(Editor’s note, Rumpus reader Katie Ryder wrote in to complain about the sex ads on The Rumpus sex blog. Links are NSFW)
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So, this afternoon I was taking a coffee and Internet break from my long exciting day of cover letter writing, and I made my way to the Rumpus. There I checked out the Sex column, because I’d never been there before, and because, you know, I like sex.
I did the preliminary blog scroll through and came across the most recently posted advertisement – one for Sex and Submission. Because of the placement of the ad (central with all the regular postings) and the usual content of the Rumpus, I thought I was being brought to some sort of commentary on sex advertising. But alas, no, I am an idiot. I was brought to SexandSubmission.com. The coffee stains on my tablecloth can attest.
Let me first say that while I’ve had my back and forth sways with how I really feel about the porn world, I’m not someone who is categorically opposed to pornography. I might actually have some more hard-line ideas about how porn effects us in general – as individuals and as a collective, but I have also spent some time with a manfriend browsing the work of the pros. And definitely laughing. I’m 100% pro- open discussion of porn, both in frivolity and seriousness. So while what may have spilled my coffee this afternoon was a literal knee-jerk reaction to surprise penises, what kept me from returning to my scheduled day of job applying was something else.
Like Wally Lamb, I know some things to be true: The posting of these advertisements are all a part of the fun and games of the Rumpus, the ads may or may not actually bring in some cash-money to writing we care about, and they’re straight-up valid as postings on the sex section of a site that by its simplest definition comments on culture. But I still felt straight-up discouraged after I cleaned up my coffee.
Right now the first two featured advertisements on the Sex column are for “Sex and Submission” and “Hogtied” – both sites that fetishize violence against women in a way that I can’t just laugh at, and that I don’t want to support. I don’t begrudge anyone their sexual fantasy, and I support everyone going for their gold in any of the millions of safe, consensual ways to get off, including BDSM. But when the fantasy is defined by non-consensual violence, and the fantasy of the woman depicted is that of a victim, I get worried about the blurry edges. Maybe for some people these images are so elaborate, so unusual, that they don’t seem to have anything to do with our reality at all. And maybe, if we are very lucky, there will be a time in our future when the same images in fact don’t reflect our reality, and could then be funny in their absurdity, because we will be that far past real sexual violence.
But for now, while in the US 1 in 6 women you know will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and 3 women will be killed each day by an “intimate partner”, I don’t support advertising for a sight called Hogtied that ties up women like animals and profits from images of them in pain and distress. While the few pictures selected from Hogtied for the Rumpus feature clothed girls smiling and wearing rope (silly!), the site itself will hit you upfront with some very different images, as will Sex and Submission.
It should be noted that both Hogtied and Sex and Submission are subsets of Kink.com, which markets itself as “progressive…porn”, and thus is unusual in its claimed adherence to a “Values Statement”, which can be found on the Kink website. This is absolutely a good thing. But these are still images of violence against women that reap a profit. While it is clearly a tricky line that I am maneuvering, wishing to remain supportive of everyone’s right to sexual fantasy, I feel strongly that such images have the power to deeply limit our understanding of each other and ourselves, and contribute to a culture in which real violence against women is so commonplace. To the real people (non-corporate) fans of BDSM out there, I do love you, I just hate rape, and I hate when we treat each other like meat (see “Little Piece of Meat” on Sex and Submission. And by that I mean DON’T).
For those of you who have no interest in being hung from ceilings by rope, but just wish it could all be hilarious absurdity, like in the good old future when we don’t even remember the association of sex and real violence, I’m right there with you. But for now. While it’s ballsy and culturally aware and self-referential to post these kinds of ads, I just can’t laugh. And I love me some Rumpus and coffee without them.
