Wacky Wrestling Theory 09.04.08: Full Penetration Sex

Posted by Jake Chambers on 09.04.2008

How far is pro-wrestling willing to go in order to shock the audience? I hypothesize that showing full penetration sex is one step pro-wrestling will be willing to take due to the tradition of eroticizing violence against women already ingrained in the culture.

If we look to the future, we have to assume that what we consider ‘pornographic' sex today will start to assimilate into mainstream popular culture. The movie Shortbus and the television show Tell Me You Love Me are two examples that have already started to nudge that boundary in the serious drama category. The problem is that word ‘serious.' The core audience for pornography does not want to take a serious, intellectual look at sex, they just want to see girls getting fucked in as many wacky and dangerous ways as possible. The pornography that people buy is filled with abusive and humiliating treatment of women at the hands of tough and cocky muscular men. Sound familiar? You may see where I'm going with this, since this is a wacky wrestling theory, and the comparison has been commonly made before, professional wrestling and pornographic film share the same imagery, exaggerated style and visual symbols. Therefore, I believe that pro-wrestling will be the perfect place for pornographic sex to eventually penetrate into the mainstream.

Romance (or at least romantic overtones) often has a place in pro-wrestling mythology. Everyone remembers the touching reunion of Macho Man and Elizabeth at Wrestlemania VII, but of course this followed years of verbal and physical on-screen abuse by the Macho Man character. So truly, as much as the romantic pay-off may exist in pro-wrestling, it is the humiliation and degradation of women that actually connects with the audience.



Violence against women is common in professional wrestling. Whether it is the lust shown by the Dudley Boyz for putting women through tables, the aggressive Trish and Lita verbal feud, or Randy Orton RKO-ing his girlfriend Stacy Keilber to send a message that he will do anything to win; in most cases the lowest place a wrestler can go in order to ‘heel'-icize themselves is to attack women… or is it? The respect some segments of pro-wrestling fandom has for ‘artistic' heel performances are no different than the way the audience admires Al Pacino in Scarface or Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Therefore, if the heels were able to use another, common cultural method for symbolically ‘attacking' women, then what is to stop them from using full penetration sex in the ring similar to way it is used in pornography.

I don't know if you've seen any porn recently but certainly a majority of the content is incredibly brutal. Regardless of any feminist arguments that could have been made for pornography during its inception decades ago, these days there is little social redemption in the degrading and borderline criminal way women are abused by groups of men in some modern porn. Yet, the gag reflex continues to decrease in the throats of young women worldwide while the influence and market penetration of pornography increases. As was brilliantly dramatized in the recent HBO drama mini-series Generation Kill,the young people that are growing up saturated with violent imagery who do not feel any repulsion or disgust for these acts will simply accept them as normal, and corruption at the highest levels or society can encourage this kind of naive youth over those educated or moralistic. With the saturation of pornography in the Western world, we can assume that this means the youth of today will be as desensitized to seeing extreme penetration sex as I was to seeing hip gyrations of Elvis Presley. As these young people grow to take control of society in the future, the images that are required to shock them will need to be more extreme.

While this year we watched Chris Jericho unapologetically punch Shawn Michaels' wife in the face and were ‘moved' by the resultant swollen lip, could we not imagine that in a few decades we might see a similar scenario, only with the wife being sexually molested, fully penetrated and left in a cum-covered pile in the ring as a means to amp up the violence against a women that is so required to pull an emotional response from wrestling fans? Sound shocking? That's the point. Besides, it's not ‘real,' right? Although it may look and feel real, Jericho didn't really intentionally punch or hurt HBK's wife, so from an artistic standpoint, how would collaborative penetration sex be any more real?


Too far?

What would penetration sex add to the show that simply simulated sex could not provide? That's a good question, since we all realize that wrestling is not a real fight, why would they need to show real sex? The question then is: how real is pornographic sex? As I have discussed before, the sex in porno looks very different from the sex people most likely are participating in on a regular basis. Pornography shows ultra-exaggerated, hyper-real acts of near athletic proportion, much like the moves in pro-wrestling. Really punching a person in the face hard may be quick, sloppy and awkward looking, yet practicing and perfecting the ‘wrestling' punch is a main component in any wrestler's arsenal. Visual scenes of vaginal penetration, and the accompaniment of ejaculation, female ‘squirting', along with choking, slapping and spitting are all appealing, unrealistic visuals that are comparable to the chest chops, piledrivers, powerbombs, and submission holds that we see in wrestling. A pornographic sex scene, particularly where the men are larger than the women and able to maneuver and position them in extreme ways, as well as the force at which they are able to thrust and the effect that can have on the female body, can be a fascinating physical feat to watch. This fascination can be titillation on some levels but it does not have to be. Wrestling uses violent imagery with highly sexualized women, but I don't think that there are many people with their pants down in front of their TV, jerking off to the WWE or TNA Knockout division. The visual stimulation of seeing women's bodies and genitalia in exaggerated photorealistic scenarios can be one way for 'trash' or low culture to politically get a reaction from their audience.

I think that in search of the next level of extreme physical, visual stimulus, the marriage of pro-wrestling and pornography is an obvious one. As wrestlers look to push the envelope, the penetration of the erect penis into the vagina and the subsequent pumping holds a certain violent cache that must be appealing to wrestling producers. Unlike a simulated dry-hump, the visual of full penetration is what draws people to porn because it is the ultimate demonstration of man's power over women. If this can be shown with force and violence, then the act becomes ever that much more dominant, shocking, and attractive to a carnal, male audience.

Just how soon can we start to expect to see this kind of imagery in pro-wrestling? I would have to say decades, at least, but some signs point to an even sooner possibility. First of all, there is the inception of an independent wrestling promotion Not Rated Pro-Wrestling (as was once evaluated here) starring and funded by porn stars. These men see the degradation of women as a daily, economic necessity, and how long will it take before they begin to book matches that involve winning a woman and having sex with her in the middle of the ring, rather than just splicing sex scenes in between the matches on DVD? The rich man's Evan Stone, Triple H, has not been one to often adhere to the current kid friendly image the WWE wants to pretend to project. Triple H, the character, mocked Vince McMahon for loving ‘cock,' stood beside Candice Michelle as both were apparently on the receiving end of oral sex until completion, and he literally ‘fucked' the brains out of the corpse of Katie Vick on live TV. Triple H, you have to assume, is a guy who may finds these sexual themes fun or funny, and thus with his position as a possible leader of the direction of the WWE in the long-term future, there is a good chance that we would be in favor of experimenting with pornographic images on WWE shows.

Although censors may have come down on WWE in the past for characters like Mohammed Hassan and Goldust, as the WWE increasingly becomes it's own distribution channel (we can assume that shows like RAW and Smackdown will eventually be exclusively available on WWE 24/7 in the future) control over content will no longer be regulated by outside bodies. As the WWE becomes able to script shows that are without boundary, like satellite radio, then I would imagine a switch away from the current (and horribly forced) ‘kid friendly' programming will move toward the equally as lucrative and more appropriate, ‘adult' dollars.

The visual imagery of penetration sex plays perfectly into the culture of WWE wrestling that likes to exaggerate physical pain and activity as well as use the humiliation of women at questionable levels of acceptability. Therefore, I would not be surprised, that in the lifetime of Vince McMahon, we will see full penetration sex in WWE rings or programming.