Today's work/fandom collision

[rivkat]

So I am at this intellectual property conference, and the first panelist (who I like a lot) started with two provocative questions: How many in the audience thought of themselves as authors? (All of us.) How many had had positive experiences producing or performing in pornography? (Nobody raised a hand.) And here I am, sitting in the audience with the fic nicknamed “Kryptonian Sex Secrets” open on my desktop. How am I supposed to react? Would I have been more honest to raise my hand? I do think of some of my fiction as pornographic, even though it’s not a great term and even though it causes me some discomfort.

The panelist was talking about porn made with real bodies, not porn made with words based on imaginative conceptions of real (actors’) bodies. So she didn’t mean me, not exactly. But should she have?

Comments

[irishabastard.livejournal.com]

I am curious too, as to how an intellectual property conference speaker was expecting to effectively segue a question about positive porn experience among self-styled authors. Was the presumption that it was impossible to HAVE a positive experience producing or performing in porn? Porn, like art, is whatever you think it is, and whatever you like. So should she have meant you? Do you think of what you were reading as porn? Hard to say.

[chase820.livejournal.com]

I know from my own reading that there is still a lot of controversy in feminist studies over whether pornography--especially filmed pornography--can ever be healthy to produce or consume. Yes, female sex workers say that it's their choice to do this work, it makes them money and gives them independence, and what could be more liberated than that? But one has to wonder where the impulse to fuck people on film for money rather than, say, go to law school comes from. Both professions can make you wealthy and independent, but really--who's kidding who here? Does anybody really see Jenna Jameson as a healthy role model?

We've all heard the story of the girl who worked her way through Brown by stripping, but how common a goal is that? For every law student, aren't there a thousand strippers who come from abusive backgrounds, now supporting equally abusive boyfriends and/or drug habits?

I'm not quite sure where the divide between exploiting yourself and being exploited is, or if it even exists. That's why I prefer my porn drawn or written. At least that way I know I'm not enjoying the fruits of anybody else's trauma. Not that way, anyhow.

[irishabastard.livejournal.com]

I have heard that argument, and I don't necessarily argue against it. I don't have a point of reference cause if I end up doing porn, noone BUT me is benefiting. Having worked at a strip club on more than one occasion, though, I can testify that in my experience if a girl is a stripper or a porn star, she probably has some issues with self-esteem, a need for attention, cocaine, or all of the above. There are, however, more college students than you might think. Remind me, when we next speak to tell you about the group of prositutes in Holland who recently brought a suit to the international court of justice to get recognized as independent contractors, and won.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I agree -- there's no way she expected a positive answer. But then again, we're not a group that had much reason/need to participate in filmed porn, and we have lots of reasons not to admit so if we did -- probably we'd admit to being Republicans first.

The most sympathetic take on her position -- which I probably agree with -- is that law, including intellectual property law, treats porn of all types as speech and creative work. But there's another aspect to some types of porn, which is how it gets produced, and there are important questions about the participants and the true level of choice they have and the risks they face, from physical to emotional to social.