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In Italy Father’s Day is recognized on St.Joseph’s saint day, which is today. And I have to say given Joseph’s role in Jesus’s birth, there’s a strange subtext to the day here 
Anyway, I spend much of both the Italian and American Father’s Day quoting from the first episode of the horror omnibus Creepshow (1982), which is appropriately called “Father’s Day.” It’s a story of a wealthy, homicidal patriarch that is murdered by his daughter after having her lover killed in his ongoing campaign to control her love life. It’s an awesome episode, and everything is narrated by the bored, dissolute heirs of this fortune while they’re waiting for their great aunt Bediliah to arrive to celebrate Father’s Day, which happens to be 7 years after she murdered the pater familia.
Creepshow: “I want my Cake, Bediliah”
The line repeated throughout the episode is by the tyrannical patriarch, who belligerently cries, “I want my cake!” while banging the table with his cane. And that’s what I find myself saying again and again on this hallowed day. I often preface this demand with some context, “It’s Father’s Day, and I want my cake!” And once I get it I say, “It’s Father’s day, and I got my cake,” the latter being a reference to the end of that episode, but no spoilers here. Anyway, I’m not sure why Creepshow continues to be a huge touchstone for me on a regular basis 40+ years later, but it is. The other thing I find myself exclaiming histrionically when the occasion calls for it is “I can hold my breath for a long time!” which is a quote from the third episode of Creepshow called “Something to Tide You Over.” You just have to see that one, which is my all-time favorite.
Creepshow: Lost Reception
Also, while we’re on the subject of Creepshow, it’s worth noting the “Father’s Day” episode also features a young Ed Harris doing an impressive series of disco dance moves:
A Young Ed Harris doing the sprinkler move
I love Creepshow, and all these GIFs were actually taken from the bava archive during the heady days of the Summer of Oblivion. I went on a little Creepshow tear in June 2011, and the tale of the blog confirms that. Speaking of GIFs, I’ve been watching a bunch of Yasujiro Ozu‘s films recently, and I got an idea for an interesting GIF project for my house. I ordered the Blu-ray and will be trying to make really high quality GIFs from Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon (1962) because I think that film is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and like the first episode of Creepshow, it is all about fatherhood I’ll try and write about my Ozu GIF project once a figure a few things out, but until then 2011 is a little something to tide you over
On Wednesday, Netflix released a new documentary looking at how Pornhub came to be and the controversies (and lawsuits) that ensued. Directed by Suzanne Hillinger, Money Shot: The Pornhub Story features interviews with both porn stars reliant on platforms like Pornhub and Onlyfans for income, as well as with the anti-trafficking activists who sought to stop the rampant exploitation, rape, and non-consensual imagery (including videos of minors) on the site.
The film begins with a cutesy complilation of porn stars sharing their first experiences with porn. A number of these stories are pre-internet, meaning they do sound quaint in comparison to what kids see now, at ever younger ages, online. We’re talking 80s Playboys and fairy tale-themed “erotic movies” on Cinemax. Even I found such things confusing and disturbing when I accidentally encountered them as a kid, but apparently people think this stuff is cute and kitschy nowadays — ah the fond childhood memories of adult sex. A young woman named Noelle Perdue, though, grew up in the internet age, and describes going onto Pornhub at 11 years old, where she discovered “an eight person geriatric gangbang” — more fitting of the modern day norm.
Perdue worked in the porn industry for a number of years — namely, she worked as a writer, producer, and talent acquirer at MindGeek. Despite this apparent conflict of interest, she served as a “consultant” on the Money Shot. Perdue appears not to be the only industry representative to have had input.
Though the documentary can claim to show “both sides,” the narrative is shaped by industry advocates disguised as “independent sex workers.” One interviewee, Asa Akira, is in fact Pornhub’s spokeperson and brand ambassador. The other porn performers interviewed may not literally have that job title, but are reliant on these kinds of sites for their income and are invested in ensuring their industry and the sites they profit from don’t get a bad rep or get shut down entirely.
While including industry voices in a documentary purporting to expose or at least delve into accusations of serious criminal activity and sexual exploitation is reasonable, allowing those invested in ensuring the industry is not shut down or that profit is not restricted in any way (say, by blocking consumers from using their credit cards on porn sites) to control the narrative is going to compromise the final result. No one working directly for Pornhub is going to admit the company and the industry as a whole profits from trafficking, exploitation, rape, and child porn.
Missing from the film are women who have left the porn industry, now free to tell the truth about their experiences; researchers who might offer data and insight into who goes into porn and why, mental health, STDs, and addiction in the industry; psychological or physical impacts on the women involved; and trafficking victims themselves. Even porn producers, as evidenced by Exodus Cry founder Benjamin Nolot’s series, Beyond Fantasy (in particular, the third episode in the series, “Hardcore,” which drops March 23), can offer insight into the manipulation, coercion, and sadism behind the scenes claimed as “consensual,” provided you ask the right questions. The producers could have asked the “consenting sex workers” featured about their pasts and experiences — how and why they ended up in porn, and what’s happened to them in the industry — but they chose not to.
The primary voices featured in the documentary who offer a critical view of the industry are connected to the anti-trafficking groups going after PornHub — namely Exodus Cry (founded by Nolot) and NCOSE — who are dismissed as Christian fundamentalists with ulterior motives.
Like many debates, the porn debate is treated as two-sided: there are the “sex workers” fighting for the right to sell sex legally, free from “censorship” (the little guy), and then there are the moralistic, anti-sex, religious conservatives who wish to repress sexuality and are campaigning against the little guy’s freedom.
We are offered “choice” or “no choice.” “Freedom” or “North Korea.” Pro-sex or anti-sex.
But this is not the story. It’s not even a story. In truth, porn is a multi billion dollar industry that uses a few “happy hookers” as politically convenient representatives to speak on their behalf, disguising the dark truth behind the sex trade.
There are many reasons to oppose the sex industry — including impact on users’ brains, mental health, and relationships, as well as impact on the women and girls in porn — yet most the critical are framed as “hating women’s bodies,” “trying to control women’s sexualities,” or “ being prudish/anti-sex.” Dismissing critics as religious extremists is always popular, as it scares off liberals and progressives from engaging with anti-porn arguments. Including voices like mine — a free speech and civil liberties advocate who comes from a leftist and feminist background and is far from “anti-sex” — complicates the narrative. Broadening context to include women’s stories about their pasts and experiences in the industry disrupts the simplified “consenting adult” narrative. Talking about men’s choices to consume abusive and dehumanizing pornography, or porn that sexualizes “teens” or childern is almost always left out of the conversation.
The “let adults do what they like” almost always applies to women, except when framed as “policing people’s sexualities,” which implies a form of thought policing, but conveniently excludes the fact that porn is not relegated to people’s imaginations.
Industry advocates are sure to restrict the discussion of disturbing categories like “teen” to one of “consenting adults” who are free to imagine whatever they like. Perdue claims the “teen” category “doesn’t necessarily refer to teenagers,” and that “it’s more in reference to a body type” — a rather genius defense, because it ignores the fact that sexualizing minors and encouraging men to masturbate to their degradation creates a market for actual teen porn and encourages men to view teen girls as sexual objects.
Siri Dahl, a porn performer featured extensively throughout the film, seems only to be concerned about categories like “teen,” in terms of finding “solutions to tagging” that don’t “police people’s sexualities, which they’re allowed to have because they’re a legal adult.” In other words, it’s not the content itself, it’s that the “teen” category doesn’t sound great on paper. Unfortunately, Pornhub’s customers love it, so what can you do, eh?
Just to hammer in the point, the producers include another performer, Cherie Deville (playing a creepily stepfordesque character), saying:
“We’re providing entertainment within the legal bounds for consenting adults, and within that buffet of pornographic content, that adult, if they choose to consume it, can choose… anything.”
It all felt incredibly rehearsed, as though Pornhub lawyers have fed lines to these women. By carefully presenting performers as “independent, empowered sex workers,” the film’s producers construct a conversation about “free choice,” and are able to avoid the fact porn sells abuse, objectification, and exploitation, regardless of “consent.” And that within that “consent” — those contracts signed, what happens on set involves a hell of a lot of coercion.
When we talk about porn, we aren’t talking about independents — we are talking about a massive, multi-billion dollar industry. Shoving “independent sex workers” to the forefront to pretend as though holding Pornhub execs to account is really an attack on these empowered women, just trying to get by so–please-be-nice-and-stop-talking-about-trafficking-it’s-awkward-for-us is gross.
I don’t know if the makers of Money Shot were simply naive, or if they had biased intentions from the get go, but they buy into the manufactured David and Goliath narrative full force.
The intent behind Money Shot is to argue that porn is a clean, happy industry full of enthusiastically consenting women, and that the “dark side” — child porn, trafficking, and nonconsensual content — is completely separate from that and only a tiny minority of the industry (in fact, they claim it’s not a part of the industry at all) — an accident led by bad actors who are dragging the industry’s reputation down unfairly.
This is not the case. The happy hooker fantasy has always only represented a tiny minority of women, and usually doesn’t tell their whole story anyway. The few stories of exploitation and abuse that make it into the mainstream represent only a sliver. Indeed, even the so-called “consenting” women tell horrific tales once they are free to do so and able to reflect back honestly.
~~~
The documentary does of course acknowledge that a few bad things went down on Pornhub.
MindGeek, the company that owns Pornhub, was sued by numerous plaintiffs who accused them of distributing and profiting from child pornography and nonconsensual sex videos. The company was undoubtedly aware that this content was displayed on Pornhub, as numerous women and teen girls had emailed them, desperate to have their images removed from the site, but the company was not pressed to do anything about it. Nonconsensual videos would stay up for months after complaints were filed, and when they were removed, they would immediately pop up again on the site.
MindGeek claimed it “instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history,” but until the lawsuits had only 30 human moderators employed to monitor millions of videos on Pornhub and did not have any verification process in place for users uploading content. Even after a verification process was put into place (which women like DeVille and Perdue claimed “sex workers” were begging for, as it would resolve the problem of pesky rape videos popping up on the site), there was still no age or consent verification required for the women featured in the videos. Anyone with an ID could still upload what they liked.
~~~
In an article for Rolling Stone, a DeVille writes, “anti-sex-trafficking campaigns are anti-porn campaigns in disguise.” She complains that the “war on Pornhub is a proxy war to take down the entire legal sex work industry” and that “what they really want is to shut down Porn Valley.”
And honestly she’s right.
I don’t want to just stop child pornography or trafficking on Pornhub. I don’t want to just see Pornhub shut down on account of isolated incidences of rape and nonconsensual videos found on the site. I want to make it next to impossible to profit from pornography, because I want it to be next to impossible to profit from the exploitation, abuse, and dehumanization of women and girls. I don’t want to simply “take down” the “legal sex industry,” because of course much of what happens in the sex trade is not legal — I actually believe that the porn industry as a whole should be illegal. I do not think it should be legal to pay another person for sex or to profit by coercing another person to engage in sex acts.
Realistically, I don’t believe we can end porn or prostitution entirely. But we could make it impossible for companies like Pornhub to exist, make profiting from porn illegal, and ensure a porn set must comply with labour standards, including health and safety standards and laws against sexual harassment and assault, thereby rendering everything that happens on a porn set illegal.
One of the common threads throughout Money Shot was the one of the empowered independent performer, making her own content happily, from the comfort of her home, under attack by these attempts to go after trafficking and abuse in the industry. And while I feel very badly for women who feel dependent on porn for survival, I don’t feel bad for the women who could choose something else — who have the means, education, options, and privilege — but instead choose to shill for a vile industry responsible for the trauma of countless women and girls around the world. The idea that the horror of the industry should be accepted because one woman managed to buy a house with her earnings is not good enough for me.
Whether they intended to or not, the filmmakers did little more than produce propaganda for an industry that hardly needs a boost.
For further discussion of this film and the debate surrounding the industry, you can watch a conversation between Benji Nolot, Alix Aharon, and myself which aired live on YouTube Thursday, March 16th.
The post Money Shot’s big lie appeared first on Feminist Current.
“No debate” is a common response offered to those who challenge gender identity ideology, yet a debate is happening at last. A new documentary has been released — then promptly censored — giving a platform to a group almost wholly ignored by mainstream media: the parents of children identifying as “transgender.”
Dead Name, released in December by BrokenHearted Films, shines a timely spotlight on parents of children who claim to be the opposite sex, encouraged by an entire industry of therapists, doctors, activists, and LGBTQ charities. Given the alarming number of children suddenly identifying as “transgender” in North America, their parents are surely a group worth hearing from. And yet, Dead Name was removed from the popular video platform Vimeo on January 23, after just 34 days.
Dead Name’s director, Taylor Reece, told me via email that when Vimeo removed her 50-minute documentary she received an email from the company, stating, “We have unsuccessfully published your film.” Success is relative, of course, but Reece says viewers from 16 countries bought her documentary. The Federalist’s Tristan Justice contacted Vimeo about the film, and the company told him via email:
“We can confirm that Vimeo removed the video in question for violating our Terms of Service prohibiting discriminatory or hateful content. We strive to enforce these policies objectively and consistently across our platform.”
I reached out to Reece, asking her to respond to the accusation of “discriminatory or hateful” content. She refuted this, saying, “I’d like to emphasize that there is absolutely no hate speech in our film.” She’s right.
Given that Dead Name highlights the plight of and effects on the immediate family of children labelled “transgender,” and addresses the harms of “transgender” ideology, it appears Reece’s documentary has been censored for revealing flaws in and harms of transgender ideology. Reece is now just the latest in a long line of women censored for questioning the medicalization and mutilation of children’s bodies in the name of “trans rights.”
Most of Dead Name’s running time is dedicated to interviews with three American parents, identified by their first names only: Amy, Bill, and Helen. Their stories are heartbreaking, and likely to inspire distress in any parent who fears their child might get caught up in the social contagion of transgenderism.
The film also includes brief interviews with Stephen Levine, a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, and Christian Post reporter, Brandon Showalter, as well as brief interviews with other parents of children swept up in an ideology that convinces kids and teens they may have the “wrong body” or that any distress they are experiencing can be resolved through changing “gender.”
Amy, Helen, and Bill come across as thoughtful, caring parents and their stories share many commonalities. They describe their children being influenced by others and becoming withdrawn, learning about transgenderism as a “solution.” They describe feeling alone and powerless to protect their children, and being treated like terrible, unsupportive parents for questioning their child’s new identity. They describe this period of their life as a nightmare. Amy says of her teenage daughter, “She would end up verbally abusing me. It got really ugly… I can’t even begin to say the names that she called me.” They remark on the incongruity of others presuming to know their child better than they do. They discuss being let down by mental health professionals seemingly intent on rushing their child to “transition” to the opposite sex. The sadness and distress is palpable.
Bill says, “This is about protecting my kids. I don’t want another parent to ever have to go through what I’ve been through.” Amy also feels like she can help other parents to navigate these kinds of situations, saying of her parent support group: “I realized that I can be a voice. I can be there for other parents that are going through this, and that’s important to me.”
Bill explains that professionals’ hands are tied by the trans-affirmative model and insufficient attention is given to other paths, such as the watchful waiting approach. He, Amy, and Helen say the trans-affirmative model is portrayed as the only way.
They reflect thoughtfully about wrong-body ideology and ask valid questions our societies are failing to answer. Amy asks her interviewer, “Where does our species go if you can cut off your body parts like this?” She wonders what her grandmother would think of all this and asks: “How are we getting so far from reality?”
Helen describes how, in 2014, she was sidelined when her four-year-old son Jonah was “socially transitioned” at school. Soon after separating from her wife, Helen received a call from Jonah’s daycare’s director, informing her that Jonah claimed to be a girl. This call left Helen shocked and confused. Shortly after, the preschool sent a letter to all the parents, informing them they had a new student named Rosa (Jonah), and that the school wanted the parents to support “her.”
Helen received the same letter as the other parents, as though Jonah were not even her son. The preschool, she felt, seemed to be on a crusade to get everyone using Jonah’s new female pronouns. Says Helen, “It was all about me having to accept this… ‘It’s what Rose wants’.” No one at his school challenged the claim that Jonah was now the opposite sex.
Helen says Jonah’s kindergarten teacher told him about sex-reassignment surgeries. He was six years old. Helen began to look into the impacts of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and how these things lead (often very quickly) into cross-sex surgeries. She realized the social transitioning which had begun at preschool could lead to permanent physical changes to her son.
Jonah adopted two identities to navigate the world: a “boy identity” for his time with Helen and a “girl identity” he adopted at school and expressed when he was with Helen’s ex-wife. Helen agreed to call him Rosa and gave him the choice of “boy clothes” or “girl clothes,” but believed using female pronouns would be harmful to him, saying, “The truth is he’s not a transgender girl.” She tells her interviewer that Jonah’s well-being and mental health have been sacrificed.
American-Canadian clinical psychologist and sexologist James Cantor attended Helen’s child custody battle with her ex-wife, as her witness. Helen won sole legal custody of Jonah, however, she cannot stop her ex from calling him by a girl’s name and using female pronouns for him.
Amy, the mother of a teenage daughter, recounts how in 2015 her daughter suddenly announced she was “trans” and said she needed a new name. She had shown no signs of childhood gender dysphoria, but had begun hanging out with a friend that identified as “transgender.”
Amy’s daughter’s desire to “transition” to the opposite sex led to terrible rows between mother and daughter as Amy questioned her new identity and intention to begin hormone treatments. Her daughter threatened suicide and their disagreements led to fights between Amy and her husband. A meeting with a counsellor who treats gender non-conforming youth resulted in another blow-up, and Amy’s daughter moved out of the family home.
Bill tells us of his son Sean’s difficult life, cut short. At two years old, Sean was diagnosed with cancer, and his leg was amputated. At five it was discovered he had a form of leukemia, which resulted in a bone marrow transplant. When he was eight, Sean’s older brother died of a heroin overdose. Sean’s mother also died. What’s more, Bill says Sean likely knew he was sterile due to the chemotherapy. Clearly, Sean had suffered much trauma during his childhood — trauma Bill believes played a part in Sean embracing gender identity ideology. Bill maintains that Sean gave no signs of early childhood dysphoria.
Following these traumatic events, Sean was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. According to Bill, it was at this point that Sean wanted hormones “to become a girl as quick as possible.” Sean set up an appointment with an endocrinologist at the hospital, which was subsequently cancelled by the endocrinologist (who had been following Sean for some time), as cross-sex hormones would be fatal to Sean on account of the cancer.
Bill believes Sean fell in with the wrong crowd during his freshman year at college. He says Sean was planning to move in with three girls who were “involved heavily in the trans thing.”
We learn that Sean died while at college. A police officer sent to Bill’s home informed him his “daughter” had died, confusing Bill, who initially assumed the officer had the wrong parent. When he viewed his son’s body at the funeral parlor, Bill didn’t recognize him, leading him to believe Sean was taking cross-sex hormones at the time of his death, despite his doctor refusing to prescribe them.
Footage of a Partners for Ethical Care (PEC) protest outside a gender clinic shows parents holding signs reading, “Gender clinics harm children,” “No child is born in the wrong body,” and “Stop transing gay kids.”
Psychiatrist Stephen Levine, who is also a Genspect advisor and who published a paper called Reflections on the Clinician’s Role with Individuals Who Self-identify as Transgender in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in September 2021, explains:
“I’m well aware of the anguish of the parents and it’s not just a one-time anguish that is settled by kind words from the doctor. It’s an ongoing, continued anguish. Many of the parents I’ve seen have gone into therapy as a result, have become depressed and anxious, can’t sleep and so forth. And they don’t know what to do… But I think for every parent who gets involved wisely with other parents there are probably more parents who just deal with this by themselves, in shame and in horror and in sadness.”
Brandon Showalter has been covering the fight against gender identity ideology at The Christian Post for some years now. He tells the interviewer:
“What I would see consistently is that this ideology ruined everything it touches. And that the heartbreak and the devastation of parents and families was just staggering… To be forced to watch the slow-motion dissociation and disintegration — chemical disintegration sometimes — of their own children, was just like living in a horror movie. And that has only increased through the years.”
Mothers of trans-identified children interviewed near the end of the film express how gender identity ideology alienated their children from them, teaching them their parents were the enemy if they were not fully supportive of the child’s wish to attempt a medical “transition” to the opposite sex. They observe that the clusters of children identifying as trans should raise a red flag — but doesn’t — and that being “transgender” is now a social currency for children.
A “dead name,” we learn, is a term used by proponents of trans ideology to refer to one’s name before it was changed to correspond to the new, opposite-sex identity. In most cases the “dead name” is the one given by one’s parents.
Dead Name shines a spotlight on the devastation trans ideology leaves in its wake. It is dedicated to the memory of Sean Mahoney and can be purchased for viewing at deadnamedocumentary.com/
Alline Cormier is a Canadian film analyst and retired court interpreter with a B.A. Translation from Université Laval. In her second career she turns the text analysis skills she acquired in university studying translation and literature to film. She makes her home in British Columbia and is currently seeking a publisher for her film guide for women. Alline tweets @ACPicks2.
The post ‘Dead Name’ shines the spotlight on parents of kids taken in by the gender identity industry appeared first on Feminist Current.
Your Pretty Much Pop hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Baker talk through various ethical and narrative problems having to do with the creation of artificial life.
We all watched M3GAN and Steve Spielberg’s A.I., and also touch on After Yang, Ex Machina, Bicentennial Man, the BBC show Humans, and of course this is an element in classic sci-fi properties like Alien, Blade Runner, Star Trek, etc.
We also go on a tangent about A.I. writing academic papers.
We mention the short stories E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” and Roger Zelazny’s “For a Breath I Tarry.”
Follow us @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck, @ixisnox, @MarkLinsenmayer.
Hear more Pretty Much Pop. Support the show and hear bonus talking for this and nearly every other episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choosing a paid subscription through Apple Podcasts. This podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network.
Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast is the first podcast curated by Open Culture. Browse all Pretty Much Pop posts.
Fun fact: the original Gladiator was such a massive cultural phenomenon that Ridley Scott entertained the idea of a sequel almost immediately. The original idea for the sequel is one of the greatest and most ridiculous unmade movies in history. — Read the rest
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