Barely Legal Blogwars

It looks like there's kind of a small blogwar brewing in the sex-poz blogosphere around the issue of "barely legal" porn. This started when Viviane of Viviane's Sex Carnival posted one of the Sugasm feeds from Sugarbank, which was headed by a featured photo of "Mima and Luna", two very young-looking models from the glamour-porn site Errotica Archives. (I wanted to see if Sam Sugar had anything to say about this, but Sugarbank seems to have completely gone down all of a sudden – hopefully its not permanent.)

This was very upsetting to sex-poz blogger Tom Paine (who apparently has other differences with Viviane) of Polymorophously Perverse who's "protective father instinct" kicked in and called Viviane on the carpet for posting "pseudo-kiddie porn", which led to all manner of disagreement from the commentariat there, though Caroline, of Polymorophously Perverse and Un-Cool, offered Tom some support and expressed her discomfort with the image in a couple characteristically thoughtful and reflective posts on the topic.

The interesting thing, though, is that hardly anybody thinks the 2257 disclaimer on the site is inaccurate, and people who have problems with the pictures are upset over the models adolescent appearance, which apparently some people feel is dangerous because it undermines the idea that teenagers can't give meaningful consent or "sexualizes" teenage girls. In other words, you have some sex-pozzes sounding uncharacteristically radfemmish advancing a sort of "social harm" argument, about porn expressing a dangerous idea which might influence viewers in the wrong way; the kind of argument that, in a different context, most of these people would probably argue against.

My own stance on this (which I'm sure I'll be torn a new one for) is that just because somebody who's a legal adult looks a few years shy of an arbitrary age limit doesn't suddenly make the images anything remotely close to kiddie porn. Second, I don't have a whole hell of a lot of sympathy with the idea that porn like this represents such a dangerous idea that it ought not be produced. That's not to say actual under-18 teenagers should be doing porn, of course, but I'm not against porn that expresses the idea of sexy teenagers, either by use of young looking models, or through drawings or animation (such as hentai manga or anime). I can see where images like this might piss people off, especially given the current moral panic over the "sexualization" of teenagers, particularly teenage girls, but I don't think its an idea so heinous that it should be driven out of the marketplace of ideas (though to be fair, I don't think anybody has so far argued that the state should step in an censor such images).

And when people get so upset about a particular model, my first instinct is to try and find out who the models in question actually are. Its the dark-haired model, Mima, in the photoset that people seem to be most upset about. She's somebody I thought I'd recognized, and sure enough, its none other than the (usually-blonde) Miriama K, an already young-looking model who's ungodly-large doe eyes make her look way younger than her actual age. According to her Myspace page (which I'm assuming is genuine), among other sources, Miriama is a 21 year-old professional model from Bratislava, Slovakia. She's been active since late 2006, which would have made her about 19 when she started modeling. She's actually been all over Central European web porn circuit over the last couple years, doing both softcore and hardcore, and from some of the photos on her Myspace page, it looks like she models for non-porn stock photography as well. Could she pass for 14-17? Definitely. Is she anywhere close to that age? No.

I could find less about the other model, Luna, who typically goes by Judita A or Lea T, but I've seen photos like the one in question where she looks young, and others where she looks well into her 20s. (Amazing, what differences in appearance a few differences in lighting and camera angles will bring about.) I'm guessing, if anything, she's around the same age as Miriama or a few years older.

And as an aside, I see a lot of stuff come up in the feminist and sex-poz blogosphere about young-looking girls, but nobody seems to notice there's an entirely parallel genre in gay porn. Do a Google image search for "twinks" and you'll see what I mean. It could have to do with the fact that gay porn is hugely off of a lot of people's radar, to the point where most discussion of porn, even among sex-positives, seems to mention it only as an afterthought. But I also think that young-looking guys being sexual just don't get people quite so upset as sexy images of young-looking girls, and to my mind, that speaks to the fact that a lot of this concern might be coming from an all-too-traditional "lock up your daughters" mentality.

Addendum: Anastasia from "Sex, Life, and Frilly Bits" weighed in with a thoughtful post on "Youthful Erotica & The End of the Civilisation?". Nothing to add except, "what she said".

Further addendum: It appears that Caroline, a blogger who I have a great deal of respect for, is now feeling singled-out, maligned, and mischaracterized by some of the statements I've made above, and is really quite upset about the whole thing. Her arguments about her discomfort with the images acknowledge that a lot of this is gut-level revulsion on her part, and she does acknowledge a certain degree of contradictory feelings on the subject, given her other writing on "extreme porn". For my part, I didn't do the most perfect job of summarizing the argument taking place. (Actually, I challenge anybody to try summing up the nuances of an argument between multiple parties in one or two paragraphs and do a good job of it.) If you're interested in this issue and want to know who's arguing what, I strongly recommend following the links I've given to Caroline, Tom, and Anastasia's posts (and their respective comments) for a clearer picture of what arguments are being made and by whom.