SHINE LOUISE HOUSTON talks about

00:03 #Birth of queer porn
00:56 #Sustainable business
01:49 #The best porn director in SF
02:25 #Not a particular look
03:05 #No shows and cold feet
03:36 #No modeling agencies
04:44 #Casting process, I take my biases out
05:34 #Black butches
06:38 #Typical black tropes, femininity vs. masculinity
08:46 #Diversity on the top of the pile

 

Shine Louise Houston is the director of Pink and White productions and received her sex-positive training in the sex shop Good Vibrations. She observes that around the millennium many producers were starting new companies but unfortunately many of them did not last long. She wanted to have a sustainable business plan and “become the best porn director in San Francisco.” She received financial backing from the company Blowfish to film the Crash Pad and started producing queer pornography.

 

The Crashpad Series does not work with a talent agency so in principal anybody can apply to do a porn shoot. Houston explains that they do not look for a particular type of performer and she encourages a diversity of applicants. Many performers do not adhere to conventional notions of gender and beauty but are “gender queer” –performing as “tops” and “bottoms” or “femmes” or “butches” and as gender fluid or post-operational transsexuals ... people of color; people of differing abilities; people who are fat, thin, athletic, and/or otherwise; people aged 18 to over 50; people with and without tattoos or piercings; and more.” [i] 

 

Indeed, these performers are radically different from the streamlined and toned female bodies of commercial pornography. The Crashpad Series features black and ethnically diverse performers. There are still considerably fewer ethnic minorities that apply to appear on the site, though she will put them on the top of the pile if they do. Several years ago she was accused by audiences in France and the UK of only featuring "black or brown people as masculine," but she could not understand this criticism as these types of performers are nearly absent in the typical porn landscape.

 

[i] Pink and White Productions defines its site within queer context on the Crashpad Series website http://crashpadseries.com. (Accessed 1 march 2016)