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Archive for the ‘Ramblings’ Category

You may have noticed that blog and twitter posts have been a little scarce over the last few weeks. That’s because I decided to take up a new hobby and it’s taken over my life.

Five weeks ago I decided to join my husband on a 570km 9 day cycle tour, along with 1500 other people. A bit of a strange decision for someone who hasn’t really been into cycling before, but there it is. Always good to try something new.

What happened is I discovered the wonder of recumbent tricycle riding. I had a go on my husband’s new trike and decided to steal it off him. As you can see from the production pic above, it’s like a billycart for grown ups. No more aching crotch, wrists or neck like you get on a normal bike, just a lot of laying back and enjoying the view… and going really fast down hills (although, damn, it’s a bitch getting to the top of said hills).

Since then I’ve been in training, trying to build up my muscles enough to cope with average rides of 75km a day. I’ve also been stocking up on sexy lycra clothing and camping equipment, learning about cogs, cranks and derailleurs and generally turning into a cycling nerd.

In the meantime, I’ve been taking a bit of a mental break from porn. After the stress of the last 7 months, I’ve needed it. So I haven’t been keeping up with my usual news feeds or searching out good pics to post. It’s also been nice to mentally withdraw from a few of the usual conflicts: anti-porn, censorship, religious bigotry etc. Sometimes you just need to step back and refresh your mind a little.

I do still want to keep up my blogging but it’s not as frequent as it could be. And I’ll be pretty much offline for 9 days when the tour starts on September 4.

Rest assured, I’ll be back into the swing of things when I return, hopefully fitter and thinner than before. And then it might finally be time to make that movie.

Over the weekend, Australia had an election. Now the people have spoken and their overwhelming response is: Meh.

We have a hung parliament. Neither Labor or the Liberal/National coalition won enough seats to form government. This means the fate of the country lies with three country independents and a freshly minted Greens MP. Meanwhile, the Greens have gained control of the senate.

This is all fantastic news. If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know I’ve often written about the ridiculous internet filter proposed by Labor. I couldn’t vote for them because of it but I was loathe to support the conservatives. I really didn’t want to see either of them in charge… and now they’re not. Rather, we have three Independents who all seem to have a lot of passion and integrity. People are feeling a little stunned that these blokes actually give honest answers in their TV interviews. That’s how jaded and immune to spin we’ve become.

And now there’s a chance that these guys can actually change things for the better. They’ve all said they have little time for spin or party politics or bickering; rather, they want to see issues being addressed. They’re also promising changes to our crap electoral system so we won’t ever have to sit through the nonsense of this election campaign ever again. I’m just so pleased about it.

I spent Saturday morning handing out pamphlets for the Australian Sex Party. My husband and I caused quite a stir at the booth wearing our bright yellow “Vote 1 Sex” T-shirts; a surprising number of people said they wanted to own one. There was a lot of interest from a wide variety of people, including the other volunteers handing out How-To-Votes. So many people sidled up and said “Can I just have a look at that pamphlet?” We also got a few cheers and made plenty of people smile. Better yet, we noticeably boosted the vote for the ASP. I only wish I could have done it in Victoria, where Fiona Patten came incredibly close to winning a seat in the Senate. Next time, for sure.

So… after an idiotic and inane election campaign things took a surprising turn and I now have reason to feel hope for the future of this country. Which ever side gets in, they’re going to have to change they way they conduct themselves. Less spin, more consultation, greater honesty and integrity.

And one thing is certain: there won’t be an internet filter here any time soon.

As @benbirchall said on Twitter: “Nobody’s in charge, Australia! Let’s eat the condensed milk out of the can!”

Pic is from For The Girls.

So it’s official now: the Opposition will scrap plans for the internet filter if they get into government. Liberal Treasury spokesperson Joe Hockey spoke about this stance on JJJ radio and it was later confirmed by another party spokesperson.

If you were reading my Twitter feed you would have seen that my husband actually got Joe Hockey to say this over two weeks ago (July 18) when we were on holiday in Cairns. We were strolling the boardwalk on the esplanade when seemingly out of nowhere Mr Hockey appeared, pressing the flesh with media in tow. My husband asked him if it was Liberal policy to oppose the filter and Mr Hockey said it was. There were channel 7 and channel 9 cameras recording this, along with several other journos present.

Alas, it didn’t make the Sunday news. There was no mention of him saying this anywhere. The media simply decided it wasn’t important enough to publish.

Worse still, we’d left our little camera in the hotel room so we had no proof that it even happened. Imagine if I’d got the exchange on camera and put it up on Youtube?

Today I read Annabel Crabb’s amazing behind-the-scenes article about how journalists are “embedded” with politicians on the campaign trail. It’s not surprising that this is the most inane and soulless election ever, given the stitched-up nature of political reporting in this country.

Imagine if citizen journalists were allowed access to these stage-managed press conferences? Imagine if more of us were able to ask the real questions and then put the footage out there via the net? Perhaps we’d have more honesty, clarity and facts and a far better democracy.

Maybe we need to be more proactive in holding our elected officials to account.

2010 was going to be a fabulous year for me. After winning the Petra Joy Award in Berlin in October 2009, I had big plans to make more erotic films including a feature. I had planned to travel to the US to make the movie and do more business there. I was also going to do a lot more with For The Girls and maybe get a book organised.

And yet here I am nearing the end of July 2010 and none of that has happened. Instead, I’ve been mostly sitting in my office, completely stymied, feeling angry and helpless and incredibly frustrated.

There is one major reason for this: a bunch of rip off artists called ************

In November last year we hired this company to revamp the member’s area of For The Girls. Seven months later, the job is still not done and we are having to start all over again.

A bit of background: Jane and I started For The Girls in 2003 and designed the whole site using simple html with a few includes. Seven years later, it’s still pretty much the same. We add all the galleries, movies, articles and stories by hand and it can be very time consuming. Knowing a change was long overdue, we put out a call to find someone who could create a content management system (CMS) for FTG which would automate tasks like gallery building and movie conversion as well as make the site more interactive. We were also keen for a nice new, snazzy look.

Because FTG has been around for a long time, there’s a lot of content in the member’s area. A LOT of content. We’re talking thousands of photos and movies and over 1000 individual articles. We wanted someone who could take our existing written content and put it into a database so the new CMS could use it.

We put out a call on the webmaster boards and ************ stepped up and said they could do it. Article database? No problem, they said. CMS? Easy. We’ll just adapt Joomla for you. Vast amount of content? Sure, we’ll transfer it all over for you. We were promised a completely updated new member’s area with all content ready to go. All for the bargain price of $3000.

So we hired them, paid them a $1500 deposit and eagerly awaited the delivery of our new member’s area. We’d hoped we could launch the site on January 1 but given it was Christmas, figured it would be done by the start of February.

How to best sum up the subsequent seven months of lies, obfuscation, frustration and endless waiting? As you can probably guess, there’s a lot to tell. I have pages and pages of emails, including very lengthy ones written by me asking, demanding, pleading and often swearing, trying to get some kind of a result. A few highlights of the whole saga:

* ************, who runs ************, repeatedly promised me the site would be done “by tomorrow” or “by this afternoon” or “by Friday.” I counted back and she actually made this promise a total of 19 times. (Fool me once… Well, yes. I’m obviously some kind of idiot for putting up with that many lies.)

* In late January I asked why nothing had happened. After repeated emails, ************ told me they’d were unable to automate our article database and were subsequently doing it by hand. Turns out that the article database doesn’t exist and never did.

* In late February they said the site was ready to go and we just needed to give them the final payment to finish it. So, stupidly, I paid them. The site was actually nowhere near ready.

* In late March, after more delays, they finally told us there was a problem getting the CMS to work with our existing server. We tried to troubleshoot the problem and then managed to set up a new server for them after a couple of weeks. Ever since then ************ has used the problem with the host as their excuse for not doing the work as promised.

* From April they had unfettered access to the new host with all our content transferred over. Nothing got done.

* Throughout May and June I sent demands that the work be done. More promises with very little progress. In mid June I started threatening to take this public and to tell other webmasters not to hire them. That got them moving, at least. A few changes were made… and then nothing.

* I have been making repeated demands for a refund since May. They refuse.

* These people are some of the worst communicators I’ve ever encountered. Days and weeks go by without replies. There was one point where they didn’t reply to any of my repeated emails for three weeks. And then they said it was because there’d been some kind of email glitch. Funny, but they always seemed to get the emails when I said I was going public with my problems.

Start of July I left a very, VERY angry message on their answering machine. Suddenly, the emails worked again and work was being done. It looked like we might finally, finally, get a finished CMS.

Alas, no. They disappeared again. Barely a tenth of our content has been added to the site and I haven’t heard from them since the 12th July.

They seem to think the job is done. It’s not. What we have is a nice-looking site with almost nothing on it, no further information on how to work it and a company who is not interested in fixing the semi-working CMS they’ve created.

I have been threatening to take this public since May; this is overdue. The reason I held back is because the threat to ruin their reputation seemed to work for a while. But I’m over it. This farce has gone on for long enough. Now we just have to walk away from the whole sorry affair and start again.

It hurts to be financially ripped off but that’s not the real problem. For me, it’s the complete and utter waste of seven months of my time – time that I could have used doing something useful and positive. Instead I’ve been sitting here waiting for this thing to be finished.

I’ve got so many things that I want to do with FTG. Unfortunately I decided I’d put off any changes until we had the new member’s area up and running; it felt like I’d be duplicating work otherwise. So I’ve been spinning my wheels, frittering away my time on a few side projects, wasting time on Twitter and Facebook and waiting. Waiting for “tomorrow”, for “this afternoon”, for “this Friday”. It’s pretty easy to lose half your life waiting for someone else like that, especially when you expect things to be done in the near future.

It’s been very hard for me. I would lie awake at night composing angry emails to these people, trying to work out how to make them do what we’d hired them to do. At one point I went to bed for several days, crying because everything seemed pointless. I’ve had to delay travel and delay my plans to make the film because I felt I had to clear up this mess before moving on to other things. I had every intention of spending the summer in the Northern Hemisphere; instead I’m here, cold in my office as the sun dips below the horizon.

And I do wonder if I’m the most gullible person in the world. Surely I should have known better than to let it all drag on for so long? The problem was that they kept saying they were working on it. And I’d get a bit here, a bit there… the hope was always dangling in front of me that maybe, just maybe, it really would be done by Friday. Maybe we hadn’t wasted all this time and money and we could move on with our lives. It was always just there, over the horizon, if only I’d be patient and give them a bit more time…

And while ************ have been untruthful and uncommunicative, I suspect they’re not really scammers. It’s just that they’re massively incompetent. They took on a job that they didn’t really know how to do and then they wouldn’t front up and be honest about it. If only they’d said: “Sorry, we can’t do this after all, here’s your money back,” then we could have been spared this disaster. But no. Instead they’ve lied, ignored me, treated me with contempt, wasted my time and, ultimately, not done the work they were paid to do.

So, Google spider, chew on this please: ************ and the parent company ************ ripped us off. Do not hire them. Do not use them for any design or programming work. They are dishonest and have treated us very badly. Do not hire or work with ************.

I will be posting a full timeline of this saga on a blogspot blog. It details every email and every broken promise. ************ will say that it’s our fault for expecting too much, or the fault of the host, or any one of the myriad of excuses I’ve been given. None of them wash anymore.

The fact remains: we paid ************ $3000 to create a new member’s area for For The Girls with all our content ready to go. They have not delivered it after seven months. We have been ripped off. There’s no other way to look at it.

So there it is. The full sad and sorry saga. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 19 times over 7 months and the story goes up all over the internet. Fair’s fair.

Yes ************, it turns out that you really do value your reputation at $3 grand.

Update: 9.40pm Friday night. The company has contacted me offering a partial refund. I have therefore redacted their name from this post. If they don’t come through with the refund, it goes back up as originally posted.

I’m not going to delete this post. It expresses the stress and frustration I’ve experienced for 7 months. Getting a refund does not compensate me for my lost time and lost opportunities. No amount of money will make up for that.

Update 23rd August: The designers have contacted me and said that unknown persons are making threats via email on my behalf. Let me state unequivocally that I have nothing to do with this, I do not know who these people are and I’d very much like them to stop. It is not helping. I am still waiting on most of this refund but I do not need shit like this getting in the way. I also have no control over any other webpages that my link to this post or who have reproduced my original Tweets on the topic. I also have no desire to make threats to this company or the people involved. I simply want my money back.

Gorgeous cartoon from Stuff No One Told Me, via Erika Lust.

I think we need to make this point a little more often. Romance novels are often derisively called “porn for women” and, while this is inaccurate in a lot of ways, it does make a point about unrealistic fantasies. Both porn and romance/fairytales offer a fantasy version of the opposite sex and depict sex and relationships in a very unrealistic way.

Interestingly, there isn’t the same moral panic about girls reading teenage romance novels as there is about boys looking at porn. But maybe it’s something we need to talk about more.

Just speaking from personal experience, I used to love Sweet Dreams and similar girly romance books when I was 14 and it led to plenty of confusing experiences when I finally got boys to pay attention to me. I expected them to act a certain way and floundered when they didn’t. I wouldn’t say it was a major problem, really, but it meant I was somewhat deluded about how this whole “love” thing was supposed to work.

Thankfully, it all worked out OK for me in the end and I did marry my Prince Charming. I just had to get used to the fact that he farts.*

Still, it’s a question worth asking: do romance novels encourage girls to have a warped view of men? Of relationships? Of sex? And does it feed into the general world view that sells Men Are From Mars-type books? Does it encourage the Cosmo-style idea that men are mysterious creatures who are afraid of committment and must be seduced with feminine wiles?

Or is this another case of not giving young women enough credit? Are romance novels, like porn, just a bit of easy entertainment?

And since I’m asking questions, here’s one: why don’t boys (in general) read romance? Is it because, like porn for women, there are no books that actually dare to offer male-friendly stories that focus mainly on love and relationships?

It’s an intriguing idea, romance for men. I’m now wondering what it would look like. Excuse me while I go away and see if I can find anything like it on the net.

* As do I!

It was my birthday yesterday. I’m now 37. This is a prospect that is not very promising. I’m rapidly heading for 40 and the wrinkles are getting deeper. Before I was in my mid-thirties which is perfectly respectable but I think 37 is a bit of a tipping point. Like most people, I still think I’m really only about 21 inside and I don’t think anyone really accepts the age they are. It’s kinda scary the way the years creep by.

Still, I had a great time going out to a restaurant and going on a river cruise complete with Dixieland jazz. Today was the inevitable big hangover.

Every year I quote T.S. Eliot:

I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

But this year I should add a spot of Yeats:

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

And maybe a bit of Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… Fanta Pants.” – Marieke Hardy

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind 24 hours. I’ve got no work done at all because I’ve been glued to Twitter, news sites and the TV as the Australian political landscape shifted before my eyes.

Australia now has its first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. She was not directly elected to this role; rather, she’s now in the top job after a leadership spill that saw members of the ruling Labor party vote for her rather than Kevin Rudd. Our Westminster style of government can be brutal like this and part of me is a little sad that it all had to happen this way.

Nonetheless, as I watched Julia being sworn in as PM by our first ever female Governor-General, I felt a little shiver. I was watching a defining moment in our history. Finally, a woman holds the highest political office in the land. As someone said on Twitter: “At last, Australia has moved in to the 20th Century.”

Australia was only the second country in the world to give women the vote in 1901 so we’re overdue for this. A timeline of other first female leaders shows that 43 other nations have installed women as prime ministers or presidents before us. The very first was Sri Lankan Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960; Margaret Thatcher was the 6th.

Julia Gillard has been in parliament since 1998 and was Deputy Prime Minister from 2007 til now. I’m not sure if she’s going to make any of the political changes I desperately want her to make, like dumping the internet filter policy or properly implementing policies to prevent further climate change. In theory she’s a leftie but the last couple of years have shown that she’s really a political pragmatist with a strong predilection for spin. Politically, she could well be a huge disappointment for me.

Still, I’m feeling far too happy that she’s got the job. Only 3 days ago Kevin Rudd was kowtowing to the Christian Right via a closed webcast to churches. Julia has gone on record as saying she’s “non-religious” which means we might see an end to the increasingly disturbing sway of Christians over our government.

Demographically, Julia is also very unusual… and my kind of girl. She’s unmarried (but in a happy de facto relationship) and made the decision not to have children. This is groundbreaking stuff if you consider she’s flouted the prevailing wisdom of “family values”. She’s been abused for being “barren” and therefore not understanding the lives and needs of Australian women and naturally I call bullshit on that. I do think however, that her decision not to have kids has helped her get to the top job. I think politics is such a nasty business that you have to give it all your attention; most men in power leave child-raising to their wives and do this without criticism. She should be offered the same respect. She made a decision that would mean she didn’t have to make compromises with her career or family and I absolutely admire her for that.

Of course, I can’t help but feel supportive of her because she’s a redhead like me. We’re a minority and easily picked on in this country. The twitter feed was awash with bluey, ginger and ranga jokes (”I for one welcome our new ranga overlords” was popular). And hell, even I like to use the term “Fanta Pants” because it’s one of the more amusing phrases. We redheads don’t get that many role models – the best I could do was Sarah Ferguson in the 80s – so it’s great to see one of us up there. Julia even mentioned it in her speech, that she might be the first redhead PM (not true, though, that was James Scullin in the 20s). One of the more amusing cartoon depictions labels her as the Powerfox, a name which seems rather apt.

The hair is one thing. It will be interesting to see if the media gives in and starts making comments on her clothes and general appearance. I hope she doesn’t let them get away with it. Whatever her politics, Julia Gillard is a very clever and powerful woman who does not deserve to be marginalised because of her gender.

Still, she’s already been called an ugly, witchy, shrill bitch. All the usual terms for a powerful woman. I’m sure she’s used to it by now.

So there it is. In spite of my happiness with Julia’s elevation, I still won’t be supporting Labor. I still think anyone who cares about free speech and human rights should vote for The Sex Party in the Senate and the Greens in the lower house.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled smut.

Pics from the SMH, News.com.au and Crikey.

I need to say something. Something that’s pretty obvious really: I’m a capitalist. I make porn to make money. It’s how I earn my living.

And it seems that some would argue that because I’m trying to make a profit from porn, this immediately means that anything I have to say on the topic of censorship or feminist porn is therefore tainted or hasn’t any weight. I got this aggravation from a certain angsty and light-on-for-facts female blogger last year and I’m feeling it again in the wake of the Our Porn, Ourselves conversation.

Audacia Ray, who I very much admire and respect, wrote this in her piece about the current stoush:

…there are plenty of people involved in the mainstream hetero porn world who are proponents of free speech being generously applied to the adult industry (dicey legal construction of “obscenity” be damned!), but their commitment to free speech is more about protecting their business interests than being renegade First Amendment advocates. Violet is very much not one of the motivated-by-porn-profit people, her interest in porn is actually about having an interest in the sexualities of women.

Audacia’s dichotomy makes me rather uncomfortable. It suggests that any effort to protect free speech should be somehow pure and untainted by the profit motivation. It’s a troubling assertion because it seems to suggest that those of us making a living from porn and protesting censorship (as I do regularly) are only motivated by a desire to protect an income stream. That’s a little too black-and-white for my liking.

Yes, I hate the idea of censorship because it means I wouldn’t be able to earn a living making porn. But that’s not the only reason, nor is it the biggest motivation. I hate it when other people tell me what I can and cannot read, see, hear, film or say. It offends me as a human being. Running a commercial adult business does not change that motivation. And I don’t doubt that John Stagliano, who is facing obscenity prosecutions, feels the same way.

The same applies with regards to the discussion of adult material, what it means and whether it may be a problem in our society. I’m a webmistress who is part of the adult industry but that doesn’t mean I don’t strongly believe in the ideals of feminist porn or automatically reject any valid criticism of porn. Yes, I have commercial issues to consider but it doesn’t negate my ideals or determination to make porn better. I’m not a saint, but then, is anybody?

Gail Dines, the organiser of the Stop Porn Culture conference, has dismissed me, Violet Blue and any other women who enjoy porn thusly:
“Women defending porn are likely deluded by the near trillion dollar industry.”

Ah, false consciousness is fun, isn’t it? You can dismiss almost anything by patting the other person on the head and telling them they “just don’t understand.”

I’m not deluded. I’m also not engaged in a purely cynical exercise just to make a buck in this alleged “trillion dollar industry”. If I were, I would have been selling Jenna Jameson products from the moment I started, not making porn for women like myself.

And I seriously doubt that all the women who are coming forward to defend the idea of freedom of speech and sexual expression aren’t just dupes of the evil porn industry. No doubt most of them have spent time thinking about porn and also struggling with the idea that women aren’t supposed to like it, on top of fact that so much of it is just plain bad. A woman who is brave enough to say she likes porn has given the issue some serious thought.

Unlike Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan who happily wrote an entire column supporting the anti-porn conference without bothering to do a skerrick of research.

In any case, my point is this: Yes, I’m a capitalist but I also care deeply about feminism and freedom of speech. And I think that one should not preclude the other.

Can you believe it, it’s my 6th Blogaversary! Actually, I’m a day late, I forgot! Anyway, I wrote my first blog post in the old format blog on June 7th, 2004. I’m now on my 2nd script and third design.

Added to that, it’s For The Girls‘ 7th birthday in June. I can’t believe how quickly that time went. I have to admit, I really didn’t think our little site would still be going strong after 7 years, let alone fearlessly soldiering through the collapse of the mainstream porn industry and the general bad financial climate. I’m so proud of FTG, what it stands for and what it’s achieved over the years. The site isn’t going away any time soon; women still seem to enjoy what we offer, even though the range of options available to straight chicks has diversified greatly in the last couple of years.

I’m looking forward to expanding our content with more self-produced movies in the near future. And we’ll still keep adding good quality articles and stories as well.

To celebrate our birthday, we’re going to be running another competition. In the past it’s been an erotic fiction competition but this year we want to do short films. It hasn’t been finalised just yet but watch this space for the official announcement.

I’ve never seen 30 Rock. It’s on that thing called a TV that used to entertain me before the internet.

In any case, apparently an episode of 30 Rock featured a discussion about porn for women that went like this:

Jack Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin) is talking to a guy named Dave from Kablevision about new ideas for the network. Jack says they should do porn for women.

Dave’s response: “Jack, women hate porn. Almost as much as men hate going to outlet malls.”

Jack responds: “Yes, women hate porn. Our porn. But women do have one insatiable need — to jabber. And it doesn’t matter if you have a headache, or you’re not in the mood, or you’re about to go to Don Geiss’s funeral, they barge right into your office and start complaining about a boyfriend or a co-worker, and you’re supposed to sit there and nod and tell them they’re right. And the more you give it to them, the more they want it.”

Dave says: “I tell ya, sometimes my wife will be blathering on about something, and I’ll think, ‘I’m more than just a pair of ears, you know? I’m a person … who thinks about sex every seven seconds!’”

(Quotes taken from this blog post.)

Seems the writers of 30 Rock think “porn for women” isn’t actual porn. Rather it’s a simple matter of showing men who listen attentively. Because that’s all we women want. Because we talk so much (and isn’t that annoying?).

I’m surprised they didn’t include some witty comments about shoes while they were at it.

I could go over all the same arguments I’ve written about before when it comes to this rather tired joke about porn for women. But XKCD has done it for me.

You may have noticed that my blog was kinda dead for a week. That’s because I’d tripped off to Melbourne to attend the Global Atheist Conference.

I wasn’t going to write about it on this blog. After all, it should be about porn, right? And I don’t want to alienate any of my readers who may be religious in their own way. But I feel the need to have a bit of a ramble about myself and what I experienced at the convention because it touches on the two things that define this blog: feminism and porn.

As a teenager I was a Christian but we never went to church. My family were very liberal in their beliefs and we didn’t go in for all the hymn-singing and praying stuff. As the years went by I whittled down my idea of religion into a fairly nebulous blob of “spirituality”. I thought that I’d probably go to heaven when I died because I was nice and surely God would see that. Beyond that, I didn’t think about it much. I’d read my bible, knew a lot of it was horribly violent and nonsensical but figured I liked the philosophy of Jesus. He was a good guy, like Ghandi. Still, I had serious problems with his followers and their idea of morality, particularly sexual morality.

It all changed when I read the God Delusion last year. I couldn’t fault the argument of Richard Dawkins against the existence of God/gods. I realised that I was actually an atheist but I hadn’t really examined my beliefs properly up until that point. It was confronting to realise that yes, I was going to die and that would be the end of me. At the same time, that realisation is rather freeing. I’ve got one life, I need to make the best of it. When I die, my non-existence will be exactly the same as it was before I was born.

SO… what’s this got to do with porn and feminism?

Fact is, religion is a major factor in the way we approach sex and gender. Unfortunately, the impact of religion on sexuality has been largely negative. The Christian/Jewish/Muslim view of sex as being sinful and dirty informs how we construct our own sexuality; it shapes what we find to be sexy. The idea of women as either Madonnas or whores is reflected in porn’s treatment of women.

You see the results in the very language of porn: how women are sluts and whores, how porn titles often use the words sinful, secret, dirty, filthy. I’ve seen people say that sex is best when it’s dirty. There’s so much guilt and shame surrounding the act that we rope in these emotions and fetishize them. The result is sexual expression that is often problematic, sexist, unrealistic and demeaning.

On top of that, so much of the opposition to porn comes from religious people and is informed by a religious morality that dictates a very narrow view of sexuality: that monogomy is the only acceptable form of relationship; that homosexuality is wrong; that “promiscuity” is sinful; that certain sex acts such as anal sex are evil; that masturbation is harmful. The push to label all porn as “addictive” has its roots in the desire of some religious people to control the sex lives of others.

Similarly, I find that the lives of women the world over are negatively affected by religion. All the monotheistic religions, Hinduism and even some strands of Buddhism teach that women are inferior. The entire basis of Islam seems to rest on the idea that men cannot control their sexual desires but it is women who are responsible for the sexual behaviour of men. Across the world oppression, violence and rape are regularly perpetrated against women in the name of God.

One of the best things about the atheist convention was that it was openly feminist. There was no animosity towards the concept of feminism whatsoever. The equality of men and women was accepted as self evident by everyone there. It occurred to me that I’ve rarely felt so comfortable with expressing feminist ideas. There was no animosity, no nervousness from the guys, no hesitant expressions of “I’m not a feminist but…” It was all relaxed and intelligent. Imagine how far we could get if all discourses on feminism were like that?

One of the highlights for me was the speech by Bangladeshi author and feminist Taslima Nasrin who is currently in exile from her home country and under the threat of several fatwas from Islamic fundamentalists. She was forced out of India in 2007 because she dared to write an article criticizing the burka and the way women are treated by Islam. She said: “Religion is made for the pleasure and comfort of men. I don’t know why any woman would subscribe to it.” For her, there is no compromise between Islam and feminism. She believes that a woman who wears the veil cannot call herself a feminist because she hasn’t properly analysed the religion that seeks to oppress her. This is from a woman who was brought up as a Muslim.

As she described the pain of living in exile and the constant fear of assassination, I blinked back tears. The audience gave her a standing ovation. Here is what feminism is really about, I thought. Here is a woman risking death in order to speak her mind, speaking out against women’s oppression.

And then I thought, I’m a feminist because I’m an atheist and I’m an atheist because I’m a feminist.

At the convention, we discussed a lot of things: philosophy, ethics, evolutionary biology, science and politics. While there was a huge diversity of opinion on show, one thing we all agreed on is the idea of a secular society. Church and state need to be separate. Political action should be based on evidence and reason, not personal belief.

Everyone has the right to their own religion (or lack thereof) but they should keep it to themselves. When we start telling each other how to behave according to religious beliefs, conflict and oppression are the inevitable result.

Every day I see examples of the way that religion is exerting too much influence on our society and causing harm. The bans on gay marriage, the growth of abstinence-based sex education in the US, the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandals, the Pope saying that condoms are not the answer to AIDS, the plan to censor the internet in Australia, the ongoing oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and Iran, the widespread practice of female genital mutilation, the attacks on reproductive choice and the right to abortion for women, the tax-free status given to churches so they can prosletyse, the death threats against those who speak out against Islam. The murder of Dr Tiller. The whole Arab/Israeli conflict. 9/11… I could go on.

Because I oppose these things, I’m an atheist. And it’s part of my larger philosophy, one that includes feminism and what the psychologists stupidly call “erotophilia” – an enjoyment of sex without shame. I’m also a humanist; I believe in a secular society, freedom of speech and universal human rights.

I hope that there are religious people out there who also believe in these things and will stand up for them. In that we have lots of common ground.

I hope this post hasn’t put off any of my readers; I realise this is one of those issues that can be confronting and I certainly didn’t want to upset anyone with it. Rather, it’s simply a statement of where I’m at right now, and why I felt it important to attend that convention.

I think that the path to atheism is a very personal thing; you can’t really “convert” people to this way of thinking. They have to be ready to go there themselves. There’s no dazzling miracles on display, no mystical experiences to be had. Only the wonder of the physical universe and life on Earth and a sense of amazement at the improbable fact of your own existence.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled porn.

So, since I’m being nostalgic, allow me to introduce you to this amazing timeline: the history of internet memes. It traces the rise and fall of the various web fads that have kept us amused over the years.

Remember Mr T Ate My Balls? Or Bert Is Evil? How about the Dancing Baby or the Hamster Dance or Numa Numa? Badger Badger Badger Badger! Bananaphone! Wharbargl!

And of course, anything is possible at Zombo.com (damn, that site still makes me giggle).

If I needed anything to prove that I’m getting on a bit, this site is probably it. There’s part of me thinking: how can you feel nostalgic about the internet? It’s this bright, shiny new thing where you can… oh… yeah. That’s right.

It’s now ten years since I bought my first domain name.

This means I’ve been creating erotica online for a whole decade – 2000 to 2010. When I started out I never imagined I’d be doing it for this long, nor that it would take me as far as it has.

In the last ten years I’ve seen the online adult industry evolve from single images on slow dial-up to a million free streaming movies. It’s gone from an initial startup phase, through a goldrush and into a major bust. It’s has moved from “tease” to full-on hardcore and seriously nasty stuff at every turn. It’s also seen numerous attempts to legislate it out of existence.

It all started for me in 1999 when I decided to write an article about online women’s porn. Conducting research, I went into the local library and started looking up porn sites on their internet terminal. You could get away with it back then. I found a whole bunch of gay sites and not much else – except for Purve.com, the first porn for women site.

I ended up chatting to the Australian woman who ran Purve and, after the article appeared in November 1999, she encouraged me to get into the business of adult webmastering. I set about learning the whole deal – what jpegs and gifs were, how to become an affiliate, how to make rudimentary websites. I went and bought Microsoft Front Page, despite howls of derision from my friends who all hand-coded. I didn’t care. It did the job.

The main aim was advertising. Put up a site with a few free photos, preferably small, under 20kb each and advertise paysites. Hopefully your average surfer would like what they saw and sign up for the good stuff. Back then, you could only get good quality pics and movies (occasionally) if you joined a paysite.

One of my first sites was Grandma Scrotum’s Sex Tips, originally hosted for free by a now defunct company (free hosting was the way to go in those days – bandwidth was really expensive. Unfortunately it made life difficult when the host went under and you had to keep moving your site all the time)

I also had a go at promoting mainstream porn for men but I wasn’t that interested. For me, porn for women was the main game. It presented a whole new “niche” that was being completely ignored by the “big guns” (still is).

I can still remember the day I got my first signup… and then my first cheque. The amount wasn’t huge but the thrill was substantial. I saw the potential to make some pocket money on the side while continuing to be a freelance journalist.

And then the signups kept rolling in, more each week. Suddenly it seemed I could make a living out of advertising porn. Which was cool. I tried selling books as well through Amazon but the commission of 5% could never match the 50-60% I could earn with smut. Especially since making sales was so easy.

I didn’t really tell many people what was going on. It was good for a laugh sometimes, seeing the surprised looks on their faces. Nobody expects me to be doing what I do, even today. They assume I’m some sort of serious, bookish type. Which I am, of course, with a mischievous, evil pornographer interior.

From 2000 to mid 2003 I continued to make sites advertising the five or six subscription sites that existed for straight women. (Playgirl wasn’t part of the equation; they were unable to use the Playgirl domain until 2006 thanks to a court ruling. Shady operators had used the domain for fraud. On top of that, the company seemed to dismiss the idea of the internet as a waste of time.)

I wasn’t alone in wanting to make porn for women. I was part of a small group of other female webmasters who wanted to market to females. Every day we’d chat about the subject on the Women’s Erotica Network message board, discussing what it was that women wanted to see and how best to appeal to chicks like us.

The rest of the adult webmastering sphere weren’t interested. We often had large online arguments where the guys happily pronounced: “women don’t buy porn, they’re not visual, selling to women is a waste of time.” Eventually we stopped arguing. Their loss.

The technology progressed, as did marketing techniques. In the beginning were webrings and picture posts. You could create a seriously ugly page and fill it with ads and make sales. Then came linklists, consisting of large collections of adult links, supported by advertising. Ms Naughty is one of those. The linklist rules about the structure of free sites became rather rigid, requiring a minimum number of photos and a restricted number of ads. Then we saw the emergence of Thumbnail Gallery Posts (TGPs), comprising of single pages of thumbnails rather than full sites.

More and more webmaster message boards sprang up. These became the primary place to network with others and advertise. The first online industry conventions occurred.

The main aim at that point was to get listed in Alta Vista. Number 1 on that search engine was a licence to print money. You’d also submit to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and about 100 others. The results varied wildly from search engine to search engine. You’d also hope to get listed in the DMOZ Open Directory Project. I think it might have been 2002 when we started to prefer this “Google” thing that seemed to always give better results. I liked it straight away because my sites did better in Google than Alta Vista or Yahoo.

Then, in 2003, our little group of porn for women marketers began to go our own way. I had a disagreement with the owner of Purve, as did fellow webmistress Jane. In the aftermath we decided to set up our own adult site for women, modelling it on Australian Women’s Forum. In June 2003, For The Girls was launched.

Almost immediately we hit a snag: our credit card processor collapsed in the first month and made off with our initial profit. Thankfully we were better off than some who lost thousands. In 2003 American Express had decided to pull out of CC processing and Visa had introduced strict rules and a “danger fee” for adult sites. Not long after that Paypal announced it would not process for adult either and subsequently froze the accounts of many people, confiscating their “sinful” cash. We saved FTG by getting an account with CCBill and carrying on. Thankfully, CCBill is one of the few surviving third-party processors; at least 3 others went under in that year.

2004 saw blogs become popular in the mainstream. I launched the Ms Naughty blog that year in a very simple format; Wordpress wasn’t really an option at that time. I upgraded it to WP in 2006.

In 2004 the Bush administration, with the help of Attorney General John Ashcroft, introduced major changes to the 18 U.S.C. § 2257A law which ostensibly exists to prevent minors from appearing in porn (models must prove they are over 18). The new ruling changed the definition of “secondary producer” of adult content, making adult webmasters liable for any adult image that appeared on their site, even if they had nothing to do with originally creating that image.

The law imposed incredbily onerous compliance rules and allowed the government to essentially raid your house without notice or a warrant to “check your records.” I saw plenty of successful smaller webmasters driven out of the business by this new law, fearful of its implications. In 2005 it all went to court… and stayed there, it seems. A 2007 ruling said it was unconstitutional while another upheld it.

The 2257 thing was yet another attempt to restrict the spread of online porn. The 1998 Child Online Protection Act tried it and was struck down. The Communications Decency Act also had a go at it. There’s also been numerous prosecutions for obscenity, the most notable being John Stagliano in 2008. Nothing ever seems to stick.

Meanwhile, I just kept writing erotic fiction and searching out female-friendly pics and movies for For The Girls and my other sites. We held an annual fiction competition from 2005 to 2008 with much success.

Video On Demand sites had begun to be popular by about 2005, although AEBN had been offering their service since 2000. They began to challenge the old subscription-based paysite model in the second half of the decade.

In 2006 I remember going on to one of the adult webmaster boards and asking my peers: “What do you think of this Youtube thing? Should I embed this code on my page or will it break my site?” At the time I didn’t see that Youtube would become the future of porn. I don’t think many of us did. Yet it felt like only days before flash video was everywhere and porn tube sites sprung up like mushrooms, many offering full-length movies for free. Of course, it hasn’t ended well.

2007 and 2008 saw the Russians and the cheaters move into traditional webmastering in a big way, much to the frustration of the rest of us. A huge influx of new webmasters began catering to a dwindling number of surfers. Free porn was everywhere. The gold rush was over.

In the last two years I’ve seen an awful lot of old-timers sell up and leave the business, frustrated at constantly having to fight cheaters, liars, content thieves and scammers, seeing major companies beginning to rely on dodgy billing practices to keep themselves in profit. In the meantime the audience has come to expect that porn should always be free.

At the same time, I’ve seen the rise and rise of alternative, sex positive and feminist porn. In 2006 Good For Her started the Feminist Porn Awards and they’re due to have their fourth event in April. Early dyke porn pioneers CyberDyke have been joined by Shine Louise Houston and her Crash Pad films and site. Courtney Trouble’s No Fauxxx continues to cut across genre boundaries by offering all kinds of different erotica, gay, lesbian, straight and genderqueer. The original alt porn site Suicide Girls has had its share of trouble but other alt sites have stepped in to fill the gap. Meanwhile, the lovely Tasty Trixie has built her own adult empire, being in this business longer than me.

I’ve seen at least six porn for women paysites go out of business… which is always a pain in the arse because I have to take down ads. In 2010 there aren’t many subscription sites actively targeting straight women as their main audience; I’m proud to say that For The Girls is still going strong after nearly 7 years in the game.

Way back at the start of 2000 , when the new Milennium and the Sydney Olympics made everyone feel shiny and peaceful, I had no idea that I’d be sitting here in 2010, getting wrinkly and hunched and thick around the middle, still making a living from online porn. The internet has been very good to me; it’s provided an opportunity to become my own boss and to create a virtual magazine that publishes the quality work of many excellent writers. It has let me carve out a space where I can promote a healthy and positive version of erotica and given me a small voice for women amid a rising tide of sometimes horrible male-oriented porn.

And it’s let me do all this while wearing pyjama bottoms and daggy old t-shirts.

Will I still be doing this ten years from now? I don’t know. I can’t even think ten weeks ahead at this stage. But I don’t feel the urge to give up any time soon. I’ve still got about 20 domains waiting for me to develop them. And a feature film to make. And an internet filter to fight.

And who knows what kind of technology we’ll have in 2020? Perhaps all those promises of “virtual reality sex” will actually come true. Either that or the internet will have become so controlled and censored by world governments that online porn has become a distant memory.

I do know that we’re going to have to start re-negotiating the concept of paying for porn. The expectation that everything will be free is creating problems. As I wrote in this post, the audience can’t expect producers to keep making porn if it results in a loss. Especially if those producers are trying to break the mould and offer something positive and different. It will all grind to a halt eventually, and I don’t want to see that. I want to see change; it’s what I wanted from the moment I started in 2000. We need better, more positive porn and the way to make it happen is for the audience to get behind those people who are trying to create change.

It’s gonna be an interesting decade, I suspect.

I’m finally back after another extended break away from the internet. It really is very good for me to go offline and experience the “real world” every now and again. I had a wonderful festive break with my family including much vicarious fun with my nephew and nieces. I’m not going to have kids of my own but I do love playing with my small relatives.

It’s midsummer here so my Christmas and New Year involved long days filled with heat, swimming, good food and white wine. The pic above is of the beach where we went fishing a few days ago.

And now I’m back at work, trying to unscramble my alcohol-addled brain and face the challenges of a new year. 2010 will see me doing even more travelling and I suspect I’ll be spending several months in the US making my planned film and building my small porn empire. And if the internet filter gets the go ahead, maybe I’ll have to stay there.

In any case, here’s to a happy and successful 2010.

Scanning in old photos a few weeks ago I came across the pics we took at the Sydney performance of Annie Sprinkle’s Post Porn Modernist in 1996. Annie positively insisted that the audience took photos of the show so these blurry images are the result of our participation. I’ve also still got one of the rice-filled shakers we used to create a wall of sound during Annie’s orgasmic meditation.

This show was like a first step into a wider world for me. I’d had my interest in sex and sexuality stirred by the then-risque pages of Australian Women’s Forum mag but beyond a few furtive visits to a sex shop, I was still pretty naive.

And then Annie Sprinkle came to town amid much fanfare and negative press. I don’t think I paid much attention until the day the police paid her a visit. Suddenly it became imperative that uniformed officers determine if “obscene” acts were being performed in the Belvoir Theatre, something that couldn’t be allowed to go on if drinks were being served.

The libertine in me was galvanised. I booked two tickets to the show, partly to say “fuck you” to conservative censors who would tell me what I could and could not see.

Once I was in the theatre, I found myself feeling rather nervous. What was I in for? Was this really my kind of thing?

And then Annie appeared in all her positive, cheerful, bewigged glory and related the fascinating tale of a life lived to its fullest. She made us laugh and she made us share in the sad times. She also made us squirm. I can still remember my shock at hearing the story of a customer who enjoyed anal fisting: “I’d reach up and around and tickle his heart,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. I think that’s the first time I’d even heard of fisting, let alone the anal kind.

In the interval she invited audience members to come down and have a photo taken with her boobs on their head – for $15 of course. I was too shy and I still regret not doing it. The above photos show that we enjoyed it vicariously.

And then she performed her amazing breath orgasm which was just a stunning thing to watch (I actually tried it a year later with mixed success). It was a mind-expanding experience, to be in the same room as a woman who could achieve orgasm through breathing and mind power alone. I was just so impressed and Annie has been a heroine for me ever since.

Indeed, she showed me that sex can be a positive and feminist experience and that one can make a living out of prostitution or porn or sexually-based art without having to be all those negative things that society insists a woman should be. In a way, Annie’s Post Porn Modernist put me on the path that I’m still walking today: a feminist pornographer out to change the world.

I dug up my old Sydney Morning Herald and Age data CDs to see if I could find the news reports of Annie’s visit here. They’re so out of date they don’t work on Windows Vista but I did salvage some articles after much mucking around. Here’s a sample of some of the media from Annie’s 1996 visit.

Sprinkle’s tour into realm of the censors
By Mark Ray

IN a city accustomed to sordid revelations at the Wood Royal Commission on corruption within the New South Wales police force, New York-based performance artist Annie Sprinkle seemed an odd target for a burst of censorship fervor.

Sprinkle, a former US prostitute and star of 200 pornographic movies, has just finished a sell-out week-long season of her show ‘Post Porn Modernist’ at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre, despite threatened police action against the theatre. The show opens at the Athenaeum in Melbourne on Tuesday for a two-week season.

During the week, the Belvoir Street Theatre was told its liquor licence might be revoked because of Sprinkle’s explicit one-woman show. There are no longer any censorship laws in NSW but police action against the show was threatened by recourse to provisions of the Liquor Licensing Act.

By Friday that threat had been abandoned – apparently after the Minister for Police suggested to his commissioner that the moves against Sprinkle were inappropriate.

‘Post Porn Modernist’ is certainly explicit, but the atmosphere at one performance here this week seemed unlike that of a sleazy porn show.

An audience of apparently unremarkable suburbanites, dedicated fans and the curious broad-minded staged no walkouts, made no complaints but responded with much laughter…

WHAT I LIKED ABOUT ANNIE.
SHANNON HALBERT, 26, high-voltage linesman.
“It was bizarre. Much more spiritual than I expected. I thought it’d be the life and times of a porno queen but it’s a decent show.”
AMANDA GARLAND, 29, film producer.
“I didn’t know what to expect but it was nice to see sexuality brought out so openly and presented so positively.”
ROBERT SKAPPEL, 50, interior decorator.
“I liked the fact that she included spirituality into her sexual experience. I’m all for that message.”
DIANA COXSHEAD, 35, naturopath and pharmacist.
“She seemed most comfortable in the last part of the program, going into the spiritual, tantric side.”

- The Age, 31st March 1996

Annie’s Happy Ritual
By Jim Schembri
…The reaction to the show has been strictly divided, Sprinkle says. “I’ve had the best audiences in Australia and the worst press. The audiences have been the most appreciative of anywhere I’ve been in the world and the press has been the most vicious.

“I’ve been misquoted here in Australia more than I’ve ever been. I wouldn’t say (the coverage has been) the most conservative, (but) I would say (it’s been) the most misinformed, the most taken out of context, the most uneducated. And very judgmental, extremely judgmental.”

Sprinkle says she’d never bring Post-Porn Modernist back to Australia because of the stress of bad press, but will bring her new show MetamorphoSex here. “I would have to think hard if I’d want to bring something back that has that potential to be controversial. The bad press inspires a lot of hatred.

I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
- The Age, 4th April 1996

In deep water with Annie
By Emma Tom

NOT LONG into the all-nude Annie Sprinkle bath-house interview, I wish to inform Houston that we have a problem.

Note-taking in a ginseng bath is turning out to be almost as difficult as the well-documented “where the hell do I put my wallet?” nudist nightclub dilemma.

Plus, for some weird reason, the unclothed subject matter is not proving conducive to family newspaper photographs. No matter how low we sink in the spa or how strategically placed the sauna towels, there’s always a stray nipple or three vying for camera attention.

This is Annie Sprinkle, live performance sextress and former porn film starlet, after all. Asking her to keep her money- makers out of the camera would be like asking Eva Cox for a lap dance. Just wouldn’t seem right…

- The Age, 29 March 1996

Reading through some of the other pieces I’m somewhat depressed that Australian society hasn’t progressed in the 13 years since Annie’s visit. A 1996 article called “Have We No Shame?” used Annie’s public cervix announcement as an excuse to bewail the alleged decline of society’s morals. You could easily reproduce the piece in today’s papers and the conservatives would happily nod along. The visit by the police was reproduced during the Henson art gallery censorship incident in 2008. Seems that Australia’s attitude to sex is still very furtive and juvenile.

Annie hasn’t come back and I don’t blame her. Looks like I’ll have to make the effort to go to the US and seek her out. Maybe then I can finally get that photo of her boobs on my head.