I've always been indifferent toward porn. It has never prompted any deep desire in me, during my precocious pre and late teen years to watch out of curiosity, amid all the salacious buzz. Sneaking a peek at the erotica on Cinemax after 11pm, finding and then reading Jackie Collins's titillating plots, Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, and the illustrated educative wonderment of The Joy of Sex was it for me. I didn't watch hardcore porn until I was in college... with my best friend. We watched out of sheer boredom. We walked down to the town's local video store and picked something from the late seventies/early eighties, much to the cashier's amusement. It featured an interracial raunch fest. Basic man on woman boning. Nothing too shocking or sexy and void of anything particularly depraved and disgusting. The usual cheesy fare, in fact. Neither of us found the antics sexy or arousing. We laughed raucously and critiqued the clownery of it all. Pure comedy. We decided perhaps we were too intellectual and snotty to get it. Other then a porn clip online here and a legitimate art house flick there- (most recently the movie Short Bus, which featured unsimulated sex)- it hasn't interested or enticed me since. Despite the rash of filmed celebrity sexploits being "leaked" online. Over the years... after having watched and read a great deal of "behind the scenes" documentary style films and books, I've came to the conclusion that porn is not erotic, is silly, quite frankly, ridiculous. Most of the pornographic material being released is filmed and produced by men. Men and their distorted visions of how women should look, what ridiculous sexual positions we should be bent in, and how we should act. Despite rumblings to the contrary, I doubt any of the women acting in these films have any actual orgasms. Hair flinging, head whipping, and high pitched 'O' and fuck yeaaah sounds, I'm sorry but the orgasm is fake. All in all, it's harmless fun for the lonely, lecherous, and in some cases... the socially inept. I've never been one of the protesters screaming for the industry to be banned. That being said, a lot has changed with the porn industry. The ever increasing advances in technology, the internet, video cameras, webcams, and the like have made porn more accessible and more achievable for aspiring porn mongers. Any amateur can film their sexual exploits and upload them onto Xtube or Pornotube with relative ease. In turn, the industry has become a virtual free for all. College fraternity houses host parties where group sex and orgies abound, while their peers (men and women spectators) stand off to the side, cheering the guerrilla fuckfests... clutching beers, fists pumping in the air. All in front of the camera and easy to view over the internet. These "gonzo" type films have raised the stakes... and the stakes have become even more disturbing and depraved in their delivery. The acts women subject themselves too is enough to make the most hardened, difficult to offend person cringe. And it takes a lot to make me want to gag and then vomit in my mouth or turn away with disgust. Some of it is downright perplexing. Such as the compelling documentary Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, which documents- Grace Quek's (Annabel is her porn name)- rise, exploitation, and eventual retirement from the porn industry. Annabel allegedly pioneered the whole "gang bang" trend in the industry. Nothing was too graphic or hardcore for Annabel. She performed a diverse array of hardcore sex acts, including "triple penetration." Annabel's motives for starring in The World's Biggest Gangbang were troubling as the documentary delved into her past. Needless to say, this current wave of pornography breeds misogyny and encourages violence toward women. Spat on, slapped, pissed and defecated on, penetrated and fisted in every orifice by several different men at once... It's sickening. And it's distressing. Particularly the gonzo films featuring Black, Brazilian, and Latino women. Men take trips to urban areas (usually scouting in a van of some sort) in search of "Black ghetto sluts" willing to oil up, shake, and then spread their cheeks in a seedy looking hotel room, on film. The perpetuation of sexual stereotypes frustrate the hell out of me. Two steps lower and more debased than the garbage shown in rap videos. And those in and of themselves are bad. I'm open and believe in people having the right to engage in whatever consensual sexual act they desire... but some of this stuff is troubling, notwithstanding my liberal stance. And it's not behind closed door. I think challenging what's wrong with the porn industry as it depicts itself today, does not a prude or anti-sex type make. I do believe there's something wrong with people who don't challenge this sort of behavior, the women who willingly subject themselves to this sort of humiliation, and the men who encourage them to do it or who are sitting at home with their hand down their boxers watching it and then thinking it's okay to go out and mistreat women, outside the realm of that business. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that the behavior in these gritty porn movies- the degradation, the abuse, the spitting, skull f*cking, quadruple penetration, crude talk, choking etc. are anti-sex. Here's a small snippet from Robert Jensen's book, Getting Off:

It hurts to know that no matter who you are as a woman you can be reduced to a thing to be penetrated, and that men will buy movies about that, and that in many of those movies your humiliation will be the central theme. It hurts to know that so much of the pornography that men are buying fuses sexual desire with cruelty.

It hurts women, and men like it, and it hurts just to know that.

Donkey punched, penises rammed down their throats until they puke, heads dunked in toilet bowls while they're being reamed from behind, faces saturated with semen and pee, wanting to jizz on a woman's face... Is this the type of sexual interaction men are craving to have with women?? Do you all secretly fantasize about making some woman vomit, while you force your penis down her throat? If so perhaps I should get my delicates stitched closed and look into becoming a nun.

Read a more substantial excerpt from Jensen's book here.

Also read this Money Shot entry, from October 29 blogged by Girl with a One Track Mind.