Could Donkey Punches KO Porn’s First Amendment Protection?

“Fact 1 tells us that every dollar spent by the producers of violent pornography could be invested more profitably by adopting a softer tone. ”

This is only true if the producer has resources of imagination, creativity, technical skill, financial depth, etc. In other words, you can spin straw into gold, but you have to know how, and you have to have the right kind of spinning wheel.

For producers without such resources, inflamatory productions like “Donkey Punch” et al offer the opportunity to eek out a marginal existance (these titles are produced for almost no money, and move only a very small quantity of units) on the the producer’s willingness to trangress, the performer’s willingness to do anything for a dollar, and a tiny minority audience’s desire to see such material.

This sort of pornography has always existed, but since the advent of DV production and DVD/internest distribution, which virtually removed the (already low) barriers to entry into the production side of the jizz bizz these sort of titles have proliferated, even as the number of units moved for each title has steadily fallen.

As ugly as it is, “Donkey Punch” and similar are merely a symptom of more talentless, resourseless “producers” chasing the same small audience and the same small revenue pie, producing shabbier titles, each more shocking than the last, in a desparate hope to move 1200 copies at $6/each. It doesn’t have much meaning beyond that.

Instinctively, I would say that whoever tried a donkey punch on me would be punched in the bollocks. Also instinctively, I would say that there must be a line over which a pornster (or the industry, if you like) shouldn’t venture.

In practice… we all know that whenever we start discussing lines, a question necessarily comes up as to who’ll be drawing them, on what grounds, and what the consequences will be of ending up on either side.

There was a mountain of debates on this topic late last year, when the UK Government brought in the proposition to make possession (never mind production) of sex+violence materials illegal. We (the folks on the CP end of BDSM) are always eager to show how little we have to do with any sex at all, so any violence must be OK. But it’s always struck me as a dubious argument - and, somehow I doubt that a body charged with separating the good porn from the bad would be overly concerned with the difference between a simulated rape film with a whole lot of degrading words flying about - and a very real 50-stroke caning sequence where nobody has sex.

I have my limits. They are, to be honest, not very vast limits where sex is concerned. But every time I want to tell somebody how repulsive I find things like double penetration or A2M, I remember that I’m the girl who begged the director to be caned on the thighs when my backside had had too much.

I’d love it if there was a debate about how much violence is too much. But I for one am way too aware of being curled up inside a glass house - and if I wasn’t, I’m sure I’d be reminded pretty promptly.

It has huge implications. Sam you are 100% correct. It should not be allowed and the industry should shun them. We as a society should shun them.

This is such a tricky question from a free speech standpoint. But, in terms of business practices it doesn’t seem to be in the interest of the adult industry to embrace these sorts of operations. The industry has already clearly declared that child pornography isn’t pornography at all but rather the assault of children on camera. It isn’t a far step to say that movies like Donkey Punch aren’t pornography but, like you said, violence on camera. The questions we need to ask, though, is whether this would limit other fetish oriented pornography. (I’d tend to think it wouldn’t as consent is such an important tenet of the BDSM lifestyle.)

I can’t answer the question of what is or isn’t okay, nor the questions of who should decide. But the real question you asked, Sam, is a little easier to answer:

“With the government having publically declared that obscenity is a priority, should the adult industry distance itself from the excesses of ‘porn’ to ensure its survival and the well-being of performers?”

Should the industry distance itself from the extremes? Almost certainly. If the bulk of the money to be made falls into the more “acceptable” sorts of pornographic expression, then maybe the answer is to adopt an industry-led ratings system supportive of titles which adhere to something similar to the “comics code.” Although the comics code led to the suppression of a lot of great work in comics, I think it might be possible to design a more enlightened code for porn.

Does this make sense?

I’m picturing something like a ratings system which clearly states where an individual title stands in the continuum of porn and the extreme. There’s a danger in this kind of thing, but on the other hand it’s more proactive to do it ourselves than to have it imposed from outside the industry.I can’t answer the question of what is or isn’t okay, nor the questions of who should decide. But the real question you asked, Sam, is a little easier to answer:

“With the government having publically declared that obscenity is a priority, should the adult industry distance itself from the excesses of ‘porn’ to ensure its survival and the well-being of performers?”

Should the industry distance itself from the extremes? Almost certainly. If the bulk of the money to be made falls into the more “acceptable” sorts of pornographic expression, then maybe the answer is to adopt an industry-led ratings system supportive of titles which adhere to something similar to the “comics code.” Although the comics code led to the suppression of a lot of great work in comics, I think it might be possible to design a more enlightened code for porn.

Does this make sense?

I’m picturing something like a ratings system which clearly states where an individual title stands in the continuum of porn and the extreme. There’s a danger in this kind of thing, but on the other hand it’s more proactive to do it ourselves than to have it imposed from outside the industry.

Interestingly there’s a much larger market for the simulated rape film with some degrading language than the vomit, urine, and punching stuff… The kicker is that the viewers have to be absolutely certain it’s simulated. The core audience would be women. Most of them know why “their” kind of porn barely exists - but there is a demand.

What worries me is that so many people and companies are afraid to touch dark erotic fantasy (which needs to be done, and done sanely - I do know of a couple amateur sites doing it, but the market is still unsaturated, compared to the glutted Max Hardcore-style market) but extreme violent porn production has increased. There’s a lot of unexplored mental territory but that takes more skill and vision to cover than just peeing on someone…

I don’t believe in thought crime, do believe in minimal legislation and don’t think current obscenity legislation is the answer when the core issue is harming performers. There’s a pretty obvious solution that respects a masochist’s right to consent but also protects performers in general: if there’s a good chance it could kill them, it shouldn’t be legal to produce. That rules out erotic asphyxiation (too risky), donkey punching (likewise), eating feces and so forth but doesn’t rule out sex and violence/discomfort/humiliation and pain, be it mental, emotional, or physical as a valid concept or affect what noncommercial edge players choose to do to each other (no matter how stupid…).

Morality is a separate issue from legality. What is and isn’t moral or okay will vary from person to person - as it should. But outlawing producing stunt porn with a serious risk of killing or permanently damaging (that last is an important stickler for BDSM porn - I see too many breast bondage sites that let the girls go too tight, too long for dramatic effect, to the point where it’s a matter of seconds before permanent tissue damage or loss of sensation could occur) someone on the job is basic physical protection for industry performers.

There are a lot of good thoughtful responses to this and I’d like to add my perspective as an employee of “one of the largest online adult movie stores.”

One very important thing to know about Adult DVD Empire is that we do not carry titles like ‘Donkey Punch.’ In fact, we screen every single movie that goes on our site to make sure we do not sell anything featuring excessive violence - which is why you won’t see the vast majority of Max Hardcore titles for sale. And we’re not the only ones. As retailers, it’s our choice and I’m personally comfortable with that.

The following is my opinion and does not represent that of Adult DVD Empire in any way:
What I’m uncomfortable with is restricting the right of studios to make the content they see fit. After the indictment of Extreme Associates, there was a lot of talk about lines and who gets to draw them. In the end, I personally believe that material that is being consumed by adults has a right to include any content that does not in itself break any laws. I may not want to watch it, but that’s my choice. Reacting to government pressure by censoring one another is, in my opinion, playing into their hands. It’s debatable how realistic that point of view is, but I suppose I’m principled to the end on these things.

I think that it’s a good idea to express one’s opinion that films like ‘Donkey Punch’ are out of step with what’s healthy and/or acceptable to society. But to decide “we shouldn’t allow others” to produce is heading down an awfully slippery slope.

I am not quite sure I am ready for a comics code style “Adult Industry Seal of Approval.” What I would like to see is a code of conduct agreement (and an education effort to promote it).

I can imagine a logo and language that appears on packaging and in the production that states something like “This production confomes to the Adult Industry Safe & Sane Practices Agreement. [yadda yadda yadda].” Max could still do what he does, and probably wouldn’t care that he couldn’t get the rating, but it would be a step for the majority of the industry to say “we care about our own,” and I think that would count for something.

“Fact 1 tells us that every dollar spent by the producers of violent pornography could be invested more profitably by adopting a softer tone.”

I’d have to disagree with this. Ask any scat/watersports/extreme bondage/jizz-enema porn producer — the easy conversions are in niches, the more extreme the better. The top titles (Pirates, etc.) are, as in Hollywood, more a reflection of oversized marketing budgets than anything else (with the rare ‘indie’ exception of course).

If I wanted to make a million dollars in the porn production biz, I’d make a site along the lines of girls with hairy calves and lopsided nipples getting gag-fucked by black midgets to the point of vomiting… and repeat that formula ad nauseum. In fact, I’ve noticed in recent months that many sponsors are trending in this direction.

For better or worse, porn plumbs the depths of the human psyche. Even if the extreme stuff were banned here, it would just be exported somewhere else.

Damn, this all sounds pessimistic. Then again, if you saw some of the query strings that bring people to NLP you’d be pessimistic too.

Quinn,

“This production conforms to the Adult Industry Safe & Sane Practices Agreement. [yadda yadda yadda].”

Yeah, that’s basically what I meant… something that is opt-in for the producers and easily recognized as meaning that they are following industry-set practices to insure the safety of performers.

The other thought I had (which I thought Sabrina had brought up, but then I re-read it and realized not) is the idea of someone whose job is to be on the set to insure the safety of performers. It would have to be someone with enough medical knowledge to actually know what is and isn’t safe physically. Having “spotters” might make a difference.

Quinn, BadAss, those are very cool ideas and they link up nicely IMO. I like the idea of the labels being opt-in and concerned with safe practices rather than censoring ideas. I think it’d make for an easier sell to responsible fringe companies, for one.

Lex… exactly. The mainstream stuff appeals to most people but you’ve also got to have the budget to promote to most people. More specific/extreme stuff is going to make it easier to dominate a particular genre, and I’m wondering how many companies go extreme/violent with the view that they’ll be so far out as to be untouchable…

The thing is, last time I checked there were still heaps of men begging for more tease and denial porn, more plot, more heat, and forced bi fantasy videos. The guys that want vomit can get it already… and that doesn’t even get into the underserved and developing women’s market.

Actually I don’t even know if anyone’s doing forced bi fantasy videos. If not somebody should.

Forced bi videos? Hmmmm…

“Ms Watson? I know my grades aren’t very good this year, but is there ANYTHING I can do…”

gotta go….

Ha! Actually I was referring to m/m bisexuality… so that would be Mr. Watson.

“are choosing to censor what they sell ”

Deciding you don’t want to sell something because you find the content objectionable is not censorship. It’s not even close to censorship. It’s merely excersising the same freedom that the producers enjoyed when they made it.

I do not think it is possible to get the adult industry, especially online, to agree upon a rating system. I followed a debate on this and people have very different visions of what a system should look like. I think it comes down to the difficult task of organizing a group of people who want to be independent, who want things there way.

The industry recoginzes this challenge and knows if we do not do something the government will.

Sam -

We’re bigger than Amazon. Really…

From what I can tell, retailers lose very little money by adopting selection criteria that excludes this kind of content. Every now and then there’s a bigger release that we probably miss out on, but the immense volume of titles that are released daily (100+) cushions retailers very well. Essentially, it’s not much of a loss and that makes the risk of shipping those titles far too high for the return.

“If there’s reason to draw a line between violent movies and sex movies, should we be drawing it now? If not is there anything that we shouldn’t allow others to package as entertainment? When violence, fear, implied lack of consent and sex are rolled together how do we counter accusations of fetishizing rape? Howcomfortable are you with the crying edge of pornography? How comfortable do you think you’ll need to be?”

I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with the merging of sex and violence. Now violence in my mind, my definition of violence concerns non consensual sex and battery, blood, snuff, rape, but basically it is overtly visual/explicit. I’ve always believed that visual images have a profound impact on the individual, more so than written scenes do, psyche.

There is the other element of classifying ‘violence’ into an operative term. People have various scales of violence. It’s not that straightforward.How can it be done?

I’m not certain about laws in other countries, but here in Australia all pornography has to fall into the NVE rating (Non Violent Erotica) otherwise it’s not sold (in X or Restricted versions). Now the Internet, well that’s another ball game altogether,in the era where child pornographers are making a killing simply because of the difficulty of policing the Internet, which I think is unfortunate because child pornography, without going on about it, is a debased form of erotica. But see ‘free speech’ and the new term ’sex positive’ are all about ‘oh no you can’t ’say’ that because you’ll offend people’.

What also gets me is the anus to mouth depictions. The transfer of bacteria from the anus to the mouth, or to the vagina as well, can lead to other things like illness. So there are moments I think lines, (plural) should be drawn, simply because a lot of the things out there simply don’t educate people about sex.

Hypothetically, if a person only relied on what they viewed on underground websites or on DVD, and this comprised their entire sexual education, then it doesn’t really paint a great picture, because whether people like it or not pornography (in the mainstream sense) has influenced sex practices between adults.

From a social standpoint however, I do find this ‘new’ violation of women in ‘adult’ films intriguing but not in the erotic sense. While I can accept the fact that plenty adults enjoy “Hilary crying, gaging, puking and drinking urine from her rectum via a clear tube while being called a dirty whore”, I think it reflects the ‘minority’ who want to sell this image as a ‘normal’ ’sex positive’ image when the reality is (oh yeah, I can hear the ’sighs’ now) it’s not, not on a ‘mass scale’. Who, in history, drank excrement for sexual enjoyment while being violated? it makes for good historical debate or sociological debate of ‘where is society heading’. Yes, there are de Sade proponents who believe that all his stories were literal and that yes ‘there were people who did the things in Juliette’, but let’s not forget he spent many years locked away.

‘Free Speech’ is a term that is bandied about , and ’sex positive’ is the sexual equivalent of political correctness where sex and extreme sexual violence are concerned.
‘Hey, watch this. Candy is fucked by a Bowie knife!’

In short, how far does it have to go before it affects society or people in their everyday life?

It’s during such intervals where everything and ‘anything’ is sold that I can see where the anti-porn extremists are coming from (only for a few seconds anyway) because, well I wouldn’t be impressed if someone expected me to drink urine from my arse, through a tube, being called a whore. It really shouldn’t be marketed as ‘pornography’ because violence, as an ‘act’, is not one that falls within the standard definition of sexual pleasure. The only people who experience sexual arousal from extreme acts of violence and degradation are psychopaths (as well as pyromaniacs, who can also kill people through their fixations. So, should it be ‘normalised’ and slotted under the heading of ’sex positive’?

???

I think that the argument about hate speech is useful and potentially valid. However, I’m surprised to see you so close to aligning with Catherine MacKinnon. Lots of things can be construed as hate speech including mainstream pornography so the problem becomes deciding when to draw the line. The best thing about letting the industry self-regulate is that the established standards don’t have to spill over into other types of speech. That said, free speech has always stopped when it encroaches on another’s freedom and well-being. But are you ready to make the argument that films like Donkey Punch are violent and degrading towards women as a class when it risks sweeping up the entire industry in that generalization?

“Ha! Actually I was referring to m/m bisexuality… so that would be Mr. Watson.”

Sabrina: You have *your* forced bi fantasies and I have *mine*.

What I am sure about it that the market it more than big enough for both…

Perhaps the real question isn’t sex or violence, but the combination of the two… separating the issues might help.

After all, even mainstream television portrays significantly more violence (and a fair amount of stereotyping, degradation etc.) than porn on the whole. And when you add in Hollywood films, the level of violence is insane (but enjoyable in that context).

I suppose the difference is twofold: One, combing explicit sex and violence is more disturbing than either on their own; and two, we know that in Hollywood the guns use blanks, the falls are staged, and qualified stuntpersons are doing the tricky bits with the help of technicians and cgi.

If the real issue is the fact that porn films real violence as opposed to staged violence, then maybe what need to happen are some regulations that allow violence as long as it is possible to prove that it was staged in a safe way. This goes back to the idea of adopting a safety standard, but it’s a slightly different gloss on it.

What are the rules for Major studio stunts? How are they enforced? What kind of medical coverage do stunt performers get? Perhaps teh industry could consider adopting similar standards.

Personally I didn’t think anyone actually preformed donkey punches! I’m shocked that there is a company making films about such a mean spirited act.

In addition, call me a nerd, but this part really bothered me: “the inversion of the rectum (which may then be described as a “pink sock”).”

Your intestines are alergic to open air, so, to my knowledge, a “pink sock” = surgery which also = an end to play time.

I used to watch the occasional Max Hardcore movie back when i was single. (Mind you this was like 8 years ago and he was not nearly as “Hardcore” as he is now, but it still wasn’t very nice.) I always thought it was really really exciting and I always felt like a total asshole afterwards. Nowadays I have to stop a movie people start getting choked, or the hardcore facefucks which seem so prevelevt lately.(is this even pleasurable for the guys? it doesn’t really look like it.) My erection just goes away.

I think part of it has to do with being in a serious long term relationship. I can’t watch porn without thinking of my wife. Normally this is a good thing, exploring new ideas and new situations. New ways to have fun. But if it turns violent, well, how can I image that sort of thing with someone I love.

I have to ask this: Is it really all that bad? Porn for me is about fantasy sex that I would never want, let alone be able, to actually perform myself with a partner. And there must be a market for this violent porn or their wouldn’t be so many companies making it and performers willing to put themselves through it. I don’t neccessarily mind “regular” porn but why would I want to watch that when I can see it on Showtime or Cinemax or perform it myself? On the other hand I will never be in a position to shove a baseball bat into a girl’s pussy (I would be scared to even try it) or perform something like a donkey punch (if you’ve tried this in a real life sex situation, you’re a nut) but I actually like to see them! It’s fantasy! And as long as it’s kept as fantasy and in the porn world the performers should be allowed to go as far as they are willing to.