Newsletter
Enter your email address here to receive updates from the team.
Poll
Jobs
Policy | Charity & Fundraising | Research | Education | Executive | Media | Social Care | Communications
User login
RSSWelcome to Erotica: Britain’s Gulag of desire
If you had to build a prison for human pleasure, it would look like this.
By Laurie Penny Published 28 November 2010 19:35
You shuffle through the clinical, white foyer of the Olympia Grand Hall in Kensington and, after presenting several forms of ID to prove that you've paid the requisite £20 for your sexy times, security guards usher you into a huge iron stadium full of concession stands and bored-looking women in their scanties.
This is Erotica, "playtime for grown-ups": a festival that is billed both as Europe's "best-attended erotic event" and "a unique shopping experience" - statements that, taken together, possibly explain a great deal about western sexual dysfunction.
If you had to build a prison for human pleasure, it would look like this. Among booths selling tacky, made-in-China suspender sets and a smattering of interestingly shaped dildos are concessions for discount bathrooms and homoeopathic Viagra substitutes; towering above the entire bazaar are giant inflatable female limbs, naked torsos and amputated legs in stockings suspended from steel girders a hundred feet high.
The punters are English, bourgeois and middle-aged; the strippers onstage and in the booths are young and eastern European. They smile desperately through shrouds of fake tan. The punters, a mixture of hardcore fetishists in rubber and older couples in fleeces, clutch plastic pints of lukewarm larger as they watch the grim stage show. Strippers gyrate in nothing but thongs and a couple of England flags, a cross between a jiggle joint and an Anglo-fascist rally. In true British style, the audience claps politely while pre-recorded applause thunders over the speakers.
Damply obscene
I have lingered too long by the lube stand. A wolf-eyed salesperson in a company-branded T-shirt pounces, asking with rehearsed haste if I'd like to hear about the range of titillating products they have on offer today. Without waiting for an answer, he proceeds to test out a variety of intimate friction-reducing fluids on the backs of my hands. It's when he reaches the part about “a nice, tingly, minty sensation all over your bits" that I lose the will to live. I back away, smelling of spearmint and sensing I've been violated.
By this point, I'm starving but the only nourishment that can be had here takes the form of gigantic hotdogs: fat, grey phalluses, oozing chemical grease and waiting to be popped into polystyrene buns for a fiver. Ravenous, I buy one. It tastes rubbery and damply obscene, like an unwelcome intimate encounter. I tear into it vengefully. Behind me, the canned applause begins again.
Since puberty, I had wondered precisely what crypto-capitalism had done with desire. Like many randy young creatures, I always suspected that somewhere behind the welter of sterile posturing, the airbrushed thighs and hollow iconography of abuse, real sensuality was somewhere, straining for release. Now, I know. This is the Gulag. This is where pleasure is stripped down to its most profitable parts and flogged back to the middle classes at a profit. This is where sexuality has retreated, behind endless rails of overpriced latex. This is pleasure turned, inch by torturous inch, into work: the repetitive, piston-pumping moil of mass-produced erotic kitsch that passes for sensuality.
In a way, it's worse than work because we have to smile and pretend we're having fun. The Daily Sport girls in their booth have to smile. The rubber-clad dancers have to smile. Even the grey-faced punters have to smile, resigning themselves to a middle-age in which desire and satisfaction are gradually replaced by the purchase of more plastic tat.
At the end of the day, we all leave unsatisfied. Of course we do: if there were a single stall here where you could actually buy an orgasm, the whole edifice would collapse. It's the Gulag of desire. Nobody gets out, and nobody gets off.
Related articles
Pop culture and radical politics with a feminist twist
Latest Posts by our Bloggers
From the magazine
-
Jason Cowley -
Sophie Elmhirst -
Martha Gill -
Rafael Behr -
George Eaton -
John Pilger -
Will Self -
Bryan Appleyard -
Samira Shackle -
Rafael Behr
Elsewhere on the Blogosphere
- ConservativeHome
Could George Osborne's leadership ambitions deliver a referendum on the EU? - Political Scrapbook
Latest data shows recession worsen after Tory HQ attempt to spin figures - Coffee House
The coalition: two years in - Left Foot Forward
Spending watchdog slams Regional Growth Fund waste - James Kirkup
LOL: David Cameron's love-texts to Rebekah Brooks could mean voters laugh out loud – at his expense
Blogroll
- Alastair Campbell
- Benedict Brogan
- Coffee House
- Comment Central
- Conservative Home
- Dave's Part
- Gary Gibbon
- Guardian Politics
- Hopi Sen
- Iain Dale
- Labour List
- Labour Uncut
- Left Foot Forward
- Liberal Conspiracy
- Liberal Democrat Voice
- Luke Akehurst
- Neil Clark
- Next Left
- Our Kingdom
- Paul Waugh
- Penny Red
- Pickled Politics
- Political Betting
- Political Scrapbook
- Simon Fletcher
- The Bleeding Heart Show
- Think Politics
- UK Polling Report
Latest tweets
More from New Statesman
- Tools and services:
- Polls
- Predictions
- Jobs
- Archive
- Magazine
- PDF edition
- RSS feeds
- Subscribe
- Special supplements
- Stockists
52 comments
hi buckskins,its so cold in the uk now i dont think even the class war lads are up for a riot tommorow,but wouldnt it be nice if it does snow tomorrow in london the police and protesters have one big snowball fight instead !!! ps,,i am bringing my own pre heated kettle tommorow with some nice bovril to keep me warm,lets hope thats the only type of kettle that is used tommorow (;.;)
Haha. You said `flogged'.
Wow, that was some powerful stuff. It was like being transported into a Kafkaesque circus of imagined pleasure and realised pain for a while there. Great writing.
This is the best (i.e. I agree with the most) article of yours I've read. More than that, it reveals to me beliefs/ideas I held hitherto in mere shadowy vagueness. I now have a greater understanding of what previously had seemed a contradictory position of being happily very sexual whilst uncomfortable with the (I now appreciate, industrialized) New Social Movement of "fetishism". Well done.
this article is all a bit melodramatic isn't it? these kind of tacky ventures aren't for people like you, it's for the people who find it erotic. why can't total superficiality and total sexual ignorance count as a fetish? let their kind lay with their kind so to speak?
Of course you can argue it's may not be the stripper's port of call either...
I went to this a few years ago and have honestly never felt more depressed in my life. Well done for capturing its spirit nicely.
Hilarious! I can picture it so vividly from your description.
And you were thinking last week's Kettle was an awful place to get stuck. Now you know, there's worse.
I'm sure that it's not just through age but that I've always had an 'organic' (sic) approach to eroticism that would have cheered the Soil Association and has mercifully meant I've been impervious to any attempts to commodify pleasure. The paraphernalia leave me completely unmoved.
I remain steadfastly searching for the holy grail: a man (or woman) who can sing the song of love with me completely acapella
The Gulag? Then Page 3 is, perhaps, Ford Open Prison.
See what you can do with that analogy... And what, I wonder, is 'Community Service'?
It's obvious that the poor girl isn't getting enough. Try being a little less self-absorbed dear and I'm sure (eventually) someone will find you sufficiently interesting to risk an hour or so of their time, energy and dignity to ease your frustration.... can't be me though as I bat for the other side.
Yeah great, but what happened to your editors attempt at a bit of mouth-to-mouth on his old mucker James? That was too too shameful to admit to, was it?
"It tastes rubbery and damply obscene, like an unwelcome intimate encounter."
Unwelcome intimate encounter? Nice metaphor. I think you mean rape. Quite aside from the ludicrously melodramatic tone of this, it's just clumsy, especially for a feminist.
It's an overpriced, disappointing hotdog, and you're comparing it to the 'taste' of rape? Eh?
That's kind of a "hollow iconography of abuse" in itself, actually
If I meant rape I'd have said rape. Actually, the phrase I used in the original copy was 'half-hearted blow job', but the NS editors thought that was a little too too much. Not all sex that isn't rape is enjoyable or really mutual, and it was that that I was attempting to draw on.
fantastic article
'real sensuality was somewhere, straining for release.'
Don't you mean 'unreal' ?
@Buckskins: 'the worst sex I ever had was still fantastic'
Even when the goat turned around and bite you?
Dear men, try and take notes instead of making snide comments. The female sexual experience is often greatly different to the male for what seem to us obvious reasons. Some men get this, and we go back to them cause the sex is better. Uninspired consensual sex is often worse than no sex at all.
dont get to excited mr divine,we all know you are a bit of a perv on the sly and dress up in gimp outfits.
Wonderful article Laurie
What a damp squib Laurie manages to make of the event - Wouldn't it be weird if this whole pretentious global sex industry is really being run by some really small and ignoble individual hiding behind some big opulent curtain - like in the wizard of oz.
But I don't agree with the idea that the sex industry caters solely for the so-called middle classes - unless by middle class we mean all these posers who are desperately pretending to be something they are not. Also, one wonders if it's true the job centres have been apparently advertising phoney sex jobs.
Indeed Marysia. One thing I often wonder is if men, even nice ones, genuinely realise how easy it is for women to go along with sex they aren't enjoying merely because that's what you do, because of social pressure, or in order not to seem rude. There are certain aspects of the male physiology that make arousal quite difficult to fake, but for women it's not just orgasm - we can, and regularly do, fake the whole thing, even when we're enjoying some aspects thereof. And in a culture when female sexuality has become synonymous with sexual performance, why wouldn't we?
I found being kettled the other day to be an entirely vivid psychosexual experience. My treatment, particularly by the stick-wielding handlebar moustache wearing bulls at the whitehall end, was entirely in keeping with my Sacher-Masoch mentality, and while all around was a sea of anger and education related woe, I bit hard upon the gumshield of state brutality and it was glorious, the iron fist in the velvet glove inside my cynical anus, I once more felt alive. "You gettin off on this, bruv?" asked a youth beside me. "Yes" I replied "Being kettled is a similar sensation to being consensually suffocated by a hairy man,"
"You're sick bruv" He replied.
"I WANT A HAIRY MAN" I screamed.
Later that evening, when I was wheeling myself along Turnpike Lane, I found myself meditating on the image of Christ and remembering that he died for all our sins so that we can understand the nature of love. And tiny leather hats.
@Buckskins: But didn't the biting experience make you more wary the next time?
@Laurie/Marysia: 'I often wonder is if men, even nice ones, genuinely realise how easy it is for women to go along with sex'. Of course some of us do. I think the main reason that women do it when 'they don't want to' is because they want to please the person. It is very painful being aroused for a long time. Relief can of course be achieved in various ways but the best way is for a woman to be involved. Perhaps woman instinctively know this as well and their kind nature takes over in that they want to do something for the person. Perhaps sometimes it is 'fear' of not sexually satisfying their partner. That is fear of losing the person or of causing resentment. With some people it is very difficult to say what you think or feel.
@stuart: I'm surprised that you know the word, 'gimp' but do you know the meaning?. Perhaps for the Tuesday demo you could dress up in a gimp outfit using barbed instead of straight wire. There will be plenty of excitement then.
Just another day at the office
@Laurie
"One thing I often wonder is if men, even nice ones, genuinely realise how easy it is for women to go along with sex they aren't enjoying merely because that's what you do, because of social pressure, or in order not to seem rude."
Goodness--and it's not even that I disagree with this statement, so much that it strikes me as one sided. Both lads and ladies can be called to bed when they're not all that interested, but feel that it'd be more socially acceptable if they did. Furthermore, not all sex ends with a male orgasm. Furthermore, not all sex in which male climaxes is necessarily enjoyable (though one fleeting instant of it may have been).
Please don't get me wrong, no one should be forced into sex they don't want. But both men and women will concede sex when they're not in the mood but their partner is wanting. Please do not think that only women make the concession, and please do not assume that this is some cryptic piece of wisdom that Y-Chromosomes have not deciphered.
Penny, I am madly in love with you. We are having a demonstration in Aberdeen tomorrow, please come join us.
'I have lingered too long by the lube stand.'
Favourite line of any article, ever. Your alliteration is eversoslightly arousing. Um, sorry.
Ha ha! Let's laugh and make fun of other people that are different to us!
Laurie you are both infuriating and hilarious. May I buy you dinner?
Laurie, I love your writing, but I'm gonna call b-s on your symbolic flaccid weenie-roast lunch, as there are two cafes which have (admittedly overpriced) salads and sandwiches inside the Olympia hall, as well as a pizza express, and if you go outside (seriously--50 feet from the entrance) there is an Indian buffet next to an Iranian place with falafels to die for. On the same strip, there is also a fruiter's with excellent figs and pomegranates, so you could have eaten something both symbolically lady-centric and less likely to fur your arteries/cause projectile vomiting. Just something to consider if you ever have the misfortune of attending this freakshow again. Don't sacrifice your stomach for a cheap metaphor, it isn't right.
Read Herbet Marcuse
Thanks again Laurie for hitting a couple of points spot on for me. James & I were both there on the Saturday (he bought extra ticket, I owe him a drink next time I have a quid) and it did feel distinctly mixed. Also was funny waiting outside in freeze for him to arrive with my ticket. I'm that skint there was no money for any food/ coffee whilst waiting to go in. So I ended up keeping the coffee seller amused and lending a brain to help with wiring of his coffee car. Also had to explain to one or two people why we were discouraging ticket hawkers.
Anyway, myself and various friends have wandered around the fetish scene for some years. Sometimes its assumptions and the quantity of fantasy-only-online-forever crowd can be off-putting. Some of us campaign for the Outsiders charity, which puts me into spotlight a bit as a partially disabled/ multiabled(?) woman in my 20s who also does modelling and is plus-size. It's a little like being a chameleon at a zoo. Everyone tries to look at me to see whether I exist or am an imaginary figment!
At least it is in some cases more open (the scene) than it used to be. Food options and queues were rather horrifying though, especially for partial vegetarian people.
Sounds very similar to just about every night club I've been to. Everyone pretending they're enjoying themselves but bored numb by the reified expreience. Worse than work, I couldn't agree more!
excellent post Laurie.
It is not news that sex is a commodity.
It may be a surprise to some but men as well as women may get a rawdeal from sex (no pun intended!).
However, thats why romance, sharing and commiting yourself to someone is far more rewading and fulfilling (and leads to better pash!).
a 22 YO in the pub yesterday "i dont care about personality, i just want big tits and someone good looking on my arm!!!!" says it all really.
Great article, really funny and depressing (subject matter is depressing, not your writing).
I actually enjoyed the article even more than the url, which is saying something given that it ends with "sexy-sex-erotic-gulag"
Superb.
I do wish you'd marry me. We could reinvent sex together ;)
"unwelcome intimate encounter" was far better than 'half-hearted blow job'. The editors did you a favour.
It can be largely pleasurable for the male that the female doesn't enjoy the sexual experience, though there needs to be some underlying structure in place to support that. Negating pleasure too can be pleasurable for the female.
More than the orgasm however should be the willingness to give something to the other - 'individuals' forget this in their relational dalliances. To some extent, isn't that the meaning of 'faking it'?
http://innegative.wordpress.com/
Funny thing about LP is when I read her articles I imagine some left-lurched Mail idealistic journo, Mad Mel in reverse. (The sixth-form photo probably doesn't help.) But when she responds to her own comments she seems human, rather likeable and makes much more sense. I wonder if NS should consider letting someone else edit her work (and commissioning a new photo)? I think someone might be crushing her spirit in the name of ... can't think what.
oh dont worry mr divine, i will be at the demo early tommorow morning selling my big issue to the good students who are decent enough to buy one of me,as for the gimp outfit,i think your onto something there mr divine since its so damm cold that could be the answer to keeping warm tommorow,ps students, ..if yer lobbing any missiles tomorrow please aim them at the police lines and not me as i dont have any riot gear to protect myself,umm could always wear a crash helmet..
Excellent article Laurie, and you seem to sum up the nagging feelings I have had for a while now about our growing "Adult" (surely childish?) industry - that it is on the whole sexless, devoid of either passion and love.
The only upside would seem to be a greater openness towards the sheer variety of human nature, but you really dont need to buy overpriced tat for that do you?
Not all men are as immature or stupid as some posting here, so do take hope LP, lets face it, if I can find a kind, loving wonderful woman, then everyone has a chance...
What happened to pink shirt?
Best regards for you all,
Looking forward to your visiting.
http://www.1shopping.us/
Best regards for you all,
Looking forward to your visiting.
http://www.1shopping.us/
Post new comment