„it’s pornography“
this is the original transcript of my interview with judy minx that can be found in its translated version there. it is just a little abridged, just like it appears in the german version.
dear ms. minx, i have been to your performance yesterday.
can you explain what the „fisting club“ actually is about?
obviously it is about fisting. but i was looking for a deeper meaning which i actually could not find.
is it simply about the circumstance that we all have holes and we should enjoy them ?
„The Fisting Club is about fisting. There is no need for a „deeper meaning“, I think. Fisting is already pretty deep indeed. Maybe there is more to it, but you should ask Shu Lea instead : she was the director of this performance, not me. I just performed it, she created it. To me, the main point of that performance was to be entertaining and sexy and fun. I didn’t really try to give it much more sense. Of course you can find that the parallel between Fight Club and The Fisting Club gives the latter a feminist and sex-positive meaning. Fight Club is a movie about men and manliness, it exalts masculine values, and the only female character seems to be the product of a misogynistically prejudiced imagination. So maybe The Fisting Club offers fisting as an alternative to fighting. Maybe it offers sharing sex and love and extreme sexual acts as an alternative to shaving your head and working your muscles and becoming an übermensch and fighting with your buddies in a basement. The guys in Fight Club seem to believe that what they’re doing is changing society, that it’s a revolutionary or at least marginal act and a refusal of the dominant values. But they exclude women from their army. Maybe we girls created our club because we thought „we’re gonna fist each other“ because we were bored because we weren’t in Brad Pitt’s club. Anyway, this is just something I’m making up right now, not the actual meaning of the show, not something I thought of while performing. Wendy and Shu Lea would probably not agree with this anyway ^^.“
what i really liked about the performance, was to see, that wendy delorme obviously trusts you, you had direct eye-contact and you carefully watched her reactions, nearly like a labor of love.
but after that some people from the audience have been encouraged to try „it“ „themselves“.
are these volunteers identical with the participants of the fisting-workshop which you co-hosted, or was it as spontaneous as it looked ?
„Indeed Wendy and I have a great stage connection, and it’s important to have that if you wanna do a fisting performance. We are not engaged in a romantic relationship with each other, but we are very good femme friends and I love her. The volunteers who went on stage to fist Wendy were indeed participants in the fisting workshop of the previous day, that we hosted, and some of them were as well friends of Wendy and I. They had all fisted Wendy previously at least once, either the day before in the workshop or earlier in other circumstances. We would have been glad to have more people come spontaneously from the audience, but they didn’t.“
even if the message of the performance would have been „fisting is for everybody“, some people might have found it „bizarre“ or „dangerous“ before or associated it with bdsm. so… is fisting such a satisfying sexual practice that people should get used to it ? is this sexual education then, the workshop and the show ?
„I think this question is weirdly put. Fisting is a satisfying sexual experience for some, and not for some others. No sexual practise is enjoyable for everyone. Wendy clearly enjoys fisting, but we’re not saying that everybody „should get used to it“, as you put it. We’re just showing it because it’s a sexual practise that is rarely shown, the main image of fisting that we’re shown is anal fisting between gay men, but vaginal fisting is not often told about or represented. The workshop was sex-education indeed, since we gave advice on how to fist someone safely, which lubes to use, etc, but the performance is not sex-education : it’s pornography.“
talking about porn and feminism:
i think it is a real progress that women can now relate to porn as men did before, distinguishing loud and clearly what turns them on and what they maybe dislike about what has been seen in porn(movies) during the last decades. i really hope this will continue. i think, porn should be inspired by women.
but i know some left-wing-activists who would like to see a natural contradiction inside this phrase.
to make this clear though, can you define „feministic porn“?
„Why are you asking me to define „feministic porn“ ? I didn’t use such a phrase. Feminist porn would be porn were feminist ideas are displayed, either directly or indirectly. I don’t see how feminist porn would be a contradiction in terms.“
the sex industry itself is still in the hands of men, mainly. most movies seem to follow male fantasies.
does that contradict feministic approaches ?
„First, I’d like to point out that more and more women direct porn, own porn companies, etc. The American porn actress Belladonna, for example, directs a lot of porn movies, and owns her own adult company. Ovidie is a former French actress who now directs porn as well. Also, I think the premise of your question, „most movies seem to follow male fantasies“, is prejudiced. […]
What is a male fantasy ? I don’t think fantasies are male or female. Everyone can have every fantasy. I watch a lot of mainstream straight porn and I am very satisfied with the fantasies depicted in them. They are mine.“
i saw your appearances at „explicite-art.com“. of course i liked them. the scenes themselves didn’t look like you would have been forced into something, it rather partially looked like fun. but can you explain, how much of this is completely set up ?
for example: those popular „audition“-scenes. they normally aren’t real, are they?
„I don’t understand the question. I cannot answer about what is „generally“ done, I can only answer about my own work. The scenes I have done for explicite-art are not „completely set up“. They’re gonzo, real-porn, which means what you see is what happens. The editing and production are minimal. You see the second camera, you see the cables on the floor. You see me having a cigarette break, you see my comments and reactions on what I’m doing… Some tiny bits of it are staged, for example the director sometimes asks me to do or say something, and the positions are not completely spontaneous (they have to come out nice on video, so we are told to be at a certain angle, or stuff like that) but seriously, most of what is seen on video is what we did, nothing more, nothing less.“
you will continue doing porn?
„Yes, I’m still doing porn. I sometimes think of quitting, when I have a tiring day or a bad experience, but most of the time I’m quite satisfied with what I do.“
would you reject offers from mainstream studios like „hustler barely legal“ and so on ? if yes: why?
„I don’t know. It’s very unlikely that I’ll ever need to know the answer to that question, because these studios don’t shoot in France. The studio I work for, with explicite-art, is quite mainstream though. And I have been in the two most mainstream adult magazines in France, Chobix (July 2007) and Hot Video (January 2009).“
on your myspace-page there is an album full of pictures from demonstrations etc., snapshots from your activism. what are the political issues of what you do?
„do you mean the political issues of porn or the political issues I’m concerned about ?
If you’re talking about the first, there are lots of political issues dealing with porn, but my activism deals very little with them. The main things to be fought for concerning porn, in my opinion are :
-the rights of sexworkers in the porn industry (we want higher wages, more legal protection against abuse from employers, laws and measures to protect our health, etc.)
-the organization and unionization of sexworkers in the porn industry to get these rights and others
-government-subsidized porn, like for any other genre of cinema, and the end of censorship
-the end of the taboo of masturbation, the end of the taboo of porn, the end of any type of shame regarding sexuality, the end of the stigmatization of sexworkers in general
-more access to a greater variety of pornographic material.
If you were not talking about the political issues in porn but the ones I’m concerned with in general, I’ll talk about them in less details or it would be too long an answer :
I’m involved in feminist, LGBT, queer, sex-positive movements. Being the partner of a transgendered person and the ally of a lot of transgendered persons, I’m involved in the transsexual, transgender, and intersexed movement. Being a sexworker, I’m involved in the sexworkers movement. Being a dyke and a woman, I’m involved in the movement for gay and lesbian rights, gay and lesbian visibility, and feminism. Being a kinky person, I’m also fighting for the rights of kinky people to live their kinks freely and without shame.“
is there a strict dividing line between your professional work and your personal sex-life or are there any intersections?
„There are no intersections between my professional life and my private sex-life. What I do in porn, and in sexwork in general, has nothing to do with what I do in bed. In my private sex-life, I’m a dyke (I mostly have sex with transmasculine persons, that is, people who were NOT born with a penis), while in porn I mostly work with cisgendered males and females, and people I’m generally not attracted to. In my private life, I do a lot of BDSM, while in porn, I tend to avoid it.
In the other sexwork activities I engage in, it’s the same : I work with/for people I wouldn’t have sex with in my private life, and what I do with them has nothing similar with my private sexlife.
My performances (bondage suspension, for example), the work I’ve done with the French queer porn director Emilie Jouvet (a scene with my current partner and lover, for example), or the photoshoots I’ve done for NoFauxxx, etc, might be considered at the intersection between my professional and private sexlife, but actually, I don’t consider them to be sexwork, mostly because I don’t make money with them. I posed for NoFauxxx for free, same for Emilie, some of my performances aren’t paid either. some are, but it usually barely covers the expenses. I don’t consider my performances, sexeducation workshops and queer porns to be part of my professional life. It is not sexwork, it’s activism and/or art.“
what are you up to next ?
„well, I have an erotic BDSM story that is going to be published soon in a collection of short stories. I have several queer porn projects in progress, as well as several performances and shows and tours in progress as well. As for the sexwork, I keep going, very slowly, step to step, with the porn, one scene here and one scene there.“
judy minx can be adored at „explicite-art.com„, „no fauxx“ and „nakedby.com„. ms. minx also has an own blog: „i’m so excited“ (mainly in french language), and of course a myspace-page.
the „fisting club“ has its own website now too.
the image in the header is part of a photo-series called „putain“, shot by kael t. block.
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