Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (53 page)

It is a continuation of themes that have defined the antipornography feminist position since the heyday of the feminist sex wars in the 1980s: sexual danger, victimization, injury, and harm. Although the commercial context is different—indeed the industry has grown, not waned—the concerns, and the overarching analytic framework, remain essentially unchanged. It is a world in which shades of gray do not exist: there is “good” sex and “bad” sex; positive sexual representations and dangerous ones; and very real differences between male and female sexuality.

One of the major problems with the antipornography feminist movement is the very definition of pornography its supporters invoke. In an article published shortly after the 2008 AEE, antiporn activist–academics Gail Dines and Robert Jensen claim that, “pornography, at its core, is a market transaction in which women’s bodies and sexualities are offered to male consumers in the interest of maximizing profit.”36 Definitions matter, precisely because they establish the parameters and terms of debate. For Dines and Jensen, pornography is a one-dimensional, monolithic entity. While they acknowledge in the same article that there are degrees of difference in the

“overtly woman-hating sex” depicted in pornography—female-friendly films
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depicting ordinary women kissing are, in fact, different from films where a woman is being penetrated by three men at once—these differences, in the end, do little to alter their conclusion that all pornography, regardless of its content, objectifies, and subordinates women. In their schema, pornography is a closed circuit of representation that constructs only
one
truth about sexuality: men’s domination over women. It is a specious, over-simplistic argument at best, but one that continues to hold sway.

As many cultural and media studies scholars will attest, systems of representation and discourse are far more complicated than this. Cultural meanings are polysemic and open to multiple readings and interpretations; representations and discourses are actively created, recreated, negotiated, and resisted. Foucault, for example, argues that we are “dealing less with a discourse on sex than with a multiplicity of discourses, produced by a whole series of mechanisms operating in different institutions.”37 Stuart Hall maintains that representation “implies the active work of selecting and presenting, or structuring and shaping: not merely the transmission of an already existing meaning, but the more active labor of making things mean.”38 Surprisingly, these poststructuralist insights, including social constructionist theory, seem to have had very little, if any, impact on the perspectives advanced by antipornography activists, many of whom are driven by moral outrage and use heavy-handed rhetoric as substitutes for empirical evidence and well-substantiated arguments. As Lisa Henderson notes, if “sexual alarm drives engagement [with sex], if you only come to the discussion of sex when you don’t like what you see, that is all you can find.”39 Thus, antipornography feminists continue to be trapped by an essentialist framework that reduces pornography to a singular cultural narrative about sex, gender, and power, altogether sidestepping any engagement with gay, lesbian, transgender, and feminist pornography—systems of representation that would invariably complicate their arguments about the intractability of “woman-hating sex” in pornography.40

The claims advanced by antipornography activists certainly do no go unchecked.41 Nina Hartley, a porn performer who has worked in the adult industry since the 1980s, responded in print to one report of the 2005 AEE

convention, arguing that the writer’s account focused “at length on the most distasteful aspects of what she saw and heard, but makes no mention of any attempts to establish direct communication with any of the women who work in the adult video industry.”42 Indeed, a disregard for the voices and experiences of women working in the industry is perhaps one of the most consistently conspicuous absences in antipornography writing. “It is that much easier to characterize all female sex workers as degraded, humiliated, and unhappy if you’ve never talked to any of us,” Hartley contends. She continues:
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None of the diversity of our vibrant, raucous, and contentious creative culture seems to have attracted [the writer’s] notice. By focusing on one or two examples she finds particularly heinous, she obscures the broader truth, which is that the marketplace of sexual entertainment contains products for almost every taste and orientation, including material made by and for heterosexual women and couples, lesbians and gay men. . . . By no means does all of it, or even most of it, conform to the author’s notions of porn-as-expression-of-misogyny.43

Adult industry trade shows such as the AEE are powerful reminders of just how diverse and dynamic the adult industry is. There is no single, uniform market represented at these events, but numerous markets and various sexual taste cultures and publics, including male, female, and transgender, straight and queer, mainstream and alternative, vanilla and kinky. This reality is very often overlooked or intentionally downplayed by industry detractors, such as Dines and Jensen, who are unable or perhaps unwilling to see the adult industry as anything other than a bastion of male-oriented consumption that perpetuates the exploitation of women. Yet the Expo’s visible intersection of market sectors, retailers, manufacturers, consumers, and fans reveals a far more layered and nuanced picture of an industry that—like other segments of the culture industry—is neither homogenous nor fixed and unchanging.

R E B R A N D I N G TH E S E X I N D U STRY

Recent changes in the adult industry—a turn toward women, toward quality products, toward nontoxic and high-end sex toys that can now be found on the shelves of Sharper Image—are the result of decades’ old efforts to normalize sex and make sexually oriented products more respectable. These marketplace transformations are emblematic of what some see as a “re-branding” of the adult industry. They are also the result of conversations that are happening among some industry professionals about how to redefine themselves, their businesses, and the products they sell in the hope of gaining greater cultural legitimacy and a larger share of middle-class consumers who prefer shopping at “stylish” sexuality boutiques instead of “dirty” bookstores.

Some manufacturers and retailers contend that the adult industry is at a crossroads. The time has come, they suggest, for a public relations makeover, one where “porno shops” are recast as “sexual health boutiques” and “dildos”

are sold as “sexual health products.” More than just a gimmick or a silly game of semantics, a growing number of companies see these changes as an
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important business strategy aimed at “broadening sales potential [and]

marketplace options.”44

This emphasis on re-branding—what one writer described as “taking the sleaze out of sex toys”—is about reducing stigma and growing the market.

Some companies are making concerted efforts to do this by removing all references to “adult” and “novelty” from their marketing materials in order to garner mainstream media exposure and gain access to new sales channels that might otherwise be predisposed to avoid “adult” products. According to Metis Black of Tantus: “The more that we distance ourselves from porn and the adult industry, the more apt we are to get mentions in
Marie Claire
,
Women’s Health,
Men’s Health
, or
O Magazine
. This is central to our business plan and we are not alone.”45 Ian Denchasy, co-owner and founder of Freddy and Eddy, suggests that one way to facilitate this transformation is by highlighting issues of sexual health and education, while simultaneously downplaying the language of “pornography”: the latter, he thinks, keeps the adult industry on the cultural fringes. “From a practical standpoint, relying less on pornography as a profit center means more opportunities to focus on education and customer comfort. . . . We view the re-branding of our sexual health, education and entertainment industry not as some gimmick . . . but as a serious attempt to accurately define what we do and who we are.”46

Not everyone, however, is comfortable with what they see as a “linguistic sleight of hand” promoted by a few “self-anointed arbiters of sexual legitimacy.” Tony Lovett, editor of
Adult Novelty News
, recently commented on what he called an “extreme industry makeover”: Sadly, there will always be those who use
porn
,
dildo
, and similar expressions with contempt. Even sex remains a dirty word to many in this country, and already carries enough shameful baggage without our industry’s implicit demonization of toys and porn that don’t pass some arbitrary muster. If we choose to look down on those who prefer a blowup doll to a pricey vibrator, then we have truly lost our way.47

It is unlikely that a time will come when the adult industry will have to make an either–or decision between promoting “porno shops” or “sexuality resource centers,” selling blowup dolls or pricey vibrators. If industry observers and professionals have learned anything over the course of the past decade, it is that consumer demand for adult entertainment is diverse enough to support an increasingly segmented marketplace. Sexual titillation
and
education, Larry Flynt
and
Tristan Taormino, sexual “lowbrow”
and

“middlebrow” can and do coexist. Indeed, the success of sex-positive, women-oriented retail businesses like Good Vibrations, Babeland, and Early to Bed
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have not put traditional porno shops out of business; feminist pornographers have not supplanted mainstream adult companies like Hustler or Wicked.

Rather, these businesses have brought new voices, new products, and, importantly, new consumers into the sexual marketplace, expanding adult industry offerings and, in the process, leaving an indelible imprint.

Today, the boundaries between “mainstream” and “alternative” segments of the adult industry are increasingly porous. Feminist “sexperts” like Tristan Taormino and Jamye Waxman are now collaborating with mainstream adult companies, such as Vivid Entertainment and Adam and Eve, respectively, to produce their own video series. And, in October 2007, Good Vibrations, the venerable women-oriented sex toy emporium based in San Francisco, was purchased by GVA-TWN, an Ohio-based adult wholesaler and distributor.

For GVA-TWN chief operating officer Joel Kaminsky, combining forces with Good Vibrations made a great deal of business sense: “Our strengths are infrastructure, inventory, and financial strength. And [Good Vibrations] have a lot to bring to the table in helping us reach out to women and couples of all genders, and in training our staff.”48 For both companies, the sale was viewed as a win–win situation: Good Vibrations received a much needed infusion of cash and GVA-TWN gained a leg-up on competitors also hoping to tap into the growing women’s market.

These kinds of business associations, what some might see as “unlikely bedfellows,” are, I argue, the wave of the future for the adult industry. After all, market
segmentation
, which is the overall trend, is not the same thing as market
segregation
. The changes currently underway in the adult industry are forcing longtime industry players to think outside the box, and to cross-pollinate in interesting and novel ways. The result is a proliferation of new, hybrid business models that are blending and borrowing from different segments of the adult industry. What the sex industry might look like in 5 or 10 years remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: we will undoubtedly get our first glimpse at how the adult industry is continuing to evolve and adapt to a rapidly changing commercial environment at industry trade shows, which will remain the best way to gauge what is new, what is notable, and, importantly, what direction the industry is headed.

N OTE S

1. Frank Rich, “Naked Capitalists,”
New York Times Magazine
, May 20, 2001; David Cay Johnston, “Indications of a Slowdown in Sex Entertainment Trade,”
New York Times
, January 4, 2007.

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2. See Lynn Comella, “It’s Sexy. It’s Big Business. And It’s Not Just For Men,”
Contexts
7 (Summer 2008): 61–63; Lynn Comella,
Selling Sexual
Liberation: Women-Owned Sex Toy Stores and the Business of Social Change
, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, 2004.

3. Lisa Henderson, “Sexuality, Cultural Production, and Foucault,” paper presented at Sexuality after Foucault Conference, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, November 2003.

4. See Joshua Gamson,
Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual
Nonconformity
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998; Laura Grindstaff,
The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

5. See Katherine Sender,
Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market
, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004; Arlene Davilla,
Latinos,
Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People
, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

6. See Kathy Davis,
The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels
Across Borders
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007; Amy Farrell,
Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism
, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

7. Larry Grossberg, “Can Cultural Studies Find True Happiness in Communication?”
Journal of Communication
43 (1993): 89–97, at p. 90.

8. Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Henry Abelove, Michelle Barale and David Halperin, eds.,
The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader
, New York: Routledge, 1993.

9. For examples see: Elizabeth Bernstein,
Temporarily Yours: Intimacy,
Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007; Barbara G. Brents and Kate Hausbeck, “Marketing Sex: U.S. Legal Brothels and Late Capitalist Consumption,”
Sexualities
10 (2007): 425–439; Katherine Frank,
G-Strings and Sympathy
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.