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Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada
I am a lawyer in Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada who enjoys reading, especially mysteries. Since 2000 I have been writing personal book reviews. This blog includes my reviews, information on and interviews with authors and descriptions of mystery bookstores I have visited. I strive to review all Saskatchewan mysteries. Other Canadian mysteries are listed under the Rest of Canada. As a lawyer I am always interested in legal mysteries. I have a separate page for legal mysteries. Occasionally my reviews of legal mysteries comment on the legal reality of the mystery. You can follow the progression of my favourite authors with up to 15 reviews. Each year I select my favourites in "Bill's Best of ----". As well as current reviews I am posting reviews from 2000 to 2011. Below my most recent couple of posts are the posts of Saskatchewan mysteries I have reviewed alphabetically by author. If you only want a sentence or two description of the book and my recommendation when deciding whether to read the book look at the bold portion of the review. If you would like to email me the link to my email is on the profile page.

Friday, January 24, 2014

More Emails with Jill Edmondson on Porn Movies

At the beginning of the week I posted a review of Jill Edmondson's new book, Frisky Business. I followed up with an email exchange about the book and the porn film industry. That exchange led to two further exchanges of emails with Jill which are below. I thank Jill for her prompt and frank responses.

For the first time I will advise readers that part of the following discussion will be disturbing and, even X-rated. I have deleted some extremely graphic language on what happens in "gonzo porn". Readers who want to read the actual language can follow the link.

The email exchanges have left thinking about the state of our current society.
****
BILL IN BLACK, JILL IN RED
 
Thanks for your prompt reply. Is it alright if I post our email exchanges on my blog ?  You may post the last exchange we had  (your email 19 JAN 2014 and my reply to it on 20 JAN 2014).
 
Before discussing your reply I noticed you did not respond to my questions about male actors in porn films. I would be interested, as set out in my email yesterday, in whether their backgrounds, experiences in the industry and effects differ from women.
 
Ha ha!  I knew the lawyer in you would get back to me on my “non” answer.  I was actually thinking about that as I walked to work yesterday.  Let me steer you back to Hedges and Empire of Illusion because that actually is my answer (albeit obliquely).  As mentioned, chapter 2 of that book was my inspiration.  It primarily looks at women, so I guess, maybe, that was why I looked at women. 
 
As I walked along to work mulling this over, I wondered about men and porn, and whether I should have looked at men’s situations more.  But the men’s stories never grabbed my interest the way women’s did.  I have no idea why that is.  Maybe I can relate to and empathize with the women’s stories in a way I can’t with those of the men?  Who knows? 
 
I wondered, after our exchange, if I should have aimed for more of a balance.  Then the little voice inside my head (a slightly defensive voice!) said “no”.   Frisky Business is a novel, not non-fiction.  It’s not meant to be an example of investigative journalism, it’s not a documentary.  It’s just the story I decided to write.
 
But Bill, you’ve got me thinking: Maybe in a future novel, I will take a look at men and sex and exploitation...  Hmmm...
 
I have not read Empire of Illusion. I do remember you telling me previously about your paper on Human Rights and the Sex Trade.
 
I dislike censorship but I do like regulation and taxes with regard to the adult film industry. I am not sure if any of the following has been done in Canada.
 
Agreed re: dislike of censorship, and yes to taxes and regulation. 
 
I deal every day with the issue of informed consent. I think the issue can be partly addressed by governments requiring consents from actors in specific forms which could then be monitored by public health inspectors.
 
I think Occupational Health and Safety should be setting rules requiring condom use because of STDs in the industry.
 
Public Health departments/officials certainly should be involved in the sex industry (that’s one of the many reasons why I am in favour of decriminalizing prostitution). Safe practices must be put in place and enforced.  But what would that look like in the real world of porn?  A lot of porn is amateur; a lot of it is underground.   
  
I think adult film studios should be required to be registered with Workers Compensation Boards for actors, male and female.
 
That is an excellent idea! 
 
I think there should be specific taxes on downloaded porn in the same way there are “sin” taxes on tobacco and gambling.
 
I agree.  I have no idea what the “mechanics” of something like that would be, but a sin tax on porn is a good idea.
 
 
“If we can get a man on the moon, certainly we can figure out a way to protect children from unwanted porn,” said Winnipeg Conservative MP Joy Smith, who is formulating a private member’s bill that would automatically block access to online pornography. Anyone wanting to access porn would have to contact their Internet service providers.
Mrs. Smith hosted a recent meeting for parliamentarians and other stakeholders in Ottawa, with speakers including Gail Dines, a self-described radical feminist and sociology professor at Boston’s Wheelock College who founded the Stop Porn Culture group, and Julia Beazley, policy analyst at the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
They warned about the increasingly violent nature of modern pornography and its effects on young users, which Ms. Dines described in an interview as a “public health emergency situation,” which she says is proved by empirical research and academic studies.
  
Whoa!  I’ll get back to violence in a moment, but I’m curious about what the studies/research Ms. Dines referred to have shown. 
 
I’m pretty open-minded, but a lot (not all) of porn nowadays crosses a line (in my opinion).  Much of what is produced today is not what one would call art, even in a loose sense of the word.  Instead, much of what’s available online is exploitative and degrading.
 
Go back in time, maybe the Seventies, and porn was one guy, one girl, a leopard print bedspread and a cheesy moustache.  You had to duck into a dark alley to buy it.  Then things got a bit more daring: two girls and a guy, or two guys and a girl, maybe a bit of “back door,” and so on.  Then *poof* fast forward to the 21st Century and the Internet.  Porn is now bigger, faster, nastier, harder, more degrading, and more violent that a generation ago.
 
Here’s a brief excerpt from Chapter Two of Empire of Illusion:
 
(I chose to delete the excerpt as stated above because it is so extreme I did not want it on my blog. Links below will take you to the excerpt if you want to read it.)
 
This short video (2:58 minutes) from BookTalk on C-Span2 gives a glimpse of Chris Hedges’s view on pornography: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOZLdw6n2L4  and here’s a link to read more of the excerpt from Empire of Illusion by Hedges.  http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/page2/20091011_the_victims_of_pornography
****
Jill:
 
Thanks for your reply.
 
I am left disgusted by "gonzo porn".
 
I would like to post your email reply, which includes my email to you, but I would delete the excerpt from the book. Frankly, I do not want to put up the extremely graphic contents of the excerpt on my post. I would post the link you provided to the pages in the book from which the excerpt was taken so readers of the blog could read the excerpt if they chose to follow the link. I consider your reply to provide valuable information to the discussion.
 
I agree with Hedges that "gonzo porn" cannot be justified as free speech.
If women in Canada are being injured by intentional violent acts during filming our Criminal Code should be considered. The Code does not allow consent to assault causing bodily harm.
I would also post this email and any reply you would wish to make to it.
Thank you.
 
Bill
****
Hi Bill,
Sure - go ahead and post my more recent reply.  I understand about not wanting to include the excerpt, but the link to it is good (for those who wish to read it).
---
Yup.  I, too, am disgusted by "gonzo" porn.  After I'd read what Hedges wrote, I was appalled and angry.  You can see from this where and how I was inspired to write Frisky Business.  
In the video clip I sent with the previous email, Hedges makes an interesting point about the inconsistency of folks getting upset about an exploited factory worker on the other side of the globe, yet accepting  the ways in which women in the porn industry in America are treated. 
I did not realize that "The [Criminal] Code [of Canada] does not allow consent to assault causing bodily harm."  That is very interesting and gives me something to chew on.  (I'm also thinking of this vis a vis the Workers' Compensation Board - which you mentioned in the last email).
I have no idea how big or small the porn industry in Canada is.  I'd like to think it's not terribly huge.  I  think the numbers to focus on, though, are the ones that reflect on the industry worldwide.  According to an October 2012 article on The Next Web:
"It is hard to know where the industry stands today. Some statistics put its revenues as high as $97 billion a year at one point in the last decade, with US revenue at around $13 billion." 
A more recent article (January 2013) on Huffington Post offers a similar figure for the USA:
"Theo Sapoutzis, the CEO and Chairman of Adult Video News estimates that the pornography business made $10 billion in 2012."
Also worth noting is the number of movies filmed every year. According to The Guardian (January 2011):
 
"[the industry] produces more than 13,000 films a year in the United States alone".

And finally, Business Insider offered a few disturbing facts about the porn industry:

-The online porn industry makes over $3000 per second
-There are 40 million regular consumers of porn in America
I could go on and on digging up statistics and numbers, but I think the above are enough for now.
What's more interesting and disturbing is what possible effects all of this has on the viewers.  This concern was sort of raised in the National Post article you mentioned in your earlier email:
"They warned about the increasingly violent nature of modern pornography and its effects on young users, which Ms. Dines described in an interview as a “public health emergency situation,” which she says is proved by empirical research and academic studies."
I have no idea about this; I've never looked into it, but my gut tells me that all of this can't be good for viewers (regardless of age).  It must surely have a negative impact on sexuality.  In fact, this article on Salon (October 2013) gives a first hand account of the detrimental effect an addiction to pornography had on one young man: 
"But porn didn’t visit my mind to spice things up; it colonized my sexual brain. Porn grabbed as much terrain as it could and wiped out whatever native culture might have otherwise lived there. Now, I can’t just complement my sex with a little visual arousal, I practically need it to cum.
This dependence is narrowing. I can’t have whole sex, complicated sex, balanced sex. I can only compartmentalize the many facets of sexuality. Sensuality is for massages. Mindfulness is for conversation. Emotionality is for hugs. Sexuality is for viewing. 
...
I need to focus less on avoiding the subjects of my porn fantasies — incest, rape, and S/M — and more on getting rid of the dynamic of them — addictive, isolating, voyeuristic — however I can.  This way, I can acknowledge my kinky desires and feel comfortable sharing them with a partner. This way, I can incorporate other dimensions of sexuality that I currently exclude from sex: sensuality, emotionality and mindfulness." 
I think I'll leave it there for now... Jill

 

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Bill and Jill,
    Thanks again for sharing your conversation. While I too object to censorship when it comes to fully consenting adults, one thing strikes me. There is a similarity (or perhaps better to say a parallel) between what's been happening in the porn film industry and what's been happening with certain kinds of novels.

    I do not in any way equate porn films with crime novels (um, but there are some crime novels about the industry..), but I've seen some major changes in the past few decades in what some crime novels contain. I sometimes wonder if it's a larger societal issue - not sure of that. What I do know is that in some ways there seems less restraint in what's written, what 's depicted and so on. Some of the violence and exploitation in some of today's novels makes Frisky Business look tame. And I'm only talking about crime novels. Look at the wider range of novels and you see it there too.

    I too wonder about the effects of all of this on readers. And I write crime fiction! It's a lot to think about and my apologies for taking the conversation away from your book, Jill.

    You've both offered a lot of 'food for thought,' for which thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Margot: Thanks for your thoughtful comment. You draw a strong parallel. Explicit sex and graphic violence make neither books nor movies better and often distract from the plot.

      Delete
  3. Ok. That was interesting. It goes to show you that times change and industries adapt to be able to survive.

    ReplyDelete
  4. With the these days,it shouldn't come as a surprise that
    people are beginning to study the effects of it on our sex lives. which is committed to
    abstaining from porn and masturbation,has helped researchers open the door to a better
    understanding of the effects of pornography on our lives.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryhd_pUwCIs

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for joining the discussion Scott, Thomas and Margot. It is indeed a thought-provoking discussion topic.

    Jill

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you to Scott, Thomas and Jill for your comments. I have learned from the emails and comments that have followed my review of Frisky Business.

    ReplyDelete