Feminist Collections a Quarterly of Women’S Studies Resources
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Feminist Collections A Quarterly of Women’s Studies Resources Volume 35, Numbers 3–4, Summer–Fall 2014 CONTENTS From the Editors ii Feminist Visions Breaking Quarantine: Complicating Our Concepts of Pornography 1 by Nora Stone Feminist Archives The Letters of Anne Whitney: Using Archives in Digital Scholarship 6 by Jenifer Bartle Book Reviews Is Feminism Really Dead? Or Has It Just Become Too Fast to Catch and Gone Too Gaga to Spot? 10 by Tiffany Lee Inclusive Feminist Activism? Yes, Please! 12 by Lachrista Greco Feminism, “Women’s Magazines,” and The New Yorker 14 by Teresa D. Kemp Sexuality & Africa 16 by Cherod Johnson King vs. Laqueur: Sex and Texts in Ancient and Early Modern Europe 19 by Suzanna Schulert Concepts & Disciplines: A Reference Work on Gender 22 by Nina Clements E-Sources on Women & Gender 23 Periodical Notes: New & Newly Noted Periodicals 25 Books Recently Received 27 Subscription Form for GWSL Publications 29 FEMINIST VISIONS BREAKING QUARANTINE: COMPLICATING OUR CONCEPTS OF PORNOGRAPHY by Nora Stone Anne G. Sabo, AFTER PORNIFIED: HOW WOMEN ARE TRANSFORMING PORNOGRAPHY & WHY IT REALLY MATTERS. Winchester, UK: Zero Books/John Hunt Publishing, 2012. 245p. notes. pap., $22.95, ISBN 978- 1780994802. Tristan Taormino, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Constance Penley, & Mireille Miller-Young, eds., THE FEMINIST PORN BOOK: THE POLITICS OF PRODUCING PLEASURE. New York: Feminist Press, 2013. 432p. pap., $22.95, ISBN 978-1558618183. MUTANTES (PUNK PORN FEMINISM). 91 mins. 2009. Directed by Virginie Despentes. Distributed by Alive Mind Cinema. Purchase: $21.21 for DVD or $9.95 for download at http://alivemindcinema.com. I LOVE YOUR WORK. 6 hours. 2013. Directed by Jonathan Harris. Streaming online at http://iloveyourwork.net. Purchase: 24-hour pass for $10.00; or three 24-hour passes plus a 13” x 19” limited-edition archival print of I Love Your Work, signed by director Harris, for $300.00. To stage a screening, email concept to screenings@iloveyourwork.net. With the explosive popularity of raphy remains quarantined in its own make. Anyone with a monolithic con- E. L. James’s erotic novel Fifty Shades space — a radioactive political issue cept of pornography, the pornography of Grey and its follow-ups, along with rather than a genre. The mainstream industry, or the pornography audience excitement about its 2015 film adapta- media generally treats pornography will soon have that idea complicated by tion, mainstream American culture with suspicion, with most of its atten- any one of these works. would seem to be becoming more ac- tion going to the horrors of internet cepting of women consuming sexually porn addiction. Myriad news stories Anne G. Sabo’s After Pornified: explicit media. The numerous think- and articles imply, either implicitly How Women are Transforming Pornog- pieces about the book’s craze, however, or explicitly, that the easy availability raphy and Why It Really Matters is a often pointed out that Fifty Shades was of porn is bad for women because it straightforward study of porn made a Kindle bestseller, the kind of thing infects the brains of their husbands or by women. Sabo’s starting point is that women don’t want to be seen read- scars their children. journalist Pamela Paul’s book Porni- ing. Thus, in many communities, there fied: How Pornography is Damaging is a disjuncture between what we want Pornography remains Our Lives, Our Families, and Our Re- to read or watch and what we want to quarantined in its own lationships (Henry Holt, 2005), which be seen reading or watching. blamed the wide availability of pornog- This ambivalence is even sharper space — a radioactive raphy for numerous social and psycho- with regard to sexually explicit audio- political issue rather than logical problems. Rather than respond visual material — otherwise known a genre. to that blanket accusation, Sabo wants as pornography. Although there is a to back the conversation up to a more wider range of sexual representation on In their own way, each of the basic question about what porn is and television and in film than ever before following materials combats these as- can be. (including on premium cable series sumptions by focusing on the variety Picking up where Linda Williams’s such as Looking and Masters of Sex, and of women who participate in the porn 1989 landmark study, Hard Core: in the French cinema du corps), pornog- industry and the variety of work they Pleasure, Power, and the “Frenzy of the Feminist Collections (v. 35, nos. 3–4, Summer–Fall 2014) Page 1 Feminist Visions Visible,” left off, Sabo posits that fe- porn, giving a fair assessment of the Jennifer, an independently produced male directors and producers have the landscape. The list of resources at the feature film about feminist vigilantes. power to radically revise the dynam- back of the book is handy, collecting These clips set out two different poles ics of porn, thereby affecting viewers the web addresses of women making of sex-positive feminist media — punk positively rather than negatively. Sabo’s porn and the names of festivals that art pieces made in Europe, on the one show their work. hand, and more mainstream female- In a world where porn often cir- empowerment porn and feature films Sabo wants to back the culates in small clips that are divorced on the other. conversation up to a more from their origins, with no indication basic question about what of financing or mode of production, Mutantes surveys diverse modes porn is and can be. After Pornified is a helpful resource for of sexual expression and political those looking to study women-made engagement, via film clips, news foot- porn. But although she offers a good age, and interviews with female porn criteria for this re-vision of porn are starting point, Sabo does not inter- producers, feminist sex workers, and twofold: high cinematic production feminist media scholars in the United values and progressive sexual-political States and France. The film begins with commitment. Enfolded within those the origin stories of some of the most two criteria are a number of normal- famed American porn revolutionaries: izing ideas about what makes a film Annie Sprinkle, Candida Royalle, Nor- good — realistic settings and costume, ma Jean Almodovar, Scarlot Harlot, flattering lighting, legible character de- and others. Almost all of these women velopment. Most interesting, though, speak about doing sex work without is the focus on narrative as an essential censorship or victimization. Despentes part of a woman’s desired experience of later brings in scholars Linda Williams porn, which contrasts starkly with ear- and B. Ruby Rich, who have not per- lier feminist film theorists’ refutation of formed sex work but have documented narrative film generally. it and theorized about it. Each woman is strikingly articu- Sabo’s second criterion, progres- late about her decision to embrace sex sive sexual-political commitment, is work, and each speaks with purpose clearer: equality of pleasure at least, if about combating oppression through not the woman taking control of the her work. A number of the interview- sexual encounter; equality of repre- ees consider producing porn to be a sentation, meaning the camera is not major site of resistance and revolution, lingering solely on the female body and while others look behind the history genitalia or looking down at the female of prostitution itself at the values that from the male point of view; and no rogate assumptions about what makes enforce a sharp divide between accept- coercion or violence unless it is explic- porn good or what arouses women. She able, chaste womanhood and unaccept- itly part of a character’s fantasy. avoids dealing with these issues because able, sexually active womanhood. In order to highlight examples of her book is explicitly about porn made One subject to which the film this preferred sort of porn, Sabo gives by women, not necessarily “feminist” devotes little attention is the intersec- concise histories of three of the most porn. After Pornified is a clearly written tion of sex-positive feminism and race. pioneering filmmakers in the pornog- primer, not a definitive historical or Sociologist Siobhan Brooks points out raphy industry: Candida Royalle in the theoretical work. United States, Lene Børglun in Den- The same issues affect Mutantes: One subject to which mark, and Anna Span in Great Britain. Punk Porn Feminism, a documentary Mutantes devotes little Sabo offers interviews with each, as made by French pornographer Vir- well as descriptions of their most fa- ginie Despentes. It opens with footage attention is the intersection mous films, and then examines a num- from Images d’Ouverture, a French of sex-positive feminism ber of different genres of women-made performance piece, and from A Gun for and race. Page 2 Feminist Collections (v. 35, nos. 3–4, Summer–Fall 2014) Feminist Visions that women of color generally work life” of nine different women, each of ing choices. I Love Your Work lives on in the most dangerous parts of the sex whom is involved in making lesbian a website to which a visitor can buy a industry, such as street prostitution pornography. Rather than focusing on ten-dollar pass to explore for 24 hours. (rather than call-girl work), and often their careers in adult film, Harris folds Once admitted into the website (which make less money than white sex work- their performances and reflections on allows only ten visitors per day), a ers. This is a significant topic that de- making porn into the texture of their viewer can browse the footage in dif- serves further attention, but Mutantes daily lives. The camera accords as much ferent ways. In “Timeline,” the ten- allows for little to no deviation from attention to performer Dylan Ryan second clips are arranged in chrono- its celebration of feminist sex workers lugging a suitcase down a city street as logical order according to which day of and sex-positivism.