How To Be An Anti-Porn Campaigner

Every now and then an article appears in the mainstream media that denounces pornography. As a feminist pornographer, I see a lot of these. They’re often popping up in my news feed, clutching their pearls and demanding something must be done. Sometimes I just roll my eyes and get back to work. Other times, I can’t help but write about it. Today is one of those days. Never mind that I have a 45 minute porn scene that is waiting to be edited. Nope, today, I’m going to have to wade in, despite my better judgement, because this one takes aim at feminist pornography. And I want to defend it.

Today’s source of frustration is an article at ABC’s The Drum called “So what if your porn is feminist? The collusion of feminism with sexual violence“. It’s by Laura McNally, who is a psychologist and consultant* as well as a contributor to a book called The Freedom Fallacy: Limits of Liberal Feminism. This book is keen to put the boot into “choice feminism”.

This piece is a textbook example of the many ways that anti-porn campaigners frame their argument. If you’re looking to take up railing against the evils of porn, here are some of the things you’ll need to do:

1. Start with the assumption that all porn is harmful. Doesn’t matter who makes it, what it looks like, what it depicts, if people are having sex on screen, it’s bad and dangerous and not feminist at all.
2. Mix in an anti-sex-work philosophy. This worldview sees any exchange of sex for money to be wrong and exploitative. Ignore any suggestion of consent or agency. Insist that sex is for love, baby-making and maybe, occasionally, for pleasure. But not money.
3. Define pornography only on your terms. Make sure your definition is narrow and only includes heterosexual, mainstream, US-produced porn. Whatever you do, don’t mention gay or queer porn. Make sure the focus is always on how porn is harmful to women. Do this by discussing only straight rough sex or sexist porn. Mislabel it as “gonzo” (see the actual definition here).
4. Present your anecdotal or debunked evidence. In anti-porn campaigning, anecdotes are gold. Present first-person stories of porn trauma and “addiction”. Say you’ve had discussions with women and they all say the same thing. Talk about what some doctors have told you. Quote a vox pop or a TV documentary. Assert that porn is addictive, that pre-teens are watching it regularly, that young men are replicating what they see in porn with their hapless girlfriends. Use online surveys, statistics from porn piracy sites, opinion pieces. Don’t look too hard at where your information is coming from or how it was obtained. Don’t ask whether your data is scientific or not; the main thing is, it supports your argument so use it. Ignore any contradictory evidence.
5. Suggest that porn is one of the root causes of modern women’s problems. Imply that the many injustices women face because of patriarchy can be helped if we could just do something about pornography.
6. Assume the viewers of porn are uncritical, unthinking beasts. Roll with the idea that only men watch porn and they passively accept the worldview of what they are seeing. Suggest that because they have an erection, all reason goes out the window. Assume that they will automatically replicate the behaviours and attitudes of porn.
7. Assume all the performers in porn are exploited, stupid, abused or drug addicted. Ignore any suggestion that the performers have agency, are happy with their work, have collaborated on set. Use only those who have had bad experiences as your examples. Also, only talk about the female performers.
8. Talk about “the porn industry” as a monolith. Focus on the Porn Valley studios, the AVN conventions, the Mindgeek tube sites and say that these people represent everyone in porn. Paint “the industry” as greedy, ultra-capitalist, exploitative and huge, an enemy that must be stopped. Ignore the global nature of porn or the way the internet has allowed anyone with an iPhone to make and publish their own porn.
9. Dismiss feminist porn as either irrelevant, too capitalist or collusive. Say feminist porn is too small to make a difference, or it is still exploitative because money is exchanging hands. Question the feminist credentials of those involved. Dismiss it as frivolous or “choice feminism”. Call the female directors “pimps” and say their performers were duped. Say that their work is worthless because it was produced with a larger studio or else say it’s too indie so nobody is watching it anyway.

This last one is new. Feminist porn has proved to be a fly in the anti-porn ointment because we are showing that porn isn’t the bogeyman they have built. This is of course bad news for their book sales so lately I’m seeing attacks on feminist porn as part of the armory.

The frustrating thing is this: I am a critic of pornography just as they are. I see the problems with porn — the sexism, the racism, the bad business and employment practices that do exist. I also see a massive lack of sex education and porn media literacy among the wider public. I want to change that but my approach is to make change from within, to be the change I want to see in the world, even if it’s just me, one woman, making my own version of porn, far removed from “the industry”.

We differ greatly when it comes to point 10:

10. Push for censorship or prohibition. Raise a panic. Demand that something must be done. Urge governments to step in. Fight to make sex work illegal. Regulate porn out of existence via mandatory condom laws or bans on “extreme” porn. Push for mandatory internet filters.

I think this is why I’m here writing about this. Because I know that this ultimate goal is wrong. Porn and sex work have always been with us; people like sex, people want to watch sex, they want to have sex. Prohibition doesn’t work. What does work is sex education and ethical practices. And those are two of the goals of feminist porn.

Laura McNally’s article seems to follow the above script fairly closely. I want to look at what she’s written in more detail here, just to point out some of the fallacies and misconceptions of the piece. Because sometimes, you just gotta sit down and call out the bullshit.

The article is an extension of Laura McNally’s ongoing crusade against pornography. In May she wrote this piece which follows the usual pattern. I commented on it recommending that she look more into feminist porn. Well, now she has decided that feminist porn needs to be denounced, hence this latest tirade.

So, the piece begins with an anecdote, that standard of most anti-porn pieces. We hear of a woman who goes to a doctor complaining that her husband’s use of porn is ruining her marriage. He’s requesting physically harmful things, apparently, because he saw them in porn. We don’t know if this story is true or entirely made up. It doesn’t matter because it allows the author to segue into a cheerful listing (with links) of all the harms of porn. She offers quite an impressive swathe of “evidence” to back up her assertion that pornography is causing harm in the community.

What I want to do firstly is point out where her “evidence” is anecdotal or problematic. Trying to dig down to find the actual source of some of the statistics quoted is an effort; often it involves clicking from one news link to the other and wading through commentary.

The Anecdotes

1. “There are many adults who report partners using and demanding the same.” McNally links to an anonymous first-person essay called “A letter to … my ex-husband, who preferred pornography to me.” One person. Anecdotal evidence.

2. “Back in the therapist’s office in Canberra, Susan, who wrote to me with her story after she read an article I wrote…” Apparently Susan was upset because her therapist suggested finding good porn to enjoy together. One person, as told to Laura McNally.

3. “Girls are reporting to GPs with sexual injuries.” McNally links to a News Ltd article as her evidence. I actually spent a bit of time dissecting this particular piece of “porn truth” and discovered that it is entirely anecdotal. The source is cyber-safety author Susan McLean, who has not done any actual research into this but has simply said she has spoken to doctors who report it. Her comments were widely reported as fact across local media. But this “evidence” is purely anecdotal.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

The Dodgy Research

1. “As neuroscientist Ogi Olgas said on feminist pornography…” McNally quotes Ogas (not Olgas) to back up her claim that “sexual coercion and violence is what makes pornography so thrilling to many of its users.” I have blogged before about how the methodology used by Ogas was biased and non-scientific. I’ve also talked about how he made broad generalizations about the audience of my site For The Girls in his book without actually bothering to ask me (e.g. he used Alexa to calculate that 50% of our audience was gay men. Wrong, it’s over 80% female.) Any dismissive claims Ogas has about the popularity of feminist porn should be ignored, since his data set is not at all reliable.

2. “According to Pornhub 2014, teen, MILF, anal and rough were all top categories for women, similar to male users.” Actually, according to Pornhub, the top five categories that women searched for were lesbian, gay, teen, “for women” and “ebony” (black performers). Rough sex ranked third last. McNally describes her list as evidence that women preferred “volatile” porn. Not sure what is “volatile” about age differentiations — or anal sex for that matter. I should also point out that using Pornhub’s statistics on “what women want” isn’t really such a reliable source of information, given the sexist and male-oriented nature of that site. I wrote in detail on why these stats aren’t great here.

3. “Brands like Brazzers and RedTube are commonly used by children as young as 11 through to adults.” The statistic that 11-year-old children are regularly using porn has become yet another panicdote but few provide a source for it. Back in 2005 Forbes showed that the “11 year old” stat came from a self-published self-help book by a “porn addict” who said “I don’t remember where I got that from.”

When I went looking for an actual study that said 11 year old kids commonly used porn I found a bunch of religious and anti-porn sites quoting the figure but not much in the way of actual research. I did find Fox News reference to a University of New Hampshire phone interview study that had found 17% of 10–11 year olds had unintentionally found porn online. I also found mention of an interview with Michael Flood in Psychologies magazine that said a third of young kids had accessed porn (that article no longer available, here‘s the Daily Mail’s panicked piece about it). But stumbling across porn when you’re 11 is different to “commonly using” it.

Extra links: The seven problems with research on young people and porn Michael Flood and Defining the “harm of porn”

The Inconclusive Links (or Did Your Study Really Say That?)

1. “The link between porn and domestic violence has been briefly touched on,” writes McNally. The link goes to one of her own articles in the Religion and Ethics category of the ABC website. That piece discusses research on the attitude of young people to relationships via a survey called The Line (official website). I managed to find a summary of the findings but not the full result. From what I can see, the methods used did not specifically address porn use, though it’s difficult to tell. The official press release about the findings does not mention porn, even though subsequent media articles do.

The pdf does mention porn, though only in its introduction: “Young people are left to figure it all out for themselves from other sources: their friends, their ‘heroes’, the media’s portrayal of women, pornography, and porn-inspired popular culture.” It would appear The Link survey sees pornography as part of a wide range of media and social circumstances that have an influence on young people’s attitudes to relationships, control and gender stereotypes. From what I can see, it doesn’t provide a concrete link between porn and domestic violence.

2. “Statistical evidence indicates nearly 90 per cent of popular pornographic films include violence against women.” Here McNally links to this 2010 study in the journal Violence Against Women. I can’t read the full paper, only the abstract. It says the study looked at 304 scenes and found “88.2% contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging, and slapping.”

So firstly, I think there’s a lot of discussion to be had on the meaning of “violence against women” here. I’m sure fans of spanking have a lot to say about how their particular fetish is vastly different from violence. If the spanking, gagging and slapping are part of a consensual sexual encounter, I don’t think it can be classified as “violence”. Simply sitting and counting spanking scenes without taking context into account is something of a problematic research method. Secondly, it’s quite a stretch to use this one study to imply that almost ALL porn contains violence against women. And rest assured, that’s what Laura McNally wants us to think.

Actual Research

Some of links in McNally’s article do point to peer reviewed research. One of those is a meta analysis: “Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: revisiting the relationship in nonexperimental studies.” Again, I can only read the abstract but this article says that there is a correlation between watching porn and accepting attitudes towards violence against women. Interestingly, the research discusses the difference between”violent pornography” and “non violent pornography” and once again I wonder about definitions there.

“Despite evidence of pornography’s harm,” she writes, linking to her own article, “denial continues.”

Nope, no denial. I know that there is a lot of research out there that suggests porn can generate harmful attitudes. Fair enough. But there’s also a lot of research that says the exact opposite e,g, The Porn Report and The PornResearch.org project. There’s a lot of wriggle room with definitions, methods and motives. I’m not an academic, I don’t have access to many of these peer reviewed articles and I don’t have the time to read them all; I’m just trying to make porn. I share Laura McNally’s concern about the way that some porn depicts sexuality and gender stereotypes and I am open to reading all peer-reviewed research on the topic. It’s why I’m a supporter of the Porn Studies journal which aims to scientifically study all aspects of pornography without bias or judgement.

If we are concerned about pornography, we need to make sure we look at our sources and question the data. All of us.

Gish Galloping

When it comes to arguing against feminist porn, McNally is all over the place. I’ll try and distill (and speak against) her many confused arguments here

1. Feminist porn is harmful. The first thing she does after introducing the idea of a better, more positive and feminist pornography is to say that all porn is harmful, no matter the type. But she doesn’t really provide solid evidence for this assertion about the nature of ALL porn, even though she’s pretty keen on linking to various articles and studies (which address mainstream “violent” porn but don’t specifically talk about feminist porn). The assertion that feminist porn creates harm seems to arise from ideology alone.

Next she says: “Feminist porn, the refrain goes, is about equality, pleasure and empowerment.” Great. And you know what? Aside from the snarky phrase “the refrain”, McNally has nothing further to say on that at all. Nothing. Which is an interesting stance since feminist porn is supposedly harmful and violent and shouldn’t be recommended to Susan The Anecdote by her counselor. So the author chooses to ignore these three vital aspects of feminist porn, perhaps because she can’t allow herself to consider the idea that you can make porn that wasn’t harmful or sexist or bad. All porn has to be bad within McNally’s framework; there is no room for discussion.

My only response to this is: I do not believe that porn is inherently harmful. Media depicting sex and sexuality is not automatically bad or degrading or sexist. It is entirely possible to visually depict sex in a positive, feminist and inclusive way. (Insert “Your Argument Is Invalid” meme here).

2. Feminist porn is in collusion with The Porn Industry which is capitalist and therefore evil. Having proven beyond any doubt that all porn is bad, mmmkay, McNally immediately gish-gallops into a somewhat muddled anti-capitalist tirade. Apparently when Tristan Taormino calls feminist porn “fair trade” she reveals the whole dastardly plot because a. Fair trade things are expensive and not available to everyone and b. Porn is a “trade” and an industry and thus it has huge lobbying power and this makes it available to everyone. Or something. I’m not actually sure about what’s going on here.

In any case, it’s time to summon the chimera that is the evil Porn Industry and talk about how “there has long been a move toward making unethical commerce appear ethical.” Yes folks, we feminist pornographers are part of a wider cabal, apparently. And we’re helping the mainstream porn industry to “femwash” its product, simply by offering “diverse genres”. Because that’s all feminist porn is, apparently. A few different categories. But it won’t help because porn is inherently unethical and the industry “necessitates sexual dissatisfaction, disconnection and exploitation to grow its profits” (don’t ask Laura McNally for evidence of this, just roll with it OK?).

Ahem. I’m getting a bit sarcastic here. Back to the serious dissection.

Notice how “The Industry” is presented as a monolith, a large and unstoppable force that seeks only to exploit. Even though McNally acknowledges the diversity of porn (“with millions of films produced, diversity is unavoidable”), she still doesn’t hesitate to talk about it as a single entity, a hivemind of sorts. This is Big Porn, just as bad as Big Tobacco, willfully selling their dangerous products to poor, defenseless customers. Except that, you know, porn isn’t actually harmful like cigarettes. And “porn” is a ridiculously varied type of media that can encompass commercial films, amateur movies, iPhone recordings, art photography, short films and political material. It’s made by corporate studios, queer collectives, independent filmmakers and performers creating and selling their own work on cam. To talk about “The Porn Industry” is ignore the vastly diverse nature of what’s out there. To turn it into a capitalist bogeyman makes for a very simplistic argument. But never mind that because…

3. Feminist porn is capitalist and therefore can’t be ethical. McNally writes: “A commercial industry cannot feasibly work to end harmful practices when it requires them for profit” and “At the end of the day, the industry operates under a commercial doctrine, not a social or moral one.” There’s a whole bunch of ideology to unpick in those two sentences. The idea that seeking to earn a profit automatically wipes out any social or ethical concerns is deeply flawed and suggests a particularly nasty and neoliberal view of how capitalism operates.

I would argue that one of the important discussions I’m seeing within the feminist porn movement is how to balance ethical and commercial imperatives (I wrote about this in this post). Just because people are making money from porn doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in creating fair working conditions for performers, or showing sex in a positive light. Just as organic and fair trade food is increasingly successful with empowered and aware consumers, so ethically produced feminist porn is able to cater to people who want to see a better kind of pornography.

At this point I would like to point out the irony that occurs when anti-porn campaigners use anti-capitalist arguments. Laura McNally makes a living writing about pornography. In essence, she profits from porn. This doesn’t sit well with the assertion that any commercial involvement undermines one’s ethics.

4. Feminist porn is too small to make a difference. Having just denounced feminist porn for colluding with Big Porn into “femwashing” their product, McNally then says that feminist porn isn’t really making any difference. “The problem with ‘change from the inside’ initiatives, as with the ‘feminist porn’ model, is that minor tweaks do nothing to adjust the total impact of the industry,” she writes. And being “fair trade” means only rich people can buy it so you’re not reaching the everyday consumer. Apparently feminist porn is the “not all men” of the porn debate. By pointing it out to anti-porn campaigners, we just derail the point.

So, which is it, Laura? We’re Big Porn and we’re evil and harmful or we’re a pointless distraction and should Just Shut Up?

What I’m seeing with this article (and in her previous piece at ABC) is a determination to misunderstand and misrepresent what is actually happening within the feminist porn movement. We’re not a “front” for the porn industry. We’re not a buzzword and we’re not a way to pretend that bad porn is OK.

Those who identify as feminist pornographers are primarily independent, sole operators and performers, creating their own vision of good porn. Very few work with the larger US companies, although there have been a few such as Tristan Taormino who have made films for the big labels, hoping to encourage change within those organizations. But primarily we are still a small group working for ourselves. We don’t tend to phone Steven Hirsch at Vivid and say “Hey, you know you should start calling your films feminist, you’ll make millions!”

The pornography we make is hugely varied and covers the entire spectrum of human sexuality. It seeks to represent all bodies, all genders, all fantasies — and that can include kinky sex that is often misrepresented as being “violent” and “harmful” in research. The common element you’ll see in feminist porn is a focus on respect, consent and pleasure.

One of the key things that unite feminist pornographers is that we don’t just make porn; we are also a community and we talk about things. We have conferences and we critically think about all aspects of pornography. We participate in academic studies, we write for Porn Studies, we blog, we read, we get together and talk about what’s wrong with porn and what we can do to change that. We are being the change we want to see in the world.

We also talk about ethical production methods and sex work. Part of the feminist porn movement is a discussion about labour and how producers and performers can work together for mutual benefit. Of course, ethical production is by no means exclusive to those who identify as feminist within the porn world. What is different is that we are bringing this issue into the conversation and making our ethics and methods explicit to the audience, seeking to dispel any concerns that they may have about how that porn was made.

McNally talks of “trade” but she doesn’t speak of the exploratory nature of feminist porn. Some of us may be straight-up capitalists and others are doing it for political reasons, for personal reasons, for charity, for love. Some of us are making a profit, some are struggling to pay the rent. Some of us are finding new ways to interact with the public and to create a user-generated experience that centres the viewer and their desires and politics. Some of us are crowdfunding, some are trying to create a sustainable non-profit payment model for porn, others are developing payment models that profit-share with performers.

And here’s the thing that Laura McNally dismissed in her article: we may be small but we are making a difference. Feminist porn is becoming a “brand” of sorts. The media is increasingly reporting on it. Consumers are becoming more aware of the possibility of a more positive kind of porn. More importantly, the US mainstream porn industry IS taking notice. Industry awards night XBiz has introduced a “Feminist Porn Release” category and have been hosting panels on feminist and women-made porn for several years at their annual conference and trade show. Similarly, AVN has come on board with a feminist porn discussion at their conference. There is an increasing awareness in the industry of consumer demand for ethical porn.

Better still, a new performer advocacy group has formed — APAC USA. Not quite a union, it is still a vital step toward a more transparent and ethical porn industry. APAC aims to “provide representation for performers in the adult film industry and to protect performers’ rights to a safer and more professional work environment.”

Sure, some of these changes may well just be “femwashing”. And yes, a lot of porn remains sexist and sex-negative, especially what you see on free tube sites. But change is happening and it is worth celebrating.

Unfortunately, we still face a lot of obstacles. And that includes anti-porn campaigners who advocate for censorship. It would be nice if Laura McNally would take the time to read The Feminist Porn Book and reconsider her dismissal of the feminist porn movement.

As I’ve said before, there’s actually a lot of common ground in these discussions. I am concerned about the messages that sexist porn conveys. I hate the negativity and lack of creativity displayed by of a lot of mainstream porn. I’m also concerned about the lack of sex education and porn literacy among young people. I want to change things. I just wish our conversations weren’t as dumbed-down as Laura McNally’s article. Because it wastes time and doesn’t help matters.

by Ms. Naughty

Originally published at Ms Naughty’s Porn for Women Blog (NSFW)

Bio: Ms. Naughty is a feminist porn filmmaker and writer. She has been making and curating porn for straight women online since 2000. Her erotic films have screened at several international film festivals including Cinekink and the Berlin Porn Film Festival and she has won several short film awards. She has a chapter detailing her work in The Feminist Porn Book, edited by Tristan Taormino et al.. She has spoken about feminist porn at the 2013 and 2014 Feminist Porn Conferences in Toronto, as well as the Women of the World festival in Brisbane in 2015. Her fiction has featured in several editions of Best Women’s Erotica. She runs Bright Desire, an adult site that features all her films. It won Best Website at the 2015 Feminist Porn Awards.

Photo credit: Hansol, via flickr