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Virtuous or Virulent Videos: Why We Don't Carry Video

We don't sell video because we haven't found any which fits within our stores quality standards (a product should be well made, whether its about the materials its composed of or the production quality of the final cut) nor that fits within our stores motto of providing an environment, services and products for the celebration and empowerment of women's sexuality.

For the most part it's men who purchase porn. Hence, porn is produced to appeal to a male target market and the producers still believe that they need to sexualise women to satisfy their viewers. There isn't any real alternative to this production approach. As a result, there isn't any choice for female viewers. It doesn't really matter whether the production is porn, a juvenile male targeted action adventure or the professional wrestling "knock-down" finals, if the content has been produced to appeal to a specific target market and the viewer isn't part of that target market, most excluded viewers are going to hate the video. The result, most women dislike videos made for men without consideration of women as potential viewers.

Since we're trying to stock products that appeal to women, we're not stocking porn. We don't want to risk ruining an initially positive experience by sending customers home with a video that isn't going to reflect why they visited us in the first place.

Recently, the Vancouver Sun published an article on porn for women. The co-owners of Womyns'Ware are quoted thusly "the owners of Womyn'sWare have had enough inquiries about the matter that they once considered producing their own videos. "We had everything together: a talented female director, female screen writers. And the next thing you know, we had this cigar-chomping, Florida-based attorney wanting to co-opt the whole thing. We ended up having to bring our own lawyer in because the guy was trying to enforce a joint venture agreement that he said we had by just initiating discussions with us. We discovered quickly that we'd have a hard time even getting distribution because distribution is controlled by the mainstream porn makers." It just wasn't worth the heartache and besides, they told me, women aren't even really sure what it is they want to see. "Some say they'd rather see 'erotica' and they feel there's a difference. Some would rather see hardcore [films that show penetration]. We've been to screenings of women's porn and some find it offensive and they get up and walk out."

For some odd reason, we never get our website mentioned when we say "we don't sell video". Instead, the writers talk about the *ick* factor in the videos and then make sure to publish all the websites where you can get these tasteless videos from.