Tag: consent

[↑] Hardcored – Title unknown (201X); [↓] All Fine Girls – Title unknown feat. Amia Miley (201X)

This was originally supposed to be a juxtaposition as commentary post.

That, however, shifted when I discovered that the version of the top image posted by @partialboner (who blocked me, for some reason, apparently–which sucks since he runs a damn fine art porn blog) was a crop of the original.

My initial reading of the crop version of the top image was: this is aggro but fucks with notions of public vs private in a way that this is more edgy than uncomfortable–even the extra color saturation enhances the feeling that what we’re seeing has been carefully negotiated.

The uncropped original skeeves me out because of the production company whose water mark it bears. (I’m fine with BDSM–I’m a switch–but BDSM demands a baseline minimum of respect for boundaries and hinges upon complicated questions of verbal and non-verbal consent. (More on this in a bit…)

The lower image is more visual complex-yes, it’s still very porn cliché-y but it’s at least less flat than the top image.

Initially, I wanted to feature this as a juxtaposition as commentary post in order to underscore varying degrees of visual legibility, as well as how the top scene is ostensibly public and the lower one is obviously transpiring in the privacy of a boudoir.

Also, I wanted to create a comparison/contrast between the way panties (an object) are employed in a manner for which they were not designed–a gag and a penetrative object, respectively.

The post would get close to going up and I’d kick it down to the bottom of my queue because I knew it belongs here but the framing of juxtaposition as commentary seemed too toothless a means of engaging with it.

Part my initial reluctance to post this was a direct result of allegations made by Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon… and, well: nothing about the scenes they are speaking out about are acceptable things to not have explicitly negotiated boundaries/consent in advance.

I think the problem I have with these runs much deeper and has everything to do with objectification. You wouldn’t be out of line to respond: methinks the lady doth protest too much–after all she does run a sex blog that frequently showcases graphic and/or explicit depictions of sexuality.

In for a penny, in for a pound, you’d think; except…

Porn deals in fantasy. You can argue until you’re blue in the face that a person who sees a pornographic video and goes out and treats the video like a how-to guide is a full psychopath. I mean how often has the pizza deliver guy shown up holding a pizza with his schlong just hanging out and the scantily dressed woman who answers to door just pulls him in and starts using his member to probe her tonsils. The world doesn’t work like that and you’d expect that most folks would realize that’s not how things work IRL; except…

Increasingly folks do not have access to fact based, reliable, comprehensive and honest sex education. So in some ways the argument that it’s all fantasy and everyone knows that and only a real fuck-up would think the world operates like that doesn’t follow here because part of porn being a fantasy involves the suspension of disbelief.

Beyond the absurdity of some of the scenarios porn features, what is someone who lacks strong sex education to believe and disbelieve? It’s dangerous to assume and not assuming makes things very thorny.

Generally, I think you can argue that in most porn you can presuppose that the participants have consented. However, I think it’s EXTREMELY dangerous to extend that presupposition to more BDSM elements–since those sorts of scenarios demand additional verbal consent as a result of the escalation.

And I realize I’m applying my impression of the one studio to all of their work; except…

I don’t know it’s hard to read either of these images as if the women are anything more than objects for sexual gratification. And honestly that’s where my primary beef sits: I think there is an onus on porn producers whose bread and butter involves scenes of women being manhandled and acknowledge as little more than warm, more or less moist orifices to penetrate really do have a responsibility to convey something with regard to an awareness of and respect for consent.

It’s definitely easier to do that in a video–I’m not sure how you do it in a single, static frame (it would likely be difficult to impossible and would dramatically slow down production).

But I do think we really have to do better about being mindful of consent when producing this kind of content, fwiw.

200

Every 50th post, I feel it’s important to take a step back from the smut and examine how depictions of sexuality and explicit imagery fit into the broader weave of life.

The first anniversary of the shootings in Newtown, CT is next month. It came at the tail end of a year featuring at least fifteen other mass shootings.

I have strong opinions when it comes gun violence; this is not the appropriate forum to vent them.

However, I feel compelled to address the rash in sexually explicit imagery where guns feature prominently as props.

I am not so much bothered by the stuff akin to Jackie Brown’s Chicks who Love Guns gag. But such images represent only a small fraction of what has been crossing my dash. Most of said imagery features a male bodied individual holding a gun to a female bodied-person while engaged in sexual activity.

I believe (I do not employ that word often or lightly) in protecting first amendment rights. Either all speech is free or none is.

Freedom of speech does not require agreement or even a duty to listen.

There is no way to sidestep the fact a gun–an instrument capable of causing grievous bodily harm and/or death–tinges the image with the shades of coercion. Coercion is unequivocally incompatible with consent. Period.

To me, those who make such images are irresponsible but I won’t question their right to carry on in such a fashion.

Yet, I do not owe them an their reprehensible work an audience. Henceforth, I will exercise my right to a heckler’s veto: if you post images/gifs featuring guns as props in sexual exchanges, I will unfollow you.

I encourage like-minded followers to do the same.

Rehtaeh Parsons with a rescue dog

*** Trigger Warning ***

Rehtaeh  (Heather, spelled backwards) was a sensitive, an avid reader and a straight-A student until, at age fifteen, she attended a party at a friend’s house.

There are some basic details to which all parties agree:

  • Rehtaeh had a great deal of vodka in a short period of time
  • She engaged in sexual activity with up to four boys.
  • Digital images of these encounters were captured.

Accounts diverge from here.

Rehtaeh claimed she was raped. Her family and a small group of friends believed she was telling the truth.

However, the majority response to her accusations was at in the best case insinuations of “buyer’s remorse” with a heaping helping of slut-shaming on the side and malicious bullying and ruthless harassment when images of the exchange began circulating in her high school.

Rehtaeh’s family relocated but the traumatic fallout followed them.

After a year, the case was closed the case due to lack of evidence in a he-said, she-said situation.

Rehtaeh had already not been doing well and on April 4th, 2013 she hung herself in her bathroom. Her mother tried to save her but by the time she broke door, the damage was irreparable.

Her family removed her from life support on April 7th, 2013.

…

Attention to Rehtaeh’s story came on the heels of the verdict in a Steubenville, Ohio rape case.

The details were nearly identical: a party, alcohol, images of star football players gloating about their sexual conquest, a girl who was raped and a community who categorically defended the perpetrators in the face of damning evidence against them.

During their trial, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond insisted they couldn’t have raped the victim because they weren’t violent.

When both were found guilty there were two very sets of responses. Without any concern for the victim many talking heads trumpeted the stain this would place on the lives of two promising young men. Another faction saw the punishment meted out for the crime as far too lenient.

Henry Rollins wrote an exceptional piece—which is really worth reading in its entirety—implicating rape culture while refusing to let the perpetrators off the hook.

It is obvious that the two offenders saw the victim as some one [sic] that could be treated as a thing. This is not about sex, it is about power and control. I guess that is what I am getting at. Sex was probably not the hardest thing for the two to get, so that wasn’t the objective. When you hear the jokes being made during the crime, it is the purest contempt.

As lucid as his insights are they fall into the same trap as those who foist the term ‘rape culture’ as a readymade framework for calling out the insidious cultural prerogative resulting in one woman being raped every two minutes in the US.

In other words, in the time it takes to read this post two women will have been raped.

Only one will report the crime.

…

I object to the term rape culture. I don’t deny its existence as much as readymade-ness of the accompanying critique. Inversion is never subversion.

To perhaps put it better: blaming rape on ‘rape culture’ is analogous to blaming kidney failure for killing a cancer patient. Yes, the patient died because their kidneys stopped working but what caused the kidneys to stop working came as a result of a broader systemic malfunction.

The problem with the way things are now is that the burden of proof is placed on the shoulders of the victim—missing and misconstruing the onus. Rape is the result of a failure to seek and receive consent. Thus from a legal standpoint what happens after the non-issuing or retraction of consent is rape, full stop.

…

Why can’t we focus on consent instead of the crime which arises from discounting it?

First off, while there are a fucking shit ton of resources on rape statistics, preventing rape, surviving rape, etc. there is very little substantive material pertaining to consent.

But I only found two decent resources: Reed College’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response document as well as a similar document from Vassar. The former is impressively thorough; the latter, more vital.

But the documents only tell us what any person who with an ounce of humanity already knows: flirting does not constitute consent. Further, drugs and alcohol render their user incapable of consenting.

Still women are raped and blamed by their rapists using the most specious and conceptually flimsy sexist notions.

This is literally not difficult at all but beautiful people like Rehtaeh Parsons continue to suffer and fall as a result of the sins committed against them.