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A review by geertje
The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography by Angela Carter
4.0
During the 1970s and early 1980s, there was such a thing as the feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars or simply the sex wars or porn wars. They were about diverse sexual issues, but one of them was about the feminist stance to pornography. One group felt that porn was inherently misogynistic and a tool in the oppression of women, and should therefore be banned (they got support from conservative and Christian groups in this). Another group argued that, no, porn could be a way for women to liberate themselves because women should be allowed to have and want sex and be sexual creatures. A lot of nuance was lost within this debate, with the anti-porn group refusing to acknowledge that women are often indeed sexual creatures who desire sex and can enjoy porn, and the pro-porn group unwilling to engage with the fact that a lot of porn is violent towards women (rape porn, for example). Ultimately, in the USA the anti-porn group won a lot of support and managed to restrict pornography, though in practice this mainly meant that LGBTQ porn was banned and its makers and distributors persecuted, rather than mainstream porn.
Marquis de Sade, who lived from 1740 till 1814, wrote some very extreme porn during his lifetime. It was found so shocking, in fact, that he spent a large part of his life locked away in mental institutions in order to keep the general public safe. Apart from sexual acts we find a lot less shocking today (oral sex, anal sex, sex between two men or two women, orgies, certain fetishes regarding faeces and urine, what have you, this man wrote it all), his work also brimmed with violence and pain (there is so much rape in them, guys, as well as mutilation, murder, cannibalism, necrophilia, you name it); it is with reason that the word 'sadism' ('to gain pleasure from hurting another') was named after the Marquis. Needless to say, the anti-porn crowd found in Marquis de Sade everything that was bad about porn, and the pro-porn crowd did not have that much to bring in against it.
But then Angela Carter enters the discussion with her book 'The Sadeian Woman', shocking friend and foe alike. Through analyses of his major pornographic works, she argues that Sade's work is actually proto-feminist since Sade was one of the first (if not THE first) to divorce women having sex completely from sex' reproductive function. Instead, sex is all about pleasure. That pleasure is always to the detriment of another, for such is the way Sade perceives the world, but it is pleasure nonetheless.
An interesting book that is well argued.
It also has ensured that I NEVER want to read anything by Marquis de Sade.
Marquis de Sade, who lived from 1740 till 1814, wrote some very extreme porn during his lifetime. It was found so shocking, in fact, that he spent a large part of his life locked away in mental institutions in order to keep the general public safe. Apart from sexual acts we find a lot less shocking today (oral sex, anal sex, sex between two men or two women, orgies, certain fetishes regarding faeces and urine, what have you, this man wrote it all), his work also brimmed with violence and pain (there is so much rape in them, guys, as well as mutilation, murder, cannibalism, necrophilia, you name it); it is with reason that the word 'sadism' ('to gain pleasure from hurting another') was named after the Marquis. Needless to say, the anti-porn crowd found in Marquis de Sade everything that was bad about porn, and the pro-porn crowd did not have that much to bring in against it.
But then Angela Carter enters the discussion with her book 'The Sadeian Woman', shocking friend and foe alike. Through analyses of his major pornographic works, she argues that Sade's work is actually proto-feminist since Sade was one of the first (if not THE first) to divorce women having sex completely from sex' reproductive function. Instead, sex is all about pleasure. That pleasure is always to the detriment of another, for such is the way Sade perceives the world, but it is pleasure nonetheless.
An interesting book that is well argued.
It also has ensured that I NEVER want to read anything by Marquis de Sade.