Cultural Theory Reddit Post RE: Gail Dines + Shelley Lubben

I wish reddit had a thing that saved posts in case you accidentally close a tab, oh well.  This will probably be more coherent than what I had originally written.

I came across that tumblr post months ago, when I first started camming. I actually even shared it on my cam tumblr page -- thanks for sharing it, I would have had to comb back through my posts to find it again. Portions of it are obviously dramatized, but I’m sure there is some truth in it.  Any industry can be horrible to work in, especially something so physically demanding. The post helped shape some of the decisions I have made regarding what I am and am not comfortable with doing, and whether or not I want to risk losing customers for being outspoken and encouraging critical thinking about porn and how you get sexual satisfaction.  I actually think I make more money for it / it makes cam work significantly less exhausting.  But camming is different than porn, it is based significantly more on your individual personality.

The post cites Gail Dines.  The other day I watched a couple of her lectures, after seeing her name in an academic paper on what it's like to be a female porn scholar -- [How Did You Get Into This?: Notes from a Female Porn Scholar by Laura Helen Marks](http://media.wix.com/ugd/d96dce_d7126844eedb449aadb4c47126a8adf2.pdf).  Her anti-porn stance seems to be more of a venue to discuss anti-capitalist sentiments.  I like how Melrose Gia Grant says she is anti-sex work, but pro-sex worker rights.  At the heart of it, I feel much of the work we have to do to live and eat and have shelter over our heads is explotation, and that all explotation should be fought against.  So, in some ways I agree with Gail Dines, and I think the arguments she makes are valuable, but she does not seem to have concern for the actual experience of sex workers and exploring what sex workers want / need.  Bringing down porn will not bring down capitalism and the patriarchy.

It also cites Shelley Lubben.  I imagine this is where the most extraordinary material in the post comes from.  I read two posts on the site -- one that disregarded the ability of those who work in the porn industry to make their own decisions as they are too “damaged” to take responsibility for themselves, and another that was written by a girl who was “saved” by Shelley Lubben after a history of abuse lead her to consider working in the porn industry.  But nope -- Shelley swooped in just in time!  At the end of the post is a link encouraging you to donate to the Pink Cross Foundation, a “charity” that saves people from the porn industry.  Googling [“Pink Cross Foundation criticism”](https://www.google.ca/search?q=pink+cross+foundation+criticism&oq=pink+cross+foundation+criticism&aqs=chrome..69i57.4639j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8) reveals that it is likely that it is more of a cultish cash grab thriving on dramatization than a charity (surprise). Definitely a part of the rescue industry, and reminded me of Magdalen Laundries -- workhouses / cites of slavery for “fallen women”, because slavery is better than prostitution (right?).

[Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry](http://www.amazon.ca/Sex-Margins-Migration-Markets-Industry/dp/1842778609) by Laura Maria Agustin will probably be another good resource for me, I think I’ll pick it up when I get a bit of extra cash.  Reviews say it has good data.

Although I am expressing criticisms of the tumblr post, all of this is very interesting and helpful and the more I read and link things together, the more possible areas of exploration I find.  It’s definitely helping me hone in on what areas of sex work I find interesting + feel I can create critical work on.

It is so interesting that such a huge, profitable industry is has such convoluted data.

“HOW DID YOU GET INTO THIS?: NOTES FROM A FEMALE PORN SCHOLAR.”

http://media.wix.com/ugd/d96dce_d7126844eedb449aadb4c47126a8adf2.pdf

via whit strub

" It is very easy to dismiss a female porn scholar’s findings—my ten years of research can be outmatched by one man’s lifetime of casual pornhub browsing. If the threat of the female scholar of porn is the threat of inverting the social controls of porn, then pornsplaining is the effort to wrestle back this control and re-insert male mastery of the subject, thereby reducing the female scholar back to her object status."
--Laura Helen Marks

“What people want to know is how does pornography make me feel, or more to the point, does it turn me on? The leap from my study of sex to the study of me studying sex seems automatic and reflexive”

"These people, in their desire to be reassured of my lack of sexual arousal when watching pornography, do not recognize that they are in fact asking about my sex life, my masturbatory habits, and just what exactly goes on when someone like me watches films like that."

antiporn documentary - The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships

"Reactions to and preparations for offense not only perpetuate the idea that sex and sexual representation should offend, but also validate the notion that “offense” is a reason not to learn. "

" Furthermore, are we really warning students, and anyone else who attends talks like this one, to guard them from being offended? Or is the real threat the possibility of sexual arousal? "

"“To them, pornography was much more interesting as a springboard for discussion and demystification of the sex acts and sexualities we always seem to talk around in other contexts” (“Porn Studies” 20). This last reflection points toward the need for porn literacy in an age of increased accessibility but decreased open discussion of pornographic convention and sexual representation"

More disconcertingly, following a series of high profile publications on erotic labor, UCSB graduate student Heather Berg found herself on the receiving end of radical feminists’ wrath: “I got lots of emails from self-identified anti-porn feminists demanding that I self-disclose 1) am I or had I been a sex worker 2) was I sexually abused and 3) how do I feel about being a scab to fellow women by using looks to get by?” Berg remarks, “the prurience and sense of entitlement I see in anti-porn feminists is far greater than the average sex work consumer. And the latter are better at respecting boundaries.”48

“Have you ever been in porn?” or “Do you plan to be in porn?” Porn scholar Sarah Stevens regards this line of inquiry in two ways: “It's different depending on where it is said, who says it, [and] what they intend to do by saying it. Sometimes, from people in the Feminist Porn Community it's a way of saying, "Hey, your intervention in our body of work would be welcomed," [and] sometimes I think it's a way for people to dismiss the idea of porn being a legitimate or relevant object of study. Other times it's said with disgust, contempt, or dismissal, and sometimes, with fascination and a way to demand my sexual availability to them.”49

Even when rooted in genuine curiosity, the outpouring of relieved and open dialogue about porn and sex can often feel like an uninvited assault, highlighting the need for multifaceted research and pedagogy, not one-sided condemnation or celebration, that the specifics of this diverse and problematic genre can be deconstructed and defanged.

How does a scholar of pornography establish her boundaries in social, academic, and networking environments? 
How does the scholar of pornography maintain critical distance in their research without ignoring the critical issue of arousal? 
How does the teacher and scholar of pornography avoid becoming unwitting sexual object, subject, and disseminator of pornography, and why precisely is this a problem? 
How can educators turn problematic situations and experiences into teachable moments? How can the way gender and age problematically factor into these experiences create new avenues of research? 

While these questions may seem to highlight the problems and drawbacks of researching and teaching pornographies, they should rather be taken as a reemphasis of the dire need for porn literacy and diverse porn pedagogies.