Monday, March 7, 2011

porn I don't like

When I was researching porn for my new porn by women book while on sabbatical in Oslo, Norway, a journalist that interviewed me about my work described the kind of porn I write about as "gourmet." In another newspaper, it was defined as "humanistic." These labels are somewhat fitting, because I don't like trashy fast food porn or discriminating and violent porn. I like porn that stands out for its high cinematic quality and for its progressive content, portraying women and men respectfully and on equal terms.

However, at an event where I presented porn clips at a theater in downtown Oslo in order to initiate discussion about how we qualify good porn as opposed to bad porn, a woman came up to me after the discussion, pointing out how soft the porn I like is compared to the one she gets turned on by; porn where red monsters bite into women. During the discussion, the therapeutic potential of fetishistic and extreme porn had been brought up as well; how some extreme porn can provide release for the user’s individual tensions based on psychological histories and cultural taboos, and thus function as a regulated space within which to explore and process these instead of turning to actual physical violence. 

In the case of the porn featuring red monsters biting into women, it was animated, so the issue of real people being physically violated is avoided. But still; it's not showing consensual sex. Sure, it can provide an outlet, but as Ms. Naughty (feminist sex blogger and producer of sex positive porn aimed at women) writes in her recent post, "Let's Talk About Extreme Porn," while one can "acknowledge that negativity may just be someone’s fantasy ... surely we should be able to ask: what the hell is going on if you need hatred to get off?" Ms. Naughty asserts that she is not opposed to BDSM, rough sex, power play, and other kink acted out consensually, which I second, but that the problem is when the context is missing, presenting you with the extreme sex acts without making it clear that the performers are willing participants.

Ms. Naughty maintains that she does not think being sex positive and tolerant should mean that she blithely accepts that all porn is fine. I agree. I also don't accept the porn she refers to in her post. As she writes, "it seems reasonable to be asking questions about bad porn and extreme porn. We should be talking about what it means and how it effects us." 

Like Ms. Naughty, I don't think censorship is the solution. On the contrary, I think the kind of new porn by women that I write about in my book has the potential to counterbalance bad and extreme porn, and therefore I promote it.

But also like Ms. Naughty, I think comprehensive education about the topic is needed to equip people and youth in particular with the analytical tools to read porn. In my research, I've developed criteria that can be used to judge quality in porn, which I present in my book. Yet obviously something more is needed. We need to talk about it publicly and privately, and we need to include teenagers in the discussion.
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Update: For a preview of personally developed criteria for how to evaluate quality in porn, check out these links for criteria to define quality in terms of content and style, included in the first part of "my very brief guide to feminist porn," originally published at Good Vibrations Magazine. 

Also, I write more about porn I do like and porn I don't like in my post about Smut City.

7 comments:

  1. When we talk about "good" vs "bad" porn, we have to explain what we mean by "good" and "bad", and for whom.

    Much non-sexual TV and film has just the same characteristics as porn. Is a war film "bad" because some people "enjoy" one side killing the other. How about the violence in Tom and Jerry?

    I think that most people know that, for example, a rape fantasy is just that. After all, I know that I wanted to have sex with my school teacher, but doing so would have been rape, and it would have made her a pedophile.

    Extreme porn is not about domination and force, but actually about consensual submission, the complete opposite. It's usually the critics who don't make the differentiation, the same sex bullies who don't make a difference between nudity and sex.

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  2. As I write in my post, I'm not opposed to porn that portrays extreme sex such as BDSM, rough sex, power play, and other kink acted out consensually, but porn in which the the context of the extreme sex is missing, presenting you with the extreme sex acts without making it clear that the performers are willing consensual participants.

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  3. It seems that what, for the commenter above, is missing in this post might be just the kind self-conscious language one expects to find in such discourse. But for me the post does the job of explaining the point without excessive ""ing. Here "good" porn and "bad" porn are terms defined without needing to go too deep into the implications, since it is clear the post acknowledges these as tentative terms; and the point of the post seems to be addressing a quality of porn that fails to develop the consensual sex act, especially when concerning the actual people (and not only the characters). Extreme porn as a kind of theatricality or performativity, or such, which treats the viewer's sensibility--while stating implicitly in its total package that what viewed is porn made by consenting persons to inspire healthy attitudes towards sexuality in its viewers--is not in itself a problem. However, the commenter above conflates all porn that might be considered extreme by genre as the same; and fails to realize that the term extreme in the context of the above post is meant to call out as "bad" a kind porn that cannot be immediately accepted as self-conscious or aware of its own implications.

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  4. Consensual, contextual and continual.

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  5. I think you've hit the nail on the head, context.

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  6. As I write in my post, I'm not opposed to porn that portrays extreme sex such as BDSM, rough sex, power play, and other kink acted out consensually, but porn in which the the context of the extreme sex is missing, presenting you with the extreme sex acts without making it clear that the performers are willing consensual participants.

    ReplyDelete

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