Ms Naughty looks at porn for women, feminism and sex in general
The conservative government in the UK has announced that all households in the UK will have to officially opt-in to allowing porn by notifying their ISPs of their intention. The Guardian reports: In the most dramatic step by the government to crack down on the “corroding” influence of pornography on childhood, the prime minister will say that all internet users will be contacted by their service providers and given an Read More …
Over the last few days the internet as been mightily stirred up thanks to Valleywag “breaking the news” that Tumblr had effectively hidden all 2 million-plus porn blogs. It had removed the “erotic” tag along with numerous other porny tags and inserted a robots.txt file that hid any blogs marked “NSFW” or “adult” from all search engines. I say “breaking the news” because Bacchus from Eros Blog had actually discovered Read More …
This is not going to be a very coherent post, I suspect. More of an angry “I need to vent” kind of rant. Hot on the heels of being censored by Vimeo came the news that Blogger (owned by Google) was giving users 4 days to remove any adult advertising from their sites. The email sent out to those who had voluntarily labelled their blogs NSFW didn’t bother to define Read More …
If you read my twitter stream you know that last week Vimeo deleted four of my film trailers (and two private full videos) because apparently the films had violated their community guidelines. The original emails I got said: Hello Ms Naughty (Louise Lush), Your video “I.M. In Love Trailer” has been removed for violating our Guidelines. Reason: Vimeo does not allow pornography or sexually explicit material. If you believe this Read More …
Deciding to use the word “porn” or not becomes a branding exercise and it can make a big difference to how you are perceived, by your audience, the media and even the law. This post looks at the p word in feminist porn circles. Read More …
You may be surprised to discover that October 21 is International Fisting Day. This is a day to celebrate and raise awareness of a sex act that is considered to be too obscene for porn. It was created last year by queer porn stars Jiz Lee and Courtney Trouble in an effort to draw attention to the issues surrounding fisting. Read More …
About this time last year I wrote a post called Beware These Skewed Statistics About Porn “Addiction”. I talked about preliminary research by two University of Sydney academics, Gomathi and Raj Sitharthan, who had conducted a survey of 800 people, focusing on compulsive behaviour toward porn, or, as it’s misleadingly called “porn addiction.”* The survey specifically invited participants who self-identified as having a problem with porn. Many of the questions Read More …
A while ago I went to Sexpo and came home with a showbag full of… well, I didn’t bother to look to be honest. I was too busy being interested in my new corsets. The bag got shoved into a corner of my office and ignored until I did some cleaning. Thus I discovered 3 freebie copies of softcore men’s magazines: Zoo Weekly, Picture and People. These magazines won’t win Read More …
I have had my first video removed from Youtube. It’s a trailer for “That’s What I Like” that I edited so it was incredibly tame (see above). Essentially it consists of shots of Mia talking about sex alternating with images of her kissing Andy. The closest the video comes to nudity is bare shoulders. And you can see that they are on a bed. Apparently that’s far too rude for Read More …
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (attributed to Voltaire) I thought I’d preface this post about censorship with that (overused) quote because the film I’m about to write about is exceptionally distasteful, disturbing and, most likely, trash. The Human Centipede 2, which has just been banned by the British censor, could well be the Read More …
Last Friday I heard that anti-porn author Gail Dines was going to appear on the ABC’s interactive program Q&A. As the public is invited to submit questions, I thought I’d add mine. It went something like: Gail Dines dismisses feminist porn by saying it’s not different enough from mainstream porn. What kind of sexually explicit material would be OK by her personal feminist standards? I signed it as “Louise Lush” Read More …
In the US bookstores Barnes and Noble and Borders are censoring the cover of Dossier magazine which features an image of androgynous model Andrej Pejic, shirtless. As you can see, Andrej is biologically male but he is also very pretty and his face may be considered to have feminine characteristics. Andrej has made waves in the fashion world by modelling women’s clothing, including a wedding dress by Jean-Paul Gautier. It Read More …
Back in 2008 a censorship controversy erupted over Bill Henson’s photographs of nude teenage girls. Police raided the gallery and shut down the exhibition, the Prime Minister called the images “disgusting” and a lynch mob mentality generally prevailed. Eventually the images were classified “G” (suitable for children) by the censors. Since that time the art world has become increasingly paranoid about censorship and have been self-censoring images of children, including Read More …
Wendy Bacon was a campaigner against Australian censorship in the 1960s and 70s. In this amazing article, she details the fight of students against censorship in those heady libertarian days. This was a time when the Minister for Customs justified bans on books by saying “normal healthy Australians would not be interested in the works of DH Lawrence and Henry Miller anyway.” Wendy and her friends conducted civil disobedience activities Read More …
In August last year, film director Richard Wolstoncroft decided to engage in some civil disobedience. He had wanted to screen the film LA Zombie, an explicit gay film about zombies, at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF). The Australian censors did not grant permission for him to do so – it’s illegal to publicly screen porn in Australia. Angered by the banning of the film, Mr Wolstoncroft organised a “public Read More …