The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure (30 page)

Following in the footsteps of my sex-positive cis dyke sisters, when I want something done right, I do it myself. Other than a middle school film class, I had no experience with video. I approached the project as an organizer. I figured out what I needed, how to achieve it, and relied heavily on the skills and knowledge of friends. I put out the initial casting call and got a lot of positive feedback from people who were excited about the idea, as well as a dozen or so performers scattered across the continent.

This enthusiastic response made it clear how needed this project was. Many people were eager to help out behind the camera, and I was lucky to have a friend in film school who was willing to loan me her camera and consult with me whenever I had questions. The project would not have been possible without the support of skilled individuals willing to work far below standard industry rates and others willing to help out in small ways for free.

Ironically, rampant antitrans employment discrimination meant I was able to find other trans women who had plenty of free time to help because they were dealing with chronic unemployment/underemployment. I was glad to have a production crew that was mostly trans women and almost entirely trans or genderqueer. Unfortunately, working with a marginalized population had drawbacks. Due to various life crises, such as poverty, homelessness, depression, and problems with the police, my first two editors had to leave the project.

It was lucky I had backups, because I never was able to get the footage back from my second editor. The first scene we shot was between me and Gina deVries. After the shoot, Gina suggested we apply to perform on The Crash Pad Series. I was enthusiastic but still a bit timid. There are a lot of issues around the exclusion of trans women from queer women’s spaces—especially when sexuality is involved. There is a strong history of feminist thinkers who oppose giving respect or legal rights to trans women, including Adrienne Rich, Mary Daly, Janice Raymond, Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, and Shelia Jeffreys. With the commonly espoused fear of “men infiltrating women’s spaces” and some even comparing trans women’s mere presence in women’s communities to rape, the stakes can be very high for trans women wanting to enter a “women’s space.” Although I knew that Julie had performed for them before, part of me worried that her inclusion this time was based on her surgical status and ability to pass as cis and not based on a choice to include all trans women.

Once I took the leap, I discovered that the casting coordinator actually wanted to have more trans women. Within a couple months my fears were put to rest as I did my scene. I became the second trans woman on the site—and the first with my particular genital configuration. It was a great introduction to the queer porn community. Not only was the scene directed by Shine Louise Houston, the mastermind behind Pink and White Productions, but, as chance would have it, Courtney Trouble, the creator of the groundbreaking
NoFauxxx.com
, was the still photographer. To suddenly be working with two of the largest figures in the
industry underscored both how small and interconnected the feminist and queer porn communities are, and that I was now becoming a part of it.

The following year I attended the Feminist Porn Awards for the first time. I was given the opportunity to present a preview clip from
Doing It Ourselves.
It was an amazing, eye-opening experience. Receiving validation for my work, especially from queer cis women who cared about the lack of visible trans women in their community
and
the lack of representation of trans women in queer porn, was amazing.

I asked myself, if so many people in queer porn cared about including trans women, why wasn’t it happening more than one or two times? One answer I found was that in any production, there will be so many objectives that often times completing a project takes priority over other goals. Other queer porn producers cared about the issue, but none had made it their first priority. In addition, it is a natural reaction for underrepresented communities to be hypercritical of what little representation there is because it has so much impact; I’m quite aware of that impulse when I engage in criticism of my own and others’ work, but I believe it is important to engage in it nonetheless.

I set out to make my film as a response to the criticism of how trans women have been represented in mainstream porn, and their lack of representation in queer porn. With the critical focus on representation, I spent a lot of time thinking about casting. I received very few applications from folks who already had scene partners in mind, and several applications from geographically dispersed candidates looking for me to play matchmaker; my options were limited.

I came up with over a dozen underrepresented demographic categories that I wanted to have in the cast. I wanted to include at least one trans man, cis woman, and cis man, in addition to trans women with a range of surgical statuses and experiences relating to their bodies and sexuality. I also wanted to cast people of color and people with a wide range of body types. Of course, doing all this at once was a problem, especially considering that I only had space for eight cast members. Some folks, like myself, would fit more than one of those categories, but I quickly realized that just one film could not accomplish everything that I wanted to see.

Addressing the issue of comprehensive representation takes time, planning, and energy. Availability and limited resources at once seemed to be the central problem with representation in queer porn. I can’t keep up the rate of one film a year, and websites that update regularly budget
for a specific number of scenes per year, often with a backlog of regular performers on a waiting list. No matter how much we make, it’s never enough to represent everyone we want to.

These factors contribute to the underrepresentation of trans women in queer porn, but they don’t explain the severity of it. I wouldn’t expect every DVD on the queer porn shelf at a feminist sex store to include trans women, but very few do. Those that do seem to always have two to three times as many trans men. There’s enough transmisogyny in our communities in general for trans women interested in acting to assume they won’t be welcomed, especially if they perceive this underrepresentation as intentional. Underrepresentation can be an indication of hostility so, on multiple occasions, I have personally told trans women interested in doing porn that The Crash Pad Series and
NoFauxxx.com
would welcome them. Having an inclusive policy is great, but it is not very effective without being publicized. Until it is explicitly stated—and not just in the small print—it’s not unreasonable for potential models or audiences to wonder if trans women are actually welcome and included as equals. It’s like the treadmill metaphor of oppression—if you’re standing still, you’re being pushed along with oppression. You have to walk just to stay in place, and you have to run if you want to make any change.

Another reason for the underrepresentation is that casting is largely based on personal connections. As a director, it’s tempting to cast a person when you already know their skills, abilities, and professional demeanor. Someone you don’t know could clash with the rest of the cast, have different expectations for their work, or just be difficult and unreasonable. Without a good reference, it’s always a risk to go with someone unknown. I don’t think anyone is
only
hiring people they know personally, but knowing the casting director does give someone a huge advantage. Understanding this dynamic, I have sought out trans women who want to break into queer porn and gotten to know them so I can act as a reference for other directors I know.

There’s a lot a director can do to specifically combat these problems. Send recruitment announcements to trans-positive communities and spaces, make an extra effort to be encouraging with trans women applicants, ask trans women models to refer their friends, make a commitment to including a trans woman in each film (or season, year, and so on), or do extra publicity for the trans women actors you’ve already included.

After I finished
Doing It Ourselves
and it went out into the world, I got several letters from fans. Some of them talked about how
Doing It Ourselves
helped them process their own experiences around sexuality.
Others were simply happy to have had the first opportunity to see someone like themselves in a positive sexual representation. One fan wrote, “I’ve done mainstream trans porn and I honestly find it really gross and offensive . . . I definitely think you are doing awesome things and you are certainly one of the people inspiring me to make porn that I’m not embarrassed to be in and that I actually find hot.” These are the responses that I was hoping for, and they are what drive me to continue doing this work. In short, I want to do porn that inspires people.

Trans women still face major barriers to inclusion in feminist and queer porn, but the work to make that inclusion a reality is finally being done. Twelve years after the first porn film made by trans men claiming their own erotic and pornographic space, there is finally a film doing the same thing for trans women. Slowly, there are more and more feminist and queer porn films and websites including trans women. Many don’t make a big deal about it, creating both a positive impact in terms of recognizing trans people’s genders and an unfortunate side effect of under-publicizing trans women’s inclusion. However, there are instances where trans women’s inclusion is being celebrated as well. At the 2011 Feminist Porn Awards, the award for Heartthrob of the Year went to a trans woman. In the past two years alone, I’ve been contacted by five different sets of trans women interested in making their own porn films. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and we will need all the help we can get. Nonetheless, it’s an exciting time, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

Author’s note: For a timeline of trans and genderqueer performers in trans-made, queer, and independent porn, see
thefeministpornbook.com
.

Imag(in)ing Possibilities: The Psychotherapeutic Potential of Queer Pornography

KEIKO LANE

Keiko Lane
is a Japanese American poet, essayist, and psychotherapist. In addition to her literary writing, which has been published in journals and anthologies, she writes about the intersections of queer culture, oppression resistance, and liberation psychology. Her current writing projects focus on the relationship between queer kinship, and queer rage and grief in the long-term survival of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Keiko has a private practice in Berkeley, California, that specializes in working with queers of all genders, artists, activists, academics, and other clients who self-identify as postcolonial. She is a volunteer therapist with Survivors International, where she works with refugees and asylum seekers. Keiko also teaches graduate psychotherapy courses on queer and multicultural psychotherapies, the psychodynamics of social justice, and the embodied literature of exile.

T
he first time I talked about pornography with a psychotherapy client I was an intern. Still in grad school, I saw clients in a San Francisco counseling clinic that offered therapy to the community on a sliding scale. Because I was one of the few out queer therapists, I was assigned many of the queer clients.

The client with whom I was talking about porn was a butch-identified dyke in her late twenties who was seeking therapy because she was struggling with issues she felt resulted from a history of childhood sexual abuse. She wanted to heal sexually and to reclaim a sense of desire and agency. She said she felt depressed because she was unsure that healing was possible.

We met in a miniscule office just off the waiting room of the converted Victorian that housed the clinic. The room faced west. Through the lacy curtains, the afternoon light poured in, leaving watery shadow patterns on the walls. The room had space enough for two chairs and a
small table where I kept my appointment book and the tape recorder my supervisor insisted I use to record my sessions.

Over the course of a few months, the client told me about the abuse she had suffered as a young girl, which was simultaneous to her budding understanding that she did not feel normatively gendered. During her late teens and early twenties, she had questioned whether she might be transgendered. She decided that she didn’t actually imagine herself as male, but concomitantly didn’t feel she interacted with women the same ways she saw other dykes interacting.

“I mean, it isn’t that I can’t, you know, pass as a ‘normal dyke,’” she said, turning away from me.

“What is a ‘normal dyke’?” I asked.

“Well, you know, um . . . nice?”

“Nice?” I was not certain where this was headed.

“Yeah.”

“So, you’re not
nice,
” I said.

“Well, no, that isn’t exactly right. I can be. I mean . . . I can go to parties or bars and make small talk and be funny and laugh at the right places in the conversation. But that’s not how I want to be,” she said. “It’s frustrating. I’m frustrated and sad at the end of the night, after I go out with my friends and they’ve hooked up with other people, or whatever.” She looked around the room, uneasy. In our small space, there weren’t many places to look. Her gaze fixed on the tape recorder on the table.