How feminists pick porn: Troubling the link between ‘authenticity’ and production ethics

Abstract

This article presents findings from an empirical study into the experiences of feminists who use pornography, with a focus on how feminists choose the material with which they engage. It discusses the ways in which participating feminists understood notions of authenticity in relation to porn, as well as the role played by perceptions of ‘authentic representation’ in their porn selection processes and ethical decision-making. The article problematizes the link made by interviewees between more authentic-seeming representations of sex, bodies and pleasure on one hand, and superior production standards and/or more enthusiastic performer consent on the other. It furthermore argues that uncritical demands for authenticity in porn risk undermining broader ‘sex positive’ or ‘anti-anti-porn’ feminist political goals, particularly around stigma reduction and the elimination of exploitative industry practices. In this way the article offers a meaningful contribution to academics, activists and others engaged in the discussion around porn consumption ethics and the ethics of porn consumption, as well as those working on ways to address exploitation within the pornography industries.

Introduction

‘Mainstream’ pornography is often criticized, by ‘anti-porn’ and ‘anti-anti-porn’ (Paasonen, 2011) feminists alike, for its seemingly fake representations of sex, bodies and pleasure. What is actually meant when talking about ‘authentic’ and ‘fake’ in the context of porn, however, is not always clear. Such articulations tend to be invoked without a critical examination of what the parameters of ‘the real’ actually comprise (Maina, 2014), and sometimes lack sufficient consideration of the social and political implications that demands for greater authenticity in porn might entail (Berg, 2015). Drawing upon an empirical study into the experiences of feminists who use porn, this article explores the perceived nature and centrality of authenticity to feminists’ porn selection processes. It also discusses the implications of these understandings for broader feminist projects that aim to reduce stigma towards, and exploitative practices within, the porn industries.

The study itself set out to understand feminists’ experiences of choosing and using porn. It explored the ways in which participants described the pornography selection and consumption process and the role that ethical considerations came to play in these activities. Using a grounded theory approach in data collection and analysis, a number of key theoretical concepts were developed to conceptualize how participating feminists understood and articulated the porn consumption process. These concepts are elaborated upon in this article with a view to contextualizing a subsequent discussion of how notions of authenticity – and the ethical implications thereof – come into play in this context.

With this in mind, following a brief methodological explanation, the article proceeds with an overview of respondents’ stated motivations for using porn, followed by a discussion of reported search practices and selection processes. It later moves on to interviewee descriptions of engagement with and reception of porn, and the range of anticipated or recollected responses generated by porn use. The article then explores the important role that perceptions of authenticity appeared to play in consumer behaviour and ethical decision making among participating feminists. In particular it discusses findings which suggest that, for some feminist porn audiences, notions of authentic representation in porn may go hand in hand with perceptions of superior porn production ethics. It ultimately troubles this conceptual coupling, however, arguing that an uncritical association between the two risks undermining goals around stigma reduction and labour rights; goals that many sex positive and anti-anti-porn proponents, as well as the feminist porn movement itself, ardently advocate.

Methodology

Grounded theory was chosen as a methodological framework due to its emphasis on a ‘bottom-up’, inductive, theory-building approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). In this way, the project diverged somewhat from the theory-testing approaches that are common in qualitative research (Urquhart, 2013: 180), in part due to there existing so few theories of pornography consumption at the time the research was conducted, and even fewer seeking to locate themselves outside of a binary harms/empowerment approach (Boyle, 2006). The utility of using grounded theory in feminist research and the tools it offers for making meaningful interventions within academic fields fraught with polarized opinion, were likewise a factor in the decision to adopt grounded theory (Macleod, 2020a).

The data collection and analysis process consisted of two stages: an online group discussion exercise, and subsequently, a demographic questionnaire followed up with in-depth semi-structured interviews with selected respondents. The online activity saw 38 contributions being made and the demographic survey gained 22 responses, of which 17 participants were selected and 18 interviews held. Interviewees represented a range of identity categories along lines of age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, relationship status, political beliefs and religion (for a full demographic breakdown see Macleod, 2020b). The selection criteria for respondents were that individuals considered themselves to be (a) London residents, (b) porn consumers, and (c) feminists. Given the slipperiness of the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘pornography’, I resisted the temptation to rigidly define these concepts and, instead, encouraged participants to discuss their own understandings thereof during the interviews.

In accordance with grounded theory, data collection and analysis took place iteratively, making use of open, selective and theoretical coding techniques in order to generate insights that would inform ongoing sampling. Open coding, for the purposes of this research, tended to revolve around assigning either descriptive or analytical codes to small sections of data. Meanwhile, selective coding represented the process of narrowing open codes down into conceptual themes to help develop the direction of the research. Indeed, it was at this point that the research question for this project began to shift from a broad inquiry into experiences of porn consumption amongst London feminists, to a much more precisely articulated research frame, focusing on the intersection of ethics and practice in this context. Lastly, theoretical coding involved identifying connections between categories and theorizing substantive patterns. As is common in grounded theory, this involved revisiting the selective coding phase a number of times before coherent relationships could be neatly marked out.

It is by means of these three coding approaches that insights into the selection and engagement processes described by feminists were identified and refined. These insights revolve around a number of theoretical concepts – motivations, search practices, selection process, access and response, and reception – each of which I will now elaborate upon in turn.

Motivations for using porn: The role of impulse

The main incentives for porn use amongst participating feminists pertained to its capacity to aid arousal and facilitate orgasm at times of heightened sexual interest. This was complemented by a range of other secondary motivations, such as boredom; a desire to relax or fall asleep; and efforts to get in the mood for sex with a partner. Respondents’ purported motivations for using porn thus aligned, on the whole, with those put forward in the audience study conducted by Smith, Barker and Attwood (2015), in which ‘when I feel horny’ emerged as the most common motivation for using porn, followed by ‘when I’m bored, can’t relax, or can’t sleep’ and ‘because I want to feel horny’. Respondents also discussed using porn as inspiration for their own sex lives and as a way to educate themselves about sex, particularly when they were younger. This also supports findings from the abovementioned study, which indicate that, in addition to masturbation, motives for using porn also include education and curiosity (Attwood et al., 2018; Barker, 2014). It has been argued that some, often women, may cite sex education as their main motivation for using porn in order to present a more socially acceptable reason for engaging with it (Juffer, 1998). However, respondents in this study appeared not to hide their more hedonistic interests in porn in any concerted fashion, instead citing sex education and sexual inspiration as historical or secondary reasons for using porn, behind the primary purpose of porn as an aid to arousal and orgasm.

On the whole, participants reported using porn alone. In turn, their motivations for doing so were frequently triggered by pleasure-seeking desires or urges, with ensuing behaviours commonly representing spontaneous actions based on how the individual anticipated being able to satisfy those desires most effectively. This often affected the degree to which ethical considerations were incorporated into decision-making processes, and thus, how participants felt about the porn they used. For example, some respondents associated the spontaneous quest to satisfy their sexual urges with feelings of conflict, guilt or shame after having used porn. This was attributed to the affective mode of consumption activated by such urges, which they felt overrode more rational and feminism-informed decision-making. Others described experiencing both spontaneous and non-spontaneous porn practices at different times and pointed to the different motivational inclinations associated with each:

[I don’t use] ethical porn … as much as I want, because sometimes, like, you know, I just need to get it done [laughs] … But, if I have a bit more time, if I feel like it’s not as urgent … if it’s not that kind of urgent scenario, then I go through those [ethical porn] sites. (Courtney)

In this way, it is possible to observe how motivations for using porn and decision-making priorities may be experienced differently in impulsive and non-impulsive consumption contexts, with the former being more strongly associated with the satisfaction of immediate sexual desires and less regard for ethics, and the latter more easily incorporating a desire to explore products they considered to represent superior ethical standards.

Indeed, the importance of exploring the motivational foundations underlying impulsive and non-impulsive consumption is a point stressed by Lades (2014: 125). In his consumer ethics study, Lades (2014) claims that a deeper understanding of motivational forces on decision-making can help develop better approaches to supporting those who wish to improve their ethical practice; ethical practice here referring to consumers’ own conceptualizations thereof rather than assuming any universal moral imperatives. Lades acknowledges the problematic nature of censorship measures that seek to restrict access to certain content deemed by one person or group of people to be inferior. Instead he suggests more libertarian behavioural interventions that seek to foster the realization of self-defined ethical consumption practices by accounting for and attempting to counteract the effect of impulsive desire on consumer motivations and willpower. When applied to the porn context, this type of approach might consist of efforts to support feminist (and, indeed, non-feminist) consumers who wish to make more ethically-informed porn choices, without resorting to the type of state censorship measures that participants regarded with suspicion. These strategies, if one is to take the libertarian paternalist approach advocated by Lades, may revolve around: ‘strengthening willpower, reducing impulsive desires to consume, and guiding impulsive behavior in ethical directions by making salient certain self-images that favor ethical consumption’ (Lades, 2014: 115).

It may be argued that behavioural interventions of any sort need not be a necessary, desirable or effective measure in the context of online porn use; some may disagree with the principles of libertarian paternalism that assume individuals’ incapacity to act in their own best interests; and one might question an approach to ethical consumption that does little to address the role of industry players, structural inequalities and the broader global capitalist economy in porn production ethics. Nonetheless, Lades’ article serves as a reminder that a deeper understanding of the motivations behind consumption, and how these differ in impulsive and non-impulsive decision-making contexts, can provide useful insights into the processes underlying ethical decision-making. In turn, such insights could have the potential to inspire new approaches to ethical consumption amongst those who wish to incorporate considerations of ethics into their porn use more effectively, as well as new ways for activists and/or ‘ethical porn’ producers to reach them.

Searching for porn: Avoiding ‘very unethical’ material

Whilst some participants recalled occasions on which they used porn chosen by someone else – most commonly, when watching with a partner – most discussed searching for porn themselves and talked at length about the search practices they adopted. These included strategies such as following signposts and recommendations, remembering and revisiting, having go-to sites, hunting, stumbling upon, avoiding, keyword searching, browsing, filtering and going incognito. A number of search practices emerged as prominent in this regard, particularly insofar as they intersected with participant notions of consumer ethics.

Firstly, rather than actively seeking out what they thought of as ethical porn, many people adopted strategies for avoiding what they deemed unethical porn.

I would never look at child porn or something like that, or an actual video of someone being raped [so] I guess I would stay away from websites that look as if they’re moving in that direction … I mean like, if I was looking for hentai and I’m seeing there are some with cartoons that seem a bit younger, I would probably stay away from that website. (Akim)

This is in keeping with the theory of ‘conscionable consumption’ (Macleod, 2020b), whereby consumers – in lieu of a clear way in which to achieve ‘ethical’ porn practices, and a limited amount of time and energies to dedicate to such efforts – seek at least to avoid behaviour and material that they consider ‘very unethical’.

Meanwhile, for those interested in finding and using more ethical porn, recommendations from friends or online community acquaintances served as useful means to that end. Some respondents spoke about the value of friends linking to their own porn content in a way that helped them avoid what they considered to be the unethical terrain of porn tube sites:

Other circumstances in which I consume porn online is when I am watching stuff that my friends have produced … because they send me passwords for their work … Because in the tubes … no matter what word you put in the search, like, really misogynist stuff will come up as part of the results … There’s no escape. (Serena)

Others spoke about how online communities, wherein porn and feminism were discussed openly, helped signpost them to ‘ethical’ and ‘feminist’ content. However, whilst participants described giving and receiving recommendations for more ethical porn, recommendations on the basis of other characteristics – such as genre, sex acts, or quality – appeared less common. This may relate to the stigma associated with porn and (female) sexual desire, which often serves as an obstacle to more open conversation on this topic, particularly when niche or taboo tastes may be concerned.

Instead, most participants claimed to have certain go-to sites that they used to access porn, and discussed the merits of these different online spaces and platforms. Commonly, sites were deemed preferable when they featured a wide-ranging and regularly refreshed selection of content, though some were preferred because of the niche nature of the scenes they offered. Others talked about being ‘lazy’ and choosing one site over another out of habit or convenience. As such, on the whole, respondents appeared to know where they could find the type of porn that would be, at the very least, fit for its intended pleasure-seeking purposes. It was relatively rare, however, that interviewees reported being aware of more ethical or feminist porn that was also of erotic interest to them. Lacey, for example, recalled her attempts to find feminist erotica:

I actually put into Google, feminist erotic fiction [laughs] because I was like, I want to find more, like, feminist uh, like, style … even in the Tumblr thing I think I put in feminist porn, but nothing came up, sadly. Um, but yeah, and so then I found like … And actually in the book, the recent book I was reading, they had a website for feminist erotic literature, but then I went on there and I think it had shut down. (Lacey)

Meanwhile, Helen discussed ‘stumbling upon’ feminist porn performer, Stoya, rather than necessarily having known where to look for feminist porn or even being aware that feminist porn that was likely to align with her tastes existed in the first place.

Accordingly, while participants apparently knew where to look when seeking out porn that aligned with their sexual tastes, difficulties were reported when attempting to combine these search criteria with a secondary desire to access ostensibly more ethical porn, particularly given the comparatively limited range of content that the ‘feminist’ and ‘ethical’ porn sectors were thought to offer.

Selecting porn: Rational thought vs. base desire

[When choosing porn] it’s just … sort of intuitive, I’m drawn to this for some reason … I’m not sure I can particularly analyse why, other than, like, the characters, or the kind of scenario that it is … whether that is in tune with my kind of fantasies. (Gayle)

Parts of the porn selection process, for many respondents, remained indescribable or inaccessible during the interview, particularly insofar as affect-based decisions were concerned. Some also spoke about the role of habit and the idea of being ‘automatically drawn’ to certain types of material that served their functional needs well in the past. Simultaneously, however, an element of conscious calculation also appeared pertinent to participants’ understandings of the selection process. In this way, descriptions of the porn selection process corresponded well to the three components of Weber and Lindemann’s (2008) ‘functional taxonomy of decision modes’. These decision-making modes comprise calculation-, affect- and recognition-based imperatives:

Calculation-based decisions involve analytical thought. Affect-based decisions are governed by conscious or unconscious drives or feelings. Recognition-based decisions involve recognition of the situation as one of a type for which the decision maker knows the appropriate action. (Weber and Lindemann, 2008: 192)

Weber and Lindemann conceptualize this framework in terms of making decisions with your ‘heart, head or by the book’. With regards to porn, instead of head and heart, participants preferred terminology around ‘rational’ thought and ‘base’ desires. Interviewees also drew upon notions of ethical imperatives and a sense of ‘feminist duty’ in lieu of by-the-book decision-making, though they claimed to employ this mode of decision-making less frequently than its affective and calculative counterparts. This was sometimes explained with reference to the lack of consensus around pornography and consumer ethics within the feminist community – and thus the apparent absence of any collective, by-the-book guidance to which they might easily refer – as well as the seeming impracticability of the limited guidance that does exist.

Whilst some respondents made attempts to shed light on the more intangible elements, it was the conscious, rational processes that they drew upon most during interviews. Calculative criteria for porn selection fell into two categories: functional merit and ethical/social merit. Under the functional merit umbrella lay a number of considerations relating to fitness-for-purpose, including content, format, quality, accessibility and price. Central to each of these components was the characteristic of ‘authenticity’, with almost all respondents emphasizing the importance of authentic sex, scenarios and aesthetics to their selection criteria. Meanwhile, ethical/social merit revolved around the moral and social considerations that individuals might make when choosing porn. These were usually framed as secondary to the functional considerations, with the exception of ‘unconscionable’ content, the presence of which superseded any functional merit that the material in question may otherwise offer.

Functional criteria: Plausible fantasy and the ‘consensual catch-22’

Accessibility was revealed as a relevant consideration in the porn selection process, from preferences for mobile-friendly platforms to those known to have fewer ads and pop-ups. For those who were willing to pay for porn at all – a subject addressed later in the article – price was also a relevant factor in the selection process. Over and above these considerations, however, it was taste-based criteria that featured most centrally in participants’ descriptions of porn decision-making. Whilst tastes in porn emerged as highly variant, most respondents were able to identify some consistent themes. In particular, the ‘fake aesthetic’ associated with some pornographic videos and films represented an off-putting characteristic across the board, in contrast to ‘real’ bodily representations that were generally cited as preferable:

Typically I try to look for things that are not … like I prefer the people to look more real than fake – so not a ton of makeup, like generally, relatively more realistic body images. Um. So I guess if it’s a guy, not someone who’s way too muscular, or if it’s a woman not somebody who is incredibly thin. (Akim)

This was positioned as a functional criterion, with many claiming simply not to be attracted to models embodying such ‘exaggerated’ aesthetics. As will be considered later in the article, however, authenticity was also discussed in terms of its ethical value, with unachievable ‘porn star’ body ideals often considered antithetical to the feminist project.

Also prominent in participants’ accounts of functional selection criteria was the notion of ‘real sex’ and ‘authentic pleasure’. Yosef, for example, used live interactive platforms such as ChatRoulette, and browsed descriptions of real-life sexual fantasies shared by gay men on Craigslist, in order to satisfy his desire for authentic pornographic material. Others searched for video and text-based sexual representations that portrayed what they considered to be more realistic sex scenes and conveyed ostensibly genuine pleasure. For many participants, these perceptions of realism enabled them to more easily imagine themselves as a participant or voyeur in the scene. Meanwhile, Helen talked about being distracted by ‘fakeness’ and the seeming detachment of performers:

I can’t have this complete, you know, confrontation of how fake this is. I like to be a little bit, you know, that someone has some sort of fun in there … I think you can see this immediately if something is completely fake, then you can already imagine them, how completely detached they are from this. (Helen)

As before, the objection to fake-seeming sexual representations revolved firstly around the impaired functional value they were thought to offer, but also related to ethical concerns, with many associating scripted ‘porno sex’ scenes with the dismissal of female sexual pleasure and a lack of female sexual agency. This is an assumption challenged by Berg (2015: 28), who notes how scripted scenes are preferable for some performers, who may prefer to draw a line between the sex they perform as work, and the sex they may have off camera in their personal lives.

Also apparent across interviews, however, was a strong acknowledgement of the simultaneous centrality of fantasy to these portrayals of authenticity:

This one site that I used to really enjoy … they’d have porn performers, and then they’d invite … people going to the clubs to join in as well. And there’s that sense of, you know, you could be a participant, you could join in, it’s that kind of mix of realism and fantasy. So that’s important for me, to have some grounding in reality. (Josie)

Josie, and indeed all those interviewed for this study, strongly emphasized porn’s role as sexual fantasy. In this way, the interview data supports Barker’s (2014) notion of a pornographic ‘paradox’, wherein porn still functions as fantasy even in those cases where more realistic sexual depictions are pursued. Interviews with feminists for this study thus challenge the belief that ‘the fantasy status of this world [is] invisible to the people who visit it’ (Barker, 2014: 144). Instead, participants described complex understandings of pornography’s role as fantasy and how this fantasy status might interact with notions of authenticity and realism as desired characteristics of pornographic representation.

Shreya, for example, described this convergence of fantasy and authenticity as ‘hyper-reality’, comparing sexual scenarios in porn to the way in which films and adverts capture, yet often exaggerate, certain aspects of day-to-day lived experience. This notion of fantasy that is nonetheless ‘grounded’ in reality is one that recurred throughout the interviews, with participants referring to ‘hyper-reality’, ‘plausible fantasy’, ‘convincing stories’ or scenes that are ‘realistic but not real’. The lattermost of these descriptors tended to be associated with porn depicting non-consent themes, wherein it was the authenticity of pain or domination that viewers sought in addition to performer pleasure. In these cases, participants wished to view (consensually produced) non-consent scenes that were realistic, but that simultaneously managed to assure the viewer that they were not actually watching ‘real-life’ abuse. As a result, many found themselves confronted with contradictory needs: a wish to be convinced of a scene’s realism on the one hand, alongside a categorical requirement not be convinced thereof. I refer to this tension as the ‘consensual catch-22’. In order to feel reassured about the absence of abuse in pornographic material used, participants affected by the consensual catch-22 often felt more comfortable reading porn and thus expressed a preference for erotic literature.

Text-based and video-based porn were the two most common formats for pornographic material amongst those interviewed. Animated graphics interchange format (GIF) images were also used to access many different types of imagery in a short space of time, particularly in the cases of those for whom sound was not an important feature. On the other hand, as is to be expected, this format was uncommon amongst those who enjoyed the audio associated with porn videos. For Courtney, sound played an important role in conveying a sense of realism and authentic pleasure amongst performers:

I need to hear people interacting and the noises and the how they’re expressing how happy they are or pleased they are is important to me. (Courtney)

This supports Mitarcă’s (2015: 94) assertion that diegetic sounds such as these help to state the authenticity of the scene, especially in gonzo porn wherein ‘raw and unprocessed sound’ helps create the illusion of realism that is characteristic of this genre.

As Mitarcă goes on to point out, production values in porn often relate more to the cinematographic means by which seemingly rudimentary, amateur-style scenes can be most effectively constructed, rather than more conventional film-industry understandings of ‘good stagecraft’. As such, quality in porn becomes a difficult concept to define, as demonstrated by participants’ contrasting descriptions thereof. For some, good quality porn consisted of scenes that had high production values in the traditional, artistic and filmographic sense; interesting plotlines and character development; texts that were well written and grammatically correct; and/or material portraying diverse sexual representations. For others, however, quality was equated with fitness-for-purpose and thus good quality porn was more likely to be described in terms of the type of material that ‘did the job’ effectively. In these cases, the reverse characteristics to those listed earlier were often cited as representing good quality. That which emerged as fairly consistent, however, was the association of authenticity with good quality porn. This sometimes pertained to the plausibility of the scenario portrayed; the novelty of the storyline and divergence from tropes and stereotypes; the degree of immediacy and presence conveyed; or the authenticity of the characters’ and performers’ reactions. Mitarcă’s claim that ‘pornography in the digital age is all about “authenticity”’ (2015: 94) therefore appears well supported by the study’s data.

Ethical criteria: The importance of authenticity

The most frequently occurring themes with regards to ethical considerations in the porn selection process revolved around issues of vulnerability, perceptions of abuse, objectification, the level of communication between partners or characters, and the recognition (or not) of women as a target audience. These represented issues and topics that participants tended to factor into their more calculative porn selection processes. These considerations were usually deemed secondary to the functional criteria, by reason of the motivations behind the individual’s decision to access pornography in the first place:

The point of porn is that … it works. Is that it makes you feel good. Is that you respond to it in some way. Like. It’s not meant to be an essay in acceptable social interaction. And, an essay in acceptable social interaction might be a good thing and you might read that as well, but I don’t, to me it doesn’t do the same job. (Catherine)

The social characteristics of porn were thus revealed as a second priority, yet not necessarily one that was antithetical to respondents’ tastes or pleasures.

Indeed most participants discussed the ways in which assurances about the standards of production ethics, and sometimes also perceptions of more ‘female-friendly’ types of content, helped in their quest for sexual satisfaction. Equally so in reverse, revisiting the concept of unconscionability here, interviews once again pointed to how perceptions of extreme unethicality served as a turn-off. Here, ethics were usually understood in terms of (female) performer agency. Courtney, for example, favoured ‘hardcore’ straight porn but only when she felt the female performer also occupied a position of power and was ‘really revealing her sexual pleasure and sexuality’. Similarly, Gayle described feeling more comfortable with BDSM porn on Kink.com where she felt female performers had a more active involvement in setting up the scenes and seemed to enjoy themselves on set. Carla meanwhile noted that whilst she sometimes enjoyed depictions of ‘violent play’, she did not wish to see genuine vulnerability, instead needing to ‘see confidence there’.

Agency, as well as being contrasted with vulnerability in this way, was also contrasted with the objectification of the female body – a topic about which interviewees expressed a concern. Women’s objectification was largely associated with straight porn and tended to be understood as the perceived absence of female subjectivity. This, participants felt, was combated by portrayals of women’s agentive participation, reciprocal – verbal or non-verbal – communication between male and female performers or characters, and perceptions of ‘authentic’ female pleasure. In this way, authenticity is once again framed as a sought-after characteristic, for the purposes of satisfying taste-based, but also values-based selection criteria. For this reason, authenticity was a characteristic that featured highly in participants’ selection criteria and on which they rarely compromised, due to the ways in which a lack of authentic representation was likely to affect both their functional and social needs.

Accessing and responding to porn: ‘Try it and see’

Theories of affect put forward by porn scholars such as Paasonen (2011) and Keen (2016) resonated closely with participant descriptions of browsing and using image and video-based porn. With reference to pornographic GIFs, Keen notes:

I find myself using less and less cognition to browse. I watch images for split seconds before clicking ‘next’, relying on my body’s reaction to decide what I want to look at. These images are pure Barthesian punctum. Single gestures rendered in their most simple form, they have been stripped of any capacity for ‘contemplation and contextualisation’ (Paasonen 2011, 84) that might give them studia. My eyes are drawn to one captivating point, and – at an affective level – the image either clicks or it does not. (Keen, 2016: 315)

Similarly, respondents discussed both the ways in which they acted based on calculative decision-making, as well as more unconscious actions based on physical reactions and corresponding urges. For example, Josie discussed how she gauged the social and functional merit of a scene in a seemingly more calculative way, before choosing or discarding a video. Meanwhile, Akim drew upon the affective rhythms with which he scrolled and clicked, with the browse pace reflecting his level of excitement and the associated sense of urgency.

In a similar fashion, most respondents talked about skipping and discarding videos based on affective responses to the material. Lacey, for example, pointed out how the affective response provoked by perceived inauthenticity would prompt her to discard the pornographic material in question, in favour of text and videos that she deemed more realistic:

I’d like watch the first, like, little bit and if I’m like, well this looks interesting … then I’ll continue watching it. But if it just like starts off really, like, fake and strange, then I’m like, mmm not going to do that … With literature … sometimes I’ll like be reading it, and then I’m like, oh this is really fake, and then I’m like what, this would never happen in real life … and it really gets to me … I’m like, ah fuck this I’m going to read something else. (Lacey)

Through these descriptions, participants illustrated an ongoing process of porn trialing, whereby a cycle of flicking, clicking, skipping and discarding – directed largely by a combination of calculative and affective decision-modes – was repeated until orgasm (or desired outcome) was achieved. This was described by Catherine as the ‘try it and see’ method, and represented an approach adopted by a number of respondents in their attempts to source ethical-enough, enjoyable-enough and, relatedly, authentic-enough pornography.

Receiving porn: Suspending disbelief, and its limitations

The ways in which respondents described their reception of porn gave some insight into their understandings of underlying cognitive processing. Descriptions of porn reception included terminology such as ‘escaping’, ‘losing inhibitions’, ‘relating’, ‘imagining’ and ‘suspending disbelief’. Some pointed to the types of inaccessible, unconscious processing that was difficult to articulate in the interview context, often described in terms akin to ‘fleshy’ (Keen, 2016) affectivity. Most common, however, was the idea of being able to relate to individuals in a scene and imagine experiencing the types of sexual stimulation being enacted. Many imagined themselves occupying a voyeur position, while others envisioned themselves metaphorically ‘jumping on’ or taking the place of a character or performer:

I think that sometimes I’m just a voyeur… but … I definitely see … there are other times that I would like to be the person. Like … sometimes if I see an action of fisting, I’m definitely the person fisting. So, yeah, I think that I do that as well, I ‘jump’ on someone. (Serena)

Such descriptions are similar to those put forward by participants in Chowkhani’s (2016) study of female porn consumers, wherein participants often described ‘wish[ing that] they could be the woman on screen’.

For many respondents, key to being able to relate in this way was a degree of realism and sense of authenticity. For Josie, this revolved around perceptions of authentic female pleasure, which she felt enabled her to ‘put [her]self in the action’. Similarly, Serena discusses a need for ‘veracity’ in order to connect, expressing a desire to be convinced that performers are acting ‘not only as a profession … but also that they’re actually enjoying it’. Participants usually described suspending disbelief to some extent when they encountered something they believed to be unrealistic. However there were limits to what could feasibly be overlooked, often coalescing around the perceived authenticity of performer experience:

If you’re reading like a fantasy novel … there’s the concept of suspension of disbelief. However, there’s a level to which [you] will not be able to suspend [your] disbelief anymore … I think it’s the same thing in porn. Like, it’s a fantasy, really, because they’re not using condoms and they’re not asking for consent and whatever and I’d hope that that wasn’t necessarily always going to be reality. And it’s like, it’s not necessarily congruous – like someone walks into your house and you immediately start having sex with them, right? So, that’s part of the suspension of disbelief. But the porn that people look like they’re not having a good time or whatever, it’s like, I can no longer remain in this fantasy world with you – I step out and I, I stop believing in the fantasy … And also, there’s aspects of, like, people’s bodies being so exaggerated that it’s like I can no longer believe that this person is real. (Yan)

In addition to authentic pleasure, those who were interested in porn with BDSM themes often expressed a similar desire to see genuine experiences of (consensual) bondage, pain, humiliation and/or submission. Many found that the acting in professional porn was not convincing enough in this sense, though, and thus sought out more ‘amateur’ style porn videos (or, alternatively, other types of non-video porn). The use of amateur porn was thought to have the additional advantage of being more ethical, as respondents often believed these videos to have been produced by individuals in a DIY fashion, for free and for fun, rather than by large porn corporations with a reputation for exploitation. It has been argued, however, that such perspectives tend towards an idealized view of crowdsourcing platforms as ‘empowering and democratizing’ and thus risk obscuring the ‘network of capitalist forces that drive free amateur online content’ that serves to undermine the value of digital and sexual labour (Ruberg, 2016: 147). It is this, and other issues implicated in the pursuit of authenticity amongst feminist porn users – and indeed, demographics beyond the scope of this research – that I will elaborate upon in the discussion that follows.

Discussion: Political ontologies of porno-authenticity

Online porn, perhaps more so than any other pornographic medium, has emerged as a fertile site for ontological debate, compelling us to ‘question the boundaries of the real’ (Levin-Russo, 2007: 250). Discourses around the concept of ‘realness’ are often evoked in discussions of pornography – from those criticizing porn for depictions seen as inauthentic (Gordon and Kraus, 2010), or indeed too authentic (MacKinnon, 1993), to those expressing support for pornographies that claim to feature more ‘genuine’ representations of bodies, identities and sexual practices (Young, 2014: 187).

A pertinent question emerges around what authenticity might actually mean in this context – and whether any consensus can be reached with regards to its definition(s). Williams offers one explanation, pertaining to the ‘positivist’ roots of realism in film. She suggests that the pornographic real can be equated to maximum visibility, ‘wherein the elusive and prurient ‘truth’ is located in increasingly more detailed investigations of the bodies of women’ (Williams, 1999: 36). This type of authenticity, described by Josie as ‘nitty gritty’ realism, tended not to be judged favourably amongst interviewees, and was associated by some with the objectification of women’s bodies:

I remember feeling really put off by the level of focus on body parts, specifically, you know, vulvas and anuses … it almost looked like a kind of medical examination. And I at the time wasn’t really involved in feminism, so I couldn’t put my finger on what my problem was, but it was that objectification … that removing the person from their body part … If I come across porn where it’s very much focused on that … then I’ll just kind of click and move on. Because it’s, like, I want to see people’s faces … it’s not like I need their life story or anything, but I need a bit more than just their vagina. (Gayle)

Similarly positivist conceptions of realness have also been described in terms of indexicality, ‘liveness’ and perceived transparency between object and representation. Some have sought to achieve this reality effect by means of ‘voyeuristic’ images, televisual strategies of documentary, and by ‘eschew[ing] formulas and staging in favor of low production values’ (Levin-Russo, 2007: 244–245).

However, there is increasing acknowledgement of the ways in which authenticity may not reside purely in perceptions of unmediated visibility, as highlighted by participants in this study. Indeed, it has been suggested that the problem with much (straight) porn ‘is not what it shows, but what it doesn’t show’ (Moorman, 2007: 16–17). Such hidden elements may include the portrayal of ‘genuine’ female pleasure, common safer sex practices, explicit consent, the use of sex toys, condoms and lubricant, and ways of having sex that do not fit into heteronormative models, amongst others. In this way, some conceptions of realness appear to pertain as much to the representation of diverse identities, bodies, sexual narratives and practices, as to modes of production. This is certainly a perspective that appears well supported by the interview data and findings described in this article.

Accordingly, perceptions of authenticity in porn appear to resist unification into one comprehensive or universally agreed-upon definition. In fact, DeGenevieve (2014: 194) challenges the notion of pornographic ‘authenticity’ even further, asserting that porn is fundamentally about fantasy and does not, in fact, concern itself with reality at all. This begs the question of what, then, is referred to when porn claims to portray ‘real sex’ (Levin-Russo, 2007: 239), ‘real lesbians’ (Levin-Russo, 2007: 244), ‘real teens’ (Bonik and Schaale, 2007: 84), and so on. Is it possible to represent fantasy in a more or less authentic way? And if so, what makes some representations thereof more authentic than others? Authenticity in feminist porn, for example, may favour concerns with the ethics of industry practices (Taormino, 2013: 259), the presence or absence of certain cultural markers in pornography (Levin-Russo, 2007: 249), or the challenging of particular sexual stereotypes (Mondin, 2014: 191), over and above preoccupations with visibility. Conversely however, feminist porn that adopts high-level production values – regardless of any other ‘legitimating’ characteristics it may wield – could in fact be seen to forfeit its claims to authenticity from the perspective of those who equate ‘real’ with a ‘refusal of artifice’ and who may even celebrate the unapologetically crude as a challenge to bourgeois conceptions of acceptability (Attwood, 2012: 45).

Seeking to address some of these questions, Levin-Russo has suggested a four-pronged model for understanding porn’s ‘privileged relationship to the real’:

it records an unsimulated, authentic sexual act (realness of production)

its images appear real due to their character and conventions (realness of representation)

it acts directly on the viewer to produce real effects (realness of reception)

it is directly tied to real economic, political, and/or cultural processes (realness of social context)

(Levin-Russo, 2007: 239–240)

Participants’ descriptions of authenticity appear to incorporate elements of each of Levin-Russo’s characterizations. Selection criteria reportedly revolved largely around notions of natural bodies, authentic sex, real pleasure, and convincing storylines; requiring both realness of production and realness of representation. Responses to porn were often described in terms of the relatability of characters, acts, experiences and scenarios, which similarly required a degree of authenticity around the production and representation of sexual scenes in order to be achieved. These responses appeared to impact the ways in which porn was accessed, with many basing their decisions about which videos or texts to try next, on the real-life effects of the material viewed thus far. As such, a desire for ‘realness of reception’, experienced as arousal and/or climax, may likewise be identified. Furthermore, some respondents discussed their participation in wider (queer, feminist and/or fandom-based) porn communities, and emphasized the importance of porn productions deemed to be authentically queer, feminist, or otherwise. In this way, they pointed to the ‘realness of social context’ to which some producers and productions within such communities are able to lay claim.

Given these numerous modes of constructing realness and divergent interpretations of how authenticity is to be understood, it is perhaps unsurprising that notions of pornographic realities have been invoked to serve very different ends. Indeed, anti-porn proponents use discourses of realness to denounce the production, distribution and effects of pornography altogether (as discussed by Attwood and Smith, 2013; Levin-Russo, 2007). In contrast, many people have instead come to consider much of the mainstream, professionally produced video porn as fake, as was demonstrated by participants in this study. The supposed superficiality of this type of material, however, has been questioned by the likes of Maina (2014), Paasonen (2011) and Levin-Russo (2007), who point out that performers and their sexual encounters on-screen are no less real in mainstream porn than in any alternative genre. In this regard, Gorfinkel makes a pertinent assertion, claiming that pornographic performance has come to represent:

a vocation that most directly challenges a set of ontological questions regarding the labors of performance, and the labors of privatized intimacy – the relationship between authenticity and artifice, between real pleasure and its mimesis, and between acting (playing a role) and being (oneself). (Gorfinkel, 2012: 87)

It is precisely these complex ontological challenges that reveal themselves in the findings of this study. Whilst participating feminists described authenticity as a priority in their porn choices, for both personal and ethical reasons, their emphasis on ‘real pleasure’ and ‘authentic sex’ simultaneously presents a number of challenges and contradictions for a feminist analysis. In particular, this emphasis on authenticity has the potential to blur the line between performance and reality further, which in turn risks undermining other feminist priorities that participants claimed to value. Of particular thorniness are issues surrounding: (a) the association of authentic-seeming ‘amateur porn’ with enhanced ethicality; and (b) the association of authentic-seeming pleasure with more enthusiastic consent. Each of these assumptions, it is argued, contributes to the devaluation of sexual labour, which Ruberg (2016) claims to be at the heart of porn stigma and exploitative industry practices. Such views and the consumption decisions they inspire are thus ostensibly rendered inimical to participants' stated feminist aims, for reasons that will be discussed in the remainder of this section.

Amateur porn and authenticity

Attwood notes that shifts in online sexual cultures are making it ‘increasingly difficult to distinguish between labour and play’ (2009 in Ruberg, 2016: 152). It has been argued that this, in turn, has resulted in the devaluation of sexual labour – and online sexual labour in particular – with pleasure itself deemed to be reward enough for those involved (Ruberg, 2016; Scholz, 2012).

Far from suggesting that porn performers should work for free, participants in this study nonetheless tended not to view pornography as a product for which they felt obliged to pay. Instead, most – though not all – took advantage of the amateur and DIY gift economies, in which text, image and video porn products are apparently produced as a ‘labour of love’ rather than as paid work. Free porn was naturally described as more economically accessible, and some respondents also associated amateur porn with greater ethical standing. The latter was based on an assumption that this type of DIY style production eschewed the murky waters of the for-profit industry, effectively disentangled the association of money and sex that could sometimes cause discomfort, and enabled them to avoid participating in what they saw as an exploitative capitalist enterprise. As Ruberg (2016: 155) notes, however, ‘the fantasy of digital DIY porn as non-capitalist … overlooks the fact that amateur tube sites are big business’. In particular, these assumptions fail to acknowledge the advertising revenues, affiliate schemes and other corporate enterprises with which Mindgeek and other tube site owners are involved. They also overlook the ways in which a denunciation of monetized sexual services and products arguably facilitates the very exploitation that respondents seek to eliminate, by silencing discussions around fair compensation, contracts, and working conditions. Furthermore, such perspectives risk contributing to the stigmatization of those who cannot afford to make porn for free, by framing DIY porn as superior to productions for which performers received payment.

Authentic pleasure and consent

It is also the case that some participants associated their perceptions of authentic performer pleasure in video productions with more enthusiastic consent. Whilst respondents described being aware that they could not know with any degree of certainty or detail the conditions of production, some sense of authentic pleasure on the part of performers, especially women, helped them feel more reassured that the scene was not forced. This approach has been problematized, however, by Berg (2015) who claims that such perspectives are informed by feminist analyses that have not paid sufficient attention to labour politics. As mentioned earlier in the article, whilst authenticity in porn is often framed as an ethical endeavour, and artifice an unethical one, Berg notes that, some performers may in fact prefer adhering to scripted sexual scenarios in their work, whilst reserving their more authentic displays of sexuality for the private sphere. In this way, it has been argued that the insistence on increasingly more ‘authentic’ sexual performances risks fostering further exploitation if performers feel compelled to share parts of their sexuality that they might otherwise wish to keep separate from the work context and, in the process, to take on additional unpaid duties usually reserved for directors and scriptwriters. As Scott (2016: 126) notes, the association of authentic pleasure and authentic sex with better ethics ‘also perpetuates a belief that sex work is only acceptable when it does not feel like work’ thus further undermining and stigmatizing those who claim it as labour.

In the light of these arguments, the desire to access authentic porn emerges as a site of contestation and, in many ways, contradiction, for feminist consumers relying on perceptions of real pleasure and authentic sex for reassurance about the porn content they access. One might speculate that such practices are especially prevalent in the absence of other more reliable insights into production ethics and labour conditions. However, given how associations between authenticity, ethics and consent risk encouraging a view of porn performance as somehow better when unpaid, the valorization of authenticity is perhaps especially litigious for ‘sex positive’ feminists who do not wish to devalue the labour of sex workers. Thus, while authentic representations of diverse bodies, pleasures and sexualities undoubtedly holds value for feminist consumers of porn – in a variety of ways which ought not to be diminished – those with an interest in consumption ethics might nonetheless wish to interrogate their demand for authenticity and the ways it may serve to help or hinder parallel efforts to reduce stigma and exploitation associated with the porn industry.