Sharing self-made porn online
By Anna-Stina Nykänen
The popularity of self-made art – the kind that ordinary people produce for themselves and share with others for their own pleasure – has extended to pornography.
In Finland, self-made art of various genres is referred to by the initials ITE, for itse tehty elämä, or “self-made life”.
Finns who look like the average person next door are uploading nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves taken at home onto the internet for others to see.
In the amateur pictures they pose on their home streets or at their summer cottages. Familiar shopping bags and coffee packages can be seen in the background, as they exhibit their genitalia. There are pictures of people having sex inside log cabins.
This amateur self-made porn might be called organic porn, or fair trade porn, which lacks the commercial aspect. It is voluntary and it’s free.
Finland has several websites that distribute erotic pictures sent in by members – sites such as alastonsuomi.com, omakuva.org, and nakusuomi.com. Alastonsuomi.com alone has 60,000 registered users, according to the webmaster. Each of them has had to upload a picture of him, or herself.
Tero, 32, joined the alastonsuomi.com site about three years ago and uploaded his own picture there, as that is the only way to get to see all of the pictures, and to chat. He wasn’t inspired by the thought of exposing his own body, but as his relationship began to get rocky, he thought that the pictures might raise interest among women.
Tero found a girlfriend on the website. Now he and Laura, 31, upload pictures together. In most of them Laura poses, but there are a few pictures of the two in the act of having sex.
“My girlfriend and I have different motives for this. She likes to exhibit herself. I get excited when others admire my girlfriend and praise her”, Tero says.
Webmaster Markus Parkkonen says that the site has a roughly equal number of men’s and women’s pictures. About 1,200 new members are registered each month, and 200 quit. There are more men than women, but women are more active at sending pictures, chatting, and writing blogs.
For men it is more a porn site. They like to look at raunchy pictures. The more artistic pictures are to the liking of the women.
“Tero likes closeups, I like beautiful pictures where you can see the whole body. They can also be black and white, but I don’t really even look at other people’s pictures”, Laura says.
In her blog Laura writes about books, and about racism, for instance. She prefers to take the pictures herself.
“I want to get onto the top 25 list of the website. I take pictures that people like”, Laura says.
Some people on the site hate porn, Tero says. They do not see nude photographs as pornography, but rather as a social medium for adults where sex is also allowed.
Some people send pictures of motorcycles and cars. That raises some criticism.
“I also feel that the nature of the pages is such that there should be some revealing photographs”, Tero says.
Nude photography has become a pastime and hobby of ordinary people. At wedding fairs self-made erotic photographs are suggested as gifts for the morning after the wedding night. There are websites where people can produce their own erotic photo albums, calendars, and even magazines.
There are long traditions for nude photography around the world, says Juha Janhonen of the vocational school and university textbook publisher WSOYpro. The company has long looked for someone in Finland who could write a guidebook for nude photography.
Hobbyists have always produced porn themselves, says Susanna Paasonen of the University of Turku. Pictures have been taken with Polaroid cameras and on 8 mm home movie cameras. When home video was introduced, groups were formed immediately to exchange home-made porn cassettes.
Even the porn industry started to make amateur-style shaky pictures.
Now the distribution of self-made porn on the internet is easy, and volume is huge. Various YouTube-type porn pages are among the top ten of websites. At the same time sales of porn video has decreased, just as is the case with the music industry. In the early years of the new century profitability of the porn industry declined for the first time in history.
Self-made porn does generate money from advertising that is published alongside the pictures.
“Hobbyists put up free material for their pleasure, which the pages can recycle again and again.”
Tepa, 24, got to know the alastonsuomi.com website after being urged to do so by a friend.
“I haven’t put completely nude pictures there – I’ve always had knickers on at the very least.”
She finds that taking the pictures is interesting. There are no sex games involved, so what then?
“There are fun people. I have made good friends through the blogs, and when I have commented on the pictures of others.”
Tepa has been recognised on the basis of her pictures, and people in bars have come to say hello to her.
She is a painter by profession, and does not think that her bosses would mind this kind of a hobby. But right now she is not at work, as she is performing in the new season of the Finnish version of Big Brother.
Tero works as a sales representative, and Laura used to work at a child day care centre. When she did, she did not show her face in the pictures
Now both of their faces are shown, but not in nude pictures.
“It doesn’t matter if I am recognised, but I don’t want my nude pictures to confront me in the coffee room in the place where I work, in a situation that is not to my liking”, Tero says.
Pornography is more popular in Finland than it is in Sweden, for instance.
“Public debate on porn is usually critical, but in fact, attitudes toward pornography have become more positive since the early 1990s. Women are increasingly finding pornography to be exciting”, says Osmo Kontula, a researcher at the Family Federation of Finland.
Posing is an erotic game, and it usually happens in private. However, the idea that someone might see it can be exciting: people make love in parks in their fantasies, even though they would not actually do it.
“There is a lower threshold the internet. It is not perceived to be public in the same way.”
Is it exhibitionism, or is it striptease?
“Exhibitionism is a desire to show others one’s nakedness. Usually it is linked with men, old men in parks, whose behaviour has been criminalised. Striptease, meanwhile, is linked with women, who often are seen as victims. It is not clear how much the women themselves actually enjoy it”, Kontula says.
Some might have regrets about their pictures. Some are proud. In some circles of young women porn pictures on the internet are a good thing, but an employer might feel differently.
“It is generally not seen as a merit”, Kontula says.
The porn site is off limits to people under the age of 18, and it is not permissible to publish photographs of other people that can be recognised.
Problems emerge all the time.
“A couple of times a month we have dealings with the police, when a man has placed a picture of his ex wife online without her permission”, says Parkkonen of alastonsuomi.com.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) deals with the situations as a part of its regular routine.
Ten to fifteen times a month the site asks the sender of a picture to prove his or her age, if there is suspicion that the picture is of someone who is under 18. Responsibility for the self-portrait of a lying teenager is with the parents, not the administrator of the page, Parkkonen says.
“People should think about what they do”, he says. Pictures will never come off the internet. It isn’t always a good idea to show one’s face. And what will the parents think?
Couples take sex pictures perhaps more frequently than one might imagine, Parkkonen says. They are hidden away on a computer, but what if they end up somewhere else?
“When taking pictures of a sex act, it is important to be able to fully trust the other partner. Your partner knows that the person in the picture is really you”, Parkkonen says.
Showing the genitals is generally not accepted, even though one might think that this would be the case, judging from the number of pictures and the attention that they have attracted.
There is no point in moralising about adults involved in pornography, but it is not something that anyone can recommend to anyone.
And nobody should agree to be photographed just to please someone else.
Just looking at the pictures it is impossible to say what lurks behind them, but the same applies to family photos, Paasonen notes.
There is no reason to suspect that women would not be producing self-made porn because they want to, he says.
ITE porn is not always particularly individualistic. It contains the same positions and fetishes as in any other type of pornography, but it is close to the people.
“It is homespun, and it comes close. It is a reaction to American porn. People are tired of drag queen aesthetics. People want bodies and gestures that are more genuine”, Paasonen says.
It makes one think what porn ultimately is, Paasonen says. And about what ordinary people are like.
Pictures are not taken very spontaneously, even though it might seem to be the case. “First we concentrate on setting up the shot, and only then on the sex”, Tero says.
There are pictures of them on Yyteri beach in Pori, and inside a log cabin. But most of them are taken at home.
“We make sure that there aren’t any confirmation photos or clothes racks. In some pictures there is even trash”, Tero says.
Feedback is brutal - it is either or: would I, or wouldn’t I want to shag this person?
But men like amateur pictures, even if the models are not especially good looking. Women do not always understand it, Tero says.
“Many women downplay their own pictures, and are surprised when they get praise”, Tero says.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.9.2011
ANNA-STINA NYKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-stina.nykanen@hs.fi
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 Sharing self-made porn online |
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