Originally shared on FB by Hollie Howlett (http://www.escapethebinary.com)
Pandora Blake articulately unpacks the loaded (and misguided) question: does porn empower women?
Listen to radio 4, today, Sunday 8th March at 5pm to hear the debate. But first, read this article.
Pandora Blake articulately unpacks the loaded (and misguided) question: does porn empower women?
Listen to radio 4, today, Sunday 8th March at 5pm to hear the debate. But first, read this article.
"The problem with the ‘empowerment’ narrative is that it’s deeply classist. If I argue that porn — and all sex work — is a legitimate form of labour because I personally feel empowered doing it, my argument falls apart the moment someone steps forward whose work in porn doesn’t empower them.
I’m not naive — I’m aware that my experience has been empowering because I benefit from an intersection of race, class, cis and body privileges. Power engenders power. The empowerment narrative ignores the fact that people with privilege are more likely to feel empowered. It also creates a hierarchy in which “empowered” workers are seen as more deserving of respect, platforms and rights, and marginalised workers are dismissed and silenced.
It did not escape my notice that Woman’s Hour invited a white, cisgender, middle-class femme with a post-graduate degree to speak on their panel. This is one of the ways that anti-sex-work feminists weaponise the empowerment narrative against us: it enables them to claim I am selfish and naive, and “not representative” of all those poor degraded victimised working class porn workers they didn’t invite. (If they invited them, they’d have to listen to them, and then they’d no longer be able to speak for them and use their supposed lack of empowerment in their argument)."
I’m not naive — I’m aware that my experience has been empowering because I benefit from an intersection of race, class, cis and body privileges. Power engenders power. The empowerment narrative ignores the fact that people with privilege are more likely to feel empowered. It also creates a hierarchy in which “empowered” workers are seen as more deserving of respect, platforms and rights, and marginalised workers are dismissed and silenced.
It did not escape my notice that Woman’s Hour invited a white, cisgender, middle-class femme with a post-graduate degree to speak on their panel. This is one of the ways that anti-sex-work feminists weaponise the empowerment narrative against us: it enables them to claim I am selfish and naive, and “not representative” of all those poor degraded victimised working class porn workers they didn’t invite. (If they invited them, they’d have to listen to them, and then they’d no longer be able to speak for them and use their supposed lack of empowerment in their argument)."
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