Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

Just had to do a quick post with this image, taken from this Amazon page for communion wafers.

Wafers, the Bible and… Astroglide lube. The perfect combination.

It’s not surprising, but a study of which US states consume more online porn has found that “red” states are up for it more often. New Scientist has found that those states with more conservative and religious populations tend to be the biggest consumers of porn. Utah tops the list.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

Interestingly, church goers bought less porn on Sundays but they made up for it during the week.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behaviour.”

“One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you’re told you can’t have this, then you want it more,” Edelman says.

As Jesus said: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the giant throbbing sticky penis in your own hand?” Or something like that.

Pic from the always amusing Church Sign Generator.

Once again I’ve got a bunch of things to write about and I’m just going to be lazy and bung them all into one post with a nice sexy pic to make it a bit more fun.

First – they’re about to release the rejiggered Joy Of Sex. The New York Times has a great article about how the book has aged and it goes into some interesting detail about how some parts of the book weren’t very female-friendly.

If Dr. Comfort was a man before his time, he was nonetheless still a man, and his book was written from a man’s perspective.

“He had a section on tactful ways to take a woman’s virginity,” Ms. Quilliam said. “He had a section called ‘frigidity.’ I’m sure he was a lovely man, but he said that most men, given a young and attractive partner, can always get it up — it’s only when a woman lets herself go that he has a problem. And you’re going, ‘No, no, no!’ But that is what it was like then.”

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered a new French-language site that is pitching itself as porn for women called Second Sexe. Unfortunately I can’t read it so I’m not sure what the deal is, but it’s inspired this article at The Observers. Naturally I had to leave a long comment.

The Porn for Women book keeps raising its determined little head, popping up in everyone’s Christmas wish lists and consequently setting off my Google alerts something awful. I did find this post at Jossip which questions the whole thing:

But what is this Porn for Women meme, where the joke is that the guys aren’t naked, they’re just helping out around the house and acting like gentlemen?

Is the implication that women are turned on by thoughtful gestures? Sure, that’s one way of looking at it. Another way is that it’s funny to imagine women thinking about porn, and ha-ha, I bet when they think of erotica they just imagine a man dusting! Get it? Because women don’t think about dirty things like sexy or objectifying men.

OK so now it’s time to get into “ooh that pisses me off” territory.

Indonesia has recently passed their “anti porn” law which effectively criminalises anything remotely sexual. It was fully backed by the Islamic heavies in that country who are pretty keen on turning Indonesia (and the region) into a theocracy. And then you get this: Indonesian clerics take child brides, back anti-porn bill. The guy has married a 12 year old and thumbs his nose at secular law that says she must be at least 16.

What a beautiful religion Islam is.

And while I’m bashing religion, the Catholics have weighed into the Australian internet filter debate, with a council of bishops happily supporting the idea. Somebody Think of the Children blog has a good post on the topic. One bishop has said that censoring the net is fine because it will bring it into line with all the other censorship we have. Here’s most of my comment in response to this argument:

My personal view is that Australia’s existing system of classification needs to be thoroughly overhauled to reflect the community standards of 21st century Australia: namely that Aussies like porn, that it doesn’t cause societal or personal harm and that consensual sexually explicit content should be legal to view no matter what media it comes in.

I would argue that, as it stands, the OFLC already tramples on our right to freedom of speech thanks to its ability to ban films by refusing classification. The classification system should be voluntary as it is in the US.

Essentially, it should not be up to the government or the OFLC to decide what I as an adult can view.

That should be the answer to the “bringing into line” argument – although I realise it may be considered a little too “out there” for some.

But if you think the current classification system is working, consider how the films of Tony Comstock were banned while other films like Destricted made it through because they were more “serious”.

Do we really think the people at the OFLC are representing society’s interests? What are they protecting us from?

We don’t need to bring the internet into line with current restrictions on freedom of speech because those restrictions in and of themselves should not exist in the first place.

I’ve been keeping fairy close track of No Clean Feed movement in the last few weeks. It’s so nice to connect with other Aussies who are opposed to censorship and moral panic. It seems the clean feed has created a space for better public dialogue about where we’re going with censorship in this country. And now some people are questioning the way child porn is increasingly used as an excuse to trample on our rights, in the same way that the spectre of “terrorism” is used.

I hope we can make a difference.

A while ago I made a little site called ExExExChurch which is my response to the way some religious groups are fixated on the idea of “porn addiction.” The name is a play on one of the worst culprits, XXXChurch, a insistent rabble of lunatics who believe that masturbation is a sin.

Anyway, via Fleshbot I found this news story of another bunch of self-righteous busybodies who are filming the customers of a lingerie shop and having prayer sessions outside.

There’s one really good solution to this nonsense, as outlined in Operation Church Stakeout: the sex positive people of Vacaville, California need to start protesting outside the doors of the Valley Church with signs. They should also take photos and video of those people going inside, perhaps to post them on a porn site of their choice.

These people are suffering from a dangerous church addiction and it’s up to us to save them!

In theory I shouldn’t talk about religion on this blog, but sometimes I feel the urge to post something I’ve found. And given that US Republican candidate Mike Huckabee recently said he wanted to change the US constitution to resemble the bible, I’m feeling inclined to say something.

Reading this list of scary, ignorant and occasionally amusing comments by fundamentalist Christians makes me concerned for the future. Individuals should be free to follow any religion (or lack thereof) that they want, but the people on this page want to make others follow their God and their rules, with force if necessary. And some of these beliefs and comments are horrific. A sample:

Women are naturally weak, they are more open to sin, then men are… The rapes happened in the bible yes they happened and were recorded, why to teach us a lesson… most female rape victims often bring it on themselves.
…
A woman wants to abort a rape child? She should have thought of that before she walked down that dark alley without a male prescence, not to mention she should have thought before putting on revealing attire.
…
The only solution we have to stop gays from recruiting other people is to cut off the source. They need to be taken to specialized containment centers where they will be forced to become straight and accept Jesus as thier savior and to repent from their disgusting, wicket, hatful, devilish ways. Those that refuse to go can either be forced, or banished from society in other specialized communities where they have no connetion to the outside world at all. Most would die of AIDS anyway.
…
In my opinion, if an animal in the wild like a swan is caught being gay it should be shot on sight, disinfected, and used to feed the poor.
…
[On why oral and anal sex are "unnatural"]
Oral with dudes can’t be natural because the legs will be poking out from different directions as will the ladies if they participate in oral sex. Oral with the opposite sex still isn’t natural because you still have the leg issue and often someone is further down if they are not on top of each other. Anal with opposites is still excluded from natural sex because once again your are sticking your think in a crap hole and a womans tits are usually projecting outward.
…
Now some people might object to killing atheists for there (and obviously it is there and not thier as they are not whos but whats ) organs but think of all the full human persons that would benifit from the organs and the medical research that could be done on these non-persons.
…
Satan loves homosexuals.. And will usually set them up with good careers in something Satan is in control of i.e.. Entertainment.. any form of the Media.
…
Looking on nakedness is a shameful and intolerable thing. And most employment for doctors and nurses requires looking on other people’s nakedness (bathing patients, giving shots, operating, examining, etc.)

And then there’s this funny-but-sad story:

I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don’t think he’s ready to date yet. What’s worse is that he’s sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!

I read a while ago that the internet doesn’t make people stupid, it just makes that stupidity more accessible to the rest of the world. No doubt the people making these comments aren’t the sharpest tools in the church shed, although that’s not the main problem. It’s the fact that their brand of bigotry and blind beliefs are informing politics and censorship both in the US and here in Australia.

And that’s pretty fucking scary.

I’ve stumbled across another dodgy example Christian anti-porn extremism.

This page asserts that the domain just4ladies.com was originally a “pioneering porn site for women” and was in operation as far back as 1995. It then gushingly praises the owner, Michele Washam, for converting it into a Christian site.

Naturally I was curious to discover this when I found it on Google News. As far as I was aware, the first adult site for women was Purve and it debuted in 1998. So I thought I should see what this “original” women’s site looked like.

The Wayback Machine (archive.org) is a great tool which can show you the text from sites as far back as 1996. It reveals the truth about just4ladies.com. Turns out the site was never online prior to 2000 and it’s always been a Christian site.

And the interesting thing is this: the first archive dated 23 May 2000 makes no mention whatsoever of porn. Indeed, the site doesn’t even acknowledge the P word until 2007 when Washam released her book on the subject.

The Whois entry for that domain says it was first registered in January 1999.

This page says Washam worked as an adult web designer from 1995 to 1999 and again repeats the claim that she operated “one of the first ladies only erotica web sites.”

This article also makes the claim that just4ladies was a membership site in 1995, with 7000+ members paying $29.99 a month.

Just4Ladies.com itself says it used to be a porn site:

The Just4Ladies Heartbreak Community has an interesting past and a promising future. Originally created as one of the Internet’s first ladies only erotica web sites but after a life changing heartbreak the creator, Michele “Shell” Washam, then a 30-year old single mom of three, changed her course in life after surrendering her broken heart and broken will to God.

On Valentines Day 1999 Just4Ladies took on a new mission…

Fact is, that’s just not true.

There WAS a women’s porn site called Just For Ladies (justforladies.com) which has recently closed down, but it was operated by Maxcash and one of the women behind it was Ladylynx. That particular Just for Ladies started in 1999 but it had nothing to do with Michele Washam.

As far as I’m aware, Just4Ladies.com was NEVER a porn site.

It is possible that Washam was an adult web designer prior to her religious conversion but if she can’t tell the truth about her website, what else is she lying about?

This month’s feature at For The Girls is about cybersex. It’s a fairly general article that looks at the appeal of one handed typing and discusses some of the negative issues like whether it constitutes cheating.

The article proved difficult to research thanks to the bazillion Christian-based sites out there raving about the terrible dangers of cybersex and how it’s always “addictive” and ruins relationships.

I spent over an hour trying to find reliable statistics about how many people on average were engaging in cybersex. What should have been a relatively simple bit of research was hugely complicated thanks to the plethora of conservative-based sites pushing their own agenda about “addiction.” A lot of them were happily throwing statistics around that I was unable to use thanks to the taint of bias.

In the end I resorted to search strings like “cybersex statistics -christian -addiction -addict -danger” just to try and find some stats I could quote. It was the same when I was trying to hunt down an expert to discuss the issues: there’s a lot of talking heads out there who aren’t terribly balanced when it comes to sex or porn.

I wasn’t trying to write a pro-cybersex article. I may have my own biases but when writing a feature I do like to at least aim for a balanced presentation of the issues. And this may be why I was feeling so frustrated. The Christians and the conservatives have put a lot of effort into flooding the internet with sites about “the dangers of cybersex/porn addiction” and unfortunately the sheer number of them seem to be pushing out alternative voices.

And it’s worrying that the stuff they are pushing is so extreme: ALL cybersex is bad, ALL porn is addictive and exploitative. These sites don’t hesitate to misuse surveys or statistics to get their point across. And it means that someone who may be struggling with bad habits in relation to cybersex or porn use (and I don’t deny that this happens to some people) will only encounter the extremist Christian message on this topic.

Google doesn’t have a filter for bias but sometimes I wish they did.

We have new neighbours across the road and, because we didn’t hide quickly enough, they invited us over for a coffee.

Now, when you’re a pornographer working from home in a nice, quiet, suburban neighbourhood, you do your best to stay on the good side of the neighbours and not attract attention. I’m also freakishly antisocial and try not to talk to any of them, just because it’s easier that way. And I’m a hermit.

Anyway, we couldn’t find an excuse to avoid it so we headed over yesterday morning for our little get-to-know session. It went well enough for half an hour (”Yes, I work from home, I make my money advertising Amazon”) until, suddenly:

“Have you thought about dedicating yourself and your heart to God?”

Yes, they were born-again Christians, and they were out to convert. While I broke out in a cold sweat and thought of ways to escape (ENEMY TERRITORY! ENEMY TERRITORY!), my husband engaged them in a robust conversation about how God doesn’t exist.

The were firm in their faith. We were firm in our atheism. We agreed to disagree and things ended pleasantly. Still, I was so full of adrenaline I had to go for a long walk on my treadmill to calm down. I hated the whole thing. I felt horribly uncomfortable and kind of offended. Their brand of Christianity is so opposed to my politics and my life in general that it’s unnerving to have someone try and push it on you.

And that’s the thing. I don’t mind that they’re into God, but I do mind that they felt it was OK to ruin a perfectly good conversation with bible bashing. They were so sure they were right, and didn’t hesistate to tell us we were wrong. You don’t see atheists inviting Christians over for coffee and then abruptly saying “So, when are you going to give up on all this mumbo-jumbo?”

And maybe we should be doing that because their style of Christianity is not content to be a personal pursuit. They’re out to make everyone follow their beliefs, by law if necessary. Their religion pushes intelligent design, and campaigns against gay rights, abortion and contraception – stuff that I’m fairly certain Jesus didn’t mention at any point. These people are out to ban porn but think there’s such a thing as a “just war.”

Maybe people like me should make more of an effort to challenge this world view, because it’s this kind of fundamentalism that causes more problems than it solves.

By all means, believe in God, but leave me and everybody else alone to choose our own path.