from www.sfweekly.com – For many of us queers, fisting – the insertion of a hand into a person’s vagina or anus – is an important and regular part of our sex-lives. While it’s possible to view hand sex on many independent queer porn websites, distributers continuously refuse to carry DVDs and Video-On-Demand that show the popular act.
Inspired to put their fists up and fight back, award-winning porn performer Jiz Lee and porn producer and icon Courtney Trouble have announced October 21st, 2011 to be International Fisting Day, spreading a call to action for social media users and porn consumers to pump their fists in solidarity. Though busy as a bee amassing fisting-related content from all over the world, Courtney Trouble agreed to a Skype date to teach me a thing or two about the movement.
Q: What were your biggest prompts for starting International Fisting Day? Why now?
A: Over the past few years I have shot a lot of porn with fisting in but I had another producer distributing my films and I had to edit my films, otherwise my films wouldn’t get out there and I wouldn’t get the budget for the next film. In order to keep making these movies I kept quiet, angling and editing out people on camera who want to fist because that is how they get off.
This year I am putting out my first independently released film, called Live Sex Show, in which I chose to include an incredible, beautiful scene of Nina Hartley fisting Jiz Lee using latex gloves, lube, safe-sex and a lot of communication and negotiation. If you’re going to show people something they are scared of this is the ideal set-up for something new to be introduced to an audience. While trying to distribute Live Sex Show retailers asked me, again, to edit out fisting.
I thought about it, because I had done it before, and I watched the scene and realized if I edited out any second of the fisting I would be cutting out Jiz Lee’s orgasm. Showing sex that’s authentic to the people having it is what I’m known for, and I decided I wasn’t going to edit it out anymore and I told Jiz Lee and they stood by me and we came up with this idea of International Fisting Day to celebrate it publicly, so we can open up more dialogue about it in the sex-positive community.
Q: Can you explain why you were asked to edit fisting out of your porn?
A: Fisting is on something called the Cambria List, made in 2001 by an adult industry lawyer who came up with a list of things that could potentially trigger an obscenity lawsuit. So none of these things are actually illegal to show. I just could potentially be sued.
On this list there is fisting, squirting, sharing a dildo, blindfolds, transsexuals, bisexual sex, menstruation, and interracial sex. And all of these things are weighted the same as rape, necrophilia, incest, bestiality; things that are actually illegal and abusive, but there are a lot of things that slip through all the time. There is an AVN award for squirting, and it’s on the list. It’s become normalized because enough producers have decided that it’s worth it for them to put out that content. Hopefully if we can get enough sex-positivity discourse happening around hand-sex maybe in a couple years we will see best fisting scene at the AVNs.
Q: Where does fisting come in in your personal sex-life?
A: Fisting is something that happens when the stars are aligned and the chemistry is allowed to get really high and things are really passionate and two bodies really open up to each other and the bodies actually start having sex with each other, instead of just the people.
It can’t really be a quickie and it happens when you have space, time and creature comforts. It’s not forced. It’s not pushed. It’s not punching. It’s not always a slow process and gentle, but it’s always this warm, opening, serene, really emotional, and connected sex-act. And it’s skin-on-skin contact, which for queer people is like going “balls deep” so to speak.
Paraphrasing Jiz Lee, American society is much more lenient about violence than they are sex, so in movies you’ll see people punching each other, but you’ll hardly ever see a bare breast. So it’s only natural so when we think of fisting we think of violence, pain and aggression. The fist is supposed to be the same size and shape as the human heart, so for me I think of love and beating passion.
Q: On Jiz Lee’s blog they say “fisting censorship discriminates against queer sex” and I’ve heard the ban called homophobic. What are your thoughts?
A: A lot of the things on the Cambria list that have slipped through, like cum shots on face, or two dicks next to one female mouth, or really big sex toys, are all used in heterosexual porn, but many of the prohibited things like transsexual performers, menstruation, squirting, and fisting identify a larger problem within the adult industries guidelines: misogyny and homophobia. If these things that represent queerness or female pleasure are still kept on this list strictly, we have a problem.
We are supposed to have the freedom of speech in this country, but then we have this loosy-goosy obscenity lawsuit situation hanging around. I don’t understand the place of free speech with this free-for-all with possible obscenity charges. We are forced to censor ourselves.
Q: Have you seen any results from International Fisting Day yet? Have other people come onboard to stop editing out fisting content?
A: I’ve gotten some retailers to pick up Live Sex Show without editing out the fisting, like Smitten Kitten, Early to Bed, and Fatale Media. Many of my porn buddies have said that they will stop editing out fisting from their DVD and Video-On-Demand content. My own small websites NoFauxxx.com, andqueerporn.tv, and other queer porn sites like crashpadseries.com andgooddykeporn.com have had fisting content on them for years. Madison Young is starting a fisting website.
Tristan Taormino came out with a DVD about advanced anal sex techniques, and she edited out the anal fisting, but she shot it and put it on her own DVD that Vivid Edge isn’t putting out. So we are all finding ways to stay independent and true to what we want to show.