Femme Bashing and the Masculine Ideal

Abjection of the Feminine: Effeminophobia and the Construction of Gay Masculinities

 by Betrearon Tezera

Is every kind of man equally extended in society, or are there particular kinds of men deemed more favorable for social endorsement? Peter Jackson reminds us that “certain forms of masculinity…achieve a virtual hegemony [in contemporary society]” (201). Furthermore, the proliferation of hegemonic masculinity is achieved by explicitly “privileging certain socially-approved [embodiments of masculinity, most notably]…exclusive heterosexuality” (Jackson 201). Indeed, as dominant (hegemonic) masculinity relates to homosexual men, it insists on the figuration of the gay male body as “deviant and dangerous” (Jackson 201). For the purposes of brevity, and achieving a truly incisive analysis, this paper will focus on the differential valuation of masculinities within post-Stonewall (1969) gay male enclaves in the United States, with the understanding that, even within the bounds of a generally disprized social group, certain masculinities are valorized at the expense of others (Emily Kane 54). So, to refine our driving question, is every kind of gay man equally extended in “gay social spaces?” By utilizing various literatures in sociology, anthropology, sexuality studies, and cultural studies, this paper aims to assert that effeminate gay men hold a particularly marginalized position within US LGBT social and political spaces. Furthermore, in combination with the rejection of the feminine in the relegation of effeminate homosexual men, I aim to argue that, within said gay male enclaves, the obsessive need to achieve hegemonic ideals of masculinity reduces the queer political potential non-normative gender expressions and sexualities purportedly promise, a potential that, if fully realized, could have significant positive implications for the social, political, economic, and cultural valuation of effeminate gay men in the United States.

In Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship, Kath Weston reminds us that homosexual subjectivities “structured [themselves as] possibilities…for self-identified lesbians and gay men in the United States,” when the Stonewall Riots of June 1969 took place in New York City, effectively “birthing an [official] gay movement” (44). The significance of the Stonewall Riots in organizing the thesis of this paper thus becomes self-evident. Indeed, Weston asserts that, as a consequence of the Stonewall Riots, publicly declaring a homosexual identity, a process referred to as coming out, became “a strategy designed to gain political power and promote self-respect,” an assertion most profusely valorized by American gay icon Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco (47). But while this “moment of inception” of the modern gay movement in the United States is often cited as one of the greatest humanist strides of contemporary times, it is not exempt from the intrusive doctrines of hegemonic masculinity, a critical example of which, as Emily Kane reminds us, quoting sociologist Michael Kimmel, is “the notion of anti-femininity, [which] lies at the heart of contemporary…constructions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is” (54). Contextualizing this tenet of hegemonic masculinity, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick notes that “the official gay movement has never been quick to attend to issues concerning effeminate boys” (20). Sedgwick provides a workable definition of effeminophobia here, in addressing the reality that the modern gay movement often “turns away” from the needs of gay men in its wake who do not embody ideals of hegemonic masculinity; she notes that the modern gay movement has as an implicit requisite the “relative de-emphasis of the links between gay adults and gender non-conforming children” (Sedgwick 20). While this de-emphasis has been crucial to the treatment of gender expression and sexual object choice as distinct and non-collapsible conceptions, the danger, as relating to the effeminate gay male, is that “the effeminate boy [comes to occupy] the position of the haunting abject…of gay thought itself;…the eclipse of the effeminate boy from adult gay discourse [represents] a damaging theoretical gap” (Sedgwick 20). To ignore the specter of the effeminate gay male, whether child or adult, is to belie the reality that “[gay men] have a…history of self-perceived [or externally ascribed] effeminacy, femininity, and non-masculinity,” and the grave illogicality of utilizing “internalized homophobic hatred” in order to reify “gay-affirmative analyses” (Sedgwick 21).

Deploying Sedgwick’s sentiments, I propose here that the modern gay movement is held hostage by effeminophobia; more specifically, it is constricted in its queer political possibilities by what can be called the “figure of the sissy.” glbtq, the Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, defines the term “sissy” as “a term for an effeminate male,…used as a disparaging term for boys who behave like girls;” indeed, the term “serves as a kind of social control to enforce ‘gender appropriate’ behavior” (Hayes and Summers). The origins of the term are debated, but American popular culture figures it as a maligned iteration of the word “sister.” But a more intriguing etiology of the term is furthered by glbtq, an origin related to “the American Psychological Association’s (APA) voting to remove homosexuality’s categorization as a mental illness,” implementing, in its place, “Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood, also known as ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome’” (Hayes and Summers). The sissy then mobilizes, as Hayes and Summers would put it, “yet another attempt to pathologize gender variant behavior.” Interestingly, the figure of the sissy, as an ideological figuration, is reminiscent of what Judith Butler calls “the situation of duress under which gender performance always and variously occurs;” it is important to remember here that, as a result of Butler’s seminal work in feminist and gender theories, it is generally accepted within academic and activist discourses that gender is “a performative [identity],… an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (519). In this sense, then, the figure of the sissy comes to represent not just a milieu of “duress” that subtends the performance of gender, but a means of instituting “punitive consequences” for “those who fail to do their gender right” as well (Butler 522).

In this sense, the figure of the sissy becomes a convenient means of enforcing hegemonic masculinity, particularly considering gay male enclaves. As Kane reminds us, hegemonic masculinity has as its features such tenets as “aggression, limited emotionality, and heterosexuality” (54). This view is corroborated by Hayes and Summers, as they assert that “many boys [who are called “sissies” as a result of self-initiated or ascribed feminine expressions] consciously attempt [as a result of the derisive power of the figure of the sissy] to redirect their interests…toward stereotypically masculine interests.” In this manner, what I propose as the figure of the sissy is intimately related to what C.J. Pascoe calls the “specter of the ‘fag.’” (329). As does Sedgwick, Pascoe reminds us that “the ‘fag’ position is an ‘abject’ position and…a ‘threatening specter;’” indeed, the “fag” asserts itself as “[a means of] constituting contemporary American…masculinity, [actualized by] the repudiation of this abjected identity” (333). Arguably, then, both the specter of the “fag” and the figure of the “sissy” are “infused with regulatory power,” such that the consolidation of a “coherent” American masculinity requires the rejection of any performative repetition of femininity, what can be called “the subordination of non-hegemonic masculinities” (Pascoe 333; Kane 54).

But, in addition to instilling the notion of the “sissy” as a means of social (and self-) policing in my theoretical framework, I would also like to propose that we read the figure of the “sissy” as an illustration of what Sara Ahmed calls proximity and its resultant disgust, “the inter-corporeal encounter of incorporation” through which we harbor “disgust” as a reaction to “objects and subjects” interacting to form “impressions, or how objects impress upon us,…[the] affect of one surface upon another” (83, 6). Indeed, further relating this formation to the figure of the “sissy,” “Ahmedian” disgust is not merely the act of rejecting or repudiating this figure, for “disgust is deeply ambivalent, involving desire for, or an attraction towards, the very objects that are felt to be repellent…‘even as the disgusting repels, it rarely does so without capturing our attention’” (Ahmed 84; William Miller, quoted in Ahmed 84).

It is in the frisson between deep attraction and acute repulsion that Ahmed locates what she calls queer discomfort: “[this is] a discomfort which is generative…[a discomfort] not about assimilation (attraction) or resistance (repulsion), but about inhabiting norms differently…the inhabitance is generative…insofar as it [represents] possibilities of living that do not ‘follow’ these norms through” (155). Here, we can begin to construct a functional elucidation of the queer, and more precisely, why gay male “assimilationist” attempts to realize hegemonic masculinity have decidedly de-queering effects. Supplementing Ahmed’s insistence that we critically question, and eventually move beyond, an oppositional figuration of societal norms, Lee Edelman reminds us that “queerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one…the burden of queerness is to be located less in the assertion of an oppositional political identity than in opposition to politics as the governing fantasy of realizing” (17). Combining Ahmedian queer discomfort and an Edelmanian notion of queerness as a disidentification from the hegemonic understanding that politics is necessarily driven by the reification of oppositional norms, I suggest a definition of queerness such that to be queer is to disidentify with oppositional politics, while anticipating that such a release from hegemonic organizations of political participation will afford alleged sexual and gender “dissidents” an inclusive, empowering orientation to the respective milieus within which they exist. It becomes evident, then, that the contemporary gay male’s obsession with achieving hegemonic masculinity (at the expense of effeminacy) is less queer because it insists on interacting with an oppositional political order within which, as Kane reminds us, “masculinity [is emphasized by] its relational opposition to femininity,” within a social order that, as it currently stands, “can neither fully articulate nor acknowledge [queerness]” (Kane 54; Edelman 26).

Utilizing this framework, how might we read anthropological and sociological evidence in which hegemonic masculinity becomes a prized performance? Can we begin to suggest a queer-feminist alternative to hegemonic masculinity, and more importantly, to the insistence that hegemonic masculinity occupy its dominance by repudiating the figure of the “sissy?” I would like to use the remainder of this paper to further my attempt at answering these and other related questions.

Kittiwut Taywaditep’s examination of contemporary American gay subculture offers perhaps one of the most insightful ventures in elucidating hegemonic masculinity, particularly as it relates to the ways in which gay men who embody non-hegemonic masculinities experience punitive consequences; for instance, the reality that “effeminate gay men [are]…predisposed to…[psychological] problems…such as low self-esteem and poor psychological adjustment [due to] marginalization [via] constant [social] rejection” (Taywaditep 11). Indeed, exploring an array of historical materials evidencing the progression of the gay movement, particularly George Chauncey’s exploration of (white) gay life in New York, he observes that “hypermasculine sensibilities announced a new masculine gay identity [through rejecting] the ‘limp-wristed swish’ stereotype of…previous eras” (Taywaditep 7, 9). This hypermasculine ideal, corresponding comfortably with doctrines of hegemonic masculinity, “became highly visible in gay men’s aesthetics, fashions, recreation, and erotica” (Taywaditep 9). We begin to observe, then, that the valorization of hegemonic masculinity within gay male enclaves (and indeed, in broader society) is representationally achieved, and supported by capitalist constructs which are invariably in conversation with doctrines of (hetero)sexualized masculinity and the accumulation of value and markets, regardless of the ways in which individual consumers of representations of hegemonic masculinity identify in terms of sexual object choice; as Ahmed reminds us, “it is important not to identify [homosexuality] as outside the global economy, which transforms ‘pleasures’ into ‘profits’ by exploiting the labors of others” (163). But perhaps the most useful observation Taywaditep makes is his incisive comparison of the hypermasculine gay figure and the effeminate gay figure as potential embodiments of what he calls the rage of oppression: “effeminacy acknowledges the rage of being oppressed in defiance; [gay men’s] macho denies that there is rage and oppression [at all]” (11). Indeed, one could even figure the “macho” as “[a set of] values which are architects of closeted lives…adopting that style is the opposite of awareness” (Taywaditep 11). In addition to reminding us that gendered self-expressions are achieved through “stylized repetitions,” as is aforementioned, Taywaditep’s analysis is also in dialogue with Ahmed’s call to embrace queer discomfort as a source of enlightenment and emancipation, where his valorization of “awareness” could be compared to the tenuous yet generative space of neither assimilating to, nor rejecting, norms, but rather, embodying an awareness of one’s social position in the present moment, which is perhaps the most immediate explanation as to how and why effeminate gay men come to understand (and wrathfully interrogate) the fallacy of gender and, more importantly, the fallacy of hegemonic masculinity, for “gender is…a construction that [is realized through] the tacit agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions [where]…the construction compels one’s beliefs in its necessity and naturalness” (Butler 522).

It is productive here to explore further the potential manifestations of what Taywaditep figures as “effeminate rage,” where it could be argued that this rage is also an example of radical queerness, where the varied stings and wounds of perpetually oppressive social constructs converge to inspire the “sissy” to reject the social order’s impertinent and often unattainable demands. Just how does one channel a rage that has the potential to overtake one’s life and livelihood, to fuel a measured and effectively subversive presence? Perhaps an example of this is observed in Jamie Coy, Lynsey Goddard, and Jack Kahn’s analysis of the ways in which drag performances (in this paper, defined as the caricaturing of stereotypically feminine affectations by male-identified bodies) can provide a potential arena within which a successful sabotaging of hegemonic masculinity can take place. In examining the private and professional lives of performers at the Theatre Offensive, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing “’activist-based artistic forums’ promoting creative programs in queer culture,” Coy, Goddard, and Kahn concentrate on drag performers whose subversive attachment to drag performance can be seen as a template for queer intellectual, activist, and artistic investments (142). Indeed, these performers, in addition to displaying the “traditional” and socially recognizable drag repertoire, also “defy traditional drag norms by portraying female-bodied characters in less than flattering and/or stereotypically feminine ways…[often consistently refusing to] hide embodied male characteristics [like genitals and facial hair]” (Coy, Goddard, and Kahn 142). This embodiment, an uncanny and often “grotesque” embodiment at that, is apt in furthering an understanding of gender and sexuality, in which Sedgwick’s “de-emphasis” of the specter of the childhood “sissy” in articulating contemporary adult gay male discourses is critically interrogated. The performers of the Theatre Offensive begin to productively collapse some of the assumptions the contemporary gay movement has imbued itself with, regarding the apparent mutual exclusivity of gender expression and sexual object choice. In short, these performers refuse to “box themselves into a particular aesthetic,” to consciously choose to not engage with normativizing demands on their gendered performances of drag (Coy, Goddard, and Kahn 142). Theatre Offensive shows here the ways in which, as subjects, consumers of these performances can be “acted upon” by the “grotesque” object that is the “unrefined” drag queen, and as Ahmed reminds us, can be influenced positively by the “ambivalent disgust” they may experience in the course of such keenly subversive performances. But while Theatre Offensive represents potentially queer correctives to hegemonic masculinity, these correctives nevertheless arise in platforms with significant cultural and political cache, with an understanding of, and an absorption into, American historical and popular culture, pervaded by the presence of the white, gay, middle to upper-class male subject.

Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila reminds us that a majority of literature on queer theory, particularly involving hegemonic masculinity, has been produced with the white (particularly, Anglo-Saxon) middle to upper-class gay male in mind (209). But what might our examination of hegemonic masculinity reveal if we were to examine non-white American men who have sex with men (MSM)? This is precisely what Vasquez del Aguila achieves, in his examination of the lives Peruvian-born MSM lead in New York City, considered by many scholars to be a gay “epicenter,” a geographical region where gay life and gay culture proliferate significantly (207). Vasquez del Aguila reminds us that, in such gay epicenters, “white people [are] the hegemonic and desired race, while other ethnic and racial groups are relegated to subordinate positions” (210). But, while “white middle class [men] are more likely to be associated with…[subversive] gay identities,” Vasquez del Aguila’s intersectional analysis of Peruvian MSM in New York City suggests that this particular subset of gay men has its own strategies of navigating the strictures of hegemonic masculinity (209). In a Latin American immigrant context, Vasquez del Aguila asserts that “those [Peruvian-American gay men] who perform as ‘straight gays’ increase their masculine capital…[and] dilute ‘doubts’ about their homosexuality” (208). But while these men achieve some semblance of hegemonic masculinity by performing such tenets as “[manly] walking and speaking, proficiency in ‘male’ sports, [and] display and control of emotions,” they also “bend” the norms of hegemonic masculinity in important ways (Vasquez del Aguila 210). For instance, the caleta, in this expatriate gay community, represents “a man who has homoerotic experiences in total secrecy and discretion...., a man with a public heterosexual identity… [and] a secret homosexual life” (Vasquez del Aguila 210). In addition, many Peruvian-American gay men come out as “bisexual,” with the belief that “a bisexual identity….keeps alive their families’ ‘hope’ for a future ‘reconversion’ to a heterosexual life….bisexuals remain ‘masculine’ and their ability to penetrate other people is still intact” (Vasquez del Aguila 215). While these men represent a less grandiose challenge to hegemonic masculinity relative to Theatre Offensive, their embodied masculinities are more related to their need to navigate their existences than to the denigration and maligning of the effeminate gay male. In this manner, a certain queerness is realized, in that these men subvert hegemonic masculinity to the extent of mobilizing what Coy, Goddard, and Kahn call masculinity as strategy, where “[conventional] masculinity [becomes] a strategy for adaptive strategic action [in the realm of]…work, academic environments, and relationships” (145).

Eithne Luibheid, relying on Lisa Duggan’s work, reminds us that “concrete mechanisms” like hegemonic masculinity pervade our social milieus, mechanisms through which the homosexual male body is coopted “as a…figure complicit in the abandonment of broad-based social justice struggles in favor of incorporation [into hegemony] for a select few” (Luibheid 299, 307). Our objective is thus clear: we must continue, using the above and countless other examples as referential points of origin, to advocate for a radical queering of hegemonic masculinity, lest we come to serve hegemony as coopted social machinations working to achieve our own annihilation.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. Print.

Coy, Jamie M., Lynsey Goddard, and Jack S. Kahn. “Gay Men and Drag: Dialogical Resistance to Hegemonic Masculinity.” Culture and Psychology 19.1 (2012): 139-62. Print.

del Aguila, Ernesto V. “‘God Forgives the Sin But Not the Scandal’: Coming Out in a Transnational Context—Between Sexual Freedom and Cultural Isolation.” Sexualities 15.2 (2012): 207-24. Print

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke, 2004. Print.

Hayes, Brandon, and Claude Summers. “Sissies.” glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Ed. Claude J. Summers. 2006. Web.

Jackson, Peter. “The Cultural Politics of Masculinity: Towards a Social Geography.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 16.2 (1991): 199-213. Print.

Kane, Emily. “‘No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That?’: Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity.” Men’s Lives. Eds. Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2010. 52-69. Print.

Luibheid, Eithne. “Sexuality, Migration, and the Shifting Line Between Legal and Illegal Status.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14.2-3 (2008): 289-310. Print.

Pascoe, C.J. “‘Dude, You’re a Fag’: Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse.” Sexualities 8.3 (2005): 329-46. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve, K. “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay.” Social Text 29.1 (1991): 18-27. Print.

Taywaditep, Kittiwut. “Marginalization Among the Marginalized: Gay Men’s Anti-Effeminacy Attitudes.” Journal of Homosexuality 42.1 (2001): 1-28. Print.

Weston, Kath. Families We Choose: Gays, Lesbians, Kinship. New York: Columbia, 1991. Print.

Porn for a Feminist World?

Queer Porn: Savior of Pornography for a Feminist World

by A.W.

Porn has a problem. In the same way that minority individuals feel invisible when there are no representatives of their race, class, or gender expression in mainstream television or film, minority viewers feel ignored, misrepresented, and obscured in the production process of mainstream pornography. Specifically in regards to gender trends, popular porn has done little to stray from the age-old script of masculine superiority and pleasure gained from conquering even the slightly feminine. These trends have been instrumental in polarizing my feminist thought and my developing ideas of sexuality, which are in part inspired by porn consumption. I have heard the arguments of many feminist voices who have ultimately condemned pornography as a hopelessly sexist medium. Even so, the goal of my research is to find American porn's salvation; determine what ways, if any, porn can be reappropriated--assuming that porn has a strict definition and singular function--and beneficial to a post-modern society. I aim to pull the voices of theorists who argue for or against pornography from a distance, the voices of scholars who directly examine pornographic works, and the voices of active-in-the-biz directors and performers into discussion here. While I am probing the medium with feminist tools, I believe that there are distinctions to be made within visual pornography, and (in spare terms) the primary distinction that I will examine is between mainstream pornography made solely for profit and independent porn made for sexuality's sake. Based on a cocktail of my own experience and the findings of interested scholars, the subgenre that I propose as an anti-sexist and anti-homogeneous solution is independent feminist queer porn. Before I delve into this possible solution to porn's complex problem let me first present the problem and the arguments surrounding it.

Here and now, in an era that some scholars call the digital age, video porn is accessible on any device with an internet connection. Porn sites are being optimized for visits on mobile phones, and even with restrictions, people of any age can be exposed to explicit images. What has often come under scrutiny is the power of these images to forcefully gender viewers, particularly within the context of heterosexuality, and support historical inequities through the repetition of practices and reproduction of symbols. Judith Butler describes gender as "performative" and only real as long as it is indeed performed (Butler, 1988, 527). Since gender is dependent upon a set of repeatedly performed acts, it is easy to see how it can be constructed by the sexual acts in porn. For example, in mainstream heterosexual porn the woman is passive and penetrated while the man is active and does the penetrating; this dichotomy of acting/acted upon serves to gender the performers as well as the audience, and limit their expression to discourage action outside of the boundaries set for their performance. As for how this affects our sexual expression within the two-gendered hetero framework, each viewer is assigned one traditional gender role based heavily on their sex, and are subsequently taught to find sexy the traits of the complementary role in the binary system.

Mainstream porn transfers not only an expectation of behaviors to its wide audience but of presentation as well. Feona Attwood says that, in the case of women, porn pushes "conventional forms of representation (the safe,  the thin, and the asexual)" as ideal, and they must live up to this in order to be desirable (Attwood, 2004, 13). What we get are most often images of the augmented, shaved, and petite white female, and this representation of the body has been instrumental in leading women to go as far as to undergo surgery. In her report, "Towards a clean slit: how medicine and notions of normality are shaping female genital aesthetics", Lindy McDougall investigates the growing popularity of genital cosmetic surgeries like labiaplasty, which is the surgical reduction of the labia minora in order to produce a simple and contained genital appearance. She argues that the "altered images" of porn have left the realm of fantasy and infiltrated our views of how a real and normal woman should look (McDougall, 2013, 5). Organic parts are too complex and variable and masculine, while the "clean slit is a marker of appropriate and acceptable femininity." (McDougall, 2013, 4) The efforts to simplify and make interchangeable the bodies of women are aligned with the ideal that females should be asexual, which accounts for the lack of a display of feminine desire and sexuality in porn, an issue that many of the scholars we will look at dissect.

I have been a consumer of internet video pornography for over a decade now and most of my surfing was done as a teenager. My experience can be described as this: at first it was exciting, I was finally learning about sex and seeing things that my parents would never explain to me. Then I noticed the ideals that I couldn't measure up to or ignore, as they were consistently on every page, in every image. Soon after I felt an attack on my femininity unfold; the existence of my desire was contradictory to the singular and rigid femaleness each image dictated to me, and this fact, coupled with the unmistakably male point of view of every video I saw, constructed a masculine site of enjoyment inside my head. I consumed porn from this "male" perspective, deriving my pleasure from the ever-central locus of male orgasm, participating in its fetishization but not able to completely relate. This worked internally uncontested for a while, until I found myself searching for authenticity and a desire that I could fully relate to, as what I now see as my implanted masculine proxy began to fail. I was now an adult very interested in sexuality studies; combing through mainstream content available for female perspectives, but I found every attempt to showcase feminine sexuality to collide with industry constraint, and unfortunately fall short. To me, major studios seemed to keep a cap on the options for women performers in order to hold male desire as the focus and driving force of every scene. I was going to have to give up on heterosexual porn if I wanted a fresh script or to really learn about variant bodies and expression.

Pornography as a form has plenty of critics, and these critics speak of pornography as if it is a monolithic genre, which it for the most part is. While some of the opposition to porn has come from conservative forces rallying against obscenity, much of the battle against porn has been fought by a group of feminists identified as anti-porn feminists. These women held a position "organized around the claim that sexually explicit representation is a form of sexual violence that depends on the objectification of women for its charge." (Attwood,2004 , 7) Clearly these feminists were concerned with the rampant sexism of pornography and the possibility for it to actively combat the social progress made by women up through the 1980s (Schorn, 2012). Major voices of the early anti-pornography movement connected pornography to America's rape culture, saying that "pornography is the theory, and rape the practice." (qtd. in Atwood, 2004, 8). These activists confronted all pornography similarly, leaving no room for the medium to be considered beneficial. This issue was picked up by feminists arguing for pornography, sometimes called anti-antiporn feminists (Kohlehmeinen, 2010) but mostly referred to as sex-positive feminists. Sex positive thinkers examine and accuse the cultural contexts that influence porn rather than the medium itself (Schorn 2012), and discourage the restriction of practices in favor of reforming them to be safe and totally consensual (Schorn 2012). Out of sex positivity has come feminist porn, porn claiming to be made for a feminist world by feminist producers and performers. If porn as a whole is a tainted medium, used to gain profits from the demeaned and subjugated bodies of women, does the idea of feminist pornography become oxymoronic?

Feona Attwood takes steps in her work "Pornography and Objectification" that can help answer this question. She confronts the claims of anti-porn thought by examining the writings of famous anti-porn activist Andrea Dworkin, historian Walter Kendrick, and theorist Laura Kipnis. Attwood boils each writers' work down to one over-reaching claim about pornography. According to her, Dworkin believed that "all pornography objectifies women and everything that objectifies women is pornography." (Attwood, 2004, 10) This is part of what distances me from the movement. While pornography situated in the cultural context of the American industry has been decidedly stubborn about what it showcases and for whom, this definition shows a failure to consider porn that features other genders and porn made to empower women. Dworkin fought for strict federal regulation of all pornography, bringing us to Kendrick who looked specifically at the causes and effects of such regulation. Attwood summarizes Kendrick's findings as "all sexual representations which are subject to regulation become pornography, and all attempts to regulate pornography are an exercise of power over powerless groups, including women." (Attwood 10) Kendrick seems to support sex positivity here, pointing out that it is possible that the censorship of pornographic works can further oppress silenced groups. Whereas Dworkin held to generalizations of groups and media, Kendrick enlightens us that women may not be single-mindedly against pornography, and that regulation will deny pro-porn women exposure to positive porn while aiding in the control of what women can consume. The final view that Attwood discusses is that of Kipnis, whose argument can be summarized as "pornography always transgresses dominant norms of sexuality and gender, and whatever is sexual and transgressive is pornography." (Attwood 10) I would say that this view is correct within the context of an early period in the U.S. as progress in porn has created and informed these "dominant norms", removing mainstream porn as a transgressive medium and exposing it as essentialist and didactic. Attwood recognizes this didactic quality in some sense when she engages Lynne Segal and writes that porn "has become “overburdened with significance” as a culturally established way for speaking about sex, power, and regulation...as an emblem of misogyny and as a symbol of the power of the image." (3) Trends in pornography have permeated our understanding of sexuality and the medium is recognized for its ability to be an agent of culture and instill ideals in a mass audience. In the end, Attwood leaves us with an attractive idea that sexual display might just be a source of power for the under-represented, supporting the reappropriation of the sexual image as potentially powerful (14-15).

It has been said that "today sexual pleasure is far too important a commodity for women not to seek their own desire and agency in it." (Williams, 1993, 130) Johanna Schorn has examined well this idea of reappropriation, or margin-dwellers making a porn of their own. Schorn examines feminist women in major production positions as they display power by taking the established system, flipping the script or flat-out destroying it to create a better one. She intently argues for the use of pornography to change damaging cultural systems:

"While it is undeniably true that we live in a heteronormative patriarchal society that mandates certain ways of sexual expressions and does not generally place much of a focus on consent or equality, it should also be possible for individuals to experience their sexuality and pleasure in the way that feels most intuitive to them...in the specific example of pornography [one of the ways to ensure a safe and healthy context] is through breaking apart the hegemonically phallocentric structure of the porn industry and through producing and distributing material that gives a “realistic” and more inclusive view of human sexuality in general and female sexual agency in particular." (Schorn, 2012, 1-2)

Schorn looks at the work of feminist porn director Tristan Taormino and feminist genderqueer performer Jiz Lee for examples of the realistic and female empowerment. Taormino is seen as one of the most prolific directors of feminist porn, with an emphasis on educating viewers and giving performers a stage to express themselves and experiment on (Schorn 4). While Schorn describes one of Taormino's erotic sex education titles in her article, I'd like to describe one of her films that I saw a few years ago, which was revolutionary to me. The 2009 film Rough Sex starts off with interviews of two pretty successful performers in the mainstream industry. These interviews are not the usual set of leading questions ending with descriptions of how the woman will end up pleasing the man, but actual inquiries into the real interests and dislikes of both the female and male performer. The interviews were filmed individually and edited together, switching between the performers' answers to the same questions. What struck me the most about this film was, after the interview segment ended and the scene was beginning, there was an on-camera negotiation between the performers of what they wanted and what would not take place. It was a very real construction of a safe and consensual context, with the individuals' idea of proper boundaries set up. To me this was extremely educational and encouraging, showing that women, just as much as men, should be aware of their bodies and boundaries and should clearly express those boundaries to their partners before physical intimacy. I had not seen that before in any of the porn videos I'd come across online. Schorn explains the vast majority of porn that I had been exposed to as "the kind of mainstream pornography that is overwhelmingly  heterosexist, that is focused on phallocentric power and pleasure,  that perpetuates “unhealthy” ideas about women and sexuality and that supports the image of the ideal woman as surgically  altered and sexually subservient." (6)

The other feminist that Schorn features in her article is Jiz Lee, a genderqueer pornographer with a "sex-positive activist agenda." (Schorn 5) Lee is a part of the independent and queer porn production company Pink and White Productions, which produces both the online Crash Pad series that Schorn examines, and Queerporn.tv that I will examine later. The Crash Pad, Schorn explains, is set up as a single and secret location where couples or groups of queer-identified people go to have sex that "breaks with the heteronormative and often sexist traditions of [pornography]." (5) The series is a prime example of a more inclusive and powerful brand of porn that, not always featuring cisgendered women, does not deny the existence nor expression of female sexuality in favor of another. What, though, is queer porn exactly, and what power of image does it hold compared to that of mainstream porn?

Before we explore queer porn, let's first examine what queer means. Queer has a long history in the U.S. of being used as a pejorative term against gay or lesbian individuals, targeting them for being different or against the norm. Reclaimed and re-signified by a gender variant and sexually variant group, queer has come to mean something more than sexual identity--it denotes having a political stance against heteronormativity and what Butler calls the compulsory heterosexuality that is dominant in a binary system such as ours (Butler 1988). Queer theory has inspired a global movement against social hegemonies and norms, and Scott Gunther looks at queerness and its history through American and French contexts. According to Gunther, though queer has taken a variety of situational meanings within other cultures, "it refers to a flexible identity that's constantly in motion,  constantly becoming, constantly transgressing...First, to be "queer" is to be against assimilationism." (Gunther, 2005, 1) Jiz Lee may be one of the contemporary American queers that Gunther describes as opening a new theoretical space (Gunther 2). This space is a space in which "desire is not only  considered primary, but autonomous. As an autonomous force," he explains, "desire cannot be understood as socially or historically  determined." (Gunther 2) Desire is therefore individual to every person and cannot be constructed. However, forces like patriarchy and heteronormativity can function to alter or suppress desires. Queerness is then set up as a political contender to the dominant script of porn, and activists live very aware of this potential. Regarding the power of queer imagery to invoke change, Jiz Lee has expressed that they "think explicit queer sexuality on film will permeate the adult industry by opening dialogues about gender, sexuality, and sexual acts." (qtd. in Schorn, 2012, 4)

Queer porn is small and independent--not nearly the billion-dollar industry that the mainstream porn of California's San Fernando Valley boasts (Whisnant 2009)--and seems to thoroughly be its antithesis based on who makes it and for whom. "The sexual subject in porn can be seen as representative of the national subject of the United States; the position and power of the white male subject is reinforced through performances of domination over people of marginalized gender, sexual and race identities." (Seise, 2010, 22) Queer production companies, like Queerporn.tv, strive to focus on a more inclusive idea of the subject through the performers involved. According to the website's Manifesto, QPTV vows to "showcase sex that people want to perform as opposed to the sex that we expect audiences [sic] want to see." (queerporn.tv) Their definition of queer porn is "porn that is directed and produced by queer people, depicting queer performers engaged in queer sex acts. Associated with, political consciousness, authenticity and artful independent production." (queerporn.tv) Upon entering the website one can see performers from a wide range of race groups, with an even wider range of gender identities. Each performer has a bio page, listing their preffered pronouns, gender identities (showing that an individual can possess more than one!), and what makes them queer. This lends to each performer being presented as a real person whose sexual journies they've shared for us to follow. One aspect of the company that encouraged me the most is the equal presence of trans identified men and women, who are unfortunately marginalized even within the already marginalized LGBTQ community in America. Allowing all these queer individuals a space and stage to express their sexualities is empowering for them, as they are underrepresented in commercial porn, but also for viewers who are like me and were at any point "fed up with mainstream pornography and the way it has hijacked sexuality." (Schorn, 2012, 6) QPTV is a pay to view and download porn site, which isn't accessible to everyone, depending on economic status or even their access to the internet. However, for those with internet access, the clips, bios, and video blogs are enough to inspire and encourage those downtrodden and made invisible by the dominant porn narratives.

Now, how can we apply this queer subgenre to the concerns of contemporary anti-porn feminists? An article came out recently by an anti-porn feminist by the name of Maya Shlayen bringing up the economic privilege of those who can produce porn, and the general privilege of voyeurs who consume what I would call unethical porn. She relays the story of a retired performer named Vanessa Belmond who was abused within the industry and has become a strong anti-porn activist. Shlayen sees feminist porn as a problematic conundrum because, due to stories like Belmond's, the industry is seen as uniformly and dangerously misogynist. We must note with Shlayen that many women begin sex work because they have limited options due to their race or class (Shlayen 2013). Thus the feminist and queer performers that can afford to use pornography as an outlet for expression and a political tool cannot be compared to the performers who get on camera to make a living and may not have the opportunity to avoid strictly exploitative and harmful sets. This being said, there are two major flaws in Shlayen's views that I found. First is her rejection of all pornography while simultaneously acknowledging the potential of queer independent porn to be positive porn. She posits that, "If “feminist porn” only meant small, independent studios making queer pornography, it still wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of mitigating the harms of a $100 billion a year misogynist  industry." (Shlayen 2013) I seriously disagree with her here in a way that relates to my problem with the second flaw in her work: she describes the Feminist Porn Book, written by previously discussed director Tristan Taormino, as a text that "makes clear that: 'Feminist porn is also produced within the mainstream adult industry by feminists whose work is funded and distributed by large companies such as Vivid Entertainment, Adam and Eve, and Evil Angel Productions'," adding, "so-called “feminist pornographers” partnering with the mainstream industry shows what this is all about: money. " First off, commercial pornography is in fact all about money. I am not inclined to believe that Taormino and others work through larger companies to gain profit, as it is most likely the other way around. The market for feminist porn is growing and large companies will no doubt want a hand in the financial gains. Consumers can therefor exercise power in purse/wallet by buying and viewing feminist porn over sexist titles. The permeation of feminist interests and ideals into mainstream pornography is a wonderful thing; partnered with activism that aims to reform and not demolish the industry (keeping in mind performers who enjoy and need sex work), it can do away with abusive male control of the sets and achieve safer work environments for performers.

Shlayen asks, "why do we need pornography in the first place?" Pornography is a human-made form of art, a body genre that can excite, inspire, and teach. With the right messages of inclusion, health, and consensuality, porn can have a progressive effect on culture. As a developing teen with little honest education available to me in school or at home, pornography was a vehicle for knowledge, which ended up teaching me that what I wanted for my body, as a woman, wasn't wrong. It also helped me discover that I am attracted to trans men as well as cisgender men, aiding me in building my personal definition of heterosexuality. Mainstream media, whether pornographic or not, incessantly dictates to viewers what is appropriate gender and sexual expression, under "certain sanctions and proscriptions". (Butler 525) This regulated gendering is a long-standing tradition in western civilization: early voices like 18th century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that women are taught being an "alluring object of desire" for men is central to their worth. (Wollstonecraft 170) Women today are still encouraged to follow trends to alter and tame their bodies--as we've seen with McDougall's piece on cosmetic labiaplasty--and their desires are unrepresented and suppressed. Women are hidden from their own physical truths in order to "preserve their innocence". (Wollstonecraft 170) Commercial porn created and maintains a feedback loop between its trends and fantasies and normal society: trends are born of age-old power dynamics feeding on feminine vulnerability, porn then distributes expansions on those hierarchies, and finally receives affirmation via viewer response affected by the power of reproduced images. All feminists, sex-positive or not, can appreciate independent porn made by consenting adults, and that's what companies like Pink and White Productions and Tristan Taormino's Pucker Up productions exist to offer us. Voyeurs can easily change the industry by supporting (and importantly enjoying) positive porn that hold to the strong political tenets of queer and feminist theory. Feminist filmmaker Marielle Nitoslawska once said, in an interview regarding her 2001 documentary Bad Girl about autonomous women active in pornography: "women must begin to vocalize, to assert who they are or think they are, and to reinvent themselves in their own image. This is not something that will happen in a span of ten or twenty years." (qtd. in West & West, 2002, 13) Well, it's been over 10 years since that interview and feminist porn has already started helping queer and female-identified individuals create powerful images for themselves.

Works Cited

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“the picture that divided Britain”. Feminist Media Studies. 4:1, 7-19. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680770410001674617#.UqnrHvRDvm8

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McDougall, Lindy Joan. (2013). Towards a clean slit: 
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Queerporn.tv. Glossary. http://queerporn.tv/wp/glossary. Accessed 12/10/13.

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Gender Forum. 37. Retrieved from http://www.genderforum.org/issues/sexposed/subverting/

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Journal of Sexual Diversity Studies. 3, 19-29. Published online.

Shlayen, Maya. (2013). Whose Porn, Whose Feminism?    Retrieved from http://www.fairobserver.com/
article/whose-porn-whose-femnism

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Women Making Porno: Feminism's

Final Frontier? An Interview with Marielle Nitoslawska. Cinéaste. 27:3, 9-13. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41690153

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