A night with Barbara DeGenevieve.....and her porn!

Tonight our class had the privilege to dialogue with Barbara DeGenevieve, artist, professor, and porn maker from the Chicago Art Institute, as well as enjoy some clips from her two adult films, Full Load and Rough Stuff.

Aside from her many art projects, DeGenevieve runs a queer adult website; www.ssspread.com
To access this site, one must become a member and pay monthly. When questioned why the site is not free, as the queer community represents a range of economic levels, DeGenevieve responded that they would not be able to pay their models or cover their expenses if the website were free. Further, DeGenevieve wants to stay away from the trends of mainstream porn sites that bombard you with advertisements and pop-ups; "we didn't want annoying ads, pop-up windows, and the gross commercialism you see on traditional porn sites" (DeGenevieve 2002).

DeGenevieve also strives to show a diverse range of body types among her models. Indeed, one of the traits of queer porn is that you see more than just Barbie dolls with long red nails on the screen. DeGenevieve comments that "of course there are tons of people who will never tire of watching 'perfect bodies' as they're presented by advertising and mainstream movies, but there's a large enough population either bored with this hollow ideal, or that never really found it fully satisfying to begin with." DeGenevieve's concept of reality also extends to shots filmed at the models' own home, revealing their "punk aesthetics" and environments that are definitely not mainstream.

In DeGenevieve's work, it is evident that she is challenging conventional notions of porn in terms of gender roles. DeGenevieve discusses how the anti-porn position believes that the "male gaze" in pornography objectifies women. DeGenevieve rejects this notion of gendered gaze, saying that "there is no male gaze, or female gaze for that matter, just the gaze. The gaze does objectify, but a woman's gaze objectifies just like a man's gaze." For DeGenevieve, women are also active viewers of pornography and further, it is not always the woman that they have to identify with. As we saw in her videos, queer and trans people role play and their gender roles are fluid. A viewer then is allowed "to make up any subject position, and a subject position has nothing to do with gender."

I would love to continue with all the "juicy" details of DeGenevieve's work, but I rather encourage you to join her website, or order her films, and support alternative queer porn.

Libidoc and Dr. Jacobs, "Interview with Barbara DeGenevieve ," in Libi_doce: Journeys in the Performance of Sex Art. Ljubljana, Maska, 2005, 142-147.

The Money Shot

Coming from the generation of "money shot" porn, the majority of porno films I have witnessed have all concluded with the external ejaculation of the man onto some part of the female body, most commonly the face, ass, or tits. Call me crazy, but I never really found such climax, well climactic. But then again, I'm not that into meat shots either.

However, my existence in this generation as well as a capitalist society leads me to discuss these themes, as Linda Williams does in her work on fetishes.

As stated below in my entry on Hustler, pornography plays a huge role in America's development of free speech rights and resistance to censorship. The film Deep Throat is another great example.



Deep Throat was the first porn film in theaters to show the public not only the male phallus, but the external ejaculation. Williams reports that before its creation, the only other film to show a penis was two documentaries on Danish sexual visual culture where massed-produced visual pornography was legalized. It is key here how discourse was manipulated into a more acceptable form, the informative documentary, but its essence still being about sex and showing it; “justify seeing this film as part of a quest for knowledge about the sexual mores of a different culture” (W p. 98).

Again, Deep Throat was a revolutionary release, just in the sense that is was released. Indeed, the fact that this graphic film was out there in the public was almost as alarming as the actual content itself; "what was new in these movies, aside from their occasional color and sound, was the simple fact of their exhibition on large, legal, public screens” (W p. 97). In the class order, sex is something low and dirty which should be kept out of the public eye. Thus, Deep Throat was highly contested.

But we all know that sex does sell and before protests even began, thousands had already seen the film. And for some, it was kind of a revelation of sorts. As Williams details, porn before these films were focused on Stage Films, in which only the female body was shown; a strip tease that worked itself up to showing inner lips and lesbian play. So, as one critic put it, when the male was finally showed in action, he had to stand and give his applause; “deep-throat fellatio followed by a money shot, which seemed to him an affirmation of an organ that had been kept under wraps for far too long” (W p. 100).

Can the coming penis really replace the "mysteries" of female orgasm? I certainly hope not as I agree that the money shot “is a poor substitute for the knowledge of female wonders that the genre as a whole still seeks” (W p. 94). However, in capitalistic society, the external ejaculated penis has more means to an end. As Williams discusses, current capitalistic modes focus on visibility. Before, when porn consisted of meat shots (penetration), one was unable to see most of what was going on. Now with money shots, there is more visual gratification to feed our consumerism; “the money shot seems the perfect embodiment of the illusory and insubstantial ‘one-dimensional’ ‘society of the spectacle’ of advanced capitalism- that is, a society that consumes images more avidly than it consumes objects” (W p. 106). Further, this visual is what sells. When you buy a porno, it is not because you like the actual item on the shelf, it is because you want to own that image that is not printed on the back cover; “what is most characteristic of late capitalist fetishistic consumption, then, is that increasingly nothing tangible is purchased” (W p. 107).

But as well all know, fetishes are not just that particular thing we obsess on, they speak louder to social functions; “Fetishes are thus short-term, short-sighted solutions to more fundamental problems of power and pleasure in social relations” (W p. 105). I might have been lucky however, others who see porn featuring the money shot, perhaps before they have even experienced sex for themselves, are being a bit brainwashed by those who want us to continue to consume this product, or action. When he "pulls out", it is a visual trick, telling us that this is the more pleasurable way to have sex; “viewers are asked to believe that the sexual performers within the film want to shift from tactile to a visual pleasure at the crucial moment of the male’s orgasm” (W p. 101). As Williams notes, women in the films also give auditory clues that this is pleasurable for them when they "ask for it" in dirty phrases like "I want to you to come on my face" or "let me see that hard cock". But this really does trick us again as usually the woman doesn't even see the climax as her eyes may be closed as he goes on her face or she is turned when he aims for her ass; “it is always quite evident that this spectacle is not really for her eyes” (W p. 101). Although some do like it, let us find out for ourselves without so much pressure!

So what is the solution? Change it up to conclude with the female orgasm? Perhaps push the marketing of the female squirting fetish? Williams and I disagree. We need to unpack things a little more to get to the sources of power and conflict and be able to create a market place of discourses that show a variety of pleasures; “while celebration of the clitoris thus might constitute one way to begin to challenge the power of a phallic economy of pleasure, it could do so only if the goal were not to set up an alternate organ of fetishistic worship but rather to dismantle the hierarchy of norm and deviation and so create a plurality of pleasures accepting of difference” (W p. 102).


Linda Williams, Chp 4 from Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the 'Frenzy of the Visible,'" Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.

Larry Flynt for President!!

Laura Kipnis Does Hustler

As the clip of Lary Flynt's Presidential candidacy speech shows, Flynt’s “career as a pornographer spilled out into the political arena” (K p. 123). Flynt, the creator and editor of Hustler magazine, has shown the American public for years how pornography is a vital tool of resistance against the repression of sexuality and free speech by the government.

As Flynt said in his speech, he is devoted to "moving the massive repressive hand of government from the crotch of the American people." As Kipnis discusses, Flynt fulfills his mission through the pages of Hustler in which we can see historically precedented amount of skin and pink, as well as political satire, both which challenge the conventions of what the female body is supposed to look like as well as societal behavioral norms; Flynt's "favorite tactic was to systematically and extravagantly violate, in the most profoundly offensive way possible, each and every deeply held social taboo, norm, and propriety he could identify” (K p. 123).

For starters, as Kipnis informs, Hustler was one of the first adult magazines to actually show the full bottom of the female, including her inner "pink". Flynt has been in too many legal disputs to name, but this was one of them. In each dispute, at the cost of fines and contempt charges, Flynt has won for the American public, more and more free speech rights; “pornography-via Larry Flynt- that has had a decisive effect on expanding the perimeters of political speech in this country” (K p. 123).

Hustler was always the first to "out smut" the competition. Kipnis reviews some of the key difference between Hustler, Playboy, and Penthouse. For one, Hustler keeps it real, showing a variety of female body types, sizes, ages and sexualities, even male-male sexuality has been shown. "The sexuality Hustler delivers is far from normative, with the most polymorphous array of sexual preferences regarded as equivalent to ‘normal sex,’... Hustler's body is often gaseous, fluid emitting, embarrassing body, once continually defying the strictures of social manners and mores" (K p. 131-132). In comparison, Hustler's competition represents a cleaner, glossier cover girl, one that reflects a "higher class" of pornography, one which sends the message that you don't have to feel as guilty to consume; Hustler "is neither the airbrushed top-heavy fantasy body of Playboy, nor the slightly cheesy, ersatz opulence of Penthouse, whose lingeried and sensitive crotch shots manage to transform female genitalia into ersatz objects d’art" (K p. 131-132).

With an analysis that is more than skin deep, Kipnis underlines how Hustler's first showing of the female bottom wasn't just to challenge its competition, it was to challenge class anxieties surrounding the body. The top half of the body and its senses represent the upper class. Facial beauty, in seeing, the breasts, all more acceptable areas of beauty. A little cleavage is always ok. In contrast, the lower half of the body- the genitals which are conveniently located next to the "organs of elimination" represent the lower class, the things which disgust the upper class and should not be caught in action in the public, let alone duplicated in print and circulated. By illuminating the lower part of the body, Hustler places the lower class on top; “The body and the social are both split into higher and lower strata, with images or symbols of the upper half of the body making symbolic reference to society’s upper echelons-the socially powerful-while the lower half of the body and its symbols (Hustler’s métier) makes reference to the lower tiers- those without special power” (K p. 134).

So, the next time you pick up a dirty magazine, remember, its not just about getting off, its about getring revolutionary!

Laura Kipnis, "Disgust and Desire: Huslter Magazine," in Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America, New York: Grove, 1996, 122-132.

@ The Riviera...

http://www.rivieravideo.com/rivieravideo/index.php

This is the story of my trip to the Riviera:

I'm on Facebook trying to be cool, although I should be reading or doing something equally intelligent, when a note on my wall reminds me that I have to go to the Riviera Adult xxx shop for homework (place Women's Studies major joke, insult, and/or confusion here).

My mind slides and I think back to my very first visit @ the Riviera. Belle*, and Green* and I drove down there, listening to The Toadies on the way. I remember sitting in the backseat like the younger sister. The power and sexual authority of the two women in the front illuminated them, and my shyness.

Green was very vocal about her needs. She never ignored the fact that we all thought about sex constantly so she figured it was best to just talk about it and be honest and open. We all lived in the same house and knew who was getting some and who was not. Belle and Green shared a room and in keeping close quarters knew how to take turns for that personal time we all need. Green needed a new vibrator, and that's why we were there.

We pulled into the shady parking lot in the back and Green greeted some gentlemen leaving as we were making our way in. She spoke to the man at the counter like they were old friends. I had never been in a sex shop before and I wasn't quite sure what sex shop etiquette was. In my mind you were supposed to look down at all times, not say anything, do not make eye contact, and go in and leave as quickly as possible with whatever purchase you made in a black bag to cover the shame. Only creeps actually hung around and browsed through the store.

Ok, so maybe I wasn't that uptight, but you can understand why a girl would be. Not all sex stores are exactly women friendly.

After long and hard debate, Green picked out the vibrator she wanted. Just a small thing you could carry in a hand bag, for the woman on the go I suppose. Belle had told me before there was a strap on device that her and her new girlfriend were considering. I couldn't imagine a bulky leather object attached to either of their slim figures. But then Belle showed me the one they liked, and I could understand the attraction to the cute set; a soft purple velvet strap with a matching purple dildo that wasn't too big.

I skimmed the vibrators. This would be my first one. And what a better time to buy it then here with my two sources of women power. At first I was nervous. I couldn't make a decision. I wished my partner was there to help me.... No, I can do this on my own. I choose an affordable slim vibrator. One that did not look like an actual penis, but was an opal color with tints of purples and pinks. I imagined my vagina like a giant doorway and this object would be the key that would unleashed vaginal orgasms on call! (Ohh how ignorant I really was).

Years later, going back to the Riviera is different. I try to arrange a threesome of Rose*, Liberty* and I which then turns into a play date for just Liberty and me. Now I am in the front seat of experience, it is her first time.

Liberty picks me up in her truck. It was a gift; the best kind. We ride with the more mellow Thievery Corporation, though the soothing beats do not match her so-called reckless driving. After two U-turns plus some lefts and rights, we finally manage to park on the street in front of the Riviera.

I've been there so many times now that nothing really shocks me, even the huge 12 inch black dildo that has more girth than my forearm (which the owner kindly informed me that they sell 2 of a week). I want to take notes in my journal, but I don't want to embarrass Liberty. We look at the map conveniently placed in the front next to the over-priced couples section and try to figure out what all the subheadings mean. After a friendly stroll through the toy section (I smile at the purple velvet strap on), we move on to the endless racks of videos. I examine the best sellers; a combination of Jenna and anime porn.

What is new on this trip is that I'm not so interested in the toys or the movies. I went straight to the magazine shelves. Trying to be more "literary" I examine over and over the Small Favors Book One collection. I want to buy the sealed book and put in behind my pillow to read when I am alone and need to focus. But I don't want Liberty to get the wrong impression.

The owner casually interrupts us now and then to give us helpful hints and stats. We ask him what ProAm means. I'm still not sure what it means, or if he really knew to begin with, as ProAm can mean a couple of things. First, the style could be amateur in that there is only one camera. But usually it means that the male talent are "pros" and the women talent are "amateurs", or new bodies. This section is reasonably large as I am aware of how many new women enter the porn industry everyday. They become disposable as there is always a new, younger girl ready to take your place. They go too fast, trying to do everything so quickly, going from my first Lesbian experience and virgin asses, to gang bangs over night. Even in the porn industy, a women needs to be a Lady to survive.

The further into the store you go, the more "hardcore" it gets. All sorts of fetish play, body parts and "ethnic" specialties. I found it interesting that the "Bi" section was only refering to male bisexulaity, as there was already an only girls section and otherwise, women are assumed to be bi at all times. Their Black Hookers series is particularly extensive, as well as the MILF games. Liberty and I continue along the whole store, picking up ones that interest us, for whatever reason, to explore the back covers.

I imagine we are on the Blind Date show. Our first date @ The Riviera would just boost their ratings as sex really does sell. What a better place for us to get to know each other and share family stories about her Catholic school upbringing and my mom who has had threesomes. The episode concludes when we go to the back viewing room where the camera cannot follow, a talk bubble pops up with Buck Angel asking us if he can cum along.

We head back towards home, chatting along the way. Liberty asks if I need to do anything else before she drops me off. I think about extending our night, perhaps a trip to Borders to see if they have any new foreign fashion magazines in, and then maybe a casual drink at The Merc, but I play it safe and say no.

I went back the next day and bought Small Favors.

Sex Workers' Art Show...!!!

http://www.sexworkersartshow.com/

Last year the Sex Workers' Art Show dazzeled the audience of the MCC for the first time. The show brought in an interesting mix of the Women's Studies and ally department crowds, queer kids in the know, and of course the average "bro" or two who were just there for well, "naked ladies" as host of the show, Annie Oakley would put it. Either way, the show was a super sold-out success and I know I couldn't wait to see more.



This year, oddly enough, there was not as much "outsider" support economically as last year. (But thanks again to the Women's Studies Dept and Professor Miller-Young for bringing them and the MCC for the free space). But that was a shame considering once again the show was sold out and then some; filling the ile floors and standing in the back. Apparently those Sex Workers do know how we like it...

One main difference I saw between this year's and last year's show was the level of nudity. Last year, Julie Atlas Muz http://www.julieatlasmuz.com/ started the show off with her performace to Judice Priest's "Breakin' the Law" in which she not only smoked and cigarrette in the MCC and stamped it out on the stage, but she also was fully nude! In all, last year there was definately more "skin". This year no performer was completely nude, tops covered with pasties and bottoms covered with at least dollar bills.

And why am I paying particular attention to this? No, it's not because I was disapointed at the lack of nudity this year (believe me, I was over stimulated as it was), but it is like Burlesque teacher and performer Jo Weldon http://www.gstringsforever.com/ put it when she brought a member of the audience on stage to do a strip-tease teach-in; No woman should take her clothes off for free. Yes, I don't think our admissions fee reaches the going rate for these extravegant women and men.

Another issue brought to my attention by a roomate who also went to the show this year was that of representation. What kinds of sex workers did the performers represent? In terms of class, working conditions, and motives, do these sex workers represent the majority of workers in and out of the U.S.? The answer clearly is no, but it would be foolish to ignore the impact that their work has on all sex workers. For one, they are working to dispel myths about sex workers and show that they have a voice, and an artistic one at that, and can use that voice rather than simply being silent objects of consumption. Also, everyone in the performace is contributting greatly to the sex worker community through the different aspects of their work. Amber Dawn from Canada organizes an FTM top surgery fundraising group called For the Boys and is a sexual health educator in an AIDS organization. Kirk Read works with St James Infirmary in San Fransisco, a free health clinic for current and former sex workers where he also started a men sex worker support group. Reginald M Lamar's lyrics discuss issues of race and opression that can't be ignored in the lives of sex workers of color. Just to name a few....

Finally, on a personal level I would like to comment on Miss Dirty Martini http://www.missdirtymartini.com/



Ahe is my newly found role model, and well Goddess. Her moves were amazing and she glide across the stage beautifully. I was able to speak with her after the show; she gives all kinds of confindance and inspiration to my kind, that is the "pleasantly plump"; thank you Miss Martini...

On Freaks...

In between school, organizing, and blogging, yes I actually do things just for fun. Ok, well blogging is fun, but only when you can throw in those fun posts that make all the academic stuff worth it.

So this weekend I saw Little Miss Sunshine, an excellent film about a family and all the problems that go along with being in one.

I would like to particularly talk about the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant scene. The first clip shows all the contestants in the bathing suit walk through. All of the girls except Olive are wearing makeup, heals, and hair extensions. In an earlier scene one girl is getting spray tan on her legs. The point is that they are trying to win with the sexuality of these girls and to make them look as grown up as possible. Little Olive is the only one without makeup, in a simple one- piece, her hair down in a pony-tail, and even with a little tummy.

The next clip is of Olive's "talent" in which she is doing somewhat of a striptease to the ever appropriate Rick James' "Superfreak". The crowd is more or less disgusted (aside from the one pedifile in the audience) and try to pull her off the stage.

The point is, one is really no different from the other. What the other girls were doing was the same display of young, tabooed sexuality, but in a more subtile form. And becuase olive was not your typical pageant girl, she was stigmitzed and thrown out of the contest.