To feel disgusted that Elle magazine are touting porn star Sasha Grey as a "feminist"?

[Scarletohello]

So I have seen a lot of porn and Sasha Grey is a very popular porn star. Mainly because she does very extreme stuff, for example the kind of scenes where she is gagged with a man's cock to the extent that she us virtually vomiting. And she acts like she is loving it. One of the quotes in the magazine article from one of her films is, " Rip my fucking holes open". It's the most brutal, mistogynistic, woman hating porn you can possibly experience. And she is talking about it as being liberating and empowering for women. I'm no prude but her stuff sickens me. And now she's written an erotic novel and has an interview in Elle magazine where the cover line is, " writer, actress, feminist,porn star".
Makes me absolutely despair of where we as women have come to if she is being described as a "feminist". She is absolutely everything anti feminist to me. Any thoughts? Also if you have never seen her stuff, prepare to be appauled...

[perrycoma]

BinksToEnlightenment:
"How far are dicks allowed in my mouth before I automatically hate all other women?

I just think it's nuts to use that as a yardstick."

Genius! :)

[PaleHousewifeOfCumbriaCounty]

See this months Marie Claire.... Very interesting continuation of our discussions here. A feminist makes porn... After enjoying lots of porn.... Because shes a feminist... Concludes..... Porn is not feminist.... Very interesting read.

[Technotropic]

Just to add, I think Elle could have written something like, 'self confessed' or 'self proclaimed' and escaped all this criticism.

Then the argument would have been with SG herself.

[Technotropic]

Indeed, all the best Sparkly!

McGee

I think the discussion developed from the original post tbh so I don't think it was a straw man/woman argument. But I digress.

From my interpretation of the OP, Scarletto slammed Elle for labelling SG a feminist. This then turned into a near campaign with Elle's contact details being posted up so that we could all complain to them directly.

What I felt was missed was that it possibly wasn't Elle that labelled her as a feminist but SG herself, hence the 'People's Front of Judea' stuff. In fairness to Elle they appear to have simply published a description of her, which is what any magazine would do to any interviewee (pornstar or not). They are not touting at all IMHO. After all, why would any magazine chose to feature an individual and then decide for themselves what description would be most appropriate?

In any case, SG gave up porn 4 years ago so who is to say that her life 'today' is in any way anti-feminist?

The complaint the OP has is ultimately with Elle but who are they to judge whether SG is a feminist or not? This is the 'People's Front' bit. As I posted a while back, SG is acting, writing, sings in a band and also DJ's in clubs. Given this is what she does 'now', and also that no one here actually knows her in person, what qualification do we have to argue with Elle?

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Badlad, fair enough but the context of Hairy's analogy and indeed the thread was porn where people were hurt, damaged, degraded and verbally abused and those people were primarily women (or black people, in the analogy.)

[McGeeDiNozzo]

Well, sorry about the 'People's Front of Judaea' post and the 'judgey' accusations - looks like I've been going after a straw man and there was no personal criticism of Sasha Grey in the OP.

If Sasha Grey wants to call herself a feminist then that is fine. But if Elle Magazine is touting her as a feminist, and therefore as something other feminists should aspire to - as a magazine that lots and lots of women read - then that isn't really fine and the OP is NBU. Brutal porn is not a pro-woman thing.

Straw men suck. So easy to get taken in by them. Apologies.

[McGeeDiNozzo]

And I say that as a leftie. You might as well welcome the person of whom you don't approve to the party. She might change her mind in time. Other porn stars have done.

[McGeeDiNozzo]

Without reading the other pages of the thread...

Yes, the kind of porn Sasha Grey does is horrible, and yes it perverts sexual norms, and yes I don't really think what she does is particularly conducive to the empowerment or advancement of women.

But if she reckons she's a feminist, then let her be one. You're all on the same side, so being disgusted with each other is just People's Front of Judaea/Judaean People's Front stuff - so, so counterproductive, and yet lefties fucking love it for some reason.

[70isaLimitNotaTarget]

on that link- they give the actors/actresses age, number of films, wealth and HEIGHT.

Yes I'm sitting here thinking "I wonder how tall that tattooed male Rock Porn Star is"

[libertarianj]

Thisisaeuphemism why have you posted a link to the best paid porn stars? It is well known that the real money in porn goes not to the actresses but to the producers, directors and distributors (who are, despite you naming a single woman, overwhelmingly male) or do you dispute that?

You Say 'real money', but every woman in that top 20 list is a multimillionaire with Jenna Jameson at 30 million. yeah i could have listed other directors/ producers, Fiona Cooper, Jenna Hayes, Missy Suicide, Jill Kelly etc.
However If you could post a link up which supports your claim about how much male producers/ directors are earning i would be interested to see it? We should also bare in mind that a lot of companies are suffering financially too, and porn stars are cutting out the middle man, doing things like web cams instead:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/19/porn-industry-in-decline_n_2460799.html

Haven't heard of that Margold geezer but he sounds like a right tool.

Many studies show that men who watch a lot of violent porn trivialize rape.

Again could you provide some evidence for this?, most studies i've seen haven't been able to establish a link. I think this one was the latest failed attempt:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261377/Porn-study-scrapped-researchers-failed-ANY-20-males-hadn-t-watched-it.html

From that article i did think this bit was spot on though and goes back to what i said earlier about porn not actually being that influential:

Lajeunesse found most boys seek out pornographic material by the age of 10, when they are most sexually curious. However, they quickly discard what they don't like and find offensive. As adults, they will continue to look for content in tune with their image of sexuality.

[PaleHousewifeOfCumbriaCounty]

Go sparkly! Pushhhhh!

[BadLad]

I think the main problem with the white v black analogy is that there aren't any scenarios, that I can think of at least, where white people could do something to black people which would be universally accepted if done in private, and indeed, done by almost everybody in the world. But film and distribute it, and it becomes distasteful.

So I don't think it really works for the porn industry in its entirety.

[AnyFucker]

Sparkly, good luck and thanks for your contributions

[Thisisaeuphemism]

Good luck Sparky!!

Libertarian, why have you posted a link to the best paid porn stars? It is well known that the real money in porn goes not to the actresses but to the producers, directors and distributors (who are, despite you naming a single woman, overwhelmingly male) or do you dispute that?

As you are such a porn affecianado you'll know the name Bill Margold, (One of the industry's longest-serving film performers, he was interviewed by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller for his book Porn: Myths For The Twentieth Century.)

"My whole reason for being in this industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't care much for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up. So we come on a woman's face or brutalise her sexually: we're getting even for lost dreams."

Many studies show that men who watch a lot of violent porn trivialize rape.

Of course, according to you this is GREAT NEWS for women.

[FloraFox]

Takes the blue pill -> can name one female director / photographer.

So everything is okay then. Nothing to worry about. Move along folks.

[libertarianj]

Thisisaeuphemism female stars may get paid more than their male counterparts - (their careers are significantly shorter and the physical damage more complex) however, they are as hairy says, a dot in the ocean compared to the male directors, producers, cameramen, distributers, etc, etc. the chief beneficiary of the porn industry at present are men. The chief losers are women.

Do you have any facts or figures to back up those assumptions?

According to the study of 10,000 porn stars ( based on the Internet Adult Film Database) it was found that women's careers averaged 3 years compared to men of 4 years. Also it found women did an average of 19 films compared to men who did 16 films. I would hardly call that significantly shorter.
and there are loads of women directors /photographers. Never heard of Suze Randall? she's one of the biggest names in porn. A fair few female porn stars go on to be directors too.

Here's the top 20 richest porn stars:

www.worldoffemale.com/20-most-richest-porn-stars-on-earth-sfw/

[PaWithABra]

good luck and good writing.

I was having difficultly consolidating my opinions over this .. you have a gone along way to help frame them.

[Bogeyface]

I believe childbirth trumps everything!

Good luck Sparkly :)

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Sparkly, you just won the thread

[FloraFox]

Wow good luck Sparkly! Your contributions here have been amazing!

[Sparklyboots]

Read the whole sentence, I didn't say there wasn't something called sex positive feminism, but that it is a view which is encompassed within other kinds of feminism. It's all very well being liberal and taking all comers but that makes language meaningless in contexts like this. Plus the whole, feminsim = equality statement you made is pretty much not applicable in the product that SG has made, the men and women aren't equal in it so even if that is your all-coming standard, SG doesn't qualify.

I'd love to continue this discussion but I have literally just gone into labour with my DD1. Hence my heightened concerns about feminism and also why I probably won't be able to respond for a while...

[Technotropic]

Woman: I'm not a feminist but......

Feminist: So you don't believe in equality?

Woman: Yes I do.

Feminist: Then it's simple, you're a feminist.

If I had a £1 every time I heard or read the above.... . Somehow something that started of with the premise of being very ridiculously simple has become very messy indeed.

I think we should try and remember that sex-positive feminism is not a strand of feminism.....

As you can probably tell I'm quite liberal and all inclusive so you'll forgive me for thinking you're in denial. That's a pretty damning statement there and that's fine as its good to know the lie of the land.

[Sparklyboots]

But sex-positive feminists would unlikely recognise SG as one of them. Sex-positive feminism isn't about describing participating in male centric, male identified porn as feminist, but in creating a public sphere for the feminist reconsideration of female sexuality, which might include but is not limited to the creation and use of pornography that is female centric and female identified, or at least reflects the politics and values of the feminists that consider themselves sex-positive. This would include room for the exploration of the erotic potential of submission/ BDSM but crucially in a contextualised, critiqued and female identified way. SG has not been involved in such work. And the mere relabelling of a porn career in gonzo porn as an act of sex-positive feminism doesn't change that, it just demonstrates that the person so travelling has misinterpreted feminism and sex-positive feminism.

This is only inequitable if you assume equity is based on the relative rights of individuals to self-identify; I think that this is neo-liberal bullshit TBH, and only possible if you are so beholden to the post-modern relativism of language that we may as well stop talking cos the construction of meaning is purely an individual act. If you believe in the capacity of language to name something specific, or even just in its capacity to say what a thing isn't, then self-identification is unreliable; I can call myself black all I like, but I'm white, and while I might be trying to recognise and claim for myself a political response to dominant conceptions of race, I would still be fundamentally wrong in self-identifying as black. By the definition of sex-positive fems, SG' s work is not feminist in itself; by the definition of feminism as a word that refers to women as a class, her desire to reclaim it has such is neither here nor there.

I think we should try and remember that sex-positive feminism is not a strand of feminism in the way cultural or Marxist feminism are because it does not describe a political approach to gender and social identity but a particular view of a particular issue which will itself arise from a broader conception of gender politics, a kind of feminism. An interest in women only insofar as they have a sexual identity is not sex-positive, or any other kind of feminism; it's fetishism precisely encoded with patriarchy, making an attempt to relabel itself as something more palatable and claiming neo-liberal rights to self-identification which are in themselves, nothing to do with feminism.

[Thisisaeuphemism]

Techno, female stars may get paid more than their male counterparts - (their careers are significantly shorter and the physical damage more complex) however, they are as hairy says, a dot in the ocean compared to the male directors, producers, cameramen, distributers, etc, etc. the chief beneficiary of the porn industry at present are men. The chief losers are women.

[bestegg]

I havent read the entire thread, but have the people saying shame on elle actually read the article? It is not a positive article about sasha grey, it ends on quite a negative tone about here and the statements she makes about her career in porn.