A few things strike me about this commentary on DIY/indie/alt/queer/whatever you want to call it online porn.
I want to challenge the idea of being "beyond commercial porn" - I think its important to not be completely derisive about commercial porn, because commerce plays a very important role in the forward motion of the sex industry. I don't necessarily think that imagining the world of alt porn as "social [zone] for people who may be sick of beauty standards or who dont care about the demands of commodity culture" is 100% useful. SuicideGirls is an excellent and extreme example of this - on the surface, in the visual expression of what is happening on the site, the models and site owners step outside of the norms of beauty standards and have created an alternative social sphere. However, the company was modeled after standard adult industry business models, which are inherently exploitative and disempowering for the models, who don't own or have control over content featuring them. I personally would like to see a unity between better business practices and diverse visual offerings in the adult industry, and I don't think representation and commerce should be separated from each other in this way. To participate in the sex industry, to put naked pictures online, even if the model has control, is the essence of commodification. I don't think its possible to opt out of commodification if you're going to tangle with porn. (To position myself in this struggle, I'll say that I've been involved in the adult industry in various ways for the past six years as an academic researcher, curator, and sex worker magazine editor, as well as a sex worker, alt porn model and more recently as an adult film producer and director) -- Audacia Ray Waking Vixen Productions PO Box 20690 - NY, NY 10009 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wakingvixen.com Phone: 917.334.8618 Fax: 718.504.6252 Also: $pread Magazine - Executive Editor - http://spreadmagazine.org Fleshbot - Contributor - http://fleshbot.com MySpace - http://myspace.com/audacia Flickr - http://flickr.com/photos/wakingvixen/ _______________________________________________ Netporn Mailing List Netporn-l@listcultures.org list: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/netporn-l_listcultures.org links: http://del.icio.us/netporn
