Vision Conversations

From borderlandsHacklabWiki

hey folks,

here are the bullet points from our first meeting, sorry it’s so late :(

meeting: claire de lunes 10.5 feb 24th

vision/mission bullet thoughts

- outlet for tranny folks, people of color, people of all body types/sizes, different sexualities (non-categorical)

We dream of a space online for all kinds of people to explore their sexual expressivity and performativity. SharingIsSexy.com will be a space for transgender people, people of color, people of all body types and sizes. With Sharing Is Sexy.com, we are creating the space we dream of where we reject categories of sexual expression, a space where we are free to do want what we want when we want it. We are unsatisfied with the so called “alternative porn” sites like SuicideGirls.com that mostly portray very thin white girls with tattoos and disallow transgender people and explicit sex.

- no pressure, no assumptions

- support when suport is needed

-safe space in the community, supportive through dialogues, community education events etc.

- sharing/ open source, copy left

Some critics of alternative porn sites have pointed out that while alternative porn claims to be more ethical or ideal, it still operates within the capitalist system by only allowing people to iew the sites once they have paid. SharingIsSexy.com rejects this practice, envisioning a space for free as in freedom sexual expression free of the demands of the market by allowing all of our content to be seen for free and by making all of our super sexy porn copyleft. We encourage people to download it, save it, burn it to a cd and share it with a friend as long as you credit Sharing Is Sexy.com, license anything you make out of it with the same license we do and don’t sell it, for details, see the Creative Commons By Attribution – Share Alike – Non-Commercial license.

- non hierarchy(sp?) of sexual or gender expression

- no non-consenual activities (to be made explicitly clear)

- no language that marginalizes(sp?) people

-all participants must be 18+

-promote safe/safer sex practices

What’s Next?

- an idea was thrown out was about a free skool by jenny

- rachel suggested that we begin to think about the aestetic(sp?) of the site design, check out other websites

- fliers for outreach was suggested as well

In the mean time it was said that we shouldl look at these bullets and began to form an actually statement for the next meeting which is March 10th 10.5 at claire de lunes. word! meeting sat, 3/10/2007

- open source porn allows the ideas behind free software to work in porn. often it is said that you have to control information and restrict copying in order to make a profit, but we don’t want to make a profit. also, we feel that the more the porn is shared, like music or software, the more people see it and the more use it gets.

- porn as propaganda, if we want lots of people to see our porn, is it like propaganda

- open source porn as subverting the power of men “owning women”

- an experimental attitude, we don’t come to this with the answers, this is a kind of research

- maybe we should focus on this as a research project into the idea of “open source porn” and the ideas and spaces that that opens up. but beyond open source, its also an investigation of community and culture online and offline

- creating a space where porn is free to counter to argument that its only done for money

- we don’t want to undermine sex workers by offering free porn

- sex work isn’t only done by strippers and prostitutes, in a way, much of work involves getting paid for looking good, many homeless women have to have sex for a place to sleep and survive.

- we want to do offline events: strip shows, discussion groups, parties, things to create a closer, more supportive community

- we have a concern that in a society that is so sexually disfunctional, some people may look at our porn and then be aroused to engage in dysfunctional acts. we hope that by creating more open discussion about sex in our society, we will help create a society which is less sexually dysfunctional.

- we have a concern about the site contributing to ideas of queer people being hyper-homoerotic, overly sexed or all about sex. how can we critique or challenge those ideas?

- we both want to portray more honest, authentic sex, which we think is hot, but also reject ideas about there being a true, honest sexual expression that is lacking any element of performativity.

- we want to have a research group and have lots of shared ideas and common inderstandings before “jumping into” making porn. at the same time, we want to experiment and learn through the production of porn.

- we want to work on consensus, so that if one person in the group has a concern about something, we will all respect about that concern.

- we need to understand that once things go out into the world, they’re no longer yours, you can’t control their distribution.

- some of us are ready to start making photos or videos or images. some of us have wanted to for a long time but aren’t ready to do it. some of us feel like we’ve been doing sex work in other forms, looking good to make money. if i’m getting these sexual comments anyway everyday because of the body i’m in, i might as well be getting paid for it. but we can’t really know what it will be like until we do it. what if the reality doesn’t match our ideas?

- with pg toys, we followed the “release early, release often” idea and got feedback all throughout the process that we then incorporated into the project. but its hard, because i felt like i didn’t want to put it out until its how i really want it to be. so in this project, i want there to be some clarity and cohesion before we put it out. so we want to respect each other having our comfort zones and consensus.

-some of us expressed concerns with the language of the vision mission bullet thoughts from feb 24, 2007. Specifically, “Some critics of alternative porn sites have pointed out that while alternative porn claims to be more ethical or ideal, it still operates within the capitalist system by only allowing people to view the sites once they have paid. SharingIsSexy.com rejects this practice, envisioning a space for free as in freedom sexual expression free of the demands of the market by allowing all of our content to be seen for free and by making all of our super sexy porn copyleft.” Some of us think this statement sounds like “sex work is fucked up.” I would rather say “conditions requiring people to do things they don’t want to are fucked up” or something like that.

notes – 2007-03-24 ———————————-

- we want to make porn that is really hot and sexy. we want to both show that we are doing what we want, which we think is hot, and also strategically use stereotypes to subvert them

- how are we going to include different communities and people of color? language.

- maybe we need to just make it happen.

- migrant worker support drag show. how can we invite them?

- problems with the word invite, with the concept of we. how can we include lots of people in the project and not us language that creates boundaries. one idea is to describe the project as starting and build a community before putting out anything public

- meet again in 2 weeks, sat morning at 11:30, discuss intro to book “outlaw bodies”. see lea for the book.

- also, lets have a movie night at someone’ s house and invite people to a discussion. where? when? movie suggestions: live nude girls unite, herstory of porn

- this week, some of us are out of school, eneri, micha and jenny volunteered to summarize notes so far into a one page statement for the journal that’s calling for entries about online porn.