Strange Bedfellows: Can Feminism and Porn Coexist?

By Nikko Snyder, Bitch Magazine. Posted April 7, 2008.

When it comes to pornography, it's safe to assume one thing: Whatever you choose to say on the subject, nearly everyone will disagree with at least part it. Add feminism to the mix and you're pretty much guaranteed a brawl. Chanelle Gallant understands this as well as anyone. "You're probably the first interviewer who didn't start with the question, 'Aren't feminism and porn oxymorons?'" she jokes over the phone. Gallant is the creator of the Feminist Porn Awards, an event held annually in Toronto since 2006. She and the other folks at Good For Her (a feminist-owned and -operated sex shop in Toronto) launched the awards as a response to the racism in mainstream pornography. "We were complaining about how we had to send back all these DVDs because they had the most egregious racial stereotyping in them," she explains. "I said something like, 'It's really too bad that nobody recognizes the filmmakers who are making an effort to do something better.'

The awards recognize sexually explicit films that fulfill at least two of three criteria: first, a woman is substantially involved with the making of the film; second, the film depicts genuine female pleasure; and third, it expands the range of sexual expression for women by telling us something new about female sexuality. Categories range from Hottest Group Sex Scene to Hottest Diverse Cast to Hottest Trans Sex Scene; winning filmmakers and performers travel to Toronto from across North America to accept butt plug-shaped trophies.

Folks working within the adult industry to radically challenge porn's mainstream image is nothing new -- the likes of Annie Sprinkle and Carol Queen have been at it for years. And yet, one pesky problem remains unresolved: the question of what it takes, practically speaking, for feminism and porn films to coexist. If there's no sticker on the front of a DVD identifying it as Fair Trade porn, how can I know if it was produced in a way that I can support? What if I do know it was produced ethically, but I don't find the content compelling or hot? And if I identify material as non-feminist and still find it hot, does that damn me forever to the realm of the Guilty Bad Feminists? Finally, even if by some miracle I manage to reconcile all these contradictions for myself, is the adult industry as a whole showing any indication of evolving past the most token and self-serving co-option of feminism?

I tracked down five of the filmmakers whose work was honored at the 2007 Feminist Porn Awards to find out what they think sets their work apart -- and whether they'd classify it as pornography to begin with. From hetero white men making documentaries to queer black women making mockumentaries, gonzo reality to story-driven hip hop rom-coms, the only obvious commonality is explicit, unsimulated sex -- and for many, that's enough to call them porn. For some, it may also be enough to call them nonfeminist. But in speaking to the filmmakers, it became clear that in the world of onscreen sex, labels are carefully applied.

Venus Hottentot defines pornography as sexually explicit material designed to titillate, and because the intention of her film Afrodite Superstar is to tell a story that happens to involve sex, she prefers the term "sex film." She explains, "I wanted people to engage in an intellectual manner, in an entertaining manner, and then if it was going to titillate that was going to be, quite honestly, the third thing on my list." Tony Comstock, too, finds the term "pornography" troubling. Comstock works with his wife, Peggy, to produce explicit documentary-style features about real-life lovers, and he laments that, "pornography is, in large measure, about what sex looks like, without exploring everything else that sex is. If you want to try to reach beyond that both physically and metaphysically, the word "porn" becomes very limiting."

According to Audacia Ray, director of the The Bi Apple as well as a sex educator and sex workers-rights activist, "Feminist porn is, for me, much more about the production end of things than it is about what is actually onscreen. It's about the ability of the people performing the porn to negotiate what they're doing." For Ray, producing feminist porn involves paying performers above the industry standard, using condoms and covering the costs of HIV testing (neither of which are industry standards), getting input from her cast about what they want to do before they arrive on set, and avoiding surprising actors with last-minute requests.

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