Protecting Porn is worth doing for its own sake

Since this past week or so itch and steam have both succumbed to the powers that be regarding porn, I’ve been thinking about what access to porn means, and what creating porn is, and I’ve been getting kind of philosophical about it. I was even thinking about writing something about how even the Ancilliaries of Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch world have and enjoy sex. About how in sex games half the fantasy for me is a world where talking about and having sex is considered a normal part of life.

And then just about an hour ago I sat down and finally watched another episode of Interview with the Vampire which I paused after episode 3 about a year and a half ago.

Episode 4, if you’re not familiar, introduces Claudia, a vampire turned at the cusp of puberty. In the book, and now in the TV show, she is tortured by the fact her mind ages and her body doesn’t. She’ll never become physically sexually mature, but she still has a sex drive, she still has attraction.

And I already knew I wanted to write about the porn ban in some way but that really secured it for me.

Sex and sexuality have been topics entwined with shame my entire life. Something other people have, not me, despite the fact I became sexually active at around 15 years old. I never really understood sexual attraction the way my friends talked about it, and I was surprised and confused the first time I saw a penis by the way it looked.

But also, I remember being a teenager and reading people’s erotica blogs on some obscure blogging platform, and engaging in erotic roleplay with a friend, and not having the context for any of it.

And I was someone who a) wasn’t that intererested in sex in a “normal” sense and b) was extremely sheltered, and raised in a conservative christian household.

If I’d had access to porn, what would have changed about my life? Likely very little, but almost certainly I would have known more about how I felt about desire. About my own body, and about what sexuality meant to me.

I suddenly find myself at a rhetorical cul-de-sac. I’m not saying anything new, and to change topic now would mean going down a whole different road, so I guess I’ll stop here with some boring repetitions of well worn phrases.

Censorship of porn is simply another avenue fascists use to assert control, it serves no greater purpose.

Support sex workers. Sex work is essential work that is as old as society if not older, and sex workers will be hit hardest by this latest crackdown.

Embrace your sexuality. It came free with having a body, and even if you are completely uninterested in sex and masturbation for yourself, try enjoying the art forms pornography takes for other reasons. Don’t forget how many classical nudes are portraits of sex workers. Don’t forget that Shakespeare made jokes about sex and sexuality. Don’t forget that graffiti in Pompeii is often sexual in nature.

Even the bible, the text many of these fascists lean on when they legislate porn and sexuality, doesn’t shy away from discussing sex as a thing that happens whenever humans get together.

To finish off I’d like to make some quick recommendations for further reading, for people who are interested in exploring porn and open sexuality later in life, the way I had to.

Devon Price, author of Laziness Does Not Exist and Unmasking Autism is a trans man who talks openly about kink and sex on his tumblr blog. He also has a number of articles on the topic of unlearning shame and obedience, and why we shouldn’t exclude young people from discussions of sex and sexuality.

Hardcoded is a porn game about a transgender robot exploring her desire as a person and her tendency to be whoever the people around her need her to be in the moment. It explores a really wide range of kinks and expressions of (especially trans) femininity, while also being a dystopian cyberpunk critique of late capitalism. I highly recommend it.

Hien Pham, an artist for Oh Joy Sex Toy, is one of my all time favourite artists generally, but importantly for this topic he’s a gay man who struggled to find community or access to sexuality until his 30s, and many of his incredible comics for OJST are documentations of his first time trying something. He’ll sometimes pick something he’s never done, decide to make a comic on it, then recruit a friend to take part. It’s a wonderful and realistic depiction of gay sex, and the art is incredible.

Another game, Opportunity, a sugar baby story, is pretty much what it sounds like. A single mother in her 30s discovering that sex work is a flexible and enjoyable way of supporting her family.

Have a lovely week!