Posted at 1:42 PM Aug 15, 2008
I had this mammoth three-page post all written up talking about taboos and degradation and the ethics of transgressive pornography and the thin line between the erotic and the grotesque, but when I had typed it all up I realized that as blindingly brilliant as my writing is, that post wasn't the right kind of stuff for this blog. Instead, let's just pretend (just temporarily, because I'll probably post it to my own blog later) that I wrote all of that, and you read it. Now, pop quiz! Based on the article you pretended to read, tell me whether it's ethically acceptable to masturbate to the following things or not:
1) Japanese animated rape/snuff porn, like yesterday's Bible Black. My verdict: It's animated! Who cares? Go right ahead. Rub it 'till your hands cramp!
2) Creepy Japanese frog porn. TOTALLY GROSS (and pictured above, ha!). Equally gross: Japanese fish porn. There's more in the series but I'll spare you the horror): My take is that it's gross and creepy, but as long as those animals are dead and the performers are consenting then I guess I don't really have an ethical problem with it, aside from maybe hygiene or disease concerns. I don't think it's any worse, morally speaking, than using leather toys or clothing -- dead animal is dead animal, right? So if you want to jerk to it, go ahead -- but I'm totally going to judge you because... ew. Gross. Really gross.
3) "Painal" (painful anal) scenes, either real or faked: Well, I've got mixed feelings about these. I don't really think that people need to learn to fetishize painful and unsafe anal sex. It's not just altruism, either -- the more people that try that in real life, the more women are likely to be turned off of anal, and the less likely it is that the next girl I meet is going to be into letting a Mongol come around the back way, if you know what I mean. But even considering those facts, I can't really call it unethical -- I mean, I'm perfectly fine with watching people get hurt for my non-sexual pleasure, and I've certainly got zero beef with sexual sadism either, so whether real or fake I guess I've got to give painal an ethical pass as well, assuming the performers knew what they were in for and went ahead anyway.
Still, I can't help but wince and twinge inside anytime I watch that scene in Gang Bang Auditions 10 where you can tell that Amee Donavan is still pumping through the pain of a wrecked rectum. I personally would have stopped at the first anal tear, let alone smiled teary-eyed through three.
4) Rough Sex by Khan Tusion, or anything that Max Hardcore has done in the last ten years: My thoughts about these are more complicated than a simple yes or no. The issue here is that several of the performers involved in Rough Sex and others in a few Max Hardcore movies claimed that they didn't know what they were getting into, that they weren't given enough information for informed consent. The directors and producers, of course, deny this. Having watched the Rough Sex movies and compared them to mainstream pornography that was out at the time, I can completely see how and why those actresses weren't expecting what was about to happen, even if they were told things would get rough and there would be spanking and choking involved -- Rough Sex hadn't been on the market, and it was a quantum leap forwards in terms of violent, aggressive content. It's totally a judgment call, but I'm going to say that no, you shouldn't jerk to that because those actresses weren't given the chance for informed consent, and were being exploited and assaulted.
Now Max Hardcore, on the other hand... if you're a performer today, you've got absolutely no excuse not to know what the hell you're getting into when you step onto a Max Hardcore shoot. That may not have been true ten years ago, but nowadays the opportunity for informed consent is there, and while I don't like what he does -- I find it distasteful on a personal level and bad for the industry on a professional one -- I can't really say that he should be stopped from producing it, or you from masturbating to it.
5) That scene where Darren James infected Laura Roxx with HIV: OK, so there's a waiver that you sign before you do a professional porn scene, and if you're barebacking -- especially if you're double-anal barebacking for the first time -- there's a certain level of risk that you voluntarily assume. I can't really see any ethical difference between enjoying that scene and watching, say, a motorcycle stuntman trying to jump a half-dozen burning cars, failing, falling and breaking his neck. In both the sex scene and the hypothetical stunt, the performers knew they were being filmed for an audience, they knew (or had ample opportunity to learn) that there was a certain level of risk, they took money in exchange for accepting those risks and they drew the short straw. But you know, I don't think I could stay friends with you if you got off to watching this scene. I can't say it's unethical per se, but it sure as hell is repugnant.
6) Bug-chasing movies: Yeah, I know they're probably mostly (if not all) fake, but I don't care. I'm all for people's rights to have unprotected sex, to fuck who they want, to risk catching what they want and to commit suicide when they want, but I cannot get behind the idea of someone deliberately facilitating, promoting, exploiting and profiting from some pathological and intentionally fatal expression of a homosexual's twisted self-loathing, or the eroticization thereof.
So? What do y'all think? I know not all of you agree with me, so let's hear it.
--Mikey Mongol
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