Women in power in porn

"I'm sorry
if I sound distracted.
I'm watching
A League of Their Own," says the breathy voice
on the other
end of the telephone.
"And Tom Hanks just peed
in the dugout."

We both giggle. For a moment, I forget I'm talking to world-famous sex kitten, symbol and legend Nina Hartley. Cooped up in a hotel room in suburban Illinois, she says, "I've only seen the beginning and want to see how it turns out."

It's a perfectly symbolic story: a group of feisty women make their mark in the sexist, male-dominated world of pro baseball. Hartley herself is part of another group of feisty women making their mark in a male-dominated industry: the world of pornography. And I'm watching to see how it all turns out. In 1983, while a sophomore in college, Hartley started dancing in San Francisco strip clubs to fulfill her exhibitionist fantasies and meet other sex-positive women; she made her first adult film, Educating Nina, directed by Juliet Anderson, in 1984. "For me, being in the adult industry was not just a fantasy thing, it was also political," she says. Before she began dancing, she asked herself some tough questions: "Could there be a feminist sex performer? If there was a feminist sex performer, what would she say? What would she feel? What would she believe? I knew if I got into the business, it would be in order to be an advocate for the industry to the media."

In her quest for answers, Hartley has performed in, directed and produced hundreds of porn movies in more than a decade. She has made films in nearly all porn's subgenres: mainstream hardcore hetero (Debbie Duz Dishes), porn with a plot (The Secret Life of Nina Hartley), lesbian porn (Suburban Dykes), feminist porn (Candida Royalle's The Bridal Shower) and even "amateur" porn (Nina, Shayla and Kylie's Barcelona Home Video). Her latest project is writing and directing a series of how-to videos, on topics ranging from oral sex to swingers, for video distributor Adam & Eve: "I've combined my degree in nursing, my ability to talk to people and teach them about sex and my desire to teach into one project," she says. Hartley is also an outspoken advocate for the adult film industry, speaking everywhere from the erotic-dancing circuit to colleges across the country.

Multitasking seems to be popular with women in porn. When I ask Marci Hirsch about her title at Vivid Video, one of the leading producers of adult films run by her brother, Steve Hirsch, she says she doesn't really have one. That's a typical answer from this serious, straightforward, energetic 38-year-old. In six years, she has become head of production and supervises everything from scheduling to postproduction of 90 new titles each year. She also manages the nine "contract girls" who appear in Vivid's films, as well as PR, marketing and mail-order sales. If that weren't enough to keep her busy, she is a divorced mother of two young children. She doesn't sugarcoat anything with them, either: "They know what I do for a living," she says. "I won't be a hypocrite. I tell them, 'I make movies for adults, and when you are adults, you can watch them if you want to.'"

One of Marci Hirsch's goals is to foster greater acceptance and understanding of her industry. "We've gone pretty mainstream," she says. "I'd like to be accepted as legitimate. Hollywood makes movies, we make movies. Our budgets are smaller and we produce and release faster, but the process is the same. There aren't orgies in the office all day long."

Like Vivid's Marci Hirsch, Joy King has no official title, but there is no doubt she is a key player at Wicked Pictures, another highly touted adult film company. Polished, savvy and articulate, King directs the company's PR and marketing; she also manages Wicked's Web site (www.wickedweb.com), its line of DVD products and sales to distributor Adam & Eve.

A 14-year industry veteran, King had never seen a porn film when she got her start almost by accident ("I took a job in the accounting department of a company for the great benefits, and it happened to be an adult company"). She stayed for the supportive work environment: "I never thought there was anything negative about adult movies, and I didn't have many predetermined ideas about what the business was going to be like," she explains. "The people in this industry are really honest and open and nice, and the people in so-called legitimate industries tend to be backstabbers and full of political bullshit."

In light of a recent HIV scare in the industry, some companies--Wicked and Vivid among them--now require all actors to use condoms. King is adamant about the responsibility the porn studios have to their audience. "I think we need to consider that every thing we do is seen by a large number of people. We influence people and we do contribute things to society. I think as an industry, we have an obligation to promote safe sex." King hopes "to be one of the people responsible for getting our industry into the mainstream. And I hope I give the industry a female voice."

Candida Royalle has seen the porn world from both sides of the camera. A former adult film actress, she founded Femme Productions in 1984 in order to forge new territory: videos that depict realistic, compassionate, responsible sex and, perhaps most importantly, are created with a female viewer in mind. "There are really two categories [of videos]," Royalle explains. "There are how-to and pure fantasy, and there's really nothing in between. I try to put more realism in my work...you can still have good, hot, nasty fun, but...if people are going to apply what they see to their own lives, let's give them some information that might enhance their lives."

As a producer-director, she has achieved her vision with a body of work that is intelligent, innovative and, yes, sexy. Her techniques on the set are also creative and are apparent in the final product: "I pretty much let whatever happens happen," she admits. "I'm not one of those filmmakers who demands that you get an erection, demands that you have a come shot. Some people come, some people don't. As a culture, we are too focused on goal-oriented sex.... No one gets coerced to do anything they don't like. They all like what's going on, and it shows."

Like Royalle, Nan Kinney wanted to make videos for a particular group of viewers: lesbians. In 1984, along with Debi Sundahl and Susie Bright, she founded On Our Backs, the first lesbian-produced lesbian sex magazine. The idea to create lesbian porn videos was a natural outgrowth of the magazine and their flourishing lesbian porn empire. In 1985, Sundahl and Kinney formed Fatale Video and released Shadows and Private Pleasures, two low-budget lesbian S&M videos. Fatale continued to produce titles like Suburban Dykes, Safe Is Desire and Dress Up for Daddy, until On Our Backs magazine was sold in 1994. Kinney then took over Fatale and Sundahl left to work on other projects. Known for their lesbian and S&M titles, Fatale's latest offering is Bend Over Boyfriend, a how-to video about women anally penetrating men. Kinney explains, "My main desire with Fatale is to keep doing lesbian videos, but titles like How to Female Ejaculate and Bend Over Boyfriend cross over into the sex-education market. They sell better and help finance the other projects. Bend Over Boyfriend fits into Fatale's mission: to present sexual practices that are authentic, alternative and not normally seen in mainstream porn."

IT'S NOT YOUR FATHER'S PORNOGRAPHY

Most of the women now in power positions in the porn industry grew up in the sexually liberating 70's and experienced first-hand the anti-sex, anti-porn crusade waged by some feminists in the 80's. They've seen the market change dramatically in the past two decades: beginning with video and cable television and followed by CD-ROMs, the Internet and DVD. These technological advances have made creating, distributing, viewing and buying porn easier; plus, attitudes toward the adult industry have shifted as well. In the last decade, a grassroots, pro-sex feminist movement has sprung up, more women have become involved in producing behind the scenes and women themselves are finally being seen as porn consumers. Bright, the founding editor of On Our Backs, worked on Fatale Videos and founded two of the classic anthology series of contemporary erotic literature, Herotica and Best American Erotica. "I knew less than nothing when I started," Bright says. "My total naivete made it possible to make outrageous, revolutionary erotic magazines and porn videos without ever considering what the 'market' or what the 'laws' were.... I feel both vindicated and sort of awestruck now. I knew there was a hungry female audience for great erotic fantasy, and now people take that for granted instead of finding it perverse."

When Femme Productions was born, Royalle was particularly interested in making adult films from a woman's point of view. "I felt what was missing from videos was women's sexuality--how to really pleasure a woman. I wanted to make the point that there is more to sex than just fucking."

Lisa Palac, former editor of both On Our Backs and Future Sex and author of the recent The Edge of the Bed: How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life (Little, Brown & Co.), reflects on how the industry has changed and how it has affected her own attitudes about porn: "Back in the mid-1980's, when radical anti-porn politics were at their peak, I felt that I could only talk about porn in the most positive, radiant light. Because the medium was under such vicious attack, I had to be an unequivocal opposing voice. But now I want to talk about the contradictions I feel when I come across something that is both arousing, funny and perhaps disturbing at the same time. I want to get deep."

THE PROS...

When asked about the positive aspects of the porn industry, Hartley, King and Hirsch point to the financial opportunities for women, particularly actresses. According to Variety, sales and rentals of adult videos topped a whopping $4.2 billion in 1997. And along with the money comes power. Hirsch says: "The business is centered around the girls. The girls are what sells. We don't have contract guys, we have contract girls. In the last few years, men have become more important, but they were always just window dressing. The girls can choose who they want to work with. They have a lot more say about what they do."

The women of grassroots companies like Fatale, On Our Backs and Femme have struggled to survive financially, and their toughest ongoing battles are about capital and resources. These women are more likely to point to the political and cultural impact of their products. Royalle believes that "people deserve to have good, explicit erotica available to them. We are fed so many subtle messages about our sexuality that are negative, that instill more shame, more confusion. I am trying to produce work that does the opposite and sends a message that sex is a wonderful gift in our lives."

...AND THE CONS The negative aspects of the adult industry often center around the misconceptions, contradictions and realities women face. Joy King says: "A lot of people feel that women are being degraded or exploited. Unfortunately, there are girls in this business who probably shouldn't be. I wish that when they get into it, they take it very slowly and cautiously and have a full understanding of what they are getting into." Likewise, Royalle identifies the hypocrisy women have to deal with: "We live in a culture that purchases these videos in huge volume and condemns the very women who appear in them.... I fear for the women in this industry because they've got to understand that the minute you present yourself in a public sexual performance, you have broken one of the greatest taboos a woman can break in this culture. You'd better be aware of it, be ready to face it, be honest with yourself about it and be O.K. about it, because you're going to be dealing with it all your life. You will always be seen differently as a result."

The growth of the industry has intensified competition, and while this can result in better products, it has also spawned a segment that attempts to push the envelope as far as it will go. King believes this has led to sex acts on video that are simply "inappropriate, irresponsible and disgusting." Hartley agrees that some videos have a "circuslike atmosphere": "Those movies are getting crazier and crazier: double penetration, double anal, double vaginal, triple anal, 250-person gang bang... It cannot get any more outrageous."

FUTURE SEX

Looking ahead, Hartley identifies some of the markets and themes that are still underexplored in mainstream porn: "Ninety percent of porn companies are geared to single men, and the people not getting serviced are women, couples, people who want nuance and emotion with their sex. Nuance and emotion are areas where the mainstream guys fall flat on their faces. That's where women and some of the married men in the business are going to come out on top as producers. The wave of the future will be more content-based pornography."

King predicts that we'll continue to see more acceptance and tolerance. She believes that Hollywood will become more interested in making sexually explicit films, and the boundaries between the adult industry and the film industry will become more fluid. Susie Bright agrees. "Barring a right-wing legislative or law-enforcement backlash, porn is losing its stigma both inside and out of the film business," she explains. "You'll see more crossover talent between porn, music, TV, Hollywood independents and even studio works."

"I just read in the Wall Street Journal that since the obscenity busts...have slowed considerably, more financiers are investing in the industry," says Palac, "which I hope will lead to higher quality films and a greater diversity of the sexual experience on film." It will be women like Palac, Bright, Hartley, Royalle, Kinney, King, Hirsch and others who will continue to influence, create and revolutionize pornography in the next millennium.