…

Because Twisty is always right, and if you disagree with her you’re a fucked-up tool. We know the drill, thanks.

How gay porn has anything to do with the sexual exploitation of women is beyond me.

And that’s where I have to express skepticism on Tess’s claim that she can use teh pr0n to selectively promote her political beliefs, or that it’s even helpful. There are way huge-er problems and more immediate problems with porn than the body-image thing. My biggest problem with it is that I can’t look at a mainstream porn or go to an ordinary strip club without thinking about the girls who may be there not because they want to or because it’s better money than factory work or because they’re paying their way through school, but the ones that are there because they’ve been trafficked, or are stuck there to support a drug problem, or who may be sexually assaulted or forced into prostitution or any one of the thousands of horrible things that are just a hop skip and a jump away from that pole. Tess is going on and on about hairy natural women and woman dominated scenes and fucking great, whatever, I’m not going to watch that either but OK. But I heard nary a peep about say, raising awareness about human trafficking or getting sex workers the legal protection they need that a lot of them just don’t have. Maybe she just forgot to mention it, I don’t know.

But I have to take the Twisty view on someone who goes on about how doing this thing is “liberating” or “empowering,” two words that raise giant red flags in my mind. Getting all defensive because you like being an object and being all huffy because someone else reminds you that hey, there’s a whole few thousand years of oppression here that make your liberating kick kind of a dicey one helps no one. If Tess there is not using her empowerment to raise awareness for those women who lack that luxury and instead is patting herself on the back for filming some sex between women who don’t shave, then she’s more part of the problem than the solution. Taking umbarage to a post that points out, correctly in my opinion, that women are the sex class and that this is the basic problem with any porn and whining that your tiny little slice of obscure porn is totally not that way and no discussion of the big picture can be valid without giving a big old heap of acknowledgement to you is analagous to those guys that show up on feminist blogs going “but what about the tiny fraction of men who are falsely imprisoned for rape?”

If there were no patriarchy, or at least a weaker patriarchy, then sex work would be a choice like any other and could be as empowerful as you wanted. But there is a patriarchy, and it can’t really be ignored.

and if you think that this is a completely bad or evil thing, there is something very wrong with you. We are all, to some extent, sex objects.

My working theory on porn is this:
1) Capitalism depends on exploitation.*
2) The porn industry is based in capitalism.
3) The porn industry is sexually exploitative.

Unoppressing porn cannot exist in capitalism, and women (i.e. the sex class) will be oppressed by it as long as the patriarchy exists.

*That pesky profit motive inspires not the goodwill in our fellow humans.

What the Patriarchy wants most is for women to enact their assigned role of sex hole(s). It doesn’t care much how you do it.

If you want to participate in an industry that reinforces women’s status as objects worth nothing more than their sexual usefulness, be my guest. Just don’t pretend it’s a feminist endeavor.

A small but growing percentage of porn is very, very female-empowering. I’m not talking about most alt or just about all mainstream porn, which of course oppresses women (and judging by this article that’s all Twisty knows of the industry) - I’m talking about porn made for women that includes rounder, more natural looking women, a noticible lack of breast implants, no unecessary gynecological shots, many or mostly women-dominated scenes, and no “money shot” at the ends of the scenes (check out Candida Royalle’s work for starters if you don’t believe me); I’m talking about political pro-femme porn that supports fatter, hairier, and “normal” non-mainstream-type women who direct their own photo shoots (vegporn.com is a good example); I’m talking about progressive gender-bender BDSM porn like the meninpain.com stuff. This type of porn is liberating for women both in the industry and outside watching it.

In summary, if you think mainstream porn oppresses women, you’re right. If you think porn in general oppresses women, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s important that women recognize this so we can support the projects that are empowering to women.

Sorry Kyso, but as a feminist sex worker who works constantly - and selectively - to preserve and promote my political beliefs, I cannot help but feel offended by Twisty’s blatant overgeneralization and ignorance of the porn industry.