Teachable moment, heh

Transcript of a story told to me over IM... (Posted all in a row like this, it looks kind of like poetry, with all the line breaks. And that makes it even funnier.)

so my roomie was showing me stuff around the apartment
and he was like, "this is where my videos are
feel free to watch any whenever you want"
and then he gets this slightly sheepish look on his face
and he's like, "um, there might be some porn in there."
and i say, "i don't care."
and he rushes on, "it's all softcore stuff, like playboy. i mean, there's nothing hardcore."
to which i reply, "well, that's a shame."
and he looks at me like i have two heads or something
and i'm like, "i really don't care."
and he starts stuttering apologies/justification
and i'm like, "really, I DON'T CARE."
and he stops and he's like, "so, what. women watch porn?"
and i'm about to fall down b/c i'm trying so hard not to laugh
b/c he's SO sincere
and i'm like, "look."
"one of my friends has been taking pictures to be naked on the internet..."
"and another sent me an email this morning asking what i thought about searching for a fuckbuddy on craigslist"
i REALLY DON'T CARE that you have porn.
"unless it's tony comstock. then i care."
...which he didn't understand, but that's probably just as well. :)
anyway
that made MY day.
first time he's lived with a girl. :)

Heh.

Collective action

Someone brought up the problem of collective action elsewhere. The idea that "well, if everyone stopped supporting the capitalistic system/eating meat/buying exploitative porn (or any porn, if you're the type to think it all is) then these problems would disappear." It reminded me of my own struggles with porn back when I was a hmmm shall I call it more porn-critical? I was never exactly anti-porn feminist.

I stopped using porn for a while, which I've mentioned, for reasons very like those. I've mentioned going back to using porn in here before, but I thought this take on it might prove interesting and illuminating, so:

"Well, I like this, and I'm not
using it for sexist reasons BUT if we ALL stopped, there'd be NO more rape on
film. And someone has to get the ball rolling. As much as I'll miss enjoying
looking at it, if I'm the one who does, I'm brave!" *pretends vast majority of
hard drive is empty*

*waits eagerly for The Menz (tm) to be inspired by her example*

*crickets*

"Huh. This ain't workin'. Looks like I don't matter to the machine."

*Devil appears on shoulder* "Don't you miss it?"

*Angel appears on shoulder* "No! Do not open that folder!"

"But... she's right. I'm liberating nobody doing this and I'm feeling resentful
about what I can and can't look at, and surely that's not feminist political
action."

*Angel gasps* "But if NO ONE lives like they would in the better world, it'll
never come to pass! And remember, once the Industry falls, people will be free
to make pictures again and you can look at them! You should be doing your part
to speed The Day's coming!"

"Hmm. Um..."

"She's off her gourd. No sexist guy has, will, or did change his wanking
patterns because you changed yours!"

"Nnnnngh...."

"'Be the change you want to see in the world!'"

"Hmm, she has a point there. Someone's gotta be the example."

"But you're NOT the example. Hear the crickets? No one cares! They've never even heard of you, or of anti-porn feminists -- or if they have they think MacKinnon needs a dicking, or snicker about the dickings she got from Masson."

*mouse hovering*

"'Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.'"

*Dev's tail twitches* "Angel honey, have you ever had an original thought in your LIFE?"

*Trin wavers*

*Devil rolls her eyes* "Trin, Angel has about as much idea what those sayings mean as you or I do. Who are the 'concerned citizens'? What kind of political action did they actually do? How'd they plan it? And where's the proof that everyone who made serious social change started as a small group anyway? And who's your "group" of concerned citizens? All I see is you yourself, agonizing over whether to purge your porn collection. I don't see you in an "expornie" group, struggling together to not look. Whatever sense that saying makes, it's just a bumper sticker now."

*clamor*

"But Trin, you can't support that!"

"Think about this T: do you feel bad that (exboyfriends, male friends, male lovers) use porn?"

"Oh, no! Not at all!"

*angel glowers*

"Well... in a better world maybe they oughtn't, but... no, I'm not sure I think they're doing something wrong."

"Wouldn't you think that if individuals not using porn any more helps, it would surely help more for them to stop? After all, they're men, and the anti-porn feminists you hang with consider women's use of porn an irrelevant anomaly."

"True, but... it doesn't feel right to tell my friends what they ought to do, if they already know there's sexism in porn. Which I know they do, because we've talked about it."

"If they can use it because their individual use isn't worrisome to you, and they're men, what does you using it matter?"

"Uhhh... hmmm."

*further clamorous yammerings*

*click*

An Apology to Abby Lee

Earlier I had posted an excerpt from Abby Lee's Girl With a One Track Mind blog entry regarding some comments she had made regarding her tastes for seeing men in porn.

Unfortunately, in my haste, I forgot to read the part Abby wrote about getting explicit permission and a copyright notice from her before reposting excerpts from her blog.

Therefore, I have gone ahead and deleted the post; and will simply refer you to Abby's original entry, which is here.

She also has another entry which documents her recent struggle with Blogger, who flagged her blog as "spam" and for a while suspended her access to it.

Newsflash... women like it, too

It astounds me that this is still considered news among some self-identified progressives, but - gasp! - women like porn, too!

Yes, women are sexual beings who get turned on watching people fuck. This is news, apparently.

A new Toronto Sun article says:

According to a 2006 survey by Nielsen NetRatings, women are among the fastest growing users of cyber porn with the number of women downloading X-rated material skyrocketing to 1.4 million.

The article spends a lot of time with the usual "He looks at porn so he must not love me" trope, but does include some quotes from Chanelle Gallant, organizer of the annual Feminist Porn Awards.

[Via Ms. Naughty Porn for Women Blog]

How not to talk to a porn star

Over on the 2257 thread on Feministe, a discussion of porn star Melissa-Ashley came up. This prompted me to check out her MySpace blog. I thought this post was quite well-written and expresses a common frustration with the attitude that some people take toward porn models.

What I'm about to say has been goin' on for a while now, but lately it's been really bad and I can't just hold my tongue about it any longer.

Why the fuck do guys insist on sending me inappropriate email? I get literally about 1,000 emails a day, at at least 700 of them are just plain dirty, some are even kinda offensive. Why do ya'll think it's okay to say that shit to me? Yeah, I get naked for a living. Yeah, I'm a slutty girl. But that doesn't give you the right to run your nasty little mouth and say whatever you want to me! Above my career, I'm a lady and I expect to be treated as such. So what, I like to get naked and I like to have sex. But that DOES NOT mean you can treat me like a whore! No, I don't wanna see a photo of your dick. No, I don't wanna see a photo of one of my pics covered in your cum. No, I don't wanna read a long, detailed email about how you wanna rape me. No, I'm not gonna send you my phone number so I can talk dirty to you while you stroke off. No, I'm not gonna send you a personal, naked pic of me. And what really pisses me off the most about all this, is that it says so right there on my main profile page! If I wanna see your dick, I'll say so. If I wanna send you a personal photo, I'll ask for your email address. If I wanna have sex with you, I'll ask! So if that's all you want from me, leave me the fuck alone!

I'm not really a whore, I only play one on TV.

Dana DeArmond has a YouTube video that expresses the sentiment with a bit more levity.

A Primer on Sex-Positivity (from the World Congress of Sexology)

If there is a better definitive breakdown of what "sex positivity" should mean (and not just the opposite of "sex-negative" either) than this, I've yet to see it.

Excerpted from a larger post by Charlie Glickman that was posted to the Good Vibrations blog today:

Sexuality is an integral part of the personality of every human being. Its
full development depends upon the satisfaction of basic human needs such as the
desire for contact, intimacy, emotional expression, pleasure, tenderness and
love.

Sexuality is constructed through the interaction between the individual
and social structures. Full development of sexuality is essential for
individual, interpersonal, and societal well being.

Sexual rights are universal human rights based on the inherent freedom,
dignity, and equality of all human beings. Since health is a fundamental human
right, so must sexual health be a basic human right.

In order to assure that human beings and societies develop healthy
sexuality, the following sexual rights must be recognized, promoted, respected,
and defended by all societies through all means. Sexual health is the result of
an environment that recognizes, respects and exercises these sexual
rights.


1. The right to sexual freedom. Sexual freedom encompasses the possibility
for individuals to express their full sexual potential. However, this excludes
all forms of sexual coercion, exploitation and abuse at any time and situations
in life.

2. The right to sexual autonomy, sexual integrity, and safety of the sexual
body. This right involves the ability to make autonomous decisions about one’s
sexual life within a context of one’s own personal and social ethics. It also
encompasses control and enjoyment of our own bodies free from torture,
mutilation and violence of any sort.

3. The right to sexual privacy. This involves the right for individual
decisions and behaviors about intimacy as long as they do not intrude on the
sexual rights of others.

4. The right to sexual equity. This refers to freedom from all forms of
discrimination regardless of sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, race, social
class, religion, or physical and emotional disability.

5. The right to sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure, including autoeroticism,
is a source of physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual well
being.

6. The right to emotional sexual expression. Sexual expression is more than
erotic pleasure or sexual acts. Individuals have a right to express their
sexuality through communication, touch, emotional expression and love.

7. The right to sexually associate freely. This means the possibility to
marry or not, to divorce, and to establish other types of responsible sexual
associations.

8. The right to make free and responsible reproductive choices. This
encompasses the right to decide whether or not to have children, the number and
spacing of children, and the right to full access to the means of fertility
regulation.

9. The right to sexual information based upon scientific inquiry. This
right implies that sexual information should be generated through the process of
unencumbered and yet scientifically ethical inquiry, and disseminated in
appropriate ways at all societal levels.

10. The right to comprehensive sexuality education. This is a lifelong
process from birth throughout the life cycle and should involve all social
institutions.

11. The right to sexual health care. Sexual health care should be available
for prevention and treatment of all sexual concerns, problems and
disorders.


Sexual Rights are Fundamental and Universal Human
Rights

Adopted in Hong Kong at the 14th World Congress of Sexology, August 26, 1999

Sounds like a pretty damn good political platform, doesn't it??

The definitive takedown of NoPornNorthampton

Those of you who have been following the blogosphere porn wars are surely familiar with the rise of NoPornNorthampton as a major clearinghouse for antiporn writing. The context of the real-world political battle that NPNH emerges from might be less clear to readers, though rival sites MoPornNorthampton and TalkBackNorthampton have been pretty good about exposing "The horror that is NoPornNorthampton".

Now a Hampshire College student, Murial Barkley-Aylmer, has written a senior thesis, an ethnography of the porn wars in Northampton, from a clearly pro-queer and sex-positive perspective. Its an excellent piece of work, covering the porn and censorship battles in Northampton, MA from the early 1960s up to the present and presenting a thorough history of the players in the present battle, including the folks behind NPNH and MPNH. (Though, oddly enough, TalkBackNorthampton isn't mentioned anywhere, which is the one oversight I'd quibble with in this thesis.)

It pretty much pegs exactly what Adam Cohen and Jendi Reiter are all about, and describes how they "shopped around" for several avenues of anti-porn argument before siding up with the radical feminist one, a perspective that, not surprisingly, they were completely unfamiliar with until they got into this battle.

One interesting piece of Northampton history she manages to dig up is a forgotten episode from 1989 that might very well be titled "When Radfems Attack". This describes how anti-porn radical feminists managed to shut down Womonfyre, a lesbian feminist bookstore through a combined boycott, "direct action" campaign (eg, vandalism and targeted shoplifting), and threats of more direct violence (eg, firebombing). Ironically, this was a business that had previously managed to survive earlier attacks by religious right types. The crime that this bookstore was being punished for? Carrying feminist porn and erotica – On Our Backs, Annie Sprinkle, that kind of thing.

(I think this and a number of other violent incidents from back in the "sex wars" give lie to the idea that a really extreme and crazy form of radical feminism is something that solely exists as internet chatter. Anti-porn radical feminism was a very violent and scary movement back in the 1980s when it had the critical mass to be so. This is the reason so many of us, coming from various ideological perspectives, spend our energies critiquing what's otherwise such a fringe movement.)

Here's a radio interview with Barkley-Aylmer that serves as a really good overview of the thesis:

Bill Dwight Show, WHMP, August 14, 2007 (MP3).
(Interview starts at 12:00 minutes.)

Here's the thesis itself. To give credit where credit is due, NPNH is actually hosting the PDF of the thesis. Very big of them considering the work is very critical of them and pretty on-target:

NoPorn Northampton: An Interdisciplinary Ethnography Following One City’s Struggle with Pornography, by Murial Barkley-Aylmer (PDF).

NPNH gives their response here:

Hampshire College Thesis Explores Northampton Porn Debate; Our Comments

(NPNH's rebuttal is the usual mix of NIMBYism and extreme sexual conservatism dressed up as "progressive" and not really worth responding to. One point that is worth responding to, the charge that NPNH "bombards with information" and NPNH's counter that they build a strong case by presenting evidence. The problem with NPNH is that the information they present is an often-contradictory mish-mash of far-right, radical feminist, and pop psychology writing presented mostly without analysis or insight. Its the shotgun approach to argument – throw out enough charges and hope that some of them stick. This kind of "presentation of evidence" does not, in fact, amount a strong case of any kind.)

MPNH has a point-by-point comeback here:

NPN Responds to Hampshire Thesis: A Point-by-Point Rebuttal

And, an excellent comeback by Bill Dwight about the "adjustable philosophies" of Adam Cohen:

Bill Dwight Show, WHMP, August 21, 2007 (MP3).
(Runs from 19:00–30:00 minutes.)

Finally, Barkley-Aymler's conclusion is worth quoting, because its such a great "why I'm anti-anti-porn" statement:

"To oppose all pornography, delineated from erotica by a self-imposed checklist, is to impose one’s own personal boundaries, sexual preferences and sex-political views on other sexual beings, without respect for individualized needs and positively-experienced pleasures. Regardless of who or what anti-pornography activism seeks to target, this indiscriminate condemnation always negatively affects those individuals who live their sexual lives farthest from the sexual norm. Nevertheless, to applaud all pornography, without concern for sexual violence, industry working conditions, and sexually transmitted infection is to esteem the right to free speech over the value of human life."

More APR/BushCON/Religious Right Collusion: Donna [Rice] Hughes, and TVPRA

[UPDATE (8-22-07): Jill offers an even more in-depth breakdown of the Donna Hughes/TVPRA/Radfem/ReligiousRight alliance as a response to an antipornradfem male critic over here at Bound and Gagged; it's worth a visit.]

Ahhhh...lookee here...some more evidence of the collusion between radical antipornradicalfeminists and the anti-feminist Bush Administration when it comes to sexual fascism (cloaked under the name of fighting "sex-trafficking").

This courtesy of Jill Brenneman's MySpace blog:

From http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/hughes200601260824.asp

"Lopez: How important has the president been in this fight? (Against
trafficking via TVPRA)

Hughes: President Bush has been the crucial factor. He has created a political climate in which all of us, from local activists to high-ranking political appointees, could do this work. Mainstream feminists like to say he's anti-woman, but by supporting the abolitionist work against the global sex trade, he has done more for women and girls than any one other president I can think of. And he seems to have done it because it's the right thing to do, not because of pressure or favoritism. The new law and policy will literally initiate change for millions of women and girls around the world. Years from now, when the anti-Bush hysteria has died away, I believe he will be recognized as a true advocate for women's freedom and human rights.

The mainstream media has ignored this story. Most of the coverage has come
from the conservative press as a result of faith-based groups' involvement in coalition efforts to support the new law and policy. I believe it is a result of the liberal media dislike of the Bush administration and the lack of mainstream feminist groups' acknowledgement of Bush's efforts to fight sex trafficking. Most mainstream journalists don't search out the facts, and instead accept the stereotypes and anti-Bush propaganda. When I speak favorably of what the Bush administration has done to support the anti-trafficking movement, people are often shocked because it isn't consistent with their view of President Bush or the Bush administration. Hopefully, history will set the record straight.

[Emphasis added by me.]

So...I guess that according to the former Donna Rice, it is now perfectly OK to defend an administration bent on overturning fundamental women's rights such as the right to reproductive freedom and autonomy, who wants to eavesdrop and wiretap everyone without a warrant, and who believes that permanent war is good for business but universal health care and public infrastructure is evil "socialism"??? And that feminists should just pipe down and just support him because he's really for children and women when he goes after "sex-trafficking"???


I wonder how Nikki Craft and the rest of the "antiporn left" posse will react to that.

Please Help Stop This Law...

I beg of you, seriously.

Like porn or not, these additions won't stop child porn, but they will make the private information of people working in porn accesable to anyone who wants it...which can lead to anything and everything from stalking to identity theft.

I've sent in my letter of protest, you can do the same by writing toAdmin.ceos@usdoj.gov

Include in the subject line: Docket No.Crm104

You must do so by Sept. 10th....

I don't ask for much out of people...favors, money, support, whatever...this, this I am asking you to do...

What I said?

As a US citizen with a computer, I am writing you just to let you know that I do not like the revisions being proposed for 2257. Yes, it is important to know that the performs in pornography are over the age of 18, and that proof of age is documented and on file. 2257 already does this. The proposed additions to this law demand that a porn performer give up more personal information than most other people working in the US have to give up (as many eomployers require only legal name, proof of age, and SSN), and then makes that information easily accessed by anyone, with good intent or not, who wishes to have it. There is no national data base for other professions containing maiden names, every stage name ever used, and full legal name. This makes performers in porn far more likely to be subject to everything from identity theft to stalking and harassment.

The people you are after, the child pornographers, will never comply with any form of 2257, so why go after and punish those pornographers who already comply with your law? This law will not even truly effect the larger porn companies, but it will be devistating to smaller businesses, it will intimidate performers and put them at risk, it invades their privacy, and these are all people, from Vivid to the budding "woman friendly net pornographer" who already willingly comply with and support 2257. It will not deter illegal (child) pornographers in the least, and it is terribly unfair to the people who legally perform in porn and honestly puts them at severe risk by effectively outting any and all of their personal information to anyone who wants it.

I understand wanting to keep children out of pornography. I do not understand trying to drive pornographers out of business and threatening the privacy and people who perform in porn legally, which is what this law, moral panic aside, will do. Time, money and effort is better spent going after real child pornographers who have never and never will comply with any form of 2257 than those who already follow the laws currently in place.

When Sexual Fascism Attacks: Sec. 2257 and the "Porn Registry"

I had briefly commented on this in the previous thread...but this is scary enough to deserve its own discussion.

This is what Abu Gonzales's Anti-Porn Posse has in store for anyone who wants to be a porn star:

[linked from the New York Post, via the AdultFYI dot com website:

NY Post: Department of Justice Wants Official List of Every Porn Star in America

Ron Jeremy, Jenna Jameson - get ready to stand and be counted.

The Department of Justice wants to come up with an official list of every
porn star in America - and slap stiff penalties on producers who don't
cooperate.

Porn Valley- The new rules, proposed under the Adam Walsh Child Safety and
Protection Act, would require blue-movie makers to keep photos, stage names,
professional names, maiden names, aliases, nicknames and ages on file for the
inspection of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

"The identity of every performer is critical to determining and ensuring
that no performer is a minor," according to the new proposal.

The adult film industry plans to challenge the new rule as a violation of
the First Amendment, said Paul Cambria, a lawyer for Hustler and other adult
film companies.He sees it as a way to harass legitimate stag-film
producers.

"If they can't get you for obscenity, they'll get you for violating
record-keeping," he said. Such a violation would carry a five-year
penalty.

The proposed rule would require porn producers to give the title of the
video or magazine, or the Web address where the actor appears.

The Department of Justice has shown some sensitivity for the performers'
privacy, however. All information not essential to proving their age and
identity, like phone numbers and addresses, can be withheld.

Distributors of foreign pornography aren't off the hook - they must still
produce a copy of the foreign actor's identification card. The department
estimates that there are 500,000 Web sites, 200 DVD producers and 5,000
businesses nationwide that would be subject to the new rule.

The department did not respond to requests for comment, but in its proposal
suggested that the benefits outweighed any negative impact on the porn
industry.

"The benefit of the rule is that children will be better protected from
exploitation in the production of visual depictions of sexually explicit conduct
by ensuring that only those who are at least 18 years of age perform in such
depictions. The costs to the industry include slightly higher record-keeping
costs," the agency argued.

"Slightly higher record-keeping costs"???

Really??? I mean, it's not as if this "registry" won't be easily available to every right-wing fundie/antipornradicalfeminist crackpot or any hacker with time on his hands to harrass and "out" legal porn performers, right??

Or perhaps it's the fact that we have to rely on the very same organization headed by a man who thinks that torture is a very good way to smack Muslims into submission....ahhhh, I mean fight terrorists?? Or that wiretapping the Internet and land-based conversations of their political critics and dissidents....errrrrr, suspected terrorists...without the need for a warrant or any other proof of a crime is simply good crime fighting???

Oh...and did I forget that such information about the ages of porn performers are already required in the first place??

And since when did they need the private info on all porn performers in the first place...since even Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles could see that the majority of them are well over the legal age??? Or, are they planning to make this retroactive so that they can tap the records of past work to grasp for their lack of prosecutions??

"Protecting children from porn", my ASS.

This is more about the BushCONS feeding the Far Right and APRF one last slab of red-meat to save the sinking ship....at the expense of the rest of us.

2257 shouldn't be reformed...it should be NUKED. Like, yesterday.

Psst...it's illegal...

There is an interesting topic being discussed over on Jill B's blog, and as it is a peeve subject of mine, I thought I'd bring it up here...

Why yes, it would be the use of pornographic images on anti-porn blogs, and the fact that unlike pornographers, the anti-porn folks, along with utterly ignoring the performers whose images they use, are also not at all in compliance with 2257...

Nikki Craft, Melissa Farley, so on, so forth? I seriously doubt they have the legal documentation required to be on file for the images used in their anti-porn arguments....

Curious, no?

Pro-porn links 8/14

Links of interest from around web from the last few weeks:

• You, guest blogger on Dennis Cooper's blog, brings us "The Japanese Porn Exploratory Day", an introduction to the weird and wonderful world of Japanese AV. (Scroll down to August 8 for these posts – since this consists of several posts, I wasn' able to link to just one. By his own admission, the strong emphasis in these posts on bondage porn in this post represents You's own tastes. JAV, like porn elsewhere in the world, consists of many genres, most having nothing to do with bondage.)
  
  
• Greta Christina reposts "Playing the Race Card: Candida Royalle's 'Caribbean Heat'", which includes an interesting discussion about the how this production, with an all-Latin American director and cast, differs in positive ways from typical US "race fetish" porn.
  
  
• Tony Comstock offers "How 'X-rated' Came to Mean “Porn” and the Death of Movies for Grown-ups", a concise history of the X- and NC-17 ratings.
  
  
• A Dan Savage web extra has readers reactions to his earlier "You Gonna Eat That?" comments about his dislike of vaginas. (The earlier comments being much-circulated through the United Matriarchy of Bloglandia as evidence of unforgivable gay male misogyny.) This column features feedback from gay men who like straight porn featuring cunnilingus.
  
  
• The upcoming Los Angeles Erotica Film Festival promises to be very interesting. Definitely check out the trailer.
  

Interesting links on the relationship between porn and the political Left

First, Dr. Marty Klein explores the lack of talk about sexuality at the Daily Kos conference:

Sexual Intellegence: No Sex, Please, We're -- Umm, Liberal Bloggers

Then, moi and Ernest Greene (kinkster and hubby of Nina Hartley) get into a friendly discussion over the Left's antipathy towards porn and sexual expression -- including some cleared up misunderstandings about this blog in particular:

The SmackDog Chronicles: Porn, The BPPA, and The Left: An Exchange with Ernest Greene

Situation back to normal....

I had posted on my domain/site issues previously....

Well, I was able to buy back my domain yesterday, and as of a few hours ago, my sites and blogs are now running and fully operational.

So, all links should be working as normal now.

Thanks for being so patient.

Not anti-porn? You must be a man.

Most women can relate to how shitty it feels to have your thoughts and feelings completely discounted, just written off as being "too emotional" or the result of PMS. It sucks. It removes all agency and is a convenient way of not letting women's voices be heard.

So the "male-identified" accusation is different, how...?

Answer: it's not. It's dismissive and it reinforces gender stereotypes.

And, too, it's not acceptable to discount men as thinking with their dicks, or being "creepy" simply for having an interest in sex (see Dacia's post on that topic), or the other gendered stereotypes that are often attached to men.

Note, I am not talking about calling men out on male privilege. Women (and other men) should absolutely do that, especially as part of a feminist, progressive discourse. And men should listen, and learn. So before anyone goes there, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about stereotypes. And stereotypes aren't good for anybody.

I guess the only thing worse that being called a man because of your stance on porn, is actually being a man and holding that same stance on porn. (Or perhaps one is not worse than the other, but rather they're two sides of the same shit-covered coin.)

Marty Klein didn't get "you're just like a man" or "you must be a man" or "you sound like a man." Instead, he got, "I am not surprised that you arrogantly only see this from a man’s point of view."

Convenient, isn't it? If someone makes an argument about porn you don't like, they're either a man, or they're male-identified. Because certainly no real woman would have that kind of (reasoned, well-thought-out) opinion about porn. That is "a man's point of view." No woman could have that point of view. Nice girls don't.

Talk about removing women's agency. We're either victims, or we're male-identified. Riiiight.

Or, as Marty Klein put it:

What you’ve done is just as bad as dismissing a woman’s opinion as “just a woman being emotional,” or “women just don’t get it,” or “she’s just premenstrual.” If we want to get beyond “women only think with their hormones,” we have to get past “men only think with their penises.”

Pornography and sex trafficking: is there a relationship?

Daisy raises an interesting question in the responses to my previous "anti-anti-porn" post:

"I am concerned about the traffickers; I just flagged a blog with a bunch of Asian kids, couldn't have been more than 12-13. This kind of thing, probably filmed in Singapore, Bangkok or wherever (my sources tell me the language was not Japanese, Chinese or Korean) is the wave of the future. I saw the Amnesty International documentary on the traffickers, who are mostly working in Burma, Thailand, eastern Europe... but I'm sure you already know this. Most are teenagers. How can we deal with these people? Is there an effort in the porn industry to identify and isolate the traffickers?

I'd take the pro-porn activists far more seriously if I knew they were on the case. They are obviously hurting your business too. Using traffickers to discredit pornographers working with consensual adult models/actors is wrong, but you need to take a very principled stand on this. (The way some dope dealers refuse to sell meth or deal with people on meth, for instance.)"

First off, I don't think sites like the one you've found are "the wave of the future". There has always been child pornography (which is what the above site sounds like), but its not part of the mainstream porn industry, nor is it what the vast majority of porn viewers are looking for. Most people (even "barely legal" porn fans) are simply not attracted to pre-pubescent children and are repulsed by the thought of them being in porn. It is, needless to say, very illegal, and its unlikely that the above site even had any kind of 2257 documentation, which should be a red flag concerning the legal status of the content.

As for the larger issue of trafficking, you are right about it being an important issue vis a vis the sex industry and sex workers rights, specifically, in prostitution, or at least some segments of that industry. However, I don't think its a major issue in the porn industry, because I simply see no evidence that trafficked women make up any significant portion of the models in the commercial porn industry. That's not to say I don't think there aren't dodgy practices in the porn industry, I just don't think use of unfree, trafficked women is among those sins.

I do see this charge coming from anti-porn folks a lot, but I never see anything in terms of concrete examples to actually back it up. As in, such and such model who appeared in this video or that site was trafficked/coerced into doing this. The group "Captive Daughters" has come out with an antiporn anthology focusing on the subject, " Pornography: Driving the Demand for International Sex Trafficking". I am interested in seeing the book and perhaps I'll try and get it through interlibrary loan. However, based on the introduction to the book I read at the website I just linked to, I don't think they're even making a case that the porn industry directly employs trafficked women, but simply that the pornography and the sex industry in general drive attitudes and a general demand for sex work that inevitably creates demand for unfree sex workers. I don't buy that argument, of course.

The introduction does note that MacKinnon makes a rather creative redefinition of "sex trafficking" to include any transnational migration for the purpose of doing sex work. By that measure, every porn industry in the world has "trafficked" women. But its a bogus argument, really – its simply muddying the waters by saying "immigrant sex worker = trafficked = unfree". That's almost never the case, not by a long shot.

There's a lot of suspicion cast on the East European sex industry since Budepest and, particularly Prague, have emerged as major centers of porn production, particularly since the Czech Republic and Slovakia have been named as destination points for trafficked prostitutes. (And, I think, there's a generalized stereotype of the "Natasha", that is any East European female sex worker as being trafficked or otherwise some kind of sex slave.) Unlike the American porn industry, there's very little inside story on what the Czech porn industry is like, at least in English language media. Here's a couple I know of:

"Talent, profits cause boom in porn", The Prague Post, October 05, 2005.
"Evil Porn Werewolf Enslavers Debunked", ErosBlog, October 22nd, 2005.

Based on what I've read, and Czech- and Hungarian-produced sites and videos I've seen, the porn industry there seems to be pretty above-board. I see no evidence that the porn industry there is using trafficked women. (Immigrants, yes – from several East European countries.) The biggest criticism I've heard is that their pay scale doesn't measure up to what American porn models make.

Some of the porn I see coming directly out of Russia and Ukraine itself is more dodgy, with some of their "barely legel" models looking, well, not even "barely". I personally have no problem if they're 18-year-olds who just look real young, but its hard to tell. All of these sites claim to have their 2257 documentation in order (so as to be able to market their porn in the US and elsewhere), but I've also read that in Russia, primary ID is not nearly as secure as it is in the US and is easily forged.

What can be done about this, as well as for the abusive pornographers I named in my prior post, is not so easy. As I'll say, once again, the porn industry is not a monolith, and there's nobody sitting in an office at Larry Flynt Productions controlling what does and doesn't get marketed as pornography. If somebody can film or photograph some sexual content anywhere in the world, get it on the internet, and set up a credit card payment system – they're in business. They are are upsides to this (eg, much greater diversity in the kind of pornography being made, even compared to just 10 years ago), but also definite downsides (that is, highly dodgy people easily marketing porn).

So, while it would be a good thing for more responsible pornographers to isolate themselves from less responsible ones, how this would be done is less clear. There have been efforts to come up with some kind of "ethical porn" certification, meaning models are of legal age, consent is fully given, there have been adequate STD checks, etc. This kind of proposal inevitable gets hung up on is gray areas, such as whether "condom optional" shoots are OK, use of 18-20 year-old models, etc. Also, nobody has come up with a mechanism of how an "ethical porn" certification would actually be monitored and enforced.

Why I'm anti-anti-porn, Part 2

This being the next in my occasional installments of "Why I'm anti-anti-porn". The last one about issues involved in the production of porn, where I think there are real concerns, and where I think the critiques of porn production fall flat. I've realized that there was one aspect of the antiporn feminist critique that kind of "bridges" the critique of porn production with porn as an expression issue, and one that I didn't address in my last essay.

This idea was a large part of feminist anti-porn rhetoric, summed it up in this quote by Andrea Dworkin from “Letters from a War Zone”:

“The pimps and the normal men have a constitution that says the filmed rapes are "protected speech" or "free speech." Well, it doesn't actually say that--cameras, after all, hadn't been invented yet; but they interpret their constitution to protect their fun. They have laws and judges that call the women hanging from the trees "free speech.”

Essentially, this argument is an attempt to take some of the piss out of the free speech/free expression arguments for porn by pointing out that what's shown in pornography are real acts performed on real women, hence, either free expression arguments don't apply, or, perhaps more broadly, the concept of free expression itself is a red herring, since expressions and acts can't meaningfully be differentiated. (The latter strong version being essentially Catherine MacKinnon's argument, in a nutshell.) In its most extreme form, there's the urban legend that rapists make pornography of women being raped, that this is sold as commercial porn, and that this action is protected because porn is given free speech protections.

What this speaks to is a profound confusion as to what the First Amendment protects and what it doesn't.

First off, some clarifications. I realize by saying "First Amendment", I'm being US-centric here – I am ultimately talking about the broader concept of free speech protections that would apply to varying degrees in liberal democracies anywhere. However, the US, generally speaking, has very strong free speech protections relative to other countries and a very highly developed body of law around just what falls under First Amendment protections and why. And yes, I'm also aware that under current First Amendment law, there's an exception for "obscenity". It’s an idea that I think is archaic and will eventually meet its demise, but right now, it is what it is. I'm also aware that what's "obscene" varies from locality to locality (another anachronism in the Internet era), but that in most areas, the overwhelming majority of commercially available pornography doesn't rise to the legal standard of "obscenity". Given that, one can safely say that most commercially available porn today is broadly protected by the First Amendment in most parts of the US.

To say that the First Amendment protects the final product of pornography as expression, however, does not mean that anything that therefore anything that takes place in the production of pornography is given legal carte blanche. The full consent of the performers must be given and the performers must be of legal age to give consent. If porn is made using any performer who is coerced, then that's an act of rape. If a performer is underage, it’s statutory rape. The status of porn as expression doesn't change that.

And the legal status of the final product is affected as well. Obviously, one cannot go out and sell child pornography, for example. Neither can one simply go out and legally sell a video of an actual rape. The rights to buy and sell the image of any performer or model is covered in a contract known as a model release, an agreement between the performer and producer to be able to release the model's images in exchange for payment. Like any contract, if it’s agreed to under duress, that contract is null and void and it’s a crime to distribute those images.

There is one area where First Amendment law does protect something that might otherwise be illegal. That concerns the actual act of performing in pornography, which has been treated as prostitution by some overzealous prosecutors. The Los Angeles County DA actually tried to shut down the LA porn industry this way in the mid-80s, charging several performers as prostitutes and a producer, Harold Freeman, as a pandererer. An important case in free speech law emerged from this event, California v. Freeman. It says, basically, that if you pay somebody to have sex with you, that's prostitution and therefore illegal. If you pay somebody to have sex in front of you (whether it’s live sex or in pornography), that's expression and therefore protected by the First Amendment. It’s a rather fine legal point, and personally, I support simply decriminalizing prostitution and other kinds of sex work (both for the buyers and sellers) overall. (Technically, this precedent is only law in California, but no other prosecutor has attempted to challenge this precedent. In much of Europe, Japan, and Australia, where prostitution is legal or quasi-legal, this distinction is moot. Whether Swedish laws banning the buying of sex change the legal status of porn is an interesting question, though very little porn is produced in Sweden itself.)

Admittedly, there are areas that are borderline and where the law hasn't always provided the protections that it should. Such is the case with small number of pornographers who produce porn after obtaining the barest thread of consent from the models. One such scam is a "bait and switch" where models are hired for ostensible nude or glamour shots, and then told when they arrive that it’s a hardcore porn shoot and pressured into going through with it. I'll name and shame one website that's accused of doing this – Bang Bus who's rather shameful practices were exposed in a Miami Weekly article in 2004. And, of course, there's the infamous Joe Francis, of Girls Gone Wild fame, who's tactics of isolating and pressuring very drunk women into both softcore and hardcore performances are well-known. I'm unclear why there hasn't been legal recourse against these idiots – perhaps the women victimized by these people don't seek out such recourse, or perhaps the law in this area is underdeveloped. It’s clearly an area where reform needs to take place, both in the law and in the industry itself. As is so often the case when it comes to problems in the porn industry, these problems are not a speech issue, but a labor issue. Attacking free speech protections for pornography does not directly address the problem and causes all kinds of collateral damage.

Next in this series, I'll address the issue of the content of porn and its supposed effects.

A-hem.....a-hem-hem, a-hem....Attention, All BPPA Yayponies

You may want to check out this latest thread over at the Fleshbot website....where some actual good words are being said about a certain recently formed blog.

Fleshbot: Anti Smut Activist Out To Destroy Save Porn

Here we go again ... another fear-mongering blogger is railing against the
dangers of pornography and how it will drag all of society down into a pit of
filth and slime. What's that? You're saying this activist is actually in favor
of pornography? How can that be, when every piece of available media tells us that porn will destroy our families, our sanity and our very lives? (Remember the pit?)

Yes, it seems The Blog of Pro-Porn Activism is actually taking the
radical stance that pornography is not evil and might even be—gasp!—good for
you!

Reporting on the latest in anti-porn hysteria and censorship, the site actually
makes reasoned arguments, treats its opposition with respect and doesn't insult
the educated adults who it believes can make rational informed decisions about
the entertianment they consume. Yeah, that kind of approach will obviously never
work.

You mean that Jonno actually does more than just troll the Net for celeb crotch shots and bare nipples?? ;-)

Anyways.....thanks to the fine folks at Fleshbot (and in the case of contributors Audacia Ray and Violet Blue, we mean that quite literally) for the rousing endorsement; it makes us feel a bit less lonely to know that someone appreciates our work.

Anti-porn mothers and teenage sons

xposted from my blog

The infamous Heart of womensspace has been getting hacked and harrassed in comments and other such. Her website's message board has been shut down by hackers, purportedly for the following post (not sure who it's by, but I seem to remember something almost identical posted at Biting Beaver's, so I suspect it's her):

I have three sons, ages 16, 15, and 12. I was also in an abusive marriage for ten years in which my 15 year old was a frequent target of my x husband. These boys had a rough time of it, as did we all.

After I left my husband my children acted out for a short time, we all spoke of feeling relief and feeling safe yet there were still some rough spots as I got the hang of trying to do it alone.

Several years ago my accountability program found that the computer had been accessing pornography. Turns out it was my middle son. To date he has been 'caught' accessing pornography many times since then. He was 13 I think when this started.

I banned him from the computer, but after a few months I would allow him to be on it for short periods of time. Each and every single time my son would access pornography within days (and sometimes hours) of being allowed back online. He was aware that he would be caught because the computers are monitored but he chose to do it anyway.

Most recently my youngest son allowed my middle son to play with his PSP. Brandon (the middle child) used it to immediately access pornography online. The child is now banned from computers, video games and so forth. I've talked until I'm blue in the face, I've grown angry and yelled, I've cried when I was alone and when I was in front of him. I've had him read Dworkin, my site, and other places (namely OAG's site) and I still can't unseat this problem. He can recite feminist literature all day long, he can understand the tenets, the ideas behind it, how it links together but he will not allow this knowledge to stand in the way of his porn use.

I don't think I'm looking for advice (I've tried everything I could think of so far) but more a place to simply be sad. I can clearly see why he's looking at pornography, I've figured all that out readily enough, but I can't seem to make it stop.

I know, that as soon as my child leaves my home and moves into his own place that he will be looking at porn immediately. I know that I am raising a problem for women. I know that this child will one day grow and will fully absorb the messages that porn sends to men. I know that my child masturbates to degradation of my people (when I use that phrase I mean womyn) and that with every orgasm he will further solidify his own hatred of and superiority over, women.

I know that there will likely come a day where my son coerces a young woman into sex (rape) and there isn't a damned thing I can do about it. I look into the eyes of my son and they still sparkle like they did when he was a baby, but he's not a baby anymore, he's growing into a man and that man will have trained himself to degrade women before he leaves my home.

As a radical feminist who puts women first I cannot begin to determine what I should do with regards to this issue. My heart breaks because there is nothing I can do to protect the womyn he will come into contact with.

I have three boys. One of them is lost to me and as a mother and a radical womyn this breaks my heart in a way I can scarcely express. I don't know if it says something terrible about me, but you know what haunts me late at night? More than anything else? I know, in my heart of hearts that, knowing what I know now, if I had it to do over again I would have had that abortion.

I also find myself blaming myself over and over again, even though that radical womyn inside of me stands up and yells that I'm placing blame in the wrong place. I'm not sure what I intended to say with this message. I began writing it this morning and put it away again and finally decided to finish it this evening. I think that maybe I just wanted to share, I keep trying with Brandon and I keep failing. He simply doesn't care. When he wants to jerk off, everything goes right out the window.

Nothing ever justifies hacking, "invasions," threatening blog comments. They are never called for, never wise, never acceptable.

But there is something really wrong with some of these women, if they think that forcing their sons to repeat Dworkin's theory will stop them from using porn. If they fear their sons turning into rapists and cannot allow them to make their own decisions about their bodies, their fantasies, and what they do when they masturbate.

I have no idea whether this boy is using porn guiltily, convinced that his mom's radical theory is right and that his penis is an uncontrollable force. I hope (and suspect) that he realizes she's out of touch with reality and is using this porn in part to rebel.

But I've dealt with enough hearing that my sexuality is crazy, violent, destructive to know that even when you don't believe it, hearing people say it gets into your mind and your soul and makes you feel sick inside. And you hate yourself for desiring.

I know this particular person and clique don't represent feminism and aren't even worth the time of day. But I think we need to be aware of what some of our theory lends itself to. I think the sane, thoughtful anti-porners need to wrestle with this, struggle with it, understand why the people on the other side fear inducing sexual shame.

And I think we need to realize that, as much as we love to remind the ignorant that feminism isn't about hatred of, mistrust of, or violence toward men -- sometimes those of us who are prone to it can use the theory to look at men, or men's sexuality, or men's penises, as something worthy only of derision and fear.

Bob's new book

Robert Jensen is coming out with a new book, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Still in pre-press, it promises to be "his most personal and difficult book to date" and "reignite one of the fiercest debates in contemporary feminism". We'll see.

All I have to say is – interesting choice of cover art, dude.

More here, including a link to a link to a recent radio interview with Jensen.

Personal Blog Note --

I just found out that my domain name that I use for may SmackDog Chronicles blog has expired, and that blog is no longer accessible...as well as all of my other blogs, my Red Garter Club website, and my forums I created.

I have signed up with another host, but it will take a while for me to reregister my domain due to insufficient funds (at least until my next payday).

So, if you can't access the SmackChron for a while, that's the reason why.

I am working on getting my access back; just bear with me for a while.

eURGH.

Heart of WomensSpace, a radical feminist who is among other things anti-pornography, recently got hacked and then later spammed with insults and threats for posting about it. The most recent of which she documents here (violence ahoy):

http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/blogging-while-female-warning-may-trigger/

A. Friend | ie@gmail.com | IP: 66.90.103.37

Heart, this is horrible. I¹m sorry that this is happening to you. These people want nothing to do but to hurt you and your cause. I feel for you.

In fact, I want to feel you now. I¹d like to tie you down, take a knife, and slit your throat. I¹d penetrate you over and over in all orifices, and create some of my own to stick myself in.

Not Spam ‹ Aug 4, 1:57 AM ‹ [ View Post ]

Which is, of course, completely icky, reprehensible, and at the very least all about using misogyny to frighten and threaten a woman.

But of course, the people at whom the insults are aimed take from this not that some hackers are truly disgusting assholes, but rather that no one would do such a thing if not for porn:

http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/blogging-while-female-warning-may-trigger/#comment-45959

Kitty Glendower

Oh…..but porn is so harmless…..says the yay porn people!

I think he just wants to get thrown in jail so a man can rape him and then he can pretend like he is the victim.

And of course, while rape of women is shocking and horrifying, rape is every asshole male's secret wish. For them it's fun and kinky.

*sigh* I'm sure I'll get all of nowhere saying this, but:

Reprehensible behavior is reprehensible behavior. None of "Team Yayporn" would ever be okay with threatening tactics like this.

And rape is rape. It's not funny when it's wished on men. Either rape jokes are funny, nifty, amusing, or they're not. Either people need to "lighten up" about them or, you know... not.

RApe of men is rarer. Rape of men is often brought up to derail feminist discussion. Etc, etc, etc. All true.

But that doesn't make it FUNNY, or a kink. Any more than women having fantasies of being ravished means it's okay for someone to rape a woman.

And presupposing someone fantasizes about rape, just so you can laugh at him...

That's just not on.

Heart deserves sympathy for being picked on by these asshats the same as anyone else does.

But Heart's posse ought, really ought, put the blame where it actually lies.

Gems...

Perusing that lovely new anti-porn site I found this collection of quotes supposedly proving how misogynistic porn producers are. You know, the standard couple quotes from Marigold and Flynt:

"Women are here to serve men. Look at them, they got to squat to piss. Hell, that proves it."
-- Larry Flynt, Hustler's publisher, quoted on The Anti-porn Resource Center (oneangrygirl.net/antiporn.html).

"I'd like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I firmly believe that we serve a purpose by showing that. The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that, because they get even with the women they can't have. We try to inundate the world with orgasms in the face."
-- Bill Margold, porn industry veteran, quoted in Robert J. Stoller and I. S. Levine, Coming Attractions: The Making of an X-rated video; 1993.

plus a few excerpts from mean ol' gonzo ad copy:

"We at Pure Filth know exactly what you want, and we're giving it to you. Chicks being ass-fucked till their sphincters are pink, puffy and totally blown out. Adult diapers just might be in store for these whores when their work is done."
-- Promotional copy for "Anally Ripped Whores".

Well, in the midst of it all, this:

"I enjoy watching people in pleasure, being pleasured, especially women. And that's the focus of my tapes. The woman's orgasm, the woman's pleasure. How it happens -- whether it be a fist or a penis, or a squash -- to me, it doesn't necessarily matter. That's within my personal realms of what's OK."
-- Adam Glasser, actor and producer of porn films (Source: pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/interviews/glasser.html).

Which strikes me as quite out of place. Why exactly am I supposed to be mad at someone who likes to film women coming? Unless the argument is that they're not really, or this is quoted as a subtle (because it's unstated) critique of the idea that women's orgasms are vaginal, or something.

Why is *that* one supposed to make me mad, I wonder?

Oh, maybe it's the fisting. Well, you know what The Dude said, if your [body part] causes you to sin... *amputates right hand*

Why Bob Jensen is a big damn lie -- The "Delusional" edition

Having been one who has crossed swords on more than one occasion with Robert Jensen and his band of "male feminist" guilt trippers, I can attest quite well to his ability to think outside of the box...that is, that box strategically located between his buttcheeks...when it comes to porn and its supposedly abrasive effects on men and women.

Well...I happen to have proof of how so far off he really is when it comes to analyzing porn.

In the essay that Ren fisked so well this last post ago, Jensen refers to 15 porn films that he claimed to study and analyze for their abrasive and injurous content. One of those films happened to be Delusional, a Vivid "feature" produced in 2000 for the "couples" market.

For those who missed it, here's Jensen's brief take on that video, as adapted from that essay:

This is what quality erotic film entertainment for the couples
market looks like“

Delusional,” a Vivid release in 2000, is another of the 15 tapes I viewed.
In its final sex scene, the lead male character (Randy) professes his love for
the female lead (Lindsay). After discovering that her husband had been cheating
on her, Lindsay had been slow to get into another relationship, waiting for the
right man -- a sensitive man -- to come along. It looked as if Randy was the
man. “I’ll always be here for you no matter what,” Randy tells her. “I just want
to look out for you.” Lindsay lets down her defenses, and they embrace.

After about three minutes of kissing and removing their clothes, Lindsay
begins oral sex on Randy while on her knees on the couch, and he then performs
oral sex on her while she lies on the couch. They then have intercourse, with
Lindsay saying, “Fuck me, fuck me, please” and “I have two fingers in my ass --
do you like that?” This leads to the usual progression of positions: She is on
top of him while he sits on the couch, and then he enters her vaginally from
behind before he asks, “Do you want me to fuck you in the ass?” She answers in
the affirmative; “Stick it in my ass,” she says. After two minutes of anal
intercourse, the scene ends with him masturbating and ejaculating on her
breasts.

Which is the most accurate description of what contemporary men in the
United States want sexually, Armageddon or Vivid? The question assumes a
significant difference between the two; the answer is that both express the same
sexual norm. “Blow Bang #4” begins and ends with the assumption that women live
for male pleasure and want men to ejaculate on them. “Delusional” begins with
the idea that women want something more caring in a man, but ends with her
begging for anal penetration and ejaculation. One is cruder, the other slicker.
Both represent a single pornographic mindset, in which male pleasure defines sex
and female pleasure is a derivate of male pleasure. In pornography, women just happen to love exactly what men love to do to them, and what men love to do in pornography is to control and use, which allows the men who watch pornography to control and use as well.

[Final sentence emphasis added by me.]

Now, that certainly sounds like the ultimate in woman-hating, right??

Not. So. Fast.

Enter my friend and colleague Sheldon Ranz, who happens to be a serious porn auteur, serious enough to have been a paid in full reviewer for Adult Video News (AVN) magazine during the 1980s and 1990s, and who was fortunate and seredipitous enough to have interviewed Nina Hartley for a leftist Jewish magazine called Shmate way back in 1989. (He is still friends with Nina to this day; she was the first maid at his wedding.) [Not the other way around; thanks to Sheldon for the correction.]

Anyways....as part of a previous thread over at Nina's forum touching on Robert Jensen's myopia regarding porn, Sheldon decided to take on his own review of Delusional based on his having viewed the film more than a couple of times. Here's the results of his studies, which paints a, shall we say, slightly different tale than that of Mr. Jensen, to say the least:

[Posted by Sheldon Ranz to Nina Hartley's forum originally on 9-22-04;
reprinted tonight by request from moi and posted here with permission]

OK, sorry for the delay. I hope y’all think what follows below was worth
the wait.

Oddly enough, no review of Delusional appears on AVN’s website, so I’ve
compensated by writing my own review in AVN mode, as I did for real from 1990
–1997:


DELUSIONAL(2000). Vivid Film. Director: Robby D. Script: Robby D. &
Tiffany Enright. Starring Cheyenne Silver, with Ryan Conner, Kiri, Dale DaBone,
Joey Ray and Bobby Vitale. 69 Min.

Titled for the three delusions running rampant in this feature, the film
opens with office colleagues Cheyenne and Dale bemoaning their nowhere social
lives. Dale offhandedly wonders if he’s gay since he hasn’t dated in six months
and urges Cheyenne not to give up on men after she caught her husband (Joey Ray)
boffing a hooker (Kiri) in their own home. Now living alone, Cheyenne has a
on-line chat partner named “Alex” who strikes her as her dream man – kind,
gentle and loyal. After one nightly chat, she tabs over to her Enter button and
her joy bell rings. Later, she has a nightmare involving her getting laid by her
now ex-husband in some noisy dive.

The next day, she meets “Alex”, who turns out not to be a man (Delusion #1)
but a babe with a flamboyantly blonde hairdo, Ryan Conner. Both taken aback and
curious, and wishing to avoid her nightmare scenario, Cheyenne gives Sapphic sex
a shot. After auditing Ryan’s initiating cooz course, her lips smooch and smack
before saving Ryan’s privates for last. Cheyenne wakes up the next morning
alone, Ryan having left her a note with a flower. Later, she tells Ryan at a
restaurant that she’s uncomfortable having a relationship with a woman because
of what others might say. Ryan yells at her, but abruptly smiles and lures her
into the back for a torrid threesome with Bobby Vitale. Cheyenne conspicuously
keeps her high heels on, as if to say, “I want to be bad!” Ryan yells at Bobby
for spurting on them (which she spurred him on to do) and Cheyenne is put off by
Ryan’s increasingly hostile possessiveness.

Having said that he’s been saving himself for her, Dale finally gets his
chance to be with Cheyenne when she takes him home with her. Wearing earrings
and modest tattoos, he looks like a pirate out of a Harlequin Romance novel.
Their foreplay is sweet, despite Cheyenne’s dreadful acting here and throughout
this feature. After a brief but intense exchange of oral sex, she says, “I want
to feel you inside me” and intercourse ensues (as they say on "Law and Order:
SVU"). Equal time is given to missionary and cowgirl, with Cheyenne fingering
her pooper chute throughout. Finally getting the hint, he asks, “Do you want me
to stick it in your ass?” Relieved, she replies, “Yes, I want you to stick it in
my ass!” Shakespeare would be proud.

Watching this from outside, Ryan is fed up. Armed with a liquor bottle and
a gun, she storms in, claiming Cheyenne as her lover (Delusion #2) and
threatening to ventilate Dale. Cheyenne knocks her out with the bottle, but she
escapes while the couple call the cops. Cut to “6 Months Later…”, when someone
knocks on Cheyenne and Dale’s door, leaving behind Ryan’s telltale flower. [The
feature then fades out with 'scary' music.]

Delusion #3 is our heroine’s pop-culture cluelessness. As Michael Douglas
learned in "Fatal Attraction", any assertive blonde named Alex with a fancy
hairdo is asylum bait. I guess Cheyenne didn’t see that movie, since she came
Glenn Close to buying the farm. The feature includes outtakes and bloopers.
Market to those who like their sex scenes safe, short and to the point; and away
from those offended by the blatant homophobia of lesbian psycho
characters.

************************************************** ******************

Comparing the actual contents of the film with Robert Jensen’s own
commentary, what do we find?

Jensen Delusion #1: as a self-proclaimed politically aware gay man, why
does he NEVER mention the "lesbian Fatal Attraction" subplot? This would be an
easy way to bash a mainstream, couples-oriented porn studio.

Jensen Delusion #2: it used to be that women would talk about "saving
themselves" for the right man - now it is a male protagonist (Dale Dabone) who
talks that way. Why does Jensen not see this reversal of stereotypes and how it
undercuts his notion of the man "using and controlling" women?

Jensen Delusion #3: Dale is comfortable enough with his masculinity that he
has no problem speculating in front of Cheyenne that he might be gay - also
overlooked by Jensen.

Jensen Delusion #4: the, ahem, climactic sex scene between Cheyenee and
Dale is totally directed by Cheyenne. Basically, he's a puppy who does whatever
she tells him to do. Not only is she NOT begging, but he's just grateful to be a
satellite orbiting her sun. Who's "using" and "controlling" here? And, as I said
previously, asking permission is contrary to the assumption of entitlement
underlying Jensen's notions of "control" and "using".

Jensen Delusion #5: since Jensen bashes "Delusional" precisely where it is
progressive, and ignores it, in part, where it is reactionary, you have to
wonder what sort of journalism he is passing on to his students. Is this what is
meant by, "Those who can't...teach"?

Now...the first reader here that is willing to skim through Robert Jensen's archives and find ONE essay on the original Fatal Attraction movie -- you know, the one where Glenn Close melts down and almost whacks Michael Douglas, perfect prep for his balling Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, I'd say) -- gets a free pack of Oreo cookies and a gallon of milk for dunking. Would Jensen say that Douglas' character in FA was doing the dominating as much as he preposes that the guys in Delusional were??? Or, perhaps it's only in his mind that since real women don't ever ask for anal sex or ask for spooge in the face, those who do in porn are only either "degrading themselves" for the assumed male audience (must mean gay males, I guess, since by his rules, women are too pure to watch such contemptuous sex) or are mere slaves of the evol trenchcoat-bearing dungeon masters who trap them in such scenes.

You will also notice that Delusional is actually one of the darker "couples" films out there...a bit categorically different from the more conventional style of couples features which usually feature vanilla couples engaging in happy, joyous, mutually pleasurable sex for fun....without the head games and mindfucks. Perhaps it's dark themes were what probably attracted Jensen to review it in lieu of other videos out there??

But then again, it's not like Bob Jensen to extrapolate his own myopia about what men expect from sex and what he thinks women expect from men who view porn onto others....and call it "radical feminism", riiiiiiiight???

Delusional, indeed.