An interview with Chanelle Gallant, founder of the Feminist Porn Awards

By Nikko Snyder
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2008

When I first learned of the Feminist Porn Awards, I wasn’t surprised to discover that Good For Her was behind them. An independently owned and operated sex shop in Toronto, Good For Her’s feminism is as explicit as its inventory, so it seemed fitting that they were the ones to spearhead an annual awards ceremony celebrating filmmakers intent on subverting mainstream pornography.

But, I kept wondering, what on earth is feminist porn, anyway? In an effort to answer that question, I tracked down Chanelle Gallant, the former manager of Good For Her and founder of the Feminist Porn Awards. A past sex columnist for Chatelaine and an unapologetic pro-sex and pro-sex-worker feminist, Chanelle is currently in Southeast Asia writing about issues facing sex workers internationally. Before she left, I called her up to discuss what, if anything, allows feminism and porn to coexist.

Nikko Snyder: So what makes a film worthy of a Feminist Porn Award?

Chanelle Gallant: There are three criteria for the Feminist Porn Awards. The first is that a woman was substantially involved with the making of the film as a director, writer, or producer. The second is that the film depicts genuine female pleasure and that women get their fair share of pleasure in the film. And the third is that it expands the range of sexual expression for women by telling us something new about female sexuality, as opposed to showing us stereotyped representations.

How did the awards come to be?

They actually started out as a response to the racism in the pornography industry. I was talking to a colleague of mine at Good For Her, and we were complaining about how we had to send back all these DVDs because they had the most egregious racial stereotyping in them. We kept telling our distributors that we wanted porn that showed people of colour, and so, in their complete cluelessness, they would send us this stuff that had these really offensive exoticizing stereotypes.

I said, “It’s really too bad that nobody recognizes the filmmakers who are making an effort to do something better”-because there are porn makers who are doing something different, whose approach to race and gender isn’t conservative and offensive. You don’t see them celebrated because people don’t take sex seriously and so they don’t take representations of sex seriously, but I think culture is very important, and that it matters when porn shows women and people of colour in situations that aren’t based on offensive stereotypes.

I realized that we should celebrate the people who are doing it well. And voila! The Feminist Porn Awards were born.

How do your own politics inform your involvement with the Feminist Porn Awards?

I come at it from an anti-racist feminist perspective. It’s so important to me to change the representation of feminism, and to add in those voices that until now have been really marginalized, like pro-sex feminists.

You know, I’ve done a million interviews about the awards, and you’re probably the first interviewer who didn’t start with the question, “Aren’t feminism and porn oxymorons?” I am part of a wave of feminists who insist that sex is part of my feminism, and insist on blending anti-racism, anti-oppression, feminism and a hot sex life together. And I do that shamelessly.

How do you respond to the people who feel that porn and feminism are mutually exclusive?

I don’t at all resent feminists who have a problem with the awards. I actually welcome it. I’ve been a feminist since I knew what the word meant. When I was a teenager I was reading Catharine MacKinnon. When I was in university I cut my teeth on Andrea Dworkin. I used to be an anti-porn feminist. So I’m really happy to engage in those dialogues.

I respectfully disagree with people who think porn can’t be feminist, but I’m really happy to be creating a dialogue around feminist representations of sexuality. I think it’s really important.

How contentious is the concept of feminist pornography at this point?

I would say it’s still not just contentious, but incomprehensible to most people-especially people who aren’t feminist-because they don’t necessarily know about the lesser-heard voices within feminism that have always been speaking from a pro-sex, pro-sex-worker position.

Not incidentally, what the Feminist Porn Awards do is celebrate sex workers. Some people may or may not notice that, but it’s important to me. I think they’ve affected the way feminists think about porn. And they’ve affected the way folks who don’t identify as feminists think about feminism.

Not that I’m the first one to suggest the idea. There have been feminist pornographers for more than two decades now, starting with Candida Royalle, who was awarded our lifetime achievement award in the first year of the Feminist Porn Awards.

I understand that the first awards were conceived as a one-time event. How did they become an annual tradition?

For me, one of the most moving things about the first awards was the way they affected the filmmakers. That’s the reason I did another one. The filmmakers were so moved that somebody was finally recognizing them, so I thought, we have to do this for the filmmakers and we have to do this for the audiences who absolutely flock to us.

Good For Her’s porn sales more than tripled after the first awards. People-women and men-want to find porn that they can enjoy guilt-free. We’ve had really positive feedback, and folks always flood into the store in the days and weeks after the awards looking for films that have won. And I’m so happy that we can provide that.

When I’ve talked to filmmakers who are making feminist porn, they say that what qualifies it as “feminist” for them is often largely or exclusively the production-for example, if a film is produced ethically, if the performers are treated fairly and empowered through the process. How important is the production end of things for the Feminist Porn Awards?

What I’m interested in is content, because that’s the only thing I know about. I don’t know about the working conditions. The directors do, and I applaud them for using their feminist principles to make films that are respectful of the people involved. But as a consumer, I don’t necessarily have access to that information, so what I look for is the other side of the equation, which is the content.

Sure, but the content becomes very subjective, and there seems to be a debate over whether any specific content can be deemed feminist or non-feminist.

Subjective as opposed to what? I don’t believe there is anything objective about anything. From the Good For Her standpoint, feminist content is what we see as feminist content. And that’s just the best we can do.

But content seems like the most contentious thing when it comes to defining feminist porn. For example, there are some feminist filmmakers who won’t use certain dominant images like facials in their films because they feel it crosses a line.

That’s correct. It’s totally subjective, but I think everything is. I mean, we’re talking about politics-there are no hard and fast rules. I think it’s okay for us to have varying ideas about what constitutes feminist porn.

Feminist porn resists easy categorization. Everyone assumes, for instance, that feminist porn has a specific genre. Some of the media coverage of the awards gave the impression that feminist porn had to be soft, that it had to be storyline based, and that it had to be lesbian. But none of that is true. Feminism does not have a genre. Feminism exceeds genre.

Certainly it does. But now that we’re labelling things “feminist porn,” what does that actually mean?

Don’t try to make it objective, Nikko. I mean, why try to have the final word on what’s feminist? God, why would we want to do that? It’s just a label that, for myself as someone who’s pro-sex and who is sex-worker-positive, I’m just going to demand, the same way I’m going to march right into feminism and demand a space for myself and other women like me.

It certainly is a needed space. But you can’t deny that pornography is one of the most divisive issues in the history of feminism.

It is one of the most divisive issues. And I think that’s really screwed up. That doesn’t reflect well on feminism. I can’t believe that feminism wasted a whole decade fighting about porn instead of fighting about things like child care and reproductive justice. I mean, really?

It’s interesting to know that racism in porn was a driving force behind the Feminist Porn Awards.

It was. The race politics in mainstream porn are unbelievably bad. Not that you can’t have stereotypes in porn, because actually, you need to have stereotypes in porn. For most of us, our eroticism is intrinsically tied up in stereotypes. But I really want to challenge some of those destructive stereotypes so common to mainstream porn.

I went to my local sex shop and asked for some of the titles that have won Feminist Porn Awards, but no luck. I guess they still really aren’t the norm when it comes to pornography.

That’s why we do so many online sales, because everyone who’s outside a major urban centre doesn’t have access to these titles, and they have a right to! You have a right to porn. And if you’re going to watch some, why not watch some that makes you feel awesome about yourself, your body, sex? Porn’s okay, so how about we just get access to some good stuff?

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Yeah! Go make your own. Ladies, take over the means of production! And I use the word ladies ironically. (Laughs.)

The third annual Feminist Porn Awards will take place on April 4, 2008, in Toronto. Check out www.goodforher.com for more information.

Nikko Snyder makes her home in Regina, where she has recently founded the Saskatchewan Feminist Erotic Lending Library with the press sampler DVDs she acquired during her recent research into feminist pornography. Check out more of her musings on feminist smut in the Spring 2008 issue of Bitch magazine.

To start your subscription to Briarpatch or order this issue immediately, call (306) 525-2949 or, toll-free, 1-866-431-5777, email us, or subscribe online.

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Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity
By Robert Jensen
South End Press, 2007

In Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, Robert Jensen asks readers to look unflinchingly at contemporary, mainstream, heterosexual pornography and reflect honestly on what it says about the culture we live in. Jensen argues that porn represents a masculinity so toxic that conforming to it requires men to sacrifice their very humanity. He points out that as mainstream pornography has become more degrading towards women, it has simultaneously become increasingly normalized in our society, a paradox that leads to his conclusion that we live in a “rape culture.” He is careful to clarify, “That doesn’t mean the culture openly endorses rape, but it does endorse a vision of masculinity that makes rape inviting.”

What Jensen proposes as a solution is a tall order: essentially, he calls for the total elimination of gender, specifically asking men to follow his lead and renounce their manhood in order to reclaim their humanity. He challenges men to begin this process on a personal level by ending their participation in the sex industry and in all violent and controlling behaviour and relationships, by never supporting other men who “batter, rape and abuse,” by always offering whatever support can be accepted by those being abused, and by adopting a healthy sense of guilt (which he differentiates from shame as “the recognition that one has done a bad thing” versus “the feeling that one is bad” [169]). What he promises in return is the possibility of a transformed sexuality that moves from “pleasure” to “joy,” from “heat” to “light” and from “magic” to “mystery,” and which has the potential for an intimacy based in love, compassion and solidarity.

Positioning himself within a radical feminist framework, Jensen challenges those working or claiming to work against gender injustice (and all other intersecting forms of oppression) to make feminism more threatening, not less, and calls for a radical approach to getting to the root of one of the key sites of gender oppression: sexuality. He makes his argument against porn by offering readers a deeply personal reflection on his own evolving relationship with pornography, a theoretical analysis of the content, production and consumption of mainstream porn, a sampling of commentary from within the industry, and description after graphic description of deeply disturbing scenes from popular porn films, with his own commentary added.

Aspects of the gender-free utopia that Jensen envisions are inviting, and the deep personal conviction and honesty that he brings to Getting Off is admirable. Mainstream pornography does offer difficult but important insights into the misogyny of our culture, and men and women alike would do well to heed his request to enter into honest conversation about the issues it raises, painful though they might be. However, I question both his conclusions and his approach.

Getting Off is likely not a book that will achieve the widespread cultural awakening Jensen seeks, simply because both his arguments and tactics will alienate most readers. In his attempt to shock readers out of their complacency by forcing them to face the misogyny reflected in the worst aspects of pornography, Jensen leaves little room for the off-screen realities of complicated, contradictory, conflicted sexuality. While I certainly agree that the content, production and consumption of mainstream pornography is in large part degrading, and while I support unequivocally Jensen’s condemnation of violence towards women, I have difficulty embracing his leap from mainstream-porn-being-deeply-problematic to gender-being-an-inherently-harmful-construct. As a woman, I think it’s possible for me to identify with aspects of femininity without being a traitor to gender justice, to appreciate the idea of a nice ass without having to feel guilty for the objectification-or to fantasize about something naughty without perpetuating a culture that hates women and children. And I think it’s possible for men to indulge in the same without shame (or guilt) and to still take full responsibility for their roles in a systemically oppressive culture.

Unfortunately, although Jensen is careful to include token acknowledgment of the complexities of sexuality throughout, Getting Off leaves virtually no emotional space for us to actually be complicated or contradictory. Instead, Jensen dismisses the relevance of any alternative approaches to creating sexually explicit film and doesn’t hesitate to lump pro-sex feminist pornographers and sex educators in with his representation of a monolithic and universally hellish sex industry. For example, at one point Jensen quotes “someone in the industry” talking about how to play out a controversial fantasy safely and then interjects that, “In other words, it’s fine to want to treat a woman as less than fully human and to find sexual pleasure in it, but please do it in a way that’s hygienic.” What he chooses not to mention is that the woman he quotes is a feminist sex educator and pornographer who is writing an advice column for consenting adults acting out fantasies in private life. The omission is reminiscent of Michael Moore at his worst: by presenting only the portion of the context that best supports his argument, Jensen risks compromising the integrity of his analysis for the sake of horrifying his audience. The result was that I felt manipulated by his tactics rather than convinced by his analysis.

My other major criticism of Getting Off is Jensen’s tendency to speak on behalf of female sex workers. While their bodies feature prominently in Jensen’s descriptions of the debasement women undergo at the hands of the industry, their voices are conspicuously absent from the discussion. Although he provides a convincing analysis of the many factors that complicate women’s decisions to work in the sex industry, which he uses to dismiss the “freedom” of their choices to enter this line of work, his arguments would have been so much more compelling had he supported them by allowing women on the front lines of the issue to speak for themselves.

Instead, subtle value judgments run throughout his descriptions of women’s performances (”she seems to be in pain” [64], “she looks as if she might pass out” [62], “for a moment, her face changes; it is difficult to read her emotions, but it appears she may cry” [89]). As effective a technique as this is in terms of engaging the emotions of the reader, I find it troubling that a radical pro-feminist man would choose to base his argument on his own interpretation of the physical and emotional well-being of women onscreen to the exclusion of speaking to the women themselves.

Getting Off is unquestionably an important book that raises vital questions for those willing to look. But ultimately, Jensen’s “I know it’s not fair, but you asked” shock tactics and fundamentalist renderings of gender and sexuality made reading it an act of will. Only the most fearless (or masochistic) will be able to finish Getting Off-sadly, those who would benefit most from questioning their participation in mainstream pornography will likely not be the ones to rise to the challenge that Jensen presents.

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