Have any questions or comments related to class or otherwise? If so, fire away.
Thursday mail - December 12th.
Have any questions or comments? If so, fire away.
New male birth control?
From io9:
A male birth control pill that causes a temporary vasectomy By George Dvorsky
It's the 21st century and men still don't have a birth control pill to call their own. But now, scientists from Britain and Australia have figured out a way to prevent sperm from escaping during the moment of ejaculation — and without affecting sexual function.
To date, most attempts at creating a male birth control pill have focused on the development of sperm or hormonal techniques to produce dysfunctional sperm. Problem is, those approaches tend to create various health problems for men, including reduced libido or permanent alterations to the way the body produces sperm. Worst of all, some methods even cause males to transmit detrimental changes to future offspring.
But the new technique, which is described in a recent edition of PNAS, targets the autonomic nervous system. It doesn't affect the long-term viability of sperm, nor the health of males. In fact, men would keep on producing sperm as per usual, it just wouldn't join the ejaculate. It's like a vasectomy in a pill, but one that's easily reversible.
Working with mice, the researchers disabled two specific components in the nervous system (specifically, the P2X1-purinoceptor and α1A-adrenoceptor) that prevent sperm from leaving the vas deferens (a kind of holding area in the testes just prior to ejaculation). Basically, they produced mice that couldn't squeeze the sperm out of their vas deferens.
After the treatment, these mice were 100% infertile and no deleterious effects to their sexual behavior or function could be detected. The sperm looked completely normal and the mice were able to produce healthy offspring. Well, to be completely accurate, the mice did experience a slight drop in blood pressure — a side-effect that has the researchers slightly worried about potential human applications. That said, it's being seen as an important find.
"[This provides] conclusive proof of concept that pharmacological antagonism of the P2X1-purinoceptor and α1A-adrenoceptor provides a safe and effective therapeutic target for a nonhormonal, readily reversible male contraceptive," write the authors in the study.
The next step will be to find a pair of drugs that work in humans. One may already exist in the form of a drug that treats benign prostate enlargement, but the other will have to be made from scratch — a process the researchers say could take another ten years.
Read the entire study at PNAS: "Male contraception via simultaneous knockout of α1A-adrenoceptors and P2X1-purinoceptors in mice".
Gates Foundation funds development of a better condom.
From the Verge:
Gates Foundation announces grants to start building a better condom By Casey Newton
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will fund research into next-generation condomsthat people can use more effectively to reduce unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. The foundation said it will award a pair $100,000 grants to researchers working on improving condoms, two of 81 grants it announced this week improve global health and development.
One grant goes to Benjamin Strutt and a team from Cambridge Design Partnership in the United Kingdom, who are building a male condom out of a new composite material "that will provide a universal fit and is designed to gently tighten during intercourse, enhancing sensation and reliability," the foundation said. The other grant goes to South Africa's Willem van Rensburg, who is building an applicator called the Rapidom designed to make it easier to put on condoms. The applicator is "designed to be applied with one motion," according to the foundation, "thereby minimizing interruption."
The awards were given as part of the foundation's Global Challenges Explorations, which tackle health problems around the world. Grants were also given to projects focused on making research data easier to share, increasing the productivity of female farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, and the control of tropical diseases, among others. A full list of the award winners can be found here.
Art: Vaginal Knitting.
From the Huffington Post:
'Vaginal Knitting' Is The Latest Feminist Performance Art - But Does It Open Discussion Or Close It? By Brogan Driscoll
Meet Casey Jenkins, the feminist performance artist - or 'craftivist' as she prefers to be known - taking the internet by storm with her latest work 'Casting Off My Womb', where she spends 28 days knitting from her vagina.
Yes, you read that correctly. Vaginal knitting.
"I'm spending 28 days knitting from wool that I've inserted in my vagina," Casey explains. "Everyday I take a new skein of wool that's been wound so that it will unravel from the centre and I stick it up inside me... and then I pull out the thread and knit."
The piece, dubbed 'Vaginal Knitting' by Australian TV channel SBS2Australia, hopes to break down boundaries surrounding a taboo subject: the female genitals.
"If you take a good, hard look at a vulva, you realise it's just a bit of a body. There's nothing that is shocking or scary... nothing that is gonna run out and eat you up," she says.
The performance hopes to be an honest exploration of the female body and an unflinching demonstration of its capabilities - Casey admits that the knitting can be arousing at times and vows to not stop knitting, even when her period comes.
"The performance wouldn't be a performance if I were going to cut out my menstrual cycle from it," she reasons.
According to Gawker, Casey and her peers at Craft Cartel work to combat misogyny and closed government through their art.
"I hope that people question the fears and the negative associations they have with the vulva," Jenkins says.
Read the rest here.
And the video (a little bit NSFW):
More PostSecrets.
in Humour Etc.
Many more here.
Cannibal porn.
From the New York Village Voice:
Eat Me! A weekend among suburban cannibals By Katharine Gates
[…]
Cannibalism has existed around the globe and throughout history, but perhaps only in the 21st century has it become an erotic lifestyle. For tribal peoples, ritual anthropophagy was a way for the living to incorporate the powers of the dead. Christians symbolically consume the flesh and blood of Jesus as a means to experience communion with their God. But in 2001, a German computer programmer named Armin Meiwes killed, butchered, and ate a man he met in an online chat room for cannibal "fetishists." Meiwes's victim gave his videotaped consent to the procedure, even requesting his own penis as a last meal. Since the arrangement was consensual, the German judge sentenced Meiwes to only eight and a half years in prison [ed: this sentence was later increased to life in prison].
For every Armin Meiwes there are probably thousands of self-described cannibal fetishists who never intend to kill or be killed—they only want to consume erotic stories, photographs, and videos showing humans as meat. Muki's Kitchen (mukiskitchen.com - very NSFW!!), the commercial porn site where I saw the human suckling pig, claims to sell hundreds of its photo portfolios a month (although thousands of visitors a day download the free previews). Gurgurant, a computer programmer who has been seeking "woman-eaters" like himself since the Internet's beginning, tells me that for every person who actually buys cannibal porn, there are hundreds of others who post on dozens of cannibal chat rooms and message boards. Any estimate of cannibal numbers would have to include "femcans" (men who want to be eaten by women), queers of all colors and tastes, and those who have yet to get online. Judging from my weekend visit, erotic cannibals are ordinary bourgeois kinksters. They might view cannibal porn and have vanilla sex, they might role-play online, or they might even oil up their wives in the privacy of their bedrooms, but they would never consider acting on their fantasies in anything but a safe, sane, and consensual manner.
[…]
"The reality of cannibalism would never live up to the fantasy," says Mr. Muki, smoking a postprandial pipe in the small courtyard outside of the studio. He's 45, with a short beard, nerdy glasses, a gray mullet. "If you really were going to eat somebody you'd have to behead them. You'd have to clean them out," he explains. "You'd have to skin them because humans have sweat glands—they're not like chickens! But sex is all about skin!" He continues, "I think boobies are just great, but there's nothing edible in a boob. It's glands and fat. So that goes! This is getting pretty unattractive." In other words, Mr. Muki likes his meat tasteful. "I want it to be presented beautifully, like a Hollywood picture."
What made the photo shoot I witnessed unusual is that the main course was not simply another porn model from L.A.—she is a bona fide "meatgirl," a woman who wants to be eaten. Meghan Vaughan, a 31-year-old artist living in Cincinnati, flew to L.A. to act out her fantasy of being served on a platter. She's among the half-dozen or so women, by Gurgurant's count, who have come out online as meatgirls, and while Mr. Muki claims that as many as 15 percent of his customers are female, Meghan is the only one to pose for the cannibal public. To Muki's male customers she is a dream come true, that exceedingly rare woman who actually gets off on fulfilling the fantasy they've lived with all their lives.
Read the rest here: link.
Thursday mail - December 5th.
Have any questions or comments related to sex or sexuality? If so, fire away.
New TLC show: The Man with the 132-Pound Scrotum.
I'm not particularly comfortable with these styles of shows as they seem very exploitative (at least, to me). But I thought this might be of interest, given the discussions we had in class about anatomy and how it can influence our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, and our behaviour. I can't imagine what this experience must have been like for Mr. Warren.
From TLC:
This is the extraordinary story of Wesley Warren Jr, a 49-year-old Las Vegas resident who is living with a rare medical condition called scrotal lymphedema. His scrotum has grown so large that he is unable to walk normally, go to work, drive a car, or even wear pants.
While the cause of Wes’ scrotal lymphedema remains a mystery to doctors, he has been living with this painful condition since 2008. According to Wes, it all began one night with sharp shooting pain. Afterward, the tissue around his testicles began to swell and has been growing bigger ever since.
With his scrotum now so large that it’s making everyday tasks a challenge, he’s on a desperate mission to find a doctor who can perform the life-saving surgery he needs in order to get his life back.
And some clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyNkqfDLY5o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiFzfiOVG4A
Porn stars before and after: Fantasy versus reality.
in Pornography
Pornography, in general, it's meant to be fantasy. This is what the consumer wants. While this typically has to do with the behaviour depicted, it is also relevant when considering how the performers look. Much like in mainstream, non-pornographic media, performers undergo aesthetic transformations to make them more appealing to potential consumers (or, at least, what presumably most find appealing). Melissa Murphy is one of the most successful makeup artists in the California porn industry. To show off her work, she posts photos of the performers whose makeup she has done. Some of the photos are before and after. Here are some samples:
Retired sex worker can't get work.
From the Huffington Post:
Dear God, I Need a Job: The Struggle to Find Employment After Sex Work By Eric Barry, Comedian, writer and creator of the 'Full Disclosure' sex podcast and blog.
Right now I'm scared. I'm terrified. I have not had steady employment in over three years. I've burnt through my entire 401(k). I'm on food stamps. I've paid my last two months' rent on a credit card, and have no means to pay this month's.
For the life of me I can't seem to get a job. On average, I apply to about 10 a day. From copywriting gigs to my local grocery store, most inquiries go unanswered. For those jobs which I seem an impeccable match for, even garnering a form rejection letter feels like a win.
It hasn't always been like this. I used to work for Google. I used to work for Goodby, the most acclaimed ad agency in the world. I graduated from UC Berkeley in two and a half years.
At 23 years old, I was making $74,000 a year -- considerably more than my peers. But it never felt right. I wanted to think that my years of hard work and scholastic aptitude had led me to a place of both personal and monetary satisfaction, but the truth of the matter is that nearly every morning when my alarm went off, the first words out of my mouth were "fuck me."
[…]
You see, I was a sex worker when I was in college. I had sex with men for money. If I held back on my podcast -- if I was unwilling to express my own vulnerabilities, if I was scared or ashamed to reveal who I was -- what did it say about those who I was asking to do the same? Nearly every person I've interviewed who's been a sex worker is exceptionally intelligent, well-rounded, and ambitious. But they've all used fake names because they're terrified of what may happen should their personal identity ever be revealed. They're worried they may never find work if they leave the sex industry.
I wanted to change that. I decided to lose the pseudonym and come out publicly about being a straight male who was a gay escort. I wanted to show the world that sex workers can be educated, intelligent, well-adjusted people. People who went to Berkeley. People who worked at Google.
And now that information was out there, at one with the foreverness of the internet. And it was googleable. And that's why I think I was fired.
Go read the rest here.
Research: Life of a (UK) Call Girl.
in Sex Work
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some brilliant data from Jon Millward on porn actors and actresses (link here). He also conducted a fascinating study of escorts and call girls a couple of years ago. From his blog:
Life of a Call Girl: Fantasy vs. Reality
In the final weeks of 2011, I delved once more into the secretive world of the UK sex industry.
This time my focus wasn’t on men who pay for sex, but the women who supply it. So I reached out to hundreds of British escorts with one request: tell me about your life. And—on the condition that their words remain anonymous—they did.
[…]
A hundred questions about the escort way of life sprang to mind. How did they get into the business? Which are their favourite sex acts? Do they lie about their age, or to their friends and family about what they do? What is the craziest thing a client has requested? I wanted to strip fantasy from reality and find out what it’s really like to be a courtesan, an escort, a working girl, a prostitute…
Making Contact
There are roughly three kinds of ‘working girl’ in the UK. The first can be found on the street. She is the classic prostitute: a night-worker, selling sex to men who pass in cars and on foot. She has low prices and high risks. The next works in a parlour or brothel alongside other women and she does ‘incalls’—men visit her place of work and she provides them with a massage and a happy ending of one flavour or another. The last is the escort. She mostly does incalls but in her case the men flock to her apartment to indulge in pre-booked sessions of varying durations. The escort will either belong to an agency, which advertises her services, sends clients her way, and takes a cut of the money, or she’ll run everything herself—as an independent.
It was the independent UK escorts I decided I’d contact, for two reasons. My hunch was that I wouldn’t have much luck asking agencies to pass on my request to their catalogue of courtesans. I thought it would be better to bypass the middleman and reach out directly to the women I wanted to contact. The other reason was one of convenience. I knew that only a certain percentage of women I contacted would end up contributing to my research, so it was vital I get in touch with as many as possible—hundreds, in fact. I found three massive directories of independent UK escorts and set about harvesting their contact details. This is a good way of acquiring email addresses, but it isn’t strictly legal or respectable. In fact it’s tantamount to spamming, but I couldn’t think of any other option. I’d be as polite as possible in my email, make it clear that my intentions were strictly honourable, and hope for the best.
Go read the rest here.
And the resulting infographic (click to make larger):
Documentary: Meet the Fokkens.
in Sex Work
From the Huffington Post:
Meet The Fokkens: A Portrait Of 69-Year-Old Prostitute Twin Sisters Louise And Martine
By Sara C Nelson
It’s the oldest profession in the world, and this sexagenarian prostitute duo have apparently clocked up more than 50 years each between the sheets.
Identical twins Louise and Martine Fokken began their careers working for a pimp, but soon branched out to run their own brothel in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. They are also credited with setting up one of the first informal trade unions for prostitutes.
The 69-year-olds feature in Meet The Fokkens a documentary to be shown at New York City’s Film Forum on August 8. It is planned for general distribution thereafter.
Although Louise threw in the towel owing to arthritis two years ago, (“I couldn’t get one leg over the other,” she laments), Martine is still plying her trade.
As Louise explains in the film's official trailer: “She needs the money. You can’t live off a state pension.”
Additional clips feature one of the sisters gleefully exclaiming: “I can’t tell you how many tricks we’ve had – countless,” as the pair browse vibrators in a sex shop.
Another scene sees Martine applying lipstick while calling out to an unseen man: “I’m almost there, did you hear me?”
“Yes mistress”, comes the muffled reply, to which Martine nods, muttering “Good boy”.
Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands and the tale of these two sisters has promise of being a heart-warming, cheerful affair, in an industry with a less than savoury reputation.
The sisters are wholly candid about their profession, with Louise voicing her continued support to Martine: “You did the work, you’ve been a whore. You’ll never get rid of that name.
“They’ll always call you names, so be one.”
As a last tease, the trailer sees the pair hoisting their matching red dresses over their knees and dancing a jig outside their Amsterdam home with their faithful Chihuahua standing by.
"This is the story we wanted to tell," directors Gabriëlle Provaas and Rob Schröde said in a statement reported by ABC News.
In a statement on the film’s official website, Louise comes across as wistful for past times, reminiscing: "In the old days, the local copper would tap on the window if a girl was showing too much ankle, now the girls deal coke from their cubicles."
And the trailer:
Giving sex workers the support they need.
From the Guardian:
Sex workers need support – but not from the 'hands off my whore' brigade
Prostitutes need better allies than French men focused on their own sexual freedoms – but too often, feminists only make their lives harder.
By Selma James
The 343 French intellectual men who signed a statement – "Hands off my whore" – defending their right to buy sexual services has infuriated women and caused wide controversy. Not only does it tell us what they think of sex workers, but of women generally and particularly what they think they can get away with saying publicly at this moment in time.
I have just signed a feminist statement opposing France's attempt to criminalise clients. The proposed law would impose a €1,500 fine on those paying for sex, double for a second offence. My motive for opposing it is entirely different from that of these men – not men's sexual freedom but women's ability to make a living without being criminalised and deprived of safety and protection. Driven further underground, women would be at the mercy of both those clients who are violent and those police who are sexist, racist and corrupt and like nothing better than to persecute and take advantage of "bad girls". For this is the inevitable consequence of such laws. Sex workers are the first to suffer from any proposals that make it more difficult, and therefore more dangerous, to contact clients.
The fact is that sex workers have not been able to count on prominent feminists to support their long struggle for decriminalisation. Instead, establishment feminists have spearheaded attempts by governments to make it harder for women to work. Their stated aim is to abolish prostitution, not to abolish women's poverty. That is an old story and it is painful that it is now enhanced with feminist rhetoric: disguising its anti-woman content by proposing the criminalisation of men.
Read the rest here.
Thursday mail - November 28th.
Have any questions or comments? If so, fire away.
New research: Decreasing frequency of sex associated with electronic devices in bed.
From the CBC:
People having less sex because of social media distractions: study by Jennifer Dunning
Next time you're feeling frisky, consider leaving your smartphone or tablet out of the bedroom.
A new study out of the U.K. suggests Britons are having less sexbecause they are distracted by social media and are taking their portable technology with them into the bedroom.
The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found that, between 2010 and 2012, men aged 16 to 44 had sex 4.9 times a month, and women of the same age range 4.8 times a month.
For men, this compares to:
- 6.2 times a month from 1999 to 2001
- 6.4 times a month from 1990 to 1991
For women, this compares to:
- 6.3 times a month from 1999 to 2001
- 6.1 times a month from 1990 to 1991
"We... think modern technologies are behind the trend. People have tablets and smartphones and they are taking them into the bedroom, using Twitter and Facebook, answering emails," Dr. Cath Mercer of University College London told BBC.
Brits not getting enough nookie? The study's sexual nature has quickly become fodder for jokes online.
If someone has to step up to the challenge, I guess i will have to volunteer. RT Britons having sex less often
-- Mark Leiser (@mleiser) November 26, 2013
The results of the study, which is done every 10 years, was published in The Lancet Tuesday.
More than 15,000 adults aged 16 to 74 participated in the study between September 2010 and August 2012.
"Two previous ... surveys have taken place, in 1990 and 2000, making it one of the biggest and most comprehensive studies of sexual behaviour undertaken in a single country," according to The Lancet.
Researchers say unemployment is also a factor that contributes to Brits having sex less often because it can result in depression followed by low libido -- but technology is a definite part of the equation.
"At the other end of the scale iPads and computers have all breached the boundary between the home and the bedroom," said professor Kaye Wellings, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which helped interview participants.
James Deen on being a male pornstar.
in Pornography, Sex Work
From Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon.com:
[...]
This isn’t the first time I’ve watched this man have sex and, if you’ve recently browsed online porn, chances are you’ve seen him before too. At 25, after just seven years in the game, he’s one of the most visible men in the industry. I think of him as a cold, brutish performer — but when he hears that I want to interview him, he comes right up with a warm smile on his face and juts out his hand to introduce himself. As I find when we go back to Kink’s headquarters to chat, he is thoughtful, self-effacing and polite. After a quick shower, he meets me in a conference room barefoot, wearing plaid pajamas and sipping from a bottle of apple juice. He looks more like a kid ready for a bedtime story than the man I watched hock a loogie on a bound, naked woman an hour ago. I notice that his eyes, which are usually upstaged by his aggressive performances, are such a delicate, piercing blue that it just might excuse his choice of pseudonym.
While periodically lifting his shirt to show me the fresh bug bite swelling on his chest, we talk about sex as art, Viagra, fake orgasms and why people should never try to have sex like a porn star.
[...]
The guys at the shoot were coming up to you and saying, “Oh man, you have the best job in the world,” which is something I’m sure you hear a lot. Is the job really as great as they think?
Mhmm, yeah, it is. Every now and then I’ll work with a girl who is doing this just for the money and doesn’t want to kiss, doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t want to do anything other than get her paycheck. But it’s so rare. For the most part, everybody that is in porn now really genuinely wants to do porn. Nowadays, girls will come out of high school and say, “I’m gonna be the next Jenna Jameson! I’m gonna be a sexual creature of desirability for the world and it’s gonna be amazing!” I think it’s awesome that’s happening. It’s very rare that I meet girls who are like, “I just need to get drunk. I’m just doing this because I have to.”
You have so many men, and women, making assumptions based on your movies about what normal or hot sex looks like. What does it feel like to be influencing the way that people have sex?
That’s way more responsibility than I want. We do stuff for the camera, we are having sex for the people at home, so not necessarily everything that we do feels good. I once did a magazine interview where they asked me for tips on how to have sex like a porn star and one of my biggest pieces of advice was, don’t. The key to sex is that you need to communicate with your partner about what they’re into and what they’re not into. If you’re trying to have sex like a porn star, you’re not — [a guy walks by carrying a giggling, limp girl in a bathrobe up the stairs]. I think somebody made someone come until they couldn’t walk. But, yeah, if you’re going to try to have sex like a porn star you need to make sure that the person you’re having sex with wants to be fucked like a porn star. I really hope I don’t have that responsibility of teaching people how to have sex.
Read the rest of the interview here.
The dark side of the porn industry.
in Pornography, Sex Work
From an insightful account of being a mainstream straight and gay gonzo porn director posted at AlterNet:
Why I Had to Stop Making Hardcore Porn By Sam Benjamin
[...]
But in due time, I came to learn that within the context of the heterosexual L.A. industry, while my overt task at hand was to make sure that the girls got naked, my true responsibility as director was to make sure the girls got punished. Scenes that stuck out, and hence made more money, were those in which the female “targets” were verbally degraded and sometimes physically humiliated.
[...]
What surprised me most though, was the fact that I found within myself a happy willingness to be violent, a willingness to degrade. Though my bosses may have ordered me to organize and record the scenes of degradation, I followed their orders, and not without pleasure. Something cowardly within me, an internal space, suffused with a weak kind of anger, felt satisfied when I saw a woman “take her punishment.” I clung to the sense of temporary empowerment I found through the bullying. Lust-colored aggression and the satisfaction of making “good money” guided me through scene after scene.
[...]
Gay porn, in fact, was so goddamn simple that it approached a type of Zen beauty. I mean, this was guys taking on guys, in every shape and form imaginable, for the most part in good humor and absent-minded lust. They may have stuck to roles of “tops” and “bottoms,” but in the dressing room, we all seemed equals, on the same team. Everyone laughed at me for being a straight guy shooting gay porn. Some tried to entice me to jump in front of the camera for kicks. But we all laughed about it. We all seemed like friends. The sadness and the degradation I had come to associate with my job, with videotaped sex for money, was suddenly absent.
[...]
Even so, I don’t regret my decision to work in porn. I regret how I acted within it, and wish that I had been driven more frequently by compassion than instinctive cruelty. But on its most basic level, pornography is neither evil nor noble. It is a sexual means to a solitary end, and for most, porn simply represents a harmless way to spend a half-hour: a bit of lust-inspired drivel that, done right, can serve a very practical purpose.
Moreover, within the world of heterosexual pornography, it’s clear that not every scene is degrading. Some are directed by women, others by alt-porn types who fancy a pink mohawk and maybe a bit of plot more so than your average everyday, run-of-the-mill gangbang; many films, happily, are simply produced by people who don’t seem propelled by anger. Some are just plain damn sexy.
At its worst, though, porn can represent with shocking clarity the inability of a modern society to empathize. We are living in an increasingly individualistic, over-privatized, fragmented society, and it's not going to get any better any time soon. Perhaps the character of our generation will be judged in how we react to the images that run before us on our screens: do we wish for the objects of our desire to be punished, humiliated? Or treated with respect? The answer is in our collective consciousness. It is up to us.
Read the rest of his account here.
More PostSecrets.
More Stoya on porn.
in Attitudes, Pornography, Sex Work
From a Vice article on feminism and porn:
As entertainment, mainstream pornography is no more responsible for educating viewers about sexual health and etiquette than Lions Gate is responsible for reminding kids that it’s actually not OK to kill each other despite what they may have seen in The Hunger Games. It isn’t Michael Bay or Megan Fox’s job to mention in every interview that giant robots from outer space are fictional, nor is it the job of every pornographic performer to discuss the testing protocols we use or how consent is given before shooting. I do feel the need to discuss these sorts of things, and there are other performers like Jiz Lee, Danny Wylde, and Jessica Drake who seem to feel a similar need to highlight the context already available for adult films and provide further context.
But what about the wider reaching cultural effects of pornography? I can’t entirely discount the accusation that seeing a video in which I go from giving a blowjob directly to being pounded in the ass has inspired the occasional man to rudely shove his penis into his partner’s rectum without discussion or care. Whoever those guys are, they could probably use a refresher in the difference between TV and real life. In contrast to these butt-burgling-boogey-jerks are the messages I get every week saying that seeing my body or vagina portrayed as some kind of sex symbol made someone feel more comfortable about their own body. Also, the people who’ve said they didn’t realize that things like syphilis can still be transmitted even with a properly used condom and now see the benefit of regular testing and asking to see the tests of their partners in addition to barrier use.
As long as I continue to enjoy performing in pornography and the positive social effects seem to outweigh the negative ones I’m going to keep doing it, but let’s not pretend that performing in mainstream porn is any sort of liberating act for all womankind.
Read the rest here.