If you haven’t caught the posts and discussions over at SugarBank on porn, obscenity, and the violence/sex split, get your smut-happy ass over there pronto.
If there’s reason to draw a line between violent movies and sex movies, should we be drawing it now? If not is there anything that we shouldn’t allow others to package as entertainment? When violence, fear, implied lack of consent and sex are rolled together how do we counter accusations of fetishizing rape? How comfortable are you with the crying edge of pornography? How comfortable do you think you’ll need to be?
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That post brought up a great discussion about industry standards, sex, and violence in porn which led to this one:
For thirty years Miller has served the porn industry well, but thinking Miller will never succeed in proving any pornography obscene is wishful thinking. A 3 minute downloadable clip on a webpage is easy to ‘take as a whole’ and is increasingly likely to show an apparently distressed women being deliberately hurt by a sexually violent man. The government are confident the public won’t view downloadable clips the same way they did movies like Deep Throat in the seventies. They also know that if one judgment goes against porn it’ll put the industry in the same position as the once unassailable tobacco industry – paying fines and under constant, successful assault (the difference being that pornographers will do serious jailtime.)
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(Since this is my blog and not the Sam Sugar echo chamber, I have some more thoughts on that last sentence I’ll post later tonight. Yes! A real post! Feel free to orgasm in your pants. I did.)
What’s Sam’s answer to the Miller test? Canada’s Butler test. Which is a much better solution… unless you’re not straight, or unless you’re into the kinky stuff.
The line between sex and violence and consensual BDSM can be glaringly obvious or obviously blurry depending on where you’re standing. It’s one thing to think you obviously don’t mean BDSM when you say sex and violence, and another to not specifically exclude it and realize that a lot of people do see a person hitting another person with a cane, hearing that sharp swish, the resulting stripes as violence. After all, somebody’s hitting somebody with something and somebody else is getting hurt. They’re into it, yes, but as Sam brings up in comments, there’s also the issue of whether or not a person has a right to consent to getting beaten.
I like to play rough on both sides of the whip. I’m not going to try to argue that BDSM and violence are completely different. The intent is different. The emotions are different. But BDSM is as much about hurting someone until they can’t take anymore and then hearing them beg you for more as it is tying your lover up and torturing them using only your hands and tongue. Butler doesn’t clearly exclude BDSM porn – in fact, in implementation, it’s basically considered to speficically include it as being both violent and socially harmful/degrading to women (even femdom. Yep.).
You’ll have to pry my crop out of my cold, dead hands. If we’re going to draw a firm line between sex and violence we need to know what the hell counts as sex, what counts as violence, and why we’re drawing the line there. A lot of people instinctively squick at the combination, and a lot of people are instinctively turned on by it, so call it unnatural if you like but I live to bite and be bitten, to whip and be whipped. I want that natural sexual expression protected.
Go argue/agree with him in comments. It’s less satisfying than gangland jello-wrestling him but with any luck you won’t get arrested later, either…
The best of the blogs by the bloggers who blog them, this week starting with the letter S. If you haven’t checked out the new , give it a look – it takes effect next week.
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(Sugasm participants should re-post all the links above. The following links may be excluded as long as you include all the above links.)
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- “Pornographers Are On Your Side” (fullfrontalpolitics.com…)
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Pornographers are on your side.
It’s true. At least, as regards children accessing porn.
You don’t have to approve of porn to realize the logic inherent in the following statement:
“Pornographers don’t want kids to visit their websites”
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Actually Sam Sugar raises a good, glaringly obvious point: not all the underage kids accessing porn are children. The vast majority of them are horny, curious, bored teenagers. Saying “children looking at porn” is shortened to “children and porn” which is then blurred with “children in porn” and that gives you the pornography = child porn media situation we have today. The problem we’re talking about is minors accessing porn (yeah, I read my Lakoff), and some of those minors are children stumbling across it unintentionally. If my own teenage years were any indication the rest are horny teens near, at, or over the age of consent in their state of residence, but legal minors and thusly not old enough to buy porn.
Yeah – they can legally screw like bunnies, or get married and produce more horny teenagers, but they can’t legally buy porn.
That’s a good thing. There’s a lot of twisted stuff out there. (That’s also a good thing. Some of us consenting adults like it pretty freaky.) But for a while now it’s seemed to me that the perfect solution to that is to make the natural compromise: it’s okay for teens to enjoy a little softcore, but the hardcore and kinky stuff that I was reading when I was a teenager stays restricted to adults. The idea of teens formulating their ideas of sexuality on Max Hardcore or the Grey Archive is an unsettling one.
I always know I’m right when Sam agrees with me.
As a phone sex operator specializing in BDSM, I’m well aware that most perverts are formed early in life, and often in fairly normal situations. This kind of framework – culture, really – won’t prevent those destined to become kinky but it will do something to help slow the sexual arms race from starting in high school. The logical, healthy approach isn’t to say, “Just don’t – sex is dirty and you should save it for someone you love,” it’s to say “Don’t be in a rush – take your time, enjoy everything being new. There’s no hurry (so say no if you’re pressured) and it’s more fun if you savor it all.”
Sam’s post covers the situation pretty well. He points out that there’s really only one proven age verification solution: . The problem is, that’s the answer nobody wants.
Smart. Very smart, especially in the light of the current flood of MySpace teen scare stories:
By Rhett Pardon
Monday, February 13, 2006
LOS ANGELES — Playboy.com set off a round of controversy Monday as it announced that it will tap into the ether for a photo spread.“Like the ‘Girls of McDonalds,’ this is just another direction we are going,” Playboy spokesman Matt Kalinowski told XBiz, who noted that the company decided on the spread despite objections from those who say MySpace’s demographics are on the teen end. “The girls we choose have to be 18.”
(Courtesy of )
Then again, there’s nothing like a little steamy controversy to generate publicity.
of fame has a great idea:
Mind your own fucking business.
“…And what is this theme? How must we respond to the Holy Terrors’ War On Whoopie? Four words.
Mind Your Own Business.
It’s firm. It’s assertive. It’s simple. It’s “Get The Government Out Of Our Private Lives.” It’s Freedom. It’s Liberty. It’s All-American.
It’s Ann Landers saying, “Dear Concerned: M.Y.O.B.” It’s Hank Williams singing, “Why don’t you mind your own business, so you won’t be minding mine.” You can’t get more All-American than Ann and Hank.
Of course, regarding child pornography and sexual assault, we all need to crack down, but when it comes to monitoring the sex lives of consenting adults, we have to say just four simple words.
Mind Your Own Business…”
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Up for a rant? Read on…
Sexual freedom in the U.S. rests on three things: the separation of church and state, the First Amendment right to free speech, and the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. (Some pro-forced pregnancy judges believe that the 4th doesn’t imply a right to privacy; you and tell me. Without a right to privacy, why would any search be unreasonable? It’s the violation of that recognized, everyday right that makes certain searches unreasonable.)
The separation of church and state is necessary to our continued sexual freedom because a sex-positive religious faction has yet to take political power in the U.S. Sex between any given number of people (1 or greater, and if you think about it, you damn well can be between yourself. It’s not bad grammar, it’s a jilling euphemism, dammit.) is/was considered the domain of morality – public morality (back to the 4th again) – and thusly regulated by religion, law, and law influenced by specific religious traditions.
Traditionally, the chief justification for blue laws and other laws restricting sexuality was that blurred boundary between religious doctrine, public morality, and semi-secular legislation. Of course now cultural and religious attitudes are changing and that justification doesn’t hold the weight it used to. That’s why the Religious Right and the pro-censorship left have turned to “for the children” scare tactics and pseudoscience to push their anti-sex and/or anti-porn agendas.
The idea that the state cannot legislate morality isn’t fully rooted in this country and without that guideline, the free exercise of sexuality doesn’t exist, legally, while church doctrine passes as legislation.
If we lose that, we’re fucked. In the ass. Hard. No lube and no reacharound.
, but tell that to the moral majority.
The First Amendment is every pornographer’s best friend and we all know it. Without the right to free speech, I can’t make a living say half the fun, nasty things I do over the phone or in my blogs. Without the right to yell “Theater!” in a crowded fire or speak out against a fricking irritating Shrubbery there is no right to porn. Period. Every threat to free speech threatens your free porn privileges.
That’s hitting us where it hurts.
But it’s the right to privacy guarded by the Fourth Amendment (I won’t say guaranteed by; it’s guaranteed in the same way any person’s dignity should be, by birth) that truly protects all avenues of consensual sexuality and reproductive rights (including any combination of sexuality and money you can think of, at least in some counties). The idea that whatever happens between informed, consenting adults is okay, even if you’re offended, is as J.T. Benjamin pointed out grounded in privacy rights. The idea that it isn’t really anybody’s business who you’re fucking is the one that gave unmarried people access to birth control. Your health choices and issues are between you and your doctor, right? They thought so when they .
Georgia would rather fuck you than let you fuck yourself. No sex toys for you, my friend. The erotica and porn you’re permitted to see, or make… it all comes back to privacy and whether or not you have the right to do what you want when no one’s watching and no one’s getting hurt in ways they’re not into.
was featured on a couple of days ago; if you missed him then, you’ll want to check him out now. He’s had excellent coverage of the Alito nomination process and how it could impact the average surfer’s porn viewing (free speech = free porn; less freedom of speech equals less freedom of expression for smutmongers, equals less free porn). What I really like is how easy he makes it to get involved in the process and that he points out just how much less likely politicians would be to go after porn if fans of adult entertainment weren’t ashamed to stand up for it.
His last point is his best: “And it is clear: The Rove machine, and other cultural warriors have done everything they can to blend those boundaries, and it is time to take back those terms and reframe the debate based on law, not smirking, adolescent innuendo from the religious extremists…”
Make no mistake about it, this is a cultural battle, and the “other side” is in it for the long haul. It cuts across party lines: neither red nor blue has a monopoly on individual liberty or the right to read, purchase, and produce works of fiction and fantasy. There is a strong push right now toward believing that ideas are harmful. No creatively sexual society can thrive when those guys are unopposed (and our society is pretty damn creatively sexual).
This post from the might be the best summary of the current U.S. porn “problem” I’ve seen yet:
The “Pornification of America” eh…
This argument is sounding erily familiar to the anti-porn arguments from the Regan era.
Sex sells…everything. So unless you think you can stop advertising agencies from using sexuality to sell thier products, which is not likely, get over it.
There are many different types of pornography for many different types of people regardless of gender or sexual orientation. We’ve been fighting over this same issue for 30 years and were no closer to resolving it.
The United States is a young country by comparison to the European nations, we are at best pre-pubecent, and like a young person on the cusp of adulthood we’re painfully uncomfortable with our own sexuality. On the one hand we flaunt ourselves sexually and on the other we bury our heads in the sand with shame and try to place the blame on the media or the press or our parents. It’s pathetic.
Posted by on 11:57 AM
The thread was commentary for the recent Boston Globe feature, “.” (Registration required; go see for a workaround.)
One thing I noticed, both in the article and in the thread, was that a woman’s worth is still being defined by whether she “does” or “doesn’t;” whether she’s a lady or a whore. As we all know, any female who (by society’s standards) goes too far sexually is supposed to regret and repent. Willingly crossing sexual boundaries is about consequences and punishment.
The article was very heavy on the idea that if a woman acts brazenly sexual, it’s not because she wants to but because she feels obligated to please and entertain men. (The idea that some of us get off on pleasing and entertaining men would, obviously, not exist in Pamela Paul’s world.) As fantasy objects, women have no right to fantasies of our own; if you want to get into pretentious subject-object theory, we’re always the viewed and never the viewer.
(My blogs are going to put a different spin on that, as does the growing niche of porn.)
Human lemmings are incapable of doing anything because they want to, or not doing something because they don’t; if they think they’re supposed to behave a certain way, they will. If the current look is big-breasted, tan, and lean, then it’s not okay to be okay with milky skin and a little belly, or to like whatever it is that you like anyway. If you don’t look like everyone else thinks everyone else thinks you should look, then you’re supposed to at least be worried about it…
This especially goes for behavior. I’m a big fan of exploring to find out where your boundaries are, rather than relying on a map someone else gave you, and this goes whether yours are farther out or farther in. Mine are pretty far out there in some areas (okay, a lot) and in some ways I’m as innocent as a schoolgirl.
A Catholic schoolgirl whose socks have wear-marks on the knees, but still.
It seems like there are a lot of femmes out there eagerly claiming their place at or under the pervert’s table (it’s about damn time), and a lot of girls (that aren’t exhibitionists doing it for their own thrills) who think if they look, act, speak, and think sex, they’ll get attention – as if it was the only way.
The way I see it, if you’re doing it to put on a show anyway, and you’re not doing it for yourself, you might as well get paid for it. Scabs!
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