I am writing as your constituent to urge you to attend an evidence gathering symposium on the decriminalisation of prostitution in the House of Commons on Tuesday 3rd November 11am-6pm.
I've been doing a lot of advocacy work recently. A couple of weeks ago I was invited to participate in a Woman's Hour debate on whether "porn can empower women" (click to read my deconstruction of the myriad ways that question is unhelpful) hosted by the Women of the World festival on the South Bank. The two hour recording was edited down to 38 minutes and broadcast a week later on Radio 4 - you can listen to it on BBC iPlayer here. (I haven't listened to the broadcast. When we were chatting before the recording, Dr Clarissa Smith and Sam Roddick advised me "never watch your own press".)
The week before it went out, I dreaded an unsympathetic edit. The debate audience had been dominated by members of feminist groups such as Object and Stop Porn Culture, who are vehemently opposed to the existence of pornography and consider any woman who willingly participates in it to be either an abused victim or a gender traitor. Sitting on the stage, I was all too aware that the first few rows of audience members were very hostile towards me - not only towards my political position, but towards me personally. There was a lot of jeering, heckling and yelling, and from where we were sitting the atmosphere in the room felt very tense. When the debate opened to the audience members, individuals from these groups seemed to spend twice as long on the mic as the rest - and some even started preaching, delivering emotive impassioned rhetoric which felt very out of place.
Last Sunday I participated in a debate at the Women of the World festival entitled "Can porn empower women?" In my three minutes I didn't have time to go into the full complexities of that question - so I'm going to do so here.
Debating "porn" is difficult because the word means different things to different people. Some people use it to mean "sexy media I don't like", and the word "erotica" to mean "sexy media I do like". So I want to start out with a definition: porn is media that is intended to sexually stimulate the viewer. It doesn't necessarily have to involve nudity, or sex (whatever THAT means).
You have all probably seen this already, but I haven't mentioned it here yet - on 12th December after the facesitting protest outside Parliament against the new UK porn laws, I was invited to debate the issue on Newsnight. This was my first proper TV appearance and it was a big deal for me.
So, you might have seen: I was featured in the Guardian. I'm really pleased with the article (kind of a relief, because if I hadn't I'd have had to lump it), but then I wouldn't have given Zoe Williams an interview if I didn't trust and respect her as a journalist.
I think the piece is intelligent and balanced, and I'm not just saying that because she says nice things about my work. (She also says the acting is like a school play, which made me chuckle.) She's not preaching to the converted (unlike, say, this blog), but she doesn't set out to persuade the anti-porn camp either. Instead the article is aimed at the sort of educated well-meaning lefty who reads the Guardian and doesn't really watch porn. With her trademark self-deprecating wit, Zoe positions herself in that category before describing how she became convinced that porn was not, in fact, a monolith of misogynistic degradation - and that a lot of it is not only ethical, but watchable.
Erica Scott's wooden hairbrush spanking from Paul Kennedy is getting some positive attention. From my vantage point behind the camera, I thought it was super hot.
What does an orgasm look like? Some truly awesome artworks submitted to Girl on the Net's competition (sorry, she just keeps on being interesting!)
You've probably seen it already, but this drone-shot porn is beautiful.
"The plan was to take beautiful landscapes and just put people fucking in them."
Feminist porn director Jennifer Lyon Bell shares six practical tips for shooting porn. I found number five particularly interesting - and something I could do more of.
Some responses to Zoe William's Guardian article on ethical porn (on which more later, but meanwhile you can read my first impressions here). Erotic Scribes: "Porn is here to say 'Your fantasies are OK' when nobody and nothing else is going to say it." Yes = even if those fantasies are totally pervy. And the Telegraph acknowledges that "times are changing" - the radical idea that porn might not all be universally misogynistic and unethical (even though Gail Dines is still claiming women don't watch it). Also, apparently I'm the future of capitalism. Hokay.
I love this new sensual film by Ms Naughty, which screened for the first time in Berlin: Tactile. Watch the full film at Bright Desire.
On Thursday I was lucky enough to be present at my friend Nimue Allen's most intense, ambitious scene yet - a forced headshaving fantasy incorporating psychological torture, betrayal, degredation, cold caning, belly punching, water torture and more. It was an ultra-small crew, just me, Nimue, her top (The Boss), and one other camera operator (her partner Rosie), which made the whole thing very intimate. It was one of the most electrically intense BDSM scenes I have ever taken part in, and I was honoured to hold space and bear witness as Nimue pushed herself to her limit.
Hit Me with Your Best Shot: 3 Ways BDSM Made Me More Mindful. "After a scene I feel calmer; in days that follow I actually feel more in charge of my body and my mind than before. I dont find weakness in my submission in the bedroom, I find pleasure and presence and peace."
Relatedly, I also enjoyed the second series in Jilly's month of posts on spanking, What I think about when I think about spanking. "It centres me. More than any amount of yoga or mindfulness or meditation has ever done."
Porn
What happens when the state confiscates scandalous literature? You end up with an enormous secret library of pornography.
The Pearl - Victorian porn at its finest. A raunchy Victorian magazine published by by William Lazenby, full of whipping and flogging, which perfected the art of tease-and-denial. "So what does the pornography of a famously buttoned-up era look like? It looks deeply, profoundly perverted."
Violet Blue's latest open source sex round up: "The boys club of adult film is slowly disbanding, and more women are watching, creating and, (more importantly) discussing porn."
Feminist porn award winner 2014 Lucie Blush has launched a new paysite called Lucie Makes Porn, which includes her film 'Alice Inside' which I saw screened in Toronto. Definitely worth checking out.
Australian feminist porn starlet Aeryn Walker has some tough words on censorship and Visa/Mastercard regulations. "Menstruation porn is outright banned which I think is sexist and prudish as fuck!"
And finally, I couldn't leave out Zoe Margolis' new tumblr Daily Male Objectification. Because women like to look at men too.
While I was on the plane on the way to the Feminist Porn Awards I watched The Sessions, a film based on the true story of a paralysed man who seeks the services of a sexual surrogate. A few of my sex worker friends were looking forward to this film when it came out, hoping that it might be a positive representation of sex work - something that is all too rare in film, where sensationalism and objectification are very much the norm.
Compared to the usual treatments, then, The Sessions is a good start. It's not about how sex work is super harmful; it's about the positive benefit one sex worker had on one individual. But don't expect miracles. This is still pretty mainstream.
New hyperkinks! I haven't done one of these in a while. This edition is all about porn: performers (with a special showing from the Australian contingent), industry news, politics and good old smut.
Interview with Aeryn Walker about being an independent performer/director, geek cred, her relationship to the mainstream, Australia's fucked up ideas about what sort of vulva is "normal", and being in Game of Thrones.
Things you only know if you're a porn star - Zahra Stardust talks about orgasms, work, pleasure and the costs and benefits of being an independent performer. "I am very lucky to have had loving and supportive partners who are proud of me and know that porn is an indivisible part of me."
Tonight I made a last minute decision (prompted by a friend who had a ticket to sell) to go to the Sex Workers' Opera, and I am so glad I did.
Sex workers are often the subjects (or objects) of stories, but are very rarely given the platform to tell their own story on their own terms. There's something profoundly refreshing about watching a sex work narrative unfold without feeling the usual tension; that fear that sex work will be misrepresented, sensationalised, demonised, glamourised; that sex workers will be objectified; that the narrative will hinge around a worker having her (it's always a woman in these stories) professional boundaries broken, or breaking them herself, for lurrrrve. (Show me a mainstream narrative about sex work which is not about this and I will give you a cookie.)
Sitting in the Courtyard Theatre for the Sex Workers' Opera, for the first time I felt that I could trust that whatever stories would be told, they would carry truth, and they would be told respectfully. It was an exhilarating feeling - as was my fizzing excitement to see the venue filling up and know that both nights of this radical new show had sold out. There's something glorious about sitting in a packed theatre knowing that everyone there is either a sex worker or an ally ... and if they weren't the latter already, they probably would be by the end.
