In The Company Of Men - Anna Arrowsmith's Myths About Porn

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/20/james-deen-feminist-porn-star?INTCMP=SRCHAnna Arrowsmith is a feminist porn-director, former LibDem parliamentary candidate, and a Phd Student in gender and masculinities. But from what I have read in her most recent cif article, she does not know much about masculinities, or the porn industry.

She is trying to ‘bust myths’ about porn star and household favourite James Deen. Anna writes:

‘Whenever porn stars get near to crossing over to the mainstream, the press bestows exaggerated status on them. Such has been the case with James Deen, who has been eulogised by novelist Bret Easton Ellis and hailed in the British press as the first “feminist pornstar”, because he “looks his partners in the eye” and “whispers a constant stream of presumably sexy things in their ears”.

Pornographic exemplars such as Deen are rare in their success, but not in their decency. Nor are they particularly unusual. I can remember asking fellow porn producers why the mainstream media was making such a fuss about Jenna Jameson, out of all the interesting and bright actresses working in the industry. We all shrugged.

Despite many people believing male porn stars to be misogynistic, the reality is they tend to be men who enjoy the company of women. The fact porn films sometimes require performances from men that can perceived to be misogynistic does not necessarily mean that the films, or the actors, are misogynistic themselves. In fact, most of the individuals involved are usually aware that they are putting on a performance that must be understood within friendly parentheses.’

Apart from the fact that Deen’s ‘decency’ is not exactly proven, I mean isn’t it just normal, rather than ‘decent’ to not be a total arsehole in your job? Arrowsmith produces some myths of her own. This is partly because she  misses a major aspect of men in porn: Gay Pornography. She is falling into the feminist trap of only ever framing porn in terms of its relationship to women, and women as potential ‘victims’. She has taken a VERY straight, VERY traditional example of a man who ‘bangs chicks’ for a living, and ignored all the other variants of pornography, where men are often the subjects and objects of the scenes.

new blog post jamesdeenblog.com banging @Alexis_Texas—
James Deen (@JamesDeen) February 26, 2012

So, even leaving aside for one moment the huge markets that include M/m porn, F/m ‘dominatrix’ porn and mixed-sex ‘gang bangs’ (which you cannot categorise as ‘gay’ or ‘straight’), heterosexual porn is often ALL ABOUT THE MEN. And, even taking it on its own, with men in dominant positions, the male stars are still the objects of the camera’s gaze. And other men look at them!

As Mark Simpson wrote recently:

‘Once upon an 80s time, in the early days of hard­core straight video­porn, when men were first nego­ti­at­ing their anx­i­eties about mas­tur­bat­ing over another man’s penis, it was often the case that male porn actors tended to be delib­er­ately ‘repul­sive’ – or at least, their appear­ance was heav­ily sig­nalled to be ‘com­pletely unimportant’.

But in recent years the appear­ance of male porn actors is no longer unim­por­tant. It’s expected by the men that con­sume porn who have them­selves become more image and body-conscious that male porn mod­els will take care of them­selves. They are not always just a self-propelled penis. More of their body and even their face appears on cam­era, and hence the body is usu­ally worked on to make it ‘wor­thy’ of display.

At the very least, the guys watch­ing porn today expect to see male per­form­ers who reflect their own met­ro­sex­ual pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. More than that, I think many young men expect that male porn actor’s bod­ies should give them visual plea­sure. (Deen com­plains that he gets hate mail from men – who fre­quently tell him he ‘needs to work out’.) Though it’s true that at the moment there isn’t exactly much vari­ety in that visual pleasure.’

So whether or not Deen is a ‘decent’ guy and not ‘misogynist’ seems less important if we accept, as Simpson suggests, that he and all male porn actors are ‘objects of desire’ and not just objects of desire, but objects of MEN’s desire.

According to Arrowsmith:

‘Porn stars choose the porn industry as a dream job, often over other equally well-paid job opportunities. Many years ago, I had problems convincing people that I had chosen to shoot porn films after graduating with a film degree from St Martin’s. Shooting pornography was never a second choice for me – which is just as well, because it’s not great on the CV.

Over the last 14 years I have filmed graduates, university students, ex-lawyers and photographers. The work offers a highly paid and exciting alternative to the tedious monotony of many other jobs. Anti-porn campaigners find it impossible to accept that young people might dream of shagging good-looking people on camera, showing off their bodies and accessing a huge adoring fan base that sometimes shower the stars with gifts.

The quotes from Deen will leave such anti-porn protesters cold. After all, how can a male porn star profess sensitivities to their female counterparts then go on to supposedly justify violence in the next paragraph? The answer lies in the fact that power plays a part in many people’s sexual fantasies, including enlightened women. Which is where good-looking young men such as James Dean or James Deen feature.’

And once again Arrowsmith is making it ALL about the women, and ALL about ‘submissive’ women too. What about women who work in porn movies where they dole out the ‘violence’ to ‘good-looking young men’ like Deen? How does that fit in with those young men’s view of themselves as doing their ‘dream job’ ‘banging chicks’? It gets a bit more complicated doesn’t it?
Anna’s rose-tinted heteronormative view of pornography is almost as annoying to me as the anti-porn feminists’ version. It does not allow for the socio-economic complexities of what remains a very unregulated industry. And it certainly does not allow for the sexual complexities of people often men, watching other men fuck and claiming they are all completely ‘straight’.

Again as Simpson has told us:

‘I’ve lost count of the num­ber of bi-curious straight men who have told me they were turned on to the joys of suck­ing or rid­ing penis by watch­ing straight porn. Never ever under­es­ti­mate the greed­i­ness of male voyeurism. In the pri­vacy of their own filthy minds men don’t con­sci­en­tiously restrict them­selves to iden­ti­fy­ing with the male ‘stud’. They also iden­tify with the ‘slut’ who is ‘get­ting it’ – from all direc­tions. Par­tic­u­larly since in straight porn she’s the one who is actu­ally allowed to enjoy herself.

Whilst the men have to busy them­selves with their ‘work’, like naked gym­nas­tic car mechan­ics in a hurry to fin­ish their ‘ser­vice’, in the cen­tre of all this activ­ity the female porn actress enacts and vocalises – very loudly – the slutty, pas­sive plea­sure of sex.

And judg­ing by the num­ber of men they’ve turned into sluts they’re doing a very good job of it.’

I wish Anna good luck in her PhD on masculinity. But I recommend she reads Simpson if she wants to get some insights into how men and masculinity work in her industry.