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… The media at the Adult Entertainment Expo is a veritable sausage fest. Penis party. Boy’s club. Dudeopalooza. Brotown. Worm farm. I looked, to put it lightly, a bit out of place. And apparently my heels, red hair, pencil skirt and glasses ring all manner of naughty bells in the context of arm-sized dildos and well-oiled pornography.
I am, however, treated very nicely. I don’t think I’ve opened a door for myself all week. Unlike my experiences with groping and sexual assault at the Mitt Romney victory rally, the men at the expo treated me like a gift, interacting with me in a gracious, respectful manner. The level of affection from the fans to their idols is so intense yet so tender, like a shy middle school boy elated that Dream Girl asked to borrow a pencil…
For the remainder of the afternoon, with a backdrop of some of the most profitable lesbian porn currently being produced, I speak with the adult performers about their experiences in the industry and how they feel about their jobs, costars, directors, and orgasms. Every single woman, every single woman talks nicely about their fans. Expresses pleasure in meeting and interacting with them, cherishes seeing them, genuinely seems to like these strangers that come from all over to see the object of their sexual desires. Their total lack of Stranger Danger sensors is riveting.
So if the fans are unexpectedly polite and earnest towards their idols, the porn stars are doubly tender and sweet in return. It’s quite a feedback loop, with and input of love and adoration poured onto these beautiful women, and an output of genuine thanks and flirtation given back in generous proportion to the swarms of fans who wait all year to see them. Both parties are fulfilling a need for the other; it’s a very symbiotic relationship based on attention and sexual desire…
John Cole
Now you’re just fucking with me, Anne Laurie.
ulee
I’m happy I like walking in the woods with my dogs. This sexual phantomorogasma is good for the people who it makes happy and makes them money. Everyone is happy…but the whole in and out and cock and cum and all makes me cringe. That’s just my opinion and that counts for nothing when it comes to other people’s proclivities.
redshirt
NSFWCorp is a great new web news opinion site.
Anne Laurie
@John Cole: I swear your post wasn’t up when I did the final proof!
You just type faster than I read!
TheMightyTrowel
@Anne Laurie: Hey, at least you bigfooted him with pr0n. That’s always acceptable.
Pinkamena Panic
For a moment, I wondered how you could be at a place like that and not be mistreated – until the last piece fit into my brain.
It’s about sexual desire, not the repression of it, but the expression of it. The people there don’t have to be watched by hypocritical doucheturds whose public personae are built on a foundation of sanctimonious anti-sex bullshit. They don’t have to get their jollies groping and leering and trying to be creeps because nobody’s expecting them to repress it beyond the normal standards of polite society.
But that’s just the simplistic guessings of a simple brain. I could be wrong
ulee
@Pinkamena Panic: I agree with you. But have you seen some of this shit? It is strange enough to make someone go..hmmmm. It’s none of my businesss but wow.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@ulee: As Woody Allen once wrote:
“Is sex dirty? It is if you’re doing it right.”
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Whoops, meant to post that as, “As the Great Letch, Woody Allen, once wrote …”
Sorry. My OTC slipping pills are woozifying my sharpiness.
freelancer
If you’re open about what turns you on (which btw, nobody cares about or wants to hear), and you’re not an asshole, your desire and enthusiasm is read for just that; interest and excitement. Nothing dangerous or surreptitious; it is what it is amongst consenting adults.
If you repress your shit, you end up with Men’s Rights Activists, Republicans, and people the court tells you about via mail.
Where’s my Moore Award?
Applejinx
@freelancer:
Absolutely. The thing about sexuality and that stuff is that there’s a difference between civility and repression. You don’t have to run around waving dildos if your use of them is not threatened… it’s true that many forms of sexuality have been threatened, even mortally threatened, and there’s always gonna be a line somewhere.
I see people willingly getting turned on by all manner of stuff, and sometimes it’s straight-up sociopathic/psychopathic sadism and the abuse, harming and destruction of others. A very primitive power thing. I would suggest that even if someone was able to explain their wishes in a very civilized, Hannibal Lecter-like way (“why yes, though I wouldn’t want to trouble you with the details, I want to prey on victims, destroy their lives, kill and eat them. Would you deprive me?”) not all wishes are really permissible.
But that would fall under the ‘you’re an asshole’ category…
Schlemizel
This description seems so weird – juxtaposition this with the uproar over the way women are treated at geekfests (comic-cons, si-fi gatherings, computer expos). If you need help picturing that Scalzi did a run of discussion about it that got rather heated.
Odd to think that a woman would feel less threatened at the pronfrest then the geek one.
jon
Repression is one of the worst things people do to themselves. Turning harmless desires into Places You Won’t Think About doesn’t make desires go away. That’s true if it’s homosexuality, the fact that you liked watching the mascots more than the cheerleaders, a love of the underpants of the other sex, or even that you enjoy masturbating.
Once someone enters a sex toy show or a porn expo or even a seedy adult bookstore, they’re admitting they enjoy sex. You can see happy couples checking out dildos for him, lube for both, blindfolds for her, or whatever. No big deal.
There’s a ton of sexist crap there, too. Disturbing, even. And it has to sell or it wouldn’t be there. I’m happy my local video store has a section behind the curtain, because the rest of the store could easily go the way of Blockbuster and countless other chains if it didn’t. I don’t like horror movie sexism, either. But a facefull of spunk is degrading to all women, but the woman who gets decapitated because she had sex with someone in a horror movie deserved it because those are the rules of horror movies. My outrage meter was broken years ago.
Bobby Thomson
That Jason Heller at the linked site is quite the firebagger.
Woodrowfan
that story sounds just as interesting. OK, ALMOST as interesting.
handsmile
For a rather less credulous view of the AVN Expo (but one I suspect that Leigh Cowart is well aware of), let me recommend the essay, “Big Red Son, ” by the grievously late writer David Foster Wallace.
Written in 1999 for Premiere magazine (thus pre-Internet for the subject industry), the essay is included in Wallace’s best collection of essays, Consider the Lobster (2006). This collection also features “Up, Simba,” a hilariously damning account of his time traveling with the 2000 presidential campaign of John McCain.
SpotWeld
The main difference between the two events is something like this.
If someone attempted to back a porn star up against a wall and make her squirm by vocalizing any number of “lewd” concepts, they’d be laughed at.
If someone attempted that at a GOP covention, they’d be laughed with.
In one case I woman is pretty much expected to be incharge of her own sexuality.
In the other she is expected to repress it and let someone else (traditionally her father our spouce) dictate it for her.
nemesis
Pics or GTFO.
Mnemosyne
@SpotWeld:
I’m guessing that the AVN is also like an expensive strip club in that there are big, mean security dudes who will throw your ass out if you look like you’re threatening a performer in any way.
I also wonder if, in a weird way, the fact that nothing is left to the imagination means that the guys who are heavily into fantasy (meaning sadists verging on serial killers) stay away because they aren’t interested in that much openness. You’re not going to be able to say anything to a porn star that’s going to get the shocked reaction that those kinds of guys thrive on.