James Deen is Not the Nice Guy of Porn

It was only recently that I learned of the name James Deen. Yes, this is a porn name, and yes it is a take on the late film actor James Dean.  Being that I am an anti-porn feminist, it is clear that I am not in favor of Mr. Deen’s profession. Even so, there seems to be a lot of buzz at the moment so I decided to do some digging and see what the fuss is about.

It should be noted that Deen has a genuine following. There are many many  women who swoon over him. Amongst women, it’s not a big secret that women also become aroused by visual stimulation. In other words, it is not just men that are visually aroused and it is not just men who enjoy porn. Women have been watching porn for ions although it seems only recently that more men are understanding that women watch porn just as they  do. Obviously, I am not thrilled about this, but I do appreciate the fact that women are becoming more vocal about their own desires, rather than just leaving it up to men to voice what they want.

When it comes to James Deen, I'm learning that teen girls, young women and older, are flocking to the 25 year old port star  with the 9 inch penis.  According to Good, Deen shot his first scene in a 2004 film entitled Art School Sluts.  He can currently be seen performing general porn scenes for Brazzers, BDSM scenes for Kink and  sex with girls who possess the “punk” aesthetic for Burning Angel.

If you Google James Deen you’ll find a lot of articles that speak to his sensitivities and his professionalism. In a recent article by The Good Men’s Project, Deen says in regards to his job as a porn star: “You show up on time, don’t be drunk, don’t bring drugs, be polite, be professional.”

Jezebel also posted a recent article, that stresses, his appeal is largely due to his charm. 

Deen looks like “an average guy” rather than the built biceped type of actor.  He’s laid back and lacks and over-inflated ego.  He keeps things pretty simple. I had heard about his blog and decided to check it out. His posts are very repetitive; not to mention brief. He talks about how he felt when he woke up in the morning, how he’s hungry and wants a burrito –he often mentions burritos. He will mention who he “banged” that day, and then offer a photo of the woman, usually bending over and spreading her butt cheeks.   Here are a few example posts from Deen’s blog:  

"So today i banged ava adams.  ava has a freaky awesome body.  like super amazing.  her waist is like super small, her boobs are like super huge, her ass is like super amazing.. .she is built like a cartoon.  a sexy cartoon that people want to bang.  i think i did her first boy girl scene.  i can’t honestly remember but it was for vince vouyer and it was right as she started putting penises inside her and it was awesome.  today was awesome too.  i am now home watching porn and drinking wine.  i also am eating humus.  i got some food from a place called the humus bar.  everything has been completely satisfactory.  i would recommend eating there if you are hungry and it is convenient.  the biggest problem i have is that it is called the humus bar and they don’t have a super awesome selection of humus.  get on it humus bar!!!  the end. “

What immediately struck me is that Deen compared Adams to a cartoon, which is certainly dehumanizing.

"today i worked for brazzers.com for i think teenslikeitbig.com.  i banged heather starlet who i haven’t seen for years.  she is awesome and super fun to bang.  she and used to have this contest to see how many times i could get her off in a scene… now that i think about it that wasn’t much of a contest.  she just said get me off this many times and then i would try to do it.  that crafty little slut!!!!!!!  whatever, i am happy to get heather starlet off as much as humanly possible."

Women in porn are often referred to as “sluts”. Many women in porn embrace this label or simply accept this label when working. But Deen’s post are a good example of how a man’s view of women becomes skewed through his participation in porn; be he an observer or an entertainer. “That crafty little slut!” What is it that makes her a slut Deen?

"So gia dimarco is an awesome chick.  she and i go way back like car seats and recliners.  I love this broad like hardcore.  today we did a scene for publicdisgrace.com where princess donna dragged her into a bar full of people then finger banged her all crazy squirt like and stuff and then i banged her in the ass.  i banged gia in the ass not princess donna.  i wouldn’t have minded banging princess donna up the ass because she is really fun to bang in the ass but it wasn’t the day for that.  today was the day for princess donna to direct gia dimarco getting banged in the ass by me.  ASS SLAM!!!!"

None of this is offering me a sense of Deen’s supposed sensitivity. From what I’m learning about Deen, he does indeed seem like a laid back guy. He speaks highly of everyone he works with and doesn’t take himself too seriously. All of this is fine and good, but it doesn’t change how he speaks about women.

Amanda Hess from Good, posted an article in November of this year, based on an interview she facilitated at Deen’s Woodland Hills home in California. She speaks about the porn industry in general and how Deen fits into it. According to Hess, Deen has gathered about two thousand porn films in the eight years that he has been working. She tells us that in a few years, actresses his own age will become MILFs (Mother I’d  Like To Fuck) while he will continue to have sex with 18 year olds.

This speaks volumes; not about Deen but about the porn industry. As women age, so does their career. Mainstream porn is heterosexual porn, which adheres to the male gaze. The purpose of porn is to show a woman loving whatever a man is doing to her. TO her, not with her. WITH her would equate to love making. Sex in porn equates to “fucking”.  The man is dominant, the woman is submissive. In pornography there is no such thing as "no". Or rather, when a woman says “no”, she really means yes. OR, if she says “no” she can be convinced otherwise.  Either way, porn displays women who are always willing and always wanting more.

Porn producer, Joshua Lehman, tells Good:  “If a woman enters the industry at 18, she can ride it for ten years, starting with solo scenes ($250) before advancing to “girl-girl” scenes ($600), then “boy-girl” arrangements ($800-$1,000). Along the way, she can secure pay bumps by exposing herself in new ways: blowjobs, anal, double penetration, gang bang.  She gains a following by her late 20s, she can keep working well into her MILF days. A man won’t make as much as a woman, but he can work every day without risk of overexposure. As far as the porn industry is concerned, no one is really paying attention to him anyway. “A male talent is a prop.”

This is also very telling of the porn industry. What Lehman says here is nothing I didn’t already know. A man’s entire body is not always featured in pornography. Sometimes it’s just his lower torso where a woman is fellating him or her vagina or anus is being penetrated.

Our youth obsessed society translates to porn in that the stars are becoming younger and younger and if they are of age and just happen to appear pre-pubescent it is a win-win in most cases.

Deen makes about $15,000 a month and refers to himself as “the luckiest guy in the world.”

Women gush over how nice Deen is. According to Jezebel, one young woman reports, "There was just something about the way he moved,"Emily says of her first exposure to Deen. He seemed to be "speaking to the girl, but not with his mouth, with his hand over the girl's throat, and with his eyes." Now, Emily says it doesn't matter if Deen is having intimate sex with a woman on a bed or shoving her into the trunk of his car: "I go for just about anything."

I’m not sure how shoving a woman into a car trunk is viewed as sensitive or humane in anyway. But then again, there are many women who appreciate rough sex—and although “rough” can present itself in many different ways; for some it does indeed equate to being thrown into a trunk.

Deen’s laid back personality doesn’t impress me. He may indeed by a really nice guy. I don’t believe that porn actors are necessarily bad people. But when a person embraces patriarchy I do raise some questions.

Deen does a LOT of BDSM work. In an interview with Emily Heist Moss from The Good Men Project, Deen tells her, “Rough sex is a science, and I’m really good at it.”

But Moss, continues to ask questions. She asks Deen about the misogyny that exists within porn, particularly the kink porn he participates in. He tells Moss about a particular scene that was so aggressive that he actually received death threats. 

“I was like, ‘Hey man, that was my girlfriend.’” The point, he emphasizes, is that “it’s all totally fake.” All of it? “Take these two different sites that look the same,” he says, describing sites that play in the space of extreme degradation. One site is “brilliant. Everyone thinks it’s about degradation and making girls cry, really rough, fucked-up stuff; before every scene, they do an interview with the girl. They talk very specifically about what kind of scene it is. ‘It’ll be degrading, there will be this and that.’ The majority of girls are like, ‘OK, awesome, bring it on.’” But what about the other site? “Oh, well those guys are misogynistic assholes,” he says. “They just want to hurt women. They suck.” As a viewer, I probably couldn’t tell the difference.

I agree, there’s not much honesty in porn. I find it strikingly odd that Deen would suggest that because certain scenes are fake, that they aren’t truly misogynistic. The point of those films, are to eroticize misogyny.   In Moss’s article she tells us that,

“The lines get blurry when porn gets as rough as Deen likes it. He tells me about a site he recently stopped working for because he didn’t like the premise. “Girls acted like they did something ‘bad,’ like step on my shoe,” he describes, “and then I’d have rough sex to punish them. It made me feel icky.” I want him to clarify, after all, he makes a living slapping women around onscreen. “At Kink, this girl and I are having awesome sex and she likes to get slapped in the face. The sex isn’t punishment. It’s BDSM lifestyle, and they make it super clear it’s the girl’s fantasy. It’s the distinction between power play that is built on a foundation of consent and pleasure, and sex that comes from a place of anger and resentment.”

Within feminist circles BDSM and porn in general are big topics of debate. There is a pro-porn camp within feminism. These ladies and gents believe that certain types of porn can be healthy and liberating. That a woman can exercise her own agency and desire porn without the influence of patriarchy. I disagree. I have had polite discussions with pro-porn feminists about this issue. I intend to keep these discussions civil, because if they are not than neither side is learning anything.

If you Google, “James Deen”, you will be exposed to a plethora of photos that depict Deen walking a naked woman by a dog collar in public. Penetrating a woman tied up and suspended in the air by ropes. Or a woman with her wrists tied and hung above her with one leg tied and suspended above her as well. A gag ball in her mouth, a blindfold across her eyes, and clothesline pins snapped all across her legs and breasts. Then she is penetrated. These are the BDSM scenes that Deen frequently engages in. The women are penetrated before an audience and a mistress yells at the women, referring to them as "sluts". Some women are locked in cages and are penetrated from outside of it.

All of these women are engaging in these acts willingly, but that makes little difference.  To the feminists within the pro-porn side of life, it does. I truly believe that there are women who love acting in porn. There are women who enjoy the degradation and love the stardom. I think it is lazy to leave it at that. To assume that because women are willing, they are somehow escaping the harms of pornography.

Porn teaches us all that women are less than fully human. That women, exist for the purposes of fulfilling men’s fantasies. That lesbians, are dying to have men watch them have sex and that they are willing to allow a man to penetrate them. Porn teaches us that black men are savage beasts with large penises and that women of color are exotic. If you watch porn you are aware of the titles and themes of such films.  Porn is racist, porn is sexist and often homophobic.

Yes gay porn exists. Trans porn exists. Quote/unquote, feminist porn exists. Porn that is made by women, for women. Changing up porn, broadening themes, and widening audiences isn’t so much a sign of progression as it is a sign of expansion.

Some women enter porn because of economic reasons. Some women enter porn because they desire acceptance and validation. Some believe pornography gives them a sense of self-empowerment. The list goes on, however, when a person pops in a DVD, there is no way to know for certain why a woman is making the choices she is making. It is uncertain as to whether the women on screen are truly making a choice of free will.

Think of it this way. Would you want your daughter or sister engaging in porn? If not, why not? Every porn actress is someone’s daughter or sister.

A woman or man who watches pornography has the power to pause, fast forward and rewind. She or he has the control to manipulate the activity.  This compounds everything.

Porn offers a lack of intimacy and authenticity. Albeit, that is often part of the draw. Not everyone wants this. Porn is not geared towards in depth experiences. Porn helps one “get the job done”. What I would like to know is why getting the job done equates to the type of fantasy that exists within porn.

Porn isn’t left at home. Porn creeps into our bedrooms; sometimes in overt or not so overt ways. I wouldn’t want anyone assuming anything about my sexuality based on what they view from porn.  It is no secret that some men actually learn from porn. And even if a porn act isn’t suggested in my bed, I am well aware that the idea that a man is dominant in bed is wide spread (no pun intended) within bedrooms almost everywhere.

It may seem like a bold or even arrogant statement to suggest that domination exists almost “EVERYWHERE”, but believe me it’s not.

Men and women alike often subscribe to the myth that whatever penetrates “gives” and whatever envelopes “receives.” This is a fact that I have repeated in many of my posts about pornography. I believe it is an issue worth repeating.

The truth is; within a mutual respectful relationship, both parties give and both parties receive. It’s not one or the other. One is not dominant and the other is not submissive. 

In a 2010 article from The Frisky. interviewer Judy McGuire asks Deen if he has any tips for a woman who wants to improve her sex skills. He tells her, “Don’t try to have sex like a porn star.”

Deen explains that within porn men and women are angling the sex for the cameras and that attempting this at home will result in awkwardness. The very fact that Deen insists that women must avoid t his practice, is proof that women (and men) do on occasion attempt to mimic adult films.

Women and men try to mimic porn in a multitude of ways and ultimately what seeps in is most likely to be more than technique. The mindset is likely to present itself as well. When the porn is shut off, the images infuse our fantasies. I believe that it is possible for real connections to become somewhat diluted.

In the same article, Deen is asked what he finds most attractive in women. “There’s nothing sexier than a woman who’s comfortable in her own skin and happy with herself”, Deen says.  I find this odd. Many women who involve themselves in porn undergo plastic surgery. Perhaps they are happier with their bodies after the surgery. But ultimately they have insecurities that they have masked in a very expensive and altering way.

I don’t shame anyone for having insecurities. We all have them. I just think that, porn is not a great example of self-acceptance.

I think it’s difficult to find authentic self-acceptance when Deen is holding a woman by her throat. Deen does in engage in some “gentle” scenes where he will hold a woman’s hand or stroke her hair. But porn producer Joshua Lehman has stated that, male porn actors can set themselves apart from other actors if they “differentiate themselves by “treating the girls nicely and not being a scumbag.”

I suppose there’s no real way to know what Deen’s motivations are for his occasional genteelness. Especially since, this isn’t consistent within his films.

The Good, article offers us a quote from Deen as he explains how he becomes aroused before a scene."'This part of you is really nice,' Deen will think. 'You have really nice eyes, you have really nice hair, you have really nice boobs, your vagina is really cool, I can't wait to jerk off all over your face.'"

I think the sensitivity is lacking here. I don’t see an ounce of respect when a man wants to ejaculate over a woman’s face. Ejaculating onto a woman’s face is another act of control. It’s a way of marking territory.  Being that a woman’s job within porn is to enjoy or pretend to enjoy everything a man decides to do, she will also enjoy or pretend to enjoy ejaculate all over her face. It is the woman’s pleasure in this act that adds to the excitement.

Deen is an avid Tweeter and making statements such as, “Just so you know, when I see you, I’m going to fuck your mouth so hard, you’re eyes are going to bleed” is heartbreaking.

I wonder if the women who claim that Deen is respectful and sensitive are aware of statements such as this. Scenes where Deen is slapping a woman’s breasts and butt while he is penetrating her from behind, while a man enters her mouth as she is suspended by ropes, doesn’t offer warmth and considerate attention that so many women yearn for in their romantic relationships.

Spitting on a woman’s face offers no stimulation other than defamation. Unhygienic acts are prevalent within porn. Whether it is spitting on a woman’s face, ejaculating onto a woman’s face or ATM (ass to mouth) scenes where a man penetrates a woman’s anus and then inserts his penis into her mouth.

If you couldn’t tell by now, I have done some homework. I’ve been to Deen’s blogsite and to a couple of Tumblr sites that serve as odes to the blue eyed porn star.

So it seems that Deen’s “sensitivity” is limited and inconsistent.  To tell the truth, I wouldn't be impressed if his scenes were nurturing 100% of the time.  Porn is still about appeasing the male gaze and most often in a dehumanizing way.

At the end of The Good Men Project article, Emily Heist Moss asks Deen, “Are you a feminist?” Deen responds with, “I hate feminism!” he blurts out, but rushes to rephrase. “In its truest form, I’m down with feminism, but the feminist movement has gone from being about equal rights—something I really believe in—to telling me how horrible I am because I have a penis. That shit drives me crazy.”

My guess is that Deen knows very little about feminism, if he thinks that there is so little to it. But I don’t disagree with Deen when he complains that men often become targets for anger within feminism. In the past I have posted about male friends or acquaintances of mine who have asserted that they believe there is no place for them in feminism. Or rather there is no room.

Women need men to join feminism. In fact if patriarchy were removed there would be no such thing as “feminism”. There would be no need for a movement. Men are not evil, men are wonderful. Men are loving and inspiring human beings. Men are also most often the cause of sexual violence and sexual oppression. This includes acts such as rape, sexual slavery and pornography.  But I am very aware of two things. One; it would behoove men to humble themselves and understand that there is a reason why women are angry, and that behind anger is hurt. Two; one of the failures of feminism is that men are sometimes pushed aside and viewed as “the enemy.”

That being said; Deen makes his living by involving himself in a profession that makes billions by acting out scenarios in which men conquer women. I sincerely wonder what “equal rights” means to Deen.