Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

I’m tits-deep in editing male masturbation scenes at present and currently feeling generally stressed about colour correction and exposure levels. Like you do. And then the other day I lost several hours perusing royalty-free music sites trying to find some ambient background music for a scene. Nothing seemed to fit. On a whim, I asked Twitter what people thought about music in porn.

It seems the resounding answer is no thanks. From what I’m seeing, porn viewers can do without having music playing over the top of sex scenes. They would infinitely prefer to hear the sounds of sex – the oohs, aahs and sundry squelching – than listen to the director’s latest musical thang. I did a bit of Googling and found similar thoughts here, here and here. Dutch women’s porn channel Dusk also said their surveys had found something similar. No music, thanks.

Obviously this isn’t a universal thing – some people don’t mind music if it adds to the general buildup or atmosphere. And others are real fans of the old boom chicka wow wow 70s stuff (although here’s a long rant against it).

I’ve used music in several of my porn scenes and I sometimes edit it into pre-existing non-exclusive porn clips. There’s a couple of reasons for using music. One is that it can add an extra emotional or dramatic element to a scene. I’ve got one male solo scene that’s been made moodier and more sensual thanks to a quiet backing track, one that could perhaps be described as an ambient drone. I’ve also seen indie porn scenes where the blaring rock song in the background helps to identify the location or the characters within the scene. In Petra Joy’s The Female Voyeur, the medieval orgy scene is made more exotic thanks to its intense, Middle-Eastern inspired soundtrack. In these cases the music rarely covers the sounds of sex; it’s there to complement rather than detract.

The other reason for using music is to cover up cuts and dodgy sound. In some cases the director may be issuing orders in the background which tends to spoil the fantasy a little. I’ve seen some clips where there’s no natural sound at all, just the music.

I can see why that would be annoying. And because many people listen to their own music while surfing – be it porn or something else – a standard backing track can be a hassle. It can also be jarring to have someone else’s musical taste inflicted on you.

This little bit of research has been useful to me. I still want to use music when it’s appropriate and when it enhances the scene. But if most people aren’t that keen on it, I’ll be looking to edit more “natural” soundscapes from now on. If nothing else this will save time and money, and that’s always a good thing.

By the way… is it Bow Chicka Wow Wow? Boom Chicka Wah Wah? Or Wakka Chikka Wakka Chicka? Whatever, I’ve included a vid of the classic 70s porn music above. Worth a listen just for the way Ron Jeremy talks about “a happy ass” at the start.

In searching for an image for this post I’ve found numerous porn music albums on Amazon. So here they are:

Related Posts:

• Porn Does Not Cause Rape
• Cabaret Desire Is Like Visual Erotic Fiction
• Berlin Porn Film Festival Documentary
• The Amazing, Inspiring Berlin Porn Film Festival 2011

For years, anti-porn activists have campaigned against porn on the basis that it increases acts of violence against women. In essence, they say that porn causes rape.

Today I thought I might sit down and compile a few resources that refute that claim. Because as far as I’m aware, there is still no reliable evidence to suggest that watching pornography induces men to rape.

I think the biggest piece of evidence against the claim is self evident. In the last 15 years, internet pornography has become freely available to anyone who wishes to view it. Yet there has been no substantial increase in the rape rate in that time. Indeed, US government statistics reveal that in that time, the rate of forcible rate dropped steadily. If the “porn causes rape” claim were true, we would have seen an increase in sexual assault rates. Obviously that is a very simplistic argument but it’s one that anti-porn people need to deal with. And they don’t.

One of the more interesting academic articles dealing with this issue is by Anthony D’Amato from Northwestern University School of Law. His paper Porn Up, Rape Down discusses the idea that there was an 85% reduction in sexual violence over the 25 years to 2003 (and the rate has kept falling since the paper was published). He goes on to posit that not only does porn NOT cause rape, he suggests that it may actually reduce rape, either by serving as a release valve or by demystifying sex. He concedes that the correlation does not equal causality and suggests further research.

A similar 2006 paper by Todd Kendall entitled Pornography, Rape and the Internet points out that rape rates decreased in US states where the internet was rapidly taken up. Interestingly, the growth in internet use had no effect on the rates of other crimes. Slate summed up the research in an article How The Web Prevents Rape. The Register also covers the topic here.

An earlier, pre-internet paper looked at rape rates in countries that had legalised porn and came to similar conclusions. Pornography, Sex Crime and Public Policy by Berl Kutchinsky was published in 1991. He writes:

The aggregate data on rape and other violent or sexual offences from four countries where pornography, including aggressive varieties, has become widely and easily available during the period we have dealt with would seem to exclude, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this availability has had any detrimental effects in the form of increased sexual violence.

Our knowledge about the contents, the uses and the users of pornography suggests that pornography does not represent a blueprint for rape, but is essentially an aphrodisiac, that is, food for the sexual fantasy of persons – mostly males- who like to masturbate

It should also be noted that this same conclusion was reached by Richard Nixon’s first inquiry into porn in 1970. Anthony D’Amato writes about working on the commission in his “Porn Up, Rape Down” paper. He says:

The Commission [on Obscenity and Pornography] concluded that there was no causal relationship between exposure to sexually explicit materials and delinquent or criminal behavior. The President was furious when he learned of the conclusion. Later President Reagan tried the same thing, except unlike his predecessor he packed the Commission with persons who passed his ideological litmus test. (Small wonder that I was not asked to participate.) This time, Reagan’s Commission on Pornography reached the approved result: that there does exist a causal relationship between pornography and violent sex crimes.

It’s not scientific to reach a conclusion and then set out to find data that backs your case, ignoring contradictory information. That is ideology, not research.

If anti-porn activists can give me real evidence that porn does cause rape, I’ll change my mind. But at this stage, based on the simple fact of dropping rape rates, I’m not seeing it.

One more link and quote to finish this post: a summary article from Scientific American which looked at various studies into porn and found that it was not harmful.

Contrary to what many people believe, recent research shows that moderate pornography consumption does not make users more aggressive, promote sexism or harm relationships. If anything, some researchers suggest, exposure to pornography might make some people less likely to commit sexual crimes.

The most common concern about pornography is that it indirectly hurts women by encouraging sexism, raising sexual expectations and thereby harming relationships. Some people worry that it might even incite violence against women. The data, however, do not support these claims. “There’s absolutely no evidence that pornography does anything negative,” says Milton Diamond, director of the Pacific Center for Sex and Society at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “It’s a moral issue, not a factual issue.”

PS. Even though the sample was far too small, this 2 year Canadian study of men’s porn surfing habits does provide some illumination as to the real reasons why men watch porn. What it does make clear is that porn is clearly only fantasy and that men are easily able to distinguish between porn and real life.

Related Posts:

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As a writer and editor of erotic fiction, I’m a big fan of sexy stories. Written erotica is at its best when it has the freedom to build characters, emotions and motivation before the inevitable sex scene, allowing the reader’s imagination to colour the scenario with fabulous detail.

Alas, the same can rarely be said for porn films. If the creators bother with any kind of plot, it’s often arbitrary and shallow. The “story” usually exists only to throw together flimsy reasons as to why people should fuck. There might be 3 minutes of “plot” before the inevitable 20 minutes of sex.

Cabaret Desire, the latest film from Erika Lust, is different. Here, the story is the main attraction. The film features stories about sex, to be sure, but the sex is part of the journey, not necessarily the ultimate goal. In switching the focus to the more traditional filmic aim of telling a story, Erika Lust shows us just how good – and how arousing – porn movies can be.

Cabaret Desire is set in an uber-trendy Bohemian salon called the Poetry Brothel. Patrons pay the poetry “whores” to tell them erotic stories. As the cocktails are served and the cool jazz continues, we settle in to hear four different sexy adventures, each told via means of a voiceover and luscious cinematography. We meet a queer woman having simultaneous affairs, a woman with a full-body gimp outfit and a passion for theft, a young woman given a tantalizing birthday gift and an estranged couple meeting for a fresh date. Each story quickly introduces its characters but doesn’t stint on building atmosphere and tension. When the protagonists have sex, you know exactly why they are doing it and how they feel about it. Naturally this makes it a more compelling experience.

The sex itself is hardcore but doesn’t linger on gonzo style shots. Indeed, the editing is just right. You never get bored with endless pumping.

The sets are sumptuous, the lighting and cinematography high-class, the music stylish and well suited. The actors are natural, good looking in their own way and never stilted or self-conscious.

In short, I really enjoyed Cabaret Desire. It’s like collection of women’s erotic fiction with an added visual element, beautifully told and executed with an artistic flourish. I am a fan of Erika Lust’s work and I think this movie is her best yet. Certainly it raises the bar in terms of what can be accomplished with erotic film. I watched it and wondered how I can ever make porn this good. I guess the best I can do is try.

You can download or buy Cabaret Desire at Erika’s site Lust Cinema.

Related Posts:

• Erika Lust and the Barcelona Sex Project
• Erika Lust’s Barcelona Sex Project Coming Soon
• Five Hot Stories For Her Is Fabulous
• Lust Films Wins Award + Good Porn For Good Girls

OK, it’s done. This is my mini documentary about this year’s Berlin Porn Film Festival.

Most of it was shot on a Sony Cybershot HX9V – a pocket camera that takes rather good HD video but not so good sound. I actually bought it at the airport on my way to Germany.

And thank goodness I did. Our large video camera ended up being damaged, possibly dropped when in luggage storage before we got to Berlin. A lot of the footage I shot at the festival using the big camera was half out of focus and consequently useless. You’ll probably notice that the interviews with Adrianna, Aiden and Jen look rather fuzzy. They were shot with the big camera and I did my best to salvage the footage.

We noticed that something wasn’t quite right with the camera while in Germany but it didn’t seem too bad. It’s only when I got home and uploaded the files that I saw how dodgy it was. The left side of the frame is very fuzzy but the bottom right corner is in focus. It’s incredibly frustrating to have that kind of equipment failure.

I also shot a solo male scene in Berlin and some of that footage is also no good. But the Cybershot has saved the day. Lesson learned: don’t discount the new generation of little cameras. They’re actually quite good and are worth using for B roll or as a backup.

In any case, I think I managed to capture some of the vibe of the festival in this little doco. I downloaded the film excerpts from Youtube and Vimeo so some of them aren’t the best quality. I wanted to just give a small idea of the kind of amazing films we saw in Berlin.

The films:
Smoke by Claudia Romero
Black Rose Tango by Richard Kimmel
Curuk: The Pink Report by Ulrike Bohnisch
Skallamann (Bald Guy) by Maria Bock
Orchids: My Intersex Adventure by Phoebe Hart
The Female Voyeur by Petra Joy
Gang Bang Barbie by Joanna Rytel
Festival trailer by anton Z risan

A longer version of this doco will appear at For The Girls on 29th November. It features the X-rated footage I couldn’t put on Youtube plus more interviews. And images from the amazing Chatroulette session that turned into something of a live sex show.

By the way, there’s some great photos of the festival now available at the official site.

Related Posts:

• Berlin Porn Film Festival 2009
• Cabaret Desire Is Like Visual Erotic Fiction
• The Amazing, Inspiring Berlin Porn Film Festival 2011
• Off To The Berlin Porn Film Festival 2011

I’m home again, jetlagged but also bursting with inspiration and motivation after my visit to this year’s Berlin Porn Film Festival. All up I may have spent about six days travelling to and from Berlin but it was totally worth the time, effort and money just to be there and be surrounded by so many fascinating ideas and creativity. And, of course, I got to meet some wonderful people and reconnect with old friends like Petra Joy and Jennifer Lyon Bell.

The festival was a huge success this year with over 5000 visitors attending, more than in previous years. Many of the sessions were sold out well in advance and the cinema always seemed to be packed. It feels like the Berlin Porn Film Festival is set to become something of an institution in that city, which is fabulous.

Pic: Opening night party in the cafe at the back of the Kino

I was thrilled to meet Jiz Lee and honoured to get a hug from one of the best-known queer porn stars. Jiz was there to judge the short films and I got to chat with Jiz a few times, although my hopeful attempts to snag an interview were lost due to Jiz’s busy schedule.

Pic: Jiz and Adrianna discussing Tristan’s films.

I also got to meet adult stars Adrianna Nicole and Aiden Starr, two incredibly talented and smart women who are really switched on to the possibilities of porn. Both of them are “typical” looking porn stars – blonde, beautiful, sexy. They were actually rather an unusual sight at the BPFF (look! mainstream porn stars!) and I could well imagine that they are perhaps dismissed as being lightweight because of their looks. Not so. I had some wonderful conversations about the politics and problems of porn and they had plenty of interesting points to make during the discussion panel about the future of lesbian porn and at the screening of Tristan Taormino’s films.

Unfortunately, I missed out on seeing a few other porn directors. Tristan couldn’t make it – she had to cancel at the last minute due to ill health. Nica Noelle had also pulled out the week before and Anna Span also changed her plans. It was disappointing to miss out after coming all that way but I guess I’ll meet them another time.

I saw some amazing films although I would have loved to have attended more sessions. Perhaps my favourite short film was the mini musical Skallamann (Bald Guy) which is about a young man who makes out with a bald guy. His parents are horrified, mainly because said guy is bald. The song is an earworm and I found myself singing it for the entire week I was there.

I also adored the documentary Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. It’s by Phoebe Hart, an Australian woman who was born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome which meant she had testes inside her abdomen (since removed) and female genitals. The doco was so moving and intensely personal, depicting first-time conversations about the issue with Phoebe’s family. She was there to answer questions about the film and I found out that her parents live very close to me. Small world. The doco received an extended ovation and has received multiple awards at festivals around the world. Phoebe found out that the film had won an award in Copenhagen so she flew out to the screening of it the next day. Here’s an article on the film.

There’s always a few “over the top” films at the festival. The winning short film Gang Bang Barbie (video here) packed a punch. It involves Barbie dolls “raping” a man’s penis with mini dildoes. It was funny but also disturbing and I’m not sure I liked it due to the issues of consent involved.

Meanwhile, in Stuffed we were treated to the rather strange (and amusing) sight of a man inserting a fake vagina masturbator into a stuffed fox and then fucking it. I sat there wondering what the good moral arbiters at the Australian Classification Board would make of it; no doubt I was being forever corrupted and harmed just for watching it. Afterwards the film’s creator and star, Rudy West Junior smiled and said that the film was not about bestiality at all. “The fox is dead, so it’s necrophilia,” he said.

I’m going to do a separate post featuring some of the films on offer (update: post is here) so you can get an idea of the diversity of content on show at the BPFF. Sure, there was plenty of on-screen fucking but there were also films that dealt with relationships, sexuality, religion, fertility, death and even incest. The entire festival shows just how differently and creatively filmmakers can approach the topic of sex.

There were also workshops and panel discussions. I attended Jennifer Lyon Bell’s discussion of DIY Feminist Porn which was really interesting and informative. I couldn’t get into the fisting workshop as it was booked out (indeed, many of the workshops and films had waiting lists, thanks to the popularity of the festival this year). The panel discussion about the changing depiction of lesbian sex in mainstream porn was fascinating, with contributions from Jiz, Judy Minx, Adrianna, Aidan and Emilie Jouvet.

Pic: Aiden Starr, Jiz Lee, Judy Minx, Adrianna Nicole and Emilie Jouvet discussing lesbian porn

One of the more fascinating sessions involved playing around with Chatroulette – the random webcam site that many people use to anonymously masturbate with strangers. A purely experimental idea, the session turned out to be hilariously successful. The organisers rigged up a laptop and webcam so that it could be seen on the big screen. They then turned the cam towards the packed audience. Most of us were clothed but a few brave souls got naked, including Maria Llopis, who was one of the organisers and whose film Chatroulette screened in the Female Porn session a few movies after mine.

Pic: Meat/ing on the internet session with Maria Llopis

To begin with we weren’t sure what was going to happen. I’d heard of Chatroulette but pretty much dismissed it as an exercise in developing low self esteem. Random strangers can look at you and dismiss you in a second… it sounded rather depressing to me. But the introductory video by Ariel Efraim Ashbel showed that Chatroulette is actually a cunning way to play practical jokes and mess with people’s heads via presenting a weird performance to said random strangers. I like that.

In this case, we were presenting a cinema audience and nude women to whoever was lucky enough to click “next”. Suddenly, we were all feeling rather thrilled and giggly. It was an excellent jape and we all started waving and yelling at anyone who appeared on screen.

Early on we encountered a woman who was masturbating and eager to have fun. She didn’t baulk at the idea that she was exposed to a big audience and happily showed us her boobs and pussy. Cue the applause. She then started asking guys at the front to get naked. Things got really interesting when Maria asked if anyone wanted to help her put on the show. A guy stepped up, started kissing her, got nude and suddenly he was giving her cunnilingus, right there in the middle of the cinema. Everyone became deadly quiet until Maria had an orgasm and then we all clapped. Meanwhile, the girl on the screen was typing orders demanding certain types of sex which ended up being ignored. She was rather unappreciative and pushy, to be honest!

After that we cruised through Manroulette, the gay site and saw various nude men and erect cocks but very few of them stayed to play. A lot of them hurriedly reached for the NEXT button when they saw what was going on.

All up, the session was a fun experiment with this new area of online sexuality and I’m glad I was there.

I also ended up chatting to the guy who got it on with Maria. Turns out he also appears in Petra Joy’s film The Female Voyeur. I asked him if he’d perform for me and so we shot a solo scene with him on the Monday, winging it by buying a cheap halogen lamp from the hardware shop and filming in our hotel room. I’ll be editing it in the next few weeks.

I didn’t get to many of the after parties this time around, partly because we were too tired and partly because smoking is still permitted in clubs in Germany I just can’t handle breathing in cigarette smoke anymore, it makes me physically ill. So I missed the various performances. Still, I loved the simple process of sitting in the back bar of the Moviemento Kino, drinking wine and chatting with fellow filmmakers, performers and porn lovers.

A few other things that happened:

* I went up to director Bruce La Bruce and apologised on behalf of all Australians for the stupid banning of his film LA Zombie.

* I introduced myself to cute queer porn actor Pau by giving her a Freudian compliment. She was wearing black angel wings affixed with black gaffer tape, applied in a “cross your heart” pattern over her lovely bare boobs. I said “I like your things… I mean, your wings! Your wings!” Laughing helplessly, I told her I liked her boobs as well. They were just asking to be tweaked. Pau later gave me a great interview about her experiences in porn.

* Some of the cinema staff got into the spirit of the porn festival by wearing very little clothing. Gorgeous Valkyrie Francesca made waves by announcing the waiting list for films wearing only Gerbera flowers on her breasts and a feather fanny covering, held on by I don’t know what. And the guy selling beers in the cinema (I have forgotten his name, dammit) had me drooling with his various shirtless sexy outfits.

* I had more great conversations with veteran Dutch porn director Willem Van Batenburg who was there with his original star Diana de Koening. I also saw his film ‘N Schott In De Roos (Bullseye) which is a delightful 70s classic full of discussions about “free love” and hilarious retro situations. Interestingly, I found it turned me on more than most porn.

* I caught up with Liesbet from Dusk, the cable erotic TV channel for women and found that the station is growing and in need of more good content. I also met Ellie from Dutch adult store for women Mail and Female.

* I met Ena, the editor of Bend Over Magazine, a sexy journal of “feminism, sexuality and queer art” that features great photography.

* I met and chatted to Katharina Szmidt who made Cum Different, a documentary about the growth of feminist porn, made mostly at the 2009 BPFF. There was also a feature length doco about feminist porn called Mutantes (Punk Porn Feminism) but the session was sold out and it only screened the once so I couldn’t review it.

* I spoke to BPFF curator Manuela Kay about her contribution to Fucking Different XXX, which debuted at the festival. Manuela’s film shows the romantic side of anal fisting and – I must admit – had me feeling a little clenched thanks to its two-handed extravagance. She told me that she’s fascinated by fisting because it’s a universal sex act. Everyone has hands and everyone has an ass. I think it’s a very good point.

* I also chatted briefly with queer director Courtney Trouble about her great short film What Makes Us Queer. She also had a short in Fucking Different XXX that finished the film and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen an audience applaud an orgasm. It made me laugh.

There’s plenty more I could write about but I’ll leave it for now. I’m going to be editing another little doco about this year’s festival so keep an eye out for it, I’ll put it on Youtube.

All up, I loved it. The festival has given me so much confidence about my filmmaking and the possibilities. I can’t wait to go back next year, especially now that I’m determined to make my feature film, come hell or high water.

Related Posts:

• Berlin Porn Film Festival 2009
• Videos From The Petra Joy Awards
• How Long Is The Ideal Sex Scene?
• The European Feminist Porn Award

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sai says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Posts:

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

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!

Related Posts:

• First They Came For The Pornographers…
• At Last: The Sex Party
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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.

Related Posts:

• Porn Does Not Cause Rape
• More On Australian Women, Porn and Sex
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Back in 2008 a censorship controversy erupted over Bill Henson’s photographs of nude teenage girls. Police raided the gallery and shut down the exhibition, the Prime Minister called the images “disgusting” and a lynch mob mentality generally prevailed. Eventually the images were classified “G” (suitable for children) by the censors.

Since that time the art world has become increasingly paranoid about censorship and have been self-censoring images of children, including closing down an exhibition because it included a painting of a young boy without a shirt (mischievously called “above the waist nudity” by the religious nutjobs who support censorship).

Now the issue is in the papers again. A right-wing Christian senator (due to lose his seat in a few months) has chaired an inquiry into the Australian classification system and accepted submissions calling for art to be classified and possibly blacklisted if it contains nudity. The are also calls for films with full-frontal nudity to be banned. The Australian Christian Lobby have said “there are dangers to children everywhere” posed by images and bemoaning the fact that “it will be argued that adults should be able to see whatever they want, even claiming photos of naked children have artistic merit.”

(Yeah, like photos of your children in the bath. Or images like this one of Mary breastfeeding a naked Jesus.)

Naturally, the art community isn’t impressed.

Some shuddered at the thought of bureaucrats or religious groups controlling what art lovers could see. And others feared it would have a chilling effect on boundary-pushing art.

Welcome to my world, I thought.

In my original blog post on Henson I wrote my defence of his work from the position of “Come ON, people. It’s ART!”

The post incited a lot of comments including criticism from Tony Comstock who pointed out the flawed logic in my post (and I’m grateful for it). He wrote:

If you want controversial work to be protected because it’s “art”, then you are opening the door for controversial work to be supressed because it’s “not art”.

His comment is ringing true at the moment because I’m seeing all sorts of people up in arms about the idea of censoring art (and rightly so). Unfortunately it’s often couched in terms of “But you can’t censor us, it’s ART! Not porn!”

The subtext is obvious: art is good, porn is bad. Some censorship is OK… as long as it’s not of MY work. Because what I do isn’t nasty pornography! I am tasteful and intellectual and upstanding and I make ART, not PORN.

This page on the ABC website says:

We live in a time in history when more than ever before, all sorts of images are available to us. Some are beautiful. Some will make you smile. Some are confronting. Others are downright disgusting.

So how do you make that judgement about what is just a naked body – and what is pornographic? Is it about context? Is about whether or not you can see genitalia? Is it about positions, facial expressions, intent? And who do you trust to make those decisions for you?

Notice how that paragraph automatically makes a number of assumptions, mainly that pornography is inherently bad, that someone ought to be making decisions for you about what you can see.

This kind of porn/art dichotomy is ultimately harmful to the cause of free speech. It goes against the old saying, attributed to Voltaire, of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

I’m writing this post to make an appeal to artists and people who enjoy art. My appeal goes like this:

Thank you for being appalled at the idea of censorship. You are, quite rightly, upset at the idea that some government body would want to ban artwork or prevent you from seeing something, thus taking away your own agency to make decisions about what content or media you wish to consume. You want to change this. You want to fight it. Great.

Because if you don’t stand up for speech you don’t agree with, you open the door for the kind of censorship the art community is facing today.

Someone on Twitter has suggested sending Senator Guy Barnett hundreds of photos of Renaissance nudes to make a point about the stupidity of his anti-nudity stance. I like the idea but I doubt it will make much difference. The man is a dyed-in-the-wool religious conservative who probably believes that seeing nudity is harmful to children. He’s also a fan of using child pornography and “protecting the children” as an excuse for curtailing the rights of adults to freedom of speech.

He’s not the only one. Modern day prudes like Melinda Tankard Reist and “Young Media Australia” are also pushing for censorship in their crusade to “protect children”. The Australian Christian Lobby have their tentacles everywhere in government. They too are waging a moral battle to “save the children”.

Don’t be fooled. This isn’t about protecting kids at all. It’s really a campaign to inflict a certain religious moral agenda onto adult Australians. This “morality” is ultimately anti-sex, anti-reproductive rights and anti-feminist. It’s about returning Australia to a repressive time when information about sex was hidden, when children were seen and not heard, when women knew their place and had no access to contraception or safe termination.

These people want censorship because they fear sex. They think images of nudity or sexuality are inherently corrupting. They believe that repressing sexuality will somehow create a better world. They have no peer-reviewed scientific evidence to back up their claims of “harm”. All they have are religosity and an unshakeable belief that they are righteous. They are the Western version of the Taliban.

We have to stand up to them.

Here’s hoping that this latest censorship assault on the art world will be a quickening for some people, in the same way that the gamers have become organised. And I’m hoping that those who love the arts remember what’s happening here next time they ban an erotic film like Matinee or LA Zombie or Ashley and Kisha.

* The top image is by Rodney Pople. He painted this image of himself being beheaded by his children as a comment on the censorship of art.

* The bottom image is Caravaggio’s “Triumph of Eros” which would undoubtedly be blacklisted.

* Wikimedia Commons has a lovely collection of nude boys in art, there’s plenty of images to help to fire up the moral panic.

Related Posts:

• A Need For Privacy Makes This “Debate” One-Sided
• “9 Songs” And The Hypocrisy Of Censorship
• Australian Porn, Censorship And Statistics Roundup
• What’s Art? What’s Porn? What The Fuck?

Room 33 Erika Lust from boolab on Vimeo.

Here is Room 33, a new sexy movie by Erika Lust (as written about in this post from a few days ago). It just looks luscious.

And what I really admire is the way Erika can tell her story with minimal dialogue or none at all; she’s really good at getting ideas and emotions across through framing, editing and good acting. That’s the wonderful thing: Erika is a very talented filmmaker who has decided that her subject is sex. She has a discerning eye for sets and situations and she shoots with quality equipment like the Canon 5D. She sets a very high bar for the rest of us. I know when I’m planning my next film, I’ll be thinking about how Erika has done hers.

Related Posts:

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In August last year, film director Richard Wolstoncroft decided to engage in some civil disobedience.

He had wanted to screen the film LA Zombie, an explicit gay film about zombies, at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF). The Australian censors did not grant permission for him to do so – it’s illegal to publicly screen porn in Australia. Angered by the banning of the film, Mr Wolstoncroft organised a “public disobedience freedom of speech event.” No police turned up so he went ahead and showed the film.

Then in November, police raided his home demanding a copy of the DVD. He said he’d destroyed it. They threatened to confiscate all his DVDs and computers but finally relented.

Yesterday he went to court to face charges of… well, I don’t know what, to be honest. Screening a porn film in public or similar. He could have been given a $28,600 fine and spent 2 years in jail. Instead, the magistrate gave him a diversionary order and fined him $750 (plus all costs). He was ordered to pay the money to the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Let’s go beyond the insanity of our laws that make it illegal for consenting adults to view an adult film in a cinema because I think the absurdity of the situation speaks for itself.

What’s more interesting is the way Mr Wolstoncroft has been told to effectively donate to a charity to expunge the sin of showing other adults a porn film. A children’s hospital. Are you picking up the message loud and clear here folks? The implication is that the showing of LA Zombie caused harm. And somehow that harm was to children, apparently. Hence restitution for the crime of watching porn is to pay money to the children’s hospital.

Never mind that nobody was actually harmed, that adults happily attended the screening with out any ill effect, that police didn’t give a damn about it for months (it does seem that in November somebody higher up got a few phonecalls from a Christian lobby group and felt compelled to act).

The other thing is the rather mixed messages it sends. 2 years in jail for showing an adult film is just horrific. The $750 fine seems to suggest the law doesn’t want to take such a ridiculous “crime” seriously. Except to send a veiled message that porn somehow harms children in hospitals.

I’d love to hold a porn film festival in Australia. Perhaps we could just dispense with all that messing about in court and I could just donate some money directly to charity. A couple of grand to the children’s hospital to erase all the sin of watching explicit sex and we’ll call it even. Kind of like six hail marys but with swearing in between.

Or we could, oh, I don’t know… change the fucking classification laws in this country to reflect the 21st century.

Richard is holding a free speech event and mystery film screening to help pay for the court costs this Sunday. Check out the details here.

Related Posts:

• Berlin Porn Film Festival 2009
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• My First Premiere
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I own over 100 domains. I’ve got a whole bunch of sites out there that have been online for years. Plenty still look the same as they did five years ago. Too many have broken links and images, outdated text. It’s a result of a bad habit I have: I think of an idea, buy a domain, create a site for it and then move on. I’ve actually still got about 20 domains waiting for me to put something on them.

Ms Naughty is overdue for a revamp. I want to change the design and, more importantly, change the linklist. I want to move it beyond a simple free porn list and include more types of content like blogs and tumblrs. I want to add a heap more categories. I want to better reflect the diversity that I saw so many women talking about on Lady Porn Day.

But damn, it’s going to be a big job. One of the problems is that the linklist script that I paid $300 for is no longer supported. The programmer just went offline, never to be heard from again. My application of the script has errors and I’m not sure how to fix them. So that’s a little frustrating.

Meanwhile, For The Girls is STILL awaiting its member’s area revamp.

Way back in July 2009, Jane and I decided it was time to change FTG and update the inside, make it easier to use. I also had heaps of new ideas for content, both written and visual. I was really excited at moving the site forward, keeping up with the changes in porn.

It still hasn’t fucking happened.

We made the mistake of hiring a Dutch design company who ripped us off. They lied, wasted 7 months of our time and still didn’t deliver the finished product. The full story is here.

After the dust from that had settled we gathered up some more money and hired a new programmer to start again. He’s been working on the new member’s area since September, building a CMS from scratch. Apparently it’s a bigger job than we thought because we have too many photos and videos. I guess that’s a quality problem.

In any case, we were getting very close. We had hoped to launch the new member’s area on March 1. But then there was the Christchurch earthquake. Our programmer lives in Christchurch. Thankfully he’s OK but he’s without power, hasn’t slept and needs somewhere to stay. He’s obviously not very interested in working right now.

So it may be another month until we can launch.

One of the frustrating things about this is that we’ve held off from making changes to FTG until the design was done. We haven’t actively promoted ourselves because we thought we’d wait for the new design. Everything got put on hold. And putting your site on hold for a 18 months is insane. Although at the time, we were just waiting until tomorrow, next week, next month.

Towards the end of last year we finally stopped waiting and went ahead with some of our new projects like our male model shoot and my latest film. I’m still organising new written material.

Meanwhile, I can see other changes on the porn horizon. I want to take advantage of those. I need to organise FTG and my other sites to be ready for it.

I have SO much work to do.

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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.

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So while I’ve been off enjoying a break and then enduring flooding, anti-porn author Gail Dines has continued to wave her promotional flag, heavy as it is with assumptions and untruths. Unfortunately The Guardian likes to give her lots of space to do this. Her latest salvo was from the AVN expo in Las Vegas. Aside from her usual generalisations, she offered this particuarlly offensive paragraph:

One of the seminars at this year’s expo is called In the Company of Women. Here academics will mix with pornographers to share ideas on how to develop niche products targeted to women. I’m sure there will be lots of talk about how women can be empowered by watching porn, because the pornographers, being the savvy businessmen they are, like nothing more than telling women that porn is actually good for them. This is their “trick”, and one we must resist if we want to replace the plasticised, formulaic and generic images of the pornographers with an authentic sexuality based on our own experiences, longings, and desires.

Gail Dines seems to think that the porn industry is exclusively run by men and that attempting to create erotica for women is some kind of dirty capitalist trick to fool women.

As a woman who has worked for ten years to create alternative porn that does depict our own experiences, longings and desires, I feel pretty pissed off at this ridiculous claim. And no doubt all the other female directors and webmasters and happy porn performers would agree. I originally discovered this article via British filmmaker Petra Joy who wrote:

It negates the existence of any female porn directors, events such as the feminist porn awards and also the (increasing) number of women who enjoy watching porn. This article therefore victimizes and patronizes all women. It is an angle on porn which is very dated, stuck in the eighties, rather than embracing all the new trends in porn.

What about the women who choose to express themselves in porn or the women who watch and enjoy porn because it inspires them or turns them on? Gail says we do not exist and all porn is bad when she has only seen the tip of the iceberg. If you go to the most commercial adult event on the planet such as the AVN show, don’t be surprised if you get the ultra mainstream and commercial end of the stick.

Meanwhile, Violet Blue has pointed me towards an opinion piece in Salon which says that many women aren’t “pornified” as the commentators would suggest. They make their own decisions and many aren’t very interested in porn at all.

Those of us in our 20s and early 30s who were the first to come of age with free hardcore porn at our fingertips were said to be taking pole-dancing classes, waxing our nether regions and sticking our tongues down each other’s throats for show. We were supposedly “having sex like men” and “screwing like porn stars.” Our sexual coat of arms would feature a “Girls Gone Wild” T-shirt, a stripper heel and a MacBook live-streaming hardcore action. There is some truth there — yet many young women are remarkably unfamiliar with actual porn, and a gulf still remains between the sexes in talking about it.

Given that the article by Gail Dines relates an unsupported anecdote about women using pubic hair to avoid sex, Salon makes a good point. There’s plenty of moral panic about the idea that women are being persuaded to do porny things in the bedroom against their will, but is it really true? Where’s the evidence?

Related Posts:

• Beware These Skewed Statistics About Porn “Addiction”
• Porn For Women Retrospective 2010
• How Sex With Your Head In A Toilet Bowl Can Be OK
• Mainstream Movies Ignore Women: The Bechdel Test

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.” 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

* 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

* 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

* 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.

* 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

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.

Related Posts:

• Berlin Porn Film Festival 2009
• Porn For Women Retrospective 2008
• Where The Hell Is My Prince Charming?
• My Decade In Online Porn