Marilyn Chambers, 1952–2009

Via LA Times and AVN comes sad news of the death of Marilyn Chambers, only 56 and gone way before her time. Susie Bright, Four on the Floor, and, interestingly, Jezebel post fitting eulogies.

Unlike the above eulogists, Marilyn Chambers was not actually much part of my porn coming of age, being a little before my time, though her name and face were iconic for as long as I can remember being interested in such things. I have some memory of Insatiable, her "comeback" movie from the early '80s and mostly remember how enthusiastic her performance was. It was the very opposite of the (unfortunately often true) stereotype of the detached porn star just going through the motions. My later memories of her are mainly local headlines about Chambers being arrested during a performance at San Francisco's Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater, a target of then-mayor Diane Feinstein's many misguided law'n'order campaigns during her time in office. (The more libertine Willie Brown would proclaim a "Marilyn Chambers Day" upon her return to MBOT in 1999.)

Chambers was also one of the first porn-to-cinema crossovers, landing a starring role in David Cronenberg's Rabid. According to one story I heard, beating out Sissy Spacek for the role. (And as much of a Cronenberg fan as I am, I'm embarrassed to say I haven't seen this one, something I intend to remedy soon.) Unfortunately, this role didn't translate into crossover success in the long term, and latter roles she picked up were largely straight-to-video horror flicks, much along the lines of Traci Lords.

An earlier thread on Jezebel announcing her death unfortunately derailed into the inevitable porn wars on the part of the commentariat (Jezebel has a couple of inveterate radfem commentators who inevitably steer any thread on the subject around to the party line on porn and prostitution), with the debate (as usual) actually having very little to do with the particulars of Chambers life and career in porn.

Nevertheless, a few sharper critics were quick to point out that dropping dead in a trailer before the age of 60 is an awfully ignoble end for somebody who is generally regarded as a big-name and historically-important porn star, and somebody who presumably made a lot of money for "porn lords" like the late Jim and Artie Mitchell. And as much as I'm accused of being a "pro-porn fanatic" and an apologist for the porn industry, its a critique I more or less agree with. I've seen too many stories of former porn stars ending up destitute or otherwise in a bad way later on, such as the story of Asia Careera's bankruptcy a few years back (albeit, her online gambling addiction was a contributing factor there), of Annabel Chong's never actually seeing the proceeds of her infamous gang-bang video, or of Nikki Charm ending up in prison for her role in a car theft ring.

Admittedly, porn is only a short-term career for most female performers (Nina Hartley being a notable exception) and is not something that can be counted on to grant life-long wealth to the mostly young women who take part in it. Nevertheless, a few years where one is flush with cash should not be a gateway to later-life poverty, and all too often, that is the case with former porn stars. One factor is simple bigotry and, yes, sex-negativity in the larger society – a work history in porn is not something you can put on your resume in most industries, and groups like the Screen Actors Guild apparently have rules shutting porn workers out. In the worst case, uncovering of a background in porn can actually lead to firing, as happened to Linda Lovelace in her later life. However, there are also problems with the industry. Lack of residuals are a big part of the problem (albeit, the marketability life of most porn titles is relatively short) and also, the fact that long-term financial planning is not part of the mindset of many performers. There was a porn columnist (who's name and link have escaped me) who wrote a few years ago in light of the Asia Carrera situation that financial management awareness need to be as much part of the industry as STD protection, and I think he had a point.

Hopefully, Marilyn Chambers ultimately be remembered not as another porn tragedy or cautionary tale, but for what she achieved and what she left behind, which was quite a bit, really.

An Oldie From 1990 : David Brock Whacks Pro-Porn Leftists (With A Special Sheldon Ranz Sighting!!!)

One of the beautiful things about this Pro-Porn Activism blog -- well, other than the founding badassssss souljah sista who created this blog herself (Happy 2008, Henchwoman!!!) -- is the fact that the main contributors of this blog come from different perspectives. There's the independent Libertarian POV (Renegade Evolution). There's the new-school pro-sex feminist perspective (Amber Rhea). There's the male traditional progressive perspective (Iamcuriousblue). And then there's moi, representin' the Black Male Independent Sex Pox Left.

The latter perspective was at one time one of the only representing pro-sex viewpoints with much pull in political circles...until the likes of Robert Jensen came along and allowed antiporn repression and male guilt-tripping to dominate most of the intellectual inner circles of progressive activism. But at one time, it seemed that the greatest bit of activism for more open sexual expression and sexual media came almost exclusively from those who also called themselves socialists and Leftists. And just as usual, their main detractors were mostly old-school right-wingers defending the purity of the State and Chruch against such "communist" infidelity.

Here is one of the more...shall we say, interesting attempted assaults on one such attempt to merge pro-sex activism and socialism that took place in 1990. The attack took place in the form of an article in the old right-wing magazine American Spectator during its heyday in the 1990's as the main attack dog of the Right. The author of the hit piece was none other than David Brock, who at that time was cutting his teeth in the "politics of personal destruction" and preparing himself for his grand day in the sun and his "nutty and slutty" attack on Anita Hill for blowing the lid on Clarence Thomas and his harrassing ways. Of course, the world now knows that Brock is now using the Media Matters website to turn the tables on the very forces that he was so representing back then....but let's not let that fact ruin the beauty of this brief drive-by.

And you will notice that the name of a certain regular commentator to this blog appears frequently in this essay. It was that commentator (Sheldon Ranz) who first discovered the essay and posted it to Nina Hartley's forum as part of this thread.

The first part of the article consists of the usual boilerplate right-wing analysis of certain Leftist commentators at the height of the fall of the Soviet Union and the alleged final victory of "democratic capitalism" surmonting Francis Fukuyama's "end of history". (To which Hugo Chavez has recently responded, "Not so fast, my friend.") It's further down that Brock gets to the really good stuff:

In keeping with the weekend's secular tone, I spent the better part of Palm
Sunday at a workshop called Pornography with a Human Face: Toward a Sexual
Glasnost. Last year, the pornography panel was dominated by febrile feminist
censors; this year it was the socialist pornographers who got their say. The
panel far outdrew the others, and with the exception of some nervous snickering,
the audience proved quite pro-porn. This came as no surprise, given the limits
to which the left is pushing the notions of artistic relativism and free
expression these days, insisting that the production and exhibition of
homoerotic and pedophiliac images be not only constitutionally protected but
federally funded."

Adult video consultant" Sheldon Ranz warmed up with a comparison of
Gorbachev's economic reform program to the masturbatory act: "What do you call a
pair of Soviets watching porn under Gorbachev? A pair-of-strokers." Claiming to
have viewed more than 10,000 flesh-baring films, the aesthete went on to
delineate the "liberating" qualities of porn: "You see things Hollywood won't
show, like the Lady Godiva position, which has the woman dominant. They show
older women getting it. The Devil and Miss Jones stars a flat-chested woman. Men
ejaculate outside the body, eroticizing birth control. Pornography undoes
stereotypes. Bull-dykes look like the girl next door. Gay men are not punished
for being gay; they're rewarded with orgasms. Debbie Does Dishes is about a
Jewish housewife who does it with anybody who comes to the door, with no
postcoital regrets." As "People's Libido Exhibit A," Ranz introduced Shades of
Ecstasy, a "socialist film about a group of women factory workers who have
orgies on their lunch break. They find out their boss is secretly taping them,
and they take control of the factory in anger."

Sharing the dais with Ranz were "feminist-socialist" Vivian Forlander, a
kind of bubbly, bosomy Susan Sontag, and Ame Gilbert, of the "Carnival Knowledge
Collective." A writer of naughty novels, Forlander reveals the complex
intellectual history behind her pen name, Katie Nipps. Apparently, it started as
a high school nickname, owing to her ample chest size. One salutary result of
this adolescent trauma is the ease with which she slips into the point of view
of "a repressed man with a breast fetish." After reading a poem about the evils
of the male sex organ, (by way of introduction, if you will), Ame Gilbert began
to illuminate the world of "alternative porn." It seems that a group of about
100 "feminist artists" of the lesbian persuasion slink, when the urge moves
them, into a Greenwich Village basement to produce and watch their own
flagellating fantasies on film. Said the grisly Gilbert: "My own fantasy
involves tying up two women and a man . . . " No, I better not go on. This is,
after all, a family magazine. Besides, today it might ultimately be the decent
thing to let the left wallow in its own depravity.

Yeah, that was from that same "family magazine' that would make such an issue of "The Clenis" and Monica later on.

Sheldon, needless to say, had a slightly different take on Brock's impression of his project, as he mused over at Nina's board:

I purchased this article from the American Spectator web archive for just
$2.95, but it made my month, because of what it got right as well as what it
didn't. Brock cites me saying 'bulldykes' as if I were some bigot hurling an
epithet when in actuality I was referring to the mainstream media's stereotyped
depiction of lesbians as 'bulldykes'. I said the factory workers in 'Shades of
Ecstacy" acted out of revenge, not 'anger'. He screwed up the set-up to my
Gorbachev joke: It's "What do you call two Soviet citizens watching..." The
previous year's 'febrile' panel, which I also organized, only had one anti-porn
speaker.[Note: The only time he physically describes any conference speakers,
those speakers were women. Paging Ariel Levy...]But the most important thing is,
besides the fact that he reported my evidentiary firepower correctly, was that
this was a time when there were no Dworkinites claiming to be on the Left.
Ideological labeling was more honest back then. Everone's ducks were lined up
all in a row, and that's the spirit of those times, the 'zeitgeist', that Brock
captured accurately.

It's a pity that Brock missed next year's (1991) conference, when Nina made
her debut at the "Debbie Duz Democratic Socialism" panel. If I had known about
the American Spectator back then, I would have sent him an engraved
invitation!

I wonder what the present day Brock would think today of pro-porn activism?? Only he knows....

Way to go, asshole...

Porn Star arrested on rape charges.

Thanks, fuck head porn dude. Thanks a lot. Thanks for making what some of us are trying to do here so much easier, you stupid, stupid bastard. If you are guilty, I hope they throw the goddamn book at you and split your face with it. What the hell are you thinking? Contracts. Use them. Sober filming. Do it. You fucking asshole!

The Hateration Toward Jenna (or, How To Totally Trash a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale)

UPDATE: And now, you don't even have to be a porn star or even a sex worker to feel the hate of slut-shaming; simply being an attactive woman and wearing the wrong clothing in an airplane will do just fine. Ask Kyla Ebbert.


It is hardly surprising that porn performers, like most women who openly display a love of sex for its own sake not controlled by traditional conditions, are usually treated by the broader conventional public as less than worthy of full womanhood, if not full humanity. This most recent example proves this point perfectly.

Kim of Bastante Already recently posted on the rough treatment that some commentators at the D-Listed site gave modern day porn legend Jenna Jameson, who recently announced her retirement after almost 5 years of being practically the main spokesperson and flagbearer for the sex film biz. Jenna had recently gone through a nasty divorce with her first husband/producer Jay Grbina (sp??); and had basically reduced her presence in porn to mostly producing other models and performers in her "Club Jenna" stable; she even went as far as to remove her breast implants. The D-Listed article noted Jenna's stated vow to go into runway modeling as a future venture; but mostly made thinly-veiled crackbacks at her weight, all but calling her anorexic. As bad as the original post was, the comments were that much worse, most of them alluding not so subtly to her former profession in the usual highly negative ways. Some samples, as originally snipped by Kim:

"Jenna is a skinny skank. And she is too old to be launching a modeling career unless it's for the AARP magazine."

She's actually 42, BTW.

"Bitch your old, used, and abused."

"She is just old and used."

Funny, but don't porn starlets usualy get "old and used" once they reach, say, 25??

Some decided to go after the "She's got AIDS" card:

"Homegirl looks diseased. What's she modeling for, AZT?"

"I'm still not sure why 'AIDS' doesn't appear beneath every photo of her."

"She has taken too many cumtox injections, and has got the fuckin aids. "

Yeah, you heard right..."cumtox injections". Because, you know, porn starlets who happen to be skinnier than average surely must be passing HIV/AIDS to everyone. No other explanation needed here.

Then there were the sanctomonious takes on Jenna not deserving noteriety:

"bitch, no way in hell are u a model. did she suck a dick to get onto a runway? she's hideous! and its a shame, because she used to at least be a pretty slut. now she's just a slut."

"Here's the thing "jenna", people who drink cum for a living don't get to tell others what to think or say."

Notice her name placed within quotes....because porn performers are apparantly too dumb and too slutty and too "skanky" to use their real names, therefore, "Jenna" must be a pseudonym.

And of course, since she has no talent or brains apparantly, she can only fuck her way onto the runway:

"it doesn't exactly work that way, jenna. you don't go from flashing your pussy in porn to fashion icon. stuck to what you know -- cunt and dick and stds."

"Jenna, honey, Cum is not a substitute for food."

"Who does this cumbubbling idiot thinks she's fooling? "

"Tito, you left your wife and kids for that cum receptacle?"

"I like to use the term *used up fuckhole* as an insult on her but, geez - that is actually her profession. It's probably stated in her passport."

"Well, I guess she can model dried cum on her jutting breat (sic) bones. Jenna--you're a whore and nothing more."

You do get the picture now, do you??

But the prize goes to the prim and proper female poster who decided to add this bit of wisdom:

"I cannot even imagine letting some random dudes fuck me on camera...my skin just crawls at the thought. How can she stand it? How can ANYONE stand it, for that matter? How insecure and messed-up do you have to be to be a fucking PORN STAR? I mean, JESUS! When did having brains, class, and intelligence go out of style? When did it become all about how thin, famous and rich you are? Sometimes society makes me sick. I'm sorry, but I prefer to have self-esteem and self-respect over fame and an eating disorder. Can you imagine having your pussy so blown out that you need reconstructive surgery on it? Can you imagine having to wear adult diapers because your asshole is so worn out from constant anal penetration? EW! How does she live with herself?"

Now, let us put aside the juxtaposition of "fucking" with "JESUS!"; or the notion that only Jenna Jameson (rather than Jenna Bush or Paris Hilton or Nicole Ritchie) should be the sole representative of evol society corrupting women's morals....and I thought that only right-wing Republican senators from Louisiana were into adult diapers!! It's the whole "loose pussy"/torn anal cavity" thing that gets me....as if this woman has never heard the notion that most porn performers don't have vagioplasties and that anal sex does not necessarilylead to ripped bowels.

But of course, all this is simply the usual brand of slut-hating and sex-shaming that all "decent" men and women impose on women who like sex more than the usual standards would allow.

There was one commentator, however, who did manage a decent defense of Jenna:

"God, it annoys me how sexist people can be.

'Since when did a chick who gets paid to fuck become worthy of any kind of celebrity status?" 'Here's the thing 'jenna', people who drink cum for a living don't get to tell others what to think or say.'

What I find interesting here is that the people who say things like this are the same people who made her a porn icon by jacking off to her videos in the first place. You can't have it both ways - you can't jack off to her in private and bash her rights as a human being in public. Pick a fucking lane! Just because she worked in the sex industry does not mean that she's sub-human and does not have the same rights and liberties as anyone else in the world."

Now, that's a pretty damn good point she raised.....interesting that many of the same people who are so viseral in their distaste of porn actresses and generally "slutty" women are the very same ones who would most desire them. It's the old "I really HATE you because you fuck other people and you won't fuck me..but I'm so hot for you at the same time, and I just can't stand it!!" In a way, it's similar to homophobic men masking their inner desire to see a hard dick and actually want to suck it....but loathing their inner gayness by outwardly spreading such fear and loathing; the "ex-gay" ministries make their political living off such conflicts; as does the more rabid antipornfeminists and other such "Puritan radicals".

Just goes to show you how deep antisex attitudes run in this culture....and how much of a struggle we must face as sex-positives. Contrary to rumor, being an openly sexual individual AND insisting on your right to be treated as a full human being is still quite a radical notion. But radical we must be, for anything less results in tyranny and repression...and not even Jenna's economic success will help her avoid the Scarlet Letter branding of "SLUT!!!"

Jenna Jameson may need a salad or two....but she doesn't need or deserve such bullshit like this.

For all those who think that women in porn aren't that strong...

...Gina Lynn [link NSFW] would like to have a word or two with you.

And she's bringing her new ride with her.




Yes, that is a monster truck that Gina is riding....and it's not just for show, either.

Just deal with it.