Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism

What work does “work” do in sex work? Or, for Heather Berg's book Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism, the question is more specifically, What work does work do in porn work? For Berg, “every porn scene is a record of people at work” (1). But calling it work is only the beginning of the story. Berg's “porn work lens” reminds readers that work is itself a site of struggle, exploitation, creativity, and negotiation. Berg shows us that porn work both is and isn't like other work and that porn work has much to tell us about the conditions and contradictions of labor in late capitalism.Berg's intervention begins where other scholarship on sex work has left off. In the context of feminist sex wars around pornography and prostitution, the term sex work was an intervention in the terms of the debate, intended to radically shift the discourses around prostitution away from the moralizing rhetoric of sin and stigma and the radical feminist framing of prostitution as violence against women. It was a provocative and novel intervention, intended to refocus attention on the work of selling sex. Sex work was—and sex workers were engaged in—a form of labor. The work of “work” here was to normalize sex work as simply another form of labor.While much has since been written about sex work as work, pornography has not received the same attention through the lens of work. Rather, it has been studied overwhelmingly through the lens of representation and consumption, as a cultural text rather than as a site of work. Labor scholars have largely ignored pornography. Berg seeks to bridge these two solitudes, by focusing on pornography as a site of labor. Her work is based on eighty-one interviews with a range of individuals working in porn, from performers to managers to crew members. Through these interviews, Berg demonstrates how porn work is work but is not always like other work. She picks up from but also radically departs from the understanding of sex work as work. Hers is not a celebration or legitimation of porn work as simply another form of labor. Rather, adopting a Marxist feminist analysis, Berg rejects the idea of labor as liberatory under capitalism. She also breaks from a classic Marxist analysis of class and the position of workers: porn workers are engaged in creative struggle, moving between positions within the industry, from performer to director to manager and back again. As Berg shows, porn workers were navigating the many challenges of this economy long before the “gig economy” was recognized as a new, precarious form of labor.Berg's analysis is dialectic: porno dialectics. Contradiction is at the heart of the story: “Porn work can be better than straight work and also just as extractive. Both things are true, and that is the point” (5). Porn workers are, according to Berg, engaged in multiple forms of creative struggle, adaptation, and reimagining of work under the current conditions of the porn economy. Berg focuses on the actual conditions of the shop floor. “Against the framing of porn performance as exceptionally exciting on the one hand or exceptionally extractive on the other, porn workers describe the work of performance as sometimes fun, sometimes straining, and mostly routine” (27).As with other forms of work, authenticity, as in “loving the job,” is a job requirement of porn work. Consumers want authentic pleasure. But authenticity does much more work in porn. It shapes labor relations: for example, managers use “loving what you do” as a justification for lower pay. It also shapes how porn workers experience porn work: “In sex work as elsewhere,” Berg explains, pleasure can make “work feel less like work. And authenticity claims can be a means of refusing anti-sex-worker stigma” (73). But, as porn workers insist, “money matters,” and payment is not antithetical to authentic sexuality and pleasure; indeed, it is essential (86–87).Berg then turns to porn workers’ strategies for using waged work in porn scenes as a marketing tool for all their alternative income streams in the gig economy. Berg provides a fascinating look at the sex work jobs that porn workers most frequently pursue: erotic dancing, webcam modeling, escorting, and platform-mediated direct sales to fans (e.g., OnlyFans). She shows the hustles, the hierarchies, the freedom, and the challenges of these porn-adjacent gigs—or, as she describes them, “sex work satellites.” Berg writes, “Porn workers approach the gig economy with the aim of controlling their incomes, the work environments, and the representations in which they are features” (112). Performers become managers or self-producers with greater autonomy. But Berg keeps the analysis of class foregrounded—“the class politics of the hustle” (120). Not all porn workers have access to the same income streams, and hierarchies of race and class are sometimes reproduced. Moreover, while the gig economy offers greater control of their work and access to the profits, Berg is cautious about its implications: “To acknowledge the transformative potential of autonomous production is not to celebrate freelance gig economies as a frontier for the unencumbered” (120).Berg also explores the porous boundaries between work and life, as well as delving into porn workers’ general distrust of the state, and the challenge of legal regulation. Throughout, Berg provides fascinating insights into the life conditions and views of porn workers, conditions and views that turn common conceptions of the porn industry upside down. Porn work is never just one thing: it is deeply contradictory, and, as she says, “that is the point” (5). In the epilogue—“Fuck Jobs”—Berg returns to the question of “what it means to call porn ‘work’ ” (183). Calling porn work “work” is neither a “bid for respectability” nor a repudiation of pleasure. Indeed, she worries that calling porn work “work” might “legitimize it in ways no work should be legitimized” (184). Berg insists that we do call it work but also that we understand the contradictions of work in late capitalism: “It matters not only that we call porn ‘work’ but that we are clear about what ‘work’ means: exploitation but also struggle” (184–85).Porn Work is a must-read for those interested in porn studies, sex work, and sexuality more generally. It reminds the reader of the importance not only of dialectical thinking but also of interrogating the ambiguities and contradictions of the things we think we already know. Coming into this book, I thought, “Of course porn work is work.” But Berg challenged me to rethink the work of porn work in sophisticated, accessible, and, of course, dialectical ways.