Participants public review about banning porn and talking about sex
In response to the blocking by Roskomnadzor of two popular pornographic resources YouPorn and Pornhub, a flash mob #produktor was launched in the Russian-speaking Facebook. The action was initiated by digital director of Esquire Russia and former editor-in-chief of the Afisha magazine Daniil Trabun, as well as Daniyar Shekebaev, Tarlan Abdullayev and journalist Mikhail Levin. They were the first to post videos in which they watch porn and retell what is happening in the frame, calling on other users to protest in the same way.
“At the state level, a sanctimonious, sterile and conservative position is imposed, which is not explained at all - there is no discussion. This unhealthy duality is also expressed in the absence of a neutral lexicon with which we can talk about sex. Therefore, we came up with“ public review, ”wrote Trabun, inviting friends “practice your own openness" and oppose hypocrisy by choosing a pornorol and retelling it in detail to the camera. - As you understand, you first need to unlock yourself. "
An important topic raised by the action #power review is the lack of neutral words in modern Russian that can describe the sex organs and sex itself. In addition to lexical impotence, the participants of the action are confronted with awkwardness and the lack of a habit of talking about sex in principle, characteristic of our culture. "In the idea of #polnoborz, I like most of all the attempt to search for the language of speaking about sex as a description of practice. I think that I was more than ever close to finding a topic for an essay on ethnomethodology," wrote one of the participants of the flashmob, Max Lyubavin.
Some participants of the action note that porn as a phenomenon is problematic, however they consider the public inspection a good way to respond to illogical actions of Roskomnadzor. “The porn industry is quite ambiguous, and this is a topic for many hours of talk, but there are positive moments,” notes Artyom Makarsky. “Many couples watch porn together, in Japan the spread of a wide variety of fetishes helped reduce the number of rapes. talk at a party, and so on. "
Other users criticize the initiators of the action for equating sex to porn: “I don’t really understand why retelling pornorolik with the tag #polit review is annotated as talking about sex, if it’s about pornography,” says sex blogger Tatyana Nikonova. We asked the participants of the action about the goals of #publicreview, the difficulties that they encountered when recording videos, and why it is so difficult to talk about sex.
Mikhail Levin
journalist
It does not seem to me that there is a static goal that we are achieving. The process is more important. We just discussed with the guys the blocking in Russia of two rather bad, but popular hosting sites with pornography and thought it would be funny to try to release it as a sign of protest. In the end, we decided to comment on random videos and post them on Facebook. Thus, social networks are finally turning into pornhosting, which in a certain sense they have been for a long time. In parallel, this could be an exercise in finding a language to describe sex, which, as is commonly believed, is poorly developed in our country.
Something sincere and frank for me in this venture began to manifest itself after I recorded my video. For example, I chose the most absurd about group sex with pterodactyls. It was easy to comment it out, because it does not excite at all. Yes, and put on Facebook is also not difficult.
Now I think it would be more interesting to choose pornography that would have some kind of emotional value for me. Say, there would be shown an ambiguous fetish, which I love and a little shy to dream. So the protest against blocking for me resulted in thoughts about my own blocks. That's cool.
Liza Volokhova
comic book manager
The video I posted, but in the video - my girlfriend. She came to visit, I asked her to sign up, because I knew that she would be funnier and better than me. A friend signed up with pleasure, but asked her not to mark. And not because of working contacts on Facebook, but only because of the younger sister, which is difficult to explain the essence of the action.
The most difficult was the fact that talking about sex is not something that is difficult, and sometimes it is just not clear at what point you need to be serious, and at what point it is ridiculous. The surrounding people reacted to the video mainly with delight, they laughed a lot and now they record the video themselves (including those from whom I didn’t expect it at all). It is precisely in this, it seems, that there is a victory: it is very great at the same time to make fun of another windmill and check its soft limits. And someone probably checks hard limits.
The porn industry, of course, is ambiguous, but we are not talking now about a situation in which it is possible to take and ban it all in the world so that no one is offended. As for the purpose of the action, we applied the principle of cartoonists: to solve a problem, you need to make fun of it to begin with - this is exactly what the whole flash mob looks like. Each participant has a million reasons to write: perhaps someone in general has dreamed all his life to retell porn and make everyone happier. And for some it's just interesting to try something that you never did. Random knowledge along with the game is our everything. Well, the funniest promotions of the action - now there are quite a few people who can say that their friends made porn.
Artyom Makarsky
journalist
It seems to me that each of us achieves different goals: initially the main one of them was an appeal to the news about blocking Pornhub. Gradually, new levels emerged, for each its own: the process of understanding the hypocrisy was not very important to someone, the process of searching for a language was important to someone. For me, probably, the language as the second goal was the most important thing - all the time it seemed to me that talking about sex in Russian is a little ridiculous. Not so long ago, I relaxed and realized that words like “pussy” are funny, but this is not a reason not to use them - for this it is enough just to make an attempt to talk about it, even just with one person. Communication is the key to everything. Such an “unexpected” discovery for me coincided with the proposal to record a video. Pretty good!
Although, when Misha asked me at the very beginning whether my parents were on Facebook (my mother reads Medusa, but I will not be ashamed if she sees this), the most difficult thing in fact is to find a video. Actually, I tried to find the video "Asian Blowjob" that impressed me at the time, but this is even worse than searching for a needle in a haystack. At some point on the fifteenth page, I found a video that I retold. It attracted me precisely from the point of view of language. We agreed that the title of our video will be the translation of the name of porn into Russian - and my video didn’t mean anything at all, "dark meat" (well, a little phrase) can be anything, even though it implies sexual connotations. I can not say that it was scary to participate, it was rather interesting - but something about me can be said about the fact that I uploaded the second version of the video, because in the first one I spoke so softly that even when the volume was increased to maximum, nothing was heard .
I do not like porn. Most of what can be found on Pornhub or other hosting services seems to me wildly boring and has almost nothing to do with real sex - in general, in my video you can see that I see something absurd in porn and I try this absurd to show. We went rather talk about sex methods of working with porn. Talking about porn should be different - talking about violence, necessity and its harm / benefit. Without the requirement to ban, but with a human discussion. It seems to me very important that negative responses are represented only by phrases like "Well, this is stupid" or "Now you will be closed" with "Porn is not my topic." Nobody speaks out for banning porn. It was important to understand, this is a good start.
The photo: F-shipping