Porn Mums Of British TV

On March 16, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

The white supremacist who murdered all those Muslims in New Zealand said he did it to defend Western civilization. Well, guess what? Muslims aren’t responsible for a new reality show in which mothers make pornography for their children to watch — this for the sake of fighting “toxic masculinity.”  A state broadcaster in Great Britain is. More:

A group of five mothers were so disgusted by porn they found online they decided to make their own X-rated film that they would be happy to show their children.

The women made their adult movie as part of a Channel 4 TV show called Mums Make Porn.

Although they didn’t star in the video themselves, they helped direct and produce it in a bid to create porn that is realistic and promotes positive attitudes towards sex.

The three-part series follows their journey into the adult entertainment industry, which sees one mother so distressed by internet porn she quits the project altogether.

One mother is reduced to tears by the violent, rape-based content they find and another throws up.

At the end of the programme the women show the video to their children.

To be clear, the mums didn’t star in the film. That’s one taboo they didn’t break. Give it another year or two, though, and somebody will make that movie.

Here’s an interview with Emma Morgan, the show’s executive producer. Excerpt:

What is your response to anybody who doesn’t agree with why you have made the series?

EM: We were shocked by the stats about the impact of free mainstream porn online on the younger generation. It was clear that a lot of young people were accessing porn and were being influenced by it.

We felt it has real purpose to do something meaningful to provoke debate and encourage responsible conversations between parents and their children and draw attention to the issue. Sometimes actions speak louder than words, and we are very proud of the mums and the film that they made and the messages it conveys.

Here’s an interview with the four mums who made the porn film (again, they were producing and directing, not starring in it). Excerpt:

What was your goal making the film?

Sarah-Louise: My daughter said that if her boyfriend saw porn, he might look at an actress and compare. For me, it was about body size and body image. It was very important we showed different body types, diversity and also that there wasn’t a type. You could have different sized breasts, penis and vaginas. They all look different. I wanted to show there was diversity in appearance.

Sarah: For me, it was about communication and consent. I wanted connection.

Emma: I wanted it to be an educational purpose. I wanted to show you could have intimacy and a connection in porn. I wanted them to enjoy each other but have communication with each other. I wanted to demonstrate that in our film as well as consent and body image. I wanted to make porn that we will all get stimulated by and serve everyone.

Anita: Like everyone else, it was about showing young people that it was ok to try things and experiment but to always be aware. I wanted to show reality and show what sex is really like and how you get from A to B. I did not want people to feel ashamed.

How many people have you got in your film?

Sarah-Louise: Four. We have got girl on girl and a boy/girl. We had one chance at this. We wanted to make it good. We wanted to show as much as we could in one film. We have gone for something a little bit different as normally you pick an audience and you pick your film. For instance, if you were a lesbian, you would make a lesbian film. It’s unusual in the porn world, as you don’t normally combine them. We wanted to show you could have the same chemistry with different couples. We try to mirror it as much as possible. No matter what you are into, there are important messages we wanted to get across. The big message is we have communication in our porn film. They ask for things.

Emma: It’s two separate sex scenes but they mirror sexual positions. One is daytime; one is at night. They interlink within the edit. It is all about the build up and exploration of the body and asking.

Sarah: It doesn’t matter about your sexuality. The fundamental thing is consent.

This is not a fringe thing. This is mainstream now. It wasn’t too long ago that parents introducing their children to pornography would have drawn the attention of the police. Now parents make it for them as an enlightened act of liberal charity, and get a celebrated television show about it, broadcast on a BBC state-supported British television channel.

Think about that. Seriously, think about it. Raise yourself out of the boiling pot, frog, for just one minute, and think about what this means.

There is no saving a culture as degenerate as this one, only withdrawing from it, and building up small communities within which to live out the faith (and moral sanity) while it destroys itself. I’m telling you, get started on this right now. Something big is coming. You feel it as well as I do. It is a Weimar Republic feeling. Here’s a passage from a Salon review (2000) of a then-new history of Weimar Berlin’s sex culture:

Whether or not Berlin’s unique brand of decadence was “in the air,” there apparently was the feeling in Weimar culture that anything goes. A quote from Luigi Barzini’s social memoir, “The Europeans,” used by Gordon in the book, illustrates this point particularly well:

“I saw pimps offering anything to anybody, little boys, little girls, robust young men, libidinous women, animals. The story went around that a male goose of which one cut the neck at the ecstatic moment would give you the most delicious, economical, and time-saving frisson of all, as it allowed you to enjoy sodomy, bestiality, homosexuality, necrophilia and sadism at one stroke. Gastronomy too, as one could eat the goose afterwards.”

When this happens here, you may be certain that some liberals will chastise the disapprovers, reminding them that in the 1950s, prudes looked down on Elvis too.

UPDATE: I wasn’t clear that Channel 4, though state-backed, is not technically the BBC. Thanks, British readers, for the correction. I’ve changed this post to reflect that.

‘This Could Have Been Their 9/11 Moment’

On March 16, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

NEW YORK—The prayer space at the Islamic Center at New York University is like any other college conference room: big windows, tall ceilings, retro carpeting. But when it’s transformed for Friday prayers, called jummah, there’s a certain familiarity to it, too: rows of tape showing worshippers where to sit, a line of chairs dividing women from men, people sitting cross-legged and chatting. This prayer space is similar to the two mosques, thousands of miles away in New Zealand, where 49 worshippers were killed and scores of others were injured by a gunman on Friday.

For Mohammed Hojaij, a junior at NYU who serves on the board of the Muslim Students Association, that’s what was most sickening as he watched the video of the attack that was allegedly posted by the shooter: “Looking at the carpet, the design, the greeting at the door,” seeing how similar it was to the mosque he grew up attending in Dearborn, Michigan, “it was almost a part of me,” he said. “I felt it.”

To the group of young Muslims who showed up for prayers on Friday, the deadly shooting in Christchurch and the ugly ideology that apparently motivated it does not feel far away. They see similar versions of white supremacy and anti-Muslim rhetoric all around them in America. Many of them are too young to remember 9/11, or were barely even born when it happened; their formative moment is happening now, in the shadow of ascendent white nationalism. Young Muslims are scared and grieving over what happened in New Zealand. But they’re also ready to get political.

[Read: American Muslims Are Young, Political Liberal, and Scared]

Because New Zealand is located in a time zone 17 hours ahead of New York City’s, Muslim students at NYU had the whole, brutal day to think about whether they wanted to attend jummah prayers. “It was difficult … to decide whether or not it was appropriate for people to go out,” said Hojaij. “It felt like it was almost dangerous—like there was still a threat looming.” Asad Dandia, an NYU alumnus who still volunteers at the Islamic Center, told his mother in Brooklyn not to leave her house without him. He was worried that someone might target her, because she wears a hijab and doesn’t speak English very well.

In the end, though, people turned out—a lot of people. More than 300 men and women crowded into the space, standing in rows shoulder to shoulder to pray. Omer Malik, an NYU senior who serves as president of the Muslim Students Association, said the turn out was as big as he’s seen it in his four years at school.

The message shared at the beginning of prayers was emotional. “If you’re angry, man, it’s okay to be angry. If you feel scared, it’s okay to be scared,” said Imam Khalid Latif, the executive director of the Islamic Center.  “We’re going to do what we can to make sure tomorrow is as best as it possibly can be. … This is divine promise. Indeed with hardship, there is relief.” The room was completely still as Latif spoke. Several students were crying.

But Latif’s message was not just about grieving: He stated forcefully, in a voice edged with emotion, that the New Zealand shooting was driven by a dangerous ideology. “That act is … rooted in the same white-supremacist mindset that underlies the very systems and structures of the country we live in,” he said. “On a globalized level, it is running rampant.”

[Read: How White Supremacist Violence Echoes Other Forms of Terrorism]

In his role as a Muslim chaplain, Latif told me afterwards, he is responsible for caring for students, but also coaching them to use their voices. “Our young people have shown over and over that they can be a real catalyst for change,” he said. “Organized evil will triumph over disorganized righteousness.” In his message to the community, he explicitly encouraged students to get politically active. “We are in the beginning of 2019, and 2020 is ahead. And each one of us has to say to ourselves what our commitment will be,” he told the room. “One of the most American things we can do is speak out in protest against injustice in any administration’s policy.”

The students in the room seemed to resonate with this message. “Because of everything that’s been happening in this country since 2016, politically, we’ve had to come together as a community in the MSA,” said Maha Hashwi, a junior who serves on the board of the Muslim Students Association. The students have been working on building partnerships with other groups on campus, added Malik, and they’re not afraid to be outspoken about political issues.

They are coming of age in a political environment in which anti-Muslim rhetoric is common; a number of students told me they were devastated, but not surprised, to hear about the New Zealand attack. “We are the generation that’s going to do something about it,” said Samina Saifee, a sophomore. “We are young, we’re passionate, and we understand things in a different way.”

From a demographic point of view, Saifee may be right. As recently as 2017, polling from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding showed that American Muslims as a whole are much younger than other religious groups, with nearly 40 percent of Muslim adults aged 29 and under. They’re overwhelmingly sympathetic to liberal and progressive policies.

And they live with a lot of fear: As I reported in 2017, roughly one-fifth of Muslims under 30 have made plans to leave the U.S. if they need to, and nearly half say they fear being the victim of a white-supremacist attack. The shooting in New Zealand confirmed what many young, American Muslims have grown up knowing: White supremacist individuals and groups want to hurt people like them. In Christchurch, the white supremacist succeeded.

[Read: Trying to Be an Apolitical Muslim in America]

A growing group of Muslims in their 30s and 40s have become visible leaders in U.S. politics: figures like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the newly elected Muslim congresswomen, or Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian activist who co-headlined the Women’s March. Latif is one of those leaders: He told me that in the wake of the New Zealand attack, he got calls from the New York City Comptroller’s office and the office of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. For leaders like these, September 11 was the formative moment for their identity as Muslims in America, and for many, that experience drove them to get involved in politics.

But for the next generation of Muslim leaders, these students who are still in school, 9/11 is something they’ve only heard spoken about by their parents and other elders.  “The young kids, for whom this is the first Islamic Center that they’ve ever been to, their first time making a real community—this is what their first experience has to be, and that’s just very unfair to them,” said Dandia. “This could have been their 9/11 moment.”