Who are our master porn experts? We’ve had classy theorists (and class favorites might be Laura Kipnis and Linda Williams), activist thinkers (two from the Libertarian camp alone being Nadine Strossen and Wendy McElroy), and not the least of which, porn star philosophers (Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, and Nina Hartley make a representative triumvirate). Lest we forget the oft-labeled antiporn contingent, your MacKinnons and your Dworkins and then your more recent throwbacks (Pornified, anyone?) and questionable skeptics (hello, Female Chauvinist Pigs).
But the folks the laypeople hear from are most likely those who got porn expertise from, it would seem, their virtue of being able to have a heated, soundbite-driven debate about porn…
… or being addicted to porn…
… and sometimes (if they’re uber-businessmen about it, or can act as decently repentant women) from having worked in the porn industry itself:
So who are the real porn experts?
While it may be easy, easy to limit critique of pornography to its end product, to get dirty with the production of pornography itself? Not done so often. It’s foolish to believe pornography may be understood without examining the rules of the industry, too — porn is as much a matter of labor as it is media.
Porn is huge, and the story of porn that penetrates into the full-on economy of porn has yet to be told, and will not, cannot be told, without all of porn’s players in collaboration.
That is, you can’t critique pornography’s content for being dehumanizing, boorish, risky, or uninspiring without an analysis of the industry that creates it: both the working conditions within porn, and the social forces at play that shape what the industry produces, markets, and, we know this, sells and sells well. It’s not enough to complain that some porn performers have little awareness of sexual health (assumed based on their on-camera activities, not their medical histories), or that porn pushes a fake sexuality, or that porn hurts people, or that porn hurts you.
Then the question that remains is, if we could be sold healthy, real sex, would most of us even buy it?
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What about Susannah Breslin?
http://reversecowgirlblog.blogspot.com/
It was Warren Ellis & Susannah’s back and forth on “who ruined sex?” that inspired this post — I linked them both the day before I wrote this, but I erred not linking them here, as well.
And hi, Lori!!
i was thinking about this the other day.
well, not exactly this, but close enough.
that there is what is availible,and your druthers.
people say you can find anything online. i have found that not to be true.
the first time you run across a girl who likes it rough, or public, or other things too specific not to embarrass somebody.
she’s sexy,and better, enthusiasticas hell about it. it’s hard not warm your hands at it.
if you are not carefull, you will develop an itch of your own.
sex is not a settling thing, but porn tends to be.porn you gotta take what there is ,unless you make your own. idon’t mean this oedipally,
but your mommas biscuits are what biscuits are sposed to taste like. repetition makes it so.i wonder if porn makes the same impression. the sexy enthusiasm is usually missing, but there is always pretty and nekkid to make it palatable. i druther see a giggling woman,reaching out to me one more time. happy, glowing, goosebumped. she’s just had an idea, and it itches
the few movies i have shot like that, i can’t imagine wanting to show a moment that beautiful, that private to strangers.
but anybody ever came up with a site like that, they could pull my pockets inside-out.
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