Pushing the boundaries
An intimate philosophy of shifting sexual identities in the age of the Net
By Ashley Benigno
We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? (1)
Mielexxx first made her appearance through a posting on "sex-talk", an Italian mailing list (2). At the time, I was lurking around a few lists trying to pick up leads that would help me develop certain ideas involving the changes in the concept of identity in contemporary times, starting from the boost given by the Net to such a process. I concentrated on Italian lists to avoid the dispersion and utter chaos found on similar English-writing lists and because I was interested to see the Net's version of Italy's real life scenario, which mixed the Vatican, pornstar celebrities (and politicians - for those that remember Cicciolina and Moana Pozzi), and the ubiquitous presence of legions of transvestites along many of the country's city streets every night.
So there I was, a cyber-voyeur in researcher's garb with nothing much to "see" really. The common assumption of the Net being filled with males, both in the guise of males or females, looking for females became quite apparent after the first couple of days. This lot did not even seem to be looking, just posting the URLs of free hardcore sites to look at, or arguing over the merits of rising starlets in the global video porn market. On a more creative note, one guy would cross-post short stories about his alleged sexual exploits, invariably set during a business trip. But they were drab to the extreme. Sex, after all, when translated into words, nearly always comes out sounding trite and tacky.
Feeling dispirited and on the verge of sending an unsubscribe through, I looked through the last batch I had downloaded and came across mielexxx's piece. Another story. This time, the setting was a dream set in a 70s porno cinema, while the narrative started to unravel an orgy that… came to an abrupt end, just like in a dream. And the narrator's voice that of a woman. Just like the username. The list went wild, fan mail started to arrive immediately, and the list-owners asked if they could publish the piece in a forthcoming anthology dedicated to art and sexuality, under the title "Artin' the Sex Online".
The following day, mielexx made another posting, called "il diario (the dairy)", which was to become the first entry of mielexxx's "diary". Dated Buenos Aires 30 March 1999, it is the story of a graphic designer that is busy working on a project, forgets to wear her knickers, gets excited during the lunch break and ends up having sex with an obscene colleague on someone's desk. The tone is both dreamy and brutal. A caveman clone wrote back saying: "E brava! invece di sbattere sul lavoro ti fai sb.....sul tavolo da lavoro!! (That's a good girl! Instead of getting the fuck on with work… you get fucked at work!!)" Someone else wrote: I do not often write to this mailing list… but this time I must say something…which nobody may give a shit about…but thank you my dear mielexxx…I don't know if you copied this story…but the result was decisively pleasurable! Well done!". Did lust lead to trust this easily? I wondered. And could the Net really influence life this easily, was it possible that a simple story of sex in the office was leading a cyber-posse of male users to masturbate in office lavatories during coffee-breaks, or in the privacy of their own homes?
But who was behind mielexxx? The name itself seemed a clear allusion/tribute to a erotic cartoon character drawn by Milo Manara (3), one of Italy's most famous comic artists, called Miele (Honey) who was also often to be found with her knickers half-down or missing, involved in risque' situations around the world, in a mixture of mundane and oneiric situations. Was someone simply rehashing an old comic? But there seemed more. While this second story gave the initial appearance of a stereotypical sexist fantasy, its hardcore edge also carried something else: a sense of humour. At one point the story reads: "e' stronzo ma ha un bel cazzo (he's a pig but what a beautiful cock)". Could a (heterosexual) man write something of the kind? And if so, what happens to the psyche and sexuality of a man taking over a female persona? And is it a liberating experience?
John Seabrook in his book on the Internet, which is very much a personal account of a journey through the mindscapes of cyberspace, wrote thus when he first encounters sex online:
"When I first encountered Chat, I was a little
taken aback by my impulse to try cybersex, and made an effort to put the thought
out of my head, but it would not go away. So one evening I logged onto the CB
simulator…as
With the ball set in motion, Seabrook's first reaction was one of doubt: was he about to commit a new form of adultery? As a form of insurance, he called to his wife Lisa for legal advice:
"'Hey, I think I am about to get laid here for the first time on the screen!' 'WHAT?' came loudly through the Sheetrock. Lisa appeared in my doorway. 'I mean, as a woman,' I said. 'You're a woman?' 'I'm a woman who may also be a deer. My name is Bambi. I'm sorry you had to find out this way'." (5)
With candyman's invitation "to run through the woods" and his wife's teasing, the writer's thoughts turned to excitement:
"Hmmmm. An interestingly modern situation. Yes, in fact, I did want to run through the woods with the candyman. The thought gave me a funny tingling feeling I had never felt before. I covertly studied Lisa's profile but did not see the hardening in the jaw muscle that is the thing you don't want to see ever, if you can help it. Could it be that, thanks to the miracle of the many-to-many, we were about to get into a menage a trois? And with two women? O, utopia! Although I had never imagined that I would be one of the women… 'A little run through the woods might be fun', I suggested tentatively. 'I am a deer after all". (6)
So off they ran, the candyman and bambi, and started to pet, until the man wanted to go "lower" and the fawn started to falter. "You might be surprised what you find down there", bambi replied. The candyman began to turn sour: "don't tell me you are a man". Things got murky. Seabrook morphing between species and sexes until, on finding out the candyman worked in a hospital, he transmuted into a doctor. "Scalpel please", bambi asked. The candyman was never seen again. (7)
Enough to have got Freud on crack had he been around in the age of the internet. A guy loses his online virginity and we are immediately confronted with scenarios involving transgenderism, bestiality and castration fantasies, as if all the boundaries have been reconfigured by the Net. As if the monitors we face sitting in front our Macs or PCs were the tools of shamans. The mind weaves a hyperlink to the stories, Castaneda et al, told of brujos and their alleged power of transference into other animals. With the internet, it is no longer peyote but pixels that allow a metamorphosis to take place.
Meanwhile, Seabrook, left unsatisfied by his encounter with the candyman, returned to the chat room:
"Later, when Lisa wasn't around…and allowed
a very forceful gentleman named
At this point, the words of Simone de Beauvoir in the opening of the "Second Sex" come to mind: "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman" (9). What is interesting here is that the writer, on "becoming" a woman in an online environment, carries over with him a whole series of assumptions on what it means to be a woman. In his second and more 'intimate' encounter he is immediately drawn to a stereotypical role. There is passivity at play: "a very forceful gentleman". The idea that sex for women is or can be a chore: "after what seemed like a lot of hard work on my part". And, last but not least, that women fake their pleasure without men ever knowing. All in all, not only stereotypes, but also and foremost a compendium of male fears.
Beyond the sexual assumptions and role-play being verbally ejaculated by men online, where and what were the fears, fantasies and desires of women in online sex? And had I found a rare example in mielexxx? Was she an online Tank Girl storming up sexual maelstroms wherever she went? A digital granddaughter of Anais Nin?
"…Dear Diary, since having said goodbye to Bambi (what is it with this Walt Disney icon that keeps popping up? - the author's note) on that desolate film set one afternoon, which saw us taking two different paths, the rhythm of the dance of my sexual experimentation has become more pressing, and no ghost, no violence can no longer contain it or build walls around it to isolate or mortify it. mielexxx"
Was this a woman writing? The (alleged) males were clamouring for photographic evidence. The more veteran users pointing out the utter futility of a JPEG as proof of identity. Until a picture came through, but which did not fit into the beach/amateur nudity category usually paraded in such circumstances. It was a polarised b&w image of a voluptuous young woman laying face down across a rumpled bed, only her culottes highlighted in lurid pink, together with a faux lipstick scrawl running across the picture stating cyber-sex. So was mielexxx really a graphic designer living in Argentina? The list owner once again wrote back saying: "Wow is that you? Cool image in any case, we could put it in the "Artin the SEX On Line" CD-ROM with your stories, if you like". A niggling doubt kept peeking its head up: was this simply artful promotion on the list's side for a coming product? Whoever s/he was, a strategy of seduction was definitely underway.
It was all starting to be too good to be true. The (alleged) guy that kept posting his porno-business stories, called mielexxx a bluff. She was too vulgar, crude and direct to be a woman, he said. Mielexxx wrote back with a small essay on vulgarity and then continued posting entries from her diary. Each set in a different city, they continued along the lines of everyday life situations overflowing with sexual acts involving men, women and transvestites. And then, like a virulent meme, other (alleged) women picked up on mielexxx's thread, appearing out of the blue. One in particular, known as M. wrote:
"Hi…are you really a woman? If you are could you answer the question I posted yesterday to which nobody replied: what do you think of the fact that I would like to meet with that sixteen-year-old (what's more the son of a friend) and experience making love with a woman? (on two separate occasions obviously)…I have no ulterior motives, I am married, serious, but I like eros and issues linked to it".
To which mielexxx replied:
"Personally I am very excited by the idea of starting to flirt with a woman in public…I would like to kiss her mouth, maybe at night, in a club full of people, allowing our tongues to be glimpsed. To rub my tits against hers, nothing excites me more than the desire of others. I would want her to lose control and run her hands over my arse. I would like to make her suck my husband when she is at the height of her excitement and I push a finger up her arse. I would be great if she had a sudden need to be spanked".
In less than a month, the contents of the "sex-chat" mailing list had turned upside down. The "boys" adopting a lower profile, the merits of Asia Carrera slipping out of the limelight. A dramatic reduction in the "Hi I'm X, are there any women out there?" postings occurred. After all, the women were now there, exchanging fluids in the form of fantasies in a graphically-escalating style. A self-defined lesbian commented that a cold bath no longer did the trick, and she needed her freezer, while M. continued to let her hair down. In her following letters she expanded on mielexxx's fantasies, introducing others, getting increasingly hotter and impatient:
"Write to me, I want to read you… you are the only one that makes my knees tremble. I have the little finger of my left hand (the right is writing) between the slit of my skirt and it is moving very slowly up to the left side of the clit…Just think that I am a career woman. It's up to you, I'm in the office. Write to me immediately."
And
"I want to read you because you are the only person on this mailing list that makes me come…Give me some ideas and I promise you I'll lock myself in the bathroom for a while (I am not used to acting this way)".
And so forth. Like cracks in a dam, the pressure can be felt pressing at the structure in an attempt to break out and flood its surroundings. The seeds and juices of a sexual revolution are all there. Or simply of a revolution full stop. At the end of the day, aren't all these people sneaking off to the loos to masturbate during working hours being a touch subversive? Has anyone ever tallied up the (wo)man-hours lost to onanism? If anything, the words of Michel Foucault come to mind: "If sex is so rigorously repressed, this is because it is incompatible with a general and intensive work imperative". (10)
"Practical Advice What I recommend of cybersex: Everything. What I do not recommend of cybersex: Nothing. The same applies to transgenderism. To pulsate, explore, choose, touch, taste, try, change, modify, and so forth, these are the functions of life. Free, not vegetative. A dualistic, schematic Good and Evil do not exist. And the only dualism we still accept is that between free choice and imposition…Free choice even to be masculine males and feminine females, if this is really what pulsates inside us, if it is really what we desire. But also to be whatever other possible shade, variation or flux of transformation within these two vague parameters. And this only depends on us. Nobody else. Our will to be who we want to be". (11)
The above form the closing remarks to "Dal cybersex al transgender (from cybersex to transgender)", a book written by Helena Velena, the main figure behind Italy's chapter of the TRANSGENDER interNATIONal and a long-time activist at the heart of the counter-culture scene. A native of Bologna, Helena Velena's first involvement was as part of the Radio Alice collective and later went on to be the lead singer in RAF PUNK, a Crass-inspired band that was behind, together with other three bands, the DIY of Italy's first ever punk record: an EP by the title: "Schiavi nella citta' piu' libera del mondo (Slaves in the freest city in the world)". Since then, she has had other musical experiences, produced other artists and bands, and been active both in the theory and practice of expressions of sexuality and in the potential of new technologies of communication. She writes extensively on the issue of transgender, while generating media attention on the subject at the same time. She is also, together with her partner Maya, behind the mailing list on which mielexxx appeared. The list is part of the website "Sex OnLine", which defines itself as the "sexiest non-sexist sex site on the Net" (12). Having recently expanded its bandwidth and introduced a "members-only-pay-for-access" hardcore section, "SexOnline" applies a different perspective to pornography, with a more militant edge, wrapped in a bizarre coitus with its commercial intentions. Unlike the usual sub-divisions found in all (?) porn sites (Anal, Teen, etc), "Sex OnLine" has a more cultural approach, with sections providing information on current and historical porn stars (Digital X-Divas; Xstorical Stars) and hardcore film directors. In addition, it branches out into issues of S&M, fetishism and bondage, feminism and pornography, and transgender. A virtual community is also encouraged through its mailing lists, chat rooms and personal pages.
"Tell all analysts, ticket inspectors, psycho-policemen, experts of our minds, our pulsation, primary-school teachers scared of the world, corporals, psychiatrists, fortune-tellers, television presenters, paid gurus, sexologists and assorted wankers that want to make us feel better in exchange for our money to go to hell. To take control of the destiny of one's life, the will to self-expression, the freedom to be instead of to suffer. And to do all this we need to communicate, understand, learn, grow, discuss, analyse, speak, touch, love, connect" (13)
Helena Velena's book is a long, rambling essay that threads together elements of Italy's cultural and media landscapes, lots of musical references, pop-culture allusions, Japanese mangas, punk, URLs, transcripts of online sex sessions, philosophical musings, personal memoirs, the merits of sex-orientated interactive CD-ROMs, all viewed and filtered through a cybersex and transgender optic.
Whilst distinguishing between six classes of cybersex -
"Class 1 Off-line, CD ROM, solitary, non-interactive Class 2 Off-line but with hi-tech toys, also with partner Class 3 Online, only textual communication Class 4 Online multimedia, including also audio and video and possible further stimulation, like smell Class 5 Online multimedia, including sensorial and tactile stimulation, and bodysuit. Class 6 Cyber-body modifications, bio implants, who knows?" (14)
- the philosophy outlined with regards to cybersex is actually quite fluid. Great attention is paid to the way that new technologies of communication can and are used as instruments of liberation. Helena Velena charts the alternative sexual culture that flourished firstly on the Videotel system, then across BBSs, IRC and finally the world wide web. What is stressed throughout is how cybersex should not exist as a separate dimension and a separate entity from real life sex. On the contrary, online sex is seen as supplying a laboratory in which to experiment with one's sense of gender and identity, a place of regeneration in which to strengthen one's choices. And out of the cybersex experience stems the notion of the transgender. As a philosophy it goes beyond MtoF or FtoM permutations, in seeking to remove labels and categorisations:
"…A macho gay living with a drag queen. An effeminate bisexual living with a super-feminine transsexual. A butch lesbian living with a man to woman transsexual…In a transgender logic they would simply be two creatures that love one another. Without labels, imposed roles, obligations of any kind. Two creatures that are free, and nothing else. And there could be more than two.. It is evident therefore that this practice of liberation, which cybersex allows us to set in motion, tends to the dissolution of the post-Weberian mechanisms that are so dear to the Catholic Church and all those religions that set themselves up as the armed (psycho)right-arm of the constituted order. You are right in fearing us, you bureaucrats of repression full of hang-ups, that try to annihilate us while wanking off with the other hand. Repulsive policemen of Male Supremacy, squalid ticket inspectors on the bus of everyday life. You fear us because we represent and support the only possible logic for a healthy and happy life. In which everyone is free to be who they want to be, without impositions of any kind. Even to be male, if that is his real nature. Instead you are forced into a role that is often not yours at all. Your natural male characteristics surface and you worry about repressing them before the other White Heterosexual Males, corporals like you in an army destined for defeat, may call you, insults of insults, half-queer. God forbid….You build masks. You live in real life a virtual, falsified sexuality, that does not correspond to you". (15)
Another Italian book that recently explored antagonistic sexual practices is "Sesso Estremo: pratiche senza limiti nell'epoca cyber (Extreme Sex: limitless practices in a cyber era)", written by the Reverend William Cooper. According to the bio-notes on the cover, the "reverend" was born in Birmingham, England, in 1957, comes from a punk (again!) background, has studied literature and cultural anthropology, taken an interest in oriental philosophy, works as a music journalist and is the considered one of the "spiritual leaders" of the British antagonist community!!! Rumours on the Net, however, state no such person exists in England and that it conceals somebody from the Italian scene. Early in the book Luther Blissett is discussed and a full-page picture portrays the media prankster. Could it be that…
Regardless of who the Reverend really is, it is interesting to note that once again the identity of the author remains concealed, hinting at the freedom of anonymity and the play between reality and fantasy, fact and fiction. The book is mostly a compendium of "antagonistic" or "perverted" sexual practices, depending on your viewpoint. The chapter headings run thus: "S&M; Piercing, tattoos, scaring and branding; Fetish; Bondage; Fist-fucking; Pissing; Gang-bang & art direction; Animals; Shit lovers". The whole again is placed within a context of practices of liberation. Early on, in fact, the Reverend says:
"Let's get something straight: while this book describes many forms of extreme sex, it is not that these kinds of experience are the only ones to which we can attribute the value of practices of liberation. In fact, it is not said that to be whipped or to stick a pin through your partner's skin are particularly liberating experiences in and of themselves. What I am interested in pointing out is the possibility of a path that is founded on a new consciousness of the body, the opening of new channels of perception, the freedom of expression of one's interior world". (16)
The Reverend William Cooper's argument is about recuperating a body watered down by spectacular times and outing a series of age-old practices that have never been recognised and always been considered deviant by the ruling orthodoxies. It pinpoints in extreme sexual practices a means of cultural resistance against the standardisation of desires. It criticises television and advertising for over-stimulating and subsequently deadening the senses:
"Like those children that are continually being made to eat, who end up losing interest in food and developing an anorexic pathology, these adults end up escaping the schizo-paranoia of information by making little and bad love, or in a repetitive and habitual manner, and especially losing the capacity to enrich the spirit through the sensation of limits, ritual, excess and folly in love". (17)
Last, but not least, he promotes, similarly to Helena Velena, the notion that cybersex can be used as an excellent laboratory in which to experiment with sexuality and ideas. Furthermore, from a community perspective, he highlights the importance of the bulletin board systems and mailing lists as ways for like-minded individuals to meet and come together.
"Do you know it is to me quite delightful to have a frame so susceptible that it is an experimental laboratory always about me, & inseparable from me". (18)
The words are those of Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and Annabella, a mathematician. She became the first person to write a software programme, a hundred years too early, for the Difference Engine of Charles Babbage. And she also forms the framework, and underlying motif, of Sadie Plant's seminal text "Zeros + Ones", in which an alternative female perception of the history and development of computing argues strongly against the identification of IT technologies as inherently male. If, for example, Steven Levy's "Hackers" (19) highlights the male/nerd-programmer (the only female exception being Carolyn Box of Sierra On-line) as the hero of the information revolution, Plant outlines how women have always been at the foreground in the implementation of new technologies. Pointing out, for example, how the word "computer" initially referred to women workers carrying out computational tasks, and only later did it become associated with an object. In addition to the influence of women on technology from Ada Lovelace onwards, "Zero + Ones" goes much further in pointing out how:
"In spite or perhaps even because of the impersonality of the screen, the digital zone facilitates unprecedented levels of spontaneous affection, intimacy, and informality, exposing the extent to which older media, especially what continues to be called 'real life', come complete with a welter of inhibitions, barriers, and obstacles sidestepped by the packet-switching systems of the Net. Face-to-Face communication - the missionary position so beloved by Western man - is not at all the most direct of all possible ways to communicate". (20)
In short, while "technologies are only ever intended to maintain or improve the status quo, and certainly not to revolutionise the cultures in which they are introduced" (21), this, according to Sadie Plant, is what is happening. Referring to the feminization of both the workforce and society as a whole, she points out how decentralised systems and the need for multitasking are increasingly in line with a woman's way of dealing with the environment:
"A strong sense of identity and direction gets one nowhere in cyberspace. Plans and determinations had not merely become economically and socially counterproductive. As it turned out, paying too much attention to anything was brain damaging. Overused brain cells die of boredom. A 1996 report revealed that men tend to 'overwork portions of their brains, killing off a large fraction of the cells in them". (22)
Again we are back to the meaning of identity: "all complex systems are indeterminate processes rather than entities"(23). Again the whole edifice constructed by Western Man is harshly criticised, and viewed as heading for defeat:
"The digital revolution has spawned a vast swathe of debate about cyborgs, replicants, and other posthuman, inhuman, extrahuman entities which are complicating orthodox Western notions of what it is to be a human being. These are new ideas, and also more than this. Self-control, identity, freedom, and progress have long been argued out of court by postmodern theorists who have spent at least twenty years discussing the decline of all the great values and principles of the modern world. But nothing ever changes in theory. These debates are smoke rising from a very real arson attack on man's illusions of immunity and integrity. Intelligent life can no longer be monopolised. And far from vanishing into the immateriality of thin air, the body is complicating, replicating, escaping its formal organisation, the organised organs which modernity has taken for normality. This new malleability is everywhere: in the switches of transsexualism, the perforations of tattoos and piercings, the indelible markings of brands and scars, the emergence of neural and viral networks, bacterial life, prostheses, neural jacks, vast numbers of wandering matrices". (25)
The question of identity is very much alive these days, and not only in the field of sexual politics. Throughout the (Western) world identity is often debated with regards to labour relations, politics, sports, whatever. At his party's conference last Spring, for example, the Speaker of Italy's Lower Chamber Luciano Violante bemoaned the fact that:
"It is a long time since I have seen a true battle of ideas in Parliament…Identity is not only a problem for the popular party, but also for the Leftwing Democrats, for Rome, for Italy and for all citizens. When citizens no longer recognise themselves in a party but in a person instead it means there is no longer any political identity". (26)
While for his part, Italy's latest Prime Minister, the former communist Massimo D'Alema stressed that "it is time to recreate a common Italian identity based on common values and the rediscovery of Italy's best traditions: work, intelligence, solidarity, a sense of duty and concern for others. These are values that belong to all honest Italians and are part of our common history" (27). Fear is obviously in the air, and not only in Italy, as similar statements can be heard vented by politicians throughout the western world. At its worst, in more economically disadvantaged countries, this quest in search of national and/or political identity leads only to violence, war and death. It is business as usual, with the rich versus the poor, men versus women, etc, but has business left conditions as usual? Could it be that we no longer, if ever, have an identity that can be fixed and frozen across time and experience, but instead "no one is or has one sex at a time, but teems with sexes and sexualities too fluid, volatile, and numerous to count"? (28)
What Sadie Plant is interested in is the empowerment of women over their own lives, their own destinies. It follows in the footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir in highlighting how it is that the nature of women has always been defined according to the perceptions, fears and desires of men:
"Too little, too much, too empty, too full: The suppression of female sexuality has always been a matter of regulation and control. The ideal female sexuality was neither too active nor impassive, but just right…and just for him. Balanced and equilibrated, neither running away with itself in some state of fast loose overexcitement, nor breaking down for want of sufficient stimuli. Just the right degree of satisfaction, nothing more and nothing less. Left to her own devices… but this, of course, couldn't be allowed. She didn't have the right equipment to guarantee her self-control, her loyalty to the reproductive machine. And without her complicity, the whole reproductive system would collapse". (29)
And so generations of men have stood guard over sexual order, becoming at the same time their own captors, like screws condemned to spend their lifetimes inside prisons, never getting out, unlike the prisoners they played guardians to. Men too fearful of their own vulnerability, of the mystery of their self, to rock the boat & rattle the bed should it unleash the beast of desire that is felt laying dormant in the sexuality of women: it could end up shouting, like the little boy, that the king is naked. Thus we see power brandished, and limits imposed, through definition. And this has been actively pursued not only by men, but also by women, imposing censorship and borders to sexuality and the representation of sex. Pornography, in particular, came (and still comes) under harsh attack. Back in the seventies it would have been anathema to speak to an orthodox feminist of porn in terms other than exploitation and degradation of women. Similar concerns were vented against prostitution. But what did the unorthodox feminists, those involved in sex work actually think and feel?
"'I learned fast,' says the prostitute, 'that I didn't need to go down there as a beggar - it's the woman who decides. After a while I learned that I was the one who made the rules; there were enough people to choose from. If people didn't want to follow my rules that was it'. This is not the only sentiment expressed by women who sell sex, but it is not uncommon…(and) This was never in the plan. He hadn't made the women into objects only to watch the objects come to life. They hadn't functioned as commodities in order to learn to circulate themselves. But if 'her "fluid" character…has deprived her of all possibility of identity with herself', it is a positive advantage in a future which makes identity a liability. He has never known if she was faking it: herself, her pleasure, his paternity. She makes up faces, names, and characters as she goes along". (30)
For her part, prostitute rights activist Dolores French, describes thus her first introduction as a child to the figure of the prostitute and her desire to become one:
"From what I had seen in my short life, women were always trying to entertain men. This woman (referring to a hooker that appeared in an episode of "I love Lucy") simply got paid for it. In my mind, she had picked a profession that should be admired, like becoming a doctor or a lawyer. She got to wear glamorous clothes that sparkled and swirled around her when she moved. And she didn't have to make excuses about what she was doing or where she was going or with whom, or why she wanted money. Lucy and Ethel could have picked up a few pointers from that woman. 'That's what I am going to be when I grow up', I announced. 'Oh, hush!' my shocked mother said. 'You don't even know what that means'. I insisted, 'Yes, I do.' Of course my mother, a practising Southern Baptist, tried to make it clear to me that proper little girls didn't aspire to become call girls. But in 1955, I already knew that proper young ladies didn't aspire to be doctors or lawyers either". (31)
A vocation indeed:
"The genital dance of sex work demystifies the spiritual image of sex, and, at the same time, remystifies. Sex work has the potential to tease the true anxiety men feel about women, the anxiety they hide in brutality or simply bravado, tease it up to the surface to be transformed into something else - desire, affection, rest, wonder. The original 'harlots' were sacred women who worked in temples, a widespread practice in the ancient world. Temple prostitutes had sex with visitors in exchange for donations to the temple and as a way of both gaining and giving spiritual merit. If we respect myth and the living power of cultural history in any way, we have to bemoan the loss of the sacred harlot; we have to mourn her translation into the pitiful whore of modern myths. The degrading of prostitutes is a direct comment on the degradation of the concept of the Goddess and the ancient celebration of the power of women". (32)
Since 1993 three practising sex workers: Bubu, a prostitute; Mikado, an S&M dominatrix; and Akira, a gay 'delivery host', have been translating their experiences into artistic forms, through performance work and the production of videos, posters and postcards, under the name of The Biters. "The Biters are teachers of safe sex in the workplace, the Biters are impostor doctors and nurses, the Biters are philosophers, the Biters are friends, the Biters are artists!!". (33)
The group recently posted some texts on the mailing list "nettime". The pieces, which are touching and funny in turns, are militantly and poetically engaged in presenting an alternate perception of sex work. The texts range from lists of presents received from clients:
"(Bubu's) Presents I've received from my customers: My customers often give me tokens of their affection Chou a la creme Stockings Prepaid telephone cards Lottery tickets A handmade book of pressed flowers A bear keyholder Poetic works A warning alarm to protect me from rapists Bamboo shoots Flower bouquets Potatoes Onions A vibrator Sushi Panties"
… To exorcisms of violence:
"He was dressed in a Comme du Garcon suit, and he was drunk. He was drunk and he was getting out of hand. Violent. I put up with it for a little while, but he had it coming to him. Before I'd really thought about the consequences, I decided to fuck him in the ass hard, with no warning. It really looked like it hurt. He even cried. 'It's never hurt like this before' he bawled. After that, he caressed me, and gave me head in the most unbelievably gentle way".
Via philosophical musings: "Why is it that men who don't want to use condoms are the first ones to use the word 'Love'?"; and zen-inspired poetry:
"semen
blood
sweat
tears
urine
here in a place steeped in all of the bodily fluids,
I thought about the relationship between flowers and honey".
And still more presents:
"A Helmut Lang jeans jacket two dozen rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste an MD player fortune cookies from Chinatown a Caetano Veloso CD YMC T-shirts Love letters A down jacket A garbage bag full of oranges Some funky leopard-skin patterned bikini underpants A discount ticket for a deluxe hotel A Katherine Hamnet shirt Economy sized supplies of lubricant and condoms Fruit cake A yukata dressing gown and yellow Hachijou-shima sash T-shirts from a famous NYC leather bar Money Peach-flavoured candies" (34)
Nina Hartley, on the other hand, in "Reflections of a feminist porn star", adopts a more political and openly militant defence of women in pornography, while carrying out a harsh criticism of reactionary feminism. Here are some excerpts:
"My Name is Nina Hartley. When this is published, I will be 32 years old and will have spent the last nine years as an active member of the sexual entertainment community, specifically the worlds of erotic dancing and explicit video. I am also a graduate nurse (BSN, magna cum laude, San Francisco State, class of '85), a secular Jew, a third-generation feminist, a happy bisexual, a member of a long-standing two-women-one-man triad of over ten years duration, and I do not happen to be a survivor of abuse, drug addiction or incest. I consciously chose, as a path to self knowledge, the exploration of sexuality in its many forms… Here in the '90's, there is a necessary split among feminists around the issues of sexuality and censorship and I'm in the middle of it. I know that, to a lot of people, the term "feminist sex worker" is an oxymoron; but not for me. I admit I'm unusual, the product of a unique life. But, that life gives me a different perspective on the issue of sex and feminism-this feminist speaks from direct experience. I've found a wide array of equally maverick, avant-garde women who have all come to remarkably similar conclusions concerning sexuality and the most recent push to "protect" women from its perceived dangers. Sex as a commercial venture doesn't bother me because I do not automatically view all women as victims of sex; nor do I view all men automatically to be victimizers, or all intercourse as de facto rape (a Dworkin/MacKinnon tenet)… To overlook the root causes of institutionalized violence (5000 years of antipleasure, hierarchical, patriarchal social engineering) in favor of placing the blame for Western society's ills on an entertainment form widely available for less than 100 years exposes an extreme bias. Women alone are not the victims of the system. Rather, women, children and the majority of men are oppressed by our pleasure-negative, puritanical society which deliberately denies both genders full access to their own bodies… In talking to reactionary feminists, it becomes clear that they view me, and others of my ilk, as brainwashed, deluded, woefully misled or out-and-out lying about our experiences. Their blatant lack of respect for the voices and experiences of other women would be laughable if it were not so insulting. It is a betrayal of all the feminist principles I learned from my mother. Their refusal to consider that different women have different sexual realities, even when confronted with it in person, smacks of both arrogance and fear. How DARE these women tell me, to my FACE no less, that my experience was not my experience and, furthermore, could not ever BE my experience? The whole situation is Kafkaesque in the extreme. Here I am, a feminist, who, since the age of 13, has followed the early '70's dictum to "reclaim" and "define" my sexuality FOR MYSELF. Now, nearly 20 years later, they tell me I got it all wrong. These so called pillars of the feminist establishment are no better than any patriarch who callously dismisses women's testimony about their own lives". (35)
Maverick voices perhaps, but beautiful, brave and uncompromising. Proving Nietzsche's dictum that there are "no facts, only interpretations" (36). Detouring meaning and perception inside out. Hinting at the primordial past, possible futures, rites, the cosmogony of the female sex:
"When I look at pornography, it reminds me of the hundreds of figurines of nude women that turn up in the prehistoric strata of some archaeological digs. This vast outpouring of images of female mouths, breasts, vulvas, and buttocks being approached and filled by eager male and female hands, tongues, dildos, cock; the anointing of the female form with spit and oil and cum; and the atmosphere of abandon and need feel almost religious to me. It is as if pornography is a huge repository of male longing and adoration for women. Like any form of worship, it is flawed, but I detect at least as much curiosity about and admiration for women in pornography as I do misinformation, guilt, or rage. The woman in pornography is a triumphant goddess. She is the mysterious source of all pleasure, the powerful magnet that attracts every lascivious eye or itchy crotch. She cannot be denied. She always gets what she wants (and wants everything she gets). Who could ever be thick enough, long enough, pump hard enough to satisfy her insatiable sheath? Who could ever be worthy of her perfect body, her sultry glance, her silky skin? Certainly not those hairy, pot-bellied, fumbling, wise-cracking, sweaty-handed men who always get second billing in these adult epics". (37)
So what do all these sex workers, porn actresses, S&M lesbians, transsexuals, and cyber-theorists have in common? The thread here seems to be very much one of heresy, in the sense that the outlooks expressed go against the grain. These are the witches of our hyper-modern times, carrying different truths, freedom and secrets in their wake. And like witches throughout time, they are at risk of being burned at the stake. Or are the tables finally turning, and will it be the inquisitors that perish in the unstoppable flames of a passionate life?:
"Sex is threatening. Sex undermines the conventions of our mental life; we go back to them in time, but first they disappear for a while. What works to fix "it", in the words of all the seekers, is that which controverts the given, creates psychic anarchy. In the sexual moments of greatest intensity there are no rules, no givens, no paradigms but the immediate - the one right in front of your eyes and hands. Practice anarchy long enough and it becomes a way of life. The most personal and the most political moments in our lives always strike us like blows, knock us to our knees with their sweet truth". (38)
And isn't this another primary reason behind the creation of roles and the repression of sex: the fact sex is implicitly political and anarchic as an act? Heretics, witches, the outcasts have always been anarchist at heart. And linguistically it is curious to see how the ideologies of modernity, in Latin based languages, capitalism, fascism, communism, socialism, etc (capitalismo, fascismo, comunismo, socialismo, etc.) are all masculine, while anarchy (anarchia) is the only modern political thought to be feminine:
"I became convinced that honest people in power will always be as incapable as corrupt people are damaging; and that it will always be impossible for freedom to forge alliances with any kind of power…I am therefore an anarchist, because only anarchy will bring happiness to humanity and because it is the loftiest idea the human mind can conceive, until something loftier does not appear at the horizon" (39)
And this is essentially what this paper is about: the ongoing struggle between freedom (to be what you are) and the deployment of power (to fit you into categories). "I am large, I contain multitudes" Walt Whitman once wrote (40), thus anticipating a concept that has become apparent in cyberspace (be it only through multiple e-mail accounts) by over one hundred years. This is the crux of the matter: multitudes and singularities, not simply men and women. If this paper is predominantly peopled with female voices, it is because it is women that have the most interesting things to say on the issue these day; the ones that are pushing the boundaries the most, experimenting, surfing the pipelines of our times. Or, more precisely, some women.
"By creating the imaginary element that is 'sex', the deployment of sexuality established one of its most essential internal operating principles: the desire for sex - the desire to have it, to have access to it, to discover it, to liberate it, to articulate it in discourse, to formulate it in truth. It constituted 'sex' itself as something desirable. And it is the desirability of sex that attaches each one of us to the injunction to know it, to reveal its laws and its power; it is this desirability that makes us think we are affirming the rights of our sex against all power, when in fact we are fastened to the deployment of sexuality that has lifted up from within us a sort of mirage in which we think we see ourselves reflected - the dark shimmer of sex…the rallying point for the counter-attack against the deployment of sexuality, ought not be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures" (41)
This, in fact, is not about the deployment of gender. It is not wanting to pitch or compare men against women, but simply to highlight "bodies and pleasures". It seeks to point out that human beings go beyond classification and that diversity is endemic. If I describe myself as male, white, married and in a low-income bracket, how much of an understanding am I conveying about myself, beyond aiding marketing departments and the census? Does it mean the people I feel the most affinity with are like me: male, white, married and in a low-income bracket?
Moreover, what does it mean to be 'like' someone else? Is it just a matter of 'appearance'? Are we so poor in perception that we cannot recognise the increasing wealth found in human fauna? Can we not see that behind the unreal veneer of post-modern society, behind the loss of sense, behind the crises in identity, the body and the spirit are real and tangible. What is not present is the consciousness that poverty and wealth are not only determined by economic factors. Richness and poverty are also at play when we speak of our emotional, intellectual, spiritual and sexual lives.
"What Marcuse calls "erotic reality" isn't based in sex so much as in life-affirming and loving acceptance of others. Children know a kind of ecstasy in their bodies; they tolerate pleasure. Erotic reality is a return to "the anarchic and total sexuality of early infancy", a way of living in which we don't cut off or turn away from others out of fear of them, or of our feelings for them, and we don't turn away from ourselves out of fear of our desires. The surges of erotic response that are so continual and varying in very human life are, to Marcuse, a kind of cellular expression of the spiritual. Scarcity of every kind is artificial to Marcuse. We make scarcity, both economic and interpersonal. Sexual energy is an abundance that fills more than one void. Marcuse merrily glides from Freud into Marx, pinching both on their cheeks with a cheerful smile. The return to a world of polymorphous perversity both requires and helps create an abundant society. " (42)
The Twentieth century has been, among other things, very much a century of liberation, and even if the 'liberated' have at times turned into 'repressors' themselves, there are many victories to celebrate: all the advancements made by the women's movement, gay liberation, against racial prejudice. The road is still long, and it has already morphed into a rhizome. Connections continue to be made, and never along the same path. The struggle for human liberation continues, maybe next century it will flourish into a fight for the recognition of each human being's right to self-definition, and self-mutation. If theory is a toolbox, then so is everything else. And they are already being applied, both in real life and online.
Oh, and for those left wondering, mielexxx is also a woman. (43)
"We are fallen creatures. We are divided from each other and ourselves, despising joy, despising what we desire because we despise ourselves. The only way out is by incorporation. Never by exclusion. Never by fencing off, escape, separation, or destruction, because these things leaves us on the run, undone. There is peace in the chaos of sex, because it is one place we can find each other in ourselves and ourselves in each other". (44)
NOTES
1) Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale Fawcett Crest 1986, p. 4
3) check examples of his work out at: http://www.milomanara.it/
4) John Seabrook Deeper (a two-year odyssey in cyberspace) Faber&Faber 1997, p.140
9) Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex Penguin 1984, p.3
10) M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (an introduction), Penguin, 1984, p.6
11) Helena Velena Dal Cybersex al transgender (tecnologie, identita' e politiche di liberazione) Castelvecchi 1998, p. 242
12) http://www.sexonline.cybercore.com/cyber.html
13) Helena Velena Dal Cybersex al transgender (tecnologie, identita' e politiche di liberazione) Castelvecchi 1998, p 234/5
16) Reverend William Cooper Sesso Estremo (pratiche senza limiti nell'epoca cyber) Castelvecchi 1995, p.5
18) Ada Lovelace quoted in Sadie Plant Zeros + Ones Fourth Estate 1997, p. 205
19) Steven Levy Hackers (heroes of the computer revolution) Penguin 1994
20) Sadie Plant Zeros + Ones Fourth Estate 1997, p.144
28) Sadie Plant Zeros + Ones Fourth Estate 1997, p.212
31) Dolores French (with Linda Lee) Working: my life as a prostitute Gollancz 1990, p.10
32) Sallie Tisdale Talk dirty to me (an intimate philosophy of sex) Pan, pp. 151/2
33) The complete text can be found at: http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/
34) For all "Biters" quotes see note 33
35) http://www.sexonline.cybercore.com/femporn/ninaporn.htm
36) (ed.) R. J. Hollingdale A Nietzsche Reader Penguin 1977, p.96
37) Pat Califia "an introduction" in Some Women (ed. Laura Antoniou) Rhinoceros 1995, pp. 4/5
38) Sallie Tisdale Talk dirty to me (an intimate philosophy of sex) Pan, p.240
39) Louise Michel quoted in AA. VV. La storia dell'anarchia Idrovolante 1970 p.33
40) From "Song to myself" in Walt Whitman Leaves of grass Penguin 1984 p.47
41) M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (an introduction), Penguin, 1984 pp.156/7
42) Sallie Tisdale Talk dirty to me (an intimate philosophy of sex) Pan p.243
43) mielexxx agreed to have her mailing list experiences used a case study.
44) Sallie Tisdale Talk dirty to me (an intimate philosophy of sex) Pan p.246
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale Fawcett Crest 1986
AA. VV. La storia dell'anarchia Idrovolante 1970
Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex Penguin 1984
Pat Califia "an introduction" in Some Women (ed. Laura Antoniou) Rhinoceros 1995
Reverend William Cooper Sesso Estremo (pratiche senza limiti nell'epoca cyber) Castelvecchi 1995
Dolores French (with Linda Lee) Working: my life as a prostitute Gollancz 1990
M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality (an introduction), Penguin, 1984
Nina Hartley Reflections of a feminist porn star online at: http://www.sexonline.cybercore.com/femporn/ninaporn.htm
(ed.) R. J. Hollingdale A Nietzsche Reader Penguin 1977
Steven Levy Hackers (heroes of the computer revolution) Penguin 1994
Sadie Plant Zeros + Ones Fourth Estate 1997
John Seabrook Deeper (a two-year odyssey in cyberspace) Faber&Faber 1997
Sallie Tisdale Talk dirty to me (an intimate philosophy of sex) Pan ?
Helena Velena Dal Cybersex al transgender (tecnologie, identita' e politiche di liberazione) Castelvecchi 1998
Walt Whitman Leaves of grass Penguin 1984
All Italian texts translated by the author.