Recently I had the pleasure of attending Porn Reborn – New Movements and Markets in Pornography with my dear friend Tara McKee, sex educator and workshop facilitator for Good For Her, put on by SDSSU. The SDSSU is the undergraduate course union for everyone who has ever taken a Sexual Diversity Studies course at the University of Toronto.
Porn is absolutely not something I’m an expert on. Sure, I have a website link bookmarked on my iPhone, but I actually only own 1 movie and I got that for free at the Everything To Do With Sex Show a few years ago. (And ick, it’s so terrible!)
The fact that I only own one movie is absolutely 100% embarrassing. I should have a big ol’ box of porn like in the 40 Year Old Virgin, but trying to find the right style to watch with Steph has been a bit of a challenge over the years.
I admit it. I am a participant in the ‘Click! Gratify’ movement. I watch porn when I need to. If I’m in a hurry to finish, or having trouble shutting off my brain to focus on my lady bits, I’ll find something quickly and click. Steph and I have never really watched together – (though we’re going to work on that by buying some stuff and not living such separate sex lives) – we’ve always had issues with the types of porn that the other likes and gave up trying to find something we could both enjoy.
But no more! Well, ok I will likely still be a click, gratify kinda’ girl, but I will also add to it by purchasing and watching good videos that add to my sexual relationship with myself, my husband and hopefully my lovers.
Anyway …
The conference opened with Brenda Crossman, Director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and professor of family law, gender and law, and law on film. Here’s some highlights from her talk:
- The adult entertainment industry is suffering the same fate as the newspaper industry as more and more people are getting their content, for free, online. Hustler’s suffering just like the New York Times. (Note: *Free might be the right term for the consumer, but many times we click on a Tube8, PornHub, XHamster or other video, we’re watching content that was originally meant to be purchased.)
- Though the stats are unreliable, from 2005 – 2007 the porn industry shrank by $600m in sales
- Porn companies are starting to catch on, allowing the consumer to watch a certain amount of a video for free before reaching the “sweet spot” of time spent that encourages people to take out their credit cards and watch the rest.
Next up was Sherrie Quinn, 4th-year Philosophy and Sexual Diversity Studies student. Growing up as a kid watching Sex TV in 1999 (I was 19 then, how cute is she?), Sherrie didn’t experience the same gradual transition as the rest of us as porn culture became more mainstream. While her presentation was very much like listening to someone read their thesis out loud, she also had some good points and spoke about how hardcore has proliferated into western society.
- In the US, ten to eleven thousand porn films are made EACH year
- We as a society don’t think twice about seeing pornographic style images in modern culture. American Apparel will sell you porn in the form of $40 striped socks.
- “Porn Sheik” has become a taken for granted advertising gimmick.
- Hardcore porn was not available in Britain until 1998. (Ah, my mother country and its old fashioned ways.)
Next up was Bruce La Bruce; a Toronto based filmmaker, writer, photographer, and artist. He bean his career in the mid-eighties making a series of short experimental super 8 films and co-editing a punk fanzine called J.D.s, which begat the queercore movement.
LaBruce was interesting to listen to as he spoke of his life as The Reluctant Pornographer saying that lately when asked why he makes porn, he’d call it kind of a bad habit. He had a lot of great things to say, and again … here’s a summary:
- Punk has the same root as the word faggot.
- Porn was originally made in the 60′s by filmmakers moonlighting after hours. They’d spend their weeks working on regular Hollywood films and their nights on their love for porn.
- Amateur video used to be very personal but porn on video lead to a capitalization of the industry, allowing it to be taken over by the mainstream.
Am I an artist or a pornographer?
As LaBruce creates, he combines unexpected genres like avant garde and experiemental trying to transgress the boundaries limiting the audience. He made the decision early on to not let family disapproval influence his choices and has gone on to have his work featured in numerous international film festivals.
Some of my favorite snippets of his talk were:
- Porn starts are some of our best martyrs, sacrificing themselves on the sexual drives of the masses.
- Contrary to popular belief, porn stars are people too and it takes a really strong moral compass to navigate the world of porn. There are a lot of damaged people working in the industry and having a strong sense of personal ethics to deal with what can be a very fucked up industry is crucial.
- Exploitation is rampant in the industry, but there are people out there changing that. Sasha Grey filmed a scene where 15 guys came in her mouth and she didn’t seem exploited at all. She is not the norm though.
Finally the keynote speaker, Tristan Taormino came on stage.
Tristan took us on a trip back through the history of porn on video, avoiding the topic of internet pornography, deciding instead to focus on video throughout the decades. What have the big, and not so big, names been making and how has it changed?
The 1980′s was the birth time of feminist porn, with the 90′s heading more into unexplored territories like S/M and sex education. Tristan herself made it onto the education scene along with Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Deborah Sundahl, Nina Hartley and others.
The 2000′s brought about a decade of diversity; lesbian, dyke & queer porn with gender fluidity, WW3 westerns, kinky and Buck Angel, the 1st independently funded FTM crossover star to sign a deal for mainstream distribution.
As the decade went on, community based subgenres started to appear with alt, punk, indie and art porn.
When Tristan decided to make her first video, the thought sort of hit her like “Hmm, how about making a video?!” So she wrote a proposal that she managed to get in front of a bunch of porn big-wigs. One day the phone rings … and it’s Buttman.
Buttman, is on the phone.
He said he liked her proposal and asked her if she was going to Vegas. She said “Yes!”, hung up, and thought … “What’s Vegas?”
Once she realized it’s where the AVN’s were being held, she hopped on a plane to meet him and ended up signing the deal to make her first movie. Taormino decided to be in the last scene of the film, having sex with the entire cast. Having never taken so much as a polaroid of herself having sex, here she was about to have a 13 person gangbang.
In 2005, Taormino returned to porn, feeling that the gonzo movement had become corrupted. Rather than being an honest experience for the viewer, gonzo was focusing more on circus like acts, like how many holes can be impaled at once?
Gonzo became the antiporn feminists worst nightmare.
When Taormino filmed “Chemistry”, she challenged the porn formula, letting the actors speak for themselves, setting it up more like a reality show that took place over 36 hours. The process of selecting a cast involved heavy consideration of each actors “yes” and “no” lists – the people they would and would not appear with on camera. She wanted to show that porn actors are more than just sexual objects, that they are people and it’s important to treat them as such. Each actor was interviewed to find out who they are, with questions being asked like “What do you like about your job?” and so on.
This challenges the porn formula as men in porn often don’t speak, or even have their face shown. They are often simply … just a dick.
It’s a formula that Taormino follows in her other films such as “Rough Sex” where actresses describe their own personal submission fantasies, and are able to act them out with cast members they want to work with, in a scene that makes them feel safe.
Not the first thing you think of when you hear the expression ‘Feminist Porn’, but here’s how Taormino describes that idea.
Feminist porn is:
- fair and ethical processes
- safe working conditions
- collaboration with performers
- respect for STD testing and condom use
- positive representations of genders and orientations
- pleasure for everyone
- showing that actors are three dimensional human beings
- not telling people where to fuck, allowing them to choose. If given a choice, most actors will choose a bed because … it’s comfortable.
- against messages from society that porn is dirty or a mans world
It’s not the granola hippie arm hair movement that so many of my guy friends seem to think it is. It’s not just about lesbian or queer pornography, instead it focuses on good movies for all. Porn doesn’t have to be something that men watch when their wives are away, there is 100% something for everyone in the industry.
Come and celebrate Feminist Porn at the Good For Her Feminist Porn Awards, taking place tomorrow, April 9th at the Berkeley Church in Toronto.
Interested in a new way to watch porn? Check out Hot Movies For Her where you can watch movies by the minute. Satisfy the Click! Gratify! urge, or relax and watch some story.
Check out some of the above mentioned peeps, as well as other great people involved in feminist porn on my Twitter List! Did I miss someone? I’m sure I did! @reply me and let me know!
