicit photographs of labia in a 'women's health' article on genital plastic surgery. The rationale given was that the illustrations were ‘prominent and contained genital emphasis’ (Vnuk, 2001: 7). Whereas the medical textbook editors took issue to the model's red nail polish in the interests of depicting a de-eroticised genital truth, the OFLC demanded that the objective 'reality' of individual genitalia be re-shaped to fit a legal model of de-eroticised genitalia. 52 Hence the problem for classifiers of films like Romance, Intimacy and Baise Moi, where certain meta-truths about love, gender relations or sexuality are present alongside graphic genital 'reality'.

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ones, or with those that have been replenished in the interim ... Now we have

high performance professionals who, in the manner of Taylorisation,

contribute specialised skills to the completion of the final project (1993: 35).

Like many of those who discuss pornography, however, Koch, I would argue, implicitly

places the ‘aesthetic of pornography’ outside of the aesthetic of mainstream cinema.

Williams’ example of Muybridge’s photography, Kapsalis’s medical textbooks and

Heidenry’s training video all serve to demonstrate how closely interwoven seemingly

different visual representations of ‘truth’ and ‘pleasure’ really are. On the most literal

level, it is clear that the histories of licit and illicit cinema and photography are not

separate or exclusive. As Thomas Waugh argues in his exhaustive history of gay

pornography, Hard To Imagine (1996), since the eighteenth century ‘respectable’

photographic studios and photographic ‘artists’ have also produced explicit material, for

their own private use or commercial distribution. While it is quite difficult for

professional porn performers to work in mainstream Hollywood cinema, producers,

directors and film crews do not tend to encounter the same obstacles. Like pornography,

both fiction/narrative cinema and non-fiction/documentary films and television programs

must engage with the problems of representing ‘believable’ realities, even if those film

and video realities exist beyond the realities of everyday life.

As Williams (1989) argues compellingly, it is disingenuous to criticise the ‘fakeness’ of

pornography, as if other cinematic conventions are ‘real’. For example, actors in

narrative/fictional films and television perform intimate love scenes with strangers, and

fake emotions like fear and anger for the camera. This faking is designed to produce a

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real response from the audience – excitement, laughter, empathy or disgust. The success

of a performance is gauged not by the actor’s experience of their performance but by the

audience’s response to what is seen on screen. As Joel Black puts it, all film and

television, be it fiction or non-fiction, primarily presents “truth as visual spectacle”

(Black 2002: 8). In many cases, the ‘truth’ of non-pornographic film and television does

not even stem from the believability of individual performances but from a more general

‘reality effect’. In special effects genre films (e.g. horror, action/adventure, disaster)

‘reality’ is produced through graphic, explicit or literal depictions of unreal events (2002:

8). For Black:

Graphic depictions of sex and violence in contemporary film, and cinema’s

preoccupation with scenes of bodily ecstasy and suffering, all arise out of a

quasi-scientific, documentary impulse that has come to pervade even the most

non-realistic fictional entertainments, and that attempts to disclose some

elusive truth concealed behind a hypermediated world of special effects

(2002: 30).

However, while Black challenges the conventions of cinema theory which locate the

depiction of reality ‘outside’ of the fiction film, he too discusses pornography’s faking

through the representation of real sex as if it produces some kind of fundamentally

different effect to that of other film and video forms. Black argues that pornography

(unlike other forms) fails in its depiction of reality, deluding its viewers: “the ultimate or

absolute reality that the porn junkie believes he or she has entered is ‘in fact’ a realm of

the senses, but more accurately, it is a tyranny of the visual where sight reigns over all the

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other senses including that of touch” (Black 2002: 47). Setting aside the question of

whether or not Black should refer to consumers of other genres as ‘junkies’, it seems to

me quite strange to single out ‘the tyranny of the visual’ within pornography. After all,

we do not expect to experience other forms of cinema and television through the senses

of smell, taste or touch. Even in high-tech disaster movies such as Titanic, where

subsonic rumbles literally move us in our seats, audiences are primarily experiencing

sensory reality through the visual. This does not mean, however, that we cannot

experience real, embodied arousal during the love scenes, real fear as the ship begins to

sink, or real excitement as Kate Winslet rescues Leonardo DiCaprio in the nick of time.

We may even (as I did) shiver with cold as the shipwrecked passengers float in the icy

sea, or shed tears as DiCaprio’s character slowly freezes to death, sacrificing himself to

save the woman he loves.

Richard Dyer (1995) argues that pornography, which seeks to ‘move’ the viewer to

arousal and masturbation, should be understood in the context of Tom Gunning’s (1986)

theorisation of the early ‘cinema of attractions’ which linked ‘realism’ within film

technique with vaudevillian narrative convention. The film Titanic itself not only fits the

‘attraction’ genre of the ‘weepie’, but is also a perfect example of Black’s thesis

regarding the blurring of fiction and non-fiction/documentary in the production of ‘the

reality effect’. The use of ‘scientific’ framing for the fictional narrative is combined with

painstaking recreations of the ‘real’ Titanic’s disastrous journey. It could be argued that

all the painstaking recreation of period setting and costume is merely foreplay for the

climactically ‘real’ disaster of the ship’s sinking.

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Like feminists who argue that pornography ‘is’ sexual violence, Black seems to believe

that porn is attempting not to depict real genital displays and events, but to ‘be’ real sex

for its audience. Just as audiences today no longer accept a documentary film of a train

pulling into a station as a real event, I contend that porn audiences understand that, while

they may be aroused by and masturbate along with porn images, they are not literally

‘having sex’ with the performers who facilitate their pleasure. At the same time, a porn

spectator may feel moved by or drawn to a particular performance or performer, in the

same way that fans are drawn to non-pornographic performers. The fan’s connection to

the celebrity is ‘real’ to them, but only a very deranged fan would claim to believe that

the star is moved in return.

Black is not the only commentator to argue that porn fails in its depiction of real sex. In

their comparison of mainstream pornography and ethnographic documentary, Christian

Hansen, Catherine Needham and Bill Nichols (1991) argue that both genres make a false

promise to reveal the pleasure of knowing truth or reality of the Other – women/sexuality

in pornography, exotic cultures in ethnography. Hansen et al further represent porn as

particularly manipulative and ‘unreal’ since viewers can never experience real pleasure

but only the illusory pleasure of representation (1991: 225). The authors either ignore (or

are ignorant of) the interactive nature of porn spectatorship. While they claim that ‘we’

(the viewers of porn and ethnography) must “defer our own pleasure, perhaps

indefinitely, in favour of those who represent its fullest satisfaction [the actors], nothing

could be further from the experience of watching porn at home” (1991: 225). Since the

1980s, pornographic motion pictures have been largely viewed at home, on domestic

VCRs and, more recently, computer terminals and DVD players. While consumers of

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porn are not always happy with the quality of the porn they buy, rent or borrow, they

certainly are not at the mercy of the director’s narrative or editing decisions. Narrative is

provided by the viewer, through their interpretation of facial expression, gesture, sound,

costume and bodily movement. Images on screen can be accepted or rejected, and viewed

repeatedly, or not at all, according to their ‘match’ with the viewer’s own ‘real-time’

fantasy/masturbatory imagination. Home porn viewers using their remotes to skip boring

dialogue or loop exciting scenes are effectively amateur editors, able to impose the

narrative of their own sexual tension and resolution over that of the director and on-

screen actors.

It is not only the mode of domestic consumption of pornography which conflicts with

academic theorisations of pornographic representation as ‘fake sex’. Hansen et al (1991)

claim commercial, heterosexual pornography’s allegedly manipulative intent is ‘troubled’

by both self-representation in gay and lesbian film and by the home-made porn circulated

by heterosexual amateurs. I would suggest, however, that those who theorise heterosex

and pornography are more likely to be troubled by these genres than the producers of

mainstream porn. In fact, producers of commercial pornography have been so receptive to

queer self-representation that Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano’s butch-femme production

Hard Love and How to Fuck in High Heels was awarded ‘Best All-Girl Feature’ title at

the 2001 Adult Video Awards (also known as the ‘Porn Oscars’). For Hansen et al:

two forms of potential ‘trouble’ ... are lesbian, often recuperated by being

structured for a male gaze, and love, often recuperated as receptive to open

and swinging relationships. Another risk would be the absorption of

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[amateur] characters in their own pleasure [to the extent that there is no

external cum shot]. Absorption might also include the loss of performers to

the ideal spectator when they no longer tacitly arrange themselves as though

at the behest of an invisible, orchestrating presence (1991: 226).

Implicit in this argument is an assumption that amateur porn performers wish to ‘resist’

the gaze of the pornographic consumer. Yet why would an individual, couple or group

produce and circulate home-made amateur pornography (Hansen et al are specifically

referring to tapes which do not enter into the mainstream, commercial economy) if not to

be seen by porn consumers? I argue that amateurs see themselves as part of an (albeit

very loose) community of fans, connoisseurs, exhibitionists and voyeurs. They are not

only the producers of pornography—they are also their own ‘ideal spectators’ who take

reflexive pleasure in the knowledge that they are both objects and subjects of the

pornographic gaze. Whether this gaze has the same meaning for them that it does to

theorists of spectatorship is another question entirely. As Waugh (1996) says of gay

erotica, pornographic representation, be it amateur or commercial, can take many forms,

each with different potential:

from the nonsexual portrait of the loved one, to his unclothed body; explicit

depictions of fucking, whether nonloving and mechanical or imbued with ...

romantic patinas ...; both narrative representations (stories of desire) and

nonnarrative (views of the object desired); not only depictions and narrations

but also enunciations of desire (‘I love you’ – whether reciprocated, tolerated

or unnoticed ...), performances (‘here I am being desirable’), and even

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prescriptions (‘here is how to make love’); from the psychological or spiritual

to the physiological, from the symbolic to the literal, from the exalted to the

sleazy; from the embroidery of the fetish or symbol, to the look that strips

bare (1996: 7).

For many, the fantasy of ‘being porn’ may confer its own form of sexual reality.

Domestic pornstars

WANTED! LADIES FOR PLAY Newport. Hi, we are a hot young horny

couple who are looking for ladies who would like to watch us have sex and

who would like to play with my wife while we fuck. We are very horny so sex

is practiced quite often. We are new to the porn industry and hope that one

day we can actually star in one [sic] or a magazine or video would be nice.

Please feel free to send a pic with your reply, the sooner you reply the sooner

the hot sex can start. We hope to hear from you soon, hope you like the pics.

We want to do more so if you like them we’ll send more, ok seeya. Love and

kisses D&J. All replies answered (Advertisement in Australasian Vicsin [sic]

a Melbourne-based swingers magazine, March 2002).

Five photos, clearly taken at home with a tripod, accompany this ad. Four out of

five show conventional, close-up ‘porn’ shots (vaginal penetration from behind,

fellatio, etc). Unlike most photos in this (and other) swingers magazines, where

participants are either nude or ‘erotically’ costumed, the woman wears a striped,

sleeveless casual dress, while the man wears a tracksuit and T-shirt (and running

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shoes in one photo). His fly is undone so that his erect penis is visible, and her dress

is pushed up to reveal her buttocks and pubic hair, but almost no genital detail.

Hands with wedding rings (his and hers) are visible in two of the pictures, but the

most interesting overlap of porn and domesticity occurs in the only full-body shot.

The couple are posed in profile, in ‘doggie’ position (both still clothed as

described), both smiling. She is looking slightly downward and ahead, while he is

turning his head to smile at the camera. Both have what could be described as

‘average looks’ (i.e. they are clearly not professional models). Neither D nor J have

‘model’ bodies: he has a bit of a belly, and she has stretch marks on her thighs and

buttocks, and a rounded body. This photo is clearly taken in the couple’s

loungeroom: a chair, a flower arrangement, a telephone table with heart-shaped cut-

outs, and an entertainment unit are visible in the background. It is not well framed:

the edge of her head is slightly out of frame on the left, while on the right

something that appears to be an open door with a towel draped over it juts in. This

picture, even more than the others, emphasises the ‘amateur’ status of D and J. Not

only is the photo clearly the work of a home photographer using the timer on their

camera, but the television and stereo, and the wall above them, are covered in

framed family photos. Although very little detail can be made out in the magazine

reproduction, it is clear that some of the photos are studio portraits of a family

group, some are mother-and-baby pictures, and some are snapshots of children.

Others show adults alone, or in affectionate group poses.

D and J are indeed ‘new to the porn industry’. Like many amateurs they are able to ‘play’

at being pornstars by photographing themselves having sex, by advertising for new

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partners, and, most importantly, by appearing in a full-page ad in a swingers magazine

which includes not only other amateur photos but photo spreads by professional porn

models. D and J seek ‘exposure’ in an environment that invites both contributors and

readers to blur the boundaries of amateurism with professionalism, for their own sexual

pleasure. Many advertisers in Australian Vicsin (as in other swingers magazines) seek

actual contact with potential sexual partners, and indicate their tastes and level of

experience (phrases like ‘bi-curious’, ‘first-timer’ and ‘limits respected’ are common).

Others, however, advertise as ‘collectors’ who merely seek to exchange photographs or

invite fantasy-driven written and/or telephone correspondence with other amateurs. It is

clear, also, that there are readers who respond to ads without actually intending to make

contact – these are the ‘time-wasters’ to whom ‘genuine’ advertisers advise should not

reply.

This ad seems an extreme example of the blurring of public and private sexualities in

amateur porn, with its almost naive exposure of the family that exists around the

fantasising couple. The reference to ‘my wife’ suggests that the male partner has

submitted the ad, and classical radical feminist analyses of pornography would suggest

that if the female partner has actively participated it is only the result of coercion by, or

collusion with, the patriarchal male. Yet the (as yet limited) specific academic research

into amateur porn suggests that this may not necessarily be the case – that women

participate as enthusiastically as men, despite having a lot more to lose in terms of

acceptable hetero-feminine identity.53

53 See Barcan 2000.

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Amateurs and porn reality

In her study of contemporary amateur porn as a ‘reality’ genre, Ruth Barcan (2002)

contests Roland Barthes’ claim that professional striptease was (by 1957!) so “unreal,

smooth and enclosed like a beautiful slippery object” (cited in Barcan 2002: 1), that the

rawness and awkwardness of the naked amateur offered greater erotic value.

Interestingly, Williams contrasts the stylised ritual of the classical live professional

striptease with what she describes as the ‘crude, awkward, and amateurish’ performance

of the early twentieth-century stag actresses (Williams 1989: 77). The live professional

stripshow offers the promise of verbal, physical and possibly sexual contact between the

stripper and her audience. However, since each audience member must be addressed as a

potential sexual partner, no one audience member in particular can be singled out and

satisfied to the exclusion of others. The stylisation and theatricality of the performance

ensures that no audience member will experience this lack of ‘closure’ as rejection;

instead, each viewer understands that his fantasy is being provoked as part of ‘the act’. In

contrast, Williams argues, while the stag actress’s performance is less polished, this

amateurish aesthetic is ‘a crucial aspect of the very different visual pleasures’ of the stag

film:

The performer’s self-consciousness, the smiles and giggles that would be out

of place either in a professional stripper’s act or in ... a feature-length hard-

core narrative, become her a form of reassurance that this show is no act

(1989:78).

As with her article ‘Home on the Rage’ (2000), Barcan’s work is part of a broader study

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of public nudity in contemporary Australian culture. While her work usefully challenges

and productively intersects with my own work on ‘Home Girls and Home Blokes’ (see

Albury 1997), I would seek to expand Barcan’s arguments about representations of

ordinariness and celebrity in amateur heterosexual porn by examining not only

‘unrestricted’ representations of nudity but Category One and Two discussions and

depictions of heterosex: the pictures and texts that appear on internet webcam sites, in

chatrooms, in amateur videos and in the pages on swingers contact magazines54. Just as

reality television and ‘factual entertainment’ programs, from talkshows to ‘docusoaps’

(such as Popstars), have blurred the boundaries between celebrities and ordinary people,

so amateur porn has blurred the boundaries of ‘pornstardom’ and ordinary

heterosexuality, of kink and domesticity, of public and private sex.55

While this chapter has focused, largely, on amateur pornographic self-representation, it is

important to note that the terms ‘amateur porn’ or ‘DIY porn’ might also refer to recycled

non-pornographic mainstream media texts. These texts are collected, edited or digitally

altered to create specialist erotica – for example, websites or magazines which collect

pictures of celebrities smoking, or showing their naked feet. For a foot fetishist, a shot of

Meg Ryan which foregrounds her bare feet may be more arousing than the more

mainstream ‘celebrity skin’ paparazzi shot of topless sunbathers, freeze-frame shots of

nude scenes from movies or, for that matter, a faked digital shot of Julia Roberts doing

double-penetration with George Clooney and Brad Pitt. It is clear from specialist

54 Category One and Category Two designate the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s categories for legitimate pornographic print publications. 55 The popular circulation of repackaged celebrity home-made porn such as Paris Hilton’s One Night in Paris has added an additional frisson of public/private blurring in recent years. For an interesting interrogation of the crossover of the genres of ‘pornography’ and ‘the home movie’, see Hillyer, 2004.

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websites, too, that fetishists form fan cultures with specialised sexual tastes, and as such

are avid ‘queer’ readers of popular media. For example, many BDSM websites contain

lists which faithfully cite even the faintest hints or allusions to BDSM sexuality in pop

songs, films or television shows, such as the comic spanking sequences in Ally McBeal

and Sex and the City or use of BDSM terminology in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Others go

further than simply collating lists by editing together highlights from their personal

collections for commercial distribution, a tradition which Thomas Waugh notes has long

been popular among gay men as a form of communal appropriation. Waugh describes a

still of Alan Ladd being flogged in the 1946 film Two Years Before the Mast as 'the prize

of one S/M aficionado's collection' (1996: 57). As Laurence O’Toole describes it:

In the porn shops of North Beach, San Francisco, you can find shelves of

video compilations ... recovered from the mainstream and remade as porn.

There’s Eugene Bernard’s series of classic corporal punishment clips from

cinema and television, full of scenes of cowgirls being spanked by cowboys

and of tanned, muscular male leads being strung up and whipped in biblical

epics, on the high seas, or in the Sheriff of Nottingham’s dungeon (1998: 22).

There is also a large community of (largely) fans of mainstream media who invent and

circulate pornographic or slash ‘fanfics’ – stories which describe explicit sexual

encounters between characters in non-pornographic media, such as Captain Kirk and Mr

Spock. Then there are fans who produce their own forums to re-post professional porn

alongside gossip, debate, reviews and critiques on amateur news groups and bulletin

boards. There are also hardcopy fanzines reflecting, in typical zine style, the idiosyncratic

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likes and dislikes of their producers. These publications, which, like the fan websites

described above, are highly personalised labours of love, often contain pirated images

from professional porn alongside original pornographic and non-pornographic texts and

images. Some are produced in a conscious attempt to represent the erotic and

cultural/political tastes and sensibilities of those who are not catered for in the

mainstream media.

While some zines circulate exclusively within particular local subcultures, the more

broadly distributed zine Betty Paginated (‘BP’) represents an interesting blend of

pornographic amateurism and professionalism. Like many amateur websites and zines,

BP contains pirated images ‘stolen’ from video freeze-frames and old pornographic

magazines. BP is an amateur zine produced by (soft-core) porn professionals Dann

Lennard, a former People magazine editor, and Helen Vnuk, a former editor of

Australian Women’s Forum. In classic zine style, BP is highly personal, containing

interviews with porn producers and professional wrestlers, diary entries by the publishers,

letters and fiction contributed by readers, and reviews of books, zines, videos and

wrestling matches. Although ‘professionally’ produced in many ways, the zine reflects

amateurism in its collection of the many loves of its producers. All issues contain a

mixture of reproduced pornographic pictures, discussions, and humorous, blokey reviews

and biographies of, and tributes to, particular pornstars (e.g. ‘I coughed my filthy trouser

yogurt heaps of times over this chick’). However, the ‘Born for Porn’ edition (No 22)

also contains erotic semi-nude pictures of Helen Vnuk, shot by Australian ‘glamour

photographer’ Bambi. As Vnuk is Dann Lennard’s lover/partner, her photographs fits

into the classic genre of the ‘naughty wife’ home-porn shot. However, the pictures are

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professionally shot by the same photographer who takes the pictures of the featured

amateur and professional glamour models for Picture and People magazines. This

overlapping of the home-made and the professional points to some of the ways that

amateur porn echoes the debates about ordinariness and celebrity, voyeurism and

exhibitionism, professionalism and amateurism that circulate around other ‘reality’

genres such as webcams, docusoaps and gameshows.

Since even the most glossy Hollywood pornography offers (by definition) the

representation of real bodies having real (as opposed to simulated) sex, amateur

filmmakers and performers have a better chance of reproducing celebrity or stardom in

porn than they might in other genres. After all, the generic term for any pornographic

performer is ‘pornstar’, not ‘pornactor’. Paradoxically, Barcan’s interviewee ‘Keith’, a

director of amateur porn, holds the view that the audience for amateur porn has been

expanded as viewers become increasingly sophisticated and developed a desire ‘to relate’

to the performers having sex on film (Barcan 2002). In Keith’s view, amateurs are

performing their ordinariness rather than their stardom. They are trying to produce

performances that ordinary people can relate to. But, while the desire to relate to the

image may partly explain why people make porn for themselves, it does not explain why

so many people choose to swap, sell or otherwise publicly circulate the pictures and

videos they create at home56.

Porn exhibitionism

56 Barcan also quotes Keith as estimating that 70% of Internet porn is home-made, while Jon Dovey cites an estimate that approximately 25% of video porn is produced by amateurs (Barcan, 2002: 5).

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Just as critiques of documentaries, docusoaps, chat shows and reality gameshows tend to

explicitly or implicitly pathologise the everday participants, so discussion of porn

production tends to question the motives of participants. Feminist theorists have rightly

confronted the psychoanalytic construction of the prostitute (and subsequently the

pornographic sex worker) as ‘perverse’. However, this repositioning of sex workers as a

disadvantaged economic class that can only ever be ‘exploited’ in self-exposure ignores

the various ways that women can recast themselves within seemingly limited social roles.

As I have argued elsewhere (see Albury 1997), women with active sexual desires have

been read by both psychoanalysis and feminism as ‘whores’ who are paradoxically

masculine – whether this masculinity is read psychoanalytically as identification with

men, or politically as collusion. If the cultural positions available to the heterosexual

woman are variations of virgin, wife, mother and whore, then it is clear that whore is the

only role through which a straight woman can express her desire. As Linda Williams

observes, “there is no self prior to the convergence of discursive injunctions to be

something (whore, mother, heterosexually desirable object, and so on)” (1994: 180). Yet,

within this ‘compulsory’ repetition there is the always potential for subversion of these

idealised positions. The stigmatised role of the pornographic whore cannot be ignored or

wished away, but it can be enlisted for sexual pleasure when “the taboo becomes

eroticised precisely for the transgressive site that it produces” (Butler 1993: 97). Amateur

porn images are simultaneously pictures of real people having real sex, and of men and

women not only performing gender but also performing sex according to the cultural

narratives which are constituted by and through sexualities. Just as Butler’s theory of

masquerade argues that real womanliness is a copy for which there is no original, so real

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sexual performances reveal that there is no definitively real and authentic sexuality, or,

for that matter, a definitively real heterosexual body.

Whereas Ariel Levy sees raunch culture as a sign that women are “faking lust” (2005:

198, original emphasis), I think that the popularisation of amateur pornstardom offers a

mode of heterosexual performance which contests heteronormativity. This mode of DIY

stardom does not present an unrealistic or unachievable sexuality, but instead reveals the

ease with which sexual fantasies can be embodied and performed as both real and unreal.

Porn as drag

“It’s usually pretty easy”, says Ruth Barcan, “to distinguish amateur [porn] participants

from the professionals. That the naked body is so easily legible gives lie to the fantasy

(one of which nudists are especially fond) that nakedness erases social distinctions”

(2000: 151). Undoubtedly, professional bodies are ‘disciplined’ differently to everyday

bodies. Pornstars and strippers are sleek and gym-toned, and plastic surgery has almost

became an ‘industry standard’, particularly obvious in silicone-enhanced female

performers.57 Both male and female pubic hair is neatly trimmed or completely shaved to

allow maximum visibility. ‘Pornstar’ has become not simply a job description but a

sexual identity or persona, a form of drag, signified, particularly in female performers, by

an instantly identifiable ‘trashy’ style of hairdo (big hair), makeup (heavy eye-liner,

exaggerated dark lip-liner), manicure (square acrylic nails), clothing (lycra hotpants and

crop top, or lingerie) and footwear (the knee-high/thigh-high platform boot, or platform 57 Unlike standard 'showbusiness' celebrities, porn performers never attempt to deny or conceal the evidence of plastic surgery. Belgian porn performer (and surgery addict) Lolo Ferrari released x-rays of her breasts before and after silicone enhancement. I also recall seeing a porn film entitled Buffy's New Boobs in which the plot line revolved around the performer 'trying out' the results of her augmentation surgery.

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sandal). This look is frequently adopted outside porn by cheersquads, girl groups and,

most notably, Pamela Anderson (who has herself appeared in both professional and

amateur porn), but usually in a diffusion of the high-end porn style. It is also a favourite

with drag queens and, I would argue, is itself a form of drag, or female masquerade, when

performed by women in porn.58

Male porn performers are also ‘sculpted’, but they costume themselves in particular ways

in order to maximise their appeal. Costume is particularly noticeable in ‘couples porn’,

where both men and women appear in stylised outfits. The men in this type of film often

resemble ‘romantic leads’ in mainstream romance or action adventure/fantasy genres.

The excessive costumes and hairstyles mark pornstar sexuality as ‘different’ to everyday

sex – not only differently choreographed, but differently costumed. The eroticised role of

the exhibitionist, the sexual show-off, the stud or slut, not part of ‘normative’

heterosexuality (although the fantasy roles can be experienced as normalised and

normalising), but as something above and beyond real sex or everyday sex. Of course,

not all producers of amateur porn choose to emulate the codes of pornstar drag – many

display an eroticism that directly challenges the codes of mainstream porn. Frequently,

however, pornstars are imitated in a form of ‘playacting’ which I believe challenges the

normative boundaries between domesticated and pornographic heterosexualities.

At the same time, the relative accessibility of the technologies that allow ‘publication’ on

the net, as well as the popularity of webcamming and blogging, has revealed that porn

consumers are eager to look at and fantasise about ‘imperfect’ bodies. As Victorian

58 The masculine versions of male pornstar personae also overlap with fetishised 'rockstar' or 'moviestar' looks. Flowing hair, rippling muscles, bulging leather pants, tattoos, body piercings, jewelry and make up the most stereotypical 'pornstar' look for men.

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webmaster and publisher ‘Craig’ explains, it is the very ordinariness of web amateurs that

makes home-made porn so appealing:

A lot of internet webcam sites have become very popular, because people

like the factor of seeing someone who is not a paid pornstar getting their

gear off or having sex with somebody … I think it’s kind of like the next

door neighbour factor – they don’t really know who it is, but they like the

fact that it could be someone they walk past in the supermarket or someone

who lives down the street … The biggest growth in porn in the last ten years

has been in the amateur area, the other areas are pretty much maxed out

(personal communication, 2001).

Online amateur sites, and CU-SeeMe webcam groups, have opened up a realm of

‘domesticated’ pornography that is simultaneously public and private. Don Slater

found in his ethnographic research into one online collector’s site that sex-pic

traders feel themselves to be part of a virtual community, much like other special-

interest groups. Slater’s interviewees enjoy participating in a pleasurable

alternative to everyday life, especially when:

the chat [on the sex-pics site] … can itself become eroticised as

representations, flirting, heated and pleasurable sex talk, cybersex, in which

the actual encounter between participants becomes, as the typical comment

goes, ‘like being inside a piece of interactive pornography’ (Rival et al

1998: 300).

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This desire to voluntarily immerse oneself in ‘interactive pornography’ is not exclusively

the province of male porn fans. In his study, Slater found that female informants

particularly appreciated the internet as a place where they could “explore desires which

are too taboo, embarrassing or dangerous for off-line life: mainly bisexuality,

exhibitionism, group sex and promiscuity” (Rival et al 1998: 301). This finding is

supported by participant observer study, conducted by Australian researchers Marj Kibby

and Bronwyn Costello, of a heterosexual webcam exhibitionist site which, they argue,

allows not only a space for female sexual experimentation and exhibitionism but formed

a community that supported women’s voyeuristic desire to be sexually entertained by

men, and men’s desires to perform as eroticised objects of desire (Kibby & Costello

1999, 2001).

As Kibby and Costello observe, it is easier for amateur women to perform porn than it is

for amateur male performers, since there are fewer popular signifiers of erotic display for

heterosexual men than there are for women. As they succinctly put it, “there is no sock

equivalent to the fishnet stocking” (2001: 361), and many elements of eroticised

masculine costuming (such as cock rings or uniforms) are more commonly seen as

homoerotic (although this is changing as women’s deployment of ‘the gaze’ becomes

more acceptable in popular culture). Kibby and Costello note, however, that members of

the CU-SeeMe community are critical of male participants who limit their interaction to

what is termed ‘crotch-cam’, or the close-up framing of their genitals to the exclusion of

the rest of their bodies. This is not considered by community members as ‘doing a show’,

and female community members frequently refuse to interact with such men, who are

seen as ‘selfish’ (2001: 361).

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It is difficult, in this context, to determine whether online sex is public or private,

and whether it is real or fake. As Rival et al have observed, online sexual “pleasures

and transgressions evidently depend on a clear separation of sexuality from ‘real

life’” (1998: 304). At the same time, the separation between sex and real life is not

always clear-cut. Slater observed that “many logged conversations move within

minutes from tastes in porn to the problems of single-parenthood, money problems,

dead-end jobs” (Rival et al 1998: 304). Similarly, for Kibby and Costello, CU-

SeeMe sex chat “is often grounded in the ordinariness of everyday life as people

discuss where they’re from, their age, their marital status, their jobs, their computer

problems and the weather, all the while displaying erotic images of their naked

bodies” (2001: 364).

Clearly ‘internet porn’ does serve as a pleasurable space where sexual fantasy serves as

an escape from the everyday. At the same time, amateur porn and X-rated swap-sites

seem to demonstrate that sex (even pornographic or taboo sex) is interconnected with

everyday life. Not only are everyday domestic issues discussed on the pic trading site, the

space of the site itself is ‘domesticated’ in participants’ discussions. These may include,

for example, the formulation of guidelines for online sexual etiquette, and the negotiation

of jealousy and competition between online and real-life sex partners. As Slater and his

fellow researchers describe it, the study of this particular web community “shows that the

objectification of sexuality on-line appears to be fuelled at least as often by the urge to

order sexuality (and IRC relationships and practices themselves) along ethical lines as it

is to gratify it transgressively” (Rival et al 1998: 316). I take this to mean that these porn

fans do not view their own enjoyment of pornographic representations of sexuality as

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dehumanising or objectifying of themselves or others. Instead, IRC sex pic trading is seen

as part of everyday sexuality – pleasurable, but not without its problems and ethical

challenges. As Slater argues, it is this acknowledgment that the world of porn and

striptease is not divorced from everyday life that make the experience ‘real’ for

participants (Slater 2002).

Even within the seemingly utopian world of interactive pornography, there are negatives.

Online porn fan communities are vocal about their enjoyment, but can be quite critical of

what they see as the sausage-factory production practices of commercial porn producers,

and the generic, poor-quality products which can sometimes result. One male porn

fan/collector complained, “I get the feeling that whenever … I watch an adult movie I’m

being sneered at behind my back and treated like a moron. I don’t appreciate it” (O’Toole

1999: 337). And if heterosexual men, who are after all porn’s target demographic, are

dissatisfied with commercial pornography, those with ‘minority’ sexual tastes have extra

incentive to create their own alternatives. As Melbourne amateur drag-king/lesbian porn

producer Bumpy puts it, “I hate the [mainstream] lesbian porn that I’ve seen … most of

it. Like it’s not sexy. To me it seems very wimpy and straight”. Given this widespread

dissatisfaction with the work of porn professionals, it not surprising that many porn fans

decide that they can do better.

The proliferation of pornographic everyday heterosexualities reveals the limitations of

theories that attempt to oppose private, everyday, domestic, unseen, ‘normal’ sexualities

with those that are public, exotic, subversive, visible, or perverse. Further, amateur porn

offers an opportunity to think about the production and consumption of pornography in

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terms of both men’s and women’s own exhibitionism, and their desire to present

themselves as pornographic ‘spectacle’ to be applauded. Amateur pornstars are not

necessarily ‘transgressive’, yet their engagements with exhibitionism and voyeurism are

often shaped by ethical considerations that acknowledge aspects of sexuality that are

generally seen as outside heterosexuality. In addition, the production or consumption of

pornography can be a space for exploring new modes of thinking about and performing

sex and gender. In particular, pornography can become a space where the meanings of

non-normative sexual practices can be explored, and in some contexts contested. In the

following, and final, chapter, I will look at changing representations of heterosexual men,

and the ways that even quite normative media forms can be seen to challenge hegemonic

models of phallic hetero-masculinity. I will look at the ways in which the depiction of

semen (the ultimate sexual ‘waste product’) has shifted, from being exclusively

pornographic, to becoming a tool for representing the ‘shame’ of heterosexual

masculinity. I will also examine the traditionally taboo practice of male/female anal sex,

and consider some of the ways that its popularisation in pornography since the 1990s can

be seen to intersect with broader popular shifts in thinking about ‘normal’ heterosexual

practice.

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Chapter 5

Abject Masculinities

There are many (like myself) who agree with Lynne Segal's assertion that:

Male sexuality is most certainly not a single shared experience for men. It is

not any single or simple thing at all- but the site of any number of emotions

of weakness and strength, pleasure and pain, anxiety, conflict, tension and

struggle (1990: 215).

The tendency within radical feminism to equate maleness with a particular kind of

masculinity, and a particular kind of heterosexual relation can serve to reinforce, rather

than undermine, traditional conservative notions of masculinity. Many radical feminists

seem to believe that male heterosexuality was not simply a sexual desire for women, but

a desire to control and sexually dominate women. As Susan Griffin put it “If the

professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual, it may be

mainly a qualitative difference” (cited in Segal 1990: 233). Important as the feminist

introduction of debates around rape as sexual violence have been, the tendency to

conflate sexual violence with 'heterosexuality' constructs heterosexual masculinity as

intrinsically and universally violent, and constructed through the sexual intimidation of

women. As Suzanne Moore puts it, “the way we regard a body of theory is much the

same as we regard real bodies. We can disavow the things we don't like, fetishise the

things we do, make do with what is familiar while fantasising about something altogether

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different...” (1988: 45). This is most evident when discussions of eroticised male

heterosexual bodies are qualified by an insistence that these depictions are 'homo-erotic',

and deny women the pleasure of spectatorship. Futher, there has been a move within

feminism to read representations of heterosex and sexuality in advertising, in mainstream

cinema and in particularly in pornography, as literal (and transparent) images of

heteronormative male desires to shame, and therefore control, women. Sexual images are

opposed by campaigners such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon on the basis

that they are part of a continuum of sexual violence, in which shame and disgust are

deployed as weapons against women. That is to say depictions of women having (or

inviting) sex with men are read as 'demeaning', and femininity and feminine bodies are

read as 'dirty' or shameful, and disempowered. It is not simply the construction of men as

'looking', and women as intrinsically 'to be looked at' which is most troubling to porn's

opponents. It is the fact that the 'looking' and 'being looked at' is sexual, both in content

(pictures of people naked, or having sex), and in function. From the most 'artistic' erotic

black and white etching, to the most explicit, badly lit all-anal video; the bulk of

pornography is designed to facilitate male sexual fantasy, and enhance male

masturbation.

Before I go further, I will clarify my specific aims in this chapter, and Chapter 6. I

acknowledge that femininist and queer theorists, particularly, have argued that

masculinity cannot be seen as a monolithic structure. Even within straight and gay

identification, men (and women) can recognise and perform numerous masculinities.

Class, age, race, ethnicity, education, subcultural affiliation, social geography - all these

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factors may come into play. For example, a tertiary educated middle class white man may

experience his masculinity quite differently to a rural immigrant labourer who never

completed high school - even if both prefer to have sex exclusively with women.

Although I will draw on contemporary masculinity studies, my focus on male sexuality in

these chapters is designed to serve other strategic purposes. Firstly, it is a reparative

engagement with what I see as paranoid tendencies within some feminisms. As I

discussed in Chapter 3 and 4, feminist critiques of misogynist themes in pornography and

other popular texts have been noted by the producers of pornography, and porn itself has

changed as a result. In some contexts these changes have been motivated by a desire for

social change, and anti-sexist politics, in others the shifts have been commercially

motivated. Popular representations of sexuality (particularly in pornography) are still

critiqued, however, as the source of bad messages about male and female sexuality. For

that reason, I have chosen to closely examine two aspects of pornography that are widely

agreed to encourage the ‘worst’ aspects of heterosexual male sexuality: cumshots, and

anal eroticism. In doing so, my discussion examines various ways that heterosexual

men’s bodies, and sexual practices have been represented within texts that target

heterosexual audiences. These representations occur in diverse forms within

pornographic texts, and in other popular cultural texts, such as Hollywood films or men’s

magazines; yet (with rare exceptions) feminist theorists of sexuality representation have

often overlooked their specificities. By attending to these specificities, I do not seek to

‘undo’ heterosexual masculinity, or even to challenge the erotics of heterosexual men’s

and women’s investments in ideologies of sex and gender. Rather, my aim is to

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demonstrate the instabilities and inconsistencies that are already present within these

popular discourses, in order to illustrate their potentials for thinking about ethical

heterosexualities. It is these erotically charged instabilities that create potential spaces for

ethical reflection, and the remaking of heterosexual identities.

As Laura Kipnis puts it, the realm of pornographic heterosexual masculinity is most

problematic for feminism when men are able to “arrogate the power and privilege of

having public fantasies about women's bodies without any risk or comparable exposure

of the male body, which is invariably produced as powerful and inviolable” (Kipnis 1999:

151). Or, as Calvin Thomas puts it, “the deployment of women as objects of visual

pleasure allows the masculine subject to hide himself behind his own gaze” (1996: 80).

Yet critiques of porn which focus only on the representation of women's bodies are also

'hiding' men behind a particular theoretical gaze, which can only see heterosexuality

through a particular mode of gender opposition. Men who look at pornography see more

than women's bodies. Unlike advertising, or even most of Hollywood cinema,

heterosexual pornography is one of the few mediums specifically aimed at hetero men in

which male bodies are fully exposed. Pornography allows a prolonged, sexualised

scrutiny of other men - particularly their erect or semi erect penises (Kipnis 1999: 131).

Both male and female genitals are depicted in close-up 'plumbing shots', and the male

bodies that appear in mainstream porn often conform to fetishised models of masculinity

which would be considered 'homoerotic' in other contexts. The average male porn star in

mainstream heterosexual US made porn is every bit as tanned, toned, waxed, coiffed and

buffed as his female counterpart - right down to his neatly groomed or shaven pubic hair.

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Even outside of pornography, straight men's bodies are far more subject to scrutiny than

classic critiques of media imagery will allow. A close examination of 'men's' media

genres, from glossy magazines to gross-out teen movies reveals a more complex, anxious

picture, in which men's bodies are frequently 'exposed' and made vulnerable. Often this

vulnerability is explicitly linked to male sexuality, and heterosexual men's desire for

women. As Catharine Lumby (1997a) argues, more 'upmarket' men's magazines such as

Men's Health, Esquire and Details often represent male heterosexual pleasure not as

phallic mastery, but as “awfully hard work”, requiring “devotion, commitment and

sacrifice” on the part of men (Lumby 1997a: 7). While the traditional Playboy style

magazine of the '50s, '60s and '70s59 may have represented and presumed a (no doubt

tenuous) unified hetero male identity, post 1980's men's magazines present “the

overriding message ...that masculinity has entered an age of profound uncertainty”

(1997a: 8). And, as Carol Siegal (2000) observes, contemporary Hollywood films such as

Jerry Maguire and Chasing Amy present pictures of troubled or ambivalent hetero

masculinity. Jerry Maguire is “the most submissive person in the film” (2000: 106), the

protagonist is Chasing Amy is desperately attracted to, yet threatened and confused by,

the aggressively pansexual Amy. Extending Lynne Segal's (1994) observations

(following Hollway) that both heterosexual men and women seek sexual surrender and

passivity, Siegal argues that feminist theorists of heterosexuality have underestimated (or 59 In The Hearts of Men, Barbara Ehrenreich (1983) suggests that Playboy's discursive construction of the 'swinging bachelor' who resists the financial and emotional drain of marriage and childrearing is itself a reflection of masculine sexual anxieties. Steven Cohan's 1993 reading of images of masculinity and femininity in the 1955 film Picnic also points to the proliferation of popular cultural debates around masculine sexual fatigue and uncertainty in post WWII America. Both Cohan and Ehrenreich argue that these concerns over male 'fatigue' and anxiety were fuelled in part by the Kinsey Report's revelations of the prevalence of male sexual dysfunction.

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underacknowledged) the extent to which heterosexual masculinity is played out in both

public and private arenas as a 'masochistic' desire to be controlled or dominated by

sexually aggressive (as opposed to simply assertive) women (2000: 11).

In this context, both looking and being looked at sexually can be understood as potential

sources of excitement and anxiety for heterosexual men. In this chapter, I am not simply

concerned with presenting evidence of 'table-turning' or role-reversal. Nor do I seek to

argue that popular media images represent either 'transgressive' or 'hegemonic' images of

hetero masculinity. Instead, I am interested in the most explicit images of hetero sex and

male pleasure - images of aroused men, with erect and ejaculating penises. While these

images have been available to heterosexual men in straight porn for many years, they

have only been made freely available to 'mixed' audiences in the last ten or so years.

The representation of naked men, particularly naked, aroused or orgasmic men troubles

the notion that men are never voyeuristic objects. As I will argue, the popular media

scandal that surrounded the publication of a nude photograph of footballer Andrew

Ettinghausen reflected the ways in which theories of representation which insist that to be

looked at is to be 'feminised', reflected some of the limitations of 'gendered' thinking

about looking and being looked at sexually. For example, while Julia Kristeva's

theorisation of abjection is extremely useful for unpacking some of the mixed shame,

disgust and excitement that 'loads' sexual (particularly pornographic) imagery, Kristeva's

work is based in a psychoanalytic model of gender difference, which is centred on female

castration and lack.

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Abjection makes an extremely useful tool for exploring alternatives to the argument that

pornographic images are always images of demeaned and degraded female bodies. In

fact, images of ejaculating penises (and of semen itself) can be read in multiple ways -

one of which views them as evidence of male shame. But while I will explore images of

ejaculation in pornography and mainstream cinema, my aim is not to simply 'shift' shame

and ambivalence from abject femininity to abject masculinity. Rather, I seek to explore

the ways in which shame constitutes a visceral part of sexual experience, rather than

simply an attachment to particular kinds of gendered representation. It is not enough to

propose that images of heterosex represent the opposition of 'male sexual pride' to 'female

sexual shame', nor that the antidote to hegemonic heteronormative masculinity is to

enforce female sexual pride, by reinforcing male sexual shame. By moving away from

psychoanalytic models, to draw on Sylvan Tomkins theories of affect, I hope to open up

some ground to re-read images of embodied male sexualities.

Naked masculinity

Much of the feminist opposition to pornography defines heterosexual porn itself as an

objectifying representation of women, and a male projection of an idealised femininity.

But images of naked men, in and out of pornography, present an image of masculinity

that is not at all straightforward. For example, even a flaccid penis is considered

practically 'unrepresentable' in popular culture and media (outside of pornography).

When Australian HQ magazine published a naked change-room photograph of Rugby

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League footballer Andrew Ettinghausen, the publishers ACP were forced to pay

Ettinghausen $350 000 in damages on the basis that the photo “showed his penis and held

him up to public ridicule and contempt” (cited in Buchbinder 1994: 77). As David

Buchbinder argues, there can be no doubt that the publication of a naked photograph

caused Ettinghausen (known as ET) a great deal of understandable embarrassment. But

why should the publishers be prosecuted under defamation laws? Clearly, the

implication that ET had approved the release of the photo (he had not) opened him up to

ridicule by his peers. And, as one report put it, “it was humiliating to be asked by young

women to sign the photograph in the magazine” (1994: 77). Buchbinder argues that the

publication of ET's photo was considered defamatory for a variety of reasons: it revealed

his penis to be simply a penis - rather than a phallus, it opened him up to comparisons on

the basis of his penis size, and it made ET's body 'the eroticised object of the gaze' -

implicitly feminising him. Thomas, following Lacan, argues that “visibility [of the penis]

not only shames the phallus, it transforms it into its opposite, alienates it from ‘itself’”

(1996: 51).60

While I do not dispute these hypotheses, I argue that Buchbinder, like many theorists who

draw on particular politicised models of sex and gender, has perhaps disavowed the

extent to which even the most masculine male bodies are eroticised objects in

contemporary pop culture. Theoretical insistence on the unified 'phallic masculinity' that

is only undermined via the feminising force of sexualised representation disavows the

ambivalence and instability that exists even within the most 'secure' masculine personae.

60 Thomas cites Lacan's note on the Latin derivation of the term pudenda: the verb 'pudere', to be ashamed (1996: 50).

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For example, media coverage of professional football leaves the viewer in no doubt that

these men’s bodies are their fortune. The fact that Ettinghausen's penis was visible in the

HQ image may have added an extra frisson for his female fans - leaving aside the

arguments that insist that heterosexual women do not find photographs of men's penises

attractive or erotic (such as those advanced by Jeffreys 1990 and Coward 1984).

However, even prior to the publication of the explicit photograph, handsome, blonde

Andrew Ettinghausen had already been widely promoted by the Cronulla Sharks,

Channel Nine, and the Australian Rugby League as an object to be gazed upon by both

male and female fans.

To insist that to shame Ettinghausen is to 'feminise' him is certainly in keeping with

feminist (and psychoanalytic) understandings of gender difference in which femininity is

identified with 'the body', as masculinity is distanced from it. Within this strict division,

(feminine) bodies are deemed to be lower, and more shameful, yet at the same time, more

available to be looked at and evaluated by judging (masculine) subjects. Yet both men

and women have bodies, and experience a range of emotions (or affects) associated with

them. Shame, pride, disgust, excitement, fear and surprise may all be experienced in

relation to the body, particularly the sexualised body. Feminist theorists have rightly

noted the tendency for heterosexual men to disavow their own embodied ambivalence,

displacing it into an intense overinvestment in female bodies as the ultimate repositories

of both shame and excitement. Certainly (as I will discuss) Julia Kristeva's work on

abjection points to some of the ways in which representations of penises and ejaculations

can both emphasise and efface male bodily anxieties. Yet Kristeva's adherence to a

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psychoanalytic model also ensures that bodily affects such as shame and disgust are to be

'housed' primarily in feminine bodies, and that, as a consequence, any understanding of

bodies that are 'shameful' or 'disgusting' must be understood in terms of oedipal gender

binaries. It is these divisions, I argue, that limit discussions of the complex and multi-

genred media of heterosexual pornography.

Objectified masculinities

Theories of the 'objectifying male-gaze' (see Berger 1972, Mulvey 1975) insist that men

'do', and women 'are'. Photographic and filmic images of women, such theories argue,

represent woman as passive 'objects' to be gazed upon, rather than subjects with their own

agency. By contrast, male celebrities (Mulvey specifically refers to Hollywood movie

stars, but the theory might also be applied to celebrity sportsmen) are constructed as

desirable not as eroticised objects to be looked at, but as images of “the more perfect,

more complete, more powerful ideal ego” (Mulvey 1989: 20). However, as Steven Cohan

argues, male film stars have in fact been promoted not simply as paragons of idealised

masculine power, but as beautiful, sexualised men. As Cohan puts it:

Whether promoting Douglas Fairbanks Snr. and Rudolph Valentino or Robert

Redford and Mel Gibson, the Hollywood studios have made it their business

to sell the imagery of male stars as part of the film product, holding out to the

spectator, male or female, the pleasure of looking at men (1993: 204).

Just as Mel Gibson's hyper-masculine 'action hero' status is not diminished by the erotic

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attention paid to scenes where he appears naked, or bares his buttocks on film; the fact

that Ettinghausen and other 'glamorous' sportsmen 'do' sport does not prevent them from

being objectified as beautiful, highly produced and managed commodified bodies in

newspaper articles, on television programs, or in photographs. The fact that young

women asked ET to autograph his naked image suggests that he had already been

produced in some way as an object of desire. Ettinghausen's particularly eroticised status

is emphasised by comparison to the two other naked footballers that were photographed

with him. Neither was sufficiently defamed (or explicitly eroticised) to join the suit

against ACP, nor were they mentioned by name in Buchbinder's academic consideration

of the incident.

While almost any representation of a woman can be understood as ‘objectifying’,

heterosexual males are only recognised as having been objectified (in a pejorative sense)

when they are full frontal. Sexualised full-frontal shots of heterosexual men are never

simply feminising, or homoerotic. They reveal that masculinity involves vulnerability

even where it is theoretically held to be most invulnerable. If the visible, sexualised penis

confronts and unravels the 'power' of the hidden, symbolic phallus, it does so not only

because the naked hetero man is objectified and therefore feminised by the exposure, but

because heterosexual masculinity is already permeated by the spectre of erotic need,

anxiety, failure and shame rather than a universal ‘power over’. If the emperor of 'phallic

mastery' literally has no clothes, it is only obvious to us when we look right at his penis...

or worse. The dominant construction of gender certainly constructs femininity as abject—

but it does not necessarily follow that all that is abject is inherently feminine. I argue that

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masculinity is not 'made' abject when a man assumes a feminised identity as a cross

dresser or a naked pin-up, it already contains an inherent abjection. I refer to the abjection

of the male body that performs the most 'masculine' of bodily functions - ejaculation.61

Dirty Semen, Dirty Men...

Andrea Dworkin asserts that semen is a 'totem' of male power, and argues that hetero

men believe that while the act of ejaculation 'ennobles' men, it makes women dirty

(1997:164). For Dworkin, then, the pornographic image of ejaculation in the 'money' or

cumshot has a straightforward, transparent meaning. When “... semen is spread all over a

woman's face, a man or men ejaculate all over her body; ... to ejaculate is to pollute the

woman” (1997: 187).

I agree that unless a woman has a very intense semen fetish, she probably wouldn't

consider ejaculation on her body as anything even close to a peak of sexual stimulus. It is

quite important, though, to explore the logic that underlies this 'commonsense' concept of

ejaculation as pollution. In the much-quoted words of anthropologist Mary Douglas, “dirt

is matter out of place” (1969). If semen 'belongs' to men to the extent that it ennobles

them, it must, then, be out of place on women. If male sexual pleasure produces a

polluting substance, then sex with men pollutes women, therefore any depiction of

61As Shannon Bell (1991) notes, ejaculation is not an exclusively male sexual function. Bell argues that not only have modern male sexologists invested in an economy of ejaculation where the privilege of 'spending' and 'withholding' ejaculate is denied to women (160), but feminists who have invested theoretically in the politics of sex/gender 'difference' have difficulty recognising the potentially destabilising 'sameness' of male and female ejaculation.

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heterosexual desire and pleasure is 'demeaning'. As British feminist Avedon Carol

observes, feminists can create very specific charmed circles around 'appropriate'

heterosexual practices. For example, “while we may be allowed to enjoy cunnilingus, it is

often perceived as ‘degrading’ for women to perform fellatio” (1993: 152) Those

feminists who (unlike Dworkin) approve of heterosexual activities per se, but disapprove

of their representation in pornography must then take pains to point out that they are not

opposed to nudity, or sex itself, but to particular, pornographic images. It is unsurprising

then that the cumshot is singled out as a particularly offensive marker of all that is bad

about 'pornographic' heterosex. For example sociologists Robert Jensen and Gail Dines

assert that the everyday physical act of ejaculation itself is not, in their view, demeaning,

but:

…in pornography, ejaculating onto a woman is a primary method by

which she is turned into a slut, something (not really someone) whose

primary, if not only purpose is to be sexual with men (1998: 79).

The Money shot

Read in Linda Williams' terms as 'the frenzy of the visible', the cumshot provides proof of

the pleasure, and 'realness' of on-screen pornographic sex (1989). Although female porn

actors thrash and groan, there's no actual proof that they've really had an orgasm (unless

they ejaculate - which can be faked with the assistance of douches). Williams argues that

the cumshot must be made visible to stand for proof of both the male and female

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orgasms. Additionally, it provides a handy cue for the masturbator at home, letting

him/her know that the scene has peaked. Williams notes that the actress being cum on

(back, stomach during fucking scenes, breasts and face for blow jobs) generally behaves

as if having semen on her body is more exciting and pleasurable than having a penis

inside her (or any other kind of sexual stimulation, for that matter). After the money shot,

the porn actress is generally presumed to be satisfied. There's no going back to

cunnilingus, or other sex acts. The cumshot, then, provides porn with the narrative

equivalent of 'they all lived happily ever after'.

Within the pornography industry, cum or money shots are highly valued...yet this is not

necessarily a 'compulsory' aspect of the visual representation of sex. Early 'stag' cinema

does not seem to have especially eroticised cum shots, although withdrawal prior to

ejaculation is hardly a recent contraceptive technology. For porn actress Brandy

Alexandre, the cumshot is an erotic fashion, which represents contemporary taboo and

fetishised pleasure:

You've got to have the come shot, [because] you've got to have the heat. And

this, at present, is where the heat is. Once it was a glimpse of ankle, maybe

some cleavage, some thigh. Then they got naked in time, and they fucked, and

they showed them penetrating. But they also want to show pleasure, and

internal come shots aren't so pleasant or pleasurable, but [external] come shots

are deemed to be so. I don't have a problem with them...but I expect in time

they will become old news (in O'Toole, 1998: 73).

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In his 1998 study Pornocopia: porn, sex, technology and desire, Laurence O'Toole

reports that the success of Candida Royalle's Femme series of 'couples videos' (which do

not include cumshots) has launched a lively debate within the US porn industry as to

whether they are necessary at all. For example, producer David Kastens speculates that

his production house Vivid “might go more internal come shots [sic] and seek to show

the intensity of feeling and emotional release” (1998: 343). In response to his

interviewees, O’Toole expresses concern that without the 'closure' of the cumshot, 'real'

porn may drift towards euphemistic 'soft core':

Though potentially still erotic, such euphemistic sex is clearly unable to

offer a representation of 'real' sex, in the sense not only of contact but also

of arousal and release. In hard core the viewers can witness bodies that are

'moved' as well as beautiful (1998: 344).

The paradox of pornography is that even though the sex is 'real', most representations of

real sex on film are highly staged and choreographed. Not only are the scenarios often

clearly contrived fantasies, the performers themselves do not always look like they're

enjoying their work. Most female porn actors appear to be faking orgasm most of the

time, and although most male performers ejaculate, very few show any evidence of an

'intensity of feeling and emotional release'. (There are notable exceptions in both

categories). It is precisely the profusion of body fluids, the 'messiness' of semen and

sweat, which provides O'Toole (and other porn viewers) with the satisfying illusion of

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'real' sex. Certainly it is this pleasure in messiness and body fluids that Kipnis (1999)

identifies as a major factor of porn's appeal.

Abject Fluids

The generic hetero porn cum shot is easy to 'read'. Typically we see a man penetrating a

woman vaginally, anally or orally, and then pulling out to masturbate to ejaculation on

her back, buttocks, belly, breasts, or face. This style of porn typically contains plenty of

explicit plumbing shots, and a clear shot of semen squirting out of the penis. Until the

mid to late 1990s, this was the only mainstream cinematic image of ejaculation. Yet in

the late 1990s's, Hollywood films such as American Pie, Happiness and There's

Something About Mary began to depict semen on screen. For Anne Marlow, columnist

for the online magazine Salon, these images of semen were a sign of the erosion of hetero

masculinity in the face of advances in women's rights to control reproduction. Hollywood

cumshots, she argued, “only prove how passé men have become”:

What's depressing about this plethora of white goo on screen ... is the

desperate need to insist on its importance. As semen becomes less and less

essential to reproduction, we brandish it even more defiantly

(www.salon.com/health/sex/1999/04/24/moneyshot/index.html).

It seems to me, though, that these onscreen ejaculations have very little to do with

reproduction, or whether or not men are defiant or passé; but quite a lot to do with the

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instability of the boundaries around gender categories. The cumshots in American Pie,

Happiness, and There's Something About Mary are visible results of solitary

masturbation, or of fellatio that ends in masturbation. None of these acts are remotely

linked to reproductive potential, yet all reveal uneasy and ambivalent male relationships

to sexual shame and sexual pleasure. One might argue that Hollywood cumshots became

‘fashionable’ following the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, as it became possible to publicly

make fun of semen and ejaculation - after the President’s penis and semen had been

discussed on the nightly news, it would have been difficult for studio executives and

classifiers to argue that these topics were unacceptable according to US 'community

standards'. This does not, however, answer the question of why ejaculation is funny in

There's Something About Mary, or horrific in Happiness.

Abject semen

Kristeva’s concept of ‘the abject’ offers a few clues as to the source of the humour, and

the horror. According to Kristeva (1982), almost all body fluids: blood, urine, sweat,

faeces, breast milk and vaginal lubrication, provoke a horrified reaction. Seeing,

experiencing or contacting these fluids cause a corporeal reaction, a nauseated reflex to

expel the contaminating substance. But it is important to remember that abject fluids

provoke disgust and horror not because they are foreign or invading substances, but

because they are part of us, products of our own bodies. In the realm of the abject, the

boundaries between subject and object are dissolved. Neither self nor other, the abject

blurs our body's 'clean and proper' boundaries, provoking simultaneous transgressive

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fascination and repulsion.

Abjection occurs in reaction to a loathsome object “an item of food, a piece of filth, waste

or dung” (1982: 2). In abjection there is “a massive and sudden emergence of

uncanniness” (1982: 2), in which something (someone) that seemed familiar becomes

strange, “radically separate”, and horrific (1982: 2). In Kristeva's terms, abjection is more

than uncanniness - it provokes a violent reaction - a retching, rather than a shivering.

There is shame in the nauseated reaction to that which is improper/unclean, because the

improper object is as compelling and fascinating as it is loathsome. Crucially, the abject

is not fully an object - it is part of the self, the subject. Wastes products: shit, blood,

urine, mucous, are part of my body - however they cannot be part of me, they must be

expelled. If I allow the abject to remain with me, or if I revel in my own abjection (as in

Kristeva's example of the Christian martyr), I myself become abject: criminal, “abased”,

masochistic (1982: 5). “Thus” Kristeva puts it, “it is not lack of cleanliness or health that

causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order” (1982:4).

The abject is “the ‘object’ of primal repression” (original emphasis 1982: 12) in Oedipal

struggles to distinguish self from the mother as other - and consequently grounded in

psychoanalytic models of castration and lack. Joiussance, or wordless self-shattering is

associated with abjection, when “urine, blood, sperm, excrement show up” to allow the

anxious subject to refer “the horrors of the maternal bowels” away from himself,

reassuring himself, in the process, that he is not castrated (1982: 53). As in Freud's model

of the fetish, within Kristeva's model, the male subject is able to mask or deflect his own

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horror over ‘the collapse of the border between the inside and the outside’ by

transforming 'the abject into the site of the Other’, gaining both erotic pleasure and

symbolic reassurance. In contrast, Kristeva argues, “when a woman ventures into these

regions it is usually to gratify...the desire for the abject that insures the life (that is the

sexual life) of the man whose symbolic authority she accepts” (1982: 53-4). Kristeva's

reasoning here seems to follow Freud's assertion that women always (already) know

themselves to be castrated/lacking, and therefore have no need for 'protective' perversions

and fetishes (see Freud: 1979). And, accepting this reason, it follows then that women do

not eroticise men’s bodies and bodily fluids, but rather their 'symbolic authority'. That is

to say, women accept their 'natural' position as the Other, the object and never the subject

of sexual authority, symbolic or otherwise.

Indeed, Kristeva herself seems to accept the symbolic authority of the male body when

she later contradicts her listing of semen with the other (non gender specific) body fluids:

urine, blood and excrement. In the chapter entitled 'From Filth to Defilement', she later

specifically states that two fluids, tears and semen ARE NOT polluting... and therefore

not abject. While in the case of tears it could be argued that they are clear, non-staining,

and above all, products of the eyes, a 'clean' and uncontaminating set of orifices, semen,

however, is a spanner in the works. It is wet and slimy, with a distinctive odour, and it

stains. I argue that Kristeva can only rule out semen as abject by adhering to fairly

traditional and rigid models of masculinity and femininity (as defined in the

psychoanalytic models she adheres to). Within these models, 'real' masculine men are

active subjects: 'hard' and in control, impermeable. In contrast women have messy,

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uncontrollable bodies that dissolve, and leak fluid involuntarily. Feminine women have

messy boundaries, and are, by definition, both penetrable and polluting.

Yet Kristeva repeatedly emphasises the erotic pleasures of the abject - particularly in

association with this 'horrific' model of femininity. The abject other is associated with the

wordless dissolution of jouissance, and thus the other is an object of desire. While I do

not ascribe to the psychoanalytic model of lack, I believe it is crucial, when exploring the

potentials of this model for exploring popular images of sexuality, to remember that

fetish and perversion involve identification with feared/despised/desired objects. One of

the reasons why I find it so difficult to accept the simplistic (and admittedly clichéd)

argument that explains heterosexual men's enjoyment of pornography as a case of the

male sadistic, voyeuristic porn viewer 'demeaning' women through his objectifying gaze

is that this model relies so selectively on a part of the psychoanalytic construction of

subject/object relations.62 If one is to use theories of fetish to explain the pleasures of

looking, one cannot ignore the same theories built-in insistence on the tenuousness of the

boundaries between self and other. The exaggerated Othering that is seen to demean and

degrade the female through the 'male gaze' is not an expression of overweening

masculine strength and power, of a strong and impermeable subject position. Rather, it an

expression of the fragility of the masculine position as Subject, which is always

62 It is important to remember that the masculine subject in psychoanalysis seeks the elusive objet a, or missing phallus. As heterosexual object of desire the woman is the phallus for the man, in the hope that he will give her the phallus, in the form of a child (Freud: 1979). So, it is a very partial reading of male hetero desire which disavows this masculine 'lack'.

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experienced as being at risk. It is this very sense of being at risk which creates the need to

enforce boundaries between the 'inner' and the 'outer', between masculine and feminine.63

Certainly, in many cases, the most heteronormative porn images (either visual or written)

serve to reinforce a particular model of masculine subjectivity at the expense of eroticised

femininity. Yet all too often pornography's critics assume that there is only ever one way

to look at, or read these pictures. It is shortsighted to imagine that even in the most

'misogynistic' images, the male spectator/reader never puts himself in the position of the

'degraded' object of desire. Very 'dirty' erotic fantasies are not easily confessed to a

partner, nor are they easily and comfortably discussed in mainstream, non-pornographic

arenas. The heterosexual 'pervert', who is aroused (for example) by the image of women

urinating and defecating is not likely to win support for the expression of his fantasies

simply because he has chosen a female object of desire. In fact, it can be argued that

'extreme' porn images of messy/dirty sex, offer the male viewer an image of comfort and

acceptance in the face of ambivalent combinations of arousal, shame and disgust. If one

is to follow the lines of thought offered by psychoanalysis, one must admit that within the

realms of fantasy, there is no fixed and finite boundary between subject and object - in

fact, fantasies are attempts to define, test, and create atmospheres of safety within

unstable spaces where boundaries are always questionable.

However, the psychoanalytic model, reliant as it is on the central Oedipal experience as

63As Butler argues, the distinction between the inner and the outer articulates “a set of fantasies, feared and desired” (1990: 134). She refers here to the desire to articulate a stable 'true' inner world, which is separate from an unstable, 'false' outer world, or an authentic, gendered self based 'within' the body, free from the impositions of public discourse (although discourse is always somehow 'internalised').

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the bedrock of sexual/psychic development, cannot account for female sexual

engagements with perverse (non-reproductive) sexuality, since active desire is coded as

'masculine'. Thomas (following Williams) on porn argues that the 'bodily truth' of orgasm

that the cumshot seeks to capture is that of the unrepresentable female orgasm, rather

than the male orgasm. So, as Thomas puts it, “semen is feminised by virtue of being

subject to representation” (Thomas 1996: 19). So while we can't believe 'the

pornographic deceit' that women prefer to be ejaculated upon, neither can the academic

gaze allow for heterosexual male pleasure in the 'feminising' representation of ejaculate.

If semen has positive meaning for heterosexual men, it 'must' only be negative for

heterosexual women. As we know from the Clinton/Lewinsky case, semen is literally

'evidence' of loss of control. In mainstream sex advice, it is considered perfectly normal

for women to be nauseated by penises, and especially semen (witness the long running

'spit or swallow' debate). As HIV/AIDS has added a new level of suspicion or outright

revulsion towards body fluids, semen has become even more suspect, as 'a carrier of

infection'. In contraceptive advice, sex advice columns, and safe sex education slogans

like ‘Tell him if it's not on, it's not on’, there's a universal assumption that women are not

interested or aroused by semen. At best it's an inconvenience (that pesky wet spot). At

worst it's positively dirty and disgusting.

Is hetero porn 'disgusting' to anti-porn campaigners because it shows 'straights' perversely

eroticising messy, abject fluids? Or does straight porn, like mainstream hetero culture,

make women 'wear' the disavowed masculine abject, by literally wearing their semen in

the cumshot? In his book Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety and the Male Body on the

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Line, Thomas suggests this possibility. He argues that women's abjection both protects

and prevents men from seeing their own - particularly during the abject act of

masturbation. The porn actress needs to 'accept' the porn actor's semen ecstatically, in

order to 'distract' the male masturbator from his solitary, messy ejaculation, and

subsequent clean-up. Since femininity is conflated with waste and abjection, the presence

of the female body in the cumshot, Thomas argues, makes sure the “object of horror”, the

semen, ends up “where it belongs” - on a woman, not a man (Thomas 1996: 22-23).

Certainly the ways in which the cumshot has been described suggest that the

photographic or cinematic representation of ejaculation is consistent with Kristeva's

location of the abject 'at the crossroads of phobia, obsession and perversion’ (1982: 45).

For Thomas, cumshots are not a sign of masculine 'power over', but a source of

reassurance to a masculinity that cannot fully be certain of itself as subject rather than

object:

The money shot functions to assuage male anxiety about the lack of value,

lack of power, and lack of masculinity that accrue to the hyperbolic act of

ejaculation at the very moment of the ejaculate's self-shattering appearance

(1996: 22).

But as Constance Penley argues in her article ‘Crackers and Whackers’, porn itself has

often proposed the male protagonist as not so much a Phallic Master but a grotesque

parody of normative masculinity, a figure of fun, slave to his ‘uncontrollable’ urges and

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fluids. The pornographic male, she argues, is often a comic figure, controlled by his little

head, not his big one (Penley 1997). Like Penley, Kipnis (1999) draws on the layers of

meaning in pornography. Unlike Dworkin, she argues that gender is not always the cental

valuing system in the pornographic world order. In her study of Hustler magazine, she

emphasises the classed nature of pornography, where male politicians are satirised and

undermined by 'levelling' them through sexually explicit words and images. This is not

necessarily a feminising move - rather it is an insistence that even those with the greatest

cultural control and masculine authority (Presidents, congressmen, religious leaders, etc.)

have vulnerable bodies. Hustler's celebration of the comedy of “grossly erupting bodies”,

Kipnis argues, is designed to puncture to hypocrisy of “high culture and official culture,

which feels the continual need to protect itself against the debasements of the low (the

lower classes, low culture, the lower body...)” (1999: 137). The abject then is not only

gendered, but also classed. As Kipnis observes, “the lower body and its productions...shit,

farts, semen ... [are] Hustler's staple joke materials” (1999: 140).

Certainly, I agree that heteronormative masculinity is bolstered by attempts to insist that

sperm always requires the 'appropriate' receptacle of a woman's body (never, as Thomas

observes, another man's). This does not, however, lead me to argue with Dworkin that

semen ennobles men and pollutes women. The relationship of both men and women to

semen (particularly the especially visible semen produced through masturbation) is more

problematic, more ambivalent, and, at times, more pleasurable than that. As O'Toole

observes, the porn industry may be geared towards the desires of masturbating men, but it

does not always treat them well. Sex shops are not necessarily comfortable environments

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for heterosexual men, as any woman who has walked into one and startled solitary male

shoppers can attest.

The illicit nature of much of the porn industry keeps prices high. Censorship regulations

ensure that magazines are wrapped in plastic, and shoppers must judge them by covers

that may promise more than they deliver. Some production houses mislead purchasers as

to the content of specific videos, naming stars on box covers who may not appear in the

actual films. All this points not only to contempt for wankers, but to a shame among male

porn consumers which prevents them from effectively lobbying for their rights under Fair

Trading Acts. When the porn industry does publicly address these consumers, it does not

portray solitary male masturbators as its audience. These men still evoke the spectre of

the miserable, frustrated teenage virgin or the dirty old man in a raincoat. It is the

autonomous woman 'empowered' by feminist erotica, or the (potentially reproductive)

monogamous heterosexual couple adding 'spice' to their marriage who represent the

acceptable porn consumer - even though they are surely in the minority.

Male use of pornography for masturbation is still seen to undermine his heterosexual

relationship, by eroding 'intimacy'. Use of pornography, or even frequent masturbation

accompanied by 'visual' fantasies is seen as a rejection of female partners, or as a sign of

'addictive' tendencies. Heteronormative masculinity always risks being eroded by male

masturbation, not simply enhanced by it, and even material designed to facilitate

masturbation admits this.

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Loaded Guns and Baby Batter

It is this erosion of the boundaries of masculine subjectivity that is played on in the recent

Hollywood ejaculations, which Marlow finds so depressing. Within these films, semen is

very much a 'low' product, one that does not ennoble, but humiliates the masculine

subject. For example, in the Farrelly Brothers' hit teen 'date movie’ There’s Something

About Mary, Ben Stiller (Ted) is preparing for his long awaited dream date with the

lovely Cameron Diaz (Mary). His friend runs him through a pre-date checklist, and

discovers that Ben has omitted a crucial step: masturbation. He warns him that

masturbation is an essential prerequisite for a big date. Going out horny is 'dangerous...

like going out with a loaded gun', he warns. (Which is sound advice for girls or boys, but

I don't think it's purely a problem of 'baby-batter on the brain', as the character describes

it). So, in the next shot we see Ben vigorously wanking in the bathroom, over an insipid

page of bra ads, which might easily have been torn from a K Mart catalogue. It seems

like nothing more than a good sight gag - he doesn't have any porn, so he has to

improvise. It's a guy thing. But, as I will discuss, there may be another, more specific

reason why he uses those particularly innocuous images as 'porn'.

Ted masturbates, and we see him grimacing and pulling silly faces. Just as he's finally

coming, there's a knock at the door: it's Mary! He grabs a tissue and wipes his hands.

Nothing there. He frantically looks around the room, but can't find it anywhere. He rushes

to answer the door, and Mary, the love of his life, greets him by reaching up and scooping

a glutinous glob of cinematic semen off his ear. She then runs her 'polluted' hand through

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her hair, grateful for the 'hair gel'. The cinema audience, guffawing throughout the

sequence collapses. Obviously, this comedy sequence depicts masturbation and

ejaculation, but it's not quite a cumshot. As with the ejaculation into the glass of beer in

American Pie, we only see the cum itself as an 'inert' substance, not in motion.

This masturbation scene mirrors an equally abject sequence earlier in the film, in which

Ben's first date with Mary has been disastrously aborted when he looks innocently

through a bathroom window, only to accidentally catch sight of Mary changing into her

prom dress. Mary and her mother 'catch' him looking, and in a great twist on the Porkys

teen gross-out genre, Ted is accused of peeping at and masturbating over Mary, even

though this was not his intention. He zips up hurriedly, catching his genitals in his fly. A

long comic-horror/humiliation sequence follows, which ends with Ted being carted away

in an ambulance, while Mary's intellectually disabled brother Warren joyously shouts “he

was masturbating, he was masturbating!” to the crowd which has gathered outside the

front door. When Ted finally is shown masturbating, it's crucial that he does not jerk off

over Mary. After 15 years of pining for his dream lover, are we really supposed to believe

he can't come up with a decent pre-date masturbation fantasy? Surely he has a better

imagination than that! I suggest there might be several possible reasons why we see that

bra ad:

a) the filmmakers are making a good joke about male sexuality and 'the frenzy

of the visible' e.g 'women like to fantasise, but men need to look'.

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b) the Farrelly brothers know they are treading a fine line classification wise,

and are wisely not actually showing an explicit 'sex fantasy' sequence in a

teen movie, or

c) The reason that is most likely in my reckoning: they're showing us that

Ben is a nice guy who respects Mary, and doesn't ‘objectify’ her by jerking

off over her body, even metaphorically. This proves he is good enough for

her.

Imagine the alternatives to the bra-ad joke. If we, the audience saw a cutaway image of

some kind of Ted and Mary having some kind of idealised yet comical 'fantasy' sex, the

scene would be more 'realistic'. However, a literal representation of Ted's masturbatory

fantasy would take the film dangerously close to pornography, threatening Ted's Mr Nice

Guy Protagonist status. (Despite the fact that we might logically assume that an 'ideal'

heterosexual dream girl like Mary actually does desire and enjoy sex with her

boyfriends). Ted's wank and ejaculation is presented not as pornography, but as grotesque

physical comedy. It's not eroticised, nor is it presented as a source of male pride or

'ennoblement'. We know that he doesn't want Mary to know that he has masturbated, let

alone wipe 'the evidence' through her hair. Yet we can still laugh with Stiller's character,

despite his humiliation.64

64 Bodies out of control are of course a staple of comedy. Steven Shaviro's work on Jerry Lewis' 'comedies of abjection' argues that the constant humiliation of Lewis' characters represent his male body as constantly disintegrating. Lewis' subjectivity, Shaviro argues, is masochistic, constantly failing in the face of external authority. The audience both identifies with Lewis' confusion and misadventure, and is disgusted and embarrassed for him and by him (1993).

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In a similar Hollywood ‘teen movie’ cumshot, a character in American Pie demonstrates

his true love for his girlfriend by ejaculating not in her mouth or onto her, but into a glass

of beer by the side of the bed.65 Later, his boorish friend drinks the ‘loaded’ beer, and not

only instantly recognises that he has drunk semen, but becomes violently ill. The physical

horror of the friend's reaction demonstrates not only the abjection of sperm as a ‘waste

product’, but a horror of the act of ‘homosexuality’ in swallowing another man’s cum66.

Clearly, in this case semen has the potential to pollute not only women, but men. But the

most abject non-pornographic visions of ejaculation occur not in teen movies, but in US

director Todd Solondz' extremely complex (and much less popular) adult film Happiness.

In Happiness we see a furtive 'pillar of the community' psychologist pedophile,

masturbating in a carpark over a pre-teen fanzine, as a mother loads her children into the

neighbouring car. We see his overweight 'lonely guy' client, masturbating over obscene

phone calls, and unable to respond to the opportunity to fulfill his fantasies. And we see

the pedophile's eleven-year-old son masturbating on his grandmother's balcony during a

family meal. This film has been described as a 'horror film', but the horrific acts of rape,

murder and mutilation take place largely off-screen. There's no graphic nudity, either. In

fact, the most gruesome things we actually see are two incredibly abject cumshots, which

(in true 'horror' tradition) were both met with audible groans by my fellow filmgoers.

65Although Vanity Fair writer Scott Turow (1999) considers both American Pie and Mary to be evidence of a Hollywood open season on that cinematic holy of holies, the penis, we actually don't get see an actual penis in any of these films - only the object of horror it produces. 66 Christopher Looby (1995) notes that there is a literary and medical tradition of both homoerotic and homophobic discussions of 'the odour of male solitude': the horrific olfactory recognition of another man's semen.

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In the first scene, the obscene phone caller's semen hits the wall, and he uses it as 'glue' to

stick up a postcard (groans of horror). Then, in the film's final sequence, the ten-year-old

son of the horrific nice-guy suburban dad paedophile finally achieves his goal: he cums.

Having discussed his fear and inadequacy over his inability to ejaculate in several scenes,

he 'peeps' at a siliconed sunbather from on his grandmother's balcony and masturbates, as

his family sits down to lunch in the next room. We see his semen hit the railing of the

balcony, where it is promptly licked up by the family dog (more groans), who then goes

inside and exchanges 'kisses' the boy's mother (absolute incestual horror to end all

horrors). Although the obscene phone caller in Happiness has the fantasy of fucking his

callee until he 'cums out her ears', when she expresses an interest in taking up his offer,

he's absolutely paralysed and unable to act. The anxious flip-side of the cumshot is laid

bare: wankers are losers. It is men, not women, who are shamed by masturbation.

Wankers Are Losers

Although Dworkin argues that the cumshot is designed to teach women to eroticise their

'violation', it seems strange to suggest that the marker of such a 'male-centred' genre is

there solely to instruct women. Given that the vast majority of pornography is made by

heterosexual men for heterosexual men, it is impossible to imagine that the cumshots are

not a significant source of masculine heteroerotic pleasure. Since most pornography is

designed to facilitate and enhance hetero men’s experience of masturbation, then I tend to

agree with Calvin Tomas' argument that the cumshot is there for the solitary masturbator,

who must see his own semen, and can only imagine the 'body' that might receive it. In

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most porn films (there are a few exceptions, particularly in the newer, Gonzo/amateur

films) 'the camera cuts away' before we see the towels or tissues brought into frame for

the clean up. The image is frozen at the moment of pleasure, before it becomes re-coded

as a shameful or disgusting waste product. The porn cumshot serves (at least in part) to

reassure the solo masturbator that cumming on the outside is not only acceptable, it's

infinitely more erotic than any other form of ejaculation-even when an excited, willing

partner is available.

The question arises then as to whether the ‘real’ meaning of the cumshots can be

objectively defined. Clearly, semen itself has multiple meanings, in various contexts. It

is, at once, evidence of pleasure, ‘baby-batter’, messy waste material, potential biological

hazard and ‘neutral’ by-product of orgasm. While gay men are encouraged to jerk off

together as an erotic form of safer sex, straight women are encouraged to believe that

semen is messy or 'demeaning', and that women who enjoy its tactile qualities are either

brainwashed (in Dworkin's terms) or 'sluts'. I certainly don't think that anti-porn

campaigners are trying to bolster up the now very tired idea that heterosexual vaginal

penetration is the only 'real' sex; in fact, one of their critiques of porn is that it re-enforces

stereotypes of heteronormative sexuality. However, the idea that cumshots are demeaning

seems to insist that semen belongs properly in a body, not on a body. As both Thomas

and O’Toole point out, men are used to cumming on themselves while masturbating, and

don't tend to consider the experience to be either ennobling or demeaning, although it

may be shameful, or messy. This doesn't mean, however, that they are 'proud' of

masturbating to ejaculation. At this point, it is worth considering whether an insistence on

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defining semen as either disgusting or ennobling is futile. Perhaps a better question (in

terms of an ethical project) might be “why do we need to determine or fix a universal

meaning for bodily fluids at all?”

Andrea Dworkin’s construction of the cumshot seems to claim that, as Kipnis puts it

“men prefer that semen be seen as disgusting because the only way they can get sexual

pleasure is through violation” (1999: 147). At the same time, by arguing that semen is a

source of ‘pollution’, Dworkin seems to be insisting that “any shame [for women] is

transferred to those who evoke disgust” - that is, men (Probyn 2000: 129). If, as Judith

Butler argues, abjection is “the mode by which Others become shit”, then Dworkin's

response to the ‘othering’ of the cumshot is understandable (Butler 1990: 134). Her

reasoning seems to be as follows: masculinity is coded in relation to a feminine other.

When feminine sexualities have been normatively represented as slimy, excremental and

disgusting and women have been ashamed of their sexual bodies, it ‘makes sense’ to shift

the shame back to the men, by claiming it is male sexuality that is disgusting and Other.

Citing Silvan Tomkins' work on affect, Probyn proposes that “disgust has evolved to

protect the human being from coming too close” (Probyn 2000: 15), while “shame, on the

other hand, is in part a recognition of having been too close, where proximity to the other

has been terminated” (Probyn 2000: 131). Certainly, outside of pornography, semen is

almost universally viewed as a disgusting waste product. The thought of finding (not to

mention touching) a used condom, for example, provokes a shudder of horror, a feeling

of very definitely ‘coming too close’.

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Ejaculation is linked with the male experience of orgasm, but it does not necessarily

follow that heterosexual male pleasure depends upon the degradation of heterosexual

women. Nor does it follow that the experience or substance of ejaculation must be

experienced by men as either a proud erotic triumph or a shameful and/or disgusting loss

of self-control. As Probyn (2000) argues, shame, disgust, guilt and pride can coexist

within a 'single' subject's corporeal sense of self. In her discussion of projects of identity

politics (such as feminism) which have sought to replace what they see as “damaging

forms of representation” such as commercial pornography with “representations of the

right sort” (i.e. woman centred erotica), Probyn questions whether disgust and shame can

ever by fully “stripped away” and replaced by pride (2000: 125). If such a project could

be successful in the case of pornography, what would be the future utility of a sexual

politics based on pride alone? For, as Probyn suggests, disgust and shame may be “the

hidden face of body pride” (2000: 128). As Thomas points, even feminist politics of body

pride persistently gender “the devalued as feminine”, and deny “the value of

powerlessness in both men and women”, insisting that there is never any source of

subjective agency for the ‘object’ of erotic desire and sexual abandon (1996: 23).

A queerer reading of the abject masculinities depicted in cumshots takes account of the

instability of sex/gender identities, and the layering of shame, pride, arousal and disgust

within even the most 'acceptable' sexual identities. If semen is simultaneously coded as

pleasurable and disgusting, it does not necessarily mean that this must always be at

women's expense - although it often is. By unpacking some of the complexities of images

of ejaculation, I have sought to question the normative understandings of sexualised

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masculinity and femininity. Tomkins' theories of affect are exciting precisely because

they allow for open, complex readings of the intersections between cultural products and

personal, political, emotional reactions (see Probyn 2005, Bollen and McInnes 2004).

Affects are responses to stimulus - but an affect is never assumed to be 'married' to a

particular subject or object. That is to say, disgust is not 'feminine', and surprise is not

'masculine'. Affects may be layered - shame, disgust and excitement interwoven- but not

as the result of 'repression' or Oedipal conflict.

As Tomkins puts it:

Whatever one is excited by, enjoys, fears, hates, is ashamed of, contemptuous

of, or is distressed by is an object of value, positive and negative. Value

hierarchies result from value conflicts wherein the same object is both loved

and hated, both exciting and shaming, both distressing and enjoyable

(Tomkins 1995: 68)

It is easy to see then, why porn, and pornographic cum shots, are so highly charged: with

erotic value for porn's viewers, with negative value for porn's critics. Thinking around

porn with the help of Tomkins' theory, it is possible to argue that 'disgusting' (messy,

abject, visceral) heterosexual porn does not simply serve to straightforwardly mask the

threat of male sexual shame (and bolster male pride) by displacing shame onto women,

and making them objects of contempt.

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For Tomkins, the shame response is directly connected to our experiences of looking, and

being looked at. His 'primal' example of shaming experience is that of the shy child, who

is first an embarrassment to his parents because he will not meet the gaze of a stranger.

Then, having overcome his shyness, the curious child stares inappropriately at the

newcomer, and his bold shyness embarrasses his parents again. The child is first shamed

by his parents for not looking, and then for looking too blatantly, and intently. Future

experiences of shame, Tomkins argues, are linked to this same tension of fearing to look,

then wanting to look, and be looked at. Shame creates a barrier to looking - it makes us

hang our heads and look away from that which is strange - and makes us feel strange

within ourselves (Tomkins 1995: 146-47).

Fantasies and representations of dirty sex with dirty women do not leave men 'clean' and

shame-free - they are opportunities for men to attempt to create different experiences of

their own feelings of sexual shame and self-disgust. Whenever one looks at another with

desire and expectation, there is the risk of being ignored, dismissed, or looked at with

contempt - of feeling oneself to be disgusting (Tomkins 1995: 144). As Tomkins puts it

“Unless there has been interest in, or enjoyment of the other person, or the anticipation of

such positive feeling about the other, contempt from the other may activate surprise or

distress, or fear or anger, rather than shame” (1995: 138). While Tomkins states that “for

some, the flaunting of shame leads to an exaggerated shamelessness in sexuality as

evidence to the self and others that one is proof against such affect”, he then refers to

those who “flaunt” shame as “the daredevils of shame” (1995: 102). A daredevil does not

deny shame - he tests its boundaries. Masturbation with 'abject' fantasy material could be

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seen as a safe way to experience the 'extreme games' of sexual shame, without risking the

contempt or rejection of the object of one's desire. This is not to say, however, that

masturbation is necessarily more, or less shameful than partnered sex -the inherent shame

of both activities can manifest itself in the ways one looks - or crucially is looked at. The

male masturbator, caught 'looking' with need and desire, is widely held up as figure of

contempt and disgust.

The contingency of masculinity

There is, in feminist theoretical writing, a general resentment towards what Lynne Segal

has termed the ‘steely inevitability’ of male pleasure (1989). As we saw in the previous

chapter, porn's critics (and even its defenders) argue that porn fraudulently depicts an

exaggerated passive receptive femininity, which is matched by an aggressive, invasive

masculinity - that is, women as perpetually wet, and men as perpetually hard. In contrast

Kipnis (1996) argues that despite exaggerating and fetishising certain obvious sex and

gender differences, pornography simultaneously de-genders women and men by

representing them has having very similar kinds of erotic responses. For example

traditional gender myths tell us that men want quickies, but women want cuddles. Or that

men cum too fast, and women take all night. Or men can only have one orgasm a night,

while women can keep on keepin'on. In contrast, heterosexual porn tells us both men and

women are very interested in sex, are quickly aroused, highly orgasmic, and incredibly

interested in interested in fetish outfits and scenarios. Likewise, both show great sexual

responsiveness, recover rapidly, and are always ready for repeat performances.

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And, as theorist Berkeley Kaite argues, there is tremendous slippage of gender roles in

pornographic scenarios: particularly when we look closely at the poses and costumes.

Even conventionally 'sexy' clothing such as rubber, leather, silk or high heels can be

difficult to read as purely masculine or feminine. Kaite suggests that the female

pornographic star is not just an 'object' to be demeaned - she almost always looks at the

man (or the camera) who looks at her. Every individual in heterosexual porn “must carry

marks of his and her desire” (Kaite 1995: 102, emphasis added). Despite (or perhaps

because of) this blurring of gender, porn is widely read as the most male of all 'male'

genres, because perpetual interest in (and readiness for) sex is considered to be both a

biological male given, and a masculine character flaw.

Porn's critics believe that pornography encourages men to project a 'masculinised' fantasy

of constant sexual readiness onto women, and often they imply that this is due to some

kind of intense 'drive' in men. To me, though, it seems more like intense wishful thinking.

In fact, most men and women are well aware that post-adolescence, men are not

perpetually interested in sex, nor are they perpetually ready for it. In fact, they have all

kinds of variations in arousability and sexual performance, according to mood and

circumstances. Men, like women, sometimes experience difficulty in sustaining sexual

excitement, or achieving orgasm. As many men and women know, male pleasure is not

an inevitable result of sexual activity. Male ejaculation is not proof of a totally

satisfactory sexual experience, any more than female orgasm is. Men can have sexual

pleasure without erection, or ejaculation. And they can have erection and ejaculation

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without much pleasure. As Leo Bersani provocatively puts it, the 'big secret' about sex is

not that it is the source of heteronormative power relations, but that “most people don't

like it” (1987: 197). That is to say, sex, or more precisely orgasm, shatters the 'self'.

'Masculine' sexual performance presents men with a challenging struggle between the

desire to abandon themselves to the “radical self-disintegration” of pleasure, and to

maintain the boundaries around their “hyperbolic sense of self” (Thomas 1996: 21).

It is important to acknowledge that the material substance of semen is highly eroticised in

hetero porn - both visual and textual, and that the meaning of semen in the pornographic

context is as fluid as the substance itself. For example, in a not untypical fantasy story in

the Australian porn/contacts magazine Vixsin Swingers, the author, 'Adrian' recounts a

fantasy of watching his wife 'Jacquie' have sex with four of his friends. While it is, of

course, possible to argue that group sex/gangbang fantasies allow straight men to

eroticise other men 'through' the focus on a female character, in this particular story it is

not the bodies of Adrian's friends which are eroticised, but their semen, in and on

Jacquie’s body. After watching Jacquie in a number of ecstatic sexual combinations with

his friends, Adrian has fantasy of the evening's conclusion proceeds as follows:

It was all I could do not to join in the festivities, but I waited so we could

reminisce while I fucked you...You look so sexy laying there covered in cum

... I want to go down on you and clean out your hot cunt. I mean, I'd like to go

down on you if that wouldn't gross you out. Would you like me to clean out

your pussy, huh? (2002: 8)

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The prelude to Adrian's orgasmic pleasure is licking other men's semen from his wife's

body. Easy as it would be to argue that this kind of fantasy involves a 'displacement' of

homoerotic desire onto a 'safe' female object, I argue that this kind of argument insists on

a rigid dichotomy of masculine/feminine and hetero/homo identification which fails to

recognise the complexity of possible erotic identities that might coexist and overlap in a

single subject. Semen and vaginal lubrication are not simply symbolic of masculinity and

femininity; they are the material substances of sexual pleasure. Not only men, but also

women can eroticise (be interested in, become excited by) bodily fluids in this context.

Both men and women may simultaneously be shamed, or disgusted by these same

processes. Indeed, dangerous, de-gendering 'sameness' evident in porn may work both

ways, acknowledging that some heterosexual women identify their own sexualities

through ‘pornographic’ desires and acts, and some heterosexual men identify themselves

sexually in reference to their own vulnerable, uncontrollable bodies.

A different kind of cumshot

Pornography itself has taken up the problems and ambivalences of heterosexual fantasy

and practice. The 'Buttman' series, launched by porn auteur filmmaker/producer John

Stagliano in 1991, heralded the beginning of a new genre of 'gonzo' porn, which breaks

with the conventions of porn - to massive success. The central conceit of the films is that

the world is full of exhibitionist hetero women who are itching to get into porn video, and

therefore can hardly wait for the filmmaker, “a shy, horny guy with a camera” (O'Toole,

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1998: 186) arrive on the scene. Aside from this central fantasy, Stalin’s films seldom

have a narrative structure, and do not feature any scripted dialogue. The films proceed in

hand-held, porn-verite style, as the female performers begin by flashing, and teasing the

camera, while a humbly appreciative (and ‘surprised’) Stagliano comments on their

beauty and desirability. While Stagliano himself has sex on camera occasionally, he is

more frequently accompanied (and vicariously represented) by pornstar Rocco Siffredi

(who attracted a certain amount of controversial attention in Catharine Breillat's

Romance). Siffredi, (known in the Buttman series as 'Dario'), is a good looking, well-

built, well-hung Italian 36 year old married father of two, who makes films in Italy and

the US. He is known for a particular 'European' style, which combines aggressive dirty

talk and energetic 'macho' penetration with effusive displays of pleasure.

I am not Rocco's only fan. In Pornotopia, Laurence O'Toole observes that Rocco is

renowned within the porn industry as a star who genuinely “loves to fuck” (1998: 211),

and is “by far the biggest earning performer in the whole porn world” (1998:198).67

Unlike many US porn actors, Rocco not only talks during sex scenes, he sighs, groans

and cries out with pleasure. He also collapses, laughs, embraces and kisses his co-star (s)

after orgasm, although often Stagliano follows the conventions of the cumshot and cuts

away before the inevitable clean up of the 'wasted' semen. In one particular scene,

however (which is the literal climax of the video Buttman's European Vacation), Rocco

has three-way sex with two women in a motel room in Cannes, which concludes with a

67Rocco is a 'name' heterosexual pornstar, who, unusually for straight porn, is a 'brand' in his own right, with a range of 'lifelike' dildos modeled on his penis. The 10 1/2 inch 'life-size' model is available in Australian shops packaged in a 'bursting' box which contains it. There is also a 70% scaled 'training model' available, once again illustrating that the role of humour in the sex industry should not be underestimated.

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characteristically abandoned cumshot on one woman's face. Although there are edits

within the three-way, the final shot is a continuous take, where Buttman (John Stagliano)

engages ‘Dario’ in dialogue directly after he orgasms. The scene breaks with numerous

porn conventions, in terms of dialogue, and action. Rocco's body is visibly shaking and

sweaty, as he gets up from the bed post-orgasm to engage in improvised narrative

dialogue with the film-maker/voyeur Stagliano.

This attempt at improvisation is doomed from the start - Rocco and his female co-stars

are too shaken by their corporeal performances to 'speak' the fantasy. When Stagliano

attempts to engage 'Dario' with a matey 'We should do this again sometime', Rocco the

exhausted actor hears a direction to do a re-take, responds with a horrified 'Again! No!' -

which is echoed by his co-stars, As Stagliano attempts to salvage the misunderstanding

by pressing on with dialogue, the women on the bed begin to overpower the scene. As

Stagliano and Siffredi speak, we hear one of the women exclaim “Ow, My eye!” and the

other reply “He always does that!” It is clear that one performer has semen in her eye,

and this is not an uncommon side effect of the facial cumshot. Still, the camera does not

cut away. As one woman tries to help the other wipe her eye with a hand-towel, Rocco is

abandons Stagliano to join them, repeating “Oh, sorry baby, sorry, sorry” as he too picks

up a towel to dab his semen from his co-star's stinging eye. Although Stagliano

intervenes to 'close' the scene, the accidental mis-aimed ejaculation, injury, apology and

clean-up are not excluded from the pornographic narrative. In gonzo porn, fantasy is

important, but there are misunderstandings and miscommunications, accidents happen,

and messes have to be cleaned up.

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Conclusions

Of course, it could be argued that Siffredi's 'mastery' is reinforced by coming in his

fellow performer's eye - many viewers who oppose porn and cumshots as evidence of

hetero-masculinist oppression could choose to read the scene this way. Yet Rocco's own

stated preference for facial cumshots is put in terms of 'enjoyment', rather than 'mastery':

In my films, I always ejaculate in the face of the models, never somewhere

else. Because from the expression on their face, you can tell if they really

liked what they did or not...They really have to enjoy sex. That's why my

films are quality products

(www.planetrapido.com/carnal/sexperts/rocco/htm).

There is no doubt that porn's critics are disgusted by porn's fantastic incitement to 'look

back' at the masturbating viewer, no doubt reading the above statement as just one more

piece of evidence that porn involves women being forced to participate in unpleasant

heterosexual acts. But the fantasy here is not necessarily of degradation, but of

quantifiable mutual pleasure. Although pornography shows 'real sex', it is, paradoxically,

an unreal fantasy. Those who seek to produce 'quality' porn clearly feel this acutely -

Stagliano has stated that he developed the 'gonzo' style out of a desire to make the 'fake'

sex in porn seem 'more real', less choreographed and more clumsy and passionate. The

intermingling of shame/disgust and excitement/joy is apparent in Siffredi's desire for the

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pornographic to 'look back', to not make him (as the representative of the masturbating

viewer) 'strange' by looking away. By 'playing' with sexual mess and discomfort,

pornography allows daredevils of shame to enhance sexual pleasure without having to

insist on a clean and natural 'body pride', or, indeed, on the impossible 'clean and proper

body' which is fantasised by the psychoanalytic subject.

While the presence of a female body may serve to comfort male sexual anxiety, effacing

the vulnerability of the shameful, solitary masturbator, there are many forms of

heterosexual pornography that offers more than a straightforward (and straight) male

subject/female object position. There are opportunities for revelling in abjection, rather

than pushing it away onto an 'other', and for experiencing, if only for a moment, the

experience of loss and dissolution, the blurring of subject/object boundaries as pleasure,

rather than danger.

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Chapter 6

The trouble with anal sex

The equation of heterosexual vaginal intercourse with compulsory heterosexuality has

been widely criticised, particularly by radical feminists (see Dworkin 1987, Jeffreys 1990

and Greer 1997). Interestingly, feminist critiques of normalising sex advice have been

mainstreamed into popular culture, particularly the detailed discussions of sex practices

which occur in ‘women’s’ media such as Cleo magazine and Sex and the City. The

degree to which these ‘pop-theoretical’ understandings of sex practices have changed is

particularly notable in discussions of sex practices which have traditionally been

considered taboo among heterosexuals.

For those who would argue, with Sheila Jeffreys, that heterosexuality is ‘the eroticisation

of a power imbalance’, the specifics of sex practices and sexual negotiation are

particularly problematic. It is true that heteronormative models of sexual relations

represent men as ‘doing’ and woman as ‘done to’. Within this framework, men are

assumed to be sexually desiring and sexually proficient. They are also presumed to be the

initiators of heterosexual encounters. In contrast, ‘normal’ heterosexual women are

assumed to be sexually reticent, until ‘awakened’ by a suitable and skilful male partner.

Attempts to redress the power imbalances inherent within heteronormativity have tended

to focus on proscribing certain forms of ‘bad’ sexual speech and sexual practice, and

encouraging women to both know and actively assert their sexual desires. Yet certain

desires are still highly conflicted and problematic. Although radical feminists have

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argued against the practice of all kinds of penetrative sex as ‘passive’, I would argue that,

as Kippax and Smith put it, “to forbid passivity, in whatever form it takes, does not

resolve the problem of phallocentric power structures. Indeed, the injunction against

passivity is internal to phallocentrism” (2001: 430). However, while vaginal intercourse

is considered redeemable by most ‘liberal’ feminists, anal intercourse is often figured

quite differently, as a ‘demeaning’ practice which is most likely provoked by male desire

and coercion, and can only ever be ‘tolerated’ by the female heterosexual. It is as if the

injunctions against ‘penetration as male domination’ have been found to be somewhat

exaggerated in the case of one orifice, but absolutely true in the other.

Interestingly, the strongest rejections of receptive female eroticism in recent times are put

forward by Germaine Greer, who explicitly states that anal intercourse is a rejection not

only of women’s reproductive function but of heterosexual love itself (see Greer 1997,

1999) – a very ‘essentialist’ view in many senses of the word. There is any number of

conflicting discourses around anal intercourse. It is ‘gay’ sex, and therefore is considered

to be more desired by men than women. It is, post HIV/AIDS, ‘dangerous’ sex which can

lead to the transmission of HIV from ‘deceitful’ bisexual men to ‘innocent’ heterosexual

women. And, above all, it flouts the natural purpose of the female body, because the

anus, as opposed to the vagina, is not ‘designed’ for intercourse. Yet, paradoxically, these

very prohibitions against anal intercourse make the practice itself more appealing for

heterosexuals, as its uncompromisingly unnatural and taboo status make it ‘the last

frontier’ of hetero experimentation. Furthermore, the association of anal intercourse with

the transmission of the HIV virus has, I will argue, encouraged a flourishing of practical

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‘expert’ advice in the popular media which has in turn provided new opportunities for

non-normative heterosexual pleasures.

Anal intercourse, it seems, poses a severe threat to the normalised categories of sex and

gender. It is possible to argue that, when a man penetrates another man, the one

penetrated is being ‘treated like a woman’. It is possible to argue that, when a man

penetrates a woman, she is being ‘treated like a man’. And also to argue, paradoxically,

that when a woman penetrates a man, she is reiterating her own castration, and bolstering

his sense of phallic superiority. I can think of no other sexual practice which destabilises

the categories of man and woman and straight and gay in quite the same way. As Eve

Sedgwick puts it, “anal eroticism will propel the subject into an area of our culture where

the gender dimorphism of discourse is almost unthinkably extreme” (1994: 203). Yet, as

Jonathan Dollimore argues, the confusion around who does what to whom, and what he

or she ‘becomes’ through anal eroticism and anal intercourse, allows for a productive

rethinking of these supposedly oppositional categories of man/woman and hetero/homo,

in which “we are not all the same. [But] we are differences which are radically

proximate” (Dollimore 1990: 229).

The proximate sex

According to Freud, “we actually describe a sexual activity as perverse if it has given up

the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of

it” (quoted in Dollimore 1990: 175). Following this medical model, as Dollimore

observes, almost every contemporary sexually active person is now a pervert, actual or

aspiring (1990: 175). However, psychoanalytic theory represents only one of many

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critical attempts to account for sexual desires and pleasures, and it has its limitations.

According to Dollimore:

Freud discloses the displacement of sexuality into culture ... But displacement

also goes the other way ... social crisis and conflict are endlessly displaced into

sexuality. And this may be the more important kind of displacement. Certainly

it is why today perhaps the most important task of sexual politics ... is to chart

this displacement of the political into the sexual (in contrast, for example, to

liberating the sexual) (1990:181).

In his study of modern and pre-modern theories of perversion, Dollimore explores the

social anxieties regarding taboo and transgression which have been displaced into

sexuality in the construction of ‘normal’ and ‘perverse’ sexual categories. In readings of

authors such as Oscar Wilde, André Gidé and Radclyffe Hall, and historical examination

of biblical, theological and early modern accounts of perversity, Dollimore reveals that

the contemporary confusions around anal intercourse are not unique – indeed perversity,

be it a physical or textual practice, is commonly understood as a kind of paradox.

Perverse practices are viewed, paradoxically, both as ‘against nature’ and as the product

of ‘giving in’ to nature; perversion “is very often perceived as at once utterly alien to

what it threatens, and yet, mysteriously inherent within it” (Dollimore 1990: 121).

According to this history, it is not surprising that, in his perverse rereading of

psychoanalytic texts, Dollimore produces his own form of ‘liberationist’ theory in which

sexual perversion, “conventionally imagined as the definitive manifestation of

inauthenticity and even degeneracy, becomes ... the expression and rediscovery of an

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original intensity of being; even, perhaps an original integrity of being” (1990: 179).

Following Foucault, Dollimore notes that the psychoanalytic model of ‘normal’

heterosexual development depends on the central trope of perversion. In the development

from the polymorphous perversity of early childhood to the genitally focused

heterosexually oriented ‘normal adulthood’, one must ‘limit’ oneself to one sex or the

other, but this must occur via a ‘detour’ of attraction to, and intense love for, the parent

of the same sex. It could be argued, then, that political or cultural insistence on strict

gender ‘differences’ and sexual ‘opposites’ serves to mask anxiety around the proximity

of men and women, and heterosexuals and homosexuals:

... if, within the construction of homosexuality as a fear or refusal of

otherness, there may also be a projection by the male heterosexual on to the

homosexual of his fear of the woman as other, there may also be a disavowal

of the heterosexual’s fear of the homosexual as the same – that is, a fear of

those gender proximities and interconnections ... whose feared mutual

implication compromises not only the ideology of sexual difference, but the

cultural formation it underwrites (Dollimore 1990: 272-273).

While Dollimore focuses particularly on male heterosexual anxiety around

homosexuality, it is interesting to note that some heterosexual feminists have also

demonstrated an anxiety towards gay men on the basis of their sexual ‘rejection’ of

women, just as some heterosexual men have chosen to view lesbians as ‘hating men’

rather than ‘loving women’ (see Gallop 1989; Rich 1980). As Dollimore puts it, the

threat of sexual/erotic difference “is never the absolutely unfamiliar, but the reordering of

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the already known, a disclosure of the radical interconnectedness which is the social, but

which present cultures can rarely afford to acknowledge and must instead disavow”

(1990: 230). Anal intercourse can draw unsettling attention to the proximity of male to

female, since it emphasises the sameness of the male and female anus rather than the

difference of male and female genitals. Since heterosexual men are capable of

experiencing anal pleasure, and even penetration at the hands (or dildo) of a woman, anal

intercourse also reveals the unsettling proximity of gay to straight. If what is ‘already

known’ is that one sex/gender penetrates (and is powerful) and the other is penetrated

(and powerless), then it is no wonder that the proximity of anus to vagina, and anus to

penis, is disavowed as vigorously as the difference between penis and vagina is insisted

upon.

Crimes against nature

In US states where sodomy is still illegal, a person is deemed to have committed the act

of sodomy “when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organ of

one person and the mouth or anus of another” (Weiss 1989: 101). Like the Tasmanian

‘anti-gay’ laws which prohibited oral sex, anti-sodomy laws reflect the classic notion of

perversion, where mouth and anus are conflated as ‘unnatural’, non-reproductive organs,

not to be touched by sex organs – that is to say, genitals.

However, while anal penetration of a woman, or a man by a woman, is technically

‘against the law’, heterosexual sodomy is largely forgotten by law enforcers.

Heterosexual sex is not considered to be a matter of public interest, and is generally not

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subject to legal scrutiny, unless people make their sexuality public in some way. If the

law so desires, anti-sodomy laws can be stretched to cover all kinds of unusual sexual

circumstances, as in Annie Sprinkle’s arrest in 1978 by the Rhode Island police for

‘sodomy’ and ‘conspiracy to commit sodomy’. In Sprinkle’s words:

The sodomy charge stemmed from the fact that I had had sex with my friend

Long Jean Silver, who had a leg without a foot. She had made love to me

[vaginally] with her sexy stump, and we photographed this delight ... (1998:

47-48).

According to Sprinkle, the legal definition of sodomy in Rhode Island is “an abominable,

detestable crime against nature” (1998: 48). In this case, vaginal penetration by ankle (or

shin) was legally deemed sodomy, although the photos of the event, which Sprinkle has

since published, do not involve the ‘misuse’ of either a mouth or an anus68. The act was

made doubly criminal by the presence of a photographer, and the intent to distribute the

images – in fact, given the flexibility (or anxiety) of the law, any kind of sex which

occurs in front of a camera might also be considered ‘a crime against nature’.

As Dollimore observes, the proscription of sodomy as a crime against nature has a long

history in both religious and civil law. Prior to the nineteenth century:

Sodomy was associated with witches, demons, werewolves, basilisks,

foreigners and (of course) papists; and it apparently signified a wide range of

practices including prostitution, under-age sex, coitus interruptus, and female

68 The charges were dropped by the Rhode Island police when local disability activists threatened to protest against the trial.

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transvestism. Socially, sodomy was repeatedly equated with heresy and

political treason; metaphysically it was conceived as ‘sexual confusion in

whatever form’ [Sodomy was] not part of the created order but an aspect of its

dissolution (1990: 238).

What, then, is the ‘natural’ order being challenged, and why is the threat so great? In his

study of Sade’s ‘anti-natural’ explorations of sodomy and other non-reproductive

perversions, Alan S. Weiss argues that Sade’s excesses of sex, torture and murder target

the paradox by which cultural law-givers attempt to normalise or legitimise some sexual

practices, and prohibit others, through appeals to nature. Weiss points out that:

... if there is to be any civilisation whatsoever, the cultural field must be

rigorously separated from the natural domain: the term human nature is an

oxymoron, since it is precisely the unnatural which is particularly human ....

Nature is that which must be transgressed in order to affirm one’s humanity,

one’s sovereignty; yet that nature can never be transgressed since we are part

of it – an impossible dialectic (1989:103-104).

Whereas in Sade’s time the natural order might be defined by church or state,

contemporary appeals to nature are generally put forward within scientific

frameworks. These appeals, however, tend to demonstrate the same conflating of

‘the natural’ with what has culturally been deemed ‘good’ – particularly when

justifications for the proscription of certain practices are couched in terms of the

body’s design. One could argue, for example, that anal intercourse is potentially

dangerous because the anus was not ‘designed’ to be penetrated, while the vagina

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was designed exactly for this purpose. But who has seen the blue prints for

penetration? One could argue that most women’s vaginas produce lubricating fluid,

and that this ‘prepares’ them for intercourse. The level of lubrication varies

considerably from woman to woman, however, and can be affected by stress and

environment, as well as different stages in the hormonal cycle. Sex manuals list

pages of instructions on the correct techniques for ‘preparing’ the vagina for

intercourse. But what if there was no pre-existing cultural assumption that vaginal

intercourse was normal or healthy? Would we still think the same way about

vaginas? If we did not already have the pre-conceived notion that vaginal

penetration is normal, would those women who do not lubricate much, who are

allergic to latex and spermicide, who find penetration painful, or who suffer from

recurring thrush, cystitis or vaginitis be encouraged to ‘soldier on’? (see Goldsmith

1995). Would woman who suffered from vaginismus (a spasm of the vaginal

muscles that makes penetration painful or impossible) still be sent to counsellors

and therapists? Would there be the same proliferation of hints and tips on foreplay,

position and ‘communication’? Or would we instead see advice like the following:

The vagina is a very delicate structure, designed for the evacuation of

menstrual blood. While some women may enjoy the insertion of a finger or

penis, great care must be taken not to cause injury. For many women, a

penis, sex toys, or even a finger can cause vaginal irritation or infections.

The introduction of semen, latex and/or spermicides into the vagina has

been shown to cause allergic reactions, infections and vaginal discharge.

While some couples may choose to try this kind of activity on occasion, it is

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better not to persist if any discomfort occurs.

Women who fear vaginal penetration are reassured with the reminder that ‘the vagina is

designed to stretch enough to accommodate a baby’s head’, but this describes an ideal

situation. Many women’s vaginas are abraded or torn in childbirth, and damage to the

pelvic floor is seen as a ‘normal’ result of vaginal delivery. Even births supervised by

‘medical experts’ still result in death, or near death.

Clearly, vaginal intercourse can be uncomfortable, painful or even dangerous, but

heterosexual women find ways to deal with the everyday risks. First World women, with

access to soap, running water and preventive medicine, find that most of the hazards of

vaginal intercourse can be easily avoided, despite all of the vagina’s inherent ‘design

faults’(interestingly, the penis, which could be said to have quite a few design limitations

of its own, is rarely discussed in quite this way). So, vaginal intercourse may not

necessarily be natural nor healthy, yet it can easily be made that way. It is assumed that

heterosexual women are willing to do the maintenance work required for pleasurable,

painless vaginal intercourse, and that this willingness reflects our desire to engage in the

activity, whether we desire it for our own pleasure or our partner(s)’. Anal intercourse is,

however, imagined quite differently.

Everyday heterosex in Cleo Magazine

In November 1999, Cleo’s cover headline promised readers ‘REAL WOMEN DOING

IT: What we want, how bad, and the anal sex thing’. This first-ever explicit mention of

anal sex on a Cleo cover was linked to an article entitled ‘Sex and the City’ which ‘asked

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six sassy, dating career girls to watch the first five episodes of Sex and the City and give

... their honest opinion of some of the show’s more provocative themes’ (Simicevic 1999:

102). Cleo’s creation of a panel of professional women to discuss the issues in the

program echoed the narrative formula of Sex and the City itself, in which the central

characters’ conversations themselves present ‘balanced’ yet highly subjective debates on

various issues. Part of the pleasure for the viewer (at least for this viewer) is the manner

in which the ‘hot topic’ of the week is explored by the friends. Although the show’s

writers occasionally break from this formula, it is fair to say that in most of the

discussions (and sexual adventures) Charlotte will be the conservative, Samantha the

radical, Miranda the rational pragmatist, and Carrie the slightly neurotic

observer/commentator. Interestingly, in most episodes of Sex and the City, sexual

knowledge is gained through personal experience (or through personal discussions of the

experiences of friends and peers), rather than through the solicitation of ‘expert’ opinion.

Indeed, when the characters occasionally do seek the advice of formal experts, the

encounters are clearly of limited usefulness compared to the advice and support of the

group of friends.69

Nikolas Rose (1990, 1992) draws on Foucault’s concept of governmentality to argue that,

since World War Two, expertise has increasingly served as a governmental tool.

Although liberalism demands that the state ‘stay out of the home’, Rose argues that the

private home is of public or ‘governmental’ importance as the source of ‘normal, healthy,

69 Consultation with experts is generally a one-off experience for the Sex and the City characters, and tends to provide either a one-off comic scenario (in the case of their visit to a tantra workshop), or simple plot exposition. One example of the 'plot exposition' device is Charlotte and Trey's visit to a marriage guidance counsellor. The therapist provides a clue regarding Trey's recurring impotence – he is psychologically unable to see his wife as 'sexual'. Charlotte then calls Carrie, who offers 'expert' advice on how to test the professional's hypothesis, and the therapist does not appear again.

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law abiding’ citizens. While Rose (1990) particularly focuses on the family as producer

of ‘healthy’, productive children, it is clear that sexual health and happiness affects

productivity also, particularly with the growing emphasis on our “rights to choose what

we do with our bodies, our feelings, our identities, our relationships, our gender, our

eroticisms and our representations” (Plummer 1995: 17).

The job of the expert, Rose asserts, is to advise and encourage the rational liberal subject

towards self-surveillance and self-help so that institutional intervention is almost

unnecessary. As a result of the now mainstream access to behavioural theory, social

research and medical advice, “life has become a skilled performance” (Rose 1990: 238),

where we are free to choose between sexual lifestyles in a climate which is largely self-

policing and self-censoring, or at least (in Australia) “bounded only by law at the

margins” (1990: 220). The field in which ‘expertise’ operates is in fact:

…a complex web, in a plane neither ‘public’ nor ‘private’, neither

‘statutory’ nor ‘voluntary’, in which the codes, conventions, and skills of

psychotherapy [and sex therapy] are addressed to all the multifarious

problems of life (1990: 214).

Ken Plummer observes that contemporary media sex advisers have a kind of

panoptic gaze: they both establish and report on statistical norms, and literally

‘normalise’ the reader through the question-and-answer advice-giving process. As

the experts interpret the questioner’s experience according to ‘scientific’ norms,

readers and audience members can gauge their own sexual health or normality

against the mediated version. As described by Rose:

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Normality appears in three guises: as that which is natural and hence

healthy; as that against which the actual is judged and found unhealthy; and

that which can be produced using rationalised social programmes (1990:

130).

However, chat shows, women’s magazines and infotainment programming often move

away from the panoptic, centralised model of expertise, and concentrate instead on ‘real-

life’ experience. While some have argued that these media self-help genres individualise

experiences of injustice and inequity that would be better understood in a politicised

context, others (such as Lumby 1999) argue that these ‘voice of experience’ panels offer

a voice to the diversity of non-normative experience that would not otherwise exist in the

mainstream media. Given that Sex and the City is based on the writing of sex-columnist

Candace Bushnell, it is not surprising that sexual issues are discussed in the personalised,

experiential voice of the women’s magazine. And, as Saywell and Pittham (1996)

observe, articles about sex in women’s magazines can “facilitate the formation of

temporary communities” of heterosexual women by adopting a conversational tone of

address which positions the readers as “friends” and “workmates” (1996: 60).

Like Sex and the City, the ‘Sex and the City’ article in Cleo focuses on “voices of

experience” rather than voices of expertise, promising to “uncover the truth about how

real women feel about love, men and sex” (Simicevic 1999: 102). The six panellists’

discussions have clearly been edited, but Simicevic does not provide any kind of editorial

overview, or ask a psychologist or dating expert to add their authority (although expert

commentary is standard in many Cleo articles on sex and sexuality). The Cleo panellists

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have clearly been chosen to reflect the characters in the television program: all work in

visual or media-based industries, and all have position descriptions which imply some

kind of tertiary education; Jude, for example, is a 28-year-old PR manager (like

Samantha) and Alison is a 31-year-old art curator (like Charlotte).

Each sexual practice is discussed in the context of a particular episode of Sex and the

City; thus, the discussion of heterosexual anal sex is based on episode 4, ‘valley of the

twenty-something guys’. The discussion is introduced by a quote from the program itself:

“Anal sex – it’s about control. Whoever goes up there will hold the power”. (This is

clearly a ‘feminist reading’, even though it is not an accurate quote. In the episode itself

the characters say that after you go ‘up there’, one partner will hold the power: ‘either

you or him!’) At any rate, 26-year-old fashion designer Natalie’s take on anal sex is: “I

question a guy’s sexuality that wants it ... It’s a power thing: guys know most women are

anti it” (Simicevic1999:105). I cannot be sure why Natalie is questioning the guy’s

sexuality, but let us assume that she thinks he is either insecure, or secretly gay or

bisexual.

Alison, the art curator, follows up with “I don’t mind talking about it – but I don’t do it”

(Simicevic 1999: 105), and goes on to say that she had an ex whose insistence on anal

was a key factor in her decision to break up with him – she thinks “he was using it as a

power mechanism”. Two of the panellists claim to be unable to comment, possibly on the

basis of lack of experience. Another says: “I actually wanted to go there because I

thought it would take our sexual relationship to another level. I felt we’d been

everywhere else and that was the last frontier. But it just didn’t work for me.” She goes

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on to add that she has “a lot of girlfriends who do it and say it’s the most amazing

experience”, to which Jude (who has previously claimed to be unable to comment)

replies, “I think it’s really only a minority who talk about it and do it”. The discussion

concludes with this exchange between Alison and 25-year-old market research executive

Rebecca:

Rebecca: It’s not actually that big a deal, but it’s not something I would do

or try outside of a relationship. I think it’s an extremely intimate request.

Alison: Unless she gets off on it.

Rebecca: Then it would be wise for her to have an awareness of how men

view that. If she’s prepared to take the risk of being labelled a certain way,

then it’s fine for her to say ‘Look, I really like it up the bum’ (Simicevic

1999: 105).

Rebecca’s statement mirrors that of Sex and the City’s Charlotte, who declines to

have anal sex with her new boyfriend because he may be “the one”, that is, her

potential husband. She wants him to see her as the possible mother of his children,

not the “up the butt girl”. The message is clear: anal sex makes you a slut, and sluts

do not get to be wives and mothers. The Cleo panel presents us with a diverse

collection of opinions regarding anal sex, which I see as fairly representative of

both women’s magazines and the broader culture – namely, that anal sex is:

about men controlling women

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a power mechanism

sought by men of ‘questionable’ sexuality

the last frontier of sexual experimentation

extremely intimate and therefore only appropriate within a relationship

the most amazing experience

not that big a deal

a minority taste, and

not something we talk about.

The Cleo discussion does not, however, address the kinds of medicalised or ‘scientific’

advice which is usually prevalent in media discussions of ‘bad’ sex, and, interestingly,

refers to neither of the spectres which usually dominate this kind of conversation: pain

and faeces. It does, however, raise some interesting issues with regard to the shaky

foundations of heteronormativity. Although heterosexuality is supposedly a matter of

object choice (i.e. all differently sexed couplings are ‘heterosexual’), it is clear that

particular ‘bad’ sexual practices undermine this certainty, and anal sex is the ‘bad’ sexual

practice par excellence.

While both men and women can be anally penetrated, receptive anal sex is so often

characterised as gay sex that it is often seen that way when the receptive partner is a

woman. As a practice, anal sex has many complex layers of meaning, yet the bulk of

theoretical writing on heterosexuality has either ignored it or assumed it represents a

simple, one-way power dynamic. It is seen as ‘men’s sex’, something dirty that only bad

men ask for, and only bad women agree to – and even they do not really enjoy it. As

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Susie Bright observes, until recently “most people considered anal penetration for women

synonymous with rape [and] assumed that pornstarlets who take it up the ass must be

either masochists or making obscene amounts of money for their ‘pain”’ (1998)70. As Eve

Sedgwick observes, the feminist tendency to view anal intercourse as inherently

‘degrading’ to women, and therefore outside the bounds of female desire, reproduces a

broader absence or denial around both heterosexual and lesbian women’s diversity of

erotic desire and pleasures:

Although there is no reason to suppose that women experience, in some

imaginary quantitative sense, ‘less’ anal eroticism than men do, it can as far as

I can determine almost be said as a flat fact that, since classical times, there

has been no important and sustained Western discourse in which women’s

anal eroticism means… anything (1996: 204, original emphasis).

The last frontier

What, then, does the ‘everyday’ conversation in the ‘Sex and the City’ article tell us

about the meanings of anal sex for heterosexual women? It suggests that, while there is

no single prevailing discourse of active female anal eroticism, there are multiple,

conflicting discourses around anal eroticism which have the potential to unsettle the

categories of ‘heterosexual’ and ‘woman’. To quote Sedgwick again, the absence of a

70 As Jack Morin points out in his book Anal Pleasure and Health (dubbed by Bright “the bible of anal sanity”), the conscious or unconscious idea that anal sex isn't 'really' pleasurable for the receptive partner can lead receptive women and men to mistakenly accept pain as a 'natural' consequence of penetration. (Morin, 1987) Likewise, insertive partners who don't expect their partner to enjoy penetration are more likely to be rough and insensitive. They are also more likely to expect a partner who is sometimes interested in anal to be permanently available and receptive. After all, they've done it before, so why get all 'tight-assed' now?

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fixed ‘meaning’ for female anal receptivity:

is a really quite large vacant space in our culture that presents a kind of lovely

laboratory for the testing of a Foucauldian hypothesis ... How far can or will

an already gendered and physically very localised desire swerve, how

radically will it misrecognise itself, in its need to join a pre-existing current to

become manifest, to be fulfilled, manipulated, or even frankly repressed – to

become, in short, meaningful. The answer is: quite far indeed (1994: 206).

Thus, the various conflicting discourses in the Cleo article offer a fertile starting point for

exploring changing popular cultural understandings of what it means to be a ‘normal’

heterosexual. For example, the assertion that anal sex is ‘the last frontier’ for

heterosexual couples fits in well with heterosexual ‘expert’ advice from the 1970s and

1980s. Alex Comfort’s approach to the topic in the classic hetero sex manual The Joy of

Sex is representative in this respect, cautiously offering anal sex as a ‘Sauce and Pickle’,

or sexual side dish for heterosexuals: “This is something nearly every couple tries once”

(1984: 118). After a few cautions regarding yeast infections, haemorrhoids and the need

to go slow (all pretty reasonable), Comfort makes it clear that anal intercourse is

something men do to women: “With the woman kneeling , head well down, carefully

lubricate your glans” (1984: 118, emphasis added). While Comfort states that “the anus is

sensitive in most people”, receptive anal intercourse is not suggested for men. And it is

clear, too, that anal sex is only ever experimental sex for heterosexuals:

Unless you find it very rewarding and are free from the feeling that it’s

unaesthetic, we doubt if it’s worth doing more than satisfying curiosity and

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the occasional impulse this way ... (1984: 118).

This style of heterosexual advice regarding anal intercourse may seem quite reasonable,

but it contrasts vividly with the advice regarding vaginal penetration, particularly advice

offered by women’s magazines. In March 1982, for example, a teenage virgin who wrote

to ‘Cleo Doctor’ fearing that her vagina would be “too small” for sex was told: “When

you find the right man and are ready for sex, I am sure you’ll find the slight resistance of

your hymen quickly and easily overcome” (1982: 26). Although Cleo Doctor warned

many such letter-writers against being coerced by men into unwanted sex, generally it

was assumed that, ‘when the time is right’, vaginal sex could be both desirable and

pleasurable, as indeed it can be. Women who wrote to the Cleo columnist complaining of

a long-term lack of vaginal pleasure were advised to read some self-help/masturbation

books, or see a sex therapist. That is, it was assumed that changes could be made to

improve their unsatisfactory experiences, and that they would actually want to make

those changes.

In contrast to this professional reassurance, anal sex was discussed in a very different

tone. In June 1983, a 45-year-old who had, in her own words, had “always had a very

good sex life”, wrote to ‘Cleo adviser’ Wendy McCarthy regarding an unsuccessful

attempt at anal sex. The woman, who was having treatment for haemorrhoids at the time,

had found anal sex with her partner to be understandably painful. Cleo responded:

Of course you shouldn’t have to take part in any sexual activity if you don’t

want to. The fact that you tried it and found it painful and unacceptable to

you is sufficient reason to say no. If you are being treated for haemorrhoids

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that would add to your discomfort, so certainly do not consider trying it

again while that problem remains. If your sex life is satisfying otherwise, I’d

suggest you put this incident down to experience and continue to enjoy your

current sexual repertoire with your husband (McCarthy 1983:21).

Aside from the last sentence, which is eerily reminiscent of Comfort’s advice, this

‘reassuring reply’ seems to be the antithesis of the reassurance given to women who do

not enjoy vaginal sex. Although the adviser flirts with the idea that the woman might

want to try again when her haemorrhoids clear up, the general tone is ‘been there, done

that’ – the frontier has been crossed, and that is all that matters. Specific advice was not

offered on other forms of anal eroticism (such as oral/anal or digital/anal stimulation) that

might either replace anal intercourse or serve as foreplay. Nor was any advice offered

regarding the necessity for relaxation and, most importantly, lubrication.

Shifting frontiers – HIV and the queering of heterosexual pleasure

Since the late 1980s sexual information with regards to both health and technique has

increasingly reflected the influences of grassroots feminist and queer politics – namely

the women’s health movement and the work of community-based HIV/AIDS activists.

Partly this may be due to the maturing of those who moved from egalitarian collectives of

the 1970s, gained ‘legitimate’ qualifications and assumed skilled bureaucratic roles in the

late 1980s and 1990s. However, it is also likely that the federal Labor governments of the

1980s and early 1990s (and particular federal ministers such as Neal Blewett) were more

open to recognising community-derived expertise, and more likely to allow grassroots

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political concerns to shape health policies.71

Whatever the reason(s), members of these community health movements have been able

to organise and disseminate information from within recognisably authoritative bodies

such as the Family Planning Association and the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON).

Popular discussions of sexuality and sexual practices (particularly those which explicitly

take the form of direct advice to readers or viewers) have accordingly reflected the public

health messages distributed by these organisations. It is not surprising, therefore, to see

implicitly ‘feminist’ views on sexuality and sexual practices reflected in popular or

entertainment-oriented discussions of sexuality, particularly in discussions of the highly

charged or taboo subjects.

Magazines like Cleo responded quickly to the HIV/AIDS education strategies pioneered

by organisations like ACON. Although other countries responded to the horror of the

epidemic with the ‘just say no’ education, the Australian response focused on harm-

minimisation, which aimed to give people the opportunity to make informed choices

about safer sex. In education aimed at heterosexual women, this created a new

atmosphere where even a ‘bad’ practice like anal sex could be discussed in terms of ‘how

to’ rather than just ‘yes or no’. If only in the form of a safety tip, anal sex was now

acknowledged as something many women did, and did more than once. Susie Bright

actually credits the negative US-style HIV/AIDS warnings with increasing the popularity

of anal sex. Her theory is that “while everyone was reading about the fatal dangers of

receptive anal intercourse, a lot of heterosexuals were thinking ‘Wow, it must feel

71 For a comprehensive history of the Australian response to HIV/AIDS see Sendziuk (2003).

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awfully good for people to take these insane risks”’ (Bright 1998).

In November 1994, Cleo released a safe sex booklet in collaboration with the

Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health. Entitled The Only Safe Sex

Guide You’ll Ever Need, the booklet was launched with lots of publicity by the then

Health Minister, Carmen Lawrence. The Only Safe Sex Guide contained information

from the Family Planning Association, the National Women’s Health Program and the

AIDS Councils of NSW and the ACT, and was ground-breaking in terms of safe sex

information for heterosexuals. For straight women, the contrast between this new

message and the 1980s ‘Tell him if it’s not on, it’s not on’ approach was huge. No longer

were they being given messages which reinforced the model of women as sexual gate-

keepers who could say only yes or no to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sex (Susan Kippax, Cathy

Waldby, June Crawford 1990).

Instead of assuming that all readers were primarily interested in penis–in-vagina

penetration, The Only Safe Sex Guide listed numerous sex practices, assuming they were

all things women might like to do. Like the safe sex education aimed at gay men, The

Only Safe Sex Guide began with the assumption that readers wanted to have sex, and then

explained which practices were safer. The section headed ‘Everything you ever wanted to

know about SAFE SEX (but were afraid to ask)’, for example, started out telling its

women readers “it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it” (1994: 18) and went on

to list 24 sexual practices, including fist fucking, voyeurism and golden showers. The

degree of risk of transmission of HIV or hepatitis was explained for each practice. Even

more radical was the article ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’, which encouraged non-penetrative

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sex practices (such as striptease and talking dirty) as safer alternatives, with plenty of

handy ‘how to’ tips (the possibility of hot, non-penetrative sex had not been widely

promoted in safe sex education media for women up until this point).

Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), it was an article on anal sex that caused

trouble for Cleo, and Carmen Lawrence. The article, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’, was

shockingly based on the assumption that some women enjoy anal sex. Not all women, but

some. It went further by describing what women liked about it, and giving safer sex tips.

The article finished on a revolutionary note by claiming that anal sex was analogous to

‘regular’ intercourse:

Like vaginal intercourse without sufficient arousal, anal sex should not be

attempted unless both partners are completely willing, the anus has been

gently dilated and plenty of lubrication has been used on the condom

(Osfield 1994: 52).

With statements like “studies suggest anywhere between 40 and 60 per cent of women

have tried anal sex” (Osfield 1994: 50) and the innovative comparison of vaginal and

anal penetration, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ was too much for conservative politicians.

Senator John Herron wrote to Cleo editor Lisa Wilkinson complaining that the magazine

had “promoted sodomy as acceptable heterosexual behaviour” (Wilkinson 1995: 25).

Paul Neville, the federal member for Hinkler, said: “It disturbs me greatly that taxpayers’

money was spent to encourage unsavoury and positively unsafe sexual practices”

(Wilkinson 1995: 25).

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This outrage was probably partly aimed at Carmen Lawrence, who had her political

enemies. But it is interesting that, out of all the possible ‘unsavoury’ or potentially

‘unsafe’ practices listed in The Only Safe Sex Guide, sodomy was the winner. By

suggesting that some women enjoyed anal sex, Cleo was seen as ‘promoting’ anal

intercourse, and Carmen Lawrence was forced to specifically defend ‘The Agony and the

Ecstasy’ in Federal Parliament:

Let’s face the fact that in terms of absolute numbers, more women will have

anal sex than will homosexual couples. In percentage terms, certainly the

number is lower, but absolutely speaking ... anywhere between 10 and 15

per cent of women, or heterosexual couples will have anal sex (Wilkinson,

1995: 25).

Despite all the political and moral turmoil over The Only Safe Sex Guide, magazine sex

advice aimed at straight women had begun to talk about anal sex in a new way. Although

Cleo articles about it were still given good old-fashioned headings like ‘The SEX ACT

men love and women hate’ (Cleo April 1995), anal intercourse was discussed more often

as something which could be done both safely and pleasurably. Advice columnists such

as Australian Cosmopolitan’s Tracey Cox began to instruct their correspondents in the

exploration of anal pleasure, advising external anal massage and/or insertion of a well-

lubed finger before any penis-in-anus penetration took place:

Start by experimenting with a gentler kind of anal stimulation. The next

time you have sex, get him to penetrate your anus with his finger ... if you

enjoy this, try two fingers and see how you like being massaged in a circular

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motion (1998:46).

Anal sex and power

To suggest, as one Cleo panellist did, that anal sex is about ‘domination’ or a ‘power

mechanism’ is to invoke a particular feminist discourse around sexual penetration in

which all penetration is ‘about power’ in the most restrictive sense. Without a doubt, in

western cultural mythology men are more powerful than women, and those who sexually

penetrate are more powerful than those who are sexually penetrated. However, as

Foucault makes explicit in History of Sexuality, Volume One, the interweaving of sex and

power is not a simple matter of ‘men dominating women’. Both men and women are

enmeshed in technologies of bio-power which not only seek to elicit ‘the truth’ of their

bodies and sexualities from them but offer specific narratives of normalisation against

which these truths can be measured. Within the institutional discourses of medicine,

psychiatry and the social sciences, ‘normal’ men are undoubtedly allowed greater leeway

in terms of their desires and pleasures. Yet their positioning as ‘knowing subjects’ of

heterosex is not without its own demands and restrictions. Even when men are in a

position where they wish to, and are able to, dominate women sexually, they are

entangled within heteronormative power relations. The dominant are as enmeshed as the

dominated. They must constantly police their own behaviour, and govern themselves, in

order to maintain their ‘powerful’ appearance through a process of ‘self-formation or

autocolonisation’ which demands they adhere to codes of normativity (Dreyfus &

Rabinow 1983:186). In order to remain ‘straight’ enough to exercise the power they are

‘entitled’ to, men must constantly assess themselves in order to maintain the performance

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of ‘masculine’ sexual desire, skill and virility, while at the same time suppressing any

signs of ‘feminine’ sexuality.

It is not the case, however, that all heterosexual men exclusively eroticise the insertive

role. Indeed, the image of a male being anally penetrated by a woman is relatively

popular in heterosexual male erotica, particularly in commercial BDSM scenarios. As

Catherine Waldby (1995) observes, the traditional psychoanalytic analysis of this line of

fantasy views the eroticised penetrating woman as a disavowal of male fear of castration,

which reinforces the centrality of his own phallic identity, and is, therefore, entirely in

keeping with hetero-norms. The hetero-penetrated man feels himself to be ‘feminised’ in

a carnivalesque act of sexual transgression which only serves to reinforce his sense of

masculine superiority. He is ‘taken like a woman’, but this is only a roleplay, a game in

which he reassures himself, through erection and ejaculation, that he is not a woman at all

(see Kaplan 1990). That this transgression takes place in what Waldby terms the utopian

‘theme-park’ environment of a commercial sex venue through a pornographic fantasy

allows him to disassociate his secretly ‘vulnerable’ pleasure from his everyday domestic

relations with his wife or girlfriend.

Writing in 1995, Waldby called for an increased feminist focus on an erotically

penetrable (as opposed to phallocentric) heterosexual male body – a call I am more than

happy to answer. I agree that it seems short-sighted for feminist theorists (and artists,

performers and writers) to follow the psychoanalytic model of heterosexuality as a

‘natural’ struggle between the imaginary spectres of the dominating, phallic, yet

threatened masculine and the dominated, castrated, yet threatening feminine, which can

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only be resolved if one side wins and the other loses. However, as I have argued in

Chapter 4, I disagree with Waldby’s assertion that the realms of pornography and

commercial sex are entirely separate from the private domestic space of

heteronormativity.

Scenes of heterosexual male anal pleasure are certainly often seen as comic when

presented outside of the realms of pornography, yet I agree with Penley (1998) and

Kipnis (1997, 1999) that both ‘gross’ physical comedy and pornography share a certain

embodied aesthetic of male (hetero) sexuality which can be seen to oppose the normative

model of cool, controlled, masterful rationality. As Simon Astley Scholfield (1999)

demonstrates, images of erotically penetrated heterosexual males are increasingly

prevalent, from the faux ‘fisting’ scene in Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me to

the seductive and ‘threatening’ gloved nurse on the cover of male heterosexual band

Blink-182’s CD titled Enema of the State.72 The image of the heterosexual male as anally

and erotically penetrable has, I believe, been popularised by discussions in men’s and

women’s magazines which tout the prostate gland as ‘the male G-spot’. This view of

male anal eroticism was reflected in several discussions among housemates Sahra,

Nathan, Marty and Keiren on Big Brother Two: Uncut (2002). The aggressively hetero-

masculine housemate Aaron also revealed a fondness for receptive oral-anal stimulation

which had led him to habitually shave around his anus and scrotum.73 These examples

suggest that the increasing public discussion of receptive heterosexual male anal 72 Schofield’s article documents various popular and erotic/artistic images of men being anally penetrated with strap-ons etc, but is most explicitly concerned with the queer figure of the man fisted by a woman. See also Dowsett (1996). 73 Aaron revealed his 'Naired crack' to housemates in a literal sense – he flashed at his fellow housemates. The blokey ex-Navy chef was wearing a cowboy suit at the time, and presented quite a spectacle of blurring the boundaries between 'hetero' and 'homo' masculine eroticisms.

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eroticism is most prevalent among younger men (roughly, those under 40) who are

familiar with the more ‘feminised’ media formats discussed above. They also suggest that

young heterosexual men may deploy similar strategies to those young gay men use to

cope with their ambivalences and anxieties around their desire for penetration.74

Although anal intercourse is popularly assumed to be the central form of gay male sex,

many gay men do not practise it at all, and, among those who do, it can provoke anxiety

around sex and gender roles. As Anne-Lise Middlethon (2002) observes, young gay men

who desire the receptive role in anal intercourse are often disturbed by their desire

because they have been raised to accept prevailing discourses of essential male activity

and female passivity. The young gay men Middlethon interviewed therefore had to

develop strategies as a means of “either resolving their conflicts or learning to live

creatively with antagonistic impulses and images” (2002: 182). Among various strategies

which included “the careful selection of partner” and “position”, Middlethon’s

interviewees also reframed receptive anal intercourse as ‘natural’ by foregrounding the

pleasurable stimulation of the prostate rather than the ‘feminine’ and therefore shameful

pleasure of sexual passivity (2002:182). I surmise that popular mainstream/heterosexual

media discussions of the prostate as male G-spot allow young heterosexual men to

reframe their desire for penetration in a similar fashion.75 It is also possible to suppose

74 I personally corresponded with a 20-something journalist from FHM magazine who exhibited just this ambivalence in seeking not only an interview about the practice, but a physical demonstration. He had been referred to me via Carol Queen (star of the Bend over Boyfriend series) as an Australian equivalent to her erotic manifestation of expertise. 75 The suggestion that the prostate is analogous with the G-spot presents an interesting reversal of the classic medical explanations of female biology and pleasure according to a 'normalised' male biology and response. Where it was once suggested by biologists (and Freud) that the female clitoris could be understood as an 'immature' penis, here one sees an expanded capacity for pleasure being explained according to a female model.

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that the prostate, with its functional link to the process of ejaculation, forms a kind of

‘bridge’ between anal pleasure and penile pleasure, so that the pleasures of anal

penetration can be in some way attributed to the ‘active’ experience of erection and

ejaculation. While this strategy could be figured negatively, as a rejection of femininity, it

could also be seen as acceptance of sexual proximity. Just as it seems to me to be self-

defeating to reject the potential pleasures of G-spot stimulation because heterosexual

women are now supposed to prefer clitoral stimulation to the ‘passivity’ of penetration, it

seems ridiculous to claim that men should experience their erotic pleasure as emanating

from any one particular zone. After all, who is to say whether the pleasures of the

prostate are ‘naturally’ located in the anus or the penis – we have not seen the blueprints.

Making a man of her

The ‘naturalising’ of male anal receptivity, however, is not as easily translatable to

female anal receptivity. Even when female vaginal receptivity is deemed acceptable (I

would suggest the ‘discovery’ of G-spot has helped with this), according to political,

medical, legal or religious rationales, active, desiring female anal receptivity is quite

shocking. As Sedgwick puts it, “one of the few topoi in which the female anus ever

becomes sexually visible is that of a woman’s ‘being used as a man’, as an anally

receptive man, or a man who is being raped” (1994: 204). Thus, the Cleo interviewee

‘questions the sexuality’ of an allegedly heterosexual man who desires even the insertive

role in anal intercourse76. The inference here is that a man who desires anal intercourse is

gay, or bisexual, an inference which had certain specific implications for the readers of

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women’s magazines prior to the early 1990s (although, as I will demonstrate, these

implications have changed since the production of The Only Safe sex Guide You’ll Ever

Need). As Saywell and Pittman observe, in the late 1980s and early 1990s bisexual men

where characterised by women’s magazines as a threat to heterosexual women, due to

their ‘high risk’ of HIV infection and transmission. Further, it was assumed that bisexual

men were “the vehicles for moving the virus between the homosexual community ... and

the general population, which [included] the reader” (1996: 55). A desire for anal sex

could therefore be read as the indicator of a dangerous and questionable sexual partner.

The practice which is seen to feminise the penetrated man paradoxically masculinises the

penetrated woman, by making her an unknowing or unwilling substitute for a gay man.

As Dollimore (1990) suggests, sexual ‘perversities’ such as anal intercourse always have

this paradoxical element, in that they focus attention precisely on that which dominant

structures “simultaneously contain and exclude” where that which is excluded, and

although disavowed, always threatens to return, and effect “an undoing, a transformation”

(1990: 33). In his discussion of D.H. Lawrence’s description of heterosexual anal sex in

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Dollimore demonstrates the difficulties of categorising anal sex

as hetero or homo in light of passages such as the following, which Dollimore describes

as “at once blindingly heterosexist and desperately homoerotic” (1990: 274, original

emphasis):

She had to be a passive, consenting thing, like a slave, a physical slave ...

She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of

which, the shame died ... There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed

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of ... But it took some getting at, the core of the physical jungle, the dark

and deepest recess of organic shame. The phallus alone could explore it.

And how he had pressed it on her (quoted in Dollimore 1990: 274).

It may be that Lawrence displaced his own desire to be anally penetrated onto his female

characters. However, his descriptions of Lady Chatterley’s receptive vaginal ecstasy has

been criticised by feminist writers such as Kate Millett, not as homoeroticism but as

examples of patriarchal propaganda designed to romanticise compulsory

heterosexuality.77 Dollimore does not provide any examples of vaginal sex to testify to

Lawrence’s homoerotic impulses; instead, he seems to suggest that the passage is

homoerotic because the woman is being penetrated anally. What is both excluded and

contained (by Dollimore in this instance) is the possibility of (heterosexual) female anal

eroticism and pleasure.

As Dollimore puts it, “the proximate is often constructed as the other, and in a process

which facilitates displacement. But the proximate is also what enables a tracking-back of

the ‘other’ into the ‘same”’ (1990:33). In the case of anal intercourse, ‘anus’ is revealed

as proximate to both ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’, to the extent that the sameness of the male and

female anus (or the prostate and the G-spot) can confuse the categories of sex and gender.

‘Gay’ is revealed as proximate to ‘straight’, just as ‘wife and mother’ is revealed as

proximate to ‘slut’. It is this proximity that can, I believe, be foregrounded in forms of

popular media and education that seek to advance ethical heterosexualities.

77 For arguments regarding male authors’ narration of female character's pleasure see Kappeler, Susanne, The Pornography of Representation, Polity, Cambridge, 1986, also Dworkin, Andrea Pornography.: Men Possessing Women, The Women's Press, London, 1982

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Chapter 7

Conclusion: queer learning and ethical heterosex

In those circles where queerness has been most cultivated, the ground rule is

that one doesn’t pretend to be above the indignity of sex. And although this

usually isn’t announced as an ethical vision, that’s what it perversely is. In

queer circles you are likely to be teased and abused until you get the idea.

Sex is understood to be as various as the people who have it (Michael

Warner 1999: 35).

From DIY webcamming to commercial pornography, there is abundant visible evidence

of the queering of heterosexuality. It is one thing to think differently about pornography,

or to try to conceive of heterosex in terms of ethics rather than morals. It is quite another

to recommend practical application for these reconceptions. On the one hand, I

wholeheartedly believe that sexual thoughts and practices are valuable in and of

themselves, and need not have any other useful function than to provide pleasure. On the

other, I believe that rethinking sex and pleasure can perform practical social functions in

terms of safer sex and anti-violence education.

In my discussion of educational campaigns that follows, I do not mean to imply that

popular cultural texts are only ‘educational’ when they are produced by community

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activists and feminist educators; or consumed in a classroom setting where they can be

‘deconstructed’. My aim throughout this thesis has been to demonstrate that the practice

of self-reflection that forms an essential component of the ethical sensibility can be

assisted by texts that are primarily designed to facilitate arousal, entertainment or

relaxation. If these texts destabilise or call into question moral certainties or fixed

identities (as I believe many do), then they may serve as triggers for affective responses

that can lead to shifts of subjectivity, and micropolitical change. As Connolly puts it, “to

reach ‘beyond’ the politics of good and evil is not to liquidate ethics but to become

ashamed of the trancendentalisation of conventional morality” (1993: 366). As I have

argued in Chapters 5 and 6, sexually explicit media, particularly pornography, is a key

site where moral certainties and idealised sex/gender identifications can become

destabilised, and shame serves a crucial role in this recognition of messy, unstable

boundaries between man/woman and hetero/homo. The negotiation of this shame (or,

more precisely, the affective pairing of shame-excitement) can be a site of ethical

learning, since it intrinsically requires an awareness of the relationship between the

interested, excited ‘self’ and the interesting, exciting ‘other’.

Given that pornographic texts directly represent the negotiation of the shame/excitement

pairing, it makes sense to think carefully about the ways that the negotiation of shame is

modelled or depicted within them, and to utilise porn scenarios that model ethical

interactions (care of the self and care of others) for political ends. British activist Anne

Philpott launched her ‘Pleasure Project’ at the XIV International AIDS conference in

Barcelona in 2002. Philpott works as a consultant with pornographic film producers in

the UK to incorporate eroticised use of condoms into heterosexual film (with limited

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success at this point, although she was nominated for a prize in the UK sex industry’s

Erotic Awards’ Campaigner of the Year in 2005). In Philpott’s words:

It is very rare for pornstars to use barrier methods, and the ones that I

worked with were nervous about it … They don’t seem to worry about

having sex in front of 30 people in a studio, but they were worried about

putting the condom on wrongly or losing their erection. In the end, though,

they were really keen to help to put the message across (quoted in Naish

2005).

Philpott began her campaigning after noticing that the female condom, or Femidom

(which she was then marketing in the UK), was being promoted quite differently in

different countries. While western countries promoted the Femidom as inconvenient but

safer (i.e. emphasised sexual danger), health educators in India promoted the Femidom as

a kind of sex toy, and drew on local ‘sexual stories’ that eroticised the stimulating effects

of inserting the condom as part of sex play, and the sensations offered by the inner ring of

the condom as it rubbed on the end of the penis during penetration. Philpott’s aim is to

develop a kind of ‘seal of approval’ for erotic media produced in the UK so that, as she

puts it, “we can declare people ‘pleasure-proficient’ in incorporating condoms into erotic

films, books and other materials” (Naish 2005).

Feminist opposition to pornography and other forms of sexually explicit media has

tended to approach discussions of sexual pleasure as if they were (at best) peripheral to

the ‘real’ issues of contemporary sexuality: that is sexual violence, sexual coercion, and

sex that leads to unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted infections. Yet discussions

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of the dangers and pleasures of sexuality need not be mutually exclusive, nor do all

ethical engagements with popular sexual media need to be ‘positive’. For example, Annie

Sprinkle’s performance and writing on her life as a sex worker (particularly from the late

1990s onward) has incorporated a critique of the elements of sex work that she found

damaging. For example, in her short letter to her colleagues at the controversial San

Francisco performance space ‘848’, Sprinkle writes:

Until recently it seemed important to be wholeheartedly ‘sex positive’, to

defend and encourage all getting paid for sex, all group sex, etc … yes, I had

a lot of fun, gave and received a lot of pleasure, and had a lot of great

orgasms, but I have also come to see that I was sometimes quite naïve, very

immature and in denial about a lot of things. I’m realising that some of the

porn, prostitution, S/M and group sex I had in the name of love and sex

positivism wasn’t all that ‘healing and enlightening’, but, on occasion,

abusive toward myself and others … It is so precious to have a place to

speak out about, and perform about, our ‘mistakes’, doubts, hurts, angers,

fears, bullshit and dislikes, and feel free to be negative about all the stuff

we’ve been so busy defending. How precious to have a place that is so sex

positive that we can be ‘negative’ (Sprinkle 2001: 79).

A non-moralistic framework that does not insist on normalising sexuality allows space

for feminist activism that accepts contradictions and understands disgust, shame and

ambivalence as productive aspects of sexual learning. In other words, it allows for

activism around heterosex that frames sex for men and women as a source of both

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pleasure and danger. In the introduction to her book The Survivors Guide to Sex, educator

Staci Haines reflects on the difficulties she experienced in framing sexuality as a matter

of both/and rather than either/or:

As manager of Good Vibrations … I found myself caught between two

worlds: the world of survivors, hurt and sometimes paranoid about sex, and

the world of sex-positive educators, many of whom did not want to know

about the negative uses of sex or the effects of sexual abuse (Haines 1999:

xviii).

In her book, and the DVD she produced with Jackie Strano and Shar Rednour of SIR,

Haines represents her work as a place to “talk about all of it: sex, sexual abuse, rape and

its effects on sex, and the glory and healing powers of consensual adult sexuality and

embodiment” (Haines 1999: xviii). Like The Ethical Slut and Carol Queen’s

Exhibitionism for the Shy (1995), The Survivors Guide to Sex presents a model of sexual

health and sexual learning that is bounded by ethical sensibilities and incorporates

“’yes, nos and maybes’ rather than ‘dos and don’ts”78.

A non-moralistic framework can, as I have argued, incorporate existing aspects of

heterosexual cultures such as pornography, popular films and magazines. An

acknowledgment of the ways men and women are currently producing and consuming

these materials in everyday contexts can create opportunities for forms of sexual activism

that incorporate ethics and erotics rather than warnings and prohibitions. In addition, the

78 I should note here that a friend who borrowed my copy of this book found that the lack of prescriptive guidelines was a drawback, rather than an advantage.

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explicitness and humour of these everyday texts can be engaged with in ways that

demonstrate that educators and activists are themselves open to change and sexual

learning.79

As Moira Carmody has argued, feminist anti-violence education since the 1970s has

tended to enforce the ‘no means no’ message by proscribing particular kinds of sexual

encounters and activities. Education about how to avoid sexual violence aimed at women

often focuses on the need to communicate more explicitly with their potential partner:

It has been demonstrated that men often misinterpret behaviour as sexual and

report feeling more justified in ignoring women’s verbal refusals and physically

coercing them to engage in sexual intercourse if women’s sexual intentions are

communicated in a nonassertive manner … Additionally, men who engage in

sexual assault often report having misinterpreted their partner’s sexual intentions

… Given these data, instruction in the use of clear and assertive communication in

dating situations may be useful in decreasing risk (Yeater & O’Donohue 1999:

769).

It is important to emphasise, however, that sexual assault is not simply a result of

‘miscommunication’ between men and women, but that men who assault women do so

because they feel they can, and because their behaviour is (in some quarters) socially

sanctioned (Flood 2004). But while anti-violence education offers many practical and

79 I am thinking here of Kate Bornstein’s writing and performance (1998), of Annie Sprinkle’s performances, videos and writing, and, in Australia, Vanessa Wagner/Tobin Saunders compassionate and humorous HIV/AIDS education. My own educator/sexpert drag persona Nurse Nancy owes a great deal to all these performers, and I have attempted to channel this spirit even when out of drag.

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explicit examples of unethical sexual encounters, it rarely offers concrete examples of

what might constitute ethical, consensual sex. Of course, preventive education is not

likely to have a lasting impact on men who truly desire to hurt or abuse women sexually.

But for men who are confused or ambivalent about sexuality, there is a real chance that

offering positive, erotic models for ethical sexual negotiation and interaction can be

valuable.

In a climate where normative sexual scripting has tended to represent heterosexual men

as natural ‘pursuers’, and framed sexually assertive women as ‘sluts’, it is not surprising

that a there is a lot of bad sex occurring. For men and women who are ambivalent about

their own desires, unsure of what may be expected of them in a sexual encounter, afraid

of disappointing a sexual partner, or confused by their own bodies, education that

provides models for recognising and responding to verbal and non-verbal sexual cues can

be both challenging and exciting. Explicit material that encourages an erotics of ‘sexual

learning’ can open up space for non-normative sexual practices and ethical sexual

relationships. A queerer, ethical sensibility of heterosex emphasises both self-care and

care for one’s sexual partner(s) as part of an erotic encounter.

As Dowsett (1993) and Flood (2003) have observed, safer sex education targeting

heterosexuals has been hamstrung by conceptual frameworks that de-emphasise

heterosexual eroticism. I have argued previously that the most popular public discourses

of heterosexuality are those of disembodied ‘expertise’ on one hand and eroticised

‘experience’ on the other. While producers of ‘educational’ or ‘documentary’ porn have

embraced the role of ‘expert’, the producers of safer-sex and anti-violence promotional

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media have been leery of identifying with the prevalent discourses of popular erotica. I

attribute this to a number of factors. Firstly, heterosexuals are rarely addressed in the

contexts of specific subcultures, or even in terms that recognise the specificities of

different cultural factors, such as education level. Consequently, education aimed at the

‘heterosexual community’ had tended to adopt a scattergun approach in which the only

specific groups to be identified are broadly identified as being particularly high-risk (e.g.

‘youth’). Secondly, there is a justifiable concern among educators and social marketers

that sexually explicit materials may be restricted or even censored, and future funding

jeopardised, if complaints are made about the tone or content of the resource material.

Thirdly, and most central for my purposes, there seems to be a resistance to promoting

sexually explicit educational material that evokes the form or content of heterosexual

pornography, for fear that these materials may intensify men’s investments in what are

deemed to be ‘patriarchal’ models of sexuality (Flood 2003). However, I would argue

that, given that discourses within both commercial and non-commercial sex media are

already demonstrating real shifts in the representation of gender and sexual practices, it

makes sense to take up the opportunity offered by these changes.

Writing in 1993, Gary Dowsett argued that the key to effective safer sex education for

heterosexual men and women lay in:

Finding a way to use pro-sex approaches quickly, approaches that actually

validate aspects of heterosexual masculinity. I say ‘quickly’ because there is

little time, in the face of the [HIV] epidemic for indulging in angst about

(hetero) sexual politics (1993: 704).

247

In 2005, after almost a decade without any national campaigns promoting safer sex for

heterosexuals, the NSW Department of Health developed the Safe Sex: No Regrets

television campaign. This campaign was indeed pro-sex, depicting young people dancing

and socialising, with captions that implied that casual sex and ‘picking up’ would not be

occasions for regret if condoms were ‘picked up’ as well. This was, however, a general

television and print campaign, designed to appeal to every heterosexual 16 to 30-year-old

(although special alternative ads were produced for heterosexual kooris, and gay men).

There would have been many heterosexuals who did not feel addressed by these ads.

And, of course, 30-second advertising spots and brochures are only one form of

education.

It may seem here that my focus is on actual production and distribution of media texts,

yet I am only interested in these texts in so far as they intersect with the other popular

discourses of heterosex. Media texts, as I have already argued, can challenge

heteronormativity while acknowledging the pleasure promised in heterosexual

encounters, but they do not provide the only framework for offering these challenges. At

present, the best models for these kinds of projects are found in edu-porn and gay men’s

peer-sex education. However, the spirit, if not the actual form, of these models is

transferable to work with heterosexuals – even those heterosexual men who could be seen

as among the most intractable footsoldiers of heterosexism.

As Kristin Mitchell and Kay Wellings have observed, “lack of clear communication on a

date may put young people at risk of having sex that is unwanted, unanticipated or

regretted. Failure to negotiate safer sex, may put young people at risk of STD/HIV

248

infection and unintended pregnancies” (2002: 393). Mitchell and Wellings note that such

difficulties have been variously ascribed to a gendered power imbalance between young

men and women, women’s concern regarding their sexual reputation, and the lack of a

‘discourse of desire’ for young women. They also note, however, that there are many

cases in which participants in a sexual encounter may be ambivalent about the encounter

itself, and simply not know exactly what it is they want (Mitchell & Wellings 2002: 394).

The issue of uncertainty is obviously not unique to young people, but, as Mitchell and

Wellings observe, inexperience can heighten anxiety around sexual uncertainty. Yet, as

Carmody (2005) has argued, educators seeking to promote sexual communication and

prevent unsafe or violent or coercive sexual encounters have tended to favour moral

models for sexual negotiation that emphasise the don’ts of sexuality rather than the dos.

These models privilege rational decision-making and articulate question-and-answer style

verbal negotiation. For example, the Antioch College code requires that sexual partners

cannot be deemed to consent to sex if they are affected by drugs or alcohol, and that

separate verbal assent be requested and gained for each individual sexual contact during

an encounter. Within the code:

‘Consent’ is defined as the act of willingly and verbally agreeing to engage

in specific sexual conduct. Previously agreed upon forms of non-verbal

communication are appropriate methods for expressing consent. In order for

‘consent’ to be valid, all parties must have unimpaired judgement and a

shared understanding of the nature of the act to which they are consenting

including safer sex practices. The person who initiates sexual conduct is

responsible for verbally asking for the ‘consent’ of the individual(s)

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involved. ‘Consent’ must be obtained with each new level of sexual

conduct. The person with whom sexual conduct is initiated must verbally

express ‘consent’ or lack of ‘consent’. Silence conveys a lack of consent. If

at any time consent is withdrawn, the conduct must stop immediately

(Antioch College 2002).

While this level of formality could be erotic in certain contexts (e.g. ritualised BDSM

role-play), it does not allow much space for improvisation, surprise or discovery as

element elements of consensual of sexual play. I should make it clear here that I am not

claiming, as some critics might argue, that a gendered power imbalance as played out in a

cat-and-mouse game of female sexual ‘teasing’ and male sexual ‘conquest’ is essential

for ‘real’ erotic encounters. Instead I am observing that both men and women may enjoy

a sense of vulnerability and surrender to the unknown in sexual encounters (see Segal

1990, 1994). At the same time, both men and women may enjoy the pleasure of pursuit

and seduction of a new sexual partner, or may enjoy demonstrating social and/or sexual

skills as part of this process.

I favour the more ethical (and challenging) model of sexual negotiation offered by David

McInnes and Jonathan Bollen (2002, 2004) in their theorising of ‘sexual learning’ drawn

from interviews with sexually adventurous gay men in Sydney. In their analyses of these

interviews, McInnes and Bollen draw on Tomkins’ model of affect to look at ways that

recollections of ‘doing something new’ in a sexual encounter could be recalled by

participants as potentially either ‘shameful’ (negative) or ‘surprising/exciting’

(pleasurable) depending on the context in which the event occurred. For McInnes and

250

Bollen’s interviewees, it was not the practice itself, or even the degree of negotiation, that

made the difference as to whether an event was recollected negatively or positively.

Rather, it was the way the other participant or participants in the encounter reacted to the

moment of potential shaming that seemed to have the most impact (McInnes et al 2002).

While some might argue that it is inappropriate to draw links between gay men’s

accounts of sexuality and straight men and women’s sexual encounters, I will support my

doing so on four counts. Firstly, I believe there are sufficient accounts of female

experiences of sexual agency and power in both theoretical writing and popular culture to

refute the blanket assertion that all heterosexual encounters involve a power imbalance in

men’s favour. Secondly, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that not all relations

between same-sex partners are experienced by participants (or observers) as ‘equal’.

Thirdly, detailed social research into gay men’s sexuality and sexual learning has been

consistently prioritised in the response to the HIV epidemic (in Australia at least), and

offers the richest and most productive example of applied sexual theory.

My fourth and final reason for supporting the transfer of research drawn from gay men’s

accounts of sexual interaction may be the most or the least persuasive, depending on the

reader. It is based in my own experiences of formal and informal sex talk (and actual

sexual contacts) with gay and straight men; and my knowledge of the diversity of desires

and practices that cut across the boundaries of ‘gay and straight’ or ‘male and female’. As

an example of how this model of education that privileges ethical rather than moral

frameworks for sexual negotiation can be transferred from gay to straight cultures, I will

offer a case study drawn from my own work with the National Rugby League (NRL). As

251

the findings of this research and education project have not been published (and were

conducted with an understanding of confidentiality), I am forced to either omit or skirt

around some details which I would otherwise have included. I am offering the example as

a modest demonstration of the ways that ethical (and micropolitical) reframings of

heterosex can fit into existing heterosexual spaces, and how they may be received when

this occurs.

Playing by the rules

In February 2004, media reports began to circulate of an alleged sexual assault

perpetrated by members of the Bulldogs NRL team. In the days following the original

leak, as rumours escalated that a violent gang rape had occurred, an unnamed player was

quoted in the Sun-Herald as having claimed that group sex was common within the

Rugby League culture, and in fact “the boys love a bun” (i.e. multiple men having

intercourse with one woman). The reaction from media and other commentators could

only be described as a moral panic. Interestingly, the key issue in the uproar was not

whether or not the incident in question had been consensual, but whether group sex was

ever acceptable, or if it was in fact a reprehensible, immoral act that by definition no

right-minded man or woman should ever wish to participate in.

The NRL commissioned a group of academics from University of Sydney, led by

Associate Professor Catharine Lumby and of which I was a member, to conduct a study

of the Rugby League culture. The brief of the study was broad, but the main aim was to

discover whether any aspects of the Rugby League culture initiated, supported,

encouraged or condoned the denigration, harassment or assault of women. The research

252

process was approved by the Human Ethics Committee at the University of Sydney, and

was supported by the Rugby League Players Association (the player’s union) and the

NRL Education and Welfare Committee. Through a process of interactive forums, one-

to-one interviews and anonymous questionnaires, we surveyed over 200 past and present

players. In addition, we sought the views of CEOs, administrative staff, coaching staff,

and wives and partners of players. As Research Coordinator I personally conducted

interviews with approximately 20 current players, and developed recommendations for

the education programs that were to form one element of our recommendations. Due to a

number of factors (including time constraints, and a public demand for a rapid and visible

response to the allegations) I was invited to deliver first the pilot and then a more

developed version of the education workshop on ethical sexual conduct which I had

recommended as part of the NRL’s response to the research findings.80

Having reviewed the interviews that I and my colleague Clifton Evers conducted with

current players, it was apparent that most sexual encounters that could be seen as

‘problematic’ for professional footballers were relatively similar to those of other young

men in their age group (most professional players are aged between 19 and 26). That is,

80 While it was agreed by most players who participated in the 2004 interview process that some form of education on sexual conduct should take place, they had mixed opinions as to whether this education should be formal, or informal. In addition, there was considerable disagreement as to whether education was most effectively delivered by an external consultant/facilitator, or by an older player/mentor. Some interviewees (particularly those who were senior players themselves) felt that mentoring was the best approach. Younger players were more likely to prefer an external facilitator, on the grounds that senior players might in fact be seen as too entrenched in League culture and attitudes. Given the mix of player opinions on the subject, it seems advisable to provide opportunities for both peer education and mentoring and information sessions with external educators. All players were asked whether a man or a woman would be the best ‘outsider’. Most were positive about either a woman or a male/female facilitating team. In the 2005 program I was the ‘female outsider’, but co-presented with a ‘male insider’ – NRL employee and recently retired player Michael Buettner. The combination was well-received, with 90% of evaluations rating the presenters as ‘excellent’.

253

they were initiated under the influence of alcohol and other recreational drugs, in a

nightclub or pub atmosphere. Where they differed is that they were often concluded in a

player’s hotel room, rather than at the home of one of the sexual partners, in a situation

that could be seen as taking place on the ‘player’s territory’. That is, other team members

would be at the same hotel, while the casual partner was, in most cases, unlikely to have

her friends close by during or after the sexual encounter. Some of the players I

interviewed observed that this could place casual sexual partners at a disadvantage if a

situation ‘turned bad’. Interestingly, while some players’ accounts of ‘picking up’ women

and having casual sex reflected broader cultural double standards around male and female

sexuality, others viewed their own celebrity status as ‘feminising’ in a sense. That is, they

recognised themselves as objects of desire, but also saw the negative aspects of being

sexualised (and scrutinised) in this way, in terms of potential damage to their personal

and professional reputations. They were also concerned by the possibility of unplanned

pregnancies or sexually transmitted infections that went along with multiple sexual

encounters.

Predictably, some players were most concerned with demonstrating sexual prowess (to

their partners and other observers) before and during a sexual encounter as the key factor

in a ‘good’ sexual encounter, where ‘everyone went away happy’. Interestingly, the

majority (particularly those in their early 20s and older) emphasised the importance of

what might be termed ‘aftercare’ following casual sexual encounters. Many older

interviewees observed that establishing consent and negotiating condom use with a casual

partner was relatively straightforward, especially in the context of their celebrity status

and the culture of sexually adventurous women (i.e. groupies) who were attracted to it.

254

They emphasised that it was male behaviour after sex that was most likely to cause

distress to a female partner, and to lead her to feel mistreated or abused. Some suggested

that this was particularly likely to be the case if she was coming down from a pill (i.e.

Ecstasy), or just feeling the effects of a big night’s drinking. It is here that McInnes and

Bollen’s research seems most relevant as a tool for developing what they term a

“contextually specific and culturally responsive” (in other words, ethical) education

strategy (2004: 22).

In developing a strategy for the NRL players, I drew on HIV education strategies which

recognise that casual sexual encounters are often negotiated in nightclubs, by partners

under the influence of drugs or alcohol, through a combination of verbal and non-verbal

cues. I argued that any such education strategy should be based on players’ own ‘sexual

stories’, since straight men, like gay men, have already developed strategies for

negotiating safer/consensual sex, even in ‘high-risk’ contexts (Foley 1997; Smith & Van

de Ven 2001). My reasoning was that, if casual sex was understood by the players only in

moral terms, then both they and their partners were ‘bad’. To go out with the intention of

getting drunk and picking up a casual partner for sex, with no intention of forming an

ongoing relationship, could only be experienced as potentially shaming and shameful. It

was a situation where men whose understanding of female sexuality was restricted to

oppositions of ‘good girls’ and ‘sluts’, or who felt guilt or ambivalence regarding their

own sexuality, were more likely to treat a casual partner disrespectfully, if not abusively,

in order to end the evening and therefore avoid further contact. It was essential, I argued,

to reframe these situations in ethical terms. Consequently, in the interactive workshops

that were a major part of the education strategy, I emphasised the importance of consent

255

and the necessity for verbal and non-verbal negotiation prior to sex, but concluded the

workshops by inviting participants to consider the value of aftercare and post-sex

etiquette.

This application of ethical considerations may seem fairly inconsequential in the face of

broader social inequities between men and women. Yet, for me, it was a clear example of

the micro level at which significant social change can take place. The fact that a group of

men who have been represented by some critics as the very personification of

‘hegemonic masculinity’ were willingly placing themselves in a situation where their

sexual conduct was subject to open discussion by both a ‘feminist from the University’

and their peers was, and still is, amazing to me. The combination of humorous self-

deprecation, boasting, anger, curiosity, embarrassment, pride, arousal and shame that was

evinced in the interviews and the workshops was far more complex than any macro

theory of ‘patriarchal masculinity’ could encompass. And having participated in, and

facilitated, similarly affectively charged Chin Wag workshops for people living with and

affected by HIV/AIDs since 1996, I can honestly say that the atmosphere in the straight

men’s workshops was, at times, not that different to that of the workshops involving gay

men.81 As one of my fellow researchers joked early on, footballers and gay men have a

lot in common – both groups are well known for their love of the gym, and going for

beers with the boys.

81 Chin Wag. and its precursor, Vanessa Wagner’s Wheel of Misfortune are designed as combination of comical peer-support and information for HIV-positive people and their friends. The interactive evenings are structured as ‘info-edu-tainment’, and are hosted by Vanessa Wagner/Tobin Saunders, and myself (as Nurse Nancy). The events have been facilitated at various locations around Australia by the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) and the AIDS Treatment Project Australia (ATPA) since 1998.

256

These workshops were designed to emphasise (in Dollimore’s terms) the proximity of

heterosexual men and women. The structure of the workshops emphasised both

similarities and differences between sexual partners, positing heterosexual interactions

not as battles or struggles, but as pleasurable engagements that can also involve

challenges and affective responses. Within the workshop process, it was acknowledged

that idealised or moral codes of behaviour frequently need to be adapted to the contexts

and circumstances participants encounter. The content of the workshops did not provide

final or complete answers for every potential situation, but invited participants to reflect

on past actions, and shape their future sexual encounters according to these reflections.

Participants were also encouraged to develop relationships of care that extended from

themselves to both their team mates and their sexual partners.

Like Bollen and McInnes, I would like to invoke possibilities for educational strategies

that understand the ‘excessive’ or ‘transgressive’ elements of everyday sexual cultures (in

my case, mediated cultures) not as problems to be solved but as evidence of ‘extant

pedagogies’ of sexual learning (2004: 22). As I have argued, websites, magazines, self-

help manuals and pornographic videos are not simply representations of ‘good’ or ‘bad’

sex. Nor are they simply templates for sexed and gendered behaviour. Instead, they offer

reflections of cultural currents that include both radical and regressive understandings of

sex and gender. They are examples of possible sexual stories that can be tried on for size.

Increasingly, they are sites that can be contested and challenged by the audiences who

seek to produce, rather than just consume, sexually explicit media. For educators,

activists and theorists to acknowledge and work with these changes requires, as Bollen

and McInnes put it:

257

an account of adventurous sex, of moving beyond sexual limits and

developing sexual capacities, that demands consideration of how [women

and] men learn in interaction with others during sexual occasions and over

time (2004: 35).

It also requires an acknowledgement that sexual conduct, like personal

relationships, has changed considerably in response to feminism and other

influences. I have argued throughout this thesis that when feminist tools for

rethinking heteronormativity are deployed ethically, it is possible to recognise real

shifts in popular discourses of sexuality. These shifts are far from seismic, but

they are signs of real micropolitical change. While I am sure that no-one would

claim that we now live in a feminist utopia, I doubt that any feminist in North

America, the UK or Australia would deny that there have been major positive

shifts in family structures and workplace practices that have brought about

significant benefits for women. Even when these shifts have been trivialised or

commodified (e.g. in media features on ‘supermums’ and ‘having it all’), this does

not diminish the ways that feminism and queer activism has impacted on popular

discourses and practices.

If these shifts and changes can be acknowledged with all their imperfections, then we

should also be able to acknowledge the ways that feminism and queer activism have

impacted on representations of ‘public sex’. Heterosexual embodiment and sexual

practices are being represented in quite different ways than they were only 30 or so years

ago, and the changes in representations and discourses are not simply a result of clever

258

marketers co-opting ‘sexual empowerment’ in order to turn a profit.

Fewww.newmatilda.comminist and queer sex radicals have significantly altered the

context and content of sexually explicit media, but they are not the only ones who have

done so. Everyday heterosexual producers and consumers of sex media have also played

a part in reframing popular discourse to reflect their own fears and desires. As Foucault’s

model of ‘the deployment of sexuality’ demonstrates, to insist on a boundary between

‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’ forms of sexuality is to disavow the process of normalisation.

‘Outlaw’ sexuality is not the ‘other’ of the nuclear family, it is embedded within its heart

– in the sanctum of the heterosexual bedroom. Feminists who insist on drawing

moralising boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sexualities will always find themselves

struggling with the enemy within. I prefer the ethical politics of care and curiosity which

do not presume to always know ‘the other’ or to foreclose the possibility of learning

something from ‘bad’ texts and ‘bad’ sex.

259

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