This comes from Goddesss’ Blog, Goddess isn’t in porn, she is a fan, someone who has been friendly to this biz for a long time, she is plainly middle America, baby boomer and from Pennsylvania’s third district, that’s where the Department of Justice has chosen to indict Rob Black, porners should read this and keep these words in mind.
I was reading AVN’s Blog and they were talking about NYU Professor of Women’s Studies Chyng Sun’s essay, Revisiting the Porn Debate. Then Nina Hartley immediately went on to refute everything Professor Sun said. I’ve never felt this way before, but I honestly feel there has been a line drawn in the porn industry from within. That line separates the porn that is good clean sexy fun–or what I refer to as the “old porn”—from the new porn that leaves you with the impression that women are garbage that you can fuck and toss away. How could you possibly compare, for instance, “Wicked Sensations” to a Kahn Tusion video? In Wicked Sensations, John Leslie’s biggest concern was getting some heat back into his dull sex life. In “old porn” choking happened when you ate too quickly.
I don’t feel this is a matter of “were the women degraded while filming?”. If they’re willing to be paid to do that, so be it. I can’t delve into their psyches and try to figure out why they consent to do what they do. That’s their job.
I’m more concerned with the end product, and with the impression it gives men about women and how to treat them. Nina makes it seem as if outrageous videos are such a small part of the industry. Really? Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like pushing the envelope has been fueling the industry for the last five or six years. And if it isn’t, it doesn’t much matter because that’s the part of the industry that’s getting all the media attention.
To my knowledge, Nina has never even acted in the types of videos she’s now defending, so does she have an accurate view of things? She says in her piece, “It’s not all Bang Bus…” which would imply there’s a difference, huh? But then she never goes on to address that issue. What about Bang Bus? How does she feel about the “new” porn? Would she herself agree to be choked, for instance? You know, if it was integral to the plot. <wink wink>
Acutally I shouldn’t even ask that question because I can almost guess what Nina would say. She’d give the standard rhetoric. “While I personally would not like to be choked I will defend the rights of others who do enjoy it” because that’s what people ALWAYS say when they know they have to defend ALL the idiots who are in the same business they are, otherwise, no one would be in business. I admire more than anything the people IN the business who are against these sorts of vids and who speak out about it. And I didn’t hear any of that in Nina’s column.
Personally, I just don’t feel comfortable defending porn as a whole anymore.
I always find myself separating the old from the new, and I’m more than happy to stick with the old, thank you. And that’s my oh so humble two cents.
One comment that Nina made in her essay stuck in my throat. She said, “What does Professor Sun propose sex workers do instead of addressing their economic challenges with what resources they possess, go to Harvard? The real choices that present themselves in modern America to a young woman with a high school education and no class advantage are often far less appealing than sex work. Perhaps she thinks we should choose the dignity of minimum wage jobs, early pregnancies and abusive marriages over the relative autonomy we enjoy as independent tradespeople.”
Well, hello, Nina. A hell of a lot of people in this country have minimum wage jobs and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. And it sure as hell doesn’t deserve to be equated with something as abhorrent as “abusive marriages” . It’s nice to know the only options open to a person in this country with a high school diploma are minimum wage jobs, abusive marriages or sex workers.
