There’s celebrations in the feminist porn community today as major Hollywood actor Ellen Page acknowledged the worth of the feminist porn movement in her Reddit AMA, replying to a question by Courtney Trouble.
The comment has been mentioned in this piece at News.com.au. The article quotes Courtney and Carlos Batts and I was really pleased with it… up until Courtney said:
“With no offence meant to the folks who label their porn this way, ‘Porn For Women’ is a marketing construct about as legit as the Bic ‘Pen for Her’ products – set up by large adult film studios to affirm that women are not part of the general consumers of pornography, which may have been true 20 years ago when we weren’t granted equal access to pornography, but not now”.
I market my porn as “porn for women” and – no offence taken Courtney – but I disagree.
To whit: let me point you toward my presentation that I gave at the Feminist Porn Conference in April 2013, in which I discussed the history of “porn for women”, the issues surrounding the term and whether it is legitimate or not.
There’s also these blog posts, written over the past few years:
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Definitions and denials: feminist porn as a label (2013)
Don’t dream it, be it: women enjoying and making porn (2011)
The female gaze does not exist? (2010)
Porn for women – the backlash (2008)
If you are all TL:DR, here’s where I stand. Yes, I get that some people don’t like the term “porn for women” because they see it as either too broad, too prescriptive, too stereotypical, too romantic, too softcore, too reliant on the word “women”, too reliant on the word “for”, too insert personal reason here etc. Yes, it’s a very imperfect phrase.
Yes, I still use it in my marketing because of one big, huge thing: Google. “Porn for women” is a search term that people use very often to try and find porn that doesn’t treat women like shit. That makes it still – for me – perfectly legitimate. I’m a capitalist pornographer who used to a librarian. I find the label very useful.
And no, “porn for women” was not set up by huge porn marketing companies. It’s actually emerged as a vague “genre” over the years mainly due to the efforts of individual women like Candida Royalle and Petra Joy and Erika Lust and Shine Louise Houston and CJ from Purve and Sandra from Ladylynx and me, each trying to create their own vision of “what women want” – even though not all women want the same thing (and not all females identify as women and so on).
Fact is, the large companies have only VERY RECENTLY decided that women are worth catering to as a separate market. As in, only the last three or four years. Before that, women were very much ignored by most of mainstream porn. I refer again to my conference video. Or you might want to read the history of porn for women article which I wrote a while ago and have updated a few times. In my sphere, on the internet, porn that spoke to women as an audience was virtually non-existent when I got started in 2000.
Women have long been considered “not visual” by the industry. Or else they’ve been dismissed as a market not worth catering to because “women don’t buy porn”. The best porn straight women ever got was “couples” videos because it was assumed the only way a woman would ever watch porn was if she was reluctantly persuaded to do so by her male partner – who did the buying. This is still the predominant mindset in the mainstream porn industry.
Indeed, this way of thinking is typified in the porn that in 2013 many consider to be “female friendly”. Sites like X-Art are very big on soft focus, beautiful looking models, “softer” sex that isn’t rough and no derogatory language. Yet the default audience is still considered to be straight men – hence the way the camera still cuts off the guy’s head and the way these sites feature girl-girl scenes but no gay sex or male solos. I understand that it is these types of major porn companies that Courtney is referring to and I do agree with her perspective somewhat. This porn has its place but it’s not what every woman wants. To be honest it bugs me that the porn tube sites now send so many women in that direction because I know there’s a lot of other alternatives out there.
Even so, I think “porn for women” is very different to the “Bic Pens for Women” (which are the same ballpoint pens coloured pink or purple). We’re not just talking about the same old 3.5 positions with soft focus or a pink background. Sex is still something experienced in a gendered way; pen use isn’t. I’ve always considered porn for women to be about showing sex from a female perspective, giving priority to female pleasure and fantasy and deliberately acknowledging the female audience first and foremost. It speaks to the clit, not the cock.
It’s the long history of women’s exclusion from porn which makes the term “porn for women” still useful. Porn in and of itself has long been a man’s domain which has meant that women’s participation in, and enjoyment of porn, has always been othered. If the feminist idea of intersectionality is applied, we can’t ignore this history of othering. It has an effect on the way people view and experience porn now.
So I think dismissing the concept of “porn for women” is kind of like saying “Oh yes, women used to suffer inequality but it’s all good now.” Because the fact is that it’s not. Almost all porn is still aimed at white heterosexual men. The fact that there is now a greater diversity of feminist and queer porn with a wider variety of perspectives doesn’t preclude the fact that it’s still fucking difficult to find something non-sexist that is focused on the clit, not the cock.
I’m repeating in this blog post what I’ve said many times before so that’s enough for now. I’m sure Courtney won’t see eye to eye with me on this but there you go. Incidentally, I’ve just put the fabulous film noir queer mastabatory ghost story video I shot with Courtney in Toronto up at Bright Desire.
*And yes, I know that the terms “women” and “female” in this post assume a biological sex and a heterosexual orientation. But that’s usually who it’s assumed we’re talking about when the term “porn for women” is used so this is my obligatory disclaimer. And I realise having this disclaimer about assumptions is precisely why “porn for women” is problematic. Cue endless feedback loop.
“It speaks to the clit, not the cock.”
“If the feminist idea of intersectionality is applied, we can’t ignore this history of othering.”
These two statements are in conflict.
As a woman and feminist who doesn’t have a clit, I’m put in an odd position here. If “porn for women” is shorthand for “porn for cis women”, then this trend of othering continues, in a way that can’t be dispelled by a two-sentence disclaimer.
“So I think dismissing the concept of ‘porn for women’ is kind of like saying ‘Oh yes, women used to suffer inequality but it’s all good now.'”
Actually no, neither feminist nor queer porn pretends that everything’s all sunshine and rainbows now. It’s more like pointing out greenwashing done by companies that don’t actually follow green practices.
It is specifically because of issues like limiting one’s audience to cisgender women that I find a lot more value in feminist and queer porn than anything labeled “porn for women”. Feminist and queer porn didn’t used to be as inclusive as it is now, but it has grown over time through community dialog, a commitment to values, and sincere outreach. “Porn for women”, on the other hand, has continued to function exactly as you described it: as a marketing term. A marketing term with a certain number of assumptions tied to it that makes it irrelevant to many women.
You’re right Amy. Although I do think it’s worth pointing out that the phrases “feminist porn” and “queer porn” also come with a bunch of assumptions and they too are marketing terms. And people bring their own meaning to terms that may not have been intended by the person who originally said it.