Images of the human reproductive act have circulated throughout cultures since before history, well before the concept of art vs. non-art or exploitation.  So ther has been lewd jerk-off material as long as humans ahve wanted to jerk it.  If you eschew the notion of sacred and profane, which one is perfectly entitled to do, what it comes down to is bodies and pleasure and consenting adults.  As for degradation, I have worked plenty of jobs where I was consensually degraded in order to pay my bills (anybody ever cleaned a grease trap?).  In the process, I only got a dirty apron, I didn't have multitudes of the opposite sex lusting after me.  If I had, I imagine the wage would have seemed a bit more reasonable.  Seems to me the religio-Marxist-Kantian affront at sex for money in front of a camera is really boosted by the 'religio' part of the equation.  I'm personally far more revolted by people who beat the shit out of themselves on camera for money.  It also seems that the Abrahamic traditions do seem to have an odd anti-humanistic aversion to the deed.   I wonder--if religious culture, or even secularized-but-still-somewhat-religious culture stopped teaching people to feel bad about sex, stopped propogating the wholly unsubstatiated notion of transcendental purity of the immaterial soul, would the neuroses and issues and ills associated with pronography (which appear to be real) continue to exist?    

Josh, sorry but you have said nothing at all really.

Tamar why do feel it necessary to find an 'out' for your friend. What about asking why she's doing it? I kept thinking as I am reading - what happened to that woman to compel her to do what she is doing?

Anonymous asked: I kept thinking as I am reading - what happened to that woman to compel her to do what she is doing?

It seems telling that Tamar apparently didn't ask her, or at least didn't see fit to let us know her answer. Maybe she's doing it b/c she thought it would be fun, or a rewarding way to make money. As Josh notes, even if we grant that starring in porn is inherently degrading, we don't really have a problem with people degrading themselves for money, it's sex in particular that we have a problem with--or perhaps sex that we find particularly degrading. To add to Josh's grease trap example: we're perfectly happy to let people work long hours as maids for minimum wage (among other things having to clean other people's toilets, change their soiled sheets, and pick up their used condoms). Having sex itself, however--apparently even if the woman prefers the work and gets better pay--is apparently verboten.

i feel like i have entered a sacred area where i should not be found..similar to when i visited the inner chambers behind the wailing wall in jerusalem.

i was born a christian, but cannot consider myself religous in any other aspect than tradition, which i think for many jews is also their relationship with religion.
to use any kind of religion to find out if something is right or wrong, is to me insane. these are the ways wars are started. we know better.. or atleast we should know better.

i produce porn.
the "christian" in me sometimes tells me it is wrong, but it a learned behaviour, we are taught from early childhood that showing our genitalia is not good behaviour. so i fight off these emotions as just that, guilt trips associated with my upbringing. the fact is that producing porn itself is not harmful or wrong, perhaps viewing porn is for some people wrong or even addictive, but many things in our modern society is addictive, and usually someone stands to profit from it.
i dont think your friend is doing anything wrong, sounds like she is just exploring her own sexuality and having fun with her new findings.
if you dont know already, there are an abundance of jews in the adult industry, not so much on the performer side, but many of the big companies are often run and/or owned by jewish individuals..

You see the thing is that I don't care how many times a woman will swear that its her choice and that she is doing it for the money or exploring her sexuality I don't believe it is actually free will. For a woman to participate in porn or the sex industry as opposed to cleaning grease traps (which I don't know why that would be degrading) - something had to have damaged her psyche.

And why is cleaning or maid degrading?

It's a well known fact that Jews by and large run and profit from the porn industry in the USA, Eastern Europe/Russia, the UK, South Africa, and much of South America.

CAN'T DENY IT...
"A story little told is that of Jews in Hollywood’s seedier cousin, the adult film industry. Perhaps we’d prefer to pretend that the ‘triple-exthnics’ didn’t exist, but there’s no getting away from the fact that secular Jews have played (and still continue to play) a disproportionate role throughout the adult film industry in America. Jewish involvement in pornography has a long history in the United States, as Jews have helped to transform a fringe subculture into what has become a primary constituent of Americana...Jewish activity in the porn industry divides into two (sometimes overlapping) groups: pornographers and performers. Though Jews make up only two per cent of the American population, they have been prominent in pornography.

http://www.jewishquarterly.org/article.asp?articleid=38

THEIR SICKNESS KNOWS NO BOUNDS...
"At the extreme end of Jewish Porn, the terror of the concentration camps is re-enacted for sexual gratification. In HOLOCAUST PORN, Jewish women are shown squatting and defecating in packed trains. They are shown having their heads shaved. They are emaciated, with their ribs poking out. They are incinerated in open ovens. They are gassed. They are sodomized with severed limbs, sometimes their own limbs.

One can find staged photographs of a naked and shivering woman under a showerhead in a tiled hygienic facility. I have seen photos of a man dressed as a stormtrooper emptying a tank labeled "Gasoline" into a woman’s mouth. The woman holds the funnel and masturbates the Nazi with her right hand. These photos are grainy black-and-whites, yet are clearly contemporary.

And here things get dirty: The Holocaust Porn industry is based in Israel. The films are mostly made by Israelis, and they are also mostly purchased by Israelis. The actresses are overwhelmingly Israeli-Russian immigrants."

http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_id=7831

Josh- Judaism doesn't have an aversion to sex.  All kinds of sex are allowed (even, according to some halachic opinions, anal sex and masturbation), and in the Torah men seem free to take on extra wives and visit prostitutes as they see fit.  hardly a prudish culture.  And though I too am disturbed by how poorly women are treated across the board in Western society, I have a specific problem with pornography.

Think of it this way.  Do you have a sister?  A younger cousin or niece?  When you think of what you hope for her in the future, does porn star come to mind?  Hopefully not.  You may wish her a life of great sex, but performing sex for others, faking it for the camera, or even not faking it for the camera is hardly a high ambition.  Presenting yourself to the world as a person whose gift is sex can only imply a pretty egregious lack of self respect. (And the difference between porn stars and hotel maids, by the way, is that hotel maids aren't flouting their toilet scrubbing skills on DVDs and subscription websites.  A hotel maid may have a crappy job, but she's probably aware of it, and angry about it, whereas most pornstars seem positively overjoyed at their profession.)  After all, everyone is capable of having sex, and most people could even manage to look great doing it if they limited their diet to cocaine and celery for a few weeks. 

I don't think my friend is exploring her sexuality and having harmless fun.  She did both of those things in college, and I didn't mind either.  My greatest problem with this situation is that it tells me first that she doesn't see herself as anything more interesting than a vagina on a pair of boobs.  And then of course there are the effects her actions have had on myself, her family and other people in the community.  Think of how much it must sick to be the sister of a porn star.  If you go out, and people recognize the family similarities, or someone finds out, the first thing they'll want to do is talk to you about your sister's sexual antics.  I'm close with my sisters, but that's not a conversation I ever want to have.

I'm just saying, I wanted to find a way to let my friend off the hook because I wanted the situation not to imply all the bad things it does.  But sadly, nothing doing.   

Oh common, you have to post a link to your observant friend's pictures...

if all your religious paraphernalia is not to blame for your prudish beliefs, then where are those coming from? contrary to your belief, people are not born with shame, it is learned behaviour, especially when it comes to sexuality and nudity.
why does this person, supposedly your friend, have to be sensitive to your prudish and selfish thoughts, why should you not be open and caring about your friend and her courage to possible live out some of her self realizations and not be judged...
you sound like a person full of guilt and shame, it is not difficult to see that you could never understand that women sometimes ONLY want to be viewed as a complete sluts and sex objects.. and yes keyword is "sometimes" as we all know women are complicated and often multi faceted creatures.
i think you should face your fear and talk to your friend about her ventures, i am sure you will find that it is not as poisonious as you might expect.

and yes, post her link here ;)

let me guess (pornographer) you aren't starring in any movies and you are a guy. please stop trying to deflect the glaring truth by using phrases like 'self-realization and not be judged'. I imagine that would be the same kind of pep talk woman in your trade hear all the time.

yes i am a guy and not a star. does that mean i cant have an opinion? i am also not jewish, so perhaps i should not be allowed to speak my mind on this blog..
the women i deal with are typically not the ones who need a pep talk, they are there to make some money, that is the bottom line. i do not recruit talent as i find that part of the business a bit tasteless, but there are several jewish adult agencies with whom i do business.
However I do think the person Tamara is referencing, is doing porn not just for the money although it is a huge motivation, as it is for washing dishes and other manual labor jobs.
and i am not trying to deflect, but i do find it interesting that Tamara searches all her religious databases to find out if she should have a negative relationship with a friend who is in porn..

Well you make my point for me by saying that you find recuiting 'talent' tasteless.

How many childrens fairytails' have the happy ending where the fairy princesses is having anal sex with UPS guy... My point being that our society, our culture, our belief system is such that in order for a woman to participate in the sex industry her pysche had to have been damaged so severly she would allow herself to do this. Even if it is to make money, there is absolutely nothing self realizing about having all your bits filmed in action for countless of whankers - well to do just that over.

Are you going to groom your little girl to take it up the ass and look like she is in enjoying it, that does take practice I am sure. I am confident that you aren't - thats left for the little girls that no one looked out for, or that were degraded so terribly porn is just the next step. You know the girls - the ones that are going to achieve self actualization and realization and will never need to watch another Oprah episode they will be so enlightened.

Hadar

i dont believe i am making your point. i only work with talent who actively seek to be in my productions, i believe some people are exhibitionists and actually enjoy and have a good time modeling for my productions.
i doubt if any parent is grooming their offspring to be in porn (except perhaps sunny lane) but that shouldnt preclude a mature female to explore her adult and naughty side.
you are so busy beeing judgemental, try to take a look at the world as a large and i am sure you can see there are other issues to worry about.
in this community it would be prudent to discuss a full and final Israeli withdrawl from the west bank and other occupied territory.
There is one reason and only one reason 911 happened, USA's unilateral support of Israel. Why should we americans put up with this threat to support a nation who doesn NOT treat its citizens (palestinian and jewish alike) equally.

911 happened because Osama wants the US military presence out of Saudi Arabia - that is the reason he gives for 911 and the other attacks he is responsible for. He really doesn't care much about his Palestinian brethren unless the rhetoric serves his purpose at the time by the way. So pleas And to try and educate you on the rest of the middle east would just take too long and its not my job.

As to saying I am judgemental, of course I am. Thats what every individual does constantly, thats how we survive - so it would be like saying hey you're breathing. The only real judgement that I expressed was that using the 'self realization arguement/justification/legitimization' is crap even when the girls themselves parrot it.

tamar, great article.   have you read naomi wolf's article 'the porn myth', published in harpers' a few months ago?  It might strongly support some of your ideas, esp. as her search for genuine sanctity in sexuality-- in a much broader article than yours-- leads her to the private bedroom of her tsenua married religious friend in jerusalem. 

 I CAN think of something to say in porn's defense, even in a jewish world. Not to defend it directly, but to put it into context.  We do not live in a perfect world, and I mean that fully; most of our families have plenty of skeletons, and as jews, we have higher-than-average incidences of traumas of victimization, rape, and the like.  The scars of such things do not heal so easily, even over generations.  I have become far more reluctant to judge people from abused or traumatized backgrounds.  While I would hesitate to ever endorse a girl working out her pain and suffering through stripping, pornography, prostitution, or even less monetarily defined forms of casual sexuality, I do not feel that any of us-- even most rabbis-- are really in a place to tell people that they are wrong, if we knew their whole story. 

 Several of my friends when i lived in Portland, Oregon were strippers or had been worse. But when I heard their whole backgrounds and the reasons why they felt that being paid for their sexuality in contexts they controlled was empowering, I found that things were not as black and white as I would have liked to believe. 

 Judaism certainly has some high ideals it teaches us to work towards.  But there is an explicit awareness in our tradition that the highest energies in the world, the lineages that produce the messianic souls that embody our highest aspirations, MUST come from the lowest places.  Tamar posed as a prostitute for Yehuda; Lot's incest with his daughters leads to Moav, whence Ruth.  Ruth's marriage into the line of Yehuda and Tamar produces David.  And David's morally compromised relationship with Batsheva produces Shlomo. 

 The reasons why are hidden in the deeper secrets of our tradition, and imperfectly understood.  But at some level we know that the working out of our tikun in the world is inescapably tied to bringing up the sparks from the lowest places.  And we should never be too quick to judge those who venture into those places, for they may be divinely guided more than we know.

Thanks, Tamar, for a thoughtful article.  I get what you're saying: that there are years for experimenting -- with ideas, with morality, with identity, and with sexuality. And your implication: that younger years are the best, and least complicated, for the experimentation.

There's really no need to apologize for being an anti-porn crusader (which you're probably not, anyway) at least as far as it concerns your friend. Alas, there's a time to put some of the younger ways behind.

We're in an interesting world. When I was your age and the age of your friend (around the time dinosaurs roamed my native Skokie), a woman's integrity was pretty safe as long as she managed to keep off the pages of Playboy and Penthouse, and stayed away from pole dancing. But in today's world, the possiblities of getting caught with your pants down (or your friends long skirt down) and having it preserved in multimedia glory forever is rather daunting.

The perhaps-unsuspecting co-eds who end up in Girls Gone Wild (including Jewish Girls Gone Wild) are only a few years away from a reasonable possibly of parenthood. And only 15 years from their kid going to a friend's house, only to find that the friend has dug into his dad's old video stash and found GGW on a prehistoric tape, boogeying her heart (and other organs and body parts) out. Good luck explaining that one.

The age of responsibility kicks in at different ages for different people. Be proud of it, Tamar. And yes, it is possible to be an adult, and responsible, and still have plenty of fun.