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Can Interracial Porn Ever Not Be Racist?
New York, 6:07 AM
Tue Nov 10
67 posts in the last 24 hours
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Can Interracial Porn Ever Not Be Racist? |
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07/11/09
But then, porn is by nature superficial. Even "racially enlightened" porn would be trading on the substance of race itself--appearance. If you're going to purposely look for porn with a Latina in it, it's going to be because you like to see a typical Latina body, and not because you're interested in the cultural perspective she brings to the film.
And stereotypes are useful for establishing the dynamics of a scene really quickly ("Innocent schoolgirl + neighborhood thug"), so that the actors can start fucking. And porn LOVES breaking taboos. That's part of its appeal.
What can you do?
07/11/09
I wrote a story about the bizarre history of MAKING "interracial" porn in 1986, which was killed by the editor at AVN, at that time, because it was so "offensive." Hey, I just quoted everyone exactly as they delivered!
Here's the link:
http://susiebright.blogs.com/Inter-RacialandBlackVideos.pdf
07/10/09
5) and asian men are left completely out, I can safely say I have never, ever seen an asian male in american porn. its sad.
07/13/09
07/10/09
Then I thought, "But it hasn't been 30 years yet."
And THEN I thought, "Oh, they mean 'triple X'! As in porn!"
Clearly I don't watch enough porn.
07/11/09
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07/10/09
Maybe I'm just extra sensitive because I'm black, but I somehow feel that porn stars of color, even more so than white porn stars, are being degraded and somehow exploited beyond "normal" pornographic levels. If I'm being totally honest, I guess I just feel more comfortable watching two white people acting in "socially deviant" ways, because it doesn't reflect on me in any way that way.
07/10/09
Watching white on white porn allowed me not think of the performers as people I might know. Watching porn with even one black person in it always reminded me of someone I knew or cared about and then I would be too busy worrying about the personal choices of the performers to derive any titillation from the sex.
Another interesting thing for me in my teens used to be that when I imagined people fucking they would be white. But when I imagined steamy, sexy, romantic love it would always be black--the key focus of the romance for me was black skin gliding over black skin. It took me a long time to get a place where I stop making the separation and humanise all types of sex.
What do you think it is? Do you think it's because we just see so much white on white sex (or at least suggestions of it) in movies and TV and society in general that we normalise it and see other black people engaging in sexual acts as immoral or aberrant? And so for black people to have sex it had to be loving and romantic for us to not feel shame about it? (like Morris Chestnut and Vivica Fox's sex scene in Two Can Play That Game, Allen Payne and Jada Pinkett's love scene in Jason's Lyric etc) ?
07/10/09
But, there's also a lot of amateur porn that tries to mimic big studio productions and dialogue which tend to lean more towards the cliche, trashy, and stereotypical underpinnings of porn.
I think its easier to find non-racist interracial sex scenes between black men and white women because black women aren't valued in society and are faced with the double whammy of race and gender intersecting to create a whole host of problems that white women do not face. White men are on the top half of the social totem pole due to their freakish amount of social power, and black women will always be at the bottom. In the black man and white woman pairing; the black male has more social power by virtue of his gender but the same does not hold true for a black women because of their lack of penile ownership. *
* This is lacking a lot of fancy sociology terms and theories but my brain is on a staycation and wont be back until school starts.
07/11/09
I think you're right, although please don't say that "black women will always be at the bottom."
Makes me want to go out the window.
07/13/09
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http://jezebel.com/5309158/men-women-and-cuckold-fetishists-male-pr...
07/10/09
Interestingly enough, the first vagina shown on U.S television was a black woman's because the white TV executives thought it was less disrespectful to "womanity" (loads of racial subtext there right)
07/10/09
The simple answer, for me, is sex is often about power, and racism is definitely about power. So......
As for your final question, could it be that we're more accustomed to seeing black men coupled with white women? I don't even know if that's true, it just seems like it is.
I also find it interesting that 90% of the top non-racist porn involved no other POC besides Black people. Which means that every porn featuring a person of Asian (well, let's face it, probably only women here) or Latin descent, for example, is?
07/10/09
It's definitely true. I'm in a BW-WM coupling and my boyfriend and I never find any porn of the same. White female/black male couplings are definitely more common IRL and the rule the interracial porn genre as well. It upsets me but what are you going to do. I think many Black women feel that they are betraying their race should they be with a White man, where some Black men..see it as an achievement. Messed up all around.
07/10/09
The assumption is that the naked female form is of European descent and looks a certain way. The shading of black women's nipples, the proportions of our bodies, the contrast of flesh inside of our vaginas etc--these are all things that are underrepresented in mainstream depictionns of the naked female form. (Think of semi-naked women used to sell everything/seen in art and how few of them are brown). Sometimes it seems to me like the presence of brown-skinned female body parts--- just because of this dearth of exposure and because the meat market of womanflesh has such charged racial/slavery-related connotations for us past the basic feminist concerns---automatically seems to move any sex with us in it into fetish territory--even if the actual sex acts are pretty mainstream.
For example porn with black women is automatically kinky or special section porn even in the sex is just p in v and blowjobs.
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It seems like there is definitely a market for non-exploitational or abusive sex vids, even among hetero guys. Someone should really get on that, there's money to be made!
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07/10/09
I very rarely watch porn, but from the little I've seen, the lesbian scenes seem to be made for heterosexual men, not actual lesbians. My husband's lesbian friend confirms this, although I guess she's found some stuff that is acceptable. It really goes back to Kelsium's original point of how porn tells us a lot about the underpinning of social (read: Patriarchal, and Racist) attitudes.
I also think it influences attitudes about sex itself (the notion that you must shave, the growing expectation of guy-on-girl anal).
07/10/09
07/10/09
I do agree that underlying racism in porn is a reflection of the racism in society. Being that porn is one of the biggest industries in the country, it definitely is a good social barometer.
07/10/09
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07/11/09
I think it's important for us to remember that what may be "disturbing" to you may be what gets other people (including women) off. Just because it's not your thing doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
I'm a submissive and a masochist and I get off on the things that you've mentioned and deemed "disturbing." I also consider myself a feminist and consent to everything I participate in. I also respect myself and my partners, and my partners respect me as well.
I think it's important to think about the lens that we look at something through. There is a big difference from something consensual and, in your words, "rapey" and actual rape. As long as it's safe, sane, and consensual and everyone involved is of age, I say to each his own.
Having said that, if your husband is looking for sex positive heterosexual porn, I second the recommendation of Tristan's work, mentioned in the article, and would also like to recommend Tony Comstock's work at Comstock films. I Feel Myself (.com) and Beautiful Agony are also great. Also, as mentioned by another commenter, Abbey Winters and Kink.com are both great.
07/11/09
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07/12/09
Unfortunately, the only times I've come across fair discussion of BDSM and feminism has been in articles about the crossover between the goth and fetish scenes. Goth: Undead Subculture, edited by Lauren M. E. Goodlad and Michael Bibby has a particularly good collection, if anyone else is interested.
07/13/09