Vive la Révolution! The Superheroines of Porn Domination

Posted on January 26, 2013 by kategould

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Porna: plural noun (treated as single or plural) – porn that women really enjoy to watch. The kind of porn that teases and pleases them: realistic, explicit, with ‘real’ people and a well-balanced development of sexual desire, made with respect. ORIGIN: Dusk!, the female-oriented, erotic digital TV channel broadcasting films made for and chosen by women.

Set up in 2009, the Dutch television channel provides over 1.5 million viewers with 24/7 female porn (or fem porn), selected by a panel of over 2000 women.

Any woman can apply to join the panel and, if accepted, will begin viewing clips and rating them according to how “spicy” they are: one pepper for “it turned me on a bit”, two peppers for “spicy enough”, and three peppers for “super hot”. Panel members then give their opinions about what they did and didn’t like about the clips and whether or not it was porna or just ordinary porn. The film has to have been viewed and rated 100 times before a decision is made on whether or not to show it on Dusk.

It’s a simple process: ask women what they do (and don’t) want to watch. However, in an industry dominated by misogyny and driven by the concept that women are nothing more than three orifices, breasts distended with implants, a face to come on, and a mouth to fake it, it’s revolutionary.

By showcasing pornography made by and for women, Dusk has become part of a growing sea change in the porn industry. And it isn’t all about soft lighting, Knights In Shining Armour, or pleasant love-making. Pioneered in the 80s by Candida Royalle, fem porn is a renegade movement. It is the luscious surrealism of Maria Beatty’s The Black Glove; the sensuality and humour of Petra Joy’s Pleasure Slaves; the so-coolness and artistry of Erika Lust’s 33 Rooms; the irreverence and zaniness of Emilie Jouvet’s The Apple; the anarchy of Dirty Diaries, a collection of Swedish feminist porn shorts; Asa Sandzen’s dreamlike animated short, Dildoman; beauty redefined by the Suicide Girls; Tristan Taormino’s guides to many things sexual that are both erotic and education; and the playfulness of Anna Span’s Diary. (There are, of course, many more – these just happen to be my personal favourites.)

These films take sex and make it the lustful, creative, fun, intimate, and adventurous thing it should be. They’re provocative because they explore turn-ons, fantasy, and desire. Unlike straight male porn, they don’t assume that all anyone, male or female, wants to do is insert as many penises as possible into as many orifices as possible. Of course there’s vaginal intercourse, but it’s only one of the myriad ways to get off. Fem porn has a joie de vivre lacking from mainstream male porn. It’s playful and consensual: gonzo doesn’t mean a woman having her face shoved in the toilet while being gang-raped; BDSM is about domination, not degradation; queer porn is women exploring each other’s bodies, not faking it for the boys; an orgy is an adventure, not a gang-rape.

It’s fetish, sex toys, feminism, love, reality, and role play, all seen from a female perspective. Most of all, it’s about lust and where it takes us. Sex is supposed to be fun, right? Part of that is both men and women learning about our desires and telling them to our partners. Fem porn has the power to revolutionise attitudes towards sex by presenting it as something creative, consensual, and joyful. And all while turning us on.

Bondage and consent

Posted on May 14, 2012 by kategould

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In this film, Lorelei Lee talks about the treatment she receives when people find out she works in porn. She wants to be accepted as a person who goes to work like any other – and why not – but this is a woman who’s paid to perform in films in which a woman will be anally and vaginally fisted, with electrodes attached to her nipples and labia, clothes pegs on her thighs, the soles of her feet beaten with a cane, her mouth gagged with underwear, her face slapped and urinated on, and her buttocks pulled apart for her distended anus to be spat on, whipped and electrocuted. After the shoot she’ll say it was awesome and amazing. She wants us to be fine with this because it’s an expression of sexuality and only the repressed would see anything wrong with it, but it’s the torture that’s the problem, not the sexuality or the expression. The sexual desire these films cater for is sated only by watching someone experience extremes of degradation – a desire that is unlikely to fade when the credits roll. Lee says she wants to make the films so she’s there by choice, as are the other performers, but choice is a tricky concept. Child labourers and factory workers on 15 pence an hour turn up for an 18-hour shift every day, their presence indicating that, technically, they choose to be there. But their acquiescence doesn’t represent their consent – all it represents is their lack of choice. Lee wants to be accepted in her entirety, which means everyone being fine and nonjudgmental about her job, but she’s peddling torture. She thinks, by making what she does for a living known, she’s challenging common misconceptions about the porn industry, but really she’s giving her approval to the violation of human rights that would be tolerated in no other arena. Why she thinks the porn industry should be any different, I don’t know.

Twitter account suspended

Posted on July 21, 2011 by kategould

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Just a quick note to say that, after posting a tweet about the Turn Your Back On Page Three campaign with a link to its facebook page and to The Sun application form, my twitter account was suspended. Censorship in action. Hopefully, I’ll be allowed to play again soon. If not I’ll just open a new twitter account and continue the campaign. Wish me luck! By the way, if you’d like to join the campaign against the use of pornography in The Sun, go to http://www.facebook.com/turnyourbackonpage3

Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned roll in the hay?

Posted on July 2, 2011 by kategould

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Sexuality is, to put it mildly, a convoluted subject. From a process of reproduction, sex has become something of labyrinthine complexity. It is far more than just our sex organs. Whether we’re aware of it or want to, we bring to sex our pasts, desires, preconceptions, prejudices, morals, insecurities, and emotions. There are expectations of both men and women – everyone wants to be thought of as good in bed, but what that involves has become increasingly demanding. We’re all to be porn stars. Girls as young as eleven are pressured by their peers (their female friends as much as the boys) into replicating the sex their boyfriends have seen in porn. Admit you like the missionary position and you might as well declare yourself a Puritan and get thee to a nunnery. No, we’re all supposed to be as limber as a Cirque du Soleil contortionist. Sex isn’t just a fun way to spend the afternoon, it’s a competition. We try to be better than the last lover – or, indeed, anyone the other person has ever had sex with. Sex is to be mind-blowing, ne’er before known heights of ecstasy, unforgettable and impossible to surpass. We count our orgasms, rating our lovers by the number of times they make us come in a night. Even if we wouldn’t want to venture into the world of slings and hardcore S&M, we’re blasé about the more extreme sexual practices because that’s the fashionable way to be. We buy into the highly lucrative concept that our sex lives need to be spiced up – thrilling at all times. At the mellow end of the market are scented candles and a romantic dinner; role play and dressing up usually make the list; then there’s a little light bondage of the Ann Summers handcuffs and whipped cream variety; and sex manuals are a must, though nothing of the boring old Joy of Sex sort – they have to be fun fun fun. On and on it goes in the quest for the perfect shag.

No matter how modern all this might make us feel, there remains the double standard between men and women regarding sexual mores. There are no derogatory words for a promiscuous man, but innumerable ones for a woman. How many men a woman has sex with and how soon after meeting shouldn’t be worth even mentioning, but it is the subject of countless, and constant, debates. Living by The Rules or by one’s own ought to be a given, but women frequently lie about the number of lovers they’ve had and the extent of their experience, downplaying both to their partners. I don’t think anyone quite knows why we do this, why we have such contrasting views of male and female behaviour, but it’s a practice that every generation adopts, to a greater or lesser extent, and has done so over centuries. Porn encourages us to act like a slut in the bedroom, but apparently we’re not supposed to actually be one out of it.

I’m not arguing in favour of mediocre sex. No one wants that. I don’t think men should, à la Christian missionaries, pray for god’s forgiveness for taking carnal pleasure and their wives’ bodies be concealed by full-length white nightdresses with a hole embroidered in the shape of a cross over their vaginas. Sex is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be about people – real life ones, not the ones pornography, magazines, adverts, and billboards tell us we should be. The anal sex her boyfriend saw onscreen shouldn’t be a part of an 11-year-old girl’s life. Her life should be about her – what she wants to do and what she enjoys – not what porn told her boyfriend she ought to be. You’d think we’d grow out of that, but the idea that sex is a performance to impress our lover surrounds us and, inevitably, affects the way we view ourselves and those with whom we have sex. In attempting to emulate the moves of a porn star, women are understudying to others paid to fake orgasms and pleasure. Role play is one thing, but if women are faking it, in whole or in part, all to seem like the person they believe their lovers want them to be, then it begs the question of who everyone is sleeping with – the person we know or the one they’re pretending to be for our benefit because that’s what they believe we want and, possibly, what we’ve come to believe we want, too. It’s no wonder we’re confused.