[syndicated profile] tacit_feed

My co-author Eunice and I write porn. We call it ‘porn’ without flinching; where some people like to claim there's a categorical distinction between porn and erotica, we both are of the opinion that po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, it’s all a tempest in a linguistic teapot.

I bring this up because, having co-authored five books of the most twisted pornography ever conceived with Eunice, filled with kinks so esoteric they don't even have names (we looked), I thought I understood the purpose of porn pretty well.

Image: Jan Kopřiva

Porn is when you use explicit, super-kinky sex to explore themes like personhood theory, agency, autonomy, philosophical ethics, atonement and redemption, social values, and community.

Obviously.

So imagine my surprise when Joreth, my wife, suggested in a Quora post:

My spouse doesn’t watch porn. He doesn’t get it. To be fair, almost all porn is bad bad BAD filmmaking, and as a filmmaker myself, I don’t disagree at all. But I understand that the point of mainstream porn is just to put naked bodies rutting on screen for those who are visually aroused, and nothing else.

My spouse, however, writes porn, but not, like, mainstream porn. He writes literary tomes, super-accurate far-future science-fiction, and detailed world-building urban fantasy. That happens to have sex scenes in them. He does. not. understand. the point of porn. To him, “porn” is for arousing the intellect, which will then follow with physical arousal.

I’m just back from Dragon*Con, where I spent most of my time alternating between the writers track and the skeptics track, so during a panel on written porn, I put the question to the panelists.

All of whom sided with my wife on this.

As did, for that matter, most of the Internet.

Now, a lot of folks do draw a distinction between porn and erotica; something I heard often is that erotica can explore complex themes but porn can’t. There’s a fair amount of this gatekeeping in the erotica writer’s scene: “erotica is what I write; porn is that dirty nasty filth that other people write.” I personally don’t draw that line; to me, it smacks of classism, of “porn is bad but erotica is okay.” If your goal is to arouse, to quicken the senses, then it’s porn, no matter what else you may be doing.

But that also seems a minority opinion.

The porn Eunice and I write is incredibly explicit and very kinky indeed. It’s also, quite often, highly uncomfortable. (Eunice likes to say she’ll keep scaling the kink factor up and up until I cringe; that’s the sweet spot we’re aiming for.) The explicitness and the discomfort are part of the point—we explore ideas that are intrinsically uncomfortable, like “is it ethical to give consent to sex in such a way that you cannot revoke it?” (Spoiler: we both think the answer is yes. It’s strange that doing this is so wildely accepted in anything but sex—joining the militart, for instance—but when it comes to sex, people—even people in the kink scene—struggle with it.)

Image: 1MilliKarat

The word “porn” is emotionally charged. Using “erotica” in place of “porn” feels to me like a way to try to soften it, to hide from sexuality rather than engaging with it directly. Our novels confront uncomfortable ideas directly, without evasion; why not call them porn?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What say you?

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[personal profile] tuftears
Happy Labor Day, those of you who celebrate it!

I celebrated the occasion with a bacon cheeseburger with BBQ sauce, sweet potato fries, green beans, and a root beer float. Yum!

Cut for length! )

For September, I have a retinal examination coming up on the 25th and I also need to get new health care insurance, so I should start shopping in earnest for that. If folks have recommendations, I'm all ears!
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

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February 2018

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