Pornography and Erotica: A Contrast

INDEPENDENT STUDY IN PSYCHOLOGY

Thomas Rue
May 1983, All rights reserved.

A book entitled Can't Stop The Sex by someone called Bonnie Cockcroft provides the l87-page representative of pornographic narrative. The cover of the book depicts a braless blonde in her early- to mid-twenties, clad in blue jeans and a white tank-top several sizes too small, chest thrust outward, and wearing an expression on her face which is obviously intended to be sexually provocative. Bound together in paperback format with another novel of the same type, the back cover pulsatingly summarizes the story-line: "Orgies are the latest thing-People are looking for a fast fling with those who want to swing. When this group comes together, they can hear the bells ring!" Can't Stop is about the experiences of a "swinging" couple, married two years. The woman, Sheri, age 24, seems at once to be the epitome of male fantasy, in terms of conventional physical attractiveness as well as utter sexual insatiability. Yancy, 44, the impotent but domineering husband, enjoys watching Sheri engage in sexual activities with his friends and acquaintances of varying ages and backgrounds.

Although the author of this work, Bonnie Cockcroft (1981), purports to be female, internal elements of the novel lead this writer to the opinion that the author is actually a man using a pen-name. This is supported by Kinsey, et al. (1953), who observe:

It is true that there is a considerable portion of the pornographic material which pretends to be written by females who are recounting their personal experience, but in many instances it is known that the authors were male, and in nearly every instance the internal content of the material indicates a male author.

The specific nature of this "internal content" will become clear as this discussion proceeds. The erotic book used in this comparison was Little Birds by Anais Nin (1979), a collection of short stories of various plots, and unlike pornography, themes. The author's preface to the anthology includes the statement that:

It is one thing to include eroticism in a novel or story and quite another to focus one's whole attention on it. The first is like life itself. It is, I might say, natural, sincere, as in the sensual pages of Zola or of Lawrence. But focusing wholly on the sexual life is not natural. It becomes something like the life of the prostitute, an abnormal activity that ends by turning the prostitute away from the sexual.

The foregoing statement succinctly delineates the most important quality which distinguishes erotica from pornography. Nin and others like her, in their writing, attempt to portray life as it really is -- including the sexual aspects of existence. Writers of Cockcroft's ilk, on the other hand, justify no such pretense. Their products have as a distinguishing characteristic "the degrading and demeaning portrayal of the human female... as a mere sexual object to be exploited and manipulated..." (U.S. Government, 1970).

The following description of Sheri, the main character in Can't Stop, illustrates several significant aspects common, virtually by definition, to all pornography, with regard to its stereotyped portrayal of the genders.

She peeled off her jeans and blouse and thought for a minute, but only for a minute She'd noticed the way Dill looked at her legs. Dill sure liked her legs. So did Yancy. So did all men. Sheri wasn't tall, only five-four, but she had spectacular legs, and a high, pert, ripely rounded ass, and high, pert, ripely rounded breasts, with nipples that were an embarrassment sometimes, the way they poked out, like stiff wrinkled red pointing fingers, at practically no provocation at all. Her legs had been raising hard-ons, she knew, since her second year in high school (pp. 6-7, emphases added.)

Even a casual reading of this passage communicates, first of all, that Sheri is anything but an intellectual (her occasional thoughts last "only for a moment", no more); and that she is characterized by an extremely single-minded, usually narcissistic thought pattern. Men, on the other hand, seem to be universally unable to control their physiological functions in the face of such provocation. Additionally, while Sheri's body may be a turn-on to men, she views it as "an embarrassment," ironically described in connotatively unattractive adjectives and other "red" nipples that "poke out," etc.), gawky-sounding terms ("wrinkled,") which might be applied to a newborn or very young child. In another place, the fictional woman is described as one might an animal, where reference is made to "the darkness of her twat fur" (p. 9).

Perhaps the most dangerous message of pornography is that women secretly long to be sexually conquered, taken, used by a strong male, despite their pretended protests to the contrary.

I'd love to have him spread my legs and play with my pussy and then slide his big hard cock into my wet cunt; every thick, stiff, beautiful fucking inch of it, and then fuck me hard, fuck me deep, fuck me, fuck me, FUCK ME. ( p. 13.)

Many psychologists (see Lederer, 1980) and social critics (Dworkin, 1981) charge that this "She wants it--they all do" perception of females, as conveyed in pornographic literature and movies, leads to rape and other crimes of violence against women. Robin Morgan (1977, in Lederer 1980) even went so far as to syllogistically entitle an essay "Pornography and Rape: Theory and Practice," although some researchers dispute this causal relationship (Wilson, 1978; Money, 1982; cited in Masters, et al., 1982).

Works of pornography are replete with explicit descriptions of male and female genitalia and genital contact. Masters, et al. (1982) explain that, "In general, males tend to be more 'object' oriented, and respond to close-ups of sexual action, while females pay more attention to the style, setting, and mood." Interestingly, these differences also distinguish pornography from erotica.

As stated earlier, pornography is almost exclusively written by men (Kinsey, et al., 1953), and tends to be more phallic-oriented than erotica. According to Kinsey, "A great deal of the pornographic literature turns around detailed descriptions of genital activities, and descriptions of male genital performance. These are elements in which females, according to our data, are not ordinarily interested. "

Although erotic writers as a group make no effort to avoid explicit sexual scenes, the accounts tend to be more balanced, dwelling as much on the portrayal of participants' emotions and other aspects of their humanity as on sex.

Eroticist Anais Nin, for example, frequently refers to genital organs, but in such terms as "her sex" (p. 42), "his penis" (p. 27), "between her legs" (p. 14), "the stiffened sex of the dog" (p. 16), etc.

Pornography has a wider vocabulary of vernacular nouns, especially for the male organ, and these names are very often indicative of power, strength, or even violence, perhaps a manifestation of a generalized male reaction formation against their own unconscious "dread of women" (Lurie, 1979, in Lederer, 1980). The penis, for example, is frequently called 8 "tool," "rod," or "shaft." On page 77 of Cockcroft (1981) the term "slippery spear" is applied. On the same page the reader is told how, "Then, with one strong thrust, Terry imbedded his cock deep, far up inside her ass..." In another place, "Her cunt was a flesh magnet to that great steel cock." (p. 161); and in another, "His cock was surging upward, stiffening, swelling, becoming rigid, the head a bursting angry red in only a few seconds...The pointed, bursting-hard red spear of a head fascinated her.', (pp. 84, 72). Why this obviously violent emphasis on penile power and ability ("far beyond those of mortal men"), if not to compensate men's worst, unrecognized fears and vulnerabilities? Most overtly hurtful in its implications is the description of a woman "impaled...on that great hard javelin of muscle..." (p. 181. Erotica contains few, if any, of these warlike tendencies, except perhaps to occasionally acknowledge their existence in men.

In addition to depicting sexual relations as an act of conquest, pornography often furthers incorrect ideas about human anatomy, such as the notion that the penis is constructed of muscle tissue.

Without looking at Dill, she knew he was very still, not moving a muscle. At least not moving a muscle that showed. She was confident that there was some movement of muscle between his legs (p. 10.)

This particular anatomical inaccuracy (there being no muscle tissue in a penis) is interesting because of its fallacious ascription of power and strength to the penis.

Female genitalia are frequently described in relatively little detail, again, especially in pornographic as opposed to erotic literature. This is probably both a cause and a result of the socialized attitude, prevalent in both genders, that the vagina is inherently unattractive or dirty, though perhaps a necessary evil in the performance of heterosexual intercourse (see Masters, et al., 1982, pp. 30-331.) Another passage from Cockcroft (1981) illustrates the extent to which some writers will go to euphemize or transform the vagina into something less distasteful or even threatening to the male perception:

It's like a mouth, you know, my cunt. It has lips, and a tongue, and a palate, a very soft palate, and it can suck and lick and gobble and chew and swallow (p. 14.)

More realistic, as well as being written with a more emotionally sensitive tone, is Nin's (1979) description of an interaction involving manual stimulation:

His hand moved around my sex, and then around my ass, and it was as if he magnetized the blood to follow the movements of his hands. His finger touched the clitoris so gently, then slipped between the vulva. He felt the wetness. He touched this with delight, kissing me, lying over me now, and I did not move. The warmth, the smell of plants around me, his mouth over mine affected me like a drug (p. 80.)

Pornography robs sex of its humanity, presenting an endless array of bodies (mostly female), in various degrees of subjugation. No pornographic description of "sucking" or "blow-jobs" conveys the feeling of joy and shared excitement like a passage written in true erotic style. Nor, in this writer's opinion, is any as erotically or sensually arousing. In the way of contrast, consider the following two descriptions of oral sex, the first erotic (Nin, 1979), and the second pornographic (Cockcroft, 1981):

I learned to take his penis in my mouth. This excited him terribly. He would lose all his gentleness, push his penis into my mouth, and I was afraid of choking. Once I bit him, hurt him, but he didn't mind. I swallowed the white foam. When he kissed me our faces were covered with it. The marvelous smell of sex impregnated my fingers. I did not want to wash my hands. (p. 121)

and:

She leaned over him, then resting her kneels on a footstool..., and put her thumb under the base of his cock, rolling it around upwards so it lay on its back on his belly, and she licked the entire underside of his cock, barely touching it with the tip of her tongue, from the base up to the wrinkled shawl of soft skin around the neck. There her mouth lingered, her tongue licking, her soft moist lips murmuring something he couldn't hear, forming tiny soft sucking kisses. 'Denise just loves to suck cocks, Ralph,' he heard Yancy say. 'She'll love to fuck you too, after your cock comes up' (p. 163.)

The second passage takes twice as long to say not nearly as much, dwelling largely on description of, in minute detail, the appearance of Ralph's penis, and providing a blow-by-blow account of the movement of the prostitute's tongue.

The first account, written in the first person, focuses more on interpersonal factors, specific incidents, and feelings. It pictures a man and young woman making love with one another, leaving the reader refreshed and with a positive perception of the scene.

It has been charged by Andrea Dworkin (in Lederer, 1980, p. 148) that, far from concerning itself with sexuality, "pornography is about death." It is about power, she says, and the use of sex as a weapon; violence, domination, and conquest.

Erotica, however, concerns "a mutually pleasurable, sexual expression between people who enough power to be there by positive choice... It is truly sensuous, and may give us a contagion of pleasure" (Steinem in Lederer, 1980, p. 37.)

Dated: 10 May 1983

References

Cockcroft, B. (pseudonym?). Can't Stop The Sex. New York: Beeline Double Novels, Carlyle Communications, Inc., 1981.

Dworkin, A. Pornography's exquisite volunteers. Ms. March 1981, pp. 65, 66, 94, 96.

Kinsey, A.C., Pomeroy, W.B., Martin, C.E., and Gabhard, P.H. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: W.B. Sanders Co., 1953.

Lederer, L. (ed.) Take Back The Night: Women On Pornography. New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1980.

Masters, W. H., Johnson, V. E., and Kolodny, R. C. Human Sexuality. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1982.

Nin, A., Little Birds. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Javonvich, 1979.

U.S. Government. Report On The Commission On Obscenity And Pornography. New York: Bantam Books, 1970.