I want to remind you that “feminist porn” is largely understood NOT as “porn FOR women” or even “porn BY women” – but just PORN, made with gender equality in mind and/OR made with actual feminist politics. Other than good old gender equality, such “feminist politics” often included in feminist porn are inter-sectional activism like racial justice, size positivity, sex with disabilities  trans awareness; and desire politics like queer theory, BDSM/rough sex/consent culture, and education and awareness around the ever multifaceted orgasm. Feminist porn has never sought out to intentionally exclude men, either as customers, performers, or even directors – but it goes to show how much work feminists have on their plate when the first argument against feminist porn is, “Where’s the MEN?”

With no offense meant to the folks who label their porn this way, “Porn For Women” is a marketing construct about as legit as the Bic “Pen for Her” products – set up by large adult film studios to affirm that women are not part of the general consumers of pornography, which may have been true 20 years ago when we weren’t granted equal access to pornography, but not now.

This original idea in itself is an example of what feminist porn seeks to prove WRONG – that all women can watch and enjoy all kinds of porn – and the feminist porn movement DOES include male directors, male performers, and of course – male fans. LOTS OF THEM. To say that the gender divide is about 50/50 seems true, at least in my case as a producer and a performer experiencing the outspoken of my fan base.

There are certainly old school female adult directors like Candida Royalle (who, also happens to be feminist), and new-school straight female pornographers like Erika Lust and Petra Joy who cash in on this idea of “Porn For Women,” which is to say that they label themselves that outside of a parent company’s designations, and proudly make work that features strong female characters and intently female desires – from the director’s specific point of view of what THEY as women want, and not necessarily what ALL WOMEN WANT. but they make up a minority in what the Feminist Porn Awards community, the FP Conference participants, and the large majority of “feminist porn” makers consider to be the back bones of the movement.

Feminist porn at large, looks more like this: Tristan Taormino’s Rough Sex Ed series, which mixes vibrant hardcore pornography and honest, open-minded information into one package, collaboratively exploring the performers – male and female – secret rough sex fantasies. Or Pink And White Productions, a queer, POC-owned company that shines light on the authentic desires of queer women, the fantasies of men, and a collection of historical and modern pornography made by indie porn pioneers and artists.

Short films like Clark Matthew’s Krutch or Loree Erickson’s Want explore how every day life and sexual desire can change, or stay exactly the same, when you’re a disabled woman. Another one, Wolf Hudson Is Bad, stars a male porn star with a tremendous variety of content and context including solo scenes, gender bending, kink, and romantic exploits, and is directed by Aiden Star, a queer female porn star and producer.

Or my new project Lesbian Curves, which just won the Hottest Dyke Film award at the Feminist Porn Awards, and explores lesbian sex from a real queer perceptive and features femmes from all along the size spectrum. There are countless other performers and producers that make all kinds of feminist porn – Tobi Hill-Meyer, James Darling, Tina Horn, Nenna Feelmore, Jiz Lee, Dylan Ryan, Syd Blakovich, Lorelei Lee, Arabelle Raphael, Julie Simone, Carlos Batts, Travis Matthews – I could go on and on! But there’s no way to decipher what we all as individuals, or our porn, have in common, except the one thing that we don’t have in common – which is make porn specifically for one gender over the other or assume that we know what we want from our audience, or what they want from us – is as ever as easy as Venus Vs Mars.

There are a few individuals who I am now labeling “anti-feminist pornographers” that seek to re-define and destroy the working definitions that dozens of porn makers have worked to build since  the first ideas of Annie Sprinkle and Scarlot Harlot. These AFP’s want to make us out to be man-hating, unintelligent gossip hens who seek to create some sort of Second-Wave “feminist porn separatist  environment  while refusing to meet us face to face and discuss the issues that effect every porn maker, regardless of political or artistic intent.

For example, I was recently scheduled to be on a panel about mandatory condom laws in porn and safer sex pornography with one of the more outspoken of these AFP’s. You may have read one of her 300 daily tweets about it, attacking me, my co-panelists, the guests who came to the panel, and the originator of the conference itself – for “putting her” in a position where she may have to actually say the things she’s said online, out loud – though she was the one who agreed to come to the conference, and the panel full of, in her words, “angry hooker feminists, frothing at the mouth.”

Needless to say, this AFP didn’t show up to her panel, and immediately went online to initiate the twitter tirade that plagued  all of our timelines for days, including her signature false truth metaphors, Jerry Springer comparisons, and direct insults of the conference coordinator and panelist’s looks, professions, and intellect.

The topic of mandatory condoms in porn, and safer sex in general, was an incomplete panel topic without the presence of a producer who works in Los Angeles, where a mandatory condom law in currently in effect. There was no Jerry Springer plan of attack, in fact – I personally mediated on kindness and equality of opinions for weeks, knowing that this woman might potentially bring her infamous tactics of deterrence. I wrote a piece about labor politics, health care, and government regulation, and stuck to what I wrote on paper. When she didn’t show, the other panelists and I did end up pointing to her empty chair and admitting that this AFP was anti-escort, and that her opinion on sex workers in the industry and their “effect” on mandatory condom laws was missing from the conversation.

There was no attack. Honestly, those who identify as feminists have been mis-labeled and accused of being overly aggressive, anti-man, loudmouths, criminals, provocateurs, and Jerry Springer contestants for way longer than this AFP has even been alive, mush less confronting feminists.

These are all tactics used by anti-feminists to bring the movement down and make our real causes – equal rights for all genders – seem petty and unimportant. No matter what wave of feminism you may be surfing, the foundation is humanist – all humans, regardless of gender, deserve equal rights in our society. believing this alone makes you, in theory, a feminist.

We may all disagree on how we get there, and what we do along the way – and that’s what makes us human. Pornography is a powerful medium for change, and as a feminist I have seen my world as a genderqueer, fat, femme shift drastically for the better in the past ten years that I’ve been involved in porn.

I’ve seen sex workers rise up and fight stigmatism and silencing. I have seen sexual abuse survivors heal themselves, and others, with sex-positive art and performance. I have seen transsexuals and their partners and families come forward and demand an end to exclusion. I have seen people of color get the space, resources, and support they need to have strong, individual ownership and access to media that represents them authentically.

I have seen young women discover countless ways to be themselves, and love themselves, outside of society’s Cosmo-approved lifestyles. I have seen eating disorders cured, abusive relationships thwarted, abortions legally granted, and new families created from true love, connection, and community outside of a legal marriage or male-ownership track.

I have even seen MEN, weary from generations of being told that they too, have their own box of gender and sexuality that they must adhere to – rise up to the challenge of exploring, celebrating, and participating in individualized  personal, and unique sexualities and frames of desire.

These are the rewards for thinking about pornography, for thinking about sex, from a feminist point of view. And I encourage you to explore as well. Feminism isn’t a dirty word unless you make it one.

Thank you for listening.