James Deen is Not the Nice Guy of Porn - PART II

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Just this week Nightline featured an interview with porn actor James Deen. To watch it visit ABC News or Hulu. The links will take you straight to the video interview, provided the sites have not taken them down by the time you read this.

I first heard of James Deen through a gender studies professor who was preparing for a course about pornography and its cultural impact. I did some digging and came to learn a bit more about Mr. Deen. To read my January 2012 post, James Deen is Not the Nice Guy of Porn, click here.

In that post I report that there are many who have deemed Dean to be a sensitive man within porn. Deen has been labelled "The Ryan Gosling of Porn" by some. He's become the heartthrob of porn for young girls. He's a 25 year old man with a laid back appearance and a laid back vibe. This seems to be one of the reasons as to why so many women are flocking to him.

Fans believe that Deen has earned his fame as he is much more gentle in his scenes than some of the other male actors out there. He will hold the hand of another actress and he will spend time kissing her. Nightline failed to mention that he also has sex with them while "gently" choking her with one hand.

For some this suits them just dandy. Deen performs different types of porn. He's heavily involved in BDSM scenes for Kink.com and will walk naked women in public before having sex with them before a live audience for Public Disgrace.com. Depending on the company and depending on the scene, you will find women with their breasts tied tightly with ropes and the rest of their bodies tied and then suspended from above. Some are put into cages and then penetrated. Some are ordered to pee in a bucket or secured to the floor by metal pipe contractions. Not your average BDSM. Others are bound and gagged with clothespins snapped all across their legs and breasts.

I don't mention this out of attempt to shock. If you're a BDSM fan I imagine none of this is shocking. There are many who truly enjoy watching or being a part of BDSM. Humiliation and degradation is a turn on for some and Deen is one to oblige.

Deen also does a lot of "alternative" porn where he has sex with women who sport tattoos and piercings. It's amazing that the word "alternative" is still being used. I thought it was a 90s thing. Back in high school when some of the music I listened to was considered "alternative". 

When I was in high school and in college, I was sometimes tagged as  "punk" or "goth". I didn't appreciate either label, because it was just that. A label. But it seems that the women at Burning Angel not only love to be called sluts but they are content to be pigeon holed as emo, punk or goth.

Below is an transcript excerpt from ,Nightline. Here Nightline expresses their concern about Deen's work.

From Nightline 2/2/12

Voiceover: Today the voracious, unstoppable American porn industry, by some estimates a $13 billion business, has now targeted and reached a new demographic: teenage girls. Evidence of that? Deen has become something of an internet sensation for fans much younger than 18, a fact that many parents may find disturbing.

Nightline reporter: You have this massive following of young women, some of them teenagers, what do you say to that?

Deen: If there's a 15-year-old girl, an underage girl, an underage guy, an underage person that is viewing a scene I'm in or some kind of porn, chances are they're curious, they're horny. Whatever it is, they're sexual enough that it is something that they desire, that they crave, that they want. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

Nightline reporter: Parents might not think so.

Deen: Why? Everyone has sex.

I agree with Deen in that there is nothing wrong with craving sex. There is nothing wrong with sex. Desire, curiosity, and sexually charged hormones are all good things. So, what's my problem? My issue is patriarchy. That's my problem.

"I would like to think that I'm, you know, opening up their sexual experience they'll be able to take their boyfriends and say, 'hey, I saw this in a porno, I want to try this. I don't think porn should be used as an actual learning guide."

As you can see Deen just contradicted himself. He tells us that he hopes a man who sees his films will want to try something new in the bedroom with his girlfriend but then says one shouldn't learn from pornography. For many porn is indeed used as a teaching guide. I do not want anyone assuming anything about my sexuality based on what they have viewed from porn. I know plenty of women who would agree with me. I imagine that there are plenty of women who disagree as well.

The problem is that porn doesn't just offer ways in which to experiment but it tells us how to have sex, how to react to sex. How women are supposed to moan, how obligated they should feel and how they should look while having sex.

Nightline's piece focused on the fact that Deen's popularity stretches across age groups. It's not just women in their 20s but teens as well. Deen tells Nightline that he thinks minors should stay away from his blogs and films. He encourages them to find him when they turn 18.

Deen claims he first became interested in becoming a porn star when he was in kindergarten when he found  porn magazine. "I picked it up and I'm like, 'oh my God, this is the cool, this is awesome,'" he said. "It was this weird moment that I will always remember where I was like, this is what I want to be when I grow up. I want to do this." 

According to Nightline, Deen said he was once suspended for telling a school teacher he wanted to become a porn star one day. He has now starred in 4,000 movies and is the youngest person ever to win porn's "Male Performer of the Year."  

The person who directed me to the Nightline interview also lead me to a June 2011 article. Gaby Dunn from 100 Interviews sat down with Deen.  

"The origin story I’d read online about James’s porn career was that someone gave him the advice that if he could have sex in public, then he could do porn. James says this is mostly true.

It actually started one day when he was listening to ‘Love Line’ on the radio. The guest was porn legend Jenna Jameson. When they opened the lines for callers, a bunch of men called in to say things like, ‘I could fuck you better’ or ‘I could do porn. I have a huge dick.’ Eventually, Jenna snapped.

“If you wanna do porn,” she said on air, “get a folding chair and jerk off for 45 minutes with twenty people around you. When one of them yells ‘Come!’ then you have to come within 30 seconds.”

Instead of being intimidated like Jenna probably meant, James thought that was something he could do. He started going to parties and hooking up with girls in full view of the rest of the party-goers, sometimes having sex right in the middle of the action. He considered it practice." 

I don't know Deen. He might be a really nice guy, truly intelligent, and approachable; just as his fans insist upon. I don't like or dislike Deen. I don't know him. My concerns aren't so much with Deen but with pornography as a whole.  

When I wrote my first post James Deen is Not the Nice Guy of Porn, I had done some research which included taking a gander at his blog that his fans speak so highly of. There I found him talking about what he wants to eat for lunch, how drunk he is, and then who he "banged" that day.  Each entry is about a paragraph or maybe two at the most and is accompanied by a close up photo of a co-workers vagina or anus.

It's difficult to view Deen as the nice guy of porn, when he talks about how he wants to "jizz" all over some woman's face or how he wants to "ass slam" her or "fuck her til' her eyes bleed."

I don't fear that Deen is going to corrupt the purity (so to speak) of women as the Nightline piece seemed to suggest. But I do think that Deen is just another guy in porn. His fans point out differences which they believe makes him unique. My belief is that there aren't enough differences to make me think of him as a more nurturing character within porn. But when it comes down to it, there isn't anything about porn that I could embrace.

Within my pieces about pornography I find it important to emphasize that I do not speak for everyone. Porn is a big-ig-ig industry, so obviously there is a fan base waiting for it. That being said, I also find it important to emphasize that pornography harms women and men alike. My post has focused on heterosexual porn, which is mainstream. Although, there are other types of porn out there, the variety has not erased the fact that, sex for pay, has become fashionable.

People use to want to "party like a rock star" and now people strive to "party like a porn star." The whole purpose of mainstream porn is to enhance a man's ego. The women in porn "love" everything that is happening TO them (not with them) and are always wanting more. They are willing to accept anything that man wants to do. This is not real life. Some may argue that, porn is meant to be about fantasy and not real life. Understood, but as a woman, I know what it is like to have men in my life (friend, foe, or romantic interest) who believe that life would be grand if women would give it up like the porn stars do.

It's this kind of mentality that has me weary about any man I allow into my bedroom. Even the most sensitive of men may adheare to the myth that men give and women receive.

Porn stretches farther than the screen. A man could detest porn but we have a porn saturated media that continues to tell women how to be women and men how to be men. Deen's supposed "nice guy" flare doesn't reverse any of that.