Also, sometimes it leads to you asking if they ever feel like getting some of this on paper and guest posting. And they send you this a mere few hours later. And it's brilliant. And honest. And hot. And funny. And REAL. We hope you enjoy this as much as we did.
Oh, and if you're anything like us, you're gonna read this and say, "MORE PLEASE, NOW!" So let's all refer to her as Red when we do make that request.
A Brief Missive on Ladyporn and How I Really Feel About Bubble Baths.
by Red.
Guys! I want to talk to you about a terrible word. I
am sorry that this might hurt, and not in a good way, but it's sort of
been following me a lot lately and I wanted to talk about it because
Violet and Rye said I could. I want to talk about what it means when we
say "ladyporn."
It has its purposes, certainly. We all know that Rachael Rabbit White claimed
this word last year for a celebration of real porn for real women. Or
do we? Until I googled the word five minutes ago, I didn't. What I did
know was that last month a popular website had a "Twitter party" wherein
they encouraged followers to tweet their idea of ladyporn, which
included some pretty edgy shit like bubble baths, red wine, and pictures
of Ryan Gosling. I know, too that the word came up in conversations
about whether the term "chick lit" described a valid literary genre. I
know that people I actually respect have used that hashtag in reference
to things they regard as romantic or guilty pleasures. People I respect
less have used it to talk about Twilight.
You know the problem, sort of, framed through Violet and Rye's own post "The Good Porn Problem." You know it in a slicker, entrepreneurial mindset through Cindy Gallop and Make Love Not Porn. But there is this, too, this slightly separate problem of porn and women: what the hell are we talking about when we talk about porn, and how do we contextualize it? Like you, I want there to be places to go online and in the world where there's a distinction between "good porn" and "bad porn"; I want that content to be as curated to my tastes as the music, art, and lifestyle blogs and publications I frequent. But I also want to know that when I say the word "porn", I'm not talking about a romantic comedy or a bubble bath, and it terrifies me to think that those are dialogues being created by women, who are unwittingly doing as much to create the gap between real sex and porn-as-we-know-it as the men who grow up thinking that sex is about coming on a woman's face.
