pornography

from Victoria's Sex Blog

Until you’ve actually had a baby, you cannot have a CLUE what you’re in for… and it’s the same with sex. I remember my shock (and absolute THRILL!) the first time a male hand slid behind the zipper of my jeans to touch my pelvis, and lower… and although I’d been doing some heavy duty making out until then, I had absolutely no idea how fabulous another person’s touch could feel on my private parts. I guess I am one of the fortunate young girls who truly was a virgin before that happened; from the stories I have heard from girlfriends, it’s not quite the same when you have already been touched way before you were ready or willing.

After reading about the negative effects of too-accessible pornography on children and youth, I sat down with my two teenage boys and told them we were going to have a talk about just that. They were pretty cool about it… they knew I knew they looked at porn (although I don’t know how much) and they know I know something about it because they know that I’ve drawn it, although I can’t be sure about how much of my work they have actually seen either. My attitude up until now has been to keep this work discreet, but not completely hidden; they know I draw and photograph the nude body and they know I do something about sexuality, but what exactly…?

posted by Victoria's Sex Blog

Sex means so many things to so many different people. For some, it's just a game, for others, it's private and sacred. For some it's an obsession, for others, a duty. Unfortunately, for many, good sex is too often just an unfulfillable fantasy and even more often we heavy-duty thinkers come to prefer our fantasies to reality when we feel unable to act on the dreams. My wish has always been that sex be a very real, respectful celebration of intimacy between people who truly care about each other... which does not exclude wild fun! 

What would happen if we took the focus on sex out of our minds and brought it into our bodies, then what? Would it result in uncontrollable, unmitigated debauchery? That is too often the instant conclusion we come to in “modern” society. Sex is most often equated with corruption, like nudity – especially in children - is automatically connected to exploitation. News flash everyone! WE ARE ALL NAKED UNDER OUR CLOTHES!!! Every single one of us: priest, nurse, clown, prostitute or rocket scientist… so why do we continue to make nudity and sexuality such negatively-connotated “sins”? Because we only focus on the abuse, not the beauty. Of course there are lots of historical reasons, too, but in this media-driven society sex sells, and that’s pretty much the only way that nudity and sexuality are ever treated,  especially visually -  to sell. Something. Anything. Everything.

To clarify from my celebration of "Dress Like a Whore" Day: I do understand the Feminism 101 concepts of the "male gaze" and its companion objectification, wherein women are reduced to bodies existing only for men's pleasure.  There is already a huge assortment of feminist treatises showing how objectification and unrealistic beauty expectations damage women.  But then, however problematically, none of my Women's Studies courses have stopped me from feeling a great erotic charge from intentional exhibitionism. So for years I've been working to articulate how I, as woman, can occasionally enjoy the role of the flashy slut without being reduced to "only" a slut. (Step one is the deliberate choice.)

And then a fellow kinky female friend introduced me to the brilliant Filament magazine, subtitled "The Thinking Woman's Crumpet." Instead of fighting the erotic "gaze" as inherently evil, Filament fights for straight women's right to gaze at men.

from Victoria's Sex Blog

Tonight I give you the image of a man, not a baby, joyfully sucking on a woman’s breast. This is a drawing from the early series I did with Francesca from pornographic images. I would go through hundreds of porn photos, in magazines or on the Internet, trying to find those with a little bit of tenderness, then I’d draw them… tenderly… as if I was pencilling in the love that I felt was missing in the original image. After awhile I got more comfortable, courageous, even brazen, and was able to draw sexual positions or situations that disgusted the prude in me, and discovered that love, injected into anything, transforms it. It’s like looking at an act through different glasses, in this case a sexual act, but without applying shame or judgement, it loses it’s negative aspect and can show its simplicity and beauty because it’s being seen from a completely different perspective.

I have been thinking too much about how to express intimacy through imagery, and the thinking led me to think that it’s not worth doing. Right. No more thinking. What I decided to do instead, is the doing… by drawing, writing, expressing a perspective on intimacy. First I looked up some quotes, and found some VERY entertaining ones I’d like to share:

By Lawrence G. Walters, Esq.

"Family Values groups and other opponents of free speech routinely use the terms 'pornography,' 'obscenity' and 'child pornography,' interchangeably, in the attempt to cause confusion in the mind of the public, and intentionally link perfectly legal content with evidence of a horrific crime."

A favorite trick of the censors in this country is to blur the lines between protected speech, in the form of adult erotica on the one hand, with patently illegal material, in the form of child pornography on the other, by mixing the two at every opportunity. Family Values groups and other opponents of free speech routinely use the terms "pornography," "obscenity" and "child pornography," interchangeably, in the attempt to cause confusion in the mind of the public, and intentionally link perfectly legal content with evidence of a horrific crime. The media often plays along, whether through ignorance or complicity, and refers to the new child porn arrest as a "Pornography Bust."

All of this helps convince the public through confusion, that pornography has something to do with abuse of children, and that all of it is probably illegal somehow. In some jurisdictions, law enforcement investigators seize every chance to mix these concepts in a blender, by charging defendants with obscenity as well as child pornography, no matter how remote the connection, or how strong the evidence. Some evidence of this can be found in a couple recent cases initiated by the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd. This is the same Sheriff made famous by declaring that he had jurisdiction to regulate anything online, so long as it was available for download in Polk County, Florida. According to Judd:

"But it makes no difference, because if you fed that server or you could receive information off that server in this county, then it gives us jurisdiction. ... Technically I could charge someone in Kansas, if I received child pornography here, obtained a warrant and had him extradited from Kansas and tried here."

For some time, religious fundamentalist groups in SA have been campaigning to ban various things in this country. A few months ago, a massive crowd - all of 18 people - picketed outside the Sexpo in Cape Town, demanding a return to "traditional" and "family values" and the banning of pornography - much to the amusement of the 20 odd thousand people drawn to the sexpo by their very negative press, which unintentionally turned out to be very positive for the sexpo instead. Such groups have held numerous protests and mounted email campaigns against "soft-porn" on E-TV, "blasphemy" in student "rag" magazines and of course, marches against abortion. And of course, who can forget the thousands who marched in South Africa some years ago to oppose marriage equality - because people falling in love and getting married is just way too bad for "the family", and will cause our fragile civilization to collapse?

Add to that the announcement on the radio I heard a few days ago where a government minister announced an initiative to table a bill in Parliament, which would enforce a blanket ban on all pornography in public media. This announcement can be seen on the Home Affairs website: http://www.home-affairs.gov.za I am sure in retrospect, he meant wet blanket.

"“South Africa should explore an outright ban on pornography in the public media as is the practice in countries such as China and India.” To this extent, the Deputy Minister will approach the Law Reform Commission with a view to requesting them to investigate and advice on the possibility of such a move. "The increase of access to technology and mobile internet, with all its benefits, also poses risks such as creation and distribution of child pornography. We need to be proactive in protecting children against this heinous crime."