Article

Sexualities
0(0) 1–18
The diverse economies ! The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1363460716675141
From paranoid readings sex.sagepub.com

to post-capitalist futures
Eleanor Wilkinson
University of Southampton, UK

Abstract
Anti-pornography campaigners have frequently claimed that porn studies need to take
the economics of pornography seriously, yet often this amounts to little more than the
idea that pornography is a capitalist product. This article brings together J.K Gibson-
Graham’s work on post-capitalism and Eve Sedgwick’s notion of ‘paranoid’ and ‘repara-
tive’ reading in order to think about the performative effects of the narratives we use to
talk about the pornography industry. It proposes a move away from a capitalocentric
understanding of online pornography towards a ‘diverse economies’ approach: one that
demonstrates the multitude of ways in which pornography exists outside of the rubric
of capitalism. This helps to avoid the affective state of paranoia and helplessness that
narratives of the all-powerful global porn industry so often create, whilst also allowing
for a more nuanced understanding of the legal regulation of pornography. The article
concludes with some thoughts as to how a diverse economies approach might better
enable us to assess recent attempts to regulate online pornography within Britain,
noting attempts at regulation may have an adverse effect on not-for-profit, amateur,
or peer-to-peer pornography, whilst benefiting mainstream corporate pornography
producers.

Keywords
Capitalism, censorship, economics, feminism, internet

While Web 2.0 has been argued to have changed the entire media landscape, its
impacts appear to have been particularly pronounced in the realms of pornog-
raphy, with new platforms blurring the boundaries of producer/consumer and

Corresponding author:
Dr Eleanor Wilkinson, Geography and Environment, University of Southampton,
SO17 1BJ, UK.
Email: e.k.wilkinson@soton.ac.uk
2 Sexualities 0(0)

amateur/professional (Paasonen, 2010). For such reasons, it is argued that the user-
generated content of ‘Porn 2.0’ could have democratizing potential (Barcan, 2002;
Kibby and Costello, 2001; Slater, 1998). In some accounts, it is claimed that this
might ultimately undermine the radical feminist conception of pornography as the
ultimate expression of patriarchal power. For, as Kath Albury (2003: 198) notes,
‘[i]nternet porn offers a tremendous challenge to traditional arguments about what
porn is and what it does . . . [it] challenges the presumption that all porn is designed
to support phallic supremacy’. However, research into the alternative ways in
which pornography is produced and consumed has frequently been dismissed by
anti-pornography scholars as a trivial self-indulgent distraction from the real harm
porn does. Scholars who refuse to see pornography as a singular entity are
reproached for naively focusing on the margins, and thus overlooking the misogyn-
istic aesthetics that are commonplace within mainstream pornography. Any
attempts to complicate our understandings of pornography is often met with the
accusation that such work is adopting an uncritical ‘pro-pornography’ approach
(see Attwood and Smith, 2014 for an overview). Some anti-pornography scholars
have therefore suggested that we need to return to the ‘proper objects’ of porn
studies, wherein pornography is narrowly defined as a misogynistic product that
serves in the interest of capital (see Boyle, 2006; Dines, 2010).
In this article I argue that attempts to frame pornography as always capitalistic
are profoundly limited, as such a framework can only manage to capture just one
dimension of the diverse economies of online pornography. Any attempt to limit
the boundaries of porn studies would be misguided, as such a narrow definition
would leave us with little space for hope and resistance within the realms of
mediated sexual relations. Building on Eve Sedgwick’s (2003) notion of ‘paranoid
reading’ I examine the potentially politically paralyzing negative affects that arise
when we depict a monolithic unstoppable ‘global porn industry’. Specifically, I
outline some of the reasons why studying alternatives to mainstream capitalist
pornography should not be dismissed as a trivial distraction away from the
harms of the porn industry. This article seeks to move away from characterizations
that impose a singular economic logic on the way in which online sexual content is
produced and consumed. Primarily, the article is a response to those anti-pornog-
raphy campaigners who have claimed that researchers need to take the economics
of pornography seriously, but reduce this to little more than the idea that pornog-
raphy is always a capitalist product (see Bray, 2011; Jeffreys, 2009). Contesting this
view, I argue that we should not always equate ‘the economic’ with capitalism, and
instead stress the fact that Web 2.0 allows for the hosting and dissemination of
post-capitalist, non-capitalist, anti-capitalist, or ‘only slightly capitalist’1 pornogra-
phies. As such, it is important to recognise that not all pornography exists to serve
in the interests of capitalism, as in cyberspace, global pornography corporations
exist alongside myriad local place-based DIY alternatives, including sole produ-
cers, couples, groups and cooperatives (see Jacobs, 2007; Jacobs et al., 2007).
Building on the work of J.K Gibson-Graham I hence propose a ‘diverse economies’
approach to the study of pornography, one which seeks to highlight the ways in
Wilkinson 3

which ‘the economy is diverse (rather than primarily capitalist) and in which eco-
nomic dynamics are multiple (rather than limited to the quest for profitability and
the law of the market)’ (Gibson-Graham, 2002: 37).
The article is divided into three sections. The first two sections will consider the
ways that, first, some anti-pornography scholars have rejected attempts to diversify
our understandings of the economics of pornography, and, second, the way these
dismissals could be seen as an example of ‘paranoid reading’. The third and final
section explores the kinds of questions and political possibilities that a diverse
economies approach might open up. It outlines how a post-capitalist approach
can enable us to challenge the commonly held assumption that the forces of glo-
balization are always more powerful than local place-based interventions.
Ultimately then, the article sets out a hopeful theoretical framework which enables
us to think outside of the totalizing and fatalistic logics of the all-powerful global
pornography industry.

Supporting phallic supremacy?

Technological advances have meant that pornography production and consump-
tion has become ever more accessible – at least for those who can afford a laptop
and internet connection – opening up spaces for alternatives, and potential places
from which to resist mainstream pornonorms.2 Cyberspace has enabled a diverse
array of pornographies, such as pornography targeted at women and LGBT+
people, meaning that pornography is increasingly no longer just a product pro-
duced solely by, and for, heterosexual men (Attwood, 2007; Jacobs 2004, 2007;
Juffer, 1998; McNair 2013; Taormino et al., 2013). Brian McNair (2002), has hence
proposed that the western world has witnessed a kind of ‘democratization of
desire’, demonstrated by growing sexual freedoms and diversity. This increased
democratization is, in part, due to the changing ways in which pornography is
produced and consumed online.3 Here, the online hosting of amateur clips signals
an increasingly participatory approach to pornography that involves a more hori-
zontal network of connections between producer and consumer (Ritzer and
Jurgenson, 2010). When freed from the laws of market-profitability there can
potentially be more scope to produce alternative sexual scripts. For example,
self-authorship may allow performers to have a greater say on issues of aesthetic
representation (Miller-Young, 2007).
Such user-produced content has the potential to bypass commercial distributors,
building on the earlier free exchange of pornography via peer-to-peer networks and
the ‘darknet’ which allowed pornography to circulate outside profit-driven net-
works (Slater, 1998). Likewise, the large range of free and pirated pornographic
material available online also complicates the idea that the consumption of porn-
ography always involves a straightforward profit-driven market transaction. Thus,
increasingly, not all pornography is exchanged within a capitalist frame. These
alternative economic markets are often entwined with diverse forms of labour
and enterprise. For example, forms of not-for-profit and ‘charity porn’, such as
4 Sexualities 0(0)

‘Fuck For Forest’, a non-profit ‘ecoporn’ site. On this site viewers are encouraged
to donate their own explicit photos, and all profits are used to support environ-
mental activism (Maddison, 2015). Alternative economic structures can also be
found in such things as ‘fair-trade’, ‘ethical’ and socially responsible pornography,
where workers rights are often positioned as paramount (Mondin, 2014; Scott,
2016). Likewise, in small-scale pornography production, individual performers
may now in fact control, or partiality control, the means of production, via self-
produced pornography or material produced as part of a cooperative (Ray, 2007).
Hence, online pornography is not just about the emergence of alternative aes-
thetics, but also alternative economies. Certain forms of online pornography
thus pose a challenge to both patriarchal porno-scripts, and the exploitative cap-
italist logic of mainstream corporate production (Potter, 2016).
Consequently, it is becoming increasingly difficult to portray the porn industry
as a monolithic entity. Some have therefore argued that the wide range of porn-
ography ‘renders any generalizations about ‘‘porn’’ ludicrous’ (Weitzer, 2011: 671).
Nonetheless, such diverse understandings of pornography have been strongly chal-
lenged by anti-pornography scholars, who have sometimes sought to dismiss the
significance of alternative pornographies. For example, prominent anti-pornog-
raphy campaigner Gail Dines (2011), reporting on a pornography conference,4
spoke of her dismay about the ways in which:

the complex, global, maturing porn industry was simplified right down to the point of
disappearance: they made the argument that there is in fact no ‘it’ – meaning the porn
industry – because there are so many producers of porn and just so many types of
porn on the internet, that it is impossible to locate any actual industry. It’s like being
at a conference on food and the researchers argue that because we have fast food,
gourmet good, independently owned restaurants, chain restaurants and even people
cooking their own food at home, well there is just so much food that there is no such
thing as a food industry.

The claim here is that the study of pornography has become so diffuse that we are
now at a stage where our discussions of porn have lost their political impact: rather
than studying the diverse economies of pornography we should be identifying and
critiquing a singular porn industry.
Consequently, in recent years, certain anti-pornography scholars have claimed
that we need to return to the ‘proper objects’ of porn studies. Karen Boyle, for
example, argues that we need stricter definitions as to what type of material should
fall within the boundaries of porn studies. Boyle (2006: 2) critically questions what
counts as ‘the ‘porn’ of porn studies’, asking us to think about ‘how we define it
and what are the implications of this definitional practice’. Founding her critique
upon Linda Williams’ edited collection Porn Studies (2004), Boyle (2006: 9) claims
that Williams is only able to move away from ‘agonizing over sexual politics that
characterized earlier feminist debate not because those questions have gone away
but because she has been selective in her choice of pornography’. Boyle claims that
Wilkinson 5

Williams, and other ‘pro-pornography’ researchers, have tended to overlook both

the ‘extreme’ (e.g. violent non-consensual pornography) and the ‘norm’ (e.g. com-
mercial pornography for heterosexual men), preferring instead to focus on the
alternative margins. Whilst Boyle’s criticism is not entirely unfounded, others
have taken this argument further and have described all ‘pro-pornography’
researchers as apologists for the porn industry. For example, Helen Pringle
(2011: 125) has argued that:

A great deal of pro-pornography academic research in the social sciences is taken up

with this task of masking the harms of pornography, in order to defend the lucrative
global industry and guarantee a continued supply of cool pleasures to the hip
consumer.5

Often attempts to complicate our understandings of pornography are seen as col-

luding with the enemy, of adopting an uncritical ‘pro-pornography’ approach.6 It is
argued that many studies of pornography have spent too much time focusing upon
the transgressive possibilities of porn, and have thus disregarded the misogyny and
exploitation that takes place within ‘the mainstream’. Dines provides a good illus-
tration of such arguments when she dismisses scholars who focus on the political
potentialities of female-produced pornography:

When women in ‘pro-sex’ work are discussed there is a tendency to focus on woman-
owned/produced pornography . . . While this type of research sheds light on the work-
ings of the various sectors of the industry, it cannot stand in for a critical macro-level
approach that explores how capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and first-world economic
domination provide the economic and cultural space for international, mass-scale
pornography production. To focus only on those women who have the resources to
produce and distribute pornography is as limited at looking at worker-controlled
cooperatives to explore how labor is organized under capitalism. (Dines, 1998: 62)

In this sense, anti-pornography campaigners propose that the arguments made in

‘pro pornography’ research only hold up because they are based on the analysis of
selective examples: they look at the exceptions to the mainstream porn industry, the
margins rather than the centre. Instead, anti-pornography scholars suggest that we
always need to see pornography as a capitalist product that is exploitative and
demeaning to women (Dines, 2010; Jeffreys, 2009; Jensen, 2007; Paul, 2005;
Tankard-Reist and Bray, 2011). It is argued that we need this narrow definition
of pornography in order to challenge the harms and exploitation that take place
within the porn industry.
Thus it appears that currently we are at a stage where there are marked attempts
to narrow our definitions of pornography: all porn is capitalist, all porn is exploit-
ative, and therefore all porn must be opposed (see Weitzer, 2011 and Hester, 2014
for a critique). Yet I want to contest this monolithic view, and to challenge Dines’
notion of a ‘critical macro-level approach’ by arguing for a critical micro-economic
6 Sexualities 0(0)

perspective that considers the supply/demand and production/consumption of

online sexual content in all its diverse forms. Dines’ earlier analogy (that linked
pornography to other kinds of industries and other kinds of labour) inadvertently
raises some important questions – mainly, can we research the porn industry in the
same way as any other industry? Recent work within porn studies has made an
important case for recognizing pornography as a form of work, and has begun to
focus on the labour of pornography rather than simply the representation, arguing
for the need to pay close attention to issues such as worker safety and wages (see
Berg, 2014; Hester, 2014; Lee and Sullivan, 2016).7 Thus porn studies scholars have
begun to highlight how pornography can be understood as just like any other
industry or product, which can be ethically or unethically produced and consumed
(see Comella, 2013; Voss, 2012).8
Though clearly these are not necessarily the thoughts Dines is seeking to pro-
voke amongst her readers, this turn to ethics and labour is of vital importance as it
helps us think about how we can study pornography in a similar way to any other
industry. Hence, if we were, as Dines suggests, attending a conference on food,
would there be such vehement hostility to those studying ethical alternatives to the
corporate mainstream? Would we argue that those who research ethical food pro-
duction are somehow complicit with the mainstream food industry? If we were
researching labour conditions under capitalism, would we say that research on
worker-controlled cooperatives simply diverts attention away from the ‘real’
issues? Of course, clearly the answers would be no – in each of the examples
Dines uses we would see that there would be space for a critique of mainstream
producers alongside research into other hopeful ethical possibilities. The so-called
‘real harms’ of pornography, that anti-porn feminists claim scholars should focus
on, misogynistic aesthetics and exploitative working conditions, are exactly what
many diverse forms of pornography are trying to counter. Yet the diverse economic
frames through which online pornography operates are frequently depicted as
inconsequential. Yet what are the limits of a political strategy that seeks to nar-
rowly define the object of porn studies: that sees pornography as solely capitalist,
misogynistic and dangerous? In the next section I go on to propose that it would be
dangerously fatalistic if we only studied ‘the industry’ without looking at the alter-
native economies of pornography production and consumption.

But it’s so big! Paranoid readings

Despite the changing ways in which pornography is produced and consumed
online, research into non-patriarchal, non-sexist, non-capitalist or anti-capitalist
pornographies is often dismissed as irrelevant, or even a dangerous distraction.
Much of the rhetoric around the ‘proper objects’ of porn studies can be seen
to exemplify Eve Sedgwick’s (1997) notion of ‘paranoid reading’. For as
Paasonen (2007: 48) notes, ‘[t]he discourse of negative affect is part and parcel of
the paranoid reading that lies at the core of anti-pornography feminist rhetoric’.
A paranoid reading is a tautological one; we begin even though we already know
Wilkinson 7

the ending, we already know what horrors we are seeking to uncover. Calls by anti-
pornography scholars asking us to turn our attention to the economics of porn are
never about looking for the exceptions, the varied and complex economies at work;
rather they are always about uncovering how embedded pornography is within
capitalism, and how the pornography industry thrives on gendered exploitation.9
Even alternative non-capitalist pornographies are frequently read as if they are at
the mercy of the wider power of the pornography industry. For example, a familiar
anti-pornography critique is to question just how real ‘reality porn’ is. Critics point
out that much amateur porn is not really amateur – that it is produced by main-
stream corporations and simply made to look amateur. Amateur pornography is
dismissed as nothing more than a niche market created by, and not in opposition
to, an all-powerful global pornography industry (Dines, 2010; see also Paasonen,
2010 for an overview of this critique). This is not to deny that a lot of amateur
pornography is not in fact ‘amateur’ as mainstream producers have started to
create commercial pornography that is marketed as ‘amateur’. However, there
are many forms of amateur DIY pornography that manage to exist outside the
sphere of mainstream commercial production, being more reminiscent of a gifting
economy in which images are freely given and received (McGlottan, 2015).
Furthermore, we could read mainstream producers’ development of ‘profes-
sional-amateur’ content in an entirely different way – that it was the popularity
of niche and amateur pornography that meant that the mainstream have had to
adapt and alter the kind of pornographies they produce in order to keep up with
changing tastes and trends (Barcan, 2002). The mainstream’s attempt to appropri-
ate amateur pornography could thus be read as testament to the strength and
popularity of this form of pornography, and the threat this kind of pornography
poses to the profitability of mainstream producers.
Another familiar anti-pornography criticism is to highlight that porn that
appears to be free is not really free; it is simply a marketing trick to lure people
onto sites and to expand the consumer base that will eventually be willing to pay
for porn (Dines, 2011; JA Johnson, 2010). However, again we could read the pro-
liferation of commercial websites giving away free trailers in a different way, not as
a cunning trick to lure people into paying for porn, but as a desperate attempt to
generate some sort of custom in a world where sexual content is increasingly easy to
freely obtain (particularly via the increasing popularity of ‘tube’ sites which began
life as peer-to-peer exchange networks).10 Thus it seems misguided to try and limit
our definition of pornography solely to that of a capitalist product, at the very
moment that the economic ascendancy of ‘the mainstream’ is potentially under
threat. Unsurprisingly, it seems that the proliferation of free porn on the net is
bad for businesses, and as Stephen Maddison (2010: 27) notes, ‘[t]he economic
ascendancy of porn’s biggest corporations is currently being threatened by slow
adaptation to the challenges of peer-to-peer networks and user-generated content’.
Reports of falling profits in pornography largely speak of the challenge piracy
poses to the falling profits: some estimate that revenue has fallen by around 80%
in the three years prior to 2011 (Cowan, 2010). Compared to other forms of e-
8 Sexualities 0(0)

commerce there is a far greater range of alternatives and competition in the porn-
ography industry, with the vast majority of consumers visiting sites that offer
pornography for free (Cowan, 2010; Edelman, 2009). If we turn to industry/
trade sites such as the Adult Video Network and xbiz.com then we begin to see
some of the problems the industry is currently facing: there are a number of recur-
rent concerns such as the rise of amateur porn and illegal file sharing, and the issue
of piracy and the billions of dollars the industry loses every year through illegal free
downloads (see Cronin and Davenport, 2001).
Yet discussions about the declining profitability of the porn industry have
been dismissed by anti-pornography feminists, who insist that who insist that it
is still ‘business as usual’ (Dines and Bialer, 2012). Anti-pornography cam-
paigners continue to claim that the internet is just another way for capitalist,
misogynistic pornography producers to expand their influence and increase their
profits. Barry Sandywell sums up this dystopian position by highlighting the
ways in which:

deflationary voices claim that digital culture is simply an addition and extension to
existing forms of information exchange in capitalist society: the coming of the Net
simply extends the reach of multinational corporations and the state. If capitalism has
taken three to four hundred years to conquer physical space, its final frontier now lies
in the wired geography of cyberspace, through the corporate colonization and com-
modification of the virtual and the imaginary. While enthusiasts celebrate the global
village of cyberspace, dystopian commentators speak menacingly of the ‘colonization’,
‘penetration’ and ‘hegemonic’ control of the new media and culture industries.
(Sandywell, 2006: 42)

The fact that the Web 2.0 now offers a wide range of material that differs from com-
mercial heteropatriarchal porn is dismissed as irrelevant. Instead it is argued that it
is the all-encompassing power of pornography that has duped people into foolishly
believing that making their own porn can ever be a form of liberation.
Experimental forays into creating alternative forms of pornography are judged
as inadequate, and dismissed as heteropatriarchy in another guise, as always
already co-opted. In this framework, DIY feminist and non-heterosexual porno-
graphies are seen as unthreatening to the mainstream industry, commodified and
assimilated into the existing capitalist framework via the emergence of niche mar-
kets (Chasin, 2001; Glick, 2000; Kendall, 2011). The anti-pornography narrative is
a deeply pessimistic one: it argues that any alternative to patriarchal commercial
pornography will eventually be incorporated into the mainstream. Hence we can
see that these readings of pornography exemplify Sedgwick’s notion of paranoid
reading. As Clare Hemmings summarizes: ‘such paranoia makes cultural investi-
gation protectionist instead of expansive, as theorists ward off other critical ima-
ginaries as duped unless they too come to the same conspiratorial
conclusions, unless they too find violence where there had appeared to be possi-
bility’ (2005: 553).
Wilkinson 9

Anti-pornography campaigners often depict the pornography industry as some-

thing that is relentless and unstoppable. Yet what are the dangers of portraying the
global porn industry as an uncontrollable force? In the next section I explore what
sort of impact these narratives have on our ability to effect political change, or, as
Sedgwick asks, ‘what use is paranoid theory?’ (2003: 147). I go on to argue that
relatively little is possible when pornography is understood as solely a patriarchal
capitalist product, when all alternatives are seen as either insignificant or complicit.
This paranoid logic of inescapable domination creates an affective state of help-
lessness from which it is difficult to escape. Sedgwick’s notion of ‘paranoid reading’
helps us understand the performative effects of anti-pornography research: the
pessimism, the fatalism, the totalizing power. Yet what would happen if we took
a more surprising ‘reparative reading’ of pornography, not one that simply
‘uncover’ what we already thought we knew?11 What are the political implications
of moving from a paranoid reading towards a reparative one?12

Reparative readings and regulation

In order to think through what a more reparative reading of pornography might
look like I turn to the work of J.K Gibson-Graham (1995, 1996, 2002, 2006). Like
Sedgwick, Gibson-Graham helps us to think seriously about the performativity of
knowledge; the stories we tell, how we envision power, and where we see resistance.
What Gibson-Graham provide is a framework for a ‘post-capitalist’ politics – one
that takes our research beyond a paranoid critique of global capitalism, towards a
more reparative affirmation of non-capitalist, anti-capitalist, or not quite capitalist
alternatives. A post-capitalist politics moves beyond a paranoid reading (one that
simply highlights how powerful global capitalism is) to instead explore different
types of non-capitalist economies. Gibson-Graham seek to generate a non-capita-
locentric understanding of the economy by making non-capitalist activities both
‘visible and viable in the economic terrain’ (2002: 36). However, they ask us to do
much more than simply acknowledge economic diversity. Rather, they propose a re-
evaluation of the ways in which global capitalism is so often positioned as unques-
tionably more powerful than non-capitalist alternatives. They challenge the stories
in circulation about the relentless power of global capitalism, and contest the com-
monly held notion ‘that the force of globalization [is] inevitably more powerful
than progressive, grassroots, local interventions’ (Gibson-Graham, 2002: 25).
Thus a post-capitalist approach to pornography would aim to see the global
pornography industry as a ‘hegemonic formation rather than as a fixed capitalist
totality’ (Gibson-Graham, 1995: 275). Our political goal is therefore to destabilize
the presumptions about the all-encompassing power of corporate global pornog-
raphy. If the global power of porn is constructed and reproduced discursively, then
we can see that an attempt to reassert porn as always capitalistic/always exploit-
ative is deeply problematic. Gibson-Graham’s work helps to highlight how a capi-
talocentric approach to online pornography inadvertently helps to reinforce the
power of the global the porn industry. Likewise, a capitalocentric approach will
10 Sexualities 0(0)

inevitably fail to recognize the non-capitalist economic exchanges that exist, and
thrive, within cyberspace: for example, DIY amateur pornography, free pornog-
raphy, pirated pornography, not-for-profit pornography, charity pornography,
eco-pornography, ethical pornography and pornography cooperatives (Bell,
2010; Jacobs, 2007). Gibson-Graham’s work demonstrates how these marginalized
economic alternatives to capitalist pornography production should never be dis-
missed as irrelevant or somehow separate from the ‘critical macro-level approach’
that scholars such as Dines (2011) are calling for. We hence need to challenge the
idea that all online pornography is simply at the mercy of a (so-called) global
pornography industry. That is, to envision these economic alternatives as potential
sites of resistance, a place from which the apparent hegemony of the global com-
mercial pornography industry can be challenged.
So what would it mean to begin to take seriously forms of pornography pro-
duction and consumption that run counter to, or directly challenge, capitalist
power? A diverse economies approach helps avoid the affective state of helplessness
that the narratives of the all-powerful global porn industry so often create. Gibson-
Graham argues that a diverse economies approach provides a kind of ‘performa-
tive ontological reframing’ that allows us to build upon and develop new spaces of
resistance. By speaking of economic diversity we can ‘cultivate an unconscious in
which dreams, fantasies, and desires for noncapitalist forms of economic organ-
ization might take shape and circulate’ (Gibson-Graham, 2002: 44). Thus a capi-
talocentric approach to pornography is deeply pessimistic and fails to see the
multitude of ways in which people are creating alternative sexual scripts that do
not necessarily always serve in the interests of patriarchy or capital (Jacobs, 2007;
Jacobs et al., 2007). A diverse economies approach allows us to challenge narra-
tives about the seemingly never-ending profitability of the porn industry. Such a
framework opens up space for us to consider the ways in which non-capitalist, anti-
capitalist and only-slightly capitalist pornography may be having significantly det-
rimental impacts on the profits of pornography producers who operate within the
commercial mainstream. Hence any attempt to reduce our understanding of porn-
ography down to solely a capitalist product will fail to understand this complex
varied economic landscape, and the pleasures (and dangers)13 that this might offer.
One other final area where a diverse economies approach could provide a useful
framework for the study of pornography, is around issues of regulation and cen-
sorship. If we were to see all pornography as a uniform capitalist product, we risk
making unhelpful generalizations that portray all pornography as a danger that
should be curtailed because it always involves exploitative capitalist patriarchal
relations. A diverse economies approach would allow us to challenge such logic
and enable us to examine whether certain forms of regulation are intended to have
a more adverse effect on specific forms of pornography (e.g. not-for-profit or
pirated peer-to-peer pornography). By paying attention to the diverse economies
of online pornography we could explore whether some mainstream pornography
producers might in fact support certain forms of government regulation (see
Stardust, 2014; Wilkinson, 2011). Thus a diverse economies approach to
Wilkinson 11

pornography allows us to examine whether regulation may at times work in the

interests of capital and the mainstream porn industry, not against (Maddison,
2004, 2010).
This type of perspective can be explored with reference to attempts to regulate
online pornography in England and Wales via measures such as the ‘Dangerous
Pictures Act’ (Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008) which
made it illegal to possess certain forms of ’extreme’ pornography. There has also
been stricter regulations around video-on-demand material via an amendment to
the 2003 Communications Act (Audiovisual Media Services Regulations, 2014),
which made this material subject to obscenity law. The Digital Economy Bill
(2016–2017) is currently passing through Parliament, and seeks to ban material
that wouldn’t be available on commercial DVD. Effectively is about making sure
that all online material is now subject to British obscenity law, thus making it
illegal to distribute images of certain pornographic acts online (see Attwood and
Smith, 2010; P Johnson 2010; Petley, 2014). Anti-pornography campaigners have
tended to support these measures, as they are seen to be sending out a strong
message about the increasingly easy access to ‘extreme’ online pornography.
The economic implications of these laws have yet to be given sufficient scrutiny,
with debates about their implementation tending to fall back into the tired dichot-
omy of pleasure versus danger (Wilkinson, 2011). Arguments in support of these
new legal frameworks failed to examine exactly what kind of material was going to
be captured under these laws. What has subsequently ensued is that mainstream
commercial pornography has been largely exempt from these regulations, given
there are a number of steps large-scale commercial producers can take to make sure
their material is still legal to distribute and consume. For example, in 2008, the
British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) introduced a new scheme that would
enable webmasters to get online audiovisual material officially classified.14
However, this online digital classification system is an expensive solution15, and
therefore will only be an option for larger-scale profit-driven producers. Strictly
Broadband, one of the UKs largest adult Video-on-Demand sites, was the first to
sign up to the BBFC online R18 classification system. The managing director of
Strictly Broadband outlines some of the reasons his company joined this new
scheme:

We welcome the clarification that the new scheme will bring to the business, which will
allow the further development of a strong and legal British adult entertainment indus-
try, and give British consumers the ability to decide whether they are buying legal
material or not.16

The BBFC scheme assures viewers that the material they are watching falls within
the boundaries of British law. This will have potential economic benefits for main-
stream British porn producers and distributors, as it may create a new market of
online consumers who are seeking reassurance that their online porn-consumption
is legal to view. Stricter regulations around the legalities of online pornography
12 Sexualities 0(0)

may also channel people back from ‘pirate’ or ‘amateur’ to mainstream sites, with
the former becoming seen as potentially illegal not just in terms of the means of
exchange (i.e. copyright) but also the type of content. Furthermore, the 2014
Video-On-Demand regulation continued to benefit mainstream British producers,
as small-scale and amateur producers in the UK were no longer allowed to contra-
vene obscenity law. Britain already has some of the strictest obscenity laws in
Europe, and therefore these new laws can be seen to offer a degree of protection
for corporate British producers, from competition faced from the online influx of
extreme material produced online in both Britain and abroad (see Maddison,
2004). Hence laws and controls that we think might be sending out a strong
‘anti-pornography’ moral message might in fact be supporting the economic
power of a select few mainstream pornography businesses. Yet, if we were to see
pornography as solely a capitalist entity then we would miss these crucial
complexities.

Conclusion
In this article I have sought to counter suggestions that claim we need to return to
the ‘proper objects’ of porn studies – where pornography is narrowly defined as a
capitalist and patriarchal product. Instead I proposed that we should continue to
move away from a capitalocentric understanding of pornography in order to think
seriously about non-capitalist exchanges – such as gift giving via peer-to-peer net-
works and theft via pirating. I outlined some of the political possibilities that are
opened up when we take a diverse economies approach to the study of pornog-
raphy. Firstly, a non-capitalocentric approach gives us a more complex under-
standing of how the economics of pornography work, and helps us to avoid a
paranoid reading that simply sees pornography as subject to the powers of
global capitalism. It enables us to challenge the performative power of these pol-
itically immobilizing narratives that portray global pornography as pervasive, all-
powerful and inescapable. Secondly, a diverse economies approach provides a
hopeful form of post-capitalist politics that helps us value the wide variety of
pornographies that exist outside of, or at least partially outside of, capitalist
frames. It allows us to make alternative pornographies both visible and viable,
and enables us to see them as forms of resistance from which we might challenge
the hegemony of commercial mainstream pornography. Thus a diverse economies
approach contests the commonly held notion that the forces of globalization are
always more powerful than local interventions. This marks the beginning of a
process of resubjectification that opens up new affective possibilities, of hope and
potentiality, rather than helplessness and despair. I examined how alternative por-
nographies might pose a threat to the continuing economic prosperity of the main-
stream industry, thus emphasizing the importance of looking at the relationship
between different types of pornography. Furthermore, I outlined the ways in which
an examination of the relationships between different porno-economies might pro-
vide a more rigorous framework for assessing issues of regulation and censorship,
Wilkinson 13

arguing that we can only begin to understand the successes and failures of govern-
ment intervention if we take into account the diverse range of pornography that
exists online.
This article has urged us to take a critical approach to the language we use to
talk about pornography: to think about the performativity of knowledge, and to
question whether our definitions of pornography might inadvertently help support
and reinforce the totality and pervasiveness of the (so-called) global porn industry.
This is not, of course, to claim that capitalist pornography is only created through
discourse, or that the very real problems that exist within certain forms of porn-
ography will somehow be solved by simply framing our arguments differently.
There are a multitude of ways in which we might wish to challenge injustices
within the realm of pornography production and consumption, and this article
does not want to shut down or dismiss these alternatives.17 However, as Lisa
Henderson (2008: 20) notes, ‘[i]n a universe of sexual possibility, constraint, and
coercion, imagining a new sexual future has a critical place’. Ultimately then, this
article has sought to stress the political possibilities that are opened up if we take a
post-capitalist approach to online pornography. Attentiveness to the diverse
economies of pornography enables us to formulate a hopeful form of politics
that recognizes the multitude of ways in which people are both imagining and
prefiguring alternative sexual worlds.

Notes
1. I borrow the phrase ‘only slightly capitalist’ from Fran Tonkiss’ (2008: 312) review of
Gibson-Graham’s work, as it provides a helpful way of thinking about how certain
seemingly non-capitalist forms of pornography are still tied to existing capitalist struc-
tures in certain ways (for example online pornography is still produced using web-cams,
camcorders, mobile phones and other forms of technology, then broadcast via webhost-
ing, and finally consumed via ISPs and computers, meaning no kind of online pornog-
raphy actually exists entirely outside of capitalist structures, though some are clearly
more embedded in capitalism than others).
2. Here I use the term ‘pornonorms’ to describe the normative scripts found within main-
stream pornography: this phrase is derived from David Bell’s invocation of ‘pornonor-
mativity’ (2006).
3. This is of course not to claim that diverse forms of pornography did not exist prior to the
internet, however, the internet has made access to this material easier than ever before
(see Kendrick, 1997 and O’Toole, 1999 for an account of the history of technological
advances and pornography).
4. The conference in question was ‘Pornified: Complicating Debates about the
‘‘Sexualisation’’ of Culture’, at the Institute of Education, London, December 2011.
5. Pringle’s critique is targeted specifically at The Porn Report (2008) written by Alan
McKee, Kath Albury and Catherine Lumby.
6. There are few, if any, scholars who would describe themselves as ‘pro’-pornography, as
none would support material that had been produced using coercion and abuse.
7. Yet whilst this turn to porn-as-work marks an important critical turn in porn studies,
there is a danger that this framework subsumes everything into the logic of capital.
14 Sexualities 0(0)

For example, non-capitalist forms of pornography via the gift economy, or founded
upon ‘free labour’, have often been seen as a form of immaterial labour which has been
incorporated to commercial ends (Paasonen, 2010; Terranova, 2000) Thus although of
course, unwaged work can be exploitative (Berg, 2014), there needs to be space for a
recognition of the ways in which pornography may be able to be produced and con-
sumed outside of capitalist logics.
8. It is important to note that the ethics of pornography production and consumption do
not necessarily fall neatly along the lines of mainstream ¼ unethical, and alterna-
tive ¼ ethical, and more research is needed to complicate these binaries (see Hester,
2015). For example, mainstream pornography producers may be adopting certain eth-
ical production practices, tied into wider moves towards corporate social responsibility
(Voss, 2015). Conversely, alternative pornographies may have deeply unethical produc-
tion processes, such as the exploitation of workers that can take place in ‘new taste’
sexual cultures, which often rely on self-exploitation and unpaid work (Attwood, 2007).
Furthermore, it is often difficult to discern the ethics of production in unregulated
amateur DIY pornographies, and there are also ethical issues regarding whether self-
made material is necessarily distributed consensually (Paasonen, 2010). Likewise, porn
that markets itself as having ethical credentials cannot always be taken as given, and
needs much more critical scrutiny (Scott, 2016).
9. See for example Jennifer Johnson’s (2011: 198) attempt to highlight how ‘centres of
traditional power tend to replicate themselves online’.
10. Here it must be noted that many tube sites are now clearly part of a capitalist economy
as well, channelling profits to the owners of these sites.
11. This technique of course is not just applicable to an anti-pornography position, as a
similar form of tautology is at work with those looking for the more transgressive/
democratizing effects of pornography – thus it is important to also trouble the overly-
optimistic readings of the transgressive potentials of pornography.
12. There is already important work on using Sedgwick’s notion of ‘reparative reading’ for
the study of pornography. Susanna Paasonen (2010) has used a reparative reading of
pornography to try and provide a more varied affective account of our relationship to
pornography. Kath Albury has also written about the merits of a reparative approach to
pornography, in particular how a reparative reading allows us to understand the pleas-
ures, surprises, and contradictions found within even the most ‘flawed or imperfect
texts’ (Albury, 2009: 649).
13. While some may wish to celebrate the declining profitability of certain large-scale porn-
ography producers, it is important to note that an economic downturn in the pornog-
raphy industry will clearly have a damaging effect on mainstream workers’ pay and
rights.
14. See bbfc.co.uk/digital-video-ratings (2016).
15. The BBFC online classification scheme currently costs £2.50 per minute, plus £20 sub-
mission fee for each clip, and those wishing to have their material classified must also
sign up to become a BBFC.online service member, costing £100 per annum for content
providers and £900 for platforms.
16. See cyberlaw.org.uk (2008).
17. For example, there is important work being done into how certain mainstream porn-
ography producers are taking steps towards more ethical production practices, in par-
ticular via notions of corporate social responsibility (see Voss, 2015). Thus I do not want
Wilkinson 15

to downplay the importance of improving conditions of mainstream pornography pro-

duction from inside the industry. Likewise, non-commercial pornography is not neces-
sarily produced in more ethical ways. Thus clearly more work needs to be done
complicating the divisions between the commercial and the non-commercial.
However, often the economic aspects of pornography are woefully under-examined in
pornography research, with the main discussion focusing solely on issues of represen-
tation (see Maddison, 2004 for a similar critique).

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Eleanor Wilkinson is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of

Southampton. Eleanor is a feminist geographer whose work explores the intersec-
tions between intimacy, culture, and the political economy. Her research interests
include the geographies of gender and sexuality, care and intimacy beyond the
nuclear family, social theory and the political life of emotions and affect.
Eleanor is currently an ESRC Future Research Leader, working on a project
around housing welfare reform and equalities law. She has published on the regu-
lation of online pornography in Social & Cultural Geography, and earlier work in
Sexualities.