Performance model of sex, Angry Eye

[gement]

I just read an essay on the performance model of sex (versus the traditional commodity model), which really lays out the nature of how we can even have a concept of 'dubious consent' in sex, when it would make no sense for any other pleasurable hobby:

"B. B. King has played with everybody, but no one would argue that he asked for it if someone kidnapped him and made him cut a demo tape with a garage band of strangers."

There's also an analysis of how the Nice Guy mindset fits into the commodity model, which uses the delightful phrase "Pussy Oversoul." The whole thing is in Yes means yes! and can be viewed on Google Books here: Toward a Performance Model of Sex

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I've seen several links in the last week to The Angry Eye. It's an hour long and it documents the educational exercise where a facilitator treats blue eyed people (defined as all non-brown eyed people) as systematically lesser. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. If you find it difficult to sit through, you're doing it right.

I was glad to get to see this, because I was bitterly disappointed in 3rd Grade when I did not get to participate in this exercise. (The 4th Grade class where I went for English was doing it.) I'd always wondered how it would look, how it would feel. I was picked on a fair amount in grade school, but I remember already having an acute awareness in my sheltered little all-white town that this was different.

Having seen the video now, I wonder how many grade school teachers I would trust to facilitate this. Not many. I wonder how I would have behaved. I hope, with a certain amount of justification, that I would be the one who burst into tears but made no excuses, answered politely, and stayed.

The most important "Oh." for me was the blank, bemused, or mildly irritated looks on the black women when the facilitator asked them if they'd been spoken to like this, and if it would drive them to tears.

The socialization of tears is a mystery to me. I am told I've been a waterworks since I was two. I don't recall deliberately using tears to get my way. I do recall being hideously embarrassed, over and over, when I couldn't stop myself from crying at an inopportune time, because a teacher was sharp with me, because another student snubbed me, because I was embarrassed or angry or frightened. It got me sent to therapy.

If I could have stopped, I would have. It's gotten better with maturity and good bipolar meds, but it's still something I have to fight. It comes up at least once a year in workplace situations, try as I might to stop it. That sharp feeling behind my eyes is there right now just thinking about it.

I can't imagine what it would take to burn that reaction out of me.

Comments

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Hm. It seems as if the commodity model comes into being when a person's performance is valued much more by someone else than by the person themselves (including if the person has a negative value associated with that particular performance). It then becomes a trade good, which can be exchanged for a thing of greater value. Whereas if the person put extremely high-magnitude valuations (both positive and negative) on their own performances, then a commodity model becomes less useful to them.

An economic analogy might be people who don't want to sell their houses/farmland/whatever to developers who want to raze what's there and put up something else. A slightly more ... I can't really say "risque" or "edgy" on this topic ... analogy might be copyright holders who don't want their works used out of a controlled context.

Hm. Rape as eminent domain to seize the property of the Pussy Oversoul? E.g., that woman is valuing her own sexual capacity too highly, so we need to step in and enforce a more reasonable rate of exchange. That seems creepily accurate.

[gement.livejournal.com]

creepily accurate.

I keep staring at this and can do nothing but agree. Nice call on noting the valuation conditions that make the model relevant.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Certainly that fits somewhat with ideas of "corrective rape", although regime change might be more fitting.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

The other thing that this analogy is calling forth in my head, is the effect that wealth imbalance has on the situation. Person A with 10 million dollars can apply a lot more objective "value" measured in dollars (as opposed to subjective value which seems to be measured in time), than person B living below the poverty line. Which makes it incredibly easy for them both to view all of person B's abilities and desires as commodities that can be traded for money. Ergo, human chattel!