If you’ve read Andi Guinness’s piece last week, you’d know it’s weird times for porn. Hell, if you’re any bit an internet user at all you’d know the same. Andi focused his article on what a 3DX content creator might do to survive the coming storm, of varying intensity though it seems to be, and thus gave people a bit of a practical guideline. This post is more meant to be an indepth look at what all this fuss over pornographic content might mean to the 3DX industry in the long term, and why it might be smarter to give 3DX free reigns.
Crisis averted
Let’s do a quick recap: first came the UK, deciding that the celebration of human sexuality is a nasty, dirty thing, and that it must be monitored for the good of the people. ISPs are given freedom to censor sites as they please, and people themselves have to request access to porn like a son in puberty begging mommy and daddy to finally lift parental restrictions. Personal embarassment all around, and the government counted on it; people too shy to wield their freedom are effectively not free.
Thankfully, there were protests abound. Rational, normal folks came out as saying that they too enjoyed sex, and did not want their liberties infringed upon by backwards policymaking. Then, not long after, we hear that that the crowdfunding platform Patreon is not so sure about hosting pornographic content anymore. This news is then followed by the sudden announcement of the censoring of porn blogs in Google search results.
Now, many of these storms have mostly blown over. Google just came out to tell us that the end of porn blogs is in fact not nigh. If you were around for Yahoo’s take-over of Tumblr, then you might recall the uproar in its porn community over revised policies. Many feared that it would be the end of porn on Tumblr altogether, and now, two years down the line, nothing special seems to have happened. Patreon, too, managed to give us all a good scare. Then they clarified that they’re in fact allowing for a distiction between photographic pornography and pornographic art, the latter involving drawn/rendered imagery. Good news for 3DX.
Still, the 3DX community has a right to be upset about events, regardless of whether or not they’re ever fully carried through. After all, the way we feel about being included in a general porn ban is something akin to GTA players being targeted in a general ban against all crime-related footage on Youtube. True, the distinction between 3DX and videogames is simple in the fact that where the intent of 3DX is to generate genuine sexual arousal, the GTA series is not made to generate a genuine desire for murder and theft. Nevertheless, as far as porn goes we’re about as morally clear as it gets. We do not exploit people, we do not make them run personal health risks, and we do not rob them of their dignity by making them go further for a couple of bucks than they truly want.
Believe it or not, this side of the story is actually why I get these social media platforms when they’re looking to crack down on porn blogs. Yes, you could put it down to them just being prudes and adhering to an old, outdated morality. We could pretend that all we see in them is the same we see in Victorian-era UK lawmakers, and that there’s a level of hypocrisy to it to boot. But what if it’s not that simple?
Smack my bitch up
I used to run a porn blog on Tumblr, now long shut down, and I’ve seen some of the mean-spirited, downright hateful drivel that goes on there. It’s not all fun and horniness. I can take a lot, but when I stumble onto a long rant about how women are made to be spat on and exist only to obey the commands of men, how their bodies are meant to be used as toys for the sexual pleasure of their superiors, and how their intellect is wasted on them once they accept their true purpose in life, my stomach turns a bit. In the online bimbo culture, this very vitriolic element is a core feature. And any girl looking up Barbie on Google has the chance to run into it.
Now I realise full well that there’s a certain element of pretending to it, and that not everything you see online should be taken literally. Moreover, if this is a sexual power fantasy that consenting adults want to indulge in, they are welcome to do it in the privacy of their own home, especially when you consider that this very consent is what undermines the vigour with which some of these things are being said. Their own blogs are usually just extensions of their private lives, a way to add some fuel to the sexual fire with a bit of exhibitionism.
But that’s knowledge that comes from experience, and not everyone has that. The majority of people will simply take things at face value, and you can’t blame them. After all, some of those who subscribe to views as outlined above do actually, genuinely mean it, and how are you going to distinguish the sexual fetishists from the hateful mysoginists? I wouldn’t know.
You can’t blame Tumblr, Blogger, or any other blog hosting service for not wanting their platforms associated with these things. For them, it’s all about maintaining a respectful, perhaps even family-friendly image, and though many people harbour the fantasy of the world being slowly turned into some kind of vast, erotic paradise, we have to keep the mundane in mind. For businesses to be viable, they have to appeal to a broader audience than just sexual deviants.
Minority Report
So 3DX gets caught in the crossfire here, and I would say unjustly so. In the year that I’ve worked for A3D I’ve come to know this community as passionate and ambitious, as genuinely welcoming to newcomers, and being generally helpful and articulate. This is a community that believes, as I do, that sex is inherently a celebration of human nature and should be enjoyed in a positive atmosphere. Case in point: in a conversation I had with Miro about potentially expanding the G4E universe, he told me that the challenge was in creating erotica that didn’t rely on depravity to function. It’s a refreshing look on porn, and one that I can only support.
So what I ask of social media and blogging platforms is this: practice the same common sense that Patreon appears to be practicing. It is of course within their rights to crack down on what they feel is degenerate, but if they stifle the ability of 3DX to find an audience and reach a broader market, they might be counteracting a development in pornography that’s more in line with their goals than they might think. Think this industry through to conclusion for a second; what if all these render sets and short animations only serve to pave the way for a much larger, much grander sex industry free of the ills that plague conventional porn? Imagine a world in which each person has access any of their sexual fantasies without it coming at the cost of the provider’s integrity? If people, through advanced technology, could temporary be taken into a world where what they lust after affects no one but themselves?
In a world like that, porn would no longer have to piggyback on mainstream services. It’d be able to step out of the shadows as an industry, and everyone would stand to gain.
BelaalArt
May 16, 2015I completely agree with your last section of this article. You do not need rape and violence in order for sex to be extreme. I love the idea of one person dominating another, but only in the sense that both parties are willing and that both parties enjoy what is happening.
3DX, while having the stigma of non-con and obscene perversion, can still offer beautiful and incredibly exciting scenes of carnal pleasures. Very few real life porn actors/actresses, can provide even a fraction of what 3D erotica can provide. But that does not mean it is wrong, or that 3D will only give, what even the most jaded porn viewers would consider abhorrent.
Love the site, and the articles. Very glad there are others out there who see 3D Erotica the way I do.
miro
March 8, 2015This is my take:
This is a bit of catch 22 situation. The porn haters create a culture of shame around sex and porn and then porn producers, being members of modern culture have a tendency to express their shame in depraved porn, not all of course but enough to be noticeable… so they essentially feed each other.
The big corporations aren’t generally activists so they will more or less side with the “winning” public position. Case in point: Tumblr and Google only reverted the anti porn stance when enough members of the public raised their hand.
Of course our goal is to break this cycle and bring the excitement of sex into everyone’s life 😀 This isn’t even a matter of choice. 99% of humans are programmed by nature to want sex (opposite of asexuality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality) as a matter of survivle, so we need to stop pretending we don’t!
If you look at the hate/ shame cycle above I think we can boil it down to this: Give people a better reason to defend porn by keeping it positive and producing better quality. That in combination with good arguments should bring about much need change 🙂
I’m not at all against exploring darker sex fantasies, but I think these can only be tolerated by society if on balance porn is perceived as a positive industry with integrity. That’s where 3DX artists can make a different 🙂
Sophia
March 7, 2015Well written article! I agree – I have been thinking for a long time now, and a lot of social research supports it, that porn actually helps channel real world excess into simulation, where no one is hurt.
But this argument will never win as long as the current academic theories reign: Feminist theory says that porn reproduces and intensifies women’s suffering. Every image they say teaches people, even adults how to act and think… of course it’s rubbish, but that’s the general academic feminist theory, and they have a huge following. Combine that with the moral prudes and you have a huge opposition. Of course porn in its current form has been around for all of 20 years or so… the same time that women are politicians, military commanders, and CEOs… rape has fallen significantly, along with violent crime in the USA and elsewhere… But even this is not enough to convince most that porn is not harmful to society.
My biggest personal anger point: Nothing like women breaking free of repression only to turn around and tell each other what they can and cannot enjoy sexually.
But with the shit I’ve seen and heard and the stuff that is still in the news… it makes it really hard to not see male sexism and abuse, and blame anything and everything we can find for it – porn is the most immediate and obvious and that is what our uneducated and ignore public targets first!
So the point I like, and think would be best emphasized – is love and tolerance. We all need to stand up to, and remove sexism from our ranks! The adult community (porn is a pejorative, we should no longer use it for any of our content!) has to monitor and police itself. What that means is watching out for those that are violent, abusive, sexist and intolerant. Removing them, blocking them – they are not who we are. Porn is a celebration of human creativity, love, pleasure, and enjoyment – for everyone! I’m speaking of course of the people The Dude mentions, not role playing and exchanging dominant positions or telling different stories.
Because first and foremost, it is wrong and inhumane that misogynists are allowed to enjoy the beauty of the female body, and the first amendment, then turn around and abuse each to their own sexist ends. They’re going to ruin the adult industry for everyone, women included, and stifle the expansion and development of a truly unique and utterly new enterprise in human evolution.
End rant, thanks for the article starting the discussion. 😉
The Dude
March 7, 2015Wow, thanks for the response Sophia 🙂 Here’s to a better and brighter future for porn 😀
Richard
March 5, 2015I believe that the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, , 378 U.S. 184 (1964), is informative in this situation.
Nico Jacobellis, manager of the Heights Art Theatre in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was convicted and fined $2,500 for showing the movie Les Amants (The Lovers), a French “art” film that featured an explicit love scene that lasted about a minute. The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which found itself in the unenviable position of having to determine the legal difference between pornography and obscenity.
The Court ruled in favor of the defendant:
“We recognize the legitimate and indeed exigent interest of States and localities throughout the Nation in preventing the dissemination of material deemed harmful to children. But that interest does not justify a total suppression of such material, the effect of which would be to “reduce the adult population . . . to reading only what is fit for children.” (Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 380, 383). State and local authorities might well consider whether their objectives in this area would be better served by laws aimed specifically at preventing distribution of objectionable material to children, rather than at totally prohibiting its dissemination.” – Justice Brennan
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/378/184
There is, and probably has never been, no easy way to tell the difference between erotica, pornography, and obscenity. But there always has been, and always will be, a demand for them. Somehow, we will manage.
miro
March 8, 2015The way I see it, the obscenity rule is an artificial “quality standard” for the sole purpose of legal discrimination, in essence it’s the same as saying writing is only artistic if it’s Shakespeare or music is only artistic if it’s Mozart… imagine banning electronic music because it “doesn’t require real talent” or “use real instruments”.
But I don’t think most people take obscenity seriously these days, the new angle is harm towards women and children which is the same misinformation but far more potent.
And yes I agree, in the end porn will of course prevail. Governments, religion, mainstream media, big corporations all against porn and still porn thrives. How? You can not win against nature 🙂
Dianaranda
March 5, 2015Personnally my take on this is the best way to deal with all this is to tell the Moral policing from Tumblrites, to just Bugger off, sadly policy makers and so forth still dont see it this way, and we seem to have reverted back to the moral panic of the 90s, remember Jack Thompson and him wanting to bann games based on them being violent?
Well this shit is the very same thing, the only difference is that this time instead of men driving the effort it is Women, or more like Sex Negative Feminism, and a generation of brainwashed Social Justice Warrior, millenials, who want to control the world through there ideological view of the feminism that is being taught at the academic level.
Sad to see how things are heading towards authoritarianism, Where freedom of expression must be stiffled, by a very loud minority of dishonest people.
And i suspect i will get flack for this post as it goes against this narrative that is being spunn by these people and there followers.