By Antoinette Comstock
Special to YNOT
NEW YORK – Like a lot of other women I know, ever since I read the kinky, erotic 2011 best-seller 69 Degrees of Trite, I’ve been experimenting a bit with watching erotic movies on the internet.
I must say, however, that while I love the naughty, voyeuristic thrill I get from watching online pornography, I’m often taken out of the moment by the constant cursing and egregious use of dirty words, especially during sex scenes.
This is why my partner Kris and I have founded E-mericans Concerned Over Foul Language In Porn (ECOFLIP), a new lobbying and consumer advocacy group dedicated to cleaning up the language of erotic entertainment.
One evening not long ago, Kris and I were enjoying a lovely porno, one with lots of loving and caring cunnilingus, punctuated by the occasional use of an egalitarian, double-ended pleasure enhancement device. Just as we were getting into the scene, really losing ourselves in the fantasy, one of the young women performing in the video just casually blurted out the p-word, callously referring to her sacred, life-giving vagina with the sort of vulgarity one associates with a Vassar dropout.
Kris and I were so dumbfounded, we nearly spilled our wine. How could the auteur behind this allegedly feminist pornographic film allow such crass language to sully her otherwise fine work?
It wasn’t a matter of a one-time slip, either. Again and again, sometimes far more loudly than reasonable even for someone in the throes of a mechanically-assisted orgasm, this young woman dropped P-bombs!
This is not just about Kris and me being able to enjoy porn without having our ears verbally assaulted, of course. This is about generations of e-citizens all over the world thinking it’s OK to curse during sex, whether it’s taking the Lord’s name in vain (“God yes, that feels so good!” or “Jesus, your C-word feels so big in my a-hole!”) or suddenly evincing misogyny or misandry toward a partner who you would never address in such a fashion in any other context (“Suck my C-word you shame-inducing-S-word!” or “Yeah, you like licking my genital-related-B-word while I stroke my C-word, don’t you, you dirty little highly demeaning B-word that means female canine?”).
I recognize in the context of certain plot lines, the use of profanity can serve a purpose that actually propels and enhances the fiction of the story. If I’m watching Merchant Marine MILFS Do Miami, for example, I’d be pretty surprised if the dialogue didn’t get a little colorful at times.
There’s no such rationale, though, when the use of curse words is completely superfluous or you can’t even get past the title without confronting indecent language, which is so often the case with modern erotica.
As much as I might enjoy watching a young performer skillfully fellate an older gentleman, I simply can’t bring myself to watch something called Ass*ucked Teen C*cksuc*ers Vol. 311, or even look at the full-size version of the box cover, because on the larger version I might be able to read the male-ejaculate-like font in which the terrible title is rendered.
Unfortunately, I know I can’t expect the adult entertainment industry to clean up its linguistic act on its own. After all, if you can’t even be talked into using condoms during anal-heavy gangbangs, I can’t see you people proactively policing inappropriate nouns, let alone all those obscene verbs you’re so fond of uttering while sexual intercourse is in progress.
The porn industry’s inability to self-regulate is why, effective immediately, ECOFLIP is beginning a major lobbying effort in Washington, D.C., and state capitals all around the country, asking legislatures to enact new laws and regulations prohibiting the use of profanity in porn.
Now, I know a lot of people are going to cry out “Censorship!” when they hear about the ECOFLIP mission, but it’s important to remember it’s not really censorship when what you’re saying is rude, gross, icky or hurtful, because you really shouldn’t have been saying it in the first place.
In conjunction with our lobbying effort, ECOFLIP is cranking up a grassroots effort to get pornographers to see the benefits of voluntarily using cleaner language and nicer terms in their movies. I’ve even come up with a very clever slogan for the campaign, if I do say so myself. The slogan has significant hipster appeal, so it will really resonate with all the cool young people making porno these days: “To Make Your Porn Tight, Keep It Polite!”
Mark my words, porn producers: Like it or not, the days of using foul language in porn are numbered. Why not get out ahead of things now? For that matter, you should work together with ECOFLIP and use this as an opportunity to have a positive impact across the entire language of the web, given how popular porn is on the internet.
Just think, porno people: Together, maybe we can make “WTF?” stand for “Wasn’t That Fun?”
Antoinette Comstock is the president and co-founder of E-mericans Concerned Over Foul Language In Porn (ECOFLIP), an advocacy group dedicated to eliminating the use of curse words and other offensive language in adult entertainment.
