I’ve long viewed the phrase “porn use” as a red flag that tells me the speaker is against porn. But I never realized precisely why the seemingly-innocent phrase was so loaded. Fortunately, Dr. Charlie Glickman nails it in an article at Good Vibrations:

On one of the sex education email lists that I follow, someone posted a question about “porn use.” And while I’ve seen this phrase used more times than I can count, it suddenly seemed to me that the term implies a bias that runs so deeply that it’s effectively invisible.

I think it’s rather interesting that people often talk about “porn use” even though they don’t talk about “sitcom use,” “talk show use,” or “romantic comedy use.” Instead, we might ask someone how often they watch TV, or talk shows, or movies. We might say that we enjoy Law & Order, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they “use” Law & Order.

But when we get into the area of porn, we sometimes shift our language away from words that we use to talk about any other media and start using a phrase that sounds like we’re talking about drugs. People use Advil, or caffeine, or cocaine. And it seems to me that when we talk about using porn, we’re framing it in the same way.

Of course there’s more.

From 1962. You can’t hardly tell she’s wearing a bathing suit:

She’s a little before my time, but I remember her from that movie where she gets face-sploshed with horse manure.

Long before Photoshop, magazine art directors were doing fun things with scissors. Want to put Bettie Page on the cover of your magazine as a harem girl, but don’t have that photo? No worries! Take another photo of her, plus a photo of a different girl in a harem outfit, get the art guys to draw a cartoon sultan, a hookah, and some fruit, then get out your scissors and Kraft paste and go to town!

This 1957 magazine cover courtesy of the Drake’s Way tumblr.

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From Vintage Lust:

Warning: ladies should not attempt this position after a full meal.

There’s an old and hilarious Ray Stevens song called The Mississippi Squirrel Revival. At one point during that song, we hear about a woman named “Sister Bertha better-than-you” who is “watchin’ all the commotion with sadistic glee.” Well, I never really knew what “sadistic glee” looked like until I saw the special light in the eyes of Isis Love (she’s the one holding the red electric shock wand in case you were in any doubt) in this shoot from Wired Pussy:

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I hate to mock porn from Hustler’s Taboo, the stylish-but-raunchy fetish nature of which I generally quite enjoy. But when I see this particular photo, all I can see is a big thought bubble where she’s thinking “Bitch, please! Could you use some damn mouthwash?”

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I’ve been reading Susie Bright since she published a kinky lesbian porn mag, back in the pre-internet era when “computer porn” meant dialing up to a BBS and watching a dirty picture appear on your screen line by weary line at (if you were rich and lucky) 14400 baud.

When I first encountered her On Our Backs magazine, I was newly arrived in San Francisco and I was just looking for porn. San Francisco: “Porn, we haz it.” But why was I reading Susie Bright’s lesbian porn mag?

Because then, as now, she was a voice for sexual freedom. It didn’t matter if her subject matter (lesbian stuff) didn’t have much (any) intersection with my life. And that “not mattering” is one of those things that never change. Here’s Susie, writing about a new movie I hadn’t heard about, about a band I never heard of, and a cultural scene I never knew existed, but making the whole thing worthwhile anyway because she’s (still) really writing about sexual freedom:

Let me make something clear that the movie only hints at: The Runaways band would not have happened, could not have been conceived, without the Underground Dyke Punk Groupie Slut culture that stretched from the San Fernando Valley to the bowels of Orange County.

What is wrong with saying that? Do dykes never get to claim anything? Is the historical lens going to stay coated with Vaseline and excuses FOREVER?

I’ll tell you why dyke rock’n’roll legacy is important. Because in order to stand up to the shitheads who tried to keep young women out of EVERYTHING, you had to NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THEIR SEXUAL APPROVAL.

You had to NOT want to get married and have babies with a nice boy. You had to be FINISHED with “virtue.”

We did not care if the guys called us “sluts” and accused us of “wishing you had a dick.” We were beyond wishing; we did whatever we wanted.

A lesbian in the ’70s was thought of as someone involved in mainstream feminist politics or the folky Back-to-the-Land milieu. Most girls I knew in the punk scene couldn’t relate to that, or thought of it as their mother’s trip. We were urban, we were not into politics as usual. Everyone called themselves “bi,” although that was really code for: don’t tell me what to do.

My favorite lines in the piece, though, are these:

The Democratic Party lesbians took one look at my lipstick and leather and flipped out. “You are a slut! You are an operative of pimps and pornographers! The S/M white slavers are controlling you!”

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