It's As Sleazy as 1, 2, 3

I am not surprised, but I am a little disappointed. (That's actually a lifestyle choice.) Let me explain.

The Porn Report was released in Australia recently and it is making waves around my house. Why? Emergency Contact is a journo and this sort of thing is of interest to her work. The delivery of the stuff is mostly by the interweb, and that equals trouble for the old fashioned methods of media delivery.

Among the myriad of things being explored in this study, is the reletive ease of “homemade” porn production today. It is suggested that it loosens the stranglehold of masculine desire and patriarchal business concerns and allows the feminine in porn to shine (poke) through.

More precisely, EC is writing an article about the fact that DIY is the fastest growing category of porn, both in production and consumption. I think I detect some triumphalism out there about this. I suggest that there is the hope in pornland, that somehow this normalises it. That somehow there is now a more wholesome element in porn that’s able to express itself with the ‘new media’. With that goes the implicit understanding that there has always been an underground of perfectly normal couples who have wanted to film themselves on the job, they just found it was too hard to disseminate - and now their liberation is at hand.

I don’t think it’s perfectly normal, and that’s not a moral statement.

First let me state my position on personal sexual proclivity. I am truly open-minded because I just don’t care. I don’t care who you go to bed with. I don’t care what you choose to do, as long as the other beings involved are into it. I mean I don’t care at a really bone-deep level. I’ve got more interesting things to think about than your sex life. Mine for example. So you are not going to find me dictating to people about how they should live their lives or what’s morally right. That seems to be what religion is for.

But I am going to take a swipe at people who talk about porn in a way that suggests it will be normalised in the next ten minutes and we can all be free to ‘get our freak on’ any time and way we like.

In writing her article, EC wanted to talk to hetero couples who make their own porn. She is an experienced journalist who has all the resources that entails, plus access to the writers of the Porn Report and their contacts.

Guess how many couples (that you would have in your house for dinner) she was able to interview? None.

Guess how many couples you’d cross the street to avoid she was able to interview? None.

Guess how many single unloved men got wind of the project and rang her? (despite the explicit instruction that it was for hetero couples to do an interview). Not sure. But she has to kill that mobile number now.

She also mentioned that the viewing of DIY porn is on the gorge-raising side of things,

“I don’t need to see ugly people with their clothes on, let alone having sex.”

I could have told her that. People who are exhibitionists are rarely the people you want to see exhibit. I’m a bloke - I know these things.

So I should also add:

Nudists who pretend that it isn’t about sex are talking rubbish. Cars are about sex. How can walking around with your bits out not be.

Swingers are not having a wholesome well balanced time, where everybody is feeling natural and free and equal. That’s why there are rules about men needing to be accompanied by women to even get in the door.

The porn manufacturing industry’s relationship with their starlets is not as healthy as a lot of people would pretend either. In most cases it is an uneven power relationship. They are getting paid, but put yourself in the high heeled shoes of a woman who is doing that for a job. Is it something you would do in anything other than desperate circumstances, if you were “normal”? Let's face it, it’s prostitution with a camera. Show me all those empowered prostitutes who love their job and are normal. Again, I don’t place any particular moral importance around normal. In fact quite often I place a yawn; but to continue.

People who are attractive, normal and sexy have partners, or can meet them. If they want a thrill, they sleep with other people, they don’t broadcast their activities free of charge.

“Where are all the good men?”, women in Sydney often ask (quite often looking around the room to get away from me). They’re taken – obviously.

I think the Porn Report itself is problematic. It found that 33% of males use porn of some sort in Australia. From my experience that is hopelessly below the real mark. I'm yet to meet a man who doesn't. It also finds that less than 1% of Muslim men admit to using it. What’s more likely here - Muslim men are anatomically, or culturally different?

The subject matter, by its nature, is going to warp the outcome out of usable shape. If you’re normal, you don’t answer honestly about your porn habits. The writers of the report admit that; almost. I think it has warped it out of shape so badly that it stands no chance of achieving what they want to do with it, which was having a meaningful discussion about it.

You (Me) don’t talk about it, we pretend it’s not there and we definitely hide it when mum visits. We know that usually, it’s a substitute until the real thing saunters by. The evolutionarily challenged among us, stick it in a central place in their life, and that’s why it’s marginalised. They, by definition, are not breeding. If it was normal you wouldn’t bother, and it would be half as fun.