SINNAMON LOVE
-Retired Adult Film Star, Sex Educator & Published Writer-
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
The Feminist Porn Book:
The Politics and Policies of Producing Pleasure
The Feminist Porn Book brings together for the first time writings by feminists in the adult industry and research by feminist porn scholars. This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world's most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, Lynn Comella, Jane Ward, Ariane Cruz, Kevin Heffernan, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the arguments of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women's movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and racial and sexual minorities produce power and pleasure.
In terms both jarring and harrowing, women’s bodies became the terrain on which the 2012 election was fought. That the choices, experiences, and consequences of women’s sexual lives became fodder for such poorly informed national “conversations” is evidence of the pressing need for thoughtful, sex-positive scholarship which centers on women’s sexual agency. The Feminist Porn Book is just such a contribution, and I predict this volume is going to find its way onto the bedside tables of several generations of American women. This volume brings together academics, activists, and porn entrepreneurs who have a startling array of interactions with pornography as an experience, a business, and a field of inquiry. This text is straightforward and informative in ways that are unfortunately rare in the multi-decade feminist struggle over porn. It’s also fun and sometimes a bit naughty to read. The authors do not assume that the porn industry as it exists is the one essential and only possible incarnation of porn. Instead, they assume that when feminists engage, intervene in, produce, and study pornography, they can radically alter its formations and meanings. At the core of the book is the question: Can porn coexist with the principles of feminism? No matter how one ultimately adjudicates this question, The Feminist Porn Book leaves no doubt about the inherent value in the inquiry itself.
— Melissa Harris-Perry
Host of MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry”
Professor of Political Science, Tulane University
Author of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
The book’s answer to the implicit question of “where is intersectionality in our porn?” is heartening. Though Tobi Hill-Meyer writes about the slow, frustrating, transphobia-filled process of trans women’s inclusion in porn, Jiz Lee and Buck Angel write about how their porn has made their trans and genderqueer bodies famous. Bobby Noble illuminates what transed masculinities mean in terms of gender expression in feminist porn, while Loree Ericson talks about flaunting her femmegimp sex, and Fatty D rejoices in transcending the BBW ghetto, reveling in her ability to inspire other fat women. Maybe I should be apologizing to Alice Walker, but contributions like Sinnamon Love’s and Mireille Miller-Young bring womanism to The Feminist Porn Book’s feminism.
- Caty Simon of Tits and Sass
