This is a little ad I made for For The Girls a while ago and I’ve just converted it into a flash movie using a new bit of software I’ve bought called EasyFLV. I’ve been meaning to learn more about flash for a few months but I was procrastinating. Instead I just forked out some money for a little program that does it all for me.
If you click on the movie it will take you to FTG.
Stumbling about today I found this post at the delightfully named Adventures of a Well Mannered Can-Can Dancer blog. The author has posted a bunch of beautiful photos of guys dressed in 19th century clothing, posing as they would for an official portrait. The pics originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 06 edition of Numero Homme magazine under the title “Ultimate Dandys” (sic). Unfortunately I don’t have a proper link for it.
I find these pictures strangely attractive and I am fully aware of what’s made me a sucker for good looking men in high collars - it’s Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice.
Yes folks, I can quote that series off by heart (as can my lovely husband) and I still do enjoy watching that jump-in-the-lake/wet-shirt scene. So here’s an excuse to post the above pic into my blog… and perhaps head off to re-watch the DVD, yet again.
Something has been bugging me for a long time now, so I’m going to have a little rant about it.
It seems that there are a lot of people out there who don’t like the term “porn for women.” I realise this - and I’ve discussed the ins and outs of it plenty of times on the blog. But I’m just gonna have to talk about it again.
The thing is that it seems any new female-focused erotica or porn now has to be prefaced with all sorts of disclaimers, disavowing that it’s this thing called “porn for women” in case someone assumes it’s soft focus romance porn similar to Candida Royalle’s work (and not that there’s anything wrong with that, I might add.)
The determined quotes on the back of the Dirty Girls erotica anthology being a case in point.
Another example: Whenever the sex blog Fleshbot posts about a female-friendly film such as Petra Joy’s Female Fantasies, or Erika Lust’s Five Hot Stories For Her, they have to always - ALWAYS - make some little comment at the start about how they don’t even know what “porn for women” is and how it’s such a silly concept. Thus:
We can’t help but roll our eyes a little when someone starts going on and on about “porn for women”—like men can’t appreciate well-shot productions featuring sexy models who look (and fuck) like real people and not porn star caricatures? Snark aside, UK director Petra Joy’s second film “Female Fantasies” looks so good we could eat it… Link
Sure, Fleshbot, I can see your point, but what’s with the bias? Especially when you have an entire category labelled “porn for women.” What’s wrong with identifying a particular audience for your porn movie?
Another example: a review of Anna Span’s latest film at Strictly Broadband spends several paragraphs reassuring readers that even though it was made by a woman and aimed at a female audience, they could rest assured that it had none of that nasty romance stuff and was just as hardcore as the next movie on the shelf.
I keep seeing this a lot lately.
And then there’s this post at Boinkology, discussing another blog’s lame joke idea that “porn for women” involves missionary position sex and choosing baby names afterwards.
A commenter says: “Smart thing would be to stop addressing the question as Porn For Women or Porn for Ladies or what women want from porn altogether.”
OK… so it would seem that an awful lot of people have decided that the term “porn for women” means softcore or boring porn. And then a whole bunch of other people have got their backs up because they feel the term “porn for women” isn’t valid because it somehow makes sweeping statements about “what women want.” Add to that all those people who feel that vanilla sex or romance in porn is either boring or not worthy of consideration.
And here I am, the antichrist, with my porn for women blog and various sites. And I run For The Girls which may very well be everything these people hate. Even though it’s such a huge and diverse site, a lot of people make assumptions about what it stands for.
It’s all getting a bit much.
Now I think it’s time I put this backlash against “porn for women” into perspective.
Cast your mind back ten years to 1998. Porn on the internet was starting to become a fairly major business. Paysites were popping up everywhere and the internet wasn’t flooded with cheap free porn like today. Photos were pretty much all you could get.
In 1998 I wrote an article for Australian Women’s Forum about what porn there was on the internet for women like myself. I wanted to find ANYTHING that spoke to me as a female. It took me a long time to find anything much. And remember, I’m a librarian so I wasn’t just stumbling around hoping to get lucky. I did eventually find two sites that were specifically aimed at women, one of them being Purve, the first women’s erotica paysite (now defunct).
So, in 1998, “porn for women” was pretty much a non-existent thing. A couple of websites and Candida Royalle’s film catalogue.
In 2000 when I became an adult webmaster, I focused on porn for women because it was something I was passionate about and I knew there were other women like me who were looking for something different - something that spoke to women as a viewer.
In those early days there was a small group of female webmasters who got together and discussed women’s erotica - what it should be, what we liked and who we were marketing to. Most of us liked similar stuff - naked guys, hardcore couples pics without the sexism, and erotic fiction. None of us thought much of facial cumshots.
We each made our own sites but we were also on something of an evangelical mission. The vast majority of the adult industry dismissed the idea that women would seek out and pay for porn (it still does). We constantly made an effort to get our message out to other webmasters that what we were doing was worthwhile. We told them that they should stop assuming that every porn surfer was male.
I even wrote an article for AVN about it.
It took a long time, but a lot of industry people listened. That’s why, folks, you’ll find “for women” categories at every major linklist and TGP out there. That’s why some major companies created paysites for women (although I must admit they were pretty crappy, hence I made my own). And that’s why there is now a distinct “niche” within porn known as “porn for women.” Type the phrase into Google and you’ll get thousands upon thousands of sites.
Fact is, I was one of the people who helped shape the idea of “porn for women.”
The idea is - and always was - to create a separate space in the pornosphere that said “Yes, girls, we know you’re here. Come on in and enjoy yourself.”
So, now it’s 2008 and there’s a desire to question the whole concept of “porn for women.” I understand this and I think it’s a debate worth having. I agree that you cannot pick one particular form of sexual content and say “that’s what women want.” And yes, the word “women” is vast and nebulous and includes lesbians and straight chicks and bi girls and everything.
Nonetheless I still believe that the term is valid and useful and will remain so while ever mainstream porn remains so overwhelmingly aimed at men.
Consider, if you will, the way it is still difficult for a straight female porn consumer to find what she wants and the way she is largely ignored by the porn industry:
* A woman types in “porn” and she ends up an adult site where every photo is of a naked woman and all the language assumes the reader is male.
* A woman types in “naked men” and every site is aimed at - and speaks to - gay men
* The vast majority of straight DVD boxcovers feature a naked woman
* The vast majority of porn movies don’t feature a female orgasm
* The vast majority of porn sites and movies focus on male fantasy
* The vast majority of porn sites and movies give priority to male sexual pleasure and satisfaction.
* The vast majority of straight porn films and photographs make an effort to cut the man out of the frame.
* Porn still perpetuates sexism, gender and racial stereotypes and it portrays women who like sex as sluts, bitches or whores who don’t deserve respect.
Until ALL those things are gone, women who like porn will be on the outer. And they will go looking for something different. Using the term “porn for women” is a great way to raise a flag, to get their attention, to say “Hey! Here’s something that’s different!”
Yes, things are changing. Indie porn producers are abandoning the old cliches and stereotypes and there is a genuine effort to create adult material that appeals to both men and women.
But even when the heady day comes that all porn is equal and has left behind the baggage… I still think the term “porn for women” will be useful. Because how else can you describe a movie that is aimed specifically at women? One that features female fantasies and focuses only on a woman’s pleasure? One that doesn’t give a damn if it turns on the male audience or not?
I’d say that was porn for women.
Giving credit where credit is due: Pic is of Candida Royalle’s Femme - her first film and the very beginning of what is now called porn for women.
My decision not to have kids was hard to make, but it was the right one for me.
Now, it seems, I’ve been backed up by a psychologist who says that having children significantly reduces people’s happiness. Research from Europe shows that, while people are very happy when expecting a baby, this drops off when the child is born and the nappies start piling up.
Apparently all those cute moments of laughter aren’t quite enough to make up for the boredom and drudgery of looking after kids.
The scientific evidence shows people are very bad at predicting what will make them happy, said Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of the book Stumbling On Happiness. He said people’s happiness goes into steep decline after they have children, and never recovers its old level until the children leave home. As a source of pleasure, playing with one’s offspring rates just above doing housework but below talking with friends, eating, or watching TV, research has shown.
Part of why I decided I din’t want children is because I’m happy with my life as it is. I do what I want, when I want. I’m unchained from the 9-5 existence and I’m my own person. And I have a lot of creative things I want to achieve which I wouldn’t be able to if I had a baby. Why would I give that up?
What’s interesting about this happiness research is that most parents will tell you it’s bullshit. Professor Gilbert has an interesting comment on this point.
Explaining why the statistics conflicted with most people’s view of parenthood, Prof Gilbert made the unusual comparison to buying a pair of Armani socks.
“When people own Armani socks they can’t stop telling you they are the best socks, the most amazing socks,” he said.
“(But) I suspect that one of the reasons that people who own Armani socks think they are wonderful is because they have paid $US85 ($A90.30) for a pair.
“The psychologists tell us that we like things more when we pay for them – what does that sound like? It sounds like children.
“We pay for them in time, attention, blood, sweat and tears – what kind of idiots would we be to devote all of that to the rearing of our young if they didn’t bring us some happiness?”
Naturally this makes me feel very smug… and lucky. And relieved.
There’s a bunch of comments here, most of them obnoxious and refuting the idea, but there’s also a retort from Professor Gilbert himself where he says:
The studies aren’t mine. I’m just reporting their results. The studies show that on average, people become less happy when they have kids. You may well feel differently than the average parent does. But why would you insist that the average parent must necessarily feel as you do? Do you really believe that YOUR experience must be EVERYONE’S experience?
Sources: SMH, News.com.au
I have a piece of paper that says I can be a teacher. I have no intention of using it unless I’m desperate because teaching in 2008 is a shit job that is undervalued and underpaid.
But I suspect that I would have no hope of employment even if I did go mad and decided I wanted to teach. That’s because teachers are supposed to be flawless, upstanding members of the community - as opposed to pornographers. Because we are all evil, after all. And teachers aren’t allowed to have a sex life, either.
One can only reach this conclusion after what’s happened to a Sydney primary school teacher who has been sacked because she appeared in a tasteful nude photo in Cleo magazine. Lynne Tziolas appeared nude with her husband and also discussed their sex life in an article about the sex lives of real couples. The photo and comments were within the sealed section of the magazine.
Apparently there’s now a petition signed by 40 parents demanding she be re-instated and she’s also suing the department of education.
Lynne and her husband obviously love each other and are relaxed about their sex lives and bodies. What they do in their spare time shouldn’t be anybody’s business… even if they are appearing nude in a major magazine.
What shits me here is the assumption that any kind of public expression of sexuality or nudity makes you into some kind of pervert - one who must be kept away from children. Because children are supposed to be completely pure and innocent and sexually ignorant.
The same “but think of the children!” mentality has reared it’s dopey head in Queensland because the government is finally going to approve the state’s first ever official nude beach. Various lunatics have piped up and said “I don’t think it’s a good idea - there are families around.” Because “families” can’t possibly be exposed to nudity… and being nude on a beach is somehow depraved, immoral and not suitable for children.
How can a bit of skinny dipping be harmful to a kid? Why would it be a problem for a child to see normal human bodies?
It also shits me that the word “family” has been stolen by conservative bastards and twisted to mean “heterosexual married couples with 2.5 kids who are sexually uptight.” Fuck that.
I hope Lynne wins her case. And I’m glad she’s making a stand - saying that it’s OK and normal to discuss a loving, healthy sexual relationship.
Also - isn’t that a fantastic photo. Tasteful, beautiful… and the look on her husband’s face is just gorgeous. That’s a photo about love, people, and if you get offended by that, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.
News articles at SMH and News.com.au
This delightful stainless steel work of art is NOT a sex toy.
It is, in fact, a coffee tamper made by Avanti and available for about ten bucks or so from your average kitchenwares shop. Like this one.
The other day my husband arrived home wielding this wonderful thing, keen to get his espresso coffee thoroughly stamped into place, always aiming for the perfect crema. I swear, he and that coffee machine are having some kind of relationship.
Anyway, I took one look at it and got the giggles. When you’re a pornographer, it’s hard not to have a dirty mind. It’s like the way I can never type the word “six” without hitting the backspace.
I also started coming up with wild and evil schemes that involved me selling coffee tampers as butt plugs and making a fortune. Your average stainless steel anal sex toy comes in at around $100 or so. I could flog these off for $30 and be rich, rich, rich hahahaaaaa.
Of course, it’s not designed for the purpose of pleasuring your butt and the flange/tamper bit on the bottom is actually quite heavy, so there’s no way you could wear this around. Still, it’s better than a carrot.
And you can always enjoy a perfectly made espresso after all that butt play.
The newspapers seem to have gone into a gurgling meltdown this week over the upcoming Sex and The City Movie. Which prompts me to rant.
Me and Sex and The City were not friends. It pissed me off. I think I only managed to watch a couple of episodes before I gave up in frustration.
Sure, it was nice to have a show that talked so openly about sex, but I just had no time for any of the female characters. I had no empathy with them, no central point of reference. These single, shoe-obsessed, cocktail drinking city women seemed exactly like the kind of Cosmopolitan chicks I gave up on years ago. They seemed horribly self-obsessed, too thin and kind of vapid. Their relationships with men were shallow and painful to watch.
So I found it increasingly frustrating when SATC become a standard media signifier for the “liberation of women’s sexuality.” Every article and TV show saw the series as a zeitgeist, something that all young women loved. The four main female characters were women we were supposed to admire.
The thing is this: I don’t live in a city. I don’t lust after high heel shoes, go on diets or drink expensive cocktails. I actually drink chardonnay and wear pyjamas to work (though not necessarily at the same time). I don’t spend hours complaining that my date was “too nice” because I’m happily married to the nicest, most wonderful man in the world. And I am perfectly sexually liberated, thank you very much.
And now it’s all back, with extra plastic surgery on top. And the media will soon be making the same statements about “post feminism” (ugh) and how it’s OK for women to have a vibrator because it was on Sex and The City. Sigh.
The other thing is this: Sarah Jessica Parker… what happened? I used to put her on my teenage lists of coolest ever girls, back when she had a big nose and starred in ditzy 80s movies like Girls Just Want To Have Fun. God I loved that movie when I was 13. It was Dirty Dancing before anyone knew who Patrick Swayze was. Sarah and Helen Hunt were just it on a stick to me and I used to dream of going on Dance TV and winning the competition and the gorgeous hunk’s heart. (Cue big dreamy girly sigh).
You know, when So You Think You Can Dance started I actually found myself thinking of that movie, musing that it was only 20 years too late for me.
You know what else? I’ve successfully turned this angry rant into a trip down memory lane. Time to go and drink some chardonnay…
You may already be aware that Britain is about to pass a law which outlaws the possession of “extreme pornography” (details here.) The law is based on moral hysteria and very bad science and is being shuffled through parliament in a much larger bill full of other issues such as privacy and immigration. Interestingly, the British press has done more reporting on a clause about data loss than it has about this particular infringement on personal freedom.
Red Pepper, a British political site, has two great opinion pieces today opposing the new law. The first, called Porn Can Be Good For You, makes a general argument in favour of porn which I found quite readable, even though it makes a few unfortunate assumptions about how many women are “forced” to work in porn.
The other, An Extreme Insult, is well worth reading. It’s by a woman who stridently defends her kinky lifestyle and her right to watch kinky porn.
Some women like rough, kinky sex. They like doing it, thinking about it and looking at pictures of it.
Now, as controversial revelations go, the above ought to be up there with ‘some women like fish and chips.’ Unfortunately, it isn’t. To the British government, among others, the idea of women having varied sexual tastes rather than being an undifferentiated mass of sexual victims seems so inconceivable that they are enshrining their denial in law.
Pic is from Sex and Submission, one of the consensual BDSM sites that would be essentially banned in Britain because of this bill. That site features female submission, and some of the pics can be confronting if BDSM isn’t your kind of thing. Interestingly, nobody seems all that concerned about male submission sites like Men In Pain.
This interesting looking sex toy is a Luna Butt plug. It looks so weird because it’s an actual cast of someone’s rectum. I’m not entirely sure how they got the cast, but I suspect it didn’t involve plaster of paris.
Anyway, the reason it looks like this is to counteract the bum muscles tendency to expel butt plugs during orgasm.
According to the blurb:
It was designed specifically to resist the expulsive power of the rectal muscles during orgasm. This is accomplished by the unorthodox asymmetrical design of the toy. Rectal muscles have evolved to clamp down symmetrically and produce copious amounts of pressure doing so. By offsetting the external and internal design of Luna, Jollies has created the first blast proof anal toy.
See… isn’t biology fascinating?
The toy is made from medical grade silicone and is one of the many weird and wonderful sex toys available at JT Stockroom.
By the way, if you’re into anal porn, check out Anal For Women.
There’s something super post-post-modernist about my blog commenting on someone’s blog which is commenting on another blog… but anyway:
Idolator blog offers up a list of sexy album covers featuring naked men, as distilled from Gigwise’s 50 sexiest album covers list. They also point out that most male entries in the list are treated as a joke, rather than as something “sexy.” This compared to the nude female album covers which are discussed purely in terms of shagability. I like their point.
I also just want to include a pic of Prince’s Lovesexy in this blog. Because come on. That is hot. I never used to think much of Prince, but I changed my mind. Fact is, Prince is a squishy velvet purple suit full of hot lovin’ that just won’t quit.
And look at how nicely that cover goes with my blog colour scheme.
Alt porn is the new black. Or it was the new black - some say that it’s been commercialised beyond coolness so now it’s more of a new brown. In any case, there are now plenty of alternative gothic porn sites out there featuring naked chicks with tattos and piercings (see Quirky Sex for examples).
The problem with the new black is that it’s still the same ol’ same ol’ when it comes to the models: namely, they’re female.
Today I received a plaintive email from a female surfer bemoaning the lack of male goth porn sites. And she’s right - this is one neglected porn niche. At this stage there’s only one major site out there dedicated purely to nude male goths and punks: Incubi Inc. It’s an indie site run by horny goth Mistress V who couldn’t find porn that would satisfy her.
I was wishing Trent Renzor was singing “Closer” to me and trying to put my finger on the sex appeal of Rob Zombie. All of my peers thought I was weird, how could I like men in make up? What was I thinking, he was wearing leather pants! Cast out of fan girl conversations, I knew I couldn’t be alone… This site is my own personal lash at “the man” showing that good looking men come in all shapes and sizes (as well as lengths of hair) just like women come in all sizes of beauty…
Incubi Inc isn’t huge but it has a lot of potential and I’m sure it’s getting bigger all the time.
There are a few alt sites that don’t focus solely on women. No Fauxxx is female run and features nude goth guys but I suspect they’re in a minority. There’s also a subgroup at the Suicide Girls site for men.
You know… I should make a naked male goth/punk site one of these days…
Pic is of the lovely Efini.
Here, my good friends, is an example of what sort of photos should have been in that Porn for Women book. Yes, it’s a guy doing the housework. But take note, dear readers, of one crucial and vital difference. Yes, Niko here is drop-dead gorgeous and he’s completely fucking naked.
The pic is from this gallery.
Apparently the upcoming spring/summer issue of Britain’s GQ Style features an essay by fashion guru Tom Ford and pictorial featuring naked men. Ford says he wants to look at the way Western society avoids serious study of the male body and the disparity between the treatment of men’s and women’s bodies.
NYMag has lifted whole paragraphs from Ford’s essay and turned it into a mock interview. It makes for interesting reading. I really liked this bit:
Imagine … if our suits were entirely designed to show off our penises. Imagine if contemporary fashion demanded that you left your cock hanging outside your trousers, with perhaps just the head trussed up in a tiny pouch like a dick bra. Everyone would see our cocks all the time, in the same way that fashion features women’s breasts.
What a fascinating idea. Part of me really, really wants this to happen. When the revolution comes, ladies, it’ll be dick bras for the lot of them, I say!
It seems that the canon of women’s literary erotica is growing, and that’s a good thing.
The latest book release is Dirty Girls, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussell. I received my review copy the other day but I haven’t had much of a chance to read it. The few stories I have read have been amazing, so I think it’s worth checking out. Here’s the official blurb off the back:
What do women really want? To be sensually seduced or pressed up against the wall for a quickie? To be tantalized by a peep show or the chance to join the mile high club?
Acclaimed erotica writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel knows: They want it all. They want to be worshiped, ordered around, sent blindly into ecstasy, and made hot in front of a mirror. They want strangers bearing ice cubes on a hot day and to be the party favor passed around among guests. They want sex at the office and in the great outdoors and on trains and airplanes. They want sex with the whole United States of America (or, at least, part of it). They want to be wooed, seduced, flirted with, taken. They want to handpick their lovers and make them do their bidding. They want men, women, and sometimes both at the same time.
I have to say, there are two recommendation quotes on the back that I found offputting. One is from Joanna Angel, who says: “Finally, a book about what girls REALLY think about. Well, maybe not every girl, but the dirty ones… and those are the ones who really count.”
Another quote is by Susannah Breslin who says: “…a collection of erotically charged short stories that affirms that dirty girls are the new black.”
These quotes irked me. I realise they’re all about appealing to those who think that erotica for women somehow always means flowers and romance, but is there any need to start imposing an “us and them” rhetoric onto it? It’s like there’s this dichotomy of sluts versus housewives, or something like that. Rachel Kramer Bussell herself says that women can be both “dirty and sweet wrapped up in one” and I really like the inclusive “we want it ALL” idea of the book, so why use those two divisive, dirtier-than-thou quotes?
Yes, it’s a niggling complaint but it has created a slight bias for me before I’ve read the book. I’ll see how it plays out in the next week or so.
Here’s a pic from one of the new couples galleries at For The Girls. It’s a lovely set of photos with lots of intimacy and eye contact - and it starts with him serenading her with a guitar.
I thought I’d best whack up a nice porn pic to keep you all placated… all of you… all of my thousands of readers out there… er… hello?
Anyway, I’ve been slack with my blogs over the past couple of days. Various issues have been getting in the way, not least the various bugs that have popped up on this blog (yes, my pages are missing). It’s time to do another backend overhaul. So if you see weird things happening, that’s what’s going on.
I’ve actually been obsessed this past weekend with researching high definition video cameras. I want to buy one, but it’s really hard to choose which brand and option to go for. I’ve developed a crush on a snazzy looking JVC model but it might not offer the best video quality. I’ve also gotten bogged down on eBay, which is never a good thing. Add to that Facebook and… no wonder my poor blog has been neglected.
I am pleased to say I’ve written up a short porn script for an upcoming project which I’m looking forward to creating. And… the tax is done. Hurrah!
On October 20, 2003 an article called “The Porn Myth” by Naomi Wolf appeared in NYMag. The article suggests that porn desensitises men to real women and thus ruins relationships. She says that women now have to compete with a porn star aesthetic:
Now you have to offer—or flirtatiously suggest—the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene. Being naked is not enough; you have to be buff, be tan with no tan lines, have the surgically hoisted breasts and the Brazilian bikini wax—just like porn stars.
The article begins with Naomi saying that “at a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin.” Dworkin died in 2005. Naomi also writes that she is 40 in this article. She was born in 1962.
In the almost five years since The Porn Myth first appeared, the article has popped up as a new item in Google news several times, even though the text remains exactly the same. There’s no actual date on the piece. And NYMag has recycled it again this month, prompting another wave of commentators to use it as an excuse to rail against the evils of porn (latest example: Is porn making men too picky?).
I find the whole thing rather frustrating. Why is a five-year-old piece of opinion being recycled like this? Doesn’t Naomi have anything new to say on the topic?
And it’s bothersome because I’m not sure if Wolf’s conclusions are correct. There’s a lot of assumptions going on and not much evidence to back it up beyond anecdotes from friends.
Fact is, five years later we still don’t know what men really think about porn, or what affect it’s having on our sex lives. You only have to see the enormous debate on a post called “How Porn Ruined Sex” at Jezebel to know that this is a complex issue that nobody has really researched.
It’s entirely possible that young, inexperienced men are getting the wrong idea about sex because of porn. If that’s the only info you’re getting, chances are you’ll be a little confused. But it’s a long bow to draw to say that all men are becoming desensitised, that porn is addictive and ruins relationships, yada yada yada. If we’re only going to rely on anecdotal evidence, then there are plenty of guys out there refuting Wolf’s argument on the net, saying “nothing is better than the real thing.” Example here.
And I have to say, Naomi really loses me when she starts to argue that the headscarves and conservative religious attitudes to sex are somehow sexier than the freedom of dress and association that a liberated Western women enjoys.
While I appreciate the point she is trying to make, this article is just too problematic to keep reappearing in the media like this. Where is the new commentary on this?
Ever since reading the Jezebel debate I’ve been thinking about the issue of how porn affects men and relationships and whether porn reflects male fantasy or creates it. It’s probably time I got on with posting about it. Stay tuned.
I love Ewan McGregor. And it’s not just because of his eagerness to get naked in almost every film he’s been in. He’s also very likeable. Proof: Long Way Round. Damn, that was great TV. Oh, and he was naked in it too.
Anyway, apparently his latest film was too much even for him. He’s told the press he was exhausted after having to repeatedly get nude and simulate sex with a procession of beautiful actresses. His part in Deception is that of a staid accountant who becomes involved in a sex club. Hence the orgy scenes.
I think I want to see it. Actually, I know I want to see it.
Meanwhile, in other shag-laden movie news, it seems Frodo has been getting jiggy with spaghetti. Elijah Wood’s first ever on-film sex scene involves getting nude and being covered in spaghetti. I suspect Samwise will be jealous.
The SMH has been paying attention to male nudity in films today, with a feature article on the way the penis is getting a bit more screen time lately. Especially thanks to comedy filmmaker Judd Apatow who has made it his mission to get the dick onto the big screen as much as possible.
“America fears the penis, and that’s something I’m going to help them get over,” Apatow is quoted as having said in December. “I’m gonna get a penis in every movie I do from now on. It really makes me laugh in this day and age, with how psychotic our world is, that anyone is troubled by seeing any part of the human body.”
Bravo, Judd.
Pic is from here.
I’d been avoiding Facebook after I tried to join as Ms Naughty last year and it wouldn’t let me. It kept demanding a real name. And then I read about all the privacy issues and how you can’t ever delete your account. So I wasn’t keen.
But then an old friend encouraged me and I thought… OK, I’ll just do it a little bit.
And now I’ve lost hours searching for old uni friends and people I used to know. On Facebook I’m myself, real name, photo, everything. And it’s kind of weird. Now I have to maintain an online profile of the real me, not the porn me, but that’s kind of cool. I’ve found all these people I used to know, been reminded of real-life connections and developed an urge to have a reunion.
And now I’ve got this nervous tension. I can’t list my official occupation on Facebook. I can’t say what I really do for a living. I’m happy to tell people face-to-face but I’m not going to out myself in such an obvious way on the net.
And no way am I going to indulge in the various plugins Facebook has to offer. For a start, the bastards want to know what colour your pubes are, and secondly… it’s a big fucking waste of time. While I’m glad to have joined in, I really don’t want to get caught up in the sort of site where it’s important to do the Dr Phil quiz or find out “what 80s song are you?”
I KNOW what 80s song I am, thank you very much. It’s Beat It. (No, wait. It’s Moonlight Shadow. No, it’s Ship of Fools… no… hang on… It’s anything by Sting…)
I will say this. Facebook looks better than MySpace. Not by much, but a little bit. And it does feel a little bit useful, although I suspect that usefulness will fade once I’ve had a chat to all my old friends.
I guess that if you’re desperate to know the real me, you can find out easily enough. But for now I’ll do my best to remain Ms Naughty. I sound so much more fabulous and mysterious that way.
I’ve now watched Erika Lust’s debut film Five Hot Stories For Her and I have to say I’m very impressed. This film won movie of the year at the Feminist Porn Awards and I think it deserved it. Certainly this film now shares a spot on my “all time favourites” list.
Five Hot Stories For Her is a pretty good title. This movie has consists of five individual short films, all of them offering a complete story about love, sex and relationships. The main focus is explicit sex, of course, but that’s not enough for Erika; she gives the audience a compelling, believeable reason to watch the sex. This isn’t plot for plot’s sake, as you’ll find in so many mainstream “feature” porn films. Here the story exists to make the sex that much hotter.
My full review of this movie will appear at For The Girls this week.
You can download the film from Hotmovies here.
Surfing around today I was slightly startled to discover that women’s porn sites have been the subject of a very serious academic paper.
Women’s Porno: The heterosexual female gaze in porn sites “for women” by Terrie Schauer is an 18 page article first published in the journal Sexuality and Culture two years ago.
Here’s the abstract:
The article deals with a number of Internet sites claiming to specialize in providing pornography for heterosexual women, as a vehicle to examine the nascent “gaze†and visual parameters of heterosexual female sexuality. The focus here is semiotic—looking at visual coding of website images rather than audience reception (i.e., whether heterosexual women are actually the main consumers of women’s porno). Motivation for this decision is discussed.
Theoretically, the article draws from Butler’s performative notions of sexuality in anchoring discussion. The remainder of the article does a comparative textual analysis of nine pornographic Internet sites, three of which label themselves “for women.†Findings are as follows: “Women’s porno†fuses the matter and anti-matter of men’s homo- and heterosexual pornography, in the process engendering an active, sexually interested, heterosexual female gaze and typifying Butler notion of “insurrectionary speech.â€
So naturally I found myself wondering which sites Ms Schauer chose for her study. Did any of my worthy efforts come under her scrutiny? What was the result? Were any of my sites charged with the crimes of “stereotypes” and “assumptionsOr should I assume that the official findings are actually positive toward women’s smut sites?
It all sounds terribly highbrow and meaningful but there’s no way I’m going to pay $32 to read it. If someone has a copy they’re willing to donate I’m happy to receive it.
The blog has just been through the ringer a little, thanks to a spot of spammer hacking and a subsequent upgrade after hours of fucking around.
Anyway, I’m back again, hopefully it will stay up, especially after I put all the padlocks on the doors, nail the windows shut and load up my virtual shotgun.
This weekend Amber Rhea’s Sex 2.0 conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia. It was attended by various blogging luminaries like Dacia and Rachel Kramer Bussell and was a general discussion of feminism, sexuality and the internet. It looked very cool and various posts are appearing about the event as I write.
Thing is, though, I wasn’t there. Once again, living in Australia means that I miss out on all these “real world” conferences and events. I remember being involved in the discussions when Amber first suggested the idea for the conference, and I said I’d like to go, but it’s just not possible thanks to the sheer cost involved in getting there.
Sometimes I feel frustrated that where I live is getting in the way of my career, a bit. I want to network and meet people and it’s just not doable at this stage. Occasionally I’ll muse about the idea of getting my butt over to the US or Europe and maybe even living there a few months to see what I can get out of it but that’s a big thing to contemplate. Australia’s online and adult industry is just so constricted compared to that of America or the UK or Europe. And the thing is, I don’t even live in a large city here so I’m doubly isolated.
I read yesterday that Richard Branson is about to offer seriously cut price fares to the US (they’re currently over $2500) so that may make a difference in the future.
This is more of a rant than anything. In a way it doesn’t make sense that someone who makes her living on the internet should complain of isolation. I guess the thing is that business opportunities and friendships always seem to be stronger when a physical connection occurs - even if you’ve known the person online for years.
One day… one day…
April 14 is Cake and Cunnilingus Day, now in its third year.
Yes, I made it up. I decided to reject the stupid masculinist idea of “steak and a blowjob day” by creating my own silly girly holiday. Does it help the cause of feminism? I’m buggered if I know.
Anyway, it’s two months after the gushy sentamentality of Valentine’s Day and it’s a good day to simply indulge in carnal and epicurian lusts. Definitely beats a bunch of flowers, I think.
Following last weekend’s Feminist Porn Awards, there’s been the inevitable debate about whether feminist porn can even exist.
Violet Blue’s SFGate column discusses the idea and at the time of writing there are no less than 806 comments. I have only read the first 6… it’s too nice a day to even consider going through the rest.
There’s also a high-falutin’ discussion at Finally Feminism 101. This one is interesting because the hardcore feminists join in and the term “the patriarchy” gets thrown around with abandon. Not surprisingly, plenty of true believers are still offering up that “false consciousness” argument that if you’re a woman who enjoys porn (or heterosexual sex for that matter) you’re a victim of the overwhelming patriarchal culture that pervades all our thoughts and influences everything we do… Essentially you’re a victim no matter which way you look at it and the only way to get free is to become a lesbian and quit watching porn.
I’ve also added my own comment down the bottom. Here’s a bit of it:
I don’t believe that creating a visual depiction of sex is automatically anti-feminist. As always, context is the key.
I don’t believe the old Dworkinist line that sex is automatically anti-feminist because it’s a patriarchal construct. This line of thinking condemns any woman who enjoys heterosexual sex as some kind of traitor to the sisterhood and it’s this attitude that has resulted in millions of young women determinedly saying “I’m not a feminist…â€
I also don’t accept the suggestion that all women who appear in porn (or prostitution for that matter) are victims who have been forced into it. Remember when feminism was about giving women a choice? About making people understand that women have their own thoughts and desires?
I do find it amusing (and frustrating) that so many people would think that feminist porn is an impossibility. Still, at least there’s a discussion about it, if nothing else.
I’m having a busy couple of days, so here’s a quickie post featuring a hot couple getting it on to tide you over.
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