"Erotica portrays nonaggressive sexual activity between willing, sensitive, caring partners. The partners share in the initiation and choice of activities, erlatively free from the stereotype pattern of male dominance and female subservience that characterizes much pornography"
--Margaret Jean Intons-Peterson and Beverly Roskos-Ewoldsen "Mitigating the Effects of Violent Pornography pg 219
In pornography women are objects. Men act on women who aren't even women, merely bodies. Recepticles of male lust.
Erotica celebrates sexuality, while pornography reduces it to domination and submission. Pornography is harmful because it dehumanizes both men and women.
http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/Garden/1073/porn2.html
Pornography and Erotica both depict sex and intend to stimulate sexually. However, pornography is more transparent wherein one person is a subject while the other is the object. In pornography, only one person enjoys the act of sexual activity. In most porn movies, there isn't really much story but rather more on the act of fore playing and sexual intercourse. Pornography is more visual in a sense that they may expose the sexual organs of the characters. Pornography is classified into two classifications which are soft porn and hard porn. Soft porn is when there is no exposure of genitalia during the sexual intercourse whereas hard porn has lots of genitalia exposure (in fact sometimes, in porn movies they even focus the camera on the genitals). Some argue that it is already to be considered as porn once the nipple of the female boob is exposed while others say only if two nipples are shown can it be considered as porn.
In Erotica, there is a subject-subject relationship in which both (or all of them in cases like threesome activities) are enjoying. Examples of Erotica are romance novels which are actually more detailed in describing the mood and setting of the scenes. In Erotica, even the smallest detail such as the color of the lingerie the characters are wearing, are described. It is very descriptive and I think that it stimulates the audience more than pornography since the audience can use their wildest imagination to interpret the message.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Curses and Labeling of Men and Women

I’ve noticed that I haven’t been using much labeling terms in my way of speaking and writing, except for the word “gaga” to connote the female counterpart of “gago.”
It’s kind of unfair that most of the curses we use tend to degrade women in general. Like the mother-fucker, son of a bitch, whore, among others. Even in translation of language, biases are so evident, as they tend to favor masculinity. Say for instance the word master which means boss, when translated to its female counterpart, is mistress which means a “querida.” Host (as in emcee) and its female counterpart, hostess (as in g.r.o.). Governor (as in administrator) to governess (as in maid or yaya).
image source|: http://getweird.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/curses3.jpg
Eating Out With Maximo Oliveros


“Eating out” is more of like a “coming out” movie while “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” focused more on the environment and its effect on the main characters’ values. The latter is not really a movie about homosexuality and it only mirrors how a typical Filipino family thrives for a living. Some of the Filipino traits that were shown in this movie include being happy-go-lucky and having close family ties. Maximo Oliveros cannot be considered as a gay since he did not actually come out of the closet. He was portrayed to be like a “little housewife slash mother” of their family because he tries to fill up the roles of their mother. He is responsible of doing household chores like cooking, cleaning, washing among others.
In the movie “Eating Out”, they try to show us not just the challenges of being a gay but also their worth as part of our society. One of the characters said something like “being gay is more than eating low fat food…” This is like saying there is more to being a gay than what people actually think. In another scene, one of the characters raised the question, “Why change to the path of oppression when happiness is right here?” This is telling us that although gay people and homosexuality have already gained acceptance in our society, there is still oppression to the third sex and it will be hard for us to erase it.
It’s funny how they try to use each other in the movie just to get who they really wanted. Kyle used Caleb to have Marc while Caleb used Marc to have Gwen. Caleb pretends to like Marc since Gwen is attracted to gay people while Kyle hopes to be Marc’s “rebound” when he eventually finds out that Caleb is just after his best friend, Gwen.
What is nice about this movie is that they are able to show us that gay people are also human beings who have emotions. It’s also good that they were able to exemplify the artistic skills of Kyle and Marc in music to show us that even the third sex can also excel in our society.
image sources:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/48/Eating_out.jpg/200px-Eating_out.jpg
http://tambayansalondon.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/maximooliverosposter.jpg
Friday, November 23, 2007
Eating Out 2, Sloppy Seconds
i didn't know that there's actually a sequel to the film "Eating Out" The first movie, which i watched in my Genders class, was really very shocking and it was my first time ever to see such film.
Here's a scene from the movie sequel, which shows how Kyle and his new prospect joined a group of ex-gays, who are trying to promote their "coming in" or what they call "homo no more."
one common thing i noticed from the original and the sequel movie is the factor of "pretending" just to get what the main characters really wanted. Does it always have to be that way? That gay people should always have to be pretentious? if that's the case.. then how far are they willing to pretend?
video source: www.youtube.com
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