Porn - Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think With Kink (36 page)

This nullification of the expert knowledge produced within and about sexual subcultures is what I call epistemic violence. A fundamental question in philosophy has been the study of epistemology, that is, the ways knowledge can be produced, verified, or invalidated. More recent theorists, like Michel Foucault, have suggested that what counts as knowledge at any given time has more to do with power and historical circumstances than it does with ultimate and transcendent truth. This insight helps us to understand the Supreme Court of Canada’s reading of an SM text in defiance of the witness testimony.The expert knowledge of the professors and writers, along with the personal knowledge of SM practitioners, was aggressively overridden by a judiciary that did not display any independent familiarity with or knowledge about the significance of the texts.What these judges did have was power.With a coercive state apparatus to enforce its judgment, the Supreme Court of Canada has the power to curtail the expressive rights of sadomasochists and impose its version of reality on their subculture.

A sadomasochist like Gabriel knows that his sexuality is respectful, enjoyable, and empowering, but this knowledge comes to be officially destroyed by a judiciary that decides his sexuality is inherently degrading, dehumanizing, and violent. This epistemic violence not only harms sadomasochists’ freedom of expression and equality, but also harms their self-perception. It creates a fissure between what one knows and what one is told. Like phenomenological violence, this state-sanctioned epistemic violence stigmatizes sadomasochists and engenders shame and self-hatred in people whose “sex crime” is premised on mutual enjoyment and satisfaction.

Aisha’s Crossing Over

Is there any sweeter pleasure, than the pleasure of giving into temptation?

Aisha flipped through the SM magazine in a haze of agitation and arousal. Her eyes hungrily consumed the images: a man hog-tied and gazing at the camera with vulnerable inviting eyes, a woman sporting a strap-on about to penetrate her prostrate lover. It was the first time she had seen representations of sexuality that turned her on without filling her with dread, the way mainstream images of sexual violence had done. She later realized that her knee-jerk protest to Gabriel operated as a defense against her own rising excitement.What she found in this magazine was not just jack-off material, but recognition. Aisha realized that there were others who shared her complicated cravings. Through this magazine, Aisha began to understand her desires as an eroticization of the symbols of hierarchy, not an adoption of the weapons of patriarchy.

Throughout her life, Aisha had tried to convince herself that what felt so intuitive and attractive was evil and corruptive. Anti-porn feminism and dominant society had taught her to tone done her libidinous personality and avoid being a “pervert” or “slut.” Finding affirmation in pornography was a welcome reprieve from this internalized conflict. It meant she could continue her critical analysis of oppressive relations without foreclosing the possibility that sexual feelings and practices could be a source of insight. Being attuned to her phenomenological reality could allow her to gain confidence in her own sexual truths. It could give her courage to resist the epistemic violence perpetrated by a society that constructs SM as both ludicrous and dangerous.

As for Gabriel, her initiator into SM sexual possibilities, he had read Aisha as a kindred spirit the moment they met. Given the ways both dominant society and anti-porn feminism have managed to drive perverts into silence, if not into self-loathing, it is heartening to know that people with a penchant for kink have an uncanny ability for finding one another.

Perhaps it is overstating it to claim that lust conquers all, but at the very least, it is a powerful force to be reckoned with.

NOTES

1
For an exploration of the origins of this myth, see Paula J. Caplan,
The Myth of Women’s Masochism
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

2
Susan Brownmiller,
Against Our Will: Men,Women and Rape
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), p. 359.

3
Patrick Califia,
Sensuous Magic: A Guide for Adventurous Couples
(New York: Richard Kasak Books, 1993), p. 150. See also Darren Langdridge and Meg Barker (eds.)
Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

4
Anti-porn theorists usually pay scant attention to gay or lesbian pornography, despite the fact that gay and lesbian pornography gets disproportionately labeled obscene in criminal prosecutions. To the extent that same-sex pornography is addressed, it is generally seen as mirroring or aping the exploitive heterosexual paradigm of dominance and submission which perpetuates sex inequality and misogyny. A notable example of this school of thought is Christopher Kendall’s book,
Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination
(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004).

5
R. v. Hicklin
, LR 3 QB 360 (1868).

6
For an excellent overview of the social science literature from the 1980s, see Dany Lacombe,
Blue Politics: Pornography and the Law in the Age of Feminism
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). See also W. A. Fisher and G. Grenier, “Violent Pornography, Antiwoman Thoughts, and Antiwoman Acts: In Search of Reliable Effects,”
Journal of Sex Research
31 (1994): 23–38.

7
See Anthony D’Amato, “Porn Up, Rape Down,”
Social Science Research Network
, 6/23/06 (2007).The anti-porn response to such studies argues that rape and sexual assault statistics are unreliable, as the crime is extremely under-reported. However, this fact was surely true before the advent of the Internet.Thus, while the number of reported rapes do not accurately reflect the actual number of rapes, there is no reason to think that the relative rate of reporting would be going down.

8
The facts for this case were taken from the following judgments:
US v. Guglielmi
819 F.2d 451 (4th Cir. 1987),
US v. Guglielmi
731 F. Supp. 1273 (WDNC 1990), and
US v. Guglielmi
929 F.2d 1001 (4th Cir. 1991).

9
Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, Part 5, Section 63.

10
Human Rights Watch, “No Escape, Male On Male Prison Rape,” online at www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2001/prison/report.html.

11
R. v. Brown
(1993), 97 Cr. App. R. 44, 1993 WL 963434 (HL), (1993) 157 JP 337, [1994] 1 AC 212, [1993] 2 All ER 75 (UK House of Lords).

12
The accused were charged under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, Chapter 100, Acts Causing or Tending to Cause Danger to Life or Bodily Harm, ss. 20 and 47. Some theorists have speculated that the police felt compelled to lay charges to justify the exorbitant costs of their investigation. See Bill Thompson,
Sadomasochism: Painful Perversion or Pleasurable Play?
(London: Cassell, 1994), p. 2.

13
Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice)
2000 SCC 69, [2000] 2 SCR 1120.

14
Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium
v.
Canada (Minister of Justice)
(1996) 131 DLR (4th) 486, 18 BCLR (3d) 241 (BCSC) [
Little Sisters
trial decision].

MZ. BERLIN AND DAVE MONROE

CHAPTER 19

RUMINATIONS OF A DOMINATRIX
An Interview with Mz. Berlin

The final piece in our anthology is an interview in which Dave Monroe interrogates the Fabulous Mz. Berlin about the ins and outs of the porn business. Mz. B is a widely known BDSM dominatrix, actress, model, producer, and director who has appeared on many such (in)famous websites. She also works in “mainstream” porn, and thus has insight into several faces of the porn industry. Note that the purpose of this interview is to allow Berlin to put forward her thoughts for consideration by you, the reader. Dave makes little, if any, attempt to
argue
with her in Socratic fashion; it is an interview rather than a dialogue. Nevertheless, Berlin offers interesting insights on the nature and limits of harm, torture, the role of mental maturity in coping with the porn industry, and other titillating topics. Enjoy (and if you don’t, prepare for a spanking)!

DM:Tell our readers about you and your educational background
.

I am from Louisiana, where I attended Louisiana State University. I majored in Psychology and Communications, and was active as a member of the Student Activities Council. Although my formal education is simple and basic, I’ve spent most of the time since graduating from high school doing two things, learning about sex and people!

I’m 30 now, and was dancing when I was 18. By dancing, I mean stripping. After that, I got into fetish and bondage modeling, and for the last year and a half I’ve been working in adult films. One thing that attracts me to the adult entertainment industry is that I learn a lot about people and their behavior.

So you were dancing while you were in school?

Yes! [Laughs] Dancing is what helped pay for college! I’m that girl!

How does your education affect your experiences in porn? Do you see a resulting difference between your relationship to the industry compared to your fellows?

I think my education affects the way I treat other people more than it affects the way I think about myself. I’m better at evaluating people; especially as a dominatrix, which is what I am primarily. I think it helps me read and understand the body language of others, and communicate with the people with whom I work. For example, I am able to understand or discover the interests of guys I shoot with and ask them intimate questions without being insulting. Studying psychology also helps with humiliation – you learn what humiliates people, and that’s part of the role of being a dominatrix. The communications part also helps in terms of public speaking.

However, there isn’t for me a kind of “psychological separation,” where I “blank out” while I’m shooting and am mentally disengaged. I really want to be there. I don’t think that has anything to do with my education, but more with who I am. Being present, in the moment, no matter what the circumstances, is my main goal as a person.

Dancing aside, how and why were you drawn into the porn world in general, and into BDSM specifically?

I became obsessed with the fetish pictures of John Willie. I was attracted to the corsets, handcuffs, chains, and to the femininity of those images. I really liked the aesthetic, and I realized that I wanted to be in such pictures. So I met with photographers in California, Ken Marcus, Ian Rath of FetishNation.com, and said,“I want to look like a John Willie girl.”We did shoots where I tried to emulate that vision of femininity. After a while, I began to see a progression in those pictures, an attention to detail, because I was becoming a different person and a better model. I was “becoming” Berlin. As far as film goes, the fetish producers realized that I like to talk and get into character while shooting – which most porn girls don’t beyond the “oh yeahs” and “give it to mes” – so I started shooting short fetish film clips. But now I do everything: boy-girl, fetish, BDSM, mainstream porn, and so on. I’m also a “rigger,” which means I tie people up, director and producer of Fetish/Bondage films, for my own company, and others. Oddly, I didn’t get into the adult film side of things until I was 28 years old, so I entered the industry ten years too late! I’m too young to be a MILF, and too old to be a “barely legal.” I have my own company called Em Kay Ultra Productions, and my own website (www.mzberlin. net), and I’m more proud of that than anything in the world.

Given that you wear several “hats,” as it were, in the porn business, has your being a producer and director affected the way you view the industry, or the way you understand yourself in it?

Yes; it’s given me more confidence as an actress. I feel comfortable asserting myself about being paid proper rates for scenes, and so on. In short, it’s given me a lot more control. Being a director and producer has also given me a new perspective – you can’t let the industry come in and use you. In porn, one works in a very physical environment; you’re being touched intimately and so forth. A lot of girls in porn still connect physical engagement with emotional engagement, and this industry can tear them down. But taking the part of directing and producing has put me in a position where I can use the industry and it doesn’t use me. I get what I want out of it, not the other way around.

It’s also a bit like becoming a manager at any other job – you realize you’re not just there to screw around. You’re there to film porn. When I’m acting, I recognize that I am a commodity, there to be objectified by someone else and to perform. As a producer, I’m interested in the financial side of things, while if I’m directing for someone else, it’s more about the shooting. If I’m producing, and it’s my money being spent on making a film, you’d better believe that everyone is doing what they’re supposed to and where they need to be!

You mentioned that some girls working in porn connect emotions with the intimate physical nature of the business, and that this can “tear them down.” Will you say more about that?

I don’t want to down the industry, but we do allow some things to happen that I don’t think are emotionally correct. Some girls don’t really understand what they’re getting into.This happens most frequently with 18-year-old girls who show up LA with a suitcase wanting to be a “porn star” because they saw it on TV. The porn lifespan of such girls is likely to be short, because they don’t understand how to set boundaries. I personally think that one shouldn’t be allowed to do porn until 21. I believe this because generally these young girls don’t recognize some of the long-term ramifications of what they’re doing – there are videos of them having sex that are publicly available and around forever. Many young girls also simply can’t cope with the “emotional drop” that comes with shooting porn.While making a film, there’s a lot of adrenaline and a “rush” in the experience, like the experience of acting on stage. Afterward, there can be a bit of a letdown, and many young girls have trouble dealing with that.They simply haven’t figured out how to reconcile their professional life as a commodity and their emotional states.The emotional effects also depend on the support system you have.

With my company, and the companies for which I work, especially in BDSM, we make a point of trying to inform actors and actresses about these pitfalls. Both TwistedFactory.com (a company I directed extensively for) and Kink.com are very scrupulous in this regard.We tell them exactly what we are trying to do, make it known exactly what to expect, and inform them about the possible consequences of their actions. In mainstream porn, AIM works to enlighten porn newcomers with a “Porn 101” DVD, but I think there should be more internal regulation.

We seem to be pushing in the direction of discussing some of the classic moral objections to pornography, so let’s go there now.You’ve mentioned that you see yourself as a commodity and that the industry can “use” people and objectify them. It seems, then, that porn is, or can be, harmful to the women or men who make it. It seems exploitative, for one thing.What would you say concerning this objection?

With respect to objectification, I see how it can happen, but from my experience it generally doesn’t, at least on a personal level.When I go on set, I make a point of making a personal connection with everyone with whom I’m working, so I don’t see them as merely “things” rather than people. Producers and directors of porn may sometimes act this way, but that happens in any business.That our bodies are our commodity doesn’t make it different. If we don’t think in terms of religious morality, my body is mine to use in any way I see fit.

There are ways that porn seems to present women as objects, but it’s not a problem unique to women. Porn also seems to objectify, in some sense, men, different races, ages, sexual preferences, and relationships, like the one between a “stepdad” and his stepdaughter. That’s particularly true in marketing; the fantasies are objectified and push the enve-lope.They are selling an image – sexual excitement and “dirtiness.” But this also isn’t a problem unique to porn, and these things occur in any other industry. Advertising for Coke works the same way. Drinking Coke makes you young and happy? No, but the advertising and marketing are designed to get you to think that. If I am on a DVD cover, I don’t feel objectified. If other people
see
me as an object, that’s up to them. I can’t control whether others see my work and objectify me, but am I objectified by merely being on the cover? I don’t think so.

Sometimes my fetish work may involve me acting like an object, such as a chair, but that’s the nature of those scenes. But my pretending to be objectified doesn’t amount to my being objectified. I make a conscious, deliberate choice to take that role, and my choosing it makes it permissible. I am not being exploited, only seeming to be.

What about the objection that porn reinforces harmful attitudes toward women, such as perpetuating the “rape myth,” and that it contributes to violence, rape particularly, towards women on the part of men?

I say fuck that – and I say that with conviction. I don’t believe that pornography perpetuates harmful values and attitudes. If someone can prove to me, with hard evidence, that porn perpetuates these harmful attitudes, then we need to reevaluate not only porn, but entertainment in general. I don’t have a television, but when I visit friends and we watch TV, I see nothing but murder, assault, and so on.There’s a lot of violence in our entertainment. If entertainment is a value-teaching tool, then the whole system needs to be looked at. I don’t think the evidence is there, though. For example, as the rate of porn consumption has increased, the rape statistics have declined.That suggests there isn’t a connection.

Women don’t like to be raped. Porn that shows what we in the industry call “forced fantasy” is made with women who consent to making it and aren’t people who want to be raped. It’s about playing with the fantasy. If some guy watching it gets the wrong message and doesn’t understand the difference between fantasy and reality – he’s just dumb, out of touch, and probably would commit a violent act with or without the extra input. Furthermore, when someone goes to rent or buy porn, they already know what they want to see. Porn is all about niches – bondage, anal, and so forth.The desire and attitudes toward a specific kind of porn are already there. No one is going to stumble across hardcore bondage or fetish movies and then come to the conclusion that that’s how women in general want to be treated.

Do you think that porn damages interpersonal relationships, particularly romantic ones like marriage? Does it place unrealistic expectations and pressures on lovers?

I don’t think it’s necessarily destructive to these relationships. I think it’s people’s perspectives that are destructive to marriage, for example. Some people don’t need to watch pornography. Some people may find it offensive, it may not be what they’re into, they may rather read a novel. If porn is damaging to the relationship, it is more likely due to communication problems than anything inherently wrong with porn. If porn is hurting your marriage, that’s indicative of a deeper issue. In our personal relationships, it’s our job to communicate well and come to understandings about expectations.

Okay.What about BDSM and the fetish stuff you do? It seems that there may be special objections to that kind of porn, even if porn in general is free from the objections above. For example, BDSM is manifestly violent, kinky, and “perverse” in a way that “normal” porn isn’t. It seems as if BDSM mixes torture and infliction of sometimes serious harms with sexuality and perpetrates these things on those involved in its production. If this isn’t immoral, why not?