Porn For Women Is Pointless? Oh, Puh-lease. #sex #porn #givemeabreak

I have a lot, and I mean A LOT of problems with this article, Is Porn for Women Pointless?, (including problems with my belief in Ogas and Gaddam as decent scientists of any kind) but I’m only going to address one of them today, and that problem lies in the space around these quotes:

1) Most women, says Ogas, are “not interested at all” in visual pornography, preferring erotic texts like stories and novels. But of the 10 to 30 percent of women in Ogas’ study who did prefer visual porn, most of them “tend to like the same kind of material men are interested in, which is more graphic and hardcore. There’s a clear contrast between what activists and women in the erotic industry talk about as women’s preferences, and what women are actually looking at,” he says.

[He then goes on to say that the 30% or so of women who enjoy visual porn are looking at the same hardcore stuff as men and DO NOT enjoy the so-called female-friendly porn. FWIW, I 100% concur with this, but still find his ultimate conclusion in 3 below to be complete bullcrap. He also says that of that 30% of women who enjoy visual porn, they test as more aggressive women both in life and in bed. Uh, okay, whatever the fuck that means. *eyeroll* We’ll go with it.]

2) Angie Rowntree, the creator of female-friendly adult site Sssh.com, believes the gap between male and female porn viewing patterns has less to do with innate differences between the two sexes, and more to do with the fact that most porn has been made “by and for men.” “Is it any wonder that a relatively small portion of women wants to watch it?” she recently told Alternet. “To me, that number just speaks to the opportunity on the market for porn made with a female viewership in mind. It’s just a function of the numbers and what has been available on the market, historically speaking,”

3) “I just don’t think visual porn will ever be something that a majority of women embrace,” Ogas says. “There’s plenty of female-friendly material out there, and there has been for a while. It’s not a question of changing people’s attitudes toward [women watching porn]. It’s something more fundamental than that.”

Okay, I’m having to actively resist my huge urge to explain why Ogas and Gaddam are shitty scientists and actually just focus on what’s being said here. So…*deep breaths, deep breaths*…okay. Let’s go.

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that the women I’m talking about are straight or bisexual women because I really can’t speak at all to lesbian porn preferences, since 97% of my own sexuality is tied up in various respects with men’s bodies, and most of the women I’ve talked to about porn are either straight or bisexual, too.

So, first Ogas points out that research shows that of the women who do watch porn, they aren’t digging the so called “female friendly” stuff. Righto. I concur. Female friendly stuff is so yawn worthy and boring and blahhhhh. THERE MIGHT BE A REASON FOR THAT, YO. Could it possibly be that the people making the female friendly stuff don’t actually know what kind of porn women want to see?

I’ve watched a lot of porn. There. I’ve said it. Tar and feather me, baby. I’ve watched a lot of straight porn and a lot of gay porn, and I’ve realized something important over that time. Straight porn and gay porn are shot, for the most part, in entirely different ways. And, interestingly, a lot of non-homophobic straight women discover that, hey, they kind of like gay porn better. This straight-women-liking-gay-porn thing is something that Ogas and Gaddam have also tried exploring (BADLY) by the way, but the conclusions they drew were utterly absurd and biased, and, well, vaguely misogynistic. I won’t mention that again, because, ugh, these guys are assholes. BUT ANYWAY….

Here’s what I’ve discovered about porn:

When it comes to straight porn, women aren’t necessarily any more interested in the fuzzy, narrative-heavy, “love-making” of the so-called “female friendly” stuff, any more than straight guys are. Sure, sometimes a woman might like to get off to a scene of passionate, loving sex, but sometimes she might want to get off to a scene of rough, fast stuff, or BDSM, or something else altogether. (By the way, it is always, always  erroneous to just assume that a woman or man wants in their real life what they are looking at in porn! Or what they read or what they write! Sometimes they are one in the same and sometimes, uh, NO.) But they aren’t really loving the other porn out there either.

Why is that? I would posit that women are interested in seeing a person who is really into whatever is going on in the scene (or possibly really not into it, if that’s your kink), and they’re interested in men’s bodies. Straight porn, even female friendly stuff, has forever catered to the male’s fragile ego by not concentrating much on the male in the scene. We don’t get reaction shots of their faces as they push into whatever orifice they’re putting their dick in, we don’t get visuals of their bodies, their sounds. We get a lot of noise from the girls, a ton of close-ups of the girls’ reactions, their asses and vaginas, and just about the only dick we get to see is the boring, boring shot of dick in vagina, dick in vagina, dick in vagina. *snooze*

Hmm, maybe instead of trying to make porn for women that is more narrative based, or prettier, why not just make it about what women actually want to see? Crazy concept, I know! And what is that? MEN AND THEIR REACTIONS AND BODIES! I mean, most of the straight porn I return to has a guy that is somehow really reacting to the woman he’s having sex with–trembling thighs, hands shaking, whispered, wrenched exclamations of pleasure. And it has nothing to do with what kind of scene it is: if it’s BDSM, lovemaking, rough, whatever. I just want to see the guy and see that he’s into it. Why? Because my sexual arousal is about MEN. That’s why.

Now, back to gay porn for a minute and why many women who watch it end up liking it better than straight porn.

1) It’s all men all the time. And that’s what these women want to see. Men’s bodies, their reactions, their dicks. And because the people shooting gay porn don’t know what the gay dude they’re making it for wants to see or will be getting off on, you almost always get reaction shots from both penetrated and penetrator, you get shots that show BOTH dudes are LOVING whatever the heck is going on in the scene. You get tons of visual eye candy, and, oh WONDER OF WONDERS the guys in gay porn? ARE ACTUALLY USUALLY HOT. Unlike, oh, 95% of the guys in straight porn who are usually really not hot in some way or another.

Because they don’t need to be, you see…because they’re not usually even in the shot. They just need a big dick, and, boom, the rest of the scene will be focused on the girl, so it doesn’t matter. Because it’s not about him. It’s about her–because straight dudes want to see the girl, because their orgasm/pleasure is tied up in women’s bodies, right? Well, shocker! Straight women are the opposite of that!

(James Deen, oh, you are such a wonderful exception to the ugliness rule. *sigh* Oh, and that new guy they’re using a lot lately…whose name I can’t seem to figure out. Young, pretty? Hmm.)

2) There’s (relatively) no cognitive dissonance to deal with in gay porn. As a woman, you don’t have moments of thinking, “Yeah, I’d never have an orgasm in that position. That’s stupid. And painful.” You don’t have distracting thoughts about fake tits, or ridiculous and ugly make-up and nails, or the really RIDICULOUS belly button rings, omg, what the fuck is that??? Why? Belly buttons exist, y’all. You can show them in porn!! I promise! No one’s gonna lose their boner because they saw a belly button! And if they do, they didn’t deserve that boner to begin with!

Nor do we have to think about the fact that 90% of straight porn has a 18yo with a 45yo man. (Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of gay “daddy” porn videos out there, but that is a small number, compared to the creeptastic amount of vast age difference scenes in straight porn.) And, you know what? Having an age kink in your porn viewing is fine, but it gets creepy after a while, honestly, watching all these young girls doing it with older dudes for money.

3) The guys in gay porn actually look like they’re loving it, whereas most chicks in straight porn look like they’d rather be eating a sandwich. I watched some straight porn a few days ago and I was like, “OMG she would so rather be having some ham and swiss right now, no matter what noises she’s faking.” *sigh* That was a so-called “female friendly” clip by the way. BORING.

So, do I think it is fair to draw the conclusion that a majority of women will NEVER be interested in porn because they aren’t interested in the “female friendly” fare provided for years? Nope. I think that so long as NO ONE has ever earnestly tried to make porn that is actually of interest to women with a focus on the male body and the reactions/pleasure he’s experiencing, along with showing genuine  female pleasure/kink/excitement/orgasm/interest then there’s just no way to say for sure.

So, yeah, you crappy scientists, Ogas and Gaddam, go draw your conclusions elsewhere, because they are, like so much of your work, bogus. Again.

Kurt Hummel Is Too Cute #glee #klaine

I have nothing to say about this gif other than, seriously, how cute is Kurt Hummel? It’s not the best quality gif, but who cares? I mean, darling, right?

And Blaine looks like he’s thinking, “OMG YOU ARE AWESOME. I LOVE YOU.”

The Story of the Birthday Present That Didn’t End In Divorce #yay #porn

As you’ll read more about in a post I scheduled for October, I’ve had a bout of the birthday blues. This turning thirty-nine thing has really hit me hard for some unknown reason. I gritted my teeth through the tiny, only-us birthday party my husband and child had for me, and tried to appear as if I wasn’t having an existential, omg-I’m-old-now crisis.

The night following the birthday party was plagued with uncomfortable, unsettling dreams of insecurity and vulnerability. Dreams that my husband wanted to divorce me because I just wasn’t “worth it” anymore. I woke up feeling sad, anxious, and vulnerable. The feelings plagued me all morning even though, intellectually, I knew they were silly.

Over a surprise lunch–Hub and I just happened to both come home to eat–I told Hub about my feelings about turning thirty-nine and told him about my dream. He laughed and told me that divorce had never entered his mind in all our years together and that he loved me and I wasn’t all that difficult. And then he said, “Oh, by the way, I got you another present but it wasn’t child appropriate so I coudn’t give it to you last night.”

He dashed upstairs to where he’d hidden this clearly sexual-in-nature gift. I had to wonder, “What was it? What could it possibly be?” I considered lingerie and sex toys, but those aren’t really in character for him. What he returned with was 100% in character and absolutely his style of gift…and something that he knew me well enough to know I’d like.

He handed it to me and I stared at it for a moment.

“It’s a porn parody,” he said, just as I read the words she sucks but in a good way.

Then I recognized the girl.

“Oh, my God!” I yelled. “I love Lexi Belle!”

He cracked up and said, “I like her, too.”

I said, “Holy crap, this is awesome! Look at this! This is amazing! Oh my God!”

He laughed some more and I turned it over to look at the back, checking out the very adult scenes back there.

“Oh, wow, that one looks hot. I wish one of the guys was James Deen, but they look good. When are we going to watch this?”

“Soon. When Bird’s not here.”

“Awesome!”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of our shows and he’s always loved dirty, filthy parodies and anything that’s a bit ridiculous, and he knows me well enough to know that I kinda-sorta like the porn, yo.

I bounced up, grabbed him in a hug, and said, “Oh, man, I love this so much! Thank you!”

He laughed some more and kissed me.

Then I said, “You do realize you just gave me porn for my birthday present and I loved it. How many women are like that? Some women, if you gave them porn for their birthday present, they’d divorce you or something.”

He laughed some more.

I said, “Why would I dream you’d ever leave me? I’m clearly awesome!”

The End

Erotic Writing under Attack by Amazon?

Pinterest is also in the morality game. They removed this pin from my account on the basis of “nudity”. I suppose it is the fringe of pubes and the side view of half a buttocks that flagged their inappropriate-o-meter? Because a man who looks as though he’s dancing, seems hardly inappropriate in a world that isn’t terrified of nudity. I wonder, if it was a painting, would it have received the same treatment?

Selena Kitts, a well-known writer of raunchy “pornography”, has written an interesting post called Survival Tips for the Pornocolypse (Erotica Writers Get Armed and Ready). It was of interest to me for two reasons. One, I write romantica under the pen name Leta Blake. You can find links to my books anywhere on this page, but to make it easy for you, here. Two, I write some really raunchy erotica under another Super Top Secret Pen Name. I do it mainly for fun and to blow off steam, and to feel like I’m giving the finger to some of the issues I have with traditional and e-publishing, but I wouldn’t say I’m doing it to make a ton of money. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to make some money from the endeavor. Otherwise I’m just throwing away time and money on covers, etc.

There were many things I found interesting about Selena Kitt’s post. I almost don’t know where to start. I suppose I could break this down into a few posts to make it more digestible. Perhaps I will. Let me start at the beginning of her post and respond as I go.

First, off, kudos, Selena, on having such an attractive site for your porn. I know this sounds like I’m being facetious, but I’m serious. It’s very nice and it would definitely encourage me to click on something and possibly buy it. One day, when I’ve got more to offer, I want to have a site like yours!

The Pornocalypse has begun. Amazon continues filtering erotica out of their All Department Search in large numbers. Don’t stick your head in the sand and think it’s going to all go away. By then, it may be too late.

I’ve noticed the books I’ve published under Super Top Secret Pen Name do not show up under the All Department Search. I’ve never entirely decided how I feel about that. I suspect some of the roads my brain has taken on this issue are similar to the roads taken by Amazon itself while other thoughts diverge. I usually start out frustrated because if someone is searching for erotica books featuring a cheerleader losing her virginity to her step-brother (as a completely made up example, I didn’t write a book like that–yet), then they should be able to find one without having to jump through extra hoops. Right now, if I go to the Amazon home page and type “Cheerleader loses virginity to step-brother”, I get a result back that says, “No products match your search.” I know damn well that’s not true, but only because I know that damn well. If I was your Average Joe Internet User, I might think, “Oh, well, I guess there are no books for me to buy like that.” But, if I go to the Kindle Book Department and type in the same search, I end up with this small, but existing, selection of titles. No perfect match, but there are some dirty books there all the same. Hooray for dirty books!

I suspect that the next thought many of you are going to have is similar to mine and probably the main motivating thought of Amazon and those who encourage its policies. Won’t someone think of the children!?!?! In the days of books and mortar stores, the dirty books would be housed either in a separate room, away from children’s eyes, in a separate store altogether, or covered in dark plastic to keep them from looking. Amazon is likely trying to do the same thing. But even in the days of books and mortar stores, I always took the position that it is the parents’ job to police what their kids are reading, not the stores’ job to police what they kids have access to within the store. Does the internet make that a ton harder to accomplish? Hell yes, but it doesn’t shift the onus onto the stores necessarily.

I do recall not too long ago, I was looking up a children’s book recommended to me by a friend. My search on Amazon brought up two results. One was the book I wanted and the other was titled something very similar and looked like a possible sequel. I opened it up to read about the book, and it was, to my surprise and amusement, an utterly filthy rape erotica story and not a sequel at all. In that moment, I though, “Oh, there are going to be Christian crazies all over this shit before long.” I have no doubt that kind of thing played a role in what is happening at Amazon.

[ETA: Interestingly enough, if I search Amazon’s main search page for various raunchy dirty books while I am not logged in to my account, I find a much wider selection of offerings. And I find that curious under the Won’t Someone Think of the Children argument, since kids are much less likely to have their own accounts than bonafide grown-ups. So, why would the search be more liberal for people without accounts than those with accounts? Curious.]

Still, my next thought is, okay, fine, thinking of the children and all, what’s the harm in moving these books out of the line of sight? They’re still there and a user who really wants to read about cheerleaders sleeping with their step-brothers can still find those books if they work hard enough. It’s only two extra clicks to be able to find the books you want!

And yet it does seem to make a difference in sales. Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing? Are we reducing the number of sales to 14 year olds whose Mommy and Daddy don’t do spot checks of their e-book readers? Or are we reducing the number of sales to full-fledged adults who don’t know they have to make these two extra clicks to get what they want? I suspect it’s a bit of both, but more of the second. There’s no where on the Amazon site where they say, “Oh, psst, you can still find your dirty books! You just need to work harder at it!”

Uh, back to Selena’s post. I’m rambling and possibly getting ahead of myself here.

The fact remains—the dirty secret that drives technology? It’s “porn.” Erotica, as a genre, has been Amazon’s dirty little secret from the beginning, driving sales of the Kindle to astronomical numbers. Does Amazon really believe that it was all the free copies of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Moby Dick” (Moby Duck on Apple?) that drove readers to buy Kindle devices? Nope, sorry. It was erotica. It was “porn.”

Jeff Bezos may have put out the product, but I made the Kindle into what it is today. Me, and legions of other erotica writers who were already writing it, and those who came later, who saw how much readers were clamoring for it. Readers could suddenly read erotica without anyone seeing the cover. The Kindle device made that possible, Amazon made the Kindle available… but I provided the content readers were surreptitiously reading under their desks at work and on the subway home.

Erotica writers made the Kindle what it is today. Not mystery writers, not horror writers, not even romance writers. Certainly not big publishing, who have been brought kicking and screaming into the ebook world. It was erotica writers who provided readers with the titillating books that made this new device so convenient and advantageous. So you could carry 500 books at a time… big deal, who’s going to read 500 books while you’re at the doctor’s office? But women everywhere realized they could read sexual fantasies, stories about BDSM, about dubious consent, about sex toys and infidelity, all those fantasies that we know women have been having since Nancy Friday wrote Secret Garden, and they could do it without anyone knowing, at the doctor’s office or in line at the supermarket.

THAT is what sold Kindles. Porn. Face it, Jeff Bezos. You owe the success of Kindle to me, and to every erotica writer out there making a living writing “porn.”

And what thanks do we get? None. Other writers (ala Konrath and Crouch and Bella Andre—the latter whose books are just as “dirty” or “porny” as some that have been relegated to the ghetto behind the ADULT filter) get special treatment from Amazon. They get spotlights and highlights. They get mentioned in Amazon newsletters.

Erotica writers get stepped on. We get shoved into a corner, we get relegated to back rooms and top shelves. We get “filtered.” Now, before you say, “But come ON! This is ADULT material, shouldn’t it be targeted just to ADULTS?”—my answer to that is “yes!” I don’t expect Amazon to highlight erotica writers in mainstream newsletters or even to highlight us at all (although if they were smart, they would… we make them a lot of money. A LOT of money. They should target us to readers they know read us… it only makes sense!) but I DO expect them to treat us with transparency and good business ethics.

She’s right, you realize. I mean, to a degree, she’s right. My mother has purchased thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of Kindle books. What are most of them? Erotica and romantica. She’s admitted that she loves the dirtiest stuff she can find on Kindle because no one ever has to know she’s read it. My mother is sixty-six years old. Who is Amazon to try to make it harder for her to read her books? And did the two additional clicks make a difference to her? You bet it did. She didn’t even know she had to make some additional clicks. She’d stopped buying from Amazon and switched to Smashwords and other online sources because Amazon had stopped carrying her dirty books. Or so she thought. How many other perfectly legal grown-ups also faced this?

And Selena Kitts makes a really good point. If Amazon actually marketed filth to those who like to read filth, they could make good money doing so. Why is it their business model to fail to do so? I assume we could say that it’s stand-up morality. But I’m pretty sure it’s stand-up stupidity. Or possibly fear. What, I wonder, are they afraid of? (Hell, probably. Oh, hell, you shiny, dark stinkhole of fear.)

The filtering tool that Amazon previously only used to exclude nudity on covers is now being applied to books arbitrarily, but in very, very large numbers. We haven’t seen a purge this big on Amazon since they banned incest and bestiality in erotic work.

First of all, Amazon has now separated Erotica and Romance. I don’t know if erotic romance writers know this or have realized it yet, but Amazon has recently changed their policy (not that they’ve told anyone about it or anything!) and you can no longer put your book in BOTH Erotica and Romance categories. You have to choose one or the other. “Erotic Romance” as a category will now classify your book as “erotica.”

And be careful, because once you have labeled your book as “erotic,” they will not allow you to reclassify it as NOT erotic. The only exception to this rule I have seen so far is for traditionally published books (ala Fifty Shades). Self-published books don’t get this treatment.

Now this? This is problematic. And revealing. There is money here, more money than they care to lose. Because Fifty Shades, while terribly written in many ways (sorry!), is just as porny as a ton of the stuff they’ve filtered. Maybe more so.

How do you avoid being filtered?

Keep nudity off your cover. Also keep it out of the inside of your book.
Keep your titles and keywords free of the “Amazon Bad Words List” below. Amazon’s current policy could be summed up in this way—if you dress up pretty on the outside, you can be as much of a whore on the inside as you like.
The “Amazon Bad Word List”

(who else is thinking about George Carlin right now?)

(And if you know of more words or things that are being banned, please go ahead and add to the list in the comments, or better yet, post it over on Banned Erotic Books on Facebook!)

Nudity on covers (this rule changes a lot – thongs are ok so far. “Hand bras” are not ok, i.e. a nude woman with her or someone else’s hands covering her breasts).
Incest is banned altogether. But pseudo-incest will get you filtered. Anything with obvious titles, especially “Daddy” and “Mommy,” but also sister, brother, siblings, uncle, family, etc.
Gangbang, rape, reluctant, reluctance, nonconsent, dubious consent (dubcon), forced, or “rough” sex, strap-on – careful BDSM folks, keep an eye out, because they may come after that next.
Breeding, bred or impregnation stories
Any profanity or obscene language: pussy, cock, cum, tits, fuck, sex, clit, etc. (Now I really feel like George Carlin…)
Lactation, breastfeeding, lactating, milky
Tentacles and other mythological creatures (minotaurs, centaurs, bigfoot, etc.)

I’m not at all sure what Selena is suggesting here. Is she suggesting that these changes only be made to the cover, title, blurb, etc? Or is she suggesting that these changes be made to books themselves. I’m going too assume she means the former and not the later because otherwise the books would be censored.

I am not sure, though, I think doing as she suggests is a good idea? If authors of the raunchy erotica/porn follow these suggestions, then how will their books ever be found? Porn readers want to know what they’re buying before they buy it. In fact, up until now, the suggested way of doing the entire raunchy porn book thing was the exact opposite of these suggestions. The advice my Super Top Secret Pen Name received when she began was:

a) make the title very obvious so people can find what they are looking for. If it is about having sex with an alien from another world, then title it something like, “Alien Tentacle Sex” or “Bred by Aliens” or whatever.

b) make the cover very sexy/obvious so people know, yes, this is the porn I seek.

c) use tag words when uploading that make it easy for the person to find the porn they want to read.

d) use the blurb area to be descriptive of the contents so people are very aware of what they are buying. Describe the sex acts within and mark it as 18+.

Now, Selena is advising that we not do these things, and I understand why she’s saying that. At the same time, readers like to know what they are getting and I don’t think people who can’t figure out that they can find what they are looking for by clicking two more times into the Kindle store are going to be able to figure out that a book called “Professor’s New Suit”, in which the blurb reads, “In a dressing room of a high end department store, meeting with a tailor who happens to be a former student, the professor’s full measure is taken and he gets something unexpected in return” is, in fact, all about dirty gay sex in a dressing room between a professor and his former student. Well, maybe they would. Who knows? But it seems more likely that “Banging My Professor” will be what someone looking for erotica about Professor/Student is going to search for. Covering it up in order to avoid Amazon’s filter doesn’t seem any more likely to bring sales than just letting it sit with its original filthy name under the Adult filter. Thoughts on that?

I suppose what most bothers me about this entire situation is the fact that Amazon made/makes a ton of money from these kinds of stories, and clearly capitulates to the likes of 50 Shades of Grey, and yet screws over the little guy making a buck. I suppose my main question is why?

Weirdly enough, because I know that the majority of people buying these books are women, I feel the reins of misogyny pulling at me when I hear about this kind of thing. Women are reading things that men don’t want them reading, that society doesn’t want them reading, and as their minds are getting free, along comes a big company, run by a man, who wants to put the brakes on it at the very least, and maybe introduce the idea of some non-sexy shackles. Gotta control access to the vagina, y’all. Gotta keep the women from getting ideas about their vag and what they might do with it! It’s for their own good, of course.

Additional reading:

1. “As fellow author, Will Belegon, noted, if Amazon is going to start pulling books with incest in them: “I just re-read Genesis 19: 30-38 and realized that Lot’s daughters got him drunk, had sex with him and bore sons. I demand you follow your clear precedent and remove The Bible from Kindle.”

Or perhaps Amazon should create a new television ad after they follow their clear precedent and ban the book the woman is reading in the advertisement on her Kindle (“Sleepwalking” by Amy Bloom) which tells the story of a 19-year-old boy who has a sexual encounter with his stepmother, which, in some states, is legally incest.”

2. The Dirty Secret that Drives Technology

3. Kindlerotica: The strange but inevitable rise of e-reader pornography. — Proving Selena right that the Kindle was driven by written pornography sales.

4. Salacious Content Driving E-book Sales