Home › Blogs › figleaf's blog

Light Can Shine Through Any Window

Mon, 2008-03-24 21:41 — figleaf

There’s an open discussion post up called “Can There Be Feminist Porn” at Finally Feminism 101.

Sara, one of the first commenters, suggested that the heavy-duty (potentially triggering) BDSM site Kink.com is ethical due in part to it’s model rights form and rules for directors. Perhaps not surprisingly she was challenged for potentially writing an “advertorial” but at least based on a quick bit of Googling and a review of her three blogs there really doesn’t seem to be any connection between the writer and the website except, possibly, they’re both from the Bay Area.

At any rate, Kink.com isn’t my cup of tea (because I’m not partial to tea, not because tea is bad) and (like society in general) seems partial to the fetish of gender dominance (a compelling term that comes up elsewhere in comments on the post) but I think Sara’s got a great point.

I think the answer would have to related to the possibility of agency in the eye of the beholder. If, as I think is currently true, most pornography is created with an exclusively male audience in mind then any possibility of identification by women might occasionally happen but certainly not on purpose.

And that’s where Sara’s observation comes in. To the extent Kink.com creates an appearance of participation for women then there’s at least the possibility that — unlike a lot of other theoretically less “objectionable” but otherwise thoroughly androcentric sites — some women could imagine making a decision to participate as opposed to simply having the situations imposed on them.

And therefore even if some of the post’s commenters were right that Kink.com’s guidelines and accommodations are a publicity stunt (which they might be) and even if for them it was an outright intentional scam (I really don’t think it is), I still think it models the behavior that a feminist/gender-conscious porn site ought to follow: active agency for all parties; the possibility of personal identification for all represented roles; and a direct intention to arouse all potential viewers within the broad categories of orientation and individual proclivities, of course.

Another way of putting it would be that if there were other, less power-exchange-y sites that implemented the same policies then Sara’s point would seem way less controversial. Assuming there are any. (I’m not aware of them if they are.) If there is such a thing as feminist porn (and I certainly think there can be) then it should at the very least meet if not raise that bar.

Tue, 2008-03-25 04:39 — 2036 (not verified) #permalink

There’s quite a lot of single-model softcore sites out there (like Furry Girl) that are independently run by the model herself, as well as sites like VegPorn that seem to have a lot of interest in giving their models respect and a voice, but I’m not aware of vanilla hardcore that has the same standards. Which says more about my awareness than its existence.

I’ve talked to people who’ve worked for Kink.com and I can vouch that it’s absolutely real—they cast from within the BDSM community and thoroughly negotiate the scenes with the models. The model rights are scrupulously respected and the directors and crew are a diverse mix of genders and sexualities.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Behind Kink is a site chock full of (free!) interesting videos about the way Kink.com works.

[Thanks for the links, Holly. And yes, I’ve read or spoken to enough people who’ve modeled at Kink.com to accept that they’re on the up and up. (People get up to all that and more on any given Saturday night at the Wet Spot in Seattle so it’s no surprise they can find experienced models for it in the Bay Area.) But what I was really trying to say was that everyone should follow their guidelines even if they themselves weren’t serious. —fl]

Tue, 2008-03-25 09:12 — 2036 (not verified) #permalink

I’m glad that Feminism101 discussion did not descend into flaming, and some excellent points were made. I think the issue with BDSM is that perhaps to outsiders it looks like patriarchal power relations played out on a supposedly consenting stage. I think BDSM is more complicated than that, and can be practised by a feminist couple as part of a loving, sexual relationship or displayed in porn with the values that Kink appears to have.

I’m not hugely interested in porn, I don’t find it erotic*, but I’m glad that feminist, or at least feminist-friendly, porn exists and perhaps as demand grows for consensual porn supply will increase and perhaps dent the ‘made for men by men NOW WITH MORE BUKAKKE!’ porn market. None of the men I’ve spoken to like the idea of non-consensual fake-titted porn – they want to see normal people having sex. It’s the verisimilitude that this offers that arouses them, they could be watching the couple next door not some perma-tanned porno pros from LA. Indeed some of the comments on the metafilter page I linked to verify this, with men complaining about the lack of good porn.

*Although I must say Comstock’s work looks like it might tantalise, as the couples eroticism and passion wouldn’t be faked.

p.s. reCAPTCHA asks for ;with daddy’ – a Freudian slip if ever I saw one…

[Hi Virago! My concern about the consistent message out of Kink is that whatever their intention, their outcome seems to play into a lot of anxieties of adequacy and inadequacy. And I’m not positive I can explain that except by comparison to American-born audiences for soccer in the U.S., which is mostly players, with American-born audiences for (american-style) football, most of whom couldn’t themselves play without injury or injuring others. On another note, for the record I’m pretty sure industrial pornographers go for the “now with even more bukakke” because they’re actually even more prudish than their nominal enemies and therefore very uncomfortable producing content with a broader appeal. —fl]

Thu, 2008-03-27 08:05 — 2036 (not verified) #permalink

Geezus Fig – my head may well explode after spending an hour at Feminism101 and blogs linked from there.

I can’t write more – it’s way too late – but thanks…I think :)

Virago – nice call on Tony and Peggy Comstock’s work – humanist porn? :)

[It’s all good, Ell. The problem with 25% or women finding themselves in get-me-outta-here situations sometime in their life is that there’s a hell of a lot of reaction. It’s a little frustrating maybe (though obviously not at all surprising) that subject of the harshest assaults are sometimes the biggest drivers for feminism, but the good news is that however hard the work is for all that the end result is fewer assault victims… and therefore more room to contemplate something like “feminist porn.” As I always say there’s no way the Comstocks would have been able to work before Andrea Dworkin and Katharine MacKinnon kicked pornographers, let alone their customers, into a 20th-Century (let alone 21st) view of women as sexually interested as opposed to merely sexually available… at some price… which is the biggest power-basis for sexual assaults. So like I say, harder than we’d normally think it ought to be but all good anyway. —fl]

Mon, 2008-03-31 03:19 — 2036 (not verified) #permalink

Well, normally I’d disagree with you on a lot of your specific points (and, in fact, could not disagree more with the idea that Dworkin and MacKinnon had a directly salutary effect on porn – perhaps the backlash against them, especially among feminists, did, but they themselves – just no). But yeah, I’ve heard of one case where Kink’s model policies didn’t play out the way they were supposed to – this was discussed on AdultDVDTalk a few months back, and seems to have leaked out to Melissa Farley and the various anti blogs as well. I was ready to dismiss this as just so much inter-industry gossip without any basis, however, the model in question, Kayden Faye, aka Kayden420, writes about it on her blog too, and if you read her description about the injuries she sustained, its pretty disturbing.

So on one hand, you have many models, like the ones that Holly has talked to, and the ones on the AdultDVDTalk discussion that say their experience with Kink.com has been nothing but professional and totally above-board. And then you have what Kayden Faye went through, and I wonder what the fuck happened. Were safe words not listened to? Did she not safe word out when it was really starting to hurt because she was worried about getting paid?

It pisses me off in any event, because as much as F101 know-it-alls might say otherwise, I do genuinely like porn performers (in a fanboyish kind of way, of course) and I don’t like seeing them hurt. Pretending to get hurt, fine, if not my cup of tea, but really hurt – not OK.

[It’s funny but I’d sort of assume that, given what they do, there are probably more real (unintended) injuries at a Kink photoshoot than just the one, and that their policies are in place (i.e. make sure they’re smiling, tops shouldn’t get too carried away) to make sure that if someone gets hurt their photos don’t go up anyway and the “she should have been able to take that” crowd wouldn’t wind up getting off on them. And while some anti-porn and anti-BDSM people might not agree with me I think that’s an important line to draw and it’s ok to draw it where they do. That said if Kayden Faye’s photoset went out anyway, especially over her objections, then that’s the wrong side of the line. As far as linking models go the line that fans and other people have to keep in mind is that people often feel the same way about, say, football stars and yet they wind up with mixed feelings about, say, the broken ribs wide receivers wind up with from contact while stretched out for a spectacular catch. And that’s sort of where I stand on porn performances: not as a special magic uniquely good or bad thing but as physical athletic performances where the universal risk is a combination of mythologizing, identification, and denial on the part of fans that — if not very carefully monitored — can increase the risks the players undertake. — fl]

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.