Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog
Ms Naughty looks at porn for women, the adult industry and sex in general.
Eros Shine Awards 2011
Thursday, December 1st, 2011On the 23rd November I attended the inaugural Eros Shine awards night in Melbourne. I went for a couple of reasons. One was to meet other industry people and do a bit of socialising/networking. The other was because For The Girls had been nominated for Best Website.
Alas, FTG didn’t win, although it seems we were a runner-up of sorts. The award went to Adult Voyeur, a new startup that is far more obviously Australian than us (they’ve even got an “AU” in their domain). I was happy for them and it was good to meet the guys behind it.
The night itself was something of a mixed bag. The highlight was definitely the burlesque and strip performances which were innovative, classy and a lot of fun. Suzie Q and Toby’s trapeze act was truly breathtaking and Sina King’s quirky performance with paint was sassy. Unfortunately the Hunkmania strippers – the token “women’s entertainment” – only took their shirts off and the act resembled a boy band. I found myself longing for some real male burlesque, something not so cliched and more genuinely artistic.
The evening was let down by the compere who took every opportunity to make sexist, sniggering jokes. At one point he announced that all women over 30 were unattractive because our boobs went saggy. That’s when I got mad. He really lowered the tone of the night, a shame given that this was an attempt to showcase our professional, grown-up adult industry.
The show also featured a number of American porn star imports such as Jessica Drake and Michelle Bombshell McGee. I grabbed Jessica towards the end of the night and got a very short comment from her – as you can see on the video, the sound is atrocious. I was only using my little Cybershot camera.
Overall the event felt incredibly “mainstream” and I felt like I didn’t belong there. Australia has made a name overseas as the place for realistic, natural, alternative porn but there was no hint of that at the awards night. Maybe next year will be more inclusive.
In any case, have a look at the vid. I’ve tried to highlight the performances and give an idea of just how impressive they were.
Here’s another view of the night by filmmaker Gina Hanrahan.
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Adventures At The Erotic Screen And Sound Conference
Sunday, February 20th, 2011Well folks, I did it. I successfully gave my presentation “Girly Smut: A History Of Porn For Women” at the Erotic Screen and Sound Conference on the 17th. While I was pleased that my voice didn’t get quavery, I did end up turning it into a bit of a shambles because I went waaaay over time. I knew the talk was 22 minutes to begin with but I thought I’d speak quickly due to nerves. Nope. Apparently it’s the other way around. You should only write a 15 minute presentation for a 20 minute slot.
In any case, about 20 people were there (not bad for 4.30pm in the smallest room) and I made them laugh. That’s enough to make me happy. I didn’t get enough time for a proper discussion about the complexities of the idea of “porn for women” – they only got a super fast and brief rundown of the various viewpoints and criticisms of it.
Part of the problem with time was my decision to include clips from several feminist porn films. I was originally going to leave that up to Anna Brownfield who was going to discuss them but she pulled out of the conference. So it didn’t seem right to talk about female-friendly porn films and not actually show any. Thus I included short and relatively softcore clips from 4 Candida Royalle films and:
- Ecstatic Moments (by Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp)
Man of My Dreams (by Mimi Balfour)
The Band (by Anna Brownfield)
The Good Girl (by Erika Lust)
Rough Sex (by Tristan Taormino)
Matinee (by Jennifer Lyon Bell)
Feeling It! (by Petra Joy)
I got the vague feeling that I made some people uncomfortable by doing so. There seemed to be a bit of squirming in the room. It was probably just because no-one is used to watching dirty movies in the company of strangers like that. Or perhaps it was because I was happily showing porn without deconstructing it in any serious way.
Still, I was pleased to be given the chance to present my version of girly smut. If you consider that I was up at 2am the night before suffering food poisoning, it went well.
The conference was very intimidating on the first day, mainly because it was laden with academic presentations rife with jargon and obscure art references. It’s been over ten years since I last attended a university lecture so the intense intellectualism was a shock to my dumbed-down system. Later I discovered I wasn’t the only one feeling a little overwhelmed by the experience. I spoke to one lady who was pleased that she got to snooze without slumping in her lecture seat.
Eventually I tuned in to the various buzz words; this was a conference thick with references to heteronormativities, hegemonies, discourses, texts, the gaze and various isms. This cartoon sums it up, I suspect. It had a distinctly queer flavour and a lot of presentations had plenty of criticism for the usual suspects: the patriarchy, colonialism, conservatism, monogamy and the mainstream media. There’s a blog post coming about all of that.
Beyond that, though, it was good to be challenged. I heard some really interesting ideas that I hadn’t encountered before. The Porn Report’s Professor Alan McKee (who is a young and funky guy, not a bearded Dumbledore as I imagined) spoke about the idea that popular entertainment (e.g. Big Brother) shouldn’t be so derided because it’s an end in itself and is necessarily vulgar and over the top by definition. A PhD student called David Gizzi discussed the phenomenon of “war porn” – a huge online community of people who watch violent real videos from war. Leonarda Kovacic showed us historic nude “noble savage” photos of aboriginal women and challenged us to read them differently to the usual victim/oppressor narrative.
I also had the unexpected experience of witnessing some extreme performance art. Rebecca Clunn projected her discussion of art onto a screen while silently threading roses onto a string. She then placed the rose necklace around her neck along with a circle of razor wire. For the next 10 minutes or so, she knelt and rocked back and forth while the razor wire scratched her skin to pieces, causing her to bleed. I ran the gamut of emotions from a panicked urge to run away (ack! blood!), to curiosity, to almost indifference because it got repetitive. Quite a strange place to be. Afterwards she sat casually on the stage and we all had a nice chat. It certainly made a change from the standard situation of sitting up the back and comfortably hearing a presenter speak.
I also got to meet some of – dare I say it – “my people”: pornographers, porn stars, strippers, performers and various kinky people. I think this was one of the strengths of the conference: it was willing to hear the voices of those on the front line of erotic screen and sound. It meant there was a balance between intense theory and real-life experiences. This also resulted in a few interesting clashes such as when stripper Zarha Stardust questioned the assumptions made about porn stars in a traditional feminist reading of mainstream porn.
In the end, the best part of the conference for me was the chance to network. I got chatting to various lovely people during the meal breaks and have made some good friends. I was interviewed by Clarissa Smith who wrote One For The Girls, a book studying porn for women. I also introduced her to the bearded dragons living in the university gardens and there was a bit of squealing.
I had drinks with Fiona Patten and Anne Frances Watson from the Sex Party and talked to Dean Beck who hosts a radio show about gay sexuality in Melbourne. I met the lovely Angela White who not only makes a living as a porn star but is also a PhD student, and Zahra Stardust who is a stripper, politician and Masters student.
I talked women’s porn with Maureen who runs Bliss for Women in Melbourne. I talked to Rupert Owen (who appears in Anna Brownfield’s film The Band) about ways in which people uploading amateur porn can keep control of their videos through open source principles. And then there was all the fun of Tiara The Merch Girl and her exuberant, very smart presence.
One of the recurring themes of the conference was a lack of space and permission to explore sexuality and the erotic. I think there’s potential for this conference to spin into a broader event, possibly like the Berlin Porn Film Festival. Unfortunately, the law will get in the way. It’s one thing for the “elite” academics to gather and discuss fisting and BDSM, watch videos of facial cumshots and discuss their meaning or analyse photos of objects shoved into the anus. It’s another to be allowed to have a festival where the general public are invited. Showing any kind of adult film is still prohibited in Australia. Gathering to discuss and enjoy sexuality is really only limited to the commercial sphere of Sexpo.
It would be nice to try and I believe the general public would be up for it but I think our “moral guardians” would step in and make it unviable. You can discuss porn in an academic way but you’re not allow to enjoy it.
Still, perhaps this conference is an important first step in created a dialogue about sex, porn, art and censorship in Australia. I’m glad I went.
I’d like to direct you to the presentation by Tiara The Merch Girl. She’s kindly uploaded the whole thing onto Vimeo. In it she discusses the idea that erotic represenations, even when they’re labelled “alternative” still adhere to a very narrow aesthetic. She gives details of her own sexual journey and finishes with a superb burlesque/poetry piece.
Tiara the Merch Girl - Erotic Screen and Sound Conference 2011 Presentation - Not Your Ex/Rotic from Tiara The Merch Girl on Vimeo.
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Hot Guys
Monday, July 5th, 2010
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Here’s a little promo I made for For The Girls with a bit of hot guy footage.
I’m putting it up here because I’ve neglected my blog for a week. I meant to write up something new but my PC decided to fail today. Thankfully I’ve got it back from the geeks and it’s OK.
I’ve had a small adventure with The Guardian – they quoted me in an article about the .xxx domain here. I also have made a number of comments on the story. In the process I attracted a bunch of lovely new Twitter followers – hi there – but haven’t been giving them anything good on the blog. This will have to do for now. I have numerous long-winded things to write, just need the time to get them out of my head.
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Life Love Lust Preview
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010This is the trailer for Erika Lust’s new film Life Love Lust. As you can see it looks amazing – really high production values and interesting imagery galore. I think Erika’s films are the real future of porn: good quality, interesting stories, hot sex. And I also applaud Erika’s unapologetic determination to cater to straight women.
The official blurb is:
LIFE: After finishing the day in the restaurant they both work in, a chef and a waitress have an incredible encounter to celebrate his birthday. LOVE: A fourty-something executive seduces a young man she sporadically meets in a city hotel. LUST: Lola uses all her sensual body to give an intense skin on skin massage to a shy and lonely woman, driving her to the most pure extasis. LIFE LOVE LUST are three erotic audiovisual jewels by the acclaimed director Erika Lust. This DVD also features two awarded short movies about fetishism: LOVE ME LIKE YOU HATE ME and HANDCUFFS.
The movie is officially released on May 1 but you can pre-order it from the official site here and score extra goodies. You can also watch another trailer and view pics from the movie. Erika’s blog also makes for great reading.
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Berlin Porn Film Festival 2009
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009It took five weeks but here, finally, is my little doco about the 2009 Berlin Porn Film Festival. It’s a little over 4 minutes and you’ll hear some great comments about feminist porn by some of the fab female directors I met including Shine Louise Houston, Anna Brownfield, Candida Royalle, Anna Span, Petra Joy, Jennifer Lyon Bell and Renee Pornero. Plus a quick cameo from Joe Gallant and footage from the Petra Joy Awards presentation.
A much longer version went live at For The Girls yesterday and I’ll also be uploading more footage there soon. Candida Royalle’s lecture about her films is particularly interesting – that’s waiting for a future update. I also wrote an expansive article about my experiences in Berlin for FTG.
The short blog version is that I had a ball, won an award, met lots of wonderful people and wished it could have gone for another 3 days. I didn’t get to enjoy nearly enough films because I was so busy with the Petra Joy Award but the ones I did see were amazing.
It was the people I met that really made it worthwhile. I interviewed Shine Louise Houston from the Crash Pad Series and was so impressed with her drive and knowledge. She’s a woman with a plan and she’s going to become even more of a force to be reckoned with in the future.
Well-known director Joe Gallant could well be the nicest man in the world. We talked the future of porn and hopefully we can work together at sometime next year. He said he thought I’d like Bong Water Butt Babes but I wasn’t so sure. He made me aware of how disconnected I am from the mainstream porn industry… something for which I’m kind of grateful.
Anna Brownfield is a card. We were so pleased to meet each other and had the comraderie of two Aussies lost in Europe, trying not to slip into slang when giving interviews. Her film The Band was such a standout and it shows you can easily marry explicit sex, comedy and great storytelling.
I also got to meet Lisa Vandever from Cinekink who is so much fun and easy to talk to, as is Vena Virago, a wild, pink haired artist who just happens to make porn for Vivid Alt. And I found myself getting stupidly protective towards the gorgeous Julie Simone, who is very quiet and shy, despite being a fearsome BDSM Mistress who can rock a rubber dress.
And then there’s Jennifer Lyon Bell of Blue Artichoke Films who I met last year. Jen is kind of like the social glue of the event, introducing people and arranging dinners and you couldn’t encounter a warmer, more positive person.
I even got to say hello to Candida Royalle, albeit briefly. Indeed, I cringe a little when I think about it. I was feeling a little starstruck and eagerly handed her my card which read Louise Lush. “That’s my new pretendy name,” I said.
Pretendy name??? Sheesh! I like to flatter myself that I have a decent vocabulary but do you think I could remember the word pseudonym for love or money at that moment? My husband has been teasing me about my pretendy name ever since.
OK, enough name dropping. Suffice to say I made lots of contacts and, as you see in the film, we all feel like we’ve found a family in Berlin.
I’ve since discovered quite a few of the short films on Youtube or other free sites around the web. I’m hoping to feature these on the blog in the future.
And as expensive as it is to travel all that way I think I’ll have to go back in 2010. The festival is too much fun and far too useful to miss out on.
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“Handcuffs” By Erika Lust
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009Wow. Erika Lust, who produced the amazingly good Five Hot Stories For Her, is working on a new project. And she’s just released this 7 minute short to promote it.
The first half is a bit too dark to really work out what’s happening but things hot up at the mid way mark. Just goes to show that a film can be incredibly erotic without going into too much explicit detail. And when you do see that erect cock… it makes the impact that much stronger.
Gorgeously filmed too… amazing production values. I’m very keen to see what she’s working on!
Visit Erika’s site – she’s got her movies online there plus a great blog.
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Stills From “That’s What I Like”
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
This week’s update at For The Girls features my new short video “That’s What I Like.” If you’ve been following me on Twitter you’ll know I had a big weekend shooting this movie and an eventful couple of weeks editing it. Now it’s live at FTG and I’m so pleased with it.
The official blurb for the movie is:
“That’s What I Like” portrays one woman’s individual sexual preferences, in words and in the flesh. This short 10 minute film aims to offer an intimate portrait of sensual heterosexual sex. Realistic and arousing, it also affirms the right of women to express their sexuality through the medium of film.
The movie is 10 minutes long and I love the way it looks. Filming was quite a learning experience, challenging but ultimately rewarding. Our two actors were gorgeous, very easy to work with and did a great job.
I’m looking forward to making more great porn for women videos in the future.
In the meantime, you can find this video at For The Girls. Next month we’re uploading a much longer version of their sex scene.
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Berlin Porn Film Festival Report and Video
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008It’s taken far too long but I’ve finally posted my video and report of my adventures at the Berlin Porn Film Festival. I was held up waiting for permission and excerpts from some of the films and unfortunately most of those I contacted didn’t reply. It’s a shame because I saw so much talent on display at the festival and I was eager to give those people a bit of publicity.
In any case I hope you like the vid. It’s only very amateur and the sound quality is crap but we made do with what was available. I’ll be editing together a much longer version and also writing a more in-depth article to feature at For The Girls.
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Chemistry 4: The “Distracted By Equipment” Edition
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
I’ve just finished writing up my review of Tristan Taormino’s Chemistry 4 for For The Girls. It’s a great film, but I must admit that admid the endless orgies and amusing porn star slapstick I kept getting distracted by the film equipment.
Yes folks, ever since I did my video production course and made a short film, my interest in the technicalities of porn has come to the fore. And Chemistry 4 is exactly the sort of film I need to see because it’s shot in high definition. It’s also a gonzo flick where the actors acknowledge the camera and where the cameras themselves become something of a star.
This movie features “PerveCam” – a nice idea whereby the porn stars can film themselves and each other during the sex scenes. They use small handheld camcorders… and I think they may be Sony HDR-HC5 models (available from Amazon). It’s got Nightvision which is used during one sex scene in the film.
I’ll bet the above “Pervcam” photo is exactly the kind of advertising that Sony doesn’t really want.
The main action is shot with a pro Sony model although I’m not sure exactly which one. It could be a HVR-V1U model but I suspect it’s a HVR-Z1U. The camera guy doesn’t appear that often so I couldn’t get a good look.
There’s also numerous shots that give a good idea about how to light a house for shooting video. Indeed, there’s one scene where Evan Stone and Adrianna Nicole bail out of the bathroom, causing the camera guy to complain: “Hey, give me something else! I’ve just lit the room!”
So I went through and got a few screenshots of all the exciting and downright arousing shots of cameras and video eqiupment.
You know you’ve been in porn too long when you freeze the movie to get a good look at some guy’s enormous Sony.
They may be fucking just there, but this guy is more concerned with his mike.
Helps to have a monitor to make sure things are framed up right. Notice how the image on the big monitor is reversed. Tristan is on the handycam.
Another good shot of the Sony pro cam – and the official porno dog in the background.
Check out the sexy fluid head tripod. Yeah baby! Nice large lighting diffuser as well.
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Hot Guy Jerking Off + Links
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
Been really busy, haven’t blogged properly. So naturally I’m doing a filler post with a dirty pic and some links. The guy in the image features in our lastest male masturbation video at For The Girls, uploaded today. He’s quite the hottie, even if he does look like something of a gym junkie. Still, I’d probably be more inclined to go to the gym if more good looking guys were naked on the equipment.
There’s a few news stories I wanted to link to, a couple of them via Fleshbot.
* The guy who organised the Mormon beefcake calendar has been excommunicated. Presumably he’ll now burn in hell for trying to make his religion a bit more appealing (the calendar sold 10,000 copies). And there goes the dream of having hunky, shirtless guys knocking on the door, handing out pamphlets.
* Apparently spas are taking up the idea of giving women a “happy ending” when they have a massage. I think there’ll be a big demand for this. I consistently see erotic massages popping up in female fantasy and sex stories so it’s definitely something women find appealing.
* The teacher who was sacked because she posed nude with her husband in Cleo has lost her battle to get her job back. She says she’ll now sue the government.
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A Hot Movie With Guys Going Down
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
This week at For The Girls I’ve reviewed Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide To Cunnilingus which recently won a prestigious butt plug at the Feminist Porn Awards.
Tristan is doing a great job with her educational series from Vivid and this is no exception. Aside from clearly explaining anatomy and giving handy tips for good pussy licking, the movie offers a number of seriously hot cunnilingus sex scenes.
It’s worth recommending just on the strength of Jack Lawrence, the porn star who loves going down and is a master at tongue work. This guy is really rather adorable and I’m a fan. His prime goal in life is to help create female orgasms, preferably through oral sex, so what’s not to like?
I’ve long been a crusader for male-female pussy licking in porn, since it’s relatively rare in the scheme of things. My site Pure Cunnilingus is devoted solely to guys going down and my goodness it’s a job finding good pics and movies for it.
Anyway… check out the Expert Guide To Cunnilingus. I recommend it.
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Madonna’s Simulated Orgasm 1990
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
I find it hard to believe that the babies born in 1990 are coming of age this year. To me, 1990 wasn’t long ago at all. It was only yesterday. And it was a bit of a golden year for me. I was 17, I was finishing school, I was freshly in love and life was an open book, full of possibility.
What is amazing is that 18 years ago there was no internet which meant that there was no overabundance of porn and masturbation was still really taboo. So when Madonna included this simulated masturbation scene in her Blonde Ambition tour, it really made waves. I mean, it was quite shocking to see. We were still several years away from “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld and we all knew that good girls just didn’t do that sort of thing. Not at rock concerts, anyway.
So I thought I’d include it here, just as a little trip down memory lane, and also to show just have far we’ve come in that time.
The other cool thing about Madonna is that she always owned the sexuality on display. She was always in charge and the men involved were always focused on her. I like how the guys here are wearing those ridiculous Gautier pointy bras. It makes them fantastic and turns them into instruments of Madonna’s own erotic imagination, beings she can control and fashion them to her own ends. Fabulous.
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For The Girls Sample Galleries
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