I had no shoes and complained, until I met a man who had no feet. – Arab proverb
Ever read one of those news stories where try as you might, you just can’t sympathize with the writer or subject of the story? I encountered two of those this morning, both of which inspired me to say “welcome to my world”. Both involved rhetoric the writer seems to feel is unfairly directed against her subject, and in both cases that rhetoric is startlingly similar to the crap whores have to listen to every damned day. So please, ladies, if you want my sympathy you might try considering life without feet before bitching about your shoes.
The first was a criticism published in Fleshbot of this article about porn in The Atlantic:
Was it too much to hope that The Atlantic—a relatively open minded, liberal publication—might approach the topic of adult entertainment with a fair and balanced perspective? Probably, but a girl can dream. Sadly, my dreams of reading an informed, insightful piece on the way today’s porn industry interfaces with American sexuality were pretty much shot by the end of the third paragraph, in which author Natasha Vargas-Cooper declares double anal to be “a fixture on any well-trafficked site.” I should have given up at that point, but I soldiered on, working my way through what has to be the most pretentious published piece ever to discuss double anal. As I finished the piece, I felt nothing but disgust. And it wasn’t simply Ms. Vargas-Cooper’s ignorance about her subject matter that disappointed me, nor was it the fact that she apparently confuses name dropping with creating a well-crafted argument. No, it was her dismal view of human—particularly male—nature, her broad generalizations about human sexuality, and—most troublingly of all—her apparent inability to separate fantasy from reality that left me frustrated and disappointed.
Vargas-Cooper’s thesis seems nebulously based on her own experience as a consumer of internet porn and a sexually active female, combined with a handful of statistics, some high minded citations, and an overlong analysis of Last Tango in Paris—hardly a firm basis from which to paint male sexuality with so broad a brush. At no point does Vargas-Cooper engage anyone from the adult industry—or, for that matter, any male consumers of porn—a strange omission for a piece that seeks to prove that porn offers irrefutable evidence that men are brutes and women weak, passive, and desperate to please.
There are also plenty that offer a very different view on sexuality, one that hardly squares with her idea of debased, ravaged women undone by aggressive male sexuality…[most] directors bear little resemblance to the vicious, manipulative pornographers imagined in Vargas-Cooper’s article (which is, of course, probably why she neglected to include much discussion of almost any actual porn)…But even if all porn were as Vargas-Cooper suggests, it would hardly be proof that men are as fundamentally contemptuous of women as she seems to believe.
Though it’s wonderful to see a publication like The Atlantic taking interest in the world of pornography (and, by extension, human sexuality), it would be even more wonderful if they’d actually present a fact-based analysis, instead of one that trades in tired tropes about beast-like men and victimized women. I know I wasn’t the only one disappointed with The Atlantic‘s choice to run this piece. I can only hope that, if more people speak up and express disappointment, that they’ll actually take note—and maybe, in a future issue, run a piece that actually tackles the topic in an informed, respectful manner.
Sound familiar? I wouldn’t have to change this by more than 30% to have an article about the garbage which passes in the mainstream media for information about prostitution. Like the Atlantic article she critiques, prostitution articles even in soi-disant “liberal” publications like Huffington Post and The New York Times are nearly always pretentious, ignorant propaganda written by a woman whose “credentials” on the subject consist of a journalism or “women’s studies” degree and a 30-hour-a-week television habit; they almost never contain real statistics, interviews with real prostitutes above the streetwalker level or even the opinions of bona fide sex researchers, and their writers are apparently unable to tell fantasy from reality. The most striking point of similarity: “a piece that seeks to prove…that men are brutes and women weak, passive, and desperate to please…it would be even more wonderful if they’d actually present a fact-based analysis, instead of one that trades in tired tropes about beast-like men and victimized women.” Welcome to our world.
Then there was this article by Irin Carmon bemoaning the fact that surrogate motherhood is illegal in Australia; please pardon me for not giving a shit. If it’s supposedly so “degrading” to be a substitute wife for money, how the hell can it NOT be degrading to be a substitute mother for pay? If renting a pussy for an hour is “inherently exploitative”, how can renting a uterus for nine months not be? And if you think the term “gestational carrier” is ugly, try “prostituted woman.” Yes, I understand that prostitution is legal in Australia while surrogate motherhood isn’t; my point is the reaction of the American writer, whose arguments would all be better directed toward a repressive law which affects a large segment of the population rather than one which only inconveniences infertile rich people.
The issue of “commodifying” women and children [as surrogacy was called by Australian Minister for Community Services, Linda Burney] was addressed here in the U.S. in Melanie Thernstom’s recent Times magazine piece about having two children through two gestational carriers and an egg donor… “Many people talked as if the mere fact of being compensated negated the generosity of the gestational carriers and the egg donor and asked if they were doing it “for the money,” as if they couldn’t want to help and want to be paid. Would you be less grateful to a beloved teacher, nanny or fertility doctor because they were paid? We wanted to pay, because it made the relationship feel more reciprocal.”
Do I need to comment on this? I wonder if Melanie Thernstom writes this passionately about decriminalization of prostitution, or if her logic only applies to things she wants herself?
“Several readers express the belief that surrogacy is ‘rich women exploiting lower-class women.’ The notion of surrogates as lower-class women relies on a faulty stereotype and is offensive to surrogates in several ways. Many surrogates…are middle-class professional women with families who want to help someone experience…joy…Surrogates, regardless of their income and occupation, are proud of what they do and of the happiness they help bring into the world – you have only to read postings on Web sites like surromomsonline.com to see how true this is. To insist they are being exploited is to discount their own will and their self-reported feelings about the process.” [Thernstom is]…right about the condescension inherent in the assumption that these women couldn’t possibly understand their choices to be pregnant for someone else, or the risks thereof.
There’s no evidence that [those who hire surrogates] viewed their carrier as a “disposable uterus.” The natural extension of this thinking, which assumes that all women consider pregnancy the same way, is that even adoption is dehumanizing. While ensuring there are legal controls against actual exploitation, we should stick to letting these women define their body’s experiences for themselves.
Change “surrogate” to “prostitute” and adapt a few other terms as needed, and I wonder if Carmon and Thernstom would still agree with it? Because the argument is exactly the same.
Especially in the case of the porn example, it’s very close. In fact, I suspect that the writer is on our side.
I say “our side” instead of “your side,” even though I’m not directly affected the way you are, because saying “your side” suggests that I’m not quite there yet. I am quite there; I’ve been on your side since before I met you online.
I look forward to the day when feet can be regenerated, and everybody can afford shoes. Do I mean that allegorically or literally?
Yes.
I’m proud to have you on “our side”. 🙂
I don’t know if you’re interested or even what the movie is like, but 2008’s ‘Baby Momma’ is about exactly that, a poor woman (Amy Poehler) being a surrogate for a wealthy one (Tina Fey). I watched about ten minutes on HBO once but it didn’t engage me the way Juno did, and both characters were off-putting one-note stereotypes.
Are there any indications about whether prostitution in Australia has declined or increased since it was legalised? I ask because I was intrigued to learn that in Portugal adult drug use has declined by about 30% since it became legal. That’s one reason I now support legalisation after a lifetime of opposing it.
I suspect Australia’s experience would be much like New Zealand’s: a slight decrease in some areas and no change in others. The reason for the decrease is probably due to police exaggeration when it was still criminal.
In addition to the predictions that national drug use would skyrocket in Portugal (which, as you point out, did not happen), it was also predicted that the country would be invaded by planeloads of “drug tourists.” Even if the Portuguese themselves didn’t use more drugs, it was argued, the beaches and cities would be littered with glaze-eyed junkies.
That didn’t happen either.
Yeah, prohibitionists always predict that decriminalization of whatever will give rise to a “Mecca“, and though it never happens they keep on predicting it and ignoramuses keep believing them. 🙁
Indeed there are other areas with similar argument structures and problems (though not as culturally sedimented as in the case of prostitution — hence your mention of the Arab proverb). Still, it seems to me both of these women are putting in the eyes of the general public the kind of thought process and association that favors pro-prostitution activism.
In the end, even if they aren’t aware of that (in the case of the pornography one, she probably is aware; the surrogate mothers case may be more iffy), they’re helping the cause. Which is why, all in all, I’d be thankful for their existence.
People who worry about their shoes at least call attention to the existence of feet.
And it may indeed be that both authors are pro-decriminalization; we obviously can’t know. It’s just that though political correctness allows both of the arguments I showed, too many people refuse to recognize their applicability to prostitution. 🙁
Speaking about visibility, by the way, this story at Salon.com has just caught my eye. I wonder if you’ll find it interesting, and what your take on it would be.
The word I would use is “disappointing”. Charlotte Shane usually writes well, so it’s sad to see her buying into the old feminist “desirability is bad” garbage. Sexual desirability is just as fair and reasonable a gauge of a woman’s social worth as intelligence, athleticism or any of the other traits feminists insist on praising, and more so than most because, as Shane herself certainly knows, it includes a personality component the other traits don’t. A nasty, mean, graceless, horrible woman can excel at intellectual or athletic careers, but she won’t ever get to the top of the escort game. Escorts are rewarded for grace and inner beauty; scientists and athletes aren’t. And that makes overall beauty (not just physical beauty) a BETTER thing to be valued for than intelligence or whatever.
Indeed. In her defense, though, it seems to me Ms Shane is talking about people who excessively glamorize the escort business — the dreamy, starry-eyed girls with their rebellious, anti-mainstream background thinking that being an escort has only good sides who aren’t aware of any of the practical problems. After all, it’s work, not just the rebellious romantic underground.
Still, Ms Shane is clearly defending the “they are just following the society-forces-you-to-be-sexy-or-else-you-don’t-get-validation” script. Personally, I don’t think there is any problem if someone happens to be beautiful (either only physically, or, as you put it, physically-cum-personality) and uses his/her luck in the genetic lottery to earn a living — this is not any worse than being born with a higher IQ and also making money on this. It may be that there’s still a some of prejudice against high-IQ women because “girls should succeed only by being pretty”, but this is a lot less than it used to be. (I remember taking several courses from the math department in my local university where most of the students and the instructor were women.)
Have you ever felt patronized for being pretty, Maggie? Have people ever thought that, since you’re beautiful, you ‘couldn’t possibly be smart’? Feminism talks a lot about this still being an overwhelming pattern, but I see it less and less.
It never was an overwhelming pattern except in the minds of ugly women. Who thinks about water more, the man living in a house with running water or the one in a desert shack in August? Men who discount women’s intelligence because of their looks are asses to be laughed at; they’re also a small minority. And I’ll tell you something else; people (men and women both) patronize the obviously intelligent far more that they do the strikingly pretty, because they find them much more intimidating. 🙁
I couldn’t agree more! 🙂
I’ll say, though, that there are men (and women) who don’t say “pretty women are dumb” when they are in the presence of a pretty and obviously intelligent woman, but who will say that in her absence. As if the intelligent woman were some sort of “exception.” I’ve seen the same people (male and female) both obviously accept intelligence in a woman, and also accept the “dumb blonde” stereotype when they happened to be with a woman who was blonde and dumb. As if they didn’t remember they also know at least one pretty and intelligent woman. Something they wouldn’t do if it were a man.
But still, I see that less and less often. With changes like women becoming a small majority in the university student population, I wonder if there’s the possibility people will at some point start believing the reverse stereotype, i.e. that women are smarter or more intellectual.
Intelligent woman are an exception; so are intelligent men. Intelligent people in general are not the norm; if they were we wouldn’t have a special word for the trait.
In that sense of the word, rich men and women are also exceptions (hence there being an expression to name them), and yet nobody makes the same strong associations between them and other specific physical features. We know that pretty doesn’t imply rich but doesn’t exclude it either; it’s just a different variable. About intelligence, however, people are more prone to make overgeneralizations.