Porn - Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think With Kink (2 page)

The Legal Controversy

Understanding the Context

Violence

Physical Violence

Phenomenological Violence

Epistemic Violence

Aisha’s Crossing Over

19 Ruminations of a Dominatrix: An Interview with Mz. Berlin

Notes on Contributors

VOLUME EDITOR

DAVE MONROE is an instructor at the Applied Ethics Institute of St. Petersburg College, Florida, and adjunct instructor of philosophy at the University of Tampa. He is the co-editor of
Food & Philosophy
, with Fritz Allhoff (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).

SERIES EDITOR

FRITZ ALLHOFF is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Western Michigan University, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. In addition to editing the
Philosophy for Everyone
series, Allhoff is the volume editor or co-editor for several titles, including
Wine & Philosophy
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2007),
Whiskey & Philosophy
(with Marcus P.Adams,Wiley, 2009), and
Food & Philosophy
(with Dave Monroe,Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).

PHILOSOPHY FOR EVERYONE

Series editor: Fritz Allhoff

Not so much a subject matter, philosophy is a way of thinking.Thinking not just about the Big Questions, but about little ones too.This series invites everyone to ponder things they care about, big or small, significant, serious … or just curious.

Running & Philosophy: A Marathon for the Mind

Edited by Michael W. Austin

Wine & Philosophy: A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking

Edited by Fritz Allhoff

Food & Philosophy: Eat,Think and Be Merry

Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe

Beer & Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking

Edited by Steven D. Hales

Whiskey & Philosophy: A Small Batch of Spirited Ideas

Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Marcus P. Adams

College Sex – Philosophy for Everyone: Philosophers With Benefits

Edited by Michael Bruce and Robert M. Stewart

Cycling – Philosophy for Everyone: A Philosophical Tour de Force

Edited by Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza and Michael W. Austin

Climbing – Philosophy for Everyone: Because It’s There

Edited by Stephen E. Schmid

Hunting – Philosophy for Everyone: In Search of the Wild Life

Edited by Nathan Kowalsky

Christmas – Philosophy for Everyone: Better Than a Lump of Coal

Edited by Scott C. Lowe

Cannabis – Philosophy for Everyone: What Were We Just Talking About?

Edited by Dale Jacquette

Porn – Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think With Kink

Edited by Dave Monroe

Serial Killers – Philosophy for Everyone: Being and Killing

Edited by S. Waller

Dating – Philosophy for Everyone: Flirting With Big Ideas

Edited by Kristie Miller and Marlene Clark

Gardening – Philosophy for Everyone: Cultivating Wisdom

Edited by Dan O’Brien

Motherhood – Philosophy for Everyone:The Birth of Wisdom

Edited by Sheila Lintott

Fatherhood – Philosophy for Everyone:The Dao of Daddy

Edited by Lon S. Nease and Michael W. Austin

Forthcoming books in the series:

Fashion – Philosophy for Everyone

Edited by Jessica Wolfendale and Jeanette Kennett

Coffee – Philosophy for Everyone

Edited by Scott Parker and Michael W. Austin

Blues – Philosophy for Everyone

Edited by Abrol Fairweather and Jesse Steinberg

This edition first published 2010
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization
© 2010 Dave Monroe

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Porn – Philosophy for Everyone: how to think with kink / edited by Dave Monroe; foreword by Gram Ponante.
p. cm —(Philosophy for everyone)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4051-9962-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Pornography. 2. Philosophy. I. Monroe, Dave. II. Title: Porn – Philosophy for Everyone.
HQ471.P585 2010
176′.7—dc22
2010004891

For Rhonda, my loudest cheerleader and constant inspiration

GRAM PONANTE

FOREWORD
Filling in the Cave

In Plato’s Myth of the Cave, the philosopher attributes to his mentor, Socrates, the spinning of a pleasing allegory about a group of prisoners sitting manacled in a subterranean cave, forced to look at the shadows projected on a wall by a group of actors, let us say, parading on an elevated walkway between the prisoners’ backs and a roaring fire.

Socrates asks, “Isn’t it reasonable to assume that the prisoners believe the shadows to be real, the echoes to be learned discourse, and the ability to predict what shadow comes next as a skill worthy of the highest reward of the prisoners’ society?” In other words, look at what we can get up to in the absence of the “real.”

This is a searing (depending on the proximity of the fire to the prisoners) indictment of blind, spoon-fed cultures then and now, to be sure. But, while we willingly accept the idea of a proto-Skinnerian world in which a group of prisoners has
for no discernible reason
been chained in an upright position since childhood and forced to gaze at flickering projections, as told by a man who thought it best to put his words in the mouth of someone else having a discussion with yet a third party (Plato’s older brother, Glaucon), we might be allowed to speculate on some of the questions that might have popped up in that ancient Athenian peanut gallery, such as, “Were they at least naked shadows?”

In my several years covering the business, lifestyles, and ethics (that last one contains the fewest billable hours) of the porn industry, I often doubt the reality of a job whose hazards include slipping on milk that has just been shot out of an oiled 19-year-old’s ass. I keep turning around to look for the fire.

But if we are tempted to think of porn (derived from the Greek word for prostitute) as those images on the wall, and ourselves as the prisoners forced to watch and believe it, then we would have to accept that the parties that lit the fire, erected the walkway, and hired the actors were smarter than us, or at least had some plan for our lives.

My friends, I have met the people who make the
Dirtpipe Milkshakes
series, and I can assure you that they will not be contesting your spelling bee title. Nor do they care where you go once you push the offending DVD or computer away from you. No, I think
porn
is the wall, and the images change depending on how we choose to look at them.

You might have noticed that porn has the quality of becoming less satisfying the more complicated it gets. Throw in a plot (or even –
shudder
– a B story) and the pornographer increases his chances of breaking something that previously hummed along like some shaved steampunk perpetual motion machine; for millennia we have been aware that one simply
can’t go wrong
with people having sex, and that modern pornography’s success has not been in presenting variations of the sexual act but in providing the media for its presentation to be more accessible.

We can argue about what is the “right” kind of porn and how something with that elusive description should appeal to women, couples, minorities, sensitive Caucasian men, the aged, and beings yet to appear, but no one says that watching other people (or oneself) fuck is not intriguing in a marrow-level, continuance-of-the-species kind of way.

It is when elements are added to stimulate the newer neighbors of our monkey brains that porn becomes less “real.” It is then we notice the boom dipping into the frame, then we realize the performers just got the script that morning, that in any case they never expected to be performing
Medea
when they got bra-busting saline injections, and then we scoff at a dolly shot when a simple close-up will do.

Early texts of Plato’s
Republic
, in which the Myth of the Cave appeared, used the word
gaze
to describe how its audience regarded the pictures on the wall.The reason we gaze at pornography, rather than be engaged by it, is because the very basic and elemental strivings and exertions depicted therein are ours to interpret. We gaze because porn becomes what we want it to be; it is a cave to be filled in.

That is why we spare porn the rigorous character breakdowns we would require of
Dude,Where’s My Car?
This is why we forgive porn for labeling as MILF the 23-year-old who has never borne children, as Asian a Swede, as a naughty schoolgirl someone who is not and never was. But the uniform is all they – and you, the viewer – need to begin the crazy joyride of projection. So porn is the wall and the viewer is both the prisoner and the fire; the actors are whoever you want them to be, because I can tell you they are not in “real life” what you have made them.

Porn as a phenomenon seems to have generated a perfect ratio of content to comment. For as many issues of
Barely Legal
,
Screw My Wife, Please
, and
Dirty Debutantes
generated annually, there are scholarly treatises about Why We Like Porn; or Is It OK That We Like Porn? or;Are We Bad People for Encouraging Other People To Like Porn?

I would like to throw my hat in the ring and say that porn is not real, but you are, and that porn serves the same purpose that monster trucks, professional wrestling, TMZ, and eating candy do: they are all fixed points at which existing thoughts can coalesce. It helps, then, that those entertainments are fairly thought-agnostic on their own.

Maybe Plato projected his own allegory of the cave onto Socrates because he thought the name “Socrates” might make the theory sexier – less Platonic. In the adult business we understand this, hence Linda Hopkins became Tera Patrick and Jenna Massoli became Jenna Jameson. What is porn if not the thoughtful practice of projecting something onto the most attractive surface?