Why we need feminist porn

Feminist pornography has evolved from its beginning with female porn icons and sex-positive academic feminists. It seeks to both address existing issues of sexism within the mainstream pornography industry as well as create new spaces and paradigms for pornography that challenge mainstream tropes.

It also strives to create fair and favourable working conditions for performers. Through these many changes, feminists’ relationship with pornography has shifted from battles over what it reveals about structures of power to experiments in what it can change in structures of power.

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Pornography has become the way that people learn about sex. It is the new sex education, as actual sex education is scarce and highly limited. By depicting authentic, non-scripted, diverse representations of men, women, and gender-queer people, feminist pornography has the potential to sexually educate and re-orient the public and thus revolutionise sexual relationships.

Olivia Tarplin is a native of Jersey City in the US who received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Global Studies with concentration on Gender and Media Studies from The New School in 2014. Her research has centred around issues of gender, politics, sexuality, media, and specifically pornography.

Also read: How watching porn is ruining your sex life

Focusing on the thriving industry of feminist pornography, she has spent the past two years studying how experiments in feminist pornography can change the widespread sexual culture and how porn made ethically can act as a new and improved way to educate the masses about sex.

In keeping with these interests, during her time in college she co-designed new and innovative ways to disseminate sex-positive sex/health education, and implemented these strategies by leading sex education workshops in Freshmen classrooms around the campus. She currently works in New York City in the non-profit world.

Also read: How I discovered sex in middle India

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community. Learn more here.