Visit any porn site, and you'll be bombarded by a video player collage of click-through body parts. Some of them have clear owners, and others are presented as if entirely independent of a larger musculoskeletal structure. Pairs of breasts here, there. Legs tangle in the lower right corner. A face surfaces, but only for the money shot.
So when spoken word artist Brenna Twohy tells you that she is an unabashed devotee of all things "Pottererotica" -- erotic fiction based in the magical universe of Harry Potter -- your response probably shouldn't be that her taste is "unrealistic." Given all of her options, erotica rooted in a fantasy book series actually seems the least fantastical.
"The sexiest part is knowing [the characters] are part of a bigger story, that they exist beyond eight minutes in 'Titty Titty Gangbang,' that their kegels are not the strongest thing about them," she explains in the video above, a clip of this month's National Poetry Slam uploaded by Button Poetry.
Unlike porn, Twohy's erotica comes grounded in a reality where women are strong, full-bodied people.
And where Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley would quicker curse you with a Bat-Bogey Hex than take an insult lying down, a 2010 Violence Against Women study found that 90 percent of porn video content online and off included verbal or physical aggression towards women.
"I know a slaughterhouse when I see one," Twohy says of the porn industry. "It looks like 24/7 live streaming, reminding me that men are going to fuck me whether I like it or not, that there is one use for my mouth and it is not speaking, that a man is his most powerful when he's got a woman by the hair."
Twohy suggests that the "slaughterhouse," an uneasy analogy where the slicing instruments aren't knives but part of a video editing suite, does more than just provide shots of women's segmented body parts. It also creates a culture where domestic violence isn't only expected, but accepted.
And she's not having any of it.
"I will not make believe dissected women. My sex cannot be packaged. My sex is magic. It is part of a bigger story. I am whole. I exist when you are not fucking me. And I will not be cut into pieces anymore."
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