The reality of porn.

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From the Scavenger:

What is ‘fake’ and ‘real’ in the sex industry?

Porn has hijacked our sexuality, according to anti-porn author Gail Dines. Her sentiment is not unlike that of other ‘raunch culture’ commentators – the sex industry is damaging because it represents ‘fake’ pleasures and ‘fake’ bodies. Both queer and feminist communities have produced porn/magazines/performances aiming to represent desires, bodies and acts that are ‘authentic’, ‘genuine’, ‘documentary’ and ‘real’. But is this line between ‘fake’ and ‘real’ so clear-cut? Zahra Stardust explores the issues.

by Zhara Stardust [bio in link at bottom]

As someone who works in the sex industry – in spaces that purport to be ‘real’ as well as spaces that are accused of as being ‘fake’ – it seems like there is no distinct line between the two. As someone who works with a body that is sometimes perceived as ‘real’ and other times read as ‘fake’ – it seems that the bodies which move across these spaces are equally fluid.

As someone whose pink bits have been airbrushed in magazines, but which have also been on explicit display; who performs both with and without make-up; whose ‘real’ name is my stage name, distinctions between ‘fake’ and ‘real’ don’t always make sense.

[…]

At the same time, websites that purport to depict ‘real’ or ‘redefined beauty’, often seem to be just as conventionalised as the mainstream genres they criticise. ‘Alternative’ nude modelling site Suicide Girls gives calculated instructions on their website about the kinds of photos, make-up and aesthetic sets they accept: ‘tasteful’, ‘picture perfect’ shoots with ‘a little bit of face powder and mascara and freshly dyed hair’, but specifically not ‘cheap wig[s]’, ‘top hats’, ‘stripper shoes’, ‘food’ or things that look ‘cheesy’, ‘gross’ or ‘creepy’.

Similarly, the ‘girl next door’ look of the Australian all-female explicit adult site Abby Winters represents an alternative to glamour photography, featuring make-up-less, ‘amateur’ adult models – but models are still required to cover up hair re-growth, remove piercings, and not have any scratches, marks or mosquito bites for the shoot in order to appear ‘healthy’.

Other sites I’ve shot for speak about the importance of models representing their ‘own’ sexuality, but then go on to qualify: “We might get you to tone down the eye make up a bit”, “Maybe don’t talk about politics”, “Lesbians don’t really use double-enders do they?” One company asked me repeatedly to stop wearing frills.

In doing so, these sites produce bodies of a particular class, size and appropriate femininity, which are marketed as ‘real’, but which are equally constructed, conventionalised and cultivated. This fear of replicating ‘cheesy’, ‘predictable’ mainstream porn means that depictions of ‘real’ sexuality are often similarly clichéd, albeit with a different set of aesthetics.

[…]

Sure, we may play with, embody and embrace hyper-femininity, but we are no less ‘authentic’, or political, or real, because our lip gloss is hot pink instead of ‘nude’. We don’t need to ‘tone-it-down’ to be any more queer, radical or ‘real’. Our bodies may look ‘unrealistic’ to you, but the labour of preparing for work gives erotic performers a sentient, working knowledge of gender performativity.

Much of the time, our work is far from glamorous. I return from work with smudged mascara, sticky lube, patchy fake tan, knotty hair, smelling like sweat and vaginal fluid – and the customers experience this up close and personal. My vagina certainly isn’t airbrushed when I get it out at buck’s parties, complete with shaving rash, discharge and blonde hair caught in my clit ring.

[…]

The irony is that you can never win – ‘appropriate femininity’ is unachievable. We are either too much or not enough. Our hyper-femininity is often so far beyond normative feminine ideals that it brings us social censure – our make-up is too thick, our heels are too high, our breasts are too large. As Rosalind Gill writes about women in media, our “bodies are evaluated, scrutinised and dissected” and are “always at risk of “failing.”

Read the rest here.

Female (sex-related) aggression.

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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society just released an entire issue of the journal devoted to female aggression (you can read all the articles for free by clicking here). It has drawn substantial attention. For example, the New York Times summarized some of the findings in an article entitled, A Cold War Fought by Women, written by John Tierney. Here are some excerpts:

[…]

The existence of female competition may seem obvious to anyone who has been in a high-school cafeteria or a singles bar, but analyzing it has been difficult because it tends be more subtle and indirect (and a lot less violent) than the male variety. Now that researchers have been looking more closely, they say that this “intrasexual competition” is the most important factor explaining the pressures that young women feel to meet standards of sexual conduct and physical appearance.

[…]

To see how female students react to a rival, researchers brought pairs of them into a laboratory at McMaster University for what was ostensibly a discussion about female friendships. But the real experiment began when another young woman entered the room asking where to find one of the researchers.

This woman had been chosen by the researchers, Tracy Vaillancourtand Aanchal Sharma, because she “embodied qualities considered attractive from an evolutionary perspective,” meaning a “low waist-to-hip ratio, clear skin, large breasts.” Sometimes, she wore a T-shirt and jeans, other times a tightfitting, low-cut blouse and short skirt.

In jeans, she attracted little notice and no negative comments from the students, whose reactions were being secretly recorded during the encounter and after the woman left the room. But when she wore the other outfit, virtually all the students reacted with hostility.

[…]

The results of the experiment jibe with evidence that this “mean girl” form of indirect aggression is used more by adolescents and young women than by older women, who have less incentive to handicap rivals once they marry. Other studies have shown that the more attractive an adolescent girl or woman is, the more likely she is to become a target for indirect aggression from her female peers.

“Women are indeed very capable of aggressing against others, especially women they perceive as rivals,” said Dr. Vaillancourt, now a psychologist at the University of Ottawa. “The research also shows that suppression of female sexuality is by women, not necessarily by men.”

Stigmatizing female promiscuity — a.k.a. slut-shaming — has often been blamed on men, who have a Darwinian incentive to discourage their spouses from straying. But they also have a Darwinian incentive to encourage other women to be promiscuous. Dr. Vaillancourt said the experiment and other research suggest the stigma is enforced mainly by women.

“Sex is coveted by men,” she said. “Accordingly, women limit access as a way of maintaining advantage in the negotiation of this resource. Women who make sex too readily available compromise the power-holding position of the group, which is why many women are particularly intolerant of women who are, or seem to be, promiscuous.”

Indirect aggression can take a psychological toll on women who are ostracized or feel pressured to meet impossible standards, like the vogue of thin bodies in many modern societies. Studies have shown that women’s ideal body shape is to be thinner than average — and thinner than what men consider the ideal shape to be. This pressure is frequently blamed on the ultrathin female role models featured in magazines and on television, but Christopher J. Ferguson and other researchers say that it’s mainly the result of competition with their peers, not media images.

“To a large degree the media reflects trends that are going on in society, not creates them,” said Dr. Ferguson, a psychologist at Stetson University. He found that women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies did not correlate with what they watched on television at home. Nor were they influenced by TV programs shown in laboratory experiments: Watching the svelte actresses on “Scrubs” induced no more feelings of inferiority than watching the not-so-svelte star of “Roseanne.”

But he found that women were more likely to feel worse when they compared themselves with peers in their own social circles, or even if they were in a room with a thin stranger, like the assistant to Dr. Ferguson who ran an experiment with female college students. When she wore makeup and sleek business attire, the students were less satisfied with their own bodies than when she wore baggy sweats and no makeup. And they felt still worse when there was an attractive man in the room with her.

Read the rest here.

Recent research: People who practice BDSM.

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From LiveScience:

Bondage Benefits: BDSM Practitioners Healthier Than 'Vanilla' People By Stephanie Pappas

Despite the fact that their sexual preferences are listed in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as potentially problematic, people who play with whips and chains in the bedroom may actually be more psychologically healthy than those who don't.

A new study finds that practitioners of bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism, or BDSM, score better on a variety of personality and psychological measures than "vanilla" people who don't engage in unusual sex acts. BDSM is a sexual practice that revolves around those four fetishes.

BDSM is listed in the DSM-5, the newest edition of the definitive psychiatrist's manual, as a paraphilia, or unusual sexual fixation — a label that has caused controversy between kinky communities and psychiatrists, who themselves are mixed on whether sexual predilections belong in the catalog of mental disorders. As written, the DSM-5 does not label BDSM a disorder unless it causes harm to the practitioner or to others.

[…]

Healthy fixation?

None of the participants knew what the surveys were about, other than they were on "human behavior." All told, 902 BDSM practitioners and 434 vanilla (non-BDSM) participants filled out questionnaires on personality, sensitivity to rejection, style of attachment in relationships and well-being.

The researchers chose these baseline measures because previous research on those in the BDSM community has focused on dire outcomes — whether they're more likely to have mental disorders or report rape and abuse compared with the general public. (They aren't, studies have found.)

The new results reveal that on a basic level, BDSM practitioners don't appear to be more troubled than the general population. They were more extroverted, more open to new experiences and more conscientious than vanilla participants; they were also less neurotic, a personality trait marked by anxiety. BDSM aficionados also scored lower than the general public on rejection sensitivity, a measure of how paranoid people are about others disliking them.

People in the BDSM scene reported higher levels of well-being in the past two weeks than people outside it, and they reported more secure feelings of attachment in their relationships, the researchers found.

Of the BDSM practitioners, 33 percent of the men reported being submissive, 48 percent dominant and 18 percent "switch," or willing to switch between submissive and dominant roles in bed. About 75 percent of the female BDSM respondents were submissive, 8 percent dominant and 16 percent switch.

These roles showed some links to psychological health, such that dominants tended to score highest in all quarters, submissives lowest and switches in the middle. However, submissives never scored lower than vanilla participants on mental health, and frequently scored higher, Wismeijer told LiveScience.

"Within the BDSM community, [submissives] were always perceived as the most vulnerable, but still, there was not one finding in which the submissives scored less favorable than the controls," he said.

Read the rest here.

Insect homosexual behaviour.

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From The Dish: 

Uploaded by Homosexuality in Singapore on 2011-07-08.

The Buggery Of Bugs

Up to 85 percent of many insects have same-sex sex. Scientists trying to figure out if this is due to the same evolutionary reasons for widespread homosexual behavior across many species have decided it’s just about confusion. The dudes think other dudes are chicks – yes, all ants look alike even to ants – and they fuck anything that moves and looks fuckable:

“Insects and spiders mate quick and dirty,” Dr. Scharf observes. “The cost of taking the time to identify the gender of mates or the cost of hesitation appears to be greater than the cost of making some mistakes.” … Almost 80 percent of the cases of homosexual behavior appeared to be the result of misidentification or belated identification of gender. In some cases, males carry around the scents of females they have just mated with, sending confusing signals to other males. In other cases, males and females look so similar to one another that males cannot tell if potential mates are female until after they have mounted them.

So many Justin Biebers, so little time. But species with high rates of homosexual sex also tend to be more generally horny, with a penchant for humping beer bottles and … well, basically anything. So you can put it down to bonobo-levels of sex. Or we may not understand it fully yet:

It is also possible, however, that sexual enthusiasm in bugs is related to other evolutionarily beneficial traits, the researchers say.” Homosexual behavior may be genomically linked to being more active, a better forager, or a better competitor,” says Dr. Schart. “So even though misidentifying mates isn’t a desirable trait, it’s part of a package of traits that leaves the insect better adapted overall.” To confirm their theory, the researchers plan to study the conditions that make homosexual behavior more or less likely in bugs. They also want to look more deeply into male resistance to homosexual mating.

Yeah: what about bug homophobia? At what point does the buggered bug turn around and say, “Hey, wait a minute …”?

Parents sue over ban on conversion therapy.

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From Salon:

Family sues New Jersey for right to put their child in gay conversion therapy

A New Jersey couple is fighting to put their child in a discredited therapy to "cure" him of his sexual identity

By Katie McDonough

A New Jersey couple is suing their state over a law banning so-called gay conversion therapy, which they say is a violation of their free speech rights, freedom of religion and ability to parent their child “free from unconstitutional government interference,” which in this case means putting a 15-year-old high school student through a medically discredited pseudotherapy intended to “cure” him of his sexual and gender identity.

According to the complaint, the couple’s teenage son began “experiencing gender identity disorder when he was around nine years old,” at which point he started to see a social worker who “helped him tremendously” with his gender identity and “unwanted same-sex attraction.”

At the recommendation of this social worker, the family then contacted Ronald Newman, a member of the anti-gay Christian counseling group National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, but the state ban on the discredited practice prevented them from going forward with the counseling.

“John Doe has a sincerely held religious belief and conviction that homosexuality is wrong and immoral, and he wanted to address that value conflict because his unwanted same-sex attractions and gender confusion are contrary to the fundamental religious values that he holds,” according to the complaint.

The suit contends that the teenager has also struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts in the past, a sad and frightening fact since he doesn’t seem like he has the support necessary to seek the genuine help — including legitimate and medically credible therapy — that he needs any time soon.

Beyond Ex-Gay, a community of survivors of “sexual orientation change efforts” who abandoned the practice and the anti-gay, anti-trans worldview that comes with it, surveyed its members to find the top 10 reasons they entered ex-gay therapy in the first place, all of which, sadly, seem to be echoed in this case:

  • To be a better Christian.
  • I believed it was what God wanted me to do.
  • I feared I would be condemned by God.
  • The desire to fit in with everyone, to feel “normal.”
  • Cultural pressure to conform to heterosexuality.
  • Desire to please family and friends.
  • I feared I would go to hell for being gay.
  • Fear of losing family and friends.
  • Misinformation of what it meant to be gay.
  • Self-hatred & internalized homophobia.

New research: Obesity linked with early onset of puberty.

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From Science Daily:

Earlier Onset of Puberty in Girls Linked to Obesity

New research in Pediatrics shows obesity is the largest predictor of earlier onset puberty in girls, which is affecting white girls much sooner than previously reported.

Published online Nov. 4, the multi-institutional study strengthens a growing body of research documenting the earlier onset of puberty in girls of all races.

"The impact of earlier maturation in girls has important clinical implications involving psychosocial and biologic outcomes," said Frank Biro, MD, lead investigator and a physician in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "The current study suggests clinicians may need to redefine the ages for both early and late maturation in girls."

Girls with earlier maturation are at risk for a multitude of challenges, including lower self-esteem, higher rates of depression, norm-breaking behaviors and lower academic achievement. Early maturation also results in greater risks of obesity, hypertension and several cancers -- including breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer.

The study was conducted through the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Program, established by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science. Pediatrics is the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Researchers at centers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cincinnati and New York City examined the ages of 1,239 girls at the onset of breast development and the impact of body mass index and race/ethnicity. The girls ranged in age from 6 to 8 years at enrollment and were followed at regular intervals from 2004 to 2011. Researchers used well-established criteria of pubertal maturation, including the five stages of breast development known as the Tanner Breast Stages.

The girls were followed longitudinally, which involved multiple regular visits for each girl. Researchers said this method provided a good perspective of what happened to each girl and when it occurred.

Researchers found the respective ages at the onset of breast development varied by race, body mass index (obesity), and geographic location. Breast development began in white, non-Hispanic girls, at a median age of 9.7 years, earlier than previously reported. Black girls continue to experience breast development earlier than white girls, at a median age of 8.8 years. The median age for Hispanic girls in the study was 9.3 years, and 9.7 years for Asian girls.

Body mass index was a stronger predictor of earlier puberty than race or ethnicity. Although the research team is still working to confirm the exact environmental and physiological factors behind the phenomenon, they conclude the earlier onset of puberty in white girls is likely caused by greater obesity.

New research: Kissing.

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From the New York Times:

Now, a Kiss Isn’t Just a Kiss By Jan Hoffman

There are activities common to most humans that we enjoy immensely, without much thought, and as frequently as opportunity and instinct provide. On occasion, researchers feel they need to know why.

Recently, experimental psychologists at Oxford University explored the function of kissing in romantic relationships.

Surprise! It’s complicated.

After conducting an online survey with 308 men and 594 women, mostly from North America and Europe, who ranged in age from 18 to 63, the researchers have concluded that kissing may help people assess potential mates and then maintain those relationships.

“The repurposing of the behavior is very efficient,” said Rafael Wlodarski, a doctoral candidate and lead author of the study, published in Archives of Sexual Behavior.

But another hypothesis about kissing — that its function is to elevate sexual arousal and ready a couple for coitus — didn’t hold up. While that might be an outcome, researchers did not find sexual arousal to be the primary driver for kissing.

Participants in the survey were asked about their attitudes toward kissing in different phases of romantic relationships. They were then asked about their sexual history: for example, whether they had been more inclined toward casual encounters or long-term, committed relationships. They also had to define their “mate value” by assessing their own attractiveness. Later, during data analysis, the researchers looked at how individual differences affected a person’s thoughts on kissing.

[…]

The participants generally rated kissing in casual relationships as most important before sex, less important during sex, even less important after sex and least important “at other times.” (To clarify: researchers defined kissing as “on the lips or open-mouth (French).”)

Past research has shown that three types of people tend to be choosier in selecting mates who are genetically fit and compatible: women, those who rate themselves highly attractive, and those favoring casual sex. In this study, these people said that kissing was important mostly at the start of a relationship.

[…]

But other people might use different criteria to size up their mates: men, those who rate themselves as less sexually attractive, and people looking for commitment. In the grand search for a partner, these individuals screen for people who seem to have the inclination and resources for the long haul. And for them, this study showed, kissing has a lower priority at the beginning of dating.

[…]

Among the study’s participants who said they were in exclusive relationships, frequency of kissing, rather than of sexual intercourse, was best correlated with relationship happiness.

Read the rest here.

AR Wear.

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TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts in the reply section.

From Mashable:

Company Crowdfunds 'Locking' Anti-Rape Garments By Eva Recinos

The creators of a new clothing line featuring underwear and running shorts aim to help women feel safer on the streets.

AR Wear has been working on a anti-rape garments that women can wear discreetly, underneath their normal clothing. The idea is that customers can wear the AR underwear, for example, with a dress and leave for a night on the town feeling, potentially, a bit more secure.

The company designed the underwear with specific locks that keep it safely and tightly on the user and make it difficult for a stranger to forcibly remove it. The "skeleton structure," as the company's video describes, functions on certain parts of the garment to add protection by making those parts harder to move.

A set of so-called thigh locks make it so that the material over the leg openings are difficult to move after the user snaps them in place. The center of the underwear's waistband also contains a lock which only opens when a wearer sets two notches to a specific position, like the hands of a clock. Each pair of underwear is assigned a position out of up to 132 different combinations.

Mashable spoke with a representative of the company, who preferred the focus to stay on the product versus the identities of the people behind it. Ruth and Yuval, the main creators of the project, therefore declined to give their last names on the campaign or elsewhere.

"Our goal is to get a product out there that might be used by some people and prevent some rapes," said Ruth. "And possibly even make more awareness of the problems of rape culture."

The clothing adds new features to already existing clothing items so that women can incorporate them into an outfit.

"Basically you're putting in some straps and webbing that can't be cut ... and you connect that with the center panel and you miraculously end up with something that is comfortable," said Ruth. "And that was the really tricky part."

AR Wear currently features underwear and running shorts and the creators hope to apply the same techniques to "traveling shorts" in the future.

The team's Indiegogo campaign had raised $2,080 at time of writing, out of its $50,000 goal, with 28 days to go. Donations of $25 yield a 10% discount on any AR Wear purchase and a $100 contribution gives the largest discount of 30% per garment. The project, however, will only be funded if it reaches its goal.

The clothing line debut has not been without controversy, however. Aside from raising questions about whether or not it would even be effective during an assault, the Daily Dotpoints out that such an invention "subtly shifts the responsibility for avoiding rape from the attacker to the victim," among other problems.

From the Daily Dot:

Admirable. But these ideas for anti-rape clothing never go anywhere, and that’s because preventing rape has nothing to do with what a woman is wearing, or not wearing, and everything to do with the rapist and a culture of victim-blaming. Are panties with thigh locks really making us safer, or is every woman’s fear simply being exploited for profit?

And here's the promo video for the clothing line:

AR Wear - A clothing line offering wearable protection for when things go wrong. To our Indiegogo campaign page: http://igg.me/at/AR-Wear


Androgynous models and our definitions of beauty.

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Passed along by Lyore (thanks!):

I came across this article and found it really interesting.

It's a year old, but I only discovered it now. It's a short interview with the model Andrej Pejic who was the first transgendered model to be featured on the cover of a major fashion magazine (Elle).

I find it really interesting that Andrej doesn't define himself by the traditional concepts of sexuality and just sees himself as androgynous. In his interview he says that his gender is open to artistic interpretation and that he doesn't see himself as either male or female-gender is irrelevant to him. I also find it really cool that the fashion industry has been so open to transgendered models in the past few years even though it has been a bit controversial. It does make me wonder though if big fashion labels such as Jean Paul Gaultier have taken advantage of models like Andrej Pejic for media coverage and ultimately for their own benefit (other then just showing openness and acceptance in the fashion world to more ambiguous and non-traditional gender roles)

From the New York Daily News:

Androgynous model Andrej Pejic pushes gender boundaries on the cover of Serbian Elle magazine

Inside, the 21-year-old cross-dressing beauty, who defies categorization, wrestles with female and male versions of himself. “I’ve left my gender open to artistic interpretation,” Pejic once said.

By Carol Kuruvilla

The androgynous model French designer Jean Paul Gaultier called his “otherworldly beauty” is now an Elle cover girl.

Twenty-one-year-old Andrej Pejic is featured front and center on Serbian Elle’s January cover, the Telegraph reports. The cross-dressing model is fitted head to toe in Gaultier and trades in his trademark platinum locks for a choppy black wig.

Inside the magazine, he wrestles with male and female versions of himself in a feature named “Victor Victoria.” The female Pejic wears skimpy La Perla lingerie, while a more masculine side of Pejic looks aggressive in suits.

At a twiggy 5 feet, 11 inches tall, the hipless, chestless Pejic is a fashion designer’s dream. The versatile model has hit the runway in both men’s and women’s fashion shows.

Pejic doesn’t plan on having sex reassignment surgery. Whether he identifies as male or female doesn’t seem to be the point: Gender is irrelevant.

“I’ve left my gender open to artistic interpretation,” Pejic told New York Magazine. “It’s not like ‘Okay, today I want to look like a man, or today I want to look like a woman.’ I want to look like me.”

Pejic is the second model to push gender boundaries on Elle, transforming what the fashion world considers feminine. (Brazilian model Lea T wore Givenchy on Brazilian Elle’s cover in 2011.)

In 2011, Barnes and Noble censored an issue of a magazine in which Pejic appeared bare-chested on the cover.

But Pejic is no stranger to controversy. His mother is Serbian, and his father is a Croat, which placed his parents on opposite sides of the Bosnian war in the 1990s. A few months after his birth, fighting caused his family to flee to Melbourne, Australia. He was discovered at 17 while working at McDonald’s, the BBC reports.

See the rest of the photos here.

Lyore also sent along a Buzzfeed link to photos of several androgynous models. Check it out here.