Interview With A Man Who Is Angry About Hot Goth Porn Girls

Maybe the second in a series of interviews with people who are totally wrong?

Anyway, readers will be aware that a lot of people get mad that porn stars play D&D.

An adjacent issue is that people get mad when porn stars--or any sex workers really--do literally anything. 

There was a recent internet controversy where a video of a bunch of model-types did a sexy video and they were goths. The internet got very upset that goths were shown as being hot. There was also something about Drake? Idk. There was discourse.

Here at D&D With Porn Stars we know a thing or two about goth sex workers but this is the Internet, where actual knowledge is often a tremendous handicap in trying to figure out what people are talking about.

So I interviewed one of them.

I started talking to B00GIEpunk and asking why he cares about any of this, he eventually got real frustrated and stopped answering and said that he would only respond if I paid him or if it was a formal interview. I said Ok, its a formal interview.

He then put a bunch of perfectly reasonable conditions on the interview assuming I'd decline (he does not assume good faith--which is evil). I agreed to the conditions, he said:

Q:

Ok, you've said that these girls in this video represent a trend that you don't like, is that right?

A:

Yes, with one qualification: I'm not saying the women themselves are the problem, I'm saying the way they've been selected and presented appears to reflect a broader, commercially legible stereotype of goth femininity - the conventionally attractive, sexualised "goth girlfriend" archetype - and I find that flattening of a much broader subculture irritating.

Siouxsie Sioux

Q:

So, the idea of this as "flattening" would seem to suggest that this piece of media is part of a *more* significant trend than lots of *other* media which portrays goths in different ways. Why is it *more* significant than other kinds of media takes on goths?

A:

I don't think it has to be more significant than every other portrayal of goths for "flattening" to be an accurate description.

Different representations can coexist, including ones that pull goth aesthetics in very different directions. My point is that this video participates in one recurring shorthand - namely, goth femininity reduced to a narrow, conventionally attractive, sexually legible aesthetic.

"Flattening" describes what happens within that representational pattern - a broad music-based subculture with many aesthetics gets compressed into a smaller set of immediately recognisable visual cues. It doesn't mean that pattern has successfully erased every competing representation, nor that this particular video is culturally more powerful than all of them.

So I wouldn't claim this video is uniquely significant. I'd claim it's recognisable as one example of a broader stereotype that is significant enough to be culturally familiar in the first place.

Patricia Morrison (Sisters of Mercy)

Q:

If it's not more significant than say "the goths in South Park" or "goths represented as losers who watch too much anime and need to touch grass" or "Goths who will boil and eat your cat" then why are you steamed?

A:

Because "significant" and "annoying" aren't synonyms. I don't need to believe this is the single most culturally powerful depiction of goths in existence to dislike what it's doing.

What irritates me about this particular stereotype is that it takes a subculture with decades of music, fashion, DIY culture and internal diversity and filters goth women through a very familiar lens of sexual desirability - "goth" as an accessory to the fantasy of the hot, available goth girlfriend.

The South Park goths are a caricature too. So are the "anime loser" and "cat-boiling weirdo" stereotypes, and I can criticise those when they're in front of me as well. Other stereotypes existing doesn't make this one less worthy of comment - this happened to be the representation in the video I was looking at, so it's the one I commented on.

I don't rank every cultural irritation on a league table before I'm allowed to be annoyed by it.

Maitri and Valor (Christian Death)

Q:

So would you say "I'm being annoyed on the Internet about something that doesn't really matter"?

A:

I'd say I'm annoyed on the Internet about something that isn't especially high-stakes, which is different from saying it doesn't matter.

Most cultural criticism concerns things that aren't matters of life and death. Representation, stereotypes and commodification can still be worth noticing and discussing without pretending they're the gravest problems facing humanity.

So yes, it's a relatively minor irritation. No, I don't think "minor" means "meaningless."

Cosey Fanni Tutti (Throbbing Gristle)

Q:

Well, I know you said you didn't have a problem with the women themselves--you do understand that they agreed to do this right? And it's basically part of their job?

A:

Yes, of course. I understand that they're consenting adults doing paid work, and I haven't suggested otherwise.

My criticism isn't that the women were somehow coerced into appearing, nor that they're personally responsible for every cultural meaning attached to the finished product. It's about the product itself - how it selects, frames and packages a particular version of "goth femininity" for an audience.

People can willingly participate in something and that thing can still reproduce a stereotype. Consent answers the question "did they agree to do it?" It doesn't answer the separate question "what cultural image is this piece of media constructing?"

Caroline Pierce (currently playing an elf ranger)

Q:

Ok. I'm asking a different thing. Knowing that these people worked on this project as their job, do you get that your nuance between "I don't like this video" & "you're not real goths" might not be real important to them--especially with thousands of others saying obnoxious things to them?

A:

Yes, I understand that. If someone is already receiving thousands of obnoxious comments, they may not care very much about the distinction between criticism of a piece of media and criticism directed at them personally.

But that doesn't make the distinction unreal or unimportant in what I'm actually saying here. I'm responsible for the claims I'm making in this interview, and I'm being explicit that my criticism is of the representation and packaging, not of the women as people or their legitimacy within the subculture.

I can understand why somebody on the receiving end of a pile-on might not stop to parse that distinction. That's a question of how criticism is experienced, though, not whether the distinction itself exists.

Vampira

Q:

The extent if your grievance is "this annoys me but I can't think of any way it really affects anything" correct?

A:

No, that isn't correct. I've said it's low-stakes, not that it has no effect. My criticism is that repeated commercial shorthand can narrow how a subculture is popularly understood, particularly when women within it are repeatedly filtered through a sexually marketable archetype.

I'm not claiming this video causes some large, independently measurable social harm by itself. Cultural representation generally works cumulatively, not because one video changes society overnight.

So if you want to characterise my position as 'this annoys me and it isn't terribly important,' that's fair. 'I can’t think of any way it affects anything' is using your own interpretative wording to misrepresent what I said.

Ms. Cassandra Peterson

Q:

Ok, so this "narrowing"--how could that affect anyone concretely?

A:

Concretely, repeated narrow representations can affect what audiences come to recognise as "authentically" goth, which in turn affects how people within the subculture are perceived and treated.

That can mean:

- women who don't fit the conventionally attractive, sexualised archetype being treated as less recognisably goth

- people assuming goth women are inherently sexually available or performing for male attention

- commercial spaces increasingly rewarding the most immediately marketable version of the aesthetic

- newcomers encountering the subculture primarily through that stereotype rather than through its music and broader history

None of those effects requires this one video to be uniquely powerful. They're cumulative effects of repetition. My claim is not (and has never been) that this video causes measurable harm by itself, but that it participates in a representational pattern which can shape expectations about what goth women are supposed to look like and what their participation in the subculture means.

Penny, who ordered this miniature

Q:

Let's start with the first one: if someone is not conventionally attractive and so they're not read as goth (by someone really stupid and impressionable who watched some videos) who cares? Why would even they care? How does this hurt anyone?

A:

Because being persistently misread or treated as inauthentic within a community you actually belong to can matter to the person experiencing it.

That doesn't require catastrophic harm. It can mean being dismissed as "not really goth," being excluded from spaces or conversations, having your taste and identity treated as illegitimate, or being expected to perform a narrower aesthetic to be recognised at all.

And I don't think you need to posit some uniquely stupid person who watched one video. Cultural stereotypes work through repetition: people absorb shorthand from lots of media and social encounters until it starts to feel like common sense.

You asked me for a concrete effect. That's one. If your next question is "but why should anyone care about that effect?", that's a different argument.

Chelsea Wolfe

Q:

Why should anyone care about that (entirely hypothetical) effect? Both the person causing it and the person feeling it would appear to have such a severe mental health problem to start with that the video wasn't the issue. The problem is untreated mental health problems.

A:

If you continue framing ordinary social behaviour, identity, or (illegal claim deleted) as evidence of "severe mental health problems," or otherwise introduce (illegal claim deleted) premises into the questioning, the interview is over. You're free to challenge my argument as aggressively as you like, but I'm not obliged to participate in (illegal claim deleted) or pathologising framing.

I don't accept the premise that caring how you're perceived within a community, or being influenced by cultural stereotypes, constitutes a "severe mental health problem." Those are ordinary features of human social behaviour.

People care about belonging, recognition and how others perceive them. People also absorb stereotypes. Neither of these require a mental health diagnosis.

And even if someone involved did have a mental health condition, "therefore the surrounding social influences don't matter" wouldn't follow anyway. Individual psychology and social environment aren't mutually exclusive explanations.

You asked for a concrete way narrowing representation could affect someone. I gave you one. Declaring everyone involved "mentally ill" doesn't actually rebut the mechanism. It just changes the subject in a deeply offensive way.

Morticia

Q:

Offended or not, do you dispute either of the following:

1. Someone who decides someone isn't a goth because they're not attractive has a mental health problem

2. Someone who decides they care significantly whether that person thinks they’re a goth has a mental 

health problem 

?

A:

I dispute both. Neither of those facts, by itself, is sufficient to diagnose someone with a mental health problem.

More importantly, I explicitly told you that continuing to frame ordinary social behaviour as evidence of mental illness would terminate the interview. Your very next question did exactly that.

So the interview is over. You may publish the answers given during the agreed interview period under the terms we established. I won't be answering further questions.

Astarte

Q:

Yeah you have been perfectly clear: you think things that are absolutely bananas aren't and that pretty much explains your whole deal. No need to ask any more.

Brides of Dracula