The Spanking That Dares Not Speak Its Name
One ought, I suppose, merely to try and enjoy porn, without endlessly deconstructing it. And yet I’m always interested in the contradictions and lies and odd labelings that porn uses to make the business safer for its owners and/or more comfortable for its customers.
The classic example, discussed here previously, is the traditional porn label “chicks with dicks.” Sorry, boys, but if “she” has a dick, “she” is no chick. And yet the obvious lie makes consumers more comfortable with the product.
Another example is “ass fetish” porn that’s marketed to spanking fetishists. You’ll see all the same postures, poses, and costumes (french maids, schoolgirl outfits, and so forth) but no actual spanking. Now, back in the day when there wasn’t much actual spanking even in the spanking magazines, this made a certain amount of sense. If you can’t get away with showing actual spanking anyway, why not tone down the labeling so you can sell the magazine at the drugstore? But these days, on the internet, there’s plenty of real spanking porn. So why market to spanking fetishists without using the label?
The only reason I can imagine is if the customer himself (like the chicks-with-dicks customer who wouldn’t be interested in honestly-labeled dudes-in-skirts-with-dicks) recoils from the accurate fetish label. Can there be folks into spanking who don’t want to see or hear the word?
Apparently, there can. Exhibit A: Girls Bottom. (Remember, pornographers and apostrophes don’t often socialize.)
Here’s a site chock full of advertising copy about bottoms. Sexy girls, bare bottoms, tight buttocks, ass keywords everywhere. Look for the word “spanking”; you won’t find it. But lookie there: “Schoolgirl bottoms.” We (and some bottoms) are getting warmer.
Now look down at the movie samples. Can you say “sore bottoms”? I knew you could. How about “welts”? Sure, no problem. But spanking? We’d be shocked, I’m sure, to find anything like that going on in this establishment.
It gets better. Check out this Girls Bottom gallery. No, it won’t show you any spanking either. But here’s a group of very adult schoolgirls standing around in the English countryside, and I doubt they are waiting for a bus:
Now we see them with bare bottoms, all bent over a fence in a nice neat row. Look close at the bottooms on display below, and you’ll see that they all seem to have been recently spanked. (You may need to look at the larger version in the gallery.) What’s more, I don’t think the young ladies have been fetchingly arrayed on the fence just so that they may enjoy the bucolic scenery. But still, there’s no actual spanking on display, so we don’t have to admit what fetish we are dealing with here:
OK, now we’ve got the girls dismounted from the fence and walking down the road in the sunshine. Clutching (yes, clutching) their gently-striped bottoms:
If that’s not clear enough for you, the rest of the gallery leaves no room for doubt. This is spanking porn with the serial numbers filed off. And pretty good stuff for the genre, too.
Strange and twisty are the comforting lies we tell ourselves, eh?
Similar Sex Blogging:
“Sorry, boys, but if “she” has a dick, “she” is no chick.”
You sound like the Michigan Womyn’s Festival. Only sexist. Can’t handle a bit of genderfuck? How unmanly.
Nothing wrong with a little genderfuck, but words and labels have meaning. Don’t lie about what you’re doing or about what gets you hot — *that’s* what’s unmanly.
Im one of the producers of girlsbottom.com - very good article ;)Thier is a definate cross over from spanking to the bottom fetish. And yes some of our stills have been cut from spanking related shoots. Demand is their for red butts with no spanking. And also for non spanked butts. Hopfully this site girlsbottom.com caters well for both camps.
Over n out :rolleyes:
I’ve just begun to get an appreciation of how people select some erotica that lets them enjoy their BDSM desires while maintaining a vanilla sexual identity.
While I’m happily masochistic I myself have come to prefer to see images of a dominant just standing there looking powerful. Maybe a whip in hand.
I don’t need to see any action, my mind takes the almost blank slate and weaves my own story about it.
The reddened cheeks don’t do anything for me, but the sight of all those firm buttocks at such inviting angles, coupled with the ‘panties around the knees’ embellishment, has me wishing that I could stand on that gate behind any one of them…
~EA
Actualy, if someone identifies as female, I don’t check to see if they’ve had surgery, nor does a bit of flesh define ‘man’ or ‘woman’ to me.
If they do to you, fine and dandy. But you’re acting as if there has to be one wholy writ of gender definitions for everyone, and anyone who dosen’t conform to your thinking is lying, and offends you.
I don’t care how people identify or act — that’s personal. But male and female are biological facts. A penis is not a female sex organ. That’s fact, not culture.
Y’all are free to use your own definitions, but if you deliberately call a tree a rock, you’re lying. Say “that tree identifies as a rock” if you want — it still doesn’t make it a rock.
I’m not trying to straightjacket anyone into behavior sets — I don’t really care what someone does with their parts or where they put them — but I’m not willing to abandon the idea that words have meaning.
I’ve deleted one comment in this thread for abuse namecalling, so please keep it civil, folks.
It’s horribly hard to keep it civil when you’re attacking the entire trans community.
It’s not an issue of parts, but the fact is that these people identify as something else because their body was formed incorrectly. In the trans community, it is VERY, VERY disrespectful to call a pre-op male-to-female “he”. She has always been a girl in her heart. Many transsexuals report feeling that their bodies were inherently wrong even as small children.
It’s a respect issue, not a word issue.
Cilantro, thanks for keeping it civil even though it may have been hard.
Now, to set the record straight, I was *not* attacking the entire trans community. Recall the context of my comment — I was mocking the community of old-fashioned pornographers, none of whom give a hoot about the trans community. When they advertise what you call a member of the trans community as a “chick with a dick”, they aren’t doing it as a gesture of respect; they are doing it to make their non-trans customers feel better, by attempting to obfuscate the biological maleness of the models they are selling.
As for it being a respect issue rather than a word issue, that’s simply a matter of perspective. I have an almost religious commitment to the power and value of words. I’m *not* a member of the trans community but I *am* a member of the community of wordsmiths. Thus, it’s far *more* important to me that words are used clearly and accurately, than that some community which has chosen to distort the meanings of certain words not have its feelings hurt.
The world is full of people who, for whatever reason, have decided that existing language useages are hurtful to them. They frequently demand that we (the rest of the world) revise our useages. The essence of political correctness is to comply. I refuse. Do what you want, I’ll support you to the hilt, and respect you also unless there’s some good reason not to. But your liberty does *not* include the right or power to pervert the language I speak, and though you are free to demand that I call a rock a tree, I’m equally free to refuse without disrespect. Which is, in my view, what I’ve done here.
<<Sorry, boys, but if “she” has a dick, “she” is no chick.>>
You don’t seem to be listening to concerns others are raising. People who consume all sorts of porn fetishize and exoticize peoples bodies for a lot of reasons which are often racist and transphobic, among other things. In the case of porn advertised as “chicks with dicks”, pre-operative and non-operative trans women are often fetishized for the fact that they have a penis. This, however, does not make them not women in any way what so ever! They are not “dudes in skirts with dicks”! Don’t confuse the projected desires of people who consume porn with the people who are featured in the porn. In doing so, you ARE attacking all trans communities.
Try educating yourself rather than getting so defensive…http://www.transgender.org/transcend/ has some good info on it, for example.
There’s a difference between not listening and not agreeing. Having penises does indeed make people “not women”. To dispute that claim, you have to do radical violence to the meaning of the word “woman”. Redefine the word, if you like, for your own sexual or political reasons, but you don’t have any right to expect others to agree with you or follow your radical new usages.
I’m also entertained to be accused of “attacking” in one sentence, and of being “defensive” in the next sentence. Which is it?
So you’re saying words are more important than people?
your defintion of the word “woman” does radical violence everyday to female-assigned babies who are born with clitorises/penises that exceed an allowable size limit. since having a “penis” makes people “not women” these infants are subjected to genital mutilation so that we don’t have any “chicks with dicks” running around confounding your definitions of gender.
some wordsmith you are. if you really did your homework then you would realize that the science of biology only recently chose to make a qualitative distinction between “male” and “female” sex organs. you see human “facts” have history because they are constructed by humans and that means they’re meanings are transient. current biological “facts” delineate five sexes. medical “facts” see only two. this is because they *choose* to interpret human anatomy these different ways. you choose your own way. all of these ways f— people who disagree with their interpretations.
A real wordsmith understands that his words describe an ambiguous, uncertain, and mutable world; that words and definitions can try to pin down meanings and realities, but often fall short, just as our understanding of many subjects outside of our experience often falls short.
You’re really falling short on this one, and it’s disappointing for people who have enjoyed your writing about sex so far.
Bacchus, FWIW, I agree with you, and have had this very conversation many times with others. Let’s call a spade a spade. Or is that not PC?
In my experience, calling transgendered people “Chicks with Dicks” is the *real* insult, meant to cater to people who are so uncomfortable with their own sexuality that they cannot admit to themselves that they might not be 100 percent heterosexual, thereby alleviating any social guilt they might feel over finding a person of the same gender attractive, as in “Hey, I’m not really gay! She has boobs!”
Which brings up another point that dovetails nicely with the comments of some of the transgendered posters above: I find it mighty insulting that the porn producers in question define people strictly by their secondary sexual characteristics. Does having breasts and long hair make a person female? Does this mean that if I have a mastectomy and short hair I’m not a woman?
Much like race, gender is a social construct. The reality is, these porn producers are pandering to the “taboo” aspect that is exacerbated by labeling folks. They are doing nothing to promote understanding of the trans community, and are in effect only perpetuating misunderstanding and discontent, all in the name of the almighty dollar.
But what else is new?
Gods forbid we should foster an accepting tolerant mindset that encourages people to explore and embrace their sexuality…why then it wouldn’t be “forbidden” and therefore tittilating and money generating! The producers probably wouldn’t make nearly as much money selling trans related porn to people with a healthy view of their own sexuality as they do marketing it to Homophobe Harry who bashes trans and gay people publicly, but privately loves nothing better than to slap his bishop around while watching some trans related erotica. Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest.
Argh. I’m rambling. You get the idea.
I get the idea, but I stand by what I’ve written.
I guess I need to clarify. I’m not disagreeing with you. Quite the opposite. What I’m attempting to convey (badly I guess) is that a person with a penis is not a female. I am not speaking of someone who is biologically/chromosomally female and just happened to have been born with a larger than usual clitoris,or even a case of someone who truly is born ambiguously gendered. I’m speaking of those who were originally biological males. So Chicks with Dicks is a misnomer, perpetuated by money grubbers, and people who feel some sort of guilt for finding trans-gendered people sexually attractive. I think Boys with Boobs is a more accurate term (if one must be coined) to describe pre-op M to F transsexuals. Plainly put, I don’t consider someone a girl or a boy until they’ve made the final step. If a person is still sporting the genitals of their prior biological gender incarnation, then they are a lovely blend which is fine in and of itself, but which is not female (or male), no matter what they may want to call themselves.
Did I clear my comment up, or just make it muddier?
::sighs, considers getting more sleep, or taking a remedial English course.
Wow!
I have to say, I agree with you 100% Bacchus.
If you have a dick. You’re a guy. It’s a pretty simple concept. I don’t think there should only be the antiquated male/female roles, but gender is really not a continnuum. How you feel about it, might be, but the gender itself isn’t.
If you want to feel feminine and frilly, that’s fine. But that doesn’t make you a woman. If you want to self-identify as being female, that’s fine too. But it doesn’t make you female.
Dress how you want. Talk how you want. Have whatever emotions you want. But, please don’t change the English language just to suit your own needs.