Whatever turns you on? | Sex |

Ever thought about what might happen if For Women magazine ended up being edited by Courtney Love with a bevy of shaggy-haired NME-fodder for designs? Really, ask yourself no longer. Flick through the pearly pages of brand new German “porn for women” journal Glück (developed by Cologne-based music industry scenesters Nicole Rüdiger and Elke Kuhlen, offered via
Leckerheft.de
) and you also have a pretty good idea.

There aren’t any typically beautiful Adonises in these pages, merely pale, slim, often hairy, indie boys. Photographed from inside the comfort of their own “bohemian” (read: filthy) bedsits, the Glück versions pose nude, appearing calm and all-natural, a million miles from simulated “erotic” contortions regarding the girls in lads’ mags. They gaze serenely, virtually smugly, from the digital camera. In fact, these males apparently enjoy their averageness: displaying their ugly systems and receding hairlines with aplomb. Plus the place regarding hands is such that, whatever their appearance, your own interest is attracted to just one thing (and is maybe not their unique come hither sight).

Glück is among a clutch of renewable sex sites products that have sprung upwards, sold to stylish, metropolitan, educated young women and supposedly offering a new take on pornography, a guilt-free fix of boy-bod. There’s also the usa magazine nice Action and also the SuicideBoys portion of SuicideGirls web site, both of which feature young, nude hipster kids. In UK, Anna Span (obviously “Britain’s first feminine porn movie director”) made movies such as for instance Hoxton Honey, in which she “decided to hang call at London’s trendy Hoxton place to capture the wonderful individuals going at it like creatures in their fashionable shields”. Hmm.

Per a Nielsen NetRatings survey the separate on Sunday last month, 1.4 million ladies in the united kingdom downloaded adult photos from the internet a year ago. Given this statistic, it’s not surprising this indie market has actually sprung up. That is definitely a substitute for the most common Playgirl/Cosmo beefcake, and, of course, with the über-creepy old-school porno stars – Ron Jeremy and his awesome moustachioed ilk. However it enhances the concern: is this what young, educated ladies would like to get down on?

Really, as cool young women our selves, we just aren’t getting it. The immediate reaction to Glück and pleasing Action were to squeal with security, blush furiously and drop the offending content like a hot potato. Not too our company is prudes! We’re not really accustomed witnessing male genitalia in an average indie fanzine.

Hundreds of women have snapped up the publications though, with purchases for Glück throughout globally. Right back duplicates of their first two problems, printed in quick sequence (the 3rd concern is now available), have actually sold out, putting some very early prints collectors’ items.

With or without this cult reliability though, should consuming this type of pornography be guilt-free? Because guys seem to have posed willingly, performs this make it acceptable to ogle all of them? Really does the original difference in the ability connection between both women and men mean all of the usual feminist objections to pornography (that it’s demeaning and dehumanising) break down? A big follower of nice Action – and brand new become the Glück cause – is Jessica Valenti, the executive editor of
Feministing.com
. “In my opinion the emergence of these type of hipster porno mags for women is a great thing,” she enthuses. While there is a recently available revival of feminist critique of “raunch tradition”, of which these publications are perhaps part, Valenti denies the theory that most porno is actually prohibited for “great feminists”. “Clearly absolutely pornography available that’s damaging to ladies and warrants all of our criticism. But that is only a few pornography. Becoming a feminist doesn’t mean I can’t value sexuality and recognise that an integral part of sexuality is wanting at nude folks. I am not sure basically would call-it one step towards equivalence just, but it’s certainly enjoyable.”

The Glück ladies on their own, Rudiger and Kuhlen, tend to be disappointingly apolitical. “the very last thing we want to be, or are making an effort to be, is feminists,” they state. “for all of us, the theory behind the mag has nothing regarding feminism. All of our audience – indie or not – simply desired to see ‘normal’ naked guys, rather than the fireman kinds frequently being offered.”

For Beatriz Jahr Concejo, of Brit anti-porn campaigning group Object, this trend is actually not amusing. As she highlights, the positions in Glück diverge from the ones that feminine models strike in old-fashioned porn, the guys staying self-possessed and strong. While this will make the women exactly who enjoy this porno convenient – cleaning away any sense that images tend to be exploitative – it can absolutely nothing to combat the damaging power connections of conventional pornography. “[These images] reinforce, in place of test or subvert, existing power relations between people,” claims Jahr Concejo, by portraying “men as powerful – perhaps not submissive”.

The overall reaction to “porn for women” is actually complicated then. Physically, we perform want equality, and we also can see that, for a few females, including feminists, these magazines seem a carefree turn-on. Porn is still burdensome for us however. For example, it creates lazy males even lazier – pleased with a two-dimensional image or a blow-up doll – and that’s not a model we have been into copying. Also, many women within the porno business will still be abused so porn for women will never be totally lighthearted – it’s still sex sites, in order to accept it and ignore pornography’s murky area should be to dismiss all the women who have suffered within the creating. Equality is actually a feminist perfect, but reversing the look only produces a lot more inequality: once again, that’s not a template we wish to repeat. We do not must react like a person to get intimate beings.

Also beyond each one of these political/ ideological/feminist arguments, the reality is that this porn fails for all of us from the most elementary amount: it does not change you in. It is a cliche to say that, sexually, women are never as artistic as males, but a study in our friends proved they universally help this notion, plus don’t feel it by any means compromises their own enlightened mindset towards gender itself.

The ladies we understand choose intimate dreams to be contextualised, which is why sensual fiction is actually more winning than porn for females is ever going to be. Sexually charged words that stimulate the creativity are infinitely much more arousing than any one-size-fits-all porno mag or movie. Whether it’s the stream-of-consciousness enthusiasm of Anaïs Nin’s writing, the postmodern sexuality of tale of O or a schmaltzy Mills & Boon, a well-written gender scene can stimulate body and mind and doesn’t take advantage of anyone in the act.

We resent any individual – male or female – advising all of us what exactly is beautiful, and hipster ladies’ deal with intercourse can be as prescriptive as any lads’ mag, even in the event really wrapped in girlie packaging. They have appropriated men’s vocabulary and imagery to locate a medium of sexual phrase, but it failed to work when Playboy turned into Playgirl, and, for people, it nevertheless does not. We will stick with all of our well-thumbed “Regency romps” and let our very own imaginations carry out the work … instead of an unusual, furry man in a magazine.

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Anna-Marie Fitzgerald and Phoebe Frangoul change feminist trend zine, Pamflet. Concern 4 is actually printed the next day. Purchasing a copy, contact all of them at
pamflet@gmail.com
or
myspace.com/pamflet