Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo di pornografia femminista

Abstract

The paper takes stock of the situation of Italian feminist pornography by considering it from the background of the U.S. and U.K. debate about the relationship between women, feminism and porn. In the first part, it examines the transformation of pornography into an epistemic object by the so-called Porn Studies and the ambiguous definition they provide for this. The paper focuses on the feminist political programme concerning porn as it emerges from The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and the work of well-known feminist directors and performers like Tristan Taormino, Maddison Young and Erika Lust. After illustrating the broader international context, the article directs its attention to the Italian scene and takes into account Monica Strambini’s and Le ragazze del porno’s initiatives. The final results of this investigation are essentially ambiguous: on the one hand, feminist pornography promises emancipation through pornography – by opening new realms to the desire – on the other, the new feminist porn looks imbued with a hidden twenty-first-century Victorian ethos.