Of Priests and Pornographers in the Age of Coronavirus

It's interesting to note how, even in the middle of a global health crisis, we can rely on the superstitious and stubborn stupidity of priests to reassert itself, as well as the cynicism of pornographers attempting to peddle their wares by encouraging those in self-isolation to engage in auto-erotic activity. 

Thus, in Greece, despite the authorities issuing precautionary guidelines and suspending festive events and large public gatherings (as well as closing schools, museums, bars, restaurants, etc.), the Church announced that Holy Communion - in which the faithful share a spoon to eat pieces of bread soaked in wine from a chalice - will continue because the blood and body of Christ is without blemish and so cannot cause illness - in fact, if anything, it possesses the miraculous power to heal.

Amusingly, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, went on national TV to plead that religious duties be adjusted to reality, but, of course, when have true believers ever been concerned with the latter?  

In Italy, meanwhile, where millions of citizens are in almost total lockdown as the government there does what it can to halt the spread of coronavirus, Pornhub - one of the world's largest and most popular porn sites - is offering free access to premium content (usually available only to subscribers) until April 3rd.

In a tweet, Pornhub declared they felt duty bound to do what they could to help keep spirits up during such difficult times. Such generosity has won the company many new fans - which, of course, was the point. 

And so, it appears that whilst most shoppers are stocking up on toilet rolls, hand soap, and packets of pasta, some are buying sex toys and lube and looking to make the most of prolonged periods stuck at home, with or without a partner.     

Paradise is in the Palm of Your Hand: Notes on Wank Clubs

Illustration by Simon Abranowicz 
 GQ (Feb 26, 2019)

I wrote - jokingly - in a recent post that if they ever open an academy of masturbation then the following line from D. H. Lawrence (in Latin) would make an excellent motto above the main entrance and on the school crest: Paradise is in the palm of your hand.

Now someone writes to tell me that whilst they don't know of any such academies, there are, in fact, a growing number of wank clubs springing up in cities here in the UK and in the US. And to provide textual support for his claim, he has kindly provided the following link to a recent article in GQ magazine on why heterosexual males are increasingly forming and/or joining circle jerk societies or masturbation networks: click here. 

Unsurprisingly, the article is framed within all the usual touchy-feely language; group wanking is said to be powerfully liberating; transforming a traditionally solitary and shameful vice into an affirmative expression of masculinity and a communal bonding experience that allows men to explore their sexual orientation and identity in a safe and supportive space. 

Maybe it is: maybe it does. Or maybe that's over-egging the pudding somewhat and the simple fact is that perversions give pleasure. Whatever the case, one wonders why the individuals who join such clubs can't simply take up some other hobby, sport, or pastime in the company of other men - like fishing, for example (and no, that's not a typing error).

For homosociality needn't involve getting your cock out and masturbating, watching others masturbate, or engaging in mutual masturbation with strangers - although, note, I'm not saying it shouldn't and nor am I judging anyone who likes to engage in sexual games involving exhibitionism, voyeurism, onanistic fantasy, and/or bi-curiosity.

If you like that kind of thing - or even enjoy giving brojobs - then that's fine with me; but please, cut the crap surrounding such activities; wanking doesn't empower, set free, or provide a transgressive and healing form of transcendental fulfilment. These are as much myths as the stories that Victorians liked to tell themselves about masturbation causing madness, blindness, or hairy palms.      

That said, wank clubs do, I suppose, accelerate the queering of culture, counter homophobia, and increase the sale of lube ...

He Took It Out: Thoughts on the Case of Louis CK

Elaine's date with Phil Totola takes an unexpected turn

I. He Took It Out 

 

When asked by a friend to comment on recent cases of sexual misconduct involving male celebrities, including that of the comedian Louis CK who admitted to masturbating (or asking to masturbate) in front of various women on several occasions, I have to admit that my first thought was of a famous scene in an episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Stand-In' (S5/E16).

In the episode, written by Larry David, Jerry sets Elaine up on a date with one of his friends, Phil Totola, who, at the end of the evening, instead of simply accepting a goodnight kiss, indecently exposes himself. The next day, Elaine - played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus with perfect comic timing and delivery - tells Jerry what happened: "He took it out." 

Jerry is perplexed and somewhat disbelieving: "How can this be?" Kramer, however, after his initial shock reaction, offers a possible explanation (and justification): "Maybe it needed some air." Whilst for George, told by Jerry of the incident later at the coffee shop, it's a moment of revelation: "Wow! I spend so much time trying to get their clothes off, I never thought of taking mine off." 

No one - including Elaine - thinks of the incident as a form of sexual assault or harassment; it's inappropriate and unexpected behaviour, but it's not criminal, or worth getting particularly upset over. She isn't thinking of reporting the incident to the police and she's not going to require counselling. Ms Benes has no idea of herself as being a victim and she's not going to start an internet campaign, because such a thing would have been #inconceivable in 1994, a very different time and a very different world, to the one we live in today ...          

II. The Case of Louis CK

In November 2017, five women told The New York Times that Louis CK was guilty of gross acts of sexual misconduct. In a statement released 24-hours after the story broke, the comedian admitted that the allegations were true and he apologised at length to all parties concerned. 

Despite this public confession and heartfelt expression of regret, a predictable storm of moral outrage and feminist fury followed, seriously damaging his reputation and threatening to permanently derail his career (which was largely built upon his willingness to joke about taboo subjects, including masturbation, for which he clearly has a particular penchant).

Asked to comment on the case of his friend Louis CK, Jerry Seinfeld amusingly seemed just as perplexed as when his fictional self heard about Phil Totola: How can this be? For him, such aberrant sexual behaviour doesn't even make sense; he can't understand why a man would want to strip naked and masturbate in front of a woman - even though, within the pornographic imagination, CFNM is a well-established (if somewhat niche) genre. 

Naturally, the media has also called upon various psychologists and therapists to help explain Louis CK's behaviour ...

III. Reflections on Male Sexuality

According to the experts, such behaviour is not simply exhibitionism; masturbating in front of another person without their consent is far more complex than erotic display. Ultimately, they say, it's not even about gaining sexual pleasure so much as it's about exercising power and control and should be seen, therefore, as a form of aggression; specifically, a form of violence against women.

Well, maybe ... but maybe not.

One might alternatively suggest that rather than see this as a sort of high-end form of gunning intended to embarrass, humiliate, or terrify women, maybe we can view it as a joyful and innocent expression of male libido once the latter has been freed from all the usual constraints placed upon it due to the privileged position enjoyed by these very successful and talented men.

Push comes to shove, I tend to agree with the poet and cultural critic Simon Solomon, who calls for a new narrative "if only to break this dangerous and disturbing cycle of women publicly recounting tales of fleeting sexual encounters months - or even years - after the alleged incidents took place, and of men accused of conduct deemed to be improper being obliged to enter therapy where they're taught to feel ashamed of their actions, desires, and fantasies."

The attempt to demonise and pathologise male sexuality is, Solomon continues, "not only detrimental to the psychic health and physical well-being of men, but it has negative consequences also for those women who love them." For as Marcuse points out, the continual repression of man's instinctual life and the frustration of his most active forces - what Nietzsche terms the taming of man - ultimately has the effect of weakening the latter and thus ensuring their becoming-reactive.

As William Blake wrote: He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence ...

Notes

Click here to watch a clip from the Seinfeld episode discussed above.

Click here to watch Jerry Seinfeld asked by Dana Weiss for his view of the Louis CK case. 

The lines attributed to Simon Solomon are paraphrased (with the author's permission) from an email sent on 2 March, 2018. 

See: William Blake, 'Proverbs from Hell', The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). 

For a follow-up post to this one, with further thoughts on male sexual display etc., click here.

Self-Enjoyment and Concern Part 2: The Aesthetico-Ethical Case For Masturbation

No wanker wanks twice

  

In his final book, Modes of Thought (1938), Whitehead argues that life implies immediate and absolute self-enjoyment. What I'd like to do here, is perversely interpret this theory of auto-affection and show how it might relate to the question of masturbation in a manner that allows us to conceive of wanking as a vital pleasure, rather than an unnatural vice; a pleasure which enables solosexuals to experience life directly by taking it in hand.

Further, Whitehead's philosophy enables us to think of pleasure as immanent to the act of masturbating; non-dependent upon the achievement of any goal or static result, including orgasm. A wank, as it were, unfolds entirely in and for itself, without conditions and without reference to any other living moment.          

So far of course, this merely reinforces the case that D. H. Lawrence and Rae Langton have against masturbation. But Whitehead goes further and affords us the opportunity to construct a novel defence of self-enjoyment; to argue that each occasion one jerks off is an activity of concern. Concern, that is to say - in feeling and in aim - with things and bodies that lie beyond it. This, insists Whitehead, is concern understood in the Quaker sense of that term.

Steven Shaviro - upon whose excellent reading of Whitehead I'm reliant here - provides a convenient explanation of this latter point:

"For the Quakers, concern implies a weight on the spirit. When something concerns me, I cannot ignore it or walk away from it. It presses on my being and compels me to respond. Concern, therefore, is an involuntary experience of being affected by others. It opens me, in spite of myself, to the outside. It compromises my autonomy, leading me toward something beyond myself." [14-5]

In other words - and contrary to what Lawrence and Langton believe - we masturbate from out of a concern with (and a desire for) others; it's a relational activity, even if the enjoyment is purely private and personal. Ultimately, masturbation is a way of reaching out and coming into touch with others and not just touching ourselves in an inappropriate manner.

Unfortunately, Lawrence and Langton confuse the fundamental difference between these two closely bound but contrasting conditions of self-enjoyment and concern; or, rather, they see the first but are blind to the latter. But as Shaviro points out, you can't have one without the other; for concern is itself a kind of enjoyment and both are "movements, or pulsations, of emotion" [16].    

Thus, whilst masturbation may not directly involve others, it always keeps them in mind. It's also, crucially, not an atemporal phenomenon; we may wank in the present, but we do so with fond memories of past experience and projected towards the hope and the promise of sexual contacts still to come. In other words, masturbation is "deeply involved with the antecedent occasions from which it has inherited and with the succeeding occasions to which it makes itself available" [15].

It's because we come in a way that unites and affirms our life not just in the living moment, but across time, that wanking is transformed from simple self-enjoyment into concern: "Conversely, concern or other-directedness is itself a necessary precondition for even the most intransitive self-enjoyment ..." [15]. For no wank is ideal, or ever entirely without object.

And, what's more, no masturbating subject ever experiences the same wank twice; each and every wank is selected from a boundless wealth of alternatives, thus ensuring that masturbation, as a philosophical practice, "has to do with the multiplicity and mutability of our ways of enjoyment, as these are manifested even in the course of what an essentialist thinker would regard as the 'same' situation" [18].

In sum - and to reiterate - the joy and the excitement felt by a happy masturbator, is always derived from the past and aimed at the future. As Whitehead says: "'It issues from, and it issues towards ...'" [16] someone, something, or somewhere else. But it's important to note that it doesn't really matter who, what or where; what matters is the activity of wanking itself as an event that explores modes of thought, styles of being, and contingent interactions.  

I don't know whether masturbation can be said to be beautiful - though it certainly belongs to any ars erotica worthy of the name. But it can, I think, be said to be ethical (if in a somewhat illicit sense) and, as such, part and parcel of a good life conceived as something physically embodied. Indeed, what Whitehead offers us, says Shaviro, is an "aestheticized account of ethics" [24] in contrast to any categorical imperative.

And what I've attempted here is to illustrate how such an ethic might result from masturbation - i.e. concern is the consequence of wanking, rather than the basis of its value or its moral justification; something which "cannot be separated from self-enjoyment, much less elevated above it" [25].

See: Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things, (University of Minnesota Press, 2014). All lines quoted and all page numbers given above refer to the first chapter of this book: 'Self-Enjoyment and Concern'. 

To read part 1 of this post - The Moral Case Against Masturbation - click here. 

Self-Enjoyment and Concern Part 1: The Moral Case Against Masturbation

D. H. Lawrence and Rae Langton

According to D. H. Lawrence, the one thing that it seems impossible to escape from, once the habit is formed, is masturbation; a simple pleasure that he regards, for a number of reasons, as the most dangerous of all sexual vices. Chief among these reasons, for Lawrence, is the fact that masturbation is a form of fatal self-enclosure rather than just innocent self-enjoyment; a vicious circle of narcissism and nullity that causes the breaking of bonds between people formed via an exchange of mutual affection and results in a state of inertia, each man and woman trapped and isolated within the dirty little secret of themselves.      

Eighty years later and the feminist philosopher, Rae Langton, is still making much the same argument in her work on what she terms sexual solipsism; leading a liberal crusade not only against pornography and objectification, but against masturbation too, as a form of self-objectification, thereby betraying her Kantian roots. 

For Langton, committed masturbators, playing all alone with their sex toys, are not merely sad losers and reactive fantasists, they're unethical. And they're unethical because they show no genuine interest in - or concern for - others and their otherness. Happy to imaginatively explore their own bodies and their own desires, Langton regards their auto-erotic activity as so inauthentic, as to border on the inhuman. 

For we have, writes Langton, a duty as human beings to love others as others and to open ourselves up to that which we are not. In so doing, we unlock the prison of the self and nourish the virtues. Further, we impose an obligation upon others to love us in return. And so, in this way, we slowly erect a moral utopia established upon love, reciprocity, and transparency of the feelings.

Now, readers who are intimately familiar with this blog will doubtless recall that I've discussed this material previously: click here, for example, for a post on masturbation as a form of sex in the head; or here, for another critical summary of Rae Langton's musings in this area. I suppose we might deduce that something else which seems impossible to escape from, once the habit has been formed, is writing about masturbation ...

However, with apologies for any repetition and at the risk of boring readers for whom masturbation isn't such a pressing issue, I would like to offer in the second part of this post a new perspective on this subject; an aesthetico-ethical defence of masturbation as an activity of concern - not merely self-enjoyment - inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher whose thought has recently been subject to a (post-Deleuzean) revival of interest after a prolonged period of neglect.

To go to part two of this post, please click here.


See:

Rae Langton, Sexual Solipsism, (Oxford University Press, 2009), particularly chapters 14 and 15. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

On Masturbation and the Invocation of Pan

According to archetypal psychologist James Hillman, masturbation is a universal practice which is legitimate as a form of sexual behaviour in its own right and not to be considered a poor substitute for coition. What's more, masturbation is not for Hillman merely a simple pleasure; it exemplifies rather the important relationship between mythology and pathology and is divinely sanctioned by the great god Pan whom it invokes and enacts within the flesh.

It would, of course, be easy to laugh at this line of thinking - a line that I know all too well and followed all too closely in my youth - but where I think Hillman is to be commended is in his insistence that masturbation is not an eruptive sexual urge and that the association with Pan is therefore not merely a means of dressing up the old idea of the uncontrollable beast in man.  

Despite the language used, Hillman's analysis is sophisticated enough to allow for the fact that both the will to masturbation and the will to inhibition which accompanies and diverts it, belong to the same instinctual matrix; i.e. that the latter is not merely socially constructed in order to frustrate a more primal desire.

Just as moralists mistakenly branded masturbation an evil because it seemed to serve no biological or social purpose, so too have sex radicals confused the shame which accompanies masturbation with an internalised authority in need of overthrowing. Hillman recognises the traditional moral standpoint to be misguided, but so too does he interrogate the attempt to liberate masturbation from the restraining prohibition which is such a crucial element of the compulsion itself. For Hillman, sex radicalism and secular humanism ultimately risk making masturbation meaningless:

"Deprived of its fantasy, shame and conflict, masturbation becomes nothing but physiology, an inborn release mechanism without significance for the soul".

In other words, in seeking to make masturbation a harmless activity, we reduce the mystery of Pan - and for Hillman this is a bad thing. For Hillman wishes to re-enchant the world via a "re-education of the citizen in relation to nature". However, he's keen to stress that this re-education "goes deeper than the nymph consciousness of awe and gentleness" and that a Romantic love of the countryside is not enough:

"The re-education of the citizen would have to begin at least partly from Pan’s point of view … But Pan’s world includes masturbation, rape, panic, convulsions, and nightmares. The re-education of the citizen in relation to nature means nothing less than a new relationship with these ‘horrors’, ‘moral depravities’, and ‘madnesses’ which are part of the instinctual life …"

Rightly or wrongly, Hillman insists that by intensifying interiority with a complex mix of joy and shame, masturbation “brings genital pleasure, fantasy, and conflict to the individual as psychic subject" and ultimately opens the way towards a neo-pagan future ...    


See: James Hillman, Pan and the Nightmare, (Continuum, 2000).

Note: this post is a revised and edited extract from an essay on masturbation in The Treadwell's Papers 1: Sex/Magic (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). Readers interested in two related posts, also extracted from the above essay, should click here and here.

Sexual Solipsism

Clive Barker, The Happy Masturbator, (1997)

Recently, I attended a very interesting research seminar at Senate House. The paper, presented by Professor Marco Wan of Hong Kong University, examined the obscenity trial that resulted from publication of Paul Bonnetain's novel Charlot s'amuse in 1883 - the story of a serial masturbator told in a naturalist style much influenced by Zola. 

Despite causing a huge scandal at the time, the work is little read today outside of French literary circles and the author, who died in 1899 aged just forty-one, is mostly a forgotten figure. Interestingly, however, 130 years after Charlot s'amuse, the subject of masturbation is one that still attracts moral condemnation from philosophers who place themselves in a feminist Kantian tradition in order to critique pornography; philosophers such as Rae Langton, for example.

Langton has two main concerns, which she relates to the question of pornography: the first is the sexual objectification of women (pre-given as a bad thing per se in her work); the second is the sexual solipsism that men, as the primary consumers of pornography, fall into via the solitary vice of masturbation. In brief, Langton argues that in a pornified world of objectified women, men too pay a heavy price; i.e. by mistaking women for things and substituting things for real women, they ultimately isolate and dehumanise themselves.

Now it could be that there is something in this argument. But Langton overlooks the fact that men are not quite alone in a world of objectified women. For not only do they still have one another to form relations with of a social, fraternal, and, indeed, sexual nature if they so desire, but they also have their animal companions and, as everybody knows, a man's best friend is his dog. 

Further, as Simone de Beauvoir was obliged to concede, not all men would regard an isolated and solipsistic existence as problematic. Indeed, for many it would be a more attractive option than a supposedly authentic relationship with another human being. The world of the masturbator may not be deeply fulfilling, but it's by no means unhappy and perhaps a little superficial physical pleasure means more today than vague promises of spiritual satisfaction and the soul's consummation via union with another.  

Langton, however, insists - and this is never a good sign in someone who claims to be a philosopher - that there has to be an escape from solipsism, as if it were the worst kind of trap to fall into. And she insists that in order to make this escape "some of the beings with whom one interacts must be people (not things); and one must treat them as people (not as things)" [Sexual Solipsism, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 312]. 

Ultimately, for Langton, this is a matter of moral duty: one must not fuck dolls, or jerk off over on-line images. Rather, one must seek out a real lover to hold in one's arms. For when sex is something you do with a thing, you reduce your own ontological status and become self-objectified. Kant has no sympathy for those 'worms' who violate themselves in this manner. And neither does Langton much care for those who remain shut up inside their own heads, alone with their own fantasies, when they could (and should) be sharing with others in a paradise of love and total transparency.

And here, we arrive at the crux of the matter: for Langton, there is a fundamental human need to unburden the heart and communicate the self. To articulate the body, she says, rather than masturbate it, "enables us better to learn what we think and feel and desire" [361].

This, in my view, is not only optimistic and naive, it is also highly sinister. For we know now how confession serves ultimately to better enable correction; that we have been encouraged to speak the self  historically in order that our thoughts and feelings may be judged and corrected by others. Humanists like Kant and Langton always promise to lead us out of our solipsistic and fallen condition into communal bliss, but they just as invariably end up marching us into drab social conformity and ugly moral convention.

And so there is, I think, something to be said for those who want to keep themselves to themselves and indulge private fantasies behind closed doors; better the solipsist and the solitary masturbator than the fascist who compels speech, or the moral exhibitionist exposing themselves in the name of Love.