I need to say something. Something that’s pretty obvious really: I’m a capitalist. I make porn to make money. It’s how I earn my living.<\/p>\n
And it seems that some would argue that because I’m trying to make a profit from porn, this immediately means that anything I have to say on the topic of censorship or feminist porn is therefore tainted or hasn’t any weight. I got this aggravation from a certain angsty and light-on-for-facts female blogger last year and I’m feeling it again in the wake of the Our Porn, Ourselves<\/a> conversation.<\/p>\n Audacia Ray, who I very much admire and respect, wrote this in her piece about the current stoush<\/a>:<\/p>\n …there are plenty of people involved in the mainstream hetero porn world who are proponents of free speech being generously applied to the adult industry (dicey legal construction of \u201cobscenity\u201d be damned!), but their commitment to free speech is more about protecting their business interests than being renegade First Amendment advocates. Violet is very much not one of the motivated-by-porn-profit people, her interest in porn is actually about having an interest in the sexualities of women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Audacia’s dichotomy makes me rather uncomfortable. It suggests that any effort to protect free speech should be somehow pure and untainted by the profit motivation. It’s a troubling assertion because it seems to suggest that those of us making a living from porn and protesting censorship (as I do regularly) are only motivated by a desire to protect an income stream. That’s a little too black-and-white for my liking.<\/p>\n Yes, I hate the idea of censorship because it means I wouldn’t be able to earn a living making porn. But that’s not the only reason, nor is it the biggest motivation. I hate it when other people tell me what I can and cannot read, see, hear, film or say. It offends me as a human being. Running a commercial adult business does not change that motivation. And I don’t doubt that John Stagliano, who is facing obscenity prosecutions, feels the same way.<\/p>\n The same applies with regards to the discussion of adult material, what it means and whether it may be a problem in our society. I’m a webmistress who is part of the adult industry but that doesn’t mean I don’t strongly believe in the ideals of feminist porn or automatically reject any valid criticism of porn. Yes, I have commercial issues to consider but it doesn’t negate my ideals or determination to make porn better. I’m not a saint, but then, is anybody?<\/p>\n Gail Dines, the organiser of the Stop Porn Culture conference, has dismissed me, Violet Blue and any other women who enjoy porn thusly: Ah, false consciousness is fun, isn’t it? You can dismiss almost anything by patting the other person on the head and telling them they “just don’t understand.” <\/p>\n I’m not deluded. I’m also not engaged in a purely cynical exercise just to make a buck in this alleged “trillion dollar industry”. If I were, I would have been selling Jenna Jameson products from the moment I started, not making porn for women like myself. <\/p>\n And I seriously doubt that all the women who are coming forward to defend the idea of freedom of speech and sexual expression aren’t just dupes of the evil porn industry. No doubt most of them have spent time thinking about porn and also struggling with the idea that women aren’t supposed to like it, on top of fact that so much of it is just plain bad. A woman who is brave enough to say she likes porn has given the issue some serious thought.<\/p>\n Unlike Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan who happily wrote an entire column supporting the anti-porn conference without bothering to do a skerrick of research<\/a>.<\/p>\n In any case, my point is this: Yes, I’m a capitalist but I also care deeply about feminism and freedom of speech. And I think that one should not preclude the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I need to say something. Something that’s pretty obvious really: I’m a capitalist. I make porn to make money. It’s how I earn my living. And it seems that some would argue that because I’m trying to make a profit from porn, this immediately means that anything I have to say on the topic of censorship or feminist porn is therefore tainted or hasn’t any weight. I got this aggravation Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,19],"tags":[166,912,645],"class_list":["post-1956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-feminism","category-ramblings","tag-capitalism","tag-feminism","tag-pro-porn"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“Women defending porn are likely deluded by the near trillion dollar industry.”<\/p>\n