I've followed a couple of links around since the month began and I have two or three posts for it now. I posted the first; re: women, friendships, danger and WiR. This one, is all about my confusion in the unspoken sexual directives of porn and how that plays into the comics industry.
In this journal post, I've a question to ask you. You being fellow comic readers, specifically any men reading this.
This month is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. And the 5th was 'Blog Against Sexual Violence Day'. I have an entry in my personal journal up about that. And it's footnoted in the prior post.
But in following the links around about this, a particular mention caught my eye. Pornography - in particular in reference to yet another harrowing account of a cell phone video taped rape.
Is there a general consensus that these boys, and others like them, learn to devalue women as human beings through watching porn?
I admit to having some conflicting thoughts about porn. I think the industry needs stricter oversights and that it should be more than just a few companies who look after the health and welfare of their actors; that there should be industry wide compulsive testing, health updates, maybe a check-up just before work for the day to ensure the actors don't have problems that will be exacerbated by the work, etc. I don't hate the end product of porn or the workers, but as sex positive as I am, I do dislike the industry and all the mistakes that could have been and should be foreseen and taken care of ahead of time.
But since I don't see porn as the great dark sexual evil, or rather the end product of porn as a great evil, I thus don't think the women in porn necessarily feel devalued as human beings. I don't think there isn't a feminist in the bunch and I don't think they're betraying any women's rights causes. Treating sexuality as something to be catered to and something to not be ashamed of, seems healthy to me.
However, I'm an adult and I've actually sat down and worried these thoughts out. I've read the blogs and journals of a couple porn stars; heard their complaints and their praises and seen interviews. I've read books on the subject. I've done my best to have an informed opinion.
When I hear about the cell phone rapes, and how the footage is passed around and how the boys involved are both dumb enough to think they won't get caught while showing off the evidence and apparently titillated enough by their own - whatever- at being on tape, I find myself looking at 'Porn is Bad' in a different light.
For impressionable young human beings, just figuring out their kinks and not even knowing if they have any fetishes, while bombarded constantly by ideas and unrealistic ideals of who and what they should be - porn isn't going to help them.
But are these new breed of rapists rooting around in their parents private belongings and finding porn? Or is there something closer to home that devalues women and praises machismo, anti-heroes and raw treatment of scantily clad heroines and villainesses.
Yeah, I mean comics. And no I'm not now saying comics are bad and evil.
In fact I think before anything else influenced those boys to treat girls as their objects of sexual fantasies to be used and thrown away, that some other twist happened in their brains. And that's something for sociologists and psychologists and parents to worry about.; especially not just for those boys but for others who might act on such impulses in the future.
But comics as a reflection of the current times? Comics that objectify a sixteen year old girl; which make it seem like a super heroine really wants it, cause look how she flaunts it? That I can agree with.
That I can place a finger on. Super Heroes and Super Heroines are our modern mythology 1. And modern mythology hasn't been talking about fearsome and awe inspiring goddesses. They've been talking about how one rape changed the universe; Persophenone Sue Dibny. And the redemption of the rapist's sense of self and personal honor.
Hundreds of years have passed and yet we're not only not imagining anything new. We're still stuck with a cadre of men, possibly well meaning , but with no higher thought processes, who demand that their personal heroes (or anti-heroes) help mold the concept of modern civilization.
What do I mean?
Well what sort of message does it send when a comic book is devoted to a rapist recovering his sense of personal honor? Not a good one. I repeat - Not A Good Message. His honor and his pride and his martyrdom sets up a mode of thinking - not even a role model - but a mode of thinking that places women as superficial unreal fluff! It's a message there for anyone to read, child or adult, fanboy or browser.
Are comics promoting the very thing that people (women) bitchsmack porn for? Do comics and porn share the tropes and fetishes and fantasies of sex and sexual situations as something established and continually built on?
Yes.
Don't believe me? Wondering how do they fit together?
- Women in suggestive poses.>
- Women as objects to be looked at.
- Women as symbols to fight over or fight for
- A confusion over signals; What suggests 'availability'
- Virginity / Innocence as a prize for men.
- Lack of innocence means you're tainted.
- Good girls don't do that; they first have to cross to the dark side or be tricked into crossing it.
- Once a good girl says she likes it, she's not a good girl anymore.
- Bad girls are very tainted; It's the bad girls who are; sexually aggressive, available & promiscuous. - easy
- A confusion of violence with strength; women just want a caveman/bad boy.
- A confusion of fantasy /fantasy symbols with reality; good girls want to be tricked, bad girls are there to be used.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Does it sound like the reason female fans have problems with how female characters are presented?
Does it sound like a situation wherein men reinforce their ideas about sex and sexuality and demonstrate again and again an utter cluelessness about real violation. So much so they use it as impetus for the male character? 2
I'd say it does.
1 - While modern mythology has also been talking about how the The Lady of Maidens can't order coffee - that is another post. That'll probably be the third post brewing in my mind in regards to a female writer having so much difficulty with an iconic confident woman. There are things to consider as to whether she couldn't find the icon inside herself, or whether she wasn't personally strong enough to stand against the flow from TBTB, or from the artist she was working with. I'm even suspicious enough to wonder if it was always a set up to get a different writer even more interested in taking on the job.
2 - Rape Fantasy
Let me get this out in the open now.
Does it exist? Yes.
Do women have them? Yes.
Do women actually want to be raped? NO!
Then wtf does it mean????
What it means is that there are enough women in the world who feel that only 'bad girls' are sexually aggressive and say what they want and so the only way women who think of themselves as 'good girls' might have a particular raw and aggressive sexual experience is if they fantasized of being put into a position where it was not their fault.
But it's RAPE you say. Women are just trying to confuse us!
Actually, in a fantasy, a woman is always in control. It's her head after all! Her thoughts. She could decide in the middle of things to grow claws and disembowel her attacker and then suck the juices from his still beating heart while enjoying her after-tremors.
Or the person in her fantasy could be her husband or lover who's aware it's a game.
The point is, her fantasy, her fantasy reality, her power, her control. Rape fantasy isn't about rape as much as it's about the internalized misconception of whether or not ordinary, down to earth, 'good girls' can enjoy or explore raw sex, or kinky naughty things.
So, just because a woman could have a rape fantasy, doesn't mean she'll enjoy looking at the 4 color pages and seeing another woman, forced against her will, violated, threatened, fearful for her life - or that she'll think anything cool about it.
I could compare this and say 'I'm sure there are men who have castration fantasies and that doesn't mean....'. But it wouldn't be a fair comparison. Men don't have the weight of society approved castrations in their mind all the time. Men don't worry about people holding them down and being helpless and violated, scarred for life, etc. Men don't worry about being attacked as a tool for someone else's fantasy or being used as a prop for some one else's misplaced now twisted to sexual aggression.
So please don't bring up that men have 'bondage fantasies too' or 'being helpless fantasies' etc, etc, etc.
Because the majority of men don't have ages of history of being 'the property of the most important male in their life' as part of the current consciousness. And the men who do have an inkling of something similar - Black Men - would kick up a fuss about images of other black men in bondage or being abused.
So to relate the footnote back to the original post. If in 'a boy's power fantasy', the world is his oyster and every woman in it; if there are constant images (sculptures, dolls, artwork/posters) of Super Heroines presented in a manner not deserving of respect.; then how does that boy add a mental note about the integrity and power of the ordinary young women in his life? Teen boys already battle a near constant bombardment of 'sex, sexy, hot, breasts, beer, bikinis, wet skin, mini/teeny skirts, and R-rated' that no doubt make it difficult to see a woman as anything but a collection of body parts that lead to that 'real good feeling'. If first come comics, then comes tv, then comes porn, how much more reinforcement do they really need to see women as nothing more than walking, talking, joy juice making property? (And then get into the comics industry and start the cycle all over again, unconsciously or not)
After all, we female comic fans are continually told how men are visually stimulated and like 'eye candy'. So I'm asking, how are young men supposed to believe in strong, confident women, when their first instances of visual stimulation come from heroines (the supposed strong ones) bent and curved and slinked in servile, humiliating, awkward cheesecake poses? How are they to overcome the establishing fetish of what happens to comic book super heroines?
I (and others) will keep asking questions, over and over again and pointing out the discrepancies, for both the young women and the young men of the future.
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