Please Use Porn Responsibly / Violet Blue's concerns about the new anti-porn feminist agenda

Far be it from me to attempt a liberal media cover-up of the real dangers of porn. DVDs have really sharp edges. Like, do not spill Astroglide into your keyboard. Your hard drive could fill up. Do not lick the monitor; it's bad for the screen. Most porn sucks and you will spend hours trying to find anything worth watching. Caterwauling starlets on higher volumes might have your neighbors dialing the emergency number for Animal Care and Control. Wireless mice are not safe for insertion. Re-enacting anything starring Rocco Siffredi might actually cause someone to lose an eye -- be careful where you point that thing. And I'm deeply worried about the under-representation of women in gay porn.

And then there's the correlation between porn and automobile fatalities. Linda Lovelace, famous porn star of "Deep Throat" fame died in a car accident in 2002. Porn star Britney Madison, sometimes known as Britney Jade, died in a Las Vegas automobile accident in 2005. Adult star Anna Malle, described by Adam Film World as "one of the great wild women of porn" died in 2006 as the result of a car crash off state Route 160 in Las Vegas. These porn-related accidents should obviously serve as cautionary tales for would-be starlets.

Porn viewers are equally at risk. A 38-year-old Ohio man reported that his home was invaded in September 2003. The article says, "The man said he that was sitting home alone masturbating and watching a pornographic movie when a man came down into the basement, holding a gun, and started to videotape him. The man said that before he left, the intruder fed his dog some mushrooms and the dog died." Poor dog. What's worse, porn might even stop your heart. This completely weird research studysays that having sex in a "hasty situation" makes you more likely to have a coronary incident and die. Last month, Australian researchers claimed a link between clinical depression and an online sex life. "1,325 men from the U.S and Australia were surveyed about their Internet sex habits, which might include trolling for porn, participating in online chats, or doing things with webcams."

There is actually no limit to the ways in which this four-letter word ruins lives. On July 17, 1990, Daryl E. Porn, a Connecticut resident, was involved in an automobile accident in Portland, Maine, when motorist Lori Willoughby sped through a stop sign and broadsided his vehicle. See, you just have to be called porn to find yourself in a life-threatening situation.

Of course, any thinking person knows that these anecdotes are just that, anecdotes. The correlation between porn use and making freaky death and depression actually happen in real life is hardly valid.

But when people like the extremist feminist group Stop Porn Culture tells us that porn is harmful, their arguments make just as much sense as the ones above. Never mind the fact that SPC is a traveling anti-porn road show that displays over a hundred extreme hardcore images to all comers (no puns; they don't check IDs at the door, nor do they provide the federally required documentation to show that none of their sexually explicit images include children). They perpetuate myths and unsubstantiated claims that porn -- they say all porn, but only show us the really extreme stuff -- is responsible for exploiting women, providing dead-end economic choices for young girls, fostering racism, fostering hatred and degradation of women, and they totally totally promise (while admitting on their own Web site that there is no hard evidence) that porn is a causal factor in rape, child abuse and domestic violence.

And SPC also plays that great old ditty, stating that all porn performers must have been abused as children. Isn't this all just so adorably retro, coming from a 2008 organization? Awww. It's sweet that people can still be so naive in these jaded times. I want to give them a cookie and pat them on the head like children telling me Herbie is real when SPC states that in porn "abuse an exploitation of women is common." Mostly, I want to introduce them to Sasha Grey who said:

"I performed my first sex scene on May 1st, 2006, in The Fashionistas 2: Safado. Although I have come a long way since then, many people in society believe that I am a victim. I was not sexually abused. I am not on drugs. The acts I perform are always consensual. I am a woman who strongly believes in what she does -- it is time that our society comes to grips with the fact that 'normal' people (women especially) enjoy perverse sex."

If correlation were equal to causation, organizations like SPC would be right. Porn would be the cause of all rape. I'd also be able to blame porn for killing Gerard Damiano of natural causes last month. I could also categorically state that porn was responsible for my friend's body issues (because everyone wants huge scary immovable porn chick breasts). And the economy? Well, if porn hadn't saturated our society with "industries of sexual exploitation" then no one would have painted the Wall Street bulls' balls blue, leading to the humiliation and exploitation of everyone on Wall Street and sending the Dow into a money shot of a tailspin.

It's anti-porn logic, people. And it's awesome! It's all is based on the assumption that there is no such thing as healthy porn use, and that there's no such thing as healthy porn. And that all porn is the same, and that the mainstream porn industry isn't being killed by the Internet giving us all, finally, freedom of choice and we don't have to watch things that makes us go "ew" anymore because that's all they carry at the local Jack Shack. Please, no one tell them the truth. Someone's got to keep the millions of us normal, porn-loving peoples of all genders, races and sexual orientations entertained with a little haunted house fiction.

It's not just the logic at SPC that kept me coming back for laughs. It's important to really savor the "new" face of the anti-porn movement, especially since we're finally getting the Bible-thumping extremists out of the White House. At Stop Porn Culture, they give us the history of the feminist anti-porn movement, citing Dworkin and MacKinnon as their lineage, and give us the vision of a world where the great tradition of stopping sexual abuse of women and children is possible in their mission. Their board of directors (some of whom also star in their upcoming film "The Price of Pleasure" as "experts") hail from colleges around the nation. Links from SPC's Web site lead to their MySpace and YouTube pages, have DIY instructions on doing your own anti-porn presentations (though you gotta promise you're over 18 to see the images, m'kay?). Links offsite also lead to a site called "The No Porn Pledge" (owned by Patty Valentine, aka "One Angry Girl"), and is part of throughtheflame.org, an anti-porn nonprofit -- and all of the Web sites in the ring categorically state that they "do not promote any particular religion or ideology." The funny thing is, when you scratch the domain lookup surface it's just like the anti-porn feminist history they claim, where the 'ists were in bed with the church: Stop Porn Culture is registered and owned by Skyward-bound Productions, specializing "in serving churches and other nonprofit organizations get the materials they need to help spread the ministry of Jesus Christ."

The real low-down dirty shame isn't that John Waters isn't directing porn (okay, it doe make me cry myself to sleep every night). The real shame and harm is that organizations like SPC are so busy with their questionable beliefs -- and truly exploitative tactics -- that no one even gets a chance to find out that no, you shouldn't imitate what you see in porn: It's not safe sex. The sexual fantasies portrayed in porn -- especially the extreme ones -- like all adult sexual situations, require context (which is exactly what SPC removes).

And most of all, that people should be given the opportunity to use porn responsibly like alcohol, cars, or the Internet. Or pilfered hardcore images. Got that, SPC?

Violet Blue is a Forbes "Web Celeb", notorious blogger (Laughing Squid), high-profile tech personality and one of Wired's "Faces of Innovation." She writes for outlets ranging from Forbes.com to O, The Oprah Magazine. She is regarded as the foremost expert in the field of sex and technology, a sex-positive pundit in mainstream media ( CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Show) and is interviewed, quoted and featured prominently by major media outlets. Violet has many award-winning, best-selling books, a famous podcast, is fun to follow on Twitter, and is a San Francisco native.

Blue headlines at conferences ranging from ETech, The Forbes Internet Leadership Conference, LeWeb and SXSW: Interactive, to Google Tech Talks at Google, Inc. Her tech site is Techyum; her audio and e-books are at Digita Publications.

For more information and links to Web sites discussed in Open Source Sex, go to Violet Blue's Web site, tinynibbles.com.