All language subtitles for Mutantes.2009.Main.EN

A fiIm by
Virginie Despentes

Summer 2005.

I cross the U.S. From west to
east, from Seattle to New York,

through Los Angeles
and San Francisco.

I meet with activists,
photographers, artists,

fiImmakers, sex workers
and theorists,

who in the 80s began a
revolutionary movement:

A pro-sex feminism,
pro-whores,

porn that is feminist,
S&M, lesbian.

When we speak of feminism,

we often assume
abolitionist feminism.

It treats any pornographic image

as an attack on the dignity of women
and calls for its censureship.

It sees all prostitution as
merchandizing of the human body

and calls
for its criminalization.

Pro-sex feminism has the
opposite strategy:

The body, pleasure,
pornography,

and sex work can be political
tools which one must seize.

Here, the discussion of those
directly involved

outweighs the word
of the experts.

Annie Sprinkle,
Norma Jean Almodovar,

Carol Queen or Scarlot Harlot

have all written about
prostitution in the first person.

Freed from censorship
and victimization,

they claim the right to use
their bodies as they see fit,

including for sex work.

The concept of obscenity is a
totalitarian tool to reduce women,

ultimately, to a piece of flesh.

What is that in sex,
especially women's sex,

what is it in the human
sexual act

that is so shameful?

It's more than the ugliness,
it's... a rejection.

People want to vomit,
people...

or they're fine with it,
with lust, etc...

or in a salacious way.

But to finally find
the simple humanity,

just the beauty,
with ugliness mixed in,

with people as they are,

it's in this delicate balance,
finally, that it's touching.

There are few people
who recognize it,

and who, if not the fiImmakers
can show it

with human material, that is
to say, with the true sexes?

I see absolutely no
objective argument

that allows one to say that
porn is degrading to women.

I had my first professional
shoot in December.

The following ApriI I had my
first cover of Hot Vid�o.

After three months, I fell face
to face with myself in the street,

and it's true that the effect
is quite striking.

Being a porn star,
for me it was

to make a fool of myself maybe
once or twice a month on a set.

It took maybe 10 hours of my
life per month. It was nothing.

What does it mean,
"pornography?"

It's a look focused
on the human sexual act.

It carries a prejudice

and ethics outside
the Judeo-Christian norms

because of nudity, obscenity,

an act of indignity to humans.

It's an indignity to humans
even to believe these things.

Society states that the woman
is a vault of dignity

that is emptied when she's
committing sexual acts.

I think people are perverts,
frustrated,

and that's their problem,
whatever.

Because ultimately, the people
who butt fuck, etc...

Sometimes I've been insulted
by guys in the street.

And I said, "Wait, if you find
what I'm doing so dirty,

"it's because you've
already seen what I do.

"You must be interested.

"You see, you're curious
about it, so you look.

"If people like you didn't watch,
there'd be no girls like me."

Judgment is strong because people
won't recognize the fascination,

the strength of the fascination.

And it's necessarily the object
of their desire that causes desire.

And because it's repressed,
it's wrong... I don't know.

People are completely twisted.

At least, much more than me
when I was doing porn.

"Queer" is first of all
an insult, in fact.

Actually it's very important,
it really is an insult.

It's an insult that means
fag, dyke, asshole,

deranged, sexual sicko, whore.

It indicates a sexual deviation,

a dissent from the sexual norm.

And so that insult has been

reclaimed by a set of micro-
communities in the United States.

In the late 1980s, they turned
this insult on its head.

It's quite incredible,

this hijacking of an insult
thrown at you.

You pick it up and actually
start working with the injury,

and an identity develops.

There was a huge surge

in psychoanalytic and sociological
discourse on femininity

as construction,
as parody, as performance.

Besides, the seminal text

was by a psychoanalyst
named Jean Rivi�re.

It became the basis of
all analyses, Queer analyses.

They actually began to speak of
femininity just as a masquerade.

This performative or
parodic analysis...

Well, it wouldn't happen the same
way in relation to masculinity.

That's to say on the one hand

there's a deconstructive swell
concerning femininity,

and on the other hand,
a huge silence about masculinity.

Masculinity appears as
a natural absolute,

and no one, in fact,
thinks about it.

I don't like to make hierarchies,
in fact,

about gender, sexuality,
saying there are...

well there are butches,
there are drag queens.

Then there are transgenders
and transsexuals.

I think they have different ways
of reclaiming a multiplicity

of the technologies of gender.

I refer the concept
of Teresa Lorite,

these kinds of technologies
of gender.

And these technologies in fact,
they are often performative,

that is,
they are only parodies or...

It's works about representation,

but sometimes they're biopolitical
technologies in a wider sense.

And so we can work equally well
with photography as with fiIm,

with a performance,
with a hormone.

And for me they're different...
different ways

of actually reclaiming the technologi
of production of the genre.

Contemporary society,
in any case from the 1950s,

is a society in which
bio-women are...

systematically pumped
with estrogen.

Every girl, in fact, from
the age of 15, 16 years

wiII take the piII and be fiIled
with estrogen and hence hormones,

in line with creating
femininity in her body.

To my knowledge, there are very
few boys with access to estrogen,

and it's not because it's hard
to find estrogen in our society.

N the other hand,
testosterone,

and here's a radical
political shift,

testosterone continues
to be a hormone

and also a political metaphor,

the use of which is stiII
extremely restricted.

That's to say that testosterone
is controlled, prescribed today

either medically or for the
production of transsexuality

in the body of bio-woman. That is,
for transformation into a man, period

Now, pro-sex feminism
has crossed the Atlantic.

These European inheritors
combine punk rock,

gender politics and
trans/queer/dyke

to make visible the
dissident sexual practices.

They refuse that the state or the
cultural industry decide for them

what is presentable
and what is not.

Mainstream pornography imposes
on us restrictive requirements

of what is a man
and what is a woman,

who does what to whom, what
angle, how many participants.

Pornographic representation
is a war.

To seize it is to
change the imaginary,

to construct identities of resistance

That image is experimental,
funny, edgy or exciting.

Nly one instruction: Do not
leave intact any regulatory code.

The Postporn movement is a new
stage of the feminist revolution.

By staging a deviant sexuality

that doesn't address
the hetero male eye,

one chips away in the brain
of the beholder

the resistances that others
had implanted.

Postpornography undermines
the castrating fiIters

that define virility:

A man does not touch
the cock of another man,

and his anus should
always remain locked.

In Barcelona, the new warriors
of Postporn are punks,

insecure,
feminist and politicized.

Armed with diIdos, mustaches,
fisting, prostheses

and post-movida
comic characters,

they claim all that mainstream
pornography forbids.

Here, Mad Max
confronts Judith Butler.

In 200, at MACBA, the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Barcelona,

the marathon Postporno invited
artists, activists, marginals

and theorists to work together

on an investigation
around pornography.

Postporn had reached
its critical mass.

Ah, follow, follow.

Fuck me, fuck me. - I'm going
to make you work a bit.

I'll make you wait.

I'll make you wait.
- Smash my ass.

Now, I'll break your ass.

I'll split you in two.

Nine years ago,
when I arrived in Barcelona,

a Postporn movement
began to hatch.

Queer, trans-gay-lesbian,

I was a part of it
from the beginning,

and it continues to expand.

There have been many results.

It implements
different politics,

much more aggressive.

When we started Girlswholikeporno,
it was very militant queer,

very involved in the queer
movement in Barcelona.

We were in the background:
Queeruption, Judith Butler...

Confusion of gender,

against dichotomies:
Man/woman, hetero/homo.

That was the birthplace of the
project, Girlswholikeporno.

I find it politically very
interesting and contentious

that women reappropriate
the stigma of the whore.

In Spanish, the words
"bitch" and "fox"

are often used as pejoratives

to describe women,
especially free women.

I like to call myself
or my girlfriends

"sluts" or "bitches,"

and I find that usage
very liberating.

It's no longer to argue,
"I'm good, I'm not a whore."

Kay, I'm a whore.
It's my decision.

On a beautiful spring morning,

there was once a prostitute

looking for clients,

in order to make some cash.

She looked and looked,

Until at last,

after several attempts,

appeared a gypsy,

his briefcase
stuffed with euros.

When they arrive
at their destination,

the whore

begins to put the gypsy
in a position

that is vulnerable
and defenseless.

She presents him to
her friend, the bitch,

and offers him

what appears to be
a bunch of grapes,

ready to eat.

By now,

the Gypsy is caught
between the claws

of these two unwise women.

The poor victim

cannot or doesn't want to
imagine what awaits him.

Don't ask me how it happened,
but we've put together

a lot of people who share
the same interests,

who are friends,
are all productive,

and there's a way of life...

ur leisure time and our time
of political activity has merged.

We formed a network,
compact and powerful,

that's giving us good results
at this time.

This network also influences
our individual work.

Everything produced is the
result of ongoing cooperation.

F course, our work
nourishes feminism.

Even if we've never fought
in feminist groups,

it is influenced,

especially by feminist artists
since the 1970s.

Ur main influence is mainly
from within the queer discourse,

but this is not incompatible.

N the contrary,
it forms a whole.

Let me take your picture.

Do what you want.
Do you have a light?

Are you from around here?

Wait, don't move.

Give me a light, bastard!

No photos.
Give me a light...

I'm doing it, okay?
Where are you going?

In my house, fuck...

I want to fuck, too...

Go fuck your mother.

Your mother!

She fucks like hell.

Call me when you
know how to eat pussy!

It's part of the relationship
between the two of us,

a desire to play
and try things,

especially in connection with
photos, to explore sexuality.

Before discovering Postporn,
it was, at first, a game.

Then, our readings enabled us
to situate ourselves.

I used a diIdo before I knew
what it means.

I developed myself
against masculinity.

Because of my history,

at some point a rejection
of "bio-men."

And to find new meaning
in this rejection,

and to invent other types
of practices,

I enrolled in feminism.

I'll shit on everything

with my crazy bitch voice.

Finally, I have a pussy.

I didn't choose it,

but it does not displease me.

I am a capricious kid
who wants it all.

Perpetually dissatisfied.

It's possible that today
these tools,

these weapons are destroyed.

It is clear that the
lesbian scenes

aim get rid of all the
old stereotypes of femininity.

We can say that the scenes are
the sexualization of power,

the sexualization
of strategic relationships.

What struck me in the scenes is
how it unfurls to see beneath her.

The game in the scene
is very interesting,

because although its time has
a strategic relationship,

it is always fluid.

There are roles, of course,

but everyone knows very well that
these roles can be reversed.

Sometimes when the games begin,
one is the master,

the other the slave,

and at the end the slave
becomes the master.

What seduces me about Postporn
is its experimental side,

trying to talk about sex,

of sex and our desires,

with other codes.

Sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes
it is incomprehensible,

sometimes you read the opposite
of what you expected.

But this line of research

is what really
interests me in Postporn.

I find it very exciting.

For me, Postporn...

I believe my own sexuality
when I make Postporn.

I do not reproduce it,
I create it.

It's like a moment of creation.

To break the barriers and say:

"Now I think I want,
that which I invent?"

Yes, what was very important
for both of us

is that sexuality
is not an essence,

but a creative activity,
buiIt little by little,

from which we create
concepts such as gender.

The aim of Postporn

is not only to excite,
like mainstream porn,

but to construct

and deconstruct
majority discourses.

That's a creation.

Yes, sexuality is
an artistic creation.

Previously, we weren't represented
in mainstream pornography.

Or were represented by others.

So we took the reins
to make our own porn,

adapted to our physical realities,
our practices and our tastes.

The punk subculture seeks
to liberate itself from

established production structures
and production companies

and create its own
independent labels,

its own media,

to organize its own festivals,

its own events,

conferences, etc...

All this with a reduced budget.

It gives strength

to notice that four
or five colleagues

can achieve so many things.

We must reclaim
our sexual representations,

in order to stop hiding.

I am not trying to
escape patriarchy

to enter the convent of feminists,

where I cannot show a breast
or speak sexually.

Giving visibility to our pleasure

and to our twisted sexuality

seems essential to me
in order to emancipate us

and control the way
we're represented.