Ann Garry: ‘Sex, Lies, and Respect’

Garry wants to assess whether pornography can be considered morally objectionable. She distinguishes between the view that pornography is wrong (because it is sick and nasty, sex is dirty, etc.) and a more feminist point of view.

(1) She thinks that pornography obviously involves sexual objectification (it’s PORN after all). The question is whether the content of pornography can degrade women (i.e. lower their status in humanity). She thinks that the content of porn obviously does degrade in some cases (as when women are shown as wanting to be raped and beaten). However the deeper question is whether the content of porn can degrade through sexual objectification.

(2) The issue of respect. There is a traditional way in which a woman might lose ‘respect’. Here ‘respect’ is to be understood as in ‘Will you still respect me in the morning?’. It is a specific sort of respect that women in particular can maintain or lose. So a woman who has too much sex (or the wrong kind of sex) may no longer be ‘respected’ by people. She may no longer be the ‘marrying type’.

According to Garry, this notion of ‘respect’ is built upon the Good girl (Virgin)/ Bad girl (Whore) dichotomy. A woman who retains her ‘respect’ can remain a ‘Good girl’. A woman who loses this respect becomes a ‘Bad girl’.

 According to Garry this notion of ‘respect’ is also built upon the double-standard according to which men who sleep around are praised (‘gain respect’?)  and women who sleep around ‘lose respect’.

Both the dichotomy and the double-standard can be objected to on feminist grounds. The dichotomy seems designed to control female sexuality (and secure a patrilineal system). Garry points out, that even the ‘good girl’ isn’t respected in a feminist sense. This is to say: She is not respected as a full human being (she’s a good wife, a good help-mate, a good second-class citizen, etc.).

            So Garry differentiates herself from traditional critiques of pornography which worry about a loss of ‘respect’ in the traditional sense. Garry is concerned

about how the very system of this kind of ‘loss of respect’ is based about anti-feminist principles. Rather than playing the game, she is interested in analyzing it.

(3) Sex as harm. Garry appeals to the work of Baker. Baker argues that sex (heterosexual penis-vagina penetration) is connected to the notion of harm. In order to show this he considers the following sentences:

(A) “Dick fucked Jane”

(B) “Jane fucked Dick”

He argues that while (A) is a grammatically correct way of speaking, (B) is not.

Now Baker wrote this article back in the early 70’s. So things have changed. And it would seem (B) is also a correct way of speaking. But it may have multiple meanings. In one sense, in may simple mean that Jane is having sex very actively.

On the other hand, it may mean that she penetrated Dick. This last sense is presumably the older sense. But note that we can see how the word “fuck” involves a doer and a done to (penetrater/penetrated), and it sets up the former as active and the latter as passive. In the more modern sense of the word it may not involve penetration. Instead it may only mean ‘active’ sex.

            Anyway, Baker’s argument is that we also use the word “fuck” to suggest harm:

(C) “John really fucked me over. I’ll never do business with me again.”

(D) “I never studied for the test. I am totally fucked.”

He argues that metaphor involves similarity, and so if the word “fuck” is being used as a metaphor in these cases, it must be because in both cases harm is involved (i.e. to ‘be fucked’ is to ‘be harmed).

Another argument: When sex is ‘fucking’ it may be precisely the kind of activity that results in a loss of traditional ‘respect’ for a woman (by contrast, ‘making love’ or even ‘having sex’ may preserve her traditional ‘respect’). If this is right, then the activity of ‘fucking’ in particular is a species of sex that involves harm (i.e. loss of respect).

Even if one rejected the view of ‘traditional respect’ as anti-feminist, it doesn’t mean that ‘fucking’ doesn’t have the power to harm in the real world. (Consider the fact that ‘swear words’ and flipping somebody the bird is a purely social convention that may differ culturally. Nonetheless, they may be used to inflict real disrespect).

In this way, Garry argues that there are genuine feminist concerns about the sexually objectifying (and degrading) content of pornography that does not reduce to more traditional concerns about ‘filth’.

Some final considerations:

 I suggest that this can help us analyze ‘normal sex’ in greater depth. Recall the concerns that I raised about consent and bogus moral obligations. The worry now is that heterosexual penis-vagina penetration may have different manifestations. By this I mean that it can be viewed in different ways (as having sex, as making love, as ‘fucking’). Notice: It’s not just a matter of how we describe a physical activity. Rather the physical activity must be assessed within a broader context. For example, if it occurs within marriage of two people who love each and who are expressing their love for each other, then we describe the activity ‘making love’. If it is taking place at a seedy model between two strangers, then it seems to be ‘fucking’.

The point is not just that the same activity is described in different ways. The point is that there are completely different activities involved. An analogy: Killing somebody in self-defense is different from murder. But in both cases it involves pulling the trigger (for example). However, the overall context matters in determining what kind of activity it actually is.

This means that heterosexual ‘fucking’ can be a real social activity that involves harming women. A more expanded analysis of this would involve exploring the dichotomy between ‘fucking’ and ‘making love’ (is this analogous to the Whore/Virgin dichotomy)?

Are there other sorts of sexual sex, other ways of being? My guess is that many women  try to find their way through life without being EITHER a virgin or a whore. They may engage in an in between activity that is neither ‘making love’ nor ‘fucking’ but rather ‘having sex’. This may open women up to especially tricky double-binds.