I Hate IR (But Watch It Anyway)

It happened like this. A little while back, I came across what turned out to be a treasure trove of porn. Those were the days when I was just discovering Megaupload and Rapidshare and the like, all of which were godsends. That place turned out to be an IR board. And in no time my collection comprised a sizable chunk of IR.

To backtrack a bit, Interracial Porn has been never something I've deliberately sought out. I was familiar with it and I've watched it when I came across it and on the whole I didn't hate it. But I never walked into a video store or newsstand looking for it. I never turn on my computer thinking “You know, I really want to see a black guy fuck a white chick. That's just what I need .” But at the same time the thought that “I really want to see a white guy fuck a White/black girl,” never crossed my mind. I have wanted to see Asian men in porn, but that's only because you never see any. That's novelty at work there. For the most part color doesn't play a major part in what I watch.

You got to consider that I came up in an era when Sean Michaels was the only black guy on the Spice Channel. Here's a man who's made a point not to call what he's doing interracial. I got into Lex Steele and Jake Steed a little later and although I was a bit annoyed about Steed playing the animal, it's nowhere nearly as offensive the stuff that comes out now. I can't decide who's worse for race relations: Spring Thomas or The Hush Pass dudes.

Which brings me to what I wanted to say. I hate Interracial Porn. But I watch it anyway.

Let me elaborate. I hate the premise behind IR. Think about it. The appeal, the selling point, is that the black man, the Other, is more sexual because he is animalistic, less than human. It wasn't that long ago that the Justice Department considered cracking down on IR. On their list it wasn't that far down from bestiality I don't think that's an accident. I think that's the mindset of many of the people who produce and watch IR. I propose that IR isn't made as, say , a tool of empowerment for and by black men, to show how far we've come, but rather by and for people who think that having sex with a black man is another way to humiliate a woman(also not accidental that IR is big in the South), in the same vein though not the same degree as a donkey show.

With IR the humiliation doesn't rest merely with the woman. It goes both ways. How does the stereotype go? The white woman is simply irresistible to the Black man who must do everything to have her. In some cases that means debasement (did you think of Spring Thomas too?). I believe that's called the Mandingo Syndrome.

And the fact that there's an actor working under the name Mandingo just makes my case that much easier to make. God, I hate IR. Why do I watch it then? Perhaps, I'm harboring deep seated self loathing that manifests in watching this stuff. I dunno. It would take years of psychoanalysis to dredge that up. I know that the on-the-surface reasons are pretty straightforward: Some of the best looking women do IR. Maybe, it's the higher pay rate that attracts them. I dunno, but the girls are banging. Plus, Black woodsmen do their job correctly. I know based solely on the sex if I'm watching IR the chances are much better that it will be a mind-blowing performance. Or maybe I'm buying into the stereotype.

Another thing that bothers me is The fact that the term Interracial refers almost exclusively to a Black Man and a White Women. That should get you thinking. Black Woman/ White Man, a rarity, is never referred to as IR. If it's labeled anything it's like some big booty thing. Black Man/ Hispanic Woman are IR most of the time (depending on the lightness of her skin) but the designation doesn't apply the other way around. And we all know that anything done with an Asian woman doesn't count as IR. If you can get a bunch of their scenes together you can label it Asian porn but that's about it.

But I guess when you consider all the other demeaning shit that's fair game in porn the stuff I'm griping about is small peanuts. What really gets to me is the looseness with which the N word gets thrown around. I really don't like getting offended in mid-stroke. And I feel the ante will keep getting raised and in a few years I'll be beating off to a scene that unexpectedly ends in a lynching. Seems like the direction things are going. Hopefully, I'll feel at least conflicted.

Who am I kidding? I'd probably watch it. Sigh.

Happy (Belated) Birthday Nina Hartley

One of Porn's legends turned an unbelievable 50 years old last week. This also marks 25 years in porn for Ms. Hartley. Can you believe that? This woman started fucking and sucking onscreen when many of us (including yours truly) were in diapers. And she's hasn't fallen off. God bless her.

Of course this anniversary has got me thinking. It occurs to me that in the long timeline that is the history of my porn consumption, Nina Hartley comes in relatively recently. I am talking of course about her sex scenes. I have known of Nina for quite some time. Whenever there was a critique of pornography, I could always count on the writer getting Nina's always cogent, always articulate arguments. Thank you, Nina Hartley, for being porn's best apologist. You made me believe that porn has the ability be empowering for women. Whether that actually happens is a different story.

Yes, I've been reading about Nina since I was 14, but I didn't actually see her till Boogie Nights. And even after that it was a while before I saw her do hardcore. It was an old scene, one of Peter North's first, where he pulls out of doggystyle an shoots a load that drenches her back. Explosive! I had broadband so I had to have been in my early twenties at that point.

Better late than never.

Thank God for the emergence of Cougar Porn. It keeps Nina Hartley working an the world is better for it. I think she's better now than ever. I saw a recent scene she did with Byron Long that so intimate and sexy--sexy in the human way not the porn way--that I actually watched the whole thing start to finish. That's huge. I skip through scenes. Blow job. Missionary. Doggy. Maybe spoon, if it's a good flick. Load. Then I'm done. It takes all of three minutes. You've got to be a goddamn master of your craft to get me to watch an entire 25 minute scene. And that was not all. In the end, the climax I reached was so intense it rivaled anything I've experienced IRL.

So Happy Birthday, Nina Hartley. This isn't something I tell all 50 year-olds, but I hope you keep doing porn for many years to come. The younger girls in the industry have a lot to learn from you.

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.