How to Deal With Sex Racism in Pornography

I originally began writing this article to explore sex racism in pornography, particularly focusing on the portrayal of women. I aimed to examine the portrayal of Asian and Black women as submissive in media. And how it upholds sexual stereotypes and expectations due to widespread societal racism.

I expanded my article to address Rachel Bell’s piece in Broadly after finding an interview with James Deen. He discussed racial inequality in porn casting. Intrigued by Deen’s tarnished reputation due to abuse allegations, I wanted to hear his perspective on racism.

Addressing Sex Racism In Pornography

Rachel Bell could have tackled industry-wide racism but chose to highlight women opting out of scenes with men of colour, labeled as “disgusting and annoying.” This narrows sex racism to women shunning interracial scenes, ignoring wider issues and women’s experiences, except for a brief mention of the pay gap for women of colour.

<p”>Realizing the limitations, I broadened my article to include discussions about men, aiming to explore issues affecting both genders in adult films across heterosexual and LGBTQ+ contexts, focusing on race, gender, and sexuality.

Women in Pornography

Conversations about women in pornography frequently become intense. Typically, when this subject comes up, it revolves around how women perceive themselves and their bodies, the impact of pornography on women’s views of sexuality, and the treatment of women by men in adult scenes.

People often analyse it through a feminist lens, excluding other social ideologies. Discussing these concepts through a racial lens is rare. The reality is that pornography consumption affects women, whether or not they actively and explicitly consume it.

Gail Dines suggests that the proliferation of porn messages through images, media, pop culture is having a profound impact on all of us. She discusses the hyper sexualised images delivered by pop icons Britney, Beyonce, Rihanna, and even Nick Jonas.

These images create a false sense of power. In terms that there are many social groups which believe that conforming to this image will result in giving them power within the world through social acceptance, social standing and this ideal transcends culture.

Sexualisation is a cultural issue

When teaching in Thailand there was an afternoon in which the whole school community were celebrating with the local army. Being a military school, all students underwent scouts training. In the afternoon, the entire school gathered in the main oval, where music played, laughter and games ensued, and children enjoyed general frivolity. Meanwhile, foreign teachers congregated in one corner and local Thai teachers in another.

A Western pop song came on and the children began to engage in a dance off – small children, almost exclusively female with the exception of gender queer males, started dancing in ways reminiscent of the way that Britney or other hyper sexualised female performers would grind and dance against a pole or her male dancers.

Our group of foreign teachers was shocked by behavior that our home countries would find unacceptable. This left one of us particularly distressed. After discussing with our lead host teacher, we came to understand that the performers, according to their cultural standards, did not view the highly sexualised dancing as overtly sexual.

What occurred to them was simply an emulation of a western dance to them was devoid of any connotations of sex and sexuality. Indeed, the more ‘provocative’ that they danced, the more celebrated by their peers and teachers that they were. These children were not in a position to consume pornography. The messages of porn had already influenced them with the ideal that sex and sexuality were celebrated concepts.

Media Can Create A Sexual Imbalance

>We can explore this further through Dines scathing critique of Cosmopolitan magazines and its depiction that women are incapable of experiencing authentic pleasure. The pages of Cosmo, primarily targeting developing teenage girls, suggest that a girl’s sexual pleasure should align with a boy’s, implying what she enjoys and desires should match what he wants and enjoys. The magazine, as a whole, is all about him, his needs, wants, desires, and most importantly, about his orgasm rather than about hers.

The idea spreads through pornography, which seeks the female body as a supplementary tool for his pleasure, focusing on penile penetration culminating in his orgasm. This is exemplified through a pornographic scene generally concluding with his ejaculation. As Dine highlights, discourses on female pleasure originate from being an object of desire rather than a subject with desires. This perspective leads to the reduction of women to stereotypical roles within pornography.

How Do Women Interpret Sexual Racism Stereotypes?

Lets now expand this to look through femaleness through a lens of race. We often see portrayals of Black and Latina women reduced to their curvaceous body parts or characterised by attitudes that need taming throughout the scene. Once again, we can see the influences of society within pornography, and pornography influencing society.

Black women in pornography ties in closely with American historical culture. Due to the disparity between White and Black in the nation’s past, there is a certain fetishisation between interracial porn. This typically involves taming a white woman by using a ‘sub-class’ black male with a larger, and thus perceived superior, penis, but it also applies when the roles are reversed.

The culture that women and men of colour are sub-class has existed throughout American history and draws its roots through Slavery. Casey Calvert explains that interracial porn is an American construct, with its associated stereotypes continuing to shape modern social policies. The concept of a male, once seen as a slave, overpowering a white woman with an overly large phallus, compared to white men, embodies racial and gender inequalities and underpins the fascination with interracial pornography.

The stereotype when it comes to women of colour is that they are overbearing, and in need of control. The idea is, however false, that there is a profound difference in the size of white cock to black cock, and that woman will be more than satisfied by the white, albeit ‘smaller’ conquering cock. Issues surrounding men and women of colour see them reduced to concepts such as body parts, attitude, and black thuggery. Producers often instruct men and women of color to play up their ancestry for the camera, aiming to make their portrayal more realistic.

Sex Racism Typically Examines Active Traits

Time and time again, we see arguments directed at porn which discusses violence within porn, and the objectification of women. These arguments generally examine active traits, where someone does something to someone else, either through physical movement or verbal abuse. It is less common to view this through the passive lens. If we determine that domestic violence against women is a male issue, then shouldn’t we also take the same approach to pornographic content?

The fetishisation of Asian women relates to submission, the devaluation of their physical attributes and of being child-like. Porn portrays Asian women as enjoying submission and embracing domination, often wearing pig tails, erupting into giggles, excessively smiling, and fully embracing infantilization in every sense of the word.

The set-up of a scene involving an Asian female will relegate itself to seeing the actress in a subservient role, or relying on poor English speaking skills, where the male actor will become her saviour and she will be eternally grateful.

Blurring The Lines Of Sex Racisim

Amy Sun in her article in Everyday Feminism links the history of the Asian woman Image to colonialisation and the blurring of lines between services and sex. She discusses that the image of subservience is reliant on colonialisation. For the most part, sub-servient jobs such as nail parlours and massage places, don’t require many language skills to provide services. Faced with displacement, and an invasion of foreigners, Asian people had to assimilate and adapt in order to survive.

This had led to racist notions such as Asian women being reduced to the physicality of their vaginas with the assumption that all Asian women are small and tight. Amy Sun paints this discourse as a counterpoint to black males and big black cocks to reinforce the idea of Orientalism being defined as the discursive practice of reinforcing the dichotomy of ‘us’ vs ‘them’, and “east” vs “west”. This issue becomes increasingly prominent when porn is produced for, and consumed by westerners.

Pornography Is A Vehicle For Sex Racism Through Fantasy

It is clear that sex racism exists as a result of history. It has become ingrained within mainstream consciousness, and gives a seemingly legitimate platform for racism through the confusing and delicate tangling of stereotypical thought. Not everyone considers pornography racist, whether due to careful consideration or ignorance. Many view porn simply as a sex scene, without acknowledging its racial implications. Marty Klein is one such author who disregards the idea of sex racism within pornography.

<p”>He critiques Gail Dines as having an issue with the idea of pornography, and not ‘racist’ pornography. The crux of his argument is that pornography is a ‘vehicle for sexual fantasy’ and he exclaims that you’ll see racial stereotypes in porn with absolutely no effort. He suggests that the ‘racism’ primarily concerns the idea that people of color are considered sexual objects. He argues if we would consider it less racist if we saw a small black penis disappointing a woman? Or if we saw a small Asian woman demanding sex and refusing to let her male counterpart go, until she had had enough.

In an idealistic world, Klein is right, however he in turn neglects to acknowledge the relationship between pornography and society and how the values within a social context both influence and shape pornographic content and vice versa. I have discussed the inherent sex racism within Grindr and Tinder, the assumed sexuality of individuals through race, class and looks, and this is in part influential towards, and influenced by the Adult Industry.

Pay Inequality In Pornography Is An Example Of Sex Racism

Klein is correct on a stripped back simplistic definition of pornography as being a vehicle for sexual fantasy. He suggests that the concept of ‘racism’ primarily revolves around the idea that people of color are seen as sexual objects.This is an example of outright sex racism.

He also makes reference to pornography which contains small black penises, and a dominant Asian woman  – which goes against dominant discursive practices of porn. The fact that scenes of this nature are rare in any type of porn other than home-produced should dampen his triumph in acknowledging this.

With the exception of humiliation scenes, after searching for videos with the tags ‘Small black cock’ I found nothing. Although dominant Asian women could be found, they still conformed to certain expectations that enforced dominant racist discourses. The reality is, that social constructs dictate pornography content and vice versa.

Whilst the issue of sex racism surrounds women, and concerns women in negative ways, the same can also be said about men. The fetishisation of black men, the queering of masculinity and gay femme, and the expectation of straight male porn performers.

This will be explored in our next article. We’ll explore the notion that while the scene centers around the male’s pleasure and climax, he is considered secondary to the starring female.

All this and more, next week!

Author: Stephen Smith – BA Of Social Sciences, M.Ed