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.