From brothels to “pink salons,” to even the rise of online platforms such as Pornhub and OnlyFans, the commodification of sex and sexuality, namely women’s sex and sexualities, has shaped global consumerism. With that being said, it’s important to note that since the dawn of the sex industry there has, ever-presently, been an overshadowing demand for such services. From Johns to “cash pigs”––a humorous and rather blunt term for customers that financially support their service-providers––the demand for sex services has scaffolded the industry’s growth. Now, even more-so with the rise of anonymous digital markets, women’s bodies have been constructed as both commodifiable and innately oversexed. And while I could write lengthily on the connections between economic neoliberalism and broader inequalities in global sex exploitation, my intention here is to provide a fleshed-out approach on the cultural narratives which rationalize these large-scale systems. To me, the bigger question lies in where demand meets industry. Yes, while the sex industry may have “bad apples” which enable these practices––a dubious management agent or a stereotypical ‘pimp’––my focus is on the cultural and monetary incentives which rationalize sex exploitation. If we were to continue looking at the porn industry as a tree with a few bad apples, you may think of the tree’s trunk as normative values (on gender, race, sex or sexuality), and the branches as the various structures which uplift these values. If you were then to take this a step further, the planter could be conceptualized as the concentrated elite which benefit from monopolies on women’s bodies and the commercialization of sex. While a loose metaphor, my goal with this essay is to further connect the micro- and macro-level structures of society which promote sexual commodification in the market.
It wasn’t until my Sophomore year as an undergraduate that I began to critically examine sexual oppression. Like my parents, I had initially chosen to pursue a degree in psychology, but, on a whim, I decided to take a Sociology of Sex and Gender course offered at my university. An interesting course title and few credits to fill––sure, I’m in. It was from this class that I found a framework to piece together my own experiences of the world. I was specifically interested in the ways in which womanhood was performed under very specific, and very idealized, standards. From gender-policing in grade school to discrimination in the career industry, the confines of womanhood felt incredibly narrow and static. And it wasn’t just me, performance was ingrained in many of the lives of the women around me. It affected their views of the world, and often synonymised their femininity with approval and desirability. The discrepancy I felt between my world views clashed viciously with a pressure to conform into my prescribed role as a woman. This turmoil was only fueled by a growing insecurity to fit within the conventional views of womanhood. Frankly, at this time––and as a woman––I was disemboldened. I was angry; I wanted change, but I didn’t know how or what that could come from. It was through educating myself, and through reading feminist and anti-colonialist literature, that my thoughts and emotions to the world around me, clarified. (Ironically, this was the exact class which propelled me to declare an undergraduate degree in sociology soon after). It was mid-semester when our class was first introduced to a segment from Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly, and it was during that lecture that I began to realize the more subvert, oftentimes overlooked, ways performances of femininity intrude onto public consciousness. Traditional advertising media––fragrances and colognes, clothes and lingerie, to even food products—have, for the better half of the mid-century, eroticized women’s bodies. Look, this product is just as sensational (and sensual) as the woman who’s using it! Much akin to the sex industry, the advertising industry equally configures, and fixates on, women’s bodies as a form of consumption. From subliminal stereotyping in the media which idealize particular versions of femininity––the “trophy wife,” the “schoolgirl”––to the distribution of degrading pornographic materials, these narratives serve to monetize women’s bodies. And this is merely one root of the tree which reaps these bad apples. It was from Kilbourne’s research that I began to investigate other scholars’ work within the pronography sphere. Later that year I found myself reading Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, a contemplative analysis on modern porn production and consumption, which only further propelled my advocacy against the sex industry. Jensen begins with a pornography as a reflection of broader social themes:
Mirrors can be dangerous, and pornography is a mirror. Pornography as a mirror shows us how men see women. Not all men, of course––but the ways in which many men who accept the conventional conception of masculinity see women. It is unsettling to look into that mirror.
Jensen’s book, though limited in its scope on the rise of online pornographic distribution, outlines an unsettling social narrative. To “be a man” is to exude control over women’s bodies––vessels for pleasure and an extension of one’s own social prowess, and to “be a woman” is to be subjected to aforementioned sexual subordination. It was from Jensen’s work that I began to realize that larger industries––advertising, pornograhy––were actively fuelled by heteronormative agendas on consumption. These agendas are directly responsible for the production of pornographic materials, as well as the exertions of ‘manhood’ enacted onto female bodies. These industries are not the exception, they are the rule. And the rule is that women can be commercialized––from their beauty, to their bodies, to “woman” as an abstract; the exchange of women spans further than solely physical bodies, but to the very ideas which constitute femininity and womanhood. And these pornified cultural narratives are not isolated to pornography, but are reproduced through various social spheres outlined by normative sexed, gendered, and even racialized expectations.
Wait, did you say race? While it’s crucial to recognize the gender gap in pornographic media, a more startling concern lies in the ways pornographic narratives are innately racialized. Yes, while gendered ideations are a predominant motivator in the production of pornographic materials, constructions of femininity are dependent on signifiers of differences (whether on the grounds of race, sexuality, able-bodiness, etc). For Gail Dines, a leading anti-porn scholar, categories for interracial pornography serve as a new-age “minstrel show” which capitalize upon racial ideologies about people of color and their sexuality. Within an increasingly digitized market for pornography, we witness a large outgrowth of race-related content. Most oftentimes, these include hypersexualized and extreme depictions of black sexuality––from the debaucherous Black “gangster” to the femme-fatale “Jezebel,” to the overarching fetishization of Black people’s bodies in its totality. And this is not a designated outlier, but rather a patterned form of racial exploitation present in the pornography industry. Other stereotypes such as the “dragon lady”––a fierce, sexually-active East Asian woman––or the naturally demure and subservient “lotus blossom”––act as manifestations of the white imaginary. (It is almost paradoxical to me that these exact racial stereotypes and sexual caricatures are present in content labeled under the “interracial” category). Dines continues by underlining how pornographic narratives offer a peepshow for white consumers into “authentic black life,” outside the conventions of White civilized society and controlled black bodies. Though, ironically, it is these same racial ideologies praised in pornography which are overpoliced and disciplined under white supremacy. Within the white imagination, the white consumer can identify with the prowess of a Black man under safe mediation, without any real-world ramifications of sexual eroticism and body-policing. Pornography is an industry which not only commercializes the body, but the sexual perversions of “White fantasy” and imaginary. These are also carried across racial categories which naturalize Black, Asian, and Hispanic women as sexually-subordinate to White men. And while pornography is an industry which capitalizes greatly on the white imaginary, it’s necessary to recognize that racial ideologies about people of color’s sexuality were not born from this industry. Rather, they have been fashioned from colonialist mindsets which rationalize the use of sex and sexuality—including rape––as a tool for racial subjugation. Oversexed racial ideologies are also a large contributor to global trafficking, with women of color at greater risk for human trafficking, sexual slavery, and child marriages. These ideologies oftentimes gloss over or dismiss the disproportionate effect race, poverty, and other social classifications have on sexual exploitation processes. In Getting Off, Jensen’s interviews with pornography directors held similar sentiments, with many either incredulous or dismissive of the normalized racism present in their films. Even more striking was that many directors merely hyped the popularity of interracial materials on their platforms. Racial stereotyping in pornography becomes normalized through perceived audience demand. And while pornography is an industry which affects all women, it is critical to recognize the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality which may increase the vulnerability of non-White women to sexual exploitation and abuse.
So how do these ideas become normalized? Rather than blame a few bad apples, tangible progress can be made through addressing the roots which nurture these frameworks. Drawing on Foucault’s biopolitics, I argue the normalization of these values begins at an interpersonal level. The monetization of women’s bodies––from ads to pornography, to sexual slavery and child-trafficking––is reliant on the population’s incentivisation to maintain these industries. These processes are reproduced once the population envisions itself as an enforcer for these normative values. Consider the previous example of the pornography industry, in Pornography as Trafficking, Catherine A. MacKinnon argues that pornography is one way in which women and children are trafficked for sex. Women and children are inducted into the sex-industry and “rented” for commercial sexual acts, of which the produced materials are sold for consumer gratification. The conceptualized and practiced abuse often featured against women in pornography is a direct byproduct of women’s objectification in the economy. And within the global neoliberalist framework, the grotesque mistreatment of women in the sex industry reflects a deeper message: harms against women are rationalized because, in terms of market, they are an accessible material product. And these narratives are reliant on the consumer viewing actors within the sex industry as both hypersexualized and sexually debaucherous. Because they perform sexual acts, and because women are naturalized as perverted and sexually inferior, the harms these industries produce become rationalized by actors in society. These disparities in gender presentation are not isolated, but rather framed by the contexts of social actors’ lives. The implications of internalized sex roles for young adolescent girls are increasingly worrisome in the digital-sex age. As pornography becomes, as Gail Dines writes, more affordable, accessible, and anonymous in the digital sphere, erotic materials have become immersed in modern-U.S. pop culture. And when young, impressionable teenagers are introduced to these rigid expectations of womanhood, girls are herded into either of two sexual identities: fuckability or invisibility. Women are pigeonholed into the expectation of being and presenting as sexually available, or they are expected to fade into the social background. Furthermore, oversexed notions of femininity monitor young women’s bodies in the backdrop of eating disorders, political-feminist criticisms, as well as patterned violence against women. And from this increasingly“pornified” culture, it can be asserted that rapists are not deviants, but rather “over-conformists” to today’s hypersexualized sphere.
Now, where does that leave us? My intention with this paper is not to provide a neatly lined call for action (give me a year or two), but to provide a cohesive analysis of the ways in which micro- and macro-level (mis)representations of womanhood are mutually-reinforcing. Consider Women and/as Commodities by Nancy C.M. Hartsock, in which she argues that women occupy a unique axis of the transnational economy: not only are they direct contributors to globalized industry, but they, themselves, are ascribed use and exchange values. Whereas men are portrayed as possessing the necessary assets to exercise “all his human faculties,” women are marginalized and made invisible in the transnational economy. Even today, lucrative enterprises which traffic women’s bodies rely on the explicit subjugation of women both institutionally and interpersonally. Womanhood has been constructed alongside neoliberalist enterprise which centers women’s purposes on the consumer. Her goals, her dreams, become contingent on the degree to which she can “escape” her own commodification. More critically, the devaluation of women’s humanity––including their capacity for agency and morality––enables profiteers to ascribe economic value onto their bodies. These factors also overlap with other aspects of identity––race, class, able-bodiedness, etc.––and become pornified within our culture. Rather than a single-axis approach to the sex industry as a regulatory agent for gender, it must also be recognized as a multi-faceted tool for normalizing various aspects of identity. From “interracial” porn to fetishization, the sex industry commercializes all aspects of an individual’s identity. It targets personhood, promoting strong expectations for performance and harsh social punishments for deviance. It is something which has the capacity to construct the entirety of our lives. If I were to offer a beginning strategy formulation, I would begin by addressing interpersonal narratives. I would examine the avenues by which women’s bodies are constructed in the media, and I would think deeply on how those introspections affect all of us, regardless of sex. This includes examining how these ideas color our interactions and how they form our beliefs of others. Then, I would recognize the detrimental ways in which industries mobilize these ideologies in order to police and profit off of people’s bodies. Once we recognize these various industries are mutually-reinforcing structures, all which carry constructions of personhood and value, we can hold them accountable. After all, one bad apple spoils the bunch. Once we recognize ourselves as connected, as equally affected and affecting the world around us, we can motivate ourselves for action. Actions that denounce stereotyping in advertising, enable harsher restrictions on pornographic distribution, and demand greater protections for women in the transnational economy are crucial in fighting the commercialization of bodies.
Citations
Dines, Gail. 2017. Growing Up With Porn: The Developmental and Societal Impact of Pornography on Children. Dignity, A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence, 3(2). Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=dignity.
Dines, G. 2006. The White Man’s Burden: Gonzo Pornography and the Construction of Black Masculinity. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 18, 296–297.
Hartsock, N. C. M. (2004). Women and/as Commodities: A Brief Meditation. Canadian Woman Studies Les Cahiers De La Femme, 23(3). Retrieved from https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/view/6231.
Jensen, Robert. 2007. Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Jhally, S. & Kilbourne, J. (2010). Killing us softly 4: advertising’s image of women. Media Education Foundation.
MacKinnon, C.A. (2005). Pornography as Trafficking. Michigan Journal of International Law, 26(4), 993-1012. Retrieved from https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol26/iss4/1.
Willis, E. 1993. FEMINISM, MORALISM, AND PORNOGRAPHY. New York Law School law review, 38, 351-358. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816681204.003.0014.