Posts by Emma Hart
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Cheers, Stephen, that's a lovely thoughtful post. It's very easy to articulate blind certainty, somewhat harder to express a complicated view in a complicated way and hope other people can pick up the complexities.
It's also nice to see that people can see that I'm NOT saying 'PRON IS GRATE YAY!'. Just, y'know, listen.
But if it was an argument, due to its nature, personal experience is paramount. But then, this isn't the ideal place to share personal experiences involving sexual exploitation. After all that would amount to putting oneself on the block as the specimen in question. all things considered.
When Georgina Beyer spoke on Prostitution Law Reform, and she spoke from personal experience of being raped as a prostitute, I cried like a baby. We were incredibly lucky to have somebody elected to our parliament who had that personal experience to draw on.
I admire her courage enormously. But I'd never recommend anyone do this if they were at all dubious about it. Some people will never change their minds no matter what you say. Theory is all that matters, and rather than adapt the theory, they'll find a way to explain away your personal experience if it contradicts what they believe.
Basically, it's like witch trials and the fall of the Roman Empire. If someone has a simple answer, they're wrong.
IMO.
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aND i BELLOWED AT ONE STAGE "wE'RE NOT "QUAXING" GOING TO "QUAXING" MCdONALDS EAT YOUR "quaxing" donut & be "quaxing" GRATEFUL!
Yessss... My ability to be a cool aunt is sort of hampered by my brother's determination to be cool uncle to his own daughter. After several years of observation of said niece, I've been forced to conclude that either my brother or his partner must be Satan.
My mother is the most patient person I know. She once took Brother and Niece to the Bay. Niece spent entire first half of trip whining for an ice cream. Halfway through the ice cream, she decided that what she really wanted was chips. Having already endured a week of Whim Catering, my 80 year old mother said, "If you buy her chips, I'm getting in the car, and I'm going home, and I'm leaving you here."
There were no chips.
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I'm glad you mentioned Mitcham. I'd been talking about him with friends in the weekend, about the fabulousness of his reaction to his win.
NBC said, in their defence;
Not every athlete has a personal discussion. I could show you 500 athletes we didn’t show. We don’t show everyone.
This is clearly bullshit. This guy was a story. If you were neutral on sexual orientation, then this guy's personal narrative (his depression, his reaction, his battle to have his partner with him financially, his winning when he wasn't 'supposed to', his belonging to a minority) was newsworthy.
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abbreviations NSFW, has an interesting ambiguity.
Good grief. What could you possibly describe as being 'not safe for women'? I've never seen it used that way, but then, well, I wouldn't.
I really really wish you had put a definition of
NSFW
at the TOP of your post.
Sorry. Sometimes I run columns past someone else so they can spot assumptions I might be making that I can no longer see. This one I didn't.
I also should probably have censored the swearing out of that last quote I put up. I'm always uneasy doing that, though. Do you rip it out completely, and change the voice you're quoting? Do you take out the rude word and insert $%#& so people know there was a swear but not what it was? Or just remove some letters - 'f*ck' - so it's still perfectly obvious what was said, which seems utterly pointless?
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So, but, and, maybe there's a connection between writing about it and feeling a little bit sovereign over it? Y'know - like, if you can retool and recount your experiences for the Village Voice and eager grad students and a world wide readership, and thereby earn some cash and some respect, you're doing a different kind of sex work, one that does provide you with a more reliable sense of agency?
I'd say so, yeah. And add to that a palpable sense of taking your voice back - that not only have you been voiceless, but other people have felt fine talking about you without talking to you.
And some other sex workers react to it like this:
I’m also a sex worker involved in the sex worker’s rights movement in motherfucking AUSTRALIA. And at least once every couple of months, a random Australian sex worker from a random part of Australia will post a link on the SW mailing lists to one of Ren’s posts with a “fuck yeah!” or a “look what Renegade Evolution is saying on this one!”
That'd make me feel valuable...
Ren also talks about how, given she's in sex work by choice, she feels she has a responsibility to other sex workers who have less choice and less power than she does. Hence the work she does with SWOP.
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Hey Is, how glad do you think I am right now that my mum doesn't read here?
Sorry, it just struck me.
I remember freaking and being sure there was something desperately wrong with me the first time I tangled with a bloke with a lower libido (or even just more inclination to wait a bit) than myself.
Oh yeah, me too. I really did think I was some kind of sick deviant, or physically repulsive, because I was much keener than he was. Combine it with the slut-shaming from other women and you have some very confused guilty teenage girls, more worried about what other people will think of them than what they actually want.
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It has to be believable, you have to be able to relate to the subject. With that in mind, I find any violence in the material to have a negative affect. I guess I must be the "caring sharing" type.
Sure. For some people, their sexuality responds well to role-play, which I guess is, at essence, faking. Violence can be a part of that.
There was a fabulous comment I ran across a while back from a woman saying that when she looked at sexually-explicit material, her reaction in terms of 'okayness' was based on whether or not she either found it arousing, or could imagine finding it arousing.
Then she got to Pie Porn.
At that point you sort of have to realise that the breadth of human sexual experience is so vast, you just have to shrug and say, look okay your kink is not my kink, but whatever.
I don't think power in a sexual context does have to be zero-sum, any more than any client/provider interaction has to be (one is providing something the other one wants),
This was pretty much the conclusion (ie place where I got tired of thinking) I came to last night, that if two people can come out of a situation having both got what they want, if they both get a win and no-one loses, that's an overall power gain.
are we buying into a stereotype of men being led by their dicks? (The way I phrased that is definitely buying into heteronormativity.)
I really hate this stereotype. It ignores the decency and ability to control themselves that most men have, and gives men who behaves like pricks an excuse for it. Then it implies that women have lower sex drives than men, which is laughable.
I've dated both men and women. It's not a huge sample, but I'm dead sure that's what's formed my perception that, when it comes to wanting pursuing and getting sex, there's more variation within each gender than there is between them.
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But isn't it implicit that someone else (for argument's sake, a man) in turn becomes a victim of that power?
Oh, that's kind of interesting: is power in a sexual context a zero sum game? I'll be mulling that.
It was great until one day a bloke joined the class and i could see by his trouser profile that he was aroused. And he later said some pretty grubby things on the quiet. About then i started to feel dirty - didn't stop me modelling but it tainted it a bit.
Eh, Kerry, that sucks, that a jerk spoiled something you were obviously enjoying.
Thanks for the post, Emma. It really is something I've thought alot about over the years.
Thanks, Jackie. And you know... it's weird how I'm oddly gratified by the respect you've shown Ren. I feel a bit guilty about constantly quoting her, it's just that these issues are obviously something she's thought about a lot over the years, and she has such a way with words.
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But now I realise you put 'woman friendly' in quotes. Which is different ...
I did indeed. Aren't I sneaky. But yeah, I suspect that 'woman friendly' porn appeals to a hell of a lot of men. Ms Naughty has a whole bunch of posts where she talks about the difficulty of the 'porn of women' label.
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One question, though Emma: on video, is what women want really a chick-flick with penetration? Just asking.
What women want? What women want? What's next on my list of things to answer, 'is there a god'?
Pron for women, that's made by women and intended for female consumption, covers a big range. Like I've said, there are sub women who love what some other people might consider to be the nasty, squicky end of porn. Genuinely, with agency and everything.
At the other end (actually, I think there might be a whole bunch of different ends) is that stuff you see on the 'drama' shelves in video stores, that 's called 'erotica' all airbrushed to shit and lit like Janice Rand. Doesn't do it for me personally.
But, in general? In 'mainstream' porn, men get their heads cropped out of the shot a lot, and become sort of disembodied penises. Pron for women certainly features a lot more shots of faces. Hence, y'know, emotion, connection.
And there's a genuine playfulness in Candida Royale and Erika Lust's stuff. Or, y'know, there's a site that's pictures of people's feet while they self-pleasure...