The pornoverse has a dialect

[elfs]

A while back, when Omaha was on vacation, I was bored and the kids were in all bed upstairs, so I rented a high-end all-girl porn film with a pornoverse plot: two girls, age 19 and 20, live with their mom. Scene one: younger woman and her girlfriend, scene two: younger woman and her girlfriend, scene three: mom and her girlfriend discuss finding younger daughter's dirty magazine stash, which when on camera looks suspiciously like the film studio's catalog of all-girl smut and then mom and girlfriend go at it, scene four: mom's girlfriend seduces older daughter, scene five: mom seduces younger dauther's girlfriend, and so on.

("All-girl" porn is very distinct from "lesbian" porn; in the latter, the woman typically takes more than three minutes to reach orgasm and usually has more than one facial expression and sound effect to exhibit while doing so.)

The odd thing that got me while watching it was the dialect of the heterosexual pornoverse: there are no "gays" in the pornoverse, no "straights," and naturally there are no "dykes," no "butches," and no "femmes," although everyone in this film is one. There are only "lesbians," and it's said with a peculiar emphasis, an accent that exists only in the pornoverse. When one of the two women protests, "I like girls but that doesn't make me a lesbian," it's as if the word does not mean what the dictionary says it means, but has a wholly different connotation that the audience should understand.

I guess I'm not part of that audience. I didn't get it.

Comments

[rarkrarkrark.livejournal.com]

I thought the point was to emphasize that these are the girls who would sleep with the (presume hetero and male) viewer of the movie. Contrast with actual lesbians, who generally won't.

Because lots of straight guys like the idea of girl on girl action, but real lesbians just won't sleep with them.

(Yes, that ignores the whole pan/bi thing and is a drastically and disturbingly simplified view of the world, but I'm not the one producing the stuff.)

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I originally assumed when someone said "lesbian" in that way, they were saying they also liked men, as if all lesbians hate men. Later on I came to conclude that it was a self-identity thing. They don't identify with the lesbian community, probably because of what other associations they have with self-identifying as lesbian.

So what they really mean is they're bisexual. :)

Something odd clicked in my head whle I was reading this

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

I completely get your point, but for just about half a minute, I thought, "What would be wrong with a world where there weren't any labels such as "heterosexual", "homosexual", or "lesbian", or "gay", at all? What if there were just people who slept with other people whom they found attractive, and there weren't any labels?" Then my brain clicked back into understanding what you were writing about. I still think it would be cool, though.

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I know a few women who talk like that.

They don't consider themselves lesbian, and they don't consider themselves bi-sexual, because they don't consider that what they do with female friends is the same as "sex" (Perhaps in the same way that Clinton never had "sex" with Monica Lewinsky?). They consider themselves "straight" in their heads.

However, specifically to do with the pron in question, I would agree with what rarkrarkrark said.

[intrepid-reason.livejournal.com]

I can't stand all-girl porn. Now I like lesbian port, and gay porn...:)

[intrepid-reason.livejournal.com]

lesbian porn even...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

"A high-quality tawny lesbian port, oak-aged 12 years, imported from Portugal." Hmmm. There's something there, but I'm not sure what.

[intrepid-reason.livejournal.com]

Nah, the lesbians stomped the grapes dude!