The 'Pornography Debate' has struggled on endlessly. We have heard voices of anger and despair, of support and condemnation, of humiliation and violence. Only one thing seems to have united these disparate opposing voices: the fact that very few of them have come from men and heterosexual men in particular. What has been straight men's response to pornography? After all it is we who produce it, buy it and masturbate over it - yet we have remained silent. The deathly silence of the porn shop, of the lonely figure fast forwarding his VCR, of male eyes anxiously darting across displayed flesh in a magazine has followed us into public debate. What is it about pornography that frightens us into such paralysis?
| despite being in a joyful long-term relationship with a woman, it seemed I had become drawn to the excitement and trauma of seeking out these images of frozen flesh |
Pornography has shadowed my life from the moment when, aged 8, I discovered my cousin's secret pile beneath his bed. Twenty years later, and despite being in a joyful long-term relationship with a woman, it seemed I had become drawn to the excitement and trauma of seeking out these images of frozen flesh. Alone, I attempted to find the answers as to why I had become addicted to these self-abasing rituals. But all I could find were arguments about censorship, about representation, about definitions and about politics. Where were the voices of experience? Where were men's stories about their feelings when consuming pornography? Where were confessions of powerful addiction? Everywhere I heard screams of male dominance, of violence and rape, of eroticized murder. I was told that pornography was one of the most excessive manifestations of male power - yet my own experience had been one of disempowerment and of shame. My understanding of pornography was not that it was a site for the celebration of powerful masculine sexuality, but a place of trauma where men search for escapist ways of avoiding the truth of their own emotional experience. A secret world where we are allowed to desire and be desired unconditionally.
For many years my work as an artist has involved creating performances and installations that have dealt with social and ecological concerns. As I grew older, the work became more rooted in personal experiences. No longer seduced by the 'big' abstract issues, I started to look at the direct experience of the death of my father and how my personal denial of this was mirrored by a cultural denial of death. 
Slowly I was edging towards confronting the more pressing concerns of my life, questions of masculine identity and attempting to relate them to a wider social context. In the winter of 1992 I was commissioned to produce a new piece of work for the NOW '92 Festival of New Performance, Nottingham. I decided it was time for me to create a work that attempted to deal with my own confused feelings and to break the silence about pornography. 'Guilty Pleasures' would confront men with the role that pornography plays in their lives. It would be centred around the 'phenomenon' of porn, the direct experience of the 'users'.
The 'Guilty Pleasures' project began with a 'Confessional'. A black box appeared in public spaces in London and Nottingham. Inside were two chairs and a video camera. My aim was to get men to come into the 'Confessional' and speak about their experiences of pornography to the camera. In order to conceal the participants' identities, they were filmed in silhouette, not unlike the way terrorists are interviewed on British television. The first task was to find suitable public sites for the 'Confessional'. It needed to be in interior spaces where members of the public might have time to stop and get involved. Public libraries, shopping malls, sports centres, cinemas, museums and art centres were approached. Most places refused immediately, indeed one council banned it from all their public libraries and buildings, (and all it was, was a place for men to TALK about how pornography had affected their lives). It seemed that even discussing pornography was an undesirable act. Eventually, only the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), in London, and in Nottingham, the Playhouse Theatre and Broadway Cinema, allowed it into their foyers.
Setting up the first 'Confessional' was terrifying. Suddenly I began to fear the worst. Men I had spoken to about the project had said 'There is no way men will just come off the street and talk about such things, you need years of trust building' or 'No one will tell the truth, they will swear that they haven't seen any porn since their teens'. Maybe they were right, maybe I was one of the minority, one of those invisible 'dysfunctional dirty old men'. After all, it is always 'other' men who use pornography; maybe I would meet a wall of blank silent faces.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Standing outside the 'Confessional' with a clipboard, I walked up to men and invited them in to talk. I expected most to make some excuse, to claim they were busy and did not have the time, but one in four men approached did accept the invitation and came into the 'Confessional'. Once inside, I would ask a few basic questions: 'What was the first pornographic image that you ever experienced?', 'Do you still use pornography?', 'What are the feelings that you experience before, during and after you've used porn', 'Do you see any ritual patterns in your use?' These would usually lead into general dialogue.
| a student compared pornography to using drugs because it provided him with a momentary numbing of the pain and emptiness he often felt |
Most men immediately opened up and trusted me; it felt like they were suddenly able to express things they had never spoken about before. Some men said they felt a relief, a burden lifted; others thought they would not be able to find the language to talk about these things but proceeded to make lucid connections between their lives and pornography. Of course, there were a few who denied any involvement with it, but the majority spoke long and in depth about how porn had touched their lives. Similar patterns and stories kept emerging: finding their fathers 'porn stash'; pornography being the first time they had seen a naked woman; using pornography when feeling bad about themselves patterns of loss leading to need followed by excitement then depression; anger at the power that pornography had over their lives.
One young man, after speaking for half an hour about the fact that his 'porn binges' were the only moments when he felt in control of his sexuality, returned several hours later to the 'Confessional' in a flustered state and asked me to wipe his story from the tape. Many more moving stories were told: a middle-aged surveyor who would automatically search for discarded pornography when working in derelict buildings because it gave him a brief moment of feeling 'really masculine'; the Frenchman who wanted to burn down sex shops because he felt haunted by the images he had seen as a teenager; a student who compared it to using drugs because it provided him with a momentary numbing of the pain and emptiness he often felt. Twelve hours of video tape later, I emerged feeling exhilarated by the sense that what I was trying to do was working -men were able to talk freely about these things. At the same time however, I was exhausted at having listened to so many tales of anguish, insecurity and guilt.
Edited down to one hour, these 'Confessional' tapes were used in the next stage of the project - the 'Guilty Pleasures Shop'.
A large empty shop on a high street in central Nottingham was taken over for a period of two weeks. Inside a replica of a sex shop was built (based on the European/U.S. video arcades). Pink silk curtains were draped in the window, a red neon sign advertised a 'LIVE SHOW', an electronic message machine invited people in to 'See the live show featuring Judy Joy .... visit the private video booths ... enter the world of guilty pleasures...'
On entering the open doors, a long corridor stretched ahead, bathed in the red light from a neon sign, reading: 'CONFESS PLEASURE'. Passing a small ticket booth with a male attendant who explained that there was no charge for seeing the show, the viewer would walk down the narrow corridor with booths on either side, out of which the monotonous pants, groans and musak of sex videos leaked. Most of the booths would appear to be occupied, but two of them remained open; inside video screens showed the 'Confessional' tapes. Not the expected writhing of flesh upon flesh, but the darkened silhouettes of people speaking in soft tones about their sorry secret moments of using porn. Continuing down the corridor which began to turn dark corners, the visitor entered another room, with peepshow slits along the side of the wall. The glass of the peepshow slits were engraved with: WANTING BUT NOTHING INSIDE and INSIDE IS NOTHING BUT WANTING. Looking into the peepshow the viewer would see what at first seemed like the traditional bump and grind of a stiletto heeled PVC clad woman gyrating to tacky music.
| the viewer would see what seemed like the traditional bump and grind of a stiletto heeled PVC clad woman gyrating to tacky music |
As the dry ice cleared, the dissected carcass of a pig could also be seen hanging inside the lurid red chamber of the peepshow. Then the figure would begin a raunchy slow striptease, draping each item of clothing on the dead pig. As the music reached a climax, the figure removed her basque and wig and it became clear that what the peepshow audience had been watching was the disguised body of a man, myself.
My aim was to create a space which would give viewers the same corporeal sensations of a sex shop visit - the furtive excitement and the 'buzz', which I see as elements fundamental to men's experience of porn. By confronting the viewer with the unexpected, perhaps they would be jolted into questioning their own relationship to pornography. My act of dressing in drag was to suggest the shifting subjectivities involved in fantasy and to hint at the idea that part of men's attraction to pornography is the desire to be wanted sexually, to be in a passive sexual position free from the masculine chains of 'performance' and 'initiative' - in other words, to become the object of desire. Drag also presents a facade, a surface that disguises other realities, a key ingredient of pornographic images. The pig's carcass symbolised masculine sexuality, but also the devouring yet fertile feminine, and was a reference to the myth of Cerce, a Greek sorceress who turned men who leered at her into pigs.
During the two weeks, approximately 3000 people visited the 'Guilty Pleasures shop'. The majority were men who thought they were coming to Nottingham's newest sex shop. The reactions to it were extraordinary. Groups of lads would be besides themselves with excitement during the peepshow. They would shout and demand things from me: 'Come on darling bend over! ...Get your kit off!' I heard words for female genitalia that I had never encountered before. They would set up a system of control knocking on the peep glass to get me to perform in front of it.
Excitement, shouting, laughing and jeering would build up until the final moments when they realised I was about to reveal my breasts. Suddenly a silence would descend, an expectant hush. When the truth of my identity was revealed there would be a few sharp words of surprise - 'It's a fucking geezer!' and embarrassed laughter followed by immediate evacuation of the peepshow. Looking at a body disguised in the fetishized trappings of the pornographic model may be arousing, but looking at the same body with the knowledge that it is male sets up severe sexual/cultural confusions. Sometimes I would hear them bantering and denying their arousal as they rushed out of the shop: 'I wasn't excited, I knew all along... but I saw what your hand was doing!' It was a very different experience from the silent shame of a real peepshow, for the very reason that men were watching together, not isolated in their own booths. This created a dualistic construction of voyeurism: man looking at the object of desire; men looking at each other looking at their object of desire. Men realising that they had been aroused by and were desiring a surface.
What were my own feelings while performing this routine over ten times a day? Dressing in drag is an empowering act, the lie that it creates masks one in a certain confident armour. When the peepshow was full (about 15 people at a time) and there were lively verbal responses, I was able to play up to the viewers' excitement by teasing and turning up the raunch factor. In many ways this aroused me; feeling the object of so much longing and desire gave me a heightened sense of sexual power. Ironically a power rarely, if ever, felt by myself in my 'real' experience as a man. As soon as the revelation took place, I began to feel this surface of sexual confidence disintegrate. Once again, I had become me - a man.
| as the dry ice cleared, the dissected carcass of a pig could also be seen hanging inside the lurid red chamber |
A completely different relationship would be set up when only one or a couple of men watched or when I recognised men returning to see the show. In this silence it felt harder to keep up the pretence. I would go through the motions feeling very vulnerable. I would wonder if maybe they knew and were therefore being aroused by my real identity?
Occasionally groups of lads, feeling duped, would erupt into violence. They would attempt to smash the walls down and shout homophobic comments, an immediate way of defending their perceived masculinity from transgression. This reaction was problematic. Giving men an outlet for homophobia can be dangerous and destructive, and the force of this anger would override any of the issues I was trying to present. This was one way in which 'Guilty Pleasures' may have failed, but I am neither an academic, a sociologist or psychotherapist. As an artist, I attempt to bring issues into debate, to raise questions and maybe suggest but not provide answers. The work is not created to reach final conclusions, but to open up new ways of feeling and thinking and provide a space for unrestricted dialogue. The 'sex shop' experience had taken risks, manipulating men's desires and emotions, maybe wrongly; but I feel it is only by taking people through 'real' experiences, suspending their disbelief, that they can begin to be touched on levels beyond the visual and intellectual. The fact that what they are experiencing is 'art' becomes irrelevant. The issues take precedence over the tired debates of 'is it art', 'a waste of tax payers money' and so on. In this way, the ideas and questions raised are able to flow outside the rigid arena of art.
As well as the 'Guilty Pleasures Shop', a day long seminar took place bringing together 30 men to talk about the issues. Before the work even started the local Nottingham press decided to run a headline - 'Festival of Porn Storm' - which began a healthy debate about pornography, in the form of published letters and editorial comment for a couple of weeks. The National press and media soon picked up the scent, and attempted to put me in the uncomfortable position of 'expert' and 'mouth piece' for all men, including trying to set me up in public confrontations with Andrea Dworkin and others.
After recovering from exhaustion, I initiated a network for men who had written to me. The network enables men to write their own stories about how porn has shadowed their lives, and to share their stories with other men. I am also working with my partner on a piece that relates to women's experience of bulimia and men's addiction to porn which we have come to understand as fundamentally similar conditions.
All this is only the start of a long journey. A journey dedicated to men who mistake fear for passion, a journey to find a place where they can speak of the fragility of their sexual longings, a place where they no longer need to numb their pain by losing themselves in images of beautiful bodies, a place where men and women can be equal in desire.
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
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