My life in books

The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure, is a collection of essays about the making, enjoying and understanding of feminist porn edited by Tristan Taormino, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Constance Penley, and Mireille Miller-Young.

Anyone familiar with the history of the "sex wars" knows that pornography is one of several divisive issues in the area of sexuality that has been, and continues to be, hotly debated among feminists. (Personal disclosure: my own positions during the wars were, and continue to be, primarily what has been labeled as "sex-positive.)

In their introduction, the editors state that

The Feminist Porn Book offers arguments, facts, and histories that cannot be summarily rejected, by providing on-the-ground and well-researched accounts of the politics of producing pleasure. Our agenda is twofold: to explore the emergence and significance of a thriving feminist porn movement, and to gather some of the best new feminist scholarship on pornography. By putting our voices into conversation, this book sparks new thinking about the richness and complexity of porn as a genre and an industry in a way that helps us to appreciate the work that feminists in the porn industry are doing, both in the mainstream and on its countercultural edges.

The introduction goes on to discuss the concept of feminist porn and the editors' framework for examining it.

Feminist porn is a genre and a political vision. And like other genres of film and media, feminist porn shares common themes, aesthetics, and goals even though its parameters are not clearly demarcated. Because it is born out of a feminism that is not one thing but a living, breathing, moving creation, it is necessarily contested—an argument, a polemic, and a debate. Because it is both genre and practice, we must engage it as both: by reading and analyzing its cultural texts and examining the ideals, intentions, and experiences of its producers. In doing so, we offer an alternative to unsubstantiated oversimplifications and patronizing rhetoric. We acknowledge the complexities of watching, creating, and analyzing pornographies. And we believe in the radical potential of feminist porn to transform sexual representation and the way we live our sexualities.

Contributors to the collection include such stalwart defenders of women's right to experience sexual pleasure as Betty Dodson and Suzie Bright, and pioneering creators of women-identified pornography such as Nina Hartley and Candida Royalle, as well as a range of other pornographers, academics and feminist thinkers. The politics of porn as it exists in the mainstream porn industry and the ways in which feminist porn aims at creating new power dynamics in the production and distribution of porn, and a new feminist aesthetic in the product itself, are examined from various standpoints. The authors of these essays and personal narratives look at such issues as gender expectations, race, means of production and distribution, body image politics, authenticity in representation of sexuality, queer, genderqueer and trangender images and representations, and more.

While problematic aspects of porn, even feminist porn, are acknowledged and discussed, the focus here is on porn as a medium and a message of positive sexual pleasure in which sexuality of all kinds, not just the male and heteronormative, is celebrated. As Nina Hartley points out in her essay, "Unlike Hollywood tropes, in which the “transgressive” woman must meet a horrible fate for crossing some invisible line, at the end of a porn movie the woman has had orgasms and lives to tell the tale. There are no Anna Kareninas or Emma Bovarys in porn."