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Sugarbank.com

I got this press release from Sam Sugar:

TGP.com, like Sugar's other blog projects, has a majority female staff whose presence can be felt in the content selections and approach to sex in general.

"The adult industry often portrays women as passive sexual participants or corrupted innocents," said Sugar, "but the huge number of female-operated sex blogs is shining a light on the number of women interested in and turned on by porn. The best people I could find staff TGP.com and 75% of them happen to be female. I'm proud to be working with talented writers."

Sam, who's in his early thirties, calls me Wednesday morning (3/15/06).

Sam: "I don't really disclose my age. It changes the way people see me.

"I'm itinerant. I'm calling you from my apartment in Latvia. I've been here 18 months. Being a European citizen, it is not easy to get permanent residency in the US. London is one of the most expensive cities on the planet. All I need is access to a phone and an internet connection. I'm weighing up where my next move will be."

Luke: "How did you get into the adult industry?"

Sam: "During the dotcom period [1999, he went to work for DHD, owned by Danni.com].

"I began my career in the publishing industry in London for Maxim.

"We launched the first American issue of Maxim in October of 1997.

"Tech companies in Los Angeles wanted someone with publishing experience. The only place to get publishing experience in the US was in Manhattan. Unlike in London, when you work in publishing in Manhattan, you get paid a vast amount, particularly if you are involved with technology or marketing, and I was in both.

"This company worked out it was cheaper to hire people in London and bring them to the US then to hire Americans.

"I was enormously over-qualified. When I landed in Los Angeles and looked around, I said, 'Ohmigoodness, these people aren't in the same ballpark.'

"After a while, my colleague and I looked at each other and said, 'We are the best deal this company has ever had. It is wrong how much work we're doing and how much better we are than the people we are supposed to be working with or for.'

"A friend convinced me to go on this interview [with DHD] as a joke, thinking I'd be walking into an office full of people having sex. I was impressed with what I found.

"I was the director of marketing. I worked with them in one form or another until 2003.

"I'm now running a network of blogs that started a year ago with my own blog sugarbank.com. I've branched out to include other blogs such as Podnography.com, PSPPorn.com, SugarClick.com, SugarJoy.com, SugarPit.com, Sugasm.com, and TGP.com.

"I launched sugarbank.com as a way to contact people within the industry and to raise my profile."

Luke: "There are many Adult blogging operations. Why do you think yours will be successful?"

Sam: "There aren't many Adult blogging operations run by the commercial industry. The best sex blogs are run by people outside the industry.

"One of the things I've learned in the past year is how many women are interested in explicit sexual material and how blogging has connected with them in a way the rest of the Adult industry never has. It empowers people to publish their own stuff. Women have jumped on and supported the erotica they like, which isn't the typical Candida Royalle soft-focus Kenny G you'd think.

"Sugarbank.com has 600 subscribers and thousands of readers every day. I only make one post a day."

It's Alexa.com ranking is 65,121.

"The only sex blogs working on the scale of TGP.com are Fleshbot.com, Sexblogs.com and Erosblog.com."

Luke: "What do you love and what do you hate about the Adult industry?"

Sam: "I hate the stupidity. Because it pulls from a particularly barren demographic base, and particularly online the pickings were so easy, you have people in positions of power who wouldn't be able to survive if they had not been lucky to buy some great domain names in 1994.

"The video industry has more than its fair share of imbeciles. Because it takes a defensive attitude towards its product, it tolerates a lot of stuff that it shouldn't -- the violence, racism, narrowmindedness. The output of the Adult video industry is mostly unappealing. The exception is some of the bigger companies which are run by smart, nice people who are grounded in social reality.

"There's so much dreck which is an excuse for people who are emotionally stunted to vent their injuries in public. I don't want to shake those people's hands.

"There are some great artistic people who are like Betty Page and Hugh Hefner and Frank Zappa. Their pornography represents the avante garde who are advancing in America the still radical idea that sexuality is OK."

I hate this smugness and sexual superiority about sex that I hear all the time from pornographers (and this superiority to America that I hear all the time from Brits). As large a percentage of Americans believe that sexuality (privately expressed, and traditionalists would hold it should be within a relationship but even they don't want to send anyone to jail for sex outside of marriage) is OK as do Europeans and as large a percentage of Americans as Europeans believe that it is not OK to perform sex publicly and to earn your living from the sale of wank materials.

What percentage of Europeans believe that pornographers are expressing important ideas and are in the avante garde of important societal change?

All civilizations have opposed pornography and all civilizations will oppose pornography because civilization (based on, among other things, sexual restraint and respect for the family unit) is the opposite of pornography (the free expression of desire and the breaking of societal taboos).

As atheist Pat Riley put it: "It's not religion per se that is against porn; it's any civilization that has to ensure support (in its largest sense) for the children and the females. Briefly, if the male can find another outlet to satisfy his craving for sex, he won't make the sacrifices and adjustments necessary to pair bond with a female and porn helps him masturbate which serves as a crutch to avoid that commitment."

Pornographers have no reason to feel superior to the mass of humanity who have only one sex partner at a time. Pornographers have about the worst record of any group of which I am aware at sustaining relationships (every porn family of which I am aware is screwed up beyond belief), and if you can't sustain relationships, then your life is pathetic and you should shut up about advancing ideas on love and sex.

I don't mind pimps and hookers. I mind when pimps and hookers become preachers of pimping and hooking.