Some posts moved here from other blog

I moved some posts to here from my original blog, Chunks, Eggs en Prix. I felt they were a better fit for this blog, since the other has more recently focused on politics and world affairs. All the moved posts actually pre-date the beginning of this blog, so in fact the oldest three posts here are actually moved over from the other blog.

Whoops! Truth, or fiction?

Today, I read through the Shirley Shave blog in it's entirety, and, much to my disappointment, it's obviously fictional.

Shirley's story started out seeming pretty plausible, but after a while, there were too many things that didn't jive with the plain facts of the adult industry. (Note that I read all the posts in chronological order, from earliest to latest--when you just read a few posts at random, they seem much more realistic.)

At first, it was little things, like the fact that she got her first job on the very day of her audition, with no mention of an HIV test.

There was also mention of multi-day production schedules. This is actually pretty unusual--most shoots are done in one day, especially the low-budget type of stuff that she was allegedly performing in. Only large, big-budget productions shoot on multiple days, typically.

There was no mention of Viagra for the one guy with wood problems. Viagra has been a true boon to the porn industry, and is used even by big name male stars if they run into trouble. The days of seeing semi-hard dicks in porn videos appears to be gone, as far as I can tell.

There was mention of male performers who move freely back and forth between straight and gay porn. In reality, this does not happen, because female performers are terrified of "catching AIDS from a gay performer." Yes, I know AIDS is not a gay disease, but a lot of porn actresses are apparently unable to grasp this simple fact. Likewise, they seem unable to grasp the simple fact that the level of condom use in gay porn is much higher than in straight porn, so HIV transmission is probably less likely in that side of the industry. In any case, male performers in straight porn avoid doing gay porn because they know full well that once they cross that line, there's no turning back.

Then there was the mention of a mafia connection for the big, evil porn producer, who proceeded to rape her. Do such things happen in the porn industry? Who the hell knows? I've never heard any plausible accounts of that happening, but, then again, what would it take for me to consider an account like that "plausible"? On the other hand, if there was a producer who was in the habit of raping his best actresses, you would tend to think that word would get around the grapevine--that not all of his victims would simply lie back and take it like Shirley did. And the mafia allegation is just annoying. The porn industry is so diverse, with so many teensy little production companies, making so much money, it's really hard to see how organized crime would be able to wield much influence there. Not to mention that porn is legal, so, by definition, it's not organized crime, is it? I don't doubt that mafia interests are making some money off of porn, but I find the kind of strongarming portrayed in this story to be pretty unlikely.

Finally, towards the ending, Shirley's loser ex-boyfriend somehow manages to spread a rumor in the industry that she's HIV positive, resulting in her no longer being able to obtain work. That's just not the way it works. The adult industry is extremely wary of HIV infections: testing of performers is done regularly, and an agent who actually cared about his performers as Bernard supposedly did would insist on it. Whenever someone tests positive, the first thing that happens is the entire industry comes screeching to a halt while that performer, and anyone who he or she had sex with, is tested again, to make sure the first result wasn't a false positive. When you compare this to the way Shirley's story plays out, there's a pretty big incongruity there. Furthermore, even if it did play out the way it's written, if Shirley was such a gorgeous, young-looking blonde babe, she would have at least been able to make some money stripping or posing for nude photo layouts. There's always work available for a gorgeous young blonde who's willing to take her clothes off.

Taking all these things into consideration, it seems pretty certain that, not only was the whole story made up, but it was made up by someone who doesn't entirely know what he or she is talking about.

There were some things I liked about the story, though. Things like this:

I enjoyed my outlaw life and rebelling against all the straight crap, respectable jobs and monogamy. My dad held a respectable job and beat the shit out of me. What was so respectable about that? Many of the men I went out with were bad to me. Everyone was sinister in some way. I was a good person. I had ego enough to know that I was a better person than most. But someone somewhere said my job was one of the most sinister of all, close to war.

And this:

The sight of a healthy woman's body could bring joy to people. People liked to surround themselves with beauty in the same way they surrounded the warmth of a campfire. Sex was as important as shelter. Some people were afraid of sex because it could be overwhelming if used wrong. Like the sky could be beautiful and blue one day, make tornadoes another. I myself never forgot the blue. This didn't mean that sex never did me wrong. I had been abused and misused throughout my life. But even the sun caused cancer to some, made other things grow. I never forgot that sex was a beautiful thing, a serene kind of beauty like a painting or the ocean. So I was happy to be a part of it by posing for the camera. Like a perfect glove made from lights and lenses. I didn't feel guilty or immoral posing for Bernard. I was a sexual creature as much as I was human. I had been my entire life. Plain and simple, I liked fucking. And I was taken in by the camera eye. Each picture was framing my young body forever. I was happy to be part of some long-standing dirty tradition, a world that I had always heard about and was curious, but now was seeing first hand. So many other girls had come into Bernard's office to do the very same thing, smiling and eager and proud and doing something daddy would frown on but every other man would lust after. It wasn't any cold, callous waitressing job. Small beads of sweat were beginning to form on my body, a hot, arousing, sexual sweat. This felt like a beginning.

In general, the writing was pretty good--much better than you're likely to run into in the general blogosphere. I offer my congratulations to the writer, because I think it was a pretty good effort. On the whole, however, the story really doesn't convey a positive or realistic impression of the adult industry, and, since it is also fiction, that means it pretty much falls into the category of negative propaganda. So I guess I'm going to have to take the link down.

Oh, well. I'm sure I will find plenty of other good links, sooner or later.

Towards a purpose for this blog...

Also, I seem to be settling down towards an idea of what I actually want this blog to be about (hah--took me long enough). With that in mind, I've posted the following text up at the top:

Commentary, information and advocacy pertaining to the role of sex and sexual entertainment in American culture.

You know what? That actually sounds pretty respectible.

Some interesting blogs I found today

I got a little bored today. It's been happening a lot lately. Sometimes, when this happens, I'll program a search string into Google, set it so it only searches "blogspot.com" domains, and see what comes up. Today, the search string was "breakup", which has to do with something I've been posting about on one of my other blogs. In any case, the search led me to an interesting blog by a woman calling herself "Breakup Babe". That's not what I am posting here, though (although I did like that blog enough to link to it from my other blog). While reading the comments on one of Breakup Babe's posts, I came across a link to a blog by someone calling himself "DanceFan". The blog is called DanceFan: On Strippers and Life, with the description

I love my wife. I love strip clubs. I'm in touch with my inner horndog. Get over it.

Heh. Just the thing to post a link to here.

Then a little later on, I clicked on yet another link, from the DanceFan blog to a the blog of a woman calling herself "Shirley Shave", who, as it happens, is a porn actress. Again, very promising, although Ms. Shave seems to have put her blog on hiatus back in February of this year. Unfortunate, that. However, I will post a link to it here anyway, in the hope that she will start it up again at some point.

So pardon me while I access the layout functions of blogger and post those two links. And happy horniness, people. :)

One small thread in the "Sex as Corruptor" meme...

I came across something interesting in a world-affairs forum on Worldcrossing. The owner of the forum stated:

I put the following question to an ex-army (US) guy.

'When a woman, out of financial circumstance and desperation engages in commercial sex, she is classified as 'the lowest', scum of the society....etc...

When a man goes and KILLS and maims tens of INNOCENTS because he needed a job and joined the armed forces, he is treated as a 'hero'. No, NOT to defend his country or whatever camouflage jargon the avaricious plutokrats may use.

The "ex-army guy" responded (in the forum owner's words):

He came up with the following lame arguments:

1) Conscientious objection is a recent thing. Once upon a time, you just HAD to follow orders.

2) It is a male dominated society. Males control most of the global revenue.....

3) Women become famous after sexual-commercial enterprise. He gave me the example of Paris Hilton. (As someone who is far away from all such BS, I knew nothing of her.)

I won't comment on #1, since it is clearly beyond the scope of this weblog. #2 is interesting as well, but, again, I will skip comment. What really caught my eye is #3:

First of all, Paris Hilton was obviously never a prostitute (so "army guy" was clearly grasping at straws). The term usually used to describe her is "socialite". And the translation of "socialite" is approximately "spoiled rich girl who has no need for, or interest in, an actual profession." She is only famous because the news media need something to fill up their air-minutes in lieu of actual news.

If "ex-army guy" truly believes that women become famous due to "sexual-commercial enterprise", he should reflect on the following question: "What happens when a porn actress tries to break into regular movies, and why?" Note that I'm not talking about cable television soft-porn here, but real movies made by the likes of MGM, Paramount, Dreamworks, Miramax, etc, and shown in real movie theaters. I'm also talking about real porn stars, not women who allow their boyfriends to videotape them during sex--I'm talking about people who get paid to fuck on camera.

The first part of the question is easy: If a casting director has any knowledge of her porn career, she won't even be cast in the first place. Not even if she's the producer's girlfriend. And if, through some fluke, she manages to slip through and actually be cast in something, the studio will throw her out as soon as they figure out who she is. (This rule applies to male porn stars too, incidentally.) I believe there have only ever been two exceptions to this rule, Traci Lords and Ron Jeremy. Traci Lords was able to use the "But I was underage at the time and therefore exploited, so it wasn't my fault." So that may leave Ron Jeremy as the only true exception, out of countless thousands of people. (I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure Ginger Lynn never had any sort of significant role in a Hollywood movie. I also need to state here that Playboy has never been considered pornographic by anyone other than people who have no clue what they are talking about, which is why Shannon Tweed, Pamela Anderson, and some others managed to eke out limited movie careers.)

The second part of the question is what really requires some reflection: Why does this happen? Why should anyone care if an actress in a blockbuster film happened to previously appear in a bunch of porn flicks?

A name that comes to mind is Stephanie Swift. Young, beautiful porn actress in the late 1990's, if I remember right, and a woman of above average intelligence, if the reports in the adult industry news media can be believed (and I have no reason to believe they can't on something like this, since the average porn consumer doesn't really care how smart the fuckbunny on his screen is). She could also act, a skill not strictly necessary in most of the videos in which she appeared. I can testify to this personally, having seen her in a number of pornographic videos. One thing that was immediately noticable about her was that it was totally impossible to tell whether she was feigning pleasure during the sex scenes. With her, it always looked real. That, my friends, bespeaks a fair amount of acting ability--far above what the typical porn "actress" is capable of.

At one point, under another name, she actually managed to get cast in a real movie, presumably based on her acting talents. But then somebody squealed on her, and whichever studio it was gave her the boot. Thus ended her brief Hollywood "career". What exactly did she do to deserve this?

Well, the answers to that would probably take at least a few hours to type out--a few hours which I, unfortunately, can not spare right now. So I will end this here.

[Final notes: 1) I tried Googling the name of the movie that Swift was cast in, but that proved to be hopeless. 2) In no way should anything in this blog entry be construed as a generalization on the intelligence of Army veterans--the man discussed above is just one person, who happens to be a dumbshit, and a veteran.]