Introduction Story of O Is One of the Most Important Explicitly
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129 Pornography in the Library* David Squires Thus, Less Than Twenty-Four
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Humanities Commons NOT FOR CITATION Pornography in the Library* David Squires Thus, less than twenty-four hours after her arrival during her second day there, she was taken after the meal into the library, there to serve coffee and tend the fire. Jeanne, whom the black-haired valet had brought back, went with her as did another girl named Monique. It was this same valet who took them there and remained in the room, stationed near the stake to which O had been attached. The library was still empty. The French doors faced west, and in the vast, almost cloudless sky the autumn sun slowly pursued its course, its rays lighting, on a chest of drawers, an enormous bouquet of sulphur-colored chrysanthemums which smelled of earth and dead leaves. Pauline Réage1 I. A perverted library When Grove Press put out an American edition of Story of O in 1965, the publication did not initiate a momentous legal battle over obscenity, nor did it face aggressive censorship campaigns. Generally speaking, it did not even shock public tastes or outrage critics. The translation hit shelves in a plain white wrapper that indicated the book’s title and its intended audience (“limited to adults”) after Grove Press had already engaged a series of high-profile legal battles over so-called modern classics Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer.2 By 1965, Story of O had accrued the peculiar distinction of winning the Prix des Deux Magots at the same time as weathering a publicity ban in France. -
Name Upon Name.Indd
Name upon Name Encountering Pauline Réage Dominique Aury Anne Desclos by Gregory Stephenson “Through me forbidden voices, voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil.” —Walt Whitman The pornographic paperback with an incongruously chaste white cover had been circulating around the barracks for some weeks before the now creased and curling copy came into my hands. Up to this time of my young life, the only explicit erotic writing that I had read was the thick Grove Press paperback of My Life and Loves by Frank Harris and that was all roguish and rollicking and jolly. This book was something altogether different. This was stern and severe, stark and solemn. And hauntingly strange. The year was 1967, the place was Fort McClellan, Alabama; I was twenty years old, and the book was Story of O by Pauline Réage.1 I read it with intense interest but little real attention, ignoring altogether the learned prefaces by Jean Paulhan and André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Yet even the most casual reader must ultimately find himself implicated in the paradoxes and ambiguities of this unsettling novel. For here is a story with its well- springs in the deepest recesses of consciousness, those William James named “the darker, blinder strata of character;” a story revelatory of the mystery, the power and peril of the erotic appetite. I was, to be sure, intrigued by the 2 book, aroused and even discomposed while reading it, but—having once finished it and quickly going on to readI, Jan Cremer, another sexy Grove Press publication—I thought little more about it, except to feel a kind of lingering low-key awe. -
Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: an Investigation of Anti- Woman Perspectives Among Leathermen
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Sociology Department, Faculty Publications Sociology, Department of 5-2020 Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: An Investigation of Anti- Woman Perspectives among Leathermen Meredith G. F. Worthen University of Oklahoma, [email protected] Trenton M. Haltom University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sociologyfacpub Part of the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, and the Social Psychology and Interaction Commons Worthen, Meredith G. F. and Haltom, Trenton M., "Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: An Investigation of Anti-Woman Perspectives among Leathermen" (2020). Sociology Department, Faculty Publications. 707. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sociologyfacpub/707 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology Department, Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. digitalcommons.unl.edu Fifty Shades of Leather and Misogyny: An Investigation of Anti-Woman Perspectives among Leathermen Meredith G. F. Worthen1 and Trenton M. Haltom2 1 University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA; 2 University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA Corresponding author — Meredith G. F. Worthen, University of Oklahoma, 780 Van Vleet Oval, KH 331, Norman, OK 73019; [email protected] ORCID Meredith G. F. Worthen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6765-5149 Trenton M. Haltom http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1116-4644 Abstract The Fifty Shades books and films shed light on a sexual and leather-clad subculture predominantly kept in the dark: bondage, discipline, submission, and sadomasoch- ism (BDSM). -
Kinky Sex: When Did BDSM Become So Wildly Popular? by Carl Frankel, Alternet Posted on June 2, 2010, Printed on June 7, 2010
Kinky Sex: When Did BDSM Become So Wildly Popular? By Carl Frankel, AlterNet Posted on June 2, 2010, Printed on June 7, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/147084/ It’s just another day at The Armory in San Francisco: A bound and naked woman is laid out on a stylish serving table. Elegantly-dressed people of both sexes gather around—enjoying the view, apparently—and take turns having their way with her. Various devices are deployed— dildos, floggers, electrical stimulators. She says “Thank you, sir” and “Thank you, madam” frequently. Welcome to "The Upper Floor," a high-definition Internet reality show where, website copy states, “real submissive women and real submissive men become house slaves to be dominated, trained, punished, spanked, whipped, and fucked … Inspired by the legendary French BDSM erotic novel The Story of O, The Upper Floor illustrates real lifestyle BDSM as it is lived by 24/7 slaves and Masters, complete with … explicit sex in bondage, punishment, erotic humiliation, and more.” The Upper Floor is a project of Kink.com, a thriving pornography business that was founded by Peter Acworth, a British-born entrepreneur and lifelong aficionado of BDSM (for Bondage, Domination, Submission—or Sadism—and Masochism). Kink.com sells subscriptions to websites with names like Hogtied.com, SexandSubmission.com and, yes, TheUpperFloor.com. Acworth often attends these, er, corporate events. “He’s the master of the house,” says colleague John Sander. Only in Satan’s City by the Bay, right? Not exactly. Acworth was recently invited to speak at a summit on innovation convened by the ever-so-respectable The Economist. -
3 Objectification, Complicity, and Coldness: the Story of O's
3 Objectification, Complicity, and Coldness: The Story of O’s Narratives of Femininity and Precarity FOR A BOOK that has engendered so much commentary, The Story of O begins unassumingly, with a walk in the park: “Her lover one day takes O for a walk in a section of the city where they never go—the Montsouris Park.”1 From there the narrative progresses rapidly. René, her lover, deposits O at Roissy, a castle, where she is stripped, penetrated orally, anally, and vaginally and taught how to submit. After her initia- tion, the narrative ricochets between S&M tableaux and descriptions of O at work. O is given to another lover, goes away for further training, and is pierced and branded as a sign of her bondage to Sir Stephen. In one of two endings offered, O has become a living statue in an owl cos- tume; in another, she asks to die because her lover has lost interest in her. The novel caused an immediate stir when it was published in France in 1954.2 Written by Pauline Réage (later unmasked as Dominique Aury), The Story of O won the Prix de Deux Magots for emerging voices in literature but was also subject to censorship from the French government. One of the main axes of contention was the identity of the author. Pauline Réage was previously unknown: Was she really a woman? Could women write such erotica? In his introduction to the text, the publisher Jean Paulhan pleads ignorance but argues that the text suggests that the author, whoever Réage might actually be, is really a woman.3 As evidence, he points to her attention to detail—“the green satin dresses, wasp-waist corsets, and skirts rolled up a number of turns (like hair rolled up in a curler)”—and to the narrator’s persistent selfless- ness: “When René abandons O to still further torments, she still man- ages to have enough presence of mind to notice that her lover’s slippers are frayed, and notes that she will have to buy him another pair. -
Department Regulation No
Department Regulation No. C-02-009 Offender Mail and Publications Revised 02 July 2019 REJECTION LIST Publications: A Witches Bible – The Complete Witches Handbook Airbrush Action – September/October 2010, March/April 2016 Airbrush Bible AL-HAGG Newsletter Volume 10 Issue 3 Al-Haq Allure - May 2008, December 2011, March 2017 Alternative Revolution – Issue #14 American Art Collector – June 2014 Issue #104, July 2014, #108 October 2014, #109 November 2014, February 2015 American Artist - Spring 2009, May 2010, November 2011, October 2012 American Curves – June 2006, July 2006, November 2006, January 2007, Eye Candy for Men – February 2007, May 2007, Duos Spring 2007, #34 – June 2007, Eye Candy – August 2007 – To Be Displayed Until October 16, 2007, October 2007, Presents Lingerie Magazine – November 2007– December 2007, February 2008, Eye Candy for Men – March 2008, May 2008, June 2008, July 2008, December 2008, Eye Candy for Men - January 2009, February 2009, Eye Candy for Men - May 2009, April 2010, Summer 2012, American Photo - September 2008, November/December 2008, January/February 2009, March/April 2009, May/June 2009, September 2009, May/June 2011 Amerikkkan Prisons on Trial – Guilty! – Number 11-1996 An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons & True Stories – Volume #2 Angel Song – A glorious collection of heavenly bodies by SQP (Volume #1) Anti-Racist Action – Volume 25 #2 April/June 2012 Art in America - September 2008, October 2008, May 2010, March 2016, June/July 2016 Artists Magazine - October 2009, September 2012, November -
Michell Ward (Ohio University)
eSharp Issue 6:1 Identity and Marginality Empowerment in Chains: Exploring the Liberatory Potential of Masochism Michell Ward (Ohio University) The empowered woman so often given to us by the traditional feminist movement is happy, healthy, and capable of doing anything and going anywhere. While she might face challenges in her life, she will overcome them and emerge from them stronger and more powerful. This is not the empowered woman that Kathy Acker creates in Empire of the Senseless (1988); indeed, this form of empowerment would be impossible in the chaotic and cruel world that she creates. Empowerment in Acker’s fiction, especially in regards to women, takes the form of violence turned inwards. Characters who are incapable of controlling their worlds are left with little option but to learn to control themselves; specifically they must learn to control their response to the pain which they will inevitably experience living in their shattered society. Though the characters in Empire of the Senseless do gain a form of control over their lives by appropriating pain, it is unclear whether or not masochism has revolutionary potential because it outwardly reinforces hierarchical power structures at the same time as it subverts them for the individual. Masochism in Empire of the Senseless takes on a very specific form that diverges from most traditional conceptions of masochism as a sexual practice. It appears neither as the consensual and mutually satisfying sexual act that appears in many positive depictions of sadomasochism, nor is it characterized as a glossed-over form of abuse as negative depictions often portray it. -
Sadomasochism to BDSM: Discourse Across Disciplines Jacqui Williams Monash University
Sadomasochism to BDSM: Discourse Across Disciplines Jacqui Williams Monash University Recent studies have revealed the stigma faced by practitioners of the sexual practice of BDSM (bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, masochism). This stigma affects practitioners’ ability to be open about their sexuality and raises the question: why is this the case in this socio-historical moment? In answer, this paper analyses discourses regarding BDSM across the disciplinary boundaries of psychiatry, sociology, feminism and law. It investigates some key historical moments in the development of these discourses and reveals two discursive formations that continue to affect practitioners: pathologised practitioner and BDSM as violence. Further, this paper demonstrates how these discourses permeate the social world through the narratives produced in popular culture, and looks at the place of practitioners in these discursive formations. The sexual practice of BDSM, more commonly known as sadomasochism, is as complex as it is varied.1 Theorists frequently struggle at succinct definitions due to the range of practices involved and the changing and subjective meanings for individual practitioners.2 However, some common features are the consensual exchange of power through dominance and submission, the inclusion of pain or intense stimulation, elements of role-taking or role play, and various levels of bondage.3 Practitioners combine activities in a 'scene' or encounter and importantly these scenes are discussed and negotiated beforehand.4 Safewords (used to slow or halt play) are agreed upon and the consensual nature of the interaction is fundamental.5 Recent studies have shown that some practitioners of BDSM face issues of discrimination and stigmatisation which affect their lives and mental well-being.6 They 1 BDSM stands for: bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, masochism. -
The Feminist Sex Wars: 1975-1986 University of Michigan Winter 2018 January 3, 2018
The Feminist Sex Wars: 1975-1986 University of Michigan Winter 2018 January 3, 2018 ANTHROPOLOGY 658.003 WOMEN’S STUDIES 698.004 AMERICAN CULTURE 601.011 Wednesday 1:00PM-4:00PM 210 West Hall Professor: Gayle Rubin [email protected] Office Hours: Monday 1:30- 3PM or by appointment 104B West Hall 647-0947 COURSE DESCRIPTION This seminar is an excavation and exploration of a piece of the history of the present. The aim is to make sense of some common contemporary discourses on pornography, sexual representation, and sexual conduct by exploring their sources in feminist political conflicts of four decades ago, as well as examining how the feminist engagement in these issues was entangled in other trajectories of conflicts over sexual representation and sexual media. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the feminist movement was rent by a series of acrimonious debates over issues relating to sexual conduct and representation. While there were disputes over many aspects of sexual behavior, some of the most intense controversy focused on “pornography,” although the definition of what constituted “pornography” was itself contested. Nonetheless, the roles of certain kinds of sexual imagery and behaviors in the creation and maintenance of male supremacy, and their causal relationships to violence against women, were contested with unusual ferocity. While these debates have largely subsided within feminism, they have not disappeared. Moreover, they continually affect a variety of other cultural conflicts which erupt on an almost daily basis. Debates about government funding of sexually explicit art, concern over the putative dangers of on-line sexual content, and struggles over what imagery is appropriate for public display are constant features of the cultural landscape. -
The Use of Gender in the Interpretation of BDSM
Article Sexualities 0(0) 1–26 The use of gender in the ! The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: interpretation of BDSM sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1363460717737488 journals.sagepub.com/home/sex Brandy L Simula Emory University, USA J Sumerau University of Tampa, USA Abstract In this article, we explore the ways BDSM practitioners negotiate gender. Based on 32 in-depth interviews with BDSM practitioners and thousands of message board posts from the then-largest online BDSM community in the USA, we explore the explanatory frameworks BDSM practitioners use to (1) downplay and (2) emphasize dominant notions of gender to make sense of BDSM practices and experiences. In so doing, we discuss some ways BDSM practices and interpretations may both challenge and reproduce broader societal patterns of gender inequality. In conclusion, we draw out implications for understanding (1) variation in the utilization of gender beliefs and assumptions within BDSM cultures, and (2) the consequences these patterns have for the reproduction of gender inequality. Keywords BDSM, gender beliefs, interpretive frameworks, kink, social psychology In the contemporary USA, gender is one of three primary person categories (along with race and age) people consistently and continually rely on to interpret the bodies of others and guide interactions with one another (e.g. Brewer and Lui, 1989; Fiske, 1998; Ridgeway, 1991, 2009). Ridgeway (2009, 2011) explains that sex category and gender work together as a primary frame for interaction through which people make themselves intelligible to others. As a primary person category and primary frame for interaction, gender is a social system that all individuals in the contemporary USA must negotiate daily. -
The Cultural Politics of 50 Shades of Grey
Justus-Liebig-Universität-Gießen Institut für Anglistik Seminar: Lusting after Submission? The Cultural Politics of 50 Shades of Grey Lusting after Submission? The Cultural Politics of 50 Shades of Grey Reading Journal Louis Bördner Table of contents 1. Robin West: The Erotic Appeal of Submission…………………………………...1 1.1.Introduction…………………………………………………………………….1 1.2 Central Aspects………………………………………………………………...1 1.2.1 The Erotic Appeal of Submission……………………………………… .....1 1.2.2 The Pornography Debate…………………………………………………..2 1.3 Discussion……………………………………………………………………...3 2. Franziska Mader: Ästhetik des Ersten Mals………………………………………6 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………6 2.2 Central Aspects…………………………………………………… …………..6 2.2.1 Visual Representations……………………………………………….........8 2.3 Discussion……………………………………………………………………..9 3. Andrea Dworkin: The Root Cause........................................................................11 3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………..11 3.2 Central Aspects…………………………………………………………….....12 3.3 Discussion……………………………………………………………….........14 1 1. West, Robin L. (2001). “ The Erotic Appeal of Submission“ (199 - 209) 1.1. Introduction In an article to be found in the Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal (15: 199 - 201), Robin L. West investigates “the erotic appeal of submission” (199) on the background of diffe rences in women’s hedonic lives , repeatedly adducing Desclos’ Story of O (1954) before relativizing the radical feminist debate about pornography . 1.2 Central Aspects 1.2.1 The Erotic Appeal of Submission: In terms of sexual submission, West (2001) empha sizes the necessity to distinguish between erotic appeal and value based on t rust and its danger based on fear. In the widest sense, both can lead to submission, the difference being that trust is a source of pleasure, while fear is a source o f pain, damag e and injury (2001: 201) . -
Passion, Politics, and Politically Incorrect Sex: Towards a History Of
PASSION, POLITICS, AND POLITICALLY INCORRECT SEX: TOWARDS A HISTORY OF LESBIAN SADOMASOCHISM IN THE USA 1975-1993 by Anna Robinson Submitted to the Department of Gender Studies, Central European University In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in Women's and Gender Studies CEU eTD Collection Main supervisor: Francisca de Haan (Central European University) Second reader: Anne-Marie Korte (Utrecht University) Budapest, Hungary 2015 PASSION, POLITICS, AND POLITICALLY INCORRECT SEX: TOWARDS A HISTORY OF LESBIAN SADOMASOCHISM IN THE USA 1975-1993 by Anna Robinson Submitted to the Department of Gender Studies, Central European University In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in Women's and Gender Studies Main supervisor: Francisca de Haan (Central European University) Second reader: Anne-Marie Korte (Utrecht University) CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2015 Approved by: ________________________ Abstract This thesis is an exploration of the largely underexamined history of lesbian sadomasochism (SM) in the United States between the mid-1970s, when the first organised lesbian feminist SM groups were founded, and 1993, by which time public debates about lesbian SM were becoming less visible. I engage with feminist discourses around lesbian SM within the so- called feminist sex wars of the 1980s, tracing the sometimes dramatic rise to prominence of lesbian SM as a feminist issue. Entwined in this web of controversy, I assert, is the story of a perceived fundamental split in the feminist movement between those who believed SM was patriarchal, abusive and violent, and those who saw it as a consensual expression of sexual freedom and liberation.