Friday, February 11, 2005
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Arthur Miller Dies, But His Example Lives On
Christian Mann writes: "Death of a playwright... Arthur Miller dead at 89. A significant person whose passing will be unnoticed by many. Sad."
What a waste of Miller's talent. He never wrote any porn films.
The New York Post reports that the famed 89 year old Jewish playwright and defender of the Stalinist left is on his last legs. Even so, do you know who stands by his side? His 34 year old girlfriend. Not bad, eh? Now consider this - were Mr. Miller a member of your kehilla, the clucking aging hens would have prevented him even from meeting her at any of the Jewish singles "events" they control. No shidduck would have stepped forward to make the introduction, and he'd have been damed to be in the company of women his own age (no wonder men die first). Of course, it must be noted that as a high status male, he long knew the companionship of high status women. In early middle age, Mr. Miller won the heart of Marilyn Monroe. The moral of this story is that you need to elevate your status. Greatly, and NOW.
One way is by making money so that you can stop collecting cans in the duskier parts of town. I know you say it is good exercise and that nobody you know will ever see you doing physical labor, but really, a man of your age shouldn't be doing that. I propose you instead teach Jewish singles when and how to settle in life (a life skill Jewish women obviously lack).
Your years of work in the fields of porn uniquely qualifies you to determine a woman's worth in the mating game, and what that worth might presently fetch on the open market. Ditto all the Jewish accountants, lawyers, and dweeb males out there who seem to think that some young Jewish hottie will fall into their lap. (The only way that's going to happen for most of them is if it is in the form of a lap dance.) Jewish men and Jewish women need some sort of an Ebay to evaluate their relative rankings so that they can figure out when where and how to settle for what they might actually get out of life - and enjoy - instead of holding out for what they are not likely ever to get. The man who figures out the best way of pulling this trick off stands to make a TON of money (so much so that I am getting aroused just thinking about this), which will make him that much more desirable to women.
Gonhorrea, Clamydia Running Rampant
Fast Eddie, my favorite poster on the hobby, writes on FunWithPSEs:
I have it on good authority that right now gonhorrea and Clamydia are running rampant in the adult industry. I'm talking more than 50% of scheduled shoots being cancelled because of talent testing positive. the industry requires HIV screening on a monthly basis, but full panel screenings are suggested two or three times per year.. so be VERY careful out there!
On another note, there IS a vaccine for Hepatitis A and B... if you particiapte regularly in this hobby it may be something you want to look into. It's a series of three shots, the first two are a week apart and the third about 5 months later.
a gonhorrea or chlamydia test every thirty days is as worthless as a porn chicks discarded hair extensions. In thirty days you can get it, be cured and get it again from someone you gave it to when you had the first time who doesnt know she has it cuz her "AIM" test aint till next week...Its ridiculous that s--- has been going around porn twice a month for years, and it aint gonna stop now. You people talk about AIM like it's the CDC or something...they dont even use approved testing methods for HIV...it's all a crock of bulls--- to make money...believe it. testing for the clap every 30 days...please.... Ask yourself how many female performers have had cancer of the cervix? They answer is several...know what causes that s---? HPV that's what...you think those chicks are working condom only now? HPV can't be cured and guys can carry it and its sexually transmitted. But hey it's only the f---ing pornchicks that die...guys don't have a cervix...where the f--- is AIM on this one? You think AIM is your f--king ally? you know how many girls I know were diagnosed by AIM as having Hep -C? 3 that i kknow....now you know how many of them actually had it? NONE thats right AIM had one convinced that she had HEP-C for 5 years, she finally goes to a specialist who said..."Who told you that? You don't have any for of Hepatitis" OOPS. do yourself a favor...go to a REAL doctor...f--- that phony sharon mitchell and her dime store phd...she doesnt even have a BS how the f--- is she gonna have a real Phd?
Fast Eddie writes:
AIM is looked on with skeptcism by most and outright scorn by many. Unfortunately it seems (and Mike, correct me if I'm wrong) that Ms. Mitchell has positioned her organization as the de facto testing benchmark for the adult industy.
With the proliferation of internet porn, shoots are being done all over the country now. Florida, NY, and other locations; the talent is accustomed to what the AIM test result looks like so they feel more comfortable seeing AIM paperwork rather than and unrecognized form from one of a hundred different labs. Less chance of it being a fake, (or should I say a little easier to recognize if it IS a fake). So AIM has somewhat of a monopoly for no other reason than one of convenience.
The sad truth is that very few people in the industry really care about the talent, and that too often includes the talent themselves. A PSE friend of mine stopped doing videos about two years ago. She had a Sunday shoot and forgot her test results, and being Sunday they couldn't call AIM for verification. When she got to the location she realized she didn't have the paperwork, and when she explained that she had forgotten it they told her "no problem, we'll call tomorrow for it". As she was walking away she heard one of them remark "It won't be the first time we've done that"... She felt compelled to tell her shooting partner the situation: He knew and trusted her so they shot the scene anyway, but that was the last porn vid she ever did.
Don't fret, most bugs are quick and easy to get rid of. Most commonly the industry deals with Chlymidea and Gonorrhea. Both are gone with some medication and all is well. But one thing this industry allows, that most people don't realize, is the "I'm on the meds, I'm okay to work" attitude. That's right. They went to the doc, found out they had the bug. They begin medication and went back to work. Yes, they haven't gone back to the doc to find out if the s--- is gone...they just assume because they're on the meds, all is good. And guess what? Many movie companies allow that. In fact, a lot of companies don't even ask to see the proof that their on the meds. There are some smaller, in my opinion, s----y companies who get the news that you have a bum test and you can say, "but I'm on the meds" and they will still shoot you with a girl, guy, whatever.
Chaim Amalek (whom some think exists only in my imagination, although I know better) fears that I am socially a gay man, a tinkerbell who refused to grow up during that time when it could have done him some good. He sees this central fact being played out in my quest for a mate, which he feels has always been something of a joke that only I could get.
Chaim Amalek: "You know that there is another you could marry, a woman both smart and young and pretty, a woman who can appreciate the mistakes you have made in life (not the least because she has made a few herself). This woman, whom I shall not name, is also a very good writer, smart (as attested to by friends of yours who have met her) and generally well matched to you (also as attested to by friends of yours who have met her). But you would rather do this Rock Hudson shtick than get serious."
Reavill Agonistes II
Deep Throat calls: "Gil Reavill has turned into Catherine McKinnon. He turned on the whole porno world. He's like Linda Lovelace. I bet he's gonna claim he was seduced into it. He got $100,000 to write this book. The reason he had to write this book is that he and his wife wrote this book: Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem And Save Girls' Lives. It's considered a standard text for soccer moms. It will always be in print.
"So my guess is that he had to turn on porn to legitimate the book. Otherwise, here was a book on raising kids from a guy who was getting rim jobs from hookers left and right. That was his job assignment at Screw. To sample the hookers and write reviews.
"To get his Athletic Daughters book into highschools, he had to write a takedown of porn and how he is an innocent who was sucked into it. I don't know this. This is pure guesswork on my part. I haven't read any of the book.
"Gil Reavill is a smart guy. He's a good writer. He's making a smart career move here. He wallowed in porn for years like a pig in ----.
"I hear Gil decimate [former Screw publisher] Al Goldstein, who's been spotted gibbering on streetcorners."
Gil used to work on the magazine Sluts and Slobs. When he'd review an asian massage parlor, he'd be in there for four hours. The establishment wanted a four cock rating. If you were a customer, you were treated like crap. But if you were a Screw reviewer, you got treated like royalty.
"In back issues of Screw, there are pictures of him in burlesque parlors getting a 'boob shampoo' when Candy Samples and Annie Sprinkle drape their bosom over your head."
Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem And Save Girls' Lives
According to Jean Zimmerman and Gil Reavill, girls in our culture need to be saved. Why? Because, they say, we are raising a "nation of Ophelias" - to invoke clinical psychologist Mary Pipher's metaphor - a nation that can only be described as "girl-poisoning."
The life choices of too many of our daughters are compromised by drug and alcohol abuse, early pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, eating disorders, self-mutilation, depression, and suicide.
Not to mention sexual harassment and abuse, sex discrimination in schools and at home, and the omnipresent glass ceiling.
The solution they suggest? Athletics.
With cheerleader-like enthusiasm, the book promotes sports as salvation for girls. While athletics may improve girls' lives, the heavy slant toward participation seems the product of one-track minds. Zimmerman writes out of a decidedly feminist background, while her husband Gil Reavill helps out with his journalistic background. They are the parents of a young daughter to whom the book is dedicated.
Reavill Agonistes
Excerpted from Mark Kramer's "I Was Al Goldstein", which appeared in a significantly altered version in the now-defunct Spy , Oct. 96.
..."Sounds like you've got all your f---s in a row, Goldstein" snickers Screw editorial fixture Gil Reavill.
No one but Reavill has the temerity to address Al in so comradely a fashion in Team Goldstein's presence, and this basically is a stinging bitch-slap at Manny Neuhaus--whose standing edict is that any comments or ideas voiced in editorial meetings must be pre-approved by Neuhaus himself, so that credit can be properly assigned.
But Reavill is Goldstein's Top Gun, his Rambo, his Sperminator, his Wizard of Ooze--paid the big bucks ghostwriting Al's monthly video-review column in Penthouse and the occasional feature--like "Al's" early-Eighties John Holmes story in Playboy that cemented for all time "his" byline into the pantheon of investigative reporting.
Nobody except Al knows more about being Al than Gil Reavill, whose job description for years also included penning Screw You!, an onerous weekly task paying somewhere in the low-to-mid three figures.
Approximately a decade earlier, Reavill publicly characterized Neuhaus as "a s----filled clam" in a snarky, Goldstein-sanctioned "guest" Screw You! under Reavill's byline, and Neuhaus has seethed with resentment ever since.
Deskbound, Neuhaus clocks his workdays in Screw's editorial isle of the doomed -- positioned cheek by jowl with Team Goldstein's twitching, round-shouldered cabal of overeducated hopheads, shnorrers, slackers, noodlers and misfits -- while Reavill, only a sporadic visitor to these fetid premises, gets to schmooze, kibbitz and jive with the likes of Hef and Guccione.
So in a masterstroke of passive-aggressivity, Neuhaus convinces the morbidly thrifty Al that he can save six bills a month by divesting Reavill of the Screw You! franchise and in-sourcing it to a salaried, entry-level staffer -- who turns out to be your humble correspondent.
Rising to the weighty occasion of building a better Al, I employ what I call the "EZ-2B-Sleazy-Al-O-Matic" method of conveying the Frankensteinian fullness of his misanthropies, delusions, bugaboos, whims and phobias: Take one slightly overripe "F--k You!" transcript, puree through a self-serving skein of logical fallacy, wishful thinking and situational ethics, roll in poppycock, drizzle with Krafft-Ebing and a dash of Cabala, dust with exclamation points, garnish with sprig of dented Shakespeare and serve lukewarm to vanishing readership.
In the meantime, although Al's executive doppelganger-at-large Gil Reavill seems actually relieved at being divested of Screw You!, he is less thrilled that the cunning Neuhaus also cut loose his "Naked City" consumer-sex beat--and assigned that to me as well.
Screw's "Naked City" correspondent tirelessly endeavors to produce only the most up-to-date, user-friendly information--sometimes visiting an establishment as many as four or five times before it proves itself worthy of Screw's coveted "Four Penis" rating on the "Naked City" Peter-Meter! And while in later years, Al's trusty pen-for-hire would go on to co-author the immensely popular soccer moms' parenting guide Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls' Lives -- but for Neuhaus' act of subterfuge, Reavill might still hold sway, as he once did, over a spuzz-stippled demimonde necessitating that he sample intoxicating droughts of orgasmic experience in swing clubs, massage parlors, Korean spas, lap-dance lounges, unlicensed prostate parlors and other erotospheric outposts of the Gotham's once-proud fleshpots.
These wearying tasks would be added to my already excessive editorial duties, which henceforth included being alter-ego to an adipose, middle-aged glandular golem. "I want us to do something of meaningful significance," Al pontificates, "Something about the hostility of lesbians."
Al deplores all acts of lesbian sex not involving his own genitalia. "I like the same thing they do. That's my humanity: I deal with pussy juices, smells, pimples, stretch marks, just like them."
TO BE CONTINUED?
'Read AVN'
I asked an insider for the scoop and that is what he told me. Cheek!
"I am in the cesspool of pornography, rumaging around the depths of our society to scoop a dime into my gnarly grasp," he said.
Smut: A Sex-Industry Insider (and Concerned Father) Says Enough is Enough
Gil Reavill, former Al Goldstein ghostwriter at Screw magazine has a new book coming out April 21st.
About the Author
Gil Reavill is the coauthor of Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls' Lives. He writes about true crime for Maxim and has a cultural review column in Penthouse.
Product Description:
Smut has become the new secondhand smoke: It confronts you against your will where you least want to encounter it, and it's impossible to protect your children from it. Nothing made this clearer than the Janet Jackson episode during the Super Bowl when millions of kids were exposed to an image that used to be restricted to consenting adults. But that's nothing compared with the sexuality that now saturates morning radio shows, prime-time sitcoms, pop music lyrics, billboards, and store windows. "Just change the channel" doesn't work anymore.
Enough, says Penthouse and Maxim writer Gil Reavill, the concerned father of a middle school daughter. As a liberal, Reavill always believed that Americans have a First Amendment right to read and view sexually explicit material, and he saw nothing wrong with contributing to publications like Screw. But he now argues that unlike magazines and videos-viewed in private and by consent-smut in the public square has simply gone too far.
Reavill takes the reader inside the sex entertainment industry, recalling his own experiences as a young man from the Midwest seduced by a job at an X-rated magazine in New York City. With witty and fascinating stories, he shows how his colleagues rebelled against a stifling culture by pushing the envelope. Little did they realize that words and images considered porn in the 1980s are now on the public airwaves around the clock.
Many Americans instinctively defend smut because censorship strikes them as unacceptable. But Reavill argues that we have to balance the rights of those who want to buy smut with the rights of those who want to avoid it. His book will spark a long-overdue debate about where we draw the lines in pop culture.
A Chat With Tonia Ryan
By Cindi Loftus, courtesy of Xcitement Magazine:
Tonia Ryan is beautiful and brilliant. She's a talented multi-tasking entrepreneur, webmaster, feature dancer, spokesmodel and now add author to the mix. She co-wrote The Way He Made Me Feel with Tatiana Thumbtzen about Tatiana's life with Michael Jackson.
Xcitement: How is the book going?
Tonia: We were on the front page of MSNBC.com which just blew me out of the water. And MTV just wrote a big piece.
X: Wonderful! When does it come out?
T: Valentine's Day, February 14th. We are shooting a piece for Access Hollywood next week and they are running it that day, Feb 14, and the 15th and 16th. As soon as I get the full printed book I will send you some.
X: The timing for this release couldn't be better. His trial is going to start and your book is going to come out.
T: We get so many e-mails, between the fans and the foes. The foes say that we are jumping on the bandwagon because of his distress we are writing a book. And in the book I put both of Tatiana's diaries and one is dated 1992, and one is 1993. She has been writing this book forever. I mean it's finally ready to come out, but we were going to launch it as soon as it was done, it just happened to be now, and we couldn't have picked better timing. I guess Joe Jackson just wrote a book where he talks about Tatiana, which totally contradicts what she says in her story. So when his book comes out, there will be even more press.
X: Where can people buy the book?
T: We won't be in the bookstores until June, but someone can walk into a store and order it. Of course you can get it right now on Amazon.com. or on our sites you can get an autographed copy at BadGirlT.com or ToniaRyan.com.
X: Do you tell everyone that you are in the adult industry?
T: Well as soon as the book comes out everyone will know because it is mentioned in the book, Tatiana talks about how we met and everything.
X: Do you think you are going to get negative press because of that fact?
T: I'm ready for it. That's what got this book out there. If it wasn't for me featuring there wouldn't have been any money to be able to do the book. All it will be to me is more press, more publicity. I am proud of the industry. No matter what, I am still going to be featuring. That's a fun outlet.
X: The Publisher said make sure that there is some sex in here. So Tonia, have you been naked lately?
T: Naked? All the time. I live naked. I'm actually naked right now while I am talking to you on the phone.
X: Have you talked to (Vivid Star) Mercedez lately?
T: Well you know that I signed her, Gina Lynn and Mari Possa for my cosmetic line Xgirl. I'm waiting to get some current pictures to put up. My new products are coming out. The spring Palette is really cool. I'll send you one because you have the fall palette. I'll send it to you with the book
X: What other things are you doing?
T: I am the new spokes model for PinupPoker.com. It is the coolest poker site. When you win a game you get a whole set of pictures of beautiful girls to look at. And we are going to implement that when you lose a game you get a set as well.
Read the whole interview on CindiLoftus.com.
Steve Hirsch Speaks
My relationship with Vivid owner Steve Hirsch has gone through its ups and downs over the years, but no matter what happens, we're always there for each other when it counts most.
Steve said Thursday through his publicist Jackie Markham (her former clients include Paula Jones and ASK OJ): "By mutual agreement, David Schlesinger is no longer employed by the Vivid Entertainment Group. We hope to have the opportunity to work on projects together with David in the future."
Now that was worth waiting for, right?
Hey Jackie, has OJ found found Nicole's killer yet?
Ms. Markham doesn't reply to my email.
Queens For A Day
Here's an all-star cast of homosexual media celebs. Though some of them are hetero, I'm willing to make them honorary queens for a day.
ADT shouldn't really be talked about here unless its making mentions of people like watch guy, or links to threads of them setting up their cool parities. (OMG we need another link to one of those threads). I always considered it more of a 80's lakers/celtics rivalry but it seems its reached the pre 2004 Red Sox/ Yankees level and it doesn't warrant that, in my eyes. People there say well we have jenna , etc post. Well let's break it down:
* A for most its not really by choice, they are pressured by the companies to make a few posts so adt keep their products lists and reviews active, like big radio stations, if the star wants their records played they have to make a brief stop by, same difference
* I don't really care that the [XPT] board isn't littered with porn stars, most aren't very interesting or have anything of interest to say, in fact we are lucky that the mains ones that post here are interesting and funny, bish, grant michaels, john boy, kami, genesis and tyler bring something interesting to the board and its not forced on them to do so, they come here cause they want to, cause they like the board not so the site will keep their products listed.
In the last 10 years the porn industry has taken itself more and more seriously, performers are now products that give the same robotic answers over and over, and its just not interesting, ADT embodies that same trend in my eyes, granted I've read a total of 5 threads there, I'm still well aware of how the site is run and what is and isn't allowed, so they have more posters, I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week. I know thatI probably sound like John Belushi at the end of Animal House, but I feel no need to compete with ADT and the threads I set up about them is more out of boredom or to fill space then anything else.
I enjoy posting here, I enjoy the fact i can say whatever is on my mind without the fear of being banned or the thread being deleted, I enjoy the posters here and what they have to offer (except jrv and lurid 2.0), if you don't and prefer ADT then that's okay, chances are you wouldn't offer this board the kind of stuff that has made it great to this point anyways. I say let the naive fan boys who jerk off to the typings of jenna jameson have their ADT and we will have our XXXPT. monkey out (flicks hair)
Luke crushes "sex positive" hipster?
BEST INTERVIEW EVER, Luke. You could all but hear the uncomfortable shifting of her backside on her leather chair as you probed, isolated, and then forced her to confront the empty hole inside of her soul. Frankly, I would have lost it after this comment: "You could say that not only am I sex-positive, but I am tech-positive." But that's not Luke's way.
Luke: "You either believe it. You don't believe it. Or, you're undecided."
Regina: "It's one of those questions I don't answer."
Because you can't, and like the other infidels in this godless consumer society, you're just drifting from sensation to sensation, from "what feels right" to "what feels right," not really sure why, and reduced to shuddering silence when face-to-face with the deep void.
James writes:
Luke preys on people who think they should be famous but aren't used to doing interviews. Then the questions come like Randy Johnson fastballs fired at someone batting deep in the order at the 9-and under Special Olympics. No responsible manager/pr-fraud would ever let Luke near their clients.
I really want Luke to be involved in an OJ-style carchase, but I don't think the LAPD has jurisdiction over white people. They usually turn themselves in with their media people. But yes, Catalina is working on showing "lewk" the basics of voodoo and the "demonds." I wonder who's on Luke's... proscription list to the point he's going to make a doll out of their image?
Smelly Monkey writes:
I actually wondered where Luke's bite went. I thought it was the endless death threats but fat italians/jews in the industry that wore him down, then I found out about the 150k he had to fork out, its sad to see a cobra with its fangs removed, considering he has a gag order on everything he posts and still runs the best porn gossip site on the net it says a lot, and leads me to believe that the Monkey is Luke's alter ego, free from law suits, oops I've said too much.
Bornyo writes: "Luke's online persona has never, ever exhibited a sense of humor... I like his stuff even though he'll be rolling right along for weeks then f--- it up by advertising for a wife or somesuch."
Nina Hartley's Book Deal
Nina writes on Nina.com: "Well, the contract with Penguin is a done deal! I signed on the dotted line this past Friday. The due date for the manuscript is Aug. 1st. Whew! It's going to be a wild ride, I can tell you that much! We have three chapters down, about 20 to go! The last time I had this much work to do, I was in college, and that was a looong time ago."
The Left's War On Sex
Though porn-bashers of the feminist left always claim to oppose censorship and furiously deny making common cause with the likes Lou Sheldon and James Dobson, they have a funny way of comming out of hiding during periods of anti-sexual reactionism from the Far Right, as they did during the Eighties and clearly are once again. Those who followed the whole controversy here over the writings of so-called "feminist man" Robert Jensen will recognize some troublingly familiar themes in this latest saga of prog-fem anti-porn agitprop, a saga in which, alas, I play a minor part.
Before AEE this year, I was contacted by Professor Chyng Sun of NYU, who had been referred to me by my friend Mark Kernes at AVN. In her cordial email, she informed me that she was shooting a documentary on porn and invited me to be interviewed on tape while in Los Vegas.
I was suspicious, as I alway am, when it comes to academic types and mainstream journalists snooping around the industry. Long and bitter experience has taught me that, with some notable exceptions, what they're usually looking for is dirt. And I was particularly uneasy about this project, simply for the reason that the good professor had gone to the trouble of tracking me down, when there were so many other, more mainstream porn directors she could have found. I had a hunch my BDSM work would be her main area of interest, since that's what I'm best known for, and that did not bode well, as most outsiders start from all the wrong assumptions about the kinds of pictures I make.
Nevertheless, I agreed to sit for the interview, so that my point of view would at least be heard, if not accurately represented, in the final product. For a bit of insurance, I took an excellent, highly credible mainstream-journalist friend of mine along as a witness, should it be necessary later to clarify what I actually said, as opposed to what made it into the professor's movie after whatever amount of editing.
Sure enough, though the professor's manner was not unfriendly, her questions returned again and again to matters concerning pain, degredation and hostility toward women in the making of porn and in its content. While I patiently demolished all her evident preconceptions and blatant prejudices about these topics - emphasizing the consensual nature of performers' participation, the great variety of XXX materials on the market, the understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality that is clear enough to those who make and consume porn but somehow eludes the brilliant intellects who make their livings hammering on it. I made it very clear that no real harm was inflicted on the players in the process of making even rough porn (while candidly acknowledging that not all porn stunts are risk-free and that unfortunate accidents had happened, very rarely, as they do in regular picture-making), but I had little doubt that the professor's movie would, in the end, come to the conclusions she had already set out to establish.
Now, we get a grim preview of what we can expect, via an opinion piece she posted recently on www.alternet.com. Here it is, folks. Read it and grind your teeth: Prof.Chyng Sun's report.
Luke says: I've noticed how few porners admit they give interviews against their better judgment because of the implied flattery of an attentive listener and a camera crew with all its potential for fame and glory. No, it is always in the service of higher values.
Reading this diatribe certainly validated my concerns about the project, but didn't inspire me to regret my participation. The filmmaker may lack any shred of intellectual integrity, allowing no opinion that articulately contradicts her own to be heard in her propaganda piece, but she will not be able to claim unfamiliarity with cogent counter-arguments. When the time comes to address what I'm sure will be an unnalloyed denunciation of the porn business, I will at least be able to ask what happened to the footage she shot with me.
Meantime, I think it's important for those leftists and progressives who genuinely oppose censorship and favor freedom of expression to address these flanking attacks for what they are. Though, like Jensen, Dr. Chyng Sun goes out of her way to disavow support for official censorship, she no more lives in a political vacuum than does Jensen or the rest of her crew. She must surely be aware that the rhetoric of anti-porn feminists is freqently appropriated by attack dogs of the Religious Right in making their cases for criminalizing pornography. In the set-to on Nighline last week, the arguments raised by the Other Side focused again and again on the themes struck by anti-porn feminists - violence toward and degredation of women - as opposed to the broader, faith-based agenda of right-wing advocates of legal censorship.
However much she doth protest, the good professor and her friends are snuggled up in bed with the likes of Jerry Falwell. How a woman who calls herself a feminist could choose to make common cause with a movement that has as its single, highest priority the revocation of reproductive choice for women would be simply mystifying, were the common strain of social authoritarianism that runs through both schools of thought not so glaringly, painfully obvious.
I await Chyng Sun's film with utter pessimism - and my journalist friend's notes in hand.
I, too, was gobsmacked by Ms. Wolf's swooning over her Orthodox friend's new modesty. She and I are roughly the same age, and the notion back in the '70's was that the Bible was the source for so much of women's oppression. To see her swerve so sharply back to it was beyond annoying.
Sex has no intrinsic "meaning." WE give it whatever meaning we desire, every time we have it. The "magic" and "mystery" of sex come from the players deciding to open themselves up to the power of pleasure and feelings, of being exposed and vulnerable.
This can happen at an orgy or between two people who married as virgins and have had no other partners. Why? Because having sex is a choice we make. If we make it consciously, then the rewards are great. If we make it unconsciously, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, then the consequences are more dangerous.
If Ms. Wolf wants to get more religion into her sex life, she shoud do so, with my blessings. If she wants to have an intellectual conversation about it with other intellectual women, she needs to leave her daintiness at home.
Fred writes:
I've heard Ms. Wolf speak at a forum broadcast on NPR. I have also heard her interviewed by Cal Thomas on TV.
She is one of the most shallow individuals I have ever heard. If this is what constitutes an "intellectual" in feminist circles, the feminists are in trouble.
On the other hand, she's not bad looking.
Feminists For Porn
It was with a growing sense of outrage that I read Prof.Chyng Sun's report of her visit this past January to the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. I couldn't help wondering it the author had done any prior research whatsoever into the active, twenty-year debate among women over the impact of pornography on their individual lives and their status as a gender. There's nothing new in her indignation, nothing fresh in her insights and nothing unfamiliar in her arguments. As a sex-worker and sex-worker advocate for over two decades, I've heard and read it all before.
The professor appears wholly unfamiliar with the work of accomplished, feminist women who reject her fundamental contentions about porn and sex-work. If she bothered to consider the writings of Nadine Strossen, Carol Queen, Pat Califia, Susie Bright, Wendy McElroy, Sallie Tisdale, Linda Williams, Annie Sprinkle, myself and others, her homework wasn't reflected in what she showed me. Clearly, testimony that failed to corroborate her pre-conceived notions of what porn is "really" about, or what it "really" means didn't register on her radar screen.
I am an R.N., a third-generation feminist and a First-Amendment activist as well as a porn performer with the longest continuous career in the history of the industry. I'm easy to find. In fact, I was in one place for four hours each day on the floor at AEE. She certainly found my husband, writer-director I.S. Levine, (whose videos and magazines appear under the name Ernest Greene). At her request, he granted her a two-hour, on-camera interview in good faith, hoping but not expecting to receive an open-minded hearing. Why did Professor Sun not speak to me? Could it be because she knew that my very existence argues against her core assertions? Where was the honest, fearless intellectual curiousity that is hallmark of the pioneering academic researcher?
Perhaps, like a number of anti-porn feminists these days, she chooses not to solicit the opinions of women engaged in or supportive of sex- work, rather than risk encountering a contrary-to-theory example.
Professor Sun's criticisms of pornography , though jazzed up with some contemporary media theory, are little different form those posed by the first round of anti-sex feminists I came across at the NOW conventions I attended the mid-1980's. The gender bias, anti-male hostility, neo-Victorian erotophobia and unacknowledged class prejudice are all too familiar. Having been told to my face, in the company of twelve other, like-minded women, that I was either a shill for or a victim of patriarchal domination, I know how powerful the angry denial of feminist porn-bashers can be.
And it is that very power that makes Professor Sun's generalizations and oversimplifications so dangerous. Though she begins her jeremiad with the obligatory disclaimer about opposing censorship, she and others of her persuasion cannot believe for a moment that their opinions are offered in a political vacuum.
For many years, right -wing ideologues have co-opted the language of feminism in their on-going, nefarious attempts to erase all forms of sexual choice. Prof. Sun plays into the hands of these enemies of women. Does she not know that making common cause with those whose most treasured ambition is the reversal of Roe v. Wade will always be suicidal? How is Prof. Sun different from Phyllis Schlafly? From Anita Bryant? From Beverly LaHaye? From Judith Reisman? From Lou Sheldon or Jerry Falwell? They all want to eliminate my choice in the disposition my body. If I have the right to choose abortion, then I have the right to choose to have sex for the camera. Sexual freedom is the flip side of the coin of reproductive choice. Make no mistake, Professor. When they've got rid of me, they're coming for you next.
Professor Sun's reportage dwells at length on the most distasteful aspects of what she saw and heard, but makes no mention of any attempt to establish direct communication with any of the women who work in the adult video industry. No wonder she finds it so effortless to ignore our opinions and dismiss our perceptions of our own lives. It's that much easier to characterize all female sex workers as degraded, humiliated and unhappy if you've never talked to any of us. That we might be involved in constructive, effective efforts to improve our own working conditions, and that our employers might take our concerns seriously, clearly doesn't fit Professor Sun's pre-cut template for who we are.
Likewise, none of the diversity of our vibrant, raucous and contentious creative culture seems to have attracted Professor Sun's notice. By focusing on one or two examples she finds particularly heinous, she obscures the broader truth, which is that the marketplace of sexual entertainment contains products for almost every taste and orientation, including material made by and for heterosexual women and couples, lesbians and gay men. It's not all Bang Bus, and by no means does all of it, or even most of it, conform to the author's notions of porn-as-_expression-of-misogyny. For her to project her own, obviously conflicted, feelings regarding men and sex onto all of the incredibly broad medium we call pornography is intellectually indefensible.
Professor Sun defames male consumers of pornography with the same broad strokes used to stereotype the experiences of female performers. Does she really believe that the average man cannot tell the difference between a movie and real life? Does she really think that young people's difficult times with sex are more attributable to porn than to the enforced ignorance resulting from twenty years of abstinence-only "sex education" and anti-choice propaganda? Does anyone seriously harbor the idea that individual conceptions of intimacy and sexual pleasure are shaped more by exposure to pornography than by the examples parents set for their children?
A young person's self-image, ability to set boundaries, and attitude toward sex is formed long before his or her teen years, before he or she has encountered to the supposed "evils" of pornography. I have personally met, and looked into the eyes of, hundreds of thousands of fans over the past two decades, and precious few of them would fit Professor Sun's construction of the "typical" consumer.
And to confabulate the images on a screen, which are created performances, with the actual experience of the performers themselves, would be laughably literal-minded, were it not so profoundly insulting. Sex performers, like the products they make, vary greatly in taste and temperment. We are much more than the characters we play. Like it or not, many female performers enjoy what they do, including things Professor Sun finds repellent. If we are not to choose what forms of sexual _expression we find appropriate for ourselves, who is to do the choosing for us, Professor Sun and her like-minded friends of the Christian Right?
Even those performers to whom work in porn is just a way to pay the bills don't need to be lectured by a tenured university professor regarding what work they may properly do, based on her interpretation of the gender politics of porn. Her essay pulsates with the unconscious classism that has contaminated feminist thought since I first encountered it. If I learned one thing when I started my career in 1983, myself the product of an ivory-tower upbringing in Berkeley, California, it was to rein in my received ideas about my fellow sex workers and to see them as individuals struggling with all kinds of situations. What does Professor Sun propose sex workers do instead of addressing their economic challenges with what resources they possess, go to Harvard? The real choices that present themselves in modern America to a young woman with a high school education and no class advantage are often far less appealing than sex work. Perhaps she thinks we should choose the dignity of minimum wage jobs, early pregnancies and abusive marriages over the relative autonomy we enjoy as independent tradespeople.
With what I've learned of Dr. Sun's views thus far, I can only await her film "documentary" with the usual weary apprehension. Knowing already what her conclusions will be, I'm only left to wonder who subsidizes her obviously well-funded labors and to what purpose. All I know at this point is that neither I nor anyone like me will be represented in her depiction of my world, or of any world anyone I know might recognize. To me, she's just one more exploiter, seeking to make her living from the attempt to deprive me of mine.
NINA HARTLEY is a Founding Member, Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force Member Emeritus, Board of Directors, Free Speech Coalition Member at Large, Board of Directors, Adult Industry Medical Foundation. Visit her blog at: http://www.nina.com/
Stan Goff Responds to Hartley: Wrapping Profit in the Flag. Susie Bright responds.
Goddess and Mike South - Separated at Birth?
Ira Levine aka Ernest Greene writes:
Good morning,
Went over and had a look at Goddess' blog. In addition to her slam at Nina, found lots of friendly, cutesy-poo references to Mike South. Went over to South's site and found Goddess' comments about Nina repeated and amplified with a couple of "contributions" from South alter-egos.
South, as you know, is a major AIM-basher who has had bad things to say about me in the past. It would appear to the untrained eye as if South and Goddess might be double-teaming my wife in the service of undisclosed, pre-existing resentments. I'm sure it's all actually pure coincidence.
Interesting, though, that both Goddess and South took Nina's reference to minimum-wage jobs out of context and twisted it into a put-down of working people in general and a suggestion that sex work is somehow superior to non-sex work. No one who knows Nina could believe that was her intent for an instant. Her real point is that sex work is no less dignified than any other form of labor, represents a more hopeful alternative in some cases, and certainly doesn't merit the dismissive scorn of tenured academics.
I find it grimly amusing that Goddess, South and Left-wing porn-basher Stan Goff all try to paint Nina as a snobbish limousine liberal and shill for porn moguls. I seriously doubt that any of the hundreds of performers she has mentored and nurtured in this business, or the thousands of fans to whom she has been a supportive friend and tutor during the past twenty years, would recognize her in that description.
Just a bit of background in the interest of transparency.
Mike South replies:
Tell this moron not to flatter himself. First of all I wrote about him once in the entire life of my site and this is the sum total of it: "With people like Ira Levine making statements like Darren James wouldn't have tested positive by ELISA until July...well thats both woefully incorrect and very, very dangerous."
That's it, It was true then and it's true now.
Second Ira assumes that people who write to me are my alter egos, I would suggest he analyse the writing, I dont write nearly as well as Bob, who is a professional, as in published daily, writer. ditto David, whose writing style is completely recognizeable if Ira had any brains at all.
Third I copied Goddess post on purpose, to illustrate a point, I made no commentary except that maybe porners should pay attention.
Fourth I never attacked Nina.
And last, Ira, try supporting your position as opposed to to just whining like a little bitch.
Oh ya Ira...how come you don't have the balls to say it to me? You afraid to engage me in a debate? You probably should be....
I don't know how to say this nicely to you Mike, but Ira did not want to display his arguments in the tawdry world of mikesouth.com. Instead he wanted to post them where the cognitive elite gather -- lukeisback.com. And may it be through the merit of my posting his points that I may find a wife.
Ira Levine writes: "Now why would I want to bother debating someone
whose rhetorical style involves calling me a moron and a whining bitch?
Wouldn't be a very fair fight, would it? South does know what an alter-ego
is, somewhat to my surprise."
Questions For Nick Gillespie
I'm reading the new book Choice: The Best of Reason. Soon I will interview Reason editor Nick Gillespie.
What questions should I ask him? Email Luke.
Here are my notes:
* Do you think people should be allowed to have sex with dogs?
* Man-boy love. Hot or not?
* Legalizing drugs and hookers?
* Matt Welch, Brian Doherty and I are staging an intervention so that you can conquer your alcoholism. Is AA compatible with a robust libertarianism?
* How does a husband tactfully tell his wife to look better for him and drop 20-pounds?
* Francis Fukuyama. Hot or not?
* Isn't atheism simply an excuse to have sex with all the twat you want?
* Who's your favorite porn star?
* Isn't there something unlibertarian about giving your employees medical insurance, particularly ones like Matt Welch who support socialized medicine?
* Do you own a gun? Do you know how to use it?
* If you ran into ten big black guys in a bad part of Washington D.C. at 2am, would you or would you not be relieved to know that they were just returning from a Bible study?
* Desperate Housewives. Do you watch it with your pants around your ankles?
* Do you agree with Plato that when modes of music change, a society's morals change with it?
* Do you prefer the workman's entrance?
* Who would you like to see become the head of the Supreme Court?
* Which novels best capture the ethos of your life?
* Clarence Thomas? A great justice?
* Do you think rock music promotes promiscuity?
* Do you find it aesthetically pleasing for one man to stick his willy inside another man?
* Do you care about how many black people are murdered in Africa or America's inner cities? If you do care, what were you doing when the Hutus were murdering 500,000 Tutus in Hotel Rwanda?
* Have you ever paid for sex?
* Did you like that motorcycle movie about Che Guevara?
* Why are chicks left of center hotter and sluttier than chicks right of center?
* Are women genetically less suited for serious scientific thinking?
* Are airport screeners groping too many women? Is this an example of intrusive government?
* Do neurological enhancements undermine good character?
* How should America combat the p---- plague?
* Do you think non-Anglo-Saxons are truly capable of democracy?
* Is it ok to tailor immigration policies for national self-interest?
* Where do you support government involvement aside from the libertarian basics?
* Do you believe there are immoral books and films?
* What do you love/hate about your job?
* Do you believe in the eternality of the soul?
* Eric Hoffer - greatest philosopher of the 20th Century?
* When you were a little kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
* What can we do about all the illegal Mexican immigrants draining our social services and flooding our country?
* Do you favor undoing all anti-discrimination laws?
* In which cases would you favor affirmative action?
* Hookers on the street soliciting. The libertarian solution is?
* Age of consent?
* Which part of the government is most efficient?
* Solution to nuclear arms development in Iran and North Korea?
* The book The Bell Curve?
* Do you think it is possible different races could have different mean IQ levels?
* Why do you stick so much sex, drugs, and rock in your tawdry little magazine?
* What was David Aaron Clark like at Rutgers?
* Adam Smith did not only write Wealth of Nations, he also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Did you ever read that or were you too busy doing blow with an illegal Haitian hooker with AIDS?
* I notice how your essay on immigration likes to use the word "immigrant" without making any distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Do you think Americans are too stupid to notice this rhetorical sleight of hand?
* What matters of public policy last made you mad?
Troy writes: "Is the world divided by two conflicting ethical doctrines? That is to say, are there some countries who abide by Utilitarianism while others abide by Kantianism? If you agree, what implications does this have?"
Cindi Loftus from Xcitement Magazine writes:
I just feel like answering your Q's for some reason- Maybe I wish I was Nick, who ever he is...
1. only if the dog makes the first move
2. hot, as long as both are over 18
3. OF COURSE!
Is AA suitable for anything? Yeah, keeping people straight who really want to be otherwise.
Babe, You won a spot on "Swans."
Anyone with F--- in their name has to be interesting.
NO, atheism means that you are too tired to think about sex or religion or any other redundent thing on the planet.
Fav porn star is anyone that looks like Felicia Fox.
SKIP this one.
My husband owns a gun and he hides it to keep me from shooting him. I sleep walk.
Relieved that they were a bible gang.
NO, don't watch late night soap operas.
YES, look what rap has done to us!
I prefer to ignore a rear entrance.
Anyone who doesn't have " Dick" in his name.
Animal Farm, and they capture all of you US people also.
A great Injustice.
I think rock music promotes the real world, no not the tv show.
Generally no, but i don't have a problem with people who wish to experience an "alternative lifestyle."
I certainly care. no, but i would like to... especially if she had real boobs, long dark hair and an open mind!
I call Regina Lynn (her real name) Wednesday afternoon, February 9, 2005. She writes a weekly sex-positive technology column for Wired.com.
I discovered that she is not Immanuel Kant.
Luke: "Why do you think there are so many more women sex columnists than men sex columnists?"
Regina: "A sex column arises out of a relationship column. Until recently, it was women's magazines that wrote about relationships, which includes sex. A women audience is more primed and socialized to accept how-to and advice."
Luke: "What do you love and hate about writing a sex-related column?"
Regina: "I love the opportunity to talk to people who are doing cool stuff. My beat is sex and technology. Being a geek and a big fan of sex, I get to combine two of the subjects I am most interested in and talk to other people who are enthusiastic about those subjects. There aren't that many people writing about where sex and tech come together. I'm at the forefront, part of the revolution.
"I don't hate anything about it. Sometimes I get flamed. Someone will read my column and write that I am corrupting America's youth. I've been told that I am deluded and working for Satan. But even when I am called names, it is interesting to me to hear what other people think. And that I touched somebody deeply enough that he wanted to flame me reminds me that people are out there reading and thinking about this stuff."
Luke: "What price does your life pay for your column?"
Regina laughs: "I still have a day job [freelance tech writer]. The price I pay for writing my column is working all the time."
Regina giggles. "I'd be working all the time anyway."
Luke: "And that's about it?"
Long pause.
Regina: "Are you looking for -- have I lost a relationship because the man couldn't handle that I was writing about us? Or something? That's never happened."
Luke: "Do you think men feel threatened."
Regina: "I have not felt threatened."
Luke: "Not you. They."
Regina: "I really respect my friends, my boyfriend [of one year] and my family. I've not been in a position yet where I've had to choose between -- this needs to be said or I need to expose so-and-so. I realize that people may be sensitive about being in the column. I haven't been stuck so far."
Luke: "Your boyfriend is ok with your sex tech column?"
Regina: "Yes. He gets great benefits. As the column gets more widely known, interesting products start showing up at our mailbox. It's nice to have a willing volunteer to test some of these things out."
Luke: "Have you ever been married?"
Regina: "I have. I was a child bride. I met my husband when I was 15. We married when I was 21 [it lasted six years]. It was an amicable split-up."
Luke: "Did that [exclusive ten-year relationship] fuel your desire to sow your wild oats?"
Regina: "I hate that expression, but yes. We were each other's first sexually [he was two years older]. Here I was in my mid-twenties never having dated. Online dating was just getting started. After my split, that's when I fell into...experimenting with cybersex."
Luke: "When?"
Regina: "I can't remember if it was 1997 or '98, because that whole period of my life is dim for me. Even if it is mutual and amicable, divorce is huge. We were sad. Our families were sad. I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I'm fuzzy on when I first went into that chatroom."
Luke: "Why do you hate the saying -- sowing your wild oats?"
Regina: "Because it trivializes your experience. It's like you are just out there spreading stuff around. A man spreads seed and a woman spreads legs. I didn't take the people I was with for granted."
Luke: "Were you having sex for fun?"
Regina: "I think you should always have sex for fun."
Luke: "Some people think you should only have it within a loving committed relationship."
Regina: "Casual? Yes."
Luke: "Do you think that did anything to your soul?"
Regina: "I think it expanded my soul. I learned a lot about my own sexuality and theirs. I spent time with interesting people."
Luke: "Have you had sex that you've regretted?"
Regina: "No. I've had sex that wasn't very good. But no, I was safe. I made sure that every year I got tested for STDs and went with people I trusted. So even when it turned out that it wasn't the best idea, I wasn't hurt by it, physically or emotionally. It's not like I went to the bar and met a stranger and went home with a stranger and didn't know where I was with no one to call. I was playing with people I had known for a while. With friends or friends of friends."
Luke: "Do you think sex is fire as a metaphor for how dangerous it can be?"
Regina: "I tend to use earth and water metaphors. I went into my experiences thoughtfully. For me, the fire metaphor would be more about passion."
Luke: "What about danger?"
Regina: "I'm not into danger. I ride a motorcycle, but not dangerously."
Luke: "Could you give me a brief sketch of your upbringing?"
Regina: "Middle class. Small town. Farming community [in the Sacramento valley]."
Regina got a BA in Writing from a UC school.
Luke: "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"
Regina: "I always knew I'd be a writer. I did have other things I wanted to be in addition, like, a paleo-biologist. And an astronaut. I wanted to be a jockey.
"My parents never told me, 'You better think of something else for your day job because you can't support yourself by writing.' Some teachers said that."
Luke: "You wrote in your column that sex-technology-chat stuff helped you overcome childhood sexual trauma. Do you care to elaborate?"
Regina: "Cyber gave me a safe place and a medium where I feel natural (writing and reading) to interactively write about activities I was uncomfortable doing in real life.
"When I was six, somebody [about 13, not a relation, forced Regina to do things]. My parents found out about it right away and there was a big to-do and it was all over.
"When I tried to do these things as an adult, it would be like a warehouse door shutting in my brain and my body would shut down and I'd go into this whole fear thing.
"Practicing in cyber was a desensitization therapy. It got really exciting. I took the confidence and excitement I was finding in writing with another person and bringing that into my relationships. I rewrote the part of my brain that had been scared and angry. I had a blast."
Luke: "We're not likely to see some slashing, devastating, critical columns from you on people who traffic in sex technology?"
Regina: "You never know what people are going to get from me. If someone is doing something that horrifies me, I'll probably write about it, unless I don't want to give them any publicity at all."
Luke: "I haven't seen you do that yet."
Regina: "So far there is so much to write about that's not whiny but I don't really feel drawn... I don't really feel the need...to...give a whole bunch of publicity to something that disgusts me. I haven't found out that much that disgusts me either.
"You could say that not only am I sex-positive, but I am tech-positive."
Luke: "How do you like the people that you mix with at Internext and AEE and people who make their living in sex technology?"
Regina: "They're great. They're smart fun people who can joke around and make fun of themselves and their industry, who are far enough outside of the holier-than-thou media. I especially like at AEE talking with middle-aged couples who come up with things."
Luke: "How do your parents feel about your sex technology column?"
Regina: "They're proud of me. My mom is shy about talking about sex with me. She doesn't want to hear about -- 'When I was having cybersex, blabla...' We have a running joke that mom is only allowed to read the column if I send her the URL."
Luke: "Is there an exhibitionist element to your writing and is that dangerous?"
Regina: "I'm not conscious of one. You can probably tell from this phone call that I am a very extroverted person. When I bring my own experiences into the column, I do not intend it as - whoohoo, look at what I've done! I just want readers to know that I'm not making this up. I've done what you've done."
Luke: "How do you decide what is right and wrong?"
Long pause. Regina repeats the question. I assent.
Regina: "That's a really big question."
Fifteen-second pause.
Regina: "I try to be open and listen to what people have to say, especially when I feel that kneejerk reaction to go, that's bad! I can always learn from what [intelligent] people have to say. In terms of judging what is right and wrong as in, this kind of porn is right and this kind of porn is wrong: I know what I personally feel. I don't put that in the column. The column isn't about that. I don't think the column is a judgmental column."
Luke: "Beyond the column, how do you decide what is right and wrong?"
Regina: "I have a set of values that I compare things to."
Luke: "Where do the values come from?"
Long pause.
Regina: "They are your standard values. Is anybody getting hurt? Did George Bush say it? It must automatically be wrong. That is one of those things that takes an awful lot of effort just to listen without immediately rolling my eyes and going geez, does anybody really believe this crap.
"Are you wanting something simplistic like, murder is wrong? And excrement in sex is disgusting."
Luke: "No. I'm asking how do you decide [right from wrong]?"
Regina: "I think about stuff, see how it feels. I can't just define it in a soundbyte here. I don't try to decide it for anybody else, other than that I vote. How I make that actual decision is a combination of logic and emotion."
Luke: "Do you believe that you have a soul that will go on after your death?"
Regina: "That's one of those questions I can't answer."
Luke: "You either believe it. You don't believe it. Or, you're undecided."
Regina: "It's one of those questions I don't answer."
What Are My Sexual Fantasies?
I remember early on in a dating relationship with a young hot ex-porn star, we were lying on my floor and she was stroking me and asking me, "What are your sexual fantasies?" And I kept protesting that I don't have any. That I've been writing on sex for a decade and I don't have any fantasies left. In theory, two girls sounds interesting, but in practice I'm not down for it.
After she asked for the hundredth time and I gave the same response, we got down to business and that was about the last time I was bothered on this score.
I enjoy sex as much as the next guy, but nothing too messy or lengthy or complicated, because soon after my orgasm, I'm dying to check my email and update my website.
My favorite sexual fantasy, the thing that gets me most excited, is a big scoop.
I guess that's a gay thing.
Will We Remember Jenna Jameson In 20 Years?
In the 2002 documentary, Desperately Seeking Seka, Seka says no. "Do I think they will remember Jenna Jameson? As much as I like her, probably not. I think they will remember Amber Lynn and Ginger Lynn, but Jenna Jameson? No."
That's ridiculous. Jenna is the biggest porn star of all time. Jenna is the one new porn girls want to emulate. They don't say, 'I want to be like Amber Lynn or Ginger Lynn or Seka or Marilyn Chambers.' They say, 'I want to be like Jenna.'
Jenna is the one who published a best selling book. Twenty years ago, Seka talked about having a publishing deal for her autobiography. It never materialized. Jenna did it.
Seka: "I have no idea why people look back at my films today. I was the transitional woman from film to video. I was the one who helped the crossover. I made adult videos take off because I was the only platinum blonde. When Swedish Erotica was going from film to video, everything I did on film they transferred to video and they had instant product.
"If I hadn't have done porn, I would probably be married with five kids. I'm glad I didn't stay married."
Former Screw publisher Al Goldstein says from his first-hand experience (he had to pay Seka $500 for the following pleasure): "Seka was an absolutely superior cocksucker... Any woman who has taken my cock in her mouth, I salute and admire.
"There are so many videos today. You will never have the stars of old days, except for Jenna Jameson. That's because of Howard Stern. He's number one on the radio.
"The women have never been more beautiful but we are desensitized. We are bored. I am. I review films for Penthouse and I'm bored out of my mind. I'd rather be hit over the heat with a bat than watch another f--- film. What can you do that's different?"
I don't think Al wrote many of those Penthouse reviews (or his Screw columns). Over the past decade, most of his purported reviews in Penthouse were written by its present reviewer Eric Danville.
Al: "I'm an addict. I believe you can never have too much of anything. You can never have too much pussy. You can never have too much of Cuban cigars. You can never too much hash. You can never have too much food. More of everything is wonderful."
Nina Hartley says: "You can not work in the business without an HIV test of 30 days or less. Many of the women [and companies] are condom-only players. I'm condom-only. The HIV risk is almost gone. The other risks - chlamydia, gonorrhea - things that won't kill you but are contagious... I don't wear condoms for HIV but for everything else."
Two years later, five people caught HIV in the putatively heterosexual industry.
Question: "How do you hold a relationship in this business?"
Nina: "It's very hard for most people. I had 20 years in my first relationship (with a woman, Bobby, and a man, Dave) but that's just because I was too stupid to leave sooner. What I have now is with a man who is also in this business (Ira Levine aka Ernest Greene). He is a producer and magazine editor. He is also sexually advanced like I am. He and I are European about sex. There's love and there's sex and they're not the same. With him I have wonderful love sex, and then with other people we have fun sex. I have a partner who is my peer. He is also a sex professional. He has also had thousands of partners. He's not jealous. I'm not jealous."
Q: "How do you like a hundred fans grabbing your ass?"
Nina: "I love it. I would touch all of them if I could. But I am very well suited for this job. I am not average. I am a one-in-a-million woman. I don't mind strangers touching me."
Peter North says he's lost 25 potential girlfriends and several potential wives because he works in porn.
He says that when he first got into porn, he was sometimes compared to John Holmes.
He says he was one of the rare '80s male performers who was clean-cut and in good shape.
David Schlesinger Fired From Vivid
Everyone I talk to wants to know why he was fired.
Schlesinger started at Vivid in 1998 as a publicist. Then in 1999 he became the head of its Internet division.
In 2003, Webquest took over Vivid's Internet operation. David quit Vivid to go to work for Girls Gone Wild. After Joe Francis got busted on child porn charges, David hustled back to Vivid with his tail between his legs. David asked Steven Hirsch for help. Steven hired him back. David took charge of branding. He organized the Vivid Club at the Venetian, which opened Friday night. He pushed Vivid condoms and Vivid Virility herbal pills.
I've heard stories over the years that David has pulled a few things over Steven such as selling Vivid email lists.
I'm not sure that David's marriage is still holding together. Schlesinger was spotted around Las Vegas in January with a woman not his wife.
Word of David's firing leaked Monday but only Wednesday could I confirm it.
Maybe David will go to work for Jenna Jameson's new J22 herbal erector enhancer. It sounds like a perfect fit.
JFK writes on GFY: "Now that the club is done, perhaps he is no longer needed."
I emailed Steve Hirsch about David's firing. So far, Steven hasn't gotten back to me.
Commencement Speeches
Dennis Prager says secular universities are more likely to have a porn star give a commencement speech than a conservative thinker.
There are distinct advantages at universities. You can go to the bathroom with a member of the opposite sex. You don't have uni-sex bathrooms outside of the university.
Rob Spallone Fires Back At Mike Davis
I call Rob Wednesday morning.
Rob: "Put this up there. Tell Mike to get a life, buy new friends, email everybody but stop emailing me."
Mike asked Rob to join him at Porn Star Karaoke Tuesday night but Rob declined. Rob doesn't want to fight him because Rob doesn't want to go to prison with a third strike.
Rob: "Did Guenther buy his wife yet to stay in the country?"
Luke: "How does a man tactfully tell his wife that she needs to put more effort into her appearance?"
Rob: "Tell her to fix herself up or he's trading her in like a used car."
Luke: "Heard any good scoop?"
Rob: "I've got to meet Stacy Valentine's girls this morning because [Penthouse and Legend] are looking for contract girls."
Watching Desperately Seeking Seka
The 2002 documentary follows a young Swedish writer on pop culture, Stefan Nylén, as he seeks ex-porn star Seka.
As I watch the interviews, I'm struck by what a dangerous thing it is to talk about yourself before somebody recording you. Many people have a view of themselves, usually inflated but sometimes diminished, that is far from reality and they end up looking stupid.
As I watch these porn people talk, I yawn and remember the saying: That which is vital to you is insignificant to others.
Al Goldstein pontificates: "I started the industry with Screw. There was never frontal nudity. There was never f------. There was an underground business that started with Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat. I reviewed the movie. I made it chic so you could see a porno film. The industry has been diluted since it has gone from celluloid to video. Now there's too much product. It's the lowest common denominator. It's s---. But the public's appetite is deep and unending. Sex in the City would've been pornography in the 1960s and now there it is on HBO."
Veronica Hart: "Do I love pornography? Ehh. I can take it or leave it. It has been good to me. I believe there are many more important causes out there like peace, helping children and single mothers and educating people and animal rights. Those are the global things I'm really concerned about."
Seka: "Do I claim to be a sex performer? Yes. An actress? Never.
"I didn't fake it most of the time. Maybe three or four times.
"I went to the Inside Seka premiere in New York... It was like a big Hollywood opening. I took my aunt and my mother and my cousin. My mother and my aunt had to leave. When I was doing the oral sex scene with the guy, they were like, 'Oh, gross. We wouldn't do something like that.' I went out and said, 'It's ok. You can come back now.'
"They wanted me to do Body Double (1984) but I wanted too much money.
According to a pop-up on the screen: Annette Haven was happy she didn't do Body Double because she thought the script wasn't good and there was too much violence.
According to imdb.com, Annette had an uncredited role in Body Double.
Seka says about working for the late director John Frankenheimer on 52 Pick-Up (1986): "There were certain things I wouldn't do off-screen that he wanted me to do on-screen. Number one, I am not a hooker. Then all these other films in the adult film business went and did the movie for nothing just to be in a legitimate film. They went and had sex around a pool, something they would normally be paid for.
"Why did I stop doing films? I got too old. I love to eat. You have to stay thin and in shape. I would go to the gym for four-and-a-half hours a day, seven days a week. I never ate anything fattening. I never partied or drank. I wanted to go have some fun. I didn't want to work that hard at looking good and feeling miserable."
Dierschmeister writes on IMDB.com about Desperately Seeking Seka:
Who would have thought a film about porn could be so boring?
Another "me-too" documentary about the porn industry, this time focusing on the adult film legend Seka.
Most of the film covers very general information about the industry. It's not hard to see why. Most of the participants seem to have trouble finding relevant things to say about Seka and she herself isn't particularly interesting.
Ironically, the most interesting person in the film is Veronica Hart. The film spends as much time with her as it does with Seka. Hart constantly wavers between being in denial of her resentment towards the industry, defending it, and being entirely apathetic toward it.