Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

I’m a bit late with this but I wanted to direct your attention to Violet Blue’s SFGate column criticising the mainstream porn industry’s ongoing continuation of racist stereotypes in their movies. Her article quotes several feminist porn stars and directors including Madison Young and Shine Louise Houston. She’s also made a number of further comments on her blog.

While we all understand that sexual fantasies are often politically incorrect, it’s still worth standing up and questioning the way the industry continually perpetuates negative stereotypes of African Americans – and of Asian and Indian people as well. There’s no balance, and there’s certainly a distinct lack of positive perspectives when it comes to depicting non-white people in porn.

I’ve said before that For The Girls is unfortunately skewed towards a white audience; our photos and movies invariably feature white actors. This is because it’s damned near impossible to find acceptable content featuring black couples making love. Instead we’re invariably confronted by the standard “booty” / “ho” / “brother”/ “pimp” stuff that I just find offensive.

Violet’s piece has inspired a particularly vitriolic editorial from AVN. The author takes Violet to task over a number of factual inaccuracies but unfortunately he does so in an extremely petulant and nasty way, constantly trashing the concept of sex positivity.

Indeed, the tone of the whole thing seems to sum up what’s wrong with so much of the porn industry. We’re down and dirty exploitative pornographers, don’t you know. It’s our JOB to be racist and negative and misogynistic. Any woman who takes it up the ass like Madison Young deserves to be hated. And all you queer types can take your thinking approach to sex and porn and stick it.

At least, that’s the vibe I got.

I read it and felt immensely disappointed with AVN. Their slogan is “the industry standard” and they’re the most visible face of the porn world. So to see such a negative attitude displayed in an editorial like that does them no favours.

Perhaps they should stop hating the sex positive porn community and instead start paying attention to what we’re doing. There may be a global recession and DVD sales are well down but I honestly feel that well-made, positive, realistic and, yes, “politically correct” porn is the future.

There are millions of people who are turned off by the offensive stuff the industry churns out in a never-ending attempt to out-shock a jaded audience. Why disdain such a potent market?

Alison Lee of Canadian adult shop Good For Her has written an extensive article looking at porn for women, the feminist anti-porn movement and her own experiences with porn. It makes for great reading. A snippet:

Seeing the world of Big Porn showed me that not only are women left out, but men are presented with an incredibly bland palate to work from and to mold their own sexuality. I left my porn review gig believing that the world of porn shouldn’t be eradicated, but that it should instead live up to the boundless possibilities of the erotic, and that it should, and could, be able to reflect the diverse bodies, desires and dreams that make up human sexuality.

Alison is organising this year’s Feminist Porn Awards. Submissions are open until 24th February.

I’m busy busy busy today editing dirty movies so here’s a couple of quick links of interest.

* Vice Tries To Bust Me On The Porn Set – Feminist adult filmmaker Tristan Taormino reveals her run-in with an LA Vice squad while filming her latest movie (something BDSM themed, can’t wait). This story provides a disappointing reminder that it doesn’t matter how ethical or feminist or progressive the porn may be, in the eyes of the cops and the prudes, it’s all dirty and evil.

* Thanks to the lovely Ell I now know that there’s going to be a semi-erotic film festival in Melbourne in September. The Sexy International Film Festival aims to showcase movies about relationships, love and sex, although it’s running with the tag line that it’s “not porn.” Presumably so Australia’s version of the vice squad don’t turn up and close it down, as happened with Tony Comstock’s film. Actually, I’ll be interested to see if the cops do visit the festival just to make sure no-one’s getting aroused.

The list of films is here. I see that Anna Brownfield is presenting some of her short films (I’m still looking forward to her film The Band which we should see very soon)

I’ll be in Europe when the festival is on, and then I’ll miss it when it goes overseas. I wish the organisers the best of luck and wish I could go.

The Ask Sam blog at the Sydney Morning Herald has published this post entitled “Why Women Hate Porn.”

Unfortunately the article doesn’t actually discuss the whys and wherefores of any negative female reactions to porn. Rather it points out recent statistics that one in three Australian women regularly watch porn. And then the author asserts that women have taken up porn watching because it’s trendy, or because they want to please men (as this Salon blog post suggests).

I can’t help but think this is a huge wasted opportunity to discuss women and porn, squandered on a few vague generalisations and the blanket statement that “what we need is more foreplay, more romance, more kissing after sex and more (gasp!) story line.”

If 25-30% of women are looking at porn regularly, that still leaves a lot of women who aren’t so keen. I thought I’d whack together a quick, simple and numbered list of suggestions as to why some women don’t like porn.

1. The vast majority of porn is made for a male audience. It depicts male fantasies and focuses on male pleasure. Female viewers aren’t acknowledged as an audience.

2. Mainstream porn is often unrealistic and divorced from situations in which everyday women experience sex. It’s also increasingly focused on sex acts that aren’t normative. A simple example: anal sex is standard in today’s porn, but an awful lot of women aren’t so keen on butt sex (and when you consider that in porn butt sex is usually portrayed as painful or cruel, it’s not surprising).

3. The performers in mainstream porn can be alienating and/or unappealing to women. Fake tits, blond hair, no cellulite, no pubic hair… Porn actresses can make women feel self conscious about their bodies. They may also find it hard to empathise with the female stars, which can make watching porn less appealing. And male porn stars can be seriously unattractive or downright creepy.

4. Mainstream porn can have an element of sexism or misogyny involved e.g. the reality sites where women are “tricked” into sex and derided. Even the language of porn (“slut, bitch, whore”) is not encouraging to women who enjoy sex. It upholds the old dichotomies of virgin/whore; women are simultaneously valued and despised because they have sex.

5. There’s still plenty of uncertainty about where porn fits into a relationship. A lot of women feel threatened by their man’s use of porn. There’s a concern that fantasy will make reality less appealing.

6. Some women are concerned that porn is warping men’s idea of good sex, making them expect sex acts that may be unusual or demeaning or unpleasurable for the woman. They feel it misleads men into thinking women will act or think a certain way, one that doesn’t reflect reality.

7. Our Western/Christian society is still very anti-sex and anti-pleasure. Beyond those women who are religiously opposed to porn, there’s still a cultural resistance to the idea of “the prurient interest.” Porn is dirty, uncivilised, unladylike and should be spurned.

I’m sure there are other reasons, but that’s a good start. And I realise there are plenty of generalisations and assumptions going on there. There’s no science behind what I’ve written, just speculation. Indeed, there needs to be heaps more research into this whole thing.

So, to be fair, I’m going to make a list of reasons as to why some women DO like porn.

1. It’s good masturbation material.

2. It can inspire new sexual fantasies that can be used to spice up a relationship.

3. Watching it with a partner can be a form of foreplay.

4. It can inspire a desire to experiment with new ideas in bed (although porn as sex education is never a good idea).

5. Purely for entertainment.

Hmmm, now I make that list, I suspect those are the same reasons why men watch porn.

And interesting that the reasons against are so complicated but the reasons for it are simple.

As a feminist pornographer, I’m can see both the positive and negative aspects of porn. I know I can defend the idea of sexually explicit material while still being critical of the many problems associated with porn. I never want to see this in black and white. Porn is problematic, no doubt about that. Indeed, if porn was perfect, I’d probably still be working as a librarian now.

It’s my desire to make it better that inspires me. Porn doesn’t have to be crappy. Women shouldn’t have to hate it. It’s not going to go away any time soon so we should be aiming to make it better, more realistic, more inclusive, more engaging, more erotic, more intimate and, yes, sexier.

That’s why I make porn.

Pic: From Postsecret

Edit: Jezebel has a good post on this topic here.

No, that title doesn’t mean your usual girl-girl, long fingernail stuff. I’m talking about real life lesbians, making porn that reflects their sexuality.

Today I stumbled on a rather extensive academic essay entitled The Politics Of Lesbian Pornography. The author looks at the contrast between anti-porn feminism and the work of lesbian filmmakers such as SIR and Fatale Video. The essay seems to date from about 2001. I skimmed through it, partly because of the awful layout (white text on black background) but it does seem worth reading. For a start, it’s chock a block full of good quotes about porn and feminism. E.g.

The political engagement of S.I.R. demonstrates the need to look beyond the academy in the study of pornography. As we have seen, popular culture can produce theorists. These theorists deserve legitimation within feminism. Women who work in or intersect with pornography in some way have the most to tell us about its effects. Declaring them anti-feminist and their views irrelevant silences the voices of the experts. These women deserve not to be barred from or “black-listed” by the movement. How are we ever to truly know the effects of pornography on women unless we open academic forums to those who are most affected by it?

So… now I’ve been all academic, it’s time to recommend some good lesbian porn.

Adult film producer Shine Louise Houston now has her own porn site, The Crash Pad series. It’s a sequel of sorts to the award-winning film The Crash Pad.

Delightful columnist Emma Tom had a bit of fun with this column, inspired by the recently released Porn Report. She takes the idea that all porn is always addictive to its logical conclusion.

Unfortunately your frigid female boss (who’s probably a lezzo and not the good kind, either) lacks a sense of humour. You lose your job, then lose all your money downloading pony porn and snuff flicks from the net.

Next thing you know, you’re jiggling alone in soiled raincoats in sticky adult cinemas and dying in a violent tussle with other addicts over a lingerie supplement from the Sunday papers, the porn equivalent of methylated spirits. “I can give up any time,” are your pathetic, final words …

Phew. Now we’ve got the mindless hysteria out of the way, how about a porn reality check?