A Person of Consequence (1)
Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to figure out ‘what I’m doing’, particularly in regards to my internet presence. On a most basic level, I’m having fun; a great deal of my social and entertainment life take place on the internet, whether it’s reading fanfic, or meta, socializing (as much as I’ve ever been interested in that), grazing the knowledge base or sharing my pearls of wisdom with the unsuspecting populace. In a slightly deeper sense, I get pleasure out of the idea that my opinions and ideas are heard and maybe even listened to occasionally. Beyond that, the internet has allowed me to both practice certain skills (writing, arranging my thoughts, social skills and so on) and given me room to develop my thoughts and philosophies based on what I see and how people react. Yes, the internet is my first step to ruling the world, next, win the lottery.
One of the things it’s led me to is a sex positive philosophy. I’m not all Mr. Educated about the currently accepted theories and verbiage about it - what I’ve come to believe has been drawn pretty much directly from what I see and experience around me. For me sex positive means encouraging an environment where guilt, shame, repression, jealousy/resentment, contempt and fear are not part of sexual development or desire but pleasure, meaning, excitement, joy, humor, exploration and happiness are. Beyond that and adult informed consent, sexual expression is whatever it is for whomever is participating in it at the moment.
Not surprisingly, I fiercely disagree with anti-pornographers of any stripe or the idea that pornography is intrinsically damaging/oppressive/morally corrupting or a tool of the evil patriarchy (also - I am virulently anti-censorship). One result, for me, is the dislike of the erotica/pornography divide; the idea that erotic works are ‘artistic’ and pornography is ‘skeevy’ is a cowardly mental gymnastic IMO (photographing someone’s dick in black and white doesn’t make it artistic, sorry). I’m a pornographer; I write porn for people to read and (possibly) get off on and I see nothing wrong with that. I generally lean towards the RACK guidelines when dealing with kink rather than the SSC system; obviously, it also means I have no problem with most forms of consensual kink though I may not do them or appreciate them myself. I’ve also ceased to see monogamy as a particularly beneficial lifestyle or as a correct ‘norm’ (either ‘natural’ or ‘social’), though I do not particularly align myself with the polyamory movement.
Sex positive is not some morally slippery slope; accepting the idea that someone might want to piss on their lover and their lover might get turned on by it doesn’t mean the next step is necrophilia, pedophilia, cannibalism etc, etc ..., insert whatever straw man bullshit you want here. It doesn’t even mean you have to like it yourself. The basic answer (as a friend of mine pointed out very concisely) when you say you support kink/queers/legalizing prostitution and they respond ‘but then you’ll have people wanting to marry/fuck children/animals/the dead/Snape’ is to say ‘what part of consenting adults didn’t you understand?’
Strangely enough, this brings me back to the internet.
I spend a lot of time in the slash communities and reading slash stories. There’s a lot I can (and probably will) say about slash but for now … I really, really don’t like the heteronormative, moralistic, bad romance novel tropes that show up periodically in slash; the jealous boyfriend, the weeping, neglected girlfriend stand-in, the manipulative, passive-aggressive, limiting and sex-and-love negative stories and images that are frequent visitors to slash stories. Since I both cannot and would not legislate or censor these things, yet I think they are actually damaging to people’s sense of their own sexuality and their expectations of how a relationship goes, I feel I need to do something to provide an antidote. Or at least materiel that I want to read.
So I write porn.
Obviously, that’s not the only reason I write porn. If I didn’t enjoy writing porn, for its own sake, all the rest of this would be pointless. I also don’t spend hours of my day sitting around thinking of ‘lessons I can teach’ via porn - that’s ridiculous, pointless and also condescending. I simply follow my interests and my ideas of what makes a good story and an enjoyable read, try to be self-aware, and hope that the work I present can give someone else an opportunity to see sex and desire in a more positive light.
The porn I write is often kinky, it’s explicit, it’s variant in all sorts of ways. What I don’t write are stories that use rape as titillation or a ‘lesson’ for someone who’s violated moralistic expectations, or idolize childish innocnece/virginity/barely-18 which I think are encoragements to a youth obsessed sexuality that results in a very limited ideal of sexy and attractive. I don’t have characters withhold sex to teach a lesson to a lover, or slot my characters into the male/female dynamics of receptive/penetrative, submissive/dominant, asshole/long-suffering roles. In fact, I try not to use sexuality as a punishing ‘lesson’ at all; if my story is about the pleasures of sex then the participants are going to be enjoying themselves. I do my best not to neglect or disparage female sexuality, even though it’s not something I personally enjoy or participate in - a problem that is particularly strong in slash and this is an area where I make conscious efforts to be inclusive and thoughtful.
Nowadays, where do people (of any age) learn about sex? The internet, as we all know, is for porn. Many schools in the US teach ‘abstinence sex-ed’ which is much more than ‘don’t have sex’, it’s also fully immersed in a particular form of regressive, monogamous, heteronormative world-view that I think is both unrealistic and damaging. Even better programs rarely acknowledge variant sexuality at all and the media is full of poor representations of desire, love, and relationships. I believe an awful lot of people explore sexuality on the internet and the search engines and numbers bear me out. If someone stumbles on my work, beyond going OMGWTFBBQ!, I want to offer something that isn’t going to increase guilt and shame in the world.
I think pornography is important, not as a legal or moral issue, but as both a reflection of what’s going on in a culture and a way that we learn about things (especially things we don’t want to talk openly about) in our culture. Because of that, I think it’s important - as a pornographer - to think about what I’m writing beyond simply wank materiel.
I do this because I want to be part of the solution, however small, not part of the problem. Yes, I will save the world by writing spanking porn.
One of the things it’s led me to is a sex positive philosophy. I’m not all Mr. Educated about the currently accepted theories and verbiage about it - what I’ve come to believe has been drawn pretty much directly from what I see and experience around me. For me sex positive means encouraging an environment where guilt, shame, repression, jealousy/resentment, contempt and fear are not part of sexual development or desire but pleasure, meaning, excitement, joy, humor, exploration and happiness are. Beyond that and adult informed consent, sexual expression is whatever it is for whomever is participating in it at the moment.
Not surprisingly, I fiercely disagree with anti-pornographers of any stripe or the idea that pornography is intrinsically damaging/oppressive/morally corrupting or a tool of the evil patriarchy (also - I am virulently anti-censorship). One result, for me, is the dislike of the erotica/pornography divide; the idea that erotic works are ‘artistic’ and pornography is ‘skeevy’ is a cowardly mental gymnastic IMO (photographing someone’s dick in black and white doesn’t make it artistic, sorry). I’m a pornographer; I write porn for people to read and (possibly) get off on and I see nothing wrong with that. I generally lean towards the RACK guidelines when dealing with kink rather than the SSC system; obviously, it also means I have no problem with most forms of consensual kink though I may not do them or appreciate them myself. I’ve also ceased to see monogamy as a particularly beneficial lifestyle or as a correct ‘norm’ (either ‘natural’ or ‘social’), though I do not particularly align myself with the polyamory movement.
Sex positive is not some morally slippery slope; accepting the idea that someone might want to piss on their lover and their lover might get turned on by it doesn’t mean the next step is necrophilia, pedophilia, cannibalism etc, etc ..., insert whatever straw man bullshit you want here. It doesn’t even mean you have to like it yourself. The basic answer (as a friend of mine pointed out very concisely) when you say you support kink/queers/legalizing prostitution and they respond ‘but then you’ll have people wanting to marry/fuck children/animals/the dead/Snape’ is to say ‘what part of consenting adults didn’t you understand?’
Strangely enough, this brings me back to the internet.
I spend a lot of time in the slash communities and reading slash stories. There’s a lot I can (and probably will) say about slash but for now … I really, really don’t like the heteronormative, moralistic, bad romance novel tropes that show up periodically in slash; the jealous boyfriend, the weeping, neglected girlfriend stand-in, the manipulative, passive-aggressive, limiting and sex-and-love negative stories and images that are frequent visitors to slash stories. Since I both cannot and would not legislate or censor these things, yet I think they are actually damaging to people’s sense of their own sexuality and their expectations of how a relationship goes, I feel I need to do something to provide an antidote. Or at least materiel that I want to read.
So I write porn.
Obviously, that’s not the only reason I write porn. If I didn’t enjoy writing porn, for its own sake, all the rest of this would be pointless. I also don’t spend hours of my day sitting around thinking of ‘lessons I can teach’ via porn - that’s ridiculous, pointless and also condescending. I simply follow my interests and my ideas of what makes a good story and an enjoyable read, try to be self-aware, and hope that the work I present can give someone else an opportunity to see sex and desire in a more positive light.
The porn I write is often kinky, it’s explicit, it’s variant in all sorts of ways. What I don’t write are stories that use rape as titillation or a ‘lesson’ for someone who’s violated moralistic expectations, or idolize childish innocnece/virginity/barely-18 which I think are encoragements to a youth obsessed sexuality that results in a very limited ideal of sexy and attractive. I don’t have characters withhold sex to teach a lesson to a lover, or slot my characters into the male/female dynamics of receptive/penetrative, submissive/dominant, asshole/long-suffering roles. In fact, I try not to use sexuality as a punishing ‘lesson’ at all; if my story is about the pleasures of sex then the participants are going to be enjoying themselves. I do my best not to neglect or disparage female sexuality, even though it’s not something I personally enjoy or participate in - a problem that is particularly strong in slash and this is an area where I make conscious efforts to be inclusive and thoughtful.
Nowadays, where do people (of any age) learn about sex? The internet, as we all know, is for porn. Many schools in the US teach ‘abstinence sex-ed’ which is much more than ‘don’t have sex’, it’s also fully immersed in a particular form of regressive, monogamous, heteronormative world-view that I think is both unrealistic and damaging. Even better programs rarely acknowledge variant sexuality at all and the media is full of poor representations of desire, love, and relationships. I believe an awful lot of people explore sexuality on the internet and the search engines and numbers bear me out. If someone stumbles on my work, beyond going OMGWTFBBQ!, I want to offer something that isn’t going to increase guilt and shame in the world.
I think pornography is important, not as a legal or moral issue, but as both a reflection of what’s going on in a culture and a way that we learn about things (especially things we don’t want to talk openly about) in our culture. Because of that, I think it’s important - as a pornographer - to think about what I’m writing beyond simply wank materiel.
I do this because I want to be part of the solution, however small, not part of the problem. Yes, I will save the world by writing spanking porn.