Update (9-21-08): Two points of correction, thanks to Vicky and Ernest:
1) I may have given the impression that Nina's original site Nina.com was no longer functioning. That is NOT the case, it is still up and running, but only as a basic commercial paysite without the features such as a forum for communicating with her fans.
2) The NinaHartley.com site that is being hosted at Vicky's place (Vickyathome.com) is basically a clone of Nina.com, but it does include access to a section of Vicky's own members-only forum that is dedicated to Nina personally. Membership in Vicky's site is required, however, to access the forum; such membership also gets you access to NinaHartley.com as well.
I have been seriously thinking about offering some space of my Red Garter Club website for a free forum or blog that would archive some of the most important threads off Nina's old forum for public access; as well as serve as a free form of access for those Nina fans who might not be as able to pony up for a membership to Nina's or Vicky's sites. I will consult with Nina and Ernest and Vicky for their thoughts before I do anything; I don't want to step on any toes.
Original post:
This may not fit into the usual political and intellectual stuff, but it is more than worth announcing if you are as much a Nina Hartley fanatic as I am.
As you may well know, Nina's original official website, http://www.nina.com , has been in a state of limbo these past months following an ugly incident where her forum board was invaded and hacked by a group of fundamentalist Muslim extremists. The remainder of the site was unharmed, but due to the breach of security, the forum was permanently suspended and the site had to be refurbished....much to the chagrin of regular members of the board who had enjoyed the stimulating conversation and discussion about all matters concerning Nina.
However, I do have great news to proclaim: Nina has now revived her site under the domain of http://www.ninahartley.com , with the assistance and bandwidth space donated by colleague, supreme MILF, and outright badass, fine-ass, and boobalicious blonde bombshell Vicky Vette (http://www.vickyathome.com ), who has been a rising starlet amongst adult Internet performers and who recently scored a major coup by being voted as Booble.com's Booble Girl of the Year for 2008.
In addition to that, Vicky has been an outspoken voice not only for sexual media and sex positivity (and she has her criticisms of the industry, too, which she's not afraid to vent on occasion. She has depended on the loyalty of her devoted fans (whom she lovingly refers to as the Vette Nation Army) and her own special....ummmm, assets to become a rising starlet in the adult Internet scene...though she mostly does content solely for her site.
I'm going to try to see if I can get Vicky to surf through the BPPA...and who knows, I may even get her to post some opinions. She might not have quite the....ummmm, edge of Ren, but she does bring a lot to the plate....and I don't just mean her 36DD chest, either.
Members of Vicky's site can chat with her through her exclusive Members' Board (in which Nina also has a section dedicated to her); everyone else can meet her though her MySpace and Facebook pages.
BTW...Nina has also set up her own Facebook page, find it here.
A sanctuary for supporters of sexual free expression and the adult sexual media.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Just one question...
This isn't going to be a long and intellectual post, as I'm rather tired from working hard this week and playing hard this weekend. But, since I know from recent posts that some people from the anti-pornography crowd are watching this blog at the moment, I've got a question for them.
I understand that you feel that some sexual acts and interests involve degrading people, usually women. But what do you think is happening when someone who likes rough sex is begging for more -- or even getting irritated with his or her partner because it's not rough enough? Because last night I heard a whole lot of "More!" and even "That's not enough."
Is this only a problem if it's a depiction in pornography? Is this only a problem if the person who wants to be treated more roughly is female? A woman? Transfeminine?
It really puzzles me. I don't understand what the word "degradation" means when it's connected to acts or to kinds of sex or fetishes. To me, one person degrades another if he regards that person as lesser and intends to treat her in a degrading way.
Can that happen on a porn set? Sure. Do some people have fantasies about very harsh treatment? Sure, and yeah, there are genres of porn centered around it. (Though I do have to say I've used porn for a fairly long time and I didn't know about the very rough stuff the anti-porners always mention until I met Ren. Was I aware it existed? Yeah, but only vaguely. While it's true that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I do find myself wondering just what percentage of consumers are big fans of that subgenre, what percentage occasionally use it, and what percentage don't.)
But, well, Ernest mentions in his response to the Price of Pleasure trailer that the scene on which he puts a collar on a woman is affectionate because that's where they were in their relationship at the time. Porn revealing something about an actual relationship? Smiley affectionate tenderness and D/s? Say it ain't so!
Anyway... is that "degradation?" If we take what Ernest is saying at face value -- that they were in a relationship, that this was intimate nice stuff for them -- where's the "degradation?"
I can't engage with the worry that pornography is degrading -- or the definition of pornography as depictions of degradation -- until I know what we mean by degradation in the first place, and why degradation doesn't depend on context.
I understand that you feel that some sexual acts and interests involve degrading people, usually women. But what do you think is happening when someone who likes rough sex is begging for more -- or even getting irritated with his or her partner because it's not rough enough? Because last night I heard a whole lot of "More!" and even "That's not enough."
Is this only a problem if it's a depiction in pornography? Is this only a problem if the person who wants to be treated more roughly is female? A woman? Transfeminine?
It really puzzles me. I don't understand what the word "degradation" means when it's connected to acts or to kinds of sex or fetishes. To me, one person degrades another if he regards that person as lesser and intends to treat her in a degrading way.
Can that happen on a porn set? Sure. Do some people have fantasies about very harsh treatment? Sure, and yeah, there are genres of porn centered around it. (Though I do have to say I've used porn for a fairly long time and I didn't know about the very rough stuff the anti-porners always mention until I met Ren. Was I aware it existed? Yeah, but only vaguely. While it's true that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I do find myself wondering just what percentage of consumers are big fans of that subgenre, what percentage occasionally use it, and what percentage don't.)
But, well, Ernest mentions in his response to the Price of Pleasure trailer that the scene on which he puts a collar on a woman is affectionate because that's where they were in their relationship at the time. Porn revealing something about an actual relationship? Smiley affectionate tenderness and D/s? Say it ain't so!
Anyway... is that "degradation?" If we take what Ernest is saying at face value -- that they were in a relationship, that this was intimate nice stuff for them -- where's the "degradation?"
I can't engage with the worry that pornography is degrading -- or the definition of pornography as depictions of degradation -- until I know what we mean by degradation in the first place, and why degradation doesn't depend on context.
Friday, September 5, 2008
People get testy when things don't go their way...
As in, here.
It seems the author has a problem wiht critique of the "fair and unbiased" anti-porn film "The Price of Pleasure", and of course, assumes we just attack the hell out of everyone involved with it, including SKL, who is/was a sex worker.
Ahem. Actually, I believe SKL's representation as a star of mainstream porn was what was in question, not her sex worker status? There is no question that SKL was involved with sex work, yet never pornography as her primary field, and never in "Mainstream" porn which is what the film is supposedly discussing? Thus, it is not unfair or wooo, horrible mean to assume that SKL is no expert on mainstream pornography. Her status as a sex worker is not in question. Her status as a veteran of porn valley is...and SKL is no such thing, thus, her being included in this "fair and unbiased" film about the mainstream porn is...well, biased.
Now, since I've already been accused by half the free world of being a horrible, sadistic rapist or whatever, I will go ahead and say this now: Gee, we get to be critical of anti porn films that pass themselves off as unbiased, and be just as critical of them as other folk get to be of porn. We get to question the creds and motivations of the people making and in these films, just like you get to question the creds and motivations of people making porn. SKL put herself out there as an authority on a subject, and thus, she is subject to questions and critiques...just as any other person who puts themselves into such a role is.
No one here doubts her feelings on sex work, or her expierences, or her views on her job or other such things. What we question is her status as an authority on pornography, especially mainstream pornography, which is what this film is supposedly dealing with.
Get it now? I certainly hope so.
It seems the author has a problem wiht critique of the "fair and unbiased" anti-porn film "The Price of Pleasure", and of course, assumes we just attack the hell out of everyone involved with it, including SKL, who is/was a sex worker.
Ahem. Actually, I believe SKL's representation as a star of mainstream porn was what was in question, not her sex worker status? There is no question that SKL was involved with sex work, yet never pornography as her primary field, and never in "Mainstream" porn which is what the film is supposedly discussing? Thus, it is not unfair or wooo, horrible mean to assume that SKL is no expert on mainstream pornography. Her status as a sex worker is not in question. Her status as a veteran of porn valley is...and SKL is no such thing, thus, her being included in this "fair and unbiased" film about the mainstream porn is...well, biased.
Now, since I've already been accused by half the free world of being a horrible, sadistic rapist or whatever, I will go ahead and say this now: Gee, we get to be critical of anti porn films that pass themselves off as unbiased, and be just as critical of them as other folk get to be of porn. We get to question the creds and motivations of the people making and in these films, just like you get to question the creds and motivations of people making porn. SKL put herself out there as an authority on a subject, and thus, she is subject to questions and critiques...just as any other person who puts themselves into such a role is.
No one here doubts her feelings on sex work, or her expierences, or her views on her job or other such things. What we question is her status as an authority on pornography, especially mainstream pornography, which is what this film is supposedly dealing with.
Get it now? I certainly hope so.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Price of Pleasure reviewed, plus, an actual "honest and nonjudgmental" documentary on porn
First reviews of The Price of Pleasure
Several reviews have come out from people who have seen The Price of Pleasure at the few engagements its actually played so far. A review here by Go-To-Girl (aka Guli Fager), a sex-poz blogger and freelance writer who is new to me, but I will definitely read more of in the future. She somehow managed to score an invite to the Austin premier of The Price of Pleasure from Robert Jensen himself, interestingly, though she doesn't sound at all sympathetic to his overall view of sexuality or porn. Another review here from the Montreal Gazette, and here, from the blog Culture @ Montréal. The consensus seems to be that the documentary is anything but "honest and nonjudgmental". And lest you think I'm cherry-picking, Google it yourself – I have yet to see a review that has much good to say about the spin this documentary puts on the issue.
(Chris from Sex in the Public Square also posts his impressions here, though like me, he's only seen the trailer and website and is quite familiar with the figures behind it.)
One interjection here, to head off a possible canard by the anti-porn folks – I'm not actually trying to discourage anybody from going and seeing The Price of Pleasure. In fact, I'm definitely going to make a point of seeing it, if it comes to my area, or if it gets a proper DVD release or is made available on the web, and I encourage others to do likewise. The film is supposed to get a proper release after circulating through the film festival circuit, at lease according to a post by Robert Wosnitzer on the TPoP forum. (And, yes, they do have a forum which they claim is open to "conversations and debates" concerning the film. If anybody wants to take advantage of this rare exception to the usual closed moderation policy of radical feminist blogs, the forum can be found here.)
9 to 5: Days in Porn
I also see from the reviews from the Montreal Film Festival that there is in fact another documentary on the industry nearing release, 9 to 5: Days in Porn. Unlike The Price of Pleasure, which seems to disproportionately focus on the opinions of the "chattering class", this doc really does focus on people working in the porn industry, both on the performing and production end. The focus is on the mainstream LA industry, though it also includes some coverage of the burgeoning Czech porn industry.
This doc also claims "not to judge, but to observe" and seems to succeed in this regard much more so than The Price of Pleasure. Nonetheless, its take on performers and other people in the porn industry seems to be pretty positive, something I have little doubt the antis will find fault with. (I suppose they might also find fault with the fact that neither Shelly Lubin nor her cohorts were included, though interestingly, The Price of Pleasure doesn't include any of those people, either.)
And while this definitely can be seen as a pro-porn documentary, I think its pro-porn in the best sense – it doesn't look like a fluff piece along the lines of HBO's Cathouse, but rather a realistic, unflinching look at the porn industry as work and the performers as workers with a variety of motivations for being in the porn industry. Nor does the documentary shy away from the nature of some of the product, for example, showing Jim Powers at work on an installment of the White Trash Whore series.
9 to 5 includes interviews with some of the more articulate and self-aware voices in the porn world, such as John Stagliano, Sharon Mitchell, Belladonna, and Sasha Grey. The latter two I think are particularly important, because these are two very self-aware, interesting women who have been the target of some very distorted coverage by the mainstream media, which is often used as political hay by the antis as a result.
According to some of the reviews, 9 to 5 is still in the editing process and the version shown at the Montreal Festival is a somewhat longish cut, so it maybe a few months at least before this goes into regular release. Though, personally, considering who's interviewed here, I like the fact that they shot a whole bunch of interview footage and I hope a lot of it ends up being included as DVD extras when that's finally released.
Even more films
Yet another documentary on the porn industry, this time a short one, has recently been made in the Czech Republic, Who is afraid of Ashley Lightspeed?, which describes itself as "A little superficial reportage from the big superficial world of Czech porn business." This doc covers several figures in the Czech porn industry, but focuses on Katerina Strougalova, aka Ashley Lightspeed, a social work student who was quite active in web porn a couple of years ago, and who's still one of the more popular models in the Central European glamor porn genre. She had some publicity in the Czech Republic about a year and a half ago when some of the local tabloids decided to out her as a porn star, using her real name. This actually led to her university threatening to expel her on "morals" grounds, and I'm not entirely sure what the outcome of that was.
This film is actually viewable or downloadable in its entirety from the above-mentioned website, however, its entirely in Czech with no subtitles. If you're part of the 99.8% of the world's population that's non-Czech-speaking, you're kind of out of luck in terms of understanding what anybody is saying. Still, you can glean a lot just from viewing it, and I'm struck by how much the Czech porn industry looks pretty much like the American one.
And getting away from documentaries, there's a comedy/indie flick about feminist porn called Slippery Slope that's just made it onto DVD. An interview with the filmmaker, Sarah Schenck, went up a few days ago on the Hip Slope Mama blog and is worth a look.
Several reviews have come out from people who have seen The Price of Pleasure at the few engagements its actually played so far. A review here by Go-To-Girl (aka Guli Fager), a sex-poz blogger and freelance writer who is new to me, but I will definitely read more of in the future. She somehow managed to score an invite to the Austin premier of The Price of Pleasure from Robert Jensen himself, interestingly, though she doesn't sound at all sympathetic to his overall view of sexuality or porn. Another review here from the Montreal Gazette, and here, from the blog Culture @ Montréal. The consensus seems to be that the documentary is anything but "honest and nonjudgmental". And lest you think I'm cherry-picking, Google it yourself – I have yet to see a review that has much good to say about the spin this documentary puts on the issue.
(Chris from Sex in the Public Square also posts his impressions here, though like me, he's only seen the trailer and website and is quite familiar with the figures behind it.)
One interjection here, to head off a possible canard by the anti-porn folks – I'm not actually trying to discourage anybody from going and seeing The Price of Pleasure. In fact, I'm definitely going to make a point of seeing it, if it comes to my area, or if it gets a proper DVD release or is made available on the web, and I encourage others to do likewise. The film is supposed to get a proper release after circulating through the film festival circuit, at lease according to a post by Robert Wosnitzer on the TPoP forum. (And, yes, they do have a forum which they claim is open to "conversations and debates" concerning the film. If anybody wants to take advantage of this rare exception to the usual closed moderation policy of radical feminist blogs, the forum can be found here.)
9 to 5: Days in Porn
I also see from the reviews from the Montreal Film Festival that there is in fact another documentary on the industry nearing release, 9 to 5: Days in Porn. Unlike The Price of Pleasure, which seems to disproportionately focus on the opinions of the "chattering class", this doc really does focus on people working in the porn industry, both on the performing and production end. The focus is on the mainstream LA industry, though it also includes some coverage of the burgeoning Czech porn industry.
This doc also claims "not to judge, but to observe" and seems to succeed in this regard much more so than The Price of Pleasure. Nonetheless, its take on performers and other people in the porn industry seems to be pretty positive, something I have little doubt the antis will find fault with. (I suppose they might also find fault with the fact that neither Shelly Lubin nor her cohorts were included, though interestingly, The Price of Pleasure doesn't include any of those people, either.)
And while this definitely can be seen as a pro-porn documentary, I think its pro-porn in the best sense – it doesn't look like a fluff piece along the lines of HBO's Cathouse, but rather a realistic, unflinching look at the porn industry as work and the performers as workers with a variety of motivations for being in the porn industry. Nor does the documentary shy away from the nature of some of the product, for example, showing Jim Powers at work on an installment of the White Trash Whore series.
9 to 5 includes interviews with some of the more articulate and self-aware voices in the porn world, such as John Stagliano, Sharon Mitchell, Belladonna, and Sasha Grey. The latter two I think are particularly important, because these are two very self-aware, interesting women who have been the target of some very distorted coverage by the mainstream media, which is often used as political hay by the antis as a result.
According to some of the reviews, 9 to 5 is still in the editing process and the version shown at the Montreal Festival is a somewhat longish cut, so it maybe a few months at least before this goes into regular release. Though, personally, considering who's interviewed here, I like the fact that they shot a whole bunch of interview footage and I hope a lot of it ends up being included as DVD extras when that's finally released.
Even more films
Yet another documentary on the porn industry, this time a short one, has recently been made in the Czech Republic, Who is afraid of Ashley Lightspeed?, which describes itself as "A little superficial reportage from the big superficial world of Czech porn business." This doc covers several figures in the Czech porn industry, but focuses on Katerina Strougalova, aka Ashley Lightspeed, a social work student who was quite active in web porn a couple of years ago, and who's still one of the more popular models in the Central European glamor porn genre. She had some publicity in the Czech Republic about a year and a half ago when some of the local tabloids decided to out her as a porn star, using her real name. This actually led to her university threatening to expel her on "morals" grounds, and I'm not entirely sure what the outcome of that was.
This film is actually viewable or downloadable in its entirety from the above-mentioned website, however, its entirely in Czech with no subtitles. If you're part of the 99.8% of the world's population that's non-Czech-speaking, you're kind of out of luck in terms of understanding what anybody is saying. Still, you can glean a lot just from viewing it, and I'm struck by how much the Czech porn industry looks pretty much like the American one.
And getting away from documentaries, there's a comedy/indie flick about feminist porn called Slippery Slope that's just made it onto DVD. An interview with the filmmaker, Sarah Schenck, went up a few days ago on the Hip Slope Mama blog and is worth a look.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
New Antiporn Documentary: The Price of Pleasure
Well, the documentary we've been hearing about from the APRF crowd for the last – what, 4 years, at least – has finally been finished. This was the one that was being put together by Chyng Sun a few years back, and more recently by Robert Jensen and Miguel Picker. Website here:
http://www.thepriceofpleasure.com/
Trailer here.
The press kit promises, "Honest and nonjudgmental, the film paints both a nuanced and complex portrait of how pleasure and pain, commerce and power, and liberty and responsibility are intertwined in the most intimate aspects of human relations." But one look at the who the writers are (Chyng Sun and Robert Wosnitzer), not to mention the obvious slant even in the trailer, belies the idea that there's anything "honest and nonjudgmental" going on here.
Witnesses for the prosecution are, not unexpectedly, Robert Jensen and Gail Dines, but Pamela Paul, Ariel Levy, and Sarah Katherine Lewis are also brought in to further the case against porn and the sex industry. (And apparently the much-circulated video of the anti-porn statement by Chomsky is from this film also.) Interestingly, the documentary also feature some pro-porn folks, most notably, our own Ernest Greene, who, based on the trailer at least, seems to get some good points in, though I have no idea what his original interview versus what made it into the film is like. Joanna Angel seems to be treated to more of a hatchet job, where they select some "worst of" moments from her videos and use them to undermine her statements. Similarly, statements from fans are selected to come across as very self-incriminating.
If anybody's anxious to have a look at it, its scheduled to play in Austin, Montreal, and New York over the next several weeks, and it may play elsewhere after that. I have my doubts it will have anything like a major release (1-hour documentaries usually don't), but, is scheduled for video release next month from the Media Education Foundation, but like other MEF releases, are only available to educational institutions at $150-250 per copy. Like the Killing us Softly and Dreamworlds series (also from MEF), its likely this video end up having a long life life in women's studies and "media education" classrooms, fueling misguided outrage for years to come.
http://www.thepriceofpleasure.com/
Trailer here.
The press kit promises, "Honest and nonjudgmental, the film paints both a nuanced and complex portrait of how pleasure and pain, commerce and power, and liberty and responsibility are intertwined in the most intimate aspects of human relations." But one look at the who the writers are (Chyng Sun and Robert Wosnitzer), not to mention the obvious slant even in the trailer, belies the idea that there's anything "honest and nonjudgmental" going on here.
Witnesses for the prosecution are, not unexpectedly, Robert Jensen and Gail Dines, but Pamela Paul, Ariel Levy, and Sarah Katherine Lewis are also brought in to further the case against porn and the sex industry. (And apparently the much-circulated video of the anti-porn statement by Chomsky is from this film also.) Interestingly, the documentary also feature some pro-porn folks, most notably, our own Ernest Greene, who, based on the trailer at least, seems to get some good points in, though I have no idea what his original interview versus what made it into the film is like. Joanna Angel seems to be treated to more of a hatchet job, where they select some "worst of" moments from her videos and use them to undermine her statements. Similarly, statements from fans are selected to come across as very self-incriminating.
If anybody's anxious to have a look at it, its scheduled to play in Austin, Montreal, and New York over the next several weeks, and it may play elsewhere after that. I have my doubts it will have anything like a major release (1-hour documentaries usually don't), but, is scheduled for video release next month from the Media Education Foundation, but like other MEF releases, are only available to educational institutions at $150-250 per copy. Like the Killing us Softly and Dreamworlds series (also from MEF), its likely this video end up having a long life life in women's studies and "media education" classrooms, fueling misguided outrage for years to come.
Monday, August 11, 2008
The US v. Karen Fletcher
Ren sums up my feelings well:This sort of thing is precisely why all the outcry over visual pornography without similar outcry over words disturbs me. It's as if people think that everyone knows images are bad, whether this be due to assumptions about how they are produced or assumptions about how they induce particularly Pavlovian sexual response, yet everyone also knows words are fine.Ladies and Gentlemen: The US vs Karen Fletcher…
However, unlike Walters there, I do think we should be afraid, thanks.
Now, guess what? I have no desire to read anything Karen Fletcher ever wrote, and yep, the idea of her fiction squicks me out big time…but you know, it was words. Writings. Fiction. No real people, digitally altered or otherwise, involved at all. And let’s look at Ms. Fletcher, really…a woman without any real means, living at home, writing as her sole source of income, for a web site with minimal subscribers. And the government picks her to arrest. Now, see, people boycotted American Psycho by (wealthy) author Brett Easton Ellis. People love the best-selling George R.R. Martin series A Song of Ice & Fire, which has spawned merchandise, a role playing game, a card game, and is full of the rape, torture, imprisonment and murder of people of all ages, including children, a lot of violent sex, incest and all kinds of unsavory stuff…yet no one is arresting Ellis or Martin for their fiction…instead, they go after an unknown, unpopular, not wealthy small time smut writer…I wonder why?
Easy prey, maybe? You think maybe that has something to do with it? The Gov trying to Fight the Obscene Smut!... but taking on someone who really had no chance in hell of actually being able to, oh, fight them back?
And while yeah, I have no desire to read Fletcher’s stories, you can bet your ass this pisses me off and I will defend her right to write them. And of course, sure, some folk are likely to just, once again, accuse me of being some vile, appalling, sadistic, rapist fuck who doesn’t give a shit about anyone because my soulless, male identified self is just so obsessed with my vicious orgasms, but see…you’d be wrong. I do care about something, at least one thing…you gotta give me that…
I care about our 1st Amendment, and how shit like this affects all of us…or a whole shit load of us anyway…
I mean, check the nets, people. Fan-Fic, slash, from manga based to Harry Potter based, there is a shit ton of it out there, and a shit ton of every day people writing it, and a lot of it involves sex with underage people, violence, and even things like rape and murder. I know some of you out there write it, some read it, and a lot of people do other kinds of writing; their deep, dark fantasies, epic level fiction with a great many unsavory or disturbing themes, horror, smut, yaoi, sci-fi, high fantasy, so on, so forth…and it’s likely you, like Fletcher, could be considered easy prey…
And get arrested and tried by the big bad US Government because someone was squicked out by your BDSM fantasy, or hero/heroine in peril tale, or the written evolution of your monstrous, amoral villain. You could get completely hosed for writing things other people find disturbing or don’t like. Even if it cannot be accessed by minors, even if it is only out there for a select crowd…and the way some of this stuff is plastered all over, all public like, on the net…well gee, so many attractive “obscene” targets to chose from, eh?
For writing words….words! No pictures, no real live people, no images…words! And funny that, but I thought one of the things we here in the States were supposed to be real big on and all over was a persons ability to speak and write words…even if other people don’t like them. So see, yeah, something I do care about…a person’s ability to write and speak words, even if other people find them horrific, disturbing, and terrible…because we are supposed to have that right. Even if those words are about sex, or violence, or sex and violence, or rape, or murder, or all kinds of shit that can generally be pretty damn offensive to a whole lot of people.
As a writer this scares me. As a big time fan of free speech, it scares me even more. Being arrested for writing something someone else doesn’t like? Well, that shit should scare you too.
I've never understood this distinction, and always felt that unless it was grounded in actual facts about the production conditions of filmed visual pornography that uses live performers, the distinction was untenable. I figured that, culturally, we'd never bother to go after words, but I've still been saying for years that I don't see a big difference, if we leave production conditions out.
And this just says to me that no, there isn't one. That free speech might make us think quickest of words (since "speech" is in the name), but that whatever counts as "speech" is fair game. If certain kinds of pornography are to be erased, then that erasure can and will extend to words as well -- despite that so many of us do see differences between industry-made rape porn (which I gather there's actually little of, from what people actually in the industry say) and our little pet "non-con" Draco!Harry slashfic.
It's all the same, people. If this alarms you -- and I think it should -- it shouldn't alarm you because they finally got to print/text. That was always coming.
And that's why I think a post about this belongs here too.
Barely Legal: My Personal Reflections
The controversy:
http://un-cool.blogspot.com/2008/08/inconsistencies-and-preconceptions.html
http://bppa.blogspot.com/2008/08/barely-legal-blogwars.html
My comments: First of all, I don't think I even noticed the picture at Sugasm. I think my first note of it was just "ho-hum, something in a post that looks like it belongs in a sidebar ad *scrolldown*. When I later looked back at it, I liked it some. When I really studied the face of the model on the right, I could both see that she looks young and why some people might be bothered, but also found her face unique looking and a refreshing break from faces that don't appeal to me.
(The woman in the Uncool post? That sort of face, with the wide sparkly grin, is usually sexually unappealing to me, for whatever it's worth. That sort of smile... I'm trying to put into words what puts me off about it, and I can't. I guess for me... it's a kind of smile that makes the sex seem not very... deep? No, I don't want sex to always be meaningful. And I like sex to be silly and fun, so I'm not saying don't smile joyfully or laugh or be silly.
But also, as an SMer I like my sex to be a little scary, a little edgy at least emotionally, a dip into where there be dragons -- whether that's because there's pain or because it's really passionate or because it's emotionally intense or... anything. That kind of Polident smile puts me off. But this is JUST ME, and in no way is supposed to say that the model "means" her smile to "say" these things, or that she's fake, or that she's not smart, or not intense. It's just my explanation of why such a smile is anti-erotic to me.
Because of the "barely legal blogwar", I've been "examining" and trying to figure out if I'm actually secretly gunning for the Lolita-face, revealing that I don't like women who look fully adult. I worried this might be the case, an unconscious prejudice against women who are too mature or confident-looking. I decided that's probably not it -- though I will freely admit that as someone who's sexually dominant, I have and do eroticize certain kinds of innocence, which are not there in the other picture. Make of that whatever you will.)
But my main point was: Barely Legal porn, and how I feel about it. When I was younger, I used to be deeply angry that it existed. The mere thought of it would trigger me. I once asked a lover what men saw in it. According TO HIM, the fantasy was about remembering one's first stirrings of desire in adolescence, when sexual desire is new and particularly intense. According TO HIM, the idea was not that HE would want the cheerleader because she's naive, but that he would use it to remember first seeing attractive people dressed in those uniforms. He also reminded me repeatedly that cheerleaders are athletes and not necessarily ditzes, and that while associating the two things is culturally popular, it's not what HE HIMSELF really thought of when he thought about them. He saw them as out of his league, perfect -- smart AND athletic, the marriage of two poles, while he was just a geek.
While I now find that answer reasonable (though I think he's a lot more feminist than many men, and than many pornographers choose to be), at the time the whole thing bothered me so bad I cried for an hour. He was bewildered? Why would I?
And I realized that for me, it's personal. When others were "sweet sixteen," I was in a body cast, a wheelchair, changing bloody dressings, wondering if my scars would ever stop hurting. It dawned on me that I was less concerned about what bothers many people -- the youthful look of the women and the possible connections to pedophilia -- and more about my own lack of a childhood. While some other girls got to experience sexual awakenings that were fun and exploratory, I was fantasizing about SM to keep myself from drowning in overwhelming, and very real, physical and emotional pain. I did not trust anyone who was not like me. If you weren't a sadomasochist, or at least someone who flirted with such themes, no matter who you were and what you liked, you were the Enemy.
So the only images of teen sexuality that I was comfortable with, if I was with any at all, were ones like my own. Dark, sinister, gothy. If it wasn't Serious Business -- if it didn't involve, somewhere, the piper being paid, some kind of confession or pain or paying the price for inhabiting your body -- it made me angry and bitter... because it made me envious.
I envied "people" (including characters in images) whose sexuality wasn't hard, tough, dark, crisscrossed with battle scars. "Innocent" sexualities dredged up my rage not centrally because I feared women being taken advantage of, but because I felt ugly, tattered, dented up by comparison. Although I had hardly any sexual experience until the very ripe age of 21, I was already old-souled. Even my shiny-new, "cherry-popping" explorations were the explorations of an old soul.
Now this is not to say that my sexuality was bad. I don't consider my SM leanings to be the result of the damage. I think they were always there, but that they went from a marked leaning toward dominance and curiosity about erotic pain ("is that POSSIBLE? If it were, it'd be really COOL!") to a major, and necessary, coping mechanism when I found myself sexually developing in the midst of terrible pain.
And so images of youthful sexuality that made it about eagerness, curiosity, any such that didn't involve paying some piper somewhere, made me instantly suspicious. And when I saw critiques that said "oh, she's depicted as too innocent" well, if the shoe fit, wear it. Because "too innocent" was me before I found SM. And if these eager sorority party girls weren't making the men pay in blood for a look, they hadn't transformed like me, and must be naive.
So... now. Yeah, the critique of barely legal isn't what I thought it was. And I can see the new one. But the thing is, it doesn't -- rightly or wrongly -- have the same force to me as the other one. Maybe it's because I too eroticize some kinds of "innocence", as long as it's a smart kind of innocence, an innocence that learns and plays along, rather than one that's defenseless.
Maybe it's because "mature vanilla" isn't what I grew into, so "mature vanilla" was always a little suspect to me until I matured enough not to expect everyone to be the same. Maybe it's because there's still a grain in me that thinks "mature vanilla" is naive in a bad way, is the sexuality of people who've gotten older, but haven't yet seen pain like I saw. Maybe part of me, deep in my unconscious, believes that people who really knew the horror in the world would have more of an SM streak... even though I've long since realized that's irrational.
But my big turning point came when I started to watch Hentai. I'd always shunned it, on the theory that I just didn't like the whole youthful-as-erotic idea. But I found myself, as I usually am, intellectually curious about the genre as a kind of erotic media. And I watched some. And I remember looking at a youthfully drawn girl, in a schoolgirl skirt, and suddenly feeling a pang of desire before I could think to stop it.
And suddenly something changed in my head: how can I condemn this... when this is me too?
So that's where I am with it now. "I'd rather be a creep than a hypocrite" is, well, really the whole of it.
http://un-cool.blogspot.com/2008/08/inco
http://bppa.blogspot.com/2008/08/barely-l
My comments: First of all, I don't think I even noticed the picture at Sugasm. I think my first note of it was just "ho-hum, something in a post that looks like it belongs in a sidebar ad *scrolldown*. When I later looked back at it, I liked it some. When I really studied the face of the model on the right, I could both see that she looks young and why some people might be bothered, but also found her face unique looking and a refreshing break from faces that don't appeal to me.
(The woman in the Uncool post? That sort of face, with the wide sparkly grin, is usually sexually unappealing to me, for whatever it's worth. That sort of smile... I'm trying to put into words what puts me off about it, and I can't. I guess for me... it's a kind of smile that makes the sex seem not very... deep? No, I don't want sex to always be meaningful. And I like sex to be silly and fun, so I'm not saying don't smile joyfully or laugh or be silly.
But also, as an SMer I like my sex to be a little scary, a little edgy at least emotionally, a dip into where there be dragons -- whether that's because there's pain or because it's really passionate or because it's emotionally intense or... anything. That kind of Polident smile puts me off. But this is JUST ME, and in no way is supposed to say that the model "means" her smile to "say" these things, or that she's fake, or that she's not smart, or not intense. It's just my explanation of why such a smile is anti-erotic to me.
Because of the "barely legal blogwar", I've been "examining" and trying to figure out if I'm actually secretly gunning for the Lolita-face, revealing that I don't like women who look fully adult. I worried this might be the case, an unconscious prejudice against women who are too mature or confident-looking. I decided that's probably not it -- though I will freely admit that as someone who's sexually dominant, I have and do eroticize certain kinds of innocence, which are not there in the other picture. Make of that whatever you will.)
But my main point was: Barely Legal porn, and how I feel about it. When I was younger, I used to be deeply angry that it existed. The mere thought of it would trigger me. I once asked a lover what men saw in it. According TO HIM, the fantasy was about remembering one's first stirrings of desire in adolescence, when sexual desire is new and particularly intense. According TO HIM, the idea was not that HE would want the cheerleader because she's naive, but that he would use it to remember first seeing attractive people dressed in those uniforms. He also reminded me repeatedly that cheerleaders are athletes and not necessarily ditzes, and that while associating the two things is culturally popular, it's not what HE HIMSELF really thought of when he thought about them. He saw them as out of his league, perfect -- smart AND athletic, the marriage of two poles, while he was just a geek.
While I now find that answer reasonable (though I think he's a lot more feminist than many men, and than many pornographers choose to be), at the time the whole thing bothered me so bad I cried for an hour. He was bewildered? Why would I?
And I realized that for me, it's personal. When others were "sweet sixteen," I was in a body cast, a wheelchair, changing bloody dressings, wondering if my scars would ever stop hurting. It dawned on me that I was less concerned about what bothers many people -- the youthful look of the women and the possible connections to pedophilia -- and more about my own lack of a childhood. While some other girls got to experience sexual awakenings that were fun and exploratory, I was fantasizing about SM to keep myself from drowning in overwhelming, and very real, physical and emotional pain. I did not trust anyone who was not like me. If you weren't a sadomasochist, or at least someone who flirted with such themes, no matter who you were and what you liked, you were the Enemy.
So the only images of teen sexuality that I was comfortable with, if I was with any at all, were ones like my own. Dark, sinister, gothy. If it wasn't Serious Business -- if it didn't involve, somewhere, the piper being paid, some kind of confession or pain or paying the price for inhabiting your body -- it made me angry and bitter... because it made me envious.
I envied "people" (including characters in images) whose sexuality wasn't hard, tough, dark, crisscrossed with battle scars. "Innocent" sexualities dredged up my rage not centrally because I feared women being taken advantage of, but because I felt ugly, tattered, dented up by comparison. Although I had hardly any sexual experience until the very ripe age of 21, I was already old-souled. Even my shiny-new, "cherry-popping" explorations were the explorations of an old soul.
Now this is not to say that my sexuality was bad. I don't consider my SM leanings to be the result of the damage. I think they were always there, but that they went from a marked leaning toward dominance and curiosity about erotic pain ("is that POSSIBLE? If it were, it'd be really COOL!") to a major, and necessary, coping mechanism when I found myself sexually developing in the midst of terrible pain.
And so images of youthful sexuality that made it about eagerness, curiosity, any such that didn't involve paying some piper somewhere, made me instantly suspicious. And when I saw critiques that said "oh, she's depicted as too innocent" well, if the shoe fit, wear it. Because "too innocent" was me before I found SM. And if these eager sorority party girls weren't making the men pay in blood for a look, they hadn't transformed like me, and must be naive.
So... now. Yeah, the critique of barely legal isn't what I thought it was. And I can see the new one. But the thing is, it doesn't -- rightly or wrongly -- have the same force to me as the other one. Maybe it's because I too eroticize some kinds of "innocence", as long as it's a smart kind of innocence, an innocence that learns and plays along, rather than one that's defenseless.
Maybe it's because "mature vanilla" isn't what I grew into, so "mature vanilla" was always a little suspect to me until I matured enough not to expect everyone to be the same. Maybe it's because there's still a grain in me that thinks "mature vanilla" is naive in a bad way, is the sexuality of people who've gotten older, but haven't yet seen pain like I saw. Maybe part of me, deep in my unconscious, believes that people who really knew the horror in the world would have more of an SM streak... even though I've long since realized that's irrational.
But my big turning point came when I started to watch Hentai. I'd always shunned it, on the theory that I just didn't like the whole youthful-as-erotic idea. But I found myself, as I usually am, intellectually curious about the genre as a kind of erotic media. And I watched some. And I remember looking at a youthfully drawn girl, in a schoolgirl skirt, and suddenly feeling a pang of desire before I could think to stop it.
And suddenly something changed in my head: how can I condemn this... when this is me too?
So that's where I am with it now. "I'd rather be a creep than a hypocrite" is, well, really the whole of it.
Lesson for the Day: Never comment about a blog war unless you're prepared to become the focus of it
Seeing the way discussion has degenerated and the ill-will that has formed over the last several days around "Lolitagate" is the kind of stuff that makes me want to throw in the towel and stop blogging altogether. It really underlines the limitations of online communication and the minefield you step into when you start discussing your own sexual likes and dislikes, especially in a milieu devoted to sexual politics.
First, I've really got to give at another apology to Caroline, especially, and also Tom, though he hasn't responded, for what might have seemed like a personal attack. It was never meant that way. I'm doubly apologetic that my post apparently brought ignorant trolls to your blog. (And if anybody who went over to Caroline's blog and called her something along the lines of a "lazy, superficial, careless, frigid bitch" is reading this – Fuck Off!)
Also, it seems like there's some factional shit among the polys and sex-pozzes going on here that I wasn't aware of – apologies for stepping into the middle of that, too.
At the same time, a lot of the anger directed at me is based on such a gross misinterpretation of what I said and to whom I was speaking, I hardly know where to start.
First, the irony here is both Caroline and I feel that neither has even bothered to read what the other has said before responding, and hence there's a lot of general pissed-offness over gross misinterpretation of what was actually said. For my part, I was critiquing the anti-"barely legal" porn arguments of several people, but somehow, it was interpreted as a focused attack on Caroline. I also used a bad choice of words, calling their arguments "radfemmish", though I probably should have had the good sense to know that in the sex-poz blogosphere, those are fighting words. This unfortunately was very quickly turned into "you called Caroline a radfem", which I did not do and is pretty illustrative of the kind of rhetoric inflation that takes place in blog arguments.
If I was focused on any one post, it was actually the initial post by Tom (who's writing I also generally like, BTW), which had kind of a finger wagging and moral absolutist tone that I found distasteful, and its pretty clear from the comments, I'm not the only one.
I was critical of Caroline's argument insofar as she was shoring up Tom's position, but I think her posts on the topic were actually rather peripheral to my argument. However, I also pointed to them as "characteristically thoughtful and reflective", which seems to have been lost on most readers. Still, I perhaps didn't read Caroline closely enough to note that this was a personal statement about why this kind of thing squicks her out based on her life history and experiences, and its now being interpreted that I'm telling Caroline and others that they have no right to feel the way she does, or that I'm blasting them for not taking a YayPorn all-the-time party-line.
This is where the discussion really becomes unproductive, because I'm hearing a lot of rhetoric to the effect that me, and other commentators who have been critical of Tom, Caroline, and others on this are guilty of trying to "silence" them. But this argument goes nowhere, because I can certainly point to the level of invective against me just for daring to state an opinion as definitely silencing. But, obviously, an endless round of arguing just who is trying to silence whom actually accomplishes nothing. Either discuss something of substance or agree to disagree and move on.
The other thing that really stands out is that when you start writing about your own reactions to images of real people, what a minefield that opens up, and I think that minefield can become a veritable Korean DMZ when start throwing things like feminism or pornography into it. I think its very easy to read into images, or people's reaction to images, "you're ugly", "the people you're attracted to are ugly", "she's prettier than you", "you should be turned on by this, and not by that" (and, boy, does discussion of "feminist porn" often come across that way), and, of course, "you're a pervert", which is where I think a lot people are see some insinuation of in this discussion. Which I think actually gets back to Caroline's point about how you respond to an image being very tied up in your history, experiences, and sense of self.
Case in point – a post by Soulhuntre on some controversial images of fat women that were being discussed around the feminist blogosphere. (And, yeah, there are a lot issues between Soulhuntre and a whole lot of people, but I'll put that aside for the moment.) Soulhuntre reacted to the controversy with a kind of "um, so does this mean I'm supposed to pretend to like fat chicks" followed by some other less than kind remarks, while Belledame, quite understandably, took his comments as a swipe at her appearance. And the thing is, I don't see either of them as wrong in their subjective reaction to the image, or how the image was being spoken of. But I do see Soulhuntre as being an ass in the way he wrote about the images – a lot of women look like this and a lot of people are attracted to them, and trashing them as self-evidently ugly was really insulting. At the same time, I really find it bothersome when I see some feminist discourse insinuates that this is the kind of women that people must be attracted to, less they be guilty of fat-phobia and "looksism".
In my case, when I look at the Luna and Mina images, I'm reminded of a couple girlfriends I had back in my 20s. (Actually some pretty key relationships, in fact.) Not in exact appearance, but having the same skinny build and being quite young-looking for their age, yep, definitely. And you know what, I'm not going to apologize one little bit for finding them beautiful and sexy then, or thinking, some 15 or so years later, that young women with a similar appearance are beautiful. And I'm certainly not going to hypocritically jump on board with some party line about just how fucking horrible it is that anybody would be turned on by somebody like that. On the other hand, I can understand where some women are coming from, who look at that image and see what was probably going through the head of every creepy guy who ever leered at them in high school.
This is where I get really impatient with the accusation that you can't criticize porn, which is kind of a cheap accusation and not where I'm coming from. I do, however, think that when you discuss porn or any other kind of imagery, you're really not just discussing porn, you're discussing things like sexual fantasies, appearance, self-image and so on. I think it goes back to why a lot of us consider ourselves to be "pro-porn", there's a hell of a lot more to the issue than just pornography, or even freedom of expression. As much as radfems might want to write it off with the line "porn is not sex", the fact is, its very much an expression of underlying sexuality, stuff that would still be there even if porn didn't exist.
I don't think there's any way of discussing it without stepping on people's toes, really, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't have these discussions. On the other hand, to defend oneself with "I have a right to my subjective opinion of that image" (which is totally valid, in itself), and then get really upset that somebody else might have a subjective reaction that doesn't agree with yours – that's a contradiction, to put it mildly.
First, I've really got to give at another apology to Caroline, especially, and also Tom, though he hasn't responded, for what might have seemed like a personal attack. It was never meant that way. I'm doubly apologetic that my post apparently brought ignorant trolls to your blog. (And if anybody who went over to Caroline's blog and called her something along the lines of a "lazy, superficial, careless, frigid bitch" is reading this – Fuck Off!)
Also, it seems like there's some factional shit among the polys and sex-pozzes going on here that I wasn't aware of – apologies for stepping into the middle of that, too.
At the same time, a lot of the anger directed at me is based on such a gross misinterpretation of what I said and to whom I was speaking, I hardly know where to start.
First, the irony here is both Caroline and I feel that neither has even bothered to read what the other has said before responding, and hence there's a lot of general pissed-offness over gross misinterpretation of what was actually said. For my part, I was critiquing the anti-"barely legal" porn arguments of several people, but somehow, it was interpreted as a focused attack on Caroline. I also used a bad choice of words, calling their arguments "radfemmish", though I probably should have had the good sense to know that in the sex-poz blogosphere, those are fighting words. This unfortunately was very quickly turned into "you called Caroline a radfem", which I did not do and is pretty illustrative of the kind of rhetoric inflation that takes place in blog arguments.
If I was focused on any one post, it was actually the initial post by Tom (who's writing I also generally like, BTW), which had kind of a finger wagging and moral absolutist tone that I found distasteful, and its pretty clear from the comments, I'm not the only one.
I was critical of Caroline's argument insofar as she was shoring up Tom's position, but I think her posts on the topic were actually rather peripheral to my argument. However, I also pointed to them as "characteristically thoughtful and reflective", which seems to have been lost on most readers. Still, I perhaps didn't read Caroline closely enough to note that this was a personal statement about why this kind of thing squicks her out based on her life history and experiences, and its now being interpreted that I'm telling Caroline and others that they have no right to feel the way she does, or that I'm blasting them for not taking a YayPorn all-the-time party-line.
This is where the discussion really becomes unproductive, because I'm hearing a lot of rhetoric to the effect that me, and other commentators who have been critical of Tom, Caroline, and others on this are guilty of trying to "silence" them. But this argument goes nowhere, because I can certainly point to the level of invective against me just for daring to state an opinion as definitely silencing. But, obviously, an endless round of arguing just who is trying to silence whom actually accomplishes nothing. Either discuss something of substance or agree to disagree and move on.
The other thing that really stands out is that when you start writing about your own reactions to images of real people, what a minefield that opens up, and I think that minefield can become a veritable Korean DMZ when start throwing things like feminism or pornography into it. I think its very easy to read into images, or people's reaction to images, "you're ugly", "the people you're attracted to are ugly", "she's prettier than you", "you should be turned on by this, and not by that" (and, boy, does discussion of "feminist porn" often come across that way), and, of course, "you're a pervert", which is where I think a lot people are see some insinuation of in this discussion. Which I think actually gets back to Caroline's point about how you respond to an image being very tied up in your history, experiences, and sense of self.
Case in point – a post by Soulhuntre on some controversial images of fat women that were being discussed around the feminist blogosphere. (And, yeah, there are a lot issues between Soulhuntre and a whole lot of people, but I'll put that aside for the moment.) Soulhuntre reacted to the controversy with a kind of "um, so does this mean I'm supposed to pretend to like fat chicks" followed by some other less than kind remarks, while Belledame, quite understandably, took his comments as a swipe at her appearance. And the thing is, I don't see either of them as wrong in their subjective reaction to the image, or how the image was being spoken of. But I do see Soulhuntre as being an ass in the way he wrote about the images – a lot of women look like this and a lot of people are attracted to them, and trashing them as self-evidently ugly was really insulting. At the same time, I really find it bothersome when I see some feminist discourse insinuates that this is the kind of women that people must be attracted to, less they be guilty of fat-phobia and "looksism".
In my case, when I look at the Luna and Mina images, I'm reminded of a couple girlfriends I had back in my 20s. (Actually some pretty key relationships, in fact.) Not in exact appearance, but having the same skinny build and being quite young-looking for their age, yep, definitely. And you know what, I'm not going to apologize one little bit for finding them beautiful and sexy then, or thinking, some 15 or so years later, that young women with a similar appearance are beautiful. And I'm certainly not going to hypocritically jump on board with some party line about just how fucking horrible it is that anybody would be turned on by somebody like that. On the other hand, I can understand where some women are coming from, who look at that image and see what was probably going through the head of every creepy guy who ever leered at them in high school.
This is where I get really impatient with the accusation that you can't criticize porn, which is kind of a cheap accusation and not where I'm coming from. I do, however, think that when you discuss porn or any other kind of imagery, you're really not just discussing porn, you're discussing things like sexual fantasies, appearance, self-image and so on. I think it goes back to why a lot of us consider ourselves to be "pro-porn", there's a hell of a lot more to the issue than just pornography, or even freedom of expression. As much as radfems might want to write it off with the line "porn is not sex", the fact is, its very much an expression of underlying sexuality, stuff that would still be there even if porn didn't exist.
I don't think there's any way of discussing it without stepping on people's toes, really, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't have these discussions. On the other hand, to defend oneself with "I have a right to my subjective opinion of that image" (which is totally valid, in itself), and then get really upset that somebody else might have a subjective reaction that doesn't agree with yours – that's a contradiction, to put it mildly.
Whither Sugarbank?
As an aside, anybody know what happened to Sugarbank? Its been down for several days now. It would be unfortunate if that were gone permanently.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
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-pozzessounding 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.
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
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.
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