A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed (in my Louise Lush filmmaking persona) by Alyssa McDonald and the end result was published today in the SMH: Feminist Porn Faces Hardcore Critics.
I had a decent chat with Alyssa and showed her my film which she enjoyed. I think the end result isn’t too bad, although I wish she’d included some of the other things I’d said. I also have an issue with this paragraph:
The vast majority of explicit material is made for a male audience; at best, it is degrading, and at worst it is often physically harmful to the women featured in it.
This is too much of a generalisation and not backed up by facts. Porn is not inherently degrading and it’s doubtful that porn is “often” physically harmful to the female performers. Not to say that these things are concerns but this is too much of a blanket statement.
My other problem is that last quote about “objectification.” It hasn’t quite come out right. I was questioning the entire concept and the way it’s always trotted out as a criticism of porn. No-one really questions what it means, or whether “objectification” is something that only happens in porn. I was pointing out that objectifying others is a human trait, it happens in everyday life all the time including when we’re at the supermarket.
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And, I should say to all the shop assistants at the supermarket: you do an excellent job and thank you for doing it.
As all news articles will seek out an opposing opinion in the name of “balance”, this article features quotes from Sheila Jeffreys who is a professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. Prof. Jeffreys is an anti-porn feminist in the mould of Andrea Dworkin and she has also written about transgender issues, much to the consternation of some in the trans community. She is also critical of BDSM practices and has advocated lesbian separatism.
Unfortunately, anti-porn feminism doesn’t seem able to accept the idea that feminist porn might exist or be a force for good. I think this is because it’s founded on the belief that all porn is inherently sexist, harmful and bad. The existence of good porn undermines the basic premise, therefore it must be dismissed.
Anti-porn feminists do this by claiming false consciousness (“feminist pornographers are just regurgitating the same sexist ideas because they are unthinking tools of the patriarchy”), fake marketing (“feminist porn is just a term invented by the mainstream porn industry to sell the same stuff”), or by simply denying that feminist or ethical porn even exists.
Sheila goes for the false consciousness idea right off the bat:
The ideas of the [feminist] filmmakers have been constructed by mainstream pornography, so they don’t come from somewhere completely different.
Firstly, how does she know where feminist filmmakers get their ideas?
Secondly, why would it be wrong to look at mainstream porn, get an idea and then work from there? A lot of us look at porn and make a checklist of what NOT to do. That to me is a positive thing. Perhaps her issue is with the very concept of depicting sex itself; perhaps she believes that any image or footage of people having sex is inherently wrong. Given that anti-porn feminism concerns itself with heterosexual porn, perhaps we’re back to the old Dworkinesque concept that all sex with men is rape and therefore any depiction of it is wrong.
I’m also wondering what “completely different” porn might look like. Because, in the end, sex is sex and there’s only so many ways you can depict it. I’d actually love to hear more about Prof. Jeffreys’ idea of what porn that comes from “somewhere completely different” would look like.
And the culture pornography creates is a culture of violence against women… it’s a culture in which women are shouted at in the street, in which gang-bangs are ordinary in the Australian football league…
Cart before the horse. I actually think that the sexism of our culture sees some of its expression in porn and that’s the kind of porn I don’t like. But to say that porn is what causes footballers to be obnoxious rapists… um, no. Try harder, Homer.
Oh, but there’s feminist erotica. Oh, but there’s something else. And the fact is, thirty-five years on or whatever, I haven’t seen the something else that is completely different…
Again the call for something “completely different.” I’m fascinated as to how different porn needs to be before it meets the standards of Prof. Jeffreys. Poetry instead of dialogue? Unusual costumes? Disco lighting? No sex whatsoever?
I’d like Sheila Jeffreys to actually watch some feminist porn. Maybe not my films but I’m sure the work of Shine Louise Houston or Bren Ryder might be more to her taste. I’d really like to hear a refined critique as to what exactly is wrong with filming two consenting, happy lesbians having sex together and then watching it. (Or two straight people. Or three people. Or six trans guys, a hot gay man and their luscious female friend who has tied them all up and is making them pleasure her with their tongues… Um… what was I saying?)
It really is a shame that anti-porn feminism feels the need to decry feminist or positive or ethical porn. The argument is too black and white. Fact is, the feminist pornographers share some of the concerns of people like Sheila Jeffreys with regards to how porn is made and what it depicts. We should be having a sensible discussion about the whole thing. Instead, we’re denied and derided, dismissed as shills for the mainstream porn industry and excluded from the realm of “true” feminism. It’s no way forward and ultimately doesn’t help women.
For more info on pro-porn feminism, I recommend Violet Blue’s Our Porn, Ourselves site.
This is a great post, Ms. Naughty! I was often faced with the kind of criticism raised by Prof. Sheila Jeffreys from fellow academics (this was before I left academia!) during my first sabbatical researching feminist porn at the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Oslo. I think you do a really good job deconstructing the typical anti-porn argument that feminist porn makers can’t create anything “completely different” because they’re working with a genre that’s already flawed. Berkeley-based film scholar Linda Williams in fact introduced the idea of how we can approach feminist porn as a re-visioning of mainstream porn with her historical analysis of porn _HardCore_ (1989). In my work on new porn by women (including yours), I’m intrigued exactly by the ability to re-vision and re-vise porn as a filmic genre AND as a discourse with which to approach (hetero)sexuality.
P.S. I thought you might like to know that I’ve written a follow-up post to your above post on my new porn by women blog where I also respond to your (right on!) issue with “objectification.”
I like the idea that mainstream porn’s problem is that “women have been excluded from portraying their agency as subjects on their own terms.” It’s a great point.
I think we make several assumptions with porn. My feeling is that feminists consider porn to be bad by definition. It can be, but not always. I think objectification falls into the same category. Is it necessarily bad?
I think there are times when people want to be seen as a sex(y) object. It doesn’t mean that I consider you to be only a sex object. When I meet a geek, I don’t see them only as a geek object. Or a waiter/waitress as only a servant.
Objectification and porn are not bad, only how people treat each other.