Saving sex by saving porn (not even remotely safe for work).

I was wandering around the feminist blogosphere and ran up against a thread of heavy (justified) anti-porn feminist rage.  So, typical me, I responded…and it became a manifesto still waiting for moderation.  So I thought I would post a version of it here, somewhere I’ve lurked for years without ever authoring anything.  So here’s my passion pro-porn plea.

Another perspective:

Porn has become more misogynist and extreme in recent years, and this terrifies me, because with it this empty, harmful, unrealistic approach to sex (something I LOVE and will fight tooth and nail to protect) has become imprinted on a generation of young mens’ minds as the only way sex can be.  The studies that correlate you men viewing porn and young men becoming numb to the abuse of women, or being more likely to perpetrate it themselves, is real.  I’m a scientist and I take that stuff seriously.  You can’t Google anything without finding sites advertising women being drugged and assaulted, or girls who look too young to be legal, or scenes with extreme violence and verbal degradation in a decidedly non-consensual, awful context (I’m kinky myself, so I see room for pain to be pleasurable, but that’s a different story and not what I’ll address here).  Our porn is the logical outgrowth of our culture: one that tells men that women won’t ask for what they want, that want your attention (or your penis) while still saying no.  Porn culture teaches young men that when women don’t look like they’re enjoying it, when they look like they’re faking, when they resist, that really they want it.  And that you deserve to give it to them.  These dynamics in porn culture come from these dynamics in the larger culture: the erasure of female agency and desire, the phallo-centricism, the heterosexism, the rigid enforcement of gender norms on all sexes.  So I see why most feminists and feminist allies tend to hate it.

But porn will never, ever, in a million years go away. Never. Never ever. People will always want to watch each other get off. I’m a bisexual lifetime feminist and I’ll be the first to admit I enjoy it. But I don’t like mainstream porn. Most porn (especially most cheap porn) is a terrible, corrosive thing. But good porn? It’s the best. The absolute best. Real bodies and real people and real pleasure and passion? Makes my toes curl every time. And love it or hate it, good porn is the only way feminists can win back sex for ALL of us: men, women, gay, straight and everyone in between.

What makes good porn? I have some of my own criteria:

1. Body-type diversity, especially with the women. Women that look like me (scrawny & wiry with board-flat chest), women with gorgeous, generous curves and bangin’ big thighs. People whose clothes my friends could borrow. Also, the inclusive of disabled people in ways that grants them the room for a dignified sexuality without fetishizing their differences. And I want a high percentage of people who don’t shave (though I’ve come to terms with the fact that some people honestly want to).

2. The acknowledgment that women get please in all kinds of ways. From vibrators, penises, dildos, oral sex, vaginal sex, anal sex, manual stimulation, manual penetration. And that sometimes it take a long time. And that that’s ok. Female agency and women asking for what they want, whatever that is (not men magically somehow knowing, or worse, not caring).

3. Everyone looks like they’re having fun. There’s smiling and awkward pauses and wet pussies and giggles and moans that sound like the real ones your lover makes.

4. Trans-positivity. Trans and genderqueer folk who are presented as beautiful, sexy individuals (not “trannnies” or “shemales”) who are viewed as whole people with myriad different types of sensualities and not fetishized for their trans-status.

5. Racial diversity. I get weirded out when every vid from a certain studio is full of women who look like Scandinavian blow up dolls.  That doesn’t reflect my life and my experience.  I want porn that acknowledges that people of of all races are beautiful, something rare in our dominant culture that marginalizes or exoticizes minority bodies.

6. Safe sex. Condoms, gloves, dams, whatever. I want a disclaimers telling me that there were safe words and that any performers not using barriers were tested and consented (mostly it’s just real life partners/lovers that do that in the stuff I watch)

7. Behavior outside the gender norm. This is the most important for me. I want porn with women pegging men, I want lesbians who aren’t all super-high-femme, because butch is super, super hot. I want straight sex without penetration, and lesbian sex with penetration and guy-on-guy where they actually look like they DON’T mind being in the same room together.

I want eye contact. I want squishy and messy.  I want after-interviews where everyone’s glowing and sweaty and talking about what they liked.

And slowly but surely, it’s rising. The past few years have seen a surge is the ‘queer porn’ industry, and I’m so, so happy. I understand why feminists identify as anti-porn – I did too until I found this little world within a world. Why wouldn’t you when 99.5% of what’s out there is terrible? But we won’t win the anti-porn war, and that’s ok, as long as we win the GOOD porn war.

There is NOTHING wrong with people wanting to get off to other people getting off. What we need is for those people making porn to WANT to be making porn, and not just because it can be lucrative for a lucky few. And there totally are those people out their. Exhibitionists who get off on other people’s voyeurism, or people who know that by being a trans man/big woman/whatever else in an erotic industry they are doing more to open peoples minds above what is beautiful and real than a million sensitivity trainings ever would. I want a world where people who make kinky porn are people who actually LIKE kink, and where women who make lesbian porn actually LIKE sleeping with women.

I encourage anyone who wants to change our sick, sick porn culture to check out some of these fly revolutionaries, political exhibitionists who call out industry abuse, raise money against trafficking and rabble-rouse for queer rights. Here are some (NSFW!) starting points (just few of my favorites):

http://www.jizlee.com – revolutionary genderqueer pornstar’s blog, someone who touchingly said in a recent award speech that the queer porn industry was the first place they felt their identity was accepted and celebrated.

http://www.nofauxxx.com – erotic photos (mostly) and some video of and for people of every persuasion

http://www.queerporn.tv – new site, great content, hits all of my requirements out of the park, which kinky content that you never need to worry about being exploitative, abusive or anything but awesomely consensual.

http://www.furrygirl.com – the DIY site of a hairy, undeniably feminist porn entrepreneur (though unfortunately her life in the sex industry has brought her so much flack from feminists she distances herself from the term now)

http://www.pinkwhite.biz – you can’t go wrong with anything by Shine Louise Houston. Every film (and they really are films, cinematography and all) by this queer-identified woman of color is a boundary-breaking beauty.

You may not like porn (even feminist porn!) and that’s ok, it’s not eveyone’s thing! But something we can all get behind is promoting a new image of sex in the media. If all shitty porn was gone tomorrow, what would replace it? People (especially the young, impressionable dudes that make up the bulk of the audience) will still want something to work it to, and we need something inclusive, consensual and safe to fill that void. Banning never works. We don’t ban porn, we make better porn.  We can’t censor.  What we can do is offer a better alternative. We can promote it, we can tell our friends, we can fight like lions for the 1% of porn worth fighting for, so that one day it will be 2%. And then one day, it will be more.  And don’t let anyone who says that young feminists have gotten distracted from the real arenas of our own oppression and that we’re picking frivolous, ‘fun’ battles minimize the importance of this fight. Porn is a major avenue to redefining the public dialogue around sex, and we can’t let that opportunity slip through our fingers.

Read what these performers say about their profession and their politics. Read why they love what they do. It makes my day every time.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

Join the Conversation