The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure

This thrilling anthology celebrates the power of desire, bringing together personal essays, manifestos, and scholarly research, turning the spotlight on an industry where feminism is thriving.

The Feminist Porn Book weaves together writing by producers, actors, consumers, and scholars of feminist pornography, investigating not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists “do” porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world’s most lucrative and growing industries.

With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, Lynn Comella, Jane Ward, Ariane Cruz, Kevin Heffernan, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the arguments of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women’s movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and racial and sexual minorities produce power and pleasure.

“I predict this volume is going to find its way onto the bedside tables of several generations of American women. . . . At the core of the book is the question: Can porn coexist with the principles of feminism? No matter how one ultimately adjudicates this question, The Feminist Porn Book leaves no doubt about the inherent value in the inquiry itself.” —Melissa Harris-Perry, author of Sister Citizen