Ted X Hates Porn

So, TedX hates porn. It has to be said. Do a Google search on TedX and porn and you will be inundated with videos about porn and how horrible it is, most of them with a little disclaimer that say "This video contains assertions that are not supported by academically respected studies."

That means the video is bullshit, basically. I've watched several of them, they are almost invariably bullshit. They generally use porn to excite the audience, but by coupling it with a "safe" message that porn is bad, very bad, very very bad and boy isn't there a lot of it?

There are a couple of TedX videos about porn that aren't out and out attacks on porn, but they tend to be corrective in nature, things like "It's time for porn to change."

What this tells me is that there's money in attacking porn. I'm not surprised.  Our culture is really, profoundly weird about sex. It creates porn, and antiporn, and everything in between, as well as bizarre phenomena like the Epstein case, with billionaires sharing out harems of underaged women like sex toys.

But really, people are paying lots of money to watch these stupid videos. As our president would say, "Sad."

Re-Evaluating Old Skinamax Film Reviews In the Modern Age

A few years ago I wrote a reviews of two Skinamax movies, Passion Network (warning: NSFW images at the link) and Vicious Circles (warning: NSFW images at the link.). I was interested in the movies because they used a plot device that's common in Internet bondage fantasies: a shadowy network of wealthy, kinky types get beautiful young women into their network and try to make them into bondage slaves, either unwillingly or reluctantly.

But “Passion Network” and "Vicious Circles” are a step up on most Internet bondage stories, because the sexual performers in both films do it for money rather than out of fear of being killed or maimed, or because they're being  physically imprisoned and have no choice.

This makes so much sense! Why would a wealthy person risk going to prison for years by kidnapping or physically harming women when he could get plenty of women to be in his harem by offering them what amounted to chump change for him? True, prostitution is illegal, but not on the level that kidnapping and harming women is illegal. And it's very rare that the purchases of sex services gets prosecuted at all. It's almost always the prostitute or her pimp, if anyone.

So these Skinamax films got it right. Of course wealthy men who craved kinky sex would just pay women to play the role of kinky sex slaves. Everybody wins, right?

I praised those movies because they're set against a backdrop of so many kinky stories where rich men use all kinds of power games and illegal violence and threats of violence to make women do their bidding.

I think some of you may see where this is going. Because … I was wrong. So wrong. And you know who proved me wrong? Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, and quite a few others if the prosecutors have the balls to go after all of Epstein's clients, and not just Epstein (not holding my breath).

These are rich, powerful men who had sex with women they had no business having sex with. I have read accounts that Epstein and his cronies used force and intimidation against some of the young girls they victimized, threatening them and their family member with death. Some of the girls they may have just paid off, I don't know. What I do know is that Epstein and his buddies victimized underage girls – even getting them to have sex by offering them lots of money is illegal, because they were not old enough to knowingly give consent.

Epstein and friends COULD have hired adult women who are small and/or look young to pretend they were very young and inexperienced, just like most producers of the pornographic “Barely 18” videos do. But Epstein and friends didn't, they wanted the REAL THING. And they got it.

Just like those wealthy men in all those Internet fantasies did. They didn't want pretendy slavegirls, they wanted the real thing, and they were willing to risk jail to get it.

I think I got this wrong because I didn't understand just how little fear the wealthy in our society have of being jailed for ANY reason. The Internet bondage fantasies were what was closest to the truth, not “Passion Network” and “Vicious Circles.” Jeffrey Epstein and Company proved that.

And the saddest part is, I wouldn't be surprised if the bad guys totally get away with it … just like the Internet fantasy bad guys.

I have to say, I liked the world a lot better when I thought the Internet fantasies were just horny, harebrained fantasies instead of prosaic reality.