Dan Savage Touts ‘Ethical Porn’ in Latest Column

SEATTLE—Sex advice columnist Dan Savage has never shied away from readers penning letters for advice on porn watching, and Monday’s Savage Love column was no different. Addressing a “Savage Lover Letter of the Day” from “Previously Horrified, Recently Not Overcritical” (PORNO)—a 26-year-old Italian girl who recently move to Sweden and started dating a Swedish guy—Savage contacted Carlyle Jansen, producer of the Toronto International Porn Festival (formerly the Feminist Porn Awards), for some assistance in answering. PORNO writes: “I've always refused to watch porn because even as a teenager I felt it was primarily geared towards men and mostly unfair to women. I didn't even know what feminism was back then, but I found porn mildly disturbing and couldn't get off watching a woman being fucked in every orifice by oversized men with oversized dicks. Now that I've matured into a full-blown feminist I understood porn doesn't have to be bad if everyone involved has given their consent and is ok with doing what they're doing. I still have a feeling, though, that the porn industry is dangerous for women and a lot of the content that can be found online isn't really consensual and ethical.” Her desire, she continues, is to start watching adult material with her boyfriend, but she wants to find feminist porn, and “ethical straight porn which is meant for women?” Savage issued PORNO there is “plenty of sex-positive, alternative, and feminist porn out there, porn you can enjoy zero guilt, porn created ethically and sustainably.” Jansen was more direct with her answer: “Erika Lust is popular, more so among straight folks. She has storylines and erotic depth without the long up-close-genital shots and with more interesting cinematography. Alternatively, you can find many smaller independent productions by folks such as Ovidie, Ms. Naughty, the Madame, Jennifer Lyon Bell, Petra Joy, Lucie Blush, Shine Louise Houston, and the FeministPornAwards.com website. You can view awarded feminist films and categories such as kink, queer, straight, romantic, etc depending on interest.” Though Savage neglects to inform PORNO that adult content produced by the many reputable studios in the industry is consensual, he does hammer home one more important point: “And it's important to note that if we wanna see more feminist porn in the world and on the web, we have to support that kind of porn—and by ‘support,’ of course, I mean ‘consume,’ PORNO, and the only kind of consumption that matters here is the kind that creates a viable market, i.e. paid consumption. … If you gets all your porn from Tumblr and/or the various tubes, you forfeit your right to complain about the porn that's out there. Buy the kind of porn you like and more of the porn you like will be made.” See the full column at TheStranger.com.