Comments on: 15 Minutes of lame?

By: drew hawks

drew hawks — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:39:36 +0000

i’m glad that you’re bearing witness to this jiz. it’s a totally important thing to be critical about but the complexities for sure get so intertwined with so many issues, personal and political.

i wonder if the mainstream can *ever* understand the whole paradigm shift that something like queer feminist porn really embodies. it doesn’t sound like they really got it. at all. maybe this shouldn’t have been surprising? it sounds like maybe it was though.

also, i wonder, if queer porn gets a bigger following, as you sorta suggest, does it necessarily equate with it becoming mainstream? popularity and exposure isn’t ‘selling out’. selling out is ‘selling out’. in some ways feminism and queerness may, at times, as it has in other areas of culture, may be more or less trendy but it will never be mainstream. the mainstream may hand-pick and cleave-off what it wants but it never has, and never really could co-opt the core elements of feminism or queerness. then, i guess, it would cease to be mainstream.

By: Jiz Lee

Jiz Lee — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:54:12 +0000

Yes, thank you both.
It’s a tricky line, and my update is that there’s a lot more that occurred than I knew had happened, which unfortunately I’m not at liberty to disclose. Sorry about that! (I myself don’t even know the details.)

What I CAN say, is that the event yesterday was very chill and fun. All the HBO folks were nothing but smiles and please & thank yous. There was respect and there may be more discussion about this incident in the future, and I definitely hope that it strengthens our little SF porn family. Lessons to learn.

By: Rosa Pisces

Rosa Pisces — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:16:11 +0000

Jiz, thanks for posting this. The love and support you all have for each other is so evident and inspiring. The visibility you yourself create has ‘mainstream’ queers like myself feeling shaken up, rebelious, creative and a little more ‘gay’….if that makes any sense, than before. I have been living without much connection to any community for a long time and coming across your work, literally…. has me longing for more connectedness period: community, sexually, artistically….

Entering mainstream anything is pioneer work! The oppression that will come with that is not in vain – the result is that those who see it…. even a mainstream version, will be forced to reconsider their own boundaries, and very likely, as in my case, feel deliciously empowered….. and hot~ xoxo

By: Audacia Ray

Audacia Ray — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:42:09 +0000

I totally agree with you that there is good in “selling out” – getting a wider audience means becoming real and human to people who’ve never really given thought to queer feminist porn before, among many other things. There’s a lot of value in infiltration, for sure.

But there’s also a lot of value in pushing our notions of ethics and the importance of transparency and community process – so glad that Madison is handling this the way she is.

That said, I think it’s also important to reinforce that not everyone can or should try to be in the mainstream spotlight and if the personal harm is greater than the community’s gain, it just isn’t worth it.