Can Porn Be Feminist?

I read an interesting article this week that initially opened with praising the Toronto Feminist Porn Awards and quickly changed its tone to a more critical one, asking the question: "Can porn ever truly be feminist?"There are some interesting criteria for how some classify feminist porn such as, a woman must have played s significant role in either acting, directing, writing, or production, and the film must challenge stereotypes that exist in mainstream porn. In addition to this, feminist porn usually depicts a variety of women, not simply thin, white, large-breasted women but women who look more like the average woman walking down the street.

While seemingly well intentioned, feminist porn is still critiqued for having things such as BDSM films that portray a submissive woman dominated by men. Critics may see these types of films as confirmation that women continue to be sexually objectified even within "feminist porn" so can this truly be considered feminist at all? Feminist porn proponents say allowing actors in their film to do what they want, even if that includes women who like to be dominated, is to be feminist and open to a diversity of sexual acts. Mainstream porn does not care about the actor/actresses' likes and dislikes, they are essentially paid to perform acts that they might not personally like or agree with.

Yet critics still don't buy into feminist porn, after all how can people who use bodies, especially women's bodies as raw material for profit, really have the right to call themselves feminist? At least that is what the critics believe. Its a tricky topic overall and I'm not sure if there's a right or wrong answer. I personally think that society should not shame people for watching any type of porn, (in fact it reminds me of Gayle Rubin's ideological formations about sex, especially benign sexual variation) but I will admit to personally being somewhat disturbed by some of the genres of porn, especially those that have racist undertones and extremely explicit scenes of sadomasochism where women are in a submissive position. However, I don't think I am in any position to judge people who consume or engage in that type of porn/sex.

link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/21/can-porn-be-feminist.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29