Not too long ago, my friends at POPPORN shot me over a link to a blog. In two posts, its webmaster, Lynsey G, contends that rough blow jobs, in all of its gag-filled and mucous-inducing oral copulation, are rooted in misogyny. You can check them both out here:

Cock Sucking in Queer Porn: What an Experience, Part II

Cock Sucking in Queer Porn: What an Experience!

In a nutshell, here's what she's saying in the two posts: "I mean, who out there who knows about porn and calls herself a feminist hasn't given considerable time to thinking and bitching about the mainstream straight porn blowjob? It's easily seen and commented on as too violent, too degrading to the woman, too exploitative, too mancentric, and, well, too GROSS."

Terms like "Gender roles" and "ciswoman" (which, for those of you who aren't spending all your free time pondering how your genitalia is your identity, is a woman who thinks she's a woman and is born a woman — in other words, a "woman") are used a lot in these posts meaning she's approaching it from a very academic, very women's studies graduate-level point of view.

The problem with all of this porno-gazing from an ivory tower? It paints broad strokes and does not take into account details, though I'm not too sure she would care.

Lynsey writes: "Firstly, it's a damn shame that misogyny is so closely linked with porn in the first place, because as an industry that supposedly celebrates sexual pleasure and expression, the porn industry is unfortunately both the subject and creator of a huge amount of negativity toward women. It's not that blowjobs in porn are necessarily always an expression of male hatred for women; in a lot of cases they can be expressions of women's hatred for themselves, or very genuine expressions of extreme, hardcore sexuality that's being enjoyed by both giver and receiver."

In other words, there cannot be any women that actually enjoy gagging on a dick. And even if they did, and even if it was a normal blowjob, they really just hate themselves.

Or, it's ok. But not when it's on camera, because the porn industry hates women. All of the industry, including Andrew Blake, Michael Ninn and Suze Randall, hates women. Every. Fucking. One.

Wait, what?

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm educated and that I've always taken up the cause of a feminist — which Lynsey claims as well. However, unlike the author of those posts, I posses real, practical experience in the porn industry as a performer in front of the camera.

She fails to take into account that agents and producers consider whether the girl is ok with doing rough blowjobs or not. There's also fewer of those scenes being shot; from the way her posts read, you'd think that every guy was doing his best impression of a facesucker from "Alien" on every woman on every street corner in the Valley. If she'd also take the time to do a statistical survey rather than, say, shoot conclusions off the cuff, she'd noticed that it's usually the same girls doing gagging scenes and that there's really fewer of those scenes being shot lately.

I like sex. I enjoy working in porn. I think working as a performer and enjoying what I'm doing is not in conflict with being a feminist and yes, at the risk of sounding someone who's overintellectualizing, I find porn empowering.

However, I can tell you that as much as academics love to paint porn in shades of "gender roles" and "sexual identity," performers do not show up to a set thinking about the semiotics of the boy/girl/boy scene they're doing that day. I find it strange that porn performers always have to be symbolic of some archetype.

Ultimately, porn is a Rorschach test. People want to see what they want to see. Fans see hot, willing women and big-dicked guys who live life one sexual position at a time. Most of us who work in the valley see it as, primarily, a way to make a living. In the case of Lynsey, she sees rough blowjobs as "gross" — which is not so much an academic observation as it is a subjective observation — and therefore, it must be exploitive, degrading and "mancentric."

One of the first things that was pointed out to me in this industry is that people have their own narrow taste of what kind of porn they like, and anything outside that range is just plain strange. If you talk to straight men, you'll hear how they could never imagine seeing a penis as sexy. If you talk to gay men, they'll say they don't understand how a vagina could be sexy. While those examples are polar opposites, you'll hear the same thing for every sexual shade of gray between those extremes.

Though Lynsey says she's a pro-sex DVD reviewer/interviewer/academic, it's obvious she has problems with some aspects of the adult industry. Who doesn't? You might like eating at Morton's and maybe you've had every cut of steak they serve, but it doesn't mean you like the creamed spinach. Human sexuality is a broad menu and everyone has their own hang-ups and turn-ons, which someone coming from a scholarly or journalistic background would understand.

I think Lynsey G needs to keep this in mind when she's making her own observations about the adult industry.

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