It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire’s
ultimate weapon, the DEATH
STAR...
No, wait, wrong Hope. Start over.
A few days ago, there was a diary titled "Porn Poll", which IMHO, was the dKos equivalent of a push poll. That and BFSkinner's diary "Sexual Orientation Roll Call" ("Annette!", "Bobby!", "Christina!"...) leads me to post this diary. Well, that, and I'm so sick after the election results that for most political diaries, I read and cringe, and move on.http://
So here's my attempt at being a pollster for the community in re: porn. I wish there were more spaces in the poll, I would have added more categories, but I did what I could. And, yes, it's not a valid poll in any way, the respondents are self-selected, from a pool of people who just happened to show up this morning.
Before you jump to the poll, there's a page on porn, attitudes and the law at cybercollege.com that was just updated 10/11/2010 that has some interesting reading. I am trying to get a list of references from this article. And here's an interesting 1995 article from Avedon Carol. (All right, so she was a founding member of Feminists Against Censorship. BFD) Oh, and here's a Slate article that purports that "All that Internet porn reduces sex crimes. Really." Look them over, then take the poll.
Oh, and the business about all porn performers being inherently unhappy and depressed? Or abused as children, or in thrall to some pimp? Bullpucky. Okay, I'll agree that some folks get into the business for the wrong reasons, and don't like it. Lots of people don't like their jobs. I know unhappy plumbers. I fix computers for a living, so I see everyone in all kinds of jobs. I see depressed plumbers, art historians, people who inherit the family business and hate what choices grandpa made. There are people in every profession that are unhappy. Supposedly, dentists have a higher suicide rate than other professionals. I don't know that I believe that, every dentist I've ever had has shown a remarkable resilience to adversity, at least in their undergrad/dental school years. I think of Brando in "On the Waterfront", "I could have been a contender!"
But from my own point of view, and I'll admit, my experience is 20+ years out of date; the only way I ever got a porn job was through my friends. I, in turn, helped my friends, and people I was just casually acquainted with, find paying jobs. That was before straight porn moved to southern California. And before the wonderful people at kink.com bought the National Guard armory.
Full disclosure: Yes, I have made porn. I may have misidentified myself on BFSkinner's diary, I picked bisexual male, and self ID'd that way in the comments, but after reading the comments, I should have picked "queer". I had an awful/wonderful little crush on a FTM cutie in the mid 80's. I'm Chinese, so with hormones, he had more facial hair than I did; kissing him was so seriously HOT. He was a FTM homosexual, meaning he liked boys, but he liked bigger, hairier boys than me. My one FTM trans porn video happened only because someone I was dating put my name up to the producer/director. There's more explanation in the paragraphs below.
Fuller disclosure: I was never a porn "star". I only had small parts. [Ba-dump! bump! See, when a male porn performer says...oh, forget it...] I've made maybe a dozen videos about 20-25 years ago, and they all happened in the same way. Someone I was dating, or someone who knew someone I was dating would call me up and say, "We're looking for a boy that can do XXX. It pays $$ and you will/won't work with me, [but I've seen the girl/boy/other] and you will definitely have fun." And, since I don't have a huge dick, I was filming in the "fetish" markets; spanking, bondage, MTF/FTM, etc. I was never forced by circumstance to make porn, it was always "fun money"; I could take my girlfriend out to dinner someplace fancier than usual. (I took girls out, or we'd alternate, depending on our relationship and finances. Boys and couples usually took me out, they usually had more money. It wasn't a rule or anything, it's just that in retrospect, that's how things worked out.)
But, for me, it wasn't a desperation move. It wasn't, "Do this or you're out on the street, starving." I was making a good living as a research chemist, (small drug synthesis) at a major petro-corp. I was, at the time dating a variety of people a big ol' slut, hanging out with the sport-f*ckers and sexual outlaws. Gender never mattered to me that much; (I fell in love with someone's wife when, as I was sticking my dick up her husbands butt, she leaned over and said, "Hurts, doesn't it?" (I had to laugh because my little dick with all that lube and foreplay hurting someone...) The concept of "fun money" is kind of important here. "You have someone who will pay us to do what we did two weeks ago for free, on camera? I'm in!"
There was one case where I was less than professional; my one venture into the FTM porn world. I can see how TS people feel that they want to make a change, but as far as I can tell, my co-thespian only wanted to change genders so she could be a capitol "B" Bitch. "Don't mess up my hair! Don't mess up my makeup! Hey, not so hard! Oh, just stick it in, already!" Even the FTM who introduced me to the shoot said she wouldn't have f*cked her either.The producer/director was a good egg, paid my $750, even though I really couldn't f*ck this particular person. [This was in the days before Viagra.] I offered the to producer/director to f*ck anyone else he had around, or let any of the boys around f*ck me, but he paid what he agreed to and let me go. I don't know, maybe he fixed it in editing, maybe I wound up on the cutting room floor.
No more disclosures, just the closing: Porn has existed for homo sapiens ever since we were homo sapiens. It doesn't seem to have existed, since no other art seems to have existed for our evolutionary cousins. (Are animals into porn? I don't think so. Horses boink in a herd and the other horses don't watch, do they? I know they tried panda porn when they were breeding pandas in a zoo once...)
So, really. What do you think? Who are you, and what do you think of porn?
And in the comments, am I an amoral b*stard because I was video taped (gives you a clue as to how old I am!) boinking/spanking/sucking/f*cking/binding/beating/whipping/squirting on assorted friends and mostly strangers? Does it matter that almost every job I had was because of a referral from someone who trusted me, and wanted me on the set? Does it matter that I was doing the same to my friends and lovers without the video crew?
I would ask of those of you who have trusted user status to refrain from hide-rating comments for a day or two, as I am not a TU, and cannot answer comments I cannot see. In the above noted "Porn Poll" diary, my responses to hidden parent comments were subsequently hidden; I was unable to see my own comments. So, please, don't HR comments immediately; at least give me a fair chance of seeing what people are saying.
Thank you for reading. Please check out the links and vote in the poll.