Violet Blue: WTF is feminist porn?
A great piece on feminism, porn, and this year's Feminist Porn Awards.
I'm not going to say who's playing top or bottom in that statement, but feminism and porn have been like Crisco and condoms for decades, and feminist positions (ahem) on porn are diverse. They often boil down to the notions that porn is degrading to women, abusive, encourages rape and violence against women, and reinforces sexual domination, coercion and humiliation of women. This is much like the position of religious fundies, who toss on top a little cherry of porn as destroyer of heterosexual families and marriage, encourager of serial killers, creator of child molesters and endorser of the sin of lust (that's sexual pleasure to you and me). Many feminists loudly argue that porn-cum-sex-work is bad at its core values, and that any woman involved must be damaged, drugged, forced or worse.
Except for all the cool-headed women currently identifying as feminist and doing sex work and loving porn, like Young, Nina Hartley (nina.com), Carol Queen, Susie Bright (susiebright.blogs.com/), all the women behind Spread magazine, plus oodles more.
Entire article here, or just click the above excerpt.
I flip back and forth about how I feel about porn and how those feelings relate with my feminist values. I know it's a hot topic around these parts, and thought that the above article was an interesting addition to the conversation.
I love seeing this new(ish) genre of porn that's attempting to eliminate the sexist, racist, sizeist, cliched mainstream shit that you see so often. I think, no matter what your take on porn, it's a step in the right direction. Seeing images of realistic, non-exploitative, safe, hot sex as opposed to the Maxim Ron Jeremy shit that's taken over the world? I think that's something everyone can feel good about.
I'm not going to say who's playing top or bottom in that statement, but feminism and porn have been like Crisco and condoms for decades, and feminist positions (ahem) on porn are diverse. They often boil down to the notions that porn is degrading to women, abusive, encourages rape and violence against women, and reinforces sexual domination, coercion and humiliation of women. This is much like the position of religious fundies, who toss on top a little cherry of porn as destroyer of heterosexual families and marriage, encourager of serial killers, creator of child molesters and endorser of the sin of lust (that's sexual pleasure to you and me). Many feminists loudly argue that porn-cum-sex-work is bad at its core values, and that any woman involved must be damaged, drugged, forced or worse.
Except for all the cool-headed women currently identifying as feminist and doing sex work and loving porn, like Young, Nina Hartley (nina.com), Carol Queen, Susie Bright (susiebright.blogs.com/), all the women behind Spread magazine, plus oodles more.
Entire article here, or just click the above excerpt.
I flip back and forth about how I feel about porn and how those feelings relate with my feminist values. I know it's a hot topic around these parts, and thought that the above article was an interesting addition to the conversation.
I love seeing this new(ish) genre of porn that's attempting to eliminate the sexist, racist, sizeist, cliched mainstream shit that you see so often. I think, no matter what your take on porn, it's a step in the right direction. Seeing images of realistic, non-exploitative, safe, hot sex as opposed to the Maxim Ron Jeremy shit that's taken over the world? I think that's something everyone can feel good about.