Thoughts on Max Hardcore’s Conviction

Who hasn’t heard about this yet? Max Hardcore, a pornographer known for very violent degrading porn just got sentenced to more than three years in prison for obscenity. 

I’m sure a lot of you are cheering. I think that’s sad.

There are problems with Max Hardcore, and I’ll get to those in a second. But the charges that got him thrown in jail are bullshit. I’m not saying this just because I believe in free speech, although that’s a lot of it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with his videos. 

No one can control what turns them on. You can’t analyze sexual desire away. You can make an effort to figure out where it comes from, but at the end of the day you’re still going to want what you want. There are a whole lot of inconvenient kinks out there — kinks that scare potential partners away, kinks that can get dangerous, kinks that are so weird they’re humiliating to discuss — and if it were possible to make them evaporate, people would. 

And so instead those of us afflicted with kink find a way to achieve sexual satisfaction. We get doms to slap us around and subs to slap around.We establish safewords and boundaries. We buy handcuffs and real dolls and Nazi costumes. We masturbate a lot.

There is nothing wrong with any of this. I am not a bad person because violent degrading porn turns me on. And the guy who jerks off to the same violent degrading porn that makes me wet isn’t a bad person either. And the guy who makes the violent degrading porn with consenting actresses isn’t necessarily a bad person either.

I read this post a few days ago and it made me depressed. Even in a progressive community people worry that having the wrong kind of sex with a consenting partner is something to feel guilty about. That’s not okay and it’s certainly not something we as feminists should encourage. 

All of this is why I’m standing up for Max Hardcore and all the other violent degrading porn out there. Because yeah, your first instinct may be that it’s sick and wrong, but your first instinct isn’t always right. It’s easy to dismiss what you don’t understand.

And here’s the thing: I hate standing up for Max Hardcore, because Max Hardcore is an asshole.

Here’s the rotten.com article on him. Scroll down to the second picture and right next to it is a description of an outtake that features him treating an actress like shit. This article at the F-Word talks about a documentary in which Max Hardcore abuses a different actress.

This should be prosecuted. This is worth worrying about. This is something no one should be allowed to get away with. But no one cares because they’re just sex workers.

The obscenity charges don’t take into account whether or not the actresses were consenting or treated fairly. It’s just assumed that they are. Because it’s more important to send someone to jail for making a video of the kind of sex not everyone approves of than it is to protect women. (And of course the women are porn stars, so it’s not like they’re real women.)

The obscenity charges are still stupid. Of course, the fact that he hasn’t been charged for the way he treats his actresses is stupid and dangerous.

In this society sexphobia is more important than women. That’s disturbing.