“There is no such thing as feminist porn!”

Picture by the brilliant Stuart F Taylor

Is there such a thing as ‘feminist porn’? I’m genuinely surprised to learn that some people think there isn’t. It’s quite a philosophical question, encompassing as it does the definition of what ‘porn’ actually is, and prompting me immediately to wonder: if there’s no such thing as feminist porn, what would self-pleasure look like if the whole world was feminist?

Recently Kathleen Richardson (a trans-exclusionary radical feminist who campaigns against sex work, porn and sex robots) claimed there was ‘no such thing’ as feminist porn. She’s not the only one – search Twitter for the phrase and you’ll find others making the same claim.

They are wrong.

In a feminist world, would there be no porn?

Porn is not inherently feminist, or empowering, or any of the other stuff you’ll sometimes hear anti-porn folks offer as a straw man. I don’t expect you to drop by any of the major porn sites, in 2019, and be wowed by the inclusivity, diversity and ethical practices on display. However, while ‘most porn isn’t feminist’ is a fair enough point to argue, claiming there’s no such thing as feminist porn is an extraordinary and radical step: if true, it means that no feminist can ever create porn. If you make porn, you cannot be a feminist and if you’re a feminist, you can never make porn. It also has other – more ludicrous – implications.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Richardson is right: there is no such thing as feminist porn. Getting rid of porn is one of the key aims of feminism, so in a feminist world there would be no porn. ‘Porn’ being quite a difficult thing to define appropriately, but let’s go with a broad definition for now: porn equals any material that is primarily created to arouse. In a feminist world, according to Richardson, none of this would exist. No nude images, no sex videos, no hot selfies shared between two people, no erotic writing, etc.

If this is the case then I have one important question: to what would we masturbate?

I’m serious. What are we wanking to in this world without porn? I’m assuming we haven’t just stopped wanking altogether. Wanking has proven health benefits, so unless you’re extremely religious or a member of a hardcore anti-masturbation movement, you probably aren’t arguing that we end masturbation. I don’t know many feminists – even radically anti-porn/sex-work ones like Richardson – who claim masturbation is inherently bad, their focus is usually on the inspirational material. So in their feminist utopia, out to what are we rubbing one?

Perhaps the answer is that we’re wanking to the images in our heads. It’s what I do most often, for sure. I like porn, but I don’t tend to watch it when I’m alone, because as a general rule the people who live in my head are far more compliant and depraved than those on screen, so most of my porn-watching is done with my partner. So maybe in this feminist utopia, everyone is just wanking to their private fantasies, and never turning to external input to supplement them.

This, I think, is where our vision of Utopia collapses under the weight of its own implausibility.

Because if this is really what Richardson is after, she’s asking us to suppress an impulse almost as powerful as wanking itself: the impulse to show and tell people about our fantasies and desires. We’d enjoy our fantasies in private, but never allow these rich and powerful experiences to spill out of our heads and into the real world. For this to succeed, people must voluntarily refrain from doing something humanity has enjoyed ever since the first homo sapien daubed a cock and balls on the wall of a cave.

Humans use communication tools to tell stories. And, because sex is important to humanity, one of the key things we communicate about is sex. Pictures, words, photos, camcorder, phone, webcam, virtual reality… every single communication tool humanity has developed has been used to tell the hot stories, as well as the funny or emotional ones (and sometimes all three at once). Whether that’s non-fiction stories about our sexual escapades, or fictional stories about the fantasies we’ve dreamed up. We do it to entertain people, to inform them, and – of course – to arouse them. If Richardson’s porn-free utopia ever comes about, she will have achieved something that no one – no religion, no government, no campaign group, no war – has ever managed to achieve since the dawn of time: stop humans telling stories about sex.

If you truly believe there’s no such thing as feminist porn, and you want to live in a feminist society, you’re asking humanity to stop doing something we have done since long before we developed writing. Let’s face it, you might as well be telling us to stop wanking altogether.

The only feminist porn is porn you cannot buy

Perhaps when people say ‘there’s no such thing as feminist porn’ what they really mean is that commercial porn can never be feminist. The exchange of money will always taint the interaction, and make it so that those creating the porn are technically coerced, because they wouldn’t have created this content if there were no money involved.

Let’s go back to our feminist world: there’s no commercial porn, because money renders the act of making porn un-feminist. So commercial porn is banned, but if you want to take some saucy pictures and share them with your friends for free, you get a pass. We’re masturbating to the images in our head, and the stories we tell each other for free, using whatever tools we have available (pictures, words, films, VR, what have you).

Question: in this world, what do I do for a living? Am I allowed to write about sex, like I do now? Or may I only do it as a hobby, rather than the job I’ve worked hard to turn that hobby into? Or, as is surprisingly often the case with anti-porn folks, does my work get a pass because I am using words as the medium rather than video/images? Does the main issue come from colleagues over in video and image porn, because they’re getting their kit off?

It’s not really important which of us will be out of a job, all that matters is that some of us will be. In this feminist porn utopia, creating art is only a legitimate job if you are doing it for a reason other than arousal. We can use any and all mediums to make a living by telling humanity’s stories – including those which may be violent or frightening or challenging in some other way – but not the ones that arouse.

If feminist porn does not exist, then in a feminist society our sexual fantasies may either be shared for free or never shared at all.

Porn can change, as well as reflect, society

Feminists have a huge part to play in the discussion around porn. Let’s face it, even the most heartily pro-porn advocate has to admit that there are many elements of the mainstream porn industry that are exploitative. There are videos that are deeply misogynist. Racism in porn is a huge problem. As is ageism, fetishisation, dehumanisation: if society is fucked-up in some way, that element of fucked-uppedness will be reflected in our porn. It would be bizarre and – frankly – magical if porn managed to do what no other genre of entertainment has done, and managed to avoid reflecting some of society’s ugliest impulses right back at us.

If feminists want to tackle these problems, as I hope we do, then we have a lot of different tools at our disposal. We can call out bad practice where we see it, and we can campaign against racist, sexist, ageist and other -ist tropes where they appear. We can be honest with ourselves and each other about the problems that arise in the porn industry, and work together to tackle them. Importantly, though, we can also show how it could be done betterWe can make porn that lives up to our ideal, in which everyone is equal and treated consensually, with respect and care. We can support those who are creating porn that lives up to these goals.

If feminist porn does exist, as I believe it does, then the world looks nothing like Richardson’s: a sexless universe where we are only allowed to apply our creativity where there are no boners or nipples involved. Instead it looks like something created by Royal Fetish XXX, Crashpad, Jiz Lee, Pandora Blake, Bright Desire, Four Chambered Heart, many of the fab streams on ManyVids, Clips4Sale etc: a world where sex is a part of human life, and all humans are equal.

Porn is a genre of entertainment, like any other. It’s a means of communicating what we do and – crucially – what we want. Just as storytelling is an infinitely human way of reflecting our experience, so it’s also an important tool in changing the world. Building on our experiences to create a more equal society. Porn can reflect the way society is, and paint pictures of the way we would like it to be. I think feminism has a huge part to play in the discussion around porn. But if our solution is simply ‘stop people from watching it’ then we have fundamentally misunderstood not only porn but human nature.

You’re dismissing the methods by which humans change society in favour of telling us to stop being human at all.

10 Comments

  • Something that’s interesting (well, I think it’s interesting; other people’s mileage may vary, by which I mean that nobody thinks it’s interesting except me) is that a lot of the sort of porn that I like has, from what I’ve seen, been billed as ‘porn for women’, although not exactly in the way you’d expect.

    By which I don’t mean the ‘porn for women’ you’d find on the Pornhub network. As every Thomasina, Ricci or Sally knows, my ‘thing’ is softcore erotica, which is increasingly difficult to find on UK TV now, but in its heyday (by which I mean after 10pm on my Gran’s cable TV in the late ’90s), it was available every night on L!VE TV, then Bravo after that closed down, and latterly UK Living (now Sky Witness, and a completely different channel).

    In the UK Living era, when their late-night programming included Passion and Romance, Passion Cove and Bedtime Stories, the Radio Times used to bill these programmes as “women’s entertainment”. To this day, I’ve no idea what “women’s entertainment” is meant to mean, but from what I saw on TV when those things were advertised, women’s entertainment includes gormless men, constantly bisexual women, incredibly smooth bodies, and fairly instantaneous sex that isn’t actually happening.

    But it’s not only Radio Times that’s guilty of that. There are a number of instances where I’ve seen soft porn either touted or assumed as porn for women. Lists in IMDb of softcore “for girls, no boys allowed!”; occasional sly mentions of couples watching Emmanuelle together (“sorry Krista, I know you’re trying to leave these films behind, but married couples…”); softcore films themselves making sure to include just enough nudity to tantalise any women of any sexuality (I assume that’s what all the nudity is for).

    It’s all as if… if hardcore porn is for straight men… and… softcore porn is for women? Is that… is that what it’s for? Do I have to hand in my man license now?

    Although maybe Richardson and her clan should try asking some women themselves. The woman I live with is certainly a fan of queer people spanking each other, well-oiled breasts rubbing together and explciit penetrative sex featuring transmen. I’m fairly sure that’s not ‘porn for women’. I’ve always just called it ‘porn’.

    But then again, #whatisporn?

    • Girl on the net says:

      Oh God yeah you have touched on one of my own bugbears here too. I think the idea that porn ‘for women’ should just be softcore is a hangover from a time when porn was mostly made by men, for men. They realised that perhaps women might enjoy erotic stuff too, and simply went ‘well we’ll just make it more feminine. You know… softer and more gentle like what women are/like.’ It’s beyond annoying because as you quite rightly point out: many men enjoy softer content, as many women enjoy more hardcore content. People all have different tastes! What turns one on might not work on someone else! We are all unique and interesting and special!

      What’s more, I think it feeds into the narrative that hardcore porn is *inherently* misogynist. Women can only enjoy certain types of porn, because the rest of porn is woman-hating and degrading and etc etc. Which again I think falls into the weird logic trap described in the piece above. It also encourages me, as a woman, to feel broken and weird. Same as the men who comment below my blog posts to ‘call bullshit’ on sexual experiences I’ve had because no woman could ever possibly *want* those kind of experiences, it makes me feel erased because my desires don’t conform to what society thinks a woman ‘should’ be like.

      In conclusion – I agree wholeheartedly. This is some bullshit right here. And I miss late-night sexy telly too!

  • L says:

    So the way I think about this is very similar to what I make of the war on drugs, the upcoming EU copyright regulation, our upcoming legislation around age verification for porn: laziness and lack of creative thinking from the rule makers. Rather than coming up with a framework that is fit for user behaviours, the present day context, weighted risk and benefits, they blanket ban everything.
    The alternative would mean A LOT of effort and it seems to me that’s why these kinda feminists arrive at their conclusion. A lot of porn is problematic/exploitative, some of it less so but untangling the mess is a huge task. To me the real radical idea would be to want to tackle that task and not shy away from it. It might result in, you know, maybe a shift towards the porn that is not exploitative – that can’t be bad.

  • Phillip says:

    I suspect that ‘Feminist Porn’ is like art. They will know it when they see it.

  • L says:

    It’s worth recalling that in the Handmaid’s Tale (the book at least), the wholesale destruction of both porn and every sort of sexy clothing was done not by conservative evangelicals alone, but by evangelicals and feminists standing side by side.

  • Phillip says:

    Almost can’t believe it. My friend just sent an email that had photos done be Fracesca Woodman. Gmail demanded that I sign in so that they could be sure I that I am a ‘Grown Up’. I actually remembered my password. Looks like it may be going to get a workout!

    Francesca Woodman was an American photographer whom I knew nothing about. There is a slideshow of some of her work. Shot on 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 there were beautiful black and white photos. Nothing that should be held back from anyone!

    I am going to send a photo that I TOOK on a friend that is in the same category. Just a little exposure and nothing too nude for anyone. We will see what Google does with it. I will have him forward it back to me

    Zuckerberg is a shit head and a sell out!

    Phil

  • This post speaks so much of the problems that are wrong with a lady society who won’t be honest with people. Sex is always going to be a topic we speak bout. Porn will always exist. Why not just educate people on what they are seeing. In #SexEd a topic to speak out a ting the industry how good practice is not followed always. How feminists are countering the bad pron by making their own.
    I love what will we wank to…what indeed..

  • Lola says:

    Really good argument against Kathleen Richardson’s untenable position. I love this: “as a general rule the people who live in my head are far more compliant and depraved than those on screen.”

  • Steve says:

    Thank God for something sensible about pornography. You could have gone further: it seems pretty clear that much of the opposition to porn per se (as opposed to certain forms of porn) is really opposition to sex. I hate steel guitars and banjos so am no fan of country-and-western but I do not therefore decry all music. Instead I distinguish the forms of music I like from the ones I dislike. Blanket prohibitions on porn seem to come form the same constrained puritanism as blights most religions: sex is bad and should only be tolerated (but never enjoyed) for a very narrow band of reasons.

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