Deep thinky thots on porn and such

[valarltd]

I was reading some feminist blogs before lunch. They are universal of their condemnation of pornography as a male-dominated commodification of women.

Which leaves me wondering about my own second job.

I am a woman, writing erotica (porn with better lighting and production values) for other women, being published by a female-run small press.

Aside from the fictional characters and one male editor, I'm not sure how men or the patriarchy comes into this at all. It all feels very lesbianic, especially when I'm writing f/f. I'm writing women making love to women, in order to please and arouse other women who will pay me, through the agency of a female company.

Yet, I'm told lesbians have no sexual agency under patriarchy.

Now I'm all conflicted and confused. I think I'll go be an agent of either compliance or subversion and go write another pegging scene.

Comments

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Lesbians have a Sexual Agency? What's it called? Do they have to stand in long lines when they go there?

Oh wait. You said they have NO Sexual Agency. Well, that's good. No one likes bureaucracy.

As for your topic: totally. When I was in college, the feminist line was that Pornography=Teh Evol. But slash fandom has totally, completely and irrevocably changed my view about it. I am really, really interested in a feminist revision of the issue, because slash fandom has made me more comfortable with my own sexuality and my own -- what's the word? - prurience.

For example, I now resist distinquishing erotica for pornography. I feel like it's a way of saying one is legitimate and the other is not. I don't think the distinction is at all that clear. Even though slash fanfiction is certainly different from Penthouse magazine, I'm not sure that the titillation factor for the consumer is really all that different. In both cases, we consume it because it turns us on. (The real differences is, I think, more a matter of economics. Who is making the profit?)

And again, bondage and rape porn in traditional feminist thought was seen as totally degrading to women. Yet when women write the exact same thing of men??? What the hell does that mean? To me, it means that there is a difference between fantasy and reality, and that really lurid, even gory fantasies do not necessarily mean that you actually want it to happen in real life.

Just gotta jump in with my .02

[dragon-lord.livejournal.com]

re: bondage and rape porn

I have no problems with bondage -- either way, male or female. Boys look pretty when they're tied up, so do girls.

Now for rape stories -- I like them when they focus on the aftermath, the psychology of it, the healing such as it is. Rape stories just for the sake of rape though, those I stay away from, whether it's male or female.

Then again, I'm more of a humanist I think.