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Candida Royalle

the interview with Olivia de Court

Part Six

CANDIDA: Yes. Exactly. We saw this as very sinister. It was all lies. It was like, "we're gonna get the sympathy and votes of the feminists back by looking like we really care about women by protecting them in this way." But this was such a dangerous law in terms of freedom of expression, the First Amendment, and based on what's happened in the past... like if we looked at Margaret Sanger, how she was jailed, imprisoned, for giving out birth control information. We saw how when AOL started to shut down certain sites, things like sites on breast cancer; feminist chat rooms were shut down. It's always people like minorities, women's groups, these are the ones that really ultimately get hurt by laws that try to fix social ills through censorship. It's really our voices that, in the end, will be silenced. Like, the minute you give a legislative body, a group of white men, the ability to make laws based on what's going to protect a certain group, flying right in the face of the First Amendment, it doesn't, stop there. You're setting up a very dangerous precedent.

If we want the freedom to dispense feminist information, birth control information, the right for women to politically, socially and economically evolve and advance themselves, which is really the root of advancement for women, then you'd better not give them the opportunity to go and censor certain kinds of imagery and words, because it's offensive to us.

Do we really believe that what leads the rapists to rape is that he looked at a picture, got the idea, and went out and did it? It's way too oversimplified. This is what rallied us together.

We said, "this is starting to go on too often. We have got to rise up and let them know that we, as feminists, don't agree with this." Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin have done such a good job of becoming very loud and convincing the world that feminism equaled anti-porn and anti-sex. That is why we specifically used "feminists" in our group name. This was our way of saying, "No, no, no. They do not speak for all feminists! We are feminists, and we do not want these laws put in place. We see this as a direct threat to our freedom, and a violation to our rights of privacy and expression." I'm a founding board member. I was in on the first meetings. These were women from very diverse backgrounds. I was probably the only one in the group directly involved in the creation of explicit adult material. Many of these women (FFE members) really don't even like pornography. They just see the importance of protecting our right to free speech.

Olivia : Ironically, with Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon, their work led to, among other things, Canada adopting their {Dworkin/McKinnon} brand of censorship. As a result, Andrea Dworkin’s book Woman Hating is banned in Canada because of the title. She refused to speak with us because she didn't want her abilities to, "further something that was going to create more violence against women."

What they preach is the antithesis of what feminism was intended to accomplish, it’s very sad really. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. It’s not enough to have good intentions; you have to really dig down there to find the truth. It’s like these laws; I’ve seen dozens and dozens of them. They sound really nice on the surface but pick them apart and it’s a disaster.

CANDIDA: Right, and also, since those laws (passed), the works that have been censored in Canada are mostly the works of women and gay people.

Olivia : Yes, which is ultimately what our big fear was, to begin with, that the white male establishment isn’t giving minorities, women and gay people a voice.

CANDIDA: Yeah, yeah. She (Dworkin) really bore out the truth to everything we were saying. And it's probably no accident that Women Against Pornography (organization) finally had to shut its offices down in New York. They don't exist anymore.

Olivia : I tried to reach them and I just kept getting a disconnected number.

CANDIDA: Well, Dworkin conceded that they had lost the battle.

Olivia : Yeah, but the "Great Porn War" still goes on in her mind.

CANDIDA: Well, yeah. And you know what? It's not that I don't agree that some of the work is terribly offensive (hard-core porn), I feel for women who have been abused. I think they’re (anti-porn feminists) misguided. I remember one of the things you had asked me, and I don’t know if I have addressed this ... the fact that women are abused. They see this as a reason to shut this all down (sexually based material).

When you look at the figures that a third of all women in America have been abused, those women are not all in the porn industry. Yeah, you're going to find a high number who have been abused in the porn industry. You're going to find a high number of women who've been abused everywhere. Just another way to poke a finger at an industry that we don't want to see exist. It's like saying, "Well, you know, the Mafia ís involved." Well, the Mafia ís involved in garbage collection, construction, the government, you tell me an industry it's not involved in. But we don't point to those and say; "You'd better shut it down."

Olivia : Can you say "Las Vegas?"

CANDIDA: Yeah, it's like we're trying to turn it into a family playground. It's ridiculous. We're a sex-negative culture and we're uncomfortable with the imagery of sex, the depiction of sex, because we have agreed on some level that we should not look at sex. This is something that is sort of an unspoken agreement. What you will see is a tendency for people with fractured self-esteem, a low image of themselves, to be drawn to an industry that is seen as illicit. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't also attract people who are of sound mind and reasoning. And it doesn't mean that it's a bad thing for these people. When you have something that is seen as negative in a society, you will often see fractured people drawn to it. Is that a reason to stop the industry out of existence? I don't think so because these people are always going to turn to something.

I've always maintained that if you don't like what's out there then seize control of the mechanisms that create it and do it yourself. Put your money where your mouth is. And try to do it the way you think it should be done. If you try to push this industry underground, it will just get worse, the conditions will get worse. It will never stop existing. It's a simple supply and demand issue. As long as people want it, someone's going to make it. People want this kind of material. Elevate it and allow it to flourish in an intelligent and constructive way. Then you have a chance for it to be decent. If we keep an illicit, illegal activity, if we didn't make it something that serious filmmakers were afraid to touch, you would get really creative talent and filmmakers involved. You would raise the levels of the working conditions so that people would have a good experience in it.

It's so much about how we perceive something, more than what it really is. It is not a bad thing to do, but if we see it as bad, we will draw people to it who don't think much of themselves. We make it so that they feel bad about what they do.

Olivia : Tell me a little about your new line of vibrators. Are they the "shake of things to come?"

CANDIDA: The...

Olivia : (Laughs) That's my sound byte, "The shake of things to come." You know, vibrator ... shake ...

CANDIDA: I like that, "the shake of things to come."

Olivia : Yeah, I thought it was kind of cute - at two in the morning. Why did you decide to redesign them, and how are they different from other vibrators?

CANDIDA: They really follow on the same concept that drove Femme (Films). The same idea to take a sexual product for women and make it more about what women really need in terms of the actual fit, the comfort, the size, the shape. And also the style, the dignity of it. The class...What happened is that I've been wanting to get into other kinds of products.

About five years ago this young industrial designer from Holland approached me through some friends. This guy is brilliant! He's designed computers, ski boots, health products. He said, "I would like to create vibrators for women that are not so tacky and embarrassing looking, and are good quality." I said, "Well, what do you have in mind? I'd love to do this, but how do you see them being redesigned?" So he went to the drawing board. He had a woman in his life for twelve years, the mother of his children. She's very lucky; she was the model for a lot of this stuff. He sent back pictures that he took of four prototypes. I liked three of them. So I said, "Yeah, I'm in. Let's go." I thought, "this was really great." We fine-tuned them and got PHE (Adam and Eve), my distributors, to manufacturer them. I picked out a name (Natural Contours line).

Women love sex, we just want it done well; and we want our sex products not to be something that we have to be embarrassed to have laying around. I like nasty sex sometimes; I like nasty looking sex toys, but I also like them done well. I'm not trying to portray vanilla sex (in films); I just want to show it done well. And the same thing for my sex toys.

Olivia : That's what really attracted me to them, the way they look. They're very sleek. Unlike some phallus bit of plastic with a couple of batteries in it.

CANDIDA: Exactly. That’s the other thing, vibrators were constructed by men for so long. Think about it, they are supposed to be for clitoral stimulation, and yet they're shaped like a phallus. "Excuse me? Hello? In the centuries that you've been making these, no one's figured out that our clitorises are not inside?" With the two smaller ones (petite and Super be) they are shaped, ergonomically, to fit right on the woman's mound. The focal point of the vibrations is right where the clitoris sits. And the larger one, "the Magnifique," is shaped so that you can do it outside for stimulation, but you can also go inside. It hits to the G-spot. It’s really great!

Olivia : Nice one! Thank you for that. Are there any new features in the works?

CANDIDA: I've done fourteen (thus far). I did "Desire, Parts I and II" which came out this year. I needed a breather and time to get a handle on the marketing and promotion of my line. My line (film catalogue) is very unusual in that it has eternal legs. My early works sell as well as my recent works. It's amazing! I want to make sure that everything is set in place for the movies so that they will sell for a long time to come, as I know they can. I'm planning to put all the Femme movies on DVD, which is going to be a lot of fun. They, (DVDs) will feature me talking about behind the scenes stuff. I'm going to be doing like a narrative of certain scenes.

"Revelations" is going to have scenes not included in the original. It's going to have a whole documentary on there on the making of the movie. So there's a lot of work to be done around the DVDs. I also have a book in the works that I'm desperately trying to find the time to write. I will probably go back into production next fall. And, I really wanted to get out there and get the launch of my vibrators going,

Olivia : Wow! Well, that is quite a full plate.

CANDIDA: Yes. And in my spare time ... (Laughs).

Olivia : I weave baskets ... (Laughs). Any parting words you'd like to leave for the new wave of sherotica artists?

CANDIDA: What's very refreshing to me is that young women are showing signs of being much more open-minded. They're rejecting the notion that they must embrace a certain amount of censorship and protectionism. Young women need to remember that this was all possible by the road paved by the earlier feminists, and to not turn away from the feminist movement. To keep working for the advancement of women.

Our sexuality is a wonderful gift to be embraced, be thankful for it and get out there and express yourselves! We need more young, bright people creating very sexy, erotic materials, and I'd love to see more of that out there. I need some competition. I need someone to give me a run for my money.

Olivia : girlphoria.com is aiming to do just that. I’ve wanted to speak with you for the longest time. I want you to know that it's been such a pleasure to have talked with you. The trail has been well blazed, if you get what I mean. So thanks a lot.

CANDIDA: I really appreciate that. It means a lot to me too, to speak to women like you, because it makes me feel like what I'm doing really matters. Sometimes it can be very difficult out here. It's just wonderful to hear from people like you. I think, "Wow, this really is growing!" It's really wonderful, it's very validating, and I thank you. Good luck with your site.

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