Education In Porn

After a screening of Hot and Bothered:Feminist Pornography, there was a group discussion regarding women and porn, featuring Jack Hafferkamp of Libido, Carolyn Caizzi from Early to Bed Productions, and Becky Goldberg, the maker of the documentary. Most interesting stuff:

Woman [In the audience]: I'm back in school at DePaul, working a lot with anthropology and the idea of sex and how it empowers women, etc. Basically, answering this lady in asking you, I guess, the idea of sex, anthropologically speaking, is a power dynamic and there are many women whose agenda has been to, because they felt wounded, because they had felt raped or pillaged or whatever we go through in our society, that sex is kinda scary. So I think what you are up against is a bunch of fear from this society that's been told that the power dynamic is really that and you're trying to say "trust"-that the power dynamic can be really healthy and it can be good and so what if there's somebody in bed that's stronger, one weaker, what the gap is. How do you guys feel about that?

Becky: I think it's partly an uneducation or an unsocialization and I think that really in our society, porn might not be fully accepted. I think that's how it is. But I definitely think the communication needs to happen, more so than it does now in our culture. I think that the communication between parents and their children needs to be more open, the sex education that happens in the schools. People on a base level need to be more comfortable with their sexuality, in general. Before you get to whether or not you want to watch porn, it's like you have to be OK with who you are, OK with your body. From my perspective, I think one of the common problems feminist pornography has from getting out there is that women don't even think that they can watch pornography and that it's not even made for them, so why would they even go there? So I think, though, at its base, it has to do with education.

Image via PostSecret.