What, exactly, is 'feminist porn'?

Toronto just hosted the Feminist Porn Awards, and even female adult-film directors aren't sure if that term is an oxymoron

The eighth-annual Feminist Porn Awards occurred in early April.
(Image credit: Facebook.com/FeministPrnAwards)

"Feminist porn" is a thing. It's enough of a thing that it has its own awards ceremony, the Good For Her Feminist Porn Awards, which wrapped up this past weekend in Toronto, along with a first-ever Feminist Porn Conference, which focuses on a new scholarly tome, The Feminist Porn Book. Feminist porn is such an established pastime that the Toronto ceremony was the eighth annual Feminist Porn Awards.

But the clarity on this subject sort of stops there. Pornography is comparatively easy to define — "I'll know it when I see it," Justice Potter Stewart famously said of hard-core porn in 1964. But feminism still (or increasingly) means different things to different people. Some feminists consider feminist porn an oxymoron, others just think it's moronic. The Feminist Porn Awards bills itself as the "longest-running celebration of erotica focused on women and marginalized people," for example, while Laura Balbi at Italy's Cinema Fanpage calls it "the Oscars of women's pleasure" ("gli Oscar per il piacere delle donne").

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.