Category: Porn

24 Jun

A Billion Badly Researched Assertions

Billion Wicked Thoughts gender stereotyping 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
Truthniess 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?

Filed Under: Popular culture, Porn, Sex and Women

Tags: A Billion Wicked Thoughts, books, For The Girls, Porn, research

27 May

A Need For Privacy Makes This “Debate” One-Sided

Q&A 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!

Filed Under: Censorship, Feminism, Porn

Tags: anti-porn feminism, Australia, Censorship, politics, Porn, privacy

20 May

Beware These Skewed Statistics About Porn “Addiction”

Truthiness in porn statistics Gail 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.

Filed Under: Feminism, Porn

Tags: addiction, Gail Dines, Porn, research, statistics

06 May

Anti-Porn Feminists Can’t Acknowledge Feminist Porn

Feminist porn in the SMH 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.

Filed Under: Feminism, Filmmaking, Porn, Porn for Women

Tags: anti-porn feminism, feminist porn, Sheila Jeffreys

02 May

Girls Watch Porn

Not a bad little video.

Filed Under: Porn

23 Mar

The Guardian Does Porn For Women

Article on women's porn at the Guardian The Guardian likes to attract clicks by including articles about porn but often the articles are negative in tone and rely on the arguments of anti-porn feminists like Gail Dines. Thankfully they’ve taken a step in the right direction by offering a story on porn for women and including comments by Erika Lust, Anna Span and Petra Joy. Aside from talking about women’s porn like it’s a new thing, the piece is very positive, if a little limited in scope.

Lust says: “Pornographers are usually middle-aged straight guys, with a similar cultural background. They don’t like it when I say that I make porn for women. They say their porn is for everybody and I am the ‘tight’ one. But I just can’t have an intellectual discussion with them, because they don’t measure up. What I’m doing is criticising the kind of porn they have been making for years and offering an alternative.”

Perhaps more interesting are the 250+ comments underneath. Most claim they don’t know how porn for women would be different to other porn. Plenty trot out the usual arguments that not all women are the same or else they dismiss women’s erotica as all candles and romance. I added my own comment here but it’s impossible to really talk about the issue in any depth as a comment.

Following on from the Guardian, Salon’s Tracy Clark Flory asks Why do we care so much about ‘porn for women’?

I was writing about feminist, female-directed porn back in college for my school newspaper. In the seven or so years since then, far more female directors and feminist production companies have premiered on the scene, but we’re still asking the same fundamental question: What is “porn for women,” exactly? I’m interested in a different question, though: Why is this a perennial subject of debate?
…
Every woman has a different definition of “porn for women” based on her own finicky desires. There might be some common requests — like more kissing, more narrative — but those things are highly subjective.

So Tracy comes to the same conclusion as many others: “porn for women” is a difficult concept to codify. At least she doesn’t go on to completely dismiss the idea because of that.

By the way, the first bit of that paragraph makes me feel fucking old. When I was first building For The Girls over 7 years ago, Tracy was a student. How did that time go so fast?

Filed Under: Porn, Porn for Women

Tags: erotica, feminist porn, porn for women

04 Mar

Let’s Talk About Extreme Porn

The other day I saw an ad for a porn site that I found rather disturbing. It was a looped flash video ad that featured a couple having very rough sex. The woman was “fish hooked” (had a finger in her mouth, dragging her head back at a painful angle), a penis was rubbed roughly on her face, she was choked and slapped. She also didn’t seem to be enjoying herself much; her face was red and she was crying.

I didn’t want to see that. Firstly, I’m not into rough sex. Also I also had no idea of the context of that sex scene. Was it consensual? Did she sign up for that? Did she enjoy it?

The porn company that made the ad obviously thinks this will entice viewers to sign up, either out of curiosity or genuine desire. I’ve seen other rough ones like it, including one where it was a woman administering the rough sex to another women. I don’t promote that company, by the way, or any porn site that includes that kind of content.

This is the exactly the kind of extreme porn that Gail Dines discusses in her book Pornland. She says that almost all porn is like this and that it is having a negative effect on men’s sexuality.

The thing is, while there are plenty of problems with Dines’ generalisations and theory, I don’t want to dismiss her concerns with this kind of content. It seems reasonable to be asking questions about bad porn and extreme porn. We should be talking about what it means and how it effects us. I know that my initial reaction to that ad was pretty visceral. I can imagine that a lot of people might find it very disturbing or problematic.

I’ve seen my fair share of what I consider to be bad porn. Stuff that is overtly sexist and cruel, porn that appeals more to negative emotions and hatred than actual sexual desire (take for example the “ex-girlfriend” style sites. Or the ones where the scenarios are primarily about tricking someone into sex and not paying them). There’s porn out there that doesn’t look like it was consensual or ethically created. My stance has always been that I don’t like it and I won’t promote it – but I would never agree with it being censored. I’ve also had numerous online discussions with other adult webmasters about whether sites stepped over the line or not.

A few years back a company produced a website called “Sleep Assault.” The premise was that is showed night-vision movies of guys sneaking in and having sex with sleeping women – either strangers or friends/wives. A big argument about it started up on a webmaster board. The owners said it was merely a fantasy site and that, naturally, all the situations were staged. Others said that it was too close to a rape site and that the language was too negative. There was much discussion over whether the site was encouraging sexual assault or was just an outlet for fantasy. In the end the owners changed the wording of the tour to better emphasise that it was a fantasy and we all went our separate ways.

Extreme porn like this isn’t new although perhaps it’s now more widespread than before (this somewhat problematic research seems to suggest it). This is part of the overall one-upmanship occurring in the porn industry over the last decade, the desperate scramble to attract attention through increasingly more over-the-top porn. It’s also the result of consumers demanding more extreme stuff; perhaps natural human curiosity combines with regular porn consumption to create an urge for “the hard stuff”.

Gail Dines is concerned that extreme porn is so ubiquitous than it’s now considered “normal” and that it teaches young men the wrong lessons about how to have sex and how to treat women. I think I share that concern; I hate the idea that a virgin might see that ad and think it’s how sex is “done” or get so used to it that any partner who isn’t into rough sex doesn’t stand a chance. I can imagine that a young woman might see those images of rough sex and feel alarmed at the idea of being on the receiving end of that. It’s pretty easy to spin out scenarios about how porn might negatively affect others.

So yes, I do share these concerns. Nonetheless, I try and think beyond the immediate worries that pop up and analyse if they’re legitimate. Right now, I have no idea if the anecdotal stories of ruined marriages, lost libidos and confused virgins are true. There’s still not a lot of reliable research on it – although it doesn’t take much effort to find unscientific or religious anti-porn studies on the web. But from what I’ve seen, there’s no real data to back up the concerns about harm. If this changes, I’ll change my mind.

What’s often common in discussions about extreme porn is the idea that the viewer doesn’t think critically about what they are seeing. It’s assumed the viewer just passively watches it and then unthinkingly apes the attitudes and behaviour on show. Naturally, the person who writes about porn doesn’t do that; the concern is only ever for other people, the ignorant masses who dully consume or the innocent teenagers who accidentally encounter porn.

Is that what really happens? On my more misanthropic days (say, after reading the comments on Youtube), I suspect it does. But that’s just an opinion. The facts may show otherwise. Again, we need more research on this. I have found at least one study that has found that people do interact with porn in a far more “literate and critical” way than is assumed. Obviously that’s not conclusive though I’m sure there are other similar studies.

Two key factors in approaching porn in a critical manner are an understanding the context combined with a reasonable knowledge about sex and sexuality.

When it comes to extreme porn, it really does help to know the context in which its presented. The sex acts themselves aren’t the issue. Plenty of people enjoy rough sex or BDSM or water bondage or whatever kink it is. There’s nothing wrong with that.

The problem occurs when no context for the extreme sex acts is provided – there’s no indication that it’s a fantasy, no way of knowing if the performers were willing participants or if they enjoyed themselves. This is bad porn. If you don’t know that rough sex (for example) is a kink performed consensually, you might form the wrong idea about what it all means and it may negatively affect your sexual attitudes. I recommend Charlie Glickman’s discussion of bad porn for a further elaboration on this point.

I’ll say up front, I dislike extreme porn, particularly the nasty sexist hateful stuff. If a site is showing cruel-looking hate sex and presenting it as the ideal way to treat women, I obviously don’t want the viewer to agree with that on a philosophical level. I can’t help but feel that there IS something disturbing about the idea of people getting off on hateful, misogynistic or cruel stuff. I find it worrying that masturbating and sexual pleasure would be tied to such negativity.*

And yet the human mind is a crazy place and a fantasy is often just a fantasy. I don’t know what the people who watch that stuff are really thinking. I hope it’s just a fantasy.

So yes, I worry about extreme porn. I worry about what bad porn says about attitudes to women and sex. There’s a lot of porn I find offputting and unsexy and generally problematic. In the end, though, I think the only logical stance to take with regards to it is to talk about it and to encourage people to think critically about it.

As usual, education is so important. The concerns about teens and extreme porn are quite reasonable. Teenagers don’t always have the basics in reading texts (in this case porn) and sex education is sadly lacking in some places (especially the US where the religious right is doing its best to keep them ignorant).

I think the days of being able to restrict access to porn are long gone – if it was ever successful in the first place. The only reasonable remedy to the possible problems caused by misreading porn are pre-emptive education. Honest discussion about porn’s place in society and encouraging critical thinking as to what it all means. Parents aren’t always the best people to do this because, frankly, talking about porn with teenagers is not fun.

In this, the internet is like beer (the solution to – and cause of – all of life’s problems). The net provides the opportunity for teens to talk to each other and easily find information about porn. Many sex education sites are doing their best to get the issue out in the open and discuss what it all means – Make Love Not Porn and British site Bish Training are good examples.

Meanwhile, the anti-porn crusade continues. I guess we should be grateful they’re out there because they encourage the discussion of topics like this. Unfortunately they also encourage a debate that becomes too simplistic and too unscientific, one influenced by negative assumptions about sexuality and religious agendas. They also encourage censorship, which is ultimately a non-solution.

Porn isn’t perfect; there’s a lot out there that we should be concerned about. Yet there’s also plenty that’s positive and meaningful and worth celebrating. In the end, the best thing we can do is to keep talking about it.
—–

Update 5th March
I want to add something to this post following a reply tweet I received about it. Batcheeba wrote:” “worrying and disturbing” I’d say that is just a liberal way of judging ppl into stuff you’re not.”

I don’t think Batcheeba actually read the post, only my tweet, but I’m going to elaborate on this here.

I tried my best not to be judgmental about sex acts or sexual preferences in this post and I think Charlie Glickman’s post really spells out why it’s important not to approach extreme porn from that perspective.

Nonetheless I don’t think being sex positive and tolerant should mean that I blithely accept that all porn is fine. What I am worried about is the way some porn sites and movies deliberately tie cruelty and misogyny and hate into those sex acts. Not as part of the kink but as part of a general sexist philosophy; this kind of porn is speaking to anger and hatred and negativity, not desire or kink or preference.

And even then, I acknowledge that that negativity may just be someone’s fantasy. But damn… surely we should be able to ask: what the hell is going on if you need hatred to get off? And what happens if you think that hatred is par for the course?

Those questions and worries are shared by a lot of people. I don’t think it’s helpful to simply dismiss them as being “closed minded” or “judgmental” because all you do is turn it into a “them versus us” thing.

I wrote this post because I keep seeing the anti-porn people using extreme porn as a basis of their argument. And those of us who don’t agree with them often end up having to defend bad porn in order to maintain our own position. I don’t like that dichotomy. It’s not an honest presentation of the whole issue and it doesn’t go anywhere.

I don’t want to defend bad porn. I wanted to say that I understand why people get worried and concerned about extreme porn. And I wanted to say I think education is the answer to those concerns.

* Let me say again… I’m not talking about consensual bdsm or power play here.

Edit: Please read the comments below for more discussion about this issue. I am aware that the original post is a bit murky with definitions and could have been better written. I’ve opted to leave the post as it stands so that the comments make sense and also because it helps with the general discussion.

Filed Under: Feminism, Porn

Tags: anti-porn feminism, bad porn, extreme porn

23 Feb

Help Create Better Porn Research

Porn research is like a photo of a bunny It’s becoming increasingly apparent in the debates surrounding porn that statistics are being used like weapons. At the recent Cambridge debate, data, or the lack thereof, was an important factor in how points were presented. And dodgy statistics and studies about porn seem to be everywhere.

Now we have a chance to help create some unbiased research into the topic of how people use porn.

Pornography Research Online wants to talk to porn users and get an idea of how people interact with porn. I’ll let them do the talking:

In the past, pornography has overwhelmingly been assumed to be a ‘problem’, and the only really important questions to ask about it are – how much do people (and especially children) encounter it, and how great is the ‘harm’ that it does? This research is different.

Our project is concerned with the everyday uses of pornography, and how the people who use it feel it fits into their lives. Pornography is of course a highly topical issue, subject to many opposing views and ‘strong opinions’. And we are not saying that there are no moral or political issues. But we are saying that the voices of users and enjoyers have been swamped. In fact, there is very little research that engages with the users of pornography, asking how, when and why they turn to it.

At the Erotics Conference last week I was privileged to meet Clarissa Smith, the author of One For The Girls, a look at how UK women interacted with For Women magazine. We had a great chat about porn for women and she told me about the porn research project. I said I’d help get the word out.

So, here’s your chance to be heard. The survey may take half an hour of your time but it will be worth it. The result should be something that actually reflects our own experiences with porn, without the judgemental nonsense or “addiction” paradigms built in.

Please participate.

Filed Under: Porn

Tags: porn research, statistics, survey

22 Feb

Don’t Dream It, Be It: Women Enjoying Porn And Making Porn

Lady Porn Day. There are so many things I could write about porn for women* and women’s enjoyment of porn. And there’s so much I’ve already written; the landing page of my blog has a whole bunch of posts that I recommend you read.

What I want to do here is talk about the future of women’s porn because perhaps Lady Porn Day is a marker of sorts. It feels as though things are shifting, ideas are changing. Perhaps the audience of porn-loving women has hit a critical mass and it’s time to head in new directions. As someone who has made porn for women for ten years, I’m fascinated. And I want to be involved.

I’ve found the comments made via the #ladypornday hashtag on Twitter to be interesting and enlightening but also a little depressing. It seems there are a lot of disgruntled women out there. My first encounters with the idea of Lady Porn Day were couched in the complaint that it was not representative enough. Then there was this really angry complaint about Filament magazine. And the hashtag revealed more complaints. I can probably add them to the list of things I’ve heard many women say about “porn for women” over the years. They include:

Continue Reading

Filed Under: Featured, Porn, Porn for Women

Tags: lady porn day, porn for women

21 Feb

The Cambridge Porn Debate

Sexademic Jessi Fischer On the 17th of February, the Cambridge University Union Society hosted a debate entitled This House Believes Pornography Does A Good Public Service. On the “for” side were feminist porn filmmaker Anna Span, sex educator and therapist Jessi Fischer (The Sexademic) and porn actor Johnny Anglais. On the “against” side were anti-porn feminist Gail Dines, child psychologist Richard Woolfson and Shelly Lubben, ex prostitute and porn actress, now an evangelical Christian and anti-porn campaigner.

The debate was held in front of a packed audience (with students listening outside the hall) and the end result was a vote in favour of porn, 231 to 187 (with 197 abstaining).

Some have reported that Shelly Lubben’s emotional and non academic performance was a deciding factor (here, here). Jessi Fischer, in her blog post about the experience, says it was the lack of sources and general misinformation on the “against” side that did it in. Anna Span says the “against” side weren’t prepared to face such stiff opposition.

Debates like this are good for getting the issue out there but I do wonder whether the adversarial and strict nature of such an event can ever do it justice. I am mostly on the side of porn but I also believe there are plenty of negative issues surrounding it that need to be discussed. It’s such a pity that people like Dines and Lubben talk only in black and white when it comes to porn, they see only exploitation, abuse and bad outcomes when the fact is the whole shebang is entirely complex and can’t be reasonably discussed in generalisations.

I do have to cheer Jessi Fischer’s ongoing efforts to inject rationality and real data into the discussion, especially in the face of massaged statistics and moral hysteria. I think my favourite quote is this:

“The plural of anecdote is not data.” Superb.

Read Johnny Anglais’ speech here. BBC has a radio interview with Anna Span here.

Update 23rd Feb: Anna Span and Gail Dines appeared on BBC radio after the debate (audio here). Unfortunately the presenter took sides halfway through and belittled Anna. Violet Blue has publicly made a complaint about bias (and I did too after listening to the recording). We’ll see what happens from here.

Filed Under: Feminism, Porn

Tags: anti-porn feminists, cambridge, debate, Porn

20 Feb

Adventures At The Erotic Screen And Sound Conference

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.

Porn for Women slide 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:

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.

BDSM presentation 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.

Filed Under: Feminism, Popular culture, Porn, Porn for Women, Videos

Tags: academic, conference, erotic, video

23 Dec

Porn For Women Retrospective 2010

Another year has whizzed by and it’s time to do another rundown of all things porn for women in 2010. This year the adult industry has again endured tough times in the face of ever-increasing free content and the dismal global economy. Nonetheless, erotic content for women continues to grow and become more popular. There’s been a real attempt by many in the industry to try and cater to women, perhaps out of desperation. There’s also been an explosion of queer and alternative porn.

In The News

Hello Ladies. Isiah Mustafa, the Old Spice Guy * “Hello Ladies.” In February, Isiah Mustafa first uttered the opening line to the now much-loved Old Spice ad and caused an internet sensation. The advertisement took a quirky view of masculinity and also unashamedly appealed to the sex drive of straight women, something that is still rare. Now millions of women around the world have begun to fantasise about a well-spoken black man who’s on a boat… and a horse.

* Playboy TV made headlines in November when they announced a revamp of the channel, setting their sights on female viewers. They plan to offer “softer” content with “real chemistry, nonenhanced body parts, varied body shapes and contextualized’ sex.”

* In January the Shady Lady ranch in Nevada caused a stir by getting approval to offer male prostitutes to female clients – a first. One of the new workers (“prostidudes”) called “Markus” caused a stir by comparing himself to Rosa Parks. He didn’t last long, quitting in March. The Shady Lady continued on without him.

* The Twilight books and films were so popular that some took to calling the saga “porn for women”. I disagreed.

* British women’s porn pioneer Anna Span put her filmmaking career on hold to run for parliament in March. She stood for the Liberal Democrats using her real name of Anna Arrowsmith and came in third, considerably increasing the LibDem vote.

* The ongoing saga of the .xxx domain continued and I was actually quoted in the Guardian opposing it.

* It was also a huge year for censorship – which I’ll address a little later in the post.

The Magazines Are Back

* 2010 was a bumper year for UK startup magazine Filament, with strong sales and an expansion into the US and Australia.

* Playgirl announced that it was going back into print after a year of web-only publication. The headline-grabbing nude photoshoot of Levi Johnston (Sarah Palin’s would-be son-in-law) prompted the turnaround; his pics appeared in the February edition, causing much distress because there was no full-frontal nudity.

* In January Candy Rain, another magazine for straight women, was launched. Only one issue appeared all year however a benefit has recently been held to assist in publishing the second.

New Porn for Women Movies (Straight)

* In my opinion the best film for women released this year was Erika Lust’s Life Love Lust. Her beautifully-produced vignettes have a depth and vision not usually seen in porn. She also dared to portray sex that results in… a baby. For The Girls interviewed Erika in July and I included pics from the movie here.

* Petra Joy released Her Porn 2, another compilation of erotic short films and excerpts for women. I found this important because it includes my first short film, “That’s What I Like”. Petra also completed filming her fourth feature, despite ill health and numerous production issues.

* Netherlands-based director Jennifer Lyon Bell teamed up with Belgian artist Murielle Scherre, aka La Fille D’O, to create Des Jours Plus Belles Que La Nuit, a depiction of a real couple making love in real time. It won a Feminist Porn Award for Best Direction. It is due to be released in the US soon, following the already successful Matinee.

* Mimi Balfour created a softcore erotic film called Man of My Dreams which also won a Feminist Porn Award.

* Sex advisor and author Jamye Waxman directed 101 Sex Positions For Lovers which was filmed in Jamaica and featured real-life couples.

* Larger producers Playgirl and Sweet Sinner continued to release new features aimed at straight women regularly in 2010. Major studio New Sensations also created a new line called “Romance”, aimed at women and couples.

Lesbian and Queer Porn

Queer porn mafia at the AVN awards - pic by Courtney Trouble * Artist and porn star Madison Young had a huge year in 2010. She directed and starred in a swathe of films including Pregnant With Desire, a new film exploring the sexual aspects of pregnancy. Madison herself is expecting her first child in 2011.

* Queersexual personality Jiz Lee was everywhere this year, appearing in many indie and alt films as well as popping up in more mainstream productions. She also set up her own charity website, Karma Pervs and appeared in a massive queer orgy for her 30th birthday on Crash Pad Series. For The Girls interviewed her in November.

* Courtney Trouble was also a queer filmmaking powerhouse this year, releasing numerous films through the Reel Queer Productions label including several titles in the Roulette series and Seven Minutes In Heaven. She also maintained her stable of queer porn sites including NoFauxxx.

* French director Emilie Jouvet took a group of queer friends on a sex tour of Europe and released Too Much Pussy: Feminist Sluts on the QueerX Roadshow, an erotic documentary of their trip.

* Triangle Films made waves with their major production River Rock Women’s Prison which won several awards.

Statistics and Surveys

* In February the Sun reported that more women were watching porn than ever with 76% of readers “admitting” to enjoying porn.

* In June, Cosmopolitan reported on a survey of their readers and found that 60% of their readers enjoyed porn, either alone or as part of their relationship. Another 15% said they hadn’t seen it but were open to the idea.

Awards and Festivals

Berlin Porn Film Festival * In April the fifth annual Feminist Porn Awards were announced with gongs handed out to a variety of groundbreaking straight and queer films. The list of nominations was substantial, revealing just how much the female-friendly and alt porn movement has grown. 2010 saw the first Emerging Filmmaker award handed out to Tobi Hill Meyer.

* The AVN Awards continued to mostly ignore alternative films, concentrating on the mainstream industry. Tristan Taormino won Best Educational Release for her Expert Guide to Threesomes but that was about it. The awards night was attended by the “Queer Porn Mafia” (Jiz Lee, Dylan Ryan, Amber Flores, Madison Young and Courtney Trouble among others – see pic above).

* The Pornutopia erotic film festival held in Albuquerque was cancelled after local authorities told them they were breaking zoning laws. The city maintains it isn’t censorship but the festival directors aren’t convinced.

* I didn’t get to attend the Berlin Porn Film Festival this year which was a pity as they had a record-breaking attendance. Jennifer Lyon Bell conducted a workshop on porn and feminism and Emile Jouvet’s film Much More Pussy received an honourable mention.

* Cinekink, the kinky film festival based in New York, toured the US throughout the year. I’m pleased to say my film That’s What I Like featured at a number of screenings.

Our Porn, Ourselves and The Anti-Porn Brigade

Our Porn, Ourselves * 2010 saw a major increase in campaigning against pornography, thanks mostly to Gail Dines who was flogging her anti-porn book Pornland to anyone who’d listen. Dines uses shock tactics and generalisations to argue that porn was “hijacking our sexuality” and ultimately should be prohibited. Dines said “Women defending porn are likely deluded by the near trillion dollar industry.” My reply to that is here.

* Religious groups are also moving to ban porn using the dodgy concept of “addiction”. In May I looked at Dirty Girls Ministries, a site that charges women money to help cure their “addiction” to masturbation and porn.

* Blogger and author Violet Blue fought back against the anti-porn movement, creating Our Porn, Ourselves, a gathering of pro-porn activists including many women who enjoy explicit material. Violet’s Facebook page had over 3000 members when Facebook shut it down without warning or explanation in July.

* Moral panic about the “sexualisation of children” has also spurred numerous calls for censorship. In July a conference in the UK attended by Australian academic Catharine Lumby sought to cut through the nonsense and properly study the issue. They pointed out that most of the “research” on the issue is biased or poorly conceived. I wrote about the issue here.

Other Censorship

Looking back at my blog posts over the last year, it’s depressing to see how often censorship and anti-porn campaigning comes up. Perhaps its a personal obsession but I think it’s part of an overall trend. The governments of the world have woken up and they want to control the internet. Part of that is a panic over online porn and a demand for increased censorship. Here in Australia, the nanny state has gotten worse in 2010 with numerous arrests and crackdowns on adult material.

Operation Titstorm * In January a storm erupted in cyberspace over reports that Australia had banned the depiction of small breasts in porn and were also banning female ejaculation. The news came from The Sex Party and I wrote about it on this blog post. Within days the story had gone viral and turned up in mainstream media. The censors eventually denied that this was the case, although it did publicse the fact that material can be considered child porn if the models *look* underage.

Nonetheless, it rapidly became an established internet “fact” and even resulted in web vigilantes Anonymous attacking the Australian parliament in “Operation Titstorm” as part of a protest against the proprosed mandatory internet filter.

* In March TV show Hungry Beast raised awareness of censorship with their report on the way magazines alter images of female genitalia to meet classification guidelines: “Too Much Genital Detail”

* In May Garion Hall, the owner of AbbyWinters.com, was found guilty of “making an objectionable film” – even though the magistrate didn’t watch the film or ask for anyone else to classify it. It was the first conviction of its kind in Australia. Abby Winters has now moved all operations to The Netherlands.

* Also in May, an adult shop owner was sent to prison for three months for selling X-rated films in Sydney. Since then there have been numerous raids on sex shops and a crackdown on selling explicit porn in several states. It is not illegal to own or buy X-rated films in Australian states but it is illegal to sell them. NSW has since given police the power to decide if a film is illegal on the spot, rather than handing it over to classifiers.

* In July Australian Senator Stephen Conroy announced that the planned mandatory internet filter would be delayed pending a review of the classification categories. The subsequent federal election saw a minority Labor government with the filter still on the cards.

* In the US in April, adult director and author Tristan Taormino faced protests from a “family” group before giving a presentation on porn at Princeton University.

* In December, the UK parliament decided they wanted to jump on the censorship bandwagon, looking at a plan to ban online porn unless adults “opt in”.

Ms Naughty In 2010

Pic from the model shoot at For The Girls Professionally, this year hasn’t been the best for me. The biggest problem has been neverending delays with the upgrade of For The Girls. You can read the full, painful story here. I still haven’t got a refund and I lost so much time waiting, putting things off. I also held off on my plans for more erotic films. So it’s been very frustrating.

Indeed, writing this retrospective based on my blog posts has been difficult simply because I haven’t posted as much this year. Twitter is partly to blame but I’ve also been spending time doing other things.

Still, the last couple of months have seen me get back on track. I’m still editing the footage I shot in November and I also took part in a fabulous male model shoot at the start of December for FTG. The results are fantastic.

2010 marked my 10th anniversary creating porn online. It’s kind of hard to believe I’ve been doing this for so long. I have been suffering a bit of porn fatigue lately but I’m also motivated to head into the new year with a fresh mind and try new things. Lots to do!

Perhaps my biggest non-porn achievement of the year was cycling 500km over 9 days in September. I also attended the Rise of Atheism conference in Melbourne which was inspiring and interesting. And I handed out “how to votes” for the Sex Party which was more fun than I expected.

Some larger blog posts from 2010

Defining the harm of porn – a look at Michael Flood’s research and why it’s flawed
What Oprah didn’t tell you about porn for women – I wrote a guest piece for Good Vibrations blog on my favourite topic.
Dear kinky people, cut vanilla a break, will ya? – A somewhat controversial post about how vanilla sex is sometimes derided as boring or repressed.
It Gets Better… But why should it be bad in the first place? – Are teenagers forever doomed to be horrible to each other?
In 2010, a prosecution for procuring an abortion – My thoughts on abortion.
Fiona Patten reveals how the NVE classification was derailed – a video from the Humanist Conference detailing how porn was almost legalised in 1999.
How sex with your head in a toilet bowl can be OK – Not all porn is degrading
The female gaze does not exist? – Another bit of musing (and arguing) on the terms “porn for women” and “the female gaze”.

Eye Candy Posts

Admiring the mankini
The Dirk Diggler dick from Boogie Nights’ last scene
In defence of facial hair

Previous End Of Year Posts

Porn for women retrospective 2009
Porn for women retrospective 2008
Porn for women retrospective 2007
Porn for women retrospective 2006

Image Credit
Pic of the Queer Porn Mafia by Courtney Trouble from here.

Filed Under: Censorship, Feminism, Porn, Porn for Women

Tags: 2010, erotica, history, Porn, porn for women, retrospective, women

03 Dec

An Interview With Jiz Lee

Jiz Lee
This month’s feature at For The Girls is an exclusive interview with Queer porn superstar Jiz Lee, who has appeared in numerous alternative and queer movies and regularly turns up at the Crash Pad Series website.

Jiz also runs a charity porn site called Karma Pervs which donates the proceeds from memberships to worthy sex positive causes.

Here’s a snippet of the interview:

Being sexually active and an exhibitionist, in combination with being a performance artist, I think it was only a matter of time before I found pornography.

My lover at the time, Shawn, invited me to do a scene with her in Shine Louise Houston’s first flick, “The Crash Pad”, filmed in 2005. That was my first professional scene and the rest is history. I really love sharing my sexuality and the love I have with others on screen. I also value having this documentation — like a scrapbook but even better! In addition, for queers, there’s very little representation (or authenticity) of our sexuality. So being a part of pornography for me is a radical thing. Bringing our sexuality to the screen is a chance to share with one another, to educate, to validate our life! For so many of us it is terrifying to come to terms with our sexuality. It’s not well-documented, it’s not reflected in media, it’s not taught in schools, it’s often shamed and hidden and criminalized. So to have visible pleasure is an extremely empowering thing.

The rest is available to members of For The Girls.

Thanks Jiz!

Filed Under: Porn

Tags: jiz lee, Porn, queer

01 Nov

How Sex With Your Head In A Toilet Bowl Can Be OK

Brooklyn, the haughty, dominant lesbian pauses in her frantic fisting and then whispers in the ear of Vai, her moaning, submissive female partner. She points to the toilet her lover is leaning on.

“Do you want to put your head in there?”

Vai, panting and flushed as the result of several gushing orgasms, looks a little hesitant. “Is it clean?” she asks.

Brooklyn nods. And so the eager submissive lifts the lid and places her face into the toilet, her hair dropping into the water as Brooklyn fucks her hard with a strapon.

When I started watching Tight Places, the new queer film from Good Releasing, I expected to see fisting, strapon sucking and female ejaculation, the sort of sex that is par for the course in this kind of authentic lesbian/queer porn. What I didn’t expect was a scene that raises questions about personal taste and provides grist for the debate surrounding the “degrading” nature of pornography.

Right now, anti-porn activist Gail Dines is touring the world, marketing her book that agues that porn has “hijacked men’s sexuality.” She maintains that the current crop of porn websites and movies is far more sexist and degrading to women than ever before. She cherry-picks examples from the dark alleys of internet porn to illustrate her point. One of the regular things she mentions are sites where women’s heads are pushed into toilet bowls while they’re fucked.

How interesting, then, to encounter the very same sex act in a film that aims to be feminist, sex positive and queer- and female- friendly; a movie that features a cast of lesbians and trans-identified people but doesn’t star a single straight man.

Clearly, this movie is not following Gail Dines’ script.

I must confess to being more than a little squicked out by the scene itself. Watching someone being fucked while their head is in a toilet bowl is definitely not my bag, baby. Indeed, I found it to be rather disturbing, perhaps because this act has so many negative connotations involved. For a start, it’s just not a nice physical position to be in, as most of us who’ve suffered bad hangovers can attest. It’s hard to put yourself in her place and not feel a little, well, nauseous.

Beyond that, it has very negative philosophical associations. I’ve only ever seen it in porn that’s very abusive and hateful towards women – exactly the kind of porn that Gail Dines says is “standard” in the industry (not really true, but that’s an argument for another day). I’ve always found those sites to be pretty disgusting and avoided them if possible, so it’s confronting to find this kind of thing in a female-friendly movie. It took me out of the moment, making me analyse the politics of it all rather than simply enjoying the scene.

And the politics are pretty interesting. Because this scene is a perfect example of how consent and intent make all the difference.

Though I was personally turned off by the sex act portrayed, there is actually nothing wrong with the scene itself. Both performers consented to being in the scene and, once it’s underway, Vai voluntarily puts her head in the toilet bowl. Indeed, it seems to increase her physical pleasure by ramping up the psychological arousal. Her partner may have done it to degrade her but the intent is benign; Brooklyn seeks to get her partner off rather than to exert power or make her look or feel bad.

It’s an important difference and one that pro-porn feminists are doing their best to illustrate. It’s not the sex acts that are important, it’s the ethics of consent and how the performers are treated.

If the goal is consensual female pleasure, who cares how the results are achieved?
—-

The rest of my review of Tight Places appears at For The Girls this week. In case you’re wondering, I did enjoy the rest of it – the sex is authentic and hot.

I watched Tight Places courtesy of Good Vibrations.

Filed Under: Feminism, Porn, Porn Movies

Tags: Feminism, Gail Dines, Porn, Sexuality, Tight Places

22 Sep

The Dirk Diggler Dick From Boogie Nights Last Scene

Boogie Nights Last Scene - Dirk Diggler's dick, Mark Wahlberg

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.”

Filed Under: Naked Men, Popular culture, Porn, Videos

Tags: Boogie Nights, cock, dick, Dirk Diggler, Mark Wahlberg, penis, Porn, prosthetic