Why reform the porn industry?

(Found via Feministe's Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday comments)

Natalie Dzerins @ Forty Shades of Grey writes a post titled, "Why Oppose the Porn industry?"

She says that she identifies as "a pro-sex, anti-porn socialist feminist." Pro-sex meaning, "I think that the act of sex is a wonderful, natural thing, and encourage everyone to do what makes them happy (within obvious boundaries)." Socialist (or Marxist) feminist meaning discussing empowerment of women through widespread social change, and not "liberal" feminism's focus on individual empowerment.

She writes:

With this post, I hope to set out the reasons why my political philosophies mean I cannot accept pornography, and I hope to also answer the most common counter-arguments I encounter when espousing these views. This post was written with the invaluable help of Georgie (AKA @mortari), to whom I am eternally grateful. I will denote the parts she wrote in italics.

I want to get into these, and if her responses are counter-counter-arguments, then mine must be counter-counter-counter-arguments (or something).

She starts by quoting Dines and Jensen, which is always going to get on my bad side. I take nothing they say to have any validity. They are despised by the people they claim to want to help (sex workers) and they do not try to engage with the lived realities of those people - or, indeed, the men whom they appear to despise.

I'll draw out only one thing, which is Natalie Dzerin's own extraction. She writes:

I also oppose pornography for the body fascism that is endemic to the culture and the way that it seeps over into the mainstream as a ‘norm’.

Esxcept that in the porn I've seen, bodies have tended to be much less conforming to contemporary beauty standards than in women's magazines, or Lads' mags. In general, the more mainstream the media, the more misogynist it is - hardcore porn, for all its surface problems, arguably has fewer bad messages about women than stuff you can buy in your supermarket.

The post's co-author Georgie writes:

In a culture of gender inequality it is impossible to make porn which isn't oppressive.

However, I was of the impression that feminist analysis (particularly of a Marxist type such as that described by Ms Dzerin) says that all media suffers the same problems. It isn't porn per se, but media in general.

This sounds like a reason to be opposed to any form of writing, television, movie-making, or whatever!

She starts with the "choice" canard, as a common challenge to her position. I am not a fan of discussing this, because (as Dzerin points out) choices are not made in a vacuum, and it is also quite possible to say "I support your right to make that choice, but I think it is a poor choice to make" (or, as Dzerin puts it, "I do not oppose the womens’ right to be in the films, I oppose the films themselves.")

The question about choice and sex work, though, should be on choosing how to make the rent. Some people will be happier working in a shitty waitressing job, and others are happier to make their money by spreading their legs (either on camera, or for paying customers - porn or prostitution). Both are equally exploitative of poverty and, according to the socialist feminist position that Dzerin seems to take, it would appear that we should also be opposed to restaurants and diners for their exploitation of women who need to earn the rent.

Which brings us onto the next argument that Dzerin uses:

Well, they make good money. Surely that’s empowering?

Without willing to sound glib, there are plenty of things people do for money. Just because you enjoy the things they do does not make it empowering for them. Imagine if I paid you a million pounds to eat elephant shit. Would you consider that empowering because you were paid such a high amount?

I do not look at sex work as being about "empowering". It can be an empowered choice, or it can be a forced choice (see remarks above), but in itself it is not empowering. It is "empaychecking", as Renegade Evolution (porn performer, stripper and all-round sex worker) puts it, and as noted above, that is sometimes very important from the point of view of keeping a roof over one's head and food in the belly, and all those essentials of life. It can also provide the dosh to get nice things. Is we are to be opposed to the commercial porn industry, then a lefty person really ought to consider how the men and women who earn their living from it should go about filling those gaps in future. As I wrote several years ago now, mining is a terrible job, but when the Thatcher government tried to close the mines, the miners fought tooth and nail for over a year to keep their jobs, despite how disgusting and dangerous and degrading the work could be. While the money may not be empowering, having it taken away certainly would be disempowering.

But women produce female-friendly porn!

Yes, they do. I still find this objectionable because of my anti-capitalist views. I also feel that the fact that ‘female-friendly’ porn is a thing, and such a tiny proportion of the pornography market rather reinforces my opinion of the industry as generally misogynist. If porn were truly equal to the sexes, it would not need to exist.

I struggle with the concept of "female-friendly" porn, because I don't know what that means. There is something very clear that needs to be pointed out here: Dzerin 's position, going from this answer and from her post title, is about the current state of the industry. But many of her arguments are about the concept of pornography. The implication from Dzerin is that "female-friendly" means "non-misogynistic", but I think that usually it means "intended to appeal to women's sexual fantasies". The problem with the latter position is that plenty of women I know happen to like the fantasies portrayed in other porn, and find "female-friendly" porn to be boring. other women don't like either, and other women like both, and some like the "female-friendly" stuff.

I'll skip past the "porn degrades men too" argument, because I don't accept the premise that porn is necessarily degrading to anybody (some of it can be, for sure, but I don't accept the premise that most or all of it is).

What if the women like being submissive during sex?

I have no problem with women enjoying submission during consensual sexual encounters which take place with the knowledge that the submission only belongs in the bedroom.

Well, gee, how magnanimous of you! D/s and M/s relationships do not always have scene-delineated premises. Sometimes the consensual power-exchange operates throughout the whole relationship. I suppose I could be generous and assume Dzerin means "the submission only belongs between her and her partner", and BDSMers (especially subs) usually know very strongly the distinction between "I submit to you" and "I submit to no one else".

But here's the question that you haven't answered: how that relates to men and women's desire for BDSM porn (which is different from rough sex porn and so on, but might fall into the category "depicts violence against women" if you're not on the same page regarding BDSM). Is your case that the moment a couple video themselves and share that video, that they are suddenly corrupting and destroying women's rights everywhere?

I/a friend of mine worked in porn and enjoyed it.

My answer (inspired by Meaghan Murphy) would be: I am glad that you enjoyed your experience, really.

...

However, whatever the feelings of the performers involved might be, selling images of women as sexual objects which exist for the titillation of men only reinforces sexist attitudes.

I just don't accept the premise that that is what porn is. I think if men (or women) see that in porn, then it is more to do with those internalised attitudes about women that they bring to their experience of the porn.

What about if it isn’t a capitalist venture?

I feel that consensual pornography made for users by users with no capitalist aspects would tend to have less misogyny and therefore be ultimately preferable to any output from the porn industry.

It's pretty clear to me by now that on my Sliding Scale post, asking which element it is that makes porn bad but sex okay, it is at step 6, the introduction of profit as a motive, that Dzerin finds unacceptable. (Arguably, it might be step 8, where an explicitly capitalist business model is brought in.)

But I think this answer is based in prejudice. Because of Dzerin's political views, she appears to assume "commercial = bad" and interprets things in a way to preserve that suspicion, rather than accepting the diversity of both relationships and porn.

Skipping past a couple of points that are not actually about porn per se, we get to: "So do you want to censor/ban porn?" This is answered by the co-author, Georgie:

No. I am not a proponent of censorship, and even if I were, a ban on pornography would be practically unworkable. Making pornography illegal would make it harder to regulate the industry, which could be dangerous for the women working in it. I would like to live in a world in which pornography was eradicated because there was no market for it. My desire is to persaude people that they do not need to see images of objectification and degredation to satisfy themselves sexually.

I'm sorry, but actually I do need to see images of humiliation, "violence" and (in some people's interpretation) objectification and degradation, because that is my kink. I am a sadist and a Dominant, and wishing my sexuality away won't make it change (Lord knows, I tried, and suffered because of trying - like trying not to be gay, I guess). To me, vanilla sex is not sex. If it hadn't been for sex education at school I might never have figured it out - sex to me involves pain and domination and bondage and stuff. The gender of my partner is secondary (although I go mostly for women, male subs interest me as well).

I also find it hard to imagine a world where there is no demand for images intended to provoke sexual arousal (which is what "porn" means; "erotica" in most usage that I've seen appears to be simply "porn that I like", as opposed to the disgusting stuff other people like). The simple fact is, sexual desire is not evenly distributed, and simply doing away with the capitalist economic system is not actually going to change this (although the basis by which people are found sexually desirable might change, the fact that people will be varied in sexual desirability will not; and the variation in how much people desire sex will also be similar to what it is today). So there is always going to be a market for pornography (and for prostitution) regardless of the economic system under which we operate.

I am all for doing away with capitalism, and changing the way that businesses operate, which includes but is not limited to, pornography industry. But being opposed to the industry model does not mean we must destroy porn, and doesn't make us anti-porn.

Georgie also fields the last question:

But all men watch porn! How could this ever change?

It is important to question men who use porn, and to challenge them on its sexism. It should not be socially acceptable to use porn. Like the use of racial epithets or other hate speech, sexist attitudes and the use of porn can be denounced by social peers. If porn were not so tolerated, people would think more carefully about its social consequences and would be less likely to use it.

Again, singling out porn for sexism is hypocritical. All of society is sexist, because that's how Patriarchy works (in conjunction with capitalism, etc). Porn is not different from the rest of society, so why does it get special criticism for not being post-sexism?

How do you distinguish in using peer pressure to make porn unacceptable, between "porn is not okay, but sex is"? Unfortunately, the same pressures that could be used to attack porn use in this way, would also work very strongly to attack women, because they would serve to make "slut" an even stronger assault. To make being openly interested in sexual material into a source of shame, one cannot avoid generating a sense of shame about interest in sex. And who already receives the most attack for being interested in sex? Women. That's why "slut" is such a nasty word in most usage. If the rest of the world weren't so sexist, this plan might work, but unfortunately, it is. And that's how come porn tends to be sexist too. Just to be clear - I think peer pressure against sexist attitudes should be used; but I think that peer pressure against porn would be a bad move.

The "social consequences" of porn are, as far as I know, non-existent, or at most, comparable to the social consequences of any other media form. There have been no studies with proper controls that show any proof of negative social consequences. Whenever government studies have been carried out of the data and research, the answer has always come back "inconclusive".

As for the original question, I think it is false that "all men watch porn", and besides, women watch porn too. The problem is that sexist attitudes mean that women are conditioned not to watch porn as much as they might like to (and there isn't much porn made with women-as-viewers in mind).

I suspect that Dzerin and I are not as far apart as it seems from her conclusions, and from my position here. I am very critical of the porn industry - even, or especially, those who claim to do a better job than most (for example, the criticism of Kink.com). We also apparently agree about the problems with the capitalist economic system, of which the porn industry is a sample and fairly representative of the problems in the whole. We differ on what to do about it. Dzerin herself says as much when writing about pro-porn and anti-porn feminists, "even though we may disagree on the fine details of how to practice it, we all have the same central objective," but I disagree with her optimistic assessment that, "Of course we can coexist peacefully." Too often the initiatives of the anti-porn group (especially Dines, Jensen and so on) seem to be directly harmful to women, and indeed, to getting anything positive done.