In Defense of Lana Rhoades or How the Madonna-Whore Complex is Alive and Kicking

A black and white sonogram surrounded by plump red flowers. “This is the announcement” reads the caption. Those four words were enough to send the internet into a frenzy, as 25-year-old adult film star Lana Rhoades announced her first pregnancy in June of 2021. I suspect that the intensity of the response was partially due to the speculation around the identity of the father (which Lana never confirmed), but mostly due to us finding ourselves plunged into a cognitive dissonance invoked by the deep-seated Madonna-Whore complex. And really, and I mean really, hating how it made us feel. 

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In January 2022, Lana shared with her 16.7 million followers that her healthy baby boy Milo had arrived. “Every day since has felt like Christmas morning”, she gushed relishing the wonders of motherhood. Yet again, the internet rose to the occasion with a tirade of misogynistic tropes. I’ve hand-picked the worst of the worst. Please see Exhibit A below. 

“The kid had no problem coming out of Lana’s revolving door.” 

“How fast did he come out though?”

“Did it come out like butter?” 

Disappointing, sure, but almost expected. For whatever reason, our primate brains appear simply incapable of processing the scientistic fact that vaginal muscles are elastic and return to pre-childbirth state shortly after. Fine, you win some, you lose some (pun intended). 

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 As I kept scrolling through the comments though, I identified another pattern; one that I found a lot more sinister. 

“I feel bad for this kid”

“Praying for bro he has a rough future ahead of him” 

“Bro is gonna get abused at school” 

“Lana has done the unthinkable on camera…her son is going to get bullied hard”

The sheer prevalence of this sentiment in the comments section made me slightly nauseous. The hypocrisy and cruelty in this is staggering. I think the cruelty of adults on the internet dooming a baby for a life of pre-destined suffering is self-evident, but the hypocrisy is very multi-layered.   

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 My assumption is that most of the people providing the commentary are familiar with Lana’s work. Some of her scenes are extreme to say the least, and she has teared up during her podcast remembering the emotional toll they took on her. So yes, Lana has done the unthinkable on camera…but you have consumed it. That makes you accessory to the unthinkable. That makes you complicit in the whatever disgust you harbor towards the acts performed. The people’s rage is so blind they fail to register the bigger picture and their own contribution to the noxious dynamic of modern pornography. The law of supply and demand lives to see another day. We do this a lot - perform a mental “re-packaging” of repulsive abstracts into justified and digestible ones to avoid recognizing how our choices are active building blogs of the perversion in question. Our disgust at the limp, cold, hung carcasses melts away like butter on a sizzling rib eye when served on white china alongside creamed spinach. That’s right, shame the butcher! Shame the woman getting fucked! You are a mere scavenger who came across the dumped flesh. It simply fell into your unsuspecting lap, and you made the most of it. 

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It’s not even about the level of taboo of a certain scene. Most people have few reservations about consuming vanilla porn. They don’t, for the most part, tend to beat themselves up about it. When it comes to their opinions, views, and judgements on the female actresses (and male, but let’s be honest, the vitriol is mostly directed at women), suddenly everyone takes a moral high ground. Words like dignity, self-value, and virtue come to occupy the center stage. “How can she disrespect herself like that?” laments someone who successfully got off on the display of the disrespect in question. Oh, how high and mighty we are! Francis of Assisi could never! 

 Seriously, do we not see the hypocrisy in that? 

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There is also the actions-consequences point, which to an extent is valid. As an adult, you make choices that you must bear responsibility for. Sometimes your poor judgement carries profoundly burdensome consequences that stay with you forever, as in Lana’s case. She made autonomous, albeit somewhat misinformed (by her own admission) choices that led her to where she is today. At the age of 19 making questionable decisions is common (albeit most young adults don’t go on to join the adult film industry - it does beg the question of why some do though); the flimsy promises of hustle culture, the alluring words of (pseudo) sexual liberation, the instant gratification are to inexperience what a red flag is to the bull. Lana openly admits that her perception of the porn industry was skewed, oblivious to the darker dynamics of exploitation. She did consent to performing humiliating and violent acts on camera. However, the consent she gave does not diminish the consequent trauma experienced. The fact that she financially benefitted from partaking in the degrading scenes does not prevent emergence of regret. The fact that she made a decision does not entitle her to standing by its soundness forever. It’s 2022 – about time we realised that two things can be true at once. And that the interplay between pornography, freedom, responsibility, and choice is extremely nuanced.

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Do I think pornography is inherently in contradiction with the aims of the feminist movement? I don’t have a definitive answer. I can see a lot of reasons why it would be, but I am not convinced that outright banning sexual content or labelling it as essentially evil will bring about liberation or resolve gender-based inequality. There are only two things I can speak about with certainty. The first is that the contemporary production of pornography, and by extension our consumption and understanding of it, is riddled with unhealthy and damaging dynamics. It can be improved through the abandonment of the male gaze aesthetic, portrayal of consent, communication, and mutual pleasure, and inclusion of diverse and realistic bodies. The effect of these changes will, without a doubt, be marginal at best, as any drastic change must begin with an overhaul of the wider system of the patriarchy. 

The second, and arguably more important, is that we must see sex workers’ humanity ahead of anything else and treat them with respect and humility. Ideally the motivation for that should come from the fact that they are human beings entitled to dignity, but if that’s too selfless of an ask, then your consumer status as an active driver of demand for pornographic material might suffice.  

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 Becoming kinder is achieved through looking inward and identifying internal tensions, biases, and beliefs held about the concepts of sexuality, purity, and respect. We all hold them; I am by no means an exception. But I am working on it. I am trying to be better.

“Imagine the whole internet roasting you before you’re even born”

“Imagine the bullying her child will face” 

Yeah, well, imagine, this dynamic is not inevitable. Her son does not have to get bullied if you teach yours the art of compassion. With so much discussion around how little accountability Lana takes for the decisions in her younger years, it’s fascinating how little accountability everyone else is willing to take to raise a more tolerant and considerate generation. Even more fascinating, how little accountability is taken for their own words and actions. 

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Although many of Sigmund Freud’s suppositions are dubious at the least (the castration theory actually gave me intellectual whiplash), I think he may have been onto something with the Madonna-Whore complex. I think this is what is at heart of this entire situation. It was a specific linguistic behemoth of an aphorism under a reaction video to Lana’s podcast that jogged my memory around this psychological prototype. It read “she expects to be treated like a queen but has taken more loads than a washing machine” (great use of a literary device there by the way – really brings the sexism to life). This tension between love and sex is the crux of the Madonna-Whore hypothesis that suggests that heterosexual men view women through an irreconcilable binary lens as either objects of love (Madonna) or objects of desire (Whore), but never both. 

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Madonna is a mother. She is nurturing, caring, warm, deserving of love and reverence for her maternal sacrifices. But she is not fuckable. Her eroticism is drained to the point where desiring her becomes an unthinkable offense. That’s what the Whore is for. Only of course she is depraved in consequence, so in no way does she deserve any semblance of respect or tenderness. As a result, she is a subject of public rejection and private infatuation. So, the the most caustic comments towards Lana are likely coming from those who have had to clear their internet history quite a few times. 

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The funny (but ultimately tragic) thing is that the outcome traps both parties in an unsatisfactory relationship. The women can never please (not that they always have to) and the men can never be pleased (not that they always have to be). Everybody suffers. Checkmate. Classic Freud.  

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So, I think the world is really having trouble reconciling the role of Lana as a new mum and as former pornstar. I think it’s time for the world to look inward a bit more. And for the love of god, could we please prove Freud wrong once and for all?