About Offerings

A Zine on Porn 



Let’s talk about Sex Online, Baby! 
Written and Complied by Montana Kimel, Holistic Sex Educator 



Pornography is as old as time. 


Content warning


What to expect moving forward in this zine

This zine will discuss and show sex, erotica, pornography, and sex work. It will have prompts and reflections that may bring up strong emotions/experiences/discomfort. This is a reminder that the prompts and reflections are an offering; nothing about this experience is mandatory. Please take care of yourself as you proceed, you are a whole, beautiful human who knows yourself best!


  • Look away from the screen and/or turn off the screen

  • Take a couple of deep breaths 

  • Look for objects/things that are blue in the space you are in

  • If it’s accessible to you, do a quick body scan.

  • Take a moment to notice, if you feel called to, spend a couple of minutes free writing.

  • What else do you need right now?

  • What sensations are you feeling?

  • Water, a walk, food, a hug, music, standing outside, moving your body…


I created this project with many aspects of my identity woven into how I process information, research and, ultimately, develop a zine. I am complicit in benefiting from my privileges within institutions and systems, and I am committed to acknowledging and unlearning my biases. I understand I hold privilege as a white, wealthy, Canadian, English-speaking, cis-gendered woman, able-bodied, and college-educated person.

My queerness, learning disability, Jewishness, and fatness have given me personal insight. They have provided a lens to engage with research and advocacy based on anti-oppressive theory, methods, and ideas. Sexuality is a topic that needs intentionality, precision, and an acknowledgment of the systems of oppression and how that informs experiences of trauma.

I have learned so much from sex workers who have chosen to share their work on public platforms. their willingness to share their experiences, labour, and knowledge has greatly expanded my knowledge. And sex workers have been foundational to so much sex-related research and information, and we all benefit from their labor.

I hope to continue to center queerness, pleasure, and sexuality within education and practice the theoretical frameworks in my everyday life and as a sex educator



What is the purpose?


This is an opportunity to learn about porn, explore our relationship to it, and how it makes us feel.

The goal is not to shame, create binaries, or enforce one way of sexual expression. I am not suggesting that porn is wrong or shouldn't be enjoyed. I believe that porn and erotica can be a wonderful part of a vibrant sexual life.

The goal of this zine is media literacy, reflection, and empowerment. Let's queer our relationship to all forms of sexual expression.

For your listening pleasure



This is Space to prepare for the (Un)learning to come 



The old adage feels appropriate but limiting… erotica, porn, and sex work is as old as time (or something like that).

Yet, in our deeply erotophobic society, there are moral panics every day over pornography, sex work, and erotic content. We have deeply controlled and managed content produced by media giants, limiting the sexual acts and scripts shown in mainstream media. Rarely do we have genuine conversations about pleasure, body image, the politics of desire, consent...

Alongside the erotophobia in mainstream society and media, most of the world still struggles to figure out how, if, when, and why we should teach and learn about sex as children and adults. Mainstream sex education is often rooted in fear and morality, with a focus on disease and pregnancy prevention and sometimes a focus on complete abstinence.

These cultural and social factors often result in many turning to pornography as an outlet, an opportunity to learn, and a pleasure EXPLOSION. Most of our wildest fantasies and deepest desires can be found through porn and erotica. Tentecale penatration? All male orgies? Harry Potter & Tom Riddle fanfic? You can find SOMETHING out there that tickles your fancy.

It’s a beautiful thing… and it’s a tough thing. Porn can be a fascinating mixture of entertainment, education, and exploration. Ultimately, it’s a fantasy. Like all media, it requires literacy and acknowledgment that it’s an art form.

Porn IS performance. The performers, camera crew, lighting, editing, off-camera negotiations, and so much more.

Pornography is part of the multi-billion dollar adult entertainment industry. Like the mainstream entertainment industry, the majority of the decision-makers are white, able-bodied, straight men who are producing readily available content. This means so much of the content is laced with bias, racism, sexism, cissexism, anti-blackness, anti-queer and trans narratives.

Unfortunately, a lot of the content about pornography “literacy” that exists in the world today is based on fearmongering, misinformation, and conservative ideologies. So what do we do when this is a primary source of learning for so many? What do we do when porn and erotica are pleasurable to us?


Queering? Porn?



in progressive spaces, we struggle to figure out how to address (mainstream) porn. Feminist have fought over the oppressiveness of porn for women, if it promotes violence against women. Black, Indigenous, Asian and Latinx folks have been critical of how porn objectifies and perpetuates harmful stereotypes. Queer and trans folks have struggled with how we are represented, the voyeurism, and stereotype perpetuation. This is a serious issue that affects our relationship with self, partners, and community

In my opinion, all of the criticism is important and we need to learn from it and consider how we can radically reimagine this experience. I don’t have all the answers about what that future could look like. But I do want to offer how we can individually consider our relationship to it.

Porn can mess with our expectations of self and partners, body image, and confidence. A lot of folks feel disappointed, angry, sad that their bodies don’t look or act like porn depicts.


Some truths from a sex educator:



  • Most sex in real life, does NOT look like porn. (And if it does for you, that’s cool, whatever gets you off!).

  • How people experience pleasure is as diverse and expansive as the plant species on this earth.

  • How bodies look, taste, feel and move is as diverse and expansive as the stars in our universe.

  • he zine is not intended as an educational tool for learning about sex work. But you cannot have a conversation about porn without talking about sex work. I am 100% in support of sex workers and the decriminalization of sex work.

  • Sex work is not inherently harmful; laws, institutions, and societies that legislate, prosecute, and penalize sex workers ARE harmful.

  • I believe in a beautiful future that supports all forms of consensual sexual expression and exchanges.

  • Sex work, is work.

  • So if you can, support sex workers financially, pay for your porn, follow, like and subscribe to their chanels



Resources



Rest & Reset



I invited you to take a deep breath, get up, move around, go for a walk, shake your body, dance to a favourite song.


Activities to explore the topic more in depth

Collaborative Reflection 

When did you first see sexual, pornographic and/or erotica imagery/content online?

https://padlet.com/montanakimel1/when-did-you-first-see-sexual-pornographic-or-erotica-imager-t6t03mxbfak5a8yx


Rest & Reset



I invited you to take a deep breath, get up, move around, go for a walk, shake your body, dance to a favourite song.


Data on Porn 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q64hTNEj6KQ

  • Did you learn anything through watching this video?

  • Who was missing in this video? Whose experiences were counted and not counted?

  • What else came up for you?

  • I invite you to free write about this, using these questions as a guide.

  • Porn Hub releases information about their search terms. Follow the link to read through some of them..Pornhub.com/insights

  • What comes up as you go through these? Any thoughts/feelings/insights?



Rest & Reset



I invited you to take a deep breath, get up, move around, go for a walk, shake your body, dance to a favourite song.


Bodies Bodies Bodies 



I invite you to explore the websites linked below.

How does it feel to look through the pictures and images? Have you ever seen pictures and images like this? Write down any feelings that come up. If you like, add them to this jamboard.


https://www.thevulvagallery.com/stories

https://www.willyworries.com/the-picture-galleries/the-willy-gallery/willygallery1/

https://www.labialibrary.org.au/labia_gallery/



Joy & Pleasure… 



Enjoyable content to decompress with.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/53957/1/black-queer-fat-instagram-censorship-nude-portrait-series-enam-asiama

https://www.instagram.com/p/CmCxQnBpQYb/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D



AFFIRMATIONS

 

I deserve pleasure and joy 

All bodies are good bodies 

There is no “right” way to feel or experience pleasure. 

There is no “right way to have consensual sex or have sexual experieces 

I know my body best 

I am queer, therefore I have queer sex. 

Pleasure is my birthright


Glossary



Erotophobia (n): the fear of sex, negative attitudes towards sex.

Erotica:  literature or art intended to arouse sexual desire

Sex Workers: adults who receive money or goods in exchange for consensual sexual services or erotic performances, either regularly or occasionally.

Pornography: printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. 


Thank you for coming with me on this journey



I invited you to reflect on your first interaction with porn, to explore resources related to porn and picture and images of genitalia.

We don't often have the opportunity to reflect on our relationship with this medium in a neutral, non-judgemental way.

I hope you learned something new, and feel empowered to continue this conversation with yourself, others and partners. 


References: 



Barker, M.-J., & Scheele, J. (2016). Queer: A graphic history. Icon Books Ltd.

brown, a m. Pleasure activism: The politics of feeling good. AK Press.

Ghaziani, A., & Brim, M. (2019). Queer Methods: Four Provocations for an Emerging Field. In Imagining queer methods (pp. 3–27). essay, New York University Press.

Gill-Peterson, J. (2021). Gender. In Tompkins, K. W., Aizura, A. Z., Bahng, A., Chávez Karma R, Goeman, M., Musser, A. J., & Keywords Feminist Editorial Collective (Eds.). Keywords for gender and sexuality studies (pp. 96-100). New York University Press.

Johnston, P. E. (2020). ‘‘quare’’ studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. Black Queer Studies, 124–158. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822387220-009

Harvey, P. (2020). Let’s talk about porn: The perceived effect of online mainstream pornography on LGBTQ youth. Gender, Sexuality and Race in the Digital Age, 31–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29855-5_3

McNeil, E., Wermers, J. E., Lunn, J. O., Buehler, B., & Samer, R. (2018). Queer Acknowledgments. In Mapping queer space(s) of praxis and pedagogy (pp. 21–38). essay, Springer International Publishing.

Taormino, T., Shimizu, C. P., Penley, C., & Miller-Young, M. (2016). The feminist porn book The politics of producing pleasure. The Feminist Press at the City University of New York.

Zimmerman, J. (2015). The Birds, the Bees, and the Globe: The Origins of Sex Education, 1898–1939 In Too hot to handle: A global history of sex education (pp. 14-48). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Zimmerman, J. (2015). A Right to Knowledge? Culture, Diversity, and Sex Education in the Age of AIDS, 1984-2010. In Too hot to handle: A global history of sex education (pp. 99-121). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

All photos are in the creative commons or my own.

If you enjoyed this workbook, want to connect and/or would like to support my work:

Email: montanakimel@gmail.com

IG: @pleasure_state

Venmo: @montanakimel


The Cornucopia is a living archive + resource by Montana Kimel of The Pleasure State
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