Abstract
This chapter turns to alternative pornographies, an increasingly essential aspect of digital porn culture. It identifies the major, unifying aspects of alternative pornographies in order to demonstrate how their aesthetic, political and ethical elements all revolve around the desire to reject the multiple modes of exploitative productivity in which both the porn user and performer are embedded. Drawing on the work of directors and companies such as Belladonna, Erika Lust and Kink.com, this chapter interrogates the way in which alternative pornography discourse revolves around the disavowal of labour. It therefore establishes alternative pornography’s embeddedness within the creative industries and its notion of the compensatory pleasures and fulfilment of creative work. It analyses, too, specific ways in which alternative pornography is interpolated into this neoliberal ideology, considering the relationship between queer sexualities and economic precarity.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Almodovar, N 2006, ‘Porn Stars, Radical Feminists, Cops and Outlaw Whores: The Battle Between Feminist Theory and Reality, Free Speech and Free Spirits,’ in Prostitution and Pornography, Philosophical Debate About the Sex Industry, ed. Jessica Spector, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 149–174.
Arvidsson, A 2007 ‘Netporn: The Work of Fantasy in the Information Society,’ in C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, eds. Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen and Matteo Pasquinelli, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 69–76.
Attwood, F 2007, ‘No Money Shot? Pornography and New Sex Taste Cultures,’ Sexualities, 10, 441–456.
Attwood, F 2010, ‘“Younger, Paler, Decidedly Less Straight”: The New Porn Professionals,’ in Porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography, ed. Feona Attwood, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 88–104.
Barthes, R 1993, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London: Vintage.
Bennett, D 2013 ‘Aestheticizing Pornography for the 21st-century Academy: Pedagogy as Ars Erotica or Scientia Sexualis?’ in Pornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography, ed. Hans Maes, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 193–214.
Berardi, F 2009, The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy, trans. Francesca Cadel, Los Angeles, CA: Semiotexte.
Berg, H 2016, ‘A scene is just a marketing tool’: alternative income streams in porn’s gig economy, Porn Studies, 3:2, 160–174.
Bernstein, E 2007, Sex Work for the Middle Classes, Sexualities, 104, 473–488.
Biasin, E, Maina, G and Zecca, F 2014, ‘Introduction,’ in Porn After Porn: Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, eds. Enrico Biasin, Giovanna Maina and Federico Zecca, Milan: Mimesis International, pp. 15–20.
Bishop, C 2012, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso.
Bogard, W 1996, The Simulation of Surveillance: Hyper-control in Telematic Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bonik, M and Schaale, A 2007, ‘The Naked Truth: Internet Eroticism and the Search,’ in C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, eds. Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen and Matteo Pasquinelli, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 77–88.
Boyle, K 2010, ‘Introduction: Everyday Pornography,’ in Everyday Pornography, ed. Karen Boyle, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 1–13.
Boyle, K 2017, ‘The Implications of Pornification: Pornography, the Mainstream, and False Equivalences,’ in The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Violence, ed. Nancy Lombard, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 85–96.
Brown, M E 1996, ‘Desperately Seeking Strategies: Reading in the Postmodern,’ in Constructing the Self in a Mediated World, eds. Debra Grodin and Thomas R. Lindlof, London: Sage, pp. 55–67.
Butler, J 2006, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge Classics.
Cronin, B and Davenport, E 2001, ‘E-Rogenous Zones: Positioning Pornography in the Digital Economy,’ The Information Society, 17, 33–48.
DeAndrea, D 2010, ‘Online Language: The Role of Culture in Self-Expression and Self-Construal on Facebook,’ Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29, 425–442.
Dean, J 2002, Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy, London: Cornell University Press.
Duffy, B 2015, ‘The Romance of Work: Gender and Aspirational Labour in the Digital Culture Industries,’ International Journal of Cultural Studies, 19, 441–457.
Duggan, L 2003, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Elwes, C 1985, ‘Floating Femininity: A Look at Performance Art by Women,’ in Women’s Images of Men, eds. Sarah Kent and Jacqueline Morreau, London: Writers and Readers Publishing.
Evans, A and Riley, S 2015, Technologies of Sexiness, Sex, Identity, and Consumer Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fisher, E 2010, Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age: The Spirit of Networks, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fisher, E 2012, ‘How Less Alienation Creates More Exploitation? Audience Labour on Social Network Sites,’ tripleC 10:2, 171–183.
Florida, R 2004, The Rise of the Creative Class, New York: Basic Books.
Floyd, K 2009, The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism, London: University of Minnesota Press.
Fotopoulou, A 2013, ‘Remediating Politics: Branded New Sexualities and Real Bodies Online,’ Journal of Lesbian Studies, 17:3–4, 253–266.
Franklin, S 2015, Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fuss, D 1989, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference, New York: Routledge.
Gill, R and Pratt, A 2008, ‘Precarity and Cultural Work in the Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work,’ Theory, Culture & Society, 25: 1–30.
Gilmour, P 2019, ‘Why Paying for Porn Makes You a Better Feminist,’ accessed 12 May 2019, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/love-sex/sex/a26554563/ethicalporn/.
Glick, E 2000, ‘Sex Positive: Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Politics of Transgression,’ Feminist Review, 64, 19–45.
Grosz, E 2001, Architectures form the Outside, Essays on Virtual and Real Space, London: MIT Press.
Harvey, D 1990, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell.
Harvey, D 2005, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hatch, O 2012, ‘Fighting the Pornification of America by Enforcing Obscenity Laws’, Stanford Law & Policy Review, 23: 1.
Hennessy, R 2000, Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism, London: Routledge.
Hetland, G and Goodwin, J 2013, ‘The Strange Disappearance of Capitalism from Social Movement Studies,’ in Marxism and Social Movements, eds. Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Leiden: Brill, pp. 82–102.
Holt, F and Lapenta, F 2010, ‘Introduction: Autonomy and Creative Labour,’ Journal for Cultural Research, 14, 223–229.
Jacobs, K 2007, Netporn: D.I.Y. Web Culture and Sexual Politics, Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield.
Jacobs, K 2014, ‘Netporn: The Promise of Radical Obscenities,’ in Porn After Porn: Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, eds. Enrico Biasin, Giovanna Maina and Federico Zecca, Milan: Mimesis International.
Joseph, M 2002, Against the Romance of Community, London: University of Minnesota Press.
King, G 2005, American Independent Cinema, London: I.B. Tauris.
Klaus, E and Lünenborg, M 2012, ‘Cultural Citizenship. Participation by and through Media,’ in Feminist Media, eds. Elke Zobl and Ricard Drüeke, Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 197–212.
Lazzarato, M 1996, ‘Immaterial Labor,’ in Radical Thought in Italy, A Potential Politics, ed. Paulo Virno and Michael Hardt, London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 133–147.
Lust, E 2019, ‘We are Lust: a Female Perspective on Working in Adult Cinema,’ accessed 12 May 2019, https://erikalust.com/lust-female-perspective-working-adult-cinema/.
Mac, J and Smith, M 2018, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights, London: Verso.
Maes, H 2013, ‘Introduction,’ in Pornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography, ed. Hans Maes, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–25.
Magnet, S 2007, ‘Feminist Sexualities, Race and the Internet: An Investigation of Suicidegirls.com,’ New Media and Society, 9, 577–602.
Mahmood, S 2001, ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,’ Cultural Anthropology, 16, 202–236.
Maina, G 2014, ‘Grotesque Empowerment: Belladonna’s Strapped Sykes Between Mainstream and Queer,’ in Porn After Porn: Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, eds. Enrico Biasin, Giovanna Maina and Federico Zecca, Milan: Mimesis International, pp. 83–106.
Marcuse, H 1974, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, Part One, Boston: Beacon Press.
Marx, K and Engels, F 2011, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Wilder Publications.
McKenzie, J 2001, Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance, London: Routledge.
McNay, L 2009, ‘Self as Enterprise: Dilemmas of Control and Resistance in Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics’, Theory, Culture & Society, 26: 55–77.
McRobbie, A 2011, ‘Reflections on Feminism, Immaterial Labour and the Post-Fordist Regime,’ New Formations, 70, 60–76.
Mey, K 2007, ‘Making Porn into Art,’ in Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture, eds. Susanna Paasonen, Kaarina Nikunen and Laura Saarenmaa, Oxford: Berg, pp. 87–98.
Milne, C 2005, Naked Ambition: Women Who Are Changing Porn, New York: Avalon.
Mowlabocus, S 2004, ‘Porn 2.0? Technology, Social Practice, and the New Online Porn Industry,’ in Porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography, ed. Feona Attwood, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 69–87.
Mulholland, M 2013, Young People and Pornography: Negotiating Pornification, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nikunen, K 2007, ‘Cosmo Girls Talk: Blurring Boundaries of Porn and Sex,’ Pornification, Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture, eds. Susanna Paasonen, Kaarina Nikunen and Laura Saarenmaa, New York: Berg, pp. 73–86.
Paasonen, S 2010a, ‘Good Amateurs: Erotica Writing and Notions of Quality,’ in Porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography, ed. Feona Attwood, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 138–154.
Paasonen, S 2010b, ‘Labors of Love: Netporn, Web 2.0, and the Meanings of Amateurism,’ New Media & Society, 12, 1297–1312.
Paasonen, S and Spišák, S 2018, ‘Malleable Identities, Leaky Taxonomies: The Matter of Sexual Fluidity,’ Sexualities, 218, 1374–1378.
Pasquinelli, M, 2007, ‘Warporn! Warpunk: Autonomous Videopoiesis in Wartime,’ in C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, eds. Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen and Matteo Pasquinelli, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 149–158.
Portwood-Stacer, L 2013, Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism, New York: Bloomsbury.
Power, N 2009, One-Dimensional Woman, Winchester: O Books.
Ridout, N 2013, Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Ross, A 2008, ‘The New Geography of Work: Power to the Precarious?’ Theory, Culture Society, 25, 31–49.
Ruberg, B 2015, ‘Doing It for Free: Digital Labour and the Fantasy of Amateur Online Pornography,’ Porn Studies, 3:2, 147–159.
Ryberg, I 2014, ‘Affirmation and Critique, Political and Aesthetic Legacies of Queer, Feminist and Lesbian Pornography,’ in Porn After Porn: Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, eds. Enrico Biasin, Giovanna Maina and Federico Zecca, Milan: Mimesis International, pp. 223–240.
Scott, K 2016, ‘Performing Labour: Ethical Spectatorship and the Communication of Labour Conditions in Pornography,’ Porn Studies, 32: 120–132.
Seidman, S 2001, ‘From Identity to Queer Politics: Shifts in the Social Logic of Normative Heterosexuality in Contemporary America,’ Social Thoughts and Research, 24:1–2, 1–12.
Siouxsie, Q 2016, Truth, Justice and the American Whore, Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press.
Smith, C 2014, ‘“It’s Important That You Don’t Smell a Suit on This Stuff”: Aesthetics and Politics in alt.porn,’ in Porn After Porn: Contemporary Alternative Pornographies, eds. Enrico Biasin, Giovanna Maina and Federico Zecca, Milan: Mimesis International, pp. 52–87.
Smith, J 2009, ‘Preface,’ in The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy, trans. Francesca Cadel and Giuseppina Mecchia, Los Angeles: Semiotexte, pp. 9–19.
Sontag, S 2002, On Photography, London: Penguin.
Strub, W 2015, ‘Queer Smut, Queer Rights,’ in New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law, eds. L. Comella and S. Tarrant, Santa Barbara: Praeger, pp. 147–164.
van Doorn, N 2010, ‘Keeping it Real, User-Generated Pornography, Gender Reification, and Visual Pleasure,’ Convergence, 16, 411–430.
Virno, P 2004, A Grammar of the Multitude, London: Semiotexte.
Weeks, K 2011, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Websites
‘About’ n.d.-a, Bleu Productions, accessed 12 June 2017 http://www.bleuproductions.com/about.html.
‘About’ n.d.-b, Lust Cinema, accessed 5 June 2018 www.lustcinema.com/about.
‘About’ n.d.-c, Petra Joy, accessed 4 May 2016 http://www.petrajoy.com/about-petra/.
Belladonna Entertainment, n.d. accessed 12 May 2019, site has been discontinued.
‘How This Works’ n.d., accessed 5 June 2018 https://makelovenotporn.tv/pages/about/how_this_works.
‘Porn Stars Stoya, Asa Akira & More on if They Orgasm on Set’ 2018, accessed 5 June 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ch7IiK2Ubs.
‘Queer Porn TV Interviews Syd Blakovich’ n.d., accessed 1 January 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fas79EaoSbw.
‘QueerPorn.TV Interviews Kinky Porn Star Nikki Darling!’, 2014, accessed 12 May 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk86sqHWUBI.
‘Siouxsie Q Gangbanged’ 2015, accessed 1 January 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca0VkB1ZeB0.
‘Slow Porn’ n.d., Sensate Films, accessed 5 June 2018 http://www.sensatefilms.com/slow-porn/.
‘The Woman’s Hour Debate: Can Porn Empower Women?’ 2015, Woman’s Hour, accessed 5 June 2018 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b054yklg.
Baxwell, M 2015, ‘On the Set of a Feminist Porn Film,’ accessed 12 June 2018 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/on-the-set-of-a-feminist-porn-film-a6692826.html.
Bright Desire n.d., accessed 5 June 2018 http://brightdesire.com/.
Buck Angel n.d., Entertainment.com, accessed 5 June 2018 http://buckangel.com/.
Buckwitz, S 2001, ‘Boogie Dykes: Two Independent Filmmakers Are Changing the World of Mainstream Porn,’ accessed 5 June 2018 http://www.utne.com/community/boogiedykestwoindependentfilmmakersarechangingtheworldofmainstreamporn.aspx.
Cade, L 2015, ‘Predators and Profit: James Deen,’ accessed 5 June 2018 http://www.lilycade.com/predators-and-profit-james-deen/.
Chaos Men n.d., accessed 12 January 2019 https://www.chaosmen.com/?about_chaosmen.
Corina, Therapy n.d., dir. Jincey Lumpkin, Juicy Pink Box.
Daisy Ducati, Queer Porn TV 2014, accessed 1 January 2019 http://queerporn.tv/wp/daisy-ducati.
EasyOntheEye.com n.d., accessed 5 June 2018 http://www.easyote.co.uk/2004/index.html.
Good Dyke Porn n.d., accessed 5 June 2018 http://www.gooddykeporn.com/.
Hill-Meyer, T n.d., ‘Values,’ accessed 14 May 2016 http://doingitonline.com/values.
I Fucking Love Ikea 2013, dir. Erika Lust, LustCinema http://galleries.lustcinema.com/15/Xconfesions-I_Fucking_Love_Ikea/?nats=grandma.1.16.39.0.28277.0.0.0.
Juicy Pink Box, n.d. accessed 12 May 2019, http://www.juicypinkbox.com/s1/home/?revid=1187.
Laura, Therapy n.d., dir. Jincey Lumpkin, Juicy Pink Box http://www.juicypinkbox.com/s1/watch/Laura-13/?revid=1187.
Lily Cade, accessed 12 May 2019, https://www.lilycade.com/
Madison Young, Queer Porn TV n.d., http://queerporn.tv/wp/madison-young. http://queerporn.tv/wp/madison-young.
Martin, M 2012, ‘The Rumpus Interview with Madison Young,’ accessed 5 June 2018, https://therumpus.net/2012/05/the-rumpus-interview-with-madison-young/.
PetraJoy.com n.d., accessed 5 June 2018 http://www.petrajoy.com/.
Porn Stars Stoya, Asa Akira & More on Making Money in Porn 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPp6Kb1009s.
Ratchford, S 2015, ‘How to Make Feminist Porn,’ accessed 16 May 2016 http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/we-talked-to-a-director-on-how-to-properly-make-feminist-porn-252.
Siouxsie Q n.d., accessed 20 September 2016 https://www.slixa.com/siouxsieq.
Skye, Therapy n.d., accessed 12 May 2018 http://www.juicypinkbox.com/s1/series/JLTH/1/?revid=1187.
Stockroom n.d., accessed 12 February 2018 https://www.stockroom.com/jail-cell-stand-up-cage.html.
Store, Erika Lust n.d., accessed 12 February 2018 http://store.erikalust.com/en/.
Tina Horn, Queer Porn TV n.d., accessed 12 May 2017, Tina Horn, Queer Porn TV, n.d. http://queerporn.tv/wp/tina-horn.
Wissot, L 2015, ‘Crowdsourcing Erotica: Erika Lust’s XConfessions,’ accessed 12 January 2019 https://erikalust.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/FILMMAKER-MAG.pdf.
Films
Hot Girls Wanted. 2015. [Film]. Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus dir. Netflix.
Return of the Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls. 2010. Maria Beatty dir. Bleu Productions.
A Feminist Man. 2015. [Film]. Erika Lust dir. Lust Cinema http://www.lustcinema.com/movie/a_feminist_man/view.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Saunders, R. (2020). ‘It’s Like Being Paid to Fuck My Girlfriend’: Alternative Pornographies and Unalienated Labour. In: Bodies of Work. Dynamics of Virtual Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49016-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49016-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49015-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49016-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)