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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?

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Work Your Racial Fetishization Out On the Mat

filed under: Theory Fetish by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

“Want to watch some fetish this morning?”
“Mixed wrestling, that is rich. I wonder if am a monster, the people behind me who can see my screen are talking about Apartheid reconciliation.”
“Make that suggestion. More mixed wrestling.”
“Yes, Gandhi’s granddaughter, who I met, and was stewarding the effort in South Africa at the time, would, in all her non-violence, be all about it I am sure.”