Consent and Other Buzzwords
The Me Too Movement began six and a half years ago. There are now more conversations on the prevalence of sexual predation. But how much has the culture really changed?
“I think the culture is changing a bit—it’s already different from how it had been a decade ago, when Roger was harassing me.”
Megyn Kelly wrote this near the end of her memoir, Settle for More, released in 2016.
Kelly is a political independent, though she is often written off as a conservative by liberals, as she is a former Fox News host. Appallingly, political affiliation often affects individuals’ sympathy for a victim. Early in her journalism career, she was sexually harassed by Roger Ailes, the longtime CEO of Fox News. It started in 2005, with his behavior escalating from inappropriate comments she said she would brush off to “quid pro quo sexual harassment.”
Kelly reported the harassment to a supervisor at the time who simply told her to avoid Ailes. By 2007, the harassment had ended, and she considered him a mentor for the next nine years. She said she always wondered, though, if he had harassed other women. Eventually, she met another woman at Fox who, she found out, he had harassed. Her colleague did not want her experience dredged up either though. Kelly decided then that if she ever heard of another instance of Ailes sexually harassing a woman, she would come forward. That happened in 2016, when Gretchen Carlson brought a suit against Ailes.
Eventually, Kelly went on the record, along with others, and Ailes left Fox. On the culture changing, Kelly wrote that at the time Ailes was harassing her, “the papers were full of reports like that of the American Apparel CEO who had severely sexually harassed his female staff and, after paying off a few lawsuits, was allowed to run the company for another ten years.”
It should be noted that Ailes was allowed to resign from his position at Fox, and no mention of the pending suit or other sexual harassment allegations were made in statements from the Murdoch family (owners of Fox). These facts in mind, though, Kelly was right to say the culture is changing. A little over a year after Ailes left Fox, the hashtag #Metoo began trending on Twitter.
The virality of the hashtag #metoo following numerous sexual abuse allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein began the Me Too Movement in October 2017. Women talk more openly about the sexually predatory behavior of men today. Accusations are often take more seriously than they were prior to Me Too. However, society is also doing what it always does in response to calls for accountability for predation and corruption: It is finding ways to use the buzzwords and safeguards put in place for change to instead maintain the status quo. And many accusations and red flags are still ignored.
Kelly referenced the lack of accountability for the American Apparel CEO at the time Ailes was harassing her as evidence of change between then and the time in which she was writing her memoir. But that lack of accountability did and still does exist. Just type ‘Diddy’ into your browser to see an example of it in the present. He has a long history of assault allegations, yet only now is it really setting into the public consciousness, and only now is it being taken seriously. And still, he will likely go free. What are other powerful men still getting away with?
The endeavor to maintain the status quo through the utilization of key buzzwords and the framework laid out by supposed feminists and self-proclaimed progressives can be seen in the hyper focus on consent and consent alone. It can be seen in the claim that feminism is purely about choice and the insinuation that anything can be chosen, that people can consent to anything. At least to anything sexual. It can be seen in the claim, often from supposed anti-capitalists, that it is okay to pay someone for sex. That it is okay to commodify someone’s body.
The acknowledgement of rape culture and the prevalence of sexual harassment is important. But many have used it to push for a focus on simply getting a “yes.” Anything and everything is okay as long as there is eventually a yes. We Can’t Consent to This is a group highlighting cases of women being murdered through the use of strangulation by men in the UK. These men claim that they were simply having ‘kinky’ sex. That the woman they killed consented to such actions. And what happens? The courts often use this as a reason to lighten these men’s sentences.
The insistence that anything is okay as long as there is a “yes” is extensive. Again, everything is supposedly okay with consent. Even if someone must be paid for it. Even if someone must sign a contract, so sexual actions yet to occur protect a sexual predator who is about to strike from legal action. This is exactly what occurs in the sex trade. Contracts are an expectation in much of porn, and those who wind up in pornography often sign these, then they are sexually assaulted. And many people involved simply shrug and say the assaulted individual consented. They simply remind them that they signed a contract.
Between November 2017 and January 2018, the death of five women in the porn industry spurred a speech at the 2018 AVN Awards—often called the Oscars of Porn—by the husband (Kevin Moore) of one of the women who died, August Ames. Ames killed herself in December 2017.
Moore referred to pressure from agents, producers, and companies on individuals in porn to engage in sexual acts they do not want to, and said, “It's your body, it's your choice.” He received great applause.
Moore also said, “Now, to the female performers, I want to say thank you, for everything that you do, for everything that you endure, and for everything that you are.” What if we remove the euphemistic label and replace it with the actions taking place: “Now, to the [women who get naked and have sex on camera], I want to say thank you, for everything that you do, for everything that you endure, and for everything that you are.” This was celebrated as progressive and pro-woman. Let’s acknowledge, too, the thanks for enduring.
In an article praising Moore’s speech, Susannah Breslin wrote for Forbes, “In porn, ... female performers ... are the subject of the camera's unblinking focus, subjected to the hypocrisies of a society that watches them in secret and shuns them socially, mostly-solo entrepreneurs whose hustle demands they negotiate the value of their sexual bodies every time they work.”
Society has always shamed people for things no one should be shamed for, such as, for example, mental health struggles. However, there is a difference between shaming someone and having shame. Shame in and of itself is not a societal invention, and sometimes, we feel shame because we should. Certain actions even condone shaming.
Here, I do not make reference to the women in porn, nor many of the men in porn. (I only differentiate between men and women in porn because (1), as Breslin points out, women are often the focus, and (2), because the women are often being abused by the men.) These individuals, those in front of the camera, are preyed upon and are pushed into the porn industry, often by extreme life circumstances and certainly by a predatory and discriminatory society. I am instead referring to those who watch porn.
“In reality, porn isn't the problem. It's porn's consumers. Porn may have gone mainstream, but the stigma remains. We devalue sex work, so we devalue pornography. We watch pirated porn instead of paying for it, and the adult business struggles to eke out a profit. We turn to its female performers to fulfill our needs behind closed doors, and we turn our backs on their need: to be seen as human beings.”
Breslin is incorrect: Porn is the problem. To an extent, she’s also correct though: Porn’s consumer’s are also the problem. Consumers of porn are the demand. Without demand, there would be no market.
Breslin wrote that though porn is mainstream, stigma remains. The thing is, many who publicly promote slogans like “Sex work is work” and say porn is good for society still don’t necessarily want to say publicly that they watch it, often not even to the people who stand beside them echoing the same sentiments about the sex trade. Why is that? Within that subculture, there is no shaming of porn, yet it appears many of them feel ashamed. That is for a reason that goes deeper than culture.
To reiterate, Breslin said, “We turn to its female performers to fulfill our needs behind closed doors, and we turn our backs on their need: to be seen as human beings.” Seeing women get naked and have sex on camera is not a need though, and it is painted as a need to make people feel better about doing it. Breslin is right that the need of the women in porn is to be seen as human beings, just like everyone else. Using random people on the internet to get off whenever you feel like it inherently sexually objectifies those people though; in the mind of the user, the people on the screen are for sexual gratification, and they are using them as they please. Seeing people as objects is definitionally incompatible with seeing them as full human beings. The idea that it is possible for porn to be respectful is born out of a desire to keep engaging in behavior one knows to be shameful.
In March 2018, the BBC published a piece about women in the porn industry coming out to call for respect in response to the deaths of the five women from November 2017 to January 2018. The article blames the hardship these women face simply on the cultural reception of porn and those in it rather than the nature of porn and the sexualization of women.
The writer, Thomas Fabbri, wrote, “Angela White, who is both an actress and director, won a record-breaking 14 AVN Awards this year. She says there's a ‘large positive shift within the industry’ to more women producing and directing their own content and ‘to represent women as powerful sexual beings.’
This year, half of the 10 titles contending for Movie of the Year at the AVN Awards were directed or co-directed by women, compared with only one out of 10 Oscar nominees.”
Between points in the article about the stigma, trolling, and dehumanizing comments those in porn face and the facts highlighted in the quote above, it seems the article is meant to indicate that the porn industry itself is progressive and safe and the whole of the struggle women in it face lies in people being mean on the internet.
But movie stars face trolls and dehumanizing comments online as well. The addition of more female producers and directors in the porn industry is clearly not saving the women in front of the camera. And why should we think it would? It doesn’t change the fact that, like Susannah Breslin said, in porn, “[women] are the subject of the camera's unblinking focus.” We live in a world tailored to the male gaze; sex sells, and women have almost always been the vessel for that sale. Porn takes it further, sex being the product; women being the sale. It doesn’t matter who is behind the camera.
The MeToo Movement started in October 2017. We have more conversations today about the prevalence of sexual predation at the hands of men. I am endlessly grateful for the movement, and I will never forget how I felt the first time I saw the post “me too.” It felt like the beginning of a revolution. It is obviously good that the truth about Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein, and others came to light. But as a society, we still condone the mainstreaming of songs wherein men call women whores. We glamorize the abuse of women on album covers and on the runway. We still turn a blind eye when wealthy men like Sean (Diddy) Combs are accused repeatedly. We say that it is empowering for women to be used for sex by men, just as long as those men throw money at them. We say it is liberating for women to consent to abuse, so long as a man cums in the process.