a bonobo humanity?

NOT party hardcore, but you get the idea

I’ve already mentioned, and I’m still troubled by, a claim I read that watching pornography makes people more violent. The claim was almost as brief as this brief description, and included no references. Was it the consumption of pornography that made people more violent, and what exactly is pornography anyway? One doesn’t have to be a porn addict to know that there’s hardcore and softcore porn, that there’s woman-on-woman porn, men-on men-porn and hetero-porn. There’s presumably sado-masochistic porn, various role-play type porn, elder porn and, sadly but inevitably, its illegal opposite, child porn. And then, there are bonobos, whose sexual proclivities, I seem to remember the late Franz de Waals saying, border on pornography.

I’ve written on this topic before, in a rather hesitant way, and have avoided it in the couple of months since. So I’m going to try to be bold. In an article from way back in 2009, entitled ‘Does bonobo porn turn you on, ladies?’ – which completely avoids the actual issue, it’s reported that women are aroused by ‘bonobo porn’ but claim that they aren’t. There is no account of how such arousal is measured, and the idea that anything bonobos do could possibly influence or interest women, or even humans apparently, is treated as absurd. 

Why such stupidity? Well, the fact that it’s a US article explains a lot. 

Bonobo sex is predominantly female-to-female, and that is key to the female dominance of the species, just, as, some day, not in the near future, it might be key to female dominance in humans (maybe once we get AI and its attendant machinery to do all the work).

It’s also quite different from pornography, which, somewhat like prostitution, is primarily for the gratification of those, mostly men, who aren’t able to achieve – let’s call it sexual fulfilment – by virtue of their personal charms. They might indeed be overly aggressive types, or physically unattractive, or painfully shy, or impoverished, or disabled in one way or another. And there are gazillions of them out there, surely. 

So it’s quite wrong, I think, to compare bonobo sex with porn. They don’t do it for display or reward, nor for love in the almost hopelessly complicated human sense. To try to define what they do it for might even seem arrogant. The main thing is that they do it, and many clear benefits ensue. 

Then again, maybe I’m complicating matters. Mutual masturbation, which bonobos mostly indulge in, is pleasurable, and has evolved to be so, for many species. It also involves a brief intense expenditure of energy, generally followed by a state of mild, pleasant, temporary exhaustion. In these mutual exchanges, this would surely also involve a sense of gratitude.      

I should also point out, to the anti-porn feminists and those who ‘dis’ porn (is that the right slang word?), that even if it’s true that watching porn makes people more violent, the most obvious reason would be that they’re not getting what those porn performers are getting. I seem to remember The Rolling Stones calling it ‘satisfaction’. 

And yet there are serious downsides to being a female pornstar or prostitute in our still very horribly patriarchal society. It’s the old slut/stud dichotomy – how long will that one take to die? So it’s clear that the women in porn are being exploited and generally looked down upon in a way that the men are not. And that their time in the business is way shorter than that of the blokes. For some reason, thoughts of this kind take me back to my youthful interest in arthouse films. I’m thinking in particular of the harem scene in Fellini’s 8½, in which the debonaire and breezy bachelor Guido, played impeccably by Marcello Mastroianni, turns martinet when one of his nest of female companions resists the rule about having to move ‘upstairs’ to retirement, having turned the venerable age of thirty. The fact that this scene has stuck with me for nigh on fifty years is telling. Plus ça change…

Yet, change does happen, it’s just that our lives are so short in the vast scheme of things that we tend to live in an eternal present. Australia, where I’ve lived most of my life, wasn’t even a concept 300 years ago. Nor was the USA, or even the internet. And while we berate Middle Eastern nations/cultures for their treatment of women, our own culture has only recently woken up to their obvious superiority… oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

So compare all this to bonobos, our dumb female-dominant cousins. Of course, they only indulge in the lazy pleasures of mutual masturbation because they haven’t the smarts to indulge in all our high-falutin pleasures – such as exploring and defining gravity, making music, inventing deities, playing chess, bush-walking, racing each other under endless permutations, creating fashion trends, falling in love, identifying species, dancing, building bombs and spacecrafts, playing the stock market, and of course, yodelling. And that’s just the beginning….

Yet even with all that brain-building work and complex play to distract us, our erogenous zones are still a bothersome delightful drawcard, and so, failing willing partners, we have pornography, prostitution and masturbation sans mutuality.

So a website has come to my attention that provides a unique twist to this dilemma, if such it is. It almost turns the patriarchy on its head, if only by sheer force of numbers. The site or venue is called Party Hardcore, and it is based, I believe, in Germany, that most erotische of nations. Word of mouth tells me, though, that such venues exist in many large cities in the developed world. The venues are, essentially, nightclubs in which the patrons are exclusively women. Loud, danceable music plays, and alcohol and possibly other drugs are readily available. There appear to be well over a hundred patrons, becoming increasingly sozzled and smoochy. In the centre of the venue is a raised catwalk with the words ‘Party Hardcore’ printed over its length, clearly designed for the vast English-speaking audience that tunes in (people with video cameras wind through the crowd). A male model of the ‘condom full of walnuts’ type mounts the catwalk and dances and flexes for a few minutes before coaxing a woman or two to come up and join him in a bit of heavy foreplay, much to the amusement of their friends, apparently. Meanwhile, a handful of similarly built males suddenly emerge, sprinkling themselves about the room like an assortment of many-coloured sweets. Much licking and sucking ensues, and then some. In fact, the target audience ranges from pseudo-bored and disdainful wallflowers to gung-ho erotomaniacs wolfing down wobbly bits as if their life depended on it. 

How to define such scenarios? Prostitution? Well, the men are no doubt being paid for this service, but I doubt if that’s the main reason they do it, and there’s no straightforward client-professional relationship. Pornography? A very divided matter of opinion. The fact is that, sozzled or not, the women in these venues have agency, and safety in overwhelming numbers.

Which brings me back to bonobos. Their females don’t outnumber the males, but female solidarity has evolved in this species to provide the protection that sheer numbers provides in the Party Hardcore scenario. I don’t expect humans to ever become as sexually ‘obsessed’ or ‘liberated’ (take your pick) as bonobos, but I do have high hopes women will emerge as the dominant gender, as we learn more and more the lessons from our patriarchal history. If such dominance brings about a more sexually relaxed society – and I’m sure it would – without reducing our creative and analytic explorations, and our concern for our fragile biosphere, then…

Anyway, I live in hope. 

References

a touchy but important subject: 1 – sex, fun, sin, etc

a bonobo humanity?

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