Welcome back!

January – Jay and I started the year by celebrating our 2nd anniversary together. If you want to refresh on how we first met (and the aftermath of that) you’ll have to look back to January of 2006. We were in Thailand for half of this month and pretty depressed to back in the US again. So, you didn’t hear from me again until. . .

April – Where I attended Sex 2.0 and had a fire lit under me. I started a Twitter account, got involved with FetLife, and relaunched my podcast. I finally realized that I was part of a community and felt like I belonged.

May – I started reviewing products on my podcast and blog for VibeReview.

June – I spent a lot of time thinking about sex work in both text and audio forms. I also got sort of pissy and ridiculous about blogging and met Artemis Hunter for the first time.

July – I had my first freelance work published in The Naughty American and dug up some old camwhore shots. I also experienced a bit of heartbreak, but it turned out a great piece of writing if I do say so myself. I also got tied up by Artemis and finally hooked up with Carmine who had previously only been known as “cross-dressing law student“. Finally, I began publishing the Musings on Masculinity series.

August – The biggest news and one of the happiest days of my last several years was telling my dad about my “secret identity”. I’m still basking in the joy of that moment as I remember it. Also in July, Jay and I got to know Hania much better.

September – I was named #5 on the list of the Top 100 Sex Bloggers of 2008 among started a bajillion other projects. We also went to Dark Odyssey Summer Camp which was a watershed event for me despite the fact that I haven’t talked about it too much. I also presented at the Fetish Fair Flea Market and got to meet Catalina and Marky for the first time.

October – The posts slowed down and the earth stopped moving because something remarkable happened. We met Ariel and Michael and fell in love and my feet still haven’t touched the ground. At first I could only express the feelings in music. But. . .

November -  . . . soon I found more detailed words and images to express my thoughts. I captured the unique sadomasochistic relationship that Michael and I have developed as well as the experienced of being fucked by Ariel for the first time. And the sexy gave way to the mundanely profound as we found ourselves forming a type of family, broken hollondaise and all.

December – Ariel starts lending a hand with reviews and I think that the format suits this site. Jay and I also visited New York and saw tons of the friends that we met through the year. I also spent a sedate Birthday and Hanukkah at home with my new chosen family.

I stay away from a lot of feminist blogs because, well, reading them often hurts my soul. In fact other than perusing Feministing and Feministe, I leave it up to Ren, Trinity, Amber, and Caroline to keep my up to date on what is happening vis-a-vis sex and feminism. These ladies have the patience of saints because they manage to spend a lot of time reading the same angry arguments about sex work and responding to them over and over again.

For a long time I knew that there was some fundamental lack of clash in the debate. An ideological space where the competing ideas could not be resolved because they are operating on different planes. Many radical and second wave feminists take a strong social constructionist view of gender and violence against women. Many sex positive feminists see this as lacking in nuance and denying the autonomy of individual women. But, that distinction has been on the table for a long time.

Today I started thinking about another one when I was reading this post of Caroline’s. She links to a blog where a very brave woman discusses her incredibly damaging and negative experiences in the sex industry. That woman believes that she is dismissed by sex positive feminists as being a “sad case” – that her experience is the exception and does not invalidate sex work. On the flip-side, many former sex workers that had positive experiences feel their voices are drowned out and silenced by radical feminists who claim they are apologists for the patriarchy.

The problem is that these arguments still aren’t truly clashing with each other. Two claims are being debated as if they are a single one even though they are neither directly related nor mutually exclusive.

Claim #1: Sex work is wrong.

Claim #2: There is something wrong within sex work.

The “within” is very important in that second claim. It distinguishes the idea that sex work is on face something to be rejected from the claim that there are problems in sex work that need to be remedied. I don’t know a single sex worker that would not concede the second claim. Of course there are individuals, perhaps even the majority of individuals, who are severely adversely affected by sex work. But, one claim does not automatically support the other because Claim #2 is a quantitative claim that describes a current problem whereas Claim #1 is qualitative and makes a value judgment. The material conditions of sex work can change and Claim #2 would be eroded but for those that support Claim #1, no change would be sufficient. By definition sex work is wrong and no number of pleasant personal experiences could change that.

So, yes, I desperately abhor the abuse and mistreatment of sex workers. I loath the deeply disturbing and violent treatment that sex workers face. As a separate issue I am, of course, concerned about the trafficking of human beings or the exploitation and rape of children that cannot consent to entering the sex trade. I can see all of these things and I can still say that sex work should exist and can be healthy. I can believe that it will never disappear and so it must be prepared, not just to make the best of a bad situation but to create joy out of a vocation that should be honored instead of denigrated. I honor the voices of women that have experienced pain or violence in sex work and I don’t think that they are tokens. But, I think that their experiences provide a backdrop for an important change and®evolution, not for a dismantling of an eternal system.

(Also, go read the 11th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy)

I added a Meebo widget to the sidebar. That means I can talk to you while you are browsing the site or of course you can talk to me. Isn’t surveillance amazing? (Actually, I can’t tell who is on the site just if someone is so don’t worry, continue to shoplift at your leisure.) Talk to me!

I mentioned this paper several months ago when I wrote it. I’m working on it again and decided to publish it here in its present form. I’ve noticed a lot of great discussions on interracial porn appearing around the blogs (Audacia and Laughing Man, I’m looking at you) and thought I would jump into the fray.

***

For many open-minded Westerners, the fear of racial mixing was dismissed long ago. Still, it remains a spectre on race relations and the associated taboos constitute a frightening series of questions and problems. Liberal beliefs in equality and color-blindness often fall by the wayside at the moment that the question of erotic desire and racial mixing is introduced into the equation. In this way, deeply seated anxieties about racial contamination and power remain an element of sexuality around the world, making work on colonial sexuality continually vital. Frantz Fanon dedicates a significant portion of Black Skin, White Masks to describing interracial sexual relationships between the colonizer and the colonized. His chapters on the woman of color and the white man and the man of color and the white woman present two sides of the same coin; sexual power dynamics that fluctuate based upon sex, race, and political position.

In both situations the woman in question is the site of colonization – in the case of the woman of color, she is rendered as a symbol of the colonization of her nation. Fanon also expresses some clear resentment towards women of color as he describes their desire to always pursue the lightest men possible, to deny their nationality via their chosen sexual partners. Clearly, though, they are often the chosen. The conquest of these women by white men is an additional manifestation of the conquest of their nation. However, in the example of Mayotte, Fanon demonstrates a woman of Martinique that is bent on class ascension via racial means, “every woman in the Antilles, whether in a casual flirtation or in a serious affair, is determined to select the least black of the men.” (47) Fanon predicts that this racial self-loathing is re-projected onto the the youths of the next generation, either through the family structure or through the classroom or other social institutions. The message that will be passed on is of presumed inadequacy, one is only as “white as one is rich, as one is beautiful, as one is intelligent.” (51-52) These desired characteristics are ingrained as markers of whiteness. However, while attaining whiteness means attaining these characteristics, it is not clear that the converse is true. The colored person of the Antilles, in Fanon’s description, simply does not have true access to wealth, beauty, and intelligence because even having these qualities in abundance does not make them more white.

Fanon opens his chapter on the man of color and the white woman with the following confession:

Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white.

I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white.

Now – and this is a form of recognition that Hegel had not envisaged – who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man.

I am a white man.

Her love takes me into the noble road that leads to total realization. . .

I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness.

When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine. (63)

Fanon’s rhetoric in this poetic moment emphasizes the interaction between desire and identification. He desires a white woman because he desires to be a white man and if not a white man, then just like a white man. The white woman’s body, her breasts are the symbol of dignities that are refused Fanon as a black man. This mythical white woman is deeply objectified, a mere marker for her race and civilization. A less than human symbol and battleground for resistance. Jonathan Dollimore, in a chapter on bisexuality, writes, “Do we ever simply desire the person we love, or is our desire not also partly an identification with him or her? Simply put, the ‘I want you’ of desire is complicated by the ‘I want to be you’ of identification.” (27) While Dollimore refers to gender difference, the argument is clearly manifested in Fanon’s desire for racial difference and identification. Fanon describes these urges as coming from the “darkest part” of his soul but from the “zebra stripping” of his mind. The desire to be white comes from the part of him that is fully and darkly black, the soul and only “across” the part of him that is already conspicuously colonized by whiteness, his mind. In this way, Fanon seems to imply that the desire for whiteness or more generally the desire for identification and assimilation is intrinsic to him, separate from his experience with colonization. More importantly, this experience of identification may be just as commonly experienced by a white person as it is by him.

Can Fanon’s troubling portrayal of racial mixing be used to describe the impetus behind contemporary examples of miscegenation? Certainly, a change in setting effects the validity of this claim. Furthermore, Fanon does not regularly acknowledge the actual human relationships and emotions that are in play as the result of a given marriage. His psycholanalysis is societal instead of individuated and therefore makes sweeping generalizations about the motivations of all interracial relationships. It discounts any instances of true cross-racial compatibility or couplings that are motivated by non-political factors (love or passion spring to mind although neither are fully outside of politics.) For this reason, his work is inadequate to explain actual interracial relationships. At the very least it must be acknowledged that his condemnation or critical approach to them is over-arching.

However, there is something very useful about Fanon’s theories as they can be received by a contemporary, multi-racial American audience. It is clear that they can go a long way to explain the production and broad appeal of interracial pornography. The epidermalization of desire is reflected in contemporary interracial pornography. We need to look at not just how but also why interracial pornography portrays its characters in this way.

As an opening caveat, it should be clear that I approach this question by considering these erotic materials as texts. While much ink has been shed by anti-pornography feminists, I do not wish to enter the fray on the question of censorship. Therefore, I have refrained from making normative claims about the existence of such work or its legitimacy in the community. While it is easy to see why many find it distasteful, my purpose is to interrogate the psychology behind its creation and message, not the psychological effects of its existence or consumption.

Of course it is never fully possible to bracket this question and I hope to dismantle one particular underpinning of the anti-pornography argument. Most of the arguments to censor pornography rest on Catherine MacKinnon’s position that pornography is a form of harmful hate speech, the speech is an action in itself and has harmful effects. The effects described usually are in the form of unrealistic attitudes towards women and sexuality. However, I will argue that the adult industry does not create these myths as an invidious attempt to corrupt the psychic and sexual health of the pornography consumer. Rather, the pornography industry (perhaps more than any other group of businesses I can imagine) creates their product based upon demand. Being affiliated with “the oldest profession” means that pornography makes a business of selling sex, one of the most basic of human drives. While a gadget manufacturer is also in the business of manufacturing desire for their product (humans are not born with a drive to own a mandolin slicer) the adult industry caters to a market that is always already there. Their productions do not exist in a social vacuum, rather they are based upon the desires and fantasies of their audience. This is not to say that pornographers cannot be exploitative. But it is to say that their marketing techniques and product development are almost necessarily some of the least invasive of any type of business that exists. This is not because of particular benevolence but because of the nature of the product, they sell something that is built into humans to want and desire. They also sell the manifestations of often unspoken fantasies.

Another important caveat is regarding the appropriateness of comparing contemporary racism in the United States with the post-colonial condition of racism. Certainly the diaspora of Africans has unique impact based upon their geographical location. My argument is that these representations in pornography constitute a colonizing mindset that has never fully diminished in the American psyche. This helps one to get away from the argument that particular pornography producers are racist and hateful (although some certainly might be) and allows for the more fruitful line of thinking that the demand for this sort of material makes a very real statement about the society that produces it. The presence of this fantasy of colonization and subordination blur erotic lines to make a political statement.

It is appropriate to begin with a description of the state of contemporary interracial pornography. What happens in these films? How are they marketed? And what are the racial tropes circulating within them? One popular weblogger and adult industry insider, Sam Sugar, described interracial pornography in the following way:

I am a black man

Your name: People will want to name you something that get’s across that you have a big, black cock. The porn industry knows that black guys with small dicks do not exist. They know you have a cock like a cruise missile covered in radar absorbing paint. [...]

Your movies: You will be offered roles in movies with the words black, gang, ballin’, ass, jungle, and chocolate in the title. When you are asked to perform with white women they will be referred to using the words little, tiny, innocent, stretched and meat. E.g. “Big Black Beef Stretches Little Pink Meat”. I’m sad to say that’s a real movie.

Your press: Every mention of your name will be followed by the imagined length of your cock in inches. People will refer to the ’soul’ you put into your performances and the ‘rhythm’ of your love tenderizing.


I’m a black woman

Your name: Anything you like – bonus points for making it extra ghetto. Shaniqwa Debonair is an excellent choice.

Your movies: It’s all about being a chocolate sister. People will be unable to look at you without wanting to put your ‘phat ghetto booty’ in a video with some guys from The Digital Underground. The people doing this will be white. Regardless of the size of your butt it will be referred to as ‘two fine hams’. Expect to get spanked a lot.

Your press: The world needs to know that you have a lot of junk in the trunk. Your ass will get more coverage than your medical degree. If you ever get upset about anything you will be called an uppity high maintenance bitch.

While meant to elicit a laugh, his analysis is a grippingly honest description of the racialized discourse of sex and pornography. He makes few apologies for these realities and instead describes them plainly. These descriptions are difficult to stomach at times and seem as if they must be exaggerations. They are not, and while graphic, the honesty of these complaints is compelling. It is probably not shocking to know that Sugar’s descriptions of the treatment of black men and women is sandwiched among other groups of people that are fetishized in pornography including Latinos, Asians, and physically different people. Especially useful is description of how these films are marketed. The titles that are chosen and the words and descriptions that appear on box covers are the essence of the pornography producer’s pitch to their client. They are meant to appeal to their audience instantly and stand out amongst a plethora of other options. Why do these titles have such a broad appeal? The easy answer is that only racists buy such materials but the broad demand and the mainstream nature of them seems to undermine that option.

At face value, it is simple to dismiss these representations as repugnant, however there is a deeper ambivalence to this genre. Some argue that by depicting interracial sex, a traditionally taboo subject in American culture, that this pornography can lead to breaking the taboos that exist and allow for greater acceptance of interracial relationships.(Williams, 274) The counterpoint, of course, exists that the extreme caricatures are more damaging than they can ever be fruitful. Because the focus of these films is on the interracial aspect, the performers are distilled to cultural and sexual stereotypes and are not individuated outside of that. Pornography is rarely interracial in an incidental way. The question of race is constantly brought to the fore in the titles of pieces as well as the dialogue that occurs between characters.

The market for these films is varied. Some are meant to appeal to white men while others
are intended to have a broader appeal. This begs the question, if the audience of interracial pornography is, itself, interracial what is the message of it? Clearly, the message is different for each individual viewer just as their motivations for watching may be individual. The BDSM fetish community has a motto: Safe, Sane, Consensual. Practitioners of bondage, domination, and sadism maintain that as long as an activity between two adults meets that three-pronged test, it is acceptable. While not all people within the community may find it arousing and some may even find it repugnant, if it passes this test BDSM practitioners will not practice judgment. “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” is used to eroticize and create safe spaces for acceptance of many fringe forms of sexual play and the role playing of extreme situations such as rape, bestiality, and incest. If these acts are accepted by a sexual community can educated people make the same allowances for what we find distasteful in interracial pornography? One thing that BDSM play and pornography clearly have in common is the element of performance and the desire to segment desires in such a way that they have multiple interpretations. If pornography is nothing else, it is rhetorical, and its reception is entirely dependent upon the desires of the viewing audience.

Interracial pornography requires a performance of race by the actors involved. The dialog in these films is always self-aware and referential to the racial difference between the actors. The contrast between their bodies is emphasized continually. A black actress is playing a different role in an interracial film than she might be in a film that emphasizes the size of her breasts or a particular sexual act. She is always a black actress but her blackness becomes the commodity that is traded. While it may be hard to believe, it is plausible that the actress in question derives just as much sexual satisfaction from racialized sexual play as the white male that may be watching her performance. Likewise, a submissive in a BDSM context is just as sexually invested in their own humiliation as the person that does the humiliating. It is easy to revert to the argument that such sexual desires stem from some manifestation of self-loathing or insecurity but that explanation is dangerously paternalistic. Acceptance of such lifestyle choices does not necessarily imply advocacy of them or agreement with them. However, exiting personal preferences for a moment in order to fathom difference is a crucial step in the obliteration of oppressive taboos, including those against racial mixing.

Just as Fanon interprets negrophobia as a form of white sexual anxiety, the politically
fearful dismissal of interracial pornography stems from deeply held taboos about race. The performance of stereotypes, while distasteful can have a positive effect,

Stereotypes are important objects of study not because we can better learn to eliminate them from our thinking, but because they cannot be eliminated. Stereotypes persist, and perhaps even thrive on, the protestations against them; the louder the protest, the more they thrive. [...] To forbid all utterance or depiction of the stereotype of the originally phobic image of the large black penis is to grant it a timelessness and immortality that it does not really possess. (Williams, 284)

So, it is because of the fetishistic nature of the stereotypes, as they are already uttered, that the compulsion to repeat their utterance can actually have a positive effect. This is not a blanket suggestion to toss around slurs and half-truths but instead a way to implore people to see them for what they are – archaic but deeply held beliefs to be questions. The sooner a move is made away from holding them as sacred, the sooner we can mock and demystify these stereotypes, the more likely it is that interracial sexual relationships will lose their stigma. However, I want to be perfectly clear that these arguments are merely a way to accept and interpret interracial pornography in a useful way – to find a space where these celebrations of difference can be transmuted into an understanding of the powerful erotic desires that ground contemporary race relations. Are the stereotypes exploited in interracial pornography liberatory in and of themselves? Are the actors involved always intentionally problematizing race or experiencing sexual satisfaction from their performances of racial stereotypes? Of course not, the producer’s only intrinsic intention is to make money on their product, making it neutral at best. Many actors are exploited or at least not particularly invested in the racial tone of the product they are producing. But recognizing the adult choices that go into the production of such material and accepting fantasies without judgments can contribute greatly in stripping the stigma from interracial sexuality.

Works Referenced


Dollimore, Jonathan. Sex, Literature, and Censorship. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.


Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967.


Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

MacKinnon, Catharine A. Only Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Penley, Constance. “Crackers and Whackers: The White Trashing of Porn.” Porn Studies. Ed. Linda Williams. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.
Sugar, Sam. “Porn and Prejudice.” Sugarbank. 23 June 2005. 14 Nov. 2005 .

Williams, Linda. “Skin Flicks on the Racial Border: Pornography, Exploitation, and Interracial Lust.” Porn Studies. Ed. Linda Williams. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.

Up until now the only people that have taken pictures of me naked are myself and people I am having sex with. Recently, I was approached by an amateur erotic photographer who is interested in photographing me. The idea makes me both excited and nervous – I knew I had to find out more.

On Saturday, J and I met up with her for coffee. We hit it off so well that coffee became dinner and her husband joined us. We’ve been invited to their home for dinner next week.

Have I mentioned that they are gorgeous and funny and incredibly intelligent people? So, letting her take naked pictures of me is a no-brainer. Still, it seems weird to have someone I’m not sleeping with see me naked. I guess I’ll have to get her to sleep with me. . .

I was flipping through an old diary of mine from high school and found this entry, a poem I wrote when I was 16-years-old. It is dated October 13th, 1998. I would still be a virgin for another 4 years.

I’ve never stared into my

    lover’s eyes

But his words caress my

    body – he plays me skillfully

    in deft hands

Standing under the hot
    water the idea of him
    sucks my nipples and
    strums my clit

I overflow

His sensuality pounds into
    me, the pure eroticism of
    him

I ache and spread my legs,
    arching my back

I cannot bridge the gap

Exhausted and so hungry
    I part for his touch

Only he can fulfill me

Then his last erotic words
    flash through my head

With my hands still behind
    my back I writhe beneath
    what is truly an “intellectual
    orgasm”

Vinnie Tesla, coming off the smashing success of his recent treatise on tentacle porn, has invited his readers to suggest a title of a story he hasn’t written. He has replied with a summary of each story. My suggested title panned out a bit like this:

The New England Liberal rose quickly to the top of her chosen profession, winning the champoinship belt in only her third year of wrestling in the PWPW (Political Women’s Professional Wrestling league). She made short work of the Tree Hugger, the Log Cabin Blazer Dyke, and the Real Live Female Libertarian on her way to the top, before challenging the Evangelical Who Votes the Way her Husband Tells Her To in the most high-profile fight in league history.



But she harbored a shameful secret…only she knew of her past on an Amarillo chorus line—a past that could destroy her career should it ever come out!

The meme is entirely too much work for any sane person to take on. That said, go over and bug Vinnie to write you a story.

Where have I been, dear readers? Well, I got my tongue pierced on Thursday so I’ve been sort of under the weather while I wait for the swelling to go down (at which time I’ll take a picture, natch). Podcasting has been out of the question but I expect to catch up with that soon. I’ve got a list of short tidbits, though, and it goes a little something like this:

• I just discovered Balthazar B, Man of His Words. This man seems quite brilliant and sexy and wonderful and not updating for the past few weeks. I hope he comes back because finding a hot new blog that is already a dead old blog is so depressing. . .

• A bit of a dialogue has formed between Melissa Gira (aka, Sexiest Podcaster in the World) and I on this question of “fake women.” Touch My Blog has stepped into the discussion with this post. And while not directly related, I think that the Female Mysogynist is weighing in on the issue as well when she writes today about the “anti-feminine feminist bitch”.

• I’ve been desperately searching for Chanukah porn and the best I have been able to find (despite the hysterics of this article) is at the Yarmulkebra Website. Looks like I’ll be making my own, I can’t believe no one has tried to serve this market before!