I wish it was marketed in the same way as described in Peter Acworth’s thoughtful comment above, and not as a “virgin sacrifice” sideshow. Yeah, yeah, I know they’re catering to a lot of people with the firmly entrenched Victorian attitudes about virginity, but I always thought that one of the parts of Kink.com’s mission *was* an attempt to change attitudes.

As for the idea of a “virginity losing” show itself, I have no problem with it – big part of kink *is* playing with the widely held roles and attitudes, some of them very uncomfortable, and giving them our own twist, either to confront them, or to subvert them. Without presumptions and prejudices, we’d have so much less material to work with :-).

And I’m sorry for my faux pas …

Note to self: whenever sitting/studying/multi-tasking/browsing several pages back-and-forth, always refresh a blog before posting a comment, to check whether others have posted important comments in the meantime …

:]

One important point that Maggie makes, in noting the presumptions even in wordage – not only that ‘virginity’ is still traditionally and ridiculously judged by penetrative vaginal sex – but more, that ‘virginity’ (however defined) is somehow equated with ‘innocence’: very Christian-Puritan.

On a closely related point, the very sex-negative cultural presumptions that with sexual knowledge (or, with sex education?) we are somehow ‘losing’ something, ‘losing’ virginity, ‘losing’ innocence (“sacrificing Nikki’s innocence”) – as if one could ever ‘lose’ one’s ‘innocence’ through sexual experience or sexual knowledge; and not, rather, be *gaining* something with sexual experience and sexual knowledge and, indeed, with sex education: again, very Christian-Puritan underlying cultural presumptions.

For kink.com to be ‘buying into’ and ‘selling’ these presumptions is kinda lame considering their history and their pride in representing all that is non-traditional and progressive, isn’t it?

I greatly admire and respect so much about kink.com’s world … how odd, and rather sad perhaps, that kink.com should now be promoting heterosexual vanilla vaginal sex as the ultimate!

Then, on the other hand … we can analyse as much as we like … fantasy and imagination are deeply tied up (little pun I like!) with our sexuality, aren’t they? However, less fortunately, so are our underlying social and cultural conditioning …

L.

The spirit of this event is that we are deeply honored that Nicki has approached kink.com for her fantasy to take place – that of being penetrated vaginally for the first time in front of a live audience of fans – and we will do all we can to make the fulfillment of this fantasy as positive and exciting for her as we can. (I have written a lengthy post on Maggie’s blog along these same lines).

Violet, will you come on Saturday? it would be wonderful to have you back.

Best wishes,
Peter Acworth
CEO kink.com

Keep up the great work, (Blog, writing, educating, sharing)

JT

As Maggie so aptly explains, virginity is a very flexible, perhaps even nearly-meaningless concept. But when you’re marketing “taking virginity” as a porn event, you have got to know you’re shooting for a target market that is interested in the bad old Victorian “busted-hymen of a previously-chaste young lady” memes. And whatever Vicki is selling on camera, that ain’t precisely it. (I knew this from first principles before reading Maggie’s article; a “real virgin” in the previously-chaste-young-lady sense doesn’t do live shows. But Maggie filled in the background.)

So the whole thing is, to my eye, a production for fools and idiots, like penis pills and breast enlarger cremes. Anybody who sees the banner ought to know that what’s on sale isn’t what the banner promises; and anybody who is enticed, regardless, is either not as smart as your average bear, or is so desperately chasing a specific fantasy that they’ve got a huge suspension of disbelief thing going on.

Does this reduce my overall respect for Kink.com? If so, only a little. I’ll assume that the lady has at least averred to them that she’s never had penis-in-vagina sex, giving them a factual basis for the “virgin” claim in their marketing. (From their talk of an “official hymen-cam”, I’m gathering they think they can show video for the skeptics, too.) Beyond that, well, the Kink people have always been much better pornographers than they have been marketers. Ham-fisted off-key marketing from them we have seen before. And while I want one of my favorite porn companies to have elegant, responsible, 21st-century marketing, porn is still a medieval business in a lot of respects, nor are these easy times in it. It’s a lot to ask, and they still lead the pack. So, I can abide.