I’m having way too much fun, thanks to a very tiny conference. As many of you know, two weeks ago I heard about the feminist anti-porn conference happening this weekend called “Future of Pornography 2010” (from org Stop Porn Culture), and started a response Facebook page, launching the Our Porn, Ourselves website the following monday. I also made this video over the same weekend. While the conference is extremely small by my standards (their high attendance is 500; my last conference *audience* was 2,000), I was surprised that such a small group could be speaking for the populations they claim to represent. I was also astonished to see mainstream/corporate media go on to repeat their biased anecdotal research as fact.
I decided to look at it as an opportunity to unpack an organization such as this, and confront the larger anti-porn arguments they tout.
We have a contest underway; make a pro-porn video of any kind and soak up the free goodies. This photo is from Miss Maggie Mayhem. This video just came in from Beijing, China:
A few days ago, Audacia Ray posted a thoughtful piece on the issues this has brought up in the media and in online sex-positive circles. Read Picking Your Battles, Going the Distance: Pro-porn and Anti-porn Feminisms. It’s crystal clear that the Boston Herald’s opinion writer didn’t read it (or much of anything else) in the opposition’s battle squeak, Porn in the USA: Women’s group take sides (great comment from Madison Young). At the end of Audacia’s piece she says she’d rather not waste her time arguing with these loons, and I feel her on that. But then I gave it some thought. (I know Dacia, I’ve interviewed her, spent time with her) I wanted to say that if Audacia ever did want to face off with these women who are thin on real-life facts, Dacia would wipe the floor with them in two minutes flat. Without breaking a nail, as it were. She’d do it while tweeting and checking her FB status updates, and making a grocery list.
Why do I think this? For starters, we’re talking about a conference that has a workshop called “Anti-Pornography Organizing on the Internet.” And no Facebook page, nor a Twitter account — or up until two days before their third annual conference *could* have had a Stop Porn Culture Twitter account. For me, this is amateur hour. But like I said, it’s about the bigger picture that we’re all hanging up here for everyone to see.
Why else do I know the Boston Herald did not do their homework? Audacia nailed it when she wrote:
Violet Blue is entangled with this debate on porn as a critic – this is an important fact. She’s never produced porn or (to my knowledge) taken money from the mainstream porn biz. She’s actively posed as a nude and fetish model in her own creations and the creations of her friends and colleagues. She’s been a vocal advocate of women’s rights to consume porn, as well as a harsh critic of a lot of the truly awful porn that the mainstream industry spits out. This is important because there are plenty of people involved in the mainstream hetero porn world who are proponents of free speech being generously applied to the adult industry (dicey legal construction of “obscenity” be damned!), but their commitment to free speech is more about protecting their business interests than being renegade First Amendment advocates. Violet is very much not one of the motivated-by-porn-profit people, her interest in porn is actually about having an interest in the sexualities of women. But I would love to see her, and the other folks who are standing up and proclaiming themselves to be pro-porn, to incorporate a critique of the awful stuff in porn, especially the business practices that put performers in risky work and sex situations. (more)
This part is important. Look, I can’t count how many times AVN has written hit pieces about me, opinion items that villainize me and suggest I have different names, a minimal body of work, etc. (shit that isn’t true, and is hateful troll-bait). The very mouthpiece of the adult industry has attacked me when I’ve written and reported about adult industry racism, has attributed my work (my books) to other people, and deliberately skewed media representation of the facts and events surrounding my lawsuit. The adult industry does not like me. And I’m very cool with that; at minimum for the very reasons that it makes the Boston Herald oh so wrong.
I am none of these things.
But Audacia got it right. So, enough about me. Let’s talk about porn. It’s far more interesting. Three things in closing, and then I’ll be bugging you with videos from pro-porn supporters all weekend, along with my usual blogging:
* The anti-porn people have messages about harm that speak to very real concerns that all of us have about pornography. This new page Concerns About Porn covers popular myths about porn: info about porn addiction, multiple articles about porn and rape/sexual violence, and examines degradation, desensitization and all the scary things that make us genuinely concerned about the effects of porn. Read it: it’s now reference material. Yay! (Been wanting to create this resource for a long time.)
* Self Serve Toys made this kick-ass video about porn, and why anti-porn pundits (I’m looking at you, Steve) are out of touch with modern pornography. Superb!
* To get ready for the start of tomorrow’s conference, I just posted Furry Girl‘s painfully hilarious Anti-Porn BINGO card. Print and play! Everyone wins!
See, this is too much fun for me. Don’t I have a like a few books to write or something right now? (Answer = yes.)
Photo of 5733 artwork by my friend Thomas Hawk.
