The Porn Myth

In my travels across the internet I came across an interesting New York Magazine article written a few years ago by Naomi Wolf where she revisits Andrea Dworkin's arguments against pornography.

Ms. Dworkin foretold of an age, much like our own, where pornography was pervasive. The ubiquity of porn, in her opinion a dangerous entity that objectifies women, would lead to an acceleration of rapes and such and would incite violence against women.

Ms. Wolf went the opposite way with it. Her claim is that the increase amounts of porn in our lives hasn't led to Dworkin's nightmare world of constant rape and female enslavement but rather it as led to boredom. More Porn, dirtier porn, and lightening-quick access to it has made it easier than ever for a man find sexual satisfaction in a way that leaves flesh and blood women behind. The result is that men and human don't connect on the same level as they did before. Women for the most part have to try harder to live up to ramped-up sexual fantasies men now find standard. Men for their part understand women less. Real women aren't like porn women. Something gets lost in intimacy when Bang Bus is your guide to relating to women.

I'm an inclined to agree with Ms. Wolf's article to a point: Yes, all this porn has gotten us bored with sex. But it has enhanced my relations with women. Now I can only speak for myself, but I find that the fact that sex has lost a lot of its mystery to be liberating.

I feel that porn doesn't create what isn't there. Porn doesn't manufacture my sex drive; it merely appeases it. It quells a sexual urge that would've been there regardless of the stimulus. That means if it weren't for the the copious amounts of porn I've consumed over the years I would've been hard at work sublimating those desires one way or another. That would most likely mean directing it at real women. As it is I can maintain healthy sexual relations as well as a porn habit. It downright frightens what that would look like if there was no porn at all. I argue that I would objectify women more.

The way I see it, porn is a safety valve for my libido. The fact that I have such a thing means I can afford to think of real women as more than just sex objects. I can talk to her about her: who she is, what's she's done, who she wants to be. I'm not spending all my energy trying to get her to do anal or cum on her glasses or bang her and her best friend. I have videos for all of that. I am trying to get something I can't download: her mind, her smell, the her-ness of her. Isn't that what intimacy is? Of course I am only talking about myself. Maybe I'm different.

Shoes on Black Dudes

Something has been bothering me. I've been watching more Interracial porn lately. Several things about IR bother me a great deal and I'll touch on them in due time. What I want to harp on right now is relatively minor, yet peculiar neverthless.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who notices this. Why is it so common for the male talent to keep their shoes on? Is there an historic, cultural, or symbolic significance I'm missing out on? I would imagine it being a difficult thing to pull off. Think about it: you're on the set; right after the BJ, you got to get nude. You've got two options if you want to keep your shoes on.

1. You keep the shoes on while you pull your pants off, not an easy feat with most kinds of pants. Try it. I just did; I wear boot cut jeans and it's still a hassle.

or

2. You take your shoes off, remove your pants, then put your shoes back on.

In both cases there's reason to believe that if you see a dude naked with his shoes still on, he really wanted it that way. But why? You've got to admit the image is pretty silly. I've come up with several possible explanations:

A majority of black men, perhaps just the ones who do adult films, have ugly feet.

I'm looking down at my own feet. Yes, I'm now pantsless and shoeless. They're not the world's prettiest; they're a bit on the flat side and the toe joints have seen better days, but they don't make me self conscious enough to cover them up. Perhaps I'm an atypical example. I realize now, maybe for the first time, that I haven't spent a whole lot of time looking at guys' feet. I couldn't tell you what normal.

There is a segment of the IR audience with shoe fetishes.

I myself like to see women keep their shoes on during their scenes. And when you think about it, even though it's even easier for a girl to undress and keep her shoes on, it's just as ridiculous. The reason that's the standard is because there's a lot of dudes who get off on that (or maybe it's the other way around). Is it implausible to assume there's a group of paying customers who feel that way about shoes on black guys? I just wonder what focus group they dig that up from.

It's signifying.

It's a black thing. It's a black porn star thing. So even if you were black you wouldn't get it because you do your screwing behind close doors and you haven't cum on a girl's face since high school. Maybe it's a ritualism that sprouted spontaneously out of the IR community, a way to distinguish themselves from others. I wonder if Henry Louis Gates Jr has written about this yet.

The reason could be absolutely practical.

I've found that black people in general tend to be more hygienic than whites. I'm not trying to be racist, although I suppose it's ultimately unavoidable when discussing IR. Poorer people in general (not dirt poor, but working class and lower-middle class), and blacks in particular, especially blacks from the South or from the islands, tend to be more finicky about cleanliness. Personally speaking, I've known plenty of white people who'll skip and shower or two, sit on a couch with their feet tucked beneath them, kiss their dogs, or walk into a gas station bathroom barefoot. And I know vastly more black people who are disgusted with them. It's not unreasonable to believe that cats with that kind of upbringing would find walking around barefoot on a porn set to be the height of filth, no?

If you have theories of your own please let me know. In the meantime try to remember the last time who've seen a white porn star keep his shoes on. If you can, it's only like one or two. And the the point.

American Porn

Today was a quiet spring Sunday and I spent it the way Sundays like this are meant to be spent: lazing about at home in front of the computer watching episodes of Frontline. The first one was an analysis the financial meltdown, then I moved on to an episode about the exploding meth epidemic, and before you know it I was watching American Porn.

American Porn is a captivating look at the porn industry by the people at Frontline. Though it is beginning to look dated (it was shot a millennium ago, back in 2002), it reminded me of several facts about the state of porn today.

The most salient point, the one that stuck out in my mind, is that our present exposure to porn, in volume, variety, and level of "depravity," is unprecedented in human history. The power of the internets is only part of the equation that has made this scenario so. A lack of obscenity prosecutions during the Clinton Administration and the calculated efforts by the porn industry to infiltrate itself into the mainstream have also played a part.

We are the first generation to have near instant access to damn near anything you could think of (See: Rule 34). For better or worse we don't know the long term effects of that kind of exposure. What's more, judging by the rise of porn in just the few years since American Porn, we have not yet reached the high water mark. We can only imagine what lays ahead for the next generation. Will there a be a saturation point after which porn will start to get boring ( I have to admit I feel this sometimes myself)? Will there be a puritanical backlash? Or will porn production ceaselessly increase in order to feed a bottomless desire? Oh the questions!

Click here to see American Porn.

The Girl With the Spider Tattoo

I love love love Brazilian porn. In fact I stay away from it out of fear that it might be all I end up doing, just sitting in front of a computer all day all my days watching beautiful, brown, big-booty bitches jiggle and giggle in Portuguese.

And I've been thinking of Brazilian Porn lately. Actually just one scene from a video I'd scene over 5 years ago. That girl was to die for. The very definition of heavenly. And the icing on the cake was her scrumptiously gigantic butt, like two hams. On one butt cheek was a tattoo of tarantula.

Every couple of months, I get that yearning in my heart and I try to find that video online. The one I saw was a DVD that belonged to a friend of a friend of a friend. Long gone, I can't trace the source. So I google it. You figure if it's floating around the internet it would be relatively easy to find. Type in BRAZILIAN and TARANTULA BUTT TATTOO and it should pop up. No luck every time so far and it continues being my holy grail (one of them, there are a couple). And I go on dreaming. Someday.

Ms. Tease

Warning: this holy grail is very much Ugly Girl Porn. Watch out if you're not ready. Worse yet, it's from Exploited Moms, a site with its fair share of rough-looking women. I suspect this is a holy grail only because it's hard to find. What is it that economists say, scarcity creates value?

Ms. Tease, God bless her. I'm not quite sure what I see in her but she grows more attractive with every failed attempt to score her full vid. I've logged hours trying (imagine that!) but with no luck. I've even considered actually paying for a membership. But then I heard that her video isn't even on the member's site, even though it's advertised. Talk about running a tight shift. Heard that from a guy who more obsessed with Ms. Tease than I am. It's great not to be alone.

I did after some trouble manage to download her trailer. That keeps the passions at bay for a little while. When that stops working I'll watch a scene Kaci Starr did with Blacks on Blondes. It's a bit eerie but she looks like she could be Ms. Tease's daughter. The hair and makeup are the same right down to the eye shadow and their bodies are the same basic shape except of course Kaci Starr is more petite, way cuter, and less sloppy.

I imagine there's an alternate universe out there where everything about my life is the same, except one thing. In this parallel world, I'd been trying like hell for months and months to get a hold of the Kaci Starr scene but instead had to settle for butt ugly Ms. Tease. And in this universe, all is right with the world. The Sexual Revolution never fizzled because there's no such thing as AIDS. No one voted for the dumb rich kid even once. It doesn't cost anything to go to college. And war is abolished. All disputes are settled with breakdance battles. Yes, a truly perfect world.

The Brief Inner Turmoil Concerning Jackie Ashe

Porn is exploitative. It has the the power to not only objectify people but humiliate and debase them as well. You don't have to be steeped in feminist theory to know that. It's more or less self-evident. And you're like me, the fact that you love porn opens you up to inner conflict. And nothing brings that conflict to the surface than watching a certain type of girl do certain kind of things.

Oh, Jackie Ashe. Jackie Ashe looks eerily a lot like a girl I was heads over heels in love with in high school, right down to the catholic school uniform she wore when I first saw her scene in Bookworm Bitches. Even weirder, and probably stalker-ish and creepy if you give it some thought, I had the best sex of my teen years (it's definitely top ten all-time) with a girl in Haifa, Israel who looked like the both of them. So watching Ms. Ashe is like jump starting two very pleasant sets of memories.

I'll watch Jackie in anything. I have scenes with her from First Time Auditions, Bang Bus, Street Blowjobs, and Jizzbomb. Seeing her onscreen always brings me joy. And in every scene she has this innocent girl ingénue vibe I find refreshing.

Then I heard she was on Midnight Prowl and it made my heart sink. I've never seen her with two dudes, now she's doing gangbang? To be fair, as far as gangbangs go, Midnight Prowl is fairly tame. It's just the whole Meat Members network it's part of of really gets under my skin. I can't stand Frank Wank. I hate Meat Holes with a passion. Watching some douche step on a vagina with his dirty sneaker pisses me off. When you consider all the other stuff I've seen it's a strange place to draw the line, but that's where it is.


The upside to the Midnight Prowl episode is that you see the real Jackie Ashe come through in the little pre-sex interview . And though she's far from the naive ingénue (she lives by herself in Tijuana. Craziness), she's an all around nice chick. I can so see myself dating her.

The scene turned out be pretty good. There was no stepping on vaginas, and certainly no asshole licking, just a regular gangbang. I now watch it at least once of month. Something still perturbs me though. After it's all over, I try to reimagine myself as a sophomore in high school, sitting face to face with the girl I thought at the time I loved more than anything else and probably would've married and seeded had the situation been different. Then I ask myself, could I have foreseen a future where I would delight in seeing a smiling face very similar to hers covered with the semen of 7 dudes? Could I have foreseen a future where it's nothing for me to use a phrase like “just a regular gangbang?”

Last Words For Julie Ellis

They come and they go, don't they? The porn starlet's career is fleeting, a few months on average. The ones that stick around only do so for a few years then it's all over. If you want to think of someone who's career has lasted decades—and who isn't Nina Hartley—you'll be here all day trying to get a list long enough to fill a carpool.

They are temporary and fleeting and ephemeral. They are disposable. We take it for granted that another one will come to fill her place and if she's done only a movie or two, did you even really know she was there in the first place?

While they worked, no one really asked who they were, what went wrong—or right—in their life to bring them here. What drug habits? What belief in liberation? When they disappear, no one asks where they've gone. If they've died, no one eulogizes them.

Last week, I found out that Julie Ellis died. Overdose. About 6 months ago.

Scour the internet and you won't find a word of it anywhere. I heard about it from someone who'd worked with her. And something in me says that her relationship with her folks wasn't the greatest. If they do know about it, it's probably kept on the low. Julie Ellis probably doesn't have an obituary.

And this is one instance. Porn Valley and the internet most likely abounds with stories of these unsung starlets who've spent a minute or two under the bright lights never to be heard from again. Who've suffered silent deaths long ago, or worse.

I feel a sadness. I can't do more than I can. The only thing I can do for now is eulogize.

It seems to me, Julie Ellis, that you got into porn because you really needed the money. How else would you explain a progression from naughty cheerleader pictures to IR gangbang, with nothing in between?

I don't hold that against you; life is hard. You do what you have to do. In fact, I take back the mean shit I said about you.

I'm still fairly young so I can't pretend to know what life's about. I say though that the universal desire is to be remembered. I mean that's the unifying trait behind every portrait painted, every mountain climbed, every office filled, every child created. We all die alone. That's bad enough. But our biggest fear is for our memory to go with us.

I never got to know the real Julie Ellis, or even Julie Ellis' real name. What I know is from Blacks on Blondes and a weird lesbian threesome that involved a gas mask. I can only imagine who you were, a sweet girl who got caught up in life. I hope, if you get another go at this, that life will be kinder to you. And I promise to keep your memory alive and never forget you.

Amen.