It’s interesting, isn’t it, how on most of the video porn sites there’s a “straight” or “gay” option. ”Straight” gets you porn focused on sexy women, “gay” gets you porn focused on sexy guys.
Can you spot the unspoken assumption?
I know, I know, market forces and all that, they’re assuming all their visitors are male because most of them are, but still, would it kill them to give even a token attempt at acknowledging the other half of the human race?
How do you feel about being the first man to appear in a UK women’s magazine in a state of obvious arousal?
I go back and forth between being excited and paralysed with terror. On one hand, I’m happy to be breaking an unnecessary taboo; on the other, I’m actually extremely shy and the thought of strangers seeing me undressed is the stuff of nightmares. I suppose this is a rather over-the-top way of confronting some of my fears. I’m nervous about how much attention it may attract and equally worried that nobody will notice. What’s the point of getting up the courage to be an exhibitionist if no one watches?
(Filament Magazine, via Fleshbot)
Remember FuckForForest? I’m honestly surprised there isn’t more “activist porn”, it seems like the intersection of “young, horny and having poor judgement” and “young, idealistic and politically naive” would be bigger.
I think anti-porn writers have a very bad habit of ignoring Sturgeon’s Law. They fail to recognize that, yes, 90% of porn is crap… but 90% of everything is crap. And in a sexist society, 90% of everything is sexist crap. I’ve seen some very good arguments on how most porn is sexist and patriarchal with rigid and misleading images of women… but I’ve never seen a good argument for why, in a world of sexist TV and movies and pop music and video games, porn should be singled out for special condemnation — to the point of trying to eliminate the genre altogether.
But I also think that pro-porn advocates — myself included — need to stop pretending that there isn’t a problem. We need to recognize that the overwhelming majority of porn — or rather, the overwhelming majority of video porn, which is the overwhelming majority of porn — is sexist, is patriarchal, does perpetuate body fascism, does create unrealistic sexual expectations for both women and men, does depict sex in ways that are not only overwhelmingly focused on male pleasure, but are rigid and formulaic and mind-numbingly tedious to boot. And we need to be trying to do something about it.
Erika Hallqvist, better known under her porn-alias Erika Lust, is a Swedish filmmaker. She is the co-founder of Lust Films and is also a journalist. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1977 and has a master’s degree in political science and audiovisual management with a specialization in feminism and sexual studies from University of Lund.
In 2004 she directed ‘The Good Girl’, a Spanish indie pornographic short film. The story is a traditional “pizza delivery guy” cliché, but takes place from a female perspective. The film makes fun of typical porn clichés. It was awarded with best short film of the year at the International Erotic Film Festival of Barcelona (FICEB 2005).
In 2007 she directed ‘Five Hot Stories for Her’, a compilation of five short films written and directed by Erika Lust created especially for women and couples. ‘Five Hot Stories for Her’ won Best Script at the Festival of Erotic Cinema in Barcelona 2007, Best Film for Women at the Erotic E-Line Awards (Berlin 2007), obtained an Honorable Best Mention at the CineKink Festival (New York 2008) and was awarded Best Movie of the Year at the Feminist Porn Awards (Toronto 2008).
In 2008 she wrote and directed ‘Barcelona Sex Project’, an experimental independent adult film which takes a close look into the lives of three men and three women.
(photo via Erika Lust’s Flickr)
When set against the plethora of men’s lifestyle and top-shelf magazines featuring scantily clad and open-legged women, the struggles faced by Filament highlight a deeply entrenched sexism: men can look at women but women cannot look at men.
Attempts to even out this disparity often lead to cries that two wrongs don’t make a right; that countering the prevalence of eroticised women by adding men to the mix legitimises sexist objectification. But there’s nothing inherently sexist about depicting nudity. It’s sexist when only women are deemed to signify the erotic; it’s sexist when eroticised images of women are so normalised and widespread that women stand to be viewed first and foremost as sex objects – their value inextricably linked to their sexual desirability. The sexism is in the inequality.
In challenging a culture that positions women as sex-products for men, Filament isn’t seeking to turn the tables in an act of vengeance. Instead, it’s asking for women to be acknowledged as human beings who can look and lust just as men can.
Explicit images of women are available at any newsagent, but Filament, the world’s only magazine featuring male pictorials designed for the female gaze, is finding itself between a rock and a hard place when it comes to printing explicit images of men.
Filament only prints explicit images when these are of high photographic and erotic quality, and clearly designed for women - we won’t ever be putting hard cocks on every page. The problem is, all the printers that a small, independent magazine like Filament can afford have said they won’t print images of the male of the species in a state of obvious arousal. Reasons given include that printing these images may cause offence to ‘women’s groups’.
Filament Magazine (via The F-Word)
So the decision to let 9 Songs be R rated was based on the idea that the film was artistic, serious, moral and not demeaning to the participants, as well as the fact that, being an “art film” it was designed for a higher class of people - you know, those smart trendy ones with university degrees who can obviously watch explicit sex without being corrupted or aroused - unlike all those scum who watch porn and for whom the X rating was created, to stop society from descending into a Mad-Max type scenario.
I can name numerous adult films with explicit sex that are artistic, serious, moral and not degrading. Of particular note is, of course, the films of Tony Comstock which were banned from a film festival several years ago, but I could also talk about the explicit films of Petra Joy, Jennifer Lyon Bell, Shine Louise Houston or Tristan Taormino. Most of the movies I saw at last year’s Berlin Porn Film Festival could fit into that mould… but they would be illegal to screen here. I could easily argue that the new brand of porn seeks to explore relationships and sexuality in exactly the same way that Winterbottom has done with 9 Songs.
The only difference is that adult filmmakers acknowledge the arousal of their audience rather than placing themselves on an “art” pedestal, one that denies the fact that people WILL get turned on and masturbate if you show them sex.
And that’s what it really comes down to in the end. The OFLC can use all kinds of excuses about art and class and audience and intent but ultimately our laws are about the fear of people getting aroused and masturbating.
If you’re taking a girl home to meet your mother, the last person she wants to meet is a porn star. Porn stars have a terrible reputation for being sad, abused girls with low self-esteem, drug and alcohol problems, and an insatiable appetite for doing the deed. The truth, however, is a lot more complicated.
‘Girl Girl’ is a contrived notion of queerness. I spoke with a company owner who boasts “true lesbians” in his business, and he had the audacity to say to me, “We make sure they’re a little bit bisexual.” And, while bisexuality is certainly a queer notion and bi girls count - the thought of this guy’s testing mechanisms for “real lesbianism” seems a little… weak. I think that regardless of whether these “girl/girl” models actually like girls or not, the film is produced by men, with the intention of selling to men who like to watch lesbians.
I think you can be “queer” and be anywhere in the sexuality spectrum, as long as you feel like your sexual identity is somewhere outside the box, and perhaps you just don’t do things the way the world would expect you to as a gay, lesbian, straight, or bisexual.
The word “queer” in relation to “lesbian” and “gay” is an even more unifying word than “GLBT,” because you don’t have to explain your sexuality any further than that unless you feel like it. I think it’s a term used by younger people, certainly people who have transgendered folks in their scenes perhaps because of the complication of calling yourself “lesbian” or “straight” when you date people of varying genders. I believe “queer” also has a very punk rock element to it - we’re more deviant, we’re more dangerous, we’re more exciting.
Women watch all kinds of porn. But women who identify as lesbians, from my experience at least, find most “girl/girl” porn to be extremely fake. It’s like whoever directed it has absolutely no idea how women fuck each other. Many alt porn sites have the same exact problem when it comes to shooting two girls together. When I was doing girl/girl shows in a peepshow, it translated to men’s ideas of how women fuck in real life - meaning that men believe this junk. I think that porn has the power to educate people, and that can be enlightening as well as damaging. How many things have you seen in porn where you have thought, “Well, that’s just not right!” Good porn will show you how it’d done right - but porn that was carelessly produced can teach it’s audience that our clits are in the backs of our throats, that lesbians love to show off for men, that all women can take 5 cocks in their asses all at once…. you get the picture.
Tristan Taormino Shows Straight Men The Back Door
“In straight porn parlance, anal sex is pretty exclusively used to refer to a girl taking it up the butt from a guy—and not the other way around. “Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to Anal Pleasure for Men” flips the switch on that relationship.”
(via Fleshbot)
Courtney gets a monster dickI feel sorry for all the teenage boys being raised on porn like this.
Let me set your minds at ease: No, you are never going to encounter a woman who needs a cock the size of a tallboy beer can to be satisfied. (If you do, you should stop dating girls who post on BMEzine. Jesus!)
This shit is getting ridiculous. I have even noticed, on the venerable old (in net terms) medium of IRC, that the men who PM you looking for cybersex are feeling the need to make ever more ridiculous exagerrations in the description of their undercarriage. Back in the dialup days (dating myself here) when a horny young guy on the internet wanted to impress you he would claim to have an 8 or 9 inch cock. These days 11 or 12 inches seems to be the standard exaggeration. Inflation is a terrible thing.
If nothing else, you guys need to keep in mind that all this giant cock porn is aimed at men. It’s guys who fantasize about ravaging women with gargantuan supercocks, not women who fantasize about being thusly ravished. Or if we do, we would probably balk if confronted with the real thing. Just watching some of these vids is enough to make me wince.
The idea is simple—a choose your own adventure porn, if you will. The program gives you a whole host of options (choice of girl, choice of prop, choice of action, choice of setting, choice of music), then compiles your selections into your very own porn clip.(via Fleshbot)
Ah, “objectification”, one of those buzzwords - like “empowerment” - that I’ve heard so many times, it just sounds like gibberish. And really, I’m not sure if I ever knew what it was supposed to mean in the first place. This topic is one of my major headdesk issues with anti-porn crusaders. They say, “porn objectifies women!” as though that’s some kind of end-all analysis.
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