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This weekend – 26th to 28th of April – see the London Porn Film Festival taking place. Before anyone gets too excited, let’s point out that this is not the sort of porn – arty or otherwise – that you might be interested in seeing. The festival describes itself as “celebrating queer, feminist, radical and experimental porn”, which is all well and good, but rarely – of we are to be brutally honest – the sort of erotica that is either sexy or well made. Suffice to say that The Reprobate did not receive any press material about this event, and I rather suspect that everyone involved would thoroughly disapprove of us.
Be that as it may, we believe in different strokes for different folks, and if people want to make their own sort of porn, more power to them. We’d prefer it if they didn’t then try to throw the mainstream industry under the bus by declaring it unethical, exploitative, heteronormative, body shaming or whatever, but nevertheless, everyone should have their own form of sexual entertainment. Not everything has to be for us. We get that. Live and let live.
Sadly, the feminist movement in general seems to struggle with those sentiments. Without even seeing any of the films being shown, ranty anti-sex campaigners Object have chimed in to try and have the festival banned, making official complaints to Camden council, which the council claims that they have to investigate (we wonder if councils up and down the country feel obliged to carry out a full and costly investigation into every complaint by cranks and pressure groups, of just those they sympathise with). Object chair Janice Williams singled out the strand called Sex Work is Work – a title guaranteed to rile up the ant sex movement immediately – because someone, rather oddly and foolishly, had included the hashtag #necrophilia in the description. I doubt anyone actually thought that genuine necrophilia was going to feature in any of the films being shown, but just as these groups still present the movie Snuff as a genuine snuff movie despite all the evidence proving otherwise, so they declared to the council that the festival planned to show illegal ‘extreme pornography’. Joining in the protests are the always miserable Feminists Against pornography, who sniffily told The Guardian “Feminist pornography is an oxymoron… feminism is not about individualistic wishes or desires, it is about liberating all women from the oppression of males. This can never be achieved by being tied up to a bed or by telling women that torture will make them free.” As ever, we suggest that Women Against Pornography try some different words on the PornHub search engine, and they might find that not all porn involves bondage and torture. Unless, of course, they share the Andrea Dworkin viewpoint that all heterosexual sex is rape – and I rather suspect that many of them do.
The complaint to the council and, apparently, threats of protests, have forced the festival to move from the Horse Hospital in London to a secret location, only to be given out to ticket holders (though presumably, a protester could simply buy a ticket to find out where to relocate their protest to – the event does not appear to be sold out).
A protest by a handful of shrieking erotophobes sounds like the sort of publicity that money couldn’t buy, you might think, but the festival seems a touch sensitive – perhaps they think that exploiting the outrage would be somehow encouraging misogyny. In their statement about the complaints, the festival has blamed it on transphobia, and certainly we know that both Object and FAC are certainly of the ‘TERF’ persuasion. Quoted in The Guardian, FAC state that “In the letters we sent there was no mention of transgenderism. However, if transgenderism is apparently so closely linked with pornography then that’s not a very good advert for it. As radical feminists we are gender critical, although this didn’t form part of our criticism of the festival.” Interestingly, The Guardian glosses over the fact that Object clearly state on their hilariously hysterical website statement that “almost all the pornography references the sexual fetish of ‘transgenderism ’“ (our emphasis) – a claim that isn’t even true.
The festival has also been a little flexible with reality when it claims that the festival was started in reaction to the 2014 extension of BBFC guidelines to films on the internet that allegedly targeted “queer acts” (as organiser Rude Jude states). We might point out that the rules were never really enforced, that the acts in question – spanking, female ejaculation, BDSM etc – are hardly exclusively – or even predominantly – ‘queer’, and that recently announced obscenity law changes have effectively legalised that material anyway, but that would be a bit pedantic. We might also say that filmmaker Nimue Allen, who says that the festival is important because by “centring on people of colour, trans performers, queer sex of all types, allowing people to see themselves represented on screen” is almost as guilty as the protesters in stereotyping and misrepresenting mainstream porn which, as we have to tiresomely point out again and again, actually features a much wider selection of body shape, sexualities, desires and fetishes than you’ll ever find in ‘radical’ or ‘ethical’ porn.
But even if we find both sides of this argument to have (widely) different levels of disingenuousness, our sympathies definitely lie with the festival. Their heart is in the right place, even if they are a touch too social justice fixated for our personal tastes (sexual fantasies should not be governed by political correctness, after all). And in the end, no one should have the right to shut down other people from expressing themselves because of lies, misinterpretation or simple disagreement.
(The original version of this story did not have the Object statement about transgenderism available and suggested that claims of transphobia were exaggerated. Clearly, they weren’t. Thanks to Twitter user @jngovando for the correction)
