Looking back at the AVN porn awards

2010 nominees included tons of queers


There’s probably no more interesting award ceremony to me than the AVN Awards, a source of intense fascination since I watched the 1999 documentary The Girl Next Door, about pornstar Stacy Valentine. The 27th AVN ceremony, sponsored by Adult Video News (hence the name) took place on Sat, Jan 9 in Nevada. It is the catch-all ceremony for all things porno-video related; there are more than 100 categories, honouring everything from packaging and parody to best MILF and most clever title (my money was on Twitter my Shitter from Vouyer or the actually entertaining, It’s Big, It’s Black, It’s Inside Joanna from Vouyer/Burning Angel. Sadly, the prize went to Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?)

A couple of interesting things about the AVNs:

Among the many many categories, no Woody is awarded for best penis or best pussy. That’s weird, right?

Especially weird and kind of unfair when you note that there are several categories for best actor and actress (or best “performer”), as well as many awards for best [insert descriptor here] scene. All scenes, whether solo, threesome, orgy, oral, anus, foreign or otherwise, involve some level of penis and/or pussy participation. So how come there’s nothing for the man and woman with the best worx?

Clearly there are performers who we’ll all admit have pretty outstanding junk (and they might not be the best performers, as it were). Historically speaking, there was the late long-donged John Holmes, aka Johnny Wadd, coming in at roughly 13 1/2″ inches. On the far end of the other side of the spectrum, there is the amazing vagina of trans porn sensation Buck Angel (whose V you can catch in such films as The Adventures of Buck Naked and V is for Vagina, both from Buck Angel Productions). There are awards for best big bust, best big butt, and there’s a foot and leg fetish category. Are boobs, bums and toes more important than dicks and clits? Say it ain’t so!

On a positive note, if the AVNs are overlooking the big, hard cocks and puffy pussies of this world, they’re certainly, finally, giving some of what’s due to the amazing queers and gender-queers making porn these days. The 2010 AVN nominations include many nods for cool queer productions and producers. The amazingly talented Jiz Lee, featured on Crashpadseries.com, was nominated for best new web starlet. Fierce femme-queer pornographer Courtney Trouble had two movies nominated for best soundtrack, Roulette Berlin and Speakeasy (both from Reel Queer Productions). Dylan Ryan scooped up a nomination for best solo sex scene in Crash Pad Series 3 (from Pink and White Productions). Queers everywhere.

For those of you looking for something to keep your palms hairy post-holidays, consider the fact that the Feminist Porn Awards are still accepting both submissions of films for the April 2010 ceremony and applications for a spot on the jury. Application details can be found on the Good for Her website.

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Culture, Toronto, Pornography, Sex work, Arts

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