Is 'Feminist' Porn Getting Its #MeToo Moment? (Jezebel)

Read the full article by Tracy Clark-Flory at Jezebel.com

The question of just what it means to make ethical or feminist porn does not have any single answer. “Ethical porn is whatever porn fits your personal system of values and ethics, and they are subjective, person to person,” said Vex Ashley, the creator of Four Chambers, an indie porn company with a reputation among performers for being feminist and ethical, but that does not actively market itself as such. “There are no general[ly] accepted specifics, there’s no naughty or nice list.”

She chooses to prioritize the welfare of performers, which in part means paying “fees that are as high as possible.”

It also means “working in collaboration with performers” to make it feel “like their needs are paramount.” This means, in part, that on the day of the shoot she listens to performers’ needs while being flexible and adaptive in response. “I also give performers control in post-production, to veto or remove any shots they’re unhappy with so that there’s a degree of control of their own image,” she said.

Of course, there are some widely agreed upon ethical concerns—like establishing sexual boundaries and consent—but even those are approached in different ways by different directors. Some rely on physical checklists which detail the acts to which performers consent, while others rely on more informal conversations between co-stars on the day of the shoot or in the weeks leading up to it.

Sex workers have fought long and hard, and continue to do so, just to have their jobs recognized as just that: a job. But that isn’t to say that performing in porn is just like any other job. As Ashley who is also a performer, puts it, “Asking people to have sex on film is asking people to be in a state that is probably one of our most vulnerable, which is why it can be so powerful,” she said. It is “imbued with all these social complications and pressures and we all come [to it] with our own complexities.”

There is also the tension inherent in any politically-minded business enterprise. As [Marit] Östberg, [a longtime independent Berlin-based porn director with an ethical reputation] observes, “In a feminist, or ethical, porn film production the human being should be the most important and everything else should come in second place.” But, as she puts it, “If you wanna make [a] business out of porn you have to play the rules of capitalism and in the rules of capitalism money comes first,” she said. It’s not that it is impossible to turn ethical porn into a successful business, but, says Östberg, “it is complicated and something we need to talk about in a time when the market for ethical and feminist porn has opened up.”

Östberg poses a familiar question: “What happens when feminism becomes a label used to sell products?”