Porn loves variety. Log on to any porn site, free or paid, open a porn mag, walk into a porn video shop, and you’ll see it laid out before you like the infinite varieties of toothpaste in a supermarket. Amateur, Anal, Asian, Barely Legal, BBW, Ebony, European, Gangbang, POV… a complete list would fill a book.
You become the immaculate consumer. Every possible definition is available to you, and the definitions become definitions that only exist insofar as they offer you choice. Every possible narcissism is possible, every combination, every motion of this immaculate world can be bent to your exact whim.
The word ‘fetish’, once used about objects with magical properties, continued in the 19th century through use of objects with sexual properties or uses. But in online porn, it now appears to mean everything from the shape of a woman’s body hair to how many men are raping her.
The definition ‘Asian’, for example, or ‘Black’: these exist in pornography explicitly as ideas for your enjoyment. Gone is the history of racisms, gone the struggles for rights, gone murders, gone beatings, gone pathologisings, gone identities. Gone even, the possibility that people of colour might simply want to see people of their race in anything but positions of abjection. Porn has no conscience. It candidly assumes that if you have ill-feeling about the use of these definitions, it is definitely only in your head. Look, it says instead, at these women: they are literally begging for more. Asian isn’t an identity, it says, it’s just a type of fuckability.
Every possible difference in life becomes fetish. Then, every possible difference in porn production becomes fetish. Barring a very few homemade sex recordings that have made it onto filesharing networks and ad-supported streaming sites, ‘Amateur’ porn is not porn made by amateurs: it is filmed by big studios. It’s worth briefly dwelling on why to see what it shows us about this industry.
There are certain tropes in amateur pornography that are not only obvious and easily replicable, but indeed the reason why porn users seek out such ‘amateur’ videos: distorted screams (imitating distortion caused by cheap OEM microphones), higher-speed penetrations, faces covered in hair or cut out of shot, blurred video quality, and so on. (You may wonder what distinguishes these from beheading videos- the answer, not much). ‘Ex-girlfriend’ porn -videos of women masturbating, supposedly sent to partners during relationships as a sex aid- is exactly the same. Studios openly specialize in it.
I have written before about how we must understand porn as a business, busily creating its own market- the principle of ‘you have to have it because you have had it’. The production of porn at home, for no profit, is most directly comparable to children playing at ‘shops’- it mocks the existing market, and yet also has no effect upon it.
As social relations, each with their own complex history of abjection behind them (racism, eating disorders, homophobia…) become subsumed into the narcissism of personal fetish and lose all meaning but fuckability, so too is rape subsumed into the commodification of sex.
Socialist feminists have long held that ‘you can’t buy consent’; but even that is not the whole story. What happens in porn is in the best case happening for money. Trafficked women, women in slavery or bonded labour (where they work to pay off a ‘debt’), women working to support their addiction and in the vast majority of cases the addiction of their partner, women forced through disability or poverty to get work in the sex industry constitute the vast majority of sex workers. It is important, I think, not to separate prostitution and porn.
Our last fetish, then, is the commodity fetish. As porn becomes widespread as the most common sexual experience of men and boys, it slowly changes social relations into commodity relations. Women’s abjections become aesthetic preferences. 
Masturbation becomes transaction. Your regular hits on the porn website purchase advertising revenue for the website; the website purchases video from the producers; the producers purchase labour from the male actors; their labour is to force the commodity, apparent willingness, from the women. The actors’ sexual and hegemonic pleasure at the rape is merely a bonus for them.
It doesn’t stop there, however. The tremendous gender imbalance of porn consumption leads to the next problem, which is boys having their first sexual experience with girls, the boys being now very well versed in porn. The result is either explicitly or implicitly rape: ‘sex to’ or ‘sex on’ might be a more accurate formulation than ‘sex with’ the girl. She is subsumed into the masturbation fantasies of the boy, or rather, the commodity is extracted from her; and if she does not quickly learn what is expected of her, first, it will go ahead anyway, and then she will find herself humiliated and isolated.
Women and girls who watch porn (as many will after an experience like that) will not redress this balance, however. They will see the fetishes laid out before them. They will see that their lives, their bodies (‘Ebony’ ‘BBW’ ‘Asian’ ‘Shaved’ ‘Bisexual’ ‘Gangbang’) are not their lives or their bodies, but brands of commodity. They will understand their place in this economy: they must be willing givers of this commodity. They will return to the boys, and they will be raped without even knowing what’s wrong.
Amended 16/01/2012 to clarify point in fourth paragraph
No related posts.
Thanks for this brilliant article Kit. There is lots to think about here. I think as a white man I understand what you are trying to say about fetishes relating to skin color:
“The definition ‘Asian’, for example, or ‘Black’: these exist in pornography explicitly as ideas for your enjoyment. Gone is the history of racisms, gone the struggles for rights, gone murders, gone beatings, gone pathologisings, gone identities…Porn has no conscience. It candidly assumes that if you have ill-feeling about the use of these definitions, it is definitely only in your head. Look, it says instead, at these women: they are literally begging for more. Asian isn’t an identity, it says, it’s just a type of fuckability.”
I agree with what you say here in that references to one’s skin color – of the woman in these cases – is about much more than that. It is also a fuckability as you say. Or to put it slightly different a certain type of fuckability, sex fetish or body fetish – e.g. Asian being synonymous with: submissive, schoolgirls, small breasts; Black being synonymous with anal sex, big bootys and curvyness. In this way porn connects various types of fetishes with racist stereotypes and strengthens them through their strong focus of porn on what they term “interracial” sex.
I am slightly confused by the use of the term race in your article and wonder whether it’s use refers to skin color or not.
“Gone too, the possibility that you might simply expect to find attractive the people of your own race.”
After a few readings I have come to understand it as referring to the human race. In the context of that specific paragraph I think the meaning can be twofold however. Which “race” are you referring to?
Many thanks for your swift and clear analysis of porn as a business, whether this is pay-per-view porn or so called free porn:
“Masturbation becomes transaction. Your regular hits on the porn website purchase advertising revenue for the website; the website purchases video from the producers; the producers purchase labour from the male actors; their labour is to force the commodity, apparent willingness, from the women.”
This makes it very clear that all types of porn, whether directly paid for by the user or “free” porn for which the user indirectly pays through generating hits and exposure for ads, are based on a money making principle. This rules out the “free porn” argument.
Alwyne, thanks for your kind comments. The sentence in the fourth paragraph is due to be amended (see my comment below about it). When I refer to race I consider race broadly in Gilroyan terms.
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This is such a good article. As u say, there is no such thing as free porn, it has such a gender imbalance, im glad u adressed women who watch porn as well, what with the messages and advertising and’porn papers’ showing girls from a young age to be submissive, judged on their ‘fuckability’ but at the same time being deemed a slag,slut,whore it gives confusing messages, so when she’s coerced to watch porn to be ‘normal’ either by society standards or a boyfriend the brain wash continues…and then gets passed down the generations..
I think you underestimate girls here. Any girl with a brain will see the ridiculous contradiction in porn’s message. More important are the conditions: upbringing / emotional (i.e. lack of self-esteem or fear of loneliness) or financial dependency that makes any sensible girl submit to any of the nonsense propagated by the porn industry or its male users.
Emma, Shropshire Lad: thanks for your comments. I aimed this article at men, and attempted only to show the destructive effects of porn in the interest of their realisation of its power. You are quite correct of course that women fight back and this article makes no attempt at a global assessment of all power dynamics in gender relations.
I hate watching our society embracing porn as the norm
I just wanted to make one clarification – when I suggest that people looking at porn might naturally prefer porn of their own race, I was referring specifically to people of colour. Whiteness is specifically constructed in porn to be the dominant and the norm, and seeking a situation where people that look like them exist as equals is impossible. I certainly did not intend to imply that a white homogenisation would be a good and sympathetic goal – as after all, a making white of porn is exactly what goes on, as the process of making white is done by opposing and abjecting blackness. So people of colour are necessarily in porn, in order to assert further whiteness. I hope this clears up any ambiguity.
I think this is the most lucid insight of your rather rambling article. Just like the whole how-can-free-porn-make-anyone-a-buck issue, the racial issue is also rather contradictory in porn. White hegemony is somehow enforced by having black people only fucking or getting fucked by white people, never with other black people. The porn idea is obviously that black people’s sex lives must and should revolve around white people and their desires.
Perhaps the financial and racial issues connect to a certain extent if the actors are considered as experiencing some kind of slavery? The product is free because the workforce get slave-like wages? But that doesn’t explain why people who definately are not philanthropic would bother to make a free product. Sure, cotton and sugar became very cheap because of slave labour, but those products still weren’t free.
I think that the answer lies in a Marxist understanding of production. The effect of the internet on property relations has been to force delivery to be free, or rather free-at-point-of-delivery. Paid sites are comprehensively undermined by the internet’s ability to disseminate material for free, as with music and films. The producers have no choice but to sell their product at the market rate, which is eroded by the lower revenues of ad-supported sites.
As for race in porn, this is a bigger question and one I’ll tackle in my next article.
Incidentally, further exploration of the assertions of whiteness in porn will make up my next article.
I read that a third of online porn is consumed by women.
And has that translated at all to real life? Do you often see groups of women raving about the newest Brazzers video or debating the best pornstars?
No, but then again I don’t see too many groups of men doing that either.
Actually, yes. The room I work in has a female majority and they do occasionally talk about porn.
Just this morning one lady was recounting an anecdote about her friend sending her a picture message featuring a well endowed black man. She likes well endowed men and she regularly assures us of her husbands credentials in that department.
The only thing I’ll add to what I’ve already said in the article (which deals with this phenomenon, however big it actually is) is a caution to remember the power relations of gender and the male-centred way porn is constructed. Even if ten million women rave about porn to you, it isn’t the same as with men.
Im not sure about those stats,but it starts to address it towards the end of the article..as a woman,and i find this hard as well, i think most women do as we’re sent confusing messages,u have to be sexy but if u r u risk being called a slut, if u object to porn u get called fat and ugly(thats happened to me on some sites which is annoying as im not plus shows that the people that make those offensive comments have been brainwashed to think that or maybe they feel guilty of their habits and it’s a defense mechanism) would you rather be what society sees as fuckable or invisable? Fuckable u look the part,go along with the ideals pressed on women of what they should look like,even as children many toys are divided by pink submissive girls toys-dolls,pretend kitchen stuff,being a princess versus boys blue-strong action man dr’s outfits… Or invisable, u refuse always to look the part,have sex with ur partner like a porn star etc…sadly lots of people go with the first which might explain the steep raise in plastic surgery, genital mutilation-even our labia’s are being lectured on how they’should look’. I hope with the raise of awareness in the media people will see this effects everyone, ur sisters,brothers,mothers. Men (and some women) are being shown from an early age what they should sexually like, theyre challange that this is what ‘real men’want,violent sex,rapes,violence towards women, double entry etc…the whole sick list goes on, the industry is hijacking men’s sexuality and replacing it with something so distorted and dangerous… Really feminists(and make feminist supporters) are mens best friends. Lecture over
x
“Or invisable, u refuse always to look the part,have sex with ur partner like a porn star etc”
But then why is this person your boyfriend? Honestly, the world will improve before women stop falling for douchebags.
the world will NOT improve, I mean!
I think ‘women falling for douchebags’ is a very poor assessment of the problem.
Emma, thanks for your comments. I think your concept of ‘fuckable or invisible’ while damning, is extremely insightful.
*that was suppose to read’male feminist supporters*
Kit, you seem to be accepting at face-value the mainstream pornographers’ definition of “fetishism”, and conflating it with a basically Marxist definition of commodity fetishism… But I doubt many of the pornographers would accept the Marxist definition, or vice versa, and neither of these corresponds with the correct sexual definition.
None of the categories of pornography that you list actually are fetishistic in the more precise sense of the term which you briefly allude to near the beginning of your article. What I mean is that fetishism in the sexual sense is quite specifically about arousal by inanimate objects, materials or body parts (e.g. rubber, leather, feet) which most people don’t see as sexual. These are by definition *not* “objects with sexual properties or uses”, in fact they are objects which some people (for reasons unknown) find sexually exciting in spite of the fact that they have no obvious sexual properties or uses…
The point I’m trying to make is that pornography that is truly fetishistic, is actually not sexual in a way that non-fetishists can even recognise – it appears absurd and meaningless. The kind of thing that a programme like So Graham Norton or Eurotrash will highlight for amusement. Fetish porn in the true sense often doesn’t feature sexual intercourse at all…!
The basic point I’m trying to make is that I don’t think it’s helpful when you adopt the vocabulary of mainstream pornographers… in doing so, you are condemning people (fetishists) who are not committed to heteronormative or racist worldviews or ways of desiring. This isn’t to say that fetishists can’t be racist or misogynist or homophobic, just that there is no necessary link.
Perhaps the more significant question to ask is why do some porn advertisers and cataloguers often marginalise a wide range of non-normative sexual preferences as “fetishes”. Presumably it is because they see all sexual preferences which do not match a very restrictive norm as a form of “sexual deviance”, and, equally problematically, that a whole person can be a “fetish object”. But few actual fetishists hold either of these opinions.
I would be interested to know if you think there is something objectionable about fetishism in the precise sexual sense rather than the vulgarised expansive sense, or the Marxist sense?
Hear, hear!
I’ll second this concern with the use of the term fetish and fetishism. It comes across in the article as if you are overtly linking fetishes with exploitation and subjugation without really understanding the fetish/bdsm community nor the explicit terms of of consent that occur within the scene. Sexual imagery, much of it amateur in nature can be an inherent, integral part of sexuality within the bdsm community done with explicit consent of the participants.
I think this is a deeply hetronormative, cis gendered analysis of pornography, its consumers and their sexual experience that ignores homosexuals, male and female as producers, consumers and participants and normalises sexual experience in to a very limited experience and understanding of sexuality.
I’m also deeply uncomfortable about the implicit assumptions about how young women experience sex, as if we can only be passive recipients having our sexuality inflicted on us by prn gobbling boys.
littlespy, thanks for your comment. The article, as I have outlined above, is intentionally about heteronormative and cisgender relationships. The use of pornography in BDSM and by queers is a situation vastly different from the intended remit of this article. My personal experience and sources of interviews were heteronormative and cisgender. I don’t have the expertise or the contacts at the moment to write something about BDSM and queer porn, but I do hope to be able to in the future.
As I have said in my response to zetkin (http://kitwithnail.blogspot.com/2012/01/response-to-zetkin.html), I sought only to describe some of the oppressive forces, not to attempt a total understanding of all possible outcomes of the sexual power dynamic, and wished, believing my audience on this site might mostly be male, to caution only against the dangers porn gives. I understand there are therefore problems with an apparent implication that women cannot fight back, and I apologise.
I think the issue is that the idea that women can and do enjoy consuming and producing pornography, much as someone can enjoy any job they happen to get paid for, completely and absolutely undermines the whole argument that women are *inherently* exploited by porn.
What if, in a socialist society, people have the luxury to make pornography for free? Would you be anti-pornography then?
There are clearly serious exploitation issues within the sex industry, but the problem is with the “industry” not the “sex”.
I think that if your position is going to be nuanced enough to reach to feminists such as myself who object to the ‘invisibility’ of gay/bi/trans sexualities and gender identities in the porn debate you need to be talking to us as well. otherwise, I will always see this position as denying sexual agency to a whole group of people and making definitive judgements and conclusions without consulting the actual people you seem to intend to speak on behalf of.
I’d be happy to explain at greater length regarding BDSM and fetishism and answer questions but perhaps the comment section of an article is not the place for this.
Ben, thanks for your comment. I’m not conflating porn’s definition of fetishes with commodity fetishism. Fetish here is merely a theme for exploration, and so I consider the various ways the word is used. I am very well aware of the difference between porn’s definition of fetishes and Marx’s use of the term.
You appear to think that the definition of ‘fetish’ by the porn industry is an incorrect one. There is of course no such thing as an incorrect definition, as definitions are created by their uses. My article intended to highlight the more commodifying uses of the word by the porn industry. That a somebody with a foot or leather fetish might bristle at the term’s use to describe, say, ethnicity, or rape, is not of interest to this article. I am not in the business of reclaiming definitions, I am merely attempting to show what effects their use may have.
I also don’t see the relevance of your last sentence; nothing in the article suggests that I object to sexual fetishes per se.
Why would it make it ok if a third of the viewers were women? Or 80% for that matter? Are women less morally questionable as a group? Whether negative, gender stereotyping images are perpetuated by men or women they are still damaging to both. I went to an all female school and we still had bullying if you had sex (slut, whore) and if you didn’t (frigid, ugly) and no one could openly say that they masturbated without being thought of as disgusting. Also you got it in the neck for being fat, spotty, having body hair etc. These stereotypes have been taken on by most women now as well as most men and the issue can’t be purely discussed along gender lines.
I can’t help but feel that a few links to reliable sources would have done this article the world of good. I thought that these claims in particular needed support:
1) A meaningful percentage of women in porn aren’t doing it for the money but are addicts/trafficked slaves etc.
2) Amateur porn has no effect on the industry
3) A significant percentage of ‘boys’ expect real sex to mimic porn.
4) Those same ‘boys’ will force sexual partners into porn-like sex if they don’t agree to it.
I’m not sure that any of those things are actually true…
A response to zetkin.net’s response to this:
http://kitwithnail.blogspot.com/2012/01/response-to-zetkin.html
Zetkin’s article: http://zetkin.net/proper-names-pornography/
Whether it’s a fetish-based or not, the biggest problem I have with pornography is that it teaches people (usually teenage boys) to be consumers when it comes to sex, training them to see sexual pleasure as something that’s on-tap and made-to-order rather than as a natural result of two people expressing love for each other.
I think this is a really important point. Sex is something to purhcase, consume and get out of the way, rather than as part of a loving relationship, or just for some good fun. Most porn involves groups of men going through the motions (no pun intended), in an aggressive manner, without the usual laughs, perhaps awkwardness or intensity real sex often has.
It’s a sad thing that many people (especially the young) are being alienated from their sexuality. Porn and porn culture is produced on an industrial scale, normalised and therefore people then have to buy it for their sexual pleasure (if they regard and enjoy porn as normal on a superficial level). This ensures profit (even if the end user doesn’t pay, but advertisers do) before true enjoyment, passion, sillyness, fun, but it’s a treadmill that’s hard to get off.
It’s time for feminists, progressives and radicals to take back sex for all bi, gay, straight people. This is urgently required, not just for enjoyments sake, but for those who have been drawn into the abusive world of the porn and sex industries.