“It's making a statement that women should be allowed to watch whatever kind of porn they want to watch,” says porn star Courtney Trouble.
Porn actor Quinn Valentine at the Feminist Porn Awards.
Source: All photography by Rachel Rabbit White.
The audience for the Eighth Annual Feminist Porn Awards is shimmying in and out of a tightly packed bar full of bow ties and Tumblr-esque galaxy prints. A woman in a hunter-green pencil dress and Mad Men–era updo reaches for a glass of wine, revealing a tuft of armpit hair — obviously a conscious choice. The awards take place in Toronto, and this year's event is held in a posh venue normally used for wedding receptions. There is a swirling staircase up to a balcony, a row of crystal chandeliers, and a giant screen projecting writhing naked bodies. Moans echo over the audience, who cheer as a man on screen is penetrated with a dildo; the scene shot with dreamy sort of cinematography.
Later a sequin-jacketed MC says to the audience, seemingly out of context, "In sex work, get that money, darlin'. Get it up front. Get it. Get it. Get it." Behind me a woman with a septum piercing says to the girl beside her, "Yeah, but with films...that's hard." In feminist porn, how to actually make money is one of many open questions.
With the hundreds of guests that came to the event, it's clear that what's happening here is a movement, an industry and a philosophy, all of which seem to be in a constant shift. For some, feminist porn may sound like an oxymoron — and in reality, feminist porn does remain a bundle of contradictions. None of this stops feminist pornographers from moving full speed ahead with an agenda of equality and fairer working conditions in porn. But as feminist porn expands to include the kind of hardcore scenes typical of more mainstream films, can it stay true to its ideological roots? And will staying true to those roots ever be profitable?
A burlesque performance at the FPAs. The number was choreographed to Grimes' "Be a Body" and also included faux blood vomiting.
Put simply, feminist porn is porn made by feminists. But the guidelines to submit to the Feminist Porn Awards (FPAs) have a vague "I know it when I see it" quality. The FPAs call for porn that is "made by women or marginalized people," porn that "challenges stereotypes," and porn that "depicts real pleasure."
This year's FPAs also included the first Feminist Porn Conference, held at the University of Toronto. During the keynote speech, filmmaker Tristan Taormino had another definition: Feminist porn is organic, fair-trade porn.
Labor has always been a feminist issue, points out Taormino. She explains that the organic, fair-trade food movement has been successful at educating consumers, and she hopes this is what the feminist porn movement can also do: "If you care about the conditions under which your food was made and your jeans were made, then you should care about the conditions under which your pornography was made. And you should be willing to pay a little more for it to support the industry and its growth." It's early on a Saturday, and the lecture hall, crowded with coffee-toting attendees in comfy sweaters, erupts into applause.
During the daylong conference, the hallmarks of "organic" feminist porn are discussed: consent; fair wages; making a comfortable environment for performers; trying to depict real pleasure; and an attempt to inject feminist, intersectional politics if not on screen then at least behind the camera.
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