A review by garberdog
The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure by Constance Penley, Mireille Miller-Young, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Tristan Taormino
3.0
A real mixed bag. This anthology of feminist scholarship and writing by academics, pornographers, porn performers, and others contributes an important body of knowledge and perspectives, but ultimately is limited by a "pro-sex" or apologist framework. My favorite pieces were those which were most academic, critical, and unapologetically feminist/political. Too many of the pieces felt like marketing blubs for the respective authors' films, and while I understand that feminist pornography often exists within a commodity framework, this anthology didn't sufficiently account for this; there was not enough of a distance/critical stance. That said, when the pieces were good, they were REALLY good. The book is worth a read if you can get your hands on it, and it's an important first foray into a more complex discourse on pornography within feminist scholarship. However, I am concerned by the separation of pornography from other forms of sex work enacted by this text.
One final thought: it seems to me that some of the most compelling pieces overcame some of the false dichotomies of the "sex war" paradigm not by repudiating the "sex as painful/traumatic" framework (versus the "sex as pleasure/liberation" framework), but by hopelessly spilling the former into the latter. I think this recognition that sex (at least under the conditions of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy) is always going to be (at least somewhat) traumatic (for at least some people), that it can never pure clean fun, is a necessary recognition for the future of queer feminist sexual politics. The failure of this recognition contributed the only real moment in the book the book that I thought was profoundly anti-feminist. (Not so) surprisingly, this was in Betty Dodson's chapter, where she states that she kicked a woman out of her Bodysex workshop for speaking about sexual trauma. This to me is an appalling failure of feminist politics. This is why we need the framework of theorists like Lynne Huffer (Are the Lips a Grave?), who attempt to theorize a queer feminism.
Summary:
Read it for the critical/academic/feminist political pieces, be prepared to roll your eyes at endless references to "authenticity" and "choice," and be thankful that there's finally an emerging (if still extremely limited) discourse on pornography in feminist that's moving beyond the good/bad binary
One final thought: it seems to me that some of the most compelling pieces overcame some of the false dichotomies of the "sex war" paradigm not by repudiating the "sex as painful/traumatic" framework (versus the "sex as pleasure/liberation" framework), but by hopelessly spilling the former into the latter. I think this recognition that sex (at least under the conditions of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy) is always going to be (at least somewhat) traumatic (for at least some people), that it can never pure clean fun, is a necessary recognition for the future of queer feminist sexual politics. The failure of this recognition contributed the only real moment in the book the book that I thought was profoundly anti-feminist. (Not so) surprisingly, this was in Betty Dodson's chapter, where she states that she kicked a woman out of her Bodysex workshop for speaking about sexual trauma. This to me is an appalling failure of feminist politics. This is why we need the framework of theorists like Lynne Huffer (Are the Lips a Grave?), who attempt to theorize a queer feminism.
Summary:
Read it for the critical/academic/feminist political pieces, be prepared to roll your eyes at endless references to "authenticity" and "choice," and be thankful that there's finally an emerging (if still extremely limited) discourse on pornography in feminist that's moving beyond the good/bad binary