Ways of Seeing Porn: A Queer-Lesbian Imaginary

by: , May 14, 2019

© Atrophy portraits II (Four chambers: afourchamberedheart.com)

Think of Berger’s critique of renaissance painters for their erotization of women: ‘you paint a naked woman because you enjoy looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and call her vanity’ (Ways of Seeing, 1972). Even contemporary (mainstream) lesbian pornography manages men’s expectations and sexual needs, leaving women’s desires wrapped and repurposed for the desires of others. But in spite of this suffocating material reality, as a woman desiring women, I have felt the counter-imaginary of the ‘male gaze’. I know it when I see it: when we are with each other naked – not nude, as a spectacle to some other viewer’s gaze – naked, as in mutually constructing our respective subjectivities. So what does the counter-factual to the male gaze look like? And where can we find it? The question of how women might be seen in a non-patriarchal way is just starting to be answered by our ways of loving, our ways of seeing, our emerging visibility. Contrary to queer men, queer-lesbian women are just starting to leave behind a trail of images. In an attempt to portray this emerging imaginary, I turn to images from mainstream lesbian porn and contrast them with images from queer-lesbian porn, resulting in three poems which speak to a utopian imaginary outside the suffocating ‘male gaze’.

I. ASYMMETRY

In a room with incandescent light,

the cold porcelain teen

(penetrates with her five acrylic nails a classmate’s odourless and nubile sex)

executes the scene

without                passion

without                 blood.

Meanwhile, the classmate moans in pastel colours

with the cold precision of patriarchal desires.

* Close up: squirts *

New flash:

a girl and her stepmother’s acrobatic motion.

Two girls and a monstrous dildo.

Four bending over backwards.

A shaved papaya.

This is how they look at women,

this the beginning of asymmetry.

II. THE MIRROR

‘Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at’ (Ways of Seeing, 1972).

Women look at women being

objects watching subjects,

resolving their gaze in a game of distances, slow burn

the brush holder.

She, holding the mirror with one hand,

with the other, her wrist.

Come, come here, I’m just like you, listen to the beats of my perverse heart.

Come here, I’m Selene, I will show you my secret altar.

Look opposite: the rhythm of fire, your fingers

smoke like Hera at the other side of the mirror,

Minerva 20 years after, respected by the wrinkles.

Meanwhile, he kicks the waters in order to not sink. Pronounces time and cries.

The only thing that matters to us is to loose our minds.

What is this movement in all directions?

An old man looking for and not finding women watching themselves being looked at?

Cradle, nest, den.

Have you been looking for us from your map, with your shoes on?

We’ve been running away barefoot

spreading glitter on our skin,

inhaling each other’s pores until we feel it in our foreheads.

What is this movement in all directions?

We kick the sky and it rains,

we find solace in the curve of each other’s breasts.

Where is your object now?

III. SYMMETRY

In the room with a single candle,

I have a giant collection of lovers.

(When I’m with one of them, or with all of them at the same time, I feel the heavy weight of their pupils on me, whispering things:

miss beautiful tongue,

deep fingers,

cliff).

We read each other’s bodies:

visual sweat,

bloodfull.

Suddenly my knees kiss the floor,

she fills her hand with champagne, brings it to my lips:

open, she says

I open.

                * A close up: a mighty fist speeds through the intersection. The sound of the cosmos expanding, you know? That image *

New flash:

A genderless figure climbs into a big-bosomed wide-hipped goddess.

She hugs with ropes and then whips.

Two women in black lingerie approach her with strap-ons.

A moment of calm.

And, all of them could be me: this is how I feel the weight of their pupils – penetrating me. (Inside a room that is so warm and close to the skin that, I swear, you open your eyes and confound their pupils with your self).


REFERENCES

John Berger: Ways of Seeing (1972), Episode 1/4, ‘Through the Eyes of a Child’, BBC.

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