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When I was in high school I was a debater. I was serious about it too - I spent my weekends cramped up in high school classrooms across the country from my own school arguing the merits of the US foreign policy to Russia, renewable energy, and secondary school achievment. I used to spend my summers in the basement of libraries at major universities doing work for “debate camp”. I picked my undergraduate university based on being recruited by the debate team. It was pretty serious. I first read Foucault, Gramsci, and de Beauvoir because of the debate team.

One ideology I encountered in debate was Objectivism. Objectivism seems to be a pretty easy philosophical system for white, affluent, argumentative teens to grab onto. For this reason, the objectivist society actively recruits high school debaters to brainwash with their Randian message of greed. I never thought of it as something that someone would hang onto once they became an adult nor of something that could get you laid.

I was wrong.

I mentioned this paper several months ago when I wrote it. I’m working on it again and decided to publish it here in its present form. I’ve noticed a lot of great discussions on interracial porn appearing around the blogs (Audacia and Laughing Man, I’m looking at you) and thought I would jump into the fray.

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For many open-minded Westerners, the fear of racial mixing was dismissed long ago. Still, it remains a spectre on race relations and the associated taboos constitute a frightening series of questions and problems. Liberal beliefs in equality and color-blindness often fall by the wayside at the moment that the question of erotic desire and racial mixing is introduced into the equation. In this way, deeply seated anxieties about racial contamination and power remain an element of sexuality around the world, making work on colonial sexuality continually vital. Frantz Fanon dedicates a significant portion of Black Skin, White Masks to describing interracial sexual relationships between the colonizer and the colonized. His chapters on the woman of color and the white man and the man of color and the white woman present two sides of the same coin; sexual power dynamics that fluctuate based upon sex, race, and political position.

In both situations the woman in question is the site of colonization – in the case of the woman of color, she is rendered as a symbol of the colonization of her nation. Fanon also expresses some clear resentment towards women of color as he describes their desire to always pursue the lightest men possible, to deny their nationality via their chosen sexual partners. Clearly, though, they are often the chosen. The conquest of these women by white men is an additional manifestation of the conquest of their nation. However, in the example of Mayotte, Fanon demonstrates a woman of Martinique that is bent on class ascension via racial means, “every woman in the Antilles, whether in a casual flirtation or in a serious affair, is determined to select the least black of the men.” (47) Fanon predicts that this racial self-loathing is re-projected onto the the youths of the next generation, either through the family structure or through the classroom or other social institutions. The message that will be passed on is of presumed inadequacy, one is only as “white as one is rich, as one is beautiful, as one is intelligent.” (51-52) These desired characteristics are ingrained as markers of whiteness. However, while attaining whiteness means attaining these characteristics, it is not clear that the converse is true. The colored person of the Antilles, in Fanon’s description, simply does not have true access to wealth, beauty, and intelligence because even having these qualities in abundance does not make them more white.

Fanon opens his chapter on the man of color and the white woman with the following confession:

Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white.
I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white.
Now - and this is a form of recognition that Hegel had not envisaged - who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man.
I am a white man.
Her love takes me into the noble road that leads to total realization. . .
I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness.
When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine. (63)

Fanon’s rhetoric in this poetic moment emphasizes the interaction between desire and identification. He desires a white woman because he desires to be a white man and if not a white man, then just like a white man. The white woman’s body, her breasts are the symbol of dignities that are refused Fanon as a black man. This mythical white woman is deeply objectified, a mere marker for her race and civilization. A less than human symbol and battleground for resistance. Jonathan Dollimore, in a chapter on bisexuality, writes, “Do we ever simply desire the person we love, or is our desire not also partly an identification with him or her? Simply put, the ‘I want you’ of desire is complicated by the ‘I want to be you’ of identification.” (27) While Dollimore refers to gender difference, the argument is clearly manifested in Fanon’s desire for racial difference and identification. Fanon describes these urges as coming from the “darkest part” of his soul but from the “zebra stripping” of his mind. The desire to be white comes from the part of him that is fully and darkly black, the soul and only “across” the part of him that is already conspicuously colonized by whiteness, his mind. In this way, Fanon seems to imply that the desire for whiteness or more generally the desire for identification and assimilation is intrinsic to him, separate from his experience with colonization. More importantly, this experience of identification may be just as commonly experienced by a white person as it is by him.

Can Fanon’s troubling portrayal of racial mixing be used to describe the impetus behind contemporary examples of miscegenation? Certainly, a change in setting effects the validity of this claim. Furthermore, Fanon does not regularly acknowledge the actual human relationships and emotions that are in play as the result of a given marriage. His psycholanalysis is societal instead of individuated and therefore makes sweeping generalizations about the motivations of all interracial relationships. It discounts any instances of true cross-racial compatibility or couplings that are motivated by non-political factors (love or passion spring to mind although neither are fully outside of politics.) For this reason, his work is inadequate to explain actual interracial relationships. At the very least it must be acknowledged that his condemnation or critical approach to them is over-arching.

However, there is something very useful about Fanon’s theories as they can be received by a contemporary, multi-racial American audience. It is clear that they can go a long way to explain the production and broad appeal of interracial pornography. The epidermalization of desire is reflected in contemporary interracial pornography. We need to look at not just how but also why interracial pornography portrays its characters in this way.

As an opening caveat, it should be clear that I approach this question by considering these erotic materials as texts. While much ink has been shed by anti-pornography feminists, I do not wish to enter the fray on the question of censorship. Therefore, I have refrained from making normative claims about the existence of such work or its legitimacy in the community. While it is easy to see why many find it distasteful, my purpose is to interrogate the psychology behind its creation and message, not the psychological effects of its existence or consumption.

Of course it is never fully possible to bracket this question and I hope to dismantle one particular underpinning of the anti-pornography argument. Most of the arguments to censor pornography rest on Catherine MacKinnon’s position that pornography is a form of harmful hate speech, the speech is an action in itself and has harmful effects. The effects described usually are in the form of unrealistic attitudes towards women and sexuality. However, I will argue that the adult industry does not create these myths as an invidious attempt to corrupt the psychic and sexual health of the pornography consumer. Rather, the pornography industry (perhaps more than any other group of businesses I can imagine) creates their product based upon demand. Being affiliated with “the oldest profession” means that pornography makes a business of selling sex, one of the most basic of human drives. While a gadget manufacturer is also in the business of manufacturing desire for their product (humans are not born with a drive to own a mandolin slicer) the adult industry caters to a market that is always already there. Their productions do not exist in a social vacuum, rather they are based upon the desires and fantasies of their audience. This is not to say that pornographers cannot be exploitative. But it is to say that their marketing techniques and product development are almost necessarily some of the least invasive of any type of business that exists. This is not because of particular benevolence but because of the nature of the product, they sell something that is built into humans to want and desire. They also sell the manifestations of often unspoken fantasies.

Another important caveat is regarding the appropriateness of comparing contemporary racism in the United States with the post-colonial condition of racism. Certainly the diaspora of Africans has unique impact based upon their geographical location. My argument is that these representations in pornography constitute a colonizing mindset that has never fully diminished in the American psyche. This helps one to get away from the argument that particular pornography producers are racist and hateful (although some certainly might be) and allows for the more fruitful line of thinking that the demand for this sort of material makes a very real statement about the society that produces it. The presence of this fantasy of colonization and subordination blur erotic lines to make a political statement.

It is appropriate to begin with a description of the state of contemporary interracial pornography. What happens in these films? How are they marketed? And what are the racial tropes circulating within them? One popular weblogger and adult industry insider, Sam Sugar, described interracial pornography in the following way:

I am a black man
Your name: People will want to name you something that get’s across that you have a big, black cock. The porn industry knows that black guys with small dicks do not exist. They know you have a cock like a cruise missile covered in radar absorbing paint. [...]
Your movies: You will be offered roles in movies with the words black, gang, ballin’, ass, jungle, and chocolate in the title. When you are asked to perform with white women they will be referred to using the words little, tiny, innocent, stretched and meat. E.g. “Big Black Beef Stretches Little Pink Meat”. I’m sad to say that’s a real movie.
Your press: Every mention of your name will be followed by the imagined length of your cock in inches. People will refer to the ’soul’ you put into your performances and the ‘rhythm’ of your love tenderizing.

I’m a black woman
Your name: Anything you like - bonus points for making it extra ghetto. Shaniqwa Debonair is an excellent choice.
Your movies: It’s all about being a chocolate sister. People will be unable to look at you without wanting to put your ‘phat ghetto booty’ in a video with some guys from The Digital Underground. The people doing this will be white. Regardless of the size of your butt it will be referred to as ‘two fine hams’. Expect to get spanked a lot.
Your press: The world needs to know that you have a lot of junk in the trunk. Your ass will get more coverage than your medical degree. If you ever get upset about anything you will be called an uppity high maintenance bitch.

While meant to elicit a laugh, his analysis is a grippingly honest description of the racialized discourse of sex and pornography. He makes few apologies for these realities and instead describes them plainly. These descriptions are difficult to stomach at times and seem as if they must be exaggerations. They are not, and while graphic, the honesty of these complaints is compelling. It is probably not shocking to know that Sugar’s descriptions of the treatment of black men and women is sandwiched among other groups of people that are fetishized in pornography including Latinos, Asians, and physically different people. Especially useful is description of how these films are marketed. The titles that are chosen and the words and descriptions that appear on box covers are the essence of the pornography producer’s pitch to their client. They are meant to appeal to their audience instantly and stand out amongst a plethora of other options. Why do these titles have such a broad appeal? The easy answer is that only racists buy such materials but the broad demand and the mainstream nature of them seems to undermine that option.

At face value, it is simple to dismiss these representations as repugnant, however there is a deeper ambivalence to this genre. Some argue that by depicting interracial sex, a traditionally taboo subject in American culture, that this pornography can lead to breaking the taboos that exist and allow for greater acceptance of interracial relationships.(Williams, 274) The counterpoint, of course, exists that the extreme caricatures are more damaging than they can ever be fruitful. Because the focus of these films is on the interracial aspect, the performers are distilled to cultural and sexual stereotypes and are not individuated outside of that. Pornography is rarely interracial in an incidental way. The question of race is constantly brought to the fore in the titles of pieces as well as the dialogue that occurs between characters.

The market for these films is varied. Some are meant to appeal to white men while others
are intended to have a broader appeal. This begs the question, if the audience of interracial pornography is, itself, interracial what is the message of it? Clearly, the message is different for each individual viewer just as their motivations for watching may be individual. The BDSM fetish community has a motto: Safe, Sane, Consensual. Practitioners of bondage, domination, and sadism maintain that as long as an activity between two adults meets that three-pronged test, it is acceptable. While not all people within the community may find it arousing and some may even find it repugnant, if it passes this test BDSM practitioners will not practice judgment. “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” is used to eroticize and create safe spaces for acceptance of many fringe forms of sexual play and the role playing of extreme situations such as rape, bestiality, and incest. If these acts are accepted by a sexual community can educated people make the same allowances for what we find distasteful in interracial pornography? One thing that BDSM play and pornography clearly have in common is the element of performance and the desire to segment desires in such a way that they have multiple interpretations. If pornography is nothing else, it is rhetorical, and its reception is entirely dependent upon the desires of the viewing audience.

Interracial pornography requires a performance of race by the actors involved. The dialog in these films is always self-aware and referential to the racial difference between the actors. The contrast between their bodies is emphasized continually. A black actress is playing a different role in an interracial film than she might be in a film that emphasizes the size of her breasts or a particular sexual act. She is always a black actress but her blackness becomes the commodity that is traded. While it may be hard to believe, it is plausible that the actress in question derives just as much sexual satisfaction from racialized sexual play as the white male that may be watching her performance. Likewise, a submissive in a BDSM context is just as sexually invested in their own humiliation as the person that does the humiliating. It is easy to revert to the argument that such sexual desires stem from some manifestation of self-loathing or insecurity but that explanation is dangerously paternalistic. Acceptance of such lifestyle choices does not necessarily imply advocacy of them or agreement with them. However, exiting personal preferences for a moment in order to fathom difference is a crucial step in the obliteration of oppressive taboos, including those against racial mixing.

Just as Fanon interprets negrophobia as a form of white sexual anxiety, the politically
fearful dismissal of interracial pornography stems from deeply held taboos about race. The performance of stereotypes, while distasteful can have a positive effect,

Stereotypes are important objects of study not because we can better learn to eliminate them from our thinking, but because they cannot be eliminated. Stereotypes persist, and perhaps even thrive on, the protestations against them; the louder the protest, the more they thrive. [...] To forbid all utterance or depiction of the stereotype of the originally phobic image of the large black penis is to grant it a timelessness and immortality that it does not really possess. (Williams, 284)

So, it is because of the fetishistic nature of the stereotypes, as they are already uttered, that the compulsion to repeat their utterance can actually have a positive effect. This is not a blanket suggestion to toss around slurs and half-truths but instead a way to implore people to see them for what they are – archaic but deeply held beliefs to be questions. The sooner a move is made away from holding them as sacred, the sooner we can mock and demystify these stereotypes, the more likely it is that interracial sexual relationships will lose their stigma. However, I want to be perfectly clear that these arguments are merely a way to accept and interpret interracial pornography in a useful way – to find a space where these celebrations of difference can be transmuted into an understanding of the powerful erotic desires that ground contemporary race relations. Are the stereotypes exploited in interracial pornography liberatory in and of themselves? Are the actors involved always intentionally problematizing race or experiencing sexual satisfaction from their performances of racial stereotypes? Of course not, the producer’s only intrinsic intention is to make money on their product, making it neutral at best. Many actors are exploited or at least not particularly invested in the racial tone of the product they are producing. But recognizing the adult choices that go into the production of such material and accepting fantasies without judgments can contribute greatly in stripping the stigma from interracial sexuality.

Works Referenced

Dollimore, Jonathan. Sex, Literature, and Censorship. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

MacKinnon, Catharine A. Only Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Penley, Constance. “Crackers and Whackers: The White Trashing of Porn.” Porn Studies. Ed. Linda Williams. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.
Sugar, Sam. “Porn and Prejudice.” Sugarbank. 23 June 2005. 14 Nov. 2005 .

Williams, Linda. “Skin Flicks on the Racial Border: Pornography, Exploitation, and Interracial Lust.” Porn Studies. Ed. Linda Williams. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting eagerly to find out about my coffee date with The Prof. Well, I was waiting eagerly at least.

Let me set the scene. We met at a nearby coffeeshop that I frequent regularly. Occupants included a former DJ at the radio station and a current grad student in English. I quickly ignored my concerns - it is just coffee, right?

The first hour or so we talked about mutual interests (literature, music, teaching). I found him funny, engaging and attractive. Then the conversation turned to me and I feared that I would shock him with my sexual lifestyle and proclivities as I described this blog, my podcast, phone sex work, my relationship, and my preferences. I talked a lot, perhaps too much.

Finally, the conversation turned to the situation at hand. And the ethics and emotions surrounding it. I was somewhat amazed by his level of consideration and thought in the decision he was making. No apologies or excuses. Perhaps I’ll write an entry soon on the ethics of adultery because it is something I have been thinking about a lot. I left the coffeeshop knowing that the Professor was about to embark on a very personal and life-affirming journey. Like many risks, it is not one without selfishness. But, I was convinced of the purity of his motivations and the desire that lay behind them.

When I got home, J and I had a long conversation about my coffee date and continued to hash out and digest what I had witnessed and learned. I realized that the reason I date other people is just what the Professor described: excitement, trepidation, flirting, desire. I went to bed with a hopeful heart (not to mention some very dirty thoughts) after sending him an email letting him know I’d love to see him again.

This afternoon (when I was nearly done writing this entry) I received a reply. The Professor thanked me for my time and conversation, he shared that he had a lot of thinking to do. He also wrote that he suspected I was ambivilent and didn’t think we should see each other again.

I wish I could say I was shocked, but I’m not. I guess the awkward moments that I found to be pregnant with sexual tension were just awkward, afterall. Sometimes you jump in with two feet and get what you want, but sometimes those moments of hesitation and second-guessing can shipwreck our intentions. I’m not the type of woman who looks a man in the eyes and says, “I think I’d like to make love to you.” I also don’t think that this experience will make me become one. However, I suppose I’ve learned my lesson that candor and resolve can make all the difference. That lack seems to be the crux of my present disappointment.

. . . Is that a lot of the smart people have something to do with the University. Today, I received a mildly clever and interesting response to my AdultFriendFinder account. I replied by giving my screen name that I use for that purpose and didn’t think much more of it. Imagine my shock when I got an IM to that screen name from the radio station that I work at. The person quickly introduced themselves as the guy from AFF. He had no idea who I was.

I scrambled for the radio and just caught him announcing. Fuck fuck fuck. I recognize him as a philosophy professor that sometimes does shows during the summer. So, I’m presented with an ethical problem. I know a big secret about him (conspiring to cheat on his wife) and he doesn’t have any clue about me. I bit the bullet and decided that he was at much higher risk than I and told him who I was. I was expected a flurry of embarassment, backtracking, and begging for mutual secrecy.

It wasn’t that simple. The Prof didn’t seem phased too much and kept hitting on me. This had me floored but surprisingly intrigued. It seems deliciously dirty to have an affair with a professor (even if he isn’t from my current department).

We’re having coffee tomorrow.

Too bad he isn’t the one I wrote this about.

Are librarians prudes?

The popular stereotype (pornographic at least) would tell you that librarians are repressed nymphomaniacs desperately trying to maintain decorum. Its a nice thought. . .

I’ve been wanting to write about sex in libraries for ages and something happened this week that drove it to the forefront. Little do you know but this week witnessed an annual cultural moment that *concerns* many librarians. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

I’ve never thought much of the Swimsuit Edition one way or another. There are certainly more revealing photographs in various popular magazines all the time. Granted, I live in the South where the grocery store puts modesty guards over Allure, Cosmopolitan, and even Shape magazines as well. I was surprised this week to notice about 15 other library students most of whom currently work in libraries grappling with the question of the Swimsuit Edition.

The first shocker is that it is a question at all. The original poster asked about it with disdain and some assumption that certainly librarians needed to lock away these shocking, disgusting images of . . . the female body! The responses varied but most gave a level-headed reply that it was handled like any other issue of Sports Illustrated (put on the browsing shelves and almost immediately stolen.) Other librarians pointed out that young adults are savvy and know exactly where to find the sex books in libraries already and that hiding these things away just makes something natural an issue to snicker over.

The thing that bothers me about this exchange isn’t the conclusions that the future librarians came to. No one advocated banning the Swimsuit Edition or was even particularly offended by it (except perhaps the person who originally asked the question.) But librarians are particularly susceptible to societal pressures and many have convinced themselves that the risk of someone seeing something pornographic at a library is absolutely terrifying. I’ve seen dozens of intelligent conversations on offering digital information to patrons devolve into “how do we stop them from looking at porn?!” hysteria.

Of course there are several practical reasons why openly viewing pornography in a library should be prevented. And unfortunately, common sense and social etiquette of patrons does not necessarily pick up the slack. However, I’m not sure that I’m convinced that sex is the most pressing issue facing libraries today and I wonder if it is a waste of resources worry about it so extensively.

This issue touches on the development of library collections (what books and periodicals appear in the library), the training of reference staff (which questions are appropriate to answer), and access to electronic resources (requirements to use an internet terminal and whether or not that internet access is filtered.)

So, I propose an experiment! I intend to visit the public library in my medium-sized Southern city and attempt access at several websites. I suspect that the filtering software will stop me from viewing many informative sites and blogs that are not pornographic but are about sex or pornography. Conversely, I suspect that it will allow me access to sites that perhaps should be filtered but are smaller. How do I know this? A preliminary experience with the filtering software allows my site (maybe it shouldn’t, I post filthy stories and pictures - it is almost certainly pornographic) but does not allow access to Sugarbank (that site has always intentionally been non-pornographic and is a source of business information.)

I have a list of sites that I want to test this theory with but I’d like more suggestions. Post links as a comment and I’ll include them in the “study”.

Where have I been, dear readers? Well, I got my tongue pierced on Thursday so I’ve been sort of under the weather while I wait for the swelling to go down (at which time I’ll take a picture, natch). Podcasting has been out of the question but I expect to catch up with that soon. I’ve got a list of short tidbits, though, and it goes a little something like this:

* I just discovered Balthazar B, Man of His Words. This man seems quite brilliant and sexy and wonderful and not updating for the past few weeks. I hope he comes back because finding a hot new blog that is already a dead old blog is so depressing. . .

* A bit of a dialogue has formed between Melissa Gira (aka, Sexiest Podcaster in the World) and I on this question of “fake women.” Touch My Blog has stepped into the discussion with this post. And while not directly related, I think that the Female Mysogynist is weighing in on the issue as well when she writes today about the “anti-feminine feminist bitch”.

* I’ve been desperately searching for Chanukah porn and the best I have been able to find (despite the hysterics of this article) is at the Yarmulkebra Website. Looks like I’ll be making my own, I can’t believe no one has tried to serve this market before!

. . . academy, watch out who you shake hands with.

Who knew that the porn studies field would be so couched in niceties that there wouldn’t be a single concise description of the state of interracial porn? There are plenty of screeds in the anti-porn, MacKinnon-esque camp to latch onto. But, in the world of people taking a rhetorical or cultural studies approach I found very little in terms of hard-hitting soundbites. So, who summed things up best, in my estimation?

None other than Sam the Man over at SugarBank in his post “Porn and Prejudice.” He says in a bulleted list what it takes the academics three chapters to write.

So, why am I linking to a 5-month-old entry in a blog you all read anyway? Because this week I cited it in a paper I wrote for a graduate seminar in Postcolonial theory. Sammy, step right up and receive your accolades with Judy, Michel, Gayatri, Frantz, and Homi.

The title of my paper? “Black Dicks in White Chicks:
fantasies of miscegenation, black power, and the colonization of
interracial desire”