Hell Yeah, Feminist Porn! Seven Minutes in Heaven 2: Tender Hearted
Warning: This post is all about porn. Please do not proceed reading if you are not completely comfortable or become triggered when seeing, reading about and/or discussing porn and other stuff sexually explicit in content.
I am by no means an expert when it comes to feminist porn directors. Tristan Taormino has long been one of very few who came to mind just because of her film Rough Sex, so when I heard that Courtney Trouble had made quite the name for herself in the world of feminist porn, garnering recognition large and vast, I needed to see what was so impressive. I have long been lusting after seeing what she was capable of, and when Babeland presented me with the opportunity to see for myself, I jumped at the chance.
First of all, let’s make something clear, shall we? Feminists have long been divided when it comes to porn. I happen to love porn. I have always loved porn; ever since I knew I was a sexual being and was first introduced to it as a naive teenager. (Hey internet, you listening? Yeah, thanks for that!) As I grew older and started reading anything and everything I could get my hands on in the realm of women’s studies and gender studies and started to identify as a feminist, one of the biggest things that has disappointed me within the feminist movement is the radical hatred a lot of feminists have when it comes to porn. I don’t like that kind of negativity in my movement and I don’t like it being used to oppress my people.
So with that out of the way, back to Courtney Trouble!
Courtney Trouble has won awards for the most diverse cast for Roulette, she was a 2009 Feminist Porn Award recipient, a 2010 AVN nominee for best soundtrack in both Roulette and Speakeasy, and she has also won an award for best queer porn site with NoFauxxx.com by the SF Bay Guardian. Yeah, she is crazy impressive.
Sarah Palin is Not a Feminist, Revisited
I thought we covered this already; in fact, I know that many covered this during the 2008 presidential election, as well as after, but mostly during election time. But since this has come up yet again, I guess it’s time to give everyone a little refresher. So, for the record, Sarah Palin is not a feminist.
The first time I had ever even heard of Sarah Palin was when John McCain announced she would be running alongside him for the vice-presidential seat and within 11 minutes of hearing her name and doing some very mild research on her, I was seething from the amount of people saying she was a strong, positive, feminist role model. A woman who does not support pro-woman legislation does not a feminist make, folks. I wrote about Sarah Palin and how she has proven to not be worthy of the feminist label nearly two full years ago and at that time (and since) I have received nearly 100 comments, some from people who agreed with me and many others who did not and told me basically, that just because Sarah Palin is not “my kind of feminist,” doesn’t mean she cannot call herself one.
Sarah Palin and the word feminist seem to have a habit of coming up in the media quite a bit. It seems that whenever Sarah Palin emerges from her Alaskan bunker to face the world or to give a speech (that she is now charging upwards of $100,000 a pop for), the media is so eager to slap the title of feminist on her. Not so surprisingly, the only time that the media as a whole chooses to run a “feminism is positive” feel-good story, it is when they are attributing the title to someone grossly anti-woman who supports tragic, anti-woman policies.
During a speech earlier this month to the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List, an extremely modest spin-off of the pro-abortion-rights group, Emily’s List, Palin brought up feminism, feminists and sisterhood. She told the more than 500 women in attendance that they are “responsible for an “emerging, conservative, feminist identity” and have the power to shape politics and elections around the issue.” To complete this point, she also told these women that they should only support candidates for public office who are uncompromisingly opposed to abortion.
Is this sentiment a nod to the fact that she will, indeed, be running for president in 2012? Oh I’m pretty sure that’s a yes.
Also appearing in her speech were a few words for us other feminists out here, you know, the feminists who work hard and wholeheartedly believe in passing legislation that supports women and gives women the power to make choices that affect their lives. After speaking about her decision to not abort her youngest child because she found out at 12-weeks of pregnancy that he would be born with Down Syndrome, she said that women are strong enough to handle having a family in addition to “pursuing career and education and avocations.” A sentiment that feminists do in fact believe in; we actually want legislation passed that would make it easier for women to realistically have everything they want and work for in life. But then she goes on to say, “Society wants to tell these young women otherwise. These feminist groups want to tell these women that, ‘No, you’re not capable of doing both.’ … It’s very hypocritical.”
Sarah Palin is not new to the buzz word-invoking tactics she uses in speeches and interviews. When she was interviewed by Katie Couric she said that she was a feminist, but later told NBC’s Brian Williams that she was not going to label herself anything. In the world of politics, that is called a definite flip flop and apparently Sarah Palin is now making herself comfortable by calling herself a feminist, but only when it suits her needs and viewpoint.
As Jessica Valenti put it in the Washington Post, “It’s not a realization of the importance of women’s rights that’s inspired the change. It’s strategy. Palin’s sisterly speechifying is part of a larger conservative move to woo women by appropriating feminist language. Just as consumer culture tries to sell “Girls Gone Wild”-style sexism as “empowerment,” conservatives are trying to sell anti-women policies shrouded in pro-women rhetoric.”
So I’m just going to come out and say it, and yes, I know some of you out there were waiting for it. I’m sorry, but you don’t just get to say you’re a feminist and automatically be one. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not allowed.
Meghan Daum wrote an entire article for the LA Times about how Sarah Palin has “made peace” with the “F-word” and how now that it’s a word that she can use to work for her to win more people over by spinning its connotations completely backward, we should be all be overjoyed with this. Daum’s own view of feminism, as she highlights in her article, is pretty much something anyone can relate to and attribute to themselves regardless of where they stand practically anywhere on the political scale. Can a man who hates gay people, goes to pro-life rallies and has everything Rush Limbaugh has ever said recorded for repeated listening be a feminist? In Daum’s world, absolutely!
I don’t necessarily believe that people must be able to go down a list of viewpoints and be able to check most, if not all of them off as something they agree with before being able to be called a feminist, I just think that people who openly call themselves feminists should probably have a good grasp over the women’s liberation movement and where feminism gained its roots. I want people who call themselves feminists to know what they are talking about and I want them to work hard to make sure legislation and policies on a country, state and a community level are passed that will help more women than hinder them. Feminists should want to make sure that children today are raised with the knowledge and with the confidence to know that they can do anything and nothing can stop them from fulfilling the dreams that they wish to some day accomplish. I want someone who calls themselves a feminist to believe that people deserve to live in a world without gender stereotypes or roles, without bigotry, without hate or discrimination, without sexism and misogyny and yes, I want them to believe that women deserve to make their own choices, not only when it comes to their bodies, but when it comes to every single aspect of their lives.
Kate Harding wrote over at Jezebel about the 5 Ways Of Looking At “Sarah Palin Feminism” that is both incredibly hilarious and informative.
EdenFantasys: The Crumbling of a Community
Image Credit: Aag Blog
A few days ago I re-published maymay’s article from Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed, Edenfantasys’s unethical technology is a self-referential black hole. The article not only uncovered, but also proved without a shadow of a doubt the unethical linking technology used by popular sex toy shop and community, EdenFantasys. But this isn’t just a matter of ethics; it isn’t that simple and if it were, some of their most prolific and popular reviewers and contributors wouldn’t be walking away from the site completely because of it. Well, the reviewers who haven’t already been banned by the so-called transparent, honest and accepting forum, anyway.
The way EdenFantasys’ linking technology works is actually quite simple and you don’t need to understand any technological jargon to see what’s really going on. Throughout EdenFantasys’ entire website, as well as their SexIs Magazine, when you click on a link, it works just as it does on any other kind of website. It brings you to the destination it is intended to. That is, if you have JavaScript enabled on your browser, which your browser should automatically have enabled. If you disable JavaScript however, and try to click on a link, it does nothing. While the link looks the same, when you try to click, it does nothing. While you may be thinking “So what? If my browser has JavaScript enabled and I can click on the link, then what is the problem?” Well, Googlebot and search engine spiders do not see JavaScript, meaning they do not see the link on EdenFantasys and SexIs Magazine in any way and cannot give that website credit for being linked on such a prominent website. Not only that, but by hovering over a link on these websites and looking in your status bar, you will see that the link is showing up as the destination of the same page you are already on. They have successfully cloaked links so that if you have JavaScript enabled and you click on a link, it will bring you to that website, but the back-end code is really functioning as giving EdenFantasys another incoming link to themselves. The only one who benefits from this linking technology is EdenFantasys.
What this means is that those who have done off-site reviews for EdenFantasys and have their reviews that they have written on their blogs linked on EdenFantasys, thinking that their Google pagerank would increase because they have been linked by such a huge website, are mistaken. In fact, if you check your website statistics, you will never see an incoming link from EdenFantasys show up. Their unethical technology is not only screwing you out of backlinks that lead to a Google pagerank increase, but also hits to your website completely. Anyone who runs a website of any caliber knows how important incoming links and hits are.
A number of months ago when I was propositioned through my other website to begin reviewing for EdenFantasys, one of the “perks” outlined in that proposition was being linked by EdenFantasys when I wrote an off-site review on my blog. When the woman I initially worked with from EdenFantasys stopped working with the company and after the person who replaced her also left the company, I was contacted by the third off-site review manager for EdenFantasys who once again gave me a run-through of the entire program and spent more time on why it was so great to be linked by EdenFantasys, focusing a great deal on the number of people who are part of the community who would see my reviews and be introduced to my website because of them. After I had been reviewing for EdenFantasys for a few months I received another email by a link manager for the website whose job it is to set up “link exchanges” between their site and blogs. The person whose responsibility it is to set up link exchanges did not even bother to look at my website, because if they had, they would have noticed that not only did I have a text link for EdenFantasys on my website, but I also had a banner present on my sidebar. I am not the only one who has received an email of this nature and what this proves is that EdenFantasys is employing someone to only set up link exchanges with blogs and they receive hits and Google pagerank increases because of the amount of links they garner from other blogs, not to mention that a reviewer must place no less than three links to EdenFantasys in every review they publish on their blog, but EdenFantasys never returns the favor because of their horrendously unethical linking practices. The people who they set up link exchanges with have been lied to and cheated by the entire company.
Obviously, when maymay’s article was published almost a week ago uncovering the unethical linking practices of EdenFantasys, people were outraged. A thread was started in the EdenFantasys forum with a link to the article and immediately, people wanted an explanation from the EdenFantasys staff. This is only natural and something people would expect from any company. Please note that EdenFantasys has gone above and beyond to try to solidify themselves as being transparent, honest and a sex shop you can trust. They showed a very hypocritical nature, however, when they decided to delete the thread that was started about their linking practices when it had gained 28 responses by concerned and respectful contributors. Luckily, a screenshot was taken of the forum before it had been deleted, just to prove that it had indeed been there. So much for that whole transparency thing.
Edenfantasys’s unethical technology is a self-referential black hole
Note: This post is republished with permission from maymay from Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed. Anyone who is concerned, offended and/or appalled by the unethical linking practices done by EdenFantasys and their defense and smoke and mirrors response about the situation are urged to excerpt, tweet, and cross-post it with proper attribution.
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A few nights ago, I received an email from Editor of EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine, Judy Cole, asking me to modify this Kink On Tap brief I published that cites Lorna D. Keach’s writing. Judy asked me to “provide attribution and a link back to” SexIs Magazine. An ordinary enough request soon proved extraordinarily unethical when I discovered that EdenFantasys has invested a staggering amount of time and money to develop and implement a technology platform that actively denies others the courtesy of link reciprocity, a courtesy on which the ethical Internet is based.
While what they’re doing may not be illegal, EdenFantasys has proven itself to me to be an unethical and unworthy partner, in business or otherwise. Its actions are blatantly hypocritical, as I intend to show in detail in this post. Taking willful and self-serving advantage of those not technically savvy is a form of inexcusable oppression, and none of us should tolerate it from companies who purport to be well-intentioned resources for a community of sex-positive individuals.
For busy or non-technical readers, see the next section, Executive Summary, to quickly understand what EdenFantasys is doing, why it’s unethical, and how it affects you whether you’re a customer, a contributor, or a syndication partner. For the technical reader, the Technical Details section should provide ample evidence in the form of a walkthrough and sample code describing the unethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) techniques EdenFantasys, aka. Web Merchants, Inc., is engaged in. For anyone who wants to read further, I provide an Editorial section in which I share some thoughts about what you can do to help combat these practices and bring transparency and trust—not the sabotage of trust EdenFantasys enacts—to the market.
Is it My “Feminist Duty” to Mention Mother’s Day?
So, yesterday was Mother’s Day. For the past three years I have written on Menstrual Poetry and for those three years, I have written about Mother’s Day and how this one day, for me, brings about anxiety, panic attacks and an overwhelming sense of loss.
It’s no big secret that I am a survivor of child abuse, neglect, sexual assault and rape. I have written about all of this on this website many, many times and a few years ago I had given an interview to the Scranton, Pennsylvania Times Tribune about being an adult survivor of childhood sexual assault and also made my childhood life experiences public to a crowd of a few hundred people at the Scranton, Pennsylvania Take Back the Night rally at Courthouse Square. But regardless of the amount of times I write about it or talk about it, the gut-wrenching, crippling, bottomless pit of emotion does not go away. Sure, I have learned healing techniques from the Women’s Resource Center, whom I sought help for my anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression from after calling the RAINN hotline one day when I was alone in my first apartment, feeling defeated and as if I were trapped inside a bubble of negativity. There are also some amazing resources online for survivors, like the Survivor Manual, started by Angela Shelton, a survivor, filmmaker, author, comedian, writer, actress, model and all-around fabulous and inspiring woman. If the amount of resources made available to survivors tells us one thing, it is that we are not alone and that sentiment inspires and motivates us to heal and to help others in their own healing journeys in any way they will allow us to. But healing is a journey–a very long journey and in the end, while you may have come to terms with what happened to you, there are still days when you can do nothing but “sit in your shit,” a term I could not help but adopt from my counselor at the Women’s Resource Center.
Having a “dark day” or period of time where you can do very little but “sit in your shit” is perfectly okay and it is completely normal. Wallowing and grieving is part of the healing process and you have to allow yourself to do that throughout your entire healing process. I remember reading that on any major given holiday, there are twice as many phone calls made to rape crisis and assault hotlines than any other time of the year. Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter, parent-specific days of recognition and all holidays in between are major triggers for those affected by assault in some way.
Mother’s Day has been my biggest trigger for over ten years.
While I have written posts about Mother’s Day and how it affects me on a severely personal level for the past three years, this year I contemplated what I would write about and kept coming up with virtually nothing. I have said it all before and nothing about this aspect of my life has changed, so what else was there to say? This year, Mother’s Day seemed to be on steroids. Between two email accounts, Facebook, Twitter and the general blogosphere, for a week I have not been able to get away from the “Happy Mother’s Day” sentiments and this year, I really wanted nothing to do with it. So my approach for this year’s Mother’s Day post? Complete and utter avoidance. But that didn’t necessarily work out the way I thought it would–obviously.
While visiting my daily reads around the feminist blogosphere, Mother’s Day was undoubtedly a major topic of discussion and conversation.
- The Undomestic Goddess listed things her mother had done for her to shape her into the woman she is now; from being her Girl Scout troop leader and “room mom” in school to teaching her the importance of friendships and how to not let people take advantage of her in any situation.
- The Pursuit of Harpyness made a list of the best advice given to them by their moms (or maternal role models) and asked for the best advice or “how it’s done” statements made by the mothers of their commenters.
- Our Bodies Our Blog featured a fun video that will insert the name of the woman of your choice in a faux news story awarding that person with the “Mother of the Decade Award” from MomsRising
- Girl with Pen compiled a wish list for Mother’s Day including ideas like “A world in which being born a girl is not a risk factor for malnourishment, hunger, neglect, discrimination, poverty, abuse, sexual violence, forced labor, trafficking or death.” and “A newspaper filled with stories about the new global peace: no environmental disasters, no bombs exploding, no torture, no hate crimes, no war.”
- fbomb dedicated their ongoing series of articles of ‘Support Women Artists Sunday’ to Mother’s Day and to Carly Simon because their mother was obsessed with the artist.
- Jezebel featured quite a few different posts about and in dedication of Mother’s Day, including an article republished by Morning Quickie about how her mother had not attended a school play when she was 10 because it conflicted with a Buddhist retreat she needed to attend and how that moment taught her that you can be a wife and mother without completely giving up your sense of self.
- Pandagon and Feministe posted the new video My Mom is an Inspiration from the Center for Reproductive Rights that thanks moms everywhere for raising a generation who care about and who are passionate about choice.
- Womanist Musings has a new post over at Global Comment about Mother’s Day and what it really means to celebrate motherhood when in the wake up Mother’s Day or any recognition honoring mothers and motherhood brings up the conversation of choice and a woman’s right to choose abortion.
- Chloe at Feministing wrote an article about the glorification of motherhood in our culture while American mothers are still denied basic rights like paid maternity leave, how women can be kicked out of public places for breastfeeding, the pay cut women take when they become mothers and the fact that single mothers earn between 34% and 44% less than men in the same field.
It was the Feministing article that really struck a chord with me–and not necessarily in a completely good way. It is definitely an inspiring and motivating piece for those who find themselves “with-mother,” with sentiments like “you only get one [biological] mother” and “it isn’t fair that mothers only get one special day a year,” but to someone tragically without, I can’t imagine being this high-strung, this emotional and this triggered more than one day a year.
But as a self-identified feminist who runs a feminist-centric blog, one must ask themselves–is it my “duty” as a feminist to blog about Mother’s Day regardless of my personal triggers and downright discomfort with the subject? Motherhood and a woman’s right to bear children is a major feminist issue. From the absence of paid maternity leave as a fundamental right to women with careers to women being formally and socially judged if they receive welfare and choose to become mothers; not one of the road blocks women hit repeatedly from the time of pregnancy to actively parenting are okay and I try to blog about these problems as much as I can, but this conversation becomes more involved, wide-spread and more passionate on Mother’s Day. The day I cannot bring myself to see the silver lining if said silver lining hit me over the head like a baseball bat.
To the credit of the Feministing article, it did mention “sparents,” a term coined by Mia Freedman. Sparents (or “spare parents”) are those nurturing and responsible adults who play essential roles in shaping the lives of children who may not be biologically theirs, but that doesn’t stop them from teaching, sharing, guiding and experiencing.
I didn’t have “sparents” exactly, but I did have a kick-ass, liberal grandmother who gave me the foundation to grow into the woman that I am today.
So, to my GramPat–
Thank you for showing me exactly what a proud, independent woman looks like. For your undeniable and unwavering love, regardless of the mistakes I have made in my life and will continue to make throughout it. For raising me with the respect to make my own decisions and form my own point of view and for your guidance. For reminding me to never be too proud to ask for help and never judging me. For instilling in me the knowledge that women can do anything and giving me the courage to speak my mind and do what I believe in. For not making too much fun of me for being 23 years old and still not knowing how to cook. For all the school projects, middle-of-the-night Walmart runs, early-morning deep, philosophical conversation accompanied by cup after cup of coffee and for teaching me who is on the 50 dollar bill, which to this day I still know the answer to (Grant.) Thank you for making me look up how to spell certain words in the Dictionary, you’re probably single-handedly the one to thank for my excellent spelling skills and for making me look up anything I wanted to know more about in the Encyclopedia first before you gave me your point of view on the subject.
Thank you for your infinite wisdom and thank you for helping me become the woman I am today. I hope to one day become even a fraction of the empowering and inspiring woman you are.
But even though I have been fortunate enough to have a deeply inspiring grandmother who is still a tremendous mother-figure in my life, that cannot erase the sense of loss that is felt when you have a mother out there, who is not deceased, but just doesn’t want you. To realize that you are not wanted by the very person who brought you into this world is a deeply damaging and tragic realization. My mother does not want me and she never has; when she had me, she did nothing but make my life into yet another statistic–another case of child neglect and emotional and physical abuse, another case of childhood sexual assault, another case of irreversible mental illness.
So last night, when sitting here thinking of the day in which we recognize the good in motherhood, I sobbed. I sobbed for the mother I have never had; for my loss of a fit and capable mother that I deserved. But what gives me that little comfort I need is the fact that there are people in my life who want to be in it and who deserve to see the woman I continue to become.
Sex-Positivity
I'm passionate about sex-positivity and believe every sexual being should have the freedom to explore their sexuality safely and without condemnation. I even lost my ad network after my refusal to censor myself after reviewing feminist porn.So if you're in the market for sex toys, porn, books, etc. take a look at the retailers below, all of which are feminist-friendly.
Out Campaign
The OUT Campaign allows individuals to let others know they are not alone. It can also be a nice way of opening a conversation and help to demolish the negative stereotypes of atheists. Let the world know that we are not about to go away and that we are not going to allow those that would condemn us to push us into the shadows.
