Women, set apart from men by physical
differences, were the first colonized social class. The territory colonized is
in the first place the women's bodies. Every culture has evolved different
beliefs, and ideology, to sustain this sexual colonization.
The ideology is stabilized in the social order through diverse institutions. Religion often serves as one such conduit. In pluralistic societies, religion is insufficient to sustain all aspects of the belief system, and in Western cultures with a broad range of beliefs and lifestyles the ideology also takes other forms --including a subculture of pornography, which is heavily imbued with direct or implicit coercion and violence against women.
We can even define pornography as the visualizing practices which encourage actual sexual coercion and violence, and thus legitimize these as normal behaviors. If women are the conventional objects of pornography and men its predominant consumers, sexual degradation is the necessary theme.
The voyeur --concealed by darkness in the “adult” theater, or a bookstore peepshow--glories in his clothed and imagined power, while a victim, the pornographed nude, is cast as a controlled and stripped object. Let us consider for a moment the myths that support this purchased epiphany.
The woman should appear ashamed of her body. Viewing and conquering it becomes a stimulus for this virile but riskless male. The shame can be twosided; if the voyeur's virility is indulged too freely, the male is said to be reduced to his animal instincts.
The pornographed female is not perceived as a sensuous real person who could overwhelm the male or compel him to interrupt his fantasy to learn about women (and men) much less to become a life partner. She is a symbol only, permitting our voyeur to keep his clothing and his distance. The voyeur is thus able to deny his own nature. With the culture encouraging it he grows committed to suffering: his own and especially hers (whomever the fantasized woman may be).
There is a fundamental distinction to be noted in nudities: A solitary nudity, lacking even an imagined presence of a man at the sexual posturing, that facilitates the images of the violence degrading women. And a sociable nudity, that is committed to the liberation of our nature from a culture that is structured to the dominance and subordination possibilities in that nature.
We can stare out the cultural sadism that first produces the pornography, then moves beyond the ideology to claim its images in action. We should moreover be aware, in naming the pattern of colonization and ideology, that the pornographer's demand for free expression merges into his demand for sexual access and dominance in practice.
The conventions must be everyone of keeping “sexual” woman naked and “rational” man clothed. Nudity will then no longer be merely a prosaic blackboard on which the symbols of exploitation are written.
SOCIABLE NUDITY IS NEEDED FOR GETTING BEYOND EXPLOITED NUDITY. Asserted in countless places and ways that men do not control, nudity may be the best strategy and practice for getting past the false consciousness leading to sexual domination. THE FEAR OF EQUAL, SOCIABLE NUDITY IN OUR SOCIETY HAS STUNTED OUR CIVILIZATION AND NATURES. - We deserve better.
Johanna Moore
The ideology is stabilized in the social order through diverse institutions. Religion often serves as one such conduit. In pluralistic societies, religion is insufficient to sustain all aspects of the belief system, and in Western cultures with a broad range of beliefs and lifestyles the ideology also takes other forms --including a subculture of pornography, which is heavily imbued with direct or implicit coercion and violence against women.
We can even define pornography as the visualizing practices which encourage actual sexual coercion and violence, and thus legitimize these as normal behaviors. If women are the conventional objects of pornography and men its predominant consumers, sexual degradation is the necessary theme.
The voyeur --concealed by darkness in the “adult” theater, or a bookstore peepshow--glories in his clothed and imagined power, while a victim, the pornographed nude, is cast as a controlled and stripped object. Let us consider for a moment the myths that support this purchased epiphany.
The woman should appear ashamed of her body. Viewing and conquering it becomes a stimulus for this virile but riskless male. The shame can be twosided; if the voyeur's virility is indulged too freely, the male is said to be reduced to his animal instincts.
The pornographed female is not perceived as a sensuous real person who could overwhelm the male or compel him to interrupt his fantasy to learn about women (and men) much less to become a life partner. She is a symbol only, permitting our voyeur to keep his clothing and his distance. The voyeur is thus able to deny his own nature. With the culture encouraging it he grows committed to suffering: his own and especially hers (whomever the fantasized woman may be).
There is a fundamental distinction to be noted in nudities: A solitary nudity, lacking even an imagined presence of a man at the sexual posturing, that facilitates the images of the violence degrading women. And a sociable nudity, that is committed to the liberation of our nature from a culture that is structured to the dominance and subordination possibilities in that nature.
We can stare out the cultural sadism that first produces the pornography, then moves beyond the ideology to claim its images in action. We should moreover be aware, in naming the pattern of colonization and ideology, that the pornographer's demand for free expression merges into his demand for sexual access and dominance in practice.
The conventions must be everyone of keeping “sexual” woman naked and “rational” man clothed. Nudity will then no longer be merely a prosaic blackboard on which the symbols of exploitation are written.
SOCIABLE NUDITY IS NEEDED FOR GETTING BEYOND EXPLOITED NUDITY. Asserted in countless places and ways that men do not control, nudity may be the best strategy and practice for getting past the false consciousness leading to sexual domination. THE FEAR OF EQUAL, SOCIABLE NUDITY IN OUR SOCIETY HAS STUNTED OUR CIVILIZATION AND NATURES. - We deserve better.
Johanna Moore
(The author is a Professor of German and Cultural History at the University of Wisconcin-Milwaukee. She is a founding member of the Naturist Society and a contributor to its journal, “Clothed with the Sun”. Position paper no. 5/1986)
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