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“We are looking for six performers to join our Company of Dykes for moving installation REIN.” When the algorithm served me this ad, my interest was piqued. Over the decades, many attempts have been made to produce “ethical pornography” just for women — and this seemed to be another one. The director, “queer artist” Leonie Rae Gasson, is recruiting three performers for a “magical, erotic journey through a distinctly Scottish landscape”, which will involve “fisting, squirting, wet work, and mess”. But worry not about exploitation on set. Gasson states that: “Our intimacy coordinators will support you to more clearly identify your detailed needs and boundaries with the sexual aspect of the work.”
This is a company that has been awarded government funding. On Monday, it was reported that Scotland’s national arts quango is reviewing REIN’s £85,000 award, “because its hardcore content is more explicit than initially indicated”. The publicity suggests that three performers will be doing an explicit sex scene — actual, non-simulated sex. Which perhaps explains why the company is seeking applicants with “experience of porn and sex work”.
These applicants must be “Dyke identifying performers”, but the list of sub-genres is long. It is topped by trans dykes, followed by, among others: poly(amorous), stud, baby, bi, asexual, fag, daddy, and princess dykes. In fact, the site clarifies that anyone who has “a relationship to the word DYKE” can apply. That is, anyone at all.
This is pornography, postmodern style. Here, lesbian terminology is being subverted beyond all recognition. And there’s no reckoning with the thorny question at the heart of the endeavour: is it even possible for lesbians to produce “ethical pornography” for the consumption of other lesbians, when “girl on girl action” is one of the most popular genres among men?
For the libertarian, porn is about freedom; for the libertine, fulfilment; for religious conservatives, it is immoral and depraved. Many feminists, like me, see it as misogynistic propaganda. But if my 40 years of researching the industry have taught me anything, it’s that porn is just big business, one of the most profitable industries on the planet. Annual revenue has been estimated at up to $90 billion, nine times more than Hollywood’s revenue.
And unfortunately, the lesbian market is just too small to be attractive to the key players in porn. Therefore anything in the “girl on girl” genre must, if it is to generate profit, appeal to men.
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Subscribei kind-of expected the article to try to prove the thesis, but no. it didn’t even try. i thought it would at least cite…something. but no.
I agree. I would have been interested in some philosophical discussion about why the Arts Council chose to view this as art. I wrote a bit more to push the point but the piece has been sin-binned for about 3 hours.
“This is a company that has been awarded government funding. On Monday, it was reported that Scotland’s national arts quango is reviewing REIN’s £85,000 award, “because its hardcore content is more explicit than initially indicated”.”
The statement that the Scottish Arts Council was doling out £85,000 to make pornography and only reconsidering because the hardcore content was more explicit than indicated was the most shocking revelation of this essay. It shows how taxpayers money is sought to be wasted on entirely unmeritorious tripe.
Presumably the Arts Council were expecting the porn to be sufficiently artistic (ie unappealing) that few would actually want to pay good money to view it. Hence the need for a subsidy. Clearly they were appalled that the proposed filth might actually be popular – particularly if men might enjoy it. That would never do.
Good old Scotland, she never disappoints, and how Dr Johnson would laugh.
I really expected a deeper and referenced article on the pornography (erotic material, what you will) which lesbians enjoy. There was once an excellent art mag I knew called Quim which was exclusively lesbian. I have been intrigued to find lesbians taking an interest in gay male porn, something under-studied except in Dr Lucy Neville’s book Girls Who Like Girls Who Like Boys https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girls-Who-Like-Boys-Pornography-ebook/dp/B07BKPLHP5.
I worked at a video store with a very large porn collection (of the mainstream variety) throughout the 1990s, and learned a lot about both the dynamics of porn rental and the kind of mainstream porn films being made between 1970-2000. With a few notable exceptions, renters were exclusively men and they were very clearly the target audience. Although the pattern of porn-watching has changed somewhat in the Pornhub era, it still broadly holds from stats I’ve seen. That said, there have been at least a few porn-makers who have tried to make films from a female perspective. For example, we stocked a couple of films by Candida Royale (yes, that was her actual stage name; you’ve got to give props to someone who names herself after a yeast infection!). A former porn star, she was a self-declared feminist porn-maker, although as far as I know, her films were aimed at heterosexual women rather than lesbians. Distinguishable by their 80s-boudoir-glamour-shot covers, not a single one was rented out in the decade I worked there. For those interested, I’ve written about the dynamics of video porn rental here: https://silentbutdeadly.substack.com/p/stories-from-the-video-store-trenches-part-1.
Your article is a great read. Thanks for posting the link.
While I generally agree with you I would say that a lot of the consumption of porn has changed and that a far higher percentage of women watch porn now than used to. Here is why I think that is…
First, we have entered an age of women, young women in particular, asserting their right to be sexual as a form of feminist empowerment. “I can watch and enjoy porn like a man.” You see that too in hookup culture. You see a lot of far more aggressive women flat out saying they just want to F&ck.
Porn has gone mainstream. There is a whole lot less stigma attached to it than there was 40 yrs ago.
Availability. You do not have to go to some seedy theater or go behind some hidden section in a video store to get porn. All any woman has to do is to boot up her computer or hit the right url on her phone and she can pick whatever porn she wants privately (apart from their cell provider or ISP). No need to go to some gross, seedy place. No need to go behind the curtain to the porn room. No need to be open or be in a risky place.
I am actually amazed at the number of women who have told me that they have watched porn, particularly in the over 40 crowd. I’m even more amazed at the few that have asked me to watch it with them.
Different world. Not sure it is a better world, but it is different.
Even in an article with so many straw-lesbians, I still couldn’t quite get there.
Can they film it on Devil’s d**e? I’m sure the National Trust would be very willing to oblige
Its not a subject I know much about but I find it hard to believe lesbians don’t watch porn. If that’s what JB is saying. (To be honest I got a bit lost in this one.)
To educate myself I thought perhaps I should watch some.
I found it hard too.
How very tongue in cheek of you !
… ‘lesbians could enjoy artisanal porn’ … So many new words for me in this piece I (almost) looked that one up.
Context is everything. In this case the emphasis is on the second half of the word “artis-a**l”, Both words (artisanal / porn) have their place, but when combined they still stink, despite any amount of musk, and are not really places you want to delve into.
It’s like artisanal cheese. “We have our own aging caves” – says one of the leading websites on the fad.
What,”enjoy”?
A small terrain investigation (conducted for scientific purposes only) around several websites hosting adult content² proved beyond reasonnable doubt that the assertion headlining this article is demonstrably fake news.
When Unherd publishes an article that even touches on religion/spirituality there are inevitably responses from readers who refute the idea of anything greater and say that the exploration of our own humanity is the route to a better society. Fair enough. Here we have one way that the Scottish arts council thinks we are supposed to do it. In England, we’ve been here before with ‘Tempting Failure’ an arts council sponsored performance which caused a furore due to its content ( one piece was about ‘demystifying the a**s’)but also because it came into conflict with licensing laws (for the venue). The licensing laws were viewed by many as unnecessary restrictions on artistic expression and human creative endeavour. Body-based performance is claimed to be ‘a powerful experience, capable of exploring the potential, and transcendence, of the human body’ (TJ Bacon)
Perhaps Ms Bindel or someone else would like to write another article coming at her subject matter from an artistic and philosophical angle.
Not “exploration” of our humanity, but honest insight and greater understanding. One can “explore” without achieving either.
Okay, I’m going to have ONE go at this:
Sex exists in order to perpetuate the species. Biologically, by separating out certain functions between sexes, our species gained an evolutionary advantage. Sexual desire exists in order to motivate sexual contact and preserve the species.
It is stronger in men than women because men as supposed to be stronger than women – they pursue the women and that’s part of our evolutionary biology. Women (passively) try to choose the best advancing male, while men compete with each other and fight to overcome female hesitancy in order to win a copulation opportunity.
The human sex act is structured around male desire. Women are passive in this act, while men drive (literally) the sex act to its conclusion, which is usually male orgasm, the deposit of sperm inside the vagina and the chance for reproduction.
Of course, there is social evolution, but this is the core of the whole thing. Insofar as porn is an abstract play on this core process, it is normal and natural that it will reflect the importance of male desire and the passiveness of women.
The author’s entire point here is that she, because of her own preferences, is uncomfortable with this basic truth. But that’s no going to change how sex is viewed – a male p***s, pursuing and penetrating a female vagina, ejaculating and making her pregnant. Full stop.
Indeed. Yet lamentably our social evolution has stranded us in this risible intellectual cul-de-sac where it is the cultural, not the biological, which is promulgated as being the core of the thing. Subsequently, porn is seen primarily as a representation of cultural influences, which are regarded by post-reality feminists to be abhorrent and unnatural.
You were doing okay until using the silly expression “Full stop” at the end; because it’s simply not. If it were, contraception would never have been worth inventing, and a great deal of art (not just in the Western canon) wouldn’t have been made.
It could be argued that human civilisation is built upon the regulation of desire, but in describing the female role as “passive” i think you’re missing a great deal of what’s going on (all around us, every single day). Females – to a greater or lesser degree – may act in what looks like a passive manner but it’s a facade. Males are simply more straightforward, or assertive, which can discombobulate some of them when females drop the facade and start to exert their own assertiveness. In many instances, the tables are turned.
We read in Comments from many males who display signs of distress at female assertiveness. It just makes me smile.
I’m well aware of the fact that society creates anomalies and deviations from the central narrative. But what happens when these deviations become too widespread is, interestingly, the death of sexuality itself. Look at all these trans and non-binary kids: many of them don’t even have or want to have sex. The pill is the same: it mutes sexual desire. Actually Mary Harrington did a piece on this point not long ago in this very magazine.
Also next time, read more carefully before you drop comments. I didn’t say women were passive. I said that in the sex act, women have a passive role. This is evidently the case: women are penetrated. The whole thing is driven by male desire. How often have you seen or experienced sex between an unaroused male and an aroused female?
I’m a 48 year old male and I can say with conviction: never.
I’d disagree that being penetrated is passive. I read your comment carefully before replying; just as the element of enticement isn’t passive, the fundamental motivation for being penetrated in a relationship where childbirth is the agenda, isn’t passive.
When it isn’t, the roles are still able to be interchanged according to taste and mood, and in this instance the “passivity” you refer to simply wouldn’t apply anyway, since the intake of sperm isn’t the primary (necessarily) purpose.
I think you’d be on firmer ground if you used the term ‘receptive’ rather than ‘passive’, but who am i to tell a 48 year old who comes to a Full Stop about such subtleties?!
You may have inadvertently explained the latter day desire a certain cohort of men have toward shemale p0rn and transsexualism: the search for a mate with even levels of sexual arousal – a sort of male desire contained within a feminine form, or perhaps even a desire expressed by sexually uncertain men to actually become the feminine kind of woman they dream of but that is becoming increasingly rare in Western society as women become hardened by feminist ideology.
Porn is like alcohol and cigarettes – it can be enjoyable in reasonable quantities and in the right company. The problem is that, without a certain amount of self-control, it can spiral into addiction, with an ever bigger hit needed to have the same effect.
What would I do? Probably ban free access (which might also help reduce child access) and tax porn heavily, which might discourage people starting down the road.
I’ve watched a lot of 70’s movies recently and nudity was a big factor at the time; either as soft-porn in a desperate attempt to attract any sort of audience, or as a tool by avant-garde directors to ‘break down barriers ‘ etc.
The former movies look like pathetic tat now and although some of the latter are genuinely interesting, they also now look terribly naive.
The Big Bucks driving the former have of course won out in the end and just like drugs have saturated our societies to the point of no return.
I agree that the old-fashioned and now derided idea of limiting access had a lot to recommend it. The alternative of porn lessons for infants is the incredible suggestion by the usual suspects, along with free drug tester strips for kids.
That does seem to be the recipe for how to handle vices that are both bad for society and nigh impossible to eliminate without resorting to totalitarian levels of censorship. Taxes are a terrible way to raise revenue but a good way to use economic incentives to influence behavior.
As usual Bindel pretends that women are helpless and devoid of agency, that they are meek pawns who are ruled and controlled by nasty men.
I’m a lesbian who enjoys a little porn. I’ve seen ethical (artisanal!) lesbian porn produced by filmmaker Shine Louise Houston. Her ‘Crash Pad’ series is definitely not directed for straight male desire.
Thanks for your honesty.
It’s interesting that the author seems totally unbothered by gay male porn, simply because it is not “misogynistic”.
The authoress, like the people who produce porn that she is criticizing, has a completely wrong conception of human sexuality. While she is correct that porn is bad for women, it is also bad for men – despite the fact that men seem to like it so much.
She says the religious (like myself) oppose porn “because it is immoral and depraved.” That is old-fashioned language that means “unhealthy and soul crushing.”
“But wait [someone says], I love watching porn and it makes me feel great!” No, it doesn’t. Perhaps there is some short-term pleasure – but centuries of human experience plus contemporary research all show the same thing: debasing our sexual impulse through commodified, commercialized artificialities impairs our ability to form and support long-term personal sexual relationships – you know, the ones that bring the greatest, the longest and the deepest personal satisfaction.
Yes, there is a ‘science’ in religious texts that in many ways is far more in-tune to the susceptibleness of human nature than modern science is today. It is becoming increasingly clear that when humans are dislodged from a coherent religious system, they fall into believing all kinds of post-modern myths and banalities.
I call it mental adultery and keep well away from it. It’s just between me and my wife no one else.
This is because Julie can never miss an oppo to play the misogyny card.
I could just as easily argue that male porn is misandrist, as it objectifies men, makes them feel inadequate about how they look and their sexual performance, serves up ridiculous and stereotyped images of ‘masculinity ‘, and highlight the frequently disastrous outcomes of those men (especially young adults) who have tried to make a living in the porn industry. Suicides are not uncommon as is drug use and leaves them unfit for employment of other sorts later.
But that would not fit in with the pyramid of intersectional oppression in which men are supposedly always laughing their heads off at the top.
And the men are paid less. And just about the only qualification is a larger than average p***s. Bit objectifying,no?
Men bad … lesbians good … got it.
I just read the title, and burst out laughing. You obviously missed half the lesbian stuff that passed through my hands when I was a comics reviewer years ago.
Obviously, it’s in the site’s best interests to suggest that porn is consumed and enjoyed primarily by those most harmed by it.
What a curious and loaded statement. Are the consumers willingly engaging in self-harm, keyword “willingly”? Part of adulthood is the freedom to make choices, including those that others don’t like and even the ones that may not be worthwhile. It’s “in the site’s best interests” to have content that people want to watch; rigging the numbers will neither inspire nor deter consumers and is likely not the sort of thing the audience spends much time fretting over.
One might think that 85 thousand pounds of other people’s money going to a porn production house would be the far larger issue and that would be applicable no matter the type of content being created. Put up your own money, whether the end product is adult-oriented or not. But it’s almost as if Julie is intent on producing one more piece lamenting alleged misogyny.
If it is a big industry why is goverment subsidising it. It show where their mind is. Oh for a proper government. they have gone too far on many levels.
This sounds so unbelievable naff and awful that I’m almost tempted to see it when it comes out.
And does “wet work” refer to the Scottish weather?
I wouldn’t like to say what I think it is.
Why is it ethical if it is for other lesbians? Is this a general rule? Is it unethical for women to watch gay male porn (they do, apparently), is Japanese porn for Japanese consumption only? What does “ethical” even mean here?
No such thing as ethical pornography. Have we lost our way?
Is this a misprint? Should it be Art Is a**l Porn?
Or porn is art which it isn’t.
I’ve only been to one of these places once – dragged there really. I felt as out of place as an atheist in a church. I was surprised though by the number of women paying for dances – though they weren’t “baying lesbians”. I’m not surprised though – women who go to see male strippers apparently behave like pigs.
Well, ok.
I agree that porn is nothing more than a huge business
I agree that the lesbian market is too small to make the money these people want.
I agree that it is probable that women do not watch a lot of girl on girl porn, but I do think there are very large numbers who watch a lot of other type of stuff that, in my opinion, is actually a bit more disturbing.
As to whether or not any porn can be “ethical” I think depends on what your definition of “ethical” is. In my opinion, it might be legal, but I somehow doubt that it is ever ethical. Either someone was desperate for money and will be emotionally damaged from involving themselves OR someone is already damaged and you are exploiting their pain to make money. I am not sure, and granted I am no expert on porn actors, how anyone who is financially secure and emotionally healthy, would voluntarily choose to be a porn star.
So, although I may see you have a RIGHT to do something, that does not mean I think you are right to do it. But, that is true for many things in life. You have the right to call me anything you like or to tell me I am old and ugly, but that does not make doing so right.
Well said.
If the gay porn market is thriving then why is lesbian porn a market failure? It’s not as if gay porn has much of a crossover with straight consumers.
If one accepts the gender critical premises that attraction is to sexed bodies and not gendered souls, the objectification is surely not merely possible but inevitable (and enjoyable, at least on a vicarious/voyeuristic level). So why would lesbians be immune from this pressure, and gay men blameless for succumbing to it?
That’s a very good – indeed very cunning – point. Has JB perhaps inadvertently shot herself in the foot here.
I’d say the biggest problem with porn is the exploitation of workers, but lots of corporations in lots of industries do the same, paying too little, unsafe working conditions, unpaid overtime, etc. I have a problem with workers being exploited in any context. These performers should consider unionizing and campaigning for better standards and practices for the industry. That’s how previous generations of laborers campaigned for and got higher wages and laws related to conditions, overtime, etc.
As for the porn itself, I don’t see why anybody should care who the audience is or supposed to be. I don’t see a problem with men watching lesbian porn or lesbians watching gay male porn or any of that other nonsense. Maybe porn is inherently misogynistic, but since when is misogyny, or misandry, or misanthropy for that matter, illegal, and why should it be? The author strikes me as arguing for a form of thought crime, where certain ideas are deemed unacceptable. Whenever I encounter such an argument I always ask the same question. How do we decide what’s unacceptable, and more importantly, who makes the decision? That’s the question I’d put to the obviously well-meaning author.
In any event, I expect most porn will be virtual and done with AI in the very near future, for the reason that the makers will be able to completely dodge any claims of exploitation of anyone because there will be no actual performers and they’ll save a lot of money also.
THANK YOU, JULIE! It’s long been acknowledged that the majority of those who read Playgirl, a magazine featuring nude men, were gay men, not women. While there are some women who claim that many women enjoy porn, like a faux ” feminist” who writes for the Guardian, she’s just projecting her own foibles on others.
And your point is??
All porn is evil, even (especially?) the stuff you enjoy most.
Amen, and thank you for the final sentence: “Women who seek enjoyment from the sexual debasement of other women are not dissimilar from their male counterparts. Live sex on stage is prostitution, not, as REIN might have us believe, art.” Yes, yes, yes.
There is no way to film or watch another human being having sex or performing a sexual act for an audience and not have that be exploitative, especially when it is for profit. And women and men with better options, choose better options. When people are objectified, they are OBJECTS. Objects are acted upon. They are not in control. It is demeaning. It is no wonder porn workers, sex workers, strippers all report higher rates of childhood sexual abuse than other people.
As Chris Rock famously once said, ” Sometimes I’m walking with my daughter, talking to my daughter and I think … They don’t grade fathers but if your daughter’s a stripper, you fucked up.”
Thank you Ms. Bindel for always fighting the good fight.
It’s a slippery slope at best.