Interview by ANA MARIE COX
In 2015, you produced a documentary about young pornography performers, ‘‘Hot Girls Wanted,’’ that was eventually turned into a new Netflix documentary series. But in 2013, you wrote a pretty strident essay in Glamour against the ‘‘pornification’’ of everything, where you recount using the hashtag #stopactinglikewhores, in regard to the mainstreaming of, say, V-strings and stripper poles. What changed? I was impulsive. Being old isn’t a good excuse for it, but using the word ‘‘whore’’ was absolutely not appropriate. I didn’t even know what ‘‘slut shaming’’ meant at the time, and I have educated myself. But that was sort of the beginning of my relationship with all this work — I wanted to see if my feelings had any validity in the real world, or if I was just being close-minded.
Do you remember the first time you saw porn? It wasn’t appointment television. ‘‘Emmanuelle’’ was something I stumbled upon at a young age, on cable, and was titillated by.
Do you personally consume porn now? I do. When I was single, it was a great way to stay at home. It’s nice that you can separate the idea of personal pleasure from the pressure of a relationship. But I had a hard time finding the kind of porn I wanted, because I had to sift through so much stuff that isn’t for me — like abuses of power, dark porn — and I know we aren’t supposed to criticize people’s fantasies, because everybody has their own thing, but unfortunately, the first thing you see when you go to a tube site is often pretty violent stuff.
Do you think there’s a tension between being a feminist and enjoying porn? Maybe it’s a generational thing, but because my identity as a feminist didn’t come about through my sexuality, I don’t have that reference point where the freedom I have with my body and my sexuality is part of my expression of feminism. I’ve had a steep learning curve to understanding that those things are interrelated, but it does create an interesting conversation about what it means to feel like a sexual being and how that’s different from sexualizing yourself — and then, is objectifying yourself ultimately a feminist thing, or is it an internalization of the patriarchy?
Is there a difference between the politics of sexual practice versus what someone might produce for money? Yes, because the feminine power that is sometimes called feminism comes from capitalism. If you are making money, you are powerful; therefore, anything you do to make that money makes you powerful; therefore, anything you do to be powerful is feminist. That has been the narrative that was presented to me, and that’s what I’m trying to ask questions about.
Read more at nytimes.com