Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

This great video details The Bechdel Test, which is a way of measuring how mainstream movies treat women. To pass the test, a movie has to:

(1) have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.

The test first appeared in 1985 in Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For.

This site has a growing list of films that do pass the test. Films from 2010 include: Toy Story 3, Sex and the City 2 and, perhaps surprisingly, The Karate Kid. What’s more interesting is applying the test to your favourite movies. It makes you realise that the male point of view has become so normalised that we’re often blind to the marginalisation of women in films. Worse still, this whole attitude seems to be entrenched in Hollywood and is actually taught in film schools.

The idea of applying the Bechdel Test to porn films seems almost ludicrous; porn films are usually about one or more women “discussing” a man, nice and hard. Still, it’s another useful way of revealing just how male-oriented most porn can be.

via Erika Lust.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* As do I!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, back to your regularly scheduled smut.

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

Stanford Magazine reports on the extraordiary discovery of a sex survey conducted in the 1890s by Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher, a professor at that university. The good Dr. collected questionaires asking women to reveal their intimate thoughts on sex. It’s now the earliest known sex survey on record and reveals some surprising information about Victorian-era women.

The Mosher Survey recorded not only women’s sexual habits and appetites, but also their thinking about spousal relationships, children and contraception. Perhaps, it hinted, Victorian women weren’t so Victorian after all.

Indeed, many of the surveyed women were decidedly unshrinking. One, born in 1844, called sex “a normal desire” and observed that “a rational use of it tends to keep people healthier.” Offered another, born in 1862, “The highest devotion is based upon it, a very beautiful thing, and I am glad nature gave it to us.”

…

Slightly more than half of these educated women claimed to have known nothing of sex prior to marriage; the better informed said they’d gotten their information from books, talks with older women and natural observations like “watching farm animals.” Yet no matter how sheltered they’d initially been, these women had—and enjoyed—sex. Of the 45 women, 35 said they desired sex; 34 said they had experienced orgasms; 24 felt that pleasure for both sexes was a reason for intercourse; and about three-quarters of them engaged in it at least once a week.

Dr. Mosher was a very determined woman and an early feminist. The article is well worth reading.

Women are watching more porn than ever. At least, that’s the conclusion if you read The Sun’s latest survey (and I will admit, The Sun must be taken far less seriously than other newspapers).

Around 76 per cent of women now admit* to using porn – a ten per cent rise on the two-thirds of girls who admitted to watching porn with their partners in a survey last year.

The most popular format is online porn, which is watched by 61 per cent of couples. Just one couple in 20 looks at magazines, while 18 per cent get their kicks watching porn DVDs on the telly.

The survey of 4,200 women also revealed four in five women like to dress up for their other halves and indulge in role play.

The most popular outfit is a French maid, used by 42 per cent, followed by nurses, chosen by a quarter of women.

The survey was actually by a site called Netmums which gives you an idea of the demographics. Apparently women have a lot less time and energy for sex at the moment but they’re putting more effort into it when they get the chance.

* I hate how newspaper use the word “admit” like porn use is a crime. It casts the whole thing into a negative light. Thankfully the article includes interviews with (and photos of) three typical porn-loving women. This is a really positive thing to include because it shows that women who like a bit of porn are just everyday, normal chicks who want to enjoy their sex lives using whatever tools are available to them.

It 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.

So it’s been almost a week since Oprah did her porn show. I haven’t had a chance to watch it so I can’t comment but it seems the response is not as positive as we’d like it to have been.

This seems due to the fact that the show relied heavily on an interview with Jenna Jameson. Reading comments in the Oprah forums after the show had aired, I was depressed to see so much negativity towards the topic and also toward Jenna herself. Perhaps not surprising – blonde, silicone-boobed Jenna is not exactly the sort of celebrity who appeals to your average soccor mom/Oprah viewer. She’s an example of the mainstream porn industry rather than the new alternative porn that is seeking to cater to women.

By all accounts Violet did a great job but it was Jenna who got the attention – along with Vivid founder Steve Hirsch. The show also featured the owner of an adult store. What is interesting is the number of people who weren’t interviewed.

Which brings us to Candida Royalle. She’s made a comment on Facebook saying she’s “miffed” at the Oprah show for the way it was conducted:

Anyone catch Jenna Jameson on the Oprah show? Jenna trying to take credit for ‘feminist porn’ was a joke. Only thing worse was watching Vivid founder Steve Hirsch try to take credit for the ‘couples market’. Oh really? Was he even in business when I created my Femme line for women and couples in 1984?…

So here’s the deal: I was called by the producers in June and worked with them for 5 months on that show…only to be canned at the last minute along with a bevy of other far more qualified and significant women who made a difference for women in porn…

In the end they went for the most famous, wealthiest and recognizable person who they hoped would bring in the ratings…it is after all sweeps month.

(Quote is from LukeisBack)

I do think it’s a pity that Candida and other female-friendly porn producers (and stars) couldn’t have been on the show. Hell, I’d have paid my own way over there to be on it and give my 9 years’ worth of 2 cents. But I guess it’s a mainstream show and, like Candida said, they wanted something to give them ratings and headlines.

There have been a few articles about the show:

E!Online offered this snarky short piece: Jameson to Oprah: I’m One Classy Lassie

The Examiner had several opinion pieces on the episode. Suzanne White offered this analysis of the show, concluding that it was focused on Jenna rather than on women consuming porn.

Interestingly, Google News lists Oprah/Jenna stories from such worthy tomes as The Plastic Surgery Channel and Celebrity Baby Scoop. I decided not to link to those.

Here’s the page on Oprah.com describing the show along with several other links (including, unfortunately, an article that states that “men are visual, women are textual”).

So… all in all, it hasn’t exactly been the big win I was hoping for.

Incidentally, if I had the luxury of compiling a show about women, porn and the new wave of feminist porn, I’d want to invite a massive guest list. My stars would include:

Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle, Nina Hartley, Veronica Hart, Shine Louise Houston, Anna Brownfield, Jennifer Lyon Bell, Tony Comstock, Petra Joy, Erika Lust, Marianna Beck, Maria Beatty, Nina Lennox, Anna Span, Nica Noelle, Jamye Waxman, Audacia Ray, Tina Tyler, Estelle Joseph, Tristan Taormino, Madison Young, Mia Engberg…

And me of course.

Now that I’ve compiled that list, it’s pretty damned impressive, actually, and nowhere near comprehensive.

Here’s hoping the Oprah show decides they haven’t given the topic enough attention and has another go.

I’m disappointed I missed it this year: International Gynae Awareness Day (and week) was on September 10. It aims primarily to encourage the breaking down of entrenched social, and cultural taboos, still surrounding most things ‘gynaecological’.

It was founded by Kath Mazella, who 15 years ago endured radical surgery to overcome vulval cancer; she had her vulva and clitoris removed to save her life. She’s now working to make sure this doesn’t have to happen to other women.

Now I considered myself to be fairly well informed about sexual health matters so I’m amazed I’d never heard of vulval cancer. And to be honest, it scares the crap out of me. Cervical cancer, ovarian cancer… we all know about those. But this? Losing your clit? That’s fucking dreadful! How do we check for this? Do doctors even know anything about it?

Thankfully, the GAIN site has information here.

One of the things Kath campaigns on is the correct usage of the word “vulva” to describe the female genitals. She, like me, is sick of people calling it the vagina.

Even today, we find it difficult to talk about our genitalia, and to use the correct name for these precious parts of our own bodies. The founder of GAIN – Kath Mazzella, a survivor of vulval cancer was surprised, then angry, and finally frustrated, to continually hear many, many women, the world over, refer to their “vulva” as their “vagina”!

Shockingly, Kath has even been told by government funding agencies to tone down her language because the word “vulva” is pornographic. “Vagina”, however, is OK. Can you believe the nonsense some people perpetuate?

In any case, this post is a plug for Kath and her good work. And also to show off that spectacular logo: isn’t it cute?

The Murdoch Newspapers have this week been plugging a book called Why Women Have Sex by Cindy Meston and David Buss. After surveying 1000 women they authors claim they know the “real reasons” why women have sex and say that desire, lust or attraction come a long way down the list.

The 1,006 women interviewed as research for the book gave some very surprising answers. One claimed she did it for a spiritual experience, because it is “the closest thing to God”. Others listed “cure for stress headache”, “to make my sexual skills better” and “for a clearer complexion”.

But the majority, 84 per cent, admit they have sex to ensure a quiet life or to bargain for their partners to carry out household chores. One said: “I have sex to relieve the boredom. Because it’s easier than fighting. Plus it gives me something to do.”

I’m not sure what to make of this research. I don’t doubt that women do have sex for a variety of reasons including keeping their husband happy. But this quote makes me a little suspicious:

“Research has shown that most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all,” the authors, who are both psychology professors at the University of Texas, conclude.

Um, what research is that? Because I’ve never heard of it and it seems a ridiculously broad thing to say about “most women.”

Add to that the way that the Murdoch papers, such as this report in the Courier Mail, seem keen to ramp up the idea that all women are just manipulating men using sex. It’s also shocked that a woman would have sex for sheer pleasure. “Rather than love or romance, for many women sex is just about fun,” says their report. No, really? You’re kidding me?

Back in June I reported that ABC’s Nightline was going to show a report women’s interest in porn and sex toys. The piece was bumped several times and it’s only just been broadcast. The report included appearances by Candida Royalle and Nica Noelle. For The Girls was initially contacted by the show but we never heard back from them.

In any case, there’s a longish article to accompany the report on the ABC website. I can only groan at the ubiquitous mention of Sex and the City but it does have some nice quotes from Candida and Nica.

“Women generally want to know why two people are having sex,” said Nica Noelle, a top porn director. “They want to know what the relationship is between those two people. … They want to feel that it’s a relationship that matters to both of the characters. And that the sex is passionate and intimate. And none of those things were really being portrayed in the porn that was out there.”

Update 14th August
Nightline has put the report online so I’ve had a chance to watch it. The yoga thing felt like a waste of space but otherwise I think it was a good, positive piece. Candida and Nica were great. What’s interesting is their focus on the amount of time spent on plot vs sex, as if this is the way to define porn for women. There was also the usual emphasis on relationships, realism and intimacy which will no doubt fire up a backlash among some porn loving women.

I was very pleased to see my site Porn Movies For Women appear, albeit briefly. Here’s a screenshot:

It’s interesting that, once again, the focus is on films rather than websites, even though the statistics quoted relate to internet porn.

I should have blogged about this on the weekend but I was busy with a festival. In any case, the mainstream media are on the trail of women and porn again, thanks to this article by Violet Blue on CNN. Today it featured on the front page with a resulting surge in interest.

The piece gives a positive overview of the statistics and the reasons why more women are watching porn. Her mention of Tony Comstock’s films have given his sales a huge boost (you know, one day I’m going to have a film that Violet mentions in her articles as well. One day…)

Violet has also written about the article on her blog.

Despite the fact that the piece is a win for balanced stories about porn in the mainstream media, there is one glaring problem with CNN’s page – it happily provides a link to anti-porn crusaders Pure Life Ministries but does not link to either Maria Beatty’s site or to Comstock Films. No doubt this is due to some “NSFW” link policy but the question needs to be asked: why link to Pure Life at all? The article only mentions it in passing. Surely it would be better not to link to anyone if you can’t be balanced with your linking policy?

The Sun is practically exploding with excited bold print in this article (and I use the term loosely) about a survey into porn viewing habits.

They’ve found that 66% of women watch porn. Well, duh. This is compared to 88% of men, out of a survey of 1000 Sun readers. I must admit, the 66% figure is a lot higher than all the other surveys I’ve seen on this topic, but maybe it makes a difference that readers chose to fill in the survey and that they are in the demographic of “people who actually read The Sun newspaper.”

The age demographics suggest that younger women are more likely to enjoy porn, but not that much more than women aged 26 and older.

65% of women said they’d watched porn with their partner or husband with a third of those saying they used it for foreplay.

The Independent has a he-said, she-said article discussing women and desire. Much of it rehashes the New York Times article from a couple of weeks ago, but I felt the need to blog these two paragraphs, just because I liked the sentiment.

So female desire can be a paradox – as Prof Chivers reports, we may want to be ravished roughly in an alley and also want someone who can be tender and caring. But I’m always amazed by how male writers manage to make that sound impossible, when really, women are not that complicated. Our sexuality just doesn’t parallel men’s; we can’t always be viewed through the same filter. So perhaps when they study women, scientists should drop the unifying theory idea.

As Mary Roach says, “[Scientists] saying that they want to increase orgasms, or boost libido is much more helpful than saying: ‘I want to understand women.’”

Catharine Townsend has a point. Why do men always find this complexity confusing? Surely they experience the same thing? Men and women are not automatons, we all want variety in bed and in our relationships. Everyone has their own kinky fantasies… so enough with the “what do women want?” question.

The New York Times has an extensive article on research into female desire and lust, profiling the hardworking scientists who are studying this relatively new field of human sexuality (i.e. nobody’s bothered to look into what turns women on. Go figure.)

What I found really interesting was the discussion about how the old ideas of romance and relationships aren’t what really get the juices flowing. It’s being lusted after that makes all the difference.

Definitely rings a bell with me.

The problem was how to augment desire, and despite prevailing wisdom, the answer, she told me, had “little to do with building better relationships,” with fostering communication between patients and their partners. She rolled her eyes at such niceties…

“Female desire,” Meana said, speaking broadly and not only about her dyspareunic patients, “is not governed by the relational factors that, we like to think, rule women’s sexuality as opposed to men’s.”

“Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need. Still on the subject of narcissism, she talked about research indicating that, in comparison with men, women’s erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it. “When it comes to desire,” she added, “women may be far less relational than men.”

For evolutionary and cultural reasons, she said, women might set a high value on the closeness and longevity of relationships: “But it’s wrong to think that because relationships are what women choose they’re the primary source of women’s desire.”

…

From early glances at her data, Chivers said, she guesses she will find that women are most turned on, subjectively if not objectively, by scenarios of sex with strangers… “I’ve often thought that there is something really powerful for women’s sexuality about being desired. That receptivity element. At some point I’d love to do a study that would look at that.”

There’s also some interesting speculation about why women will get physically turned on by all sorts of things, even if their mind doesn’t register it.

Genital lubrication, she writes in her upcoming paper in Archives of Sexual Behavior, is necessary “to reduce discomfort, and the possibility of injury, during vaginal penetration. . . . Ancestral women who did not show an automatic vaginal response to sexual cues may have been more likely to experience injuries during unwanted vaginal penetration that resulted in illness, infertility or even death, and thus would be less likely to have passed on this trait to their offspring.”

Evolution’s legacy, according to this theory, is that women are prone to lubricate, if only protectively, to hints of sex in their surroundings.

It’s a very interesting article, well worth reading.

I’m a bit late with this article but I do love what it’s saying: that women enjoy perving just as much as men.

The tiresome myth that women are not as visually aroused as men is used to justify everything from sexual assault to double standards about public toplessness, and it’s time to kill it dead.

If the oceans of female drool spilt over Obama (and Daniel Craig and Jude Law and Roger Federer et al) isn’t enough to convince you, consider the fact that women continue to have sex with men despite not being legally or economically or in any other way compelled to do so.

Hot pic is from For The Girls, of course.