A former writer for Screw and Penthouse has a new message for his old industry and for the mainstream that seems far more accepting of it now: Stop shoving sex in people’s faces.
"[S]o many people who dislike smut are getting it shoved in their faces. This strikes me as a tad undemocratic," writes Gil Reavill in Smut: A Sex Industry Insider (and Concerned Father) Says Enough Is Enough. "No pornographication without representation."
He goes on to describe the mainstreaming of sexual imagery and metaphor as the "cultural equivalent of second-hand smoke.” Elsewhere in his book, Reavill likens the Internet to "a shared commons or public square," saying that it also "the nastiest neighborhoods of any town on Earth."
Reavill said adults should be able to use or access what they want, "[b]ut when we get hit with second-hand smoke – or second-hand smut – without being asked, I am offended for myself, I am offended for other people, and I am offended for the children among us."
Reavill's book has already received favorable notice from Booklist and Wired. The former called Smut "realistic thinking on a perpetually vexing public affairs topic," while Wired called it "not a diatribe against the porn machine or an attempt to impose one uniform set of morals on a million other people . . . [but] a well-supported argument about how much sexually explicit content is forced on us each day."
“It's rude to force your sexual expression on folks who don't want to see it," Wired critic Regina Lynn wrote. "I doubt you would be thrilled if I barged into your house and wallpapered your dining room with Michael Brandon posters without your permission.
Yet that's what it feels like when you drive down a city street and every billboard leers or propositions you. Or when you check your email and you have spam sporting subject lines about incest, bestiality, and statutory rape."
