To call this situation “murky” as writer Lux Alptraum does, is an understatement. Fortunately, she says much more than that and really gets to the heart of a matter than may have no solution.
I began reading about the coercive, abusive video that appeared on MakeLoveNotPorn.tv yesterday and my first thought was “it was bound to happen.” If there is one thing we should know about the internet by now is that there is no fail-safe. Nothing, ever, can be considered above abuse. I love Cindy Gallop’s model and ideals behind MakeLoveNotPorn, but because digital is always hands-off, content that might not be ethically-created is bound to slip through the cracks. Can these be weeded out? Hopefully. Will some sneak through and stay on the site? Definitely.
(Note: Cindy has responded to the situation, but I cannot view it from my current connection. Read it here and I’ll be sure to check it out when I’m not firewalled.)
But that isn’t what most impressed my about Lux’s commentary. This is an extremely important consideration:
And while some might think abusive sex is something that can be easily screened for (like the MakeLoveNotPorn.tv subscriber who condemned the abuser’s video for its spitting and hitting), it’s important to remember that consensual sex can look violent and abusive, and abusive sex can look loving and tender: unless you’re a part of the situation yourself, there’s no way of truly knowing whether it was completely consensual or uncomfortably coercive.
Yesterday I ranted about an article that told me how to truly connect during sex—an article that I felt told me my connections were invalid. Here, Lux is pointing out that real-world sex takes many different forms, and like that proverbial book with that oft-mentioned cover—we can’t judge it. It has taken me reading Lux’s words to be able to articulate a thought that has been nagging me for sometime.
While I applaud the ideals of MakeLoveNotPorn, anything that self-describes as “real” is problematic to me. The “real” woman campaign. “Real men” campaign. These create an artifical “normal” while trying to escape a conventional version of normal. The realness of sex is too subjective to be minimized.
So, where can MakeLoveNotPorn go from here? Where can the idea of amateur porn online go from here? Where can we, who consume amateur porn go from here?
This might be the sex media question of 2014…
