so i have been thinking a lot about, oh, what should we call it … the THEORY end of this kind of work. gender stuff. connections between the sex industry and that freakish outside world in which we all still must put some time. what is influencing me is a combination of things i read and conversations with friends. and what is congealing in this conceptual quagmire is a stewy conglomeration of chunks like issues of masculinity, and psychological motives for doing and seeking sex work.
so i read this article in slate. it made a lot of observations i have made: that there is a lot of sex-negativity in my generation, that there is a conservative backlash against baby-boomers, the ’60’s and ’70’s, sexual liberation, feminism, etc. and that these reactionary turds lurk like shit-smelling explosives in a minefield that is ostensibly ‘liberal.’
here is an illustrative quote from lady gaga, who i must say i do not give two shits about: “It’s not really cool any more to have sex all the time. It’s cooler to be strong and independent.” um riiiight, whatever the fuck that means. like i say, no two shits. but anyway …
the article does not point out anything new because i observe these trends in my everyday life. i live in the world and probably do not come across many people in my urban milieu or what have you who are not ‘down’, ostensibly. yet dig a milimeter deep beneath this culture — and even the loose web of counter-culture, where i spend much of my social time — and the same old shit explodes in your face. duh.
so mainstream culture is pretty clearly the steaming pile of repressive poop it tends to be. and youth culture, even the freakier nooks, doesn’t always smell so great. so what are we pro-joy/pleasure folk to do? and what motives might we — ‘decent’ dudes and self-respecting, smart women alike — for seeking out the sexual underbelly of our society?
i found some worthwhile and insightful nuggets in this collection of essays about stripping: Flesh for fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance. it’s edited by three lady academics, r. danielle egan, katherine frank, and merri lisa johnson, who have all spent some time as dancers. one interesting thing is they include essays both by sex work providers and sex work clients. we all know that 99.999% of these clients are men. and of course the outlook is largely hetero. let’s start with one of these nuggets. katherine frank interviewed a bunch of strip club customers; here’s what one had to say about why he kept coming back:
“Many of the men that I spoke with discussed their confusion as to what was expected of them as “men” in relationships with women. … “Other men complained that they were expected to be strong and assertive, both at home and in their workplaces, but their female partners were at the same time interested in greater communication and emotional expression. Joe summed this up very succinctly:
My wife expects me to be strong emotionally, physically, and I expect spiritually, too … But emotionally, she wants me to be strong but she doesn’t want me to be overbearing. She wants me to cry and be sensitive, to be the leader and the rock … I’m confused as hell. I wouldn’t say that openly in public but I’m definitely confused about what it is to be a man.”
boo fucking hoo, why don’t you dial 911 and call the waaaambulance, right? it is so hard to be a man in this world, why don’t you cry me a goddam river. no, seriously folks. this is a pretty typical example, but i see this crisis of contemporary masculinity play out in the troubled psyches of even atypical men i know. and i do not envy it, and i have SHITTONS of sympathy. although we women often get this shit end of this shit stick of confusion, i have a fair amount of compassion for men honestly navigating the morass.
which leads me to my next nugget. it is a patent fallacy that women who do sex work, especially professional domination, suffer or delight in the agonies and ecstasies of man-hatred. quite the opposite. plenty of them seek a place, like men, where the ‘confusion’ of real-world gender relations can be tabled. or at least troubled. women can unabashedly be sexy and powerful, and (hetero) men can be unabashedly men. sexual appeal and erotic desire can be openly celebrated, without all the landmines that we have grown to associate with such things. here is what one lady, merri lisa johnson, said about why she became a stripper:
“ In the context of an American culture defined by its intensely contradictory responses to sex – the lasciviousness and puritanism – as well as in the context of my own personal life which was, when I first entered the profession at age twenty-one, defined by an unexpected divorce that had thrown my moral framework painfully into question, this stripper sexuality offered a welcome alternative to marriage and the church teachings that had left me angry and freaked out about sex. Other options were, I’m sure, available – tantric sex, swinging, etc. – but stripping was the venue through which I realized the possibilities of a freer sense of sexuality.”
you can easily substitute BDSM or what have you in place of stripping here. let’s dwell on “a freer sense of sexuality.” huh. now i know i speak from a privileged position as an independent domme working out of a female-run space. i come from a middle-class background, have no kids, and could be doing other things. but Flesh for Fantasy also makes some good points on this front. one, that there are plenty of women like me, who seek out sex work reasons other than poverty and desperation. and two, that the danger associated with the work says more about the larger culture, the stigma and ghettoization, which leaves workers vulnerable to exploitation.
and how about the alternative, the straight professional world. here is johnson again:
“The abusiveness of a sexual script that encourages us to repress what Naomi Wolf calls our ‘inner slut’ cannot be compartmentalized as the product of the sex industry. It is all around us, perhaps even worse in nonstrip-club spaces. When I check the neckline of my blouse or blot my red lipstick before going to work, when my hips begin to ache from keeping my legs crossed for eight hours under my desk, I am living out a sexual script that prohibits the erotic in everyday life. It can be seen in the ‘tight and constricted posture’ of conventional femininity, to borrow the language of Sandra Lee Bartky’s critique of patriarchal bodily disciplines, and unconscious physical ‘expression of [the] need to ward off real or symbolic sexual attack.’ In the strip club, there is no such thing as too much lipstick, and it is worth noting that my joints don’t hurt as much from spreading my legs as they do from crossing them.”
i must say, for a long time in real life i experienced my sexuality as a burden that i felt i was constantly shielding others and myself from. while an unspoken asset, professionally and socially, i sensed it to be a kind of grotesque wildcard, threatening for everyone involved. the elephant-with-a-boner quietly lurking in the corner of the room while we discuss work or bands we both like. the playroom, in contrast, is a space where the elephant, in all his absurdity, is fully acknowledged. which is to say, the eroticism that pervades much of human interaction is given free reign and not violently and awkwardly repressed. yeehaw!
with love,
midwest mistress
and now i will leave you to chew on those nuggets. and also to chew on this creepy and delightful gem:
this is awesome! i don’t know who you are, but i’m loving your thoughts on domintation…tell me more! will write more soon when not so fokin resfriada…-mother k.
Wow, lots of great observations both about the inside and outside of the playroom, MM. I too have had the feeling occasionally in school situations that my sexuality (in relation– or non-relation– to that of my colleagues) was defining an interaction and being pointed to tacitly in connection to my artwork, even though IT could not be mentioned directly, and of course no one could care less. But here in the weird world of art academia, I have come to the conclusion that hetero male artist sexuality is even more of an off limits topic that heteroqueerwhatever female sexuality: not only can it not be mentioned by name, but it cannot even be alluded as an indistinct presence, and in fact I have noticed it sitting like that very big elephant, sometimes strutting around unnoticed in its normative free reign, but (more interestingly) sometimes down on its knees groaning for acknowledgement, while everyone covers their eyes and looks away because this elephant ain’t pretty, it’s crying and its legs are broken. And no(men)body wants to see that shit, perhaps because it hits too close to home, so they imagine that this elephant is beautiful in its suffering and therefore should be left in peace. Whereas they want to kill my elephant for various reasons that you can imagine, but that would be gauche, so instead my elephant gets shot at a tangent, leaving bloody scrapes all over her skin that drip onto the floor and make a mess. At least that’s my conclusion. It seems that the paternalistic art milieu has tenderness, love, and even perhaps respect for conflicted and/or impotent masculinity. Duh. But what to do, besides try to get some power myself so that I can empower people I believe in? I don’t want to have to put my elephant under an invisibility cloak, I love it!
Another question: why do profs feel like they are allowed to psychoanalyze me in public, but not my male peers? Why is my art judged more “therapeutic” than that of the men I work with, whose work is sometimes waaay more “personal”, “cathartic”, all those out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth words? Is it just me or is something more complicated going on? And what to do? My reaction has been to dress my elephant in a lace leotard and leather vest and parade it around in all its blinding glory but there might be a better way.