It Depends What the Definition of "Fisting" Is

A reader (no, really, I swear) points to an article in Adult Video News featuring excerpts from a highly enlightening cross examination of an obscenity investigator. Topics covered include the precise meaning of "fisting" (and why fists differ from fist-shaped dildos), which facial expressions are permissible during urination, and the metaphysics of ideal Platonic "community standards" which float above, you know, what the actual community thinks or does.

Comments

[Anonymous]

okay, who's reading http://www.cruel.com at work?

[sarah]

The "community standards" excuse for closing porn shops is pretty funny. Has any adult video/book/novelty shop EVER gone out of business? Because they would if the community REALLY didn't want them there.

[Jim Walsh]

I've love to read the article, but I'm concerned about getting porn-spammed. Not, ahem, that I've ever had that problem...too much...

[Anonymous]

The "community standards" excuse for closing porn shops is pretty funny. Has any adult video/book/novelty shop EVER gone out of business? Because they would if the community REALLY didn't want them there.

And if the people in the surrounding communities also didn't patronize them. It's amazing how many porn shops and strip clubs are in poor neighborhoods but have parking lots full of Benzes and Bimmers. Also amazing how you rarely see anyone walking home from one.

[Greg Newburn]

I can tell which Hit and Run "headlines" are Julian's every single time. This one deserves a fucking award. Seriously.

[Santa Barbara CA Reader]

When a friend visited me not long ago, we drank a bit much and decided to go visit the local strip club. We did end up walking there, a distance of 1.7 miles each way. Our strip club is located on a former service road between the 101 freeway and the beach.

I'll admit it is rare to walk to and from a strip club, but it happens.

[chthus]

No one ever walks to a strip club? Maybe in the suburbs or in CA. One of the main arguments every time some one wants to put one up is the the people walking to and fro will sully the neighborhood for miles around. As for the nice cars, have you been through a poor neighborhood lately? Sure there's a lot of junkers, but there's a good number of Hummers and Mercedes and such, just sitting there with a crowd around them.

But yes, there probably are more strip clubs in poor neighborhoods than rich ones. Reason is, poor people don't manipulate the local zoning boards as well as rich ones. But it's not because poor people don't go there just as often.

[hey]

getting to the spearmint in sb is a serious pain.. or so i've heard...

and yeah, po folks don't have money to spend on lawyers to disrupt the meetings (they only screw with planning when one of the leftist groups at a local campus gets some bad weed and they can get off their ass and do something destructive)

[Evan McElravy]

For what it's worth, I seriously doubt there is too much automotive traffic to the numerous stripper joints on the Ste-Catherine strip here in Montr?al, nor to the various sex shops and pornographic video stores on the adjacent streets. Parking is just about non-existent at prime smut-hours. Evidently, there is currently a ban on any further sex-related enterprises on Ste-Cat downtown, though I understand that is being challenged in court. I guess the city government is worried that out-of-towners and suburbanites (now a voting block in city politics since the megamerger) will cotton onto just what Montreal's "community standards" really are.

[david f]

oooooh!

[Warren]

HEY!
I like porn and I like The Princess Bride, but I don't like them being mixed together.

[joe]

Holy crap, this is the guy's job? 75% of the working hours of an investigator in the DA's office is spent perusing porn?

A scene of a woman being peed on and enjoying it is prosecutable, but a scene of a woman being peed on to her disgust is ok?

WTF?

[junyo]

But yes, there probably are more strip clubs in poor neighborhoods than rich ones. Reason is, poor people don't manipulate the local zoning boards as well as rich ones. But it's not because poor people don't go there just as often.

Living in a poor neighborhood doesn't make you poor, and being able to afford a nice automobile, in my book, automatically removes you from the poor category. (As does buying 8 dollar drinks and stuffing money into someone's underwear - damn Jersey bikini bars!) We had a name for the guys with really nice new cars in my old, not so great, neighborhood. We called them "drug dealers". But okay, your anecdotal evidence washes my anecdotal evidence (the anon post was mine). Maybe lots of people walk to strip clubs. But however you slice it, the "they wouldn't be there if the community didn't want them" argument has the basic problem that people, thru mobility or the power to manipulate zoning boards or city councils or whatever, can displace something they want/need but are unwilling to acknowledge into someone else's community. It's like saying because there's a coal burning powerplant in town X, the people there must like smoke and acid rain.

[Jeff Clothier]

I don't know what's happening in your neck o' the woods, but strips clubs around here are competing for the"up-scale" crowd. One of the newer ones just hosted MIss Nude World. The event was covered by loca tv/radio news and the Des Moines Register. Apparently plenty of people walk, ride, take taxis and limos, etc. to and from these establishments with less and less social sanction or embarrassment. Whether that's good or bad - you tell me.

[dhex]

strippers frighten me. why anyone would pay to get scammed is beyond me.

but does anyone know where the provisions against fisting came from? how they were created? what makes it worse than say, 4 fingers. it's one of those distinctions i can't quite figure out.

[Six Fingers]

Five fingers is for pussies, er, I mean, wimps.

[Julian Sanchez]

Does that mean Count Rugen from "The Princess Bride" could've had a lucrative porn career?

[david f]

hey Julian!

just imagine the show he'd put on with fezzick and the albino...

that gives new meaning to "the cave of dispair"...

mercy!

[Phil, a pornographer]

That whole exchange about urination, and the detective's total ignorance of changes in the industry, was both frightening and hilarious (hilarious mostly if you're not in the porn business). Even "I know it when I see it" was better than dealing with people who refuse to see in the first place.

[Julian Sanchez]

Instead of that life-sucking machine, they could strap Wesley to Duran Duran's organ from Barbarella.

[Chaplin Geoff]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 62.213.67.122
URL: http://www.PENIS-ENLARGEMENT-SAFE.NET

DATE: 12/10/2003 04:37:01
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

[Tsao Sandy]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 62.213.67.122
URL: http://penis-enlarger.nonstopsex.org
DATE: 12/20/2003 09:01:42
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

[Weintraub Ariel]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 68.173.7.113
URL: http://pharmacy-on-line.drugsexperts.com
DATE: 01/09/2004 11:57:14
What else can i say after all this ?!

[Malver Aaron]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 210.18.158.254
URL: http://preteen-sex.info
DATE: 05/19/2004 01:52:58
Believing in God does not require believing in religion.