I count myself as a "pro-porn feminist," in that I think porn played a useful political function in the transition from feudalism to capitalism (cf. Lynn Hunt), that GLBT porn (like GLBT bars, discos, etc.) probably has helped many young GLBT teens (especially for those who are stuck in conservative families and communities), and that porn as a genre has a lot of potential, aesthetic and political. But it must be admitted that much of straight porn is made by male capitalists for male consumers, most women in the industry just non- union workers whose jobs are drudgery like most jobs (rather than female libertines). The only attraction for women workers in the porn industry (as well as other sorts of sex industries) is that they get paid far better than working Wal-Mart and the like (and in this industry actresses get paid better than actors).
Doug recently posted a news item that says that "mainstream pornography in Australia does not represent women as objects, but as partners in sex" (<http://stories.indobase.com/article_841.shtml>). That is good news (I can't say the same for mainstream Japanese porn, much of which seems to have fantasies of men humiliating women built into it), but even in Australia only "20 percent of the consumer force of mainstream porn happened to be women" (at <http:// stories.indobase.com/article_841.shtml>). Pornographers have yet to discover what women want.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>