Contributed by Adam Ramsay, co-editor of Bright Green
I like sex. OK, that’s a pretty banal statement. Most people do. So, let me put it another way. I have no problem with people having sex as much as they want to, with as many other people as they want to. I’m happy for consenting adults to do together whatever they please.
And, it’s not just that I like sex. It’s not just that I think people should be allowed to do whatever they please in the privacy of their own bedrooms. I also think we don’t talk in public about sex enough. Our sex education fails to equip people for the lives they are likely to lead. We turn it into a forbidden topic, and in doing so, we endanger our children and each other. There are many reasons the Netherlands has a fifth of our teenage pregnancy rate, and that the average person loses their virginity a year later than the average British person. But proper, informative sex education – including ‘cartoon masturbation on video, condom demos for 11 year olds and youth-club sex quizzes’ as well as in depth discussion of emotions and desires must surely have something to do with it?
I should specify: I like sex with women.
So, why would a 25 year old bloke who likes sex with women and who thinks we should be much less prudish object to the opening of a new Playboy ‘mansion’ in London?
Well, the obvious reason is that I object to the way that Playboy promotes the idea that men like me should see women as objects – not as people, but as bums, or as legs or as pairs of breasts. I don’t know what it’s like to walk down a street and feel as though half the people that you pass are assessing you based on how a particular part of your body looks. I’ve never felt like I’m being judged in that way. I don’t imagine it’s much fun. Playboy promotes an idea that women exist for the titillation of men, that women are sexual beings first, human beings second.
I object to this. It’s offensive and it’s degrading and men should stand in solidarity with women who stand up to it.
But there is another impact of the Playboy culture too. Playboy is the exact opposite of the Dutch sex education system. Both are, in a sense, explicit. But in the Netherlands, they teach an explicit truth. What Playboy teaches is a blatant lie. Playboy tells teenage boys (who are surely one of the main audiences for their magazines) that sex is something that happens in far away mansions with women who look little like most who they know – women who have undergone huge amounts of plastic surgery. It teaches that sex sits in a realm of millionaires and money. And by teaching boys that sex is something so alien, it alienates them from their real sexuality, and it ties desire for sex to a desire for wealth and a desire to have power over women. Just as Hugh Heffner’s empire creates the culture of the bunny girl, it helps create the culture of the playboy. And what that tells boys is that they ought to aspire to be rich and to treat women like objects. And because we as a society don’t properly help them to confront and understand their sexual desires, teenage boys are drawn to the lies of the Playboy culture, and all that is tied in with that.
And those teenage boys become young men. At that point, many join one of the two audiences for Playboy. The first is the audience for the clubs where, according to Reuters, a ‘single “Sazerac*” cocktail will set a member back a cool 2,000 pounds’. The second is the audience for the magazine, websites, and the various porn channels Heffner now apparently owns (and similar porn mags/websites).
That Playboy are opening a new ‘mansion’ in London for the first time in years should come as no surprise. The growing size of each of these audiences is, surely, a product of our times. We now have the most unequal society since Victoria was on the throne. The first group – men who can afford to spend £2000 on a cocktail – simply didn’t used to exist to this extent. There have always been richer people and poorer people, but not on this scale. And, as well documented in the now famous book ‘the Spirit Level’, this inequality makes us all more stressed. If you work as a banker, you will earn millions. But you will also know that you have a huge way to fall down the wealth ladder if you make only one or two mistakes. This is hugely stressful. If you go home and try to relax after work, your mind is likely to be left back at the office. And so to banish these worries people drink heavily, and take drugs. And, it seems, they go to escapist night clubs where they enact the fantasies created for them when they were teenage boys. What a sad, lonely life in a land of make believe.
The second audience too is very much a product of our times. As Shiv Malik and Ed Howker document in the excellent ‘Jilted Generation’, 29% of men under the age of 34 now live at home – they can’t afford to leave. Many more can’t settle down – they have to move regularly around the country in search of work in our increasingly ‘flexible’ labour market. The reason young people don’t ‘settle down’ in the way our parents did is pretty simple – we can’t.
More broadly, as the New Economics Foundation have studied in detail, happiness in Britain peaked in 1976. Since then, things have gone downhill for most people. We’ve become much less economically equal. The number and membership of community clubs or groups has dropped dramatically as we’ve worked longer hours and been increasingly severed from those around us: Mrs Thatcher smashed society. And now, a generation who were told we could do anything we put our minds to are being thrown onto the scrapheap of mass youth unemployment.
And one result of all of this seems to be that the dominant emotions in the lives of huge numbers of young men** are feelings of failure, and feelings of loneliness. And so they too – or many of them – revert to the escapist fantasies of wealth and sex created for them in their teenage years.
Our economic strategy as a nation is the same as it has been since Thatcher: rely on a small number of bankers to make fictitious millions, and hope that the wealth trickles down. This leaves huge amounts of pressure on the shoulders of both the bankers, and the unemployed/underemployed. Whilst increased ‘pornification’ is partly a product of the rise of the internet, surely it is also in part a response to the stress generated by this segregation of and loneliness in our communities?
And for both of these groups of men, it is ultimately damaging. Because the sexuality and the masculinity that Playboy tell us we ought to have are not the masculinities and the sexualities that I see in my friends. And the implicit message is that this is why our lives are not what they were cracked up to be – young men are unemployed and single not because of an economy that has left a generation lonely and jobless, but because they aren’t playboys – they aren’t ‘real’ men.
The most grotesque and the most offensive thing that Playboy does is objectify and oppress women. But it also oppresses men. It tells us that we ought to be Playboys. It exploits the failure of our parents and our teachers to encourage us to understand our sexuality, and ties this sexuality into the false dreams and false desires of our age. It ties an abstract desire to be rich to the much more sensual desire for sex. And then it tells men who have achieved neither that this is not because of an economic system which has failed us all. It is because of our failure to be Playboys. We all dream about sex. But Playboy takes those dreams, and makes them about power and money. And when we complain, they tell us that we are prudish. Well, I’m not prudish. I love sex. But I’m not a Playboy. So Hugh Heffner can fuck off, and take his mansion with him.
*Nope, I have no idea what that is either
** women clearly suffer from these problems too, but they don’t seem as likely to play out their frustrations and stress in the same set of ways
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Excellent analysis!
I think it’s very important that porn is analyzed like any other narrative, e.g. sociologically, like here.
Another angle would be a more symbolic-literary analysis of the anthropomorfic playboy bunny theme itself: Britain’s degrading decline from Beatrix Potter to Hugh Heffner!
P.S. I don’t think people should do whatever sexual they want to in the privacy of their own homes. Rather, I think they should have charming bunny sex outdoors.
What a great analysis, im brazilian and my culture and media are extremely sexist as u know, many of us try to fight agains’t this image that our media sells of our country. Media makes men macho and adore women as object and hate them as human being, because here the domestic violence and raping are happening more and more, its frighting how men are frustrated and charging on women here, and its commun here as a female to hear from men that u are dumb and unable to do things as men do, it doesn’t matter how conservative or clever u are, men won’t respect u, I’m very tired of all of this.
Does Playboy actually have an effect on many men? I mean, I’ve never actually met a guy who’s admitted buying it. I’m mostly hostile towards it for its paedo tendencies, planting its logo on consumer goods for little girls. In terms of its male market, however, isn’t it small and ageing fast?
I think Playboy magazine, just like all printed press are struggling with the digitalization of society which does not mean that it is getting out of fashion. I mean the circulation of just about everything, from newspapers to magazines seem to be dwindling. I read somewhere that as of june 30th 2010 Playboy sales in the US were down 33% to 1.63 million copies sold in comparison to the year before. But beware Hugh Heffner is a cunning businessman. I think it was a well thought out step, following the decline in paper magazine sales that Playboy decided this may to launch a web-based subscription service which allows viewers to see every single page of every single magazine ever published. I am sure he will find a way to keep his empire running.
I did some digging around what Playboy actually does, as I am only familiar with the magazine side of their business. I found that Playboy, which I knew is more than just a magazine, owns The Spice Networks together with Benelux Ltd. The Spice Networks provide pornographic pay per view channels to more than 72 countries. One of them is The Adult Channel (Sky Channel 901). Let me give you a sample of what kinds of programmes they offer to viewers accross Eurpoe:
Tenacious Teens
These teens are gagging for sex, but they have to undergo a series of dirty challenges before they can claim their mucky prize, one filthy babe has to see how deep she can take a dildo.
Fuck My Big British Tits
For all your fun-bag fantasies we have the finest of heavenly sized hooters and the most divine of D+cups which will have you suckling at the nipples of the most beautiful busty babes on TV! Having an insatiable appetite for cock and cum, they crave your dick between their huge fleshy pillows before fucking their tight snatches, and shooting your hot sticky load all over their big tits!
Sex With Strangers – The Jogger
A good Samaritan comes to the aid of an injured jogger and is rewarded with sex.
Mothers And Daughters
Episode 4: In this new film, Relish attempts to answer the age-old question: who would you rather fuck: a moist MILF or a tasty teen? We’ve found mums and their daughters who are willing to go toe to toe (and tit to tit) to find out.
I am sure there is plenty of guys who watch stuff like this, rather than getting a copy of Playboy…
The existence of the Playboy mansion — and the whole lap-dancing scene — is predicated on male sexual insecurity. It is a way for wealthy men who feel puny in the presence of beautiful and sexually confident women to be able to flirt with such women without having to either deal with them on an emotional level or actually satisfy them in bed. The men can pretend to be studs capable of servicing the most ardent woman but I doubt that much actual sex goes on in these places. They are deliberately structured to allow the men close to the women but the extravagant price tag on anything more than a drink (and Playboy takes that to a whole new level with a £2,000 cocktail) provides an excuse for not taking matters to the logical conclusion. If it was actual sex they were after, £2,000 buys a load of shagging in the escorting industry. Places like the Playboy mansion will continue to flourish until we raise a generation of men who are genuinely comfortable with their sexuality and don’t need an artificial human zoo in order to get close (physically and emotionally) to a woman.
Human petting zoo, LOL, right on target!
Linnea Smith
By Patricia Barrera
Linnea Smith is your average woman of the 90s. She has a satisfying family life, rewarding career in mental health and interests that include traveling with her husband, spending time with her daughters, babying her dogs and reading pornography. Yes…reading pornography–and using her professional skills and expanding international network to fight it. Like most of us, she never really thought about pornography as a critical social issue until a 1985 media conference where she learned about past and present research on pornographic materials. And what she learned shocked and angered her.
As a psychiatrist, feminist, and woman, she was well aware of the personal and societal consequences of battery, rape, and child sexual abuse. The results of the studies delivered at that fateful conference were an indictment to the connection of pornographic materials, both directly and indirectly, with these violent sex crimes. For Smith, pornography became an issue of public health and human rights that needed to be addressed.
As every critical thinker should, Smith went straight to the source to see for herself what was going on. She turned to Playboy, the nation’s first pornography magazine to earn mainstream acceptance and support. By 1984 Playboy had 4.2 million subscribers, and was selling 1.9 million magazines at newsstands (Miller, 1984).
The results of her extensive investigation of the magazine (from the 1960s on) are presented in three brochures. “It’s Not Child’s Play” is a disturbing brochure that outlines the specific ways in which Playboy sexualizes small children and presents them as sexual targets for adult males in their magazine. The collection of cartoons and pictorials is damning, and made even more so when juxtaposed against pathetic statements made by Playboy representatives denying they ever used children in their publication. Smith very well could have called the brochure “Playboy Exposed”.
Right alongside their claims that “Playboy never has, never will” publish such offensive imagery (Playboy, December, 1985), Smith placed pictures the magazine did indeed publish- of children in sexual encounters with adults and references to girl children as ‘Playmate’ material. In December of 1978, for example, Playboy published a picture of a five year old girl with the caption “my first topless picture,” and in March of that same year published a cartoon in which Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz is pointing out the Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man to a police officer as having just raped her on the yellow brick road.
Smith did not limit her investigation to the use of children in Playboy. She found jokes about sexual harassment, abuse, manipulation, dehumanization and avoidance of intimacy by men toward their partners and callousness toward women in general, and the promotion of sexual conquest over women instead of sexual intimacy with a woman.
In another powerful and well documented brochure, “As Sex Education, Men’s Magazines are Foul PLAY, BOYS!,” Smith once again had Playboy do the talking for her. The brochure featured Playboy cartoons that dehumanized women like the one in which a man was shown holding a pornography magazine over his girlfriend’s face and body as they are having sex (Playboy, August, 1974), and another featuring a taxidermist calling a man to come and pick up his wife, who had been stuffed (Playboy, April, 1995). Was she hunted down and killed, too?
Smith’s brochures include extensive documentation and commentary by recognized scholars and researchers addressing the impact of pornography on our society. There are chilling statistics, like the finding that 100% of all high school aged males in one survey reported having read or looked at pornography, with the average age of viewing the first issue being 11 years old (Bryant, testimony to the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography Hearings, 1985).
In another study she lists, three per cent of the women in a random sample and 8.5 per cent in a survey of college undergraduate women reported being physically coerced into sex by someone inspired by pornography. Ten per cent of the nonstudent and 24 per cent of the student respondents answered yes to the question of whether they had ever been upset by someone trying to get them to do something out of a pornographic book, movie, or magazine (cited by Anderson in Lederer and Delgado, eds., 1995).
Also included is a study conducted by Mary Koss on 6,000 college students in which she found that men reporting behavior meeting legal definitions of rape were significantly more likely to be frequent readers of pornography magazines than those men who did not report engaging in such behavior (Koss and Dinero, 1989).
Smith is one of few people to expand her analysis of pornographic magazines to include the presence of drugs and alcohol, especially important today considering the almost epidemic level of drug and alcohol use by adults and teenagers in this country, Smith agrees that drugs and alcohol are contributing factors to high risk and coercive sex, and that the relationship between them within pornographic materials is an overlooked, and greatly needed, area of research.
As Smith explains ” . . . No [other] reputable publication brought positive drug information within easy reach of juvenile (or adult) consumers. Since 1970, Playboy has been glamorizing intoxication as a mind-expanding, sexually-enhancing experience. It is difficult to conclude these magazines have not played a major role in popularizing ‘recreational’ drug consumption and the myth of its being fun, risk-free, and even sexy. What greater reinforcement for drug taking behavior than to eroticize it?”
In “Drug Coverage in Playboy Magazine,” a brochure she developed for the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), Smith compiled a plethora of cartoons that favorably paired sex with drugs and alcohol. Cartoons, articles and columns advise readers on how to use drugs for sexual enhancement. References to negative effects were usually humorously presented and so, easily dismissed.
Playboy’s depiction of underage users of drugs and alcohol even included their own version of the Official Boy Scout Handbook in (Playboy, August, 1984). Their suggestions for Scout Merit Badges included “Water Safety” for the scout who ordered his Johnnie Walker whiskey straight up, and “Free-Basing” for the scout who smoked cocaine. A similar feature in 1979 stated that “Today, ‘boyhood fun’ means cruising and scoring; overnight adventures’ involve Ripple and car stripping; and ‘survival skills include cocaine testing, bust evasion and cutting into gas lines” (Playboy, December, 1979).
Once Smith contacted the NCAA about her serious concerns, media attention and public scrutiny increased. Playboy denied any wrongdoing, claiming they were only reflecting a “major cultural phenomena”, but they did scale back the more obvious pro-drug and alcohol features in the magazine. damage control campaign resulted in a politically correct editorial statement on the magazine’s position on drug abuse in the May 1987 issue as well as a few anti-drug articles. To counter Smith’s NCAA attempts, the magazine also courted collegiate sports information offices with a mass mailing of a hastily compiled slick, glossy booklet “The Dangers of Drugs”, explaining their “real” position against substance abuse. However the magazine still includes covert messages glamorizing substance abuse and pairing sexualized alcohol consumption with easier prey. According to Smith, “we succeeded in exposing yet another dimension of the destructive nature of pornography, and, at the very least, cost Playboy some time and money.”
It may also cost Playboy the niche they are trying to carve out for themselves in organized sports. Playboy’s strategy for commercial success has been to include respected and well- known public figures in their magazine, an old tactic for aspiring to legitimacy. That way the magazine may be looked at as more of a credible news journal than just a porno rag. Readers too, can feel better about their consumption of pornographic pictures of women when they are “wrapped” in articles about current social issues. It made business sense to Playboy to seek out an alliance with athletes who, in some countries, are accorded hero status.
So they came up with an annual pre-season award for college level athletes and coaches, the Playboy All-America Award. The nominated players and coaches receive an all-expenses paid trip to a luxury resort for a weekend party, photo session and public relations blitz.
The team selection process is unorthodox at best. It is not a panel of sports officials but rather Photography Director Gary Cole, doubling as sports editor when needed, (Playboy, March, 1996, p.117) who chooses players and coaches for the award. The prerequisite is not athletic ability but rather who agrees to be photographed for the magazine. Again, a common tactic for legitimacy. Playboy rejects players unwilling to have their pictures associated with the magazine- -its content and underlying messages–and keeps making “awards” until the sufficient number of players and coaches agree to the photo sessions. The event hit some legal snafus as well. Complaints were officially lodged with the NCAA which included the presence of professional agents at the photo sessions. This charge, like the others, was also denied by the magazine in a letter to the NCAA.
Go to Part II
Psychiatrist Park Elliott Dietz On Porn Harms
In 1994 I wrote to psychiatrist Dr.Linnea Smith about my experience and the harms of pornography. She wrote me back a very nice note and thanked me for my important efforts to educate people on the harms of porn. She said it’s especially difficult because the public is desensitzed and the media is reluctant to crititicize other media especially sexually explicit media. She sent me two huge folders full of important information on the harms including Playboy cartoons of women being sexually harassed in the workplace by their male bosses!
One of the many things she sent me was a transcribed lecture by psychiatrist and law professor Dr.Park Elliott Dietz, and this lecture was given before the National Conference of State Legislators on August 5 1986 and was videotaped by C-Span. Dr. Dietz served as a commissioner on the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. He was professor of law,professor of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry,and Medical Director of The Institute of Law,Psychiatry and Medical Director of The Institute of Law,Psychiatry and Public Policy at The University of Virginia School of Law and School of Medicine.
He gave many examples of women and children’s testimonies who were sexually abused by men who used pornography,and also women who were sexually harassed on the job with pornographic pictures hung up on the walls and shown to them. He said he only used a small sample of the 1000′s of women and children who testified. He says many times that pornography is a health problem and human rights issue and he said one of the reasons is because so much of it teaches false,misleading,and even dangerous information about human sexuality.
This is what he said a person would learn about sexuality from pornography, “A person who learned about human sexuality in the “adults only” pornography outlets of America would be a person,who had never conceived of a man and woman marrying or even falling in love before having intercourse,who had never conceived of two people making love in privacy without guilt or fear of discovery,who had never conceived of tender foreplay,who had never conceived of vaginal intercourse with ejaculation during intromission,and who had never conceived of procreation as a purpose of sexual union.,
Instead,such a person would be one who had learned that sex at home meant sex with one’s children,stepchildren,parents,stepparents,siblings,cousins,nephews,nieces,aunts,uncles,and pets,and with neighbors,milkmen,plumbers,salesmen,burglars,and peepers,who had learned that people take off their clothes and have sex within the first 5 minutes of meeting one another,who had learned to misjudge the percentage of women who prepare for sex by shaving their pubic hair,having their breasts,buttocks or legs tattooed,having their nipples or labia pierced,or donning leather,latex,rubber,or childlike costumes,who had learned to misjudge the proportion of men who prepare for sex by having their genitals or nipples pierced,wearing women’s clothing,or growing breasts.
Who had learned that about 1 out of 5 sexual encounters involves spankning,whipping,fighting,wrestling,tying,chaining,gagging,or torture,who had learned that more than 1 in 10 sexaul acts involves a party of more than 2,who had learned that the purpose of ejaculation is that of soiling the mouths,faces,breasts,abdomens,backs,and food at which it’s always aimed,who had learned that body cavities were designed for the insertion of foreign objects,who had learned that the anus was a genital to be licked and penetrated,who had learned that urine and excrement are erotic materials,who had learned that the instruments of sex chemicals,handcuffs,gags,hoods,restraints,harnesses,police badges,knives,guns,whips,paddles,toilets,diapers,enema bags,inflatable rubber women,and disembodied vaginas,breasts,and penises,who had learned that except with the children,where secrecy was required,photographers and cameras were supposed to be present to capture the action so that it could be spread abroad.
If these were the only adverse consequences of pornography,the most straightforward remedy would be to provide factually accurate information on human sexuality to people before they are exposed to pornography,if only we could agree on what that information is,on who should provide it to the many children whose parents are incapable of doing so,and on effective and acceptable means by which to ensure that exposure not precede education. In the absense of such a remedy,the probable consequences in this area alone are sufficient to support recommendations that would reduce the dissemination of that pornography which teaches false,misleading or dangerous information about human sexuality. And these are not the only adverse consequences of pornography.
He then says before he gives more examples and research,that pornography is a health problem and human rights issue because it increases the probability that members of the exposed population will acquire attitudes that are detrimental to the physical and mental health of both those exposed and those around them,pornography is a health problem and human rights issue because it is used as an instrument of sexual abuse and sexual harassment.
And look where we are now!
Women’s Institute for
Freedom of the Press
Pornography and the First Amendment
Twiss Butler
from her chapter “Why The First Amendment Is Being Used to Protect Violence Against Women,” in The Price We Pay, The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography, Laura Lederer and Richard Delgado, eds. (NY: Hill & Wang, 1995)
“Twiss Butler argues that men’s control of institutions of communication and education allows them to support speech that harms women and to suppress speech against that harm. She observes that the publishing industry funds legal, journalistic, and nonprofit organizations endorsing a First Amendment absolutist position. She contends that the industry’s defense of pornography as protected speech serves the double purpose of dignifying misogyny and establishing the First Amendment as the publisher’s product liability shield.” (p. 160)
“When feminists criticize pornography as graphic misogyny, they are attacking not only the system of sexism itself, with its economic and social pay-offs for men, not only Playboy’s advertising rates, but also publishers’ broad First Amendment shield against liability for any harm caused by the products that they produce and sell.
“The publishing industry and the men in it therefore have a conflict of interest in reporting a critique of pornography as inimical to women’s civil rights (unsecured as those rights are by the Constitution). We need to consider how that conflict of interest distorts the information we receive through journalistic coverage of public debate and action on this issue.
“Publishers protect their liability shield either by silencing feminists while granting speech to those who vilify them, or by misrepresenting the feminist critique of pornography. Women are given credibility and access to speech to the extent that they say what men want them to say. Stray from the script and you will be attacked, misquoted, or simply go unheard. As power brokers in a large industry profiting from sexism, publishers disguise this censorship as selfless concern for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. (p. 163) …
“In the news business as elsewhere, men have long relied on the weapon of pornography to avoid having to compete on their own merits. The role pornography plays in keeping women journalists at a disadvantage is evident in the experience of Lynn carrier, an editorial writer for the San Diego Tribune who sued the paper in 1990 for sex discrimination and harassment. Men coworkers attempted to intimidate and segregate Carrier by displaying pornography in the office, using sexual insults when talking with her, and asking her to run out and buy a copy of Playboy for her supervisor–who also wondered aloud what she would charge Playboy for posing nude for photographs. Carrier won her civil suit (refusing, incidentally, to accept a secret settlement), but the outcome was typical–she no longer works at the Tribune, but is employed instead as a smaller paper in the area. (p. 164) …
“To protect pornography, women’s speech must be carefully controlled. When Linda Lovelace said she loved starring in pornographic films, she was treated as credible; when Linda Marchiano said that she had been beaten, raped, and coerced into making those films, her credibility was questioned. No risk is overlooked. At a National Press Club speech by Christie Hefner in 1986, I addressed her ‘as a pornographer’ in a written question about her lawsuit to censor testimony from a federal hearing that referred to Playboy as pornography; when my question was read aloud by the club’s president, these three words were deleted.” (pp. 166-167)
[This chapter by Twiss Butler alone is worth the purchase of The Price We Pay, The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography. The entire book is excellent and highly recommended.]