Written by Georgia Smith
When E.L. James wrote Fifty Shades of Grey it can hardly be assumed she understood the unique kind of moral fervour her book would provoke. Described by anti-pornography activist Gail Dines as a “romance novel for the porn age” which features “sexual sadism masquerading as love and adoration” the book, which eventually became a trilogy and highly lucrative film franchise, has proved divisive. Christian and Anastasia, the book’s protagonists, engage in the sexually contentious roles of dominant and submissive – the book tracing their initial encounter and the development of their sexual relationship. To continue with the emphatic, and deeply revealing, language of Dines’ criticism – Christian is a “sexual sociopath” who she suggests “delights in sexually torturing women.” It is important to note that the S/M practiced across the Fifty Shades franchise is consensual. However, this does not stop Dines and fellow anti-pornography activists from proposing that the relationship between the protagonists is defined by coercion. To Dines, Ana is “emotionally and sexually unsophisticated”, a characterisation which leaves her sexual agency barely intact.
Opposition to the perceived sexual violence in both the book and film was not restricted to print. If one chose to, it would be possible to draw a line between the protests which took place at the London premiere of Fifty Shades of Grey and the actions of anti-porn activists in New York in 1982. The campaign group 50 Shades is Domestic Abuse picketed the London premiere of the film in 2015, protesting in Leicester Square wearing white T-shirts branded with the phrases: “50 Shades is Domestic Abuse”, “Christian Grey is a Rapist”, and “Christian: Predator not Protector.” Although likely not a self-conscious act, this messaging is a direct invocation of the sentiment of anti-porn activists in the 1980s. A number of studies of the Sex Wars foreground the image of anti-porn feminists protesting the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality, wearing T-shirts which read “Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality” on the front, and “Against Sadomasochism” on the back.
Through a historicisation of feminist thinking on the visual image and the politics of sexual fantasy one can situate moral responses to the text, and the subsequent film trilogy, in a long history of feminist opposition to S/M and pornography. A concern which originated in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the so-called Sex Wars. Explicity, the moral panic surrounding the Fifty Shades franchise is one concerned with the sexualisation or pornification of popular culture. As many radical anti-porn feminist theorists argue, this increasing sexualisation is directly complicit in the encouragement and normalisation of violence against women – producing a critique of heterosexuality as “an instrument of male domination.” Yet, there is an implicit concern inherent to this moral panic. Such thinking is tacitly concerned with the construction of sexual desire: observing a particular obsession with women’s relationship to sex, fantasy, and pleasure.
I argue the claim that abusive violence is inherent to and perpetuated by S/M is an attempt to place S/M into the model of “sexual peril” and “sexual pleasure” through which it can be understood within the hierarchy of appropriate sexual practice. The positioning of S/M as perilous designates it as inappropriate, it thus being neutralised of its radical potential for social subversion and genital pleasure. As all ‘perverse’ sexualities are, S/M is too policed. It is in this way that the concern over S/M is continuous with thinking on gender and sexuality which understands sex as a method of intelligibility: the formulation of S/M into a sexual evil allows for its use as a symbol against which ideas about being and truth can be constructed – making meaning from the irrational nature of sex and maintaining the norms of the dominant heteronormative and vanilla sexual culture. The attempt to demonise S/M, to mark it as perverse, serves to enforce a continued limitation on women’s sexual expression – denying the radical potential of sex, and sadomasochistic fantasy more specifically. This argument does not deny that the malpractice of and appropriation of S/M can lead to abusive instances but seeks to reject the idea that S/M as a practice is inherently characterised by abusive violence.
The literature on the Sex Wars and Anti-Porn Feminism exists within three somewhat distinct theoretical moments. First, is the sensationalistic early historiography of the late 1980s, which is often defined by political affinity – producing and firmly establishing the dichotomy between anti-porn and pro-sex feminism. The second iteration is marked by a critical approach to the specific intellectual constructions of pornography and S/M on which the above dichotomy depends, noting the ways in which they are invoked politically and symbolically. This theoretical trend begins in the mid 1990s and solidifies in the early 2010s, moving towards an early critique of the reductionist view of feminist thought. The third, and final approach, is the thorough contestation of the dichotomous view. In taking the “long view” of feminist organising and theorising, contemporary historiography provides a nuanced consideration of the complex, and often contradictory, history of feminist thought on pornography and S/M. Moreover, it should be noted that debates over S/M are questions about the philosophy of sex. These questions are asked across “the intimate and fraught space of the body, of desire, of pleasure, of violation” thus marking ethical literature as essential to any discussion of the historiography of the Sex Wars. I approach the historiography chronologically, drawing insights from relevant ethical literature, with a focus on intellectual responses to S/M – noting its continually controversial nature and why this is relevant to the construction of sex and sexuality.
It is appropriate to describe the early historiography on the Sex Wars as sensationalistic. Often written from deep within the political polarisation of the Sex War itself, such historiography served to form a dichotomy from the opposing feminist positions, observing an overwhelming focus on sexual theory. Writing in late 1984, Ann Ferguson describes the “bitter opposition” of the positions American feminists were taking in relation to ideas of sexual morality. Ferguson establishes the term “libertarian feminist”, a feminist who assumed the position that sex and pleasure serve liberatory purposes, as a necessary foil to the “radical” anti-porn feminist. In a consideration of the activism of both Woman Against Pornography and Women Against Violence Against Women Ferguson draws the conclusion that the condemnation of pornography specifically was essential to the agendas of both groups, failing to elaborate further on their intellectual nuances or organisational divergences. Ferguson goes on to propose that both the radical and libertarian camp created their own paradigms – the contrast of these two paradigms constituting the main body of her article. While both camps are critical of heterosexuality, the former places emphasis on objectification and its relationship to violence while the latter considers heterosexuality as a mode of oppression, viewing pleasure as the key to feminist liberation.
While Ferguson may be attempting to assert that a third socialist-feminist position is viable, what she does for the historiography of the Sex Wars is maintain that radical and libertarian feminist positions are fixed and fundamentally antithetical. These essentialist positions underline how the symbolic use of sex is most often invoked in binaristic terms – offering specific, and often conflicting, teleologies and theories of being. Catherine Mackinnon’s ethical work on the feminist logic of sexual oppression is a pertinent example of both the use of sex to advance a specific theory of being and an elucidation of the discourse of anti-porn feminists. In her erudite mediation on sexuality and the state of pleasure under patriarchy she writes, “the male sexual role…centers on aggressive intrusion”. To Mackinnon it is “such acts of dominance [which] are experienced as sexually arousing, as sex itself.” Mackinnon’s truth is this: sexuality is a construct of male power in which women are the objects onto which sex is forced. It is from this assumption she forms her politics and philosophy of modern sexuality. Fittingly, this is a vision of truth that Dines happens to share, allowing one to draw a clear line between Mackinnon’s logic and Dines’ opposition to Fifty Shades of Grey.
Published in 1992, the collected volume Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate is an early example of a critical reappraisal of the fundamental concepts which informed the Sex Wars – complicating perceptions of feminist interaction with prevalent ideas of patriarchy, pleasure, and pornography. Elizabeth Wilson’s introductory piece on feminist fundamentalism moves beyond a simple delineation of the ideological differences between radical and socialist (libertarian) feminists. Instead, she explores the pre-history of this strict dichotomy. Wilson works from an understanding of the “authoritarianism” of anti-porn feminists who, neglecting the concern apparent in the 1970s for not only women’s responses to and internalisation of pornographic material but other sexualised mass media imagery, had moved to a stricter idea of sexual culture which “lay[ed] the blame solely on pornography for creating a climate of sexual violence.” This singular, culturally reductionist, vision of pornography represents to Wilson a “cordoning off” of the sexual through an understanding of porn as predicated on the image of women “enjoying” or “deserving” some form of “sexual abuse”, not a more diffuse form of cultural production drawing from numerous points of inspiration and with multiple intentions.
Wilson’s use of the term fundamentalism is what marks her analysis as particularly striking. As she writes, the radical feminist conception of porn mimics a kind of “secular fundamentalism” which advances a philosophy of life underscored by a desire to save women from male sexual domination. In light of Wilson’s blatant recognition of the teleological use of sex, one can understand the construction of S/M into an evil against which symbolic politics can organise. This semiotic function of sex is too marked by the boldness of the claim made by Lynne Segal in her contribution to the collection entitled Sweet Sorrows and Painful Pleasures. As she notes, “pornography has been placed at the centre of the search for an understanding of the pains and pleasures of heterosexual desire.”
It is this movement away from theoretical restriction and towards symbolic understanding which allows Patrick Hopkins to propose readings of S/M divorced from the origins of its politicisation and in terms of its potential for sexual pleasure, a precursor to the sex-positive nature of contemporary historiography. Writing in 1994, Hopkin’s understood the contentious nature of S/M in feminist politics as it was seen as “a major epistemological and behavioral structure of male dominated societies.” However, he seeks to counter the idea of S/M as a fundamental expression of male violence, as Mackinnon asserts in earlier ethical literature, noting the ways a reductionist idea of S/M has been perpetuated by the Sex Wars. To Hopkins, there is a central ethical distinction between the “replication” and “simulation” of sexual violence. While anti-porn feminists assume that consent is impossible since S/M replicates patriarchal violence regardless of context, Hopkin’s holds that “similarity is not sufficient for replication”. Individuals who engage in S/M are performing or enacting “scenes” and it is in these “scenes”, as Hopkin’s makes unquestionably clear, that the “core feature of real patriarchal violence, coercive violence, [is] absent.” Hopkin’s idea of S/M is more virtuous, showing how shifting political affinities can reverse the symbolism attached to certain sex practices for contemporary need.
Whitney Strub offers an emphatic critique of the historiographical tendency to neglect the complexity, and chronological breadth, of feminist theorising on S/M and pornography. In taking seriously Wilson’s pre-history, Strub seeks to recover how feminists worked with and around the idea of porn prior to the “pornocentrism” of the 1980s. Strub traces the origins of anti-porn sentiment in the anticapitalist Left of the late 1960s and early 1970s, tying porn into a greater critique of the commodification of the female body – moving from a gendered analysis of work to the more traditional focus upon the sexualised advertising of Playboy and the overtly sadomasochistic cinema of Deep Throat and Nine and a Half Weeks. Another scholar who places anti-porn feminism in its extended political context is Linda Bracewell. In Beyond Barnard: Liberalism, Antipornography Feminism, and the Sex Wars she positions anti-porn feminism in relation to the development of liberalism with which it was contemporaneous. As such, S/M is a malleable and politically loaded concept which can be invoked across the political spectrum – its symbolic uses are manifold.
Carolyn Bronstein’s monograph, published in the same year as Strub, also adopts this long view of the Sex Wars. She considers earlier iterations of feminist organising, which although they were not avowedly anti-pornography, sought to formulate a critique of the eroticisation of violence against women in mass media. Bronstein marks a shift from a concern for the historical logics of the Sex Wars to experience of and motivations for different kinds of activism. This is in no place more apparent than in the different ways Bronstein and Ferguson view the work of WAVAW. While Ferguson simply positions WAVAW as anti-porn, Bronstein goes a step further, devoting her fourth chapter to the study of the groups opposition to sexualised media image more broadly. Taking the advertising for the Rolling Stones’ 1976 album Black and Blue as her point of departure, Bronstein traces WAVAW opposition to sexual imagery in the music industry, snuff films and advertising. Alex Warner in his provocatively titled essay, Feminism Meets Fisting, again undoes the assumption that pro-sex and anti-porn can adequately describe the range of positions taken by feminists on the subject of pornography and S/M. Warner centers the work of grassroots activism, organised around the “lesbian SM question”, to interrogate the early intellectual history of Second Wave Feminism. Again, debates over S/M are highly elastic and are essential to not only heteronormative but queer histories and theories of being.
Suzanna Walters epitomises this challenge made to the dichotomous approach, realising the intention evident in Strub and Bronstein’s work. In her introduction to the 2016 collection Pleasure and Danger: Sexual Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century, Walters posits that the aim of the collection was to think of the Sex Wars in a way which acknowledged Carol Vance’s “couplet of pleasure and danger” but challenged the prevalent “logic of mutually assured destruction.” She sees the “excessive polarisation” as method of denying the “messiness” intrinsic to sex and politics, recognising the ultimate futility of the “neat and tidy categories of pro-sex and anti-sex feminists.” To Walter’s the feminist theory of liberation depends upon the ability to think of pleasure and danger in unison – petitioning for a kind of historiography which understands this distinction. Alice Echols, to whom Walter’s makes considered reference, rallies for a “definitional elasticity” which would allow for a reassertion of “the dialectical character” of women’s sexuality. While it may appear that Shrub, Bronstein, Walters, and Echols amongst others move beyond the simplistic use of sex as symbolic of theories of meaning, they too are using the contentious ground of S/M and anti-porn feminism to advance a theory of being tied to sex positivity – their politics simply depends on a complex, intellectualised, as opposed to binaristic view of sex and sexuality.
Although significant effort has been made, at least historiographically, to move away from the binary perception that perilousness and pleasure form the basis of sex, the moral panic provoked by Fifty Shades of Grey exposes the continued use of this model as a heuristic device through which to understand modern sexuality. Sadomasochism is, and will remain, politically contentious as it is has proved itself a particularly adept vehicle for conveying a multitude of ideas about legitimate and illegitimate sex acts, the nature of being and truth, and the liberatory potential of certain sexual fantasies.
Bibliography
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