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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 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
One of the most common responses to the anti-porn critiques of pornography is that they’re sex-negative and all too often, that ends up creating a “no we’re not/yes you are” argument. And yet, whenever I read the anti-porn side of things, I’m struck by how often sex-negativity is woven into their claims, although in all fairness, that’s not always the case.
I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that bothered me by the way that Gail Dines keeps talking about gagfactor.com, a website that focuses on men facefucking women. And then it hit me- there are two parts to it. First, Dines is trying to foment a moral panic. And second, she simply doesn’t understand sex.
I can explain the first point better …
Continue reading 7 Ways to Create a Sex-Positive Critique of Porn
I have to admit that I find the debates about porn fascinating. Actually, they’re not really debates since, more often than not, what I see is people yelling at each other. Calling it a debate would imply that there’s a deeper level of dialogue than actually exists. I find this rather frustrating because I can understand the perspectives of the different sides.
So I was gratified to see this summary of some of the research on the effects of porn in this post on scienceblogs.com. Of course, the research on the topic is wide-ranging and it’s hard to grasp it all, especially since different definitions of pornography and harm are used. That makes it hard to compare studies and limits how well we can …
Continue reading The Both/And of the Porn Wars
Whenever people push the edges how sex is portrayed, it causes an uproar. It really doesn’t matter whether the new frontier is a new technology (like the VHS porn revolution) or a sexual act (like Britney Spears and Madonna kissing). What matters is that crossing a boundary that was previously seemingly solid gets people wound up.
So it’s worth taking a look at this great article on Gawker. It’s chock full of interesting photos and movie clips that document some of the sexual milestones of Hollywood’s past. Just to whet your appetite, here’s a snippet of The Kiss, which was so incendiary that there were protests and editorials calling for police intervention.
Other significant events of sex in film that you can find …
Continue reading Those Who Forget the Past…
The Vancouver Sun has an article today about the potential impact of the mainstream media on safer sex practices in which they quote an editorial by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania:
The media is influencing their normative beliefs about sex: whether or not they think everyone around them is having sex, kids like them are having sex,” Bleakley says. “Risk and responsibility accounts for a very small proportion of the sexual content that’s out there, whether it’s teens being portrayed or shows that teens watch. Using a condom, having someone get pregnant and have to make those decisions, transmission of an STI — those things just don’t really come up.
There’s some evidence …
Continue reading What Responsibility Does the Media Have Around Safer Sex?
I went to the AVN Expo last week to teach a seminar on sex education in retail settings for Good Vibrations. I’ve been to a few shows before, so it wasn’t new. That’s a good thing because I find Las Vegas a bit much even without dozens of porn performers wandering around in skimpy clothing, hundreds of fans getting autographed copies of DVDs, flashing lights, loud (and bad) music, and giant screens showing porn clips.
I’m not the only one who noticed that this year’s show was a lot smaller than past ones. There were fewer booths and many companies had smaller spaces. There also seemed to be fewer fans and the awards show was in a smaller venue. Of course, no …
Continue reading Is the Porn Bubble About to Pop?
“It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.” Fabienne, Pulp Fiction
One of the sticking points in many of the debates and conversations that I’ve participated in around porn is that porn sex doesn’t look like real-life sex. Unfortunately, if the only images that we have about how to have sex come from porn, it’s easy to see how that can skew people’s perception of sex.
I’ve heard of a growing number of people in their early 20′s, especially men, who have trouble in their sexual relationships and say that it’s due, at least in part, to their porn viewing habits during their adolescence. Of course, nobody under 18 is supposed to look at internet …
Continue reading Pleasing to the Eye
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