Awkward Situation #43567: Watching Porn in a Group

Last night I dragged Sara and Christina, who are visiting from home (yay!), to a queer feminist porn viewing.

Now, I've watched queer feminist porn before.  I'm completely fascinated by it actually.  I don't think it's legit when feminists criticize porn as a whole without considering that there's a major difference between mainstream porn that centers around hetero male pleasure, and other kinds of more egalitarian porn that legitimize sexual desires of women, queer people, etc.  The porn itself was not really my cup of tea (maybe one day I'll make some that is more my thing...).  What I enjoyed most was answering Sara's questions about queer sex (seriously, I love her desire to learn) and just knowing that there are socially conscious people out there who don't all think porn is the devil.

My (second) senior year at Maryland, there was a big to-do about porn, that you can read about if you'd like to here.  It ended in a student-led protest event, screening 30 minutes of a porn film on campus, a screening that our VP for Student Affairs attended.

Last night I sort of felt like my life came full circle - 2 years ago I watched porn with the VP for Student Affairs, and yesterday I bumped into one of my student staff members at a queer feminist porn viewing.  I really miss the UMD queer community, and I thought this would be a good chance to remind myself that not all social justice minded people out there are seeking assimilation into a flawed mainstream culture that's obsessed with sexual imagery and obsessed with telling us it's wrong.  Or it's right, if you have the "right" gender and sexuality to legitimize your sexual desires.  I wanted to be around people who can consider that varied representations of sexuality are important.  What I hadn't considered is that showing up at an undergrad run porn event could mean - well, running into my staff and watching porn together.

I have to admit that my awkwardness is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy - I could've (and should have) treated the situation as if it were totally comfortable, made conversation with this student, and treated it like an every day occurrence.  Of course, my awkward instincts kick in and I comment on how it's an awkward place to run into her.  Which also made me wonder how the VP in aforementioned situation felt watching porn with a bunch of (awesome) activist students.