I had originally planned on just responding to The Librarian’s post on porn, but found that, as is my wont, I was getting a little long-winded and thought why not do a real post?
I watch porn, not a lot and not terribly often, but I’d wager more than most Smithies, and maybe even most women. I think the reason for this is that porn has for so long been relegated as being something for men, and it is obviously produced for men, and with their pleasure and desires in mind, but I think it’s important to realize that the kind of porn that most people are (first) exposed to: featuring overly-enhanced and made-up women who start to “orgasm” the minute a penis comes anywhere near them, and doing it in positions that not even a contortionist would have sex in, is not the only kind of porn out there. There are other kinds of porn that are readily available and cut very much against this mainstream porn ideal.
Amateur porn, for example, often features couples having real sex and real (or at least less fake) orgasms, in feasible positions, and features a much wider spectrum of people than other porn. For me, personally, it is way hotter to watch a video of two people who are real, with realistic proportions, having sex and enjoying it, or at the very least making me believe they’re enjoying it, than to watch some mainstream porn flick that makes me roll my eyes at the cheesy dialogue and the fact that the sex is mechanical and passionless. Unfortunately, finding this kind of porn takes some poking around on websites, which can be off-putting if you feel clueless as to where to look, or feel awkward about looking at porn at all.
I don’t think that anyone should feel as though they have to watch porn, and it’s certainly not the only way, or even the best way necessarily, to get off. But, by the same token, if women don’t watch or seek out porn that truly appeals to them because they are afraid of a stigma that might be attached to them for doing so, or because they don’t realize that there is more to porn than the mainstream stuff we’re often exposed to, how will porn ever change? Women need to become more vocal consumers if they want porn that is made with them in mind. Some studios have already started to do this, The Albright Sheriff mentioned Femme Productions, but until women are seeking out and promoting the kinds of porn and erotica that appeal to them, which for me, and many others, means not fake (the sex or the people), with real (or better acted) emotions and passions, and that are empowering and not degrading to the female performers, or any of the performers for that matter, this kind of porn will continue to be pushed to the side as the budgets are given to those movies made for a male audience. I don’t think the solution is in condemning mainstream porn completely, or saying that it should be banned entirely. I think the far better approach is to work to change the face of mainstream porn: to make women informed and vocal consumers of porn and erotica, and to demand the kind of porn that they like, whatever that may be, rather than simply take what is out there and think of it as unchangeable.
None of this is to say that I have no love for actual porn stars: I think Sasha Grey is awesome, and have a massive thing for Faye Reagan, both because I wish I were as gorgeous as her and because I seriously want to do her, but, again, neither of these women look at all like the bleach blond, DD-cup, orange-fake-tan porn stars that most people picture. I think the fact that both of these performers are becoming big names in the porn industry (well Sasha Grey has been for a while) shows that the face of mainstream porn is already changing, and that even if you don't like the first film you see, if you look around a bit you can find something that does appeal to you.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents on this topic. Other thoughts?
Love,
Molly St. Marks
This comment is going to be two parts because blogspot hates me and my tendencies toward long-winded responses:
ReplyDeleteIt is better to acquiesce to a unjust system or to change it entirely? Personally, I think it is better to attempt to change it.
This idea of female-friendly porn is an attractive one, but I simply don't think that it is possible within the way that pornography is created and conceptualized within our society. I would argue that the reason pornography exists is because of the male gaze - it perverts sexuality into performance, and reinforces a cultural ideal of female sexuality as being something to be viewed through a lens, to be captured and deadened and placed on film, with a very clear barrier between the viewer and the performer. (Why do people create amateur porn? Because pornography is considered by our society to be a sexual aspiration.) Female sexuality is then something to be viewed, not actively participated in. Women are conditioned to see their sexuality in the same way that a male onlooker does; think also of the way that women's bodies are used to sell anything from alcohol to shoes. Male bodies are to be considered funny or powerful; women's bodies are purely sexual. Our sexuality in its natural state, then, is retrained and conditioned to view itself through the male gaze, and its conceptualization of female sexuality as a display.
PART TWO:
ReplyDeleteI am also hesitant towards your porn star examples. Sasha Grey is probably one of the most aggressively exploited young women in the industry - both in her work within it and outside it (The Girlfriend Experience, for example, which was also a horrendous film.) She is promoted, again and again, as a kind of intellectual example, making sexual violence a-okay due to her name-dropping Godard a few dozen times (the oft-repeated story, for example, of her asking her male co-star to punch her in the stomach during her first porn shoot at age eighteen.) I was unfamiliar with Faye Reagan and so I wikipedia'd her, and found a link to a disgusting avn story detailing a film of hers (I don't want to repeat any exact wording since it was pretty triggering and I don't want to remember it, but one detail that sticks out in my mind is how lovingly the male writer detailed her vomiting during a blow job.) (Are these women making the "choice" to do these acts? Perhaps, but they are also making these choices in a world in which sexual violence against women is generally accepted and their decisions will be applauded by the patriarchy. What kind of choice is this?)
What I am attempting to say is that while the faces of these women - these porn stars - have changed into a supposedly more natural look, the antithesis of what this poster calls "the bleach blond, DD-cup, orange-fake-tan porn stars that most people picture," the same exploitation and degradation is being perpetuated within their films. No real change has taken place.
I am not pushing to outlaw or censor anything. I think certain masturbatory aids are pretty great. (I still can't think of a certain passage within Helen Dunning's novel "A Spell of Winter" without shivering.) But our choices have consequences; pornography has the very real consequence of damaging real human bodies, emotions, and relationships.
I could also go into the terrifying effects it has on limiting our senses of imagination and wonder, and what it means to attempt to compartmentalize, commercialize, and commodify something as complex as human desire, but this is already a pretty long comment and I am going to go to bed.
- Rhian
I do think it's absolutely crucial to distinguish between mainstream porn, certain kinds of amateur porn, and porn made by feminist/queer productions companies. Friends of mine are very big fans of The Crash Pad series and other films made by Pink and White Productions, for example. These films typically feature actors who exemplify a wider range of body types, gender presentations, and ethnicity. Some films feature people who are couples in real life choosing what acts they are going to perform and then discussing the whole thing afterward. This has some of the same positive aspects of watching amateur porn, but with the fantasy of a "plot" and so forth. confusionis, I wonder if these types of films present the same problems for you? I disagree that people make amateur porn because they consider pornography a sexual aspiration, but rather because they enjoy being watched and performing their sexuality for others. I guess I'm not bothered by the idea of sexuality as performance, as long as the one performing is fully consenting to the acts and the consumption of the final product by an audience. Surely mainstream porn encourages hetero women to think of their sexuality as a performance for the male gaze, which is problematic, but some people are also just exhibitionists and enjoy the performance aspect. I'm not saying this in defense of porn stars, but more generally about sex-as-performance.
ReplyDeleteI find a lot of porn quite disturbing and agree that it is probably harmful to society and to the people who watch it (and their partners). However, I think that porn, in general, serves an important function for a lot of people. Some people can be totally satisfied by reading erotica (a lot of which, by the way, is just as terrible as mainstream porn in its depictions of women, even if no real women are involved in its creation), other people don't have any desire or need for sex aids. But for some, porn can help with sexual satisfaction when they find themselves without a partner, or with a partner who has different interests/abilities in bed (as a previous post mentioned). I think (good) porn can also be beneficial for young people who want to experiment with their sexuality but who are not ready to do so with a partner.