by Alice Zheng
On April 30, Tristan Taormino gave a lecture on her “life as a feminist pornographer.” I got so excited by this lecture that I bought two of her DVDs (the first porn that I’ve bought and owned) and her book of sex tips. Suffice to say, I loved her. I hung on her every word. I took notes. I got my DVDs autographed.
Before I listened to her lecture, I was skeptical about whether or not it was really possible to create feminist, ethical porn. I previously wrote about two anti-porn lectures leading up to her talk, and while I was not totally convinced by them, I was pretty sure that I didn’t like porn. Why not? From the point of view of an individual consumer, I could see the pros and cons of watching porn laid out in front of me.
Pro: getting off (which could be a significant point if I really value getting off and porn helps a lot, or could be pretty insignificant if I can get off without porn).
Con: possible moral/ethical considerations of how porn stars are treated in the industry, how well they live their lives and whether they like working in porn or feel that it damages their lives, how women are represented in porn, and how sex is represented in porn.
It seemed pretty clear cut to me.
And then I heard Tristan Taormino’s lecture. Taormino is confident, frank, and a really wonderful public speaker. I fell in love with Taormino immediately, not just because she’s so charismatic, but also because I really get her point of view. Like Taormino, I like open discussion about sex, I like trusting that people can tell reality from fantasy, and I don’t like censorship.
Taormino’s porn isn’t like traditional porn. As she said in her lecture, cum shots are “a tradition in porn: if you don’t have a cum shot, it’s not a scene,” yet Taormino “wanted to eliminate the facial cum shot” in her porn. She came into the porn industry with the hope that “this can be different.” She noticed something missing in porn as it was, “the authentic female orgasm,” and she wanted to correct that deficiency.
Likewise, Taormino found something wanting in most porn that was catered towards women. Although she praises Candida Royale’s Femme line of porn for proving that women buy porn, she felt like the existing “canon of porn for women […] was kinda stuck.” In this “softer, gentler kind of porn,” she saw a reinforcement of the old stereotypes about female sexuality – that we need to be coddled and pet and prefer stories to sex.
Taormino recognizes that some people think that “feminist porn does not exist, that it can’t exist, that it’s an oxymoron.” While these people (people like Pamela Paul and Dr. Mary Layden) may try to get people to stop consuming porn altogether, Taormino prefers to try to make feminist porn a reality. To her, feminist porn is “porn that will empower both the people who are making it and the people who will watch it.” She wants her porn to provide more realistic depictions of sex, inspire fantasy, and validate sexuality. Feminist porn can actually have a positive impact on sex lives by depicting, and thus validating, sexual diversity, women initiating sex, and communication during sex. Feminist porn means counteracting the message we get from society that sex is shameful and the message that we get from typical porn that sex is the domain of men and women exist only for their pleasure.
What I like most about Taormino is probably her support of workers’ rights in the porn industry. As she points out, “if you think that porn is just demeaning to women, it’s demeaning to men as well.” As she explains, porn made by men for men tends to cut out the male performers so that the viewer can replace the male performer. She points out that those who have sex for a living aren’t valued precisely because our society doesn’t value sex. That truth makes me wonder whether feminist pornographers like Taormino or anti-porn feminists like Paul and Layden can have a more feminist, and more lasting, effect on our relationship with porn and with sex. Barring censorship, what can anti-porn feminists do to stop porn users from watching porn that degrades women? And if certain porn users just aren’t interested in ethically produced and feminist porn, then what kind of impact can the feminist pornographer have on them? Would Paul, who calls herself sex-positive, get off on Taormino’s porn? And would she feel ashamed or immoral for doing so, even if she also knew that Taormino lets her performers choose whether or not they want to use condoms, asks them to go ahead and have real sex, lets them show their personalities to the camera, and feeds her actors and actresses better than most of us can ever hope to be fed by our bosses?
You seem pretty sure that our old friend “society” creates the sense of shame supposedly attached to sex. Maybe I watch the wrong TV shows, movies, and sports, but I don’t really get the impression that someone is bad if he or she has sex. Alternatively or in addition, there are some sociobiological hypotheses for this feeling, which I don’t feel the need to go into because you give no prima facie reason to think that “society” is the cause.
“those who have sex for a living aren’t valued precisely because our society doesn’t value sex.” There are number of explanations for why people who have sex for a living (does that include prostitutes?) aren’t “valued”, assuming this is actually the case (which further assumes that this use of “valued” makes any sense at all). Taormino has chosen, and you have swallowed whole, the worst of them. This one of the rare cases where I’m not sure if a statement is a tautology or if it’s literally meaningless. “Our society doesn’t value sex”–what does this mean? I like sex, and it would seem that pretty much everyone else likes sex too. Are you saying that everyone in a group can like something without the group as a whole liking it? In which case your notion of “society” is exposed as the absurdity it is.
Amateur pornography already is very popular, which goes against both your claim that shame is associated with sex and that Taormino is doing something new. And porn producers already make movies that are imitations of amateur pornography, knowing its popularity, so Taormino’s interest in realism, if sincere, is nothing original.
Your comments about worker’s rights don’t make sense, even setting aside the problems with that concept in general. Animated movies don’t show the voice actors, does that mean that the voice actors are being demeaned? If porn only shows the guy’s penis, that’s because his job is to supply the penis, just like the voice actor’s job is to supply his voice.
If you trust that people can tell reality from fantasy, why does it matter if Taormino’s porn is realistic? Your optimism depends on a belief that people’s views on sex can be changed by watching pornography; otherwise only the people that already liked stuff like Taormino’s would watch it and there would be no change in opinion.
I don’t understand what “empowering” means and why it would be a good thing if it happened.
“more realistic depictions of sex, inspire fantasy, and validate sexuality, depicting and thus validating, sexual diversity, women initiating sex, and communication during sex.” Every one of these things is already captured to the fullest extent in existing pornography.
The main function of existing porn is to inspire fantasy and to “validate sexuality”–the problem A-Dwork etc. see with that is that it validates things they wouldn’t like to see validated. “Sexual diversity” is the absolute last thing that is missing from pornography: every possible taste, and several impossible ones, are catered to. Have you heard of Japan? In most existing porn the woman does initiate sex. And often they communicate during sex (http://www.theonion.com/articles/nations-porn-stars-demand-to-be-fucked-harder,205/). Realism I’ve already addressed.
In short, you’ve been conned by a pro out to make a buck.
I’d like to begin by noting that this post was not supposed to be a rigorous argument of any sort. It’s a blog post. It’s a personal reflection on a lecture, talking about why I personally liked the speaker’s point of view. It’s not meant to convince you of anything, which would be precisely why I don’t actually provide arguments for or against anything.
I think that we feel shame whenever we do anything that others consider shameful. Sex is largely considered something that should be had in the dark. I could liken this to Adam and Eve’s fig leaves in the garden of Eden. They felt shameful of their naked bodies not ‘naturally’ but because they ‘came to know’ that their nakedness was shameful. Likewise I believe that we ‘come to know’ that sex is shameful because this knowledge is fed to us.
I am obviously not using the word ‘valued’ to mean ‘like’ or ‘enjoy’ in this case. When I say “those who have sex for a living aren’t valued precisely because our society doesn’t value sex”, I am saying precisely the same thing as when I say “maids are paid less than a living wage because our society does not value the work that they do”. Of course we like clean houses, but we don’t value cleanliness the same way that we value, for instance, literature (I am stealing this example from Ehrenreich). Perhaps I ought instead to have used the word “respect”, though I used the word “value” because that was the word that Taormino used (note that the sentence starts with “she points out that”). I also take offense to the “pretty much everyone else likes sex too” because then you’re leaving out asexuals, which make up a good ~1% of our population.
Amateur pornography’s popularity does nothing to prove that sex isn’t considered shameful. There’s a reason why people don’t watch pornography on big screens (my friends and I have tried appropriating a relatively public big TV to watch porn and gotten very pointed stares). I also don’t know much about porn as I really haven’t seen so much so I can’t speak for the porn industry’s interest in realism, though if it is present I applaud them.
Skimpole, are arguing that it’s okay for the guy’s job in porn to just be to supply the penis? I’m getting really confused as to which side you’re on at this point. A voice has personality. I frankly don’t think that penises do. Even if it isn’t demeaning to be reduced to one’s sexual organs, though, this doesn’t actually address worker’s rights, which I didn’t really go into detail about either because I try not to ramble on. Regarding the mistreatment of workers in the porn industry, I can cite Layden’s data: in porn stars, average life expectancy is 37.43 years, chlamydia and gonorrhea are 10x greater than LA county 20-24 yr olds, 66% have herpes, 12-28% have sexually transmitted diseases, and 85% of strippers have been vrbally or physically abused by managers/staff. Taormino tries to combat the issues of STDs for her performers by offering them condoms (they choose instead to trust in the once-every-3-months mandatory testing of those in the industry), she tries to make their day on the job easier by providing them with good food and drink, and she tries to make the job a little more fun by letting them have the sex that they want to have instead of ordering them around. Perhaps “worker’s rights” isn’t the precise word that ought to be used, but I see it as a close approximation.
I actually don’t trust that people can tell reality from fantasy. I was going to write this in but decided there was no point since I was trying to talk about Taormino and not me. This is where Taormino and I differ, and part of the reason why I think it’s important for porn to reflect real sex.
Re: “empowerment”: Unless people are empowered with basic rights, I don’t believe that they are enabled to join in the “pursuit of happiness” to which I believe that all people are entitled. In ethicaly produced porn, the people who make it are given their basic rights. In realistic depictions of sex, viewers are given knowledge about sex and can engage in positive discussion about sex so that. Couples who see couples in porn communicate in order to better please both parties are shown that it’s ‘normal’ for them to communicate during sex (this is, again, the anti-porn feminist’s argument that porn leaks into life). Couples may also see different positions or ways of pleasing each other that they would not have thought of on their own. This is a good thing because sex should be enjoyable.
“Every one of these things is already captured to the fullest extent in existing pornography.” Once more, I don’t watch that much porn so I can’t speak for what exists in pornography. All I can say is that I have gotten the impression that communication in existing pornography tends to be along the lines of “fuck me hard!” or “I am now going to stick my penis in this tight little ass, oh I love your tight little 18-year old ass” which does not qualify in my opinion as healthy communication (though it might for some people). By communication I mean things like “to the left a little”, “slow down”, or “can you try relaxing your tongue and staying away from the glans because that actually hurts a little” which most people (again, personal impression) seem pretty shy about.
You cited The Onion as a joke, right? Because you do realize that they’re a humor magazine, right? I agree that sexual diversity is not missing from exisiting pornography and neither is “validating sexuality”. What I believe is that getting rid of porn diminishes validation of sexuality and sexual diversity. I think you assumed a feminist porn vs. existing porn binary whereas I assumed the typical anti-porn feminist’s porn-censorship as a possibility as well. I also think that feminist porn validates women’s sexuality in a way that regular porn doesn’t because, well, for one thing feminist porn displays realistic female orgasms whereas regular porn typically shows obviously faked orgasms and some that don’t even look enjoyable.
I don’t feel like I’ve been conned, as I’ve received for my money some of the only porn that I can find enjoyable. Besides which I’ve been conned before and not really felt much resentment about it, though I appreciate your looking out for my money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbywinters.com
I feel Australian-based website Abbywinters.com offers feminist porn in the vein of Taormino.
“Abbywinters.com is an Australian-based pornographic paysite, which specialises in lesbian and solo sex acts by female models. The site claims all-female shooting crews[1][2] and prides itself on being at the forefront of the “natural”, reality-based porn market.”
“The site is noted among fans for its skillful mix of both its professional-model “core” (of which it only has a few) alongside a massive trove of genuinely amateur models, most of whom had never worked in erotic modeling or video before coming to the company. All material is captured with particularly high-quality camerawork (usually using high-definition video and photography, especially from 2009, together with somewhat atypical “signature” capture angles) and has no models with surgically enhanced breasts, models wear little make-up, and most of them also often have a full patch of pubic hair; in addition the website claims that the photos themselves, once shot, are not retouched in any way.”