porn

Documentary filmmaker Mia Engberg has made a feminist porn film, titled Dirty Diaries: Twelve Shorts of Feminist Porn.  All of the filmmakers are either female or identify as female (one of the filmmakers was born male).  Each film was shot on a mobile phone.  The project received 350,000 kronor in production support from the Swedish Film Institute. 

The collection of independent stories coalesce around a central manifesto:

A new musical is being put together in Los Angeles that focuses on the Adult Film industry that flourishes in the San Fernando Valley.  A theater group from NYC, The Civilians and L.A.’s Center Theatre Group (recently transferred 9 to 5 to Broadway) have joined forces to create and produce the show in Los Angeles.

According to the CTG, the show “will explore the real-life stories of the people who work in California’s pornography industry.”

The initial phase of the project has “the creative team [going] behind the scenes and learn[ing] about the human side of this business, looking at the work and lives of directors, performers, producers, crew — everyone with a story to tell.”

Members of both theater groups have begun canvassing the valley for interesting stories. The Civilians use what they call an investigative approach to theater — that is taking real-life stories and interpreting them for the stage. (Steve Javors, XBIZ)

Yesterday, I drew attention to the smear campaigns and disinformation swirling around the recent news of an Adult Entertainment performer (aka porn star) who recently tested positive for HIV.  Ernest Greene, who served as the source and catalyst for yesterday's post, has followed up with some more facts about the flat-out lies told by those seeking to distort this story for their own purposes.

Today's LA Times reports that LA County officials simply made up stories of the existence of 16 previously unreported Adult Industry performers whom had tested positive for HIV.  

"We have no information on these individuals," said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's health officer. "All we have is the number from AIM."

The recent announcement that a female porn star had tested positive for HIV has led to the usual crowing from opponents of pornography.  Whether these critics be in the religious or philosophical circles of moral disapproval or whether they are in the 'law & order' fearmongers, they paint the standard campaign of disinformation, vilification, lies about the state of the industry and its effects on society and flat-out negation of the viewpoints of the actual people in the porn industry.  These campaigns traditionally use the myth of porn as evil and victim-maker to gin up the morality base and either line their own pockets with donations or garner votes for their alleged ability to rescue us all from these wicked times.

Ernest Greene has been in the Adult Entertianment industry for a while now.  He currently serves as Board Chairman for Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM).  He has taken the time to post a fact-based and honest response to the disinformation and misrepresentation campaigns that we are hearing now.

I have to admit that I've seen relatively little vanilla pornography, so the first I heard of porn star Stormy Daniels is that she may be running for U.S. Senate in 2010. Specifically, as Ms. Daniels is from Louisiana, she would be challenging the incumbent Republican senator David Vitter - one of the cliché right-wing politicians who get caught doing the very things they love to legislate against. In the summer of 2007 news broke that before, during, and after winning a U.S. senate seat by preaching conservative "family values," Vitter was a frequent customer of prostitutes. And he was a fetishist: It's hard now to find a mainstream reputable source from 2007, but some of the prostitutes who had slept with Sen. Vitter disclosed that he liked being forced to wear diapers. Which is how he earned his nickname: Vitter the Shitter.

Now, I firmly believe that Senator Vitter has the right to wear diapers with consenting prostitutes, and that doing so doesn't necessarily compromise his abilities as a senator - any more than my kinks or polyamory compromise my ability to do a desk job during the day, or any more than anybody having vanilla sex with their spouse compromises their ability to do a job. Except that apparently Senator Vitter actually disagrees with me, because after he was caught, he went on the record calling his own behavior, 'a very serious sin.' And he's still voting with the Christian Coalition 100% of the time.

In our culture, it's easy to laugh with disgust at diaper-fetishists. But I'm really disgusted he has claimed that stopping gay marriage is the most important issue in America, and I'm frustrated that the jokes at his expense generally target his fetish and not the hypocrisy of his trademark sexual intolerance.