Is the porn industry's feminist revolution here at last?
- Julia Martincic
- Feb 21, 2017
- 6 min read
"One time a director instructed me to wait five minutes, fake an orgasm and let my colleague come on my face. And I said, just give me an additional five minutes, I’ll have a real orgasm and then he can come on my face. To me, that’s feminist porn in a nutshell.”
Madison Young smiles and sips her coffee. Her name is one that might make some nod their head in acknowledgement, albeit discreetly. She’s been part of the porn industry for over 10 years, starting out in mainstream films before moving to the sub-genre of feminist porn. ”I found that performing was a way that I could do something really interesting, bringing my feminist ethos into erotic film at the same time that I was raising money for my feminist gallery,” she says of her rather controversial career choice.
Young is part of a movement that has been on the rise since the 80s, with sex-positive feminists believing that sexual images are not monolithic and can be a source of inspiration, liberation and empowerment for viewers. These ideas set the stage for the emergence of what is known as feminist porn.
The feminist porn industry is taking shape in an era where porn is being watched more and more by women. According to a survey from British photographer Amanda de Cadenet, more than 1 in 3 women in the UK admit to watching porn at least once a week. The results are echoed in a survey conducted by BLATANT, where 77 percent of the respondents said they believed porn can be feminist. One way to think about the idea of feminist porn, according to Lynn Comella, professor of Gender and Sexualities Studies at University of Nevada, is as both an intervention and a cultural critique. ”Feminist porn takes a cultural form that has historically been seen as the purview of men and reworks sexual images and conventions in an effort to explore new and more diverse kinds of desires, fantasies, couplings and representation,” she says.
For Young, what defines the porn she stars in as feminist is that the pleasure she showcases on film is real. ”Having authentic experiences of pleasure, real orgasms, and being able to talk about what you desire and your real life kinks, that’s what matters to me. Simply put, it’s about communicating as a performer while the camera is rolling,” she says.
A real orgasm on camera does not mean it has to be soft sex, however. Young has done it all: shoe-sniffing, latex, strap-on play, leather, you name it. ”One interesting experience I had was working with Jeff Gord who used to make us into different objects. He once rented an entire race track and had fetish models made into race cars and race around the tracks. We were either vaginally or anally powered. He was truly an innovator.
Young has won several awards for her acting, many of them by the Feminist Porn Awards, an annual event held in Toronto. Carlyle Jansen is part of the team that decides which new films to give some glory. ”When we launched the awards a decade ago we wanted to showcase hat the face of porn was changing. It’s really exciting, because now you have people of colour making porn, you have trans people and people with disabilities making porn.
Communities who are often under-represented, stereotyped and fetishized are now making porn on their own terms.” To Jansen, feminist porn is about inclusiveness. But as someone who has watched a lot of porn, quality is also needed. ”We’re looking for something that’s enjoyable to watch. Are we watching a 10-minute blow job scene where we got the point after 10 seconds? Is there interesting music? Good acting? Is it well-lit and framed? The theme might not be everyone’s turn-on but you have to at least enjoy watching it.”
Although the feminist porn industry is seemingly thriving, so is its counter-movement. The feminist argument against pornography, which began to take roots in the 1970s with the second wave of feminism, boils down to issues of harm. Pornography, according to this perspective, is a patriarchal tool of oppression that contributes to gender inequality and sexual violence. Dr Julia Long, author of the book Anti-porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Feminism believes porn, regardless of the form it might take, is inherently harmful to women.
”I think the idea of feminist porn is nonsensical. It makes about as much sense as saying you’re a vegetarian carnivore,” she says, adding that she gets agitated by the question itself. Dr Long believes that the new generation of young feminist are merely ambling around issues without reaching their core, and should look back to the second wave of feminism. ”I think the argument about feminist porn is indicative of a lack of feminist critique and imagination because it sets the notion that sexuality is about consumption. I absolutely refuse that that’s the case. With porn you’re creating a product, and whatever the nature of that product may be it will always be variations of eroticising inequality.”
Dr Long is not alone in her beliefs. Prominent anti-pornography voices such as Julie Bindel and Germaine Greer believe that the ”need” to watch porn is a constructed desire under patriarchal capitalism and that feminist porn is merely a distraction from the harm done to women in the industry and the way it shapes attitudes to sex. Although not a lot of research has been done on the topic, one academic analysis of bestselling pornography in 2010 shows 90 percent of scenes “contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging and slapping,” and that “perpetrators of aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were overwhelmingly female.
"Real orgasms, authentic experiences, that's what matters to me"
Long doesn’t believe adding “feminism” to its name will change the harm done by porn. ”There is so much sexist porn out there, but it mirrors a whole culture that is,” says Anna Arrowsmith, the first feminist porn director in the UK. Starting out in the porn industry as a film-graduate in the 90s, she went into it politically motivated. ”I wanted women to be more demanding, because you either had male-oriented porn or nothing,” she says. She believes Dr Long’s argument takes root in a fantasy future. ”Her argument only makes sense if you’re a Marxist. Everything is commodified, from what you eat to what you wear to what you see. You go into the market you want to change and change it from within,” she says.
Arrowsmith believes that the feminist porn industry has already influenced society’s relationship with porn in a positive way. ”When I started out, going to a sex shop was really daunting. Now, a majority of them have to cater towards women in order to survive. So we have made a big cultural difference. You might not make the most money, but culturally you’re able to make a big impact.”
But even within in the sub-genre of feminist porn there seems to be disagreement about what it should entail. Arrowsmith, who has now quit the porn scene in order to lecture at a university, believes authentic pleasure is a problematic concept. ”I don’t agree with the idea that pleasure in porn has to be real otherwise it’s no good. When you go see a horror film you don’t expect it to be real, you expect it to be performed. What I want is to create a product that entertains, that’s sexy, and that twins with my feminist ethos of the woman being a subject rather than object. But I think it can put pressure on the performers if their pleasure has to be authentic.”
Although Young has a different take on feminist porn, Arrowsmith welcomes it. ”We don’t expect all men to agree, so why should we? I think it’s great with a variety of opinions. Porn is varied, like feminism is varied.” To Young, the most important part of making porn is the message it sends out. ”In the same way that some films could give a negative view of how to communicate about sex and how we might feel about our bodies, it also has the power to make us feel great and teach consent and communication,” she says. She also believes that feminist porn does make a difference. ”A lot of us have won big mainstream porn awards. I see attitudes changing within the porn industry. There’s a curiosity about this genre and how they can work with it. I see that we’re getting larger.”
10 years in, Young is still loving the work she does for a living. She still has to deal with her fair share of judgment, however. Especially when people hear she has two kids. ”People put so much stigma around sex and sexuality, and therefore the documentation of it. I can be a mother and still be a sex activist in front and behind the camera. That tends to bring up a lot of emotions in people, especially some feminists.” ”Porn isn’t inherently not feminist,” Young says, and pauses, seemingly frustrated. ”That would be the same saying as sex is inherently not feminist."
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