SEXIS WRONG

we know about sexuality and gender is folklore. We may say
that sexuality lies between the legs, and gender between the
ears, but we don’t know much more than that. Pornography
is perhaps our best tool for demystifying sex and gender, but
progress is slow.
Serious scholars agree that pornographic materials carry contradictory
messages. Hardcore videos depict behavior that
subordinates women, yet at the same time urge women to
seize sexual autonomy. 13 Romance novels aimed principally at
women prize “sensitivity” in men but also delight in depicting
males as powerful, aggressive, and protective. Inspected
closely, nearly all pornographic genres depict gender instabilities
that wobble between gay and straight, between women
with masculine characteristics and men with feminine traits,
as if to project warring impulses that men and women do not
themselves fully understand. Factoring in tastes complicates
Pornography is perhaps our best tool
for demystifying sex and gender,
but progress is slow.
matters further. Some men enjoy only softcore scenarios,
while others insist upon gonzo hardcore sequences. And, as
Susie Bright has noticed, “Some women...[want] the ordinary,
some the punch of the kinky. And some want all of it. Our sexual
minds travel everywhere, and embrace every emotion.” 14
That said, I still think that most pornography discriminates
against women, though not for the hackneyed reasons we
so often hear. For example, I do not think that pornography
objectifies women any more than it objectifies men. All media,
especially the visual, objectify their subjects. Moreover,
objectification may be a necessary precondition for choosing
one’s roles in life. Depicting women as sexual beings, without
reference to the males who in the past claimed to own their
bodies, in a sense is liberating. Treating someone as an object,
rather than merely depicting them as objects of desire,
of course, is unethical, and pornography can to some degree
be implicated in that injustice, though here again porn in skillful
hands can remedy matters by endorsing different kinds of
behavior. At base, however, except for porn made by women
for women—and increasingly that is happening—pornography
is male-oriented, which is to say that it ignores women’s
sexual pleasure. Worse, too often pornography functions as a
training manual for women. Most pornography depicts women
working hard to give men a good time—not the reverse.
Again, change comes slowly.
The Technology Factor
One trendy explanation implicates technologies ranging from
languages to electronic media. Pornographic representations
have long functioned as engines of post-industrial capitalism
because the need to create and to enjoy those representations
quite literally drives the development of new media. In
previous ages, cave painting led to pictures of vaginas and
penises, clay tablets to sexy cuneiform messages, printing
to steamy typographies and startling images. Such older
technologies seem “harmless” now; few Americans appear
to worry about erotic novels. By contrast, photography still
seems dangerous, perhaps because, as Susan Sontag said, it
cannibalizes all other art forms. Louis Daguerre invented the
daguerreotype in 1839; by 1859, the poet Charles Baudelaire
complained that people seemed to be buying cameras only
to take pornographic photos. More recently, erotic applications
fueled the evolution of VCRs. In 1975, Sony introduced
the Beta home videocassette recorder/player, but refused to
license the format to the adult film industry, the principal producer
of videotapes at the time. One year later,
in 1976, JVC introduced the VHS videocassette
recorder/player, and gave the format to
the adult industry for free, which doomed the
Beta machine, despite its superior qualities. 15
Pornographic entrepreneurs were crucial to development of
the Internet. 16 In constructing websites, pornographers invented
such novelties as Flash, the click-through banner ad,
and pop-up windows. 17 Those irritants aside, three major innovations
stand out. The first is the creation of “transaction
technologies” on the Internet, or electronic protocols for making
credit card purchases secure. The best of these methods
was established by the Internet Entertainment Group (I.E.G.),
producer of pornographic videos and websites, and immediately
copied by legitimate industries from banks to retail
merchandisers. If you order online, you use those transaction
technologies. A second is the “streaming” of audio and
video content on the Web, another technology advanced by
I.E.G. and companies such as Vivid Video. 18 If you download
audio files or video clips, you use those technologies. A third
involves the creation of “virtual reality” scenarios that will
make artificial sex seem “real” to electronic participants.
Here again, Vivid seems to be outpacing universities and
other commercial leaders. 19 Berth Milton, Jr., CEO of Private
Media Group, a leading adult-entertainment company, has
been advising the NASDAQ exchange on making its electronic
stock reporting both friendly and secure. 20
Capitalism at Work
Another contention is that porn is not subversive at all, that
elites make use of sexual expression for their own purposes.
Herbert Marcuse argued that a capitalist culture appropriates
and sanitizes sexual ideas precisely in order to co-opt them,
144 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG