Pro-Porn Rhetoric and the Cinema of Monika Treut

In this essay, I ferret out points of confluence between Treut's queer agenda and anti-porn feminism, arguing that the discourse on the films, unlike the films themselves, produces a simplistic figure of opposition, namely anti-porn feminism. This results in a fake and unproductive dichotomy whereby tolerant, pro-queer, fun-loving, pro-porn feminists protect the rights of the sexually oppressed against puritanical, anti-queer, militant, anti-porn feminists. Such a dichotomy undermines the important questions that Treut's films pose and that encourage us all, pro- and anti-porn feminists alike, to consider what our erotic options as women, lesbians, and/or feminists might be.