Monday, October 13, 2008

The Price of Pleasure Deconstructed - Part One

Okay, at long last, let's get started. This is going to take several posts and others will undoubtedly chime in before I get all the way through, but I want to try and stay OT as much as possible and beg the indulgence of other contributors in helping me do that. After I get my critique laid out, I'll be glad to take on the various tangential issues that will inevitably arise.

But before I begin my exhaustive (and exhausting) exegesis of TPoP’s content, I want to take up Trinity’s suggestion and share a revealing encounter I had recently that sheds light on the methods used to assemble TPoP’s footage of members of the porn community. It says far more than I think this film’s author’s might like about the lengths to which they went to get what they wanted, the element of premeditation involved in manipulating situations to suit their objectives, and the complete and utter disregard shown to those who might have been hurt in the process.

I think people’s means tell us a lot about their ends, so I look to the former first in evaluating the latter.

Here's a short account of my meeting with Joanna Angel at an FSC benefit last weekend, during which I told her about what actually made it into the final cut from the interview they did with her.

According to Joanna, the TPoP crowd chased her around the 2005 AdlultEx convention floor for three days, trying to convince her they were making a "friendly" doc on porn and just wanted to get her side of the story.

As a former fish-wrap journalist myself, I can tell you that's the oldest trick in the reporter's handbook. Tell the mark you just want to "get their side of the story out because all their enemies are already talking."

So she finally capitulated to a three hour interview during which "they all seemed so nice," and of which about three minutes made it into the release, followed by the hardest, most triggering clips of Joanna's on-camera work they could find. She was all of twenty at the time this transpired and brand new in the biz with no idea that these nice "documentarians" might use her and then kick her to the curb far more callously than any pornographer.

She was practically in tears when she heard about it. "Do I come across as, like, totally stupid?" she wanted to know. 

I could honestly reassure her that she seemed perfectly intelligent in the interview stuff, but that they definitely slagged her with the clips. Clearly, using an actual woman to her detriment to get what they wanted didn’t bother them. Exploitation of someone young and vulnerable? She was practically in tears when she heard about it. "Do I come across as, like, totally stupid?" she wanted to know. 

I could honestly reassure her that she seemed perfectly intelligent in the interview stuff, but that they definitely slagged her with the clips. Clearly, using an actual woman to her detriment to get what they wanted didn’t bother them. Exploitation of someone young and vulnerable? Joanna, now 27 (which means she was all of 24 when they got their hooks into her), weighs about ninety pounds and stands 5'2" in heels. She’s the bright, gothy, founder of Burning Angel, an alt-porn site of her own, with a cheerfully rebellious attitude. Apparently, using down and dirty methods to manipulate such a person into providing material they already had mapped out prior to interviewing her didn’t trouble them much. If the ultimate goal of this production is meant to benefit women in some way, and I’m sure that’s what it’s makers hope it will do, evidently the sacrifice of the dignity and self-esteem of some women in particular is justified in their minds by the importance of their labors. Lenin used to call this “ruthlessness toward the goal,” and there’s plenty of that on display with TPoP, both in its form and in its execution.

I’ll save a short re-telling of my own experience with the producers for the end. You’ll need a good laugh by then, make no mistake.

First, this overall impression: The Price of Pleasure is clearly propaganda, and I’ll have little trouble making that case as we go through it item by item. The good news, however, is that it’s lame propaganda, so heavy-handed, clumsy and obvious it falls far more readily into the category of “Reefer Madness” than in the far more sinister and threatening company of “Birth of a Nation” or “Triumph of the Will.” It fails dismally, both as agitprop and as filmmaking, and that it was created by a director who teaches filmmaking to others at a major university says nothing promising about the future of film overall.

This doesn’t make it harmless. Far from it. There will always be those susceptible to bad ideas presented in a sensational and blatantly dishonest fashion. Laugh though we may at “Reefer Madness” today, marijuana remains illegal and the arguments against it now are just as unsound as they were in Harry Anslinger’s day. If there’s one thing we should have learned over the past eight years, it’s that really, really foolish ideas have a durable appeal to a lot of people who stand ready to be fooled. That’s why even foolishness like this sorry attempt must be treated seriously rather than simply laughed off. The potential collateral effects are far from funny.

So let's start at the beginning, with some title cards containing pertinent information the producers want us to know.

The very first one asserts that all the copyrighted material shown in the program is covered under the Fair Use doctrine as commentary, criticism, and education and is therefore exempt from claims by the creators of said material.

To just get that part out of the way quickly, I agree. I don't think there is an issue with copyright infringement that would hold up in a court of law concerning the work as a whole. I do think a creative litigator of the type who sues over a product label appearing onscreen without permission could make trouble over many minor and careless displays of trademarks and copyrighted images not central to the picture's primary concerns, but that would be expensive mischief-making to no good purpose.

However, the producers get themselves in much deeper water with the next title card:

"The following film contains explicit sexual activity, explicit and offensive language and violence. Viewer discretion is advised."

That disclaimer might do just fine for a network TV episode that had a flash of skin and the word "bullshit" somewhere in it, but for the material to follow here, it is completely inadequate as labeling under federal law. Here is what the video disclaimer looks like on nina.com:

"Videotape 2257 notice.

All models appearing in this production were at least 18 years of age on the date of principal photography. The records required pursuant to 18 USC ¤ 2257 pertaining to this production and all materials associated herewith are on file with the Custodian of Records M.L. Levine at MLL, Inc. 2404 Wilshire Bl. #10 D Los Angeles, CA. 90057."

TPoP carries no such statement of compliance, does not warrant that all models appearing therein were at least 18 years of age on the date of principle photography, does not claim that records required by federal law are on file with the producers, identifies no keeper of records by name and offers no information regarding where such records, if they exist, might be found. Given both the producers’ own warnings and the fare they proceed to deliver up, this is hardly a minor omission.

BTW, if anyone cares, that's our real address up there and I have no hesitation about posting it here or anywhere else. Anyone who wants to can find us, and our records. See, as professional pornographers, we live with the risks inherent in obeying the law, including the exposure of sensitive personal information, such as our legal names and addresses, to potentially hostile strangers at the click of a mouse.

The producers of TPoP evidently lack either the concern or the courage needed to make such information about themselves available to the public. Of course, since they don't have the records, they would be violating a few more laws by claiming they did. I guess they figure they'll just break the law big-time at the outset and not bother to enhance the major violation with any additional counts of fraud. Probably a wise decision.

Oh, and one other thing before we roll the picture. Their disclaimer contains a direct reference to violence. While the images that follow certainly meet the test for sexually explicit material, the term "violence" used in this context is entirely subjective and merely the first hint of the pejorative messages conveyed unrelentingly throughout the production, which is, of course, completely non-judgmental as claimed in its promotional material.

And just to pile the bullshit a bit higher, yet another title card claims that:

"The pornography discussed in this documentary represents current trends in mainstream pornography that is industrially produced in the U. S. and marketed primarily to heterosexual male consumers."

Remember that assertion, because it will become extremely relevant as we move along.

Next this:

"Many of the films excerpted or described herein are directed by industry award-winners or appear on the industry's lists of best-selling/top-renting movies."

Hang onto that too. It's not entirely false, but it does fall well short of true, most particularly on this point:

"The industry" as such keeps no lists of this type.

Later on, a spurious case for the producers' opinions of what constitutes "current trends in mainstream pornography that is industrially produced in the United States" will be based on lists generated by porn industry trade journal Adult Video News, but no attempt is made to support the contention that AVN's lists accurately reflect such sales and rentals. Maybe they do, but that's not a widely held consensus in the industry and is in no way definitive.

After all this specious boilerplate, we go straight to the convention floor at AdultEx 2005, where the male partner in a friendly and affectionate young couple asserts that: “You know what? If it’s between two people, and two people are comfortable with it, that’s all that matters. It’s not about what anyone else has to say about it.”

The next interminable hour will be spent trying to disprove this very basic foundation of The Constitution’s implied right to privacy, on the basis of which Lawrence v. Texas decriminalized homosexuality.

Time for the predictable “sleaze montage,” completely with cheesy drum-machine soundtrack. Cue the blue-lit stripper, the anonymous consumer checking out DVD cases, the nameless pig-tailed female performer sucking a popsicle on a TV screen (in an ever-so-subtle hint at the “hidden pro-kiddie-porn agenda hidden in mainstream material”, the mook who declares: “I love porn”, a flash of a couple of nude girls on the beach with a loud m-and-g track in the background, blurry flashes of body parts, the return of the mook telling us that: “It’s damned good porno that tells a good truth,” more strip-tease, this time lit red, then some adult bookstore exteriors festooned with gaudy neon signs. All in all, pretty much like a sweeps-week feature on your local news.

We hear from our first expert, the famously impartial Ariel Levy, author of “Female Chauvinist Pigs,” a book-length indictment of the “raunch culture” that has engulfed America’s young women. “I don’t think we’re over-sexualized,” she tells us, “I think we’re over-commercialized.” She’s followed immediately by my old pal, former Evil Angel production manager Hatman, who asks the intentionally rhetorical question: “How many dicks can you stick in a girl at one time?” Next up, a flash-cut of the box-cover for Mike John’s “Elastic Assholes #3.”

Now the stage is set for the good stuff, signaled by a blurry shot of a bunch of naked men standing around a naked woman in a bukkake vid. We get a blurred image of her face as well. She’s smiling, and there’s some looped audio of a woman, not necessarily this one, talking about how it feels so good.

Enter Expert Number Two: Professor Gail Dines, a big-time anti-porn crusader who has vowed on national television to do all in her power to “destroy the sex industry completely.” “People say to me, if you’re against pornography, are you against sex?” she begins. “That’s like saying to me that if I’m critical of McDonalds I’m against eating.” Sounds reasonable, if oddly out of context until we see what is to come.

Finally, some credits, starting with “Open Lens Media Presents” and the full title: “The Price of Pleasure, Pornography, Sexuality and relationships,” which is certainly broad enough to cover a multitude of sins, of which we’ll get plenty, have no doubt. Then come the perps, producer/directors Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun. I’m sure many here will remember the latter from her spirited exchange with Nina on CounterPunch over the evils of pornography. Obviously, no pre-conceptions were at work in the construction of this objective filmic overview.

Time to meet the victims, of whom the first is male, Gregory Mitchell, a college student who deduced from watching porn that women wanted to fuck him, like, all the time. We get a quick flash of a beckoning porn girl to drive home the point. All points in this deal are driven home with a nail-gun in case you might miss any. Poor Gregory explains that he’s not a “big guy” and that if a girl actually said such a thing to him, he’d be really scared of her. Well, I guess that lets him out of the gene pool. An invitation to consensual sex doesn’t seem all that terrifying, but whatever.

But wait, and not very long, the first wounded woman is about to make her entrance. In a V.O. laid across a picture of her as a pre-adolescent, writer Stephanie Cleveland (described in The Boston Review as “a feminist who has spoken nationally against pornography and prostitution”) informs us that she was about ten years of age when she discovered her father’s stash of Playboy magazines. After studying them for “a long time,” she concluded: “in comparison with them, my mother just looked flawed.” From this, she inferred that her father must have these magazines because her mother wasn’t good enough for him. We’re then introduced to college student Gabrielle Shaw, who at age “ten or twelve” was exposed to pornography by another girl her own age, whose dad had a large porn collection. The barrage continues. A still frame of a pre-adolescent boy appears, who we then meet as a young man by the name of Eli Schemel, now a college student also. In his case, the early introducer to porn was his brother, who downloaded some off a computer.

This episode is even reconstructed for us with a couple of other kids who remain nameless while a male narrator gravely intones that what kids looking at porn on the Internet these days see is not likely to be the image of a naked woman, “but rather aggressive penetration of a woman’s multiple orifices.” I’m not makin’ it up, folks. I’d edit a V.O. that heavy-handed out of an actual porn vid. But worse, much worse, is yet to come. And BTW, showing pictures of children in a movie that contains sexually explicit footage? This is neither morally nor legally defensible, whatever the motives of the creators.

Cut to the anonymous exterior of a generic apartment block. We get this odd cutaway several times in the reel, which makes me wonder if this is somebody’s idea of production value. Yeah, an establishing shot of a building. Always adds that touch of realism. Anyway, closing in on this building, which appears to be entirely populated with self-loathing wankers, we hear some actual porn dialog of the ruder sort in which a young woman’s voice invites some unseen party to “tear my little asshole and stick my head in the toilet.” Sounded familiar enough. No one who knows pornography reasonably well would deny that such language is often heard. However, other and very different language is often heard in porn, just not in any of the porn ripped off for this little gem. Predictably, a disembodied male voice calls the speaker some names while she moans, sounding not at all unhappy, in the BG.

Back comes the narrator, this time yakking over a Google search page of raunchy porno titles, telling us all about how the ease and anonymity of Internet porn has led to “skyrocketing production and consumption of pornography.” No statistics given to support this, but we’ll grant it for the sake of argument. Likewise the claim that there are an estimated 420 million pages of porn online is made without attribution. I’m a little skeptical on that one. There are some pretty big numbers being thrown around these days, but 420 million is still a lot of pages. The follow-up stat, 12,000 new porn DVD titles released per year, is more readily verifiable and widely accepted to be reasonably accurate within the industry. Where they come up with 900 million videos rented, I have no clue, and am given none by the narrator. The accompanying montage of jewel cases floating in space and vids being cranked out on an assembly line is a true Reefer Madness moment bordering on pure camp. That’s my critical opinion as someone who has always had a secret fondness for docutrash. It’s one of my last guilty pleasures.

How, the narrator asks, do these “pornographic messages help shape our gender and sexual identities, and our relationships? How did this industry, once considered seedy (but actually ever so much worse, of course) become part of the cultural and economic mainstream?”

When or where are we given a chance to ponder the proposition that these images do, in fact, influence these other aspects of our lives, or if, in fact, porn really has become part of the cultural or economic mainstream? The answers to those questions, at least, are clear enough: at no place or time during the interminable hour of this film.

Think we’re about to find out the filmmakers’ perceptions of these issues? You betcha. Now we get footage from MSM porn coverage, a bit of Diane Sawyer, some E! channel fluff, than a bold narrative leap to the allegation that porn rakes in ten to fourteen billion dollars a year, which is both inexact and unsourced. The NYT puts the number at 8 billion, but Forbes only estimates it at 1.4 billion. So it’s somewhere between a billion and a half and fourteen billion dollars we’re talking about, maybe. This is the kind of accounting that got us where we are today. Anyway, the narrator goes on to claim that porn enjoys “close ties with telecommunications and media corporations. A rogue’s gallery of corporate logos is paraded for our disapproval: Verizon, New Frontier Media, Cablevision, Time-Warner, CBS (still waiting for my call from 60 Minutes) and Newscorp. A giant number is brought upscreen, One (1) billion dollars, that these companies collectively reap from their close ties with porn. Now I’d dearly love to have that billion, and it’s certainly not chump change. But if all those publicly traded companies can only squeeze that amount out of this business through their combined efforts, call my broker. I’m selling these guys off. And BTW, that includes both V.O.D. sales and “porn-related content,” whatever that is. Naturally, we get some HBO late-night fare – a shot of “Cathouse”, a smidgen of “G-String Divas”, to give us the general idea.

“Pornography production, once considered exploitative, is now depicted as a fun and normal business, “ we’re told. The assertion is underscored with the opening roll from Showtime’s “Family Business,” in which Seymore Butts tells us how much he loves his relatives and the trade they all share, making adult entertainment. More narrated claims about the vast wealth pornographers have accumulated and the increasing acceptance it enjoys among “the establishment.” All I can say about that is that a big porn company owner makes less than a junior partner at a mainstream talent agency and the establishment only calls here late on Saturday nights to ask if there are any good parties happening. I guess that’s acceptance. It doesn’t include invitations to The Bohemian Grove.

And, oh yeah, in addition to all that money and respectability, our little industry has also acquired political power. Now we’re off to the annual awards dinner of the FSC. Seymore leads a crowd of well-dressed porn mighties in a round of applause of the Free Speech Coalition's legal team. Hi guys, nice to see you when I’m not wearing handcuffs. The F.S.C., viewers discover, was founded in 1993 as “a lobbying group that builds relationships with lawmakers and state officials” as well as tracking legislation all over the country.

And who do we meet from the F.SC.,? Bill Lyon, it’s fired ex-executive director, who we’re told previously lobbied for the defense industry. I could say something very snide here, but it’s too easy. A short clip of Steve Croft interviewing Lyon for 60 Minutes reveals that, while legislators may be shocked at first to find themselves talking with an emissary of the infernal porn industry, they soon discover “that we’re talking about votes and money,” which evidently is a great ice-breaker. Jesus, no wonder we fired this guy. With that kind of representation in the media, we might as well have had Donald Rumsfeld do our PR.

The fruits of the F,S.C.’s labors on behalf of freedom of expression are soon made horrifically evident. Thanks entirely to the F.S.C.’s litigation – and of course having nothing whatever to do with what the justices of The conservative-dominated Supreme Court who actually ruled based on the merits of the case before them, a ban on virtual kiddie porn, CGI of “children” engaging in sexual acts, was struck down in 1992. Just so we don’t fail to grasp the true monstrousness of this assault on the public decency, we’re shown several of the computer-generated images of child pornography in question, including one of a naked female child being anally raped and another of a naked female child in bondage.

Seeing this material in this particular film preserves a peculiar personal record. I have never in my entire life, both before and after entering the X-rated vid business, been shown any kind of child pornography by anyone other than an anti-porn crusader (which, if you haven’t been following along, is clearly the category to which the makers of TPoP belong). It happened the first time when I was a talk-show host back in Denver and it’s happened to me several times since. Where do these porn-busters lay hands on this genuinely revolting visual offal? Oddly, none has ever told me. I guess we just don’t hang out in the same places, but that’s something the gang from TPoP wouldn’t want you to think, based on the very carefully chosen juxtaposition of these pictures with those of the daily activities of the F.S.C.. That the F.S.C. has also been involved in numerous other court cases, including the challenge to the current iteration of 18 U.S.C. 2257 by which any dubious right to exhibit this film tenuously hangs, is not evident in TPoP.

In a ham-fisted transition if ever there was one, we go straight from the fake kiddie porn to a cover of Barely Legal and a clip from one of the many videos with a babysitter-fucks-daddy theme. Though neither the magazine nor the video has any minors in it, and complies with all legal requirements to prove that this is the case, the audience is left to connect the large and obvious dots.

Jumping from this weird alternative universe in which all these things that have nothing much to do with one another are conflated, we’re back in mainstream land, where we see snips of network shows like “Friends” and movies like “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin” and the solemn voice (too bad James Earl Jones was unavailable) tells us that mainstream media no longer treats watching porn as something dirty and disgraceful, but rather as normal male behavior.

How did this terrible distortion of reality come to pass? Professor Dines pops up to explain it for us. According to her, no one is more to blame than Howard Stern. We see a bit of Stern himself, some semi-naked girls and a goofy ambush of Bill Clinton having a laugh at the idea of Stern running for president. Considering the past eight years, even I would have voted for Stern, and I’m not a fan. The narrator goes on to tell us how Stern has introduced various kinds of pornography to mainstream audiences, thus agreeing with Dines. But wait a minute, isn’t this supposed to be an unbiased and non-judgmental documentary? And didn’t the narrator just repeat virtually word-for-word a claim by one of the interviewees? That isn’t the way they taught me to do things in J-school, but that was a long time ago. Stern is seen with Dave Letterman while we learn that Stern talks openly about his own and others’ use of pornography and routinely interviews porn performers. Once again, I’m shocked, shocked.

I’m sure Tipper Gore will be pleased to know that MTV is not spared “examination” either. We get a few flashes of porn performers in music videos, and are then shown the gaunt and genuinely scary visage of former porn director turned music vid wiz Gregory Dark. Yikes! Are they trying to give us nightmares or what? I mean, I like Greg personally, but they make the most of his incontestably satanic appearance. The narration identifies him as a former producer of “extreme porn” including a sequence in which a black woman is allegedly shown being raped by Klansmen. I’m not a fan of Greg’s work in porn, which I think strains for shock value, and I’m not about to approve of a picture I haven’t seen, but I’m betting it was a typical consensual gang-bang with the Klan stuff thrown in as a lame attempt at political satire. Well, I never did think Greg was a good fit in porn. Ironically, his entre to the business was a demo reel cut from a sensational anti-porn mocumentary he did as a student project at NYU film school, home base to Chyng Sun. Ironies are never in short supply in these parts.

After a quick tour of album covers for rock artists Greg’s shot, we hear from “Media Industry Consultant" Damone Williams, who talks about the links between hip-hop and porn. Snoop Dog’s short-lived porn vid line is given more play than it got in distribution.

With the predictability of a stopped-clock, we’re shown some of a sexed-up Britney Spears vid, getting us back to the theme of universal pornification woven relentlessly through the entire running time of TPoP. To underscore this message, Gabrielle Shaw returns to remind us that “it was just thrown at me from the time I was thirteen that you’re obligated to have sex” and that that’s how you exist as a woman. This breathtaking generalization, like so many others, is never challenged with a single question as to whether Shaw’s experience is universal, or a matter of her interpretation of media influences she experiences. No assertions by porn opponents are challenged by this film in any way … ever. Instead of any give and take that might explore these implied universals, we’re barraged with more visual evidence, examples of sexually suggestive advertising for Chanel, Old Navy, Guess, Napster, Carl’s Junior, etc.

In the skewed alternative universe of TPoP, there are no coincidences or accidents. Everything happens as part of some grand scheme, hinted at but never directly identified, to use sexualized images for the purpose of indoctrinating innocent young women like Ms. Shaw into becoming “female chauvinist pigs” unknowingly collaborating in their oppression by sinister capitalists bent on selling them tainted goods of all sorts (including, god forbid, hamburgers) after they’ve been dumbed down by the relentless rain of smut and stripped of their capacities to make other choices. This doesn’t say much for whatever confidence the filmmakers might have in the ability of young women to make their own decisions about what images from consumer culture they care to embrace or reject. But as we’ve already seen, respect for young women’s choices, unless those choices coincide exactly with what the filmmakers consider appropriately feminist, don’t get much respect where this project is concerned, onscreen or off.

Indeed, if you’re bothered by these media images, Stephanie Cleveland returns to tell us, “there’s really no place left to go,”

Again, an opinion presented as fact. No place left to go? How about the library? How about the Nature Channel? How about the entire vast body of art, literature and entertainment having nothing whatsoever to do with modern ideas about sexuality? Or how about feminist literature and debate on the subject that rather obviously drives this film?

I’m sure this will come as a huge shock to the TPoP crew, but there are large numbers of American citizens of all ages who have never seen any porn whatsoever, shrug off Mad. Ave. attempts to sell products using sexual images and in general experience virtually no impact on their personal lives from the existence of such things. I’ve met lots and lots of such people, but no one ever appears in this film to say a thing I often hear in the real world: “Porn? Never seen any and don’t care to.” The option of simply ignoring all this evil propaganda is never addressed in the Manichean world of TPoP, where there exist only victimizers, victims and recovering victims. That is the paranoid lens through which our entire society is depicted in this airless, lightless reinvention of the much broader and more diverse reality of daily life for most people.

Well, so much for Chapter One, in which the prosecution lays out the broad outlines of its case, thus far unsupported by much in the way of substantive facts. Maybe we’ll get those later. Maybe not.

Meantime, we’ll move on to Chapter Two: Porn Stars: Myths and Realities. Again, we start out with some MSM news footage about “a new generation of women proud to call themselves porn stars.” Actually, that started about twenty years ago, but I guess news travels slowly to the ivory towers where projects like this one are conceived. Jesse Jane, skinny-dipping in a luxurious pool, does a short bit for HBO’s doc “Thinking XXX,” made by our friend Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, who treats women in porn far more respectfully than the ardent feminists responsible for TPoP. Jesse tells us that she chose to be in this industry because she is comfortable with her sexuality and performing on film.

As we’ll soon see, she’s a mythical creature, as opposed to a human being, just like the dressed up performers walking the red carpet to the AVN awards to follow.

Thankfully, Ariel Levy comes along to rip the scales from our eyes. The mass media are responsible for idealizing and holding up these porn stars as idols. She cites Jenna Jameson as the ur-glamorized-porn star by way of example. The narrator identifies Jameson as “a central figure in legitimizing the porn industry.” That’s a good one. She may have broken through as a mainstream celeb more than anyone else, but she has been and remains highly critical of many aspects of the porn business, both in her book and in her public and media appearances.

Of course, since she’s never once allowed to talk for herself in this film, viewers would have no way of knowing about that. We do get to hear about her multi-million-dollar sale of her company to Playboy (though nary a word about why she quit porn and sold off ClubJenna), and we do get to see her have “virtual sex” from an interactive program she did several years ago. And of course, we find out all about the dolls and sex toys modeled from her body parts, just to up the “ick” factor. Icky or no, she’s responsible for glamorizing porn as a career choice and making herself a cultural icon in the process, so we're told.

Frankly, I defy anyone to read Jenna’s autobiography and come away with the belief that she’s glamorizing anything. The harsher passages of Jenna’s book are frequently cited by anti-porn cultists by way of proving that even the most successful porn performers still lead lives of squalid violence and cruel depravity. Evidently, these minor contradictions won’t be allowed to interfere with the filmmakers’ reinvention of Jenna-as-Judas-goat for gullible young women lured into porn.

After brief praise by porn producer of Brandon Iron of a system that allows young women to make a quarter million dollars a year just by using their bodies (clearly referring to porn performers but equally true of professional athletes, male and female) we find ourselves face to face with the grimly solemn Bob Jensen.

He explains it all for those of us who just can’t follow the oh-so-subtle line of reasoning that runs throught TPoP like The Missouri River.

“The argument that porn gives women meaningful economic opportunities,” he intones, “masks the fact that few women actually sustain a career in pornography and acquire any kind of wealth.”

While I might agree with Professor Bob that porn is a short-lived gig with lasting consequences for most players, no evidence is presented to support this contention, once again. In fact, there are in porn, as in most early careers, a large number of short-timers and a smaller but by no means insignificant number of performers who continue to work and earn good money both in front of and behind the camera for many years. Of course, we don’t meet any of them in this picture because they just don’t fit the narrative and therefore must not exist.

And for the record, I don’t disagree with his claim that “the lion’s share of the profits made in porn go to the producers, who are overwhelmingly men.” To be fairer than he would be to me, Prof. Bob is anti-capitalist and probably agrees that the same statement would be true for most large industries, and that he sees that as unjust also. We actually have a point of agreement on this. Women represent fewer than 4% of the board members of Fortune 500 corporations. Porn is merely no exception to that rule, but it’s still a shitty rule.

Time for another rogue’s gallery of big, bad porn guys, with Larry Flynt (big surprise) topping the list, followed by Vivid’s Bill Asher, Christie and Hugh Hefner, Phil Harvey from Adam&Eve (largest single contributor to Planned Parenthood and pioneer of socially responsible porn manufacturing, BTW) and Evil Angel’s John Stagliano.

More Jensen who, along with Dines, is really a major star of this unbiased and non-judgmental movie, despite having built almost an entire career on bashing porn in books, on the lecture circuit and in his media broadsides to be found all over the blogosphere.

This time, he argues that the success of a few porn stars obscures the fundamental reality of women’s economic inequality in the larger society. I don’t question that reality, but I doubt porn does much to obscure it. The subject of porn rarely comes up in broader discussions of the income disparity between men and women, which is only reasonable, as there are at most a few thousand female porn performers in the world by comparison to the millions and millions of women in the workforce in other capacities. He asks if we as a society want to just accept that inequality. Frankly, I doubt it. Much has been achieved since the advent of feminism in narrowing the income gap and much more is yet to be done.

Porn is, ironically, one place where women invariably get paid more than the male partners they work with. A few guys have managed to up their rates to competitive levels with female players, but no guy’s picture on a box ever sold a single straight porn vid, and producers know this, so men are simply paid less for their labor than women in porn and that’s just the way it is. Don’t believe me? Check out a few porn performer agency Web sites, call them and get a few quotes for male and female performers.

On average, women in porn make at least twice as much as men. That women from low-income brackets may see porn as an undesirable option but better than other choices is a function of the kind of market capitalism under which we live, and that Jensen, to be fair, opposes across the board, but porn is a product of that system, not its source.

But then, as Jensen would have it, women in porn are particularly exploited as laborers because “they sell the most intimate parts of themselves.” I think Ren and a few others here would have a problem with that “selling of parts” thing. Is that not a statement a Calvinist preacher might have made? Selling one’s most intimate parts. Nice. Anyway, last time I checked, porn performers generally take those parts home with them from the set, so they could hardly be considered to have sold said parts.

A less demeaning description might be that they sold their time and labor as performers using those parts of their bodies among others, but not demeaning porn performers is no more a priority for the ever-so-humane Dr. Jensen than it is for anyone else connected with this stinker. If he cares so much for the poor darlings, could he not thing of some way to defend them without simultaneously accusing them of the same things in exactly the same tone as fire-and-brimstone religious patriarchs? Seemingly not. May I just pause, as the life partner of a performer to say, fuck you Bob Jensen, at this point? I guess I just did. Oh well.

Buttressing my point about how few women are actually involved in making porn out of the total female workforce, the narrator cites the dubious estimate from now-defunct World Modeling that approximately a thousand women a year come to L.A. to seek employment in porn.

By contrast, there are over 200,000 women in the U.S. armed forces. They are able to join up at age 18, just like in porn, but unlike in porn, thousands face death or injury in combat and sexual assault is an endemic problem. I eagerly await a courageous film directly addressing the economic stresses that make such dangerous and often degrading work the best option for 200 times the number of women who enter porn each year.

TPoP then steps right over the line into flat-out criminal defiance of federal law, showing us the fully nude audition of a new female performer. If they can come up with ID and a release for that sequence, I’ll eat them while they watch.

More of Bob nattering on about capitalist commodification of everything, including sex. True enough, but not exactly news, or specifically relevant to porn.

Cut back to some BangBus footage of producers handing out money to girls on the street, followed by more of Bob telling us that “pornography takes the most intimate, the most private spaces of our lives, our sexual experiences, our connections to other human beings and sells them to us.”

Funny, all I thought we sold were dirty pictures. I had no idea we’d been granted such awesome powers. Must have missed the memo.

In one of the worst misuses of a porn performer in the whole picture, in my view, Sunny Lane, who is an extremely bright and articulate individual with big ambitions she’s enjoyed remarkable success in realizing, flashes her tits, smiles and declares that “I know I’m a product and a damned good one!” She’s obviously goofing for the camera, but we’re shown this in a context that makes it, and her, appear completely pathetic and delusional. Just who is doing the commodifying here, Professor?

Gonzo player Annie Cruz, looking understandably uncomfortable at being put on the spot about a sensitive, proprietary matter for all performers, quotes her rates for various sex acts. This is in the clips on the TPoP Web site, so I’ll spare us the numbers here. They’re pretty representative.

Obviously, we now need to hear from someone who really knows the truth about porn, author Sarah Katherine Lewis, who by her own admission has worked mainly as a stripped and done a few single-girl shoots for some Web sites far removed from the “industrially created pornography” this film is supposedly about. I’ve taken a lot of guff for calling her out on her credentials as a porn expert, but she’s not and I stand by that assertion. A couple of solo shoots on the Web do not a porn insider make. No, I never said she was a liar or implied it directly or indirectly (just in case Ms. D. is actually reading this), but putting her up to speak as somehow representative of porn performers in general? Total bullshit unrelieved by the faintest hint of reality.

When she talks about having to choose among low-wage, low-skill jobs and sex work, as she does in her first appearance, she speaks the sooth.

But when the filmmakers’ cut to Brandon Iron talking about gonzo porn, in which SKL spent not one day of her career as a sex-worker, the association is totally false, misrepresenting both porn as the locus of the sex industry overall, which it is not when it comes to numbers employed, and the experience of author/stripper Lewis, who states on her own blog that she was interviewed for this film for hours and that only a couple of her quotes made it into the finished product. She likes the film anyway, but many others who had their remarks similarly cherry-picked don’t share her approval of such tactics.

I certainly don’t, and in our next installment, I’ll have plenty to say as to why not.

Right now, I feel desperately in need of a shower.

And we’re only a third of the way through the film.

More to come, as the saying goes, and it’s all downhill from here. I haven’t even gotten to the ugly stuff yet. And there will be plenty of that, rest assured.

34 comments:

  1. Nice detailed takedown of TPoP, Ernest. A couple of details about Joanna Angel I want to point out, though:

    "Joanna, now 22, weighs about ninety pounds and stands 5'2" in heels. She’s a bright, gothy, former Suicide Girl with a cheerfully rebellious attitude."

    First, Joanna Angel is now 27. (If she was 22 now, that would have made her 16 when she started BurningAngel.com.)

    Second, she was never a SuicideGirl, and in fact, has referred to SG as "the McDonalds of alt porn". She started Burning Angel at the beginning of 2002, only a few months after SuicideGirls started, which basically was a competitor to SG.

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  2. Okay, I've now seen it...

    lemmie scrape my jaw up off the floor.

    Fair and honest, my pornified ass.

    It's so...campy...for one. And I love that for the most watched films, we have to scroll down to number 120 something to get the title we want. And we have scenes with gals like Audrey Hollander and Trina Michaels who are KNOWN as gonzo performers (no Tera Patrick, no Jesse Jane...) No, gasp...PIRATES (released in 2005, the year this film claims to have used for determining top selling/rented porn films)

    And I've never seen the virtual kiddy porn either...

    I will wait for the rest of the fisk to comment further.

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  3. Thank you for this, Ernest.

    So far you've said nothing about the time they allow the other side (if any, really) but from this beginning, unless the next third of the docu is presenting the POV of pornographers/sex-positive/pro-porn/anti-censorship feminists, then no, clearly not unbiased.

    "Gregory Mitchell, a college student who deduced from watching porn that women wanted to fuck him, like, all the time."

    And the fact that he thinks this, despite that he's perfectly capable of, oh I don't know walking up to women and ASKING if they're interested in fucking him and discovering they're actually NOT, is... pornography's fault, somehow?

    I do think pornography can influence some people, particularly if they've had poor sex ed or no sex ed. But I think there has to be SOME way to weed out who is "porn-addled" and who is "geeky socially awkward kid who can't live in reality." Because I've met a lot of those with a wide variety of hobbies... not at all limited to porn.

    "Seeing this material in this particular film preserves a peculiar personal record. I have never in my entire life, both before and after entering the X-rated vid business, been shown any kind of child pornography by anyone other than an anti-porn crusader (which, if you haven’t been following along, is clearly the category to which the makers of TPoP belong). It happened the first time when I was a talk-show host back in Denver and it’s happened to me several times since. Where do these porn-busters lay hands on this genuinely revolting visual offal? Oddly, none has ever told me. I guess we just don’t hang out in the same places, but that’s something the gang from TPoP wouldn’t want you to think, based on the very carefully chosen juxtaposition of these pictures with those of the daily activities of the F.S.C.."

    I notice that kind of thing too, actually. The only time I ever saw anything, it was stuff by that... gah, can't recall his name, that comic book artist that intentionally depicts revolting stuff. The person who made me aware of it wasn't an anti-porn crusader, but also was definitely not recommending it as sexy, either. Just as, "Wow, this is way out..."

    I've said this before in MANY places, but I think it bears repeating over and over and over, really: I think that this, as much or more than arousal and sexual interest, are part of what makes people look at the most way-out stuff they can find, whether it's horrific cartoons or gonzo porn. Not to say that people don't like these things, or that there aren't real sickos in the world, Ma knows there *are*, but... eh. I can easily imagine guys egging one another on to watch "Swirlies" because it's ridiculous. I can't imagine anywhere near as easily a bunch of men hanging out stroking their cocks because that's the REALLY sexy stuff, man, not those pansy centerfolds.

    I mean, do I think some men have a fetish for that? Sure... hell, I was just reading fanfic by a guy who apparently has a fetish for inflicting erotic pain specifically on women's navels. But I really don't think that the alleged popularity of gonzo (which as both you and others have pointed out recently, pales in comparison to the popularity of conventional fare ANYWAY) comes only from sexual interest. I think some of it is the intrigue of the person who watches things like Fear Factor or Jackass: "OMG THEY DID WHAT? IN WHERE? o.O"

    Which, yeah, as it manifests in some people isn't very *mature*, but I don't think that's a crime or an indicator of violent intent at all.

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  4. "But wait, and not very long, the first wounded woman is about to make her entrance. In a V.O. laid across a picture of her as a pre-adolescent, writer Stephanie Cleveland (described in The Boston Review as “a feminist who has spoken nationally against pornography and prostitution”) informs us that she was about ten years of age when she discovered her father’s stash of Playboy magazines. After studying them for “a long time,” she concluded: “in comparison with them, my mother just looked flawed.” From this, she inferred that her father must have these magazines because her mother wasn’t good enough for him. We’re then introduced to college student Gabrielle Shaw, who at age “ten or twelve” was exposed to pornography by another girl her own age, whose dad had a large porn collection."

    Those stories remind me a lot of this one, which was advanced as a serious argument for the harm of porn over at the recent discussion on Hugo Schwyzer's blog.

    And though probably from the point of view of some of the more victimological types out there makes me an insensitive jerk, I think this puts responsibility entirely in the wrong place. I really don't think porn or any other image should not be made simply because some child or some adult with some or another set of issues might come across it and have a hard time processing what they see.

    I can't speak to issues with children, except to say they're not supposed to be looking at this stuff to begin with, though with the amount of free porn out there on the net right now, I'm not entirely sure that's possible anymore.

    But in the case of adults, I have less sympathy. If the images bother you, maybe you should go seeking them out. (Yes, that means you, TPoP and anti-porn slideshow fans.) And for fucks sake, I think being able to deal with revelations that daddy was looking at sexy pics of women who weren't mommy is just maybe something you ought be able to deal with by the time you've grown up. And if you can't deal with morbid thoughts over your parent's sex lives, you probably should be talking that over with a therapist.

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  5. Yeah, that whole "you can't avoid it" argument is bullshit, pure and simple. As sex-positive and pro-porn as I am, I am not innundated with porn and 95% of my viewing pleasure is not porn. Like you said, Ernest, there are so many other things to look at that are not porn, and it's very easy to live life without coming into contact with porn.

    If said person actually wants to do that. Great job so far Ernest. *bows in respect*

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  6. Awesome, Ernest.

    Simply...AWESOME.

    It take a real person with serious balls to rake through all this bullshit and live to recount it.

    Eagerly awaiting the rest of this fine fisking.

    Oh...and a double-finger salute to Bob Jensen from me, too.


    Anthony

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  7. Thanks everybody, starting with IACB. I stand corrected on Joanna. Upon further examination, what she said to me was that she was "in her early twenties," not twenty on the nose, when they cornered her. If she is now 27, then she was taking a bit of license in her account, which is not unreasonable, given that 2005 puts her at 25, not that much of an exaggeration.

    As to getting her affiliation wrong, purely my mistake. I have to admit, I've only followed the whole conflict between BA and SG with one eye, and I probably won't have that left if Joanna reads this, so I'll try to figure out how to correct it. I'm often a bit lame at these things, technically speaking.

    I'll get back on other comments at the end of this whole deal, except where necessary corrections are noted.

    But the support is much appreciated. This is heavy lifting and at a very busy time, but I try to keep my promises, and this promise I take very seriously indeed.

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  8. Thank you for taking the time to write and post this.
    I've been reading about this 'documentary' here and there, and the more I read the angrier I get.

    The people behind this film are the same people (in general) who made me feel like a filthy disgusting human being just for liking some porn every now and then, and being a woman at that. I basically lived for several years 'in the closet' with my sexuality and interests, ridden with guilt over being somehow a 'bad woman'.
    I live in a very small country, and the radfem politics are currently the ONLY 'feminist' viewpoint available, and they sure haven't made life easy for the 'likes of me' here :(

    I'm beyond happy to have found this circle of blogs that prove that there ARE other viewpoints and experiences to take into consideration.

    I really look forward to reading more of your review/analysis, and thanks again for taking the time.

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  9. "The people behind this film are the same people (in general) who made me feel like a filthy disgusting human being just for liking some porn every now and then, and being a woman at that. I basically lived for several years 'in the closet' with my sexuality and interests, ridden with guilt over being somehow a 'bad woman'."

    Thank you, Arctic. EXACTLY.

    But I'd remind you that deeming kinky women, or overly lusty women, to be bad, slimy, or corrupting is the oldest trick in the Patriarchy's book. Some of these people are just ignoring the source of that meme because it serves their ends to do so.

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  10. IACB:

    I don't agree with you about that link. I do think it makes sense that someone would be affected by discovering as a child that her dad's favorite thing to get off to is police photos of real violence.

    The real reason that link is off point is because police photos *are not porn.* There is no reason to condemn the porn industry for some guy getting his jollies from actual violence. The problem with that guy wasn't that he liked porn, it was that he didn't.

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  11. Reading the story in that link, it says she discovered a stash of "true crime" magazines and softcore skin magazines.

    I'm unsympathetic on several levels –

    1) You really shouldn't go digging through your parents porn stash, any more than parents should thumb through their kids diaries. Of course, I know nosy kids tend to do this, but I think if they find something sinister there, its kind of on them. I'm really a big advocate of kids keeping a respectful distance from their parents sexuality and vice versa.

    2) She then goes on to blame pornography for shaping her sexuality and for sexual behavior she later came to see as problematic. I guess I have a hard time sympathizing with people who won't take charge of their own sexuality and see themselves as passive victims of media imagery.

    3) The rest of it is just standard 70s radfem boilerplate – "recovered" memories of sexual abuse, became a radical feminist and lesbian, only then was she able to become orgasmic, etc. Sounds like she went from being a passive recipient of porn to a passive recipient of 70s feminist literature. Did it ever occur to her that you can question and say no to things you see and read?

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  12. Arctic Nina said:

    "I live in a very small country, and the radfem politics are currently the ONLY 'feminist' viewpoint available, and they sure haven't made life easy for the 'likes of me' here :("

    I don't want to pry too much, but what country is that?

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  13. IACB,

    I disagree. I don't think young kids really KNOW when they go looking around that "that over there is the hiding place I don't get to look in if I'm 'respectful of Daddy's sexuality.'" I think you're making kids into little adults here, and that's NOT OKAY.

    I do think there's radfem boilerplate in the way that story is told, but I REALLY don't think it's out of line for a kid to discover that her dad has a fascination with violence and NOT be confused or hurt by that. I think that's REALLY a stretch, and I don't think it serves sex positive feminists' ends to blame the kid's upsetness on herself or on snooping when she shouldn't. Kids snoop. They just DO. They're developmentally SUPPOSED to explore things.

    As far as whether that can fuck someone up for life or not, I'm really of two minds. On the one hand, I saw some very disturbing age-inappropriate movies and articles (not porn, but scary/violent stuff, and art involving sexual and violent themes) as a child that scared me and remained etched in my memory for a long time, but those things haven't seriously impacted what I want now or how I conduct myself now. I'd have a few less really scary memories, but I don't think I'd have any less neuroses.

    On the other hand, I do think an experience like this person's could have a much more profound impact, because this wasn't just some weird thing in a magazine, this was a collection her father kept, and a secret. Finding it meant finding something out about her father, discovering he was drawn to violence. And... well, I'm going to assume this was a guy who had violent fantasies but kept them strictly separated from real life simply because I don't know any ore about him. But... even if he is just a random person with violent fantasies he'd never act out, how's a young child going to know anything but "Daddy likes it when people get hurt?"

    I mean, like I said elsewhere, I'm troubled by the idea of kids finding glammy-cute SM porn too, because unless Mom and Dad are ready to explain the context AND THE KID IS MATURE ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT, WHICH SHE WON'T BE IF SHE'S TOO YOUNG, that would be very upsetting too.

    So... yeah. I do find myself thinking that some people on the anti-porn side read too much into someone's porn use. Like the person who claimed that she knew from the fact that her father had a stash of porn that he found his wife unattractive -- unless she had other indications that they were having difficulties (she may have, I don't know), there's no reason to suspect that.

    But in this case, I don't think the story is necessarily exaggerated. While I do think that radfems CAN encourage people to focus on things that upset them and make their upset feelings worse, this strikes me as something that would be really upsetting for a kid and therefore might well be harmful. Heck, I think it would be deeply disturbing to many, if not most, adults as well.

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  14. Not to get sidetracked here, but I think Trinity has a strong basic point.

    Until adulthood, and sometimes even then, kids generally don't want to know anything whatever about their parents' sex lives or sexual interests. The idea of such things is likely to be disturbing to any kid. And as Trinity says, kids snoop around the house as a natural part of exploring their environments.

    I'm not as concerned as she is about the content of the particular material, as when I was a kid really lurid Police Gazette stuff was out in the open on most newsstands and I just thought it was scary and didn't like it.

    But you might be surprised to know that I ran onto my dad's Playboy stash when I was pretty young (maybe ten or twelve) and found it a little spooky at first, although then I started looking at the magazines more closely and – this is how weird and geeky I really was as a kid – started reading the articles. They had a lot of great writers back then. And good cartoons too. The whole thing wasn't traumatic, but it was a bit of a shocker, and it did raise questions about my parents that at that age I didn't want answered.

    So my solution is simple. Just lock that shit up until the kids are out of the house. Not hard to do. Most kids are pretty good at getting into minimum security stashes, but a padlocked box will usually be too much work.

    As for the case in point, well, I think there's a lot more there than the narrator is telling us, but it's her choice what to tell and how to interpret it. That's her experience of what she went through, and it does no good to criticize anyone's individual response to whatever that individual has been through. She has her reasons, and while they seem a bit skewed to me, they're her reasons, not ours.

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  15. Ernest,

    Yeah, I basically agree with you, but if I had some reason to think that my dad liked the police gazette stuff, or even just (as the article hints) that my parents are lying to me about why they collect it, I think it would bother me a lot more.

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  16. "That's her experience of what she went through, and it does no good to criticize anyone's individual response to whatever that individual has been through. She has her reasons, and while they seem a bit skewed to me, they're her reasons, not ours."

    THIS. YES. THIS.

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  17. Yep, I'm with Ernest and Trinity here. Kids snoop. It's just part of what kids do, and with Trinity here too, this woman blaming porn for her dads affection for true crime material is...really misplaced.

    But the whole idea the onus is on *kids* not to go peeking rather than *parents* to keep their erotic materials someplace safe? Hello? What?

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  18. "But then, as Jensen would have it, women in porn are particularly exploited as laborers because “they sell the most intimate parts of themselves.” I think Ren and a few others here would have a problem with that “selling of parts” thing. Is that not a statement a Calvinist preacher might have made? "

    And why yes, I do have a problem with that. The most intimate part of myself is not my tits, ass, or crotch. It's my mind, and that doesn't get sold.

    I love the ancient (ahem) patriarchal assumption that the part of a woman by which her worth is measured is her crotch. The words may have changed a bit (most intimate!) but the tune is still the same!

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  19. Finally published my review of it today and the discussion afterwards. Ugh.

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  20. I posted my response to this in the wrong thread, so I'm reposting it here:

    Without belaboring the point too much, its not that I think the onus is on the kids, but at the same time, there's just something that strikes me as wrong with these narratives. Basically, its, "I was snooping around looking at stuff that was none of my business and I found something really disturbing to me. I blame my father and pornography."

    And it seems to me that's misplacing responsibility. The only thing I can think of that should have been done differently is that the father should have locked up his stash better – I agree with Ernest there. But blame her dad for having violent fantasies that he didn't intentionally share with her, or the mere existence of porn and lurid "true crime" magazines that weren't made for kids her age? That's where I see these people putting responsibility, and I think that's wrong.

    Also, mind you, at the time this story was written, the children in question were adult children and probably should have developed some understanding about the boundaries between themselves and their parents, and hopefully by then that their parents sexual fantasies maybe were never really their business to begin with, unless, of course, the parent in question was sexually abusing them or somehow deliberately unleashing their fantasies on their children.

    Then again, what Ernest said about maybe there's more going on there than the story is telling may also be the case – I only have the story itself to go on, though.

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  21. Hello Ernest! Long time no hear from! Will be readinmng you a lot now that I have found you again. Give Mrs. Greene a smooch for me! Don aka polybi

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  22. Hi.

    This may not be the place to ask, but all of you seem like articulate objective individuals who know a lot about pornography. I'm a 20-something male college student. I have a girlfriend, I do normal college sorts of things. Currently, I am a handsome and worthy suitor, but when I was young, I was picked on a lot for being scrawny, bookish, and weird. Being a social outcast, I took very easily to pornography - first, late-night scrambled playboy with my friends in the 6th grade, and now to whatever is free and mildly kinky, "strawberry vanilla" as opposed to just "vanilla," as it were.

    This would be fine, but I am undergoing a strange conflict where I developed a strong dependency upon pornography as an artificial source of sexual love, and now I'm a bit of an emotional island. I have trouble relating to women sexually, and I am drawn to pornography regardless of whether I am in a relationship or not. This has caused problems in one relationship, rightfully so, but now I wonder: Am I wrong to like pornography? Or am I just in need of people who understand it and what it has done to my emotional systems over the past decade? Am I addicted to pornography only insofar as other people around me are not? Is it a legitimate interest, and could I just be a closet kink? If yes, is that because of my early exposure to pornography and how it reset the gain on my emotions?

    I respect one's right to produce, participate in, and partake in pornography, but is there not a gray area of moral ambiguity, where freedom of choice becomes freedom choice within the confines of one's development and the environment within which it occurred? Obviously the porn industry isn't responsible because there are checks in place to prevent things like me from occurring; however, theoretically we shouldn't have child smokers, or child drug addicts. I want to blame someone for my having to harmonize what I want to do with what society makes me feel like I need to do, and how things could have been different. Sometimes I feel like I've been inducted into a secret club of pornography and kink, but without my voluntary consent, and now I'm not sure I want to be in anymore.

    Where I can investigate these questions, if they've already been asked? Is there any literature on these developmental psychological aspects of pornography? On the morality of pornography? If I want to thoughtfully and respectfully explore kink in a safe way, are there resources? Or do I just hope that I meet someone who has the same sexual tendencies as myself - an unlikely occurrence. Is there a lingo that exists to let one person know they are in the presence of someone who's into kink, kind of like there was amongst homosexuals in the violently homophobic early days? Thanks.

    N.

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  23. N,

    I'm not sure any of us can answer your questions for you. But here are my opinions, for whatever they are worth.

    Personally, I don't think I ever experienced dependency on porn. I have trouble even understanding how someone would prefer pictures to people -- even if someone is greedy and selfish (not saying you are), flesh is warm, people react, etc. For me a big part of the fun of sex is my partner's reaction and the reactions I have to my partner.

    Porn, while I quite enjoy it, and while it can depict people or activities I can't realistically try, isn't something I can imagine *replacing* the thrill of seeing and feeling my partner respond to the things I do.

    So... I don't know. I think you have a lot of thinking to do about what's happening to you right now and why, and what you should do about it. I'd suggest discussing it with a counselor of some sort, but I don't know how likely you are to find yourself stuck with the kind of absolutist anti-porner who would try to "end your addiction" rather than help you discover if that's actually the problem.

    I will say that reading your comment, I see an interest in kink that your partner doesn't share. Only you know the answer to this question: Is it just that you need the kink, and so you're bored with the relationship you have and find yourself turning to porn to see it and think about it?

    *If* that's the case, and again I don't know if it is or isn't, I don't think there's something odd about you drifting away to porn when your partner expresses repeated disinterest in what you like. *If* that's what's going on, then it's likely you're sexually incompatible rather than addicted to porn.

    Personally, I tend to think that much of the time, people blame porn for not dealing with their incompatibilities. At the same time, I don't think it's impossible to be addicted to porn (though I don't think it's common; that strikes me as moral panic.)

    But only you know how these things are really affecting you.

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  24. "This may not be the place to ask, but all of you seem like articulate objective individuals who know a lot about pornography. I'm a 20-something male college student. I have a girlfriend, I do normal college sorts of things. Currently, I am a handsome and worthy suitor, but when I was young, I was picked on a lot for being scrawny, bookish, and weird. Being a social outcast, I took very easily to pornography - first, late-night scrambled playboy with my friends in the 6th grade, and now to whatever is free and mildly kinky, "strawberry vanilla" as opposed to just "vanilla," as it were.

    This would be fine, but I am undergoing a strange conflict where I developed a strong dependency upon pornography as an artificial source of sexual love, and now I'm a bit of an emotional island. I have trouble relating to women sexually, and I am drawn to pornography regardless of whether I am in a relationship or not. This has caused problems in one relationship, rightfully so, but now I wonder: Am I wrong to like pornography? Or am I just in need of people who understand it and what it has done to my emotional systems over the past decade? Am I addicted to pornography only insofar as other people around me are not? Is it a legitimate interest, and could I just be a closet kink? If yes, is that because of my early exposure to pornography and how it reset the gain on my emotions?"


    So much to address here I don't even know where to begin. First, it doesn't sound like there's anything "wrong" with you per se, though, obviously, I don't know the specifics of your situation. One thing I can say is that looking at porn, even a lot of it, is not a byproduct of your being maladjusted, etc. First, most "normal" teenage guys, even ones that are "successful" with women (or men) are probably looking at more than a little porn too. Also, I'd say feeling like an outcast and maladjusted at that age is so widespread that I'd go so far as to call that the rule rather than the exception.

    The other thing you need to realize is that even while you are in a partnered sexual relationship, you will have a fantasy and masturbation life of your own. The idea that once you're in a monogamous relationship that you stop masturbating and that all of your sexual fantasies are directed exclusively to your partner is a myth, and a very harmful myth at that. Porn use, generally speaking, is just an extension of one's solo sexual life, and if you have that in balance with your relationship sexuality, then really there shouldn't be a problem there. If the two aren't in balance – say you prefer masturbating to porn to sex with your partner, then there's a problem. If that's the case, the problem might be with the relationship itself – you might be with somebody who you're just not that into physically or aren't sexually compatible with, in which case I simply recommend sparing both partners a lot of heartache and call it off. Or, maybe, you're one of those rare "porn addicts" or "masturbation addicts" that prefers images and fantasy to partnered sex. I think the latter case is pretty rare, though the media tends to blow this out of proportion and make it sound like anybody who gets off on explicit sexual imagery is on the slippery slope to a major addiction.

    Finally, and this is probably the main problem in terms of porn and relationships, is that partners often have very different beliefs when it comes to porn, monogamy, and what constitutes cheating in a relationship. And that comes down to basic communication, and I think that conversation is something that needs to take place very early in a relationship. Some people have fundamental moral objections about porn and, if you're an active porn viewer, a relationship with somebody like that is probably not going to work out unless one partner basically "converts" the other to their value system. (And, personally, I'm not a big fan of trying to "change" people in the context of a relationship, which is easily something that can become controlling or even abusive.) Another thorny issue is how one feels about monogamy – attitudes toward it run from people who have completely open relationships to those that want total fidelity from their partners to various "grey" areas like "New Monogamy" or those where a partner can't have other sexual relationships, but can looking at porn or going to strip clubs isn't cheating. Wherever you fall out on what kind of values you have around this issue, you and your partner need to be on the same page about it and not simply assume the other shares your values.

    The thing to remember about porn is that it often shows a very stylized and idealized kind of sexuality and body types and that in many cases is very different from what most people actually look like or what might constitute good sex for most people. As is pointed out quite often, the function of most porn is sexual entertainment rather than sexual education (though there's a small subset devoted to the latter).

    "If I want to thoughtfully and respectfully explore kink in a safe way, are there resources? Or do I just hope that I meet someone who has the same sexual tendencies as myself - an unlikely occurrence. Is there a lingo that exists to let one person know they are in the presence of someone who's into kink, kind of like there was amongst homosexuals in the violently homophobic early days?"

    As far as kink goes, I think you really just need to make an effort to find partners with your interest. Depending on where you are, there may be a kink group that meets on your campus, so you might look into it. Craigslist or similar ads are another possibility, though that's kind of a crap shoot. In any even, whatever kink you're into, you're probably not as alone as you think you are. As far as there being kink equivalents of "gaydar", or subtle ways of cuing it, I'm less sure.

    "I respect one's right to produce, participate in, and partake in pornography, but is there not a gray area of moral ambiguity, where freedom of choice becomes freedom choice within the confines of one's development and the environment within which it occurred?"

    The thing is that this is a truism, but such a broad truth that I'm not sure exactly what its an argument for or against. Yes, of course in any real sense, freedom of choice exists within constraints. And? Yet this is often used as a "gotcha" argument in arguments against the idea that sex work is a choice, that women have agency in a patriarchal society, or whatever else the questioner claims can't really be an authentically free choice. Of course, this presumes that those arguing against X as being freely chosen have made their moral choice independently of similar social pressures and constraints and are therefore have a more "authentic" understanding, which is typically a dubious proposition.

    "Obviously the porn industry isn't responsible because there are checks in place to prevent things like me from occurring; however, theoretically we shouldn't have child smokers, or child drug addicts. I want to blame someone for my having to harmonize what I want to do with what society makes me feel like I need to do, and how things could have been different. Sometimes I feel like I've been inducted into a secret club of pornography and kink, but without my voluntary consent, and now I'm not sure I want to be in anymore."

    I'm not sure what you're saying here, but I don't think porn "made" you feel any kind of novel desire, but rather made you aware of stuff that was already latent in your sexuality, something that would probably have come up eventually even without exposure to porn. In any event, your sexual choices are your own. If there's something you like that you might be feeling judged for or "abnormal" about, I say, trust your own judgement and fuck what other people might think – they don't have to live in your skin. I'm not saying be completely out about your desires in a socially hostile environment – you need to use your better judgement, obviously, but you don't need to police your desires to conform to what's "normal" (which isn't always the healthiest box of candy, either). If there something that's genuinely troubling you about your desires, I recommend either adjusting, or, worst case, not indulging them, but in any event, that's the kind of thing that's best worked out between you and a, hopefully, kink-friendly therapist.

    "Where I can investigate these questions, if they've already been asked? Is there any literature on these developmental psychological aspects of pornography? On the morality of pornography?"

    Oh, there's plenty of "literature" and "studies" out there, and plenty of ink spilled on the "morality" of pornography, but how good is any of it? This is one of the leading complaints we make on this blog is how criticisms of porn are often based on very bad science, studies that have a tremendous a priori bias, or studies that are simply non-existant. And often these same studies are loudly bandies about by those claiming "overwhelming" evidence that viewing porn causes addiction, psychological damage, and/or social harm.

    As for the "morality" of porn, it really depends on what your moral framework is to begin with, doesn't it? The problem with just about everything written about the morality of porn has as underlying basis in some fundamental notions of sexual morality that are probably debatable and may or may not be explicitly stated. That's the whole reason the porn wars have been so long-lasting and vicious. Porn is only the "surface" issue around some very deep-seeted attitudes about sex that may be based in long-standing cultural attitudes, religious beliefs, or political ideology. And often the loudest critics of porn are very quick to forget that not everybody shares their particular religion or ideology, or their approach to sexual morality.

    As for what I'd recommend for readings on sexual ethics, what I'd recommend may or may not answer the questions you're looking for. I suppose "The Ethical Slut" is always a good place to start. Some of the books by Susie Bright or the recent one by Nina Hartley are probably also good introductions to sex-positive ideas, though they may or may not answer the questions your looking for. Going more into basic ethical/philosophical arguments, if you're interested, I'd say have a look at Ellen Willis' and Alan Soble's work.

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  25. Forgot to add, other than that, what Trinity said.

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  26. Not many arguments that hit the heart of the problem in your article. I'm reading to take a position in this debate. Thanks

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  27. wonderul post... just passing through and i came across this thread :) Kudos

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  28. Glad you liked it. Pleased that it's still being read.

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  29. Ernest, I suspect that's a spambot.

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  30. Trinity:

    Maybe so...but at least it wasn't selling anything.

    BTW...good to know you are still alive and well and still browsing us.


    Anthony

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  31. Hi Trinity,

    Nice to hear form you.

    It could easily have been a spambot. I'm pretty thick when it comes to things like that.

    Did wonder why this old thread suddenly came back to life. Suppose maybe I have an answer, even if it's not the one I would have preferred.

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  32. Ernest:

    It could have been a spambot...I get a lot of this over at my own blog, too. But, usually they come loaded with the spam link included.

    Kind of defeats the purpose to give an artificial compliment without a bait to hook people with, ehh??


    Anthony

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  33. And for the record...if it did come with an obvious spam link, it would have been nuked into pixellate Hell.


    Anthony

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  34. I just read this whole thing and very much enjoyed it. It's a perspective that is all too often ignored. I came here because I almost got fooled into watching this 'documentary.' Then I did a cursory bit a research and realized what trash it was going to be, and what they were going to try to subject me to. I have no desire to watch 'virtual child pornography' under any circumstances, and find it reprehensible they would take something that vile and try to tie it to the legitimate porn industry. It says a LOT about the people that try to say they're the good guys.

    BUT on the plus side, this led me to also discover Renegade's blog and I love it.

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