Tag Archives: feminist porn

The Feminist Pornographer

Here’s part of a brilliant interview at Salon.com with the Feminist Porn Book’s Tristan Taormino about porn and feminism and the fact that they’re not always incompatible:

“…One of the things we’re responding to is that there’s this notion that certainly is propagated by anti-porn feminists and other people, which is that there is one thing called porn with a capital “P.” And it’s monolithic and we can qualify it in all these different ways and say this is what it looks like and this is what it does. As Constance says, “That’s just not true.” What there is is a whole series of pornographies with a lowercase “p,” and that’s what we have to look at and investigate. There is no one thing, and she even challenges the notion that there is a clear division between mainstream porn and independent porn, or mainstream porn and feminist porn, because there are feminists working within the mainstream porn industry and then there are feminists working independently, and there are non-feminists working independently, and vice versa. They’re all over the place.

There isn’t one monolithic thing and, yes, of course, built into feminist porn is the notion that we’re critiquing porn that’s already out there, that we feel like doesn’t represent female sexuality in a diverse enough way, doesn’t prioritize female pleasure, doesn’t represent authentic female desire, or simply doesn’t get us off. So we’re going to go and make our own. I think that’s inherent to the thing: Part of what we’re doing is necessarily in response to what’s already out there…”

I’d highly recommend reading the whole interview here.

Strange Fruit

Here’s a link to a really interesting Strange Fruit radio interview on a “Black, Queer, Feminist View of Porn” at WFPL in Louisville:

“Pornography has long been a divisive topic among feminists. From Second Wavers who ended up in unlikely anti-porn alliances with conservatives in the 1980s to today’s Third Wave feminists who call themselves sex- (and porn-) positive. But no matter whether you feel that porn is de facto exploitation, a liberating sexual tool, or somewhere in between, there’s no denying that lots of porn is misogynistic, racist, classist, able-ist, and just about any other -ist you could name.

Earlier this month, the New York Times hosted an essay debate called, “Should Porn Come Out of the Closet?” One of the respondents was Dr. Mireille Miller-Young, an associate professor of Women’s Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara who’s been researching the porn industry for a decade. She writes that performing in adult movies can be empowering to the women on screen, and that the typical argument against porn “ignores the diverse ways that women actually interact with it.” We wanted to hear more about her work—and how her identity as an African-American, queer feminist shaped her opinion and research—so we speak with Dr. Miller-Young on this week’s show…”

Listen to the interview here.

The Feminist Porn Book

I really look forward to reading this. Here’s the Amazon.com description of “The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure” by Tristan Taormino, Constance Penley, Celine Parrenas Shimizu and Mireille Miller-Young:

“The Feminist Porn Book brings together for the first time writings by feminists in the adult industry and research by feminist porn scholars. This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world’s most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the debates of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women’s movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and other minorities produce power and pleasure.”

Click here to find on Amazon.com.