The Null Device

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Bootywhang (an ongoing series)

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Bootywhang: A piece on the rise of 'alternaporn' sites. These are independently-run online soft- to medium-core porn sites with subcultural themes (raver, goth, geek, punk, and others), 'real' models who often have online journals, and a distinct paucity of the ugly, degrading, exploitative material that your typical spamvertised commercial porn site pushes. And, perhaps surprisingly, many of their subscribers are heterosexual women.
"I want to take the sketchiness and smuttiness out of porn," said Chase Lisbon, 28, who launched Supercult in August 2001. "I don't use words like tits or ass or pussy anywhere on the site." Supercult is a mod-styled website featuring pictures of naked hipsters posing with Lambretta scooters and Star Wars action figures. Chase estimates that 30 percent of the site's paying users are female.

(Well, someone had to put Mod revivalism/retro hipsterism and porn together sometime...)

Anyway, as far as porn has been with us since the Etruscan era, if not cave paintings, and is likely to be with us as long as we have sex and symbols, it's a good thing to know that it's not all misanthropic, envelope-pushing brutality and ugliness ("Teenage sluts get banged hard by farm animals!"), and that perhaps porn can be humanistic and positive. Of course, the religious right don't agree. (via bOING bOING)

There are no comments yet on "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Bootywhang (an ongoing series)"