Porn: Faux or Fact?

Pornography remains a battlefield. Is it a healthy expression of sexual fantasies or a malignancy on the libido? Do the images of superhumanly sexy people have supernaturally impossible sexual encounters help or hurt people?

Zahra Stardust, a Penthouse Pet, award-winning stripper, pole dance champion and queer femme-inist porn star, opines on this heated subject the Scavenger blog (link below). Highlights follow...

"I experience pleasure at work in the mainstream sex industry that I certainly perceive as ‘real'. This pleasure comes from physical sensations (lactic acid, endorphins, sweat, carpet burn, whipping hair, a double ended dildo angled against my g spot, real orgasms) but also from the thrill of voyeurism (exhibitionism, cameras, being naked in front of thousands of people).

"At the same time, websites that purport to depict ‘real' or ‘redefined beauty', often seem to be just as conventionalized as the mainstream genres they criticize. ‘Alternative' nude modelling site Suicide Girls gives calculated instructions on their website about the kinds of photos, make-up and aesthetic sets they accept: ‘tasteful', ‘picture perfect' shoots with ‘a little bit of face powder and mascara and freshly dyed hair', but specifically not ‘cheap wig[s]', ‘top hats', ‘stripper shoes', ‘food' or things that look ‘cheesy', ‘gross' or ‘creepy'.

"The irony is that you can never win – ‘appropriate femininity' is unachievable. We are either too much or not enough. Our hyper-femininity is often so far beyond normative feminine ideals that it brings us social censure – our make-up is too thick, our heels are too high, our breasts are too large. As Rosalind Gill writes about women in media, our "bodies are evaluated, scrutinized and dissected" and are "always at risk of "failing."

"There is some amazing queer and feminist porn around that is diverse and celebratory. But I'm not convinced that distinctions between fake and real are all that useful, or necessary. To call somebody fake involves a whole set of assumptions about their body, identity, gender, sexuality and politics, about what is ‘natural', ‘normal', which sex acts are ‘real', what is ‘authentic' for whom, and how one must look and behave to be ‘feminist' or ‘queer'."

Right on, sister! It's worth linking up and reading the whole story. Then add your voice to the discussion.

Via The Scavenger