Tuesday, August 14, 2007

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.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for featuring my day on Dennis Cooper's great blog. I hope anyone who checks this brilliant and well intentioned collective blog you've got going here will check the Japanese Porn Exploratory out too - today's the last day it leads though.

    I did want to comment on your statement of my overemphasis. As I state in the post, it's like an episode, so it has a focus which I clearly delineate in the text. The 'day' is, for the most part, precisely what it was intended to be, the so-called overemphasis was intentional, and as such is not really overemphasis at all. And I did not admit to anything, I was not hiding anything, unless you count one's sole communication via written language as a form of admission.

    As I conclude in my day, I planned on exploring other realms as well, later on. Japanese pornography is a huge, and ever expanding and changing space, with a varied history as well. I would not even want to try and reduce it to categorization and sectioneering as I suppose you would of preferred. I think if you give the films and subjects I featured a chance, you will see they have a lot of value and deserved the space I gave them, rather then simply being reduced to 'bondage'.

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  2. ee. that dan savage thing... yeah. i don't understand the disgust or the playing up of it in gay circles. i mean, sure, i can understand that for some people, looking at a cunt isn't hot. But that doesn't mean it's gross, either.

    Eh. I mean: I can't stand the idea of food play. SQUICKY ICKY, most of it. But I don't go around acting as if not liking other people's fascination with licking whipped cream off one another is a part of my identity and slag them to make myself feel better...

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  3. As a complement to the Death of Movies for Grown-ups, check out the documentary "The Celluloid Closet" which covers different aspects of the history of film ratings.

    Not attracted to cunt or those that have one? Ok. Cunt is gross? Get over it, guys.

    I noticed a couple commenters on the followup to You Gonna Eat That? were turned on by the man's submission in eating pussy. Fellatio and cunnilingus have a domination and submission or top and bottom aspect for each party with the net result being egalitarian. People can adopt a form of tunnel vision, seeing only one side, when it suits their fantasies or, unfortunately, political objectives. I have had lovers feel submissive when they were eating me and when I was eating them, for example, because they wanted to feel submissive. The pitcher is submissive because they are serving the other sexually, with orgasm frequently a result. But the pitcher is also dominant because they are exercising considerable control over the body of the other and the other is temporarily losing control over their own body and the pitcher is normally responsible for some or all of the choreography of the act. I don't have a problem with people exercising tunnel vision in furtherance of healthy fantasy. But the anti-porn/sex/sex trade/male folks regularly disregard half of the power dynamic while the pro-porn folks here tend to acknowledge the full dynamic.

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  4. "And I did not admit to anything, I was not hiding anything, unless you count one's sole communication via written language as a form of admission."

    I didn't mean that to sound accusatory. I just meant that in your description of Japanese AV, you give a lot of emphasis on the bondage genre, and perhaps over-represent it relative to other genres of JAV. I just want to provide that caveat to those who were learning about Japanese AV for the first time. That's all I meant by it.

    Personally, I'm partial to rezu (lesbian) JAV, which is in some ways different from American and European "girl-girl" and quite hot in its own way.

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  5. Savage is an asshole. if he were straight he'd be Tucker Max. if he were a woman he'd be Dr. Laura. cannot stand. the general question is an interesting one, though, i mean crossover orientation pr0n watching/fantasizing. I know a lot of dykes--not bi, really dykes--who totally dig the gayboy pr0n.

    The Museum of Sex here in NYC had an interesting exhibit on Japanese porn, from Edo period up till now. AP and bimbo and I went to see it last fall. I had a half-written post about it but it was one of the ones that went by the wayside.

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  6. "Savage is an asshole. if he were straight he'd be Tucker Max. if he were a woman he'd be Dr. Laura."

    I can see why people might see him that way, but I don't agree. And I don't think he's anywhere near Dr. Laura (don't know who Tucker Max is) by a long shot.

    He is, by his own admission, not part of "the gay left". Which does not make him axiomatically a flaming conservative, either. Also, I think his reputation for biphobia and misogyny is greatly exaggerated. I'm aware of some of the statements he's made that give him this reputation, but I also think they've been blown way out of proportion by bi activists and feminists, respectively.

    In general, he's done a lot to mainstream gay male sexual culture, which is something that's changing straight sexual culture for the better.

    Also, I think the Seattle newspaper he's in charge of, The Stranger may be the single best alt weekly in North America, up there with The Village Voice at its height.

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  7. "Also, I think his reputation for biphobia and misogyny is greatly exaggerated. I'm aware of some of the statements he's made that give him this reputation, but I also think they've been blown way out of proportion by bi activists and feminists, respectively."

    Me too. I don't like him much, but I don't generally hold people to the "omg one time you said something sexist ur evol" standard many do.

    I think it's fine to just dislike the guy without invoking -ismage.

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