Monthly Archives: July 2010

Male vs. Female Sexual Expression

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Hey everyone!

I wanted to link to a really funny video I saw posted by Violet Blue this morning.  It’s a video by Gavin McInnes called Are Women As Horny As Men?  Check it out:

 

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

This video interesting for a number of reasons.  First off, Gavin has some serious skills in terms of dick mobility and pole dancing.  Good for him.  More importantly, though, it’s funny.  But why?  I’m not saying it isn’t.  I actually laughed out loud because of the excellent performances, the dick manoeuvring and all that, but it made me think that it’s a lot darker than it appears.

I guess it’s funny to see gender role reversal, but it’s not just that.  We’re seeing women acting as aggressors and men acting as annoyed, scared and as sexual objects.  And that’s funny because it’s usually the other way around.  Get it?  Women are usually the ones being pushed around and made to feel uncomfortable.  Hilarious.

The truth is that women may be just as horny as men, but we don’t seem it because our culture seems to tie horniness to aggressive reactions, so men feel entitled to those reactions while women don’t have the permission to behave that way.  Nor do I think most of us want to, but that could be because we’re products of dealing with this kind of behaviour.  Just because we don’t usually act on these feelings and objectify men to the same degree doesn’t mean we don’t have strong visceral sexual reactions.

So why does male sexuality manifest this way?  I think it’s because they’re allowed.  We’ve always had this apologist notion that men are biologically wired to be aggressive, to be visual, to have difficulty with monogamy…  Our society has evolved to shrug off the more “inoffensive” ways men act towards women, even when it makes us uneasy.  That’s pretty awful.  I’m certainly not coming to you with any answers about what to do in this situation, but the punchline of this story is that a man wouldn’t feel good about a world where women behaved like men.  That’s sad.

Sorry for the rant…  I could probably go on all day, but I need to get back to coding.  Enjoy the video and my moment of critical thinking.

The New Porn

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Hey everyone!

I’ve got an exciting update about The Art of Blowjob coming next week, but for now I just wanted to share some thoughts with you on the way porn is going these days.

A while back, Violet Blue posted an article about a new doccumentary called “The New Erotic”, by Ramzi Abed.  You can check out the trailer here.  It definitely looks like an interesting enough movie, but it begs the question: is this really the new erotic?  This is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of a slightly more diverse look, but it’s still a particular aesthetic…  Just a different one.  It still tends to prioritize a certain type of sexuality above all others and it’s just replacing the former norm.

I feel like the real “new erotic” would be a wider acceptance of all forms of porn into the mainstream.  The prioritized type of sexuality is the very rough stuff.  And more power to the people who make rough porn, but now it feels like that’s the only thing that is being put forth into the genre in any major way.  Sure, there’s softcore that is really soft, but most of what is hitting mainstream audiences is all about power struggles.  It feels like there’s virtually nothing that hits somewhere between hard and soft, which is how a huge number of people actually have sex.

The artistic value of “the new erotic” is really important, but it’s fairly hard to glean from the trailer whether there’s anything more to it than that.  If it is said to encompass more fetishes, that’s also true…  But again, it’s very much all presented in the same light.  For me, the true revolutionaries of porn are those of us who are trying really different things, even if that means getting back to basics.  For the porn I make, it’s all about being as natural and realistic as possible and portraying our genuine connections and our true turn-ons.

For other people, it’s about making really honest porn with the kinds of story lines that you can get wrapped up in.  A big example of this is an amazing gay film called I Want Your Love by Travis Matthews.  It’s just friends who flirt through easy, relatable dialogue and then succumb to their mutual attraction.  It completely does away with most of the conventions of gay porn, creating sex with no power struggle (asides from some adorable playful wrestling) and is focused entirely on the kind of sensuality that real people experience.  That’s what I’m trying to do with my work, even though I don’t do it through a story line.

This isn’t to say that more conventional porn performers (whether mainstream or “new erotic” mainstream) aren’t real people…  It’s just that the sex they portray is often rooted exclusively in fantasy and very much performed.  I have never performed.  Even when I’m dressed up as a fantasy of sorts, the camera rolling doesn’t put me on the spot and make me need to mug for the camera or do anything I wouldn’t normally do.  It’s just about my boyfriend and I.  I’m not sure whether this is true of the two performers in I Want Your Love, but if it isn’t, they’re really good actors.

My thoughts on the issue clearly aren’t completely defined, but I would say that there is certainly more to the revolutionization of porn than just changing the dominant aesthetic.  Whether it’s about diversifying the content, making things real, embracing queer and gender-non-normative performers (as Violet points out) or doing more to be transparent with education and issues of consent…  We still have a long way to go.

Twitter Contest Winner and Fleshbot Feature

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Hi everyone!

Before I get to the grand reveal, I have a few things to talk about:

First, I wanted to congratulate @britisshameless (who happens to run an amazing sex blog – Oh My God, That Britni’s Shameless) on winning a free month at The Art of Blowjob from our 1000th follower special random draw.  I entered the names of all of my followers into my phpMyAdmin and this is what came up:

So, I hope you enjoy your subscription and thanks so much for following me!  You guys should all follow her and check out her blog, because she updates frequently with witty, insightful and saucy tweets and posts.  Definitely a worthy addition into your sex blog roster!

Second, I’m very happy to announce that I’m once again featured on Fleshbot.  They obviously have amazing taste, because they put up one of my favourite shoots.  Definitely have a look, because on top of being probably my most gorgeous photo set of all time, they have lots of other amazing porn, nude photography and a wonderfully hilarious take on porn and sexuality in general.

 

 

Introducing Mad Blanket Pictures

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Hi everyone -

So, I keep going on and on about how things are so busy here and I never really give you any reasons why.  Well, there are two and you’re just going to have to wait until Friday for that big surprise, but the one I’m going to tell you about now is that we are officially launching our production company.  It’s called Mad Blanket Pictures and the big reason to launch it is to start our porn network!  As of right now, we have The Art of Blowjob, I Use My Feet, Dolorem and The Beautiful Porn and we are going to be expanding with new websites and new models, all while keeping the same passion, artistry and connection.  Here’s a little bit of our philosophy, taken from our new website:

Our philosophy is simple: porn can be beautiful.  With this in mind, we set out to create an overall aesthetic and ethos that embodies everything that beautiful porn should be.

From an aesthetic standpoint, it means photos and videos shot with wonderful lighting, gorgeous composition, shallow depth of field, use of slow motion, great music and sound, skilled editing and tasteful colour grading.  The websites are clear, well-written and minimalist.

The Mad Blanket ethos stems entirely from the performers.  They are beautiful yet realistic looking people with genuine human connections.  Their scenes and shoots consist solely of what truly turns them on so that all of their reactions and orgasms are never faked.  We strive to capture the human aspect of everything: the little gasps, the giggles and the meaningful glances.  These minute details capture the essence of natural sexuality.

Ultimately, this means that we will be producing more content and getting a wider audience, which will not only be good for us professionally but also good for porn as an industry.  By getting attention with beautiful, respectful and erotic porn, we’re showing the world that exploitation and lack of artistry does not need to be the standard.  We can demand more of our porn and make it something that we’re proud to integrate into our sexual exploration and sexuality in general.  We’re definitely not selling out or losing our intimacy with you guys, we’re just adding more variety and more content to make you all happy!