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The Sex Blog Of Record
Sunday, February 24th, 2019 -- by Bacchus
I was doing some Google searches on old ErosBlog posts (about which more soon) when I discovered something amusing. Fourteen years ago I had a point to make in the endless wars that Serious Ideological Feminists were then waging (and, to a lesser extent, are still trying to wage to this day) against pornography. One of these extremists claimed that we pigdog porn consumers “CANNOT know if the girl you are masturbating to is, in reality, a sexual slave from Austria who has a gun pointed at her head just off camera.” To which my response back in 2005 was:
Yeah. And you cannot know that the bottle of salad dressing you pour on your salad isn’t full of stale unpasteurized jizz from bored wanking food factory workers, either. But that doesn’t make it likely, or stop you from eating creamy salads. Why not? Because of branding. If you worry about funky jizz in your dressing, you buy a reputable brand from a company you trust, one that’s got white-coated vat inspectors and security cams all over the factory floor. And, if you really worry, you do research. You get a tour of the factory, or (more likely) read the article in Consumer Reports by the reporter who worked there for three days undercover. The point is, you check into it a little bit.
This is perfectly possible with porn. You look for accounts of what it’s like to work for a particular porn company, how they treat their people, how the sets are run, whatever you’re worried about. Of course you can’t disprove sensationalist claims about porn factories full of enslaved Eastern European beauties this way – folks who want to cling to that fantasy will continue to do so, brandishing their “news” stories from The Weekly World News, National Enquirer, and Reader’s Digest – but you can satisfy yourself, along with any other reasonable people who might be curious, that the porn you buy is sex slave free.
Imagine my amusement and delight to discover that my stale-jizz salad-dressing analogy got quoted with approval in the middle of mostly-useless 2010 train wreck of a porn wars comment thread at Scienceblogs.com. That turkey of a thread is more than 46,000 words of hateful thrash (according to wordcounter.net) and I cannot recommend hardly any of it to you. My sense is that the porn wars are mostly more sophisticated these days, or perhaps I’ve just gotten better at avoiding the worst dens of festering idiocy.
There were a few high points among the 46k words of headbanging. Perhaps my favorite bits were these paragraphs by commenter “spit”:
Wow, the porn wars will never end. Never. I still have scars from earlier battles in it. Y’all are way behind.
I guess my take at this point, as a pretty damn feministy feminist, is that both sides are kind of wrong. I think it’s really pretty clear to me that porn can involve exploitation, that it doesn’t have to by nature (but frequently does), that it may encourage some people toward nastiness but not others, and that it likely has social effects on attitudes about women and is also a product of those and other longstanding attitudes about women (positive feedback loop).
People are often capable of having all sorts of fantasies that they don’t find ethical and would never actually act on. The origin of those fantasies may well be social attitudes, so in that regard, the problem isn’t just the gross porn nearly so much as it is that there’s a market for it in the first place. Of course, how much of that is a feedback loop is anybody’s guess. Those attitudes are built and reinforced in any number of troubling ways, porn simply being one of the easiest to argue about. But I tend to view what exploitation is in it as a symptom much more than a cause, I guess, and know better than to think that people would suddenly respect women sexually if they stopped watching porn while they’re still living in a culture that objectifies girls as infants. I guess in that regard, I just feel like I have other fish to fry, except in the cases of coerced stuff or utter lack of consent. My opinion, of course, and others’ mileage may vary.
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Sunday, January 20th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
And here’s another one. This guy signed up as an extra for one of the massive indoor-gangbang sequences at Public Disgrace, and found it to be ethical porn-making in action. His report is called Liking Porn And Loving Women: My Day As An Ethical Porn Star; he’s got a lot to say, but this is from near the end:
Princess Donna ripped the clothing off the models and encouraged the audience to do all sorts of nasty things to them. Her commands carried over the crowd as she busted out all manner of kinky sex devices. Fairly close attention was paid to the models’ well-being, but the check-ins were so subtle that I doubt the audience even noticed. Whenever either woman approached her breaking point, Donna carved a path toward the exit and let them go on break.
…
I don’t have any regrets about participating in Public Disgrace. Because it showed me that ethical pornography is a real thing that can empower its participants. And because it let me see that porn stars are just, well, people – people who enjoy getting naked and having sex who just so happen to get paid for it.
Even with all my nervousness leading up to the shoot, Public Disgrace was still an unforgettable experience and I’d probably do it again.
There’s something deliciously seedy about his photo of the accoutrements marshalled for the Public Disgrace production. It reminds me of an atmospheric shot for a horror movie or for the interrogation scene in an old war movie, but here it’s just a “get the supplies laid out” bit of movie-making practicality:
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Friday, February 12th, 2010 -- by Bacchus
I’ve long maintained that a responsible porn consumer should pay attention — when possible — to the business and employment practices of the people who make the porn. Not all pornographers are created equal. And who has a better view than their models?
Thus it is that I enjoy hearing from models at Kink.com (a long-time ErosBlog favorite), especially when they confirm my own prejudices. (Can there be any human pleasure more sweet than having cherished notions confirmed?)
You can imagine, therefore, the twin delights I experienced when I stumbled over the excellent blog by Miss Maggie Mayhem (how have I missed it?) and found the following paragraph under the heading Things I loved: 2009:
Kink.Com has been one place that feels more and more like home for me every time I visit. Working for their sites means being well cared for by intelligent people who are all passionate about sexuality. Not once did my request for a condom get snubbed or looked down upon, not once did my need for a break result in a sneer, and there was always a friendly production assistant ready with a fuzzy robe and a hug. When you get your porn from Kink.Com you’re getting it from good people who treat their models with respect. I was very happy to work with them throughout 2009 and I look forward to many more years and shoots there.
Image credit: The Training of O.
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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
The shooting conditions and model treatment during the production of kinky porn has been a recurrent topic of discussion here at Eros Blog. From severe European caning videos (here and here) to purest San Francisco kink (here and here), what it’s like to be the “done unto” model is always interesting to hear about.
Thus I viewed with fascination a cautionary video published by Kink.com last month about an Everything Butt shoot that featured a ginger figging. The ginger plug vanished up the model’s butt (Figging.com says they may have carved it wrong) and we get to see how they handled it, with narration by the model.
It’s all very calm and professional, although the visuals may raise your hair — at one point in the video, they’ve got a huge metal anal-retractor device in her bottom and it put me in mind of that immortal lyric from the end of Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean:
“With jacks and timbers they started back down,
Then came a rumble, way down in the ground.
Smoke and gas belched out of that mine
and everybody knew it was the end of the line
for Big John.”
Fig-carving art is from the Figging.com blog post about the incident, which also has a lot of details from the video.
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Sunday, December 7th, 2008 -- by Bacchus
Over at Catalina Loves I found the longest and most detailed description I’ve yet seen about what it’s like to shoot for Kink.com. Model Coco writes at length about what her first shoot (for their Fucking Machines site) was like, and makes it sound like a lot of fun indeed. These are just tiny excerpts from a much longer piece:
TC the director came down to introduce himself to me and told me to meet him upstairs when I was finished. After some inspiring words I went up stairs to make-up. Isis Love the girl that pretty much got me this gig, was there to give me a thumbs up and wish me good luck. This made me even MORE nervous. I tried to calm myself down. There was a girl was in the middle of getting her make-up done and so I sat in the little lunch/waiting room. TC came in and asked me how I was feeling and if I had any questions. I started eating as he explained what would happen. He asked what I was nervous about. I said “all of the people that are going to be in the room, the more, the more nerve-wrecking” He mentioned there would be 4-5 people in the room. That must have gotten a surprised look out of me and he said, “If at any time you want to stop then we will stop and go get a beer. No harm, no foul and we’ll still pay ya.” That was relaxing. Haha. While the make-up artist was doing the other girls face, she told me I should “freshen up” I looked at her perplexed and after about 2 seconds I realized she was talking about douching. I have only douched a couple times before so I wandered my way into the bathroom. MY GOD! There was soooo much girl stuff in that bathroom, from hair ties, to douches to self enema thingys and like 4 different kinds of baby wipes and deodorants and razors, shampoos and just EVERYTHING you could think of that girls would need. So I did my deed.
…
So I was fixed on my back with my legs over the arm of the couch and the Satisfyher on it’s side. I was feeling SO ready to come and SO worked at this point I was excited and nervous. After getting warmed up quickly I just layed there and let it fuck me and took it all in. It was pretty fucking rad. Since I come faster from clitoral stimulation we decided to pull the satisfyher out and let it hit me on the clit instead of being inside me. TC manned the controls and we let her fly at 1800stokes per minute. All hell broke loose. There was no man in the world that would have stopped me from my orgasm at that point. I was sweating and shaking and moaning and right when I was in the middle of my orgasm I BROKE THE MACHINE. It just BUSTED. I have no clue I wasn’t watching it all I know is I came then I looked down and realized it was broke. OOPS!
After that I was ready for another orgasm and I was running around all energized and excited because everyone was saying how sweet it was that I broke the machine with my vagina. I felt pretty cool after that like a rockstar.
…
He happily handed over the new magic wand. TC assumed his position manning the drill and I had the vibrator. I was loose and ready. It was INTENSE. I mean getting fucked and playing with my clit usually gets me off, but this was fucking ridiculous. Every muscle in my legs and arms started shivering and aching and screaming MORE MORE MORE. It was almost too much. I was definitely overwhelmed. It didn’t take too long after that to send me into a screaming orgasm. And when I say screaming, I mean SCREAMING. I think I cussed more then anything. “oh FUCK” seemed to be the favorite of the day. I got fucked into a jerking moaning completely earth shaking orgasm. You know the kind that make you wanna write it down because you don’t want to forget that moment EVER. Ya that. I even squirted. I got some on the directors face. I was watching his face as he was watching my pussy and the look of amazement when I squirted made me feel even better.
…
After I got my paycheck, I went to my car and sat there and screamed. Screamed from how fucking cool it is to orgasm for a living. Screamed from doing something I’d never thought I’d have the balls to do. Screamed from being utterly brutalized in front of people I just met. I screamed for nothing and for everything.
And that is all I have to say about that. Take it how you want to. I know how I took it. HARD FAST and WITH EVERYTHING I HAVE.
xo-
Coco.
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Sunday, July 15th, 2007 -- by Bacchus
Remember my post arguing that making sure your porn is ethically produced is no harder than doing the same thing for your salad dressing or your cheap manufactured goods? (You’d think this was obvious, but as I documented in that post, some in the rabid anti-porn crowd dispute it.)
Anyway, Evil Porn Werewolf Enslavers Debunked remains one of my favorite pieces on this blog. In support of my argument, I chose some of the scariest Eastern European spanking porn I could find and then did some basic consumer research, quoting spanking model Niki Flynn at length on the professional conditions at a Lupus Pictures porn shoot.
 
Well, now from Spanking Blog comes a link to spanking model Adele Haze writing on the same topic: Why I Modelled For Lupus Pictures.
This was serious business — you can see her welts here — but she had her reasons:
I don’t process pain as pleasure. I knew my caning would hurt a great deal, possibly more than any of my previous experiences. I did briefly wonder whether, caught up in the moment, I would find pleasure in my real-life flogging in a way I couldn’t enjoy some other girl’s filmed experience — and, pre-empting an upcoming post on the topic, no, I didn’t get any enjoyment out of the pain until it was all over — but, on the whole, I was prepared for a thoroughly uncomfortable several minutes over the famous bench.
And that was OK, because I knew – from studying the films, and from talking to Niki Flynn, who’d gone to that scary place before — that the rest of the shoot would give me the sort of pleasures that would make a few minutes of acute pain worth going through. For somebody who has a separate fetish for artistic suffering, working with a production on the scale of Lupus’s would be worth every stroke.
I had never before worked to a script, and I’d get that. I had never had somebody else think through the costume and make-up for me — I’d get that too, and in the end even the hideous pieces of reformatory wardrobe would turn out charming in their appropriateness. I had never before taken detailed direction, or shot completely — and confusingly — out of sequence, or acted in sets built for the purpose in every small detail; in short, I had never been a part of a spanking shoot run on such a professional level — and I knew that all of these experiences were mine for the taking.
Thanks, Adele, for the eye-opening account!
Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 -- by Bacchus
One of the common mostly-false slams against porn in this era of globalisation is that the performers are mostly coerced sex slaves, or at least impoverished scared young girls with few options. (I’m not making this up as a straw man argument; see, e.g., the Biting Beaver (her term): “You CANNOT know if the girl you are masturbating to is, in reality, a sexual slave from Austria who has a gun pointed at her head just off camera.“)
Yeah. And you cannot know that the bottle of salad dressing you pour on your salad isn’t full of stale unpasteurized jizz from bored wanking food factory workers, either. But that doesn’t make it likely, or stop you from eating creamy salads. Why not? Because of branding. If you worry about funky jizz in your dressing, you buy a reputable brand from a company you trust, one that’s got white-coated vat inspectors and security cams all over the factory floor. And, if you really worry, you do research. You get a tour of the factory, or (more likely) read the article in Consumer Reports by the reporter who worked there for three days undercover. The point is, you check into it a little bit.
This is perfectly possible with porn. By way of local example, these issues came up in a peripheral way in this post about real sex in BDSM porn, where a couple of readers suggested in the comments that making such porn was degrading and unsafe for the models, only to be confronted by other readers who were able to vouch for the porn company in question based on personal acquaintance with the models and producers.
And that’s how you check out your porn brand. Research. You look for accounts (which are all over the web, since many models have blogs) of what it’s like to work for a particular porn company, how they treat their people, how the sets are run, whatever you’re worried about. Of course you can’t disprove sensationalist claims about porn factories full of enslaved Eastern European beauties this way — folks who want to cling to that fantasy will continue to do so, brandishing their “news” stories from The Weekly World News, National Enquirer, and Reader’s Digest — but you can satisfy yourself, along with any other reasonable people who might be curious, that the porn you buy is sex slave free.
To pick another flamboyantly outrageous example, how about the notoriously severe spanking and caning DVDs produced by Lupus Pictures? They are often cited as an example of a company that must abuse and exploit its models, because what right-thinking innocent girl would voluntarily consent to an ass-whipping that leaves her in tears with flaming red welts on her bottom? (Short answer: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreampt of in your philosophy.)
Here are couple of a relatively mild screen capture samples so we know what we are talking about, courtesy of Lupus Spanking [2014 update: now defunct]:
And now some samples from an article by and an interview with Niki Flynn, who went to Prague to make a movie with these “evil werewolves from the East”. From the article (link broke awhile ago, see this .txt mirror):
I never thought of myself as a girl who could survive a Lupus-style caning. I cringe and wince when I watch the films and say, “There’s no way I could take that!” I’d heard the internet rumours, of course — about the innocent, impoverished Czech girls who are seduced by the money into being abused by the evil werewolves from the East. But I’d look at the “behind-the-scenes” pictures on the website and see everyone having a good time, laughing and horsing around, even after the canings. So the rumours never seemed to have any substance. Besides, the same girls turn up again and again to do films; they clearly know what to expect.
…
The thing that impressed me most of all was the consummate professionalism of everyone involved. This was not a group of pornographers making dirty pictures, nor was it a cruel band of misogynists delighting in taking advantage of girls who couldn’t say no. This was a real film crew working on a real film. In addition to the director, producer, script supervisor, makeup artist, properties and wardrobe mistress, caterer, cameramen, boom operator, still photographer, actors and (ahem) stunt girls, there were people on hand to offer us refreshments, comfort or anything else we needed.
…
Did it hurt? Of course. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely not. Do I regret it? Not for a moment. In fact, I had the time of my life. So did William. I knew exactly what I was getting into and I did it because this is what I like. And when it was over and I lay sobbing over the desk, I felt what mountain climbers must feel when they reach the peak. I was so high on the feeling of accomplishment and so lost in the roleplay that I nearly wished I could have some more! And when I look at the marks now I have a sense of pride and achievement. I savor the marks. No one who isn’t into this can ever truly understand. Boxers and footballers suffer broken noses and concussions. No one criticizes them or calls their sport unhealthy. What we do is so much safer. It’s really a shame so many people misunderstand.
Hmm, she doesn’t sound helpless or exploited, does she?
From her interview:
David: There are many rumors about the girls who perform in Lupus productions. Some believe that they attract poor, starving, drug-addicted Eastern European Girls. Now I know that this isn’t true. Prague is often referred to as ‘The Paris of the east”. The Czech Republic is not a third world country. What myths about Lupus would you most like to dispel?
Niki: (Sigh) Yes, the famous urban legends. I think that those rumors are insulting to the girls actually. It’s true, some people think of the Czech Republic as a third world country and that the girls are all uneducated and bullied into it. Or, they have no choice because they are so desperate for money they will do anything. The truth is that the Czech Republic isn’t a third world country; it’s a middle income country that has just joined the European Union. Most of the Lupus crew are friends on the Czech BDSM scene. Some of the girls do it because they are genuinely kinky — they come back again and again. Some may do it for money, but it’s not a crust of bread. They are paid a professional rate. On the set, they are treated as professional actors. The production team at Lupus couldn’t have been more professional or more concerned for my safety — for all of the performers’ safety.
And that’s how you know that the girl in your favorite video doesn’t have an off-camera gun pointed at her head.
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