Here’s hoping we can.
Like the other stuff I’ve been posting about, I bring this up because I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately and because my opinions are shifting and I’m not exactly sure where they’re headed.
I don’t want this to be about anyone’s personal habits and what they mean and whether they’re defensible from a feminist POV. ‘Cause that’s been done to death and frankly, it’s boring. But obviously it doesn’t make sense to start this kind of discussion without laying out where I’m coming from, so I’ll dispense with it quickly: I am a fairly regular user of porn (upcoming links probably NSFW). Not generally the kinder, gentler material that’s made “for women” and called “erotica.” And not always the feminist, binary-questioning, politically aware stuff or the let’s-objectify-nekkid-hipster-boys thang either. Sometimes I like some mainstream smut (/NSFW links).
However, I’m not interested in pretending that there’s no conflict between this and my fervent belief that media images matter. If I think it’s necessary to consistently interrogate what pop culture in general says about women and femininity (and I do, duh), I can’t ignore that porn is—to put it mildly—problematic. As is true regarding a lot of things I love but have (mostly) given up for health and many other reasons, I’m willing to trade pleasure for living more closely aligned with my values. Nor am I interested, though, in arguments that porn as a category is inherently evil, or destructive, or antifeminist, simply because it involves women’s bodies in a sexual context.
I’ve been looking for some contemporary porn-critical analysis that is nuanced, that doesn’t judge or deny women’s sexual desire when that desire doesn’t conform to sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice claptrap, that doesn’t give a definition of pornography guaranteeing the circular reasoning of “porn is material that harms women, so it harms women,” and that doesn’t valorize superconservative notions of ideal relationships. ‘Cause those arguments won’t help me or any other porn consumers (or boycotters, for that matter) who have thought about these issues for more than five minutes hack our way through the thicket of excruciatingly difficult political and ethical questions that pornography poses.
And, even though I still agree with them, neither will the standard arguments on the other side. Yes, yes, there are plenty of ladies who like—and make, and like to make—porn. Sure, mainstream Hollywood movies and TV shows often send messages about gender and sexuality and body image that are just as hideous, yet no one argues that filmed entertainment is by its nature bad for women. We all know that any actual legal action against pornography is going to be constitutionally troubling and impede access to queer and feminist writing. Because they don’t even begin to substantively address labor exploitation in the sex industry. Because it’s too easy to slide into relatively simple-minded analyses.
We—and by “we” I mean feminists who fall anywhere and everywhere on the pro/anti continuum—desperately need to get past this impasse. But how, when it’s so hard to actually occupy the middle of that continuum? My own experiences trying to hang out there have only pushed me further out toward the pole again, throwing up my hands at the way all attempts to engage seem to lead inexorably to defensiveness, rigidity, and impugning of other people’s sexuality and life choices. And how can anyone not get even more defensive and rigid when called—NB: inaccurately in 99.44% of all cases—a withered sex-hating prude or a slutty brainwashed sexbot?
Both sides need to stop freakin’ out and actually listen to each other for once. The way we talk about this stuff is always so mutually alienating that we never do more than scratch the surface of how to combat our pornified culture. Which, believe it or not, is something that we all want to do.
I can’t emphasize enough just how little I think I have the answers here. But, in the spirit of reconciliation, I humbly offer…
Some points on which I think we can all agree: Our culture’s relentless commodification of women’s bodies and (approved versions of) sexuality is damaging. This commodification is by no means confined to pornography or the sex industry.
Some points I’d like to see some agreement on: Sexually explicit material is not by its very sexually explicit nature always antifeminist. A feminist world can contain sexually explicit material.
Some of what I want from a useful porn-critical theory: A labor-rights argument centered on workers’ experiences (some interesting perspectives and sources of information on how the tenor of current conversations is hindering this can be found here), connected to labor organizing in other industries. Content analysis that doesn’t assume violence as its starting point. A holistic take on body commodification that links by content and message (what does this say about women and gender?), not genre (is this sexually explicit?).
Let’s dig in.
(On comment moderation: I will be seeking to moderate out [however imperfectly, ’cause I’m, y’know, human] the kinds of broad-brush mischaracterizations of others’ arguments I’m talking about in the post. Also, I’m at my day job tomorrow, and I’m not sure that I can access the mod queue through the firewall. If I can’t, I will get to everything as soon as I get home, which will be late-ish on the west coast so even later in the east. People don’t control what ends up in the mod queue; machines do.)