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“Porn is an obsession with female pleasure” says woman porn director

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Polly Trenow
WVoN co-editor 

Anna Span (real name Anna Arrowsmith) is an English pornographic film director who speaks widely about sex, pornography and feminism.

She spoke to WVoN about her views and why she believes women enjoy porn.

You said your moment of inspiration came when you realised you weren’t angry about the existence of the porn industry but were  jealous that men’s sexuality was catered for. What did you feel was lacking for women?

That was 1988 so everything was lacking for women in this country!

You didn’t even have the Chippendales – although I actually wrote my dissertation at St Martin’s about how the Chippendales aren’t what women want – and [women] didn’t have porn magazines.

I remember [British actress] Margi Clarke bringing out a programme about sexuality on television and it was very soft.

But regardless of whether people agree with the sex industry I believe the female libido is worth catering for.

Currently companies are spending money in order to make [porn] for women because there is a market out there.

Without that appreciation of the market there is a disavowing of the female libido and this perpetuates the idea that we’re in [sex solely] for the love, which I find quite insulting really.

What was your first experience of porn?

The first thing I ever saw was, ironically, some images in a gutter when I was 11, walking home from school. There was a woman in leopard skin clothing and of course as school girls we went crazy!

Later I think I stumbled across some copies of the [UK tabloid the Daily] Sport that my brother had in his room. But the first time I used porn was when I was with my boyfriend at the time.

And that was when you started to form the idea that you didn’t think women’s sexuality was being catered for in pornography?

Yes, I didn’t know anything about pornography. It was exciting, I enjoyed it and I certainly didn’t do it because I wanted to please the boyfriend.

When I was 22 I bought “Women on Top” by Nancy Friday and I think that was very key. It’s a book about women’s fantasies and there was absolutely everything in there, it helped me accept my sexual being, it was very useful to me.

I think it also helped me realise that I was bisexual. I don’t know when I owned up to myself about that. There wasn’t a “coming out” – it sort of gradually dawned on me that i fancied women as well.

Did these experiences feed into your desire to make porn for women?

For me, like a lot of people, making porn was a kind of naughty dream job that I would have liked to do in a parallel life.

I got into [London art college] St Martin’s when I was 24 and I started to think about making porn. In my final year at college I wrote my dissertation – “Towards a New Pornography” – on porn and I made a sex film.

My first film was quite experimental, although the blokes couldn’t get it up, but there were also people peeing etc so it wasn’t soft!

Do you think you been driven by having a greater interest in sex than the average person?

I don’t know. How do you compare? They say that men think about sex every seven seconds. Well, I think about sex a lot and I enjoy it, I still do.

There is no history of abuse in my life and if you met my family you’d wonder how they spawned me because they’re very middle class and very average. We’re certainly not a sexually overt family.

When I read Women on Top there were women admitting to having sexual imaginations from when they were very young and I did too. But I developed a guilt about this imagination in my teenage years.

Do you judge your films to be successful if you find them arousing? 

Yes, to a certain extent. With porn it’s like catching a live dance, a performance, and you have to film it as well as you can, so it’s always a matter of compromise.

It’s not like mainstream cinema where you can map out everything in advance and you can get actors with acting skills. How it goes on the day is how good the film will be so there is a lot of chance involved.

You just have to get very good at managing the last minute things when people don’t turn and up and you have to recast etc.

Do you watch your own films?

I couldn’t watch them for sexual reasons because first and foremost they are work – they are my pieces of art. I also don’t watch British porn. I do watch pornography for gratification but I have to watch [films] where I know that I won’t know the people in it.

It’s important to be driven by what turns you on but you can’t forget that you are making a product that requires a level of technical knowledge. You have to know how things edit together.

A lot of bad porn is probably made by blokes who get completely carried away and think “I really fancy this bird” and forget to pay attention to the camera angles and stuff like that.

Are there cultural differences between the UK, US and European porn scenes?

Europe has the most relaxed censorship laws which means if you’re going to to do anything “different” it’s going to be in Europe. There’s a lot of pissing, crapping and animal porn which I don’t agree with.

In America, it’s all about “acts”. They involve [sexual] acts like “creampie” or “bukkake”. This goes in fashions.

In the UK porn is still hardcore but it’s a bit more happy. You know, we have this history of [British comedian] Benny Hill and [UK porn director and actor] Ben Dover always having a laugh. There is a bit of humour in UK porn but the really extreme stuff comes from America.

Last year you took part in the debate, “this house believes that pornography does a good public service” at the Cambridge Union. You went up against anti-pornography activist Gail Dines and won. Why do you think you won? 

We always win! I have been doing [debates] for 12 years and I have never lost one. There is a group of us that do these debates and the only one we’ve lost was in Dublin – but there was someone very charismatic in the opposition.

We win because our argument is logical.  Anti-porn argument is a moral panic based on hail and brimstone tactics and people don’t fall for that. It was close in Cambridge though, closer than we’re used to, but Gail Dines had been lecturing all afternoon so she had an advantage on us!

You call yourself a feminist. Why do you think so many feminists are so angry about porn?

I think because it’s about power. I think the leftwing is in denial about power. They have an egalitarian, almost communist, ideal. But this hasn’t given women equality.

Women and men are different, they have different powers. Men have the power of physical strength, women have fertility power. Power is something that excites us – it’s a huge part of all our lives.

It’s inevitable that sex will be about power. I don’t separate porn from the rest of life. To try to deny power dynamics is at best naive but actually really damaging.

Does this mean you think domination and submission are based in the biology of gender?

I wouldn’t say that. I’m not an essentialist. I was very influenced by [French psychoanalyist] Jaques Lacan who said whatever gives you pleasure gives you power.

Say a women is a submissive – though we find this politically problematic – and she couldn’t admit to it, then Lacan would say that she disempowered herself. If she did what gave her pleasure she would feel much more power.

Men and women can both be masochistic and domineering. Within us there are natural leaders and others who are not. There are powerful men who want to be dominated in the bedroom and I think women are encouraged to be submissive but throughout history there have always been women who aren’t.

These women have been, if not the protagonist, the dominant antagonist and use the power they have been afforded to the maximum.

I don’t think sex determines domination. Education at school level is important to dispel some of these ideas. For example, that testosterone is linked to aggression when really it’s linked to assertiveness.

We should be able to play with power, to have fun with it. Pornography allows us to do this. For example, BDSM [bondage, domination, sad0-masochism] is all about role-play power dynamics. All my films are role-play too.

How is your feminism compatible with what you do?

In the 60s and 70s feminists felt like they had to separate sexuality from the rest of human behaviour. This was because things like sexual harassment in the workplace were acceptable. So [feminists] had to say sex had its own set of rules.

Now the laws have changed and people like me who grew up in this changed world felt like our freedoms have been restricted.  Men and women know now when sex is ok and when it isn’t.

We want to regain our freedom and and blur the boundaries again.  We don’t want to burn bras, we want to reclaim the side of ourselves which we think is playful and fun.

All movements work in spirals so in 1988 Feminists Against Censorship started and around that time Scottish Women Against Pornography starts and pornography splits feminism.

But there are lots of different types of feminism. I’m a liberal and [Gail Dines] is a Marxist. I wouldn’t get on with a Marxist at any level.

It is sexist in itself that society thinks there should be one type of feminism. The media took a quick glance and said ok this is what feminism is – leftwing and socialist – and now they don’t challenge that.

You wouldn’t expect a leftwing man to agree with a rightwing man. We need to see feminism as a parliament where there are different views and everyone has the right to say what they want.

And when Gail Dines says that I’m not a feminist she only shows her ignorance in saying there can only be one type of feminism.

You said that you wanted to make porn because you felt men’s sexual needs were catered for in a way that women’s weren’t. Do you think then that porn represents male desires or does it define them?

Different men are different. Some people like pornography and some people don’t. I’m always meeting men who don’t like porn and women who do.

And we don’t have clear figures on how many men are watching pornography. That said, any business that wants to be successful has to respond to what customers want.

When I first started I was asked if I had done research into whether women wanted porn and I hadn’t because [women] will come back and say they don’t want [porn] because they haven’t been shown stuff they might like. So I blindly went ahead and did it. Luckily it worked out!

I think [porn] does affect people’s sex lives but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The anti-porn movement say that porn pressurises people and that women feel pressure to do, for example, anal sex. But women are also feeling free to do anal sex.

The first time I ever tried [anal sex] was when I was 18 and at that time it was such a shameful thing to do – if someone found out then you were labelled and you can’t say that now. Yes there are people who feel pressurised to do things but this isn’t because pornography exists.

Why are their so few female orgasms in pornography?

Porn spends its whole time looking at women enjoying themselves, saying ‘I love it’. But if men didn’t care about the women’s experience then porn would all be rape and negative for the women but it isn’t. So is that about female pleasure or male pleasure?

[US film scholar] Linda Williams wrote a book on pornography, ‘Hardcore’, and she talks about the difficulty of seeing the truth of pleasure. Porn is always trying to get at the truth of pleasure. That is what the money shot is about – it cannot be faked, it is real [pleasure].

But with female orgasms this is never going to happen – unless she ejaculates you’re not going to have a hardcore moment for women. You’ll never be able to see that female enjoyment is true.

It’s difficult to see a woman orgasm – in my films I make sure the woman always cums before the bloke but even as a director, sometimes women will cum and sometimes they won’t and how can I know?

Petra Joy [another director of porn for women] says that all her women come. I don’t because all of porn is performance. Pornographers are not saying this is real sex – everything is faked.

And whether you [script] the female orgasms is whether you’re making a feminist statement or not. And I certainly do. But porn is an obsession with female pleasure – I think there is more emphasis on female enjoyment in porn than is initially perceived.

What do you think would make a difference now to encourage women to engage with pornography?

I think what’s missing is an understanding that there is [porn] out there that is not misogynistic or derogatory. I’m using [the anti-porn movement’s] language but what some people think is misogynistic is just viewed too simply.

People don’t know how to watch porn. Like Gail Dines, she doesn’t understand that if someone enjoys having their head put down a toilet then they don’t feel degraded.

We learnt how to watch and understand the news and I think people need to learn how to watch porn. It has its own rules and if you don’t know you them won’t understand it fully and you might get unnecessarily upset.

So can you tell us what projects you’ll be working on this year? 

I’m working on a project called weconsent.org which is a forum for people across the sex industry – from sex workers, sex researchers and porn stars to people who work in sex shops.

It’s a site for people to have a voice to support the industry so policy makers, journalists and students can hear, from the horses mouth, people’s experiences from around the world.

Weconsent.org will be online soon.

  1. There is so much wrong with what this woman says about porn that I don’t know where to start. But here goes: first of the pic that accompanies the article is based on one of her films – I cannot see that this picture is representing women’s pleasure at all – it is a typical ‘woman on her knees’ shot.
    ‘In the UK porn is still hardcore but it’s a bit more happy’: is it really? How has she made this determination?
    ‘Anti-porn argument is a moral panic based on hail and brimstone tactics and people don’t fall for that’: again really?
    ‘ I think the leftwing is in denial about power’: what?
    ‘I don’t think sex determines domination’: this comment is completely ridiculous in every way
    ‘Men and women know now when sex is ok and when it isn’t’.: err rape and sexual assault anyone?
    ‘When I first started I was asked if I had done research into whether women wanted porn and I hadn’t because [women] will come back and say they don’t want [porn] because they haven’t been shown stuff they might like’: oh well, why bother with research – after all it is completely pointless is it not?
    ‘I think [porn] does affect people’s sex lives but I don’t think that’s a bad thing’: acres of evidence to suggest that watching porn affects how men view women sexually
    ‘Porn spends its whole time looking at women enjoying themselves, saying ‘I love it’. But porn is an obsession with female pleasure’: NO IT ISN’T – it is about the money shot, which is a man’s orgasm
    ‘But if men didn’t care about the women’s experience then porn would all be rape and negative for the women but it isn’t’: again, acres of evidence to suggest that most women in the sex industry, including films are there against their will
    ‘Porn is always trying to get at the truth of pleasure’: not women’s pleasure
    ‘I think people need to learn how to watch porn. It has its own rules and if you don’t know you them won’t understand it fully and you might get unnecessarily upset’: And, God forbid that anyone gets unnecessarily upset – obviously we need to learn how to accept women being used and abused on screen.

    Gah..

    • vicki wharton says:

      I think the first thing that alerted me to the dynamics of the porn industry was the language that was used to describe its women participants – pretty much all derogatory. 75% of females in the sex industry are coopted in as children (Women’s Resource Centre 2008), 70% of them come from care backgrounds and 45% report child sex abuse (Home Office 2006), 68% of them suffer Post traumatic stress disorder at same level as torture victims (Farley 2005). The porn sites at the top of a Google search (ie accessed most frequently) all offer rape, barely legal and incest as part of their portfolio – and given the average age of entry of girls I would say it doesn’t take a nuclear scientist to surmise that the barely legal offerings are probably not barely legal, they are much more likely to feature sex with completely illegal, underage children as do the rape sites. The popularity of these videos make the commissioning of further ones a dead cert, therefore I would say that watching rape/incest/barely legal and bestial videos should carry the same prison sentence as handling stolen goods and aiding and abetting a crime – as that’s what the people that watch this type of porn are doing. There is a basic dishonesty at the heart of the porn industry that jumps backwards and forwards across the line of morality depending on who its audience is – it is sold as rape and then defended as acting, the industry can’t have it both ways and I for one never trust the word of a liar.

    • mezzopiana says:

      i agree 100% JaneO, well said. A very depressing read.

  2. Thank you both, the self serving nature of this woman is quite astonishing.

  3. Jane O & Vicki, i can’t put it more succinctly than you do. Vicki I wanna copy and paste your comment for everyone to see! Sometimes i feel like I’m under pressure to accept that ‘female friendly’ porn a)exists, and b)is all fine and dandy. In my gut i feel such repulsion to all types of porn. I am not embarrassed about sex, i actually really, really LOVE sex, and i believe that is totally OK! But porn makes me feel ill!!! everything about it, and for so many reasons.
    I’m glad you mentioned the pic Jane, cos that’s exactly what i thought! I saw the headline and thought ‘this can’t be a pic from the woman friendly stuff, surely?’
    IF the possibility exists that there is a ‘good porn’ – that is ‘friendly’ to women AND men, surely it would involve people with REAL bodies, doing REALISTIC things. The proliferation of all types of porn today, and it’s incredibly easy access to the world via the internet, is doing untold damage to all of society. Our children are growing up with unrealistic expectations of what they should be, of what others should be, and of what sex should be. Relationships are being wrecked. Never mind the harm it also does to those in the industry. The repurcussions are far to many and varied to mention – and all negative.

  4. Polly T says:

    Whilst I agree there are some sickening aspects of the porn industry, I am of the opinion that there is nothing wrong with filming two people having sex or watching two people having sex.

    So rather than denouncing the porn industry I think we should be trying to change it. I think there are plenty of women who want to watch porn but the industry hasn’t catered to women and that is what Anna Span is trying to do as well as change the way porn is made. If you don’t want to watch it, that’s fine, though I agree there is not much escape from it nowadays.

    Jane, Vicky, Naomi would you ban pornography? Do you think it should be illegal?

    I have to say I was surprised at the reaction to the picture. I think the ‘woman on her knees’ pose is quite a standard position from which plenty of women gain pleasure. I don’t think there is anything particularly sexist about the pose.

    • vicki wharton says:

      Hi Polly
      The problem with porn as it stands at the moment, not as some far away utopia, is that 92% of it is violent and degrading to women. It uses paedophilia to draw in recruits and it mixes fantasy, reality and violence towards women and children in a way that is highly psychologically confusing to many of the men and women that watch it. To say if you don’t like it, don’t watch it is simplistic. Violent porn is like passive smoking, I may choose not to watch it but I cannot turn off the men that do and go on to subsequently rape girls and women around them, believing that women enjoy being raped because that’s what porn tells and shows them. I was raped by a married colleague of mine at the age of 15 that had stocks of Hustler and Playboy under his bed. He offered to show me what LSD was like in a safe environment and then used that opportunity to rape me. He wasn’t a demon, just a man that believed that what porn told him women liked as a breed was more valid than what the individual in front of him was telling him. That women are the other and can be forced to correspond with men’s projections of what women as animals should do. As porn stands in reality is bannable, because it encourages crime against women and children as lesser beings that are not to be respected as individual human beings with the right to their own boundaries.

    • MezzoPiana says:

      Certainly I personally would ban pornography. Even if it could be separated from the abuse of women and children (which it absolutely cannot), pornography contributes nothing worthwhile or valuable to humanity. So we all have different sexual urges we get off on – so what? Why should we demand images of same, to propagate and spread to other people? Sex as something human and natural is being completely eroded into something that now only ever resembles porn – and often the sicker the better, since desensitisation occurs and more and more extreme material becomes required. There are pornographic images and ideas I have been exposed to – unsought, unbidden, just through day-to-day living – that would never, ever have occurred to me which I cannot ever erase from my mind. This is happening to all of us, including children at ever younger ages, and in my opinion it is not ‘prudish’ to object to minds being altered in this way. This is not ‘sex’.

      Also, to think that porn could ever be ‘changed’ into something benign is grossly naive, in my view. Porn is so popular precisely BECAUSE it is seen to degrade women. If all of society did not believe that sex degrades women (whilst it enhances men), porn would very likely not be so problematic. Till then, it always always is.

      • MezzoPiana says:

        Further to my point about porn being inherently degrading to women (for the simple reason that people believe that sex itself degrades women), this bit boggled my mind:

        ‘People don’t know how to watch porn. Like Gail Dines, she doesn’t understand that if someone enjoys having their head put down a toilet then they don’t feel degraded.’

        Absolutely unbelievable. Porn is made for the VIEWER, not the participant! It does not matter a single scrap that the participant might not *feel* degraded! Nobody watching someone have their head put down a toilet believes they are watching empowerment. NOBODY.

        Gail Dines’ work on porn is unequivocally on point, and completely irrefutable if one were to actually engage with what she says – which this woman does not. It is disingenuous to the point of irony for her to say that ‘she [Gail] doesn’t understand’.

  5. Hi Polly, firstly, the picture – it is a classic man dominating/woman submission post – a better pic would have been the woman at equal height. Also despite this woman’s assertions that she is producing porn for women, why is she using a position that is routinely used in male porn?

    Secondly, based on my own experience and as Chair of a charity that works with women at risk of or who are practising prostitution, I cannot see porn as anything but an incitement to violence against women: it gives the men who abuse sex workers a blueprint for abuse.

    Similarly, a friend recently attended a seminar about how pedophiles get over the ‘inconvenient’ societal barriers against sex with children and watching porn that legitimises sex with young children/girls is how they do it.

    So for me, porn is not just watching two people having sex, it is watching the abuse and degradation of women on film and this in turn is inculcated by men and boys as to what sex is about.

    Given that the porn industry is one of the highest grossing profit industry in the world, working to change it has little chance of success – not while the bucks are flowing in.

    Finally, though – this article offended me because the woman interviewed talked about porn as if it was completely separate from the harm that it does to women and girls – she appeared to have no knowledge or interest in the context within which she is producing these films and I find that very worrying indeed.

    • MezzoPiana says:

      ‘Finally, though – this article offended me because the woman interviewed talked about porn as if it was completely separate from the harm that it does to women and girls – she appeared to have no knowledge or interest in the context within which she is producing these films and I find that very worrying indeed.’

      Me, too. It seems impossible to me that someone – especialy a woman – actually working within the porn industry itself could be so blind and dismissive of this fact.

      • vicki wharton says:

        And regardless of whether I myself like having my head put down a toilet, and I would argue as a counsellor that that in itself opens up a whole can of worms as to what taught me that having my head down a toilet was exciting rather than degrading or downright dangerous – filming this experience for other people to masturbate over is inherantly dangerous in regards of the Pavlov’s dog experiment of the 60s. People using violent or degrading porn begin to self train themselves into rewarding experiencing violence to another with an orgasm. Pretty soon afterwards they can find that they cannot experience orgasm without violence – and then what do they do in their own real life if they can’t come without violence to another? Relate is recording that 1/3 of their case load currently involves relationship difficulties that revolves around porn, either a person’s absence from relationship through being locked away in a room surfing the net for more and more violent acts to get that initially hit or trying to get a partner to recreate the scenarios that turn them on online. Check out mumsnet threads about domestic violence to see how many women report being throttled in the middle of having sex by a partner who has not asked to do this in the fear I would imagine of hearing the ultimate turn off – their partner saying NO. Anyone who has children knows how humans learn – this isn’t rocket science.

  6. Jane Da Vall says:

    This woman is kidding herself. Porn is not obsessed with female pleasure, that is deluded. Porn is, obviously, obsessed with male pleasure. That includes giving men the illusion that they are masters of the universe in bed, hence the pantomime performance of women in ecstacy. Porn tells men that what turns them on turns women on too. It’s a lie and it’s why so many men are so hopeless in bed. There is a desire in men to please women, though, or porn wouldn’t bother with female reaction at all, so it’s up to women to educate.

    I think attempting to ban porn is a complete waste of time, it will never happen and, in essence, there’s nothing wrong with it. This woman is deluded but I don’t think she’s entirely on the wrong track. The problem with porn is that the prevalent style of it is degrading to women, it gives boys terrible ideas about what sex should be, and what women like. The drive should be to change porn, to drive hardcore out of the mainstream, not ban it.

    • vicki wharton says:

      I’m not sure there is a desire in today’s men to please women – the reaction that most on line porn shows in women is one of pain, humiliation and abuse. Calling women sluts, whores and cunts is not done to please them – and women that try and educate men on how porn makes them feel are largely told to shut the fuck up by men. I would like to think that this attitude is just the minority, but I don’t think it is any more after 20 years of lads mags and the almost total domination of gonzo porn on line – it wouldn’t be market leader if it was just a minority of men buying into abuse.

      • Mainstream porn is essentially eroticizing female slavery. It often wants you to believe that females are sexual slaves whose only purpose is to serve and pleasure men sexually, obey and take care of domestic duties, maybe even while squeezing in a boob job, cosmetic lip plumping and heck, why not a labiaplasty too?

        Female slaves never care about their own pleasure. The thing they want most in the world is the money shot, hopefully on their face or in their mouths. Their needs are unimportant and can be ignored because the female slave will do whatever you want, humiliate, harm and degrade herself for your pleasure, no matter how few rewards there are because the real reward is in pleasuring the man.

        That *is* a sexual fetish shared by many people, men and women alike. But what mainstream porn is doing is making that the *one* way we are “supposed” to have sex (because it is the only way shown, pretty much). This is completely to the benefit of the man, who gains everything, while the woman gives, thinks nothing of herself and endures whatever comes her way, with a smile and a thank you. The woman may get excited. She may orgasm. But alone this is not to her benefit, at all. This is masochism. Her self destruction, which may be reflected more directly in bimbofication, is eroticized. It is sexy to destroy yourself if you are female. That is why mainstream porn uses the word “destruction” a lot to describe sex. Doesn’t it? Anal destruction. To be ravaged. That’s hot. Mainstream porn would have you believe that it’s enjoyable for the woman to be ravaged and thrown out the door after she’s spit on and slapped. If that is an obsession with female pleasure, then I’m the President.

  7. vicki wharton says:

    Just back from a conference yesterday talking about pornography as a media and it’s fuzzing of the boundaries around child abuse. Audience was made up of health care, social workers and teachers. You know what, it was extraordinary … not one of them jumped up and said wow – that website Daddy’s Little Whore – what an empowering, feminist piece of fantasy for fathers and underage daughters to explore together. You know what Ms Arrowsmith, if it looks like an onion, smells like an onion and makes you cry like an onion, do you possibly think that is just might be a f****ing onion? Hitting people, flushing their heads down loos, sticking things up their bums – your job could very easily be mistaken for that of a torturer. You are an unpleasant person to other people, whatever excuse you use to defend your actions.

  8. “I’m not sure there is a desire in today’s men to please women”

    Wow. Just… Wow. You have issues that go way beyond the ones you dismissively ascribe to porn actresses. There is a certain irony that by displaying such a victim complex you actually rather unintentionally underwrite her rationale of who is and isn’t empowered.

    • vicki wharton says:

      No Dodger, you have quoted me in part. The remainder of the quote was ‘the reaction that most on line porn shows in women is one of pain, humiliation and abuse. Calling women sluts, whores and cunts is not done to please them’. On line porn is in the majority abusive – either physically or verbally – of women and girls. It calls the women sluts, whores etc and shows them liking or indifferent to being hit, spunked on, raped or buggered by one or multiple men. Those are not issues, but cause professional concern amongst councellors, social workers and teachers that this is material that is freely floating round our society now. It is not empowering for anyone to be abused.

  9. There are some issues raised in the comments that need to be countered.
    1. There’s a lot of use of the phrase “most porn…”. Sorry to burst your bubble but “most porn…” is actually now amateur produced. Cottage industry performers with a webcam in their own homes setting their own rules. Interesting, eh? The most recent estimations show more than 50% of online adult content is in this category.
    2. Anti-porn viewpoints rely solidly on the idea that women are being exploited by violent men. They fail wholesale to consider that porn can be and is made by and for LGBT communities. Big flaw, that one. I don’t hear anyone arguing that Lesbian women are being exploited by other lesbian women when lesbian porn is sold to *drum roll* lesbian women.
    3. Laura Mullen and the female gaze anyone? Anyone??
    4. Watch the film that the still is taken from. It includes a very informative behind the scenes film that shows what an Anna Span shoot it actually like. You never know, you might learn something. Hug A Hoodie. A slightly harder example of Anna’s work but well worth a look nonetheless.
    5. Just because an academic publishes something doesn’t make it true. It can be a viewpoint. Often it is backed up by research. Sometimes that research is flawed. Some very serious questions have been asked in the Academy about Dines’ work and how selectively predetermining the outcome of your research (by basing your research on, to use one example, brief interviews of producers carried out at a trade show) is, you know, uncool.
    6. Anyone care to guess what percentage of Anna’s website customers are women? I’ll save you the effort, it’s 45%.
    7. I once had a woman from Scottish Women Against Pornography tell me all about the detailed web searches she was doing to find multiple anal penetration. she gave away her own little kinks there, I thought. I don’t go looking for that, why should she? Makes you wonder. Each to their own I guess…
    8. Another woman from the aforementioned SWAP said that if porn is to exist, she would prefer it to be made the way Anna does it. This is after she had been afforded the opportunity to discuss and debate her work in public at a University debate. A touching endorsement.
    9. Before making crass assumptions about what porn may or may not contain it is worth reading the BBFC guidelines for R18 classification. Every one of Anna’s DVDs meets either 18 (soft core) or R18 (hardcore) guidelines. These include aspects of consent, age, harm, violence etc etc. you might be surprised and if not, you’ll at least be better informed.

    By all means have an opinion. Please just make sure it is an informed one.

  10. Apologies, the autocorrect got me on Mullen. I of course meant Laura Mulvey, as I’m sure you guessed 😉
    The odd minor typo ca me put down to typing on an iPad in the middle of the night.

  11. For further criticism of the factual accuracy of Dines’ work, you may want to read this:
    http://sexademic.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/the-cambridge-porn-debate-story/
    Look also for the link to the transcript of Johnny Anglais’ speech.

  12. matarij says:

    Hello Tim, thank you for your comments. However, your whole comment reeks of privilege, evidenced by your patronising tone and know it all attitude. Some of the women who have commented here have very real experiences of being subjected to male sexual violence and therefore have no problem with making the link from this to the way women are routinely portrayed by the pornographers. This is a lived experience that you, from a position of male privilege, have completely dismissed as irrelevant with your snarky comments. Perhaps it is you that needs to inform your opinion, and in turn you might learn something.

  13. JaneO says:

    Re feminism and porn, this is interesting: http://goo.gl/o7WSM

  14. Tess Richer says:

    This woman is indeed unbelievable in trying to justify her own opportunistic money making exploitation of other women. That is just a joke, and a pretty sinister one, I am afraid to say. In that respect, she is certainly not a feminist, rather an enemy of her own kind. I would be interested to know if she would want to perform in front of a camera being humiliated in such a way? Sex should be a private and enjoyable experience, not a degrading lucrative exploitative industry! There is fine, artistic expression of human bodies in an elegant and beautiful fashion but there is a fine line between such visual context and the violation of women’s souls and bodies with a delusive ‘consent’ to such abasement. What next when it comes to boundaries of human respect? What’s wrong with this society? Pfittt!

  15. Tess Richer says:

    Here is a very wise and thoughtful analysis. If this pseudo woman think that just because someone feels enjoyment in dipping their head down a toilet bowl without a sense of degradation, it does not mean it is a pretty sight or a norm of sane behaviour! Some people suffer from severe mental disturbances and long ago they were exposed for money, for the entertainment of some inhumane aristocratic perverts who would come and watch them like zoo animals. Sadly, some people are victims of their own actions through psychosis or psychological self-destructive path, and since they look like they are not being coerced into inflicting themselves with self-humiliating situations, those unscrupulous individuals are all too keen to exploit them with the misleading impression of consent! That is utter disgrace! It makes me sick!

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2374623816662876

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