Tag Archives: porn

August 26, 2021 · 9:14 am

OnlyFans Reverses Its Decision To Ban Porn (But They Deserve No Praise)

OnlyFans bans adult content in drastic move to reshape its business - SlashGear

Well, that didn’t take long.

Just a couple days after OnlyFans announced that they were banning most of their pornographic content, and after I’d commented on it as well, they’re reversing course. For reasons I’m sure had nothing to do with the massive backlash they received online, as well as the reminder of what happened to Tumblr, they announced they’re not going forward with this new policy.

In fact, they didn’t even wait to make an official press release or anything of the sort. The announcement came in the form of a tweet, which is very revealing in its own right.

Now, without trying too hard to read between the lines, I’d like to make a few comments.

I’ll try not to speculate too much into what went into this decision or why it was made so quickly after their previous announcement. For now, I think it’s reasonable to assume that it all came back to money. OnlyFans realized that it was going to lose way too much money banning porn from their site rather than fighting the legal battles waged by those who hate it.

In the end, money usually wins out and sex still sells, last I checked. It’s the primary reason why prostitution is the world’s oldest profession.

Whatever their reason, let’s not overlook the bigger picture. This whole ordeal revealed a lot about the sex industry, sex workers, and the moral crusaders who seek to destroy both. Remember, OnlyFans didn’t make their initial decision because they suddenly became Puritans and believed anything overly sexy would trigger the Apocalypse. They did this because their payment processors threatened to cease their service, thereby preventing them from paying their content creators.

It was basically a mafia shakedown, but the mafia in this case were being pressured by the organizational equivalent of Ned Flanders. Much of that pressure came courtesy of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. They may sound noble, but don’t be fooled. This organization is basically a tool of the religious right. They’re primary goal is to rid the media of all forms of porn, sex work, and anything that wouldn’t be censored in a 1950s sitcom.

These people are basically on the same level as he Taliban. I know that’s a poor choice of words, given recent events, but it fits too well.

That’s why OnlyFans deserves no praise for changing their minds.

That’s why their payment processors deserve just as much criticism, if not more so.

These people gave into pressure from a bunch of religious radicals who won’t rest until the world is as unsexy as possible. They may claim they’re doing it to protect children and victims of sex trafficking, but that’s just the sugar they mix in with the bullshit to make it more palatable.

I think it’s also telling that some of the most vocal opponents of OnlyFans’ decision came from sex workers. The site wasn’t just a hub for their content. It became a lifeline for some people, some of whom were just in desperate need of extra money.

These were not people looking to harm children or exploit the vulnerable.

These were just people looking to better their lives, as is often the case for those who turn to sex work.

The problem is that, due to the influence of moral crusaders and religious zealots, they’re easy targets. Few politicians or companies are going to get much backlash for screwing over sex workers. These are people who already face significant stigma and shame from those who refuse to accept the world isn’t as pure as a 1950s sitcom. Attacking the very mechanisms they need to earn their living is only going to make things worse for them.

Banning the mechanisms that facilitate sex work aren’t going to make sex work go away. Moreover, shaming and denigrating sex workers or the people who patronize them isn’t going to make people less horny. It’s just going to make people more desperate, more frustrated, and more vulnerable.

Now, I get the importance of making sure that sites like OnlyFans don’t host content that features underaged sex workers or people who have been coerced into this life. That’s a serious crime. That’s also illegal and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

However, trying to address that issue by attacking sites like OnlyFans is like trying to prevent car crashes by demanding that car manufacturers stop producing cars. It’s misguided, counterproductive, and puts peoples’ lives and livelihoods at risk.

There’s no doubt that this will continue to be an issue. While I think it’s generally a good thing that OnlyFans walked back this decision, I have a feeling the anti-sex, anti-fun crowd will continue fighting their misguided fights. This ordeal demonstrated that sex workers do have a voice and they have some power. They would be wise to use it moving forward.

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August 24, 2021 · 5:45 am

The (Bleak) Future OnlyFans And The (Ever Evolving) Porn Industry

OnlyFans to bar sexually explicit videos starting in October | Technology News,The Indian Express

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a wildly successful coffee company. You grew from a small start-up to a multi-million dollar enterprise by providing a willing public with quality coffee, which was made by a sizable network of willing workers who gladly supplied you with your product in exchange for a share of the profits. By nearly every measure, your company is a success.

Then, one day, you decide to stop selling coffee because of pressure by a vocal minority of anti-coffee advocates. As a result, you’re leaving all those people who helped make your company a success to an uncertain future while putting their livelihoods in jeopardy.

Now, what I just described isn’t a perfect analogy for what’s happening with OnlyFans, a site once synonymous with personalized porn production. It still helps get my point across. This site that owes much of its success to porn and the people who make it is ditching anything that’s too obscene for an R-rated movie on cable.

First, let me just take a moment to roll my eyes and share a collective groan with all who heard this announcement.

Second, let me extend a sense of sympathy and sorrow to those whose livelihoods will be negatively impacted by this move. Many content creators are rightly concerned about how this will affect them. These are people who were already in a vulnerable position in the first place. This will just make it worse.

It doesn’t matter what your opinion about porn is or those who make it. This action will negatively affect a lot of people in ways that go beyond what they do in the bedroom or on screen. If you ignore that, then you’re just being an asshole. There’s no way around it.

As someone who writes sexy stories and follows sexy news, I feel compelled to comment on this development. In case you need the full story about what’s happening with OnlyFans and why it’s happening, here’s the story below from NPR.

NPR: OnlyFans Says It Will Ban Sexually Explicit Content

OnlyFans, a site where fans pay creators for their photos and videos, is planning to ban “sexually explicit” content.

The ban will start Oct. 1 and is the result of requests from banking partners and companies that handle financial transactions, a spokesperson said.

Still, nudity is OK if it’s “consistent” with the company’s policy. It’s not clear what that policy is, and the company did not reply to questions. OnlyFans will be sharing more information in “coming days.”

Before I get to the bigger picture, I’d like to offer OnlyFans’ side of the story. They’re not doing this because of some sort of moral epiphany about the evils of pornography. Like most things in the modern world, there’s a financial reason behind this.

OnlyFans is a company and every company needs investors. Traditionally, most investment firms shy away from anything that’s too sexy or pornographic. It offends too many people who are otherwise uncomfortable with sexuality. Those same people may not be able to legally ban the content, but they can keep it from getting money.

That’s how they attacked PornHub in late 2020. In addition to making them purge a good chunk of their content, these moral crusaders convinced credit card processing companies to not do business with them. These same crusaders were even bolder with OnlyFans. They basically lobbied the same credit card companies to force OnlyFans’ hand. If they want to keep accepting payments, they can’t host full-fledged porn.

Who are these crusaders? Well, one of them is the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. That may sound noble, but read the fine print and you learn they’re an extreme right-wing organization with ties to the religious right. They’re not really concerned about ending sexual exploitation as much as they are ridding the world of anything sexual. If you don’t believe me, then please note these same people pushed Wal-Mart to stop selling issues of Cosmo.

They’re basically the Christian Taliban, minus the guns. Yes, I know that’s going to push the buttons of some people. No, I’m not apologizing for it.

If the only way your only solution to sexual exploitation is to create a theocratic state that censors, micromanages, and punishes peoples’ sex lives, then you lack imagination. You’re also an asshole.

There’s a lot more I could say about the people who pushed for this and/or support it, but I think that’s a waste of time. If fact, I actually take comfort in the knowledge that all this time and energy they put into stopping a single website from hosting sexy content will likely amount to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Why am I so certain of this? That’s because we’ve seen this movie before.

It happened back in 2018 with Tumblr, a site that had also built much of its userbase from hosting pornographic content. At one point, it was purchased for $1.1 billion. By 2019, a year after the ban, it was worth around $3 million. Even if you’re bad at math, you can surmise that is not a trivial decline.

This is likely the future for OnlyFans. When so much of their growth and userbase was built around adult content, it’s bound to lose most of its value. It can try all it wants to be as safe for work as any mainstream site. It’s going to fail because, like it or not, the demand for sexy content vastly exceeds the demand for workout videos, cooking videos, and anything of the sort.

People aren’t going to stop being horny because OnlyFans removes porn.

Moreover, the content creators who made their living on OnlyFans aren’t going to just give up on such a lucrative job. They’re just going to search for another medium.

That’s because the porn industry has been attacked for decades by every side of the political spectrum. In every instance, it has found a way to adapt and grow. Today, despite all the regulations and moral crusading, it’s still a multi-billion dollar industry.

As long as there are horny people in this world, the porn industry will find a way to get them what they want. Despite the efforts of moral crusaders, PornHub is still very active. It may not be able to accept credit cards anymore, but that was only a temporary inconvenience. Now, it and other porn companies have started accepting cryptocurrencies.

That actually might help them make even more money because, unlike credit card companies, cryptocurrencies are global, decentralized, and more private. On top of, they have the potential to go up in value. In the long run, getting the sex industry to embrace crypto might just make things easier in the long run.

It’s because of moral crusading and prudish investors that the adult industry has to innovate. OnlyFans may or may not go the way of Tumblr, but it’ll still go down in internet history as the company that screwed over the people who helped make it a success. It’ll also make whoever creates the next outlet for all things sexy very rich.

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February 26, 2018 · 5:42 am

No, Porn Is NOT A Public Health Crisis (But Our Attitudes About It Are)

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In his book, “Sex and God,” which I highly recommend, author Darrel Ray tells a brief, but revealing story about the topic of porn addition. It goes something like this:

One day, an anxious and distressed man walks into a therapist’s office. He tells the therapist he’s addicted to porn. He spends no less than six hours a day watching, masturbating at least three times in the process. Needless to say, this habit has completely disrupted his life.

He struggles to hold down a job. He struggles to maintain a relationship. His porn consumption is so all-encompassing that it is a serious detriment to his day-to-day living. He desperately seeks help and the therapist listens intently, hoping to help this man overcome this issue and forge a healthier life.

The next day, another anxious and distressed man walks into the same therapist’s office. He also tells the therapist he’s addicted to porn. However, when the therapist asks how much porn he consumes, the man says he watches only a few hours every week. He does masturbates, but not every day and never more than twice.

He holds down a steady job. He has a wife and kids that he loves dearly. He also comes from a deeply religious community where he’s widely respected. He’s terrified that someone will find out that he watches porn or masturbates. The guilt he feels is so serious and he desperately seeks help.

The therapist still listens intently, but has to find a way to explain to the man that the porn itself is not the problem. It’s the undue guilt he feels that’s causing all these issues.

It’s a basic story, but one that reflects the strange, eccentric nature of our attitudes towards porn. It exists. It’s legal. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, complete with some of the most heavily trafficked websites on the internet. There have been efforts to ban it in the past, but those efforts rarely succeed. Even in non-democratic countries, porn finds a way to feed the human libido.

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Despite this, there are still efforts by regressive people on both sides of the political spectrum who see porn the same way others see crystal meth. It’s not just an addictive drug. It’s one that has seriously detrimental side effects on those who use it and society as a whole. It’s one of those strange sentiments that both radical feminists and right-wing conservatives share for different reasons.

I don’t want to focus too much on the reasons for those sentiments, nor do I want to break down all the reasons why I believe they’re misguided. That’s not the reason I’m writing this article. In general, I try avoid talking about these sorts of moral crusades because, like other notable crusades, they tend to be more spectacle than substance.

That said, I have noticed the anti-porn crowd shifting their tactics in their quest to temper human desire. Rather than push for outright censorship, which is rarely popular in democratic societies, this crowd is attempting to label porn a public health crisis.

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The government of Utah, the current title holder for most porn subscriptions by state, was the first to declare porn a public health crisis back in 2016. Other states have followed, but the most notable is Florida, who managed to declare it a public health crisis after denying a ban on assault rifles.

Let that sink in for a moment. Florida says that porn is a crisis that warrants greater scrutiny than assault weapons, which actually kill people. If that doesn’t show just how flawed our attitudes are about porn and guns, then I don’t know what does.

Bear in mind that just declaring porn a health crisis has limited effect beyond bad PR for the business. A government cannot censor porn any more than they can shut down another multi-billion dollar industry with massive global reach. As CNN reported, it’s more a symbolic gesture, which is just a fancy way of saying it’s one huge act of virtue signaling. It’s as empty and worthless as any declaration can possibly be.

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While this crowd will eagerly cite studies that claim porn leads to all sorts of negative behaviors that destroy families and relationships, they’re just as eager to ignore the many flaws in those studies. They’ll also ignore data that suggests an increase in porn consumption actually decreases instances of sex crimes.

As I’ve noted before, human beings are complex, multi-layered creatures. Porn is just one of those few things that impacts a wider range of those complexities than most. It strikes at our moral values, our understanding of intimacy, our insights into sex, and our concept of love.

For some people, it has no effect. For some, it has a positive effect. For others, it has a negative effect. You could say the same thing for everything from fast food to video games to stamp collecting. When it comes to the effect, it depends on the attitude of the individual and how they’re wired.

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The republican party in America has made no secret of their attitudes towards porn. That attitude is not unlike the one of the second man who walked into the therapists office that I described earlier. It’s not the porn that made him feel so damaged. It was his attitude and overbearing guilt, which is often religiously motivated.

It’s for this reason that organizations like the American Psychological Association don’t put porn addiction in the same category they do with substance abuse. They’ve noted that the vast majority of porn consumers rarely suffer ill-effects. For some, it even provides significant benefits.

There is, however, a small subset of the population that struggles with it. By small, I mean less than 10 percent. These people are, in their own minds, hopelessly addicted to porn. However, when compared to the prevalence of alcoholism or prescription drugs, porn is hardly a fair comparison. That’s not to take away from the suffering of those people, but there is a context to it.

Image result for anti-porn crusade

Porn is not like a chemical you inject into your brain to directly evoke a particular effect. It’s not sort of mental conditioning, either. For those addicted to it, as with other addictions, there are other factors involved. It’s not the porn itself as much as it is the mentality behind it.

Maybe someone is using it because they’re just a lot hornier than the average person. Maybe it’s because they’re not getting enough sex from their current personal life. Maybe it’s because there’s a particular aspect of their sexuality that they cannot otherwise explore. Whatever their reason, the damage only gets worse when they’re racked with guilt about it.

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Everyone’s experience with porn, sex, and everything in between is different. Actor Terry Crews claimed he battled porn addiction, but absent any larger context, it’s hard to know whether porn was actually the problem or whether it was an effect of something else.

That’s the ultimate irony of calling porn a public health crisis. It attempts to label an effect as a cause, which isn’t just asinine. It’s utterly backwards and detracts from other, more substantive issues. By calling porn a crisis, it creates the sentiment that there’s this one, simple target that’s the source of all these complex troubles.

I can already spoil the outcome of that effort right now. Even if porn disappeared tomorrow, those troubles would remain. Those attitudes would continue hurting those who were addicted. It won’t solve any problems. It’ll just redirect those issues, waste time, needlessly spend taxpayer money, and further undermine our ability to be comfortable with our sexuality.

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December 7, 2017 · 5:56 am

Sex Advice From Porn Stars (And Why We Should Listen)

There are certain people who just love giving advice, but overestimate the quality of that advice. Usually, their heart is in the right place. They genuinely believe they have something to offer and are willing to share it. Sincere or not, though, their advice doesn’t always line up with their expertise.

When it comes to advice about something as expansive as sex, everyone likes to think they have a unique skill to offer. Ask anyone who isn’t a priest, mullah, or monk and they’ll claim to have the secret to a satisfying sex life, especially after a few beers. More often than not, those secrets are just a bland mixture of common sense and basic anatomy.

For the more advanced stuff, you need to find people who really do have expertise. When you want to learn more about building houses, you go to an architect. When you want to know about finances, you talk to a licensed accountant. Following that same logic, if you want advanced advice on sex, then you should consult a porn star.

No, that’s not the basis of a dirty joke or a kinky anecdote. I’m as serious as a rug burn on a newlywed’s honeymoon. A satisfying sex life is a major ingredient to a satisfying life, in general. It’s also the kind of advice that’s more than a little awkward to get from your parents or family members. As such, porn stars are uniquely qualified to help.

Granted, porno sex and actual sex are as different as drag racing and your typical morning commute. Sure, porn can be a great way to spice things up, as can reading sexy novels. It shouldn’t be your sexual baseline any more than Ron Jeremy should be the baseline for penis size.

Even if porn is essentially a Photoshopped version of sex, those involve have more experience with sex than 99 percent of us ever will. You don’t have that much experience without gaining some level of expertise. That’s why I’ve compiled a few tips from famous porn stars, courtesy of the fine folks at Women’s Health Magazine and Maxim.

Beyond the advice, I’d also like to highlight its merits. Porn stars may engage in the kind of sex that most people without fake tits or a nine-inch cock can only dream of, but experience is experience. That’s why their advice should carry more weight than most.

Porn Star Sex Tip #1: Alternate Between Foreplay And Intercourse

This one comes courtesy of Jessica Drake, a veteran porn star that most men will claim not to know, but are definitely aware of. It’s also my favorite sex tip ever and one I try to employ in my sexy novels at every turn.

I’ve already made my love of foreplay known, but it’s one of those things that’s worth belaboring. Using it in conjunction with all the juicier bits of sex makes for a potent combination. With it, the physical act of sex gains a whole new dimension.

It becomes intense, emotional, and even a little exhausting. A porn star knows all those things in their work, but it works just as well for ordinary people. A little sex here, followed by some foreplay, followed by some more sex, and followed by even more foreplay doesn’t just mix it up. It turns up the heat, the energy, and everything else that goes into sex.

If you only follow one tip from one porn star, make it this one. You and your lover will be glad you did.

Porn Star Sex Tip #2: Talk Dirty

This is another one of those tips that uniquely appeals to aspiring erotica/romance writers. I kind of have to have my characters talk dirty in order to set the tone, build the passion, and create drama.

Porn stars have to use it too. It’s how they keep a scene hot and sexy to improve the overall experience. Again, this comes from Jessica Drake, who is known to have as dirty a mouth as any porn star can claim. However, that kind of talk isn’t relegated to porn stars and erotica/romance writers.

A big part of great sex involves communication. Talking dirty, while not the most refined form of conversation, helps convey your desires. Sure, it can get vulgar and crude at times, but that kind of rhetoric is uniquely appropriate for the bedroom. Also, crude and vulgar also tends to be blunt and easy to understand. It might just be the easiest way for lovers to communicate their desires so it makes sense to use it.

Porn Star Tip #3: Listen To EVERYTHING

This tip is deceptively simple, but exceedingly important. It comes from a male porn star named Ryan Driller. You might not recognize the name, but if you’ve been on the internet for more than a year, you’ve probably seen his face or his penis. The man has acted in both straight and gay porn so he knows how to tend both sides of the field.

Unlike dirty talk, though, this kind of listening involves more than just getting the right moans out of your partner. When Ryan Driller says listen to everything, he means everything. That means listening to your partner’s breathing, their heartbeat, and the way they react to every move you make.

Even with dirty talk, some people are going to struggle to convey their wants and needs in the bedroom. Sometimes, you have to be the one who listens to those subtle queues and make the most of them. Sure, it’s more work, but the end result is a more satisfied partner who think you can read their mind. Is there any other kind of work that’s more worth it?

Porn Star Tip #4: Make Your Lover Feel Desired

This is one of those sex tips that should be common sense, but is easy to forget in the heat of the moment. It’s also another one of those tips that takes center stage in erotica/romance novels like mine. However, in the real world, that sentiment becomes an afterthought all too often.

This tip comes from Veronica Vain, who doesn’t have the same pedigree as Jessica Drake, but still has enough experience to know the value of desire. Porn stars may make their living having crazy kinky sex with people they don’t have any emotional connection with, but they still have feelings. They still share in basic concepts of desire.

Making your partner feel desired is another one of those things that takes work. Again, it’s the kind of work that’s worth doing. It gives depth and meaning behind the basic mechanics of sex. Put in that work and those actions become more than basic. The more desired your partner feels, the more they’ll desire you. Everybody wins and has orgasms. That’s as big a win-win as you’ll ever get.

Porn Star Tip #5: Pay Attention To Your Needs

This is one more tip from Jessica Drake. Like I said, she has a lot of experience. As such, she has a lot of intimate wisdom to share. This is also a tip that most other porn stars tend to give, on and off the camera. Porn stars don’t always get to prioritize their needs any more than a baker prioritizes theirs when they’re making a cream pie. Actually, that might not be the best terminology for this discussion.

Whatever the case, the nature of a porn star’s work means they know the value of their needs better than most. They also know that taking care of those needs can add to the spectacle, as many porn scenes and sexy novels. This is one of those tips that works as well in real life, as well as porn and novels.

Sure, it’s important to put in the work, as I’ve stated with other tips. However, that doesn’t mean doing all the work. Sex is supposed to be mutual. Sex that involves one person doing everything while the other just lays there is barely a step above masturbation.

Meeting your needs is an important part of sex, although it’s not the only part. However, taking care of them helps ensure that everything else after that is just a bonus. When used in conjunction with the other tips, it can make for one hell of a bonus.

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September 23, 2017 · 7:35 am

Sex Dolls, Porn Stars, And Preserving Sex Appeal

Picture, for a moment, a time when your spouse, lover, or favorite celebrity looked their absolute best. It might have happened years ago. It might have been last Tuesday. Just take a mental snapshot of that image, recounting every minute detail of that beauty everything that went into it. Take all the time you need.

Do you have that image? Good, then keep it in your head for a bit longer because now I want you to imagine being able to preserve it in a physical, tangible, and exceedingly sexy form. It doesn’t just have to be a vivid memory or a daydream, which is prone to fading easily. It can be something you can actually revisit when you’re feeling nostalgic, horny, or both.

Enter the world of RealDolls, the Apple/Google/Amazon of realistic sex dolls. These are not cheap blow-up dolls that a teenage boy hide under his bed. These are advanced, sophisticated replicas that capture the look, feel, and texture of real human flesh. They’re basically the closest we have to sex robots, albeit without the robot part.

I’ve mentioned RealDolls a couple of times on this blog in various articles, often when discussing sex robots. They are currently on the cutting edge of this field, but that edge has tried to sharpen itself in a whole new way recently.

Back in 2013, the company began doing something that was probably bound to happen at some point. It began making its trademark sex dolls using the bodies, figures, and curves of real-life porn stars. That means famous figures, in the literal sense of the word, like Jessica Drake, Asa Akira, and a whole bunch of other names that men pretend they don’t recognize can be the basis for their ideal sex doll.

In a sense, it’s an extension of the porn people already watch. Most viewers will never get the opportunity to have sex with these famous porn stars. These replicas will give them the next best thing without resorting to illegal cloning, which is far more trouble than it’s worth these days. As the technology and materials improve, that gap might eventually become negligible.

In terms of economics, everyone comes out a winner here, in some cases literally. The company, RealDolls, gets perfect models that don’t have to be customized with every purchase. The porn stars get a cut of the profits from each sale. The customers get to actually live out their sexy fantasy, to some extent.

Granted, the men who buy these dolls will be subject to stigma, just as the women who work in porn are subject to stigma. Sex and stigma go together almost as much as dirty bed sheets, candles, and lube. However, that stigma may be stretched more than most expect.

That’s because those same economics I mentioned earlier are changing. The sex industry is undergoing some pretty major shake-ups that most people aren’t aware of, if only to preserve their browser history. DVD sales, website subscriptions, and the live sex shows that once fueled the industry are declining in sales. Between piracy and the porn-centric tube sites that some probably have open in another tab, that’s understandable.

It’s a lot more challenging today to make a living in the sex industry. Whether you’re a big-breasted, big-dick star or a simple producer, you’re feeling the hit on the profit margins in an era where everything ends up online for free and few have the legal muscle to ally themselves with such a seedy industry.

The challenge is how will the porn stars of the future turn a profit from their sexy trade? Even beyond porn stars, what about other celebrities whose star has fallen and need to license their name behind something other than a clothing line? Well, RealDolls has set the precedent. That’s usually all anything takes to become a trend.

Legally speaking, the laws are already in place. RealDolls even says on their website that they cannot legally create a doll to look like a particular celebrity, alive or dead. That would be like Photoshopping someone’s face into unflattering photos. So anyone hoping for their own personal Jennifer Lawrence sex doll will be out of luck.

Then again, who’s to say that Jennifer Lawrence won’t need extra money at some point in the future? What if she, or some other celebrity like Channing Tatum or Taylor Swift, see licensing their appearance as just another revenue stream? Legally, they could do that and make a great deal of money in the process. The box office for “Magic Mike” alone proves there is market for a Channing Tatum sex doll.

It would be difficult now because today, even if you wanted to buy a sex doll that resembled a porn star who has licensed her appearance, it’s still obscenely expensive. These life-like sex dolls cost almost as much as a used car, mostly because of the materials involved and the labor that goes into them.

That process is going to need to improve before celebrity sex dolls become a viable business investment. RealDolls might be on the cutting edge of the industry, but that industry has not yet had its version of Henry Ford or Ray Kroc come along. That person is probably alive right now, but just doesn’t know it.

Once someone finds a way to bring the cost of these things down, then that’s when things get interesting and not just in the sexy sort of way. Again, I need everyone to think back to that mental image I described at the beginning of this post. I promise this is the last time, but it’s part of a larger point.

After the technology behind sex dolls improves, then chances are they won’t just be used for sex. Imagine someone who lost their spouse and refuses to let them go. A lifelike sex doll could provide comfort. Imagine someone develops a terminal disease and can’t easily be intimate with someone. A lifelike sex doll could provide at least some form of intimacy to improve their quality of life.

In the end, that’s the ultimate goal of these products, beyond the sex appeal. Before lifelike robots or Matrix-like virtual reality comes along, these realistic sex dolls may provide a stepping stone, of sorts, that bridge the gap between fantasy and reality. It will likely start with porn, as many technological advances do, but it certainly won’t end there.

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March 18, 2017 · 10:49 am

Why Quality Erotica/Romance Movies Are (Almost) Impossible

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A while back, I talked about the box office reception that “50 Shades Darker” received and the implications this had for the future of erotica/romance in movies. In my assessment, as someone with a keen interest in the future of erotica/romance, I painted a mildly optimistic picture.

I had good reason to. After all, “50 Shades Darker” turned a profit, just like its predecessor. Sure, it was panned by critics, but that has never stopped trends in movies before. Just ask Michael Bay. Critical reception aside, “50 Shades of Grey” made a lot of money for book publishers and movie studios. That should be all that’s necessary to spark a new wave of erotica/romance in movies, right?

Well, maybe it’s because I’ve had some spare time while recovering from a terrible cold, but I find myself re-assessing my assessment. In doing so, I’ve surmised a number of major, almost insurmountable obstacles that will keep erotica/romance stories, like the ones I write, from being Jaws-level blockbusters.

Now I say it’s almost insurmountable because Hollywood has defied the odds and/or common sense before. I thought the vomit-inducing shit storm that was “Batman and Robin” had killed superhero movies for the next several decades. Thankfully, I was wrong and three years later, “X-men” came out. However, the erotica/romance genre has challenges that even superhero movies never had to overcome.

With that caveat in mind, here’s a quick rundown of the obstacles that hinder erotica/romance in movies. Yes, they seem daunting, but keep in mind that when there’s money to be made, Hollywood usually finds a way to exploit the hell out of it.

Obstacle #1: The Porn Problem

While the Mike Huckabees of the world may hate it, porn exists. Porn, as a genre and an industry, exists in a big way. According to Forbes, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry with its own line of major brands, product lines, and superstars. Names like Brazzers, Adam and Eve, and Jenna Jameson are all well-known, even though many are still reluctant to admit just how much they know.

This may be good for the industry, but it’s also a big reason why the erotica part of erotica/romance has such a big problem getting into movies. It’s because porn is its own industry that there’s this hard, unambiguous line between porn and cinema.

Show any typical movie next to a typical porn and it’s usually pretty easy to figure out which is which. Even if none of the actresses involved have boob jobs, it’s painfully obvious which one was produced by a porn studio. If a movie is going to be overly sexual in any way, then it’s going to either get hijacked by porn or associated with it. In either case, the romance part will be lost completely.

This is why the erotica parts of movies like “50 Shades of Grey” and “Showgirls” are so watered down. Sure, you’ll see a pair of breasts. Sure, you’ll even see a penis or a vagina every now and then, if only briefly. However, it’ll never be as overt or uncensored as porn.

Some of this because too much T&A will earn a movie the dreaded NC-17 rating, which means no major theaters will carry it. At best, a movie with that rating will end up a late-night softcore porn movie on Cinemax or HBO, which directly ties into another obstacle.

Obstacle #2: The Acting Problem

Here’s a pop quiz everybody should be able to pass. How many Oscar-winning actors or actresses in the past 30 years have ever starred in a porno movie? If you can’t think of any, then congratulations. You passed.

That’s because for actors or actresses, acting in porn or being too eager to take your clothes off is the quickest way to lose credibility in Hollywood. Now some actresses can get away with showing their tits more than others, as Angelina Jolie has proven, but those are the exceptions and not the norms.

For men, it’s even worse. Many male actors are willing to get naked on screen, as Leonardo DiCaprio has proven, but chances are they’ll never do a full-frontal where their dick and balls are clear for everyone to see. That’s usually the quickest way to get laughed out of any future audition.

This is a problem because good acting is important to a good story, especially one that involves romantic themes. However, good actors and actresses can’t get quality work if they’re too eager to get naked on camera. That’s because they’ll just be seen as quasi-porn stars of sorts who rely more on their sex appeal than their acting skills to make a living.

Now there’s nothing wrong with relying on your natural or surgically-enhanced sex appeal to make a living. Pamela Anderson is proof that this can work, even if she has become somewhat of a hypocrite about it.

However, for serious actors in Hollywood, it’s an unbalanced balancing act of sorts. Too much sex appeal means your acting skills become secondary. Without those acting skills, it’s hard to tell a meaningful story. Even if the actor or actress has those skills, there’s also the erotic acts themselves to consider, which leads to the next major obstacle.

Obstacle #3: The Performance Problem

By performance, I don’t mean an actor or actress’ ability to cry on cue. Think back to porn for a moment without opening a new tab on your browser. Why is it that many porn actors or porn actresses have such poor acting skills? Well, there’s a simple reason for that. Their acting skills are a secondary concern at best, if not an afterthought at worst.

The biggest challenge to being a porn actor or actress has nothing to do with actual acting. It has everything to do with actually being able to have sex in front of a camera, under weird lighting, and with a director barking orders behind the scene. It’s not exactly an intimate setting is what I’m saying.

Most men can’t exactly rise to the occasion under those situations. As a man, I can attest that our biology makes that difficult for us. Just as many women can’t exactly get in the mood either. That’s why male porn stars are judged more on their ability to keep an erection and why female porn stars are judged by their ability to keep the sex going, even after the mood has passed.

This is why sex in movies is so overly-censored. Even in softcore porn movies, it’s extremely watered down. If you do see a penis, it’s never erect. If you do see a vagina, it’s rarely that wet. That’s why the sex never looks real or genuine. It’s a matter of skill more than story.

Good actors and actresses have the skill to make a character seem real. Good porn stars have the skill to actually have sex in front of a camera. Few, if any, have the ability to do both, which is why erotica/romance has so much working against it.

Obstacle #4: The Stigma Problem

As I’ve pointed out before, Hollywood still has a few oddly outdated attitudes when it comes to sex. Again, just go see any slasher movie made in the past 30 years. The first person to die is always the man or woman who is too eager to get naked or have sex.

In any major romance movie, a relationship that has too much sex will be portrayed as shallow. A relationship that lacks sex or sex appeal will come off as more genuine. It’s an either/or scenario that rarely gets challenged and for good reason.

Too much sex in a movie will cause it too lose credibility. Too much sex in a romance will make it seem shallow. The idea that sex can actually complement a romance might as well seem alien to a Hollywood producer. That would be like claiming Seth Rogan can do a good movie that doesn’t involve weed. It seems outrageous.

Beyond the stigma within the movie, there’s the stigma outside the studios as well. As I mentioned with the acting issue, those involved in an overly sexy movie will get labeled as the kind of people who can only do movies that involve a lot of sex.

This is why few victims in slasher movies go onto win Oscars. They commit the sin of getting naked in a few too many scenes and they’re basically blacklisted in Hollywood. It’s not fair, but that’s how the industry works.

Reasons For Hope

Now if these obstacles make it seem like erotica/romance will never be a legitimate movie genre, I apologize if I give that impression. Granted, these are obstacles that few genres have ever had to overcome. Even with the success of “50 Shades of Grey,” it’s not like studios are clamoring to make knock-offs on the same level we’ve seen with superhero movies.

That said, there does appear to be an emerging market for more mature content that doesn’t shy away from showing nudity in more than a few scenes. How do I know this? It can be best summed up by three words: Game of Thrones.

Say what you want about the critical reception of “50 Shades of Grey.” There’s no denying the cultural impact that “Game of Thrones” has had since it debuted on HBO. It’s violent. It’s sexy. It’s downright gratuitous in the way it glorifies Emily Clarke’s breasts. It’s also a damn good story full of great acting and compelling characters.

Now that’s not to say “Game of Thrones” qualifies as an erotica/romance story. It’s very much a different kind of story, one that fits more into established fantasy genres. However, it’s willingness to use a balance of sex, violence, and story offer hope that this balance can find its way into other genres.

So while it may be a while before we see an erotica/romance movie, like my upcoming book, “Passion Relapse,” we’re a lot closer than you think. Sex still sells. Meaningful romance still sells. It’s only a matter of time before Hollywood finds a way to combine the two and make a boatload of money off it.

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September 3, 2016 · 8:27 am

Porn and the Hypocrisy of Pamela Anderson

Let’s face it. We’ll forgive celebrities for damn near anything, so long as they keep entertaining us. It’s a flaw in society. It’s a flaw in us, as a species. Our caveman brains will bend over backwards and even beyond that in order to rationalize our love/obsession/fixation with celebrities. We don’t care if the President himself is getting blowjobs while in office. We just want them to keep entertaining us.

However, there is one sin that even our flawed society has a hard time overlooking. It’s a sin so egregious that our brains will simply not allow us to ignore it. It is the alpha and omega of dick moves. It’s so disgusting and distressing that no amount of entertainment value can make up for it. So what is this horrendous sin? It comes down to one foul word:

Hypocrisy

We’ll forgive Olympians for cheating. We’ll forgive athletes for animal cruelty. Until very recently, we even forgave spousal abuse to some extent. We just can’t handle hypocrisy. It’s one thing to just lie to our faces. We all deal with lies. We all lie to ourselves and others to some extent. We can understand that to some degree. It’s only when someone elevates themselves with that infuriating holier-than-thou  spirit, only to be guilty of it themselves, that we get truly outraged.

This week, famed Playboy star, Pamela Anderson, joined the infamous ranks of celebrities who either are revealed as hypocrites or willingly embrace it. In this case, Ms. Anderson did the latter. She penned an opinion piece in the Walls Street Journal denouncing the porn industry that made her rich, famous, and relevant. She took a page out of the playbook of every anti-sex crusader, calling porn a “public health crisis” and decrying the effects it has on its users.

Now, it’s one thing when some sexually repressed, overly uptight, puritanical moral crusader denounces porn. We expect that from those people are are happy to ignore them. There’s no law against being uptight or puritanical about sex, nor should there be. They’ve always existed in society and will continue to exist to some degree. We can tolerate that.

What Pamela Anderson does here is far more egregious because she’s denouncing the very thing that made her successful. If she were to pay back all the money she ever made from posing naked, acting sexy, or just giving men something to jerk off to, then she’d give her words some weight. As far as we know, Ms. Anderson is still living a luxurious, celebrity-style life and isn’t planning to give it up anytime soon.

It’s asinine, dishonest, and just plain ridiculous. It’s not a moral stand. It’s a joke. That’s what hypocrisy does. It takes an issue and removes any critical, substantive context from the conversation. It gets reduced to a case study in what an asshole someone is for having the audacity to claim moral superiority over others, despite not living up to those morals.

Now I admit that, as a teenage boy, I fantasized about Pamela Anderson. A lot of men did. She’s a beautiful woman and she used that beauty to get ahead. There’s nothing wrong with that. Hell, that’s the the entire premise of my book, Skin Deep. I doubt Ms. Anderson would ever read my book, but I think it would be pretty revealing for her because it confronts the impact of beauty and how we use it to our advantage.

It’s not so much a flaw in our society as it is a byproduct of our biology. We’re inclined to be attracted to things and people we find beautiful. It denotes health, vigor, energy. To condemn us for this attraction is to condemn the very mechanisms that keep us alive.

Those same mechanisms are what drive us to these irrational rationalizations about everything from sex to religion to politics to tastes in movies. If I had a chance to talk to Ms. Anderson (and avoid looking at her tits long enough), I’d try to talk to her about why she feels this way about the porn industry now. I don’t claim to be psychic, but human biology does often utilize certain patterns.

As I’ve explained before in previous posts, and will likely continue to do so again in future posts, our brains are not wired to be rational or logical. They are wired for two primary functions: survival and reproduction. If there’s a force that hinders both, then our brains will work as hard as possible to avoid or overcome it, even if it means resorting to hypocrisy.

Being such a social, empathetic species, mental distress caused by guilt is a powerful hindrance. Guilt can impact our ability to survive in that the distress makes us incapable of fighting off a lion or a bear. It’s also not an attractive quality to the opposite sex. Nobody really finds excessive guilt sexy, either in our species or any other. So guilt causes a lot of distress.

To avoid this distress, we’ll lie to ourselves. We’ll forge thoughts, memories, and beliefs in our minds that are completely detached from reality, but they’ll make us feel less guilty and distressed so we’ll accept them. That way, our brains can function again. We can function again.

I suspect that, as an aging woman with children and multiple failed marriages, Ms. Anderson does feel guilty to some degree. She may not admit it. Admitting guilt is right up there with getting open heart surgery from a hammer in terms of unpleasant experiences. By denouncing the industry that made her rich and calling it a “public health issue,” she eases her own distress. Her brain can function a bit better now. It’s selfish on some levels, but understandable on others because we’re just not wired to accept such a distressing state. We’ll do or think anything to escape it.

Now to those who read her article, take comfort in the knowledge that it contains little in terms of actual research into sexual addiction. This is still a topic that is poorly understood. However, given the ubiquitous nature of porn, we do know enough about it to conclude that Ms. Anderson’s assertions are bullshit.

According to the American Psychological Association, pornography does not meet the same criteria for addiction that would put it on the same level as cigarettes or alcohol. It can be damaging to some individuals, but you can say that about many addictions from biting your nails to getting tattoos. While we’re all wired for survival and reproduction, there are many variations of that wiring and sometimes that wiring means porn will be unhealthy for some people. By and large, though, it’s not harmful to most.

There’s still more research to be done and for Ms. Anderson, it still won’t be enough. Like creationists, vegetarians, or Bigfoot enthusiasts, there’s no amount of scientific evidence that will change their mind. Their brains just aren’t wired to accept it. Even so, that doesn’t make this level of hypocrisy any less egregious. She can say what she wants, but she can’t expect the words of a hypocrite to carry much weight on this or any other issue.

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