Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association; and the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP NSW) are deeply concerned about the session ‘Is it time to rethink porn?’ at the upcoming All About Women Festival.
While we appreciate the importance of discussing various perspectives on issues related to gender, sexuality and representation, we believe it is crucial to ensure that these conversations are fair, inclusive, rights-based and grounded in evidence. We see the current framing of the session as part of a long-standing history of throwing sex workers under the bus and placing the blame on sex workers and the sex industry for the attitudes and behaviours of men.
‘Is it time to rethink porn?’ is an outdated throwback to the feminist sex wars of the 1970s and 80s. It was during the sex wars that Carol Leigh coined the term ‘sex work’ at an anti-pornography conference to push back against the objectification and victimisation of sex workers by anti-pornography and anti-sex work feminists.
As organisations advocating for the rights and wellbeing of sex workers, we urge you to reconsider the messaging and approach of this session. Instead of perpetuating moral panic and sensationalism, we encourage you to foster dialogue that respects the autonomy and voices of all individuals, including those working within the sex industry.
Sex workers have first-hand experience of what happens when well-meaning ‘feminists’ talk over us, rather than working in solidarity with us. The narrative that positions pornography as inherently harmful has been consistently used to justify censorship, the deplatforming of sex workers and adult content creators, debanking and financial discrimination, and the shutting down of sex worker spaces online. This approach not only disregards the agency and autonomy of individuals involved in the sex industry, but also perpetuates a cycle of stigma and discrimination.
We believe that any discussion about pornography should be intersectional, acknowledging the diverse perspectives of the people involved, including performers, producers, consumers, and activists. It should also take into account the broader socio-cultural context in which pornography exists, examining issues of censorship, representation, and the impact of technology on the industry.
The theory that porn, and in particular so-called “violent” porn, leads to greater misogyny, male violence and/or sexual aggression is highly contested. There is reputable research showing no effect, and/or an inability to distinguish causation (for instance Ferguson et al; Byron et al; McKee et al). Pornography is also not a new phenomenon – human beings across cultures and throughout history have created their own representations of sexuality.
The Australian porn industry is overwhelmingly composed of independent performer-producers, most of whom are women and over half of whom identify as LGBTQI+. It is unconscionable that an event that describes itself as being ‘All About Women’ generates ‘feminist’ public discourse stigmatising trailblazing sex workers across unceded Australia.
Further reading:
- Safe for Work: Feminist Porn, Corporate Regulation and Community Standards
- ‘Fisting is not permitted’: criminal intimacies, queer sexualities and feminist porn in the Australian legal context
- Does pornography harm young people?
- If not a Fist, then What about a Stump? Ableism and Heteronormativity within Australia’s Porn Regulations
- Stigma and the Shaping of the Pornography Industry
- Invisible and Everywhere: Heterosexuality in Anti-pornography Feminism.
- The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight.
- Indie Porn: Revolution, Regulation, Resistance