What is feminist pornography?
"You get to see more of people's bodies, more of people's faces, and there's less of an assumption of one person or one gender being the focus over another," says Tristan Taormino, a leading feminist pornographer, author and organiser of the Feminist Porn Conference at the University of Toronto....
Carlyle Jensen says her customers at Good for Her found the narrow range of sexual practices and imagery they saw in porn unappealing, and they wanted something they could feel good about watching... "I want to reclaim the word feminist," says Jensen, who says people unfamiliar with feminist porn wrongly think it's for "people who hate men."
ADDED: The (unlinkable) OED traces the word "pornography" only as far back as 1842, to
Smith's Dict. Gr. & Rom. Antiq.: "Rhyparography, pornography, and all the lower classes of art." "Rhyparography" — that's a new word for me. The ending "-graphy" in both words means "writing," and "porno-" originally meant "prostitutes," so the literal original meaning is "writing about prostitutes." So what is "Rhyparo-"? It means "dirt, filth," and "rhyparography" is a writing (or painting) about "distasteful or sordid subjects." How come we don't use that word? Or do we, and I just haven't noticed? Examples:
1927 Amer. Mercury May p. xlviii, Mr. Craven cannot quite distinguish between painting and art, rhyparography and art, realism and art....
1991 J. R. Clark Modern Satiric Grotesque 117 What society normally considers low and sordid, as rhyparographic, are more frequently excretory than sexual.
2007 R. Dowling Slumming in New York (2009) 68 Peck accuses Crane of rhyparography—creating distasteful imagery for its own sake.
I don't know if that advances the discussion of whether there is such a thing as "feminist pornography," or — to be accurate — whether it does anybody a damned bit of good to put those 2 words together. Watch and read whatever you want, as far as I'm concerned, but if you want to have a
conference about it, you ought to have something intellectual to say about it, not that I care about that either.
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Carlyle Jensen says her customers at Good for Her found the narrow range of sexual practices and imagery they saw in porn unappealing
"Narrow range"?!! My God, what were they looking for? Hanging from the chandelier while trussed up in latex to look like a harp seal?
I just have to believe these ladies just haven't really looked. One may not like what's out there, but don't say it's a "limited range".
" My God, what were they looking for? Hanging from the chandelier while trussed up in latex to look like a harp seal?"
And if they couldn't find that, I would guess they didn't look too hard.
For people who hate men?
Sometimes it seems more like it's for people who don't particularly like women.
I assume that creepy young Duke student is the feminist model they want . Especially the cutting herself part. We see that in military recruits once in a while. It always means serious psycho problems.
Well I realize there might be a different way to do it but there's not a limited range. Saying what you really want requires you to be a bit more specific, its a very literal industry.
"Feminist porn is political..."
Political porn - that sounds like loads of fun. No wonder they are still a n
"The Feminist Porn Awards were established by the owner of a female-oriented Toronto sex shop who realised her customers wanted to see pornography, just not the mainstream stuff they found to be fake, robotic, emotionally vapid, and visually repetitive, and perhaps demeaning to women."
Nice to know feminist porn is not demeaning to women. Why isn't performing sex in public demeaning to women? Because it is filmed by women - dummy - so it can't be demeaning to women.
""I want to reclaim the word feminist," says Jensen, who says people unfamiliar with feminist porn wrongly think it's for "people who hate men"."
Isn't it amazing how feminists have gained the reputation that they hate men. It couldn't have anything to do with their behavior could it?
I'm happy that women are now able to buy porn which floats their boats. Good for them.
It's like any other franchise operation. People go with the familiar brand name because it's safe, unchallenging, and bears a simple relationship to something they already know.
Feminist porn, feminist law, feminist film theory... the same basic principle as a Howard Johnson on the interstate.
There was a young lady of Norway
Who hung by her toes in a doorway.
She said to her beau,
"Just look at me Joe,
I think I've discovered one more way."
As Ron White points out, regular porn has an element of homosexuality to it. Most guys would rather watch a guy with a big "joie de vivre" pitching the "high hard one inside the plate", than one with a little "pop tart".
"I just find mainstream porn to be very boring," she says. "It's just old. You're just like, 'jeez, really, that's what you think women do in bed?'"
Mainstream porn! What if they really filmed what women do in bed? With their mates/partners/lovers? And not just porn poses, but actual behind the bedroom door sex. Would anyone be interested? Or would it be too personal, private, or intimate to watch?
Would that be boring?
"I want to reclaim the word feminist," says Jensen.
Bitch, you can have it.
Back in the day, before the internet, I had a friend who asked me to safekeep his pornography collection because he was going to move in with his girlfriend.
His collection comprised about two dozen of those magazine-like books that contain still photos taken from pornographic films. He'd purchased them from an adult book store where they came wrapped in plastic so you were pretty much buying a pig-in-a-poke.
Except I couldn't help but notice that every single one of those book-like magazines had a back cover with a depiction of a man with his dick in some woman's rectum.
I kept my friend's pornography collection for him, until he broke up with his girlfriend, and he asked for it back. That happened pretty quickly, within maybe a month or two.
It wasn't terribly difficult to piece together why the relationship didn't work out.
Me? I prefer the kind of pornography where some beautiful woman makes the first move and there's some intimation of an enduring emotional commitment between partners.
But I'm pretty lame when it comes to women.
Hey, I know it and I admit it.
Perhaps that counts as a saving grace or something along those lines.
I find all porn very exciting for about 30 seconds, then very boring. Same with go go bars.
I'm a doer.
@Eric the Fruit Bat
1. Great story!
2. Sounds like you'd like feminist pornography. Good for you!
Racist - Someone who believes in the inherent superiority of a race.
Culturalist - Someone who believes in the inherent superiority of a culture.
Feminist - Someone who believes in perfect equality of all sexes!
Meh. Porn money is still green when customers hand it over, and there's too much to be made to let the men have all the fun, no?
Carnifex: Ron was certainly funny but wrong, at least about the porn imagery part of his point.
I prefer landscapes with big mountains more than small mountains, but that does not mean I'm sexually attracted to geography.
Eric the Fruit Bat:
Unsolicited poking is predictably a relationship killer. Perceiving the other person as an exploitable "clump of cells" is equally detrimental to a relationship.
I have never appreciated the value of a one-night stand. Then again, I have never entertained the notion that relationships are a financial or short-term investment. Perceiving the other person as a commodity is a known moral hazard.
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