\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA lot of\u00a0\u201cfeminist porn\u201d & associated rhetoric seems like a really good example of abuse of emotional labor.\u00a0
\nRecently I\u2019ve been reading a few things by and about\u00a0Erika Lust:
\n\n\n\nLust wants to show \u201creal sex\u201d and tells her actors to \u201ctake the porn\u201d out of on-screen intercourse. She demonstrates the ludicrous poses people pull in porn: arched back, stuck-out chest, pursed lips. \u201cI tell them \u2018don\u2019t have sex like a porn star, have sex as a person, as you do in your home\u2019. \n\n
I don\u2019t know about anyone else, but I would be really\u00a0put off if an employer asked that of me. The part of my sexuality that I sell on camera is not the part that exists for me and my partners. They inform each other, yes, but ultimately the former is work, it\u2019s a job, it\u2019s art. It\u2019s not my life. Not any more than any other theatrical production would be.\u00a0
\nAlmost all porn sells the\u00a0\u201cshe\u2019s thrilled to do this; she\u2019s begging for it; she\u2019d do it for free!\u201d myth. But\u00a0\u201cfeminist porn\u201d seems uniquely intrusive in that it doesn\u2019t just peddle the fantasy - it insists that it\u2019s not\u00a0a fantasy, that its performers aren\u2019t truly enlightened or empowered if they admit that it\u2019s just an acting gig to them.
\nIt\u2019s like\u2026the difference between making sure your cashiers are smiling and bubbly and acting\u00a0happy and insisting that they\u2019d better actually be\u00a0happy. The former I can ape, no problem. But the latter? No. I\u2019ll act for you. That had better be enough, because you don\u2019t get to demand access to my actual\u00a0emotional state. I can pretend for you, but don\u2019t fool yourself: it\u2019s still a performance.\u00a0
\nYou have a point that that\u2019s a thing that can happen, but I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s what she\u2019s going for. I don\u2019t think she\u2019s necessarily saying it has to be YOUR authentic sexuality, just that it has to look like someone\u2019s authentic sexuality.
\nYes, there\u2019s still an emotional labor component (as there is in all acting), but I do think it\u2019s still expected to be acting (see the next paragraph down referencing characters).\u00a0
\nI\u2019ve never worked for Erika Lust, specifically, but that is absolutely what every\u00a0\u201cfeminist porn\u201d company I\u2019ve ever shot for has wanted. Emotional, soul-baring authenticity. When workers speak up about this, or about how the director\u2019s demands to perform a certain way are incompatible with their request for authentic sex,\u00a0they get fired.\u00a0
\n\n\n\nalso i had to sign a form saying i wasn\u2019t doing it for the money\n\n
\u201cThis McDonald\u2019s job is yours\u2026if you can prove you don\u2019t actually need money and just really really love\u00a0flipping burgers.\u201d
\n\n\n\nthe director\u2019s demands to perform a certain way are incompatible with their request for authentic sex
Tell me more about this? I think I know what you mean, but I don\u2019t want to put words in your mouth.
\nTo give an example: I was given the directions \u201cmasturbate like you do at home, to a real orgasm\u201d and also \u201clie on your back\u201d. These things cannot possibly be accomplished simultaneously. And yet.\n\nSimilarly, I was given the instruction to wear clothes that \u201cexpressed my personality and made me feel comfortable/relaxed\u201d. I did - incidentally, an outfit I\u2019ve worn both on camera and escorting. Upon arrival the same person who said that told me my attire was unacceptable and to change into an outfit from wardrobe which he picked out. It was not comfortable and the situation made me nervous, and a worse performer, and also less ~authentic.\n\nI think they would make better porn, and a better working environment, by just admitting it\u2019s a fiction an optimizing for that.
\nHave you read Mikey Way\u2019s article \u201cFuck Your Feminist Porn\u201d? It gets at what we\u2019re talking about here, and does it excellently to boot.
\n\nThey had me sign a form in which I promised that filming for them was just a hobby, not my job. \u2026 [T]his company gets everyone so worked up about them supposedly being an \nethical alternative to mainstream porn that nobody notices that they\u2019re \nan international corporation paying next to nothing for people to style,\n shoot, produce, edit, and perform in their own work. It\u2019s okay, \nthough\u2014it\u2019s just a hobby!
tl;dr feminist porn is predicated on drawing lines between \u201cregular women\u2019s sexuality\u201d and \u201cpornified sexbots\u201d (to quote Twisty Faster). It profits off sex workers\u2019 labor while being terrified to admit that its employees are, in fact, sex workers. Because that would be gross and terrible.
\nInteresting. It\u2019s curious how much the porn you describe echoes the ideas of anti-porn feminists like Dworkin and MacKinnon (particularly that sex for pay is inherently and obviously degrading) despite being nominally sex-positive, and clearly not anti-porn in the strict sense of the term.
\nThis seems like a\u00a0\u2018serving two masters\u2019 problem. A lot of amateur porn already fills one of the niches described above. Many people post naked pictures and video of themselves masturbating/having sex as a hobby, and they don\u2019t need to sign a contract to know that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing. Presumably what the feminist porn offers above and beyond this is a level of professional polish (in terms of cinematic production values and actors/outfits/scenarios that the audience is more likely to see as attractive), but the thing is that\u00a0\u201cprofessional\u201d by definition means it\u2019s someone\u2019s job. And while people enjoy their jobs to greatly varying extents, that\u2019s at least as much a matter of remuneration and treatment by coworkers and bosses (as wanderingwhore and the Mikey Way article allude to) as it is of the quality of the work itself, let alone whether the work appears enjoyable to an outside observer.
\nIn conclusion, a lot of this reminds me of the forms of internal discipline and panopticism described in\u00a0Discipline and Punish, and that\u2019s kind of creeping me out.
\nI think I know what you mean by your last bit, but can you elaborate?
\nThis passage from traditional authoritarian power to modern totalitarianism can be precisely rendered through superego in an old joke of mine. Let\u2019s say that you are a small child and one Sunday afternoon you have to do the boring duty of visiting your old senile grandmother. If you have a good old\u2013fashioned authoritarian father, what will he tell you? \u201cI don\u2019t care how you feel, just go there and behave properly. Do your duty.\u201d A modern permissive totalitarian father will tell you something else: \u201cYou know how much your grandmother would love to see you. But do go and visit her only if you really want to.\u201d Now every idiot knows the catch. Beneath the appearance of this free choice there is an even more oppressive order. You seem to have a choice, but there is no choice, because the order is not only you must visit your grandmother, you must even enjoy it. If you don\u2019t believe me, just try to say \u201cI have a choice, I will not do it.\u201d I promise your father will say \u201cWhat did your grandmother ever do to you? Don\u2019t you know how she loves you? How could you do this to her?\u201d
\n\u2013 zizek
\n
Is this necessarily about \u201cfeminist porn\u201d, or even an ideologically-driven issue? It seems to be the adult industry as a whole that\u2019s placing more emphasis on, I guess, the performance of enjoyment.
And on a scene-by-scene basis, did this trend ever present as feminist, in the sense of serving a cause? I don\u2019t think the big pioneers - Beautiful Agony, Met-Art and the other ex-Warsaw ops, even fucking ALS - ever presented as such. At the most, Abby Winters was \u201cwe love women loving themselves a/o each other: so let\u2019s monetize it!\u201d
On a broader \u201cwho is a star\u201d basis, again more character work - compared to Jenna Jameson, Sasha Grey had much more of an \u201caverage\u201d body but was much better at performing enthusiasm, that\u2019s a common theme of stardom these days. With the meteoric rise of James Deen and the fall of steroid woodsmen, even the men.
But what if that\u2019s just a function of supply and demand? In the \u201870s and \u201880s \u201cbeing willing to do porn\u201d was a saleable attribute; as more people became open \u201cwillingness plus hotness\u201d was the thing. Competing on that axis gave us plastic monsters - the pompadour of humans - and by this point where hot people are willing for free, talented sexual performance is the differentiating factor.
Also with the expansion of the industry with so much free content, from an economic perspective a lot of modern stars are effectively elite courtesans that use films as demo reels for escort bookings arranged over social media, that probably selects for skilled charismatics.
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