The Madonna and the Whore…or 50 Shades of Not-So-Blurred Lines

The internet is for porn
The internet is for porn
Why you think the net was born?
Porn, porn, porn.
~”The Internet is For Porn,” Avenue Q

I like innuendo. Sex jokes. Swear words. “Romantic” scenes in books and movies. Dark humor.

I’m also Ms. Prim-and-Proper on the surface. It’s not an act, so much as I never really figured out how to be casual and ridiculous without also being unprofessional so I usually default to a Good-Girl persona at work and school. Maybe that’s why I love the opening of Avenue Q, when Kate Monster sweetly sings that:

I’m kinda pretty
And pretty damn smart.
…
I like romantic things like music and art.
And as you know I have a gigantic heart,
So why don’t I have a boyfriend?
f**k!
It sucks to be me!

Story of my life, girl.

Kate is also a kindergarten teacher (I used to teach middle school), who is passionate about teaching digital rhetoric (okay, the internet. Close enough). Up until this point, I feel like I’ve just met my spirit animal.

Except Kate…slightly racist, pedagogy-loving, f**k-saying Kate, is utterly and completely appalled at the idea of people looking up porn on the internet.

Sex. Ew.

Funny as the song is, I can’t help but be a little disturbed by how, even in as irreverent and inappropriate a musical as Avenue Q, “good” girls remain sexually pure (until they get married, or at least find that perfect, long-term prince charming), while only “bad” girls enjoy sex, or can talk about it comfortably. Those harlots.

This Madonna/Whore complex is everywhere, splitting women into a binary that is utterly constricting. Even in some of my favorite, most progressive shows and games, this trope is trotted out long after its been worn into the ground. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the classic good girl–albeit, utterly kickass–whose sexy-times always get her into trouble. Because sex bad. Faith, the flip-side of Buffy’s coin, is the troubled, “criminally insane” bad-girl. Because sex bad. (And because she murdered someone, but priorities. We’re talking about coital bliss right now). In Christine Love’s visual novel Hate Plus, her rebellious heroines both squirm and blush when they stumble across sexy sexy notes in the archives. Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen becomes utterly flustered when anyone dares to talk to her about sex. Or lacks “proper” clothing. Or thinks she’s attractive.

And now one of the worst best-sellers of all time, 50 Shades of Grey, features a 21-year-old virgin who blushes, stutters, gasps, has never masturbated or held hands with a boy, and refers to her vagina as “down there.” Thank you, EL James. You have added to the stereotype that virgins are all sexually repressed, insanely sheltered, immature little girls. God help us.

These are our heroines. They are the women we look up to (unless she is Anastasia Steele or Bella Swan. Please, please don’t look up to them. You’re better than that). These are the ladies we put on pedestals. They are strong, intelligent, beautiful, confident…sometimes even bawdy or flirty….and apparently amazingly squeamish about sleeping with another human being.

On the flipside, we have our Whores. This isn’t always a negative. Some of my favorite characters, such as Dragon Age 2’s Isabela, Mandie from Firefly, or the previously-mentioned Faith Lehane fall into this category. If they are developed characters, they are usually badass in some way (Isabela is a pirate. Faith is a Slayer. Atlus’s Catherine–from the same-titled game–is a succubus, etc), but they often have a dark side, too. They are “trouble” at least, possibly damaged (as with Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), if not out-and-out evil.

If they aren’t fully developed they are all-too-commonly written off as “just whores.” In Witcher and Witcher 2 you collect trading cards with naked pictures of all the women you sleep with. The Grand Theft Auto series is rife with this, because it’s okay to shoot/kill/rape/abuse women if they sell sex for a living, right? And in Bioshock, Watchdogs, Red Dead Redemption, and LA Noir it isn’t uncommon to walk around and find women (particularly women who are literal or implied prostitutes) who have been murdered and/or are in the process of being assaulted. And video games are littered with women who are blatant sexual objects who either flaunt all their assets with intent (such as the scantily clad Mortal Kombat women, pre-reboot Lara Croft, or Soul Caliber’s Ivy Valentine)or flaunt them, but become embarrassed or offended when sex becomes a topic of interest (pretty much any JRPG character ever). This isn’t to say it’s inappropriate to be offended or upset by clumsy or disrespectful come-ons. And, honestly, sometimes sex is just ridiculous, embarrassing, and downright funny. Blush as much as you want. But why are these the only reactions we’re offered?

Is it any wonder our cultural media is filled with glorifications of rape and dubious consent? Nearly all of our popular mediums constantly declare the message that all the girls who want and enjoy the horizontal tango are tarnished…broken…dirty…damaged…evil…misguided…wrong. Meanwhile, all of the “good” girls think sex is a dirty word. What is a poor, sexually-needy gentleman (hah) to do except blur those lines between Madonna and Whore?

And that’s why I’m gon’ take a good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
You’re a good girl
~”Blurred Lines”, Robin Thicke

(No. No I don’t. Go away or I’ll call the cops)

The lines aren’t blurry at all in this cultural binary. Maybe that’s why critics of the feminist movement can’t wrap their heads around what it’s trying to do. Feminists who rally around birth control and the right to choose pregnancy (or not) are labeled as promiscuous, irresponsible “sluts,” while feminists who dare to speak out against objectification of women in video games are cold, frigid, sexless women who want to censor guys having good, clean fun. When people argue that consent isn’t sexy, maybe it’s because they’re picturing it like Christian Grey’s ridiculous contract, where getting groiny requires a lot of legalese and strangely technical language (….one of his bedroom no no’s is seriously “acts involving gynecological medical instruments.” Because my gyno is the first thing I think of when I want to be in the mood.) rather than the back-and-forth that happens between two willing partners. You know…the way people act when they both enjoy what’s happening.

There is no middle ground. There are no good girls who desperately want sex, but are holding off anyway–not because they’re immature or sheltered, but because the risk of STDs or pregnancy is one they aren’t willing to take, or maybe because they just don’t like the guy or gal they’re with enough. There are no bad girls who want a solid, singular connection. Women can’t enjoy a one-night stand or a casual fling and still be caretakers. No shades here. Everything is black and white.

As a feminist and a living, breathing, human female…I’m not looking to censor the world I live in. The world censors me enough as it is. The problem isn’t that the internet is for porn…it’s that internet porn (or, perhaps less extreme, heavily-implied video game sex) has been restricted to men-only. Women in the real world already struggle to make it clear that they have the right to say yes. They have the right to say no. They have the right to say yes to some people, and no to others. They even have the right to say no to one person one night, and yes another time. Consent isn’t tricky, but it is fluid, because people are not computers that you switch on and off at a whim.

Fiction reflects, reinforces, and reshapes the culture that creates it. When we ask for more diverse portrayals of women, we feminists aren’t just stamping our feet because the toys weren’t custom-made for us. We’re wanting to be seen as more than objects or saints. We want to be human, with all the complexities that entails and we want that in all things, whether it’s work, love, life, or (“oh my”) sex.