The Conversation: Pornography director Anna Arrowsmith on politics, Page 3, and how David Cameron inspired one of her films
Was it a surprise to be invited to the BBC’s 100 Women conference?
It was a nice surprise. There were three of us from the sex industry: Brooke Magnanti, who is Belle de Jour, and also Sarah Walker who runs the English Collective of Prostitutes. Three per cent of sex workers; I guess that’s a start.
You’ve been on ‘Woman’s Hour’ and ‘Newsnight’, but it’s tended to be defending pornography.
Did you see this as a kind of acceptance?
Yes, especially as I was part of a panel. There were a couple of things that I wanted to get across: men are just as gendered, they have things they don’t have a choice about; and the assumption that if you’re interested in gender equality, you’re left wing, that feminists are all socialists.
How do you find the reception from feminist quarters to your work?
We had this debate in the Eighties about pornography, and basically agreed to disagree, until it cropped back up again with the rise of internet porn. The people who are anti-porn shout louder, but there are a lot of women who support me. And if you look at the stats, 33 per cent of all porn consumed online is by women.
Do you think Britain is becoming more accepting of porn?
You have to look at the context. There’s a big campaign that’s anti-Page 3 at the moment, one that’s anti-lap dancing clubs, one that’s trying to take condoms out of saunas in Scotland. Then there’s the campaign to make sites have no explicit images available until you put your credit card details in, which is basically saying the industry can’t exist.
Anna in Los Angeles with Evil Angel’s Christian Mann and TRPWL’s Michael Whiteacre
