One of my eyes is quite a vivid red. I scratched it while taking out a contact lens maybe ten days ago, and I keep inadvertently sabotaging its best efforts to repair itself. Every time it starts feeling close to normal, I slap my lenses in again, and by the end of the day the eye is crimson and raw. Vanity triumphs over common sense yet again.
I've been doing some low-level marketing for the Sincam, my low-res cheesy online webcam. My recent innovation was to place the camera under my desk and broadcast my bare feet while I work, thus theoretically drawing in a whole new audience comprised of people with foot fetishes. The Sincam has been slow to catch on, so I posted messages on a few foot fetish bulletin boards and registered the URL with a few footsie porn sites. Thus far, my server has hasn't exactly broken a sweat handling the trickle of additional hits generated by my outreach campaign. But I have high hopes that the fetishists will be brought into the fold.
On a related note, someone who works at an underfunded DC nonprofit recently pondered aloud the possibility of using a porn site as a fundraising tool. I thought she was joking, but she was actually giving the idea serious thought. The organization itself could never set up such a site, but they could benefit from an outsider who would create the site and then donate a share of profits to the organization. "Well, Adam has always wanted to do a porn site," Susan chimed in. This is true in the sense that I've thought that selling images of sexuality to libidinous websurfers sounds like a fabulously easy way to make loads of money. There's a reason that "sex" is the most-often-searched term on major search engines.
My other interest in running a porn site came from the fact that I consider most skin sites to be very irresponsible, and I'm sure I could do a better job. Typical pornographers tend to reinforce exploitative gender roles, imply that sex is a function of power and control, and provide no sense of sexuality in a context of a balanced, healthy life. They seldom question the roles of viewer and subject. Also, very few make even the most casual nod towards the concept of safe sex, which I find kind of astonishing in this day and age.
My former nonprofit organization was primarily concerned with the reproductive and sexual health of young people. One day, we had a brainstorming session about what kinds of new projects we could do. My suggestion was that we start an outreach program with online pornographers. We could help porn sites develop more positive approaches to depicting sexuality, and encourage them to use images that support safe sex. I remember my first peaks at dirty magazines in the back of the Seven Day Junior store, and they were pretty tame compared with some of the gooey goodies available to young folk on the Web. Like it or not, this is how many young people are going to get their first glimpse of what adults do behind closed doors, and I figure it behooves us to show them something a little more akin to reality than "Preggo Bestiality Blow-rama."
As you may well imagine, the reaction at my small nonprofit was sort of like I'd barfed on the table as I talked. The idea of working with the purveyors of smut was far outside the zone for most people there, and the meeting soon ground on to other, less visionary ideas. Admittedly, the organization might have looked bad if it came out in public that they consorted with pornographers. But I felt strongly that someone's got to start changing the way that sex pops up (and bursts out of) the net, because sex sites are all just mouthing the same lame fleshy mantra that was repeated endlessly by the skin mags of yesteryear.
Susan and I idly discussed the idea as we walked down 17th Street to meet Inga and Grover at a local bar. The concept is an erotic site that emphasizes positive sexuality, supports safe-sex idealism, and counteracts some of the callous fleshmag sensibility of your typical skin sites. The site operates on the assumption that sex is a great, healthy, normal part of the human experience, and deserves to be portrayed with the same positive sentiments we would offer our own lovers. Most importantly, it donates 80% of the profits to organizations fighting AIDS, distributing the remaining funds equitably among everyone involved in its development and maintenance, like a cooperative. I thought that the "AIDS fundraising" element might be a marketing hook that could generate significant media and public interest.
Somehow, this seemed more palatable to us than running your standard sex site. Perhaps some of the offensiveness of porno sites is the idea of an individual harnessing profit from the bodies of others.
Of course, it's just an idea. Between the zine about death and another upcoming commitment to design a page for a DC nonprofit, I really don't have time for another pro bono endeavor. And in that late-night-awake place where one's actions tend to hit the moral fan, who knows how I would really feel about it?
There are certain kinds of seeds that grow eight-headed hydras in one's yard. Seven of the heads are genteel, witty, good storytellers, and all-around perfect company. The eighth head yells a foul stream of vicious curses and nonsense phrases, and stretches its snakelike neck over the fence to gobble up small dogs walking on the sidewalk. Severing this head will slay the whole creature. Knowing this, do you plant the seed?