Sex, rape, representation (original) (raw)
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Pornography and Liberation: Understanding Cultures of Violence
Drawing from select South Asian examples, this paper argues that pornography is an economically, socially and culturally significant phenomenon that must be understood as falling within the domains of representation and of commercialised sex. To ignore the understanding of it as purchased sex and as sex work, is to misread the phenomenon and to expose the already precarious and gendered labour to the risks of an unregulated workplace. It further argues that the rapid transnational spread of porn is a consequence of several factors that include the Internet boom, technological changes, convergence, capitalist entrepreneurship, and the ease with which the (sexual) labour of women is commodified and devalued. Finally, it argues that the neoliberal ethos, current economics and capitalist logic and cultures are deeply imbricated in emotional and intimate lives, and ascribe value to subject-bodies and the labour they perform. These subject-bodies also become the sites on which the tensions of intersecting identities of gender, race, class, nationality and ethnicity are staged, eroticised and sold. The understanding of porn as a liberatory phenomenon is thus, an incomplete one at best.
The diversity of women’s sexualities and desires remains contested terrain among feminists. Moreover, we want to argue, these are still in nascent stages of critical feminist explorations, explorations held back by persistent dichotomies, a stalemate between so called ‘anti-porn’ and ‘sex positive’ feminisms. Again and again, theorists and activists representing various schools of feminist thought try to come up with a hegemonic definition of “authentic” female sexuality, the ways it is (or should be) experienced and its acceptable representations. These are old debates but as even the current conference demonstrates, they have continuing relevance today although terminology has shifted. We don’t hear about the “sex wars” anymore but new terms, like for instance “sexualisation” and “pornification”, especially of childhood, have entered public discourse. Our concern in this paper is to outline and critique the persistent anti-porn position among UK feminist groups; to offer a critique of dominant sex-positive attitudes as lacking a racialised class analysis; and to offer some thoughts toward a more useful and relevant perspective on women’s diverse sexualities, a perspective that moves beyond a binary. Our point of departure is the conviction that an anti-porn feminist politics has in several instances hijacked the name of ‘feminism’ in the UK in recent years. For instance the ‘London Feminist Network’, a name indicating a broad, inclusive feminist politics, takes a specific anti-porn position, authorising it as the only valid feminist stance. Moreover, a specific anti-porn feminism influenced government policy under New Labour, partly by New Labour feminists themselves including Government Equalities Office Minister Maria Eagle , and is currently influential to government policy on so-called ‘sexualisation.’ As Gayle Rubin wrote some twenty seven years ago, “The anti-pornography movement and its avatars have claimed to speak for all of feminism. Fortunately, they do not” (29). We welcome the fact that because the word “feminism” is not a trademark and “anti-porn feminism” is not the only collocation permitted, in 2011 some women come up (the horror!) with concepts such as “feminist porn awards”. However, our main criticism of so-called ‘sex-positive’ feminism is that it often is uncritical of capitalist frameworks, as well as of the concept of choice, and can advocate an untenable libertarian entrepreneurialism as a solution to emancipating women’s sexual desire.
The Cultural Motion of Pornography Thesis20191003 49784 op5lno
2015
From the early days of the Internet, online pornography was an immensely successful industry, with a consequent phenomenal increase in both production and consumption of cyber porn. Prior to 1995, Anti-porn feminists were working to legally censor violent pornography. They received considerable resistance internally from pro-porn feminists arguing from the perspective of rights and free speech. The exponential increase in pornography consumption has inspired significant psychological research on the possible implications of cyber porn consumption on gendered expectations and attitudes. This research adds a theoretical and historical component to research exploring cyber porn as cultural contributor to social and sexual gendered beliefs that may result in violent behaviors such as cyber harassment. Using Greg Urban’s theory of cultural motion and Michel Foucault’s theories on sexuality and disciplinary practices, this thesis analyzes discourses surrounding the motion of pornography—before and after the Internet—investigating potential consequences of pornography on the social construction of gender and misogynistic social behaviors. According to Urban, the internalization of cultural beliefs is directly proportional to exposure and frequency of contact with a sensibly tangible form he calls an object. Objects are conductors of social beliefs, myths, and messages. According to Foucault sexuality has become an instrument of oppression (rather than liberation). This thesis argues that pro-porn feminists underestimated the impact of pornography on the social construction of gender, and traces the cultural motion of pornography from 1981-2015 analyzing forces influencing cultural motion. Urban asserts we are now in an age of modern culture that focuses on newness and mass dissemination. Objects of traditional culture can adapt by cleverly reforming with new technology. As a historical object that has existed for centuries, pornography contains traditional culture that has transitioned with remarkable success into modern culture. The Internet is a space that has revolutionized dissemination as mass production and consumption. Consumer statistics support the hypothesis that present day pornography consumption in Western culture is normalized among young people and particularly men. This theoretical discourse analysis supports the hypothesis that pornography directly influences gender role construction that negatively impacts both men and women. This research was limited to the theoretical realm and relied on qualitative data from other studies. Further research is required on how the proliferation, anonymity, and accessibility of pornography is currently contributing toward a radical social construction of gender, unanticipated by the earlier feminist theorists.
Harms of production: theorising pornography as a form of prostitution
Traditionally recognised forms of prostitution (such as brothel, street and escort prostitution) tend to be seen, in both popular culture and in law, as separate from pornography. The pornography industry is often represented as a less harmful and more glamorous part of the sex industry. These representations, coupled with academic debates that have typically focused on the consumption rather than the production of pornography, have resulted in some of the harms of pornography being obscured. It is argued here that commercial pornography should be understood as prostitution and, potentially, as a form of prostitution carrying specific and additional harms. This may offer useful ways forward for feminist analyses of the harms of pornography.
The diverse economies of online pornography: From paranoid readings to post-capitalist futures
Anti-pornography campaigners have frequently claimed that porn studies need to take the economics of pornography seriously, yet often this amounts to little more than the idea that pornography is a capitalist product. This article brings together J.K Gibson-Graham's work on post-capitalism and Eve Sedgwick's notion of 'paranoid' and 'repara-tive' reading in order to think about the performative effects of the narratives we use to talk about the pornography industry. It proposes a move away from a capitalocentric understanding of online pornography towards a 'diverse economies' approach: one that demonstrates the multitude of ways in which pornography exists outside of the rubric of capitalism. This helps to avoid the affective state of paranoia and helplessness that narratives of the all-powerful global porn industry so often create, whilst also allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the legal regulation of pornography. The article concludes with some thoughts as to how a diverse economies approach might better enable us to assess recent attempts to regulate online pornography within Britain, noting attempts at regulation may have an adverse effect on not-for-profit, amateur, or peer-to-peer pornography, whilst benefiting mainstream corporate pornography producers. While Web 2.0 has been argued to have changed the entire media landscape, its impacts appear to have been particularly pronounced in the realms of pornography , with new platforms blurring the boundaries of producer/consumer and
Beyond the Entrepreneurial Voyeur? Sex, Porn and Cultural Politics
New Formations, 2013
This essay aims to explore the relationship between neoliberal ideologies and sexuality, by considering questions of criticality and political agency in relation to pornography. The essay identifies a trend in contemporary porn studies work towards a ‘constrained optimism’ that also expresses a wider deadlock in cultural and media studies. This arises from a need to protect the concept of individual agency against reactionary movements, alongside a tendency to elide the implications of consumerism in neoliberal cultures. Much porn studies work is critical of tendencies in altporn, most significantly around questions of labour and commodification. Yet work in this area also tends to remain invested in the promise of agency, where this agency is a function of the expansion of the technological resources available in a networked culture, the proliferation of choice, and the blurred boundary between consumer and producer. This essay seeks to move beyond this deadlock by drawing on recent work on the concept of the enterprise society, elaborated by Foucault in The Birth of Biopolitics, and taken up by writers such as McNay, who have suggested that Foucault’s insight fundamentally challenges the relationship between individual autonomy and political resistance, where that autonomy guarantees not liberty but responsible self-management. The essay considers the figure of the entrepreneurial voyeur, in the light of concepts of immaterial labour offered by Lazzarato and critiqued by McRobbie, and goes on to make a sustained reading of the film Made in Secret in order to map ways in which we might be able to imagine how the affective pleasures of pornography might not simply underwrite alienated and competitive modes of being but might help us to imagine more radical forms of sociality.
Pornography: Structures, agency and performance
Pornography: Structures, agency and performance, 2015
Written for a broad audience and grounded in cutting-edge, contemporary scholarship, this volume addresses some of the key questions asked about pornography today. What is it? For whom is it produced? What sorts of sexualities does it help produce? Why should we study it, and what should be the most urgent issues when we do? What does it mean when we talk about pornography as violence? What could it mean if we discussed pornography through frameworks of consent, self-determination and performance? This book places the arguments from conservative and radical anti-porn activists against the challenges coming from a new generation of feminist and queer porn performers and educators. Combining sensitive and detailed discussion of case studies with careful attention to the voices of those working in pornography, it provides scholars, activists and those hoping to find new ways of understanding sexuality with the first overview of the histories and futures of pornography