after pornified rated bestselling title on feminism

My publisher Zer0 Books has featured After Pornified as one of its bestselling titles on feminism among Laurie Penny's Meat Market and Nina Power's One Dimensional Woman.

This newsletter includes a presentation of the books and their authors.

Zer0 Books is the Culture, Society, and Politics imprint of John Hunt Publishing. Publishing authors whose discourse is "intellectual without being academic, popular without being populist," The Guardian has described Zer0 Books as "One of the most exciting radical presses at the moment. ... Zer0 titles are commissioned, edited and published quickly – and that energy and velocity carries through to the writing itself. Zer0 writers share an ability to write passionately, avoiding the clunky prose of academia and generating new lines of inquiry rather than just regurgitating critical clichés."

after pornified with amanda marcotte

Listen to me talk about my After Pornified book with Amanda Marcotte on her podcast for RH Reality Check, which is the biggest reproductive rights website online. I'm on from 8:37 - 19:36.

after pornified getting more attention

The spring issue of Bitch Magazine is out and it features a review of my After Pornified book. I haven't received my copy of the issue yet, but I am very proud that this sharp magazine, which has branded itself a “Feminist Response to Pop Culture,” decided to include my book. Check it out!

Also just out is a new issue of One + One Filmmakers Journal. A special issue devoted to Pornography and Sex in the Cinema, it includes an article I wrote titled "After Pornified." Featuring condensed sections of my book, it also includes discussions and disagreements around feminist porn not included in my book. You can download a free PDF of the magazine here.

Psychology Tomorrow Magazine also has a new issue out and it does in fact feature an excerpt from my book, taken from the introduction and conclusion to give an overview of the arch of the book in its entirety.

Last month, Jennifer Lyon Bell of Blue Artichoke Films sent out her latest newsletter, endorsing my book as a "smart new book on female-made porn." Check out her excellent review here.

listen to me live on sex out loud this friday

Listen to me live this Friday December 21, 5 pm PST/8 pm EST on Tristan Taormino’s radio show “Sex Out Loud” on The VoiceAmerica Network. Call in to talk to me and Tristan LIVE: 866-472-5788.

I really look forward to talking about women and porn with callers and Tristan who herself is a feminist porn filmmaker, as well as an award-winning author, columnist, sex educator, and speaker. We will discuss the growing number of women radically changing porn to respectfully capture the authentic sexual lives of women and men and how feminist porn has become a vehicle for people to explore and define sexuality on their terms.

How I Came to Porn

(This post, which was first published online at Good Vibrations Magazine, is an excerpt from the Introduction of After Pornified: How Women Are Transforming Pornography & Why It Really Matters.)

I never wanted to watch porn. When a former boyfriend years ago showed me some of his “glossier” porn, as he put it, I was completely grossed out. The premise of his porn was that all these Barbie-looking women would seek out a stud residing in this huge mansion, where he would provide them with their ultimate satisfaction by spraying his come all over them, which they in turn would greedily lick and smear all over their bodies. The cliché portrayal of yearning women in need of a man was in itself offensive to me. But it was especially the prolonged scene featuring the guy hosing down a group of women with his ejaculate that turned me off.

You’d think from our pornified culture that we all want porn. But we know that’s not the case. Sure, women represent a large and growing audience for porn, representing at least a third of all consumers, adding up to millions of women watching porn each month.[i] But not everyone is crazy about what they see. Whether it’s “high gloss” or amateur porn, in either case featuring deep throating women who are pumped hard, legs spread wide, all the while moaning for more with come-hither eyes. The stacks of mass-produced porn at seedy superstores off the interstate. Trashy hotel room porn. Online smut catering to any imaginable (and unconceivable!) fetish. And even “softcore” and “couples porn” allegedly improved to appeal to women, but not really. Plastic looks, porny music, bad acting, faked satisfaction.

But then I found something radically different.

get your signed copy of after pornified at a discount

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free-range porn or how to be a woman

In How To Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran delivers a naked and entertaining portrait of herself and our time that makes a compelling case for the need for feminism not as theory but practice. For instance in terms of sex education and better porn. The problem is as Moran points out that in the 21st century, the majority of children and teenagers grow up with an understanding of what sex is all about based on Internet porn: mainstream hardcore porn that "blasts through men's and women's sexual imaginations" with its formulaic predictability vending a "porn monoculture" so embedded in our culture we don't even realize it when we're looking at it. (BTW, Moran does allow for the availability of "niche stuff.")

Yet as Moran points out; "it's not pornography per se that's the problem here. ... The idea that pornography is intrinsically exploitative and sexist is bizarre: pornography is just some fucking, after all. The act of having sex isn't sexist, so there's no way pornography can be, in itself, inherently misogynist.

So no. Pornography isn't the problem. Strident feminists are fine with pornography. It's the porn industry that's the problem. The whole thing is as offensive, sclerotic, depressing, emotionally bankrupt, and desultory as you would expect a widely unregulated industry worth, at an extremely conservative estimate, $30 billion to be. No industry ever made that amount of money without being superlatively crass and dumb."

video impression of dusk!'s launch party for my book in amsterdam

Great to see this little video impression of the launch party that Dusk! threw for me in Amsterdam on my final night in Europe promoting my After Pornified book. Dusk! is a TV channel solely devoted to providing erotic material to straight women, and is in fact the only channel of its kind in the world.

after(noon) pornified event in amsterdam

Watch the video at MFE.TV

Check out this video at MFE.TV capturing the After(noon) Pornified event hosted by the woman-owned sex shop Mail & Female in Amsterdam; a delightfully stimulating conversation about women and porn between myself and Ella van der Gang (Mail & Female porn curator), Marloes Meuzelaar (MFE.TV), Madeleine Vreekamp (Mail & Female Buyer) and Marije Janssen (Get a Room! events organizer), chaired by Sue du Plessis (Mail & Female events organizer and MFE.TV hostess).

The discussion was attended by an intimate and engaged audience, including independent erotic filmmaker Jennifer Lyon Bell of Blue Artichoke Films and Dutch golden age filmmaker Willem van Batenburg.

snapshots from my tour in europe

Me at the launch party at the film festival in Berlin flanked by filmmakers
Ingrid Ryberg, Nenna, Erika Lust and Jennifer Lyon Bell

I am back! And my After Pornified book has now officially been launched, with copies available in the US and Europe both in paperback and eBook for Kindle (purchase here). I've really enjoyed all the events so far, both here in the US and in Europe, even if touring overseas was exhausting with all the traveling and packed schedule all the while jetlagged. It was great to connect with so many new groups of audiences and people who also care about sex-positivity and sexual empowerment for women and men.

The panel discussion at Mail & Female in Amsterdam was a really positive and stimulating event. Attended by an intimate audience, including independent erotic filmmaker Jennifer Lyon Bell of Blue Artichoke Films and Dutch golden age filmmaker Willem van Batenburg, the discussion was video recorded for Mail & Female's MFE.tv from where you'll be able to watch it once it's edited and up. I'll also share it here together with photos that were taken at the event.

after pornified europe tour

Program page for my book's official launch in Berlin

I gave a reading at the local independent bookstore in town last week and it went really well. The place was packed so that was fun, and the audience mixed: college students, parents, younger and older women and men, and of course some friends and even family visiting from out-of-state.

This Friday I'm off for my Europe tour with stops in the Netherlands, England, and Germany. I arrive Amsterdam Saturday morning on the 20th and will get only a few hours to rest before my first event that afternoon (here's hoping I'll be somewhat intellectually coherent). This will be a panel disccussion with me on the role of positive porn and my After Pornified book at Mail & Female, a woman-owned and inclusive women-friendly sex shop that has a solid tradition in hosting and fostering discussion on what the role of positive porn by women is. They have worked with numerous celebrity names in the field in the past and I'm happy to contribute to their awareness-building efforts.

porn in the house and babysitters

The mom of a twelve-year-old girl who was going to babysit our daughter expressed concern her daughter might get her hands on some of my porn while she was here. She explained in an email:

I figure to research your book you probably have some porn in your house. While I figure this material is safely out of the reach of a 4 year old, I am just writing to make sure that it is also out of sight of curious 12-year-olds. I remember running into porn at a home as a babysitting teenager and of course I had to look at it. The father of the family kept magazines on his bedside table and I still have clear memories of some of the photos.

In any case, I would prefer that my daughter not have a similar experience at this age. I am sure you understand. Maybe someday we can chat about any ideas you have on how to discuss porn with your children.

check out "porna" or porn for women at dusk!

Dusk!

I only recently found out about Dusk!, a Dutch digital cable TV channel solely devoted to providing erotic material to straight women 24/7. I wish I had come across it sooner; it features many of the films I feature in my After Pornified book and is well worth checking out.

Dusk! is the only channel of its kind in the world and has been available since 2009. The channel is now being rolled out into Belgium and is looking to expand into several other European countries.

Dusk! does its own comprehensive research on what sort of porn they should be showing via a panel made up of over 1500 women. Each month every panel member reviews 6 to 9 porn film fragments of a variety of sorts of porn, including both hardcore mainstream and from a female point of view. After looking at a film, the women are asked to fill out a survey, rating and responding to the snippets. Before Dusk! arrives at any final conclusions about a film it is first viewed and rated 100 times. 

after pornified reading at monkey see monkey read

Launch party at Smitten Kitten

I'm happy to report that the US launch party in Minneapolis last Friday was a blast! This week has been busy preparing for my Europe tour this fall with more readings and events in London, Berlin and Amsterdam. But first: a reading at my local bookshop in our small college town; an event I am very excited and pleased about!

Event details: Anne Sabo Reading Oct. 11

Please visit Monkey See Monkey Read for an evening with Anne G. Sabo, a former St. Olaf college professor turned author and mama- & sex blogger on Thursday October 11th at 7:30 PM for a reading and discussion of After Pornified: How Women Are Transforming Pornography & Why It Really Matters, a book about how women have seized the means of representation to create a positive counterweight to pornified media and porn as it’s been known.

Though her book will no doubt appeal to women who already show an interest in porn, After Pornified is primarily addressed to all the women who are skeptical to porn as she was, and who value asserting ownership of their bodies and sexuality against the media’s discriminating sexualization of women.

With more young people exposed to porn, Sabo’s book is also aimed at them; to empower young people to read porn critically and to see that there is a positive alternative.

after pornified launch party next friday at smitten kitten in minneapolis

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. (I'm told they get the good stuff! Expect delicious chocolate, cheese, fruit and perhaps some more...) Check out the Smitten Kitten's Facebook event page for this US launch party.

the winners of cupido's first film award

Erika Lust's short film "Handcuffs" received much acclaim at Modern Porn: Cupido's Film Award to Best New Short Film that I presented last weekend in Oslo, Norway. Featuring a play with submission/domination fantasies and the titillating attraction of voyeurism, "Handcuffs" won both the jury's award and the audience's award on Saturday.

The audience's award on Sunday went to Elin Magnusson's short film "Skin" on Dirty Diaries, a collection of short films produced by Mia Engberg. You can find my review of this album at Good Vibrations Online Magazine here. "Skin" is the first of twelve short feminist porn films, and it stands out with its quiet but intense erotic energy, circling around the layers, vulnerability, and eager excitement and passion that intimacy between two people can entail.

update from cupido festival

I attended the first day of Cupido Festival today, after which I put the final touches on my own presentation of the films I've nominated for Cupido's first Film Award, which will take place tomorrow Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

People seem quite psyched about the award (as they should be!); one of the jury members told me on the side she was quite impressed with the films I've nominated (as she should be!).

I do not know who the winner is, but a winner has been selected by a select jury. There will also be an audience award, so anyone who attends my presentation of the films tomorrow will have a say.

We will find out both the jury's verdict and the audience's at the Cupido Festival gala party tomorrow night.

modern porn: cupido's film award to best new short film

I've been busy this week, including with last minute work for the Modern Porn: Cupido's Film Award to Best New Short Film that I'm presenting next weekend in Oslo, Norway. I'm off this Sunday and will announce the winner the following weekend. The nominees are:

Elin Magnusson: “Skin” (Dirty Diaries, 2009) Sweden

Ingrid Ryberg: “Phone Fuck” (Dirty Diaries, 2009) Sweden

Erika Lust: “Handcuffs” (Life, Love, Lust, 2010) Sweden-Spain

Héléna Noguerra: “Peep Show Heros” (X-femmes, 2008) Belgium-France

Murielle Scherre: “actions/louder/words” (J’fais du porno et j’aime ça, 2009) Belgium

Murielle Scherre: “j’ai rendez-vous avec vous” ” (J’fais du porno et j’aime ça, 2009) Belgium

official US launch party for after pornified at smitten kitten

I am pleased to announce that the Minneapolis-based sex-positive feminist sex shop Smitten Kitten will be hosting the US launch party for After Pornified on Friday September 21st from 7 - 9 P.M. Visit TSK's event page on Facebook for this event where you can register and learn more:

Come enjoy a book reading and discussion about how women are changing porn for the positively better. Accompanied by light refreshments and opportunities to ask questions of the author!

support principled porn panel proposed for sxsw

A group of independent-minded porn makers, sex workers, and sex positive activists have put together a panel titled "Principled Porn: Is DIY Changing the Industry?" that they are proposing for the SXSW® Music and Media Conference 2013 PanelPicker. The PanelPicker was launched in 2007 to enhance community participation, allowing members of the community to both propose panels and vote on them. This panel sounds particularly interesting and I encourage you to vote on it.

About the panel:
Porn prohibitionists assert that pornography is inherently destructive for both the performer and the viewer. Yet some studies suggest that with decreased institutionalized sexism in a society comes increased variety of pornographic imagery available and the increase of positive limpact on relationships. In the age of internet video and conscientious consumption, independent porn is getting a leg up- direct access to consumers is increasing questions about how work standards being applied to the world of XXX.