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As you may have heard if you follow her on twitter, Tristan Taormino was invited to speak at Oregon State University’s Modern Sex Conference, at least until the folks in charge at the school found out that she makes and sells porn. Since I’m one of the speakers at the conference as well as being one of her colleagues, I’d like to offer my take on this situation.
Some background: a few months ago, the con organizers emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in participating. They invited me to do a closing keynote presentation since Tristan had been asked to do the opening one. It sounded like a great fit and I thought that Tristan & I would be a …
Continue reading Oregon State U Shuts Tristan Taormino Out
Two articles came through my in-box the other day. I found one of them rather thought-provoking and the other quite irritating. But they both had one thing in common. Well, actually, more than one thing, but they had one thing in common that I found especially difficult.
They were both using gender-essentialist language to talk about men and sexism.
In Fight the Sexualization of Young Girls the Right Way, Sarah Seltzer discusses why we need to shine a light on the sexualization of girls and young women without ending up being anti-sex. It’s a good look at the challenges in navigating that. She argues very convincingly that what we need to do is make room for young people to explore and discover their authentic …
Continue reading Gender Essentialism, Masculinity, and Sex-Negativity
In all of the discussions, debates, and arguments about porn, one of the few things that most people can agree on is that most porn is terrible sex education. And this is even more important when we’re talking about how teens and young adults, who often lack access to accurate sex-positive information, end up copying porn.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are hesitant to open up a conversation with young people about porn. Maybe they don’t know how to start. Maybe they don’t feel confident in their abilities to talk about sex. Maybe they think that they don’t know enough about porn or that they don’t know how to talk about it without showing sexually explicit images. Maybe they have their own judgments about porn …
Continue reading Porn Planet: A New Resource For Talking With Youth About Porn
A few months ago, I wrote about some research showing that when porn becomes legal in various places, the rate of sex crimes stays about the same or decreases. This is contrary to one of the common anti-porn arguments that we’ve heard from various directions. And now, there’s even more evidence showing that porn doesn’t lead to an increase in sex crimes.
In their paper Pornography and Sex Crimes in the Czech Republic, researchers Milton Diamond, Eva Jozifkova and Petr Weiss chart the changes that took place when porn became legal in the Czech Republic. During the communist rule (1948-1989), “[p]ornography, by any definition was absolutely prohibited. Even the depiction of naked bodies, as well as descriptions of sexual activities in fictional novels or …
Continue reading New Research: More Evidence That Porn Doesn’t Cause Sex Crimes
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
This isn’t the usual look at the politics of porn.
According to the article Changes in pornography-seeking behaviors following political elections: an examination of the challenge hypothesis, there’s an interesting connection between how people vote and their porn habits. It turns out that states that voted for the winner of a national election search for porn online than states that voted for the loser. Here’s how it broke down:
According to the Challenge Hypothesis, competition increases testosterone in males, which leads to an increase in various behaviors. Further, the winners of competitions tend to have higher testosterone levels than the losers, and it even extends to spectators. Male fans of winning sports teams tend to …
Continue reading The Politics of Porn, The Porn of Politics
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
If you’re as frustrated as I am with the biased writing about porn that we usually hear, and if you like to geek out on some well-designed and well-written research, you’ll enjoy From The Devil in Miss Jones to DMJ6 – power, inequality, and consistency in the content of US adult films. Written by Dr. Chauntelle Anne Tibbals, it’s a fascinating look at some of the trends in porn over the last few decades.
Dr. Chauntelle (as she likes to be called) selected 26 “key adult films” from three different eras: Reels (1957-1974), Video (1975–1994), and Digital/Virtual (1995–ongoing). She analyzed and coded them using Grounded …
Continue reading Sex Nerds and Porn Geeks: Check This Research Out!
This showed up in my in-box. I’m really looking forward to reading this book! Check out the info below and feel free to pass this along.
Feminist Porn Studies: Writing by Academics and Sex Industry Workers
http://feministpornstudies.wordpress.com/
A new generation of women in the porn industry openly identify as feminist and own their own companies, direct and produce their own material, and/or take on politicized identities as sex worker performers. In addition to “porn for women,” a new wave of porn genres emerges today including alt porn, feminist porn, queer porn, amateur porn, and genderqueer and transgender porn.
Given the transformations of feminism, sexual politics, pornography and popular culture over the last decade or more, our book, Feminist Porn Studies, moves past the pro/anti porn …
Continue reading Call for Submissions: Feminist Porn Studies
Over on the Ms Magazine blog, there’s a post exploring whether porn is racist, which was sparked by some of the things that Gail Dines has said about the industry. And in among the various comments, Dines herself includes a link to the chapter in her book on race and the porn industry. Since I believe in both giving different perspectives a fair shake and not talking about things that I haven’t checked out myself, I read through it. She also has another sample chapter on the topic of growing up female in a culture influenced by porn.
At the risk of saying something that may surprise some folks, I actually agree with quite a bit …
Continue reading If Gail Dines Would Stop Shaming People, Maybe Folks Would Listen
This post first appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
One of the most common complaints people have about porn is that it offers an unrealistic model of sex. Penises are always big and hard, vaginas are always ready for deep, thrusting penetration, there’s no lube, warm-up for anal sex, romance, connection, or conversation about likes, dislikes, STIs, and other real-life factors.
In response, the porn industry generally says, “So what? That’s not our job.” After all, if you’re learning how to do anything from TV or movies, you’re going to get it wrong. All media (other than the how-to type stuff that you’ll see on a few stations) offer a conveniently packaged and formulaic idea of …
Continue reading Why You Shouldn’t Learn About Sex From Porn
The always-fabulous Maymay shared this video made by a group of sex-positive feminists discussing their views on porn, sex work, sexual autonomy and the ongoing conversations debates fights with anti-porn feminists. I can’t say it better than they did, so click on the link and see for yourself. And pass it on.
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Continue reading Sex-Positive Feminists Talking About Porn and Sex Work
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