Getting turned on to feminist porn

THE tag #feministporn isn’t trending on Twitter — not just yet.

Perhaps it’s because the term is a relative neologism, to many an oxymoron and to others an expletive. That said, the growing interest surrounding feminist pornography is testament to a shift in sexual literacy — namely that women are viable consumers of porn with desires that are absolutely diverse rather than absolute.

Testing the edges of the mainstream is award-winning author, columnist, sex educator, speaker, radio host, and feminist pornographer Tristan Taormino. Having launched the inaugural Feminist Porn Conference this year and co-edited The Feminist Porn Book, Taormino knows a thing or three about politics of pleasure. Her mission, to challenge prevailing stereotypes of sexual representation, has made her a sex-positive scion for a 2.0 generation and a game-changer in a male-dominated industry.

This is no mean feat. In particular since the legitimacy of feminist porn as a genre has been subject to three decades of debate. When the infamous ‘Feminist Sex Wars’ reached fever pitch in the 1980s, a schism grew among those who saw porn as a tool of patriarchal repression and those who championed it as a vehicle of erotic free speech.

Fast forward to a post-millennial age and the debate continues as Lovelace, a new biopic documenting the controversial story of Deep Throat porn star Linda Lovelace, hits Irish cinemas this weekend. So just what is all the fuss about?

This is difficult to fathom when I speak to Taormino over Skype. Articulate, intelligent, and funny — the Wesleyan University grad bucks the pornographer cliché with her female-friendly approach to a much tabooed topic. “Feminist pornographers are committed to things like gender equality and social justice,” she says.

“Feminist porn explores ideas about desire, beauty, pleasure, power, and seeks to do so through not just challenging stereotypes about gender, race, class, ability that we see in mainstream porn but also creating alternative representation. It is ethically-produced, which means that performers are paid a fair wage and they are treated with care, consent, and respect.”

For the New Yorker, feminist porn is a collaborative, performer-driven process where actors choose their screen partners, positions, props (such as sex toys, barriers, and lubrication) all based on their actual sexual activity rather than a formulaic script. Taormino aims to create three-dimensional characters that best represent women and men.

This is interesting as the label assumes a woman-centric approach to film-making and viewership, something which Taormino is quick to address. “There is this long discussion that goes on and on about how porn objectifies and demeans women,” she says, “but there is porn out there that objectifies and demeans men when they show them as a disembodied penis, when we don’t see their face, or the rest of their body or even hear their voices. That’s pretty awful.”

Indeed, attacking the gender binary means getting familiar with the plurality of sexual tastes and fantasies that the mass market has overlooked.

The socially enshrined belief that women aren’t visual, a theory espoused by Dr Alfred Kinsey’s 1950s research, has been debunked by recent research from Dr Michael Bailey’s 2001 study performed at Northwestern University which found that women were aroused by a wide variety of erotic imagery.

A 2006 study at McGill University used thermal imaging to measure the arousal rates of both men and women when watching adult films. Researchers concluded there was no difference between men and women in the time it took to become aroused.

Couples porn, porn with a plot, erotica, and even 50 Shades have traditionally been connoted with women’s porn. But filmmakers like Taormino are supporting a broader field of experience and power dynamics not generally associated with a rated X chromosome. Bondage, discipline, dominance, and submission are just some of the topics covered on her website puckerup.com and in the 25 films she has made under Smart Ass Productions.

“I feel like every time I talk to someone about their sexuality I get a totally different story,” Taormino tells me. “As a society we just do not understand female sexual desire and its very core. We want it to fit into a box. We want to make a pill to make it work when it’s broken. We want to be able to sum it up in two sentences. We want it to be a nice soundbite. We’ve been attempting to create these models of female sexual desire where we can make these absolute statements: All women like this; all women have their greatest orgasms when they do this; it takes this long for most women to achieve this. In my experience, everyone is really different and the complexities and nuances are what’s so exciting.”

Although still a nascent genre, feminist porn comprises about 10% of the multibillion-dollar porn market, which is significant of a paradigm shift. “I think people really, first and foremost, appreciate that feminist pornographers have a mission and a set of standards and we are willing to put those out there in the world. They don’t have to question whether it looks like someone was coerced or they weren’t into what they were doing, or they look uncomfortable, or they look like they were out of their element — what was going on behind the scenes here?”

Just as ethical food and fashion have grown credence due to a growing dissatisfaction with the supply chain and its impact on the well-being of those involved, the message created by free porn sites has led more discerning viewers to look for alternatives.

In order for feminist porn to remain sustainable as an industry, people need to get political with their wallets.

So how can people ensure they are buying the real deal? “On my website puckerup.com I have a list with all the links to people who are self-identified feminist pornographers,” advises Taormino. “Often at the Feminist Porn Awards that happen every year in Canada, they release a list of their nominees. That’s another way to find out who the filmmakers are in that world. I think you have to be an educated consumer. You need to figure out where your porn is coming from, who is making it, if that person or company has a mission, has ethics, has posted or discussed them online; if they work with performers who are online or have an online presence and say, ‘I really enjoy working for this company or this producer, or this director and here is why.’”

As revolutionary as feminist porn appears, can it answer the age-old question, what do women want? “I think it can,” claims Taormino. “I think the answer is they want to tell their stories, they want to speak their truths, they want you to listen and they want you to stop trying to limit their sexual expression.” It’s a revolution all right and the battle is only getting started.