A Conversation With Ruby Day (Part Three)

Being judged by mere appearance is something beautiful people often fall victim to. Especially if their life is much more exciting than everybody else’s is. And what are you talking about with somebody who has made a big part of her private life public and documented it on her award-winning web site? In the last part of this three-part interview Ruby Day and Mason Squelch discuss the weal and woe of the adult industry.

Mason Squelch (MS): The porn industry is in a severe crisis for several years. The desire for porn is unbridled, though. How would you explain this apparent contradiction?

Ruby Day (RD):  Every industry reaches a point where it’s a consumers market.  Over the past several years there has been an increase of producers who have entered the adult industry increasing the amount of content available to the consumer.  Any industry makes a certain amount of money and when the market gets flooded with product such as the adult industry has that money is spread amongst more producers who are using varied ways of delivery thus making it unprofitable, especially for the old model of business.  The industry is going to have to change to survive and only perceiving the whole of the industry from one portion of it is going to have to change too.

MS: How likely is that change? Sometimes it seems this industry is cannibalizing itself, with a lot of players waiting for the others to make a first step.

RD:  Time will only tell when and how fast the change will take place.  As within any industry only time thins out those who refuse to change.

MS: The industry says: there’s too much free porn around and there is too much pirated material in circulation. Is that right?

RD: There may be but I believe the consumer wants something more than what is being offered.  The more sexually liberated society becomes the more refined people’s sexual preferences will become.  Perhaps the standard of American porn needs to adjust with the consumer’s desires.

MS: Despite the need for porn, parts of the American society don’t seem to be liberated at all, at least not sexually. Or is this a misconception? To me it seems that Western societies are on the brink of a backlash for several reasons.

RD:  I can’t disagree with you that there seems to be a portion of American society that has not embraced the sexual revolution but this can be found in any countries population.  As a whole Americans have shied away from sexuality and has leaned more to the social acceptance of violence instead.  For this reason there may always be a sector of the American population who will refuse to be sexually liberated but as a whole the American culture is being more sexually open and accepting than ever.

MS: Your web site rubysdiary.com was receiving a Feminist Porn Award. What does feminist porn mean to you?

RD:  Feminist porn should be sex positive, empowering the performers who produce it and the people who view it.

MS: That’s miles away from classic feminism that still fights for women’s rights and usually has a very critical attitude towards pornography…

RD: The definition of Feminism has evolved from it’s creation.  What was once a true definition seems controlling and limiting in it’s modern day ability to push the movement forward thus producing a social definition of Feminism.

MS: We can find a lot of different protest against anything pornographic these days. Protest coming from a feminist point of view, others from a religious one. It seems these protesters against porn have only few, if any, things in common, though. Then again, your work isn’t actually porn, it differs from the industry’s output. A very muddled situation: Do you think that there will be a common understanding of porn or sexual performances one day? Besides moral condemnation?

RD:  As long as there are different cultures there will be difficulty in having a common understanding of porn or sexual performances.  In an ideal world it might be nice to have a common perspective as long as it is seen in a positive, encouraging, and healthy means but there’s no guarantee that this would be the common understanding.  Here’s why… Anytime someone abuses a living being, situation, act, etc. a negative connotation is applied to it and for this reason there may always be a moral condemnation to sex.  Too often we see or hear about the misuse of sex. There needs to be as much if not more focus on the sex positive, to help educate people so they understand there is another way to perceive sex other than negatively.

MS: Once we’re talking about differences: Is there a difference between porn made for men and porn made for women? And, second question, is there a difference between porn made by men and porn made by women?

RD:  I find that too many times producers put consumers in a gender-based roll.  The reality is, we are all human and there are many overlaps in likes between the sexes.  To assume one sex prefers a certain type of pornography is alienating to the consumer.  Does porn get created specifically for men and women?  Absolutely, and in the mainstream business it is created differently depending which gender it’s for.

There is definitely a difference between porn made by men and porn made by women.  There tends to be a “softer” subtler touch in filming style and editing when a woman makes it.  It is a rare instance to have a man be able to produce such work and vice versa.

MS: Elegant Angel’s director Mason – a woman – did a whole number of porn movies featuring quite rough sex. Some of these movies come in as social experiments with performers acting out their desire for control, sometimes the situation changes totally and the dominating part finds herself being the submissive one. Perhaps we’re touching here your ‘sex as communication tool’ thought. Perhaps this could be an option for feminist porn, too?

RD:  Indeed it could be!  The wonderful thing about words is that they are apart of language and languages are living.  Without this constant growth of living entities they would die.  In order for Feminism to continue moving forward as a powerful movement it must continue to evolve as the word it is existing as part of living languages causing the definition to continually be refined and redefined.

MS: Thank you very much, Ruby Day!