Introduction: Democratizing Pornography
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Published:September 2024
Indie porn is being heralded as a political vision, a mechanism for social change, and a revolutionary movement. With indie porn film festivals around the world, DIY, feminist, queer, artisanal, and fair trade porn is promising to diversify and democratize pornography. However, indie porn sits against legal, technological, and economic environments that pose major hurdles: a global gig economy that demands high volumes of material and expects it for free, discriminatory legal frameworks based on simplistic narratives about porn’s value and effects, algorithmic ranking systems that maintain racial stratification of the industry, and platforms that regularly prohibit, flag, and remove content. Through a combination of archival review, legal review, qualitative interviews, and “auto-pornographic ethnography,” this book explores the strategies indie porn producers deploy for visibility, survival, and structural change in the context of regulatory overkill and economic downturn.
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