(This one’s for Andrea, who asked. Slight swerve form the ongoing topic, but only barely.)

Why I Stopped Putting All (or most) of My Efforts into Erotica and Decided the Revolution Didn’t Hinge on That, Groovy as That Would Have Been. (I really wanted to work “On My Summer Vacation” into that, but alas, it just wouldn’t happen.)

So, Scarlet Letters has just been sitting for a really long time now. (And I haven’t been able to actually touch it or have it forward elsewhere in part because it was important it stayed as-is during the ACLU/COPA case.) I’ve okayed a couple of reprints on some of my photographic and written erotica, but per the written, I haven’t done anything new or particularly wanted to. With the photography…well, I’ll get to that.

I also haven’t done the constant networking I used to do with other women working in erotica and pornography, in part because there are fewer of them (when we’re really talking women-owned, women-centered, women-directed) than ever. And yes, I know that some younger women think there’s a surge of it online these days, but I assure you, it ain’t nuthin’ compared to what we had going around 2000/2001.

I’ve declined, over the past couple of years, a lot of offers for features/joint projects in the arenas of porn and erotica. I’ve even gotten to the point with features on my photography where if the approach is, at all, to have me presented as a pinup or a babe, it’s just not workable for me.

In a word, I’m outta much of this arena, or, what is generally defined as this arena. How it’s defined and how limited I feel that is an entry or twelve for another day.

Now. There are first some secondary reasons for this.

• Some of the why of this is simply that Scarleteen just took the heck off (ST gets a minimum of twenty times the traffic anything else I ever did did, even during the best years), and because I’m an activist at heart, so when a need expresses itself very loud and clear, that’s where I’m going to go. And that one shouted out way louder than any “needs” anyone ever had for women-centered erotica/porn.

• Another part of why is that set a standard at SL that we would not publish crap. That even if it meant skipping deadlines, or publishing less, that what we did publish needed to be exceptional, original, and of real quality. And as the years went on, we found that we just kept using the same artists and writers again and again because (and any erotica publisher or editor worth their salt, and being honest, will tell you this) the vast majority of what we got in was mediocre at best, and the Worst Shit You Ever Read/Saw at worst. And it gets really, really depressing (or, at a minimum, bloody boring) seeing what even the smarter, more creative eschelons of the populace define as sexy or erotic.

(It’s amazing, really, how sex can make everyone so stupid. Even really good authors and artists sometimes, who rock any other subject, can suddenly turn into the worst hacks on the planet when they tackle sex in their art.)

• USC 2257 didn’t help. While I often prefer suggestion to explicit work, our editorial policy had always been to really look at things artistically, and judge them on that merit, so that included all kinds of work. A big, big deal to me when it came to working in women’s sexuality is, was and has always been that privacy for women is a huge issue. So, the last thing on earth I would do is cooperate in compromising the privacy of female subjects in any photographic work.

• It also stopped paying even its own meager bills. After the first year or so, for a good, what, four years? Something like that… we did pretty well with CPM banner ad contracts for Scarlet. Between 2000 and 2002, for a woman-owned and run business that did not compromise itself in any way, or get into bed with anyone it didn’t want to 100%, I did pretty darn well. Again, at the time, there were enough other people and companies with the same aims, so while finding harmonious adverts wasn’t easy — bear in mind that woman-centered and focused means that 99.9% of the types of ads available to sexuality publications were big fat nos to us, because we didn’t want to have misogyny or male-directed sexuality on the site — but I worked it well enough for a while there. Then there were less of us. Then the bottom dropped out of the web, period. Then there were less still. Then, just not enough to have it be workable at all.

• We could probably have paid more bills — obviously — if both the publication and myself as its editor were willing to play something close to the more acceptable part when it comes to marketing sexuality. If I/we had been willing to talk like porn stars, to have less personal privacy, to hold the poses, always wear the heels and lipstick, “oh baby” somebody, set politics aside, care less about quality and more about quantity, and get seriously into bed with the male-run or driven affiliates and publications. But I wasn’t, and we weren’t. For me, I’d always said when I started doing work in sexual media that if it didn’t feel true to me, I wasn’t going to do it. If it conflicted with my personal/political ethics, I wasn’t going to do it. And if I just plain did not feel 100% okay about something, I wasn’t going to do it. And in time, part of what has happened is that it was that or let Scarlet and most of erotica period sit on the shelf until we could figure out a different way. Those pressures got greater, while at the same time, I began to feel like in some respects, I needed to be more cautious about what I/we were cavalier about, even considering that I was rarely calavier about anything. At this point, even with my own site here, I’ve since accepted that to do what I want to do with writing and art, I have to have zero reliance on the small funds it generates anymore, and NOT try to have it make more money, because pretty much anything that would guarantee better subscription sales would also guarantee lesser creativity and authenticity, and it’s just not worth it for a few hundred extra bucks a month.

I’ve also since worked on accepting that the comfort and security of any one “camp” is a luxury which someone who aspires to be a truthful revolutionary cannot afford.

You just can’t be authentic or nurture authenticity and autonomy in your life and your work when you always have to check in with someone else’s agenda — even if it’s the same as, or similar to, yours. I need room to be critical of any given media or issue, in whatever ways I feel critical and want to express that, and I don’t have enough room if I have to worry about betraying one camp or another.

Which is part of why it’s sitting. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m still thinking about it. I think I know a good way it can go at this point, but I want to do it right, so I’m taking my time.

Those, believe it or not, are but the smaller issues. Here’s the big one, and it’s no happy ending.

Ultimately, this is the conclusion I’ve reached, which of course seems way more obvious in hindsight, as most things do.

Women can’t possibly reclaim pornography — which is an expression of sexuality — before we’ve reclaimed sexuality, period.

That is a logical given. And we have NOT, in my mind, “come a long way, baby.” We’re a long, long way off.

(Before you go there, I don’t think porn/erotica of any type cannot make the same kinds of strides TOWARDS women reclaiming/owning our sexuality the way something can like, say, Hanne’s upcoming book on the cultural history of virginity, the cessation of rape or getting EC freely and easily available to everyone. Entertainment of any type is obviously powerful in many ways, but unless it accomplished aims like that through it as a channel, it’s power — however far its reach may be, and however much it enthralls — is far more limited. Most of what is produced as sexual entertainment, as compared to even mediocre films in every other genre, is what Olson Twins films are to Thirteen.)

While I think we can absolutely take steps, and while I think that some of us can get decently far with this individually (especially women who can have the most distance/respite from the usurpers of their sexuality, individual and collective), I’m afraid I think that at this point, most of what we can do is to provide band-aids until we’re just plain not living under patriarchy anymore. Not just in sex: full-stop.

(While I’m going off like a rocket and probably pissing people off anyway, I may as well say that I’m of the mind right now that anyone who thinks we’re even close to reclaiming or discovering our sexuality is either naive — as I was — delusional, or pretty self-absorbed. The assumption or assertion that a given women’s sexual behaviour must be 100% authentic to her just because she’s female — which oddly, usually also comes from people who will talk a bluew streak about how men are sexually conditioned, something I guess somehow women are immune to? — is as intellectually anorexic as the assumption or assertion that any choice any of us women make is feminist because we’re female.)

That isn’t so say that band-aids aren’t a good or needed thing. Much in the same way that Affirmative Action is a band-aid until (oh, salty optimism abounds) people aren’t racist anymore, I absolutely think all the reclaiming and rediscovering (and in the case of women’s sexuality, so much of it isn’t re-anything so much as trying to really find it for the first time) one can do is a Very Good Thing, and is really, really important. By all means, I think that we and women before us working in this arena have actually made some incredible strides that I wouldn’t ever dream of dismissing or discounting: even if it’s just individually rather than collectively. But even when those strides are made, they still often can’t benefit a great many women — a majority of women — because there isn’t an allowance made for them in their/our lives and world.

I mean, even if we reduce things to a lowest common denominator – okay? — it’s only so useful to know where your clitoris is and what it does if a) you weren’t reared with and/or aren’t still surrounded with a culture, community or relationships that shame the hell out of you (or cut your clit off, or stone you, or rape you) for touching it and/or b) partners who will be all that interested in it beyond figuring it might be a good way to get you to say yes to the sex they want if they pay a minimum of attention to it.

(Some time back, there was this new miracle cream — right here in the states where apparently everyone knows all about the clitoris now and thinks it’s the shit — that came out for women designed to increase arousal, right? It apparently had these totally amazing ingredients that would just drive every woman wild and make her a wailing walrus of love. The instructions explained that for the cream to work, it had to be, I kid you not, “rubbed on the clitoris for ten to twenty minutes.” I don’t think I need to expand on that one, do I?)

Maybe in my case some of it is that focusing primarily on YA sex education feels like I can accomplish this better, since most of my “students” aren’t set in their socio-sexual conditioning or attitudes yet, and if so, certainly not as solidly as people older than them are, just because of the passing of time spent under seige. That makes me feel kind of lousy sometimes, like I abandoned women of my generation or older, but I’m often pragmatic in my activism: above all else, I just want it to be effective.

I got tired of watching people come into this genre anew saying they had the best of intentions, asking for my help, getting it much of the time, and then either jumping ship when it didn’t make them oodles of dough, or selling myself and other women out to net the cash. I got tired of seeing male-owned orgs give their sites a female face or front and saying they were women-run or about women because some male pornographers/venture capitalists figured out that they could benefit off of the backs of women this shiny, new way, while the guys were setting the direction and making the big cash. I got tired of listening to men and women alike talk trash about women in porn or sex work, and either treat them like commodities or speak on their behalf — discussing negatives OR positives about the experiences they haven’t actually had themselves — without invite to do so. I got tired of listening to women outright bullshit about doing things for other women in their porn/erotica when it was so freaking obvious that that was not their concern: it was just popular to say, got you more approval from women, and made it easier to sleep at night.

I am still so goddamn tired of reading comments from men at women’s sites/blogs who work in sex and ID as feminist where the men cannot shut the hell up about what GREAT feminists they are, ever telling a woman who is questioning her feminism or choices not to…

…because their feminism does not challenge these men at all, it benefits them, and only for that reason.

Note to Guys Masquerading as Pro-Feminist Men: it is NOT feminist or pro-feminist to aim to silence the thoughts in a woman’s head. Just sayin.’

I got tired of some of us working so effing hard for so damn little and getting shit from all sides for it. I’ve talked about this before, but it is seriously draining to have porn-people and male culture demonize you because you’re apparently in bed with radical feminists, while radical feminists won’t quit with how in bed you are with the guys. Hell, in high school and college, when everyone accused me of being in bed with absolutely everyone, at least they they were right AND I got to get very well-laid all the time. I got tired of people trying to manipulate me into doing something for their ventures — work they’d sometimes, without informing me, put in a context that was totally abhorrent to me — by playing on how I “owed” something to women, because they knew I actually gave a shit, when they really just wanted to use my name (something which a few people seriously overestimated the power of, big time) to make some cash or feel important.

I got tired of noticing that when I really pushed the envelope, and really did what I felt was challenging, original and outside-the-box (as it were) work when it came to photography, people sometimes got angry with me, and when I did light and fun or…well, let’s be honest, work that was fluff or just fell short of what I’d hoped, people loved it. If I’m really reclaiming — and people really want that — and I’m really expressing my sexuality as a multi-dimensional whole, then when work I do didn’t/doesn’t meet someone’s ideas of what they want to see or are comfortable seeing that should NOT be a conflict. And if — as this has happened — I decide to shoot a series in the shower where I am processing a rape flashback, or share actual sex I am having with the actual latex barriers I use to avoid chlamydia of the throat, or shoot subjects I think are beautiful who don’t fit a certain body ideal, or the sex I have with a girlfriend doesn’t look or sound like girl-on-girl porn people should NOT be sending me angry or whiny letters or cancelling subscriptions if, in fact, they support reclaiming and earnestly exploring women’s sexuality, because ladies and germs, stuff like this is part of that gig.

I got really tired of seeing what I was told was reclaiming which looked so incredibly similar to how men have presented sexuality or women’s sexuality (hate to say it and sound like a straight-girl basher, but when I did see what seemed like successful reclaiming, it nearly always came from dykes. You know, the kind who learned to have sex with each other from each other, rather than from porn).

I’m not immune from that either: some of the reason I shoot and publish a bit less than I used to is that I found even for myself that reclaiming is a lot of work. If I didn’t put a good deal of thought into it, if I rushed it out, if I didn’t try really hard to see/think/feel differently (or make a point of questioning what seemed different on first glance/imagine), if I couldn’t view my own work really critically, I discovered on second glance that even what I thought was my reclaiming sometimes looked quite alarmingly, frustratingly, like rehash. And this even coming from me, who’s done her dyke-time, who seriously could give two shits what men think of her, her body or her sexuality, and who had all kinds of diverse sexual conditioning and counterculture and blah blah blah. You get it.

(I also got tired of feeling so damn bitter all of the time and feeling so alone in it. If you’ve gotten this far into this entry, you may also have some idea of how tired I was of the way I was making some of my friends and colleagues feel when I went on about this stuff.)

Point is, women reclaiming sexuality under patriarchy is exactly akin to people of color reclaiming their culture and identity under white supremacy: you are incredibly limited, at best, in what you can do, and that really is just that.

Not a very hopeful sentiment, I know. And it’s some of why I feel like a real asshole sometimes, and let me tell you why.

I HAD some older feminists almost telling me this almost verbatim when I started working in that arena. I’m stubborn, sure, but generally I really am very good at listening to a wealth of perspectives, and to respecting those of people who have done longer time on this earth than I have. I was never one of those folks who thought that if every woman could have a really good orgasm, the whole world and all of culture would change: I can be daft sometimes, but I’m not THAT daft. But for whatever reason, I really, really, truly thought that not only could we forge some really important cultural changes by getting our sexual expression out there, by all sisters-doin-it-for-themselves-ness when it came to sexual media, I just for the life of me could not wrap my head around the fact that a LOT of other things needed to happen first before we could not only forge those changes, but before we could even do the kind of work that could possibly create them.

Lemme tell you something: eight years of sex advice letters en masse, mostly from hetero women, and sometimes from men, will teach you a thing or two about what state of affairs we’re really in when it comes to this.

I think some of the rift created between myself and some other feminist women years back had to do with two misunderstandings: one theirs, one mine.

• Theirs was that I did not think every other aspect of women’s equality and work for that equality was important (and that some of them just didn’t really get what I was trying to do, or didn’t think my efforts were especially valuable). I did, I always have: it’s just that I earnestly thought — and given the caveats above, still think to a degree — that women’s sexual equality and identity was ALSO important, and that I could do the most effective work there, and make real strides doing that.

• Mine was that I thought I/we could do a lot more in that arena than I now think we can, and also that what some of them were trying to tell me — that I couldn’t hear — was that making changes in those other areas of equity was ALSO work for sexual autonomy and ownership; that it’s a lot more likely for larger, more tangible, basic changes to create improvements in women’s sexuality and the room all of sexuality makes for it than the other way around.

I think that is most likely correct. (And, of course, that hardly means you can’t still have your orgasms while you’re doing that other work.)

None of this is to say I plan to stop the work that I’m doing right now and have been for the last few years. I think that everything I do right now is important, and I’m feeling very good about the new projects — like the AGA — which I’ve added to the roster in the last year. I think my direction right now is a bit more sound and well-rounded than it was at other times. But that also means that I have to be careful about easy distractions and careful about not undoing my own work with other work.

It means that all of the work I do in sexuality, women’s sexuality and feminism is a lot harder than I’d like, hurts my brain and heart a lot more, and demands a LOT more of me. It means that I have to come at this stuff from both angles: I have to find ways to work on the sexuality aspects while also still working on the bigger context our sexuality lives within. I have to remind myself incessantly that if any of this seems like a no-brainer, it’s probably just me being lazy or wanting to take the easy way out.

But, more challenging as that is, it feels better to me. It feels more right, it feels more productive, it feels more truthful.

That’s probably more than you wanted to know, Andrea, and others of you who have asked over the last year or so, and likely way more than anyone who didn’t ask me about it wanted to know, but there it is: ashamedly, that’s the short version. Would that it were the streamlined one. Per usual, when there aren’t easy answers, there are rarely easy explanations, either.

P.S. For the Greek/Latin scholars out there, or other words of wordsmiths, I still need a word to replace pornography to better describe what I aim for in visual work: I need a word for sex and women, and I need a word which describes not visual entertainment or the intent to create arousal, but visual art/exploration of sexuality and women.

filed under Heather Corinna | soapbox | feminism | sex/life | pornography
posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 9:18 pm

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