Nina Hartley, "In the Flesh: A Porn Star's Journey"

Nina Hartley in the article "In the Flesh: A Porn Star's Journey," she discuss about how she became apart of the feminist debate, when she went public of her work as a sex worker. Hartley is like another Annie Sprinkle, who helps guide people through their sexualities. By creating such books showing step by step techniques, she discussed about how she became in touch with her own sexuality. The reason she entered the field of sex work is because she had many questions that she wanted to explore. She wanted to defend the sex industry against feminist disapproval; this is where she states "How could I defend my personal desire (and long-held fantasy) to indulge my strong streak of exhibitionism/voyeurism, as well as to have access to other bisexual women?" (Hartley 57). Hartley acknowledge that she made a decent amount of money in the sex industry and have come to find many positive aspects of working in the sex industry such as she was able to enhanced self-image, sexual variety and where she is able to help create a variety of ideas about sex in society. She became a role model for many young performers entering the field of pornography and began to practice her feminist by sharing her experiences. Her early exposure to feminist discussions were around the body and sexuality (where she is especially interested in childbirth). Working in the sex industry, it had helped her "to explore and accept many aspects of my sexuality [which led her] to wonderful places. It made [her] happier and [a] more loving woman" (Hartley 60). She points out the problems that usually exists within women who are uncomfortable with their sexually because they blame men , as she states "I learned that to be eternally mad at men's sexual 'nature' was as useful as being mad that water is wet. Anger inhibits intimacy and shared pleasure, to the detriment of all involved. I seek my work to defuse anger so that pleasure I invoke can work its healing magic" (Hartley 61).

Mireille Miller-Young, "Hardcore Desire: Black Women Laboring in Porn-Is It Just Another Job?"

In "Hardcore Desire: Black Women Laboring in Porn-Is It Just Another Job?," Mireille Miller-Young discussed the life of young Black dancers and raised questions such as "How do young Black women entering the adult entertainment industry understand their motivations and places in a culture that for the most part foregoes eroticism and reproduces two-dimensional stereotypes of Black women in hardcore as tasty brown sugar and nasty ghetto hos?" (Miller-Young 32). In the sex industry, which is mainly run by white men, Black dancers only get paid half of what the White dancers make, which is why the author argues that “Black women are less desirable in the sexual marketplace than white women” (32). Miller-Young discovered that most Black women who are a part of the hardcore sex industry maintain that this work helps support them financially and allows for personal advancement. In fact, the sex industry allows working class women to earn better wages in a shorter amount of time than other industries. Women that Miller-Young interviewed were using the sex industry as a way to fight against racism and sexism, and saw it as an opportunity to reach stardom. Women such as Jeannie Pepper, stated that they were in the business to reinforce the notion of black as beautiful and wondered why more black women do not partake in the sex industry. It is a way to access “wealth and […] resources that lie outside of their communities, but also they seek greater visibility” (34). These women are constantly fighting against the stereotypes held within the white community and are often unheard within the industry. Although, dealing with inequality within the sex industry, they faced the fact that it is a job that help them with their bills.

Siobhan Brooks, "Dancing Towards Freedom"

In the article " Dancing Toward Freedom," Siobhan Brooks argued that racism still exists in various places such as the Lusty Lady, where she worked. During college Brooks worked at the Lusty Lady to pay her way through school. She felt relieved to know that her show director, Josephine Baker, is also a woman of color because most workers at the Lusty Lady were white women. The Lusty Lady shattered stereotypes of strippers, as Brooks states, "Most of the women at the Lusty Lady are students, artists, or both; they are very intelligent and creative, refuting the stereotypes of the brainless sex bunnies" (Brooks 252). Although she felt a sense of a family relationship with her Lusty Lady co-workers, she still felt the racism that existed. She witnessed the racism that existed within the workers and the customers, especially when white customers lost interest in her performances. Brooks had noticed that black dancers did not get to dance in the private pleasure booth, and brought up the issue with Baker, only to get shot down because white customers had little interest in the black dancers. She realized from this experience that "all the Black women at the Lusty Lady were attractive, we just did not do as well economically as other dancers" (Brooks 253). Because of this issue, she wanted to unite and organize amongst Black dancers to bring forth the issues of the unfair treatment of the Black dancers. What led her to unite and organize was that although she felt like the Lusty Lady is supposed to be like a family, the relationship between the white and colored dancers were like, what she calls a "melting pot' theory-we were all supposed to get along without any dialogue about racism, even though we were clearly being discriminated against because of our race" (Brooks 254). Although uniting and organizing did not solve the issues of fair scheduling in the private pleasure booth, it did help the colored dancers get more money per hour. From this experience, as a black woman, she had learned that she will continue to fight against issues of racism and that she does not stand alone on these issues.

Jackson Belle, "A Matter of Pride: Thoughts on Being a Bad Stripper"

In the article “A Matter of Pride: Thoughts on Being a Bad Stripper,” Jackson Belle discussed her experiences as a stripper. Working as a stripper does not always bring in good money which is why she explains how to be a good stripper, so as to earn more money like other strippers at her strip club. Sometimes she felt like she was not beautiful enough to be asked to dance for a customer or to earn good money even on a slow night. She learned from her experiences as a stripper that it is a part of her job “to aid him in his fantasy” (Belle 44). Although going against this notion of pleasing the men, she took pride in speaking to them to where she did not feel like she was an average woman. She realized that the customers possess some power because they are the ones who decide whether her bills are paid on time, among other things. It is where she came to realize that “it was a place where men came for the privilege of being male: male consumers and male spectators” (Belle 45). It became her personal mission to “maintain a pleasant demeanor” towards the customer. With her new attitude and attempt to befriend one of the young men at her job, she was able to earn a large amount of money.

Carol Queen, "The Four Foot Phallus"

In “The Four Foot Phallus,” Carol Queen talked about the first time she was exposed to porn at her graduate school because they wanted the students to be “desensitized” porn. Before going to going to graduate school, she was an anti-pornography feminist. She thought that pornography was awful and dirty. While watching “The Fuckarama!,” she began to come to terms with her sexuality; “the promised desensitization didn’t seem to be happening to me; my clit was positively buzzing. Everything made me horny, even things I thought I’d never do” (Queen 141). It first struck her when she saw a penis, which she stated to have “taken up four feet of wall” because she had never really looked at a penis that close up before. Because of this discovery, Queen realized that pornography is educational. Pornography had helped Queen discover her orgasm and she states that “the visuals of a porn movie [had] simultaneously inspire and distract me” (143).

This experience helped her change her views on pornography, which she thought as an anti-feminist that pornography was only really made for men but now exposed to pornography she understood that it is also for women. After watching “The Fuckarama,” the penis had changed her in a way that she states: “The four-foot phallus-[had became] a much deeper acquaintance with my own eroticism” (144). She was no longer afraid of sex, but began to explore sex. Queen was able to not only explore but be in touch with her sexuality which she has never done before.

Celine Parrenas Shimizu, "Sex for Sale: Queens of Anal, Double, Triple, and the Gang Bang: Producing Asian/American Feminism in Pornography"

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Interview with Barbara DeGenevieve

With the pleasure of Barbara DeGenevieve coming to our class, we were able to view the pornography that she produces within the queer community that is different in comparison to the mainstream heterosexual and/or gay and lesbian porn. DeGenevieve is a professor at the School of Art Institute of Chicago and is an multimedia artist, writer and work in video, photography and performance. In the “Interview with Barbara DeGenevieve,” she talked about her website www.ssspread.com, which people pay a fee to subscribe to the site to view her production in the queer porn she produced. The reason that it is not free is because then she would not be able to pay the models for the work. Her work of queer pornography focuses on different types of body images, which she state “Every fetish and every body type imaginable-hairy women, fat people, men with small penises, grandmothers, the list goes on and on,” is represented in her work (DeGenevieve 142). The meaning of queer porn to DeGenevieve is much different than gay and lesbian porn because it is portrayed differently than the mainstream pornography that only portrays a certain kind of image. When Libidot asked DeGenevieve what queer’s sexuality mean to her, she states “Queer’ to me is different from ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian.’ Queers are more outrageous, less interested in fitting in or being culturally ‘normal’, and generally live within a community of social and political activism. Queer is very inclusive of gender deviations and variations that are not part of a more traditional ‘gay/lesbian’ sexuality” (DeGenevieve 144).

Annie Sprinkle and Gabrielle Cody "Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn"

Annie Sprinkle in Annie Sprinkle’s Herstory of Porn, is about her own personal experiences within the sex industry. It starts off showing her in the beginning of her career, leading to the middle of her career and the ending of her career. As she stands before an audience, there are seven phases which are illustrated in the sex film and clips that she was in. She went from mainstream pornography and transition herself into a feminist porn star. Sprinkle talked about her experience and her first exposure watching “Deep Throat.” She later starred in numerous porn movies directed and produced by men and wanted to make some of her own, where she is able to give a woman’s point of view. This is when she wrote Deep inside Annie Sprinkle and had become “the two biggest grossing porn films” (Sprinkle 51). After experiencing past co-stars dying from AIDS during her time, she wanted to promote safer sex. Although making a video in promoting safer sex, it had failed in the porn industry because people continue to use unsafe sex. She realized that the porn industry was not about safe sex, rather it was more about the money, “I realized that for the most part, the porn industry wasn’t a community that cared about people, but a business that really only cared about money. I was very disappointed” (Sprinkle 56). Towards the last phase of the “Annie Sprinkle’s Herstory of Porn, she wanted to directed a movie about mermaids, where there are an elder mermaid and a younger one, which would keep the tradition going.

Linda Williams, "Power, Pleasure and the 'Frenzy of the Visible"

Linda Williams, in her article Power, Pleasure and the“Frenzy of the Visible”, discusses the "stag film" and the history behind it. Stag films are usually represented and constructed for male audiences. They focus on the "fellatio" (the stimulation of the penis). Williams talked about the position that women take and how the phallus is a form of fetish. Marx defined fetish as "a mysterious thing", and in the movie Deep Throat, a woman is viewed as the other because she lacks sexuality. She was portrayed as a woman who does not enjoy sex very much and did not come; she went to the doctor and found out that the clitoris was in her throat. The doctor than instructs her how to penetrate herself, etc. As women have become the unknowing subject, "fetishization is an obvious way for the male subject to maintain the phallic economy of the one. Freudian fetishist attempts to preserve his own humanity at the expense of stressing the freakish inhumanity – the "horror" – of the female other" (Williams 114). Williams argues that the subjects of stag film are often women, and she explains how they are constructed in a way for the viewers to view the male penis and to make women invisible as a form of fetishism.

Laura Kipnis, "Disgust and Desire: Hustler Magazine" and "How to Look at Pornography"

Laura Kipnis in the chapter of Disgust and Desire: Hustler Magazine argues that Larry Flynt reinforce the first amendment "freedom of the press" (Kipnis 128) by publishing his magazine Hustler. A lot of people are not very fond of Flynt because of his magazine "Hustler," which is generally considered obscene. Flynt's magazine contrasts to the features of "Playboy," which is more standardized and made for the "male gaze." Hustler, oppositely of Playboy, sets "its mission to disturb and unsettle its readers, both psychosexually and sociosexually, by interrogating the typical men's magazine conventions of sexuality" (Kipnis 131). Hustler magazine has depicted pornography in a different way, aiming away from the typical mainstream pornography usually produced. Flynt represents different body images and is devoted to produced "grossness": an obsessive focus on the lower half of the body and on the processes (and products) of elimination. Its joke techniques are based on exaggeration and inversion, which have long been staples of pornographic political satire"(Kipnis 132). Hustler magazine exposes how we look at pornography, as Kipnis goes on discussing how people distinguish what is proper and what is improper. In How to Look at Pornography, Kipnis talks about the case of Daniel DePew, who was arrested and is now serving a thirty-three year sentence for creating child pornography. DePew was arrested for exchanging his ideas with the officers and is considered as a pervert. Kipnis uses Freud to argue that "disgust so often seeps over into sex to the child's arousal during parental hygiene ministrations. There are certain things we just don't want to know about ourselves and our formations as selves. These seem to be precisely what pornography keeps shoving right back at us" (qtd in Kipnis 171). In the DePew case, Kipnis argues that the jury had sentenced DePew according to the "culture, in coming to terms with the existence of pornography" (Kipnis 205). As pornography has become a part of the capitalist world where it will not disappear anytime soon, Kipnis hopes that we are able to learn a "few things from its civil disobedience" (Kipnis 206).

Patricia Hill Collins "Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies and Images of Black Feminity"

Patricia Hill Collins in her article Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies, and Images of Black Femininity discusses the history behind the word "freak". In the nineteenth century, “freak” was a description for people who were perceived as different, far from what the mainstream conceived as normal, and who were displayed in circus sideshows, such as in the famous story of Sarah Bartmann. Bartmann was a part of a medical experiment that "illustrate[ed] how Western sciences constructed racial difference by searching the physiology of Black people's bodies for sexual deviance" (Collins 120). Now the word "freak" is being redefined into a new way of understanding. Artists such as Missy Elliot and Rick James use this word to mean "the kind of ‘kinky’ sexuality... [as] boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality soften and shift, so do the meanings of freaky as well as the practices and people thought to engage in them" (Collins 121). The term "freak" categorizes with such terms as “nigger”, “bitch”, etc., which are being used in everyday speech as a form of resistance to their original meanings. Collins also distinguishes between class differences and how these terms are used differently in the African American community. For example, the working class could use the term “bitch” to mean being "aggressive, loud, rude, and pushy" (Collins 123), whereas women who are represented as being a "Black Bitch [who is] super tough, super strong… are often celebrated" (Collins 124). Some African American women rappers take words such as "ho" – which is considered the language of racism, sexism and heterosexism – and redefine it by the female sexuality. In the African American community, such words as "ho" could be represented as "female sexuality [which is] part of women's freedom and independence" (Collins 127). The social construction of beauty has changed throughout time, allowing Black women to appear more beautiful, such terms used are now reconstructed and now modified into a new meaning.

Kobena Mercer, "Reading Racial Fetishism: the Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe"

Kobena Mercer in Reading Racial Fetishism: the Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe argues that Mapplethorpe objectified black men according to the way the dominant "white" culture viewed blackness, the "black male sexuality is perceived as something different, excessive" (Mercer 173). Mercer discusses the photographs Mapplethorpe creates within the male sexuality, which are created in a way to reinforce the stereotypes of how black men are represented in the mainstream. Mapplethorpe photographs black male nudes and uses them as objects within the male gaze. Mercer compared Mapplethorpe's photographs of black male sexuality as a form "within the dominant tradition of the female nude, patriarchal power relations are symbolized by the binary relation in which, to put it crudely, men assume the active role of the looking subject while women are passive objects to be looked at" (Mercer 175). Mercer further argued that Mapplethorpe's photographs of the black male sexuality is a form of the master/slave relationship. In the sense that these photographs are like the form of the reinforcement of the master and slave, Mapplethorpe uses black men as the object, as it is he who instructs the black men in a certain way. These photographs operate under what is considered the "male gaze," which predominantly consists of mainstream middle class white men who often look at nude women in this way. Mercer, however, changes his analysis of the photographs by Mapplethorpe because he tries to encounter these pictures differently. Rather than positioning himself as the subject, Mercer admits, "sharing the same desire to look, I am forced to confront the rather unwelcome fact that I would actually occupy the same position in the fantasy of mastery that I said was that of the white male subject!" (Mercer 193). These photographs of black male sexuality can be very contradictory because one can interpret them as very racist but one can also view them as a "shocking" form of art, resisting the representation of sexuality within the mainstream.

Michel Foucault...History of Sexuality

Michel Foucault's book The History of Sexuality is a very complex book to understand. Foucault talks about the discourse of sexuality and how the dominant culture represents sexuality. An example of this is marriage and its representation within the heterosexual context. Heterosexual marriage in this case is economically useful because the wife will depend on the husband to support the family so that the state does not have to. Sex is usually thought of as occurring after marriage: "The sex of husband and wife was beset by rules and recommendations. The marriage relation was the most intense focus of constraints; it was spoken of more than anything else; more than any other relation, it was required to give a detailed accounting of itself. It was under constant surveillance" (Foucault 37). Foucault discusses the constant surveillance we face in society and how society structures human beings from childhood onwards. Sexuality has been constructed in various forms: "the sexuality of doctor and patient, teacher and student, psychiatrist and mental patient, those which haunt spaces (the sexuality of the home, the school, the prison) all form the correlation of exact procedures of power" (Foucault 47). Although marriage has become a part of state concern, it allows for those who are married to gain certain benefits and protection within the state. Marriage supports the idea of heterosexual monogamy, which the dominant religion practices as "politically conservative" (Foucault 37). The upper class would support the heterosexual married couple for instant medical benefits rather than supporting a single person. Being married allows a couple to register with the state and gain protection. In the case of a divorce, it becomes a constant surveillance and policing of the state. An example of this is if a person cheated when they are married; the state protects the other person and helps in ensuring alimony from the person who cheated because cheating, in this case, is perceived as wrong by the state.