Lisa at Feministe has a great post up entitled Can We Talk About Porn Without Having the Same Fight Over and Over?. Some excerpts:

Sure, mainstream Hollywood movies and TV shows often send messages about gender and sexuality and body image that are just as hideous [as porn], 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?

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?).

Hear, hear!

And this is my biggest issue with most feminist discussions of porn. I am not anti-porn, by which I mean I think sexually explicit material is a necessary part of the world (since we are animals unduly obsessed with sex and reproduction) and, dare I say it, not in theory an unhealthy thing. Sexual material is not, by its very nature, “bad”, or harmful, and in fact I would argue the opposite. I think an openness about sexuality would serve people much better than this behind-closed-doors, abstinence-only bullshit which only serves to endanger the physical and mental health of, well, everyone, but most importantly the children who are raised to be totally ignorant about their own bodies and options. And I find the argument that porn is inherently harmful, from a feminist standpoint, to be little different in practice from the radical religious objections on the same and similar subjects, though of course, I know anti-porn feminists mean well. (But, well, we all know what the road to hell is paved with.)

And in many cases, I would argue sexual depictions of certain groups could, at least in theory, be empowering, the same way that any depiction in the media of marginalized groups can be empowering. Especially when you have certain groups which have systematically had their sexual identity stripped from them, either made into sexless creatures or objects of fetishization. (Some examples: fat women, transfolk, people with disabilities, people of color, women in general — all of which, of course, are exploited in mainstream pornography and even in less “mature” entertainment, but do not necessarily have to be depicted in such a way, and, I believe, can and are occasionally depicted in ways which are not exploitative, which are healthy and empowering, in both sexually explicit and other media.) I don’t think this is necessarily possible within the framework of the mainstream porn industry, but, shit, am I the only one who’s read some damn good, sex-positive, written erotica around here?

On the other hand, I do have a lot of huge problems with the pornography industry. I have huge problems with most industries, being the radical pinko commie that I am. I know the industry harms women, both those who participate in the making of pornography and those who are exposed to it, and that is wrong and needs to be changed. I don’t disagree with the anti-porn crowd on the harm mainstream porn does.

What I disagree with is how best to handle this — I am more interested in empowering sex workers from a legal and economic standpoint than I am in attacking the industry in a way that risks penalizing those it exploits. I support talking to the women involved and helping them implement their own solutions to these problems in ways which work for them, whether or not I approve of their profession (hypothetically, of course, since mostly I don’t care how people pay their bills), rather than trying to subvert the first amendment with bullshit standards of “obscenity” when one man’s porn is another man’s classical art (or one woman’s porn is another woman’s feminist statement), anyway.

What I disagree with is the definition of “pornography” from which the anti-porn viewpoint operates — so often, the definition seems to be, “porn is sexually explicit material I don’t like, but erotica is that I enjoy, and erotica is fine”. All sexually explicit material is pornographic, and not all of it is necessarily bad. Just, you know, most of it, which is true of a lot of other less controversial things in this sick, misogynistic world. Admitting that there are other ways of depicting sexuality and that not all depictions are bad doesn’t really hurt the anti-mainstream-porn case, so far as I can tell — but using definitions of “pornography” which are not standard and highly subjective is harmful to those of us who use sex in our art and writing as a way of exploring female empowerment.

And it’s so baffling to me that we can come from the same place — “mainstream porn is disgusting, degrading, misogynist, and racist” — and still not manage to even have a rational discussion about the subject.

Oh, yeah, anyway, go read all of Lisa’s post. Damn it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 11:51 am and is filed under Feminist Movement, Sexuality.