shalimar

Once reserved for “fetish” sites, the popularity and mainstreaming of hardcore, body-punishing, sadomasochistic pornography is growing. One of the most well-known porn performers in the world is Sasha Grey, whose films have amassed over 360 million video views on PornHub alone. Grey, who has since retired from porn, is featured in countless videos wherein she is subjected to sadistic, painful sex and degrading activities like toilet-licking, and is penetrated by multiple men at once — humiliated through verbal abuse, and in bondage gear. Another porn performer, Charlotte Sartre, known for pornography involving double and triple vaginal and anal sex, gagging, bondage, and scenes involving urination, has over 260,000 followers on her social media accounts, and her videos have over 40 million video views on PornHub.

These are not isolated examples — it is more and more common for women to be expected to participate in body-punishing acts in their own sex lives, in keeping with the normalization of sadomasochistic pornography. If what is popular in porn is any indicator, sadomasochism will shape both the sex lives of the masses as well as societal expectations in terms of female sexuality. We are beginning to see this already, with the prevalence of “breath play” on the rise — a sex act in which a sexual partner — commonly, a woman —  is choked. In an investigative report for Flare, Briony Smith concluded that, “Choking, it seems, has become the new third base.”

Female pain and female beauty have begun to merge, and the view of the ideal woman as one who tolerates infinite pain and humiliation is taking hold.

In her 1974 book, Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin argues that pain is an integral element of the grooming process for women, and that the many practices normalized in women’s efforts to maintain desirability and femininity serve a function — to condition girls to accept pain as an inescapable aspect of their lived experience:

“Plucking the eyebrows, shaving under the arms, wearing a girdle, learning to walk in high-heeled shoes, having one’s nose fixed, straightening or curling one’s hair — these things hurt. The pain, of course, teaches an important lesson: no price is too great, no process too repulsive, no operation too painful for the woman who would be beautiful.”

Dworkin argues that conditioning women to accept the pain of their sex is necessary in order to prepare them for their futures, which were presumed to involve child-bearing and husband-pleasing. In order to maintain the status quo in our patriarchal society, girls learn their existences will be painful. By convincing women and girls that their legs, pubic regions, and underarms must always be hairless, that they should tolerate uncomfortable or even painful clothing choices for the sake of desirability, and that they ought to constantly be aware of how their body is perceived, we are teaching them to forsake their own well-being to please men.

This training in pain tolerance and compliance socializes girls — then women — to view masochism as an integral part of their existence.

Igor Stravinsky, composer

Marlene Dietrich poster

illustration：竹中英太郎 eitarou TAKENAKA

日本、九州、福岡県、福津市、中央（flickr）