On Porn

In the recent Salon.com article, “Adventures in the skin trade,” Priya Jain reviews The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, a book by Nina Hartley, and raises the age old feminist question: “Does pornography empower or degrade women who appear in it?”
I really appreciated this article – I am glad it was written and I think it does a fairly good job of identifying the insanely complex issues involved. Read it, in entirety. And when you do, consider the following, and then comment. I’d love to know your thoughts.
Jain talks about “the sort of mantra for pro-porn feminists everywhere”: “if I want to have sex on camera, who are you to stop me? My body, my choice, damn it!” She then raises a “gut-wrenching story” of a porn actress who was raped on the set “while the crew watche[d] in complicity” and continued filming.
Jain admits to being unable to reconcile these intense discrepancies, and reports that Hartley, and the women featured in the book, can’t either. She tries to find the positive and writes, “if the porn industry had been shut down, we…wouldn’t have had the wonderfully sex-positive stars like Hartley, Seka and Sprinkle, all of whom found a form of expression that provided more than just a job, and a fulfilling life.”
Now, I haven’t read the book, but I have read a ton of theory on this and there are some things not mentioned which I think are interesting parts of the debate:
1) In our culture, sex is often used as an oppressive force. Women are the overwhelming victims of rape, incest, sexual harassment, genital mutilation, etc. When we, as women, support commoditized images of women being “fucked” and dominated (as is common in porn), are we allowing the women as fuck-ee, men as fuck-er paradigm to flourish?
2) Legal protection of pornography is premised on the idea that some level of social equality exists among the actors involved – that there is agency, free will, and liberty being exercised. But when we know that equality between the sexes doesn’t exist, can we really say that women are “freely choosing” this lifestyle? What about economic hardship that puts them there?
3) Is the ultimate goal for women to be empowered or equal, or for women to be happy? If women enjoy having sex for money, or if they enjoy the money it makes them/the status is gives them, should we deny them that?
This stuff comes from MacKinnon and Robin West. There is a lot out there on this topic and I think it’s essential for women to consider. Let me know what you think…