On a Monday evening, I watched porn in a University of Oregon lecture hall — on the wall-sized movie screen in 100 Willamette. Rarely does such an opportunity arise to do “bad” things in “good” spaces, in a room full of esteemed peers, on the hallowed grounds of academia.
On the basest of levels, this is what drew me to the Survival Center’s Feb. 15 screening of “Bike Porn 3: Cycle Bound,” a medley of amateur, bicycle-themed pornography curated by Portland bike activist “Rev. Phil” Sano.
Bike porn, simply, is what the name implies. Sano calls it “the synthesis between sex and bicycles.” Every year he requests submissions on the theme, this year with a special focus on bondage, and the videos pour in from Portland and throughout North America.
On a deeper level, bike porn is a synthesis of two movements: Portland cycling and sex positivity. Sano is on a crusade to make the bicycle sexier and the sex better. In a workshop before the screening, intern Lindsay Benkel described her own take on bike sexuality. The fetishism of inanimate objects, she said, encourages sexual behavior focused on pleasure and empowerment, rather than procreation.
“Our sexual relationships are never just a means to an end. It should be enjoyable and invigorating — pleasure for yourself and the one to … 60 other people involved,” Benkel said. Indie erotic film festivals like Bike Porn also serve as a response to the oligopoly of Hollywood and the mainstream porn industry on the portrayal of sex.
“In the movies they only have sex one way,” Benkel said, “but it doesn’t have to be like that.”
The featured shorts in “Cycle Bound” reflect a diversity of ideas about what sex is, could be and should be. Some of the movies are pure comedy, parodying clichés in the porn industry or playing up any available visual puns offered by the bicycle frame. Several films feature nude Portland bikers doing awesome things on their Franken-bikes: dive-bombing hills, playing games and racing around the city. Conceptually, this still falls under the category of porn: For a Portland bike cultist, tall-bike jousting is as good as sex.
But the final film, “Tour de Pants,” delivers scene after scene of explicit sex between members (and their bicycles, sometimes) of a rowdy gang of transgender cyclists in San Francisco. Comedic interludes offer absurd prefaces to orgasms in bike shops, offices and on scenic hilltops over looking the San Francisco Bay.
Tour de Pants made me squeamish, which caused me to question the limited portrayal of gender and sexuality offered in the film and television that I consume. By this age, there are plenty of negative, violent images that I can take without grimacing, but what still makes me reel, apparently, is a moment of genuine pleasure between consenting adults who happen to have body parts different from my own.
In viewing Bike Porn, I also came to question the limits of the sex positivity movement. Can such a cerebral distinction actually draw the line between exploitation and empowerment? Though there were obvious elements of role reversal and satire in the raciest moments of Bike Porn — including a short that used a child’s bicycle to parody the concept of “kiddie porn,” and a scene in Tour de Pants that looked a lot like gang rape — I don’t imagine that a victim of sexual exploitation or assault could sit through the whole presentation and feel empowered.
Still, the magic of Bike Porn is the opportunity to gawk at these uncomfortable moments and then talk about them afterwards — to see the different viewpoints, in a University setting. As Rev. Phil told me after the show, “Sex exists, and we can choose to talk about it or not talk about it.” Most people never have the opportunity to publicly discuss how the pornography they consume makes them feel about gender and sexuality. Keep it coming, Bike Porn.
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