In response to Erin’s post about advertising, I have to agree. Advertisements are thrust into our everyday lives constantly. I remember being a pre-teen (completely consumed by image consciousness) and wanting to fit in no matter what it took– this usually meant buying the $5 lipgloss and wearing the $30 logo tee-shirt everyone else had. I want to look a little bit at why advertising to teenagers is so lucrative.

In Practices of Looking, an introduction to visual culture, Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright examine visual images and the roles they play within commerce and culture. The chapter focuses on advertisings role within economics, and how worth is placed on certain objects based on reputation and social value. Advertising strategies are used to sell the same products in new and exciting ways—these strategies are a driving force in capitalist and consumerist societies, and are used to target specific demographics. Advertising is a way of persuading people to shop and new advertisements persuade consumers to keep shopping by creating a value for the next best thing.

The consumption of commodities creates a “commodity self,” the idea that our selves are mediated through and constructed in part through our consumption and use of commodities. This self is the reason we choose to buy, wear, eat, drive, or watch the things we do—because we believe that those things define the self we epitomize.

The concept of the commodity self is, however, partial to the individual, making advertisers recognize which people should be driving their markets. The worth of an item may vary both in monetary value and social value between two different people. This creates “commodity fetishism,” the idea that commodities having different a different value per individual are emptied and filled of value depending on their commodity status. Their production is unequal to the value of their social value.

Concerning advertising and teens– corporations know how to work the age group into buying their product. And when the teens buy their product that is what give them the ‘cool factor.’

UPDATE: Utisz points out an interesting story that throws my original observation out for a creepy loop: woman marries Eiffel Tower following her long and torrid love-affair. Talk about a bizarre fetish for inanimate objects. I wonder what would be an orthodox objectological take on fetishism here? Money quote:

“Someone who falls in love with objects can control that relationship on their own terms,” he said. “Their objects will not let them down. That is extremely attractive for a person who is otherwise often desperately lonely.”

Objectology as a perfect philosophy for control-freaks without any visible attachment to human beings and plenty of feelings for inanimate objects? Jump on this one, kids, once objectology is as mighty and popular as it claims it will inevitably be, you can make a career with this interpretive approach.

________________________

This is an interesting essay from THE (Times Higher Education) on Ayn Rand:

A characteristic peculiar to Rand that detracts mightily from her works in a spectacular way is her enthusiasm for such inanimate objects as machines, trains, high-tension wires, factories and industrial areas of cities. Her unstinting praise of the so-called geniuses of entrepreneurial bent is difficult enough to swallow; but her paroxysms of delight as she ponders smoke-belching steel mills or grease-covered railroad bridges, page after page, will cause thoughtful readers to experience feelings of profound and abject embarrassment.

This reminds me of something, but I cannot quite put my finger on it.

This is the first part  that puts focus on what you can do if you happen to visit Sweden or Denmark as a kinkster. This interview is done with Fredsarmé, one of the organizers of a new fetishclub in the south of Sweden. Their next event takes place this weekend and they plan on having events on every third month.

For some one who has never heard about Lunds lekloft, what can you tell about it? Would you say it’s different from other kinky clubs in Sweden and in that case, how would it be different?

- Lunds Lekloft is one of the largest clubs in southern Sweden with clear focus on fetishism, kinky sex and BDSM. There are mainly three things that differentiate us from other clubs with similar focus in Sweden.

1. We are exceptionally allowing when it comes to different types of play, and provide first-class safety.
2. We allocate a great deal of efforts towards the playrooms.
3. We try to get hold of exciting and notorious shows.

How did the idea of arranging a reoccurring event come to mind?

- The idea of Lunds Lekloft was created in an increasing urge for such a party in Skåne, there were a period of almost a year when nobody had arranged anything of such kind in Skåne. MissAnderson and I felt that we hade the necessary skills and motivation to end the problem. We hade both visited most of the events in southern Sweden, so we had a clear opinion of what was missing and what could be done better. After long time of research and discussions we eventually know exactly what we wanted to create. As they say: the rest is history.

Was it difficult to find a venue that was appropriate for the event? Did you have to make any special arrangements in order to get access to the venue?

-To find an appropriate venue was actually one of the most difficult obstacles in our way, especially since we didn’t want any restrictions on play or outfit. One has to find the right interior design, the right amount of rooms, the right surroundings and location, the right venue owner and most important the right feeling. Unfortunately most venue owners were not at all very positive to give room for the activities we were interested in. It sure wasn’t easy but eventually we found a venue we both liked, and with some adaptations, design and effort it really was quiet nice.

What would your advice to any one who would like to organize a kinky party?

-Only enter this complex and demanding business if you are perfectly sure that you have what it takes, failure is not an option! Experience from entrepreneurship, event-planning, marketing, and management is not a bad thing to have. I have experience from six entrepreneurial companies and I am quiet positive: the experience has helped me a lot. One of the most usual mistakes is that the organizers create what they think is missing or what they would like having, they are not focusing enough on costumers value. We are doing this for the sake of our guest – our costumers, and nobody else.

In Sweden, every time any one set up a new event, there is always an issue with the dresscode. The question is ‘to be or not to be dressed’ or maybe even, ‘what to dress in, how to dress’. After reading on your website and reading your thorough statement on dressode and code of conduct it struck me that you really make an effort to include as well as help those who want to come to your club. How did you work the dresscode out, what was your main concerns and how do you, as club organizer, plan to enforce that dresscode?

- Our main vision of Lunds Lekloft is to be to offer a club that is as allowing as possible. Our dresscode is following that vision so that we want to allow everything, with only two exceptions. First for uniforms now used by authority in Sweden, because there are restrictions in the law for the use of those and it could be a juridical problem for both the wearer and for us. The second exception is for outfits that are not differenced enough from what you could wear on an ordinary club. We are aware that far from everyone finds fetishism attractive but we demand some kinky creativity and willingness to stand out from ordinary clubbers, because we are not an ordinary club. The fact that everyone are wearing an outfit that are reflecting kinky sexuality in some way will create a way better sensation for all guests.

After the first event what kind of feedback did you get?

- People seemed so glad that we had started Lunds Lekloft, and they wanted us to continue! We got quiet a lot of tips on how to make next event even better, and we have listened to our costumers. I can with strong confidence say that next event will be greatly better.

And finally, what is the best thing about organizing the Loft?

- No doubt the best thing about organizing Lunds Lekloft is all the positive feedback we get. The smiles on the faces of our guests are really worth all the effort!

Thank you Fredsarmé for that interview and good luck to you and MissAnderson this weekend!

Kapital Volume 3
Part 1, Chapter 2 The Rate of Profit.

(This post is part of an ongoing project: a close reading of volume 3 of Kapital, one post per chapter. I hope that others who are tackling this book for the first time might find my summaries and thoughts useful. I also hope that others might leave their own thoughts, criticisms, help, etc. here so that this blog might become a good collective resource for those brave souls who take on Vol. 3.)

The summary which begins Chapter Two serves not only to remind us of some important details about the way in which value is produced but also ties together several details that will be essential for understanding our analysis of the law of value in the context of competing capitals. We are reminded first that surplus value is created in production but only realized in circulation. This is a crucial point as it really helps delineate the essential contours of Marx’s argument. The world of appearance is dominated by fetishism. We think that the coercive and tantalizing power of the market, that value, is manifest in commodities themselves as a result of their specific properties. We think that capital itself creates value. And we think that the process of exchange itself can create a profit. The modern neo-classical idea that both sides of an exchange profit because of differences in subjective utility would be the most pathetic form of fetishism to Marx. Of course value must be realized in exchange. Of course we couldn’t have profit without entering the marketplace to sell a commodity. But without engaging in productive activity we would have nothing of value to sell in the first place. Marx reminds us a few sentences later that the capitalist only engages in production in the first place in order to make a profit in the market and that this is only possible if there exists a commodity which can create more value than it costs: the worker.

The fact that value is produced by the worker but realized in circulation is important for our understanding of the theory of prices of production (see Part II). If surplus value is realized in the market then there is no guarantee that all of that value will be realized. A capitalist could realize more or less than the actual value of their commodity. This is precisely how average profits are realized.

The capitalist can’t employ workers without also employing means of production. After all, this is what makes him a capitalist- his ability to dominate the means of production and thus exploit wage labor. The capitalist must always purchase additional means of production whenever (s)he invests in workers. Thus every investment in variable capital is also an investment in constant capital. It becomes impossible to distinguish between the purchase of the worker and the purchase of the tools by which the capitalist dominates the worker. If the capitalist doesn’t suffer from the fetish that his profit comes from the market then he is likely to suffer from the fetish that surplus value comes from capital itself. That is, profit seems to come from investment in total capital and not merely from the variable portion. The mystery of profit is obscured. The indirect mechanism of the market once again draws a veil over the social relation behind it.

Profit, as Marx explains in Volume 1, comes from the excess of surplus value over the wages paid to workers (variable capital). Thus we represent the rate of exploitation:
s/v
where v is variable capital, money spent on wages, and s is the surplus value created by workers above the value of their wages. But if profit is really a measure of surplus value over the entire expenditure on capital, constant and variable, we will need a different equation:
s/(v+c)
where c is constant capital.

This formula for the rate of profit, surplus value over the total capital invested, will become the focal point of the next several hundred pages. Marx will attempt to show how variations of the elements of this equation will produce different results- different worlds of appearance. In fact the rest of Part 1 will be devoted to showing how variations in surplus, variable and constant capital, produce different real world phenomenon. In the course of this painstaking exploration he will describe every single variation possible in the equation and how each results in a different world of appearance. We are expanding on the more general descriptions of class struggle painted by the equation for the rate of exploitation (s/v) in Volume 1. Now we see a more graded, varied world of outcomes as we begin to examine the new dimension of capitalist competition which we are slowly adding to our map of capitalist social relations.

Though much of Part 1 is quite tedious in its example after example of different variations in the equation for the rate of profit, one of the things I do admire about it is that it is a great example of how misinformed those critics of Marx are who label him a determinist. From a superficial glance at the equation for surplus value we would assume that Marx assumed a world of constantly polarizing class struggle, of constant immiseration of the working class at the expense of the capitalist class. And indeed, this is the basic theoretical crux of the theory of exploitation. To the extent that capital reigns supreme, unrestricted, unchallenged, it will extract as much value from the working class as possible. But some see in this some sort of weather forecast, some sort of absolute prediction that is not borne out by the current plurality of working class experiences. But here in Part 1 of Volume 3 we get a long description of the plurality of forms of appearance that capital may take just by adding another variable to the equation, constant capital. Marx is saying that capital has certain essential characteristics, characteristics rooted in the antagonism of the wage relation, but he isn’t saying that there is only one possible world of appearance that this relation may take. He’s just pointing to the essential, abstract relations inherent in all of these possible world’s of appearance.

The formula for exploitation, also called the rate of surplus value, s/v, tells us that the capitalist gets something for nothing, that surplus value costs the capitalist nothing at all. This is essential to the basic contours of Marx’s argument. He assumes equal and fair exchange. He assumes a world of free and equal exchange in which nobody is ripped off and nobody charges monopoly prices. That is, he assumes the existence of bourgeois equality, market equality. The only way capital can exist in the context of bourgeois equality is for there to be a commodity which produces more value than it costs. An equality in exchange can only create profit through an inequality in production. While buyers and sellers are free and independent in the market, the social relation of capital is an unequal one which allows domination in production. This is the basic social relation capitalism.

But as capitalists employ their monopoly on means of production they employ the products of past labor as well as present labor into production. Constant capital enters their calculations. The equation for the rate of profit, s/(v+c) describes the relation of past labor to present labor, of capital to labor, and of cost-price to profit. This is why Marx says, on page 43, that the rate of profit must be deduced from the rate of exploitation and not vice versa. The social relation of dead to living labor, of total capital to profit, etc, can’t be understood without the prior relation of capital and labor.

But then he goes further and says that “it was the rate of profit that was the historical point of departure.” (p 43) I’m not sure how to read this. There is much debate about whether we should interpret Marx’s model of simple reproduction as an historical phenomenon or a theoretical level of abstraction. Many accuse Engels of imposing the historical interpretation on Marx’s writing. Some even challenge the whole idea of simple production (See Chris Arthur’s piece: http://marxmyths.org/chris-arthur/article2.htm). It is true that Marx’s comments on the historical nature of simple commodity production seem scattered and unformed, at least in the 3 volumes of Capital. There are also some important questions to raise about the historical argument: How does primitive exchange become regular enough for the law of value to really operate without the power of capital to break down these barriers to exchange? If primitive exchange contains unequal profit rates based on varying organic compositions (something we talk about in future chapters) why do people invest in high composition industries in the first place? Here are some of the thinkers on either side of this debate: Engels, Ernest Mandel (see intro to Vol. 1), and Rudolf Hilferding (Reply to Bohm-Bawerk) all argued for some historical interpretation. I.I. Rubin (Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value) and David Harvey (Limits to Capital) are the two that I have read who criticize this interpretation. I would be curious to hear other folks’ take on this and other suggested readings.

On with the chapter…

S/V tells us about the basic relations of the production of surplus value. It is assumed that once a surplus is produced that it is realized. But we know that the market contains all sorts of pitfalls and challenges to the actual realization of the value created in production. In this chapter Marx begins to outline some of the basic ways in which “production and circulation intertwine and intermingle”. “Capital passes through the circuit of its metamorphoses. Finally stepping beyond its inner organic life, so to say, it enters into relationships with outer life, into relations in which it is not capital and labor which confront one another, but capital and capital in one case, and individuals, again simply as buyers and sellers, in the other.” As our model of the labor-capital relation is expanded by adding competition between capitals we get a more fleshed-out picture of what capitalism actually looks like.

One of the most important things we notice when examining the process of circulation of surplus value is that circulation time can effect that rate of profit. If a capitalist can turnover a given amount of capital twice as fast as another he can make twice as much profit in the same amount of time. This gives the appearance that turnover time is as important as labor-time in creating value.

The process of production constantly intermingles with the circulation process. One stage morphs into the next in a continual cycle which makes it difficult to single out just one leg of the circuit as responsible for the production of value. Equally distorting is the idea that increasing the rate of exploitation by paying workers less is similar to cutting cost-price by buying cheaper constant capital. Capitalists treat both variable and constant capital as input costs to be slashed.

Marx says this all is a further development of the inversion of subject and object which happens in capitalist production. In the factory the subjective, creative forces of labor appear as the productive forces of capital alone. On the other hand the past-labor embodied in the forces of production become the subjective power of the capitalist. These “inverted conceptions” create a “transposed consciousness” (p.45), a fetishism which attributes the social power of labor to machines and capitalists while treating the living laborer as an objective commodity.

But this is an illusion. In reality there is no inner relation between the amount of constant capital used in production and the amount of surplus value created. Now, of course there is a technical relation at play. For a given amount of workers to perform a given amount of work a certain amount of constant capital will be needed. But this amount of constant capital has no relation to the amount of surplus created. The amount of constant capital varies with the specific technical requirements of a different production processes but has no bearing on the amount of surplus created. Even within the same production process the value of the constant capital employed can change without effecting the surplus value. So Marx tells us there is no inner relation between c and s. This also means that there is no inner relation between k (cost price, or c+v) and s.

Surplus value can only be created by exploiting wage laborers. But this doesn’t mean that in the course of realizing profits in exchange this surplus can’t be redistributed between capitalists. Though the rate of profit is just another measure of the rate of exploitation, though both are just a measure of the amount of surplus value extracted from workers, the rate of profit appears as merely an excess of selling price over cost-price. It remains a mystery where the profit came from. Did it come directly from the exploitation of workers or did it come from exchange? As we will discover later in our exploration of average profits, though surplus value is created in production it is redistributed among capitalists in exchange. Though profit can only come from exploiting labor the equation for the rate of profit shows us that profit occurs as equal returns on total capital. The only differentiation within the total capital that the capitalist is aware of is the difference between fixed and circulating capital, neither of which create surplus value from Marx’s perspective.

Marx concludes the chapter by evoking Hegel: “If, as Hegel would put it, the surplus therefore re-reflects itself in itself out of the rate of profit, or put differently, the surplus is more closely characterized by the rate of profit, it appears as a surplus produced by capital above its own value….” Surplus appears as an inner relation of capital to itself and not as a social relation between capitalists and workers. And of course, appearances always have a ring of truth when we are dealing with the fetishism of commodities. The body of the laborer is incorporated into the circuit of capital. As we breathe life into the machine we gives up our own life, becoming appendages to the machine, our alienated products becoming the active agents of our domination.

Profit is the form of appearance taken by surplus value. Surplus value immediately reveals a social relation to us. Profit doesn’t. Profit obscures surplus value, and appears as a relation of capital to itself. Marx warns that the further we explore this world of appearance the more surplus value will seem divorced from profit. In Part 2 of the book we will see how, in the case of average profit, this causes prices to diverge from values.

chapter 3

“The maoism of the French and of western youth in 1968-70 has nothing to do with Mao. It’s a western revision of rebellion and rejection. It’s important to understand that and not take an anachronistic view…These were utopias which had nothing to do with localised Chinese dogmatism. We rapidly came to understand that the Chinese weren’t nearly so revolutionary as we imagined….we were ‘cultural’ maoists. My own maoism consisted of taking a course on Chinese and learning to write Chinese so as to be better equipped to immerse myself in a tradition which, I thought, had more place for women. It was all about trying to acquire some sort of non-European subjectivity that belonged really to our own utopian dissidence from western norms. It was a way of interrogating the West by means of the East”.

- Julia Kristeva 2000, in Edward Scheer, ed., 100 Years of Cruelty: Essays on Artaud

In his analysis of the ideological atmospheres of the ‘new left’ in the Paris of 1968, Scottish political theorist Tom Nairn (then teaching in Paris) remarked that “every idea, in time, acquires a fetish-like rigidity”. Reflecting on the same period over thirty years later, Julia Kristeva – above – sketches the outline of the particular ‘first world’, western, feminist activist fetishes then at work in her imagination.

The quotation from Kristeva exemplifies the many lexicons of fetishism – the term “fetish” can refer to a Christian imperialist name for non-European subjectivity, a psychoanalytic stand-in for repressed dissidence, a commoditisation of the sign of otherness, a postcolonial appropriation of the third world by the first, a queer-ing of the self to acquire another subjectivity, and a radical anthropological force for re-appropriation.

The trajectory of Nairn and Kristeva is significant for this essay as contemporary activism (such as that associated with the so-called global justice movement, of which we are now perhaps post-facto) is heavily influenced by the anti-vanguard politics and ironic play espoused by the 1960s Parisian left and iconified in the May 1968 protests. Indeed, that ideals become fetishes seems an irony par excellence; that which is resisted ends up being reproduced. This is often felt rather terribly, as any 1970s communist discovering the brutal realities of Maoism and Stalinism could tell you. As Linda Hutcheon points out, irony’s mixture of amusement and betrayal produces its’ definitive edge – along which irony can at once critique, debase, reinforce and reconstruct.

In the spirit of this irony, then, I pose activism as fetishism in this essay, and explore the implications of this for an activist ethics of solidarity across power imbalances and cultural differences. In this I focus upon the discourses of privileged or first world activists, which is a reflection of my own location. With an analysis of the fetish across the key lexicons listed above, fetishism can be understood as both a blockage and an opening to ethical alliance. I suggest that, for first world activist consciousness at least, it is more fruitful to consider how we fetishise rather than whether we fetishise. This is spoken through five years of physical and textual travel through parts of the global justice movement, loosely framed – through readings, interviews, observations and conversations within this timespace.

Gekkô no sasayaki
JP, 100 min

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208178/

In times when I got lots and lots of things I want to write, it is easy that it takes too much time before getting an actual post out there. So here is one more of those ‘look at this! ‘.

I had one of those weird sleepless nights some days ago and ended up clicking away on youtube.
This was one of my favourite, who said BDSMers did have a sense of humour?!

Then, Torture Garden reminded me of what I like with the club in the first place. Through Torture Garden TV I was watching performances and interviews. Of course there was the stereotypical bull every here and there, but it was a couple of interviews I found really interesting and refreshing.
First of all, Buck Angel. Oh, how much adore that man with a pussy. This is a very basic interview but in the same time it is still oh so clear what he is talking about. A man I truly admire on so many levels.

Secondly, Kumi’s interview as well as show with Midori are clips that show something that is completely different from many other shows out there. Kumi states that she is looking for something new, something that gear away from the usual shows, that she is not very interested in the usual images of BDSM and wants to create art. It is important to remember these artists, because without them, the kink-scene would die. And boredom would rule.

A bit more with Kumi can be seen in this video, which is truly a work of art with  behind the scenes photos from a session in collaboration with Gilles Berquet and Mirka Lugosi.

There you go. Hope you have patience enough to wait for those texts that I’m working on!

More with Kumi can be found here

When I was a girl, I believed the key to being liked was to be nice. I would put up with just about anything, just so people would like me. And, it worked. Except of course it meant that some people liked me not necessarily for who I was, but for what they could make me do.

In the adult world, being nice is not all that useful. When it comes to sex, it’s often a hindrance (let’s face it: assholes are hotter than saints). At work, niceness is usually interpreted as weakness, and those of us who are nice tend to get screwed over. And personality-wise, merely being nice is, unfortunately, just not very interesting.

I probably got it from my mum – who was famous for answering the phone in a honey-dipped tone of voice, maintaining a conversational tone that was ludicrously polite, thanking the caller profusely, and then slamming the phone down, picking up a butcher’s knife and screaming like a banshee.

(I’m not sure that wanting to be liked was the reason for my mum’s niceness – I think it was more to do with a deeply imbedded code of social obligation that states that no matter how much you dislike a person, one must always, always maintain a friendly facade. Unless of course you live with the person, in which case you can wield knives at them with frequency and vigour).

Being nice is like having the word “sucker” tattooed across your forehead. I can’t walk ten metres though the city without being asked for change/propositioned by a sleazy foreigner/accosted by credit card salesmen. For years, the common features of all the men I ever dated were ‘unemployed’ and ‘had no qualms about asking their girlfriend for money’. I also had a way of attracting guys who were trying very hard to come across as nice, but who were actually dicks.

It’s hard however to separate this incessant niceness from my personality. Apart from the fact it’s ingrained, it is also based upon a certain amount of fact.

But being sweet and lovely is kind of incongruent with being a depraved, horny, kinky slut-bag.

Hence my current dilemma. I’m a nice girl who wants some really nasty things, and who doesn’t want to say “please” anymore. Unless it’s in the context of saying: “Please, may I have another?”

This is not to say that to participate in the BDSM scene, you have to be a prick. Ironically, these so-called freaks and weirdos are actually some of the friendliest, most welcoming people you’ll ever meet. When I first stepped out of my shell and into the Sydney kink scene, it was with a sense of celebration. No longer did I have to hide my weirdness from the world – in these spaces it was valued and appreciated. Finally, I’d found ‘my people’; those to whom I could relate.

However, there are days when I don’t feel all that celebratory about my sexuality. It can be a right pain in the arse, and I wish I could just be a goddamned normal person. I feel like kink is a burden that makes the chances of me meeting a compatible partner astronomically difficult. Sure, in the scene I’m surrounded by people who share my taste in perversion, but I have other passions and interests that go beyond a desire to be tied up and violated. Sex, while an important part of any relationship, is not everything.

Lately I’ve been faced with the dilemma of needing to get my kinky rocks off, but being utterly exhausted by social situations. It’s strange – in order to fully relax, let go, and truly be the person I am, I must first make a bunch of chit chat and go through the motions of pretending to be a confident extrovert. As a representative of the Under 30s group, I feel it’s expected of me to be something of an ambassador –  to ‘network’ and make favourable impressions upon all the right people.  It has started to feel like work.

I’m just so sick of being nice all the time. Being submissive is supposed to be about being selfless, but it can also be a very selfish thing. I want to be tied up, I want to be punished, I want to be used. I find myself feeling guilty for ‘taking’ from others – even though I’ve allowed them their kink, too. These wilful, demanding ‘wants’ of mine don’t go together very well with being nice. The Creature doesn’t care about putting other people at ease, or asking how a person’s week was, or being intelligent and witty, or laughing at other people’s jokes. It just wants what it wants, and lately, it’s been running out of patience.

Cue: anxiety.

So I’ve been thinking of ways around this problem. Is there a way to separate the kink from the social?

Then I realised, of course there is. It’s called seeing a professional.

It’s funny that I’ve come all this way, to wind up right at the point where so many others begin their journeys. For a lot of my kinky male friends, their first BDSM experiences were of going to commercial dungeons and seeing pro-dommes. For some, the bulk of their kink happens with a professional mistress, and they go to public events simply to socialise.

After having been involved in the scene for years, that approach seems unusual to me, but then I have to remind myself that way-back-when, I once believed that the only way for a submissive female to get their rocks off was to be a porn star. It’s only because I started meeting people who were volunteering to dominate me that I stopped thinking that way.

Seeing a pro-domme doesn’t mean that it has to be strictly business. Just because you’re paying someone to have their way with you doesn’t mean you can’t also be friends. But… that’s not what I’m after. I want someone who doesn’t know me, who hasn’t met my ‘Nice Girl’ persona, who doesn’t care about whether I call them the next day. Because some of the things I want are really pretty fucked up – stuff I can’t even admit to my kinky friends. I don’t want those things to be associated with ‘me’ –  yet I want them all the same. They are things that I myself am not particularly happy about wanting. That hard edge where what you’re comfortable with slides into the grey area of what scares the crap out of you. The sweet spot.

A pro-domme could be exactly what I need to be able to live a ‘normal’ life. See, I could date a man who is not in any way kinky (but who is passionate and sexy – this is non-negotiable), and then go off to see a pro every month or so to get my dose of electro torture/latex/breath play/blood, pain, depravity, etc, and be completely content.

I mean, yeah, nothing in life is ever quite so neat as that, but still, I think it could be a workable solution.

There is just one small problem: money.

Darn.

Ah well. As soon as I sign that movie deal for my best-selling novel, I won’t have to worry anymore. Until then, I guess I’d better keep being nice to people.

My recently acquired fascination with nuns just won’t go away. Perhaps it’s just one big overly idealised fetish, like one of Sister Wendy’s phalluses. (Allow me to attempt, then, the requisite talking cure).

I’m wondering about the position that “nun” can still play in western language and culture. She has, as Mourão points out, “historically….been a way of thinking of woman apart from society and men.” This comes with all the ambiguity of any seemingly fixed linguistic category: “simultaneous withdrawal from dependence on individual men and submission to the patriarchal institution of the church” (xvi). She marks the existence and the absence of women’s autonomy as human beings and within this, (as Sor Juana’s ‘mulatto slave girl’ suggests), another mechanism through which humanity and autonomy is admitted and dismissed. 

She remains challenging in the current era as a choice for women who now do not always have to be married, heterosexual, monogamous, religious – and who also may enter almost the full range of professions. Women of course still face barriers in all of these aspects but the dominant social (secular liberal) discourse makes them notionally available to women – in fact insists upon it (as I was reminded recently by a 20 year old man who referred to the “backwardness” of places where women “still believe their place is in the home and that their husbands have the right to beat them”).  Women entering the convent prior to the 1960s (and especially during the medieval and Renaissance periods when church and state were indivisible) had an otherwise impossible oppportunity to pursue the kinds of things now supposedly guaranteed through social ‘forwardness’: literacy, independence, inquiry, and such.

‘The bleeding of the sisterhood’, as Karol Jackowski tells us it is known, flowed from the puncturing and patching of social, labour and political relations of the 60s and 70s in the west, especially the so called second wave of women’s liberation. Oppressive vows of silence, as the classic book Lesbian Nuns exemplifies, were broken forever. Many women, as Jackowski chronicles, left through the window opened by Vatican II (some jumping in despair, no doubt; others detaching deliberately and gratefully, gulping lungfuls of air that dried the tears on their cheeks). Others, characterised by Sister Catherine in ABC TV’s Brides of Christ, left when the window would not stay open.

In the rest of the Anglosphere, other sisters were well, doing it for themselves. Forty years later, “girls can do anything” (as we girls at Australian primary schools in the 80s were told, whilst being handed protractors and Kanga cricket gear), but it remains socially curious (if not downright offensive) to actively choose, and commit to, a life without attachments or promises to some individuals above others – ‘the single life’. There are shades of this woman in the defiance of Samantha Jones, although she is fleshed out much more by the woman who lives alone, maybe for herself and/or maybe for her community, who has made promises and travels a path. It remains counter-cultural, mysterious and the subject of grasping assumptions. Could this woman (these women?) be marked by “nun”? For the word “still brings to mind women who [lead] unnatural lives, most probably because they were disappointed in love or because they failed to adjust to reality” (Mourão xxv).

I’m pretty sure I’m not arguing for a redefinition of nun or to uncover a “new New Nuns” phenomena (or even the radical virgin embraced in the 1990s). Perhaps it’s more that I want to consider nun as a remaindered signifier of continuing instability and cultural anxiety around “single women”, as well as of the divine expansiveness hinted at by both women’s choices to attach to something other than partners or lovers. This is in turn hinted at by discourses of liberation (in which feminisms are still so prominent and fecund – particularly imho anti-colonial feminisms such as those of Anzaldúa and Ahmed).

I know that I’m not thinking so much of women like Miranda Hobbes who strenuously protest the social discrimination they face, sounding all the while more fragile and uncertain; more of women I am meeting who have integrated their out-of-step commitments to the point of contentment, their refusal to defensively assert their choice inspiring deep social curiosity.

Women who re-route labels, who may yet escape womanhood. Who, surprising in their nunliness, press upon the uselessness of such division and the place beyond this that may be reserved for sacredness.

Believe it or not, I’m actually a shy person.

Certainly, that might seem a bit rich coming from the girl once seen at a fetish party getting her vagina electrocuted while tied to a dentist’s chair. Or from someone who regularly took out the nudy award at any given Sexy Freaks event, and who was always first to put her hand up for a caning/bondage session/rubber sack experience/whatever.

If you don’t know me very well, you’re likely to think of me as that mad, exuberant, drunk person, clutching her fourth glass of cheap red, laughing, shrieking, talking, flirting; always up for a party.

And yeah, that’s who I am – some of the time. But it’s not who I always am, and it’s certainly not how I used to be, not at all.

These last three years have been massive. I went from being someone who found it hard to make new friends, had trouble making conversation with strangers, scared lovers away with my intensity and desperation, and had lingering troubles with insecurity and feelings of worthlessness. I was perpetually nervous and almost completely lacking in confidence.

Needless to say, parties were not my idea of a good time.

I’d like to think that my transformation from wallflower to social butterfly was brought about entirely by my own motivation, but the real reason why I started leaving my house frequently was due to a disturbed flatmate who was eating my food, using my computer, and cavorting naked in my room while I was out. It was during this period of my life that I started seeing Marauder, and it was then that she started to get all Single White Female on me – demanding to know who I was seeing, when I’d be home, and whether or not she should save any of her bizarre vegetarian cooking for me (the highlight of which was the dish made entirely out of couscous and onions).

I went from being a person who was once content to eat noodles in her pyjamas on a Friday night, to someone who would attend the opening of an envelope. Your neighbour’s cousin’s best friend’s bar mitzvah? Gosh, why didn’t you tell me sooner?  I’m THERE!

Marauder helped. An excitable Gemini, I fell in love with his fearlessness. As I fell into step with him, my life became a series of crazy adventures and schemes. By the end of 2007, I found myself in New York, shaking my booty with a bunch of drunk Santas in a jazz bar in Brooklyn, reaching out to him and letting him lead me places I never would have gone on my own.

2008 was something of a blur. Marauder and I started hosting our own fetish parties, the first of which was attended by the press (Michael Atkin from Triple J) and broadcast nationally. (How fucking cool is that?) It was at these parties that I really came out of my shell – and went further with public play than I’d ever imagined was possible.

I learned that pain is only a bad thing if you interpret it as such, and that I am a much stronger person than I give myself credit for. I also gained confidence in my appearance, and realised that 95% of sex appeal comes down to how you present yourself to the world; not the genes you’re born with.

I realised that people are drawn to those who are comfortable in themselves.

Simply: I stopped apologising to the world for my very existence.

All of this is awesome. And in the process of coming out of my shell, I’ve met so many interesting people and made so many amazing friends.

But now I find myself in a place where I’m questioning everything. I suppose it’s the depression speaking when I ask myself: what is the point of going out? What do I want out of public play? What am I trying to prove?

I feel like I’ve reached the limit of how far I’m willing to go in public. In the same way you tend to have deeper, better quality conversations when you’re alone with someone, the same goes for kink and sex. The more people in the room, the more self conscious I become. On top of that, I just feel tired. Summonsing the energy to behave like a socially-adjusted extrovert takes a lot out of me. Yes, it’s rewarding, but at what cost?

It takes a lot of bravery to open yourself up before a group of people. To bare not just your body but your all your emotional hiding places – the little pockets of grief and despair.

Now that I’ve been to more kink events than I’ve had hot dinners, I feel in need of a rest. I also feel like it’s threatening to become stagnant. When you do the same thing repeatedly, even if it’s something as imaginative and energetic as BDSM, the tendency is to become complacent.

This is not to say that I’ve ‘grown out’ of kink. Far, far from it. I mean, gods, this morning I jerked off with the black butt-plug I got in Japan, to thoughts of being dressed entirely in rubber, strung from the ceiling, teetering on thigh-high ballet boots, and electrocuted while having my breath restricted. Seriously. The less I give this thing, the more bizarre it becomes.

(When I went to see Dylan Moran, he did this bit about how we all have a Beast inside us, and the Beast only says one thing: ‘MORE’. He then goes on to explain that if you refuse, the Beast says: ‘GIVE ME WHAT I WANT OR I’LL MAKE YOU WEIRD.’)

My desire for more kink in my life is precisely the reason why I feel like it’s necessary to retreat. Because now I crave play that is more serious, more emotionally involved, and more sexual.

See, one of the reasons I’ve never been interested in the swingers’ scene, is because group sex is ridiculous. Add an audience to sex and it becomes a pantomime. Which is some people’s cup of tea, but not mine. I find it nearly impossible to let go sexually unless it’s private – I even find it hard to fully relax enough to come with partners the first few times I have sex with them. Which I think makes me, ah, normal.

Anyway, I’ve had some truly fantastic public play experiences over the last couple of years – but they’ve not been overtly sexual. They’ve been sex-y, sensual, arousing, but not orgasmic. (Except that one time with Marauder and needles – but that was private – which proves my point).

I *want* my kink, now, to be sexual.

Which means that I’m going to have to open my heart a bit, and let some people a bit closer to me. You know, put something of myself out there where it can be potentially stolen, lost, or hurt.

*Ack*

I don’t know if I’m ready. I’m in a bit of a strange place – caught between the past and the future, wrestling with some old demons which have chosen this moment in time to resurface. I’m still fending depression off with a stick, holding on until it passes.

Kink can be used for healing. I know that. And I know people who would be willing to help me out.

I need to surrender and admit that I can’t do everything on my own, and admit that yes, sometimes I need people. As does everyone.

It’s hard for me, though. Damn hard.

Julien’s Auction House specializes in entertainment memorabilia and high profile estate auctions. This is an auction house specialized in fetishism and making those objects that have made up the lives of celebrities available for their fans to bid and own these items.

With the current death of Michael Jackson, the objects he owned is going to attract a wide interest of bidders. Everybody wants to own a piece of Michael Jackson- he was truly one of a kind, so what kinds of objects made up the pop icon? Here’s a video highlighting the April auction which never took place.

He attempted to organize a sale earlier this year in April, it was ready and scheduled but he pulled out in the last minute because he didn’t think it would attract enough interested buyers. The is an article detailing Inside Michael Jackson’s Personal Collection. The point was to try and pay off the millions of debt he has accumulated.

With his sad death, it seems interest has risen to its peak. Julien’s Auction house gets first rights of refusal to organize an auction with his items now.

So that today won’t be a total loss posting-wise, I thought I’d say that I officially want the word “fetish” back. I want it back for all of us who have fetishes, whether they be smoking fetishes or any of the many, many, many other flavors out there. I want it out of the hands of mental health professionals.

You see, the American Psychiatry Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, one of the key handbooks used by people in the mental health professions, and which is currently in its fourth edition (known affectionately as DSM-IV), still mentions fetishism inside.

The manual defines fetishism as the use of nonliving objects as a stimulus to achieve sexual arousal or satisfaction, in cases where said objects are not specifically designed for sexual stimulation (such as a vibrator or dildo). The DSM code for fetishism is 302.81

This is the same manual that dropped homosexuality in the third edition. So, homosexuality hasn’t been a diagnosable disorder (and it shouldn’t be) for the past two editions, but we’re still hung up on sexual fetishes being something that needs diagnosing and possible treatment?

Look, I know it is possible for a fetish to cause such undue strain on a person’s life (if it’s consuming enough and interferes with normal daily life or healthy sexual behavior) that the person needs treatment. I accept that such people might need to be addressed in the DSM. But they already have a nice, medical-sounding term called paraphilia that covers this area.

I, for one, want fetish, fetishism and all the derivatives of that word back. I want the term out of the DSM and back into our hands. For the people who truly have clinical/pathological problems with their fetishism, use paraphilia instead.

Because you know, I’m tired of only feeling like I can use the word “fetish” among other people who have fetishes, and have to resort to “kink” or “exotic interest” or something with other people (including my wife for a long time) so that they won’t think FREAK! or PERVERT!

Wikipedia isn’t always the most accurate or trustworhty source of research information, but the entries on sexual fetishism and paraphilia look like they’re pretty well on the mark from what I know, so if you’re interested in learning more about the terms and their place in history and the DSM-IV (and earlier editions of the DSM), just click on the gold-highlighted words above for more.

We’re all snobs to one extent or another; since we care about culture, we care about the difference between good and bad, and promote the former while condemning the latter. And since we care we seek to influence others with our snobbery, in as polite and pleasant way as possible, of course. Subjectively, I try to take a different stylistic approach than James Wolcott, but I do enjoy his writing, it’s the main reason I look at Vanity Fair.

And so I enjoyed this new one too, in a very personal way. It’s always interesting to see what other people are reading on the subway, and gauging their reactions to what I hold. Who doesn’t enjoy public validation of one’s taste and intellect from a stranger? Of course, many years ago, when I was reading “Satan Wants You,” I found that people on the subway gave me a lot of room . . . That’s part of the pleasure and use of having the package for your cultural artifact, and why books will never go out of style. More books being published than ever before; digital media means it’s cheaper to make something we want to hold in our hands.

Music is a different matter, however. Listening to music is essentially a private activity, not only in that it’s mostly done in the privacy of one’s own home, but that it is done by doing nothing. Reading a book is an activity on display, while listening is the opposite. So the music collection belongs, appropriately, in the home and the portable music player is, in my view, a wonderful way to bring some comfort of home with us where ever we roam. We can impress visitors with whom we’ve made enough of an intimate connection to invite in, but I disagree that making an impressive music collection has anything to do with male mastery over a body of any kind. I say this as someone who loves collecting music, especially music in a box. The point of collecting is to impose order on chaos and there’s nothing sexualized about it. The world is mad and random, our homes are where we create order against this chaos, and the music collection belongs there. To have Beethoven or Charlie Parker in a box means having a universe described and circumscribed, a collection of information that both asks and completely answers a question. Perhaps it’s an expression of masculine identity, but that means the identity is one that requires comfort, order, repose. I do not believe that those are considered markers of masculine identity by those who think about such things. To put a bizarre perspective on it, take a look at this paper; we collect to control ourselves, not the world.

I think when we think about objectification in tends to be about women who fit a defined norm of what it means to be beautiful. I’m not going to claim that larger women are more objectified, but I wanted to point out some specific forms of objectification those deemed “fat” face. More on fat objectfication.

Fat Fetishists, Fat Admirers, Chubby Chasers, are all names given people who prefer larger bodies sexually. And there are all sorts of acronyms for those they are attracted to: BBW – Big Beautiful Women, BHM – Big Handosme Men, (you can SS or “Super-size” either”). And, of course, there are all sorts of derogatory terms on urban dictionary (No link for you). This terminology shows how sexual attraction to fat people is considered as part of the realm of kink and fetishism.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with kink and fetishism (as long as it’s consensual and safe, obviously), but there is something wrong with considering a certain body type a fetish, and the sexualization of that body non-normative sexual behavior. A sexual fetish, “is a situation where an individual… attach[es] sexual significance to an object or behavior that is in large part not considered erotic in nature.” Fat bodies are certainly not behaviors, and absolutely not objects. Continuing to refer to the sexual preference of a certain body type as a fetish, means that the “fat” body is not a body type but an object. It’s absolutely dehumanizing and objectifying.

Let’s look particularly at the definition of “Fat Fetishism” as given by Wikipedia:

Fat fetishism is a term used to describe the context in which fat (as a substance) and obesity are eroticized

First, looking at fat “as a substance” while viewing someone’s body is objectifying, right? I’d be offended by someone only attracted to my ass, and I’d be equally offended by someone only attracted to the fat on my ass.

Secondly, this idea of eroticizing fat and fat bodies – as if they weren’t sexual before! I understand eroticizing objects, you can imbue them with a sexual meaning they didn’t have before, but a person? The fat body is erotic. Of course it’s erotic, but not because someone else gave it sexual meaning. A fat body is erotic because a fat person is a sexual being just like everyone else – with a sexuality, sexual orientation, and sexual desires. The ides that someone else has to imbue fat bodies with sexual meaning is bullshit and ridiculous. My body is erotic on its own, thank you.

Finally what sucks about all this is the idea that there needs to be a separate category for people who have sex with people who are fat. It compounds on the shame already given to fat bodies – not only are you unhealthy, weak-willed, and unattractive, you’re unfuckable. No, scratch that, you’re fuckable, but only by sexual deviants. I really, really encourage you to read, “How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman?” by Kate Harding (From Yes Means Yes). She talks about how this sentiment can create insecurities and negative expectations for women, contributes to a culture of sexual violence, and is completely counter to most fat people’s experiences.

So the take away message is this: Fat people have sexualities. Fat people have healthy sexual relationships. Fat people are not your objects to objectify, they’re pretty fucking sexy on their own.

Andy Warhol. Torsos, 1977. Silkscreen Print

Male artists have consistently used the phallus as a symbol of masculinity and domination, particularly in sexual and social contexts.  While the image is prevalent, its presentation is rarely the primary theme of a work.  Andy Warhol, however, proves to be the exception in his presentation of the taboo image as the central subject/object in the 1977 silkscreen print Torsos. 

Torsos  is characterized by a series of six adjacent black and white photographs that have been altered via the silkscreen process.  Varying in shading and tone, each print features a cropped image of a man’s torso, more specifically the genitalia.  Consuming the entire frame, the man poses with separated legs, highlighting his impotent penis, while his clenched fist rests apprehensively at his side.  From left to right, the man’s phallus becomes increasingly more pronounced due to deeper saturation and tonal variation.  Seemingly unintentional slash marks are apparent throughout the work, most noticeable in the second, fourth, and sixth prints in which the lines violently cut across the penis.  These slashing lines are an obvious representation of a symbolic castration.  The objectification of the male genitalia is initially apparent through Torsos’ formal qualities and is further solidified through consideration of Laura Mulvey’s feminist theory on the gaze.  

Warhol’s evident focus on the male genitalia in Torsos is an uncommon image of male eroticization that is inherently connected to Mulvey’s male gaze.  In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey asserts that in an individual’s spectatorship, whether film or art, there is an assumption of a male perspective, regardless of the viewer’s gender, that is innately scopophilic and voyeuristic.  Subsequently, the aesthetics of film and art thoroughly acknowledge male viewership, visually emphasizing the passive female in vulnerable contexts while lingering on body parts, particularly erogenous zones such as breasts and legs (Mulvey 33). 

The practice of the fragmentation of the female form, known as fetishism, reduces the female to an object, resulting in a sexualization that ultimately prevents female agency.  Mulvey suggests an interaction “between active/male and passive/female (Mulvey 33).” While “the determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure,” the women adhere to their “traditional exhibitionist role…simultaneously [being] looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness (Mulvey 35).”

Mulvey also contends a connectedness between the male gaze and psychoanalytic theory surrounding Freud’s Oedipus complex.  Situated within the phallic stage of psychosexual development, the Oedipus complex connotes the male child’s infatuation with and desire for his mother and resentment of his father.  In this time of maternal attachment, the child eventually realizes his mother’s lack of a phallus, assuming that his father has castrated her as a form of punishment.  The child immediately fears castration and subsequently chooses to identify with his father, so as to avoid punishment for desiring his mother.

This castration anxiety is central to Mulvey’s psychoanalytic approach to the male gaze, since she proposes that the female figure “connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure (Mulvey 35).” For Mulvey, the image of the woman, “displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the [castration] anxiety it originally signified (Mulvey 35).”  The potential for displeasure of the holder of the male gaze is abounds, since the admired feminine image exemplifies his primal fear of castration.  Yet the desire for gaining pleasure through voyeurism is considerable and the spectator must avert anxiety through one of two methods: the transference of punishment onto the female object, deeming her the bearer of guilt; or the rejection of castration through the fetishization of a portion of the woman’s body (Mulvey). 

Mulvey maintains that these tactics are utilized in cinema, particularly evident in horror films that fetishize and victimize attractive young women.  While these strategies, enacted by the viewer and the filmmaker, are evident in film, it can also be inferred that artists and viewers engage in similar practices in the visual arts that can either support or refute the male gaze.  Warhol’s Torsos serves as a prime example of the feminist opposition of the male gaze, while simultaneously calling into question notions of gender and sexuality.

Instead of presenting the viewer with the expected imagery of a woman’s breasts or legs, Warhol displays the unanticipated portrayal of a man’s erotogenic zone. Torsos offers a photographic three-quarter profile view of a nude male, which is shocking in its aggressive focus on the man’s genitalia.  The figure’s absent face and docked limbs render him incomplete and void of humanity; he is a presentation of parts rather than an entire subject.  This portioning is an obvious utilization of fetishism, since Warhol extrapolates from the whole image, resulting in the objectification of the male form. Consequently, the female viewer becomes the new owner of the look and is liberated from the constraints of male gendered spectatorship.

What is appalling, however, is Warhol’s cropped image of a seemingly statuesque male with a prominent emphasis on his flaccid genitalia.  The erect penis confirms a sexual agency and power that only men hold, yet it has rarely been rendered in art. 

Conversely, a great deal of artistic attention has been paid to the flaccid genital despite its failure to confirm a sense of superiority and sexual command.  The limp phallus epitomizes vulnerability, since the man is physically unable to impose his sexual desires. 

The artistic and art historical ignorance of the erect genital is incongruent with societal notions of male dominance, sexual or otherwise.  Therefore, the willingness of male artists to depict men in this state proves questionable and problematic, since the image invalidates sexual superiority.  While the depiction of the lackluster sexual organ may adversely affect notions of male dominance for many artists, Andy Warhol is exceptional.

Torsos’ male subject’s lack of potency is especially striking when considered in light of the domineering fist that it parallels.  The juxtaposition of the flaccid penis, rendered drooping and lifeless, with the man’s tightly clamped fist is paradoxical.  While the man appears powerful, his intimidation is decreased and contradicted by his penis that is incapable of sexual agency.  He is sexually vulnerable instead of sexually dominant. Warhol’s visual rendering of diminished male sexual control exemplifies Mulvey’s need for the gender-neutral viewer. In the fetishization of the male penis, Warhol engages in a gender role reversal that alleviates the dilemma of the male gaze.

Warhol also combats the male gaze in Torsos through the inclusion of slash marks that physically divide the penis from the body, suggestive of the violent act of castration. The slashes force the spectator to view the dichotomy of the penis as simultaneously attached and separated.  As Mulvey asserted, the image of the female is threatening for the male spectator since she represents castration.  For the male viewer to gain pleasure out of a displeasing image, he must resort to fetishization and objectification, ultimately resulting in the consideration of the female as the bearer of guilt with castration as punishment.  This transference of culpability and ignorance of castration anxiety results in a state of pleasure for the gazer.

In Warhol’s reversal of the eroticized individual, the female becomes the holder of the gaze upon a sexually vulnerable male object, who is further defenseless when the female spectator realizes the visual act of castration (via slash marks) that occurs in Torsos.  For the male viewer, the phallus is present, thus somewhat relieving his fear of castration that a similar female image would evoke.  Castration anxiety cannot be completely alleviated, however, since formal qualities, manifested through the violent slashes, elicit this inherent fear.  In this reversal, the woman is no longer the guilty, punishable party and the male object is therefore threatened by castration.

While Warhol reverses the roles of active/male and passive/female in the categories of gaze and object, there is an implication of heterosexuality in the gaze relationship.  There is an obvious exclusion of the homosexual viewer in the traditional gaze, yet Warhol’s reversal challenges this assumption, potentially due to his own sexual identity.

It can be readily assumed that Warhol’s Torsos is meant to evoke erotic feelings on the part of the female viewer, since she is the natural opposite who is ultimately able to objectify the male image and avoid her own objectification.  Conversely, the homosexual viewer is awkwardly situated within gaze theory since he does not sexually identify with his gender.  There exists a possibility, however, that this image is meant to please the homosexual viewer, as well. With the empowerment of the female viewer, the homosexual viewer is simultaneously granted authority and is able to objectify and possess sexual agency over an object that would otherwise be viewed as unattainable, assuming the male object, is in fact, heterosexual.

As the creator and viewer of the image, Warhol’s gendered spectatorship is questionable.  In his bold display of physical castration, he does not reject but rather accepts notions of his own castration.  In his personal castration, Warhol is deprived the single object that denotes his maleness and is ultimately rendered female.  Warhol’s transition from male to female, as the creator of the image and the holder of the gaze, is crucial in light of Mulvey’s theory.  With Warhol’s work, the viewer has the power to be gendered female, instead of being restricted to male notions of viewing. 

Works Cited
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Patricia Erens (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975).