Feminist Porn: Oxymoron or Feasible Possibility?
Can porn and feminism coexist?
Modern feminists often bristle at the idea of pornography, the media deemed the most degrading to women and most anchored in misogyny. Even if the origins of porn are steeped in heteronormative, male-focused pleasure, without this context, the consumption and production of pornographic content have no inherent patriarchal roots. Some queer folks and women love watching porn and love being in porn. So why do some feminists have a problem with it?
This ironic policing of choice both disrespects and invalidates both the work of those who enthusiastically, legally, and consensually engage in sex performance work, as well as the experiences of those who may chose to consume such entertainment.
And isn’t choice the crux of feminism? The choice to be a stay at home mom or to pursue a career, the choice to shave your legs or to keep them hairy, the choice to have a baby or to have an abortion?
Being a performer
In the words of pornstar Nina Hartley, “Feminism means that I have choice in my life—autonomy...In a nutshell: my body, my rules. Other women don’t get to tell me what’s “right” for me...Whether or not we agree with or approve of them, the choices made by young women are theirs. If we’re to grant autonomy to people over the age of eighteen, then that means accepting their choices as valid, even if we’d never do such a thing. This includes being able to join the army and get shot or maimed, or become a miner or construction worker.”
There is a hypocrisy in certain feminists wanting women to be safe in the workplace, wanting women to be able to choose their own career path, and wanting women to earn money the same way men do to eliminate the income gap, yet in the same breath rejecting women who participate in safe work, are in control of their careers, and are making their own money consensually and legally. We want too much of these women who seek financial success but may do it in a way that makes others uncomfortable. Many feminists cannot comprehend how a woman could willingly choose porn as their path, and therefore assume that they haven’t chosen this life, that it has been thrust upon them. It is a well-meaning but damaging attitude to presume that all women in porn are there against their will, that all are victims of abuse or are trafficked into their trade.
Additionally, much of the anti-porn camp claims women in porn are having unsafe sex and are at high risk for STIs. On the contrary, porn performers are regularly tested and often take their sexual health more seriously than any layperson might. When California tried (and failed) to pass Proposition 60 requiring condoms in all pornography in 2016, much of the pushback was from porn performers themselves. In reality, requiring condoms would mean that in order to make money (because porn with condoms wouldn’t sell), it would send many vulnerable people underground into illegal or amateur porn production in places like Miami, FL. The work of porn performers advocating against Prop 60 has been impactful in emphasizing that porn should be viewed as a fantasy, not a guidebook for sex.
Porn isn’t all sunshine and dildos
This is not to say that women and LGBTQAI2S+ folks in the industry are unaffected by the power dynamics of mainstream pornography. Being a porn performer is surely not always legal or regulated, which can create potential for abuse or manipulation. More commonly, the abuse in porn comes more from the nature of the content—to make money in porn as an unknown performer, more violent, niche scenes are required, taking a physical and emotional toll on performers who may push themselves or be pushed to consent to such work. Even if porn performers are consensually engaging with their genre of entertainment, it’s possible, too, that talent may be underpaid due to financial abuse or the rise of unpaid porn. Today, the money-making empires of Playboy and Girls Gone Wild have fallen while free and streamed content like PornHub and cam sites have become the new era of adult media. This certainly brings up the question of consumerism and the ethics of unpaid porn—should we be paying for our porn in order to support porn performers? But what if that makes porn inaccessible for a lot of folks—can porn only be consumed ethically by those who have disposable income? What if the money you pay to watch porn doesn’t go to the performer themself, but to the production team or the distribution platform—are then cam sites and other self-owned paid porn more ethical than the mainstream porn industry? The ethics of consumerism are confusing, demanding, and unclear. However, what we as consumers can do is monetarily support as much as we are able, regardless of whether there is a clear line in regards to consumerist ethics.
In addition to financial maltreatment and demanding scenes, it is not untrue that there are some people in porn who are coerced, trafficked, or abused into the industry. There are people in porn and other areas of sex work who are victims of human trafficking or who have experienced trauma—no one should deny that and work should continue to be done to assist these people, especially members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, low-income folks, women and gender minorities, people who are homeless, and youth.
However, Nina Hartley explains further of the business that porn is not what people think:
“The widespread notion that legal porn production is a sink hole of abuse and coercion that takes advantage of poor, innocent women, is the biggest smack leveled against the business. It’s almost entirely a function or projection of people’s fears and discomfort about women, gender relations, sex, sexuality and the graphic depiction of sexual acts...The best protection for women everywhere, especially in the sex trades, is full decriminalization of all consensual sex work...the anti-sex work camp has, for the purpose of public confusion, conflated legal, consensual sex work, specifically pornography, with illegal, non-consensual trafficking of women for forced labor (some of it of a sexual nature).”
As Hartley explains, the implication that an individual couldn’t simply choose to be in the business of performing sex for money, that they must be victims of coercion or abuse, is an insult to the backbone of feminism—choice. Because sex is a part of the equation, the industry, no matter the size of its actual number of trafficking victims, will always disproportionately be considered a vacuum of abuse. Yet we are rarely as critical of domestic laborers or agricultural laborers in the same way, two industries where many workers are victims of human trafficking.
Photo ℅ Unbound Babes, which you can shop here
Being a consumer
Porn can both harm and help those who watch it regardless of impacts on performers. Adult performers may be able to participate individually in porn on a consensual level, but it’s impossible for any one performer to extract themself from the potential for negative impact on those consuming their work. Undertones of misogyny play well with inaccurate portrayals of sex and human bodies. Anal with no lube is not only unrealistic and unsafe, but also connotes forcefulness as pleasure. A fully waxed pubic area with a vagina that has undergone labiaplasty not only perpetuates standards of what vulvas need to look like to be desirable, but also promotes both a potentially harmful surgery and painful hair removal practices that can hinder sexuality.
Moreover, porn can hide implicit messages that deeply affect those who watch, especially marginalized communities. You’d be hard-pressed to find a genuine female orgasm anywhere in porn today, one that doesn’t come from repeated jackhammer penetration and one that doesn’t occur after approximately 60 seconds of stimulation. Teaching youth that sexual encounters begin and end with a penis and its orgasm teaches that their pleasure is not a priority,to their sexual partners or to anyone watching. This can perpetuate the idea that not only is a partner of someone with a vagina not expected to reciprocate orgasm (and likely won’t), but also that such an act isn’t sexy or interesting to them—that no one wants to watch a guy making a woman get off, but they want to see a guy cumming all over a girl’s face.
There is also much discussion of condoms in porn—do they ruin the “mood”? Does not having them visible teach youth they don’t need protection? Opposingly, one could ask: is anyone concerned about dental dams in lesbian porn? Certainly not; this hypocrisy illustrates that safe sex should be a priority for reality, not the fantasy of porn.
There is also the argument (prominent in circles of concerned suburban mothers) that porn promotes violence and “causes” sexual assault. According to all available evidence, nothing “causes” sexual assault except someone sexually assaulting someone. While the impact of media can certainly inform choices, porn is no more dangerous in promoting sexual assault than a first-person shooter game is in promoting gun violence—porn is entertainment like any other genre, it’s the sexual nature of the media that makes people uncomfortable.
One can certainly acknowledge that the imagery of mainstream porn is often rough and violent, but should this warrant concern for performers or our children? Why do many judge porn performers for engaging in violent acts, but have sympathy and concern for our own youth? Understanding the nuance of violence in porn requires communication between parents and children or sex education about what healthy sex looks like—that porn isn’t real. But many people are too afraid to talk to their children about sex or porn, so youth watch inaccurate and violent imagery without having the context of reality. With increase communication and comprehensive sex ed, youth can understand that porn isn’t real, dismantling these arguments.
Despite how communication would ideally occur between parents and children, these messages in porn can often act as the only form of sex ed for youth in the United States because of the failure of the education system and the government to destigmatize, prioritize, and mandate comprehensive sexuality education.
The multitude of ways in which porn can negatively impact its viewers sometimes feels like an infomercial—“but wait - there’s more!” In regards to race, sexuality, and gender, fetishization is a common thread throughout pornography that can problematically harm viewers (and performers). We all know the tropes: big dicks for black men, submissiveness for Asian women, “fiesty” and “wild” attitudes for Latina women, “exotic” look and performance for all women of color—the list continues. For trans folks, their bodies are often put on display as freak-shows, with a specific category called “transgender” on most porn sites populated with videos containing slurs in the title and fetishized images of trans women, most often, as the focal point of the entertainment.
For queer women, sex in porn is represented through a masculine ego-stroking version of real sex with women. Lesbians in porn are creatures created for the male gaze; an overemphasis on penetration, for example, makes that clear. Women only have sex with women, in the minds of many porn producers, for the pleasure of men.
While these tropes can all be harmful and invalidating of individual experiences, it’s not mandatory for an LGBTQAI2S+ person or a person of color to never watch porn or never enjoy it. People’s relationships with porn are all unique, and shouldn’t be subject to blanket judgement based on preference or tolerance of the existing sexual media.
Despite the downfalls of porn, there can be beauty and exploration in being a consumer of porn. Porn is very clearly created for a cis straight white male gaze; however, the consumption of media produced explicitly for a privileged group is then often mistaken for complicity. By some, it can even indicate acceptance of such standards as normal or okay. Opposingly, the idea that this privileged group is the only one who can enjoy sexual imagery of this nature is equally damaging to women and/or LGBTQ+ folks, especially youth. When we reject the notion that a young queer girl could enjoy mainstream porn, we minimize the rampant history of ignorance and deprioritization of the sexual desires of anyone but men, specifically female pleasure. This can also promote the idea that boys and men are the only folks who masturbate or watch porn. I grew up being fed the narrative that not only was watching porn disgusting and shameful, but also that doing so made me unlike my peers and friends.
Reflections from you
I asked fellow Camp Thirlby counselors to explain what porn means to them. Here are some of their thoughts:
One contributor explains her extremely positive and beneficial experience with porn in discovering their sexuality, despite it’s often hypersexualization of queerness:
“While it might be toxic to "learn" how to have sex via lesbian porn (many of the acts they do are inaccurate/only for the male gaze), it still showed me possible sex acts, and what I might find pleasurable myself. It, most importantly, showed me that I wanted to have sex with another woman, a thought that never crossed my mind before discovering porn.” — Natalie
Another contributor states that although porn can be good and bad—she is critical of production, as it is perhaps the root of the problems with mainstream porn:
“It [porn] creates false fantasies about what sex looks like with different people, when sex is a very individual experience. It's harmful to those communities to be put into certain boxes and rarely see sex that they have in real life or can identify with. I think the only way to really resolve that is to have different kinds of people creating porn. If it's made by us, for us, we may finally have authentic representation of what sex really is.” — Iyana
Another creator explains how watching porn is, to her, inherently feminist:
“Watching porn is a feminist act. It's always thought the person who watches porn is a cisgender man, and that's how it's portrayed in many media portrayals—it's always a young teen guy who gets walked in on by his mother while wacking off to something X-rated. Feminism's foundation is the drive to fight for equality, for people of all genders in particular. So why should cis womxn who watch porn be more taboo? People who know what gets them off are strong; it's only in recent years, I think that womxn have opened up more and more about pleasure and what they want. We're owning our sexuality more and more as we become more liberated...Porn teaches people what they like. It's good to build conversational sexual relationships with partners by watching porn—you'll know what each other likes. It helped me come into my sexuality and understand more about pleasure.” — Sammy
All this is to say there is no right answer about porn. Is porn feminist? I have no idea. Can it be? Sure. What’s important is to examine things from all sides and decide where you stand—what’s important to you?
If you’re looking for ethical feminist porn, feel free to check out the links below. Stay safe, stay mindful, and stay sexy, duh.
About the Author
Elena Phethean (she/her/hers) is a junior from Pleasantville, NY studying Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Community Health at Tufts University. There, she is the co-coordinator of Tufts Sex Health Reps, a student group bringing comprehensive and inclusive sexuality education and sexual assault prevention to campus. She also loves music and sings with her a cappella group, the Tufts Jackson Jills. As a queer woman, she is especially passionate about women’s/gender minority health and queer sexual health outcomes, as well as working with survivors.
