Ethical, diverse and not a silicone breast in sight — feminist filmmakers are standing up to mass-market porn with adult movies free of male domination and gender stereotypes.
Their films aim to show realistic, consent-based and egalitarian sex instead of the superhuman bedroom exploits of macho studs and submissive women.
“Feminist porn is part of a fight against misogyny on the same territory and with the same weapons as the sex movie mainstream,” French filmmaker Ovidie, 38, told AFP at a recent film festival on the subject in Berlin.
Photo: AFP
The first attempts at feminist pornography date back to the 1980s in the US, but the movement has received a new lease of life in response to a flood of free online porn in the Internet age.
The easy availability of even hardcore porn online has raised concerns that a generation of young people is being exposed to material that could warp their sexual attitudes and expectations.
To counter this effect, Berlin’s center-left Social Democrats who govern the city-state in coalition with the Greens, are now proposing to use feminist adult films in sex education programs.
‘X-GIRL VS SUPERMACHO’
Traditional adult films “always follow the same kind of choreography... men dominate women,” said Ovidie, who has spearheaded the “femporn” movement in France.
In her Stories of Sex(es) and X-Girl vs Supermacho, women are no longer reduced to objects — on the contrary, they are in charge.
To be truly “feminist” the productions must meet several criteria, explained Laura Meritt, a German linguist and specialist on the movement.
In addition to portraying the desires “of all genders” — including of men, who in most porn are “merely reduced to their penis” — the cast must be “varied physically and culturally” and not of uniformly perfect physique, she said.
Condom use is a must and so are ethical “working conditions, based on consent, where everyone has the choice to take part in certain practices or not,” Meritt said.
An actress who goes by the name of Misungui Bordelle said the sex scenes are usually shot with “the least possible” interruption, rather than through the mainstream industry’s “methodical execution... with many takes.”
The American director Jennifer Lyon Bell, a 49-year-old Harvard graduate, in 2004 launched her company “Blue Artichoke Films,” specializing in movies that “portray sexuality in an emotionally realistic way.”
She sees her work as part of “sex-positive feminism” which, rather than seeking to abolish pornography, sees sexuality as the arena in which women must win their emancipation.
‘DROP IN THE OCEAN’
In 2006, Toronto hosted what organizers billed as the world’s first “Feminist Porn Awards” at its adult film festival, and similar events followed in Lausanne, Lisbon and Sydney.
In Europe, the biggest festival is organized annually in Berlin, attracting 10,000 visitors this autumn.
Despite this, feminist pornography is far from breaking into the mainstream.
“I have very little relationship with the mainstream industry. The festivals and modes of income are different, these are circles that rarely intersect,” said French director Lucie Blush, 30.
It is a view reflected in the global sex movie industry, where many are yet to see this type of film-making as competition, said Gregory Dorcel, manager at Marc Dorcel, one of the leading porn media groups.
These “ethical” productions remain “a drop in the ocean of porn” online, said Camille Emmanuelle, a writer specialized in issues of sexuality.
Lacking broad distribution channels, the business model is based on subscription systems — a limiting factor since “people, especially young people, are now used to free porn.”
The Swedish Film Institute in 2009 pioneered a series of 12 short films directed by feminists and produced by Mia Engberg.
Inspired by Sweden’s example, the proposals by Berlin’s Social Democrats to use such films in sex education may make them eligible for state funding.
The party’s Ferike Thom said that “it would be great if this alternative porn, which portrays sex differently, could be as easily and freely accessible as the classic sex movies.”
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s