[ week 41 | 53 ]
Why is it again that she gets all the fun?
Monday, 21.57
So I’m cruising MeFi and I follow this link and suddenly I wish I had a former housemate’s copy of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, or any copy, really, because then I could go and find a nice good quote about how butches do and femmes are done to and I’d have something then to say about how it’s always the female person, body, voice and form that’s pictured whenever the mass media wants to body forth the idea of sexual ecstasy, sexual sensation, the image someone in the throes of sexual ecstasy, because sexual ecstasy is all about losing control, about giving in to sensation, about being done to, and losing control and giving in and being done just isn’t terribly masculine (or butch), now is it? But I don’t, so I can’t, thus I won’t. Except I just did.
Maybe it’s the booze talking—
[ # ]
R.e.s.p.e.c.t.
Monday, 07.53
When a journalist who covers blogs refuses to link to “porn” blogs because they in turn link to (gasp) pornography—but has no trouble writing a whole entry about barely legal (and, yes, underage) kids who trade sexually suggestive chats and photos for swag from their Amazon wishlists—
When Visa has no problem imposing a sweeping change in their merchant plan that pretty much guarantees a killing frost for the small-time porn sites, the individual, the quirky, the personal, the DIY, in favor of the mass-market fleshpots who can afford the astonishing fees and draconian paperwork because they care nothing about art, æsthetics, impact, or models; nothing, in fact, but the almighty bottom line—
Well, hell. Is it any wonder so much porn out there sucks? (Beyond what one might expect due to Sturgeon’s Law, that is.) When our priorities are so fucked? We get the porn we’re willing to talk about, deal with, admit to, support. We get the porn we deserve.
Visa’s two-step is the more immediate threat, of course. Ruthie’s Club uses iBill, or rather has, in the past; we’re going to have to go find something else now, I imagine, and oddly enough I think we’ll do okay because our membership is still smallish by paysite standards—we shouldn’t disrupt them too much with a switch, and we can afford a more personal touch when it comes to customer relations. (I also think this shittiness may well have something to do with covering their ass against the threat of overly zealous state attorneys general who are facing re-election, but I’m cynical that way.)
It’s Femia that’s the more disturbing—because of what he’s emblematic of, and not so much the actual effect he will have (ha): his (perhaps MSNBC’s, but he articulated it) policy of choosing not to link to “porn” blogs because sites such as reverse cowgirl (it was her I swiped the Femia link from, so props), Pornographer’s Picks—and, moving beyond Salon’s blogs—Daze Reader, Short Sheets, and (I’m presuming) Sex on the Edge all celebrate porn and in the process link to the things they celebrate (or denigrate, or mock, or discuss) is on the face of it ridiculous: these sites are, themselves, work safe; anyone who gets to actual raw in-your-face porn (gasp) would have to click through links on the porn blogs; Femia’s (and MSNBC’s) hands would still be clean (enough). It also opens an epistemological can of worms: I mean, do I count? I talk about porn, after all. I don’t as often link to the “raw” stuff, but I’m more interested in where porn and the (supposed) mainstream intersect (and anyway, let’s face it, I’m something of a prude). My title isn’t in your face about it, but it does come from an essay about porn—does that matter? Since Hanne Blank doesn’t really link to porn per se so much, does she count? Or does the occasional presence of writing about the smut she writes make her less blog-worthy than the cam kids? —Of course, if your criteria is merely whether or not the site in question links in turn to things that are not, shall we coyly say, work-safe, then Supermodels Are Lonelier Than You Think is a porn blog, Oliver Willis better watch his Britney-lovin’ step, and even venerable MetaFilter is going to run afoul of the Femia Doctrine from time to time...
But cam kids? Cam kids is fine.
(How about you? Do you ever link to anything not work-safe? Do you ever talk about sex and art in frank and frankly appreciative terms? Do you count?)
