Saturday, September 15, 2012

Facials, Feminism & Performance: On Fucking Men in a Patriarchy by Meghan Murphy. Murphy's Response to Emily McComb's Article; "Why I Like Facials (the dirty kind)."

Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current responds (in a spectacular way) responds to Emily McCombs' XO Jane piece, "Why I Like Facials (The dirty kind): My Orgasms Are a Political Free Zone." 

Murphy speaks to how politics actually do enter our bedrooms. Below is the article. Although I have linked to the article which sparked Murphy's, I have posted McCombs' article beneath it, for easy reading.

Facials, feminism, & performance: On f**king men in a patriarchy

August 29, 2012

As feminists, sleeping with men is always going to be a little fraught.
Not getting to the actual act, per se – jumping into bed with people we feel like jumping into bed with can be pretty straightforward – rather the politics surrounding feminists having sex with men within the context of a patriarchy as well as, of course, the maintenance of a sexual relationship with a man in the long-term.

 

Applying the phrase, ‘the personal is political’, seems particularly difficult when we are talking about an act that can be very private and very personal. Certainly sex is one of those things that can make us feel extremely vulnerable. Including politics or even acknowledging that, in one way or another, there is a larger context to our behaviour when it comes to sex, leaves something to be desired. Particularly for women, who work so hard to shake the inner and outer critic that says: ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘you’re not hot enough’, ‘you’re too slutty’, ‘you’re not slutty enough’ – I get why we might want to avoid opening ourselves up to (further) public critique in the form of feminism. ‘Get the fuck out of my bedroom’ does strike me as a remarkably reasoned response.

That said, I’m not one to take individual acts as simply individual acts.
Recently, Emily McCombs posted a piece at xojane.com about her love of facials (no, not the kind you get at the spa). She wrote:
No, I don’t feel degraded by it, nor do I think my male partners’ enjoyment of said act means they hate women.  I mean, if they did, there are faster ways to oppress us than one shot in the face at a time.
She adds: “My orgasms are a politics-free zone.”

So ok. I also want politics to stay the hell out of my orgasms. BUT OH THEY JUST WON’T. I can’t help but acknowledge that sometimes the things we do or want or say in the bedroom are not entirely free of ‘politics’. Being aware that the larger context that, for example, might create a desire for a man to cum on our faces might possibly include, well, porn for one, doesn’t make you a bad person for enjoying that act. I think that it’s possible for an act to be symbolically degrading without an individual necessarily feeling degraded by that act in all circumstances. Feeling degraded isn’t necessarily necessary in order to acknowledge that often our desires are shaped by a larger culture that has worked very hard, for a very long time, to sexualize the degradation of women. And that acknowledgment does not mean the same thing as saying: “you are bad and wrong and unfeminist and ruining feminism for everyone because of the things that turn you on in bed.” Nope. Not the same.

To me, I just can’t see the point of being a feminist if I’m not going to ask ‘why?’ about most everything. I ask why I keep shaving my legs, why I’m unable to eat food for the entire day before a first date (I get nervous, you guys!), why I think buying shoes will make my life better, and I ask why I feel or think or do the things I do in bed with a man. Sometimes I even think about why I go to bed with men in the first place. Is this biological or social? Would I be a lesbian if I hadn’t been conditioned towards heterosexuality? Some of these questions I have answers to, others I’m not quite sure about. But I know this: much of my sexual history and behaviour has been determined by factors including my growing up a girl in a man’s world.

My thoughts, desires, insecurities, and behaviours are not suddenly cordoned off from a larger culture once I close the bedroom door. I also don’t believe I’m being degraded every time I have sex with a man, though many accuse feminists of holding this belief. I actually don’t know a single feminist, in person, who believes that.

Like McCombs, I don’t see semen as “dirty or offensive”  — though I’m not convinced that that’s what Dworkin meant when she said:
The ejaculation on her is a way of saying (through showing) that she is contaminated with his dirt; that she is dirty.
First off, I think there is a difference between the images we see in pornography, which is what Dworkin is referencing in this quote from her 1993 speech Pornography Happens to Women, and what we do as individuals in the bedroom (though these two may well be connected). When we see a man ejaculating onto a woman’s face in pornography, it is reasonable to view that act as representative of women’s subordination. Mainstream pornography is generally, as Dworkin describes, about things happening to women’s bodies. Things are done to their bodies. Men are the actors, and male fantasies are projected onto the bodies of women.

In film theory everything has meaning. Everything is symbolic. Similarly, in pornography, as Dworkin points out “everything means something.” Gender means something, bodies mean something, body parts mean something, the acts done to women mean something. Getting a facial in your bedroom doesn’t necessarily have the same meaning as a woman getting a facial in a porn movie does and, in fact, the relevance of whether or not the individual actress in the porn appears to be ‘enjoying’ the cum shot to her face is less important than the larger meaning of the image on screen. I am not at all surprised that “the majority of porn shows women basking in and positively loving receiving a facial” or that “a lot more straight porn features women happily accepting facials than reacting with disgust and evident humiliation” because women in porn are presenting a fantasy and that fantasy is that women enjoy being objectified, cum on, gang-raped, called whores and bitches, whatever. Porn is about male fantasy. The fantasy is that women like everything you do to them, as man.

So how does this translate into real life? Women spend a lot of time and energy trying to please men. We learn early on that we are being looked at – that we are to be looked at. That we are performers. It took years before I actually started enjoying sex. YEARS. I think what I enjoyed most about sex, when I was younger, was the feeling of being desired. The actual sex part was super boring for the first while.

We learn, as girls and women, that the performance is more important than the actual feeling. Do you know how many women can’t actually relax during sex because they are so self-conscious about whether or not their stomachs look flabby? A lot. Read Cosmo (which actually suggests facing away from your partner during sex if you feel self-conscious about your body!?). HOW THE HELL ARE WOMEN SUPPOSED TO HAVE ORGASMS WHEN THEY ARE WORRYING ABOUT WHAT THEIR STOMACHS LOOK LIKE? And in other news, are men everywhere having trouble relaxing and cumming while they are in bed with women because they’re concerned their pecs aren’t muscly enough? Sigh.

What I’m saying is that, when we feel that sex is a performance it impacts, well, our performance. And the reason we see ourselves as performers in the bedroom, the reason that we’re thinking about our appearances, and the sounds we’re making, and our facial expressions, is in large part because of the porn/pornified images we have seen onscreen.

So same goes for facials. It’s more than likely that women learned this was hot from porn. And that is troubling. Because I think emulating porn doesn’t help us enjoy our bodies or sex, nor does it help us relax and have pleasure in bed. In fact it inhibits it in many ways.

All that said, I actually completely agree with McCombs when she says: “We can recognize our influences while still liking what we like.” We don’t have to have sex in any prescribed way simply because we are feminists. But to say that “sexism doesn’t get to dictate what I can and can’t enjoy” isn’t entirely true. Because in many ways it does and it has. All the fucked up ways I behave in my life were, as far as I can tell and in one way or another, determined by my experience being socialized in a patriarchal society. That doesn’t mean I need to hate myself for it. It doesn’t even mean I need to stop behaving in those ways or thinking those weird, unhealthy things about my face/life/body/boyfriends. But it sure doesn’t hurt to recognize how sexism factors into the equation. In fact, I think that understanding the way that sexism has messed with my head is the only way to overcome it (eventually).

Feminism has made sex better for me. Not worse. Feminism hasn’t limited me, it’s helped me to understand me. It’s helped me understand what I’m comfortable with, who I’m comfortable with, and what I’m comfortable doing. It hasn’t made me ashamed. What made me ashamed was the not knowing. The trying to fit into some pornified version of the me I thought I was supposed to be. Why didn’t I like all of the things I thought I was supposed to like? Without feminism I thought I just wasn’t liberated enough to enjoy degradation. That was a whole bunch of bullshit. I don’t need to dress up in cheesy lingerie and put on a strip show in order to prove how empowered I am because I don’t actually need to prove anything to anyone. Thanks feminism!

This isn’t to say that I’m constantly having perfect, empowered, multiple-orgasm, insecurity-free sex either. It doesn’t mean that I don’t catch myself performing at times. The sexism is still there folks! Inside the bedroom. Inside my head. But I’m done trying to enjoy or pretending to enjoy things that feel boring/painful/degrading because I feel like that’s what sexy girls do.

So I don’t particularly want politics in my bedroom either, but they’re there. Whether we like it or not. As long as we’re feminists and we’re living in a patriarchy, it’s very likely that we’re going to desire or enjoy things in the bedroom that might make us uncomfortable or confused or uncertain. We might wonder why sometimes we feel as though we are performing, why we asked to be spanked, or why we love getting facials.

I’m never going to tell anyone to stop liking those things but I’m also not going to pretend as though that facial isn’t symbolic. You aren’t fucking in a bubble and yet you also can have your desire. Have it without shame. No one’s here to police the sex you are having but as we move forward in this world and on our paths as feminists, so long as we are sleeping with men, politics will be in the bedroom, in one way or another.

But yes, you can keep your orgasms.

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As promised, below is the article written by Emily McCombs.

Why I Like Facials (The Dirty Kind)

My orgasms are a politics-free zone.  Emily Aug 28, 2012 at 2:00pm 
 

image























Nope! Not this kind...

How do I put this delicately? I like having my face cum on.
Yep, 90 percent of my sexual encounters end with a big face-full of splooge. (See, delicate!) No, I don't feel degraded by it, nor do I think my male partners' enjoyment of said act means they hate women.  I mean, if they did, there are faster ways to oppress us than one shot in the face at a time.

I started Googling intellectual feminist analyses on the topic while writing this piece and nearly psyched myself out of writing this, but you know what? Fuck it. I'm not the only dirty bitch out there who likes to push the boundaries during sex and as a grown-ass woman, I shouldn't have to be ashamed of whatever kind of sex I like to have. When I interviewed artist Marilyn Minter for this site, she wore this awesome shirt she'd had made up herself, reading "There are no politically correct fantasies." I'm sure there are women who are lucky enough to be turned on by erotic, lady-empowering lovemaking, but there are a hell of a lot of the rest of us who want to get cum shot in our faces sometimes and who have rape fantasies.

And that's one of the things I love about sex -- done well, with someone you trust, it's a boundaryless Never Never Land where cool, smart, and careful melt into sheer sensation. I don't care if your fantasies revolve around fisting or sibling role play -- exploring them together, crawling into each other's weirdo sexual psyches, is half the fun. My orgasms are a politics-free zone.

Thusly, this title is something of a misnomer -- why I like facials is less important than the fact that already do.
I like the feeling of anticipation, of waiting for the moment that first hot spurt will splatter my cheek. (Yes, "hot spurt" is the single most embarrassing phrase I have ever written for publication.) I like looking up, begging, while he chokes out a whimper and makes that face like something hurts a little. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel sexy. It just turns me on.

"Degrading," the number one catch phrase of those who are anti-facial, literally means, "causing a loss of self-respect." Facials can do that, as can lots of other kinds of sex, but not without your consent. Facials may very well feel degrading to you, and I don't doubt that their visibility in porn has led to women feeling pressured or coerced into doing them when they don't want to. Let me reiterate that to you: If facials or any other sex act makes you feel bad, gross uncomfortable or degraded, then you should not do it ever. That is wrong. But men aren't the only ones who like things they see in porn. In my case, there's nothing degrading about receiving a desired sex act I've asked for as a consenting adult. Sex acts are degrading when they make you feel degraded -- and nobody gets to decide that but you, not even feminism.

Nor do I think the act is inherently violent or malicious. I don't see semen as dirty or offensive, ala Andrea Dworkin, who has said, "The ejaculation on her is a way of saying (through showing) that she is contaminated with his dirt; that she is dirty." Nor do I believe that the giver of the facial is by definition trying to humiliate, cause harm or discomfort. Sure, there are movies where women sputter and grunt through a shower of ejaculate, but the majority of porn shows women basking in and positively loving receiving a facial. Of course these are paid performers who may or may not actually enjoy the act, but my point is that the fantasy narrative isn't primarily about hurting women. I read it as more of a yearning for a woman who is so hot for you that she wants your semen all over her.

And in the cases where the erotic appeal is in perceived degradation? That's OK, too. A lot of us like it that way. And participating in an erotic fantasy of degradation doesn't actually degrade me, anymore than playacting a rape fantasy means I was raped.

I received a classic second-wave education as a women's studies minor at NYU. An esteemed professor that went something like this: My mother once told me that she honestly likes to vacuum. I explained to her that she thinks she likes to vacuum, but it's only because she's been trained to like vacuuming.
Even at the time, I found this story dismissive, although I couldn't have articulated why. Now I know why: It underestimates women. It assumes that we are too ignorant or unintelligent to recognize the context in which our lives take place.

Maybe part of the reason I like facials is because I was groomed by a sexist society to enjoy being objectified. Maybe part of the reason someone else hates them is in direct opposition to that same message. We can recognize our influences while still liking what we like. The answer isn't for us all to stop liking everything that some man might sexistly want us to like, whether it's shoes or vacuuming or anal sex or having 25 babies. Sexism doesn't get to dictate what I can and can't enjoy.

Because vacuuming itself is not the problem. It's just a chore that needs to get done. The real problem is that all of our choices (to vacuum or not) lead us in the same place as second-class citizens. In the utopian feminist future, where all choices are weighted equally, there are still going to be women who like to vacuum, and who like cum on their faces. It's just that nobody will care one way or another.

That's the real myth that holds us back -- that making "patriarchy-approved" choices is somehow better or safer for women than choosing against them. It's not. They both suck. Being a porno fantasy doesn't make your life easier or better, and neither does being a Stepford wife. Rejecting the system is hard, but participating in it doesn't win you any prizes either. The goal of feminism is to make life better for women, whatever choices we make.

And we can be trusted to make those choices. Because after "degrading," the number one phrase I kept coming upon in my Googling on the topic was this: "Some women say they really like this, but I don't believe them." And discounting women's stories, just flat-out rejecting them when they don't fit your political narrative, is something I will never, ever get behind.

One final word while we're on the topic. Everything I've said here about facials goes out the window the first time you hit me in the eye with your cum. That shit burns for the rest of the day.

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Needless to say, I am in favor of the views expressed by Murphy. That being said, McCombs' article is definitely thought provoking and I believe part of a necessary discussion about patriarchy. Good work, ladies.

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