As outlined above, the issue of who speaks and who is silenced is essential to explore in the feminist debate on pornography. One way to explore this is to analyse the positions of privilege that those involved in the debate occupy. We can see the existence of a hierarchy of power and speaking privileges, conceptualised as a pyramid. Similar to Rubin’s hierarchy of ‘good’
sex and ‘bad’ sex (2011), this privilege pyramid describes how academics are positioned at the top of this hierarchy, while current self-identified sex workers occupy the lowest position, enjoying the least amount of privilege. In this dispositif, victim positioning cannot be navigated to include expert status, intelligence and respectability unless one confesses their victimhood and ‘bad’ woman status.
Academia has had a colonial tradition of speaking for the Other (Spivak, 1988), and of denying the opportunity of the other to become a speaking subject, instead framing them as objects to be spoken for. Taylor highlights Sartre and his examination of this power dynamic: the champion of sincerity demands:
‘that he consitute himself as a thing, that he should entrust his freedom to his friend as a fief, in order that the friend should return it to him subsequently- like a suzerain to his vassal’
(Sartre, 2003, cited in Taylor, 2010, p.178).
Through this process the object is seen to speak, but this is not a true voice as it is filtered through the academic, who does not approach the subject free of bias. Fabian argues, ‘there is no knowledge of the other which is not also a temporal, historical, a political act’ (1983, cited in Mills, 1997, p.111), and this knowledge is also affected by class, race and gender.
This hierarchy of privilege is exemplified in the graphic that I have designed below:
Privilege Pyramid Fig.2.
As discussed in the preceding section, the battle for control of the descriptor ‘expert’ has generally mean this term is reserved for those above this line of respectability, along with the signifier ‘authority’. The lived experiences of people such as Sprinkle are not permitted by academics such as Jeffreys to be considered for inclusion above this line. Outsider experience is viewed as more respectable above this line. The performers have the most expertise as the authors of their own experiences, but the external writers of their experiences are instead considered the real experts, and negative experience trump positive experiences. Thus those who report negative experiences, or self-identify as victims (forced/trafficked) are higher on the
pyramid than self-identified sex workers, who are subject to accusations of being brainwashed (Hartley, 2017; Rubin, 2011). This hierarchy also reflects the intersection of race and privilege, and highlights how non-sex worker white Western academics are afforded more status than sex workers of colour. This access to privilege and legitimacy also has an impact on the production and acceptance of what is considered to be knowledge.
Teo additionally argues that epistemological violence is also likely to be asymmetrical, as the value of knowledge held by a ‘respectable person’ such as a scientist is given a higher status than that of a lay person. He argues that this inequality in status means that epistemological violence: ‘executed by scientists cannot be countered by public rejection because the name of science has a higher status than theoretical criticism expressed by a marginalized Other’ (2010, p.299). This is demonstrated in the pyramid above. Spivak agrees that this violence is asymmetrical, stating that when the other is spoken for, it can result in the ‘asymmetrical obliteration of the trace of the Other in its precarious Subject-ivity’ (1988, p.76). Spivak frames native knowledge as subjugated knowledge in this framing. It is knowledge that must filter through a respectable source before it is considered legitimate knowledge.
These ‘respectable’ institutions (academia, government, mainstream media) function as the dispositif that uphold the episteme that sex work is a negative experience. However, as Foucault points out, where there is power there is also resistance. Sex workers have utilized new forms of media to connect with other sex workers and form a community. One way this has occurred is through the use of blogs, but predominantly social media has proved to be a medium which provides a visible platform for engagement. Twitter especially has served as a vehicle to being seen as a speaking subject, although more recently this has been challenged as twitter appears to shadowban those working in the pornography industry, hiding their
profiles. However, sex workers have utilised the space to challenge existing narratives about sex work, utilizing hashtags such as #sexworktwitter to build community and interact with clients, fans, academics, politicians, and more. Challenges to campaigns such as Prop 60, the attempt to force pornography performers to use condoms was mounted online, with performers tweeting their fan base and asking them to vote, and politicians were also lobbied. Chapter Six addresses this in more detail.
Challenges to this harnessing of power and resistance are never far away, with these attempts reduced to a hashtag such as #twitterfeminism, which is afforded less legitimacy than academia.. Indian sex worker Molli Desi argues that dismissal of these mediums is ‘a disingenuous argument and disqualifies our attempts to participate’ (2014). This is a dismissal of the deliberate choice of sex workers to use technology to contribute to discourse, a process Fairclough calls the ‘technologization of discourse’ (1995, p.3.) It is important to highlight this denial of respectability through an intersectional lens as it shows a lack of privilege afforded to platforms that are more accessible to people of colour and lower socio-economic groups than traditional academia. Sex workers who use social media platforms such as Twitter are dismissed as being non-representative and privileged, as opposed to sex workers interviewed by academics. Desi explains how this feels to her:
Before I spoke English and could use Twitter I was [considered to be] representative of some young Indian sex workers. Now I have broken through that technological and cultural glass ceiling I am no longer representative and I can be ignored (2014).
She goes on to state that this approach of privileging the research of the academic over the experience of the worker continues the Othering of sex workers by silencing them. Desi argues this process ‘also allows for the unheard voices of my still “representative” friends to be appropriated and spoken for by others (2014). This exclusion from the discourse also can be
seen in the control of how new knowledge is created, and the acceptance of new terminology used by those in the industry.
This argument over representation is seen in Jeffreys’ discussion of Sprinkle, and in Ireland as seen on the Pat Kenny Tonight show. Immediately after Irish pornography performer Amanda Norton told her story of working in the industry, an academic named Patricia Casey immediately dismissed her as not representative. Another example of this dismissal in regards to being representative occurred to performer Minnie Scarlet, who explains how she has experienced denial of autonomy over her own experiences:
I have felt dismissed and silenced by feminists who thought their research was more credible than my first-hand experience. There is room for both opinions and both things to be talked about, but the moment their research is given more representation than my voice, it’s a problem (Rankin, 2013).
She points out how intuition and other people's lived experiences trump her own subjective experience:
There have been feminists who have spoken over my sex worker peers and myself about how degrading porn is because you can’t prove what is consensual and not.
They know this because of things they have read and they “know a couple of girls in the porn industry.” Hello! I’m a sex worker who works in porn!’ (Rankin, 2013).
Exploring power-knowledge in this debate means asking who is deemed to be representative, and who is not permitted this status, which is linked again to respectability and expert status.
What is the impact of being denied a speaking voice because others decide on a person representativeness? Performer Conner Habib discussing this silencing: ‘What's more dehumanizing: showing your butt cheeks to an audience or having someone tell you that you don't exist?’ (2015). Finding agency through linguistic activism or establishing a place to speak can remove the veil of invisibility from the performer, but even then they are not guaranteed acceptance. Additionally, they face further risks such as stigmatisation, as discussed in Chapter
Five; risks that are asymmetrical as the person dismissing them does not experience the same risk.