This article was originally published in Archer Magazine #19: the PLEASURE issue in December, 2023. It has not been changed in this digital iteration.  

Sex and porn are some of the rare parts of society we’re still pretty scared of – simultaneously objects of fascination and cultural dysfunction.

Everyone wants to talk about the ethics of porn, especially tied into the wider cultural conversation we’re currently having about the ethics of consent, sex and capitalism.

All images by: Four Chambers

Porn, like all other creative work, acts as a mirror that often reflects our cultural consciousness, and it’s absolutely true that that consciousness is still, to this day, embedded in misogyny, racism and inequality.

The subtext of these issues that run through all media, film, art and literature often seems to be more immediately implicit in pornography because sex unseats our polite inhibitions.

Porn has long been dismissed and marginalised as culturally valueless, beneath us, and unworthy of the same criticism as the other media we create and consume.

The terms ‘ethical’ and ‘feminist’ porn are often used as markers by producers or journalists trying to demarcate what kinds of porn are made, with redressing these issues in mind. I understand why there’s a pull to use these definitions.

We’re all (hopefully) looking for ways to feel better about the moral trash fire that is consumer capitalism, and buying or watching things that are labelled as “ethically better” is an attempt to assuage some guilt about our complicity.

But this isn’t a label I’ve chosen to use for myself and for my pornography project, Four Chambers.

I started Four Chambers as an experiment, to see if I could put the same consideration for aesthetics and concepts into films with sex as I was already exploring in my artwork.

Four Chambers now exists alongside a new wave of creators making contemporary pornographic work from a new perspective.

I’d like to think that everyone making porn or creating anything that’s self-directed thinks they’re doing it ‘ethically’ by their own standards – but that’s exactly it: ethics are essentially subjective.

There’s no universal definition of what’s right and wrong here; it’s all based on our own moral values, culture and perspective.

Labelling something as ethical, feminist, honest or eco, without a clear idea of what that really means for the people or ideas it’s meant to protect, is just advertising, plain and simple.

When we take these definitions at face value, we might not look beyond them and push to ask the important questions about what actually goes on.

It can also mean playing into divisive ideas about respectability politics, adding more shame and layers of hierarchy to an already stigmatised community.

Ethics are too important to reduce to another buzzword.

I once came across a sentiment in a Tweet that really resonated – that when it comes to art and media, feminism is a lens through which to critique it, not an adjective to describe it. I think the Tweet has since been deleted, but it stuck with me.

With the Four Chambers project, we try and prioritise what we call ‘transparency’, which is being upfront about who I am, what I care about, how I make my films and how I aim to treat my performers, so that anyone watching can decide if that aligns with their personal ethics and ideas.

The recent rise of performer-produced content, with sites like OnlyFans, has undeniably changed the face of online porn forever; long gone are the days when the studios dictated the landscape. This has opened up new avenues for agency, creativity and control for sex workers.

It’s also brought a whole new set of conversations about ethics and capitalism.

Money makes everything complicated – there is no easy solution to that.

When sites like OnlyFans started gaining popularity, people were commenting on how good it was to be free from the control of porn studios with archaic themes and pressures for certain types of content.

Finally, we could make ‘whatever we wanted’. There’s some real truth to this. Decentralisation from the old-fashioned porn business has undoubtedly put more money and more agency in the hands of performers, which was long overdue.

But the reality for many workers is that in the hyper-competitive arena of content creation – more, faster, catchier, mass appeal is often the name of the game.

The pressure from studios has been replaced with pressure from consumers because they’re now dealing direct.

Lots of performers report having to work very hard to make enough content or a particular type of content to keep their subscriber numbers up and therefore their livelihoods stable.

Studio scenes have been replaced with ‘collabs’, which often involve two performers getting together in a hotel room. They’re more casual and potentially offer performers more control over what’s shot, but also may not contain the same checks and balances for what happens if something goes wrong.

So, like most things in porn, it’s not as black and white as it might initially seem.

Navigating this new landscape, where something as important and potentially vulnerable as sex is mixed in with profit, means not treating porn and those who work in it as disposable or homogenous.

There’s no universal definition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, especially when we talk about something as complicated and vulnerable as sex.

Sex and desire are as multifaceted and diverse as we are, and they span and serve many purposes and meanings in different people’s lives.

Sex has a visceral pull, bypassing our polite, thinking brain and tapping into something inside our guts, inside our body. This is why it’s so compelling and sometimes so scary.

It can seem to sit in contrast to the way we think about our public-facing selves. It allows us to explore untapped parts of our inner lives. It can make us feel out of control or undone.

I think this is exactly why sex is fascinating to me. Porn is often criticised for exploiting this pull, but never celebrated for exploring it.

Sex deserves to be documented and shared as we do any other intrinsic part of the human experience. Desire is energy; it connects us to our vitality.

‘To want’ is to be engaged – it intersects with past experiences of play, touch or trauma, which go on to form the foundations of our sexual selves.

Things that give the most pleasure can come from painful or difficult sources. Desire is not comfortable and it’s not easy or neat. It often raises questions: is my desire for this – this thought, this act, this porn, this person – is this okay? Is it ethical?

Why do we often desire to explore parts of ourselves, and our experience in the sexual realm that seem to sit outside of our day-to-day lives and personas, in ways that maybe challenge us and our idea of who we are?

Coming from someone who was, for my sins, a child actor, I often think about ways that sex can be theatre. It can be a space to play out roles and ideas in the zone of the sexual stage and sometimes we desire an experience that confronts our fears and insecurities, to say or do things we wouldn’t normally dare to.

Sometimes subverting or giving up the power or rejecting the powerlessness experienced in day-to-day life can be a way to feel more in control.

And sometimes – it’s just fun. Fun to step outside of ourselves, outside of society’s expectations and limitations, fun to try on different ways of being.

Play is such an important part of our development, and it’s never all sunshine and roses.

We learn about all parts of ourselves through imagination and fantasy without having to be fixed in the limitations or dangers of reality, and this learning doesn’t need to stop when we reach adulthood.

This is exactly why it feels limiting sometimes when people talk about a need for ethical and feminist porn to strive purely for authenticity. Porn gets a lot of flak from people saying, “It’s ‘fake’, it’s not ‘real sex’.”

While I totally share the frustration in a lack of openness and sex education that has often left porn as the sole provider of learning and agree that a lot of the most easily accessible porn presents a pretty narrow and limited expression of sex, I do think the ideal of ‘authenticity’ can be reductive.

What is real, authentic sex? Is it sex without an audience, without performance, without augmented bodies, without exaggeration or fake orgasms?

We need to make room for more realism, and especially diversity, in the porn we most commonly encounter, but to eradicate artifice altogether is to give up the idea that good sex on film can be anything and say anything more than non-curated documentation.

Instead of rejecting fantasy and performance, it can be expanded.

Porn as a genre needs more voices, more ideas, exploring the potential of sex on film in both a more real and more allegorical way.

This will make more exciting and varied work possible rather than simply swapping the constraints of tradition for the constraints of ‘authenticity’.

Desire isn’t about what we already have and are – it’s allowing ourselves to explore the potential possibility of what we could have and do and be.

It’s letting our imagination run wild and examining what it comes back with.

We can and often should investigate what desires tell us about ourselves and our society, but we should also free ourselves from the idea that they define our moral lives.

Desires, for me, are questions to be explored without easy answers, which is why creating safer spaces in sex for trust, vulnerability, growth and learning, is so important.

Porn, both more realistic and completely fantastical, made by and from many different perspectives, can inform and expand our sexuality, our desires, our learning.

It’s not about blanket definitions or labelling certain types of porn ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘ethical’ or ‘unethical’ – it deserves to be celebrated and critiqued like all other creative work: on an individual basis.

This article first appeared in Archer Magazine #19: the PLEASURE issue.

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