Porn, Consent and Respect

In the two-plus years I’ve written for Jane’s Guide I’ve viewed a lot of porn.   A tiny bit of what I’ve seen has been dreadful.  An even smaller portion I’d call brilliant, inspired and art.  Finally, vast endless swaths of it fit somewhere along the continuum of  tiresome snooze-inducing cunt-clenching mediocrity.

A few times — a remarkably few times, considering how much porn I’ve seen — an act depicted has turned my stomach.  There’s little that bothers me but for the bloodiest side of BDSM.  If I run across it privately, I click away faster than my skin can crawl.  If I find it as part of my job, I have in all cases save one soldiered through and produced a write-up that (I hope) presents the site dispassionately enough to be useful for folks who seek that sort of content and for others who wish desperately to avoid it.

Only once have I been unable to complete a review for fear of dinner coming back up.   The site’s splash page showed long skewers run through the meaty part of the breast (not just the nipple, you understand), ball kicking, and the kind of extensive play piercing that required a hospital’s worth of tiny needles.  I felt faint, and passed off the review to someone hardier than myself.  He told me later that it was a wonderful site and “not all that hard-core, really.”

Mostly though, I am in awe of those who can push their bodies past limits that would make most of us sob.  I love to see what people can do and what they love to do; I feel certain that for each person who hoists a freak flag upon the pole of pornography there are hundreds who wish they were uninhibited enough to do the same and thousands who die wanting even one such experience with an enthusiastic partner.

I almost always make the assumption that each porn performer I see has willingly if not gleefully consented to participate in the actions which eventually stream through my internet connection.   Jane won’t list sites that don’t display proper US 2257 notices; any that seem sketchy are skipped.

Nevertheless I have on rare occasions felt uncomfortable with the apparent consent shown by some models.  One site produced in Latin American promised depictions of  male masturbation.  The fact that the dialogue was not in English prevented me from picking up on lots of clues, but I gathered enough from body language and the performers’ appearances to see that they were young — terribly young — and looked frankly terrified.  Another site, a British caning extravaganza, openly bragged in their model call about the cruelty of their beatings and explicitly stated that if a performer could not complete a session, she would not be paid.  Some “voyeur” sites send slimy shivers through me at the idea of posting folks without their explicit permission.  Sure, lots of these sites are perfectly legit and the voyeurism is only an elaborate ruse.  But some of them?  Some of them feel just a bit too real.  Other content simply frustrates me as I try without success to see some spark of pleasure in the models’ dead eyes.

There’s plenty to criticize about some pornographic content, and that’s why this piece by SFWeekly.com reporter Matt Smith surprised me so much.  Of all the folks who could be accused of producing unethical, exploitative porn, Kink.com would be at the absolute bottom of my list.  That’s one of the main reasons I participate in their affiliate program and why I’m thrilled when each month I see that some of you lovely pervs have sampled their wares.  The other reason is simply that their stuff makes me hot.

The wind goes out of Smith’s inflammatory prose when you realize that not once does he quote an actual Kink model.  Nor does he mention having observed Kink’s shoots.   But David Steinberg from SFGate.com has seen the Kink folks in action.  If you haven’t already, read his take on what makes their work one of the best examples of consensual, progressive porn.  And while you’re at it, take a look at his amazing erotic photos, especially these, which bring tears to my eyes with their passion and beauty.

One day soon it’s my fervent hope that more if not most of us can realize that “different from me” does not necessarily mean “bad,” and that it really would be best if we could treat each other as we’d want to be treated.   I’m not sure that any religion originally intended their ideas to be applied to porn, but eventually we must give to our neighbors’ expressions of sexuality the same respect that we want for ourselves.