Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (20 page)

producers have worked in the sex industry; 50% of actors/models have. A little over one-third of actors/models got into pornography through networking, while about 60% of the crew members had. As might be expected, actors/

models and crew members were more likely to mention making money as a primary factor in entering pornography, although this was true for less than 20% of my sample. Four people mentioned getting into porn on a “whim”—

they were all models and got their start posing for Internet photos. Nearly everyone (96%) had some kind of activist background or sensibility prior to entering the industry. These avenues of entry differ greatly from Abbott’s findings regarding mainstream porn actors (Chapter 2), where money, fame, and sociability were the primary factors.

M OTI VATI O N S

The women I interviewed have two main motivations for making pornography: to create pornography that is an alternative to the mainstream industry and that will be educational for viewers.

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Alternatives to Mainstream Porn

Most of the women I interviewed are making films and websites outside the mainstream porn industry although a few have ties to the mainstream world.

Being outside the mainstream is a primary identification and hallmark of their work—it is what sets them apart and is used in marketing materials. There are four primary ways in which the women saw their work as alternative pornography: they make “better” porn; it is made by women; it is created for women; and they are changing the industry.

Making “Better” Porn

While being careful not to align themselves with the antiporn feminists, many of the women are critical of the mainstream industry. For them, most of pornography’s problems stem from the fact that men run the industry.

Participants criticize the types of representation of women and of sexuality in general. In mainstream pornography, they argue, the focus is not on women’s pleasure and women’s orgasms. Instead, it is all about the “money shot” (the visible evidence of men’s ejaculation), women often do not appear to be having a good time, and women are not in control of their images and therefore of their sexuality. They also object to the narrow standard of beauty portrayed in mainstream pornography. Finally, many believe that mainstream pornography gives inaccurate information about sex. Susan, prior to producing films, was a video reviewer for a large sex toy store and she helped to decide which videos the store would carry:

I was watching up to 8 hours of pornographic videos everyday, trying to screen through what was out there and trying to pick what was good and what was bad.

And it was like, wow, there’s a lot of bad stuff out there. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t being done, so we gotta do it.

My interviewees have problems with racial imagery as well, arguing that pornography perpetuates stereotypes about women. An Asian woman who was an actor in two videos produced by a large sex toy store discussed Asian stereotypes as one of the reasons she decided to work in pornography: I have a couple reasons why I do sex work. There are hardly any images of a foxy, big Asian chick with huge tits out there. There are almost no images that are at all empowering. We’re usually . . . in rope bondage or we’re wearing clothes from 100 years ago because of course all Asians have long, black hair that they
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can let flowing down with the chopsticks in their head. They’re wearing kimonos, they’re looking delicate. It plays into the stereotype. And so I think it is a feminist act to be out there and have none of those things, and I’m Asian and I’m foxy.

In addition to wanting to correct problematic representations in mainstream pornography, many of the women feel that mainstream porn omits important issues and falsifies what it does portray. Nan describes her inspiration as coming from wanting to contest, and provide an alternative to, the “lesbian” images portrayed in mainstream pornography: I want to portray images that the mainstream porn companies aren’t portraying.

And right next to that is lesbians having lesbian sex. Real lesbians having real lesbian sex. Authentic, explicit, sexy lesbians. I look at what mainstream porn is doing and I just don’t want to do the same exact thing. And that’s what we mean by alternative. . . . I would say, after the authentic part of it, I want to show lesbians having a good time having sex, enjoying it.

Making better porn thus translates into taking women’s pleasure seriously, putting women’s orgasms at the center, being mindful of gender and race, showing a diversity of bodies and sexualities, depicting fluid genders, using

“real” people with real bodies, and creating something that audiences can identify with (see Figure 4.1).

Women-Made Porn

Calling their work “women-made” is the most basic and nearly universal claim to alternative status made by the women in my study. It is alternative because it is made by women—they consider this groundbreaking and radical in itself.

Many said that women bring a different point of view to the work they do; they are contributing something different than the formulaic, overdone pornography fare. When I asked Christi, a staff person at a lesbian porn company why it is important that their films are made by women, she told me this: Well first of all, it’s another point of view when it comes to pornography because so much porn—or so-called lesbian porn, girl-girl porn—is produced by men.

Then you don’t have the point of view. . . . When you continually see things through a male point of view, through that male gaze, you’re only seeing one side of the story. . . . I think women have something else to offer when they’re behind the camera.

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F i g u r e 4 . 1

V i d e o C o v e r f o r

O n e N i g h t S t a n d .

P h o t o c o u r t e s y o f

F a t a l e M e d i a , I n c .

Making Porn for Women

Women typically describe their work as both “by women” and “for women.”

Most my interviewees see women as their audience: Their films are intended expressly for women’s enjoyment. They held various notions of what a woman consumer would want in pornography, ranging from soft, story-driven porn to gonzo porn with no plot. As might be expected, the women draw from their own experiences and desires to craft something in which they think women will be interested. Those who had experience in sex education would have anecdotal evidence of what women were looking for based on their encounters with customers, and distributors get some feedback from customers. But overall there is no marketing mechanism in place to help them tap into a women’s market. Many admit that men still comprise a large segment of the customers. But marketing it as something for women, or sometimes for
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couples, is a way to set themselves apart from the mainstream. Aki, who has appeared in three hardcore DVD features as well as Internet videos, talks about the director she works with:

She wants to do porn for women, which hasn’t been done, and I think that’s an incredibly brave and heroic feat, and it’s well-needed right now. It seems like an old debate about pornography and whether or not it’s good for women, and it’s really great to have especially a lesbian filmmaker of color take on that responsibility or that mission of actually making work that speaks to women and is for women even though it’s a hot, hot film in general that men can get into.

It’s essentially for the women who are making it and the women who are watching it.

Thus, making porn “by women, for women” includes more than gender politics; women producers and directors also bring in sexuality and, to a lesser extent, race and ethnicity in an effort to represent their identities and communities.

Changing the Mainstream Industry

Some of the women also want to change the larger porn industry—to help bring about changes in both content and work organization. They hope more women will become involved in making porn, and that the mainstream companies will see that it is profitable and hire more women to be directors.

Some talk about gaining recognition by winning Adult Video News awards and possibly being a catalyst for changes in imagery.11 They also want to be role models for treating actors well. A desire to change the industry is part of the reason Tristan decided to work with a mainstream company to produce and distribute her movies:

It’s an incredibly powerful medium. And it’s obviously a medium that continues to be debated among feminists and I’m a feminist. I love theory and debates just as much as the next Wesleyan graduate. But what interested me more was: What about the challenge of actually trying to make something different? What about engaging the beast? I like to call the mainstream adult industry “the beast”. . . .

Can I actually bring my voice and vision into the mix? Can I make a difference?

Is it like a blip on the radar or can it actually have an impact? And I’ve always said that I don’t love all porn; there’s certainly plenty of porn that I dislike or that is not erotic or is offensive to me. But my answer to that is: I want to make porn that’s different. I want to make the kind of porn that I want to see.

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So some women try to change the industry by creating an alternative to the mainstream, while others try to change the industry from within.

Sex Education

Because so many of the women come from a sex education background, it’s not surprising that education is one of the major motivations for making alternative pornography. Educational goals include making videos that highlight information about anatomy, sexual positions, and safer sex as well as depicting “healthy” sexuality. Many women discussed the lack of formal sex education in America and the function pornography serves in this regard.

Carol Queen, a well-known sexologist, described pornography as representing a “classroom.” She told me:

People look at sex movies for information about sex and they don’t always get very good information, partly because of the way that movies are made. The rushing, the not waiting for full arousal to happen, all of this canopy of things can make porn into pretty half-assed sex education. Some is much better than others. Some of the positions that you have to assume to get the camera angle

[right] are not what most people would choose do at home.

Some films/websites are fundamentally about sex education: the education is an explicit and primary goal of the product. For the women making this material, education and activism are partly about providing people with accurate sexual information. One company produced a film that deals with safer sex for lesbians. On their website, the film is touted as “beautifully shot, scripted, and performed, [this film] will challenge negative attitudes toward safer sex for lesbians. . . . Safe Sex is Great Sex!” In this film women contemplate and debate the virtues of safe sex and provide arguments for safer sex practices, demonstrating these practices for the audience. This same company builds sex education ideals into all of their films. One of their directors explained the production process to me: The way we put it together is based on an educational outline. We have to also wrap in diversity, folks of different ethnicities and sexes. . . . So producing it you think, okay, we need a diverse group, we need folks that are exhibitionists, and we need to show sex that is hot, sexy, fun—but we have to have these marker points of putting on rubber gloves, using a dental dam, checking in with your partner, putting a condom on a dildo, using correct safe sex etiquette.

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Carol Queen describes the power of providing information through explicit imagery in film:

We know from some educational research that people retain more information if they see it or experience it than if they simply read it . . . . So one of the reasons to do explicit educational work in the first place is to help people really get it; seeing can be believing. I’ve always been exhibitionistic enough to feel that I could use my own body in that context to educate and to inform, and part of that is not seeing enough sex material out there compared to the amount that I would like to see available to the public.

A more implicit sex educational goal is utilized in other hardcore films: they are modeling healthy sexuality, exploring or advancing women’s sexuality, and giving people new ideas to experiment with. Nina Hartley, a mainstream porn veteran of more than 650 films, makes how-to educational videos but believes her mainstream feature work is also educational. She told me:

It was for me very important to get into the teaching aspect because that was always my goal and intention. Even my traditional videos are subtly and subversively teaching videos in terms of role modeling happy, positive, self-actuated behavior on the part of a female—which was more radical than one might think at the time.

Others stressed the importance of showing different genders, body types, and sexual activity in the hope both that women will benefit from seeing such diversity and to help break down the narrow standards of the mainstream industry.