Porn and ethnicity

Via Womanist Musings comes a link to a CTV Winnipeg report titled Members of aboriginal community voice concerns over pornographic website.

The article continues:

Members of Winnipeg's aboriginal community are speaking out against a pornographic website featuring only native women. They believe the women featured on it are vulnerable and were targeted.

Lisa Michell of the Women's Memorial March says the site furthers stereotypes of aboriginal women. The site advertises "casino girls," "reservation hotties" and "welfare chicks."

The specific accusation in terms of exploitation is that the website's owner deliberately targeted aboriginal women with addictions, or who were unaware of the nature of the consent forms they were asked to sign.

I cannot speak to the truth or otherwise of those accusations, but the accusation about stereotyping is certainly true of a great many porn sites that offer images and videos of women of a particular racial background or appearance. Never mind whether they actually belong to those groups; porn is about physical appearances and fantasy all the way through, so if people fit the fantasy image of group X then that is how the porn featuring those people will be marketed.

And I think that a lot of the time when a person deliberately seeks out images of women from a certain racial background (in his mind, of course, they are from it even if they aren't actually) then a lot of the reason for having those fetishes is because of assumptions and stereotypes that the porn user holds about what qualities a woman from that racial background is like, whether physically or in sexual behaviour. Yes, there are some who do get off specifically on the physical appearance of (say) very dark skin, but most associate race with some other characteristics beside the physical features. Certainly they will find the porn marketed along the lines of those assumptions. I would like to say it isn't so, but as a consumer of pornographic materials for nearly 10 years I know that everywhere you go to look for porn, you will find sections specifically aimed at meeting racial fetishes and it is always the same, whether online or in sex shops, the way that the products on sale present themselves.

Without a doubt, this is a really big problem with porn as it is made and sold today. I would hope that workplace discrimination laws could and should be employed to combat this sort of crap being spouted but because porn is a marginalised industry, paradoxically it means that the law is less able to regulate it or deal with these problems. I would like there to be much better guidance for consumers of porn so that businesses who perpetuate these stereotypes and racist assumptions can be boycotted easily while those who create porn without resorting to such lazy tactics (and who look after their employees and performers properly) can be promoted and supported.

In practice though, although I can avoid buying or using the porn that carries these offensive racial stereotype adverts, most businesses selling and distributing the stuff don't seem to bother to make a distinction, and don't seem to care to discriminate between this and porn that (while people may have issues with it in other regards) is not racially stereotyped. And if all or most businesses are equally bad, ethical shopping is pretty hard to do. (Of course, this is where the anti-porn folks say "so don't buy any porn anywhere! Ha-ha!" but that's not really going to work as a mass consumer movement, not with porn or any other product, so it's not likely to have a real effect.)

I make no bones about it: I am pro-porn and think that it has positive uses (I also think it has negative uses, such as when kids are using it to learn about sex - but then, when I rule the world sex education will have classes explaining just why porn is not like real sex). However, I think that it behoves us, as pro-porn activists, to be active against porn as well, or rather, against the many problems that are real and are genuinely a part of the way porn is presented and made these days. The business isn't going to stop being racist like this of its own accord (if, as I believe, those racist assumptions are the very reason why people buy the product, it would not be a good business model to change it without outside pressure!)

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I said at the start that I cannot speak to the truth or otherwise of the accusations that the website targeted vulnerable women. I would like to believe that it is not true. I also think it would be naive to believe it is not true, at least without a lot of further investigation. Certainly, the excuse used by the site's owner of "If they didn't want to do, they wouldn't accept the money. That's the way I look at it," sounds suspect to me (just like, "if she doesn't want to be a waitress in a greasy-spoon café then she wouldn't take that job" sounds a bit dodgy reasoning). Again, the description of how the women were recruited raises questions: "He says he walked through the area looking for referrals and paid young women to have sex with him, which he filmed for his website." This conjures images of seeking women out on the street - and who are most likely to be out on the street during the day? Those without jobs and possibly without homes.

I don't know the basis of the allegations - I don't know if it's the same assumption that "no woman would ever willingly do that!" or if there's real grounds for concern. For all I know, the women that were filmed were all middle-class backgrounds doing it for fun and a story to tell their mates. But could a website owner be unscrupulous in the quest to make profit? Of course, and when you're dealing with a marginalised industry that exists in a legal grey area, one cannot assume that everyone will be a nice person! I repeat, for clarity, that I have made no assumption about the guilt or innocence of this guy (to the extent of avoiding naming him here, even though the news article does) and of course, "innocent until proven guilty" is the baseline to work from. I have reasons to be suspicious of both sides of the story, and that is where I leave it.