Lecture outline of Murray Davis's book SMUT Book: Smut Author: Murray Davis Questions prompted his work

1)Why does an individual want to have sex with others? 2)Why do others attempt to stop him or her?

His research showed (1) was usually explained as an "instinct". This is unsatisfactory in that is (a) has little explanatory power (b) has been fully explored. He wanted to try a different starting point, rather than Freudianly (or biologically) which sees sex as basically biological with some experiential consequences Davis wanted to see where he could go viewing it as essentially experiential with some biological consequences. He wants to treat sex as an experience the individual wants to undergo. Question (2) leads us to 3 groups which differ in their attitudes toward the obscene Group 1 (a conservative view frequently advanced by theologians, conservatives) fears sex will disrupt society. (traditionalists, Romantics) Group 2 (radical e.g. Norman Mailer, some rock groups) hopes sex will disrupt society. (Sexual Freedom League types) Group 3 (liberal, many social scientists) they minimize the effect of sex on our society. (Modern Naturalistic) So in the book SMUT - Erotic Reality /Obscene Ideology -Davis conceives of his job as describing the experience of the copulator (both those who do and those who want to) -An exercise in applied phenomenology i.e. he wants to articulate a specific experience rather than to discover the foundation of all experience. -Why sexual phenomenology? Because copulators experience the world in a very different manner from those who go about their ordinary activities in everyday life -Sex is a reality generating activity from the phenomenological perspective since it creates a finite province of meaning which he calls erotic reality -He is using Schutz ( a phenomenological philosopher) to understand the difference between the realties generated by sexual arousal and by everyday life. Sexual arousal generates erotic reality which we will describe.

Lecture outline of Murray Davis's book SMUT 2 Some helpful definitions Reality = a finite province of meaning = a set of interrelated objects, people and environments with its own ambiance (a surrounding or pervading atmosphere); e.g. inquiry "I'm looking for a bunny"; different meaning asked at a college registration> compared to at a farm. A System of Relevancies; each reality has a set of relations between the elements; e.g. how you are dressed at a singles bar, subtle non-verbal signals are interpreted differently as compared to your dress and signals in a college classroom. -So Davis wants to investigate erotic reality in a manner similar to the way Schutz investigated the finite province of meaning of Don Quixote's Chivalric reality (The Eric Rohmer movie "Claire's Knee" can be "read" as a peculiar erotic reality) OTHER EXAMPLES? -Following Schutz - Davis accepts everyday life world as the wide awake world of work and talk but questions several of Shutz's assertions: (1) that everyday reality is the "paramount reality" that superordinates all others. Davis says that Schutz has a bourgeois bias - earning his living as a lawyer, banker, and broker - in believing everyday reality is more basic than others; there may be others who prowl the same office buildings who are lovers (incidentally employed as lawyers, bankers, brokers) who experience their everyday existence in the work day world as merely the unimportant interlude between their erotic activities. (E.g. some of Woody Allen's movies) (2)Davis says that the boring job world dulls awareness and sexual fantasies - not to mention sexual activities - sharpens awareness; he is skeptical of Schutz's assertion that the everyday world generates a "higher tension of consciousness" than sexual fantasy. Note St. Augustine agreed more with Schutz in that he said that a problem with lust is that it dulls mental alertness This background shows where Davis is coming from philosophically and illuminates his Goal: An understanding of the experience of sexual desire from a phenomenological perspective. Phenomenology's goal is to describe the structures of experience. What can we hear people saying about sexuality? It is "dirty" Proposition - whenever we see a person talking of dirt (corruption, mud, pollution, filth, garbage, trash, slime, smut, dregs, sewage, gutter, toilet, outhouse, dunghill, barnyard, pigsty) we are seeing some system violated "dirt" is "disorder","offends against order," A correlative response to the dirt and pollution of sex is "It makes me sick!" - What is it that makes one sick.

Lecture outline of Murray Davis's book SMUT 3 Davis says it is the mental seasickness "occasioned by the sudden shipwreck of cognitive orientation which casts one adrift in a world without structure." What is it about sex that so disturbs? 1ST - Who does it disturb? Jehovenists. Why? because the Jehovenist is in a struggle to maintain a belief system and personal identity against a threatening and disordered world How does it disturb? Sexual relations have an identity transforming potential that the Jehovenists feel needs to be rigidly controlled. What are the identity affecting aspects of engaging in sex? 1)gender strengthening effects never more a man or woman than when 2)personal enhancement - raising an individual (consider the phenomena of celebrity fucking) Sex can transform one's identity by making one more -integrated -elevated -ennobled 3)personal degradation - bringing an individual low e.g. rape, abuse and/or -partners so different, so low status, so polluted that one's identity is -disintegrated -degraded -defiled He points out people acquire components from their sex partner's identity - they absorb their partner's social and personal attributes identity acquisition - identity exchange Some are more affected than others according to Jehovenists 1)Females more affected than males; the nature of the is act relevant - the female is penetrated; semen is injected into her Davis says for Jehovenists: Female identity is more unstable (e.g. fickle, moody). 1. Women exist in two states pure or polluted, madonna or whore, saint or slut. 2)Innocent vs. experienced 3)Leaders and followers

Also different sexual acts affect identity in different ways with the potential for perversion and social censure
Voyeurism (looking) and auralism (e.g. dirty phone calls) separate the sexual partners too widely;

Lecture outline of Murray Davis's book SMUT Fellatio, cunnilingus, and sodomy fuse them too closely How Erotic Reality differs from Everyday Reality

1)Is it different? Consider a person who engages in erotic behavior while not in erotic reality; clearly the system of relevancies is different in erotic reality from everyday reality e.g. how bras and underwear mean differently in the Sunday ads versus in a pornographic magazine 2. Davis, from the multiple realities view, identifies specific ways erotic and everyday reality differ: SOUND Essentially silent ; consider the effect of "Roll over and put your head down there." TIME -Time; women compared to men have more erotic inertia - longer to get started and longer to quit. -Erotic time; must be synchronized more closely than everyday time; certain periods of time and more erotic - consider a day, a week, a year, a lifetime; or bedtime e.g.-Uneroticizing time; daytime - "At least pull down the shade work time - "Stop fooling around, we've got work to do." e.g.mealtime -"Now! How nauseating! Besides everything will get cold." Two variables that complicate the transition from unerotic to erotic time are: desire and availability. i.e. for 2 (or more) people to enter erotic reality they must share at the same time a desire to do so and an available setting and partner. Consider the love affair maximizes mutual desire but not availability; marriage maximizes mutual availability but not desire SPACE Sexual arousal intensifies the here and now while reducing the there and then. There are sexy settings (moonlight, candlelight, private places, clean cushions) or (dark dangerous settings, public spaces). Unsexy settings hinder the formation of erotic reality - e.g. ordinary settings for utilitarian activities; work places, mass transportation, churches, cemeteries, medical scientific settings; crises p.25. Social Space: where one plots people on social coordinates. In erotic reality people who are important in everyday reality loss, parent, neighbor recede from attention - sex with them is inconceivable - all those of same sex (unless gay) all family members (unless incestuous). Who appears in forefront; the lovable - those to whom the aroused individual wants to make love 1)Lovables are socially ranked by society with 2 main types 1) sexy - e.g. physically arousing 2) attractive - e.g. socially attractive (Henry Kessinger - note a repulsive can be a lovable through being attractive)

Lecture outline of Murray Davis's book SMUT 5 And futher divisions into 1. cosmopolitan loveables: e.g. ___(Liv Tyler, Alicia Silverstone, Brad Pitt, models) 2. local lovables: e.g. cheerleaders, sports stars, tonight's date Attainablity is another issue important in understanding erotic reality. This is the lovable's orientation toward entering erotic reality We have: Type 2 - those who don't Type 1 - those who do a) those who do easily b) those who do with difficultly The problem is there are more lovers than lovables so many lovers have to settle for those who are attainable but not lovable This brings us to the 2)Plain or Tolerable> sex partners who are satisfactorily attractive, though perhaps not the most desirable. Finally we have the 3)Repulsive> those who the average person does not find sexy: the ugly (some amputees, ugly, obese, anorexic, aesthetically displeasing to the average lover in that society); the creep = personally repulsive behaviors (e.g. a "picker"); the loser = socially rated low in class, life style, or power; the nerd So we have the two main players in erotic reality being the: sexy (those capable of turning others on to erotic reality) (lovables, tolerables, horny (those lovers capable of being turned on by others to erotic reality) Assuming a sexy attainable meets a horny lover, the movement to Erotic R. from Everyday R. changes the way people perceive the body. Davis calls this dimension Physical; 1. increases awareness of the physical, decreases social and psychological characteristics 2. increases the boundary sense between the body and surroundings 3. leads to greater awareness of certain parts (orifaces, curves, kinesics (how the person moves) complexion, voice, smell, texture, density (firm or flabby), genitals. Davis - Random Insights -Sex language is either obscene (a lower class) fuck, suck, prick, cunt, or medical or upper class - coitus, fellatio, cunnilingus, penis, vagina -No neutral terms for sexual organs - acts. Why? Sex organs & acts don't exist in the respectable world -Metaphors: Arabs tend to see a desired body as a fruit - "her pomegranate breasts"; Chinese as a tree - "his oaken stoutness"; Western Europeans as a landscape -

Lecture outline of Murray Davis's book SMUT 6 "let my hands roam behind, between, above, below." :before metaphors were organic "Thy two breasts are like two young noes which feed among the lilies." now mechanical: "The thought of screwing her turns me on." -In Davis's investigation hard core films and novels were so abstract as to be useless it was the soft core films that provided information about sex as an experience -Why are the old "properly" regarded as sexless beings? We already mentioned the fact they can't conceive. Davis says we believe "one cannot and should not be sexually attracted to others unless one is - at least to some degree - sexually attractive to them as well." The dirty old man should perhaps be called the deluded old man (thinking that the loveable would want to enter erotic reality with him). A problem for some people with handicaps is societys unthinking application of this tendency. This is why when one sees what one thinks of as two inappropriate lovers (e.g. Hugh Hefner & Kendra) one might say "It made me sick to see them together" (as one's system of proper linkages is violated) also Beauty & the Beast; King Kong & Fay Wray, EXAMPLES?