Feminist Porn: Sex, Consent, and Getting Off

Warning: May not be safe for work ... unless you are like me and work at Planned Parenthood. :) The links at the end of the article are definitely not work-safe and may contain adult content to be viewed only by people over the age of 18.

Feminism has a love/hate relationship with sex. The "Feminist Sex Wars" rage on and not just between second and third-wavers. I once spent an evening at a hole-in-the-wall strip club with a 20-something friend fiercely debating her anti-pornography/anti-prostitution position. We spent half an hour of that night talking with a dancer, a young single mom and the only woman-of-color on the floor. She said it was better than working at a grocery store; she made more money and didn't have to pay for day care. How could I blame her? It was niave and classist for us to engage her in this conversation, but I was in college and didn't know how stupid I was being. This also happened to be the night I bought my first vibrator, with that same friend, at a sleazy adult store in Syracuse, NY. Long story short is that I became passionate about the rights of sex workers and people that work in the sex/adult industry and began a more intelligent and articulate study of why I felt so compelled to defend pornography, prostitution, women's sexual pleasure, and my own sexual desires.

In the 60's and 70's, Andrea Dworkin led a brilliant fight to expose and illuminate rape culture and end violence against women. Her analysis of the gender binary, pornography, and theories of penetrative sex as a patriarchal act is at the titillating center of a lively and necessary conversation in the feminist community. I also believe the work of Dworkin and her peers has contributed to the division of lesbian and heterosexual feminists, persecution and demoralization of sex work and sex workers, exclusion of transfolk from feminist spaces, and a whole lot of personal feminist guilt. But I gotta' give kudos to Dworkin for putting rape culture on the map and, there are many awesome, inspiring, fabulous feminist leaders I admire who also happen to be card-carrying members of the anti-prostitution camp including Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan.