Sam Sugar, of Sugar Bank and related fame, is a very funny man. His post yesterday on 10 Lies Pornographers Tell had me in stitches. I was particularly amused by “1. Porn stars are breaking into the mainstream” and “9. Art Porn,” the latter of which included the beautiful explanation “Bach was a better composer than Yanni, and Monet was a better painter than Thomas Kincaid. If you disagree that’s not an opinion, it’s proof you’re an imbecile.” Now I’ve seen art which I felt appealed to the prurient interest, or at least made me wet, and I’ve seen adult material which I felt attained a higher level.

But naturally the debate in the comments section on SugarBank is not about the nature of art. The debate is about “8. Alt Porn. Traditionally porn performers get paid a fixed daily rate, don’t get any residual pay and have no real control over the product they’re in. The product itself features skinny white girls from the flyover states who get hired because of how they look and how they fuck. Or is that alt-porn? Janine’s been rocking tatts and attitude for a decade while raising two kids without ever being labeled ‘alt’ anything, while ‘alt porn’ darling Joanna Angel recently said on camera “…does the fact I’ll let any stranger cum on my face but won’t fuck a black guy make me a racist?” Er… yes it does Joanna. A tattoo and a bad dye-job is not going to upset ‘the system’ and the ‘alternative’ to traditional porn is independence, control and new ideas not haircuts, piercings and hip records.” But what about a really good tattoo and a really good dye job?

But the debate isn’t about how good a dye job it would take to facilitate true change. Someone named FurryGirl starts going off about how she disrespects her affiliates and mainstream porn. Never mind that on her site she openly states that the only photographers she would work with are those “emailing from a major adult entertainment company.” On SugarBank, she continues to slag everyone within striking distance with “don’t get me started on how painfully cliche most of the photography is on goth/punk porn sites. Haven’t we all had enough of pale goth chicks licking knives menacingly or masturbating in cemeteries?” First off, I will never get enough of pale goth chicks with weapons or tombstones. Secondly, I’ve seen a good number of what would count as the goth or punk porn sites on the web and I’ve never seen a set of someone actually masturbating in a graveyard. This suggests to me that, at the very least, the execution of such sets can hardly be trite, them not existing and all. So Forrest Black from gothic punk erotica icon Blue Blood jumps into the fray stating that FurryGirl “can kinda fuck off” and “There is an air of irreverent DIY independence connoted by the ‘altporn’ term or label, and I simply can’t accept the idea that traditional corporate product can live up to that notion. Then again, I think that term was originally coined by corporate interests eager to exploit the tattooed and pierced teen market space.”

Once the dust settled, Sam Sugar and Forrest Black had agreed that Janine Lindenmuller and Belladonna have got it going on and the brilliantly insightful Sam Sugar had coined the expression altsploitation, saying, “just like blacksploitation movies had little to do with changing the role, or perception, of blacks in Hollywood. Alt is only as ‘alt’ as the system that produces it and most of it’s as mainstream as anything.”

And I’m left really annoyed that FurryGirl is just a girl from the amateur porn niche who only shaves a little bit and not, as I’d hoped from her moniker, a women who has sex in a colorful furry animal costume.