The Center for Public Integrity Project (2010) ‘Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice’, < http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/campus_assault/ > (accessed 7 May, 2011). Twitter (2010), < http://twitter.com/centerfoldstrip/status/36086856013586432 > (accessed 10 April, 2011). Westmoreland, Matt and Josephine Wolff (2010) ‘In the Hot Seat: Hazing at Princeton’ The Daily Princetonian , < http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/04/26/25997/ > (accessed 10 April, 2011). Yale Daily News (2010) ‘The Right Kind of Feminism’, < http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/oct/18/the-womens-center-must-continue-to-break-the/ > (accessed 10 April, 2011). ___________________________ 1 Much inspiration for this article comes from working with my student Laura Jarrett, Harvard Law School, Class of 2010, and a brilliant paper she wrote for my Title IX seminar entitled ‘The Blueprint for Sexual Harassment: How Schools Can Combat Sexual Misconduct As Required Under Title IX by Addressing the Harm of Pornography’ (hereinafter ‘Jarrett’) (on file with author, December, 2009). The author wishes to thank Jennifer Dein, my teaching and research assistant who provided primary editorial assistance, shared insights about the Greek system and contributed enormously to the overall writing of the chapter. Other students, former students and colleagues who contributed thoughts, insights and editorial help include Krista Anderson, Laura Jarrett, Michelle Katz, Renate Klein, Rebecca Leventhal, Kimberly Lucas, Maris Rosenfeld, Roberta Oster Sachs, Anne Catherine Savage, Tamara Schulman, Kamilah Willingham, and Elizabeth Wol. 2 ‘Rush’ refers to the initial process men go through to pledge a fraternity. Men are invited to ‘rush’ a fraternity; they then become ‘pledges’. After meeting the pledging requirements, the pledges become brothers, or full-fledged members of the fraternity. A significant amount of hazing behavior is required for the pledges to achieve brotherhood. 3 The fact that the email specified ‘freshman skeezas’ is consistent with David Lisak’s work on ‘undetected rapists’. As he explained on NPR (3 April, 2010), rapists target the most vulnerable women on campus – freshmen. “The predators on campus know the women who are new to campus,” he said, “they are younger, they’re less experienced” (see Shapiro, 2010; see also Lisak and Miller, 2002). 4 ‘Student Footage of Frat Pledges on Old Campus’ YouTube (13 October, 2010), < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLh0RMpit1k > (accessed 7 May, 2011). 5 Similar stories emerge from Australia. In 2009, the highly prestigious St Paul’s College of the University of Sydney came under fire after it was exposed that a group of male college students had created and participated in a Facebook group titled ‘Define statutory’ described as being ‘pro-rape, anti-consent’. The same college had previously come under fire for a slogan in their bar reading ‘they can’t say no with a cock in their mouth’ and for awarding an ‘animal act of the year’ trophy to a male student accused of committing rape. See < http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/11/13/2742684.htm > and < http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/bachelors-who-major-in-abhorrent-behaviour-20091109-i58t.html >. 6 There are many variations on this theme, such as ‘CEO’s and Office Hos’, ‘Golf Pros and Tennis Hos’. In each, women are designated as the ‘ho’. ‘Ho’ is slang for ‘whore’. 7 The new guidelines clarify schools’ responsibilities to prevent and address sexual harassment on campus as well as articulate the importance of the civil rights to equality in education. Dear Colleague Letter, Assistant Secretary’s Office for Civil Rights, Department of Education (2011), < http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201104.html (last accessed 19 May, 2011). 8 A common pattern presented in 4 recent cases I have worked on involved a young woman partying with friends who is either left in a room with 1 male friend who calls another to join him, or finds herself with 2 or more men who were friends of hers, who then rape her. Later, the men inevitably claim she consented, while she was caught completely off-guard, having been with people she’d considered her friends. See, e.g. Laura Dunn, featured on Headline News < http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/04/08/exp.jvm.rape.victims.courage.hln >; Beckett Brennan, featured on 60 Minutes , 11 April, 2011, < http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7363066n&tag=related;photovideo > (accessed 7 May, 2011). 9 In a popular Nelly song called ‘Tipdrill’ the lyrics include the lines: “Now baby girl bring it over let me spit my pimpjuice, I need a tipdrill … I said it ain’t no fun less we all get some,” < http://www.lyrics007.com/Nelly%20Lyrics/Tip%20Drill%20Lyrics.html > (accessed 7 May, 2011). A ‘tipdrill’ is a term for basketball players lining up and taking turns scoring. In this context, it refers to ‘running train’ on a woman – men lining up to take turns having sex with the same woman. 10 In response to the Yale chanting, the Yale Women’s Center objected, and then was derided in the Yale Daily News editorial entitled ‘The Right Kind of Feminism’, < http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/oct/18/the-womens-center-must-continue-to-break-the/ >. Following that criticism, however, hundreds of Yale students, alumni, and others signed a petition objecting to the editorial and addressing the seriousness of the rape chants. 11 I am using a pseudonym for Anne, who wishes to remain anonymous. 12 Vice President Biden spoke at the University of New Hampshire on 4 April, 2011 to address sexual violence on campus. National Public Radio covered the press conference at < http://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135135544/federal-effort-targets-sexual-assaults-at-colleges > (accessed 7 May, 2011). 13 The guidelines are contained in a ‘Dear Colleague Letter’ at < http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20100420.pdf > (accessed 7 May, 2011). 14 See, e.g. ‘At Yale: Sharper Look at Treatment of Women’, New York Times , 7 April, 2011 found at: < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/nyregion/08yale.html > (accessed 8 May, 2011); ‘Hostile Sexual Environment at Yale?’ CBS Early Show , 4 April, 2011, found at: < http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/04/earlyshow/living/parenting/main20050348.shtml >.
Christopher N. Kendall 1 The Harms of Gay Male Pornography Introduction Justified as a source of gay male liberation, self pride and a valued source of much needed sex education, some (indeed, far too many) gay male academics and activists have gone to great lengths to promote and sell gay male pornography as ‘harm-free’ and ‘different from’ heterosexual pornography. This paper rejects this trend, arguing that when we examine what gay male pornography presents and what it actually says about being gay and male today, what we find is a model of behaviour more concerned with self-gratification and the right to dominate and control than with self-respect and respect for others. Indeed, the identity politics on offer sexualises a role play that rejects compassion, affection and equality between gay men and instead promotes (through sex) homophobia and sexism, self-hate, hate for others and harm to others. As such, it must be rejected and any rights strategy that depends on it re-thought. Gay Male Pornography: The Reality In early 2000, I was part of the legal team for the human rights lobby group Equality Now in litigation before the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium. 2 In that case, Canada’s highest court accepted Equality Now’s argument that the production and distribution of same-sex pornography causes the same harms to equality that the Court had previously recognised within the context of heterosexual pornography in the case of R v Butler . 3 The pornographic materials at issue in Little Sisters , and others like them, have been defended and promoted as gay male identity and a source of equality and liberation by pro-pornography and pro-gay advocates alike. An analysis of what these materials actually say about gay male identity, however, reveals that this commitment to pornography is short-sighted, anti-equality and anti-liberation. In answering this question, it is worth noting the quotation below, found in an article in Manscape Magazine , not an issue in Little Sisters , but available nonetheless from the Plaintiff’s bookstore prior to the case being heard. It, like many of the materials defended in Little Sisters , reminds the reader that to be ‘male’ is to be empowered, but that to be male requires conformity to a clearly defined, gendered norm – a gender role according to which some are entitled to sexually abuse and control, while others, because they are descriptively less ‘male’, are socially less relevant, less equal, and not entitled to the respect, compassion, and human dignity that only true equality can provide:
I pushed him lower so my big dick was against his chest; I pushed his meaty pecs together. They wrapped around my dick perfectly as I started tit-fucking him like a chick. His hard, humpy pecs gripped my meat like a vice. Of all the things I did to him that night I think he hated that the most. It made him feel like a girl. I sighed, ‘Oh, my bitch got such pretty titties! They was made for tittie fuckin, made to serve a man’s dick’. 4
As in a great deal of written or pictorial gay male pornographic presentations, what one gets from the above is a ‘source of liberation and equality’ in which the physically more powerful, ostensibly straight male is glorified. This linking of manliness with heterosexuality and overt masculinity is a common theme throughout many of these materials with masculinity often gained at the expense of a woman or ostensibly gay male’s safety and self-worth – all in all, the antithesis of both equality and liberation. To the extent that women are not used or ridiculed in the pornography sold as gay male (and women frequently are ridiculed and used as objects of sexual debasement), the effects of sexism and misogyny are not eliminated. These materials, while free of biological femaleness, continue to promote violence and/or the sexual degradation of others along the lines of gender as socially defined, interpreted, and imposed through systems of sex inequality. They often sexualise large, hyper-masculine men – many of whom are described as ‘straight’ men who find sexual arousal through the infliction of pain on socially feminised sexual subordinates (read: gay men) who, in turn, are shown enjoying the pain, humiliation and degradation to which they are subjected. Frequently, sexual subordination is enforced through extreme forms of torture and violence, with masculinity again epitomised and celebrated in men who ridicule and emasculate others in the name of sexual pleasure. Humour, we are told, is found in the sexual debasement of another, assertiveness tied to aggression, resulting in an identity politics that creates, packages and re-sells a sexuality that epitomises male supremacy. Femininity in turn is linked with emasculation, linked with inferiority, linked with inequality on the basis of sex. Indeed, those who are emasculated in these materials are often specifically described as gay male, while those who abuse them and who are iconised as sexual role models are described as heterosexual. Note, for example, MAC II 19: A Drummer Super Publication, Volume 19 . 5 This magazine contains an article entitled ‘Prisoner’ that details the torture and sexual mutilation of prisoners of war during a fictional military coup. Many of the prison officers are described as ‘straight’ and ‘real men’ whose masculinity is shown through the sexual abuse of their prisoners, most of whom are belittled as gays, queers, sissies etc. 6 A similar theme is found in Bear: Masculinity Without the Trappings . 7 The emphasis in this magazine is on overt, hyper-masculinity. Like MAC II 19 , many of the stories mock gay men, describing them as ‘too feminine’, ‘sissy’ or ‘queer’. One article, for example, quotes a trucker who, while bragging about the men who have ‘serviced’ him at truck stops, says:
… truckers sure know about the clean finger nail faggots taking up stalls all day playing footsies, tossing toilet paper and love notes at any pair of boots along side. Most truckers ignore them. Some want to kill them and others figure a blowjob for free is one hell of a lot better than tossing dollars at a whore. 8
This publication, like many others, promotes violence and aggressive, non-egalitarian behaviour. The theme throughout is hyper-masculinity found at the expense of someone else’s liberty and self-worth. Merit is found in degradation. Rewards attached to one’s ability to use or be used. Equality, if at all, is found only in reciprocal abuse. What all of these examples provide is a sexualised identity politic that relies on the inequality found between those with power and those without it; between those who are dominant and those who are submissive; between those who are top and those who are bottom; between straight men and gay men; between men and women. From these and other materials, we are told to glorify manliness and those who meet a hyper-masculine, muscular ideal. The result is a sexual and social reality in which men who are more feminine, less male, are degraded as ‘queer’ and ‘faggots’ and subjected to degrading and dehumanising epithets usually used against women, such as ‘bitch’, ‘cunt’ and ‘whore’. These men are in turn presented as enjoying this degradation. In sum, these materials reinforce a system in which, as Catharine A. MacKinnon explains, “a victim, usually female, always feminized” is actualised (1989, p.141). In examining the exhibits before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Little Sisters case, we also get materials that sexualise racist stereotypes and degrade members of racial minorities for the purpose of sexual arousal. The message conveyed is one in which gay Asian men, for example, are presented as smaller and more feminine than their Caucasian counterparts and thus willing to be sexually subordinated by a more dominant, more stereotypical white male. An example of this type of publication is found in the magazine Oriental Guys (OG) . This magazine is, as its title indicates, a pictorial and written collection of articles and photographs of, and about, Asian men. A quick review of the magazine makes it clear, however, that, although ‘about’ Asian men, the magazine is directed at the Caucasian gay male market. OG presents photographs of young Asian men, usually posing by themselves. These photo spreads are often accompanied by articles with titles like ‘Be My Sushi Tonight’ 9 or ‘Behind Bars in Thailand’ 10 which discusses sex for sale in that country – a country where the sale and sexual use of young boys, via sex tourism, is rampant. The magazine does not present more than one young man at any one time. There is no apparent presentation of violence or physical pain. The magazine does, however, focus on and sexualise the youth and race of those used to produce this publication with the stories throughout the magazine describing, among other things, older white men cruising Asian boys and male prostitutes. In this context, young Asian men are described as ‘pearls of the orient’, ‘easy to find’, ‘accessible’ and ‘available.’ Often, the photo spreads of young Asian men, shown face down with buttocks elevated, are accompanied by ‘news’ articles that tell the reader how, for example, to recruit young Balinese men. 11 These, in turn, are accompanied by ‘letters to the editor’ that detail the success of the magazine’s Caucasian readers’ ‘foreign’ sexual conquests. The focus and content of this publication sexualises racism and sexual exploitation. This is its intended result and it is marketed as such. While degrading to Asian gay men, the theme promoted also justifies through sex the types of attitudes and inequalities that make racism and sexism a powerful and interconnected reality. The white male is described as one who seeks out an inferior Asian other; the young Asian is described and presented as ready and willing to serve his sexual needs and fantasies. The white male is superior; the Asian male inferior. The resulting harm is an affront to all persons seeking equality. In a similar vein, the reader is offered materials in which African-American men are presented as violent sexual predators with large sexual organs who care only to emasculate white men through rape or in which the same men are presented as sexually desiring to be the slaves of white men needing to reaffirm a masculinity threatened by the Black male. With titles like ‘Native American Drifter Hustles Man in Abandoned Mall’ and ‘Hawaiian Cocksucker Licks Cum From Peepshow Booth Floor’, the collection of essays in Sex Stop: True Revelations and Strange Happenings, 12 is typical of this type of gay male pornography. Many of the stories contained in it sexualise racial difference, sex with or between young boys and incest. In the story, ‘Boy Buys Bicycle by Riding Man’s Face’, for example, the author describes how he and his friend were paid by an older Black male for sex when they were boys. The story concludes with an editorial comment in which the editor of this collection of stories explains that “this gentleman is married and has grandchildren. He says he has no regrets and just loves to chase old Black men when he can get away from his wife to do it.” Throughout many of these materials rape is also normalised, consent implied. For example, in the story, ‘Sucks Brother Off Before Wedding’ from Juice: True Homosexual Experiences , the writer describes being raped by his older brother and other men. Explaining that these experiences formed the basis of his preferred sexual experiences as an adult, the reader then details another of his sexual encounters as follows:
Once when I was about 25 I got raped by a powerful young guy that I had taken home to blow. I always say that was the best sex I ever had. Rape at that stage of the game was enjoyable. God he was good. He knew just what to do to a willing asshole that kept saying no. He took me with force and I fought him right to the bitter end and – thank God – he won out. When he got through with [me] I knew I had had it. The bastard never came back though. 13
The identity sold is one in which violence by one man against another man or men is normalised through sex for the persons involved and for the consumer of these materials. This is a common theme. The magazine Dungeon Master – The Male S/M Publication , 14 for example, presents men torturing other men in sexually explicit ways with hot wax, heat and fire, while sexualising this abuse as sexually arousing for the abusers, the persons injured, and, again, for the consumer. The magazine Mr S/M 65 15 presents photographs of men being defecated on and who derive pleasure from eating and drinking excrement. The film Headlights and Hard Bodies 16 includes footage of men sexually using other men who are being pulled by neck chains, hit and whipped while tied to poles, penetrated by large objects and/or subjected to clamping, biting and pulling of their nipples and genitals. Men presented as ‘slaves’ are shown in considerable pain but finding sexual enjoyment from the abuse inflicted on them by others. Those released from bondage kiss the man or men who have just beaten them and thank them for putting them in their place with whips and verbal degradation. MACII magazine, 17 in turn, glorifies sexually explicit torture in a military setting, while detailing the kidnapping, torture and sexual mutilation of prisoners of war. In a photograph in the same magazine, two young men are shown confined in a cage. One, face down and bent over, is being slapped by an older man in a Nazi military uniform. Another is chained and hung in stirrups with a hand shoved down his throat. What one sees in these materials is an almost pervasive glorification of the idealised masculine/male icon. Through them, inequality is sexualised, homophobia entrenched, sexism normalised. Dominance and non-mutuality, submission and inequality remain central to the sexual act and in those photos where men are alone, positioned, posed, humanity is removed and replaced with an object. As ‘Men Against Rape and Pornography’ (a US activist group) accurately explain, the man exposed becomes a non-human, an object waiting for you to do something to it or wanting to do something to you because he has what it takes to do so. The message sent is that some people want and deserve to have sex forced on them. They solicit this and they deserve this. 18 Either way, the result is a sexuality that is hierarchical and rarely compassionate, mutual or equal.