Me And Everyone I Know, Naked On The Internet

“We knew more about each other than most of our friends knew about us.”

This is a quote from Naked On The Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In On Internet Sexploration. It’s by a sex blogger, talking about how she cultivated friendships with other women online.

As I flicked through Audacia Ray’s new book, the statement rang true for me, because on almost every page I encountered names that I knew, blogs that I read, writers that I’ve worked with. I don’t think I was fully aware of how many people I network with throughout cyberspace.

In the real world, I’m horribly antisocial and I don’t have a huge circle of friends by choice. But online I’ve got social networks stretching out in every direction, and I regularly communicate with people I’ve never met.

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So it was kind of weird to have all these people I knew popping up on page after page. And maybe the fact that it’s all in a published book (you mean a real book? with pages and everything?!) makes it seem more substantial and worthy. I may be a woman of the internet, but I’m still biased towards hard copy.

There’s also a lot of familiar stories in there. Women who blog and use the internet to publish have all had similar experiences. Audacia herself talks about learning to love working from home because it mean she didn’t have to wear shoes.

I don’t think you want to know what I’m wearing right now. Suffice to say it’s very unfashionable.

Of course, my familiarity with the webmistresses featured in Audacia’s book is most likely because we move in the same circles and her interviews followed those circles. I may be seen as being part of a clique.

Thing is, I’m not quite part of the group. While I’m mentioned in the book, I don’t actually appear naked on the internet. I’m not “the talent.” I’m not an exhibitionist and, even if I were, I’m fairly certain the world doesn’t want or need to see me without my unfashionable clothes. I’m a writer, and I’m a porn webmistress, but a lot of my personal life is my own. So while I have a lot in common with the other women in this book, I’m operating in a different space.

I also need to comment on one aspect of this book concerning For The Girls.

In Chapter 4, which is entitled I Am Woman, See Me Nude, the book discusses For The Girls with comments from me. Audacia focuses on the fact that most of the visual content at FTG is sourced from existing adult content (in essence, we choose existing videos and pics that we think are hot) and suggests that using porn originally made for men may philosophically clash with our desire to cater to women. FTG is also contrasted with other female webmistresses such as Tasty Trixie who are the stars of their own sites and who create their own pics and movies.

I’ve long held that context is vital when it comes to porn. The basic physical act of sex is always the same, but how it’s presented makes all the difference. The majority of pornographic representations of sex are depicted in a way that prioritises the male viewer and the male experience, and the majority of language used is derogatory toward women (and toward sex).

In 2003 when we started, it was difficult to find depictions of sex that weren’t like that. We didn’t have the cash to make our own, so we just used content we liked (sourced after a lot of careful searching and sifting), and framed it in a positive, female-friendly way. We still do this because it’s cost effective – and it’s still a hassle to find good pics and movies. The majority of it is still male focused and, well, crappy.

So one of the services For The Girls offers is to provide a context and a space for women to enjoy porn, without all the usual bullshit.

Unfortunately the book doesn’t mention FTG’s focus on written content. We’re a magazine as well as a straight smut site and we’re big on articles and stories. A lot of that is exclusive to us and swathes of it is written by me. So I am “the talent” in a sense. Of course, being a writer doesn’t require as much guts (or good looks) as taking off your clothes for public consumption. And in that way, I’m not part of the clique.

I greatly admire the women who run their own sites, because they control their images and make a decent living from it. I work with sex on the internet in a different way and I’m coming from a different perspective. I’m aware that it may be considered less “authentic” than that of so-called “indie” producers, perhaps because it’s more commerical. Nonetheless I would argue that I’m creating my own version of erotica, one that appeals to me, and that For The Girls is a legitimate expression of female sexuality.