Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

Archive for the ‘Popular culture’ Category

A couple of videos have come out in the last week or so that celebrate women’s genitals. Or, to use their term, the vagina.

Both of them are attempts at viral videos from companies that sell “feminine hygiene” products (that term always makes me cringe). The first one features a talking cat advocating the use of the word “Vaginal” as a substitute for “awesome”. The second one has a nice lady singing various euphemisms about the female genitals, similar to Eric Idle’s Penis Song (and, dare I say it, my own Paddling The Pink Canoe short film).

I like the vocabulary change that the cat is suggesting but I can’t in good conscience take it up since the company behind it is Summer’s Eve, which produces lots of sprays, gels and soaps for down there. They want us to celebrate our cunts while simultaneously telling us they’re filthy and smelly. That’s quite the mixed message. Summer’s Eve has previously had trouble by suggesting the best way to get a promotion was to douche.

The second one is better and it’s from a company I feel more comfortable with. The Mooncup is a silicon cup designed to be inserted inside the vagina during menstruation. It collects the blood in a more environmentally friendly way than disposable tampons or pads. I use a similar cup from Diva and they’re great. They’ve saved me a lot of money and it’s a much easier way of dealing with my period.

The comment I did want to make about both these videos is the use of the word “vagina” to describe a woman’s genitals. I’ve had my rants about this before here and here. Suffice to say, there’s a good reason to be pedantic about semantics here: put briefly, the emphasis on talking about the vagina implies that it’s the main source of female pleasure and it means the clitoris can be neglected when it comes time to stop talking and start humping.

When the cat talks about how fantastic the vagina is, I don’t disagree. The vagina can do lots of interesting things like accommodate both a penis and a baby. But I think the clitoris is far more impressive and worth celebrating. Wouldn’t it be cool if “that’s clitoral” was a replacement for “that’s awesome”?

The thing is, both videos are talking about “the vagina” as a region rather than as the specific birth canal. And that’s the colloquial term for a woman’s genitals; it’s what most people use to describe the cunt.

As much as I hate it, perhaps I’m just going to have to give in on this one. The Skepchick argues that insisting on “vulva” makes me a “pussy pedant” because language changes. It’s a fair cop.

Still, poor old vulva is sitting in a corner feeling very neglected. And I’m still going to picture speculums when people say “You can see her vagina”. Perhaps I need to start being obtuse and refer to men’s genitals as “the scrotum”. It’ll be a bit of fun, if nothing else.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

There’s a logical fallacy called “cherry picking” which is essentially this: you come up with a hypothesis. You then seek out data to back your assertions. You ignore any contradictory evidence and only use the stuff that supports your theory.

Then you write a book about it. Cue the articles in major newspapers and interviews on TV. Suddenly, your delightful theory is accepted uncritically as fact.

Thus, we come to A Billion Wicked Thoughts, the book by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. It’s subtitle is “What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire” and it’s main idea is that the authors have revealed fundamental differences between men and women by looking at internet porn (or, specifically searches for internet porn). You’ll never guess what that fundamental difference is. Yep, men like sex, women don’t.

I’m a bit late with this blog post. Plenty of other bloggers have already pointed out the various problems with this book and the methodology used and I figured I didn’t need to add my voice to the protest. Indeed, I didn’t pay a lot of attention when it first came out.

But today I discovered that the researchers had asserted that the (alleged) lack of popularity of For The Girls was proof that women are only interested in romance fiction. And well, fuck that, I’m kind of angry.

Before I go there, let me direct you to the article (and assertion) in question. It’s this: Censored by the Wall Street Journal: The Female Sexual Brain in Psychology Today. Yes, the same Psychology Today that recently published an article saying black women are objectively less attractive.

Here is the main thing they have to say about the differences between men and women when it comes to sex:

“Men seek out visuals and go straight for orgasm. Women prefer stories and often favor conversation over culmination.”

Sound familiar? It’s the same thing Kinsey was asserting 60 years ago, back when there was no porn for women. It’s the same idea that is repeated ad nauseum in any discussion about women and porn. And it’s the same idea I’ve been battling for the last 11 years.

Note the blanket statement about what men like and what women like? No detail, no nuanced acknowledgement of the wildly varying sexuality and tastes of men and women. And no concept of bisexuality or homosexuality or queerness or transgenderism at all.

(Let me say this – I’ve been called out on this in the past, saying “women like this sort of thing”. And they were right. I’ve done my best to change my views. It’s wrong to say “all women like this” because it’s just too broad a statement to be accurate).

This use of search statistics to support the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” idea was apparent from the very beginning of their research. This was posted on Slash fan fiction sites in 2009:

We’re deeply interested in broad-based behavioral data that involves romantic or erotic cognition and evinces a clear distinction between men and women. (my bold) Fan fiction matches this criteria perfectly. Let us make clear, however: fan fiction is not the subject of our research. Our subject is the human brain. For us, fan fiction is a wonderfully rich source of data–like single-neuron recordings in rhesus monkeys–albeit a unique and invaluable one.

Suffice to say, the researchers fell foul of the fanfic community on whom they based many of their conclusions about women and romance – the response can be seen here.

So, on to the bee in my bonnet. It’s this:

The five most popular adult sites for men are all within the top 100 most popular sites on the entire Internet. All are webcam or video sites featuring anonymous graphic sex, such as PornHub, the most popular adult YouTube clone, which draws about 13.9 million visitors a month. In contrast, the most popular adult video site for women, For The Girls, draws a meager 100,000 a month (and up to half of those visitors are gay men). All across the planet, with women free to access any erotic content they wish, they mostly seek out character-driven stories of sexual relationships: romance novels, erotic romance (sometimes called EroRom or Romantica®), fan fiction, slash fiction, gay romance novels, and erotic stories.

The most popular “erotic” site for women is fanfiction.net, featuring more than 1.5 million visitors a month and more than two million stories, about half of which are tagged as “romance.”

The bit in bold is their assertion about For The Girls. According to them, FTG is a minnow in terms of traffic and half of our members are gay men. That’s quite the statement to make when you have never contacted the owners and don’t have access to a site’s statistics or membership details. Let me say this now: it’s totally inaccurate.

Today I sent them an email asking where they got the data to make such statements.

I can only assume they’ve come to this conclusion by looking at the figures on Alexa, an Amazon-owned company that keeps track of people’s surfing habits via a toolbar. As alluring as that data can be, it’s not very accurate. It relies on people willingly installing their software, allowing themselves to be tracked. And the info is often 3 months out of date. Interestingly, Alexa says our main audience is 65 year old women without children – exactly the kind of person who would unknowingly install spyware or a toolbar.

But wait! Here I read that the authors contacted fellow women’s erotica site Sssh.com. Interesting. Did Sssh give them the figures on FTG? If so, why would the authors listen to a competitor site who also does not have access to our stats? And if they contacted Sssh, why isn’t THAT site the one they quote in their Psychology Today article?

I’m not about to publicly bandy about the traffic figures for FTG. That’s given out on a need-to-know basis. But rest assured, we get a shitload more traffic that 100,000 visitors a month. A metric shitload.

To be honest, though, I’m more offended about the assertion about the gayness or otherwise of our membership. Assuming they relied on the dodgy data from Alexa… there’s absolutely NOTHING on there that discusses the sexual orientation or otherwise of site visitors (and if there was, well, damn, there’s bound to be a human rights violation in it). I can only assume this assertion is based on Playgirl’s readership figures – which have absolutely nothing to do with us.

The fact is, I have no idea how many of our members identify as gay. We don’t collect that kind of data. Asking would be rude. And, what’s more, it doesn’t fucking matter. What I do know is that the majority of names on members’ credit cards are female.

Yes, we do get men joining For The Girls but I don’t know whether they’re straight or gay. Given that our content is half straight hardcore and half nude men, I don’t think it’s remotely accurate to say we resemble a gay site or that we are trying deliberately to cater to gay men. Our target audience has always been straight women. I do get emails from straight men thanking us for offering a more positive version of porn or saying they joined to share the experience with their wife or girlfriend.

Beyond this, let me say that comparing FTG to a fan fiction site (or free mainstream tube sites) is not even remotely comparing like to like. Notice how the authors called us an “adult video site” as if we’re the same as Pornhub? We’re a membership site that requires people to be aged over 18. A great deal of our visitors arrive there having clicked on an ad, knowing we’re a commercial product. We self identify as a porn site and offer hardcore content but we’re also a magazine with articles and fiction. Compare that with your average free fan fiction site. It’s apples and oranges. What’s more… FTG doesn’t offer slash or gay fiction (although we’re changing that soon). So right there you’ve got a vast difference in individual tastes.

And that’s the problem with this research. It doesn’t seem to understand the idea that women’s tastes ARE different and different women will seek out different things on the net depending on who they are, how old they are and what turns them on at that very moment.

So to use For The Girls as “proof” of the assertion that “women aren’t visual” and are more turned on by romance novels or “conversation” is just a nonsense.

By the way, let me say I’m so disappointed in this research. The idea of looking at internet porn searches IS interesting. For one thing, it seems to suggest that Gail Dines’s assertion that men are seeking out violent porn is way off the mark. But I couldn’t in good conscience use this data in a debate.

If they can’t get the facts right about For The Girls, what other information did they fudge or fuck up?

If or when I get a reply from the authors as to the source of their assertion, I’ll add it to this post.

* Note: I thought I’d include the above image from the Billion Wicked Thoughts website. Nice indication of the gender stereotypes they’re selling.

——————-
Update 25th June
I’ve had a reply from Sai Gaddam. He says they emailed us in July 2009 and got no reply. I searched back, couldn’t find any emails from them. Perhaps they went into spam.

Sai says:

We used the web analytics services Quantcast and Alexa to obtain traffic and demographic estimates. Both report a monthly traffic of less than 100k.

Quantcast also reports that 54% of the visitors are male and the most correlated site are freebuddymovies.com and outpersonals.com, which are both categorized as Gay.

We understand that these numbers rely on random sampling and are estimates — but reasonably useful ones.

We will be happy to update these articles with more accurate information about your site if you can share any relevant data with us.

Quantcast is an analytics service that relies on websites to volunteer their own data by inserting code onto their pages. When a website does not use Quantcast (and For The Girls doesn’t), they estimate. I have no idea how they estimate, but the figures they apparently pull out of thin air look impressive. Thus, according to Quantcast, 54% of our traffic is male and the majority of our surfers are black. Uh, OK.

There’s also an “Audience Also Likes” feature which says “The people who visit forthegirls.com are also likely to visit these categories and sites.” Apparently our surfers are “likely” to visit Outpersonals, Ebaums World and Urban Dictionary.

The truthiness presented by this information was “reasonably useful” enough for our intrepid authors to present it as fact and then use us to prop up their assertion that women aren’t visual.

Not good enough. As I said, if they fudged the stats here, what else did they fuck up?

Related Posts:

• Porn Does Not Cause Rape
• Beware These Skewed Statistics About Porn “Addiction”
• I’ve Got The Site Revamp Blues
• Where The Hell Is My Prince Charming?

It’s been in the news for weeks and I thought I’d finally weigh in on the whole Anthony Weiner penis photo drama. Not because of all the glorious jokes that can be made about dicks but because of the above video from The Daily Show.

It’s mostly great. I especially like the point Kristen makes that men who send unsolicited penis photos labour under the misapprehension that more information about their penis will seal the deal with desirable women. Rest assured, fellas, it won’t. Sure, we may be curious about your penis and maybe even want to see it one day. But there’s a time and a place for knowing about it and seeing an uninvited photo on one’s phone isn’t one of them.

What I didn’t like about the above video was this exchange at around 2:30:

Jon Stewart: To be fair though, sometimes women send men risque photos as well.
Kristen: Well, because the female body is beautiful and penises look like a species discovered on the undersea floor living near sulphur jets.

This whole “penises are ugly” thing has been repeated fairly often during the whole affair. And it’s a common trope that women’s bodies are naturally beautiful but men’s bodies are undesirable and unappealing. It’s an idea that reinforces the idea of the male gaze, where men do the looking but are not to be looked at.

I for one would like to speak up for the penis. I think cocks are lovely. They’re a fantastic piece of the human anatomy and we should celebrate them.

And I should know. I’ve been looking at them constantly for ten years. I think in that time I may well have seen at least ten thousand examples of the male member in all shapes and sizes and in all states of being. They all have their own personalities and unique characteristics. And they all look glorious when they’re erect.

I didn’t always think this way. I remember feeling a little squeamish about cocks when I started out. I enjoyed looking at handsome faces, muscles, hairy chests, gorgeous legs and pert butts… but the penis didn’t really thrill me. I may have considered them to be a little ugly to be honest (although, to be fair, I didn’t find female genitals all that appealing either). I was a typical example of my culture at that time; as a woman I wasn’t encouraged to look at men nor was I exposed to male nudity very often. While female nudity was common, the cock remained secret and hidden. Especially images of the hard cock, which were (and are) regularly censored.

What’s changed is sheer exposure. Over the years I got to know the penis and I finally came to appreciate how lovely it is.

I think more and more women will begin to feel the same way, especially now that we have easy access to a plethora of cocks on the internet. It’s time we stopped deriding the male body and started admiring it.

Consensually, of course.

Related Posts:

• Penis Spines? No Thanks!
• Cock Colouring Books
• A Quiet Word About Those Dick Pics
• Enormous Penis

In the US bookstores Barnes and Noble and Borders are censoring the cover of Dossier magazine which features an image of androgynous model Andrej Pejic, shirtless. As you can see, Andrej is biologically male but he is also very pretty and his face may be considered to have feminine characteristics. Andrej has made waves in the fashion world by modelling women’s clothing, including a wedding dress by Jean-Paul Gautier.

It seems that Andrej’s genderbending prettiness is too much for the good folk in the US so opaque plastic covers are being placed over the cover to protect the oh-so-delicate sensibilities of bookshop customers. Dossier are expected to pay the extra expense for the plastic.

So… where to start with this. Firstly, it’s a lovely PR coup for Dossier magazine and a great publicity boost for Andrej, so in essence I guess this kerfuffle isn’t a bad thing. But it says so much about gender, censorship and society’s attitude to breasts.

From the SMH:

Dossier creative director Skye Parrott told the Huffington Post that the magazine had informed both stores that Pejic was male, and that they were essentially censoring the image of a shirtless man.

However, both stores stood by their decisions, saying customers could mistake Pejic for a shirtless woman.

I think that statement what’s really caught my attention. This shows up just how ridiculous it is that we declare a woman’s breasts to be obscene and censor-worthy but it’s OK for a man to show his nipples (except, of course, for this man, because he looks too much like a woman). It’s the assumption that breasts are alwasy sexual and must be hidden from view. That putting boobs on a cover is always indecent or sleazy.

This is the same way of thinking that sees breastfeeding photos banned from Facebook and images of shirtless children deemed obscene. It’s helped along by the increasing use and acceptance of the term “breast nudity” in the media, a fact that no doubt pleases the hysterical anti-sex conservatives. Men can be “shirtless” but women must never be “topless”.

I’m a believer in the top free movement. If guys are allowed to take their shirts off in public, women should have the same right. Nobody should be demanding censorship because a magazine shows male nipples, no matter how feminine he might look. And nobody should be automatically assuming that censorship should occur because a magazine shows female nipples.

Obviously this censorship is also a kneejerk reaction to a queer image. Andrej’s photo messes with our ingrained perceptions of gender and no doubt this upsets some people who want it all to be neat and tidy, thank you very much. I’m sure there’ll be howls about the “gay agenda” surrounding the whole thing. Dossier have achieved their aim which was to garner attention and create that gender-ridden confusion. It’s challenging to our sense of what’s “normal” and that’s a good thing.

I’ve looked at pics of Andrej on Google Images. He’s a very, VERY pretty man. He has that aloof, ethereal quality that seems to be favoured by the lunatic fashion designers. I’ve seen comments suggesting he may be the image of perfection to the often weirdly misogynist fashion world: a stick-thin model that looks female without all that nastiness of actually being female. Part of me thinks that’s not too far off the truth.

Is he sexy? I’m not sure. He’s not really my type. Perhaps he looks TOO female for me. Especially in this pic (left) which would probably have caused armagedden if it was on a magazine cover.

Actually, that image is also a good one for challenging stereotypes and stirring up discussion. It shows just how critical the pose is to our interpretation of an image. Here Andrej is posed in a typical, “sexy” female position. It demands that we read that picture in a certain way, looking at it as a sexual image. It also demands that we study it with a male gaze and admire the feminine beauty of the model. But he’s male and that throws a delicious spanner in the works. It’s good fun.

Reminds me of the good old days of Boy George and Marilyn and Dead or Alive. Although I do hope lovely Andrej doesn’t go the way of Pete Burns.

In any case, fuck you to Barnes and Noble and Borders. And fuck you to everyone who thinks censorship of the human body is a good idea.

Related Posts:

• Now Australia Is Banning Small Boobs
• Alien Nipples And “Adults Only” Hair Sex
• “Excessive Genital Detail”: Photoshopped Vulvas In Men’s Mags
• “A Real, As Opposed To A Fanciful, Risk Of Harm”

I’m looking forward to an upcoming TV series about Cleo – the Australian women’s magazine that featured male centerfolds (only a few months after Cosmo had pioneered it with Burt Reynolds). If you follow the blog you’ll have already seen the image of actor Jack Thompson nude in the first ever Cleo male centerfold. The TV series features a scene showing how Jack’s legendary “Venus” photo was shot.

Cleo was ground breaking in 1972. It openly discussed sex and made the ideals of feminism accessible to Australian women. There’s a long interview with original editor Ita Buttrose here. A few good quotes:

“We had the best story conferences,” recalls Buttrose of the early days of Cleo, which she describes as progressive but not pornographic. “We wrote about sex as if we had discovered it.” A great deal of laughter came out of their offices in Park Street, Sydney, as the team of mainly young women (and a couple of men) had disarmingly candid conversations on topics ranging from sex toys to lesbianism.
….
In 1972, there were no women in Federal Parliament, they were not permitted to drink in “public bars” in pubs, and had only recently achieved the right to equal pay. There were no anti-discrimination laws, no Family Court or no-fault divorce, and no maternity leave, and abortion was illegal without extenuating circumstances.
…
Like many women of her era, Buttrose suffered discrimination. She couldn’t open a department store charge account without her husband’s signature (even though she supported him while he studied architecture). As late as 1976, she was one of the highest-paid women in the Australian media, yet was refused a bank loan.

I don’t have a lot of time for Cleo or Cosmo today because they’re so obsessed with fashion and diets. But in the 70s, they were revolutionary and I’m grateful for them; they laid the groundwork that enabled magazines like Australian Women’s Forum and then For The Girls to exist.

Related Posts:

• Hot Male Centerfolds From FTG
• The Artistic Male Centerfold
• “Too Much Genital Detail”
• What A Guy

Well folks, I did it. I successfully gave my presentation “Girly Smut: A History Of Porn For Women” at the Erotic Screen and Sound Conference on the 17th. While I was pleased that my voice didn’t get quavery, I did end up turning it into a bit of a shambles because I went waaaay over time. I knew the talk was 22 minutes to begin with but I thought I’d speak quickly due to nerves. Nope. Apparently it’s the other way around. You should only write a 15 minute presentation for a 20 minute slot.

In any case, about 20 people were there (not bad for 4.30pm in the smallest room) and I made them laugh. That’s enough to make me happy. I didn’t get enough time for a proper discussion about the complexities of the idea of “porn for women” – they only got a super fast and brief rundown of the various viewpoints and criticisms of it.

Part of the problem with time was my decision to include clips from several feminist porn films. I was originally going to leave that up to Anna Brownfield who was going to discuss them but she pulled out of the conference. So it didn’t seem right to talk about female-friendly porn films and not actually show any. Thus I included short and relatively softcore clips from 4 Candida Royalle films and:

Ecstatic Moments (by Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp)
Man of My Dreams (by Mimi Balfour)
The Band (by Anna Brownfield)
The Good Girl (by Erika Lust)
Rough Sex (by Tristan Taormino)
Matinee (by Jennifer Lyon Bell)
Feeling It! (by Petra Joy)

I got the vague feeling that I made some people uncomfortable by doing so. There seemed to be a bit of squirming in the room. It was probably just because no-one is used to watching dirty movies in the company of strangers like that. Or perhaps it was because I was happily showing porn without deconstructing it in any serious way.

Still, I was pleased to be given the chance to present my version of girly smut. If you consider that I was up at 2am the night before suffering food poisoning, it went well.

The conference was very intimidating on the first day, mainly because it was laden with academic presentations rife with jargon and obscure art references. It’s been over ten years since I last attended a university lecture so the intense intellectualism was a shock to my dumbed-down system. Later I discovered I wasn’t the only one feeling a little overwhelmed by the experience. I spoke to one lady who was pleased that she got to snooze without slumping in her lecture seat.

Eventually I tuned in to the various buzz words; this was a conference thick with references to heteronormativities, hegemonies, discourses, texts, the gaze and various isms. This cartoon sums it up, I suspect. It had a distinctly queer flavour and a lot of presentations had plenty of criticism for the usual suspects: the patriarchy, colonialism, conservatism, monogamy and the mainstream media. There’s a blog post coming about all of that.

Beyond that, though, it was good to be challenged. I heard some really interesting ideas that I hadn’t encountered before. The Porn Report’s Professor Alan McKee (who is a young and funky guy, not a bearded Dumbledore as I imagined) spoke about the idea that popular entertainment (e.g. Big Brother) shouldn’t be so derided because it’s an end in itself and is necessarily vulgar and over the top by definition. A PhD student called David Gizzi discussed the phenomenon of “war porn” – a huge online community of people who watch violent real videos from war. Leonarda Kovacic showed us historic nude “noble savage” photos of aboriginal women and challenged us to read them differently to the usual victim/oppressor narrative.

I also had the unexpected experience of witnessing some extreme performance art. Rebecca Clunn projected her discussion of art onto a screen while silently threading roses onto a string. She then placed the rose necklace around her neck along with a circle of razor wire. For the next 10 minutes or so, she knelt and rocked back and forth while the razor wire scratched her skin to pieces, causing her to bleed. I ran the gamut of emotions from a panicked urge to run away (ack! blood!), to curiosity, to almost indifference because it got repetitive. Quite a strange place to be. Afterwards she sat casually on the stage and we all had a nice chat. It certainly made a change from the standard situation of sitting up the back and comfortably hearing a presenter speak.

I also got to meet some of – dare I say it – “my people”: pornographers, porn stars, strippers, performers and various kinky people. I think this was one of the strengths of the conference: it was willing to hear the voices of those on the front line of erotic screen and sound. It meant there was a balance between intense theory and real-life experiences. This also resulted in a few interesting clashes such as when stripper Zarha Stardust questioned the assumptions made about porn stars in a traditional feminist reading of mainstream porn.

In the end, the best part of the conference for me was the chance to network. I got chatting to various lovely people during the meal breaks and have made some good friends. I was interviewed by Clarissa Smith who wrote One For The Girls, a book studying porn for women. I also introduced her to the bearded dragons living in the university gardens and there was a bit of squealing.

I had drinks with Fiona Patten and Anne Frances Watson from the Sex Party and talked to Dean Beck who hosts a radio show about gay sexuality in Melbourne. I met the lovely Angela White who not only makes a living as a porn star but is also a PhD student, and Zahra Stardust who is a stripper, politician and Masters student.

I talked women’s porn with Maureen who runs Bliss for Women in Melbourne. I talked to Rupert Owen (who appears in Anna Brownfield’s film The Band) about ways in which people uploading amateur porn can keep control of their videos through open source principles. And then there was all the fun of Tiara The Merch Girl and her exuberant, very smart presence.

One of the recurring themes of the conference was a lack of space and permission to explore sexuality and the erotic. I think there’s potential for this conference to spin into a broader event, possibly like the Berlin Porn Film Festival. Unfortunately, the law will get in the way. It’s one thing for the “elite” academics to gather and discuss fisting and BDSM, watch videos of facial cumshots and discuss their meaning or analyse photos of objects shoved into the anus. It’s another to be allowed to have a festival where the general public are invited. Showing any kind of adult film is still prohibited in Australia. Gathering to discuss and enjoy sexuality is really only limited to the commercial sphere of Sexpo.

It would be nice to try and I believe the general public would be up for it but I think our “moral guardians” would step in and make it unviable. You can discuss porn in an academic way but you’re not allow to enjoy it.

Still, perhaps this conference is an important first step in created a dialogue about sex, porn, art and censorship in Australia. I’m glad I went.

I’d like to direct you to the presentation by Tiara The Merch Girl. She’s kindly uploaded the whole thing onto Vimeo. In it she discusses the idea that erotic represenations, even when they’re labelled “alternative” still adhere to a very narrow aesthetic. She gives details of her own sexual journey and finishes with a superb burlesque/poetry piece.

Tiara the Merch Girl - Erotic Screen and Sound Conference 2011 Presentation - Not Your Ex/Rotic from Tiara The Merch Girl on Vimeo.

Related Posts:

• Eros Shine Awards 2011
• Erika Lust Has Been Very Busy
• The Artistic Male Centerfold
• Hot Male Model Photo Shoot: Sneak Peek

Last month we did a major photoshoot with a lovely selection of male models. We had them posing in various sexy positions and I also took the opportunity to try and re-create famous artwork and sculptures. Thus, I want to share with you an image of the lovely Martin who is our centerfold at For The Girls this month:

We got him to pose in a similar position to that of Titian’s reclining Venus of Urbino.

Titian’s painting is famous because it shows the female nude looking straight at the viewer rather than modestly dropping her gaze. It is considered to be an overtly sexual painting because of that aspect. I thought it would be fun to create an inverse representation, where it’s a guy who is reclining, waiting to be desired but also returning the gaze.

I almost got it right although we didn’t get his body position correct. He should have been leaning back on the couch a bit more. We didn’t spend very long getting the photo so I wasn’t being a perfectionist with the pose. Still, I had fun editing it in photoshop, adding the background and making it look painterly. I was quite pleased with the end result.

So imagine my surprise when, as part of my research into the history of women’s porn, I finally found a pic of Jack Thompson’s centerfold in Cleo (November 1972).

They’d already been there, done that, the year before I was born. Maybe there is nothing new under the sun. I honestly didn’t know about this pic when I decided to create my “Martin of Urbino” image. Perhaps it shows some kind of common desire to make the male nude into an artistic edifice.

In any case, I had a bit more fun with photoshop and put Martin into Manet’s Olympia.

Olympia is considered to be based on Titian’s Venus. It was deliberately provocative because it went a step further with sexual desire and depicted a prostitute rather than the mythical goddess of love.

While the history of art is resplendent with depictions of the nude, there are few images or sculptures that present us with a woman’s perspective. Female nudes often exist to please the male eye or to depict an idealised idea of femininity. Male nudes are either studies in anatomy or distinctly homoerotic. There’s no tradition of the female gaze in art, at least in the recognised canon. I think that’s why it’s fun to mess around with old masterpieces.

Related Posts:

• Hot Male Centerfolds From FTG
• Hot Male Model Photo Shoot: Sneak Peek
• First They Came For The Pornographers…
• The Birth Of Cleo Magazine

This is a screenshot from the final scene of Boogie Nights, the 1997 film set in the 1970s – the “golden age of porn”. It features Mark Wahlberg as porn star Dirk Diggler, a role loosely based on the life of John Holmes, possibly the world’s most famous woodsman. Throughout the movie, viewers are told all about the huge cock but never actually get to see it. In this last scene, we’re finally given a glimpse of Diggler’s legendary 13 inch penis. Dirk whips it out before a scene, giving himself a pep talk in the mirror.

The cock made the news when it came out, partly because viewers actually got to see a dick in a movie (still rare) and partly because it was fake. The giant rubber dong was made by KNB Effects (who presented Howard Stern with a replica) and was so realistic many still believe Mark Wahlberg really is that well hung.

Turns out that Mark actually kept the prosthesis and was fond of using it for practical jokes.

The actor says he kept the 13in latex appendage he used when he played porn star Dirk Diggler and has only just decided to store it away after previously keeping it to hand to play pranks on his pals.

He explained: “I used to keep it in my desk drawer. And I’d take it out and slap my friends in the face with it. I don’t keep many things from my movies, but that just seemed to have personal significance.” – SMH, via the Times

Alas, Mark is now a devout Catholic and has renounced his penis-slapping ways.

I went looking for video of the final scene and had a hard time finding an uncensored version. I did, however, find this “improved” version which I think is rather hilarious:

“I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.”

Related Posts:

• Boom Chicka Wow Wow: Music In Porn
• Porn Does Not Cause Rape
• Cabaret Desire Is Like Visual Erotic Fiction
• Berlin Porn Film Festival Documentary

This great video details The Bechdel Test, which is a way of measuring how mainstream movies treat women. To pass the test, a movie has to:

(1) have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.

The test first appeared in 1985 in Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For.

This site has a growing list of films that do pass the test. Films from 2010 include: Toy Story 3, Sex and the City 2 and, perhaps surprisingly, The Karate Kid. What’s more interesting is applying the test to your favourite movies. It makes you realise that the male point of view has become so normalised that we’re often blind to the marginalisation of women in films. Worse still, this whole attitude seems to be entrenched in Hollywood and is actually taught in film schools.

The idea of applying the Bechdel Test to porn films seems almost ludicrous; porn films are usually about one or more women “discussing” a man, nice and hard. Still, it’s another useful way of revealing just how male-oriented most porn can be.

via Erika Lust.

Related Posts:

• Cabaret Desire Is Like Visual Erotic Fiction
• Berlin Porn Film Festival Documentary
• The Amazing, Inspiring Berlin Porn Film Festival 2011
• The “Pornified” Woman?

SMH says: A report in the Australian journal Body Image has found that consumers respond positively to depictions of average-sized men in advertising. The survey asked over 600 students in their late teens to look at mock-up advertisements for products, some using muscle-bound men and others using thinner or chubbier male models. The results showed that the “buffed” models didn’t rate any higher than average guys.

Neither sex responded more positively to the musclebound bodies, and the males even found ads that showed just the item – with no accompanying model – more effective than those posed by classic hunks.

Some participants in the University of Queensland study ”may have attributed the models’ muscularity to vanity or homosexuality, characteristics which they may have found unpleasant or discomforting”, [study leader] Ms Diedrichs wrote.

It’s not surprising that male respondents preferred not to see a male model at all. This is not news; it’s why the guy’s heads are always cut off in porn films and why we never see naked men in mainstream film. To even look at another man carries hints of homosexuality for some people and therefore must not be tolerated.

It think it’s an interesting and useful study that also reveals a lot about gay stereotypes and how we allow men a lot more leeway in their appearance than women.

On a personal level, I don’t mind a nice six pack or well-defined muscles, although if the guy looks like a boofhead, I’m not so interested. I think a man’s smile and his eyes are very important factors in whether he is attractive or not.

Related Posts:

• Porn Does Not Cause Rape
• Anti Porn Rhetoric Lacks Solid Evidence
• A Billion Badly Researched Assertions
• Beware These Skewed Statistics About Porn “Addiction”

I think Ewan McGregor is gorgeous and he has long been a favourite actor of mine due to his eagerness to get his gear off in films. I think he should win an award for “Most Full Frontal Male Nude Scenes”.

Now he’s told Out magazine that he doesn’t mind kissing guys on set because it “gets his blood up.”

Talking about kissing Jonathan Rhys Meyers in ‘Velvet Goldmine’, Ewan told Out magazine: “I remember when I kissed Johnny. It was just a rush at the end of the day. It was just an electrical moment, because you look around and some of the British electrician guys – who are all mainly closeted homosexuals, I think – were sitting around going ‘F**k, no.’

But I like kissing boys on screen. As a straight guy, it’s quite an interesting proposition. Anything on a film set that takes you by surprise like that, that gets your blood up, is good.

“I’m always interested in playing different people, in different situations. It doesn’t matter to me whether someone is in love with a man or a woman. I find the idea of love and romance interesting. I’m a sucker for it. I like playing someone who’s falling in love because I like the sensation of it.”

If we get Ewan nude in some kind of gay romance film I think it will make millions. Just so long as the other guy isn’t Charlie from Long Way Round.

Previous post: Ewan McGregor: Our Nude Hero

Related Posts:

• Cabaret Desire Is Like Visual Erotic Fiction
• New Porn For Women Movies
• Women And Male-Male Erotic Fiction
• “A Real, As Opposed To A Fanciful, Risk Of Harm”

Meet the latest successful viral marketing campaign. It’s from Old Spice who have created a collection of odd yet very amusing commercials for their products. This one made me giggle… and then I had to re-watch it to try and spot the joins between each special effect (I couldn’t).

So one could analyse this commercial and critique what it has to say about being male, “lady smells” and the whole stereotypical notion of what women desire. But it feels like that’s taking it all too seriously. I suspect that the advertising company is taking a cheeky and ironic jab at notions of what makes a MAN (that’s MAN in capitals, of course). Essentially, it’s taking the piss out of other commercials that try to speak to macho notions of masculinity. Thus, this ad:

I think if you’re taking it seriously you probably need to get out and practice smiling a bit more.

In the end, these ads are funny, plain and simple. And that guy in the first ad is so sexy he doesn’t require any kind of diamonds (or artificial smells).

And I could even be tempted to buy this stuff and use it on myself. I want to smell like a MAN too. Now that’s a successful ad campaign.

Update 18th Feb: The commercial is up to 1.7 million views and I’ve found a video about how the ad was made. Unfortunately it’s 20 minutes long so here’s the quick version: the whole thing was done in one shot. The only computer graphics used were those with the tickets, diamonds and bottle rising up out of his hand. The shower was a set lifted by a huge crane and the boat was also a set. When he says “What’s in your hand?” he’s sitting down on a specially designed rig that moves him away from the boat and onto the horse. You can see the sky move in the background. They did have to digitally remove a few bits of that rig from under the horse’s neck.

Apparently the shoot took 3 days and this is the 53rd take. The actor’s name is Isiah Mustafa and apparently his phone has rung off the hook after this ad. He’s also on Twitter; his location is “on a horse”.

Update 19th Feb: The LA Times has an interview with the lovely Isiah here. Turns out he’s got a girlfriend.

Related Posts:

• “Women Prefer Funny To Flawless”

I’m about two months late with this post but I thought I should at least read the Twilight books and see the New Moon film before I made any comment. (Note: Spoilers follow).

For a while there, almost every Google alert I got for the phrase “porn for women” came from some columnist or blogger declaring the books and films to be thus. It’s an offhand way of dismissing the immense popularity of these teenage vampire books, similar to the way romance novels are marginalised. “Oh,” huff the critics, “it’s all just fluffy romantic nonsense. Porn for women.” (Because women don’t like real porn, of course. We’re too girly for that. Sex is icky, remember?)

I’d like to declare that the Twilight Saga is not porn for women. Mainly because it’s not porn. Duh.

Oh sure, the films certainly offer female viewers plenty of eye candy, especially New Moon which features a whole pack of buff young men running around without shirts on. “You’re kind of beautiful,” Bella tells Jacob, saying out loud what we’re all thinking. Meanwhile, Edward’s brooding, yellow-eyed paleness has its own distinctly emo appeal.

Yes, no doubt about it, the guys are gorgeous and it’s great that the female gaze is so evident in this movie. It’s absolutely a film made FOR female viewers, something that’s still quite rare.

But it’s not porn because there’s just not enough sex. Rather, it’s romance, plain and simple. The Twilight books stick firmly to the old-fashioned Mills and Boon script of love, marriage, then sex followed almost immediately by children.

I found myself having something of a love-hate relationship with the books as I read them, both guiltily enjoying the luxury of a good romantic novel while still feeling very frustrated about the sexual dynamics of the whole thing.

Almost everyone agrees that vampirism is a metaphor for sex and that’s part of the appeal. The first three Twilight novels seem to be an ode to abstinence which is perhaps not surprising that the author is a Mormon. Despite Bella’s determination to do the wild thing with Edward it doesn’t happen until the fourth book and even then, only when they’re safely married and on honeymoon.

And what’s worse… she fades the scene to black before anything happens! I must confess, I actually yelled at the book at that point. “No!” I said. “Where are the goddam juicy bits?! How could you do this to me, you bitch!”

Despite the coyness of Meyer’s writing, it’s apparent that “sex” for Edward and Bella can only mean penis-in-vagina intercourse; there’s no scope for any other kind of loveplay, despite the fact that the act is extremely dangerous for Bella. Haven’t vampires heard of mutual masturbation? And then the couple seem to get pregnant on their very first shag.

Porn for women? Pah! The whole thing just felt too white-picket-fence and conservative for me to find it intellectually appealing.

And yet… having expressed that frustration, I should now acknowledge two things. The first being that the book is for teenage girls and thus blow-by-blow descriptions of human-vampire sex may be a bit inappropriate and also decrease possible sales.

Secondly, part of the appeal of the Twilight series is the thrill of delaying the moment. As Dr Frank-n-Furter might have said, the books and movies make us shiver with anticip….ation. I ploughed my way through thousands of pages waiting for them to finally get it on and, if nothing else, it kept me motivated.

While I can’t support the idea of abstinence as a good thing simply because someone declares it to be “right”, Twilight at least makes it seem appealing for it’s own sake. There’s something to be said for the idea of delayed satisfaction, of holding back and letting the mouth water a little longer than necessary. And that, perhaps, is another reason why these books aren’t porn. Because porn is about self gratification and fantasy, something that often doesn’t include any kind of anticipation or delay.

So part of me rebels against the ideological grounding behind the book and at the same time I found myself enjoying the results.

See what I mean about love-hate?

Others have criticised the way Bella is so passive and self absorbed. They say the books promote the idea of giving everything up for a boy if your emotions dictate that you must. I don’t really have an issue with those things. It is, after all, a teenage love story and I remember feeling the same way when I was 16. Twilight is emotionally honest, even if it seems angst-filled or over-the-top to adults. And if nothing else, I see the books as a gateway to the literature upon which Meyer based her plot.

There’s one more thing that makes me want to wave the flag for these books and films, despite their many flaws. It’s the fact that Twilight unashamedly speaks to women. The author and the filmmakers know their audience and they’ve made an effort to cater to that audience without compromising. The result is a multi-million dollar franchise that has spawned a bunch of imitators and made Hollywood realise that the much derided “chick flick” might actually be worth pursuing.

It’s also created a spiteful anti-Twilight backlash that may simply be motivated by scorn for “girly nonsense.” Hence the derogatory use of the phrase “porn for women.” For an excellent critique of the way Twilight’s popularity has been marginalised in the mainstream media, read Sady Doyle’s excellent article Girls Just Want To Have Fangs.

Twilight is more than a teen dream. It’s a massive cultural force. Yet the very girliness that has made it such a success has resulted in its being marginalized and mocked. Of course, you won’t find many critics lining up to defend Dan Brown or Tom Clancy, either; mass-market success rarely coincides with literary acclaim. But male escapist fantasies — which, as anyone who has seen Die Hard or read those Tom Clancy novels can confirm, are not unilaterally sophisticated, complex, or forward-thinking — tend to be greeted with shrugs, not sneers. The Twilight backlash is vehement, and it is just as much about the fans as it is about the books. Specifically, it’s about the fact that those fans are young women.??

Doyle also points out that because Edward is not your stereotypically macho hero (he’s pale, beautiful, talks about his feelings, sparkles occasionally), he’s easily derided by men as being not manly enough. Never mind that women find him extremely attractive, the guys won’t have a bar of it. Bring on the muscles, they demand. This Edward bloke isn’t enough of a proper vampire! He’s just so… poofy!

I find Edward to be very appealing, if a little… stalky. He’s infintely superior to the boofy and obnoxious Jacob who I was ready to kill by the end of the third book (buffed abs or no).

So there it is, my delayed critique on the whole Twilight shebang. Not a literary masterpiece by any means but still a cultural phenomenon worth studying and, yes, occasionally praising.

The only question that remains is this: can Twilight ever be porn for women?

Well, I’m thinking the rights might be a little hard to acquire. But beyond that… it might be a project worth doing. Think of the possibilities: Gorgeous pale vampire guy, hot buffed werewolf guy, cute human girl… cue the MMF threesome.

I think most of us wouldn’t mind seeing that.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

This is a short film shown before Yves Saint Laurent’s 2009 fall fashion show for men.

It consists of only a full-frame shot of Michael Pitt’s face as he listens to an unseen woman talk to him erotically about clothes. “I lift up the T-shirt that peeks out from the sleeves and see underneath, you’re stark naked,” she rasps in French. “You dream of me rubbing your feet… I raise the veil from your leather belt and discover where your firm, flat stomach begins. Trousers which, though baggy, fall perfectly straight.”

Is it sexy? Well he’s certainly good looking and it feels like Jennifer Lyon Bell’s film Headshot or a Beautiful Agony video. The French voiceover sounds great although it may be seen as pretentious. I’m not sure I can read that much eroticism into clothing, I must admit, but if you like fashion, it may be a winner.

Related Posts:

• I’m In Best Women’s Erotica 2012
• The Thought Of Her – Trailer
• Women And Male-Male Erotic Fiction
• The Guardian Does Porn For Women

The Times Online has followed up last week’s opinion piece about teens and sex with an article headed Boys who see porn more likely to harass girls. The piece discusses Michael Flood’s report looking at existing research into the effects of porn on adolescents.

“There is compelling evidence from around the world that pornography has negative effects on individuals and communities,” he told the Times.

Naturally I sat right down and read the full report. And you know what? The “evidence” he found in various peer-reviewed journals isn’t all that compelling. Indeed, his summary of the existing literature looking at the “harm” or otherwise of porn found it was generally conflicting or inconclusive or not long-term enough or not particularly thorough. Almost every paragraph of the report says that while there’s plenty of concern that porn can cause harm, there’s no magic bullet that proves the hypothesis.

He says that porn doesn’t cause rape and that research is unable to “encapsulate the complex role that emotions and intent play both in the use of pornography and in sex, a role that may either enhance or minimise harm.” Essentially, a whole bunch of outside factors are the deciding influence as to whether porn is a good or a bad thing.

The point became rather repetitive. Research keeps offering the rather sensible supposition that a teenager’s attitude to porn and sex is usually shaped by their family, their peers, their culture, their exposure to other media and their education. That is, you have to take a holistic approach. If a teen – usually male – is using porn in a negative way you should probably look closely at pre-existing problems or bad attitudes before you blame the porn itself. Bad porn is more like the icing on a very bad cake than the recipe itself.

That aside, there was one aspect of Flood’s report that I found very disturbing. It’s his definition of what constitutes “harm” in the first place – and I think it’s something that needs to be discussed more often. Because in all the hysterical hand flapping of “somebody think of the children!”, nobody really sits down and says: “Well, what is it that we don’t want kids to learn or do when it comes to sex?”

Flood doesn’t claim these definitions are his own. He farms them out to “the community” in this paragraph:

Not surprisingly, given the high rates of adolescent exposure, concern exists that young people are being inundated with unwanted and wanted, and possibly violent sexual information before they are developmentally capable of constructively dealing with it. This may detrimentally transform sexual attitudes and behaviours and ultimately sexuality and intimate relationships. Concerns within different parts of the community focus on the potential of pornography to:

* interfere with normal sexual development (e.g. encouraging early sexual activity)
* foster ‘open’ sexual lifestyles (e.g. acceptance of casual and extramarital sex, multiple partners, etc.) and ‘unnatural’ practices (e.g. anal and oral sex, homosexuality)
* undermine physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing (generate shame, guilt, anxiety, confusion, poor social bonds, and addictions)
* undermine relationships and foster sexual violence (e.g. Jensen & Okrina 2004; Zillman 2000).

So folks, let’s have a look at these supposed harms, shall we?

Let me go for the obvious one first. Flood raises the terrible spectre of embracing “open sexual lifestyles”! Lord save us, people might actually take up butt sex! Casual sex, multiple partners, homosexuality… the horror! And all because they looked at porn!

I’m rather stunned that a supposedly scientific report would include such a conservative and judgemental definition of “harm.” Just because a “community” (and face it, we’re talking about fundamentalist Christians here) thinks these things are wrong does not prove that they cause verifiable harm to the individuals doing them.

I should point out, Flood later includes erotophilia as another “harmful” effect of viewing porn. If I may be lazy and include the Wikipedia definition:

Erotophilia is a term used by psychologists to describe sexuality on a personality scale. Erotophiles score high on one end of the scale that is characterized by expressing less guilt about sex, talking about sex more openly, and holding more positive attitudes toward sexually explicit material.

Um, I’m not sure about you, but how is this harmful, exactly? It seems to describe me quite well. Should I assume that I’m somehow psychologically damaged? More inclined to go on a homicidal ramapge?

The idea of “less guilt” when it comes to sex seems to completely contradict his third point that porn undermines “physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing” by generating guilt and shame. I would argue that any guilt or shame arising from pornography use comes from outside influences telling an individual that their porn use is wrong. Either that or it’s a pre-existing guilt arising from being raised to believe that sex is dirty and sinful.

Porn may encourage early sexual activity? How early, exactly? And what is “normal” sexual development? Some teens mature faster than others and make a conscious decision to have sex even before the age of consent (which differs, I might add, according to where you are). If a teen has safe sex and enjoys the experience without regret… is that “too early”? Again, it feels like there’s a judgemental, cultural yardstick being used here rather than any empirical standard of “harm”.

Now I don’t have a problem with some of the other definitions used in that list. If porn causes anxiety about body image or confusion about how to have good sex or how to maintain a healthy relationship, that’s bad. If it encourages unsafe sex, that’s bad. If it encourages pre-existing bad attitudes toward women or normalises a negative, possibly violent view of sex, that too is bad. If it becomes an obsession (note, I refuse to use the word “addiction”) and creates a dispute in a relationship, that’s bad.

Those things may actually result in problems for the individual viewing the porn (or their partners) and we should focus our attention and concern on those. And we should always look at those concerns within the broader context of the individual’s personality, upbringing and culture.

That’s the thing: I don’t want to come out swinging completely in favour or mainstream porn. I’ve expressed my distaste for it many times on this blog. I find a lot of it to be sexist, sex-negative, boring, cliched and sometimes cruel and we need to have a continuing discussion about the images and world view that a lot of porn presents. Because it is a part of our culture and it does have some influence on us as consumers.

I am, however, always worried when a study like this is used by media (like The Times) to say “There’s conclusive evidence porn causes harm, let’s ban it!”

That’s exactly what’s happened here in Australia with the internet filter. The whole idea of the filter was actually thought up by Clive Hamilton, who co-wrote a paper with Michael Flood in 2003 about the effects of porn on 16 and 17 year old “children”. They used the fact that almost all teen boys over 16 use porn to whip up hysteria about “children seeing porn on the internet”. This may be partly while I feel so antagonistic towards this latest study by Michael Flood. It feels as though he’s approached the issue from a pre-decided stance and done his best to make it say what he wants… even thought the actual evidence won’t come to the party.

Still, I can’t argue with his final paragraph which actually offers a perfectly rational solution to everyone’s concern about teens and porn: education.

Though restricting exposure will remain a priority, an over-reliance on this approach to protect against the perceived harms of pornography is problematic as it fails to recognise the realities of ready availability and the high acceptance of pornography among young people. Moreover, it fails to examine the holistic way in which adolescents’ sexual expectations, attitudes and behaviours are shaped in our society and the complexity of factors that give rise to the cited harms.

Protecting young people necessarily requires equipping them, and their caregivers, with adequate knowledge, skills and resources (e.g. media literacy; sex education; education about pornography and rights and responsibilities of sexual relationships; safe engagement with technologies) to enable successful navigation toward a sexually healthy adulthood, as well as tackling factors predisposing to sexual violence.

Interestingly, this is exactly the approach advocated by Joybear’s Justin Ribeiro dos Santos in this second Times piece.

“It’s out there and the reality is, we can’t stop that. French and Italian kids are allowed to drink at the dinner table and they don’t have our problems with binge drinking. Maybe it’s the same with porn. We need to stop being so prudish.”

Given the panicky headlines that Michael Flood’s research is going to create, I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.

Related Posts:

• Porn Does Not Cause Rape
• Sexy Science: How We Look At Half Naked People
• Anti Porn Rhetoric Lacks Solid Evidence
• A Billion Badly Researched Assertions