#who are a commodity used to perform heterosexuality for other men

[xuanllx]

Blogpost 9: Digital Intimacy (Li Xuan)

Chan’s study (2018) examines the performativity and negotiation of Chinese heterosexual men’s masculinity through their interpretations, self-presentations, and interactions on dating apps. Chan introduced the concept of wen masculinity and argued that their performances are better understood through this indigenous Chinese concept that is often associated with literacy and sexual pursuits, and the neoliberalization of such wen masculinity. He introduces his paper by highlighting the three interrelated aspects of the use of dating apps: 1) motivations and interpretations – the gratifications gained from using dating apps, 2) creating and browsing profiles – the ability of individuals to craft and present a profile they are satisfied with, and 3) managing connections and conversations – interactions with the app interface and other users provides access to a large pool of date prospects. Chan asserts that Chinese men construct and negotiate their masculinity through using dating apps in relation to their work, where they meet business partners through apps by portraying the best images of themselves through gentle, innocent, and wealthy images. Men maximize their opportunities of meet-ups through specific strategies such as using animal pictures as profile pictures, swiping right on every woman, sending a message to a woman first. He thus concludes that dating apps as an emerging communication technology is also a platform in which persistent gender issues re-surface, and that dating apps would only reproduce existing gender hierarchies if men cannot see gender dynamics as a positive sum game.

I largely agree with Chan’s points on how Chinese men negotiate their masculinity through their interpretations, self-presentations and interactions on dating apps. I feel that there are parallels that can be drawn from the rise of spornosexuality in Singapore – men who strive to attain a muscular body, and how the performativity of their bodies through the photos that they post on Instagram, provide insight on how they redefine their ideals of masculinity. Through technology like social media platforms, it brings gratification to the user, such as the satisfaction gained from receiving many likes and views and receiving compliments from your followers on the pictures you posted, similar to that of dating apps. Users can also curate their Instagram profiles based on how they want to portray themselves. Many fitness influencers post pictures that show off their upper bodies to emphasize on their biceps and abdominal muscles. The deliberate choices of many male influencers cutting off their faces in their photographs draw emphasis on certain body parts, thereby reducing their human bodies to commodities.

A picture taken from a past reading on spornosexuality in Singapore

The popularity of such “fitspo” pictures emphasizes how being muscular is desired and an ideal sign of masculinity. This further highlights Chan’s point on the neoliberal shift of masculinity, where, currently, many male fitness influencers commodify their bodies to gain popularity and earn a livelihood from the content they post on social media through sponsorships. This example shows how the online identities of male fitness influencers are mediatized and how it leads to the construction of ideals of masculinity, similar to how Chan’s article showed how dating apps reproduce existing gender hierarchies of wen masculinity if Chinese men continue to subscribe to toxic aspects of masculinity that are implicitly encouraged in Chinese culture. Thus highlighting how technology (dating apps and social media) can reinforce existing gender norms and stereotypes through the three aspects of use that Chan highlighted in his article.

[comrade-meow]

‘value converts every product into a social hieroglyphic.’ MARX, CAPITAL VOL I

In light of the enormous sex disparity between producers and consumers within the sex industry(majority female sellers; majority male buyers), prostitution and other ‘sex work’ cannot be considered outside of its historical, material, social context — and the context of prostitution is historic women’s oppression, societal sexism, misogyny, male dominance and male violence.

‘the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as material relations between persons and social relations between things’

MARX, CAPITAL VOL I

The social relations involved in the sex trade cannot be considered normal social relations between people — or even ordinary relations between men and women. When sex is exchanged in the market, it takes on a specific character which differentiates it from any other ‘product’. We must consider that — unlike in any other market exchange — the producer/seller almost exclusively belongs to one demographic whilst the consumer/buyer almost exclusively belongs to another. Specifically, the producers/sellers of the sex trade are overwhelmingly female (the historically and currently oppressed sex) whilst the consumers/buyers in the sex trade are overwhelmingly male (the historically and enduring dominant sex). It is absurd to deny that there is a monumental sexed power imbalance in this market exchange.

This is so unlike the social context which is realised at the point of exchange in any other industry. A fast food worker, for example, may come from any demographic (though likely to be of low socioeconomic status) and the consumers of fast food can also come from any demographic (including being of low socioeconomic status themselves). There is no intrinsic power imbalance between producer and consumer.

Even if we are to take professions dominated by women such as nursing, cleaning, caring and childcare where the wider social context is gendered. Clearly, these professions are woman-heavy due to historic and enduring sex roles — the stereotype of women as nurturing, caring and domestic. However, the specific social character at the point of exchange is not sexed. Consumers of these types of labour are not overwhelmingly male. Both sexes use healthcare, caring, education services equally. Similarly, nurses, carers, etc do not need to be female to perform their services. They are simply a result of enduring sex stereotypes. Of course, we must seek to address and destroy such stereotypes, but this work is not inherently misogynistic. A male patient, for example, would not reject healthcare services from a male nurse or object to having a male cleaner — the work is not dependent upon the sex of the worker.

‘from the moment that men in any way work for one another, their labour assumes a social form’

MARX, CAPITAL VOL I

In contrast, as the vast majority of sex buyers are straight men, most ‘sex workers’ must be female in order to meet to heterosexual male buyer demand. A heterosexual male buyer will only purchase the sexual services of female sellers and would reject the sexual services of male sellers— this is a non-negotiable aspect of the arrangement. The sexed social character of prostitution brings with it the historical and material weight of women’s oppression. Specifically, the oppression of woman at the hands of heterosexual men for the purpose of sexual and reproductive access. ‘Sex work’ is almost exclusively performed by the oppressed sex and consumed by the oppressor sex, rendering the sex industry inherently misogynistic.

The sex industry is built upon the power imbalance between the sexes and misogyny is evident in almost every aspect. From the rates of male violence against women (including murder); to the replication of the painful and degrading sex acts which their porn-addicted clients demand; to the predisposing factors of childhood sexual trauma; to the standards of beauty; to the scathing punter reviews of the female body.

The social character of ‘sex work’ — revealed at the point of exchange — is underpinned by millennia of misogyny and female oppression. We cannot abstract prostitution from the social and historical context of female oppression. Nor can we sanitise female oppression with talk of ‘choice’, ‘agency’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘sex worker rights’.

‘producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange’

MARX, CAPITAL VOL III

Through commodity fetishism, Marx introduces us to alienation. People are alienated from one another as they do not ‘know’ one another socially outside the act of exchange — leading to poor social relationships across communities and societies. In the sex trade, this must be considered in the specific context of male-female societal relations due to the monumental sex disparity between producer and consumer (female producers; male consumers). The sex trade allows male buyers to interact with women for paid sex and have no social relation with them outside of this exchange. As with more general alienation where people begin to see one another as mere producers and consumers — rather than social beings —in the sex trade this means male buyers begin to see female sellers as sexual objects, rather than social beings. They begin to associate women with sexual gratification and little more. This transactional relationship between men and women has permeated all levels of sexed relations — even outside of the sex industry and even amongst men who do not buy sex and women who do not sell sex. Through ease of access to internet porn, a generation of young men have grown up in a world where porn usage is completely normalised (a stark contrast to the days of buying porno mags from seedy sex shops). This has given rise to a sort of hyper-alienation where men can consume women for sexual gratification online at the touch of a button without having any social interaction with them whatsoever. These women only exist to them during masturbation and cease to exist at the point of climax — their only purpose is an orgasm aid. This generation of men are experiencing more difficulty in forming fulfilling relationships (romantically, platonically and professionally) which is unsurprising as their porn habits condition them to experience women as nothing more than an on-screen conduit for their climax.

So, it is clear that prostitution does not readily fit Marx’s definition of a commodity due to the difficulty in characterising the exchange value of sex (as explored in Part I of this series). Nor is it reasonable to assert that prostitution is ‘labour like any other’ due to the immense physical, emotional and psychological toll on ‘sex workers’ . Similarly, it is unreasonable to liken commercial sex to ‘simple average labour’ as the common profile of prostitutes — female, sexually abused, suffering from drug addiction etc — is not the profile of the ‘simple average labourer’ (as explored in Part II of this series). Nor can low self esteem or the ability to withstand psychological damage due to prior trauma be considered a special skill of sex workers (also explored in Part II of this series).

We cannot allow the pimp-led decriminalisation lobby to abstract the sex industry from its historical, material, social context. It is this aspect which presents the most overwhelming structural rebuttal to the ‘sex work is work’ narrative. We must consider the sexed reality of these industries in which majority female producers provide sexual services to majority male consumers. We must recognise that the sex industry (from street prostitution to escorting, to cam girling, to OnlyFans) reflects the monumental power imbalance between the sexes which has existed throughout history.

This article is part of a series. Please read Part I here. Please read Part II here.

[sexualityinlitproject]

Sexuality From the Perspective of Lorde and Foucault

Hello sexual beings and welcome to our first post! Each week we will highlight some of the greatest thinkers of sexual and intersectional theory to show how their work influences the people it reaches. There are many that have shaped our understanding of identity, gender performance, discourse, and sexuality. We encourage participation from our viewers in order to start an important discussion that is still considered taboo in many parts of society. This week we will host a conversation with Audre Lorde and Michel Foucault, two theorists who excel in the intersectionality between sexuality and gender. While Lorde focuses on female pleasure and power, Foucault discusses the power of politics suppressing sexuality. These two great thinkers may have never met each other in the course of their lives, but we invite you, the pleasure-seeking viewers, to explore their insights below. Here is a quick synopsis of some of their most prominent pieces:

Audre Lorde states “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” that a woman’s eroticism has been suppressed by society as women should not hold power or agency. Society has long associated the idea of power with men; thus, Lorde takes the stance that women are innately stripped of their power in pleasure. Female sex has been commodified into pornographic content because it strips women of their own autonomy and power. She sees that eroticism “is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing” (54). Envisioning sex as more than act, she sets out to establish erotic behaviors to be more than just sex but something you feel deeply. There is a fear of course, however, that women and their feelings in power are dangerous so society feels it must oppress them. How do we reclaim power in sexuality through erotic behaviors in a society that demoralizes female pleasure yet praises exploitation through porn?  Do women still feel to this day that they must be submissive to the power of the man?

Michel Foucault, on the other hand, focuses his theory surrounding sexuality in an oppressive society specifically towards the mere conversation about the subject. The law is keen to reject any love outside the bounds of a heterosexual and faithful one. Though society suppressed the notion of sex, the condemnation talks of sex brought out the desire. Foucault brings up this instance as if a child were told not to something; everyone knows that they will press it. He goes on to address the presence of homosexuality and how, “It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all actions…written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away” (43). How do you think it is possible to combat the taboo topic of sex and sexuality? Do you think there will come a day when prejudice against people of different sexualities are live their lives freely without it being a political and media commodity?

[swirlingdisobedience]

ACT UP and QUEER NATION

ACT UP

ACT UP, in full AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, international organization founded in the United States in 1987 to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic. It was the first group officially created to do so. ACT UP has dozens of chapters in the United States and around the world whose purpose is to find a cure for AIDS, while at the same time providing accurate information, help, and awareness about the disease by means of education and radical, nonviolent protest.

The mission of ACT UP was to carry out daily acts of civil disobedience and nonviolent protest, using vocal and visual demonstrations, in order to focus attention on critical issues regarding the AIDS crisis. One of their first victories came in June 1987, when activists protested at the New York City offices of Northwest Orient Airlines because the airline barred people with AIDS from its flights. The group brought two lawsuits against the airline, and the policy was reversed. By 1988 the group had gained credibility in the new field of AIDS activism. They led protests against news articles, films, and news reports that provided misinformation on AIDS, such as that women could not get AIDS from heterosexual men and that AIDS could be passed through public bathrooms, pools, and drinking fountains. Through constant public protests, open forums, and information sharing, ACT UP was able to help reverse these misconceptions and stereotypes and bring attention to the inadequacies of the U.S. government’s treatment of people with AIDS.

Queer Nation

Queer Nation is[1] an LGBTQ activist organization founded in March 1990 in New York City, by HIV/AIDS activists from ACT UP.[2] The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media. The group is known for its confrontational tactics, its slogans, and the practice of outing.

On March 20, 1990, sixty LGBTQ people gathered at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center in New York's Greenwich Village to create a direct action organization. The goal of the unnamed organization was the elimination of homophobia, and the increase of gay, lesbian and bisexual visibility through a variety of tactics. The organization of Queer Nation, being non-hierarchical and decentralized, allowed anyone to become a member and have a voice.[3]

Group Material 

An artist collective active in New York between 1989 and 1996 that was established by Julie Ault, Tim Rollins, and Mundy McLoughlin, among others, and later joined by various other artists, including Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Members generally expressed their disenchantment with the contemporary dominance of Neo-Expressionist painting and the increasing dependency of artists’ livelihood on the art market (and accordingly, the making of their artworks as easily-consumable commodities). Championing collaborative exhibitions instead of individual artist shows, community engagement over exclusivity, and alternative spaces in lieu of the customary white cube gallery, Group Material asked "everyone to question the entire culture we have taken for granted.” Group Material’s exhibitions adopted activist stances towards sensitive issues, exemplified most in their AIDS Timeline project, which sought to illustrate the complex political and cultural reception of the disease.

Archival material and case sttudies. 

Group Material Timeline: A Chronicle of US Intervention in Central and South America. 1984 PS1, NYC.

Group Material DA ZI BAOS. 1982 Union Square, NYC

Group Material Democracy: Education. 1988 Dia Art Foundation, NYC

Group Material AIDS Timeline  (New York City:1991) Whitney Bienial, 1991

LTTR

Dedicated to sustainable change, queer pleasure, and critical productivity.

LTTR is a feminist genderqueer artist collective with a flexible project oriented practice. LTTR produces an annual independent art journal, performance series, events, screenings and collaborations. The group was founded in 2001 with an inaugural issue titled “Lesbians to the Rescue,” followed by “Listen Translate Translate Record,” “Practice More Failure,” “Do You Wish to Direct me?,” and most recently "Positively Nasty" LTTR is dedicated to highlighting the work of radical communities whose goals are sustainable change, queer pleasure, and critical feminist productivity. It seeks to create and build a context for a culture of critical thinkers whose work not only speaks in dialogue with one another, but consistently challenges its own form by shifting shape and design to best respond to contemporary concerns. LTTR was founded in 2001 by Ginger Brooks Takahashi, K8 Hardy and Emily Roysdon. Ulrike Müller joined LTTR in 2005 and Lanka Tattersal was an editor and collaborator for issue 4.

ISSUE 4 DO YOU WISH TO DIRECT ME? RELEASE BLOCK PARTY

Tender Center Rotterdam

We are a collective of feminist queers who are building the beginnings of a community center for culture; or a venue for queer events; or a les university of life in Rotterdam. Tender Center is a relational infrastructure with parties, agitation, co-learning, bodies in varying states, gardening, (s)words, conversation, workshops, food, diy darkroom, curry, and a solid sound system. Tender Center is run as a not-for-profit association and we currently are running on funds from our own small pockets and your generous donations.

[sexologyposts-blog]

Gender and Masculinity

The gender aspects of the porn industry include stigma of gender and the roles women ought to play as well.  Women within the industry are often deemed as sexually subordinate while men are sexually dominant which is a constant present within the discourse of history. Though, it is simply a performance for the woman to make her earning just as much as another other job. If it can be consumed there is money to be made. Sex as a commodity that was used in order to project individuality.  But there are so some feminist critiques that target the double standard of the passivity of women and the dominance of men within porn. 

Accordingly, the goal for most feminist theories are that “womanliness” should be of merit and not oppressed.  Women within porn are often target cishet men and the male gaze.  Feminist critiques were targeting the double standard of the passivity of women and the dominance of men.  Masculinity dominated and was the root of gender inequality. The goal for feminists was that “womanliness” should be of merit and not repressed.  

The lifestyle of these working women should be perceived “promoted as an unashamed and enthusiastic [to the] ‘sexual consumer,” (Hawkes 1999:109). The body is a natural resource to have and many of these women within pornography have the privilege to have sex consensual. That is not to say that some women are dealt with unfortunate situations where circumstance and consent often clash as they are contracted to perform in pornographic films. Within class, our guest speakers had made mention that they’re most fearful of cisgendered heterosexual men but they are where the money lies. 

There needs to be a line drawn between their occupation and their identity. The women are often classified as physically unclean and uneducated which often affects their daily lives.  

Accordingly, while pornography is a form of sexual freedom, this area is still male-oriented. Porn, in which women were involved, was marketed towards men and could be understood as to why pornography can be seen in this article. Furthering this notion, within feminist politics, Dworkin defies pornography as it “emphasizes only that the valuation of women as low whores […]” (Dworkin: 298).

In the realm of pornography, many groups who refute the views of pornography regarded this as anti-feminist as this enforces male dominance and female subjectivity.  By collectively and individually sharing the experience “by women, not by men or male experts” (Hawkes 1999:111) seems to further complicate the matter of feminism.   

Bibliography:

Hawkes, Gail, A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality, Open University Press, 1999.

Dworkin, Andrea, “Pornography,” pp 297-299 in Jackson and Scott, eds., Feminism and Sexuality,  NY: Columbia 1996. 

[deconstructinglesbophobia]

"You don't wake up in the morning, have breakfast and think – I'm having breakfast as a lesbian" – Lesbophobia in the Media

It is no secret that gay men have struggled to break in to mainstream media, however the headway they have made in the field has had a massive knock-on effect on how they are viewed within a societal context. One way in which mainstream media has attempted to provide exposure to the LGBT community is through advertising. It is easy to get sucked into this advertising and praise big companies such as Coca Cola and Ikea for their pro-LGBT ventures, yet it only takes a little to reveal that their true motives lie elsewhere.

Most adverts providing LGBT content feature gay men, with as little as 3% of US advertising content showing lesbian-targeted imagery just 20 years ago according to one study on LGBT advertising (Oakenfull and Greenlee 2004). The article articulates how the majority of firms choose to use imagery of gay males in advertising, which mirrors the male-bias that already infiltrates much of mass media advertising. Gay men are still men, and thus earn more on average than women, meaning it is more likely to benefit the company to target their advertising towards a predominantly male market. Oakenfull and Greenlee’s study reveals that lesbian content performs better with both heterosexual male and female consumers. The study showed that of their sample, a significant amount of heterosexual men preferred overt lesbian imagery over overt gay male imagery and women showed no significant preference either way. Men were also significantly more interested in overt lesbian imagery than women were. Oakenfull and Greenlee thus suggest lesbian imagery may actually make for more effective advertising campaigns, yet it massively underappreciates the troubling assertions their findings make.

When you take a closer look at how lesbians tend to be represented in mass media, it is clear to see why heterosexual men are keen on the content. Lesbians have historically been subject to triviality and oversexualisation from mass media, which has resulted in the generation of lesbophobic stereotypes; as Charlotte Summers says - “[M]any lesbian characters shown in the media are femme. For some straight guys, a femme lesbian is their idea of heaven.” (DIVA Magazine 2019). Lesbians are stigmatised by heterosexual men who find it almost impossible to believe women can just be attracted to other women, believing lesbianism to be a cursory state of mind that can be conquered when the ‘right man’ arrives to save the day. Mal Hartigan felt the need to profess herself “not the media lesbian” in her 2012 article for University News, an independent student newspaper. She expresses how although historical depictions of lesbianism skewed reality, events such as Madonna and Britney Spears’ kiss was a catalyst for an explosion of ‘girl-on-girl’ images in mass media. Katy Perry’s song ‘I Kissed a Girl’ made it fashionable for girls to kiss each other, of course only as long as their boyfriends “don’t mind it” (UMKC, Hartigan 2012). This kind of representation in the media is damaging as it presents lesbianism as a conscious choice, thus affirming pre-existing lesbophobic stereotypes that gay women may be convinced into intimate heterosexual relations.

Although more women clearly feel more able to express their sexuality, with 16% of women claiming to have had some same-sex experience in 2013, compared to just 4% 20 years earlier (NATSAL 2013; The Guardian 2013) media still fails to really show the truth in this number. At a 2013 debate hosted by Women in Journalism and Diva magazine “Lesbophobia in the Media”, disabled actress Julia Carr confessed how she feels excluded from the on-screen depictions of lesbians, quote "I'm not seen as being capable of having any kind of sex as a disabled woman ... Disabled women are very much desexed.". According to the Guardian’s summary of the event, writer Imran Qureshi raised concerns over the intentional placement of lesbian characters on-screen, that no characters just happen to be lesbian – “Why can’t lesbians just be people?” (The Guardian 2013). Jane Czyzselska, editor of Diva magazine and author of the blog “Everyday Lesbophobia” remarked on how frustratingly, Diva is sometimes denied clothing for their shoots by fashion PR’s, nervous for their clients’ sexualities to be spotlighted in the magazine. Amongst the lesbophobia that taints the media this debate highlighted, with young lesbians breaking onto the scene being told not to reveal their sexualities so as to remain a commercial commodity – Czyzselska commented on how once lesbians reach the age where they are no longer “fuckable”, they are suddenly allowed to express themselves, with women such as Sandi Toksvig and Sue Perkins being allowed to assume hosting roles on primetime TV in the UK.

Unfortunately, however, aging seems to be the only loophole wherein lesbians may feel free to authentically express their sexualities, as the media continues to chickenshit lesbianism in favour of an oversexualised image that dominates advertising, film and TV. This both arouses heterosexual men who seek dominance and excites heterosexual women who feel it’d just be easier to date women – furthering stereotypes of the ‘phase’ lesbian that can be won back to society’s good side, simply by falling into the right man’s arms.

(Title quote from “Lesbophobia in the Media”, Qureshi 2013; The Guardian 2013)

[heteronormativepopmusic]

Katy Perry - “I Kissed a Girl”

Perry does a great job of creating a toxic portrayal of both female sexuality and lesbianism (lesbian existence) with her number 1 song of 2008: “I Kissed A Girl”. 

Basically, this song sucks. 

Perry starts the first verse of the song stating that being homosexual or kissing a girl was never what she intended on happening but that it happened because she “got so brave, drink in hand”. Wow! Liquor encouragement; aka, the only reason her “experimentation” began. Because you know, one can only dare to kiss the same sex when they're drunk.

The second verse broken down is Perry saying that she could not be or is not “in love” with the girl because shes straight, she clarifies that by saying she hopes her boyfriend won't mind it; essentially, because it’s just a joke, since lesbian existence is sooooooo funny.  Perry’s lyrics demonstrate the patriarchal interpretation of female sexuality as a commodity used and owned by men because she’s only kissing a girl bc shes drunk, and it’s just a joke (to her anyway).

The third verse is basically saying that Perry doesn’t know the name of the girl she is kissing. But she clears it up that it doesn’t matter because, yet again, this is just an “experimental game”; it’s all for fun. Lesbianism is just a “game” that bad girls play occasionally. 

Perry’s portrayal is toxic because it is essentially saying that as long as women only kiss women they don’t know and have permission from their boyfriends to do so, they remain within the realm of “heterosexual privilege”. However, women who identify as queer, bisexual, or lesbian and kiss women are not labeled as “innocent.” On the note of innocence, I suppose I have time to touch on racism in Perry’s music. Mireille Miller-Young, author of “Brown Sugar”, would argue that Perry’s song is only acceptable because she is a white woman fetishizing queer desire for other white women, since the song makes it seem like she's kissing a girl for male desire. Young says, “White American women are not judged in the same way, nor are they accused of representing the ‘hyper-sexuality of white womanhood’. Yet black women, as individuals, o en come to stand for their entire racial group. Not only are black women performers burdened with representing every other black woman, they are seen to depict only simplistic and denigrating types. Black porn actresses understand that they are seen as archetypical whores and bad women by both the black community and the broader, categorically white, culture” (13,14).

[laundryandtaxes]

In regards to porn do you think there is a difference between gay male porn and straight porn? You know since in gay porn it's all men.

No reblogs for now, just replies and asks as I am working through this (other porn post is fine to reblog, idc) I think porn itself is misogynist either way, because of its origins- like I said I think it is about commodifying women's sexualities for male consumption. BUT I think the practical ethics around consumption, the politics of how it operates, are toooootally different yeah, so I don't think gay male porn, lesbian porn, heterosexual porn are all exactly the same. Take one of my primary concerns with consumption of porn, which is the very the fact that their sexualities become commodities consumed by both the viewers AND by male porn performers. It is common knowledge that not all gay porn actors are even actually gay or bi, which of course creates different ethics than the portrayal of sex between two gay men. There's an imbalance, and a consumption of sexuality on the part of these men (often tops in gay scenes) that parallels that within het porn but you don't see it necessarily happen on screen as explicitly. There's a very common sense in which heterosexual relations are mapped onto gay porn in ways that don't necessarily reflect the realities, as I've had them reported to me, of gay sex- the usability of the bottom, the physical use of the bottom's bodies as tools for the top to achieve oegasm, the disregard on the part of the top for the bottom's comfort or pleasure are all common in gay porn and, I'm told, less common (though present) in gay sex. And of course you see a lot of the same kink shit that's basically about violence, just sexualized. But it isn't heterosexual violence, it isn't violence against women. Its origins are the same- sexualization of violence on the part of men, inability of men to relate sexually to others without relying on violence as framework, etc. But for sure the ethics are different- even the worst parts of gay porn often have their roots in heterosexual concepts of sex, heterosexual ways of mixing violence and sexuality- so to see them replayed in a different context does genuinely make them different, just like I think some kinds of kink are genuinely different within lesbian contexts. But gay porn is still produced for male consumption, and we have to keep in mind that the mainstream stuff is typically geared toward men with different sexualities but similar dispositions to some of the worst heterosexual men- that's not all gay men and I'd bet it is a smaller chunk than among straight men. So I know I wrote a lot, but I'm not sure! I have to think about it. If you know a famous het porn actor, odds are very good that he's a rapist, but either way he is absolutely in a position where even as he technically performs sexual labor it is a woman's sexuality that is still his for consumption- scenes are more likely to happen on his terms than hers, but either way there is a way in which his body is the vessel through which the male viewer's consumption is even made possible, the physical carrier of the aspirations of the porn consumer. So he is partly culpable in recreating the set of conditions from which you get pornography, in a way that female porn actresses are absolutely not complicit in any moral or political sense. From what I know, conditions are much better for men doing porn than for women doing porn, and that reflects something important about who does the work of creating porn. I don't know about how we should map that relationship onto gay porn though- I think something different happens in gay porn but I'm not sure what. The effects on viewers are mostly similar (difficulty taking off porn vision for real sex, difficulty getting off without using it, difficulty seeing sex with your eyes in your own head rather than in the pornagraphied camera lens way or in third person) but I don't ever think same-gender contexts are the same as heterosexual ones. This is another of those cases where I think we should recognize that homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, are all components of gender that don't just operate individually if each other. Like is the treatment of bottoms in gay porn misogyny? Honestly, more or less, but it's within a totally different context than how it is between heterosexuals. I think that perhaps, because porn is a heterosexual institution as I understand it, there's something very different about the place gay porn has within porn more broadly, because it doesn't serve all the purposes of porn or really even most of them.

[shirlleycoyle]

The Problem With ‘Porn for Women’

Pornhub launched a “porn for women” category last year, but the adult content monolith certainly isn’t the first or only corporate entity to identify a demand for “female-friendly” porn. Platforms like Bellesa, ForHerTube, and Sssh.com are now more accessible than ever, and that’s mostly a good thing. Women deserve affirming adult content that centers women’s agency and portrays them as active, consenting players enjoying realistic sexual experiences.

However, much of the rhetoric surrounding “porn for women” emerges from misguided assumptions and broad generalizations about the kind of porn women enjoy, and the kind of women who enjoy porn.

“The term ‘porn for women’ is problematic because a lot of porn does cater to an assumed cis male audience, and as part of the general porn consumer base women should feel free to select films from any genre,” artist and performer Courtney Trouble said. “In one way, creating a porn for women genre allows for a ‘men only’ genre to perpetuate itself. It just buys into an either/or dichotomy that doesn’t even begin to disrupt the foundational issues that create the market gap.”

A short history of porn for women

The idea that women watch porn isn’t new. In the early 1980s, director and producer Candida Royalle rose as an industry icon for her work creating adult films from a woman’s perspective. Lesbian production company Fatale Media and On Our Backs, the first woman-run lesbian porn magazine, also emerged as porn innovators around this same time. These pioneering enterprises sought to create porn that centered women’s physical pleasure—a rejection of the frenetic thrusting, oily bodies, and theatrics that defined mainstream porn for years.

These early woman-centered enterprises were part of a largely political movement for porn that freed women’s sexual expression from the male gaze.

“If you look back at the emergence of porn for women, or lesbian porn, or feminist porn, it was a call to arms, so to speak,” Lynn Comella, author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure said. “It was a desire for cultural intervention into a marketplace of images and discourses related to sex and sexuality that catered primarily to men.”

This era also marked a truly revolutionary moment in porn history.

“This was incendiary in the 1980s,” Sociologist and author Chauntelle Tibbals said. “Because although women had always been involved in content production, this was not generally acknowledged or understood by the viewing public.”

The social and political discourse surrounding this first wave of porn created by and for women eventually reached mainstream consumers and creators, inspiring cultural conversations in support of ethical porn, the importance of paying for porn, and the need for racial and gender diversity both in front of and behind the camera. Thanks in part to extensive media coverage and corporate interest in recent years, public discussions about women and porn are far less taboo, but still lack the depth and complexity necessary for a truly evolved cultural understanding.

“In 2019, women have more opportunities to find sexual commodities, products, materials, that are designed with them in mind, but the way in which they’re imagined as sexual consumers or porn consumers continues to be narrow, overall,” said Comella.

Generalizing the Female Gaze

Angie Rowntree, founder and director of Sssh.com, believes “porn for women” functions primarily as an SEO-friendly marketing term for mainstream tube sites. “It’s very misleading and dishonest,” Rowntree said. “The term puts women in a box, and it’s one I don’t particularly care for. ‘Women like these things, but not these other things.’ We’re pigeonholing people. It’s a huge injustice to the diversity of our desires.”

The same glowing media coverage that normalized women as porn consumers—as well as some of the language these sites sometimes use themselves—seems to assume that women as a whole are straight and cisgender. Porn site Bellesa claims on its website that it features “hot guys. Storylines. Natural bodies. Free erotic stories. Real orgasms.” On Sssh.com, Rowntree prefers terms like “female-focused” and “female-led” to distinguish Sssh.com’s content from male-oriented offerings, like a popular woman-on-woman category that includes a scene centered on same-sex marriage, though the images featured on the site’s homepage only depict heterosexual couples.

“It’s a huge injustice to the diversity of our desires.”

On most adult content sites, “porn for women” now occupies its own genre and aesthetic defined by soft lighting and vanilla sex, with a narrow view of what can—or should—turn women on.

Women in general have a widely varied and diverse set of sexual proclivities and expressions and enjoy consuming content in different ways,” Tibbals said. “In this way, current use of the phrase ‘porn for women’ is frustrating, as well as being generally dismissive and judgey in and of itself.”

Some of the most recent iterations of “porn for women” use marketing language that seems to uphold a sense of sexual respectability politics and moral policing. CEO Caroline Spiegel reportedly described her new video and image-free porn site Quinn as “a less gross, more fun Pornhub for women,” a description that suggests women who enjoy typical tube sites, or create content themselves, as deviant sexual outliers.

“This fits a larger historical framing of ideas, that women in particular need a certain amount of handholding. That, if we’re going to entice them to be sex toy consumers or porn consumers, then we have to lead them to our product very gently,” Comella said. “It suggests that women are easily ‘grossed out’, or they don’t have the fortitude of their male counterparts, they’re more delicate creatures, or they’re more easily offended.”

According to Trouble, creating a distinction between porn “for women” and “for men” also erases queer identity in consumers and performers alike.

“One big problem with this genre is that it exploits male bodies in a really corrupt way,” Trouble said. During the early 00s, Trouble launched nofauxxx.com to trade links and network with other adult content creators. There, Trouble met a producer on the who frequently bought pre-made gay porn content that was “straight enough” to resell on a separate porn site for women. “In this case, the producer was erasing queer identity to cater to a straight cis female audience. This isn’t subversive. It’s marketing. I do not see how it is any different than Bic making pink pens for women,” Trouble said.

Filmmaker Erika Lust doesn’t refer to her work as “porn for women” or market it as such, because she believes the term reduces women’s sexuality to a stereotype. She prefers the term “indie,” and creates adult films grounded in a feminist ethos instead of search engine optimization.

“I have always said I am a feminist, and naturally my values are injected in all what I do,” Lust said. “My cinema has my feminist values behind it, and I put female sexuality and pleasure at the forefront.”

Even as a soft, gentle aesthetic generalizes what women want out of a sexual experience, the appeal of friendlier, less seedy, feminist-oriented adult content can serve as entrypoint for many women exploring their sexuality and interest in porn—particularly those looking to avoid depictions of gratuitous violence or anonymized, identity-less sex.

“In the past, when I’d visited other porn sites, I felt like an intruder—like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be,” Michelle Shnaidman, CEO of female-focused porn content site Bellesa, said. “I wanted to see sexuality content that really related to my personal experience.” Bellesa features content that claims to center women’s pleasure and sexual agency, and curates videos based on user data indicating a wide range of sexual preferences as well as general trends.

According to Shnaidman, Bellesa users tend to prefer videos with strong storylines and narrative context, and the videos users consume tend to run longer in length than on other mainstream porn sites. “There is no excessive derogatory profanity, exorbitant moaning and screaming, fake orgasms, or objectifying narratives. There is no violence,” Shnaidman said.

Controversy around ‘porn for women’ and ‘feminist porn’

The language of empowerment, feminism, and ethics make great selling points, but porn for women isn’t immune to the many industry-wide traps producers purportedly work to avoid. Originally, Bellesa’s video platform allowed users to find and share content from other sites, but accusations of stolen content soon followed after its launch in 2017.

“We were, unintentionally, disempowering the people who create the content in the first place quite at odds with our core mission,” Shnaidman said. Bellesa plans to launch their own production company in the near future, which Shnaidman said will follow ethical practices regarding talent safety and compensation.

Rowntree, a longtime veteran of the adult industry, is keenly aware of widespread issues with content piracy. “Everyone in this industry is at risk of having their content stolen, regardless of genre. It’s just the sad truth,” Rowntree said. Sssh.com produces most of their own content, which is available for streaming only, digitally fingerprinted, copywritten, and blocked by a paywall. Rowntree also maintains a direct relationship with the producers and filmmakers whose curated content appears on the site. “We have had success with this method and have been able to significantly slow down the piracy process,” Rowntree said.

The cultural conversations sparked by the #MeToo movement also raise questions about sexual consent practices in the porn industry, including producers of feminist porn and porn geared toward women. In 2018, adult performer Rooster came forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Lust Films, including incidents of boundary violations and poor working practices on set. In a detailed account on their personal website, Rooster writes that director Olympe de G. allegedly dismissed his request for a break during a masturbation scene. Rooster proceeded with the scene, unsure if pushing the issue or refusing to shoot would damage their reputation.

Lust denied Rooster’s allegations of sexual abuse and assault on set, citing Lust Films’ zero-tolerance policy against sexual harassment, abuse, or violence. However, she acknowledged that de G. may not have handled the incident appropriately. “It can be argued that this incident was not a good example of best director practice in the production of a film set, but it is certainly not sexual abuse nor assault,” Lust said.

The ‘basic facepalm’ of porn for women

Catering to a heteronormative, mainstream view of feminity and female preference can leave some consumers with limited options that ignore the scope and diversity of women’s sexual expression and lean on gender stereotypes. Many women enjoy gay porn, or even ultra-violent porn, but this reality isn’t easily marketable.

“Therein lies the basic facepalm quality of ‘porn for women,’” said Tibbals. “All women? No. Nothing can meet the needs of all women, as all women have very diverse interests.” Porn that is truly created to break the stigma surrounding women and porn must first stop stigmatizing itself.

“What would be more successful is to create genres of porn that are transparent about which of their scenes depict masculine domination, or other factors that may present themselves to be undesirable to an audience that’s seeking something ‘feminine focused,’” said Trouble. “These words really mean nothing, so to just be able to read an actual description of what’s happening in the porn you’re buying—one that’s written by the producers or curators and accurately represents the performers and performances—that’s powerful. Then people of all genders can make informed decisions based on what they want to see.”

The Problem With ‘Porn for Women’ syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[sophiayacoub-blog]

How is consumption made possible: how do brands make use of western conceptions of the exotic other to sell notions of authenticity?

Commenting on how ideas of authenticity and counter culture are used in advertisement to further a brand’s value, Jacqueline Botterill states that: “While authenticity once served as an antidote to mass society, today advertisers use it to soothe their young audiences’ anxiety that authenticity is no longer possible” (Botterill, 2007, 106). Further to this, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter argue that the west is in perpetual rejection of conformity as a result of the experiences of trauma due to the Second World War and the totalitarianism of nationalist socialism, and that this is shown in the way people consume for their own individuality- and supposed nonconformity projects. (Heath, Potter, 2006, 327) Thus experiences of constraint and lack of meaning as well as organic spontaneity are common, and to look for authentic alternatives to mass society become frequent practice.

In this essay I will explore the idea that counter culture, and that which is deemed outside the norm, inevitably becomes subsumed by the capitalist market through advertisement and branding, and that this search for individuality and alternative might even be what drives the consumer market, especially in terms of fashion and lifestyle products. I argue that the search for authenticity has a way of not only being hijacked by the market (whilst at the same time playing an important part in it) but also that members of dominant cultures use conceptions of the ‘other’ in their individual identity projects. I will look at how tropes of marginalized groups are used to make products seem authentic and desirable.

Concepts such as otherness and authenticity is often used in the discourses of marketing; being aware of authentic social markers and products, often taken from those outside of the Eurocentric norm and to be able to mimic them (to a level that is fairly easy to understand) is viewed as a form of social and cultural capital. (Bourdieu, 1986) Cultural capital allows for the dominant social classes, races, ethnicities, genders and sexualities to further their quest for image building signifiers of cultural intermediation and taste making. This can be linked to a form of cultural appropriation, where traits of culturally marginalized groups are used mainly for the identity projects of the white, heterosexual, middle class, to express a level of social awareness, ‘worldliness’ and individuality whenever deemed suitable by these dominant groups. This is problematic, as groups of marginalized people only are seen to inhabit aspirational qualities and ascribed social value in cultural contexts when they become valuable for the consumer market and by dominant fractions of consumers. 

Take for example trends such as wearing bindis, Native American headdress and colourful, “tribal”-patterned scarves and other ornaments; brands such as Urban Outfitters and Topshop co-opt these cultural signifiers in order to offer mainstream consumers a way into ‘unexplored realms’ of expression. So when a white middle class american grows bored of the mundane everyday, comfortable life, they might put on an American headdress and go to a festival in the Nevada desert without consideration of the anti-colonial struggles for land rights and identity of the Native American people. Similarly, white British people will put on ‘Bollywood’ themed parties without consideration of the Imperial British colonial remnants in India and the rest of the world today. (Hook, 1995)

In his groundbreaking postcolonial work, Edward Said coined the term Orientalism, which refers to the exotifying depicting that European and American writers created about the colonised other. He argues that the way the ‘orient’ has been constructed by the west is mainly in Eurocentric terms that exotify the other. (Said, 1977) This becomes relevant in terms of consumer culture as these sorts of narratives of the exotic makes consumption of the ‘other’ possible. Contemporary consumers look to brands for contributions towards identity projects. Authenticity becomes a marker of how well a brand constitutes a cultural resource for these identity projects. (Holt, 2002) Brands thus aim to fufil the desire for authenticity by offering consumers objects and artifacts such as clothes, accessories and home decor that allow for access to the world in new and supposedly creative ways that contribute towards individual cultural, and social capital projects. This can be juxtaposed with earlier, modern marketing that mainly constituted of ‘culture-making’ rather than ‘culture-imitation’. Holt writes that:

“The postmodern branding paradigm is premised upon the idea that brands will be more valuable if they are offered not as cultural blueprints but as cultural resources, as useful ingredients to produce the self as one chooses.” (Holt, 2002, 83) Here Holt describes how contemporary marketing and branding offers consumers access to cultural resources to produce the self, or the image of the self, as opposed to earlier marketing which would have focused on offering culture in itself.

bell hooks provides further analysis on the topic of cultural appropriation in the contexts of “consuming the other” where she refers to the colonial discourses surrounding cultural co-option in terms of the longing for exotic “otherness” and the wish to consume tropes of those deemed ‘other’. She writes “Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes a spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (hooks, 1992, 366). hooks argues that using race and ethnicity for commercial and consumption purposes allows members of dominant classes, races, genders and sexualities to reassert their power over the ‘other’ by using the cultural markers of those who have been colonialized by the imperialist nations in the west.

Similarly, Crockett describes how ‘blackness’, or traits of black and urban culture, is used in advertisement by ‘idealizing and essentializing blackness’ as a form of ‘consuming others’ strategy in marketing (Crockett, 2008, 255). He describes that blackness is exotified and commodified by marketing companies in an array of ways to make brands seem to be in contestation of the mainstream consumer market, and to give access to a sense of worldliness and experience to its consumers. Jacqueline Botterill gives an example of this in a European Levi’s commercial, myths of black and urban culture is used:

“A young black, but not too black, man walks down a city street dressed in baggy jeans, tee shirt, leather jacket and baseball cap. He walks by a black bouncer dressed in a suit, protecting the entrance to a club. [...] The bouncer provides the perfect, silent, authoritarian foil against which the young man’s authenticity is expressed. Street wise, the young man begins his patter by pointing out he is aware he cannot enter the club because of his inappropriate dress, but goes on to defend his style, thereby challenging the social convention that prevents his entry. [...] Authenticity is encoded by depicting a tension between work, formality and rules, versus play, rejection and creativity.” (Botterill, 2007, 118)

Here Botterill is describing the type of othering that allows those who fit the norm to access novelty ways of consumption. In the example, a black man in urban clothing is contrasted with another black man, only that the latter is deemed “inauthentic” because he has succumbed to performing that which is presumably coded as “white”. Here we come back to the idea of cultural identity production in the practices of commodification and consumption of the ‘other’; Individuals of often marginalized groups, who have less access to work, education and other material necessities in underprivileged urban areas in Europe and North America are made to seem as rebellious heroes in reaction to the modern western society. They are romanticized and made examples of authentic individuals free from the mainstream all for the pleasure of the neo-colonialist consumption culture. (Botterrill, 2007, 111) But these authentic/romanticized narratives about certain marginalized groups is only temporary, because the consumer market changes rapidly and something is only seen as ‘cool’ by advertising companies as long as it hasn’t been done yet because there is a constant need to reinvent the brand and what is offered to the consumer. (Heath, Potter).

Similarities can be drawn about the commodification of LGBTQ+ culture. Lesbian women’s lives are fetishized in fashion advertisements such as in a Christian Dior as from the year 2000, where two half naked young girls, oiled up and dressed in a little bit of denim are portrayed in objectifying sexual poses insinuating strong attraction to one another. The photo could be perceived as an intimate meeting between two lesbian women but are clearly aimed at the straight, male gaze for the consumption of mainly straight people. This strips lesbian women of their own agency to define what lesbian existence means as it becomes sold for the patriarchal mass market. Similarly, gay men’s lives are often used in advertisement to make brands seem attractive and progressive and at the same time Gay men are depicted in TV-series and films such as Sex and the city and Glee as the stereotypical gay best friend, always there to make the straight girl chose the right dress and tell her she’s pretty. This type of representation has been used in marketing by for example apple: In one apple advertisement, workers who can be said to carry some social signifiers associated with the LGBTQ+ community and their families and friends, are depicted taking part in the San Francisco pride festival. The atmosphere of the advertisement is very bright and cheerful and later on an upbeat song by Coldplay starts playing, accompanying a big crowd of apple workers marching through the streets of San Francisco with pride flags in their hands, waving and cheering. The advertisement finishes in the slogan “inclusion inspires innovation”. This is a clear example of something so subversive as gay pride being appropriated by the mass market for branding purposes. The ending slogan can be interpreted as slightly naive and maybe even a bit thoughtless of Apple because it may as well be read as apple admitting that non-normative sexualities only are valuable if they can contribute to the ‘innovation’ of the company. Of course Apple profits from this type of pinkwashing, in contemporary western culture, where allegiance to the LGBTQ society is seen as progressive. This can surely be described as commodification of ‘otherness’ in terms of the gender, sexualities and sexual practices that are showcased and that are viewed as outside of the norm.

In Kozinet’s ethnographical study of the festival and social project ‘burning man’, he notes that the dominant ethos of the counter culture project, which springs from a neo-anarchist group, is about contesting the values of the market economy, and creating new discourses and modes of interaction by for example using gift economy and by having a ban on logotypes (Kozinets, 2002). Kozinets recalls one of his interviews:

“I interviewed Crucifix George while he was masking out the brand name of his van with duct tape. After identifying myself and gaining permission to videotape him, I asked if he was simply following the rules, or whether he really believed in them.

‘I really believe in them. You can see all this shit [advertising and brand names] all the time, anyway. [...] There's so much creative energy here that you don't need the stuff, the symbols that are imprinted on your brain on a day-to-day basis by marketing people who come out of schools such as the one that you go to. Okay? You can create a whole fucking world like this if people were open” (Kozinets, 2002, 25).

It is clear that Crucifix George is tired of the rationality and conformity of mass society and that he is looking for alternative ways of existing, be it only temporary, for one week in August. Even though it can be argued that Burning man constitutes of some anti-market traits and that it is an attempt at community building in separation from the market, it is clear that because it is only a week long event, it is more of a temporary experience (although it might a powerful one which may evoke some anti-market values in its participants), rather than a rigid attempt at creating true counter cultural modes of being. Kozinets remarks that mainly middle- and upperclass, white people attend the event and so it potentially comes under the category of consumer culture which is driven by a conquest for the same types of individual culture projects as have been mentioned earlier on in this essay. Kozinets even mentions that workers from silicone valley are sent by their companies to get “Inspired” and to network with members of the creative industries at the festival. There are similar events to burning man in Europe that focus on new ways of contesting the mass market values, such as Fusion Festival in Germany and Boom Festival in Portugal.

In The Rebel Sell, Heath and Potter argue, drawing on Frank (1998), that the idea of mainstream culture and counter culture is a false dichotomy. They argue that rather, all consumption culture is driven by that same search for individuality, ‘coolness’ and rebellion against the conformist, orthodox system. In their description of counter movements, they use examples such as 80’s punkers and the hippies of the 60’s and 70’s (Heath, Potter, 2006). I would argue that they are right; If we presume that the idea of counter culture has all to do with standing out and being an individual then there is no distinction between consumer and counter culture. The consumer market and the branding of products is targeted towards the masses, which is logical as that is where profit can be made by companies who act on that rationale. When counter cultures are based on wearing and consuming that which is deemed outside the norm, or showcasing individuality and subversiveness in terms of appearance and image, there can be no counteraction to the consumer culture, especially considering the othering of minority groups and the rampant colonialization of cultures that aren’t dominant in mass society. Bell Hooks describes how the dominant cultural elites always have longed for the exotic experience that will bring them back to a romanticized and constructed idea of what primeval community means. She describes this as imperialist nostalgia for primitivism (Hooks, 1992, 369).

In conclusion, I would argue that it is evident that lifestyle brands use conceptions of the ‘other’ to sell products by appealing to dominant groups of the mass market longing for the exotified, romanticized, authentic, lifestyles that are depicted as in contestation of the rationalized, modern society. Brands do this by for example marketing co-opted cultural markers such as ethnic clothing and through the pinkwashing and use of those sexual practices, which are made ‘other’, and by appealing to consumer’s identity projects in search for distinction and individuality and longing for freedom from capitalist modes of existence. It is clear that counter culture is sold as individualized lifestyle projects and subsequently that the concept of counter culture needs to be reimagined in terms that are including for all and that don’t exclude and exploit marginalized groups for the pleasure of dominant fractions of society.

Bibliography:

Boden, S. J Williams, S. (2002) Consumption and emotion: The romantic ethic revisited. Sociology - The Journal of the British Sociological Association, 36 (3)

Botterill, J. (2007). Cowboys, Outlaws and Artists: The rhetoric of authenticity and contemporary jeans and sneaker advertisements. Journal of Consumer Culture.

Boyle, D. (2004). Authenticity: Brands, fake, spin and the lust for real life. Harper Perennial; New Ed edition.

David, C. (2008) Marketing blackness: How advertisers use race to sell products. Journal of Consumer Culture, Jul 2008; vol. 8: pp. 245-268 – how hip hop becomes mainstream

Frank, T. (1997) The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Guinon, C. (2004) On being authentic. Routledge.

Commercial Cultures in Global Capitalism SO240-15 Student ID 1317747

Heath, J. Potter, A. (2006) The Rebel Sell: How the counterculture became consumer culture. Harper Collins Publishers Canada.

Holt, D. (2002) Why do brands cause trouble? A dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding. Journal of consumer research.

Hooks, B. (1992) “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”. Black Looks: race and representation. Boston, MA, South End Press.

Said, Edward. (1994) Orientalism. New York: Vintage Advertisements mentioned:

Dior 2000:

http://media3.popsugar- assets.com/files/2011/03/09/5/166/1668379/df9408a6fd704919_4d770e458b7 0.jpg http://fashionindustryarchive.com/Campaigns/Dior-Campaign-SS-2000-Gisele- Bundchen-and-Rhea-Durham-by-Nick-Knight/PHOTOS/Thumbs/Dior-Campaign- SS-2000-Gisele-Bundchen-and-Rhea-Durham-by-Nick-Knight-051641.jpg http://s50.radikal.ru/i128/0907/b9/47d2986e55f8.jpg

Apple :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdjAX5A-6qE

[joyfullychaotictraveler-blog]

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Culture of Misogyny: Objectification of Womanhood Among Gay Male Communities - Abby

After discussing misogyny among gay men in class, I happened to come across an article on Jezebel, “The Myth of the Fag Hag and Dirty Secrets of the Gay Male Subculture” (1). The author, Rohin Guha discussed his experiences as a gay man in communities of other gay men, and attempts to unpack the layers of how gay men perpetuate misogyny within and among their communities, many of which are isolated from women to begin with. 

Guha discusses many of the things we talked about in class such as touching women without their consent, using words like “bitch” and “ho” but he also applies what he calls the “diva worship culture” in communities of gay men. He describes this phenomenon as the way in which gay men elevate women in entertainment such as Beyoncé or Lady Gaga as “goddesses,” but in the process, commodify and objectify them, stripping them down to a brand rather than a human being. He states:

“Gay male culture requests womanhood when it comes in the form of some kind of frothy entertainment commodity–where we are asked not to actually think about the woman herself, but the made-up packaged product before us. Divas are objects; women are not.”

This commodification of women perpetuates an idea of an “acceptable” version of femininity that can only be achieved by these performers, while continuing to disregard women and feminine presenting people, including other gay men. Acceptable femininity is reserved for those who have been approved by a capitalist approach specifically refined to target acceptable gay male culture. Conversely, however, gay male identity is also dependent on proper constructions of masculinity, and through that, patriarchal standards. Within gay communities, the ideal partner is traditionally masculine or “masc-acting,” comes across as “straight-presenting,” and rejects femininity, in a way that directly reproduces the dominant paradigm of heteronormative gender roles. To be masculine, or “straight passing” in such a way allowing men to assimilate into the dominant culture, is the goal, and misogyny is part of the solution. To be properly masculine is to be misogynist.

In addition, there is a related unspoken belief that by virtue of being gay, men are allowed access to women’s bodies in a way that straight men are not. “It’s alright, I’m gay,” is seen as a catch-all, as an acceptable excuse to touch, judge, and degrade women’s bodies without consent, which Guha attributes to the fact that, “Mainstream culture has sanctioned gay misogyny against women as winky, as part of the package of characteristics that "gay people just have." This access to women’s bodies is seen as a normal and acceptable part of being a gay man, rather than casual misogyny, or in some cases, even sexual harassment or assault. 

I found another piece in my research of this topic titled “Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies” (2). by Yolo Akili. He states:

“There is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign.” This is an element of rape culture that is often pushed by the wayside when discussing consent, overlooked by the discussion of incapacitation and perceived heterosexual male aggression, but this is the ultimate act of complicity. Rape culture is inextricably linked with oppression, as rape is not a product of desire, but an attempt to exert power. Brushing aside sexual assault because the perpetrator is not or was not sexually attracted to the victim is an explicit example of the way women are taught that their bodies are not our own, and that allowing others to break their personal boundaries is their own fault. Akili discusses an experience he had when facilitating a workshop with a group of students, where he asked the gay men in the room to raise their hand if they had touched a woman without her consent in the past week, and saw every one of them raise their hands. Many gay men, particularly young gay men, have bought into the idea that because they experience oppression for their sexuality, they can ignore the ways in which they benefit from patriarchy. It is so ingrained in the culture of masculinity that they can avoid acknowledging that they perpetuate the same aspects of oppression (3).

So the question I am left with, and the tie in to this blog about identity, is why are gay men so willing to buy into and defend an identity that is so actively misogynist? It is one thing for gay men to not recognize the privileges from which they benefit as their sexuality becomes more accepted in mainstream society, but what purpose does the undermining of women and rejection of all things feminine serve, other than the reproduction of toxic masculinity? I would posit here that the gay male identity that we are currently being fed by media, advertising, pornography, etc. is rooted in capitalist and homonormative depictions of what it means not only to be gay, but also how to be a man, of which misogyny is a significant part. 

To be a proper gay man, it is a requirement to prioritize your sexuality and avoid thinking about the priveleges you receive by virtue of your other identities. To be a proper gay man is to resist womanhood that does not fit in your “diva” box. To be a proper gay man, you must assimilate.

  References

(1) Guha, R. (2014, January 25). The Myth of the Fag Hag and Dirty Secrets of the Gay Male Subculture. Retrieved May 2017, from http://jezebel.com/the-myth-of-the-fag-hag-and-dirty-secrets-of-the-gay-ma-1506868402?utm

(2) Akili, Y., & Zemsky, R. P. (2012, November 18). Gay Men's Sexism and Women's Bodies -. Retrieved May 2017, from https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/gay-mens-sexism-and-womens-bodies/#wOOLJOo22cr09rbc.01

(3) Conway, K. (2017, March 24). Are All Gay Men Secret Misogynists? Retrieved May 2017, from http://www.xojane.com/issues/are-all-gay-men-secret-misogynists

[shirlleycoyle]

The Problem With ‘Porn for Women’

Pornhub launched a “porn for women” category last year, but the adult content monolith certainly isn’t the first or only corporate entity to identify a demand for “female-friendly” porn. Platforms like Bellesa, ForHerTube, and Sssh.com are now more accessible than ever, and that’s mostly a good thing. Women deserve affirming adult content that centers women’s agency and portrays them as active, consenting players enjoying realistic sexual experiences.

However, much of the rhetoric surrounding “porn for women” emerges from misguided assumptions and broad generalizations about the kind of porn women enjoy, and the kind of women who enjoy porn.

“The term ‘porn for women’ is problematic because a lot of porn does cater to an assumed cis male audience, and as part of the general porn consumer base women should feel free to select films from any genre,” artist and performer Courtney Trouble said. “In one way, creating a porn for women genre allows for a ‘men only’ genre to perpetuate itself. It just buys into an either/or dichotomy that doesn’t even begin to disrupt the foundational issues that create the market gap.”

A short history of porn for women

The idea that women watch porn isn’t new. In the early 1980s, director and producer Candida Royalle rose as an industry icon for her work creating adult films from a woman’s perspective. Lesbian production company Fatale Media and On Our Backs, the first woman-run lesbian porn magazine, also emerged as porn innovators around this same time. These pioneering enterprises sought to create porn that centered women’s physical pleasure—a rejection of the frenetic thrusting, oily bodies, and theatrics that defined mainstream porn for years.

These early woman-centered enterprises were part of a largely political movement for porn that freed women’s sexual expression from the male gaze.

“If you look back at the emergence of porn for women, or lesbian porn, or feminist porn, it was a call to arms, so to speak,” Lynn Comella, author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure said. “It was a desire for cultural intervention into a marketplace of images and discourses related to sex and sexuality that catered primarily to men.”

This era also marked a truly revolutionary moment in porn history.

“This was incendiary in the 1980s,” Sociologist and author Chauntelle Tibbals said. “Because although women had always been involved in content production, this was not generally acknowledged or understood by the viewing public.”

The social and political discourse surrounding this first wave of porn created by and for women eventually reached mainstream consumers and creators, inspiring cultural conversations in support of ethical porn, the importance of paying for porn, and the need for racial and gender diversity both in front of and behind the camera. Thanks in part to extensive media coverage and corporate interest in recent years, public discussions about women and porn are far less taboo, but still lack the depth and complexity necessary for a truly evolved cultural understanding.

“In 2019, women have more opportunities to find sexual commodities, products, materials, that are designed with them in mind, but the way in which they’re imagined as sexual consumers or porn consumers continues to be narrow, overall,” said Comella.

Generalizing the Female Gaze

Angie Rowntree, founder and director of Sssh.com, believes “porn for women” functions primarily as an SEO-friendly marketing term for mainstream tube sites. “It’s very misleading and dishonest,” Rowntree said. “The term puts women in a box, and it’s one I don’t particularly care for. ‘Women like these things, but not these other things.’ We’re pigeonholing people. It’s a huge injustice to the diversity of our desires.”

The same glowing media coverage that normalized women as porn consumers—as well as some of the language these sites sometimes use themselves—seems to assume that women as a whole are straight and cisgender. Porn site Bellesa claims on its website that it features “hot guys. Storylines. Natural bodies. Free erotic stories. Real orgasms.” On Sssh.com, Rowntree prefers terms like “female-focused” and “female-led” to distinguish Sssh.com’s content from male-oriented offerings, like a popular woman-on-woman category that includes a scene centered on same-sex marriage, though the images featured on the site’s homepage only depict heterosexual couples.

“It’s a huge injustice to the diversity of our desires.”

On most adult content sites, “porn for women” now occupies its own genre and aesthetic defined by soft lighting and vanilla sex, with a narrow view of what can—or should—turn women on.

Women in general have a widely varied and diverse set of sexual proclivities and expressions and enjoy consuming content in different ways,” Tibbals said. “In this way, current use of the phrase ‘porn for women’ is frustrating, as well as being generally dismissive and judgey in and of itself.”

Some of the most recent iterations of “porn for women” use marketing language that seems to uphold a sense of sexual respectability politics and moral policing. CEO Caroline Spiegel reportedly described her new video and image-free porn site Quinn as “a less gross, more fun Pornhub for women,” a description that suggests women who enjoy typical tube sites, or create content themselves, as deviant sexual outliers.

“This fits a larger historical framing of ideas, that women in particular need a certain amount of handholding. That, if we’re going to entice them to be sex toy consumers or porn consumers, then we have to lead them to our product very gently,” Comella said. “It suggests that women are easily ‘grossed out’, or they don’t have the fortitude of their male counterparts, they’re more delicate creatures, or they’re more easily offended.”

According to Trouble, creating a distinction between porn “for women” and “for men” also erases queer identity in consumers and performers alike.

“One big problem with this genre is that it exploits male bodies in a really corrupt way,” Trouble said. During the early 00s, Trouble launched nofauxxx.com to trade links and network with other adult content creators. There, Trouble met a producer on the who frequently bought pre-made gay porn content that was “straight enough” to resell on a separate porn site for women. “In this case, the producer was erasing queer identity to cater to a straight cis female audience. This isn’t subversive. It’s marketing. I do not see how it is any different than Bic making pink pens for women,” Trouble said.

Filmmaker Erika Lust doesn’t refer to her work as “porn for women” or market it as such, because she believes the term reduces women’s sexuality to a stereotype. She prefers the term “indie,” and creates adult films grounded in a feminist ethos instead of search engine optimization.

“I have always said I am a feminist, and naturally my values are injected in all what I do,” Lust said. “My cinema has my feminist values behind it, and I put female sexuality and pleasure at the forefront.”

Even as a soft, gentle aesthetic generalizes what women want out of a sexual experience, the appeal of friendlier, less seedy, feminist-oriented adult content can serve as entrypoint for many women exploring their sexuality and interest in porn—particularly those looking to avoid depictions of gratuitous violence or anonymized, identity-less sex.

“In the past, when I’d visited other porn sites, I felt like an intruder—like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be,” Michelle Shnaidman, CEO of female-focused porn content site Bellesa, said. “I wanted to see sexuality content that really related to my personal experience.” Bellesa features content that claims to center women’s pleasure and sexual agency, and curates videos based on user data indicating a wide range of sexual preferences as well as general trends.

According to Shnaidman, Bellesa users tend to prefer videos with strong storylines and narrative context, and the videos users consume tend to run longer in length than on other mainstream porn sites. “There is no excessive derogatory profanity, exorbitant moaning and screaming, fake orgasms, or objectifying narratives. There is no violence,” Shnaidman said.

Controversy around ‘porn for women’ and ‘feminist porn’

The language of empowerment, feminism, and ethics make great selling points, but porn for women isn’t immune to the many industry-wide traps producers purportedly work to avoid. Originally, Bellesa’s video platform allowed users to find and share content from other sites, but accusations of stolen content soon followed after its launch in 2017.

“We were, unintentionally, disempowering the people who create the content in the first place quite at odds with our core mission,” Shnaidman said. Bellesa plans to launch their own production company in the near future, which Shnaidman said will follow ethical practices regarding talent safety and compensation.

Rowntree, a longtime veteran of the adult industry, is keenly aware of widespread issues with content piracy. “Everyone in this industry is at risk of having their content stolen, regardless of genre. It’s just the sad truth,” Rowntree said. Sssh.com produces most of their own content, which is available for streaming only, digitally fingerprinted, copywritten, and blocked by a paywall. Rowntree also maintains a direct relationship with the producers and filmmakers whose curated content appears on the site. “We have had success with this method and have been able to significantly slow down the piracy process,” Rowntree said.

The cultural conversations sparked by the #MeToo movement also raise questions about sexual consent practices in the porn industry, including producers of feminist porn and porn geared toward women. In 2018, adult performer Rooster came forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Lust Films, including incidents of boundary violations and poor working practices on set. In a detailed account on their personal website, Rooster writes that director Olympe de G. allegedly dismissed his request for a break during a masturbation scene. Rooster proceeded with the scene, unsure if pushing the issue or refusing to shoot would damage their reputation.

Lust denied Rooster’s allegations of sexual abuse and assault on set, citing Lust Films’ zero-tolerance policy against sexual harassment, abuse, or violence. However, she acknowledged that de G. may not have handled the incident appropriately. “It can be argued that this incident was not a good example of best director practice in the production of a film set, but it is certainly not sexual abuse nor assault,” Lust said.

The ‘basic facepalm’ of porn for women

Catering to a heteronormative, mainstream view of feminity and female preference can leave some consumers with limited options that ignore the scope and diversity of women’s sexual expression and lean on gender stereotypes. Many women enjoy gay porn, or even ultra-violent porn, but this reality isn’t easily marketable.

“Therein lies the basic facepalm quality of ‘porn for women,’” said Tibbals. “All women? No. Nothing can meet the needs of all women, as all women have very diverse interests.” Porn that is truly created to break the stigma surrounding women and porn must first stop stigmatizing itself.

“What would be more successful is to create genres of porn that are transparent about which of their scenes depict masculine domination, or other factors that may present themselves to be undesirable to an audience that’s seeking something ‘feminine focused,’” said Trouble. “These words really mean nothing, so to just be able to read an actual description of what’s happening in the porn you’re buying—one that’s written by the producers or curators and accurately represents the performers and performances—that’s powerful. Then people of all genders can make informed decisions based on what they want to see.”

The Problem With ‘Porn for Women’ syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[shirlleycoyle]

The Problem With ‘Porn for Women’

Pornhub launched a “porn for women” category last year, but the adult content monolith certainly isn’t the first or only corporate entity to identify a demand for “female-friendly” porn. Platforms like Bellesa, ForHerTube, and Sssh.com are now more accessible than ever, and that’s mostly a good thing. Women deserve affirming adult content that centers women’s agency and portrays them as active, consenting players enjoying realistic sexual experiences.

However, much of the rhetoric surrounding “porn for women” emerges from misguided assumptions and broad generalizations about the kind of porn women enjoy, and the kind of women who enjoy porn.

“The term ‘porn for women’ is problematic because a lot of porn does cater to an assumed cis male audience, and as part of the general porn consumer base women should feel free to select films from any genre,” artist and performer Courtney Trouble said. “In one way, creating a porn for women genre allows for a ‘men only’ genre to perpetuate itself. It just buys into an either/or dichotomy that doesn’t even begin to disrupt the foundational issues that create the market gap.”

A short history of porn for women

The idea that women watch porn isn’t new. In the early 1980s, director and producer Candida Royalle rose as an industry icon for her work creating adult films from a woman’s perspective. Lesbian production company Fatale Media and On Our Backs, the first woman-run lesbian porn magazine, also emerged as porn innovators around this same time. These pioneering enterprises sought to create porn that centered women’s physical pleasure—a rejection of the frenetic thrusting, oily bodies, and theatrics that defined mainstream porn for years.

These early woman-centered enterprises were part of a largely political movement for porn that freed women’s sexual expression from the male gaze.

“If you look back at the emergence of porn for women, or lesbian porn, or feminist porn, it was a call to arms, so to speak,” Lynn Comella, author of Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure said. “It was a desire for cultural intervention into a marketplace of images and discourses related to sex and sexuality that catered primarily to men.”

This era also marked a truly revolutionary moment in porn history.

“This was incendiary in the 1980s,” Sociologist and author Chauntelle Tibbals said. “Because although women had always been involved in content production, this was not generally acknowledged or understood by the viewing public.”

The social and political discourse surrounding this first wave of porn created by and for women eventually reached mainstream consumers and creators, inspiring cultural conversations in support of ethical porn, the importance of paying for porn, and the need for racial and gender diversity both in front of and behind the camera. Thanks in part to extensive media coverage and corporate interest in recent years, public discussions about women and porn are far less taboo, but still lack the depth and complexity necessary for a truly evolved cultural understanding.

“In 2019, women have more opportunities to find sexual commodities, products, materials, that are designed with them in mind, but the way in which they’re imagined as sexual consumers or porn consumers continues to be narrow, overall,” said Comella.

Generalizing the Female Gaze

Angie Rowntree, founder and director of Sssh.com, believes “porn for women” functions primarily as an SEO-friendly marketing term for mainstream tube sites. “It’s very misleading and dishonest,” Rowntree said. “The term puts women in a box, and it’s one I don’t particularly care for. ‘Women like these things, but not these other things.’ We’re pigeonholing people. It’s a huge injustice to the diversity of our desires.”

The same glowing media coverage that normalized women as porn consumers—as well as some of the language these sites sometimes use themselves—seems to assume that women as a whole are straight and cisgender. Porn site Bellesa claims on its website that it features “hot guys. Storylines. Natural bodies. Free erotic stories. Real orgasms.” On Sssh.com, Rowntree prefers terms like “female-focused” and “female-led” to distinguish Sssh.com’s content from male-oriented offerings, like a popular woman-on-woman category that includes a scene centered on same-sex marriage, though the images featured on the site’s homepage only depict heterosexual couples.

“It’s a huge injustice to the diversity of our desires.”

On most adult content sites, “porn for women” now occupies its own genre and aesthetic defined by soft lighting and vanilla sex, with a narrow view of what can—or should—turn women on.

Women in general have a widely varied and diverse set of sexual proclivities and expressions and enjoy consuming content in different ways,” Tibbals said. “In this way, current use of the phrase ‘porn for women’ is frustrating, as well as being generally dismissive and judgey in and of itself.”

Some of the most recent iterations of “porn for women” use marketing language that seems to uphold a sense of sexual respectability politics and moral policing. CEO Caroline Spiegel reportedly described her new video and image-free porn site Quinn as “a less gross, more fun Pornhub for women,” a description that suggests women who enjoy typical tube sites, or create content themselves, as deviant sexual outliers.

“This fits a larger historical framing of ideas, that women in particular need a certain amount of handholding. That, if we’re going to entice them to be sex toy consumers or porn consumers, then we have to lead them to our product very gently,” Comella said. “It suggests that women are easily ‘grossed out’, or they don’t have the fortitude of their male counterparts, they’re more delicate creatures, or they’re more easily offended.”

According to Trouble, creating a distinction between porn “for women” and “for men” also erases queer identity in consumers and performers alike.

“One big problem with this genre is that it exploits male bodies in a really corrupt way,” Trouble said. During the early 00s, Trouble launched nofauxxx.com to trade links and network with other adult content creators. There, Trouble met a producer on the who frequently bought pre-made gay porn content that was “straight enough” to resell on a separate porn site for women. “In this case, the producer was erasing queer identity to cater to a straight cis female audience. This isn’t subversive. It’s marketing. I do not see how it is any different than Bic making pink pens for women,” Trouble said.

Filmmaker Erika Lust doesn’t refer to her work as “porn for women” or market it as such, because she believes the term reduces women’s sexuality to a stereotype. She prefers the term “indie,” and creates adult films grounded in a feminist ethos instead of search engine optimization.

“I have always said I am a feminist, and naturally my values are injected in all what I do,” Lust said. “My cinema has my feminist values behind it, and I put female sexuality and pleasure at the forefront.”

Even as a soft, gentle aesthetic generalizes what women want out of a sexual experience, the appeal of friendlier, less seedy, feminist-oriented adult content can serve as entrypoint for many women exploring their sexuality and interest in porn—particularly those looking to avoid depictions of gratuitous violence or anonymized, identity-less sex.

“In the past, when I’d visited other porn sites, I felt like an intruder—like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be,” Michelle Shnaidman, CEO of female-focused porn content site Bellesa, said. “I wanted to see sexuality content that really related to my personal experience.” Bellesa features content that claims to center women’s pleasure and sexual agency, and curates videos based on user data indicating a wide range of sexual preferences as well as general trends.

According to Shnaidman, Bellesa users tend to prefer videos with strong storylines and narrative context, and the videos users consume tend to run longer in length than on other mainstream porn sites. “There is no excessive derogatory profanity, exorbitant moaning and screaming, fake orgasms, or objectifying narratives. There is no violence,” Shnaidman said.

Controversy around ‘porn for women’ and ‘feminist porn’

The language of empowerment, feminism, and ethics make great selling points, but porn for women isn’t immune to the many industry-wide traps producers purportedly work to avoid. Originally, Bellesa’s video platform allowed users to find and share content from other sites, but accusations of stolen content soon followed after its launch in 2017.

“We were, unintentionally, disempowering the people who create the content in the first place quite at odds with our core mission,” Shnaidman said. Bellesa plans to launch their own production company in the near future, which Shnaidman said will follow ethical practices regarding talent safety and compensation.

Rowntree, a longtime veteran of the adult industry, is keenly aware of widespread issues with content piracy. “Everyone in this industry is at risk of having their content stolen, regardless of genre. It’s just the sad truth,” Rowntree said. Sssh.com produces most of their own content, which is available for streaming only, digitally fingerprinted, copywritten, and blocked by a paywall. Rowntree also maintains a direct relationship with the producers and filmmakers whose curated content appears on the site. “We have had success with this method and have been able to significantly slow down the piracy process,” Rowntree said.

The cultural conversations sparked by the #MeToo movement also raise questions about sexual consent practices in the porn industry, including producers of feminist porn and porn geared toward women. In 2018, adult performer Rooster came forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Lust Films, including incidents of boundary violations and poor working practices on set. In a detailed account on their personal website, Rooster writes that director Olympe de G. allegedly dismissed his request for a break during a masturbation scene. Rooster proceeded with the scene, unsure if pushing the issue or refusing to shoot would damage their reputation.

Lust denied Rooster’s allegations of sexual abuse and assault on set, citing Lust Films’ zero-tolerance policy against sexual harassment, abuse, or violence. However, she acknowledged that de G. may not have handled the incident appropriately. “It can be argued that this incident was not a good example of best director practice in the production of a film set, but it is certainly not sexual abuse nor assault,” Lust said.

The ‘basic facepalm’ of porn for women

Catering to a heteronormative, mainstream view of feminity and female preference can leave some consumers with limited options that ignore the scope and diversity of women’s sexual expression and lean on gender stereotypes. Many women enjoy gay porn, or even ultra-violent porn, but this reality isn’t easily marketable.

“Therein lies the basic facepalm quality of ‘porn for women,’” said Tibbals. “All women? No. Nothing can meet the needs of all women, as all women have very diverse interests.” Porn that is truly created to break the stigma surrounding women and porn must first stop stigmatizing itself.

“What would be more successful is to create genres of porn that are transparent about which of their scenes depict masculine domination, or other factors that may present themselves to be undesirable to an audience that’s seeking something ‘feminine focused,’” said Trouble. “These words really mean nothing, so to just be able to read an actual description of what’s happening in the porn you’re buying—one that’s written by the producers or curators and accurately represents the performers and performances—that’s powerful. Then people of all genders can make informed decisions based on what they want to see.”

The Problem With ‘Porn for Women’ syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/