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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Future of Sex Starts Tomorrow

filed under: Erotic Elite by Melissa Gira | 6 Comments

Join me live in streaming video special to the Club of Amsterdam’s conference on The Future of Sexuality, Thursday November 29th, at 9:30am Pacific (18:30 CET). I’ll be discussing & taking questions on sexuality in the information age, from my new flat in San Francisco via Skype to wherever you may be. That means you can stay in bed and watch, and that I may do my lecture from my very own, as well.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Does One Need To Be Chokefucked To Be a Reliable Porn Expert?

filed under: Erotic Elite, Theory Fetish by Melissa Gira | 2 Comments

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?

Monday, October 15, 2007

Web Porn Zen: Wikipedia, You Have the Right to Objectify Me

filed under: Erotic Elite, Web Sex Index by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

As found on the blog of postmodern pornstar Tatum Reed: “I, Tatum Reed ackowelege [sic.] the public domain and license of the above photograph taken in New York City, May of 2007.” Is Reed still working out her notoriety with Wikipedia users? Her argument for her entry’s continued existence is that her media appeal is as mainstream as it is pornographic (see this archived discussion for evidence: “Keep Reluctantly. Tatum Reed is indeed a minor celebrity in the San Francisco Bay area. There are a number of independant articles about her written and easily accessed. Her being a prostitute (as well as a porn actress) is immaterial. I think she is just well-known enough of prostitute to make the cut.”).

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Cult of True Prostituted Womanhood

filed under: Erotic Elite by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Why do debates around prostitution fall apart so completely? Laura Agustin, author of the new book Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, offered this in an interview with Susie Bright this week:

Traditional prostitution debates are theoretical, focusing on the abstract question of whether selling sex can be considered a job— or must be defined as violence against women. Often debates seem to be a search for a single moral truth, in which the words of the subjects themselves are irrelevant.

Those committed to stopping commercial sex are certain of their own ideas and don’t trust those of anyone who actually works in the sex industry. They accuse people like me of selling out to patriarchy, being paid by pornographers, or being a pimp, and they accuse professional sex workers of having false consciousness or being irrelevant elites. They believe there is an essence that all biological women have in common— and they know what that essence is. They feel comfortable talking about women’s experiences across all cultural and linguistic boundaries. Fundamentalisms are on the rise, and this is one of them.

All the irrelevant elites in the sex wars, please stand up.