Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog
Ms Naughty looks at porn for women, the adult industry and sex in general.
Boom Chicka Wow Wow: Music In Porn
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012I’m tits-deep in editing male masturbation scenes at present and currently feeling generally stressed about colour correction and exposure levels. Like you do. And then the other day I lost several hours perusing royalty-free music sites trying to find some ambient background music for a scene. Nothing seemed to fit. On a whim, I asked Twitter what people thought about music in porn.
It seems the resounding answer is no thanks. From what I’m seeing, porn viewers can do without having music playing over the top of sex scenes. They would infinitely prefer to hear the sounds of sex – the oohs, aahs and sundry squelching – than listen to the director’s latest musical thang. I did a bit of Googling and found similar thoughts here, here and here. Dutch women’s porn channel Dusk also said their surveys had found something similar. No music, thanks.
Obviously this isn’t a universal thing – some people don’t mind music if it adds to the general buildup or atmosphere. And others are real fans of the old boom chicka wow wow 70s stuff (although here’s a long rant against it).
I’ve used music in several of my porn scenes and I sometimes edit it into pre-existing non-exclusive porn clips. There’s a couple of reasons for using music. One is that it can add an extra emotional or dramatic element to a scene. I’ve got one male solo scene that’s been made moodier and more sensual thanks to a quiet backing track, one that could perhaps be described as an ambient drone. I’ve also seen indie porn scenes where the blaring rock song in the background helps to identify the location or the characters within the scene. In Petra Joy’s The Female Voyeur, the medieval orgy scene is made more exotic thanks to its intense, Middle-Eastern inspired soundtrack. In these cases the music rarely covers the sounds of sex; it’s there to complement rather than detract.
The other reason for using music is to cover up cuts and dodgy sound. In some cases the director may be issuing orders in the background which tends to spoil the fantasy a little. I’ve seen some clips where there’s no natural sound at all, just the music.
I can see why that would be annoying. And because many people listen to their own music while surfing – be it porn or something else – a standard backing track can be a hassle. It can also be jarring to have someone else’s musical taste inflicted on you.
This little bit of research has been useful to me. I still want to use music when it’s appropriate and when it enhances the scene. But if most people aren’t that keen on it, I’ll be looking to edit more “natural” soundscapes from now on. If nothing else this will save time and money, and that’s always a good thing.
By the way… is it Bow Chicka Wow Wow? Boom Chicka Wah Wah? Or Wakka Chikka Wakka Chicka? Whatever, I’ve included a vid of the classic 70s porn music above. Worth a listen just for the way Ron Jeremy talks about “a happy ass” at the start.
In searching for an image for this post I’ve found numerous porn music albums on Amazon. So here they are:
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Porn Does Not Cause Rape
Friday, January 27th, 2012
For years, anti-porn activists have campaigned against porn on the basis that it increases acts of violence against women. In essence, they say that porn causes rape.
Today I thought I might sit down and compile a few resources that refute that claim. Because as far as I’m aware, there is still no reliable evidence to suggest that watching pornography induces men to rape.
I think the biggest piece of evidence against the claim is self evident. In the last 15 years, internet pornography has become freely available to anyone who wishes to view it. Yet there has been no substantial increase in the rape rate in that time. Indeed, US government statistics reveal that in that time, the rate of forcible rate dropped steadily. If the “porn causes rape” claim were true, we would have seen an increase in sexual assault rates. Obviously that is a very simplistic argument but it’s one that anti-porn people need to deal with. And they don’t.
One of the more interesting academic articles dealing with this issue is by Anthony D’Amato from Northwestern University School of Law. His paper Porn Up, Rape Down discusses the idea that there was an 85% reduction in sexual violence over the 25 years to 2003 (and the rate has kept falling since the paper was published). He goes on to posit that not only does porn NOT cause rape, he suggests that it may actually reduce rape, either by serving as a release valve or by demystifying sex. He concedes that the correlation does not equal causality and suggests further research.
A similar 2006 paper by Todd Kendall entitled Pornography, Rape and the Internet points out that rape rates decreased in US states where the internet was rapidly taken up. Interestingly, the growth in internet use had no effect on the rates of other crimes. Slate summed up the research in an article How The Web Prevents Rape. The Register also covers the topic here.
An earlier, pre-internet paper looked at rape rates in countries that had legalised porn and came to similar conclusions. Pornography, Sex Crime and Public Policy by Berl Kutchinsky was published in 1991. He writes:
The aggregate data on rape and other violent or sexual offences from four countries where pornography, including aggressive varieties, has become widely and easily available during the period we have dealt with would seem to exclude, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this availability has had any detrimental effects in the form of increased sexual violence.
Our knowledge about the contents, the uses and the users of pornography suggests that pornography does not represent a blueprint for rape, but is essentially an aphrodisiac, that is, food for the sexual fantasy of persons – mostly males- who like to masturbate
It should also be noted that this same conclusion was reached by Richard Nixon’s first inquiry into porn in 1970. Anthony D’Amato writes about working on the commission in his “Porn Up, Rape Down” paper. He says:
The Commission [on Obscenity and Pornography] concluded that there was no causal relationship between exposure to sexually explicit materials and delinquent or criminal behavior. The President was furious when he learned of the conclusion. Later President Reagan tried the same thing, except unlike his predecessor he packed the Commission with persons who passed his ideological litmus test. (Small wonder that I was not asked to participate.) This time, Reagan’s Commission on Pornography reached the approved result: that there does exist a causal relationship between pornography and violent sex crimes.
It’s not scientific to reach a conclusion and then set out to find data that backs your case, ignoring contradictory information. That is ideology, not research.
If anti-porn activists can give me real evidence that porn does cause rape, I’ll change my mind. But at this stage, based on the simple fact of dropping rape rates, I’m not seeing it.
One more link and quote to finish this post: a summary article from Scientific American which looked at various studies into porn and found that it was not harmful.
Contrary to what many people believe, recent research shows that moderate pornography consumption does not make users more aggressive, promote sexism or harm relationships. If anything, some researchers suggest, exposure to pornography might make some people less likely to commit sexual crimes.
The most common concern about pornography is that it indirectly hurts women by encouraging sexism, raising sexual expectations and thereby harming relationships. Some people worry that it might even incite violence against women. The data, however, do not support these claims. “There’s absolutely no evidence that pornography does anything negative,” says Milton Diamond, director of the Pacific Center for Sex and Society at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “It’s a moral issue, not a factual issue.”
PS. Even though the sample was far too small, this 2 year Canadian study of men’s porn surfing habits does provide some illumination as to the real reasons why men watch porn. What it does make clear is that porn is clearly only fantasy and that men are easily able to distinguish between porn and real life.
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Eros Shine Awards 2011
Thursday, December 1st, 2011On the 23rd November I attended the inaugural Eros Shine awards night in Melbourne. I went for a couple of reasons. One was to meet other industry people and do a bit of socialising/networking. The other was because For The Girls had been nominated for Best Website.
Alas, FTG didn’t win, although it seems we were a runner-up of sorts. The award went to Adult Voyeur, a new startup that is far more obviously Australian than us (they’ve even got an “AU” in their domain). I was happy for them and it was good to meet the guys behind it.
The night itself was something of a mixed bag. The highlight was definitely the burlesque and strip performances which were innovative, classy and a lot of fun. Suzie Q and Toby’s trapeze act was truly breathtaking and Sina King’s quirky performance with paint was sassy. Unfortunately the Hunkmania strippers – the token “women’s entertainment” – only took their shirts off and the act resembled a boy band. I found myself longing for some real male burlesque, something not so cliched and more genuinely artistic.
The evening was let down by the compere who took every opportunity to make sexist, sniggering jokes. At one point he announced that all women over 30 were unattractive because our boobs went saggy. That’s when I got mad. He really lowered the tone of the night, a shame given that this was an attempt to showcase our professional, grown-up adult industry.
The show also featured a number of American porn star imports such as Jessica Drake and Michelle Bombshell McGee. I grabbed Jessica towards the end of the night and got a very short comment from her – as you can see on the video, the sound is atrocious. I was only using my little Cybershot camera.
Overall the event felt incredibly “mainstream” and I felt like I didn’t belong there. Australia has made a name overseas as the place for realistic, natural, alternative porn but there was no hint of that at the awards night. Maybe next year will be more inclusive.
In any case, have a look at the vid. I’ve tried to highlight the performances and give an idea of just how impressive they were.
Here’s another view of the night by filmmaker Gina Hanrahan.
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Berlin Porn Film Festival Documentary
Sunday, November 20th, 2011OK, it’s done. This is my mini documentary about this year’s Berlin Porn Film Festival.
Most of it was shot on a Sony Cybershot HX9V – a pocket camera that takes rather good HD video but not so good sound. I actually bought it at the airport on my way to Germany.
And thank goodness I did. Our large video camera ended up being damaged, possibly dropped when in luggage storage before we got to Berlin. A lot of the footage I shot at the festival using the big camera was half out of focus and consequently useless. You’ll probably notice that the interviews with Adrianna, Aiden and Jen look rather fuzzy. They were shot with the big camera and I did my best to salvage the footage.
We noticed that something wasn’t quite right with the camera while in Germany but it didn’t seem too bad. It’s only when I got home and uploaded the files that I saw how dodgy it was. The left side of the frame is very fuzzy but the bottom right corner is in focus. It’s incredibly frustrating to have that kind of equipment failure.
I also shot a solo male scene in Berlin and some of that footage is also no good. But the Cybershot has saved the day. Lesson learned: don’t discount the new generation of little cameras. They’re actually quite good and are worth using for B roll or as a backup.
In any case, I think I managed to capture some of the vibe of the festival in this little doco. I downloaded the film excerpts from Youtube and Vimeo so some of them aren’t the best quality. I wanted to just give a small idea of the kind of amazing films we saw in Berlin.
The films:
Smoke by Claudia Romero
Black Rose Tango by Richard Kimmel
Curuk: The Pink Report by Ulrike Bohnisch
Skallamann (Bald Guy) by Maria Bock
Orchids: My Intersex Adventure by Phoebe Hart
The Female Voyeur by Petra Joy
Gang Bang Barbie by Joanna Rytel
Festival trailer by anton Z risan
A longer version of this doco will appear at For The Girls on 29th November. It features the X-rated footage I couldn’t put on Youtube plus more interviews. And images from the amazing Chatroulette session that turned into something of a live sex show.
By the way, there’s some great photos of the festival now available at the official site.
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Sexy Science: How We Look At Half Naked People
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
Scientific American reports on a psychology study about half-naked people and ideas of objectification. In six different experiments, a group of people were shown images of clothed and half-naked men and women and instructed to rate their mental capacities.
Interestingly, the ratings weren’t influenced by gender. Put simply, men don’t objectify women more. It seems to be a human trait to think differently about people with less clothing. From the article:
Subjects rated clothed people as having more self-control, better communication and better morals than half naked people. But subjects rated scantily-clad women and men as having a higher capacity for experiencing pleasure, as well as fear and pain. This latter group was also, curiously enough, thought of as more sensitive and needing more protection from fear or pain.
For example, subjects were asked if they’d administer harmless but painful electric shocks to another person. They chose to shock those fully clothed significantly more often than those exposed above the waist.
The abstract of the study (found here) has got me thinking about how this psychological perception applies to anti-porn activists.
Drawing on the distinction in mind perception between agency and experience, it is found that focusing on someone’s body reduces perceptions of agency (self-control and action) but increases perceptions of experience (emotion and sensation)… The effect of a body focus on mind perception also influenced moral intuitions, with those represented as a body seen to be less morally responsible (i.e., lesser moral agents) but more sensitive to harm.
The above paragraph sounds like a summary of how anti-porn activists judge women who appear in porn. They often tend to dismiss the intellectual abilities of performers, instead depicting them as emotionally vunerable victims or morally damaged people (e.g. “she must have been abused as a child”, “she’s a drug addict”). I find it interesting that this study was looking at the process of “objectifying” people and objectification is the most common complaint about porn. Perhaps the anti-porn campaigners are doing a fair bit of objectifying of their own.
Pic: This is the gorgeous Aeryn from Naughty Nerdy. She’s a prime example of why you shouldn’t assume porn stars are dumb. Please visit her blog for various musings on Dungeons and Dragons, gaming, politics and sex.
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Films From The Berlin Porn Film Festival
Monday, November 7th, 2011I did a bit of surfing and found a number of short films online that were featured at the Berlin Porn Film Festival.
Rosamour
This amazing little film features only the bellies of two male dancers. It’s not digitally enhanced, though it looks like it in places. It’s bursting with erotic sensibility without showing any “rude bits”. I met the two guys who made it and they were gorgeous. This film was in competition but unfortunately it didn’t win.
Room 33
Erica Lust once again proves how talented she is when creating erotic films. This short isn’t explicit but it’s still throbbing with desire. The perfect cinematography enhances the whole thing. A couple book into the “Love Hotel” and are joined by a third man. More info on the film here.
Room 33 - Director's cut by lustfilms
A Mona Do Lotacao
This was part of the Fun Porn program and I like it’s simplicity and sense of humour. A woman gets on the bus and her inherent sexiness infects everyone on board.
Smoke
A short and sweet animation that is bursting with sassiness.
King Of Fools
Another piece of animation with a wry sense of humour.
Trailers/Previews
Skallaman (Bald Guy)
My favourite short film, this is a musical about acceptance. The song is infectious and the full movie inspired cheers and much applause from the audience.
Man With A Bolex Movie Camera
Another fun film that sends up the eager pretensions of some film lovers. And makes me want to get a Bolex camera just for fun.
And just in case you’re curious, here’s the trailer for my film The Thought of Her which screened in the Female Porn session.
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The Amazing, Inspiring Berlin Porn Film Festival 2011
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
I’m home again, jetlagged but also bursting with inspiration and motivation after my visit to this year’s Berlin Porn Film Festival. All up I may have spent about six days travelling to and from Berlin but it was totally worth the time, effort and money just to be there and be surrounded by so many fascinating ideas and creativity. And, of course, I got to meet some wonderful people and reconnect with old friends like Petra Joy and Jennifer Lyon Bell.
The festival was a huge success this year with over 5000 visitors attending, more than in previous years. Many of the sessions were sold out well in advance and the cinema always seemed to be packed. It feels like the Berlin Porn Film Festival is set to become something of an institution in that city, which is fabulous.
Pic: Opening night party in the cafe at the back of the Kino
I was thrilled to meet Jiz Lee and honoured to get a hug from one of the best-known queer porn stars. Jiz was there to judge the short films and I got to chat with Jiz a few times, although my hopeful attempts to snag an interview were lost due to Jiz’s busy schedule.
Pic: Jiz and Adrianna discussing Tristan’s films.
I also got to meet adult stars Adrianna Nicole and Aiden Starr, two incredibly talented and smart women who are really switched on to the possibilities of porn. Both of them are “typical” looking porn stars – blonde, beautiful, sexy. They were actually rather an unusual sight at the BPFF (look! mainstream porn stars!) and I could well imagine that they are perhaps dismissed as being lightweight because of their looks. Not so. I had some wonderful conversations about the politics and problems of porn and they had plenty of interesting points to make during the discussion panel about the future of lesbian porn and at the screening of Tristan Taormino’s films.
Unfortunately, I missed out on seeing a few other porn directors. Tristan couldn’t make it – she had to cancel at the last minute due to ill health. Nica Noelle had also pulled out the week before and Anna Span also changed her plans. It was disappointing to miss out after coming all that way but I guess I’ll meet them another time.
I saw some amazing films although I would have loved to have attended more sessions. Perhaps my favourite short film was the mini musical Skallamann (Bald Guy) which is about a young man who makes out with a bald guy. His parents are horrified, mainly because said guy is bald. The song is an earworm and I found myself singing it for the entire week I was there.
I also adored the documentary Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. It’s by Phoebe Hart, an Australian woman who was born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome which meant she had testes inside her abdomen (since removed) and female genitals. The doco was so moving and intensely personal, depicting first-time conversations about the issue with Phoebe’s family. She was there to answer questions about the film and I found out that her parents live very close to me. Small world. The doco received an extended ovation and has received multiple awards at festivals around the world. Phoebe found out that the film had won an award in Copenhagen so she flew out to the screening of it the next day. Here’s an article on the film.
There’s always a few “over the top” films at the festival. The winning short film Gang Bang Barbie (video here) packed a punch. It involves Barbie dolls “raping” a man’s penis with mini dildoes. It was funny but also disturbing and I’m not sure I liked it due to the issues of consent involved.
Meanwhile, in Stuffed we were treated to the rather strange (and amusing) sight of a man inserting a fake vagina masturbator into a stuffed fox and then fucking it. I sat there wondering what the good moral arbiters at the Australian Classification Board would make of it; no doubt I was being forever corrupted and harmed just for watching it. Afterwards the film’s creator and star, Rudy West Junior smiled and said that the film was not about bestiality at all. “The fox is dead, so it’s necrophilia,” he said.
I’m going to do a separate post featuring some of the films on offer (update: post is here) so you can get an idea of the diversity of content on show at the BPFF. Sure, there was plenty of on-screen fucking but there were also films that dealt with relationships, sexuality, religion, fertility, death and even incest. The entire festival shows just how differently and creatively filmmakers can approach the topic of sex.
There were also workshops and panel discussions. I attended Jennifer Lyon Bell’s discussion of DIY Feminist Porn which was really interesting and informative. I couldn’t get into the fisting workshop as it was booked out (indeed, many of the workshops and films had waiting lists, thanks to the popularity of the festival this year). The panel discussion about the changing depiction of lesbian sex in mainstream porn was fascinating, with contributions from Jiz, Judy Minx, Adrianna, Aidan and Emilie Jouvet.
Pic: Aiden Starr, Jiz Lee, Judy Minx, Adrianna Nicole and Emilie Jouvet discussing lesbian porn
One of the more fascinating sessions involved playing around with Chatroulette – the random webcam site that many people use to anonymously masturbate with strangers. A purely experimental idea, the session turned out to be hilariously successful. The organisers rigged up a laptop and webcam so that it could be seen on the big screen. They then turned the cam towards the packed audience. Most of us were clothed but a few brave souls got naked, including Maria Llopis, who was one of the organisers and whose film Chatroulette screened in the Female Porn session a few movies after mine.
Pic: Meat/ing on the internet session with Maria Llopis
To begin with we weren’t sure what was going to happen. I’d heard of Chatroulette but pretty much dismissed it as an exercise in developing low self esteem. Random strangers can look at you and dismiss you in a second… it sounded rather depressing to me. But the introductory video by Ariel Efraim Ashbel showed that Chatroulette is actually a cunning way to play practical jokes and mess with people’s heads via presenting a weird performance to said random strangers. I like that.
In this case, we were presenting a cinema audience and nude women to whoever was lucky enough to click “next”. Suddenly, we were all feeling rather thrilled and giggly. It was an excellent jape and we all started waving and yelling at anyone who appeared on screen.
Early on we encountered a woman who was masturbating and eager to have fun. She didn’t baulk at the idea that she was exposed to a big audience and happily showed us her boobs and pussy. Cue the applause. She then started asking guys at the front to get naked. Things got really interesting when Maria asked if anyone wanted to help her put on the show. A guy stepped up, started kissing her, got nude and suddenly he was giving her cunnilingus, right there in the middle of the cinema. Everyone became deadly quiet until Maria had an orgasm and then we all clapped. Meanwhile, the girl on the screen was typing orders demanding certain types of sex which ended up being ignored. She was rather unappreciative and pushy, to be honest!
After that we cruised through Manroulette, the gay site and saw various nude men and erect cocks but very few of them stayed to play. A lot of them hurriedly reached for the NEXT button when they saw what was going on.
All up, the session was a fun experiment with this new area of online sexuality and I’m glad I was there.
I also ended up chatting to the guy who got it on with Maria. Turns out he also appears in Petra Joy’s film The Female Voyeur. I asked him if he’d perform for me and so we shot a solo scene with him on the Monday, winging it by buying a cheap halogen lamp from the hardware shop and filming in our hotel room. I’ll be editing it in the next few weeks.
I didn’t get to many of the after parties this time around, partly because we were too tired and partly because smoking is still permitted in clubs in Germany I just can’t handle breathing in cigarette smoke anymore, it makes me physically ill. So I missed the various performances. Still, I loved the simple process of sitting in the back bar of the Moviemento Kino, drinking wine and chatting with fellow filmmakers, performers and porn lovers.
A few other things that happened:
* I went up to director Bruce La Bruce and apologised on behalf of all Australians for the stupid banning of his film LA Zombie.
* I introduced myself to cute queer porn actor Pau by giving her a Freudian compliment. She was wearing black angel wings affixed with black gaffer tape, applied in a “cross your heart” pattern over her lovely bare boobs. I said “I like your things… I mean, your wings! Your wings!” Laughing helplessly, I told her I liked her boobs as well. They were just asking to be tweaked. Pau later gave me a great interview about her experiences in porn.
* Some of the cinema staff got into the spirit of the porn festival by wearing very little clothing. Gorgeous Valkyrie Francesca made waves by announcing the waiting list for films wearing only Gerbera flowers on her breasts and a feather fanny covering, held on by I don’t know what. And the guy selling beers in the cinema (I have forgotten his name, dammit) had me drooling with his various shirtless sexy outfits.
* I had more great conversations with veteran Dutch porn director Willem Van Batenburg who was there with his original star Diana de Koening. I also saw his film ‘N Schott In De Roos (Bullseye) which is a delightful 70s classic full of discussions about “free love” and hilarious retro situations. Interestingly, I found it turned me on more than most porn.
* I caught up with Liesbet from Dusk, the cable erotic TV channel for women and found that the station is growing and in need of more good content. I also met Ellie from Dutch adult store for women Mail and Female.
* I met Ena, the editor of Bend Over Magazine, a sexy journal of “feminism, sexuality and queer art” that features great photography.
* I met and chatted to Katharina Szmidt who made Cum Different, a documentary about the growth of feminist porn, made mostly at the 2009 BPFF. There was also a feature length doco about feminist porn called Mutantes (Punk Porn Feminism) but the session was sold out and it only screened the once so I couldn’t review it.
* I spoke to BPFF curator Manuela Kay about her contribution to Fucking Different XXX, which debuted at the festival. Manuela’s film shows the romantic side of anal fisting and – I must admit – had me feeling a little clenched thanks to its two-handed extravagance. She told me that she’s fascinated by fisting because it’s a universal sex act. Everyone has hands and everyone has an ass. I think it’s a very good point.
* I also chatted briefly with queer director Courtney Trouble about her great short film What Makes Us Queer. She also had a short in Fucking Different XXX that finished the film and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen an audience applaud an orgasm. It made me laugh.
There’s plenty more I could write about but I’ll leave it for now. I’m going to be editing another little doco about this year’s festival so keep an eye out for it, I’ll put it on Youtube.
All up, I loved it. The festival has given me so much confidence about my filmmaking and the possibilities. I can’t wait to go back next year, especially now that I’m determined to make my feature film, come hell or high water.
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Off To The Berlin Porn Film Festival 2011
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011It’s a bit much really. Just weeks after coming home from a holiday in France I’m about to fly back to Europe to attend the Berlin Porn Film Festival. It’s costing me way too much money and I’m not looking forward to another 23 hours on a plane but I felt like I’d be missing an important opportunity if I didn’t go.
My short film The Thought Of Her is screening in the Female Porn session (Thu 27/10 at 13:45 and again on Sat 29/10 at 19:45) and my essay on feminist porn was recently published in the German film magazine Schnitt to co-incide with the festival.
On top of that, I’m keen to meet feminist porn legends Tristan Taormino, Jiz Lee and Nico Noelle, among others. I’ll also be catching up with filmmaker friends Jennifer Lyon Bell, Anna Span and Petra Joy. I’m also really hoping to shoot some erotic content when I’m in Berlin. Nothing has been planned but given the cheerful and easygoing vibe of the festival, it’s a real possibility. If nothing else, I’ll shoot some interviews and other footage for small documentaries.
I’ve been to the Berlin Porn Film Festival twice before, in 2008 and 2009. The latter was especially fabulous, as you can see in the little doco I made about it:
The festival is one of the few opportunities to meet with and discuss emerging ideas about porn, film and sexuality. It’s not a commercial expo like the Venus exhibition which was on a couple of weeks ago in the same city. Instead, it’s a more intellectual and artistic endeavour and one that is becoming increasingly popular. There’s something very liberating about sitting in a packed theatre and watching dirty movies with other people. It’s such a shame we can’t do anything like it here in Australia due to our ridiculous censorship laws (although change may be on the horizon, fingers crossed).
In any case, I’ll be scarce for a couple of weeks. When I come back, I plan to finally kickstart my filmmaking plans and hopefully have a real feature finished in 2012.
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Porn Research: Younger Women More Likely To Use Porn
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011In February I met Dr Clarissa Smith who told me about the massive research project into porn that she was undertaking with collegues Feona Attwood and Martin Barker. Not long after they put out the call for porn users to participate in their survey which aimed to look at porn use in a non-judgemental way.
They received 5,490 responses to their questionaire and a heap of extended emails. They’re currently working their way through a mountain of information (over 1.2 million words) and expect it will take some time to reach any extensive conclusions. Nonetheless, they’ve put out a preliminary report of the survey, with some useful statistics and information.
Naturally I was interested in their demographic data, particularly when it came to women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the survey threw up the same “one third” figure that repeatedly appears in statistics about porn. In this case, 31.6% of respondents were female, a figure that is pretty similar to the Nielsen Netratings’ 2003 report which is regularly quoted in the media (and on this blog). What’s really interesting is how much age is a factor in porn use for women:
As you can see, women aged 18-25 are far more likely to use porn than their older counterparts.
The authors make this interesting point:
What we can’t tell,from this snapshot, is whether this is simply a ‘passing phase’ for them, or whether it signals that wider generational shift we think we have identified – something which over time will reduce the overall differences between male and female interest in pornography.
It’s only an opinion (and largely anecdotal) but I think they’re on the right track. From what I’ve seen online, today’s young women have no problem with porn and a lot of them embrace it just as easily as their male friends. Previously there’s been a cultural difference in how women were brought up – there was no entrenched culture of sharing porn among the women of twenty or even ten years ago. Now, with the ubiquity of online porn, the male-female divide has weakened.
Of course, the majority of porn is still aimed at men and I think that partly accounts for the disparity in usage rates between men and women.
The report goes on to say that men attach more importance to porn and use it more frequently. When it comes to why people use porn, simple sexual gratification was the most popular reason. A user feels horny, they satisfy the urge with porn. Interestingly, they also found that a lot more women used porn to induce arousal than men.
Among the other results: DVDs are on the way out, tube sites are hugely popular and pop-up ads don’t convince people to look at porn. Also, amateur porn sites are far more popular than a lot of upmarket studio-produced porn sites.
I can’t wait to see the extended results. It will be incredibly useful to have this kind of research available, especially as there really isn’t enough unbiased information about porn use out there.
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Anti Porn Rhetoric Lacks Solid Evidence
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
I’d like to thank ethicist Leslie Cannold for writing this on her blog today. It’s an excerpt from a longer essay called Pornography’s Effects: The Need for Solid Evidence by Ronald Weitzer. You can read the full thing here.
The essay, published in the journal Violence Against Women, points out that a lot of the rhetoric of Gail Dines and other anti-porn campaigners is not backed up by any solid established evidence. Instead, they rely on anecdotes, generalisations and assumptions.
It’s best if you read the whole thing for yourself but here’s a few choice paragraphs:
To evaluate these claims, it is crucial to ask if there is supporting evidence. Like Boyle’s book, Dines’ is evidence-thin. Although Dines cites a handful of academic studies, vir- tually the entire book is based on anecdotal information: (a) quotations from some men and women who attend Dines’ lectures; (b) her descriptions of some porn websites; (c) statements from a handful of actors and producers whom Dines met at the annual Adult Expo convention in Las Vegas; and (d) her accounts of selected scenes in porno- graphic videos. How does Dines use this impressionistic material and what alternative sources would be superior?
First, Dines did not conduct a systematic and rigorous review of porn websites or scenes, nor does she cite studies that do so. Neither are readers told how many websites or scenes she examined, nor how they were selected. Did she view 20 scenes or 2,000? She claims that they were representative—“these images are all too representative of what is out there on the Internet and in mass-produced movies” (p. xxi)—but we have no basis for believing that they were. With so much porn available today on the Internet and elsewhere, how could we ever construct a random sample from this universe to reach generalizable conclusions?
Second, grand generalizations are made throughout the book. Dines frequently refers to “men,” “women,” the “porn industry,” “fans,” and “performers” as monolithic categories. Also troubling is the jarring use of terms such as “never,” always,” “usually,” and “most.” Similarly, nowhere does she define some frequently used terms: “degrading,” “dehuman- izing,” or “empathy.” She does give examples of acts that she considers inherently degrad- ing; these include anal sex, ejaculation on a woman’s body, two or more men having sex with one woman, and multiorifice intercourse. Whether these acts are indeed perceived as degrading by viewers and actors does not figure into Dines’ argument. They are simply defined as perverted by fiat.
Third, nothing is said about gay male porn, lesbian porn, alternative porn, porn made by women—which, together, constitute a sizeable share of the market. A small but growing literature on these genres shatters Dines’ sweeping claims about “porn” (see Bakehorn, 2010; Collins, 1998; DeVoss, 2002; Stychin, 1992; Thomas, 2010; Tucker, 1991). The prolifera- tion of alternative genres renders any generalizations about “porn” ludicrous.
…..
Fourth, Dines acknowledges that there is very little data on actual porn consumers— those who watch porn in the real world (vs. in laboratory experiments)—but then proceeds to make many far-reaching claims about them. She writes that the “men who speak to me are not that different from the general population of men who use pornography,” but her source for the latter is another antiporn writer, journalist Pamela Paul (p. 89). Dines did not conduct a survey or in-depth interviews with a sample (let alone a representative sample) of consumers. A particularly troubling aspect of the book is her quotations from men and women who have spoken to her during and after her lectures. Blocks of sentences are quoted verbatim, bracketed by quotation marks, without indicating how these statements were recorded. How can readers have confidence that these statements were actually made by individuals with whom she had conversations? Was Dines somehow able to remember verbatim student statements consisting of two to four sentences at a time?
I think this article is incredibly useful and relevant – especially given that it is in a journal that looks at actual violence against women. Next time Gail Dines and her anti-porn cohorts wheel out their standard arguments, I’ll be linking to this essay. It does an excellent job of rebuttal in one easy swoop.
I am eagerly awaiting the publication of research by Dr Clarissa Smith and colleagues. They actually listened to porn 5,490 consumers via online questionaires. Understandably, it will take a while for the full results to emerge but they’ve uploaded some preliminary data here.
Related Posts:
A Billion Badly Researched Assertions
Friday, June 24th, 2011
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?
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A Need For Privacy Makes This “Debate” One-Sided
Friday, May 27th, 2011
Last Friday I heard that anti-porn author Gail Dines was going to appear on the ABC’s interactive program Q&A. As the public is invited to submit questions, I thought I’d add mine. It went something like:
Gail Dines dismisses feminist porn by saying it’s not different enough from mainstream porn. What kind of sexually explicit material would be OK by her personal feminist standards?
I signed it as “Louise Lush” because, after being mentioned in the SMH a couple of weeks ago, I should post the question as a feminist pornographer.
I hit return and the question went into moderation, along with thousands of other questions. Then, at 10.30pm on Sunday night, I got an email from one of the producers of Q&A asking me to video myself asking the question and to send it in. She also wanted to know where I lived.
Immediately, I quailed. The idea of me appearing on national TV under my porn pseudonym – with bonus information about where I live – is not appealing. I live in a small town and every second person on my street is a fundamentalist Christian.
I declined on the video question. The producer replied the next morning saying that was OK… but where did I live?
I didn’t reply. As far as I know, the question didn’t get asked. (I couldn’t bring myself to watch it).
I guess you could say it was a cowardly response. Surely if I believe in what I do and oppose censorship I should stand up and be counted, fight the good fight and be damned what people think.
The problem is, if it was only a matter of what people think, I’d probably be OK. But it’s not that simple.
Australia has some very confusing and fucked up laws regarding porn. As far as I’m aware, I haven’t broken any of them. Still, that’s no guarantee of protection from persecution. As we saw with the prosecution against Abby Winters, it only takes one crusading journalist to kick up a stink and things can go very pear shaped indeed. It would only take one fundamentalist Christian neighbour to call the police and tell them I was making child porn and my life would become a living hell. Never mind that I don’t or that my kind of porn is possibly the most innocuous stuff in the world… that doesn’t matter when the police are raiding your house at dawn and confiscating your DVDs and computers.
Ask Richard Wollstoncraft about that one.
I have a lot to lose. And while I want to engage in political discussions and tell the world that Gail Dines’ anti-porn stance is wrong, I’m at a distinct disadvantage.
Things are great for Gail Dines and other anti-porn activists like Sheila Jeffries and Melinda Tankard Reist. Our society gives them the high moral ground. Porn is automatically assumed to be evil so those who want to ban it can swan about and demand censorship with impunity. Gail Dines gets opinion pieces in major newspapers, radio show slots, TV appearances and special presentations at NSW Parliament House. Those who oppose that position are on the back foot already because defending porn invites automatic personal attack. And, in my case, possible breach of privacy or persecution.
I’m always conflicted about this. I wanted to start a group similar to Feminists for Free Expression in Australia. I want to have a lobby group to oppose the increasing influence of conservatives with an anti sex agenda. Problem is, I don’t want to be the spokesperson. I can’t be the spokesperson. I’m tainted. And I’m also afraid for my privacy and my livelihood. And yet I want to defend freedom of speech and speak out for feminist porn.
How can there be any kind of reasonable debate about the place of porn in society when the board is set so unevenly?
—-
Note: Thomas Roche has written an excellent reply to Gail Dines’ SMH piece from last week. He says everything I wanted to say – and saved me the hassle of writing it myself. Thanks Thomas!
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Beware These Skewed Statistics About Porn “Addiction”
Friday, May 20th, 2011Gail Dines is doing the rounds and she’s back in Australia promoting censorship of porn, saying that “there is no room for porn in a just society.” The response to that is a whole other blog post (although I have 2 comments on that story).
Today Joel Tozer, a freelance writer, offers his reply to Dines’ piece here. And while it’s mostly OK, I’ve got a problem with his basic assumption that porn is “addictive” and his use of a University of Sydney study to back it up.
Firstly, there is no scientific consensus on the topic of “porn addiction”. There is no diagnosis of pornography addiction in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Porn is not inherently “addictive” although some people may develop behavioural compulsions with it. The phrase “porn addiction” has become widespread thanks to its use by fundamentalist Christian organisations offering “cures” and anti-porn conservatives. It’s not helped by the numerous pseudo-psychological articles found online and the media’s constant unquestioning use of the term.
The whole dirty ball of lint will then be expanded by a piece of research which has been conducted by Gomathi and Raj Sitharthan at the University of Sydney. I can see that their preliminary statistics are about to propagate throughout the media and become a new “truth” about porn, even though their research doesn’t come close to being the whole story.
To quote from the Joel’s article:
A world-first study in Sydney has found that almost half of all adults first watched pornography between the ages of 11 and 13…
Preliminary results from the University of Sydney study show many men, and women, are spending massive amounts of time and money viewing porn. Of more than 700 adult Australians surveyed, about one-third looked at internet porn three to five times a week, while 28 per cent look at it almost every day – half of them for between 30 minutes and three hours. A few are spending up to 14 hours watching porn.
Co-researcher Professor Raj Sitharthan says many are becoming addicted to the safety of online pornography to the point where some are unable to achieve orgasm during intercourse.
Here’s the thing the article doesn’t tell you: that university study was created specifically to study “porn addiction”. It’s basic premise was that porn addiction is real and it sought to find participants who felt they had a problem with porn.
Here’s the abstract, taken from this University of Sydney Page:
The Impact of Internet Pornography
The purpose of this research is to further our understanding of Internet Pornography Addiction/ Problematic Internet-Enabled Sexual Behaviours .The study is exploring the support / treatment currently available for internet pornography addiction. The investigation is also exploring help seeking behaviour for internet pornography addiction and the barriers to seeking assistance.
When you click through to the survey, the questions are very specific in their tone. Under the heading of “The Impact of Internet Pornography”, the questions are:
How often do you find that you stay on-line longer than you intended?
How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time on-line?
How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?
How often do you form new relationships with fellow on-line users?
How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend on-line?
How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend on-line?
How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?
How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?
How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do on-line?
And that’s just the first page of questions. There’s another page of very similar questions before things get specific about first use of porn, what kind of porn is used etc.
I actually wanted to take part in this survey because I thought it might be about porn use. When I encountered those first biased questions I realised that I did not not fulfil their criteria – or their agenda. So I filled it out anyway, hoping to at least even up their figures a little bit.
By the way, question 41 is “Would you like to seek professional assistance to manage your dependence viewing pornographic materials?”
Question 42 says “If you answered Yes to question 41, how would you like to receive assistance to manage your dependence on pornographic materials:
* send me booklets
* via the internet
* face-to-face individual counselling
* group counseling
So, it’s pretty clear that this is not research about porn use. It’s research about porn “addiction” and one of its aims is finding the best way to cure that “addiction”.
The problem with today’s SMH article is that the figures produced by this survey are being quoted out of context. The statistics are being used to imply that ALL Australians accessed porn early and that lots of people have some kind of problem with it or use it constantly. The article doesn’t acknowledge that the survey was designed to find people who already thought they had some kind of problem with it.
Now, watch the truthiness propagate out. These figures will start to pop up in mainstream media outlets without any fact checking. They’ll be repeated ad nauseum until it becomes The Truth.
Unfortunately, this is often the problem with a lot of research into porn. It often approaches the subject as if porn use is a problem that needs to be solved, or it has an anti-porn slant. This is why I’m really looking forward to the results of the Pornography Research Online study being conducted by Clarissa Smith, Feona Attwood and Martin Barker, three UK academics who are interested in studying porn use. They want to be as objective as they can with the results.
If you haven’t already, I recommend you take their private and confidential survey.
I also recommend the Sexademic’s excellent debunking of the “addiction” myth here.
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Anti-Porn Feminists Can’t Acknowledge Feminist Porn
Friday, May 6th, 2011
A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed (in my Louise Lush filmmaking persona) by Alyssa McDonald and the end result was published today in the SMH: Feminist Porn Faces Hardcore Critics.
I had a decent chat with Alyssa and showed her my film which she enjoyed. I think the end result isn’t too bad, although I wish she’d included some of the other things I’d said. I also have an issue with this paragraph:
The vast majority of explicit material is made for a male audience; at best, it is degrading, and at worst it is often physically harmful to the women featured in it.
This is too much of a generalisation and not backed up by facts. Porn is not inherently degrading and it’s doubtful that porn is “often” physically harmful to the female performers. Not to say that these things are concerns but this is too much of a blanket statement.
My other problem is that last quote about “objectification.” It hasn’t quite come out right. I was questioning the entire concept and the way it’s always trotted out as a criticism of porn. No-one really questions what it means, or whether “objectification” is something that only happens in porn. I was pointing out that objectifying others is a human trait, it happens in everyday life all the time including when we’re at the supermarket.
And, I should say to all the shop assistants at the supermarket: you do an excellent job and thank you for doing it.
As all news articles will seek out an opposing opinion in the name of “balance”, this article features quotes from Sheila Jeffreys who is a professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. Prof. Jeffreys is an anti-porn feminist in the mould of Andrea Dworkin and she has also written about transgender issues, much to the consternation of some in the trans community. She is also critical of BDSM practices and has advocated lesbian separatism.
Unfortunately, anti-porn feminism doesn’t seem able to accept the idea that feminist porn might exist or be a force for good. I think this is because it’s founded on the belief that all porn is inherently sexist, harmful and bad. The existence of good porn undermines the basic premise, therefore it must be dismissed.
Anti-porn feminists do this by claiming false consciousness (”feminist pornographers are just regurgitating the same sexist ideas because they are unthinking tools of the patriarchy”), fake marketing (”feminist porn is just a term invented by the mainstream porn industry to sell the same stuff”), or by simply denying that feminist or ethical porn even exists.
Sheila goes for the false consciousness idea right off the bat:
The ideas of the [feminist] filmmakers have been constructed by mainstream pornography, so they don’t come from somewhere completely different.
Firstly, how does she know where feminist filmmakers get their ideas?
Secondly, why would it be wrong to look at mainstream porn, get an idea and then work from there? A lot of us look at porn and make a checklist of what NOT to do. That to me is a positive thing. Perhaps her issue is with the very concept of depicting sex itself; perhaps she believes that any image or footage of people having sex is inherently wrong. Given that anti-porn feminism concerns itself with heterosexual porn, perhaps we’re back to the old Dworkinesque concept that all sex with men is rape and therefore any depiction of it is wrong.
I’m also wondering what “completely different” porn might look like. Because, in the end, sex is sex and there’s only so many ways you can depict it. I’d actually love to hear more about Prof. Jeffreys’ idea of what porn that comes from “somewhere completely different” would look like.
And the culture pornography creates is a culture of violence against women… it’s a culture in which women are shouted at in the street, in which gang-bangs are ordinary in the Australian football league…
Cart before the horse. I actually think that the sexism of our culture sees some of its expression in porn and that’s the kind of porn I don’t like. But to say that porn is what causes footballers to be obnoxious rapists… um, no. Try harder, Homer.
Oh, but there’s feminist erotica. Oh, but there’s something else. And the fact is, thirty-five years on or whatever, I haven’t seen the something else that is completely different…
Again the call for something “completely different.” I’m fascinated as to how different porn needs to be before it meets the standards of Prof. Jeffreys. Poetry instead of dialogue? Unusual costumes? Disco lighting? No sex whatsoever?
I’d like Sheila Jeffreys to actually watch some feminist porn. Maybe not my films but I’m sure the work of Shine Louise Houston or Bren Ryder might be more to her taste. I’d really like to hear a refined critique as to what exactly is wrong with filming two consenting, happy lesbians having sex together and then watching it. (Or two straight people. Or three people. Or six trans guys, a hot gay man and their luscious female friend who has tied them all up and is making them pleasure her with their tongues… Um… what was I saying?)
It really is a shame that anti-porn feminism feels the need to decry feminist or positive or ethical porn. The argument is too black and white. Fact is, the feminist pornographers share some of the concerns of people like Sheila Jeffreys with regards to how porn is made and what it depicts. We should be having a sensible discussion about the whole thing. Instead, we’re denied and derided, dismissed as shills for the mainstream porn industry and excluded from the realm of “true” feminism. It’s no way forward and ultimately doesn’t help women.
For more info on pro-porn feminism, I recommend Violet Blue’s Our Porn, Ourselves site.
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Girls Watch Porn
Monday, May 2nd, 2011Not a bad little video.
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For The Girls Sample Galleries
Ms Naughty On Twitter- msnaughty: @girlonetrack I couldn't empathise with any of the women. It all just seemed to be about fashion so they lost me. But I see your point.
- msnaughty: @girlonetrack I gave up on Sex and the City after half an episode because it shitted me.
- msnaughty: RT @girlonetrack: Hold on, I've seen something PINK. OMG. *scream* Must now GOSSIP with my GIRLS over BRUNCH. SHOES!!! BUBBLY! PINK!! *h ...
- msnaughty: My short film I.M. In Love is showing in the Couplings program at @cinekink NY Friday night!
- msnaughty: RT @CineKink: Fri 8:45 / COUPLINGS is a hot mix of two-somes, three-somes and more-somes! http://t.co/1DQli10P
