What Is Feminist Porn? Great Question.

Image from a brilliant article on Decode + Disrupt - go read it!

As you might have guessed, I'm a pro-porn kind of gal. But more importantly, I'm a pro-equality kind of gal, which means I'm a feminist kind of gal, which means I get a lot of questions about how I can be pro-porn. The more nuanced ones boil down to this.

And then of course, there's the Annual Feminist Porn Awards. I'm not going to pretend to have any authority on what went down, so let's just hand the mic over to Buzzfeed:

The audience for the Eighth Annual Feminist Porn Awards is shimmying in and out of a tightly packed bar full of bow ties and Tumblr-esque galaxy prints. A woman in a hunter-green pencil dress and Mad Men–era updo reaches for a glass of wine, revealing a tuft of armpit hair — obviously a conscious choice. The awards take place in Toronto, and this year's event is held in a posh venue normally used for wedding receptions. There is a swirling staircase up to a balcony, a row of crystal chandeliers, and a giant screen projecting writhing naked bodies. Moans echo over the audience, who cheer as a man on screen is penetrated with a dildo; the scene shot with dreamy sort of cinematography.

Later a sequin-jacketed MC says to the audience, seemingly out of context, "In sex work, get that money, darlin'. Get it up front. Get it. Get it. Get it." Behind me a woman with a septum piercing says to the girl beside her, "Yeah, but with films...that's hard." In feminist porn, how to actually make money is one of many open questions.

With the hundreds of guests that came to the event, it's clear that what's happening here is a movement, an industry and a philosophy, all of which seem to be in a constant shift. For some, feminist porn may sound like an oxymoron — and in reality, feminist porn does remain a bundle of contradictions. None of this stops feminist pornographers from moving full speed ahead with an agenda of equality and fairer working conditions in porn. But as feminist porn expands to include the kind of hardcore scenes typical of more mainstream films, can it stay true to its ideological roots? And will staying true to those roots ever be profitable?

Now, Buzzfeed does a fantastic job of breaking this question down, and they make some great points. Go read it. But I need to get something off my chest: every time the debate about whether mainstream porn situations can still function in a feminist context starts up, I want to beat my head against a wall, because I'm so tired of feeling like my voice, and the voice of other submissive feminist women like me (yep, we exist), are being completely ignored. The whole point of feminism is for all people to have control over their bodies and actions -- and this is what groups like FEMEN miss in their unilateral protest against Islam, and what Sinfest misses in their comics, and what pro-lifers ignore in their pleas to protect the fetus -- it's my damn body, and I can choose to allow someone to "abuse" it, if that's what gets me off, if I fucking feel like it.

So what is feminist porn? I would say it's porn, period. If all parties are enthusiastically consenting adults and under no duress, then I say HELLS YES, do whatever you want as long as it's Safe, Sane and Consensual. I challenge anyone to tell me why that's not a feminist ideal, and how, when that ideal is applied to the porn industry, we don't arrive at something that can unreservedly hailed as feminist porn.

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Whew, got a little hot and bothered there. Do go and read the rest of the Buzzfeed article about the Feminist Porn Awards, and then make a stop over at the Decode + Disrupt article I linked to in the caption.

And now, ladies and gents, some DAMN SEXY feminist porn, courtesy of award-winner Courtney Trouble and the very exciting Library Vixen blog:

What is feminist porn? “It's making a statement that women should
be allowed to watch whatever kind of porn they want to watch.” - Courtney Trouble

I seriously want this woman to be my best friend. Also, maybe my girlfriend. <3