Moral Pornography? (Angela Carter's "Desadian Woman")

[Buffalo Souljah]

Carter argues in her book that society sets up "abstract universals" that serve to reinforce existing stereotypes and mores: namely, of women (or minorities, young people, etc) in inferior positions. These categories are lost in pornography, "the orphan little sister of the fine arts" [sic], in which the individual (shaped by society) is able to "lose herself" in "dream-time" and forego these stereotypes & mores. This setup, however, creates an interesting predicament, in which the pornographer conditions another set of variables for the spectator to observe (and to partake in, albeit, passively), making him into a defacto "moral" pornographer, who allows and enables spouses to escape the regimanetally of their married lives by "giving a purpose to sex". An interesting argument between fantasy and reality. Your thoughts?

[The Essence Of Flame Is The Essence Of Change]

Uhmm I haven't heard this Angela Carter before but I think she needs a small reality check.Stereotypes and categories are all but lost in pornography.I am by far not the puritan type when it comes to matters that have to do with sex, but nevertheless a very large portion of at least ''mainstream pornography'' is unmistakebly sexist.The very industry is based mainly on a male audience and so the scenes tend to appease certain macho stereotypes that exist in society.If you ask women who watch porn you will find out that the way most films are shooted, they can't find the same satisfaction as men.Women are displayed in a role of not much more than an advanced sex toy and the action is all centered around the man.If you just hear the dialogues once you will see what I mean.Apart from that though, racist stereotypes also pass in pornography.Since unfortunately in the paranoid world we have made today sex between a man and a woman has come to be viewed as a kind of dominance of the said man upon the woman, many pornographic clips feature immigrant/non-white women as items of white dominance, which is imposed on them via the man with all kind of disgusting comments.Now, I am not trying to be a conservative preaching bastard, it is not bad,unnatural or immoral to view pornography but at least do not delude yourself about it.

[h0m0revolutionary]

Carter is a beacon to the movement she's a member of

She exposes those who make the dizzy mistake of confusing case and effect - she holds that pornography does not result in a patriarchal and machismo-fetishising society but that Sexist subordinate depictions of women are a consequence of the patriarchal society we live in.

I believe to tackle that society, the very WORST thing we can do is start getting moralistic and denounce (and call for state bans on!) something which fulfills a perfectly natural and innate human desire. Only sex positive feminism will deliver this, kudos to refreshing feminists like Carter who have made my degree that much more bearable, if nothing else :P

[The Essence Of Flame Is The Essence Of Change]

She exposes those who mak the dizzy mistake of confusing case and effect - she hols that pornography does not result in a patriarchal and machismo-fetishising society but that Sexist subordinate depictions of women are a consequence of the patriarchal society we live in.
I agree with that.However those subordinate depictions of women which are causes and not effects are passed on in pornography.I never said pornography is inherently sexist, just that it happens to be today in the present society.As for state bans on pornography hell fuck no!:scared:Sex is something that should be stripped of the negative connotiations we have given it in the present world and not be furtherly tabooed.I am a sex positive feminist myself.However I stand by my point that you can't deny the fact that modern mainstream pornography encorporates on it's majority patriarchical sexism.

[Buffalo Souljah]

If I'm reading her right, Carter writes of the pornographer as artist, as moralist, and therefore as someone who determines the content of the art which she creates. So, pornography becomes a kind of graffiti, a sexual reducto ad absurdum, in which the genitalia take on their most basic function, that of the binary dichotomy between phallus and vagina. So, in essence, what she is arguing is that pornography serves the same role as prostitution: giving a purpose to fucking, and it does so by encapsulating fucking in a shroud of sacridity. Sex becomes not just another act but the act and thereby, receives a life of its own.

[blake 3:17]

It's a pretty good book. In her conclusion, I believe she calls Sade a basic pornographer with not a whole lot redeeming in the end. His writing is very strange and very repetitive.


Uhmm I haven't heard this Angela Carter before but I think she needs a small reality check. Read Sexing The Cherry -- oh she is so good. Beautiful writer.

[Hit The North]

Sexing The Cherry was written by Jeanette Winterson, fact fans.

[Dean]

Gender liberation must be accompanied by sexual liberation. Since it is always the ruling class that subordinates the will of the working class, and subsequently distorts, retards and subjugates human drives, it is only through class liberation that we will see any of this come about.

Any state (or moralistic) imposed sanctions against human functions can and will work against that. Carter is correct to see pornography in the context of a patriarchal society, rather than a patriarchal society in the context of pornography, the latter of which many conservative feminists tend to do.

[blake 3:17]

Sexing The Cherry was written by Jeanette Winterson, fact fans.

You're right! I blur my Virago books and authors together... I just checked Carter's bibliography and I've only read teensy bits of her writing. The only whole book was the Sade one... Premature senility.

And Jeanette Winterson is great. Read Sexing the Cherry even if it's not by AC.