You said check it out, so I checked it out.

Can you please explain to me why you think this is feminist? I don't see the "joyful celebration of the human body" spoken of, I see the same old tight bodied porny cliches and the sixth picture down, the one with a hand held over a woman's mouth...can someone explain to me either the alternative sexuality expressed by that or the feminism expressed by that, because I don't see either of those two professed elements.

http://www.showmethesmut.com/preview/pix_jenny.php

The way he's grabbing her head and face from behind as she looks into the camera strikes me as rape imagery.

If this is supposed to be some sort of big departure from mainstream, objectifying, exploitive porn someone is going to have to walk me through three or four ways on why this is different from other porn and exactly what makes this porn mag beneficial for women, hence feminist.

http://www.showmethesmut.com/preview/pix_angel.php

To be fair, you have this top picture for a balance.

I don’t get how a photo of a heavily make-upped blonde women in black underwear pointing a gun illustrates healthy alternative sexuality or call be called “sex positive”. I sincerely want to be taken through the logical steps that led you (and Jessica) to come to the pro-woman, pro-alternative porn conclusion you do from these pictures. Even if you think painted-up blondes in black bras toting guns are new in porn, I don’t understand how you’re seeing something beneficial for women.

First I thought of the pro-NRA porn calendar rural rightwingers from Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine”, but then I saw in my mind the bizarre trigger happy bedroom scene from David Bowie’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth”, which is better than the rape imagery of some the other SMUT pictures but still far from a positive alternative or feminist vision.

You have an interesting concept of “balance”, which is a synonym for equal. Providing you feel that photo is feminist (it comes off rather violent to me, with the gun and all), is that really the sort of “balance” feminists seek, one less hateful image of women to counter every hateful image, 50/50? By that standard, there’s not too much of a problem if 1 out of 4 women are raped because there are still 3 out of 4 women who aren’t therefore women are still ahead. The notion you’ve put forth here suggests half of US women getting raped would “balance” with half of US women not being raped, and that’s all right. When a man rapes his wife and someone points out, “Yeah that’s bad, but some don’t therefore it’s not a real problem”, you usually expect to find an anti-feminist speaker, so the same sentiment spoken by a feminist defending pornography concerns me.

Why is it so damn hard to just look at a photo clearly selling the eroticisation of violence against women and say, “That’s not pro-queer, pro-woman, or pro-sex”? I’m not asking you to give up your first born child, I just want you to see the hand over the woman’s mouth and the total lack of sex or nudity in that porn (placed between explicitly sexual porn) and tell me why that not only doesn’t bother you but is actually praised and promoted as good for women. How can that photo even be considered “pornography” unless we as a culture have come to see our masturbation desires as we see rape, less about sex itself and more about power and domination?

Ooohhh yeah - third picture down on this photograph looks like she's been mutilated and left to die.
http://www.showmethesmut.com/preview/pix_julie.php

If I saw this in let's say an advertisement for beer during superbowl time, I sincerely would hope that you pro-porn feminists would come to my side and protest it, but aw hell, I forgot, stupid me - this is in the context of a 'feminist' porn magazine, so this mutilated imagery of a woman is not really about 'mutilation' but rather it's an artsy fartsy photograph taken by a male photographer....

Considering I'm an active member of the Toronto Arts Community - I'm rather embarassed right now, both for feministing and for the Toronto Art's scene.

Oh yeah, not to mention haven't naked emaciated women, like the woman in photos 4 and 5 already dominated our media landscape to the point where dieting is now the media obsession.

Maybe you pro-porn types should have stuck to 'fat girls' in bondage if you REALLY wanted to be oh so 'against the grain'... Too bad Hustler's got copyright to that.

SMUT my ass....

Terpiskore writes: "I see the same old tight bodied porny cliches and the sixth picture down, the one with a hand held over a woman's mouth...can someone explain to me either the alternative sexuality expressed by that...?"

Without condoning *all* images shown on S.M.U.T.'s site (because I agree, most of it don't seem very radical or feminist to me), I have to say that this set does, in fact, get cheers from me for using ambiguously gendered/sexed people in a porn shoot. In the context of the other pictures, the one featuring a person with a hand over hir mouth becomes a lot more complex than "sexist, because it depicts a man with his hand over a woman's mouth = rape scene." Who's getting their mouth covered? A woman? A man? Neither? And who's doing the covering? We can't really say.

Yes, it may *remind* us of mainstream hetero "rape porn," but I think we have to allow room for folks to get turned on by domination/submission erotic art without feeling squeamish and without automatically assuming that it's anti-woman. (And why isn't it okay to be turned on by porn that's more about power play than explicit sexual acts?)