Katharina Freund

Yes, everything in this lecture is filled with innuendo and

latent homoerotic sexual tension.
Overview
 What is pornography?
 Pornography & feminism
 Second-wave, anti-porn
 Sex positive feminism
 Third-wave/Post
 Female sexual subcultures & “bad girls”
 “Slash”
 “Boy‟s love”
 Violence and fantasy
What is pornography?
 Pornē = “prostitute”; graphia = “written
description or illustration”
 Explicit sexual subject matter for the
purposes of sexual excitement
 “Desire is elusive and subjective. It
refuses to confine itself to particular
acts, people, objects, imaginary sites or
rooms in the house.”
 Catharine Lumby, 1997, 95
US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, 1964
Pornography in Context
 Contentious: often seen as a social problem
(obscene)
 Almost impossible to gauge size of industry…
 Estimates from one to tens of billions of dollars US,
not including online porn
 About 15,000 films released per year
 …or size of audience
 Shame and stigma prevents accurate data
 Porn is diverse and varied is content
 Million different reports on its effects, positive
or negative
 (Source: Pappas, 2004)
Second-Wave Feminism
 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema” (1975)
 Psychoanalytic approach to film studies
 Hollywood films inadvertently structured on
the ideas and values of patriarchy
 Male gaze:
 Spectator is active, masculine
 Woman is passive, object of desire
 Image of woman controlled through
mechanisms of fetish and voyeurism
 “She is isolated, glamorous, on display,
sexualised. But as the narrative
progresses she falls in love with the main
male protagonist and becomes his
property, losing her outward glamorous
characteristics, her generalised sexuality,
her show-girl connotations; her eroticism
is subjected to the male star alone. By
means of identification with him, through
participation in his power, the spectator
can indirectly possess her too.”
– Laura Mulvey 1975, 21
Second-Wave Feminism and the
Anti-Porn Activists
 Radical feminists in 1970s and 1980s
 Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon
 Pornography defined as “graphic
sexually explicit materials that
subordinate women through pictures or
words” (MacKinnon 1993, p. 15)
 Anti-pornography Civil Rights
Ordinance, 1983
Anti-Porn Activists continued…
 MacKinnon
 American legal scholar
 Groundbreaking work on sexual harassment
 Pornography:
○ should not be protected as free speech as it
prevents gender equality
○ condones sexual violence against women
○ causes men to behave in sexually violent
ways
 Rejects pornography as fantasy
Anti-Porn Activists continued…
 Dworkin:
 Pornography:
○ is objectification of women by men
○ is an act of violence against women
○ eroticizes domination and abuse of women
○ has extremely negative social consequences
 “We will know that we are free when
pornography no longer exists.” (1981, 224)
Catharine MacKinnon (quoted in Lumby 1997, 104)
“They Like To Watch”
 Lumby, 1997
 Charges of sexism commonly laid against
advertisers
 Questions reading of nude/suggestive
images of women as automatically sexist
 Why can‟t sexualized images of women be
positive?
 Censoring sexual images “protects”
women: implicit in this is idea that women
are weak, sensitive
 “Why insist on reading images…as
demeaning to women? Why teach
women to read images in a way that
makes them feel bad about themselves?
Why not encourage them to make
creative readings of images and to
appropriate and reinvent female
stereotypes to their own advantage?”
 Catharine Lumby, 1997, 8
Critiques of Second-Wave
 Misandrist
 Pro-censorship
 Links between media and effects not so
clear-cut
 Promotes a conservative, essentialist, and
negative view of sexuality
 Ignores women‟s choices or agency
 Assumes all women are victims
 Women who do like porn feel guilty, are
“bad feminists”
 “But when a woman is portrayed as a
victim, even when she is not, and
certainly does not feel like one, you not
only insult her but you alienate her as
well. The idea that a sexually active and
interested woman is merely fulfilling a
man‟s fantasy, and therefore to serve
him, is outrageous.”
 Havana Marking, 2005
Sex Positive Feminism
 Also known as sex-radical feminism
 Pat Califia, Susie Bright, Tristan
Taormino
 Women‟s sexual pleasure and
masturbation as central to gender
equality
 Anti-censorship
 Diverse expressions of sexuality
 LGBT, BDSM, etc.
Sex Positive Feminism
 “Pucker Up”:
http://www.puckerup.com/EN/home/
 Education
 Consensual, ethical pornography
 Open discussion of sexual practices
 Sex-ed porn
3rd Wave / Postfeminism
 Complicates generalised view of “the
female” common in 2nd Wave
 Feminism intersects with anti-
foundational movements
(postmodernism, etc.)
 Addresses issues ignored in 2nd Wave:
ethnicity, sexual difference, class
 Influence of Foucault: Reject idea that
power resides in monolithic institutions,
interested in everyday life
The “F” Word
 Movement characterized by its most radical
members
 Alienated other women
 Term “feminist” makes women
uncomfortable

 Further reading:
 SMH: Who says feminism in dead? 12 April
2010, Nina Funnell
 http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/who-
says-feminism-is-dead-20100412-s3ei.html
“Porn for Women”

Cambridge
Women‟s
Pornography
Collective, 2007.
“Porn for Women”

http://xkcd.com/714/
Porn Today
 More common for women to watch porn
 Moved almost entirely online
 Segal:
 US: 40% of porn tapes purchased by
women (Time Magazine)
 “Yet it still remains predominately men who
produce most of the sexual images of
women: continually repositioned, passively,
as object, icon and fetish of male desire…”
(2004, 60)
Who is the audience?

http://www.Pornhub.com , 26 April 2010

 Feminist issues tangled in
representations of women
 Complex, individual, political

 Some women want to watch porn, but

avoid the politics

 Here‟s what happens:

“Why is Queer as Folk making
straight women wet?”

Video: “Sexy Back”, by dayln03;

http://www.fabmagazine.com/features/womenwet/index.html
“Slash”
 Genre from media fandom
 Homosexual relationships between male
characters from television and film
 Kirk/Spock, Sam/Frodo,
Holmes/Watson, Harry/Draco…
 Expressed in fanfiction, video, art
 Written by women, for women
(generally)
Supernatural…
…with slash goggles

“Please”, by Melissa
Yaoi & BL
 Japanese genre
 Yama nashi, imi
nashi, ochi nashi
 Boy‟s Love:
generally PG13
 Yaoi: explicit sex
 Popular subgroup of
anime fandom in the
West

Dousaibo Seibutsu, Sumono Yumeka, 2001.

“Bad Girls”

“Especially since, like,

girls aren‟t supposed
to like, know about it
[sex/gay sexuality],
we‟re not supposed to
find a lot of things hot
or whatever, and if we
do people look at us
weird, but I don‟t care,
really, I mean, I think
they‟re repressed.”
“Bad Girls”
Q: Why do you like yaoi?

I can be as filthy as I want.

It seems more intimate when two

guys have sex because of the issues
of women‟s place in society.

Overcoming social taboos.

It‟s just really sexy!!

“Bad Girls”
 Subversive
 Female-dominated fantasy
 Active female spectators –
objectifying male bodies
 Role of community
 “I still find it incredible
writing to people and
being able to talk about
„slash‟ and use all those
words that polite Catholic
girls are not supposed to
know…”
 - Slash fan in Green,
Jenkins, & Jenkins 1998
Violent Fantasies
 Slash & yaoi often contain violence
 Can engage in S&M, rape fantasies
without guilt as not gender-identified,
free from [anti-porn] feminist thinking
 (Green, Jenkins, and Jenkins 1998)
 Exploring the darker side of
relationships
 Space for fantasy
Violent Fantasies
 Jones 2005
 Japanese
pornographic
women‟s comics
 Reconciling
submissive /
masochistic desires
 Consuming these
comics is an active,
conscious act
 Transgressive

Image: Final page of “Bachelor Party”, Yayoi Watanabe, 2000.

Why slash?
 Lack of complex female characters
 Desire to identify with heroes (male)
 Most complex and enduring relationship
in media usually between men
 Alternatives to traditional masculinity
 Source: Green, Jenkins, & Jenkins,
1998
 “What they [slash writers and readers]
do want is sexual intensity, sexual
enjoyment, the freedom to choose, a
love that is entirely free of the culture‟s
whole discourse of gender and sex
roles, and a situation in which it is safe
to let go and allow oneself to become
emotionally and sexually vulnerable.”
 Joanna Russ, 1985, 89
Why yaoi?
 Secretive – “girls aren‟t supposed to
know or talk about sex”
 Safe – fantasy of sex without the politics
of feminism
 Exotic – “something I‟ll never be a part
of, fascinating”
 Sexy! – “Why do we need a reason?”
Problems
 Lack of complex female characters in
the media (role models?)
 Politics of representation too
overwhelming
 Women unable to identify with their own
gender
 Is leaving women out of fantasy
misogynist?
In conclusion…
 Feminist thinking has provided many
different ways to think about pornography
 Female subcultures of “bad girls” based on
sexual content: consuming porn that
appeals to them
 Violence is prevalent in many types of porn
for women
 Core issues of representation, gender
equality, cultural expectations, and fantasy
Thank you for listening!
References
 Brooks, Ann. Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory, and Cultural Forms. London:
Routledge, 1997.
 Califia, Pat. Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex. Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1994.
 Dworkin, Andrea. Pornography: Men Possessing Women. New York: The Women‟s
Press, 1981.
 Green, Shoshanna; Jenkins, Cynthia; and Jenkins, Henry. “Normal Female Interest in
Men Bonking.” Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, and Identity. Eds. Cheryl Harris
and Alison Alexander. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1998.
 Jones, Gretchen I. “Bad Girls Like to Watch: Writing and Reading Ladies‟ Comics.”
Bad Girls of Japan. Eds. Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley. New York: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2005.
 Lumby, Catharine. Bad girls: the media, sex and feminism in the '90's. St. Leonards:
Allen & Unwin, 1997.
 MacKinnon, Catharine. Only Words. London: HarperCollins, 1993.
 Marking, Havana. “The Real Legacy of Andrea Dworkin.” The Guardian. 15/04/05.
Accessed:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/15/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety
 Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1989.
 Russ, Joanna. Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Peverts: Feminist
Essays. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1985.