Abstract
In this chapter, I move on to examine the tensions and contradictions that characterise feminist and queer pornographic production and self-exposure practices in the era of ‘selfie’ culture. Here I begin to untangle some of the past and present feminist debates on pornography by addressing issues around web visibility and communication technology more generally, and by contextualising them in light of contemporary postporn politics. Moving away from questions of representation, my question is: What is political about these practices? My analysis first focuses on how postporn cultures raise critical questions about communicative capitalism, about what it means to be human and how we can live with digital technologies, and how they reflect on profound anxieties about what constitutes authenticity and individuality. Then I continue to explore two exemplary cases: nofauxxx.com, a queer and women-owned porn production company that claims a feminist identity; and Shu Lea Cheang's 2001 film I.K.U., a Japanese sci-fi postporn/artporn film, and make special mention of explicit selfies and the so-called ‘selfie feminism’. By employing a biopolitical framework of network capitalism, I offer a substantive account of the complex relationship between feminism and the online porn market, to show how queer and feminist identities are becoming increasingly diffused. Although scholarly work in queer and postporn studies has variously conceptualised bioart and sex-positive blogging as expressions of resistance to a normative sexual order, I argue that content generation by both artists and companies is largely guided by neoliberal discourses of consumer choice and sexual agency, in the same way as any other porn production without a specifically feminist or/and queer agenda. At the same time, producers of queer porn and participants in postporn networks are aware of their subordination and the new forms of biodigital vulnerability, which differentiates them significantly from heterosexual amateur porn cultures. It is because of this awareness and negotiations of vulnerability, I suggest, that the networked connections, events and practices of these actors can be politically empowering.
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Notes
- 1.
She Must Be Seeing Things was the first film that explicitly addressed internal tensions in lesbian relationships. Critical engagement with the film revolved around heterosexuality and dominant codes of representation. The director Sheila McLaughlin (Butler 1993) thought that her work treated lesbian anxieties about heterosexuality in ways similar to the publication On Our Backs (1984) in New York. Certain scenes stood as a dramatisation of the debates which evolved within lesbian communities at the time, namely around sex-positive attitudes and S/M as opposed to ‘vanilla’ sex (Quimby 1991).
- 2.
Quim, edited by Sophie Moorcock and Lulu Belliveau, was a forum for artists of the avant-garde scene where, according to Armstrong (1999), for the first time ‘lesbians and female sex-adventurers could experiment and play freely without being exposed to the straight gaze’.
- 3.
This was a fetish dyke club-mainly leatherwear, featuring an alternative cabaret with a short sexual performance where the artists would use hard-core techniques, like real bodily fluids (Armstrong 1999).
- 4.
See also the feature film Dandy Dust, bringing together sexual club performance spaces and cyborg fantasy. This is an experimental film which involves the character Dandy Dust who is a ‘split-personality cyborg of fluid gender’ (BFI Mediateque 2011).
- 5.
In Public Cervix Announcement, audiences were invited to look at the performer’s vagina using a flashlight (See Sprinkle 1998).
- 6.
She has been named Wired’s ‘Faces of Innovation’ and interviewed, in between others, at The Oprah Winfrey Show. She has also published The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn and given lectures at UC Berkeley.
- 7.
For example, such events are the 2005 conference The Art and Politics of Netporn and the 2007 C’lick Me festival, both in Amsterdam (See Jacobs 2007). Also the Vivo Arts School for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd, the Berlin Porn Festival, the Porn Ar(t)ound the World in KCNona, Mechelen, Belgium, Artivistic in Montreal, and Arse Electronika in San Francisco. Other central events are Impakt Festival Utrecht, 2006 and 2008, Post Porn Politics Symposium, Berlin, October 2006, Pinched Festival, Amsterdam, June 2008, Ladyfest Dusseldorf, August 2008, Rated X Festival Amsterdam, January 2009, Stoute Dromen (Belgian feminist) Festival Antwerp, October 2009, TurnOn Artivistic Festival, Montreal, October 2009, Viva la Vivo, Amsterdam, November 2009.
- 8.
The word ‘iku’ is slang for ‘having an orgasm’ in Japanese.
- 9.
Her net installation works are in the permanent collections of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, NTT[ICC], Tokyo and the Guggenheim Museum: Bowling Alley, 1995; Buy One Get One, 1997; and Brandon, 1998–1999. Her net installation ‘Milk at 56 KB Bastard TV’ and the porn cast call installation ‘Fluid’ for Norway Detox festival (2004–2005) explored issues of exploitation of sexual bodies and visibility in digital economies and post AIDS societies.
- 10.
The film uses a subjective view, the ‘pussy point of view’, which is deep in people’s vaginas.
- 11.
See, for instance, the November 2013, Jezebel published an article under a headline that declared, ‘Selfies Aren’t Empowering: They’re a Cry for Help’ (Ryan 2013).
- 12.
For a list of absurd hashtag bans, see: http://madamenoire.com/508687/banned-instagram-hashtags/7/.
- 13.
‘Slash’ is a fiction genre that depicts same-sex romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters, for example from Star Trek (see, e.g. the website slashfic.org).
- 14.
Hacktivism is ‘hacking for a political cause…a policy of hacking, phreaking or creating technology to achieve a political or social goal’ (METAC0M 2003).
- 15.
He uses ‘Porn 2.0’ (2010: 55) to refer to user sites like Xtube and YouPorn.
- 16.
Many scholars have been critical of neo-Marxist (often also referred to as ‘post-operatist’) economic theories (Weeks 2007) and have commented on Negri and Hardt’s renunciation of empirical research.
- 17.
‘Digital economy’ broadly refers to the emergence of computer networks, informational economies beyond the internet and forms of labour which have developed in relation to the expansion of cultural industries (Terranova 2004: 79).
- 18.
I agree with Terranova in her understanding that we experience the world as members of relations, but I am sceptical about her discussion of informational politics, especially in regards to how exactly affect produces relationships and leads to action. How can this potential be actualised in ways that change the conditions of work for sex workers, for example, or other precarious gendered workers in the informational age of porn? Such issues remain unaddressed.
- 19.
An examination of the visual content offered by porn websites alongside audience analysis could complement my study, but are beyond my scope. Here I am interested in the company and website branding prior to registration.
- 20.
In heterosexual porn, for instance, these conventions include bodies enhanced by plastic surgery, maximum visibility of genitalia and male ejaculation as evidence of pleasure.
- 21.
This is not to say that NoFauxx offers something radically different – other sites like the Crash Pad Series, featuring primarily dykes but increasingly ‘today’s blurred gender lines and fluid sexualities’, follow similar marketing tactics.
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Fotopoulou, A. (2016). The Paradox of Feminism, Technology and Pornography: Value and Biopolitics in Digital Culture. In: Feminist Activism and Digital Networks. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50471-5_3
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