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Friday, March 8, 2013

Savage Love SL Letter of the Day: Shut Up and Don't Do Porn!

Posted by on Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 3:47 PM

Originally published September 15, 2005:

A friend of mine is setting up a website with some of her friends for feminist (mostly queer) porn. I'm straight, and she asked me if I wanted to be in it, with or without my boyfriend of two years. After clarifying that I wouldn't be making porn with people I didn't want to do it with, and that I like it a lot rougher than would be traditionally considered "feminist," she said that anything I wanted to do was fine.

I discussed this with my boyfriend and he is more than willing to do it—but he said that it is my decision. I've taken a lot of naked/sexual/whatever pictures of myself for him, and I'm not particularly self-conscious about being photographed naked or even in sexual situations. I certainly enjoy my fair share of porn, and I'm not averse to giving back to the genre. I also think that the risk that someone would stumble across a predominantly lesbian porn site and associate me in everyday life with some girl with a nipple ring getting face fucked is slim to none.

Despite all this rationalization, I still feel uneasy. I am 20 years old and have no intention of running for public office, so if there is any time to do something like being in porn it is now. However, I still feel like something as permanent as pictures taken by other people for other people will end up where I don't want them to be. I don't feel like my friend and boyfriend are pressuring me to be on the site, but I do feel that since they have no issues with making porn for public consumption there is some repression that is holding me back. Or maybe they are the ones being ridiculous and I am being sensible. What do you think?

Pondering Over Revealing Nudity

My response after the jump...

I think you should shut the fuck up, that's what I think. Blah blah fuckin' blah! By the time you finish talking about whether or not you're gonna splash your tits all over your friend's feminist/mostly-queer porn site you're going to be so old that no one is going to want to see your tits. It's abundantly clear that you're not comfortable with the idea of doing porn, PORN, and your reasons are rock solid. Pictures are permanent; lesbian action fans, most of them straight men, will find their way to your friend's porn site; your pictures will end up on dozens or hundreds of other websites. So don't do porn! Save those naked photos for your boyfriend, drop the whole tortured undergrad routine, and go back to being one of the tens of millions of anonymous porn consumers out there.

And finally, kiddo, consuming porn doesn't obligate a person to "give back" to the genre—and thank God for that. If everyone who consumed porn "gave back" we would have to wade through mountains of porn featuring pudgy, middle-aged guys before we found anything even remotely hot. Eesh.

 

Comments (28) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment
1
Are you drunk, Dan?
Posted by David from Chicago on March 8, 2013 at 4:01 PM
2
Oh, this is old. From when you were more edgy. I like it.
Posted by David from Chicago on March 8, 2013 at 4:02 PM
3
"By the time you finish talking about whether or not you're gonna splash your tits all over your friend's feminist/mostly-queer porn site you're going to be so old that no one is going to want to see your tits."

So, like. Wow.
Posted by Minerva on March 8, 2013 at 4:02 PM
4
Okay, so she's 27 or 28 now. What happened?
Posted by seatackled on March 8, 2013 at 4:05 PM
Hover Dog 5
This response had me grinning from ear to ear.
Posted by Hover Dog on March 8, 2013 at 4:10 PM
6
Hmm, 6 year old letter. Bet those for-the-boyfriend pics are cycling through tumblr as we speak. Always a smile when a friend's pic from long ago ends up in the feed (& a little disconcerting when it's someone who's passed away). It's not diamonds that are forever, it's digital.
Posted by usagi on March 8, 2013 at 4:11 PM
seandr 7
This babe is awesome.
Posted by seandr on March 8, 2013 at 4:31 PM
Reverse Polarity 8
Maybe you don't ever plan to run for public office, but do you ever want to be a teacher? Work for the YMCA? Volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters? Forget it. Any job or volunteer work with children in any capacity will be barred from your future.

Better yet, imagine, oh, 10-15 years from now, you are in the middle of an ugly divorce, in heated battle over the custody of your kids, and your ex's lawyer drags out your old porn. Say goodbye to your kids. Stupid and unfair I know, but it happens.

In the digital age, your porn will live online forever, and people will find it. (Facial recognition software anyone?) There is very little upside, maybe a few hundred bucks, and a huge potential for it to come back and bite you in the ass later in life, and not just in politics.
Posted by Reverse Polarity on March 8, 2013 at 4:38 PM
9
UGH DAN STOP BEING SO PUDGY MIDDLE-AGED MAN-PHOBIC. JUST LOOK AT THIS ARTICLE.
Posted by PsychoLinguist on March 8, 2013 at 4:43 PM
10
What 8 said times a billion. You will be amazed at what you will do in the next 40 years that you never imagined doing. Those who do porn are martyrs to society's schizophrenic feelings regarding sexual entertainment.
Posted by kwodell on March 8, 2013 at 4:53 PM
Sandiai 11
"Give back"? Girlfriend, please.

My favorite porn actually features "pudgy, middle-aged guys." Still, @9 is pretty funny.

Posted by Sandiai on March 8, 2013 at 4:59 PM
Tim Horton 12
I just fell in love with Savage all over again. Swoon.
Posted by Tim Horton on March 8, 2013 at 5:13 PM
eclexia 13
Was this the letter that kicked off HUMP?
Posted by eclexia on March 8, 2013 at 5:36 PM
14
Porn featuring "pudgy, middle-aged guys" is exactly what gets me off. So...
Posted by ghassan on March 8, 2013 at 5:38 PM
15
How old was Mr Savage claiming to be when he wrote this?
Posted by vennominon on March 8, 2013 at 6:42 PM
16
Gotta love Dan ... even when he's being a fat-fascist fucktard.
Posted by Phantom on March 8, 2013 at 6:53 PM
17
"Blah blah blah"? This letter isn't all that long.

But yes, this girl should be disabused of the notion that she'll never have to deal with someone noticing that she'd done porn at age 20. It's profoundly unrealistic.
Posted by DRF on March 8, 2013 at 7:37 PM
18
Poor earnest young feminist, bet she wasn't expecting that response! My response was to bust out laughing. Dan was in full form!
Posted by Snarky on March 8, 2013 at 9:13 PM
19
@17: Or by the time she's 35, she could easily deny that she ever made the porn? Like, come on. Porn doesn't have a timestamp, so you could easily say "What are you talking about? That chick is way younger than me. And I've never had a nipple ring." What are they going to do? Ask you to whip 'em out to check for the scar? Puhleeze.

The fact is these days that *everyone* is making porn. One amateur video just blurs into the next. I wouldn't even recognize my own fucking mom out of a field of 17 million.
Posted by gromm on March 8, 2013 at 9:14 PM
sirkowski 20
Good answer.
Posted by sirkowski http://www.missdynamite.com on March 8, 2013 at 10:05 PM
21
Eh. I hope she DID do porn. She was the right age and had all the right proclivities and the right friends. If not now, when? Dan, be a good little hedonist and dispense the correct advice.
Posted by dchari on March 8, 2013 at 11:26 PM
Looking For a Better Read 22
I feel that "I think you should shut the fuck up, that's what I think" could appropriately be the first line in every one of Dan's responses. Or it could be the catch phrase of a SNL skit about a radio advice show a la Loveline. Or maybe I'm just drunk.
Posted by Looking For a Better Read on March 8, 2013 at 11:26 PM
Looking For a Better Read 23
@19 - odd, because the rest of us probably *could* pick out your mom in a field of 17 million porn videos.

(sorry, I couldn't resist. I really have never met your mom nor observed her in any visual media, porn or otherwise. I did hear, though, that fnarf treated her to a chicken dinner last week)
Posted by Looking For a Better Read on March 8, 2013 at 11:30 PM
24
@19, I think denying that it's her in those videos/pictures is...not really a reliable strategy. Is there really no evidence that suggests when a certain video was uploaded to a particular website? Even there isn't right now, computer technology advances at a ridiculous pace (good old Moore's Law), and tracing information on the web is becoming increasingly precise. There are also going to be actual people who fucked her on camera and can testify that she was in fact the person being face-fucked. PORN clearly didn't fully understand the dangers of trusting other people with explicit photos and videos. What if she and her boyfriend had an ugly breakup and he put them online out of spite? Or maybe he had an asshole friend who stole them? What if he develops schizophrenia in his mid-twenties and does something batshit fucking crazy with them? @8 is right on about the damage it could do to her life. If you're going to make explicit photos or videos, it's stupid to cede control of them to another person, since god knows how your relationship with them might change, and it's your ass that's going to suffer if something goes wrong.

And it's true that there's amateur porn all over the goddamn place, but I think that a lot of people making it also don't fully comprehend the possible consequences. Blurry faces don't guarantee anonymity. A person could be recognized through scars, tatoos, piercings, or even the goddamn building where the porn is being shot, the furniture people are fucking on and the various kitschy knickknacks uglifying the room. Just because you don't examine images more closely doesn't mean that others don't. And something as minor as a nipple ring could come back to bite them in the ass. For example, if someone is trying to gain sole custody of their kids, they could easily verify that, yes, their ex-wife did have a nipple ring and there's a scar to prove it. People who are looking to harm others can be remarkably resourceful, you know.

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't make amateur porn, but it's a serious decision, especially if you're going to post it on the fucking internet! I'd say that if you're fretting over whether or not to make porn for public consumption, you probably shouldn't do it. Unless, of course, you're submitting something for HUMP Day.
More...
Posted by chicago girl on March 9, 2013 at 12:13 AM
25
Oh, one more thing for @19: amateur porn has a pretty wide range for production values, and you really can see people's faces pretty clearly in a lot of it. I got the impression that PORN wasn't considering doing something shot in a dimly lit basement with somebody's phone. If her friend was setting up a website, it's likely that they were planning to post good porn. You know, the kind that someone might actually remember, especially if it was uploaded to a specific lesbian porn website.
Posted by chicago girl on March 9, 2013 at 12:37 AM
Matt from Denver 26
@ 19, don't forget, hairstyles change, fashions change (even for lingerie - check out a vintage porn site sometime and look at what those bras and thongs), so those things CAN act as a timestamp.

Anyway, Dan was a dick with his response, and not in a good way. If that's "edge," he's much better dull.
Posted by Matt from Denver on March 9, 2013 at 6:45 AM
27
No one suggested digitally blurring the faces?
Posted by mother of two on March 10, 2013 at 10:54 AM
Sabotage 28
Blurring the faces is probably not sufficiently feminist in this context.
Posted by Sabotage on March 12, 2013 at 6:40 AM

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