Nicola and I aren’t actually joined at the hip, so I’m hoping that we don’t make a habit of attending events together and then both blogging our responses here.
Yet we did double-team when telling the Sex Week organizers exactly what we thought of their woman-as-commodity fest. To their credit, they did organize a “feedback” session at which all were welcome to come and raise concerns about Sex Week - only to then appear shocked when we criticized “without knowing what goes on behind the scenes”. Apparently basic logic did not feature in the plan.
The point that most succinctly summarizes the boundless pool of criticisms I have of “Sex Week” (The Joy of) is demonstrated by the fact that at a scheduled screening of pornography, when porn director Paul Thomas finished showing his “cheerleading porn” videos and moved onto some more violent depictions of sadism, the organizers leapt up in the middle of the hall, burning with righteous anger, and ordered the guest to turn off the entire spectacle. “We really dropped the ball on this one,” says one organizer, apologizing for the screening, who later objected to the sadistic screening on the grounds that it was “sexually unhealthy and disrespectful to women”.
So there are some types of porn which are demeaning to women, we are told. Therefore, Sex Week organizers censor them. If so, then one would infer that the other images are not demeaning! Censoring some images of sex implies an endorsement of others. Yet at the feedback session, the organizers of Sex Week insisted that they weren’t endorsing any particular practice, just bringing everything to the surface so that we can discuss it in a neutral environment. (Giving away free porn DVDs doesn’t count as endorsing porn, apparently).
My question is as follows: there are two types of Sex Week one can plan to organize. In the first, no particular perspective is endorsed, no depiction of sexuality is privileged above another, as much as can be reasonably given space in the time frame, and therefore the value judgments of the organizers do not provide a imposition of community mores. In the second, the organizers present particular perspectives on sexuality as worthy of acknowledgment, or “healthy”, and censor images which they consider demeaning. For which version were the organizers aiming?
The response to my question: “you have to understand that this is really emotional for us. It was really hard to make decisions.” No really? Dealing with issues of sexuality is emotional? Assuming positions of leadership and responsibility on campus is emotional? You really do learn something new at this university everyday.
Sado-masochism is a common expression of human sexuality. The urges to exercise or yield power, to escape or assume the pressures of being in charge, or to make intimacy with a lover a reassurance of be love even when confessing the darkest things about us, stem from the significance to all of us of natural power dynamics that do not have to be gendered. That it frequently is channeled into unsophisticated porn products in which dominance is always directed along gender lines, with all the one-size-fits-all tackiness of the mass market, should not be used as a reason to deny its existence.
What is most demeaning to women is the casual orthodoxy affirmed throughout Sex Week and throughout the mainstream media that in “healthy” sex, a woman is still an object whose job is to make herself as conducive to male pleasure as possible - when a man only has to make sure he enjoys himself. “Cheerleading porn”, which the organizers think is an acceptable contrast to sado-masochistic porn, suggests that woman’s role is to appear immature and innocently vulnerable, anxious to look sexy for her man. The very posters used to plaster advertising for Sex Week all over campus - the first thing confronting me when I open my front door in the morning, the standard representation of “Sex” that I had to walk past everyday, was that of a naked, nubile woman, leaning back in the most receptive position imaginable. So much for “a mature and broad range of perspectives on the significance of sex”.
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