Good news, everyone! I have a new post up on Luna Luna, in which I transcribed the sort-of-funny, sort-of-frustrating, sort-of-fantastic conversation-slash-argument I had with the protestors outside the NYC Porn Film Festival back on February 28.
A niblet:
Lynsey G: I do feel like you’re making a lot of generalizations here about people who make porn, as if they’re all the same. And that’s not true.
Protestor: First of all, fundamentally, to be personal… to be frank… I’m not against sex. Ok, I love sex.
Lynsey G: Awesome.
Protestor: But by definition, I think pornography is about treating… Is about the objectification of people. Sex is a relationship.
Lynsey G: What about porn that’s made by people who are in a relationship, and want to put that on video?
Protestor: But that’s not what defines pornography. I would call that eroticism. There’s a difference between pornography, which comes from “pornographis” which is about concubines, right…
Lynsey G: “Writing about prostitutes” is the Greek translation, I believe.
The protestor I spent most of the time talking to was a smart woman who had some ideas I absolutely agreed with. But I couldn’t agree that making sweeping generalizations about “porn” as a monolithic entity would get us anywhere.
In the end I gave her the name of a queer feminist trans woman who makes documentary porn about the trans experience, and we went our separate ways.