What are the three types of eroticism? What is it like being someone who fetishizes foot fetishists? What is it like writing the script for an adult video in this genre? Speaking of fetishes, were you aware of the balloon ("looner") fetish?
All that and more in this freewheeling conversation with today's guest, Noelle Perdue. A doubly fun episode because it marks the official launch of my "Riffs & Speculations" series on Urgent Futures.
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Noelle Perdue is a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian with nearly ten years of experience working platform-side for multiple mainstream and independent adult companies. Having written everything from Food Network porn parodies to legally binding terms and conditions, much of her current work explores obscenity law and how pornography’s history can influence our digital and political futures. Noelle’s writing work has been published on Wired, Washington Post, Pornhub, Slate, Brazzers, Input, etc., she’s also been featured as an industry expert on multiple programs including the BBC, CBC, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and on Netflix's 2023 documentary Money Shot. Noelle also runs the Porn World with Noelle Perdue newsletter—so pop over there and subscribe for smart takes on spicy topics!
Fans of the show will recognize Noelle from an earlier episode I did with her in August 2024. It’s a great dive into the more serious aspects of porn in society: how a society’s relationship to porn reveals the biases and forms of repression that society weaponizes, how obscenity law regarding pornography is used to smuggle anti-queer and -trans legislation, how the perceived frivolity of porn allows for creative experimentation that often doesn’t occur in other mediums. As mentioned, this conversation took a different approach—let me know what you think!
CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
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