General Masturbation
One obvious line of inquiryconcerning 'porn', leads us into the realm of masturbation
- the significance ofpornographyhere is init's capacity to
provoke arousal and orgasm. In this case, the arguments of
the opponents of pornographic visual or written material are
focusedon the masturbationpracticed by the consumers, as well as the
addiction to this practice. The first argument has
lost much of it's legitimacyin the last decades.
Not many
people existing outside religioussects which emphasize
sexual ascetism, believe seriously in
this dayand age, that masturbation is 'abnormal' behavior, which mustbe
mercilessly rooted out on sight, or, as the pioneering psychoanalysts insisted, that 'normal' humans are the ones
whichhave 'overcome' this habit before entering adulthood. Apparently this
habit has been overcome byalmost no one. Thankfullythe days in which western medical
practitioners and scientistsdevised iron contraptions to guard the little boy's penis from violation, and
amputated the clitorisof the little girl that can not stop indulging in the
evil practice, are in the past.
Not ina veryfar past 19the last
documented clotoridotomyin the US tookplace in 1958, performed on a5year
old girl to stop her masturbating. Although the question whether
masturbation is harmful or not, whether the harm is physiological, due to 'spilling the seed',
or in the spheres of 'damaging the mind', or 'destroying morals'. or whether it isharmful only
in specific circumstances, is far from answered it
is no longer at the forefront ofour "Clitoridotomy" civilization's agenda -and it is thankfullyno longer an issue of such urgency as to compel
parents to terrorize and mutilate their children for their own good. Freud and
Reich, as well as Horneyand Klein, would call regular adult masturbationa deviation, butbyand large, this
position has sunk now into the academic background. The issue of male masturbation in itself,
apart from it's sociopolitical significance when achieved through watching or
imagining certain situations in which female humans are objects for achieving arousal and ejaculation
does not concern a feminist orprofeminist agenda -pornography does. What is
pornography? Or to be more precise what is contemporary commercial hardporn?
Material for Masturbation
Often pornographyis perceived as 'representation of the sexual act'. When asked
about "pornography" most contemporaryhumans take the issues to be a choice
of making or not making available audio/visual recordingsof humans performing sexual
acts. Do we show what we do at home ordo we not show what we do at home? The choice thus put is logically
seen as a choice between sexual liberalism and sexual repression. Somefeminist observers
attempt to phrase the questions differently, first of all, by not being blind to the fact, that
pornography does not represent the sexual act the wayit happens 'at home 20'. Contemporary
mainstream hard porn is not adocumentary onthe sexual activities of humans - rather it is a
theater, a 'play' - in which certain things are beingdone, but these
thingsdiffer hugelyfrom the spontaneous (as in 'not in front of
the camera and projectors at a specific time and in
prescribed manner') sexual acts.
The processes within the actors, theirattitudesandactions,
are not subordinated entirely to the sexual act taking place, unlike 'real sex', the
actorsare not following their own impulses, but rather are carrying out instructions of
an outside authority, in order to earn money. For simplicity's sake
let's call this authority 'the director': porn is a
wayof representing the sexual and, inescapably, power relations between humans, not asit
happens 'inthe wild',but according to what the director has in mind. In a free market this
also means 'what sells'.
And what sells is not what is being practiced
by the average spouses, but that which excites the customers. Mostof the
customers to thisdayare males. From apro - feminist position pornographyis a patriarchal tool for the
enforcing of aspectsof the social reality- the aspects concerning the sexual and
power relations between male and female 20 Alison Assiter, 'Pornography, Feminism and
the Individual', PlutoPress 1991 humans. And porn certainly does create in its
viewers expectations of how a sexual act is to be carried out.