July 2010

* In this week’s Savage Love column, Dan replies to a reader who asks why women don’t consume porn the same way that men do. In “Cockcakes” Dan combines porn for women, quotes from me, the Our Porn, Ourselves movement, and cupcakes. Extra bonus: Dan calls me “Violet Blue, author, blogger, activist, and tireless foe of antiporn boneheads everywhere.” (thestranger.com)

* Now that three and a half thousand people can no longer get Facebook updates about topics on Our Porn, Ourselves I’ll be posting them here. I wrote a fun and (I think) really interesting article for first-time female porn viewers, complete with a list of recommendations of hot porn that is made and curated by women, for women in Want to Watch? What to Expect. (ourpornourselves.org)

* Apple freaks out about the fact their customers are interested in sex, and it’s no longer breaking news. This time, they’re pulling erotic books that end up in the top ten. There is no hope. (networkworld.com)

* Friend MB sends me this item by a young man who went to sex rehab and wrote a very detailed article about his experiences there. The main tool they use to “cure” men? Shame and humiliation. He really could have gone to a dominatrix and gotten a better deal. (deadspin.com)

* Just pointing you toward gratuitous big-boobed blonde eye candy for the sake of it: Egotastic has all the uncensored photos and video of Brit pinup Sophie Reade posing in Nuts Magazine that you’ll ever need. (egotastic.com)

* And a new revenue stream is born for out of work copywriters: Online dating assistants (ghostwriters) will impersonate you for a fee and guarantee you dates from internet dating services. Then you get to fuck up the relationship with bad spelling all on your own. But you’ll still have to decide if you’re being scammed by a fake relationshipper from the other side of the screen. (washingtonpost.com, cnn.com)

* Sexual health: this is a topic I’ve been agonizing about for almost a year trying to figure out how to raise awareness about. The male HPV vaccine is urgently needed and widely misunderstood: maybe this excellent article about throat cancer in boys will wake a few people up. (forbes.com)

* A friend emailed to point me to this Ask Metafilter question, but I still have not joined the MeFi community. Maybe it’s time I did. She wants to know how to gently get involved in the San Francisco BDSM scene. I’d say coffee at Wicked Grounds, events at Femina Potens the Center for Sex and Culture, checking out openly, Kinky Salon‘s community (Mission Control) and their upcoming SanFranSexy Magazine…

Image: Eniko Mihalik by Miguel Reveriego for Numéro #115 (fashiongonerogue.com/)

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In case you were wondering what Justin Timberlake’s 901 Silver Tequila tastes like, he directed us two commercials: one tastes like panties and the other tastes like a ball gag. I heartily approve. Still, I do enjoy a good drink that puts a man on his knees now and again. So say we all. (via Copyranter)

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I think Nathalie Daoust’s website is one of the strangest erotic photo sites I’ve experienced yet; it’s the closest I’ve come online to an artsy in-gallery experience. It’s difficult to explain what to expect, save for Flash and lots of stunning photographs, both erotic and non-erotic nudes, and several intense fetish portraits of women. Her newest gallery is Tokyo Hotel Story, the fruits of her time spending several months at “Alpha In,” one of the biggest BDSM love hotels in Japan. Daoust shot 39 women in their own private rooms. The portraits of their equipment, outfits, faces and poses are arresting.

There are a number of galleries from her work all over the world; Daoust’s other gallery I want to point you to is her Frozen In Time, Switzerland series:

These images are set in an ambiguous territory where dream and reality clash. In this altered state of reality, stillness and silence permeate each image, each is a moment frozen in time. Here memory and introspection create a labyrinth of illusion, mystery and fantasy. The narrative that evolves throughout the works is a personal one, a journey, steeped in self-scrutiny, towards coming to terms with one’s identity through life experiences, loss and sorrow as well as pleasure.

Found via Fantomatik.

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I just got an email from Facebook telling me that the Our Porn, Ourselves page was removed for a terms of use violation. They did not say what the alleged violation was. Take this as a win for the anti-porn trolls that had been harassing members, reporting photos that were not in violation, and were likely reporting the page for non-existent violations. (Some may remember a few weeks ago when I asked on Twitter how I could stop these people from harassing us). I was very careful to police the page nearly hourly to keep the content strictly within Facebook’s terms, as I knew the page was under scrutiny from anti-porn zealots (and I had been witnessing their underhanded tactics on the page to harass users since its inception). I immediately blocked anyone who tried to post pornographic content. I believe the page was an example of exemplary conduct in order to have a safe place in which women (and men) could talk about pornography in a socio-cultural context. I purposely wanted a work-safe, non-offensive destination for these discussions and to build women’s community. This is our porn for women manifesto, and was in the Facebook “info” box.

I had built an intelligent community of over 3,000 members, mostly women. They have deleted a giant community. All talking about what it means for women to “take back the right to look” at explicit imagery.

Facebook has given me no options for recourse: no evidence, no trial, just judgment and sentence. Like when they ‘accidentally’ removed the Ban BP Oil page (800,000 members) and then restored it, removed the gay author page for ‘Band Fags’ which had been up for two years, or when they removed Robert Scoble completely.

As I wait for Facebook’s response, here is the letter I just sent them:

Hello,

I’m Violet Blue: bestselling and award-winning author, and educator who speaks from UCSF and UC Berkley (Boalt) to Google Inc. Tech Talks on my field of expertise — exactly what this Facebook group page was about.

My page did not violate any of the reasons stated for deletion. It was under constant attack by people who disagreed with our point of view, and constantly reported our posts and images, even though we were very careful not to violate your Terms. May I find out why the page was removed? It is my utmost priority to follow and uphold Facebook community rules and standards. With national media attention to the page, questions will be raised and I hope to be able to furnish answers. Especially with a higher minded page of over 3000 members seeking community and discussion around a topic that did not target any group, threaten anyone, or link/depict/suggest inappropriate content. In fact, I policed the posts hourly for spam and attacks on our members, of which there were many. We never posted obscenity in links or images, though innocent user photos seemed to be increasingly mysteriously removed.

I feel that our page was targeted, and that we did nothing to violate the community standards of Facebook, which we sought to uphold. Any help to find out why this has happened would be deeply appreciated. I do not want to be talking to press about this in the next few days and be left guessing. We sought a safe place to discuss sex culture in media, and that is all.

I sincerely hope we can resolve this. Salon and Examiner wrote about our page as a signifier of community organization around women’s empowerment, calling it a new movement for women’s rights. I could tell we were under attack by those who violently opposed our discussions and representation as a community intersection for enriched discussions about important women’s rights issues. This development is confusing and saddening.

This fostering of group community around female empowerment and the page topic stems from my work as a talkshow guest (Oprah), international conference speaker, and columnist for various national and international magazines and publications (Oprah Magazine, Forbes.com, MacLife, etc) and media pundit (Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Esquire, Redbook, Wired, etc).

Please help me understand what I can tell media outlets asking about this, and the over 3K member we had in the page group.

Sincere thanks,
Violet Blue

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This has been on my mind for years. Coming across this gallery from French site Explicite Arte just kind of triggered the ongoing debate in my brain about Euro male porn performers versus domestic American ones. The men in the Euro sets seldom disappoint. As I’ve toiled in the porn mines (I’m actually the canary) for a decade and focused on creating female-focused community and resources both online and offline, it’s become evident to me that female viewers who voice their opinion on such matters tend to prefer European male performers. I know that attraction is a very personal and individual thing, but I’ll go out on a limb and share my observations from what I’ve seen and heard repeated over the years from female porn viewers about the guys they see onscreen. The generalizations I’ll put forth are these:

* Women dislike that mainstream (corporate, SoCal-flavored, American) porn uses all the same guys over and over.
* That the guys in mainstream porn are generally not attractive.
* Straight girls’ interests in porn are stifled by the lack of hot male talent (typically domestic).
* When women self-disclose male stars they love, they tend to repeat very familiar Euro porn names like Rocco Siffredi, Nacho Vidal, Manual Ferrara, Axel Braun. It’s few and far between that women name American stars; the two I see named often are Mr. Marcus and James Deen (and long ago, Julian).
* Overall, I read in women’s comments referring to domestic porn that they think the men in gay porn are hotter (for example lots of women love Sean Cody‘s site).

So: what do you think? Are European male stars hotter than domestic mainstream performers? And if so — why would they be? I know I have my own theories…

If you stopped by this post for the porn, here are the rest of Explicite’s galleries from this week: Angel by the pool (above), Charlotte in the bath (photos; video), Yoko strips in blue veils, and striking pale redhead Aurora in red veils.

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