In Praise of Indecency

by Paul Krassner

  A slide show strip-tease starring a transsexual. A slide show, “BrazilianHairCut,” depicting a vagina being shaved. A close-up of a shaved crotch with the caption, “Democrats New Slogan— Read My Lips—No More Bush.” A parody of the MasterCard commercial, depicting four women smiling for the camera, but one of them has her skirt hiked up far enough to reveal her pubic hair, accompanied by a punchline, “Your Beaver on the Internet: Priceless.” A foreign commercial in which a woman rolls a cigar between her bare breasts (shades of Bill Clinton). A German commercial, “Nutcracker,” in which a woman emerges from a shower, approaches a plate of walnuts, and cracks them by placing them between her buttocks and squeezing (shades of the Hillary Clinton nutcracker). “HomerLookAlike,” with the face of Homer Simpson superimposed on a vagina. A half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal.

  Photos of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows. A folder of “camel toe” photos with close-ups of female crotches in snug-fitting panties (no more obscene than similar images in a mainstream movie, “The Weather Man”). A woman in a shower massaging her breasts, each of which is larger than her head. A video, “Upside Down,” presenting a contortionist couple performing oral sex on each other. A parody of a video, “BestWomanDriver,” of a woman who, while driving a car, gives a male passenger a hand job until he comes on her hand, and then she licks her fingers—all of which certainly seems safer than driving while text messaging. A video, “ChineseMassProduction,” showing more than a hundred naked Asian couples simultaneously fucking in the exact same position. Plus urination, defecation—but not in a sexual context—and bestiality. Plus the only video which really got me aroused—a dog that can play Ping-Pong with his tail.

  Well, Judge, you had to drop out of the Isaacs case and declare a mistrial. Not that you had necessarily violated the law. It’s just that your collection could be perceived as tainting your decisions in the Isaacs case. What’s more, it could conceivably spoil your chance to ever be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And that makes me sad, because you are known as a strong defender of free speech.

  It was poignant the way your wife came to your aid, though. “Alex is not into porn,” she stated in a 2,000-word defense of you on her own website, “he is into funny—and sometimes funny has a sexual character.” Yet another rhetorical question: Who’s to say what’s funny? May I suggest a game that’s going around which the two of you might enjoy sharing with guests at your next dinner party. It’s easy to play. All you do is take the name of your first pet and then the name of the first street you lived on, and the result will be your very own porn name.

  Sincerely,

  Skippy Broadway

  WOMEN AND PORN

  WOMEN AND PORN

  Along with everything else, the marketing of porn continues to evolve. In the course of an interview with Susie Bright—whose latest anthology is X: The Erotic Treasury—I asked, “What aspect of online porn do you like?”

  “The democratic nature of it,” she replied, “that you can search and you shall find. That its basis was all free, a free exchange. That it brought such authentic, first-person networking and connection with it. Before the commercialization of online porn, there were years and infinite relationships and conversations that had built up. This was before ‘spam’ was something besides a Hawaiian loaf with cloves.”

  “And what aspect of online porn do you dislike?”

  “The con job of it, like everywhere else. The dominance of big, boring, uncreative monoliths like the rest of mainstream entertainment. Blech.”

  But adult films aren’t just for men any more. That’s so 1970s. One survey showed that about 16% of men who have access to the Internet at work acknowledged having seen porn while on the job. Eight percent of women said they had. Another survey indicated that 20% of men and 13% of women watch porn at work.

  And what about the women who produce porn? Writer/ director Candida Royalle confesses, “I have absolutely no time for my sex life any more—I’m just working too much—and I’m engaged.” Certainly those who participated in an AVN panel about porn have a vested interest in it. Shirley Isaacson, co-creater of Impulse TV, used to be with the Spice Network, where subscribers viewing habits were monitored.

  “After the kids went to school, the buys came in very heavily,” she recalls. “Around noon they started coming in again. They stopped around four when the kids started coming home from school. So we know that women watch by themselves.”

  Carol Queen, staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, says, “Fifteen years ago you really had to give women a lot of encouragement. Today there is a sub-category of more diverse, sexpositive college-age women who wouldn’t think twice about liking porn. Women would like to know just why these people are fucking. They often love that they’re fucking, but they think that plot devices are fairly stupid, and they would like to see a little discernment in the way that the plot, if there is a plot at all, is set up.”

  Susie Bright adds, “Men wouldn’t enjoy movies featuring men with limp dicks. Well, women don’t like dry pussies either. They like to see women obviously getting off. I can’t repeat that enough. What’s funny to me are the producers who make hot stuff that women would like, who don’t have a clue how to reach women about it. The production values [of female-ejaculation videos like Cum Rain Cum Shine and Flower’s Squirt Shower] are terrible, the men are red-faced clowns, but the women’s orgasmic raindown is irresistible. Every woman I know who sees them has to go excuse herself and beat off.”

  Susie has reported on her interview with porn director Tristan Taormino, whose Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women won AVN’s “Best Anal Sex Release” award:

  “Tristan has a knack for arguing with powerful men in the movie business. Spike Tee asked her to be his sex/dyke consultant for his movie, She Hate Me, a comedy about—among other things—predatory lesbians on the Baby-Making March. Spike would tell her things like, ‘I really don’t know any lesbians that well,’ and then she’d look around at everyone who was working in his office and blink—‘Hello! Are you blind?’

  “He was flabbergasted at what she suggested, that vaginal orgasms are not the primary way women orgasm. She fought sooooo hard to get some realistic female sexiness in this movie, and after I saw the film, I was impressed with the battles she won and biting my lip at the ones she lost. Thank god she got a real vibrator in. She lost the strap-on dildo debate, though.

  “But from a ‘this-is-worth-noticing’ perspective, the sheer numbers of black, Tatin, Asian and biracial dykes in this film singlehandedly smashes the cliche that lesbian is for white college girls. There are so many heretofore ‘unseen women’ traipsing in and out of the sperm donor’s apartment (this is the comedy part) that their very presence is inspiring.”

  On the AVN panel, Tristan said about pom flicks, “It’s frustrating, because there’s a segment of the industry that is still hanging on to the fact that only a tiny percentage of their customers are women and couples. I want to see people who clearly love sex, I want to see them having a good time. I want to see a lot of amazing real female orgasms. I want to see toys. I want to see vibrators.”

  According to historian Rachel Maines in The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, the vibrator was originally developed to perfect and automate a function that doctors had long performed for their female patients—the relief of physical, emotional and sexual tension through external pelvic massage, culminating in orgasm.

  “Most of them did it,” said Dr. Maines, “because they felt it was their duty. It wasn’t sexual at all.”

  Which brings us to Sherri Williams, a casualty of the war on pleasure. She was acquitted of the heinous crime of selling nonprescription vibrators. She had violated an Alabama statute, which bans the sale of vibrators and other sex toys. The law prohibited “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”

  But the not-guilty v
erdict in her case was overturned by a 2-1 decision. In the Court of Appeals, the state’s attorney general defended the statute, arguing that, “a ban on the sale of sexual devices and related orgasm-stimulating paraphernalia is rationally related to a legitimate interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex.” Rationally related? Moreover, he said, “There is no constitutional right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm.” There isn’t?

  Ironically, the FDA has approved a device specifically designed to help women achieve orgasm, marking the first time that the federal government has licensed an aid for women with sexual dysfunction. “The Eros,” which uses the same basic principle as Viagra to promote sexual arousal—stimulating blood flow to the genital area—is a battery-operated vacuum attached to a suction cup that fits over the clitoris. The device, available only by prescription, costs $359. However, fingers, tongues and penises are all free. And still legal.

  This country was founded by pioneers with a lust for freedom and by puritans with a disdain for pleasure. The problem is that those who are still burdened by that streak of anti-pleasure keep trying to impose unnecessary restrictive laws upon those who are pro-pleasure. What ever happened to “the pursuit of pleasure” mentioned in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence?

  Ironically, journalist Gita Smith wrote in August 2007, “In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can’t sell sex toys. In other words, we are free to blow ourselves up at will. We just can’t blow up a dolly with big red lips and openings in her lifelike vinyl self.

  “Alabama is a vibrator-free state. Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown a gleam of interest in this controversial state law. At the very least, this case seems to be a restraint-of-trade case as much as anything else, since the devices are sold in all the neighboring states. I would like to be a fly on the wall when oral arguments are heard.

  “Justice Antonin Scalia: You say that the sale of the Twizzler-Twister should be banned?

  “Alabama Guy: Yes, Your Honor.

  “Justice Samuel Alito: And the Buzzer-Master?

  “Alabama Guy: Yes, that too.

  “Justice Clarence Thomas: What about the Coke can with the fake pubic hair?

  “Alabama Guy: That one doesn’t vibrate, so that one’s okay.

  “There is, and always has been, a strong strain of paternalism among lawmakers down here. And that paternalistic attitude makes them believe that they are the keepers of the Moral Keys. Us wee folk need protecting from sexual pleasures derived from plastic thingies made in China.”

  But, on the first Monday of October 2007, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys. A three-judge panel had upheld the guilty verdict of the appeals court on February 14. Happy Valentine’s Day to the roots of fascism in the private parts of America.

  Sherri Williams, who faces a $10,000 fine and one year of hard labor, called the Supreme Court’s decision not to review the law “further evidence of religion in politics.” She plans to sue again, this time on First Amendment free speech grounds.

  “My motto,” she says, “has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PAUL KRASSNER is the author of several books, a co-founder of the Yippies and publishes the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster (available at www.paulkrassner.com). He edited the groundbreaking satirical magazine, The Realist (1958-2001), but when People magazine called him “father of the underground press,” he immediately demanded a paternity test. He is a columnist for AVN Online and High Times, and the only person in the world ever to receive awards from both Playboy magazine (for humor) and the Feminist Party Media Workshop (for journalism). He has also received an ACLU Uppie (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom of expression, and at the annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam he was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame—“my ambition,” Krassner claims, “since I was three years old.”