Original subtitles

Now on BBC News, HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk.

I'm Stephen Sackur.

Porn is one of the biggest drivers of worldwide internet

traffic and a generator of vast amounts of money for the titans

of the online porn industry.

But it is also an industry in a state of flux.

The biggest online porn platforms have been

accused of profiting from criminality and abuse.

Can pornography ever be truly non-exploitative

and feminist-friendly?

Well, my guest today is Erika Lust, pornographer,

feminist and entrepreneur.

Is there such a thing as ethical porn?

Erika Lust in Barcelona, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you very much, Stephen.

Erica, let's start with your backstory.

You were a Swedish student focused on political science,

specialising in human rights and feminism, I believe.

So how did you get from there to be inside the porn industry?

Well, it's kind of a long story.

At the same time, I mean, it's not that big a step in the end,

because I am actually doing what I always wanted to do.

I am working for women's rights.

I'm working to try to make a new perspective on something

that kind of bothered me.

I was a young adult and I was starting to look at porn.

And I think that something became very clear to me at

the beginning, and it was that most of the porn that I watched

was very male-centred.

It was always about the men and about their pleasure,

and the women were used somehow as some kind of tools

or like beautiful objects, but it wasn't really

their stories that were being told.

And I think that, for me, that was one of the most

important reasons why I ended up somehow deciding that

I wanted to try this genre, I wanted to try to make a movie

myself that had my values but an explicit, an adult movie.

Erika, it is fascinating.

But I wonder if you can understand why perhaps some

people, maybe many people, watching this around the world

will be a little bit cynical about the notion that you are,

quote, "working for women's rights" by monetising film

of women having sex with men...

..well, with women and men.

I mean, you know, monetising sex, is that truly working

for women's rights?

Yes.

Monetising sex is not a reason of not working

for women's rights, I believe.

What is important when you're talking about the work

that we are making is how are we making it, with what

values, with what perspective, how are we caring about our

crew and our...performers?

And I think that there lies the big difference -

who's participating in making these films and how are we

representing people on screen?

I think that in the world we live in today, we are in

a great need of watching better images of sex on screen,

because what we have seen on the internet

during the last...

at least 12 years, where the tube sites have taken over

most of the space of showing adult films, and the values,

really, if you go online on these tube sites

and you look at how they are presenting these films

is very misogynistic, many time racist, and it's

a way of really fetishising people and trying to divide us

into small groups.

And in the end, these big companies - because I think

it's important to understand how the adult industry works...

Well, I agree it's important to understand how it works,

and the adult industry generally focuses

on the word "consent".

And the industry says, "Look, the women in our films,

"the performers..."

And of course, there's men, too, but we're focused

right now on the women.

"The women are always wanting to do this.

"They are willing to do this.

"They give their total, complete, voluntary consent."

And you say the same thing about your women,

you focus on consent.

But I would put it to you that consent

oftentimes isn't enough.

It doesn't necessarily ensure that there is an equal power

dynamic between the performer and those who are organising

the shoot and who are behind the camera.

We not so very long ago interviewed a young woman,

Mia Khalifa, who became a, unfortunately for her,

an internet sensation when she was filmed performing

sex acts with men as a very young woman

aged 21, wearing hijab.

She's of Lebanese-American extraction.

She deeply regrets what she did, but she described to me

why she agreed to do it.

She was signed to a contract with a porn company at a very

young age, and she says, although she willingly

signed, she was actually fearful and intimidated

through the whole of the process.

How can you be sure that your performers

aren't going through the same feelings, too?

I think it's about the time that you are giving them

and the preparation before you are deciding

to work with someone.

What we are doing is a very long process where we are

having in-depth interviews with our performers, trying

to find out who they are, what they have done before,

why they are doing this kind of work, what they like,

what they don't like, if they have preferred

performers they would like to work with, if they have a no-go

list of people they definitely don't want to work with.

And I think it has to do with how people are getting

into today's films, how involved they are in

the process.

It's about understanding, obviously, power dynamics,

and it's about trying to be as communicative as possible

with everyone who is involved in the process.

Yes, you style it as feminist porn.

Do you only use women directors, for example?

Not only.

We have worked also with a few male directors,

but they are also feminist directors, obviously,

even if they are male.

Well, is it obvious?

I mean, how can you define a male director of porn

as a feminist director?

Well, because of the process of interviewing, where

we are talking about the values we have and how we share them.

But I think that when you are talking about the concept

of feminist porn and what does it mean, I understand that

there's many people out there thinking that in the word

"feminist" is somehow something anti-men and in the word "porn"

there's something anti-women and they can't make them go

together, or they imagine for themselves a bunch of very

aggressive women putting up, you know, putting

on their strap-ons, getting out in the world to kind

of get the men.

That's what people imagine.

But when we are talking about feminist porn here,

we are talking about the people who are participating

behind the cameras.

And women are definitely very important in this process

and how we are working.

Well, I appreciate the passion with which you speak of this,

but I just want to quiz you on one specific

aspect of your film work.

That is, you do explore violence in terms of bondage,

domination, S&M, sadomasochism.

You explore that sort of, you know, that dark arena

of sexual experience.

And I think I'm right in saying that you personally

directed a movie, Safe Word, which depicts, you

know, BDSM on film.

And there are women - and, indeed, men -

who have a real problem with the filming of BDSM

in the sense that what we often see in those sorts of films

is violence perpetrated against women, women

immobilised, women hit, women exploited

in different ways.

Now, are you entirely sure that that's feminist?

Well, it can definitely be.

I don't see a problem at all with a woman wanting

to explore that side of her sexuality.

I think that this kind of films regarding BDSM are films that

are very needed to be able to see how people are dealing

with these kind of situations, how they are communicating

their sexual boundaries and their sexual desires

through this practice, and in this film, Safe Word,

that is definitely what we are doing, and you can see

the journey of a female character and how she gets

into this genre and how she starts exploring it

and how she understands it and how she communicates...

Erika, Erika, let me put to you the words

of the Washington, DC-based National Center on Sexual

Exploitation, who last year wrote this about the portrayal

of BDSM on film.

"Female submission," they said, "is the opposite of feminism.

"There is no feminist way to hit a woman.

"Feminists want violence against women to be

"unthinkable, not sexy."

Can you see where they're coming from?

I mean, I do understand what they are coming from.

They are coming from systemic images that we see online

on free tube sites that are open to everyone

of lots and lots of images where, obviously, women

are in submissive roles.

Well, they are, with respect, they are in certain

phases of Safe Word, as I understand it.

You know, you have women there who explore their fantasies

about having violence committed upon them.

But I think, as women, that we are allowed

to explore this genre.

We are allowed to explore our sides of submission

without having to be questioned if we are a feminist or not.

But eroticising violence doesn't necessarily

get away from the fact you are portraying

violence against women as somehow acceptable.

But now you are talking in a way that I would be

showing violence against women.

That's not at all what I am doing in my work.

Here, you are talking about a very specific film

where the main character is a woman and she wants

to explore her submissive side.

There are also women doing the dominant side

of this exploration in the film, for example.

Erika, let me ask you this.

No, I'm listening intently to what you're saying,

and I'm trying to tease out the different aspects of it.

One thing I'm thinking about is not how you make it

and the thought you bring to it as the director, I'm thinking

about how people receive it.

I'm thinking about the audience.

I'm also thinking of the research work done

by various different American and British academic

researchers who've looked at the fact, for example,

that many young people, teenagers, are watching porn

but in particular are watching porn involving this violence,

BDSM, and it is being normalised for them.

To quote the British Board of Film Classification,

who sponsored a survey, quote, "Most children

"had viewed pornography that they found disturbing

"or overly aggressive, with many saying they believed

"it had influenced how they then behaved in sexual

"encounters and the way they felt about their bodies."

Doesn't that concern you?

Not the motivation you have for making it, but what happens

inside the heads of the people who watch it?

Of course that concerns me.

But remember, now you are talking about material that

are open for everyone online, for young people, for

teenagers etc, material that are not behind a paywall.

I want to be very clear on this, because, of course,

the movies that I make is for an adult audience

who are over 18.

That's why they are also behind a payment barrier online.

No, I understand that.

But the truth is that because you are part

of an industry which has over the last few years made more

and more pornography freely accessible, you can't really

walk away from an association with that industry, can you?

Or is it your insistence that you are something

completely different?

What I can try to do is to change that

industry from the inside.

I can try to influence people to become better, to think more

about their representation of women that they are

doing in their movies.

And I can bring this debate out to the mainstream,

because it's something that we haven't talked

about for many, many years, even if these tube sites online

have become bigger and bigger and we all know that they

have a huge influence.

I am aware that porn has become sex education.

Whether we like it or not, that is the situation

we are in today.

So I believe that it's very important for parents

and educators to talk to our younger generations

about this situation and about sex and about porn,

and to explain to them that porn is fiction,

that it's not the same as actual sex, that many

things that you see in porn is like in movies,

where you can watch Superman fly, but in reality,

no person can really fly, and the same is

happening with porn.

If I may ask you a personal question, Erika, do

you have kids of your own?

Two girls, ten and thirteen at this moment.

And do you feel that they should be exposed

to pornography over the next, what, two, three, four years?

No, I don't think they should.

I think that that is something that they could start

exploring when they turn 18.

But I am aware that they are being exposed

to porn if they go online and search for it.

Obviously, as I am who I am, I have a situation where I know

about restrictions and I know how I can prepare my

screens in my home.

But remember that even if I have that information,

most people don't.

So what I need to do as an adult is the same

as I would do when - which hasn't happened yet,

because of their age - but when they want,

they will come to me and say that they want to go

to a bar or a discotheque.

I need to prepare them for the world we live in,

so I need to have that kind of conversations with

them about alcohol, about cigarettes, about

drugs etc etc.

It seems to me in your career, you've constantly had

to lock horns with people who want to censor pornography,

who want to ban pornography.

And you've always, frankly, been on the side

of the argument which says, "No, we need to have the

"freedom as adults to explore."

But I just wonder right now, when there is such a live

debate about what you call the tube platforms,

the platforms where people can upload sexual content,

even from their own lives, and put it online for

others to view for free, whether you think there needs

to be much greater control and indeed maybe even

censorship of that form of pornography.

Are you now, in a sense, arguing for much

tighter restriction?

I do believe that it should be behind a payment barrier.

I think that is the clearest way to say, "Hey, this material

"is meant for adults."

Now, in terms of what you want to do with your company,

are you going to continue to sort of push for

more access, for...

..I don't know, for greater audiences?

Or do you want to maintain your place in a very small niche?

What is your ambition?

And, to be honest, how much money do you want

to make out of sex?

Well, my ambition is to get more women into porn.

That's what I'm looking for behind the cameras.

I want more women to create their own companies.

I want more women to get into important positions.

I want more women to become directors and producers

and screenwriters and start telling our stories

from our perspective.

How are we living our sexuality?

What is our desires?

How do we want to be represented on screen?

That is my biggest ambition.

And it's a project that I've been working on for many years

now, to finance and produce other female directors' films.

I just wonder if you might not be overtaken by the next wave

of internet sort of pioneering work in this field,

and that is platforms like OnlyFans, which remove

all mediation, curation, directing of sexual content

by empowering people themselves to upload content on demand

to the user direct, so that there's no need for somebody

like you and your company to direct porn, because women -

and, indeed, men - can simply provide the content

for themselves, film it for themselves and interact

directly with their - quote, unquote -

"fans" or "consumers".

That could kill your business model, couldn't it?

It could, but I don't think it will, because the quality

of the films that we are making is very, very different

from what you will find on OnlyFans, though I think

it's wonderful that at last we have this opportunity

for performers to make their own content and sell it

directly to the audience.

I'm really happy that they have this opportunity.

But then remember that what we are providing is

something quite different here.

We are working with cinematic models, we are working

with narratives, we are telling stories.

It's a different kind of format.

How have you coped with the realities of a global

pandemic, of Covid-19?

You're talking to me from home.

I don't know whether you've been able to shoot any

of your upcoming porn films through this pandemic.

What on earth has it meant to the porn industry?

Well, it's definitely meant a stop of producing,

especially a year ago in March, when we all entered

the quarantine.

Then we have started to understand how this Covid

virus works and we have been able to go back to shooting,

but under more strict situations where, of course,

the cast and the crew has been tested.

And what happens is that I am quite lucky in that aspect,

because we had shot quite much material before the pandemic

so we could continue releasing our films.

But I think that, of course, this has meant that we all have

to think very carefully about the health situation.

I mean, I can't imagine an industry which involves more

intimate personal contact between people than the porn

business, and I'm just wondering if there are lessons

that you can learn and that you in the industry have

learned from everything you had to adapt to.

After the spread of HIV/AIDS in the late 1980s, it meant

that the porn industry really had to focus on health

testing, on mandatory tests for all performers.

Is that something that perhaps is helping you to plan

a post-Covid future for your industry?

I mean, this industry is definitely an industry that

knows a lot about the health testing and that is very

prepared and has made huge steps into a very professional

industry regarding the health testings.

Final thought, and it goes back to the beginning

and your Swedish experience as a political science major,

your focus on human rights and feminism.

In all honesty, are you in this business and have you been in

it for decades because you can make a lot of money rather

than the feminist message that you've been giving to me?

Why can't you have the two of them coming together?

I don't see any problem, really, with earning money

from making respectful, good-thought films

with the values that I want to share with the world.

But I definitely think that I could not have done this

if my passion for making this kind of films hadn't been

that big that it is.

Erika Lust, I thank you very much indeed

for joining me on HARDtalk.

Thank you.

Thank you, Stephen.