Hard-core Shopping: Educating Consumption in SIR Video Production's Lesbian Porn

Abstract

abeled “100% dyke produced,” SIR (Sex, Indulgence and Rock N’ Roll) Video Production’s lesbian porn videos have been extremely successful on the gay and lesbian film festival circuit and in women-owned bookstores and sex toyshops. Like much of women’s porn, both lesbian and straight, SIR videos are structured around a discourse of sex education, sexual health, and erotic empowerment. This discourse of sex education extends to the company’s mission statement as well: “We change the way people fuck. Our mission is to make educational, enlightening, entertaining, and highly erotic videos that will provoke, inspire, arouse, and uplift people’s attitudes and habits around sex and sexual health. We aim to make very sexy stuff that focuses on chemistry, dirty talk, and fantasy.” The most significant of these “changes” that SIR advocates is the integration of toys and pornography into sexual activity as a mode of achieving feminist empowerment. Sex toys and dildos figure prominently in the straight and lesbian sexualities portrayed by SIR Productions and are featured in nearly all of the sexual sequences in the company’s first three videos. Dildos, of course, are not new to all-girl porn features, but what distinguishes SIR is the visibility of the sex toy retail industry, too. The relationship between SIR and the sex toy industry is not simply a matter of props. With the premiere of Sugar High Glitter City, SIR struck an exclusive distribution agreement with the Seattle-based national sex shop chain, Toys in Babeland, for the first two weeks of the video’s release (AVN News). SIR also features commercials for Good Vibrations, the store that is Toys in Babeland’s competitor, as well as for dildo manufacturers Vixen Creations on their tapes. They even use a retail store as the location for one of their videos. Hard-core Shopping: Educating Consumption