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Join feminist coaches Taina Brown and Becky Mollenkamp for casual (and often deep) conversations about business, current events, politics, pop culture, and more. We’re not perfect activists or allies! These are our real-time, messy feminist perspectives on the world around us.
This podcast is for you if you find yourself asking questions like:
• Why is feminism important today?
• What is intersectional feminism?
• Can capitalism be ethical?
• What does liberation mean?
• Equity vs. equality — what's the difference and why does it matter?
• What does a Trump victory mean for my life?
• What is mutual aid?
• How do we engage in collective action?
• Can I find safety in community?
• What's a feminist approach to ... ?
• What's the feminist perspective on ...?
Becky Mollenkamp: Hello.
Taina Brown: Hello, good morning, how are you?
Becky Mollenkamp: I'm okay. That's an actual "I'm okay." I could be better, but I could be worse, so I'm okay. How about you?
Taina Brown: I'm the same. I'm a little bit tired, but I'm always tired, so that's nothing new. This week I added a new thing to my morning routine. There's a park across the street from our house, and it's less of a picnic-type park and more of an athletic field park. So we get a lot of activity on the weekends with soccer leagues, peewee football, softball, and things like that. This week I started incorporating a walk around the park into my morning routine. It's been nice to add that and get some sunshine, get out of the house almost first thing in the morning. I still need my coffee and some time to rest.
Becky Mollenkamp: I mean, you're well on your way to becoming a billionaire since you even have a morning routine. Isn't that what all those white dudes who talk about getting rich say? You have to have a morning routine. Of course, you're not doing cold plunging.
Taina Brown: Yeah, you gotta wake up at 4 a.m.
Becky Mollenkamp: Drink your matcha or whatever. Apparently, now you gotta drink your own urine, but we won't even go there. I know that's what the white guys are doing to prove how masculine they are. I'm not sure why drinking urine is masculine and not just idiotic, but whatever. I think maybe those two things are synonyms: masculine and idiotic.
Taina Brown: That's another conversation for another day.
Becky Mollenkamp: So let's just start by saying if you're listening to this the day it drops, it's the day before the election to end all elections. Let's hope not. It's the election to hopefully save all elections, but it's the big election. Just want to acknowledge the elephant in the room. You may be listening to this in the future and already know what we don't: what happened. But we're tired of it, and I think you might be too. So instead of talking about the election, which you can get everywhere today, if you're like us and just want to hear about literally anything else...
I was listening to NPR this morning. It was just before Halloween, and they were doing a story about porn and love and sex addiction. It got me thinking about sex work and those sorts of things as someone raising a young boy. They shared a statistic that over 90% of children by age 14 have seen online porn. Not surprising, I guess, but still makes your heart kind of stop when you're a parent trying to protect your child. As a feminist who supports sex work, I have a lot of thoughts and challenges around those beliefs, balancing all that with wanting to raise a son who grows into a man who respects women. I want him to understand sex, but I also want him not to fall victim to or become one of those guys watching porn that’s unrealistic, unethical, and gross. Anyway, lots of thoughts around that. We could go anywhere talking about sex work.
Taina Brown: We really could. There are so many directions.
Becky Mollenkamp: I thought we would talk at least about porn and ethical porn. The other thing that had me thinking about this was something I shared in the Feminist Founders newsletter today. Lily Allen, the musician, mentioned she makes more money from selling photos of her feet on OnlyFans than she does from Spotify for her music. We could go down the rabbit hole of why Spotify and corporate influence in music is so problematic, but I'd rather focus on the OnlyFans piece. There’s a lot of real money in OnlyFans, and there are people who hate it. But I’m pro-sex work, so why would I be against OnlyFans? People, especially women, are making good money. That story highlights how even someone successful in her industry can make more from sex work. I don’t know if we call feet photos sex work or not, but whatever. Those are some of my initial thoughts.
Taina Brown: I mean, it's a kink. So I would call feet photos sex work. Where to begin, honestly? So here’s where I’ll start in terms of my thoughts and feelings about sex work. When I lived in LA, I joined a feminist activist group to meet people because it's hard to make friends in LA. Actually, it’s hard to make friends as an adult period, but in a place like LA, it's even harder. I came across the group on Instagram and thought it might be a good way to find some like-minded folks who, to be quite honest, weren't white and wanted to do meaningful work. I ended up leaving the organization before moving back to Atlanta. Even if we hadn’t moved, I probably would have left because of their stance on sex work. They were adamantly against it due to its ties to power dynamics and the history of forced sex work for Black and brown women.
The history can't be erased, and it has to be part of the analysis when we talk about sex work. But I felt their approach was unethical. They would partner with other organizations with different stances on sex work, then get stage time at events and use it to talk about why sex work was bad, even when that wasn’t what they said they'd discuss. Little things like that just gave me the ick, as the kids say. I understood their stance, and I wasn’t trying to convince them to change their minds—until they insisted we shouldn't call it sex work and should call it forced prostitution. If you ask anyone who chooses that work, they’ll tell you it’s work. So let’s call it what it is: sex work, whether forced or not. That’s a different conversation.
Their insistence that every organization they partner with aligns with their views on sex work hurt their efforts. It corroded trust with other organizations in the city. Sadly, I probably would have left the organization anyway. I think when it comes to sex work, there’s a complex history that we have to address. But the question isn’t just about the past; it’s about the future of sex work.
Becky Mollenkamp: I guess we need to be clear. I’m very decidedly anti-forced sex work. I’m very decidedly anti-forced any labor, sex or otherwise. Those have to be separate issues. In the same way we can’t talk about employment and pretend it’s the same as slavery, we’re talking about two separate conversations. I’m happy to talk about all the ways corporations manage employees problematically, but we need to separate it from forced servitude. I don’t know how anyone can have a genuine, ethical conversation around sex work and not separate the two. It’s disingenuous to pretend all sex work is forced. I could go on, but I’m sure you’re with me here. We’re clearly against forced sex work, period.
Taina Brown: I don’t think anyone should be forced to do anything they don’t want to do. I struggled with that situation because it wasn’t a both/and conversation. It was either/or, and I’m not comfortable in spaces like that. I’m not comfortable with that level of certainty because our lives and issues are so nuanced. A lot of their philosophy around sex work came from trauma their communities had experienced. While that trauma is 100% valid, when it gets in the way of building necessary relationships and coalitions for a more just world, you’re doing more harm than good. Sex work is nuanced, with layers of systemic issues.
Yes, you can make money on OnlyFans selling feet pictures, but we still need to examine power dynamics. Every angle needs to be interrogated. There’s a way to engage in sex work that helps people tap into their agency and power. It’s possible to do it ethically, without retraumatizing individuals, and resist the system dominated by white, cis, hetero, able-bodied, wealthy men. Personally, I hardly watch porn now, but I know ethical porn sites prioritize consent.
Becky Mollenkamp: I want to talk about that because I’ve tried to find more ethical options, both for myself and my son as he gets older. It’s inevitable; he’ll want to look at porn. I want to figure out how to provide options that are ethically made and more realistic in terms of consent and healthy relationships. The problem is, even when consensual, porn often sends men very unrealistic, harmful messages about expectations around sex and women’s roles in it. As a mom, I find it scary.
Most porn is heteronormative and geared toward men, under the assumption that men like porn more than women. But I wonder how much of that is because of what’s out there. I worry about the expectations it sets for men and how it often centers power dynamics. I’ve been looking for ethical porn, but even when it claims to be ethical, I struggle to find porn addressing these other issues around representation. Traditional porn is often very young, thin, and enhanced.
Taina Brown: Digitally and physically enhanced, yes.
Becky Mollenkamp: Yes, enhanced in all the ways, right? And primarily white. So there’s a certain look that porn represents, which has caused problems for many young girls and women—how they’re supposed to show up, how they measure up, not just in the world but also in the bedroom, how they have to look. I have so many issues with porn, and I consume it sometimes. I don’t think porn is inherently bad. Watching people who want to be watched having sex—none of that is bad. But this is where it’s messy. We can’t just talk about the individuals inside who are making a choice. That’s one reason I like OnlyFans. I don’t subscribe to anything, but I like the concept of an individual choosing to empower themselves. I like that a lot better than what I often see in porn, which feels much more like systemic issues at play, with people profiting off someone else’s labor.
I think prostitution, when there’s no third party like a madam or a pimp, and it’s just you making an empowered choice, reaping the financial benefits, those one-to-one transactions—hell yeah. It’s when other people get involved that things get murkier. It doesn’t make it necessarily wrong or bad, but that’s where it gets complicated. It’s not always good or bad.
Taina Brown: It’s not a black-and-white thing. As you were talking, I thought about Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde. A lot of people reference that as a process for finding wholeness and authenticity in yourself. But let’s be clear, she also talks about masturbation in that piece. It’s encoded language, but she’s talking about masturbation. When she describes the "kernel of butter" and massaging it, this was a Black lesbian in the ’70s. It’s not free of the sexual embodiment that was really prevalent for Black lesbians and lesbians in general at that time.
What I love about that piece is that it applies to finding wholeness and authenticity, but also to sexual relationships. Her whole premise in Uses of the Erotic is that the opposite of the erotic is the pornographic. Anytime you engage in a relationship, sexual or otherwise, where there’s no space for you to be completely yourself in that moment, that’s the pornographic. If you feel you have to cut off part of your feelings—whether a physical sensation or an emotional one—that’s the definition of the pornographic. Erotic allows space for the messy, chaotic parts of your feelings, both physical and emotional. I don’t know if this exists, but I’d love to see a porn site based on these principles. Like, we are the Audre Lorde of porn, right? We are the Audre Lorde of sex work, because I don’t think sex work is going anywhere.
Becky Mollenkamp: Oldest profession, right? Isn’t that what they say? It’s always been here, and it’s always going to be here.
Taina Brown: It’s a tool for people to explore things about themselves in a way that should feel safe and consensual. A lot of times it’s not, and that’s where a lot of the problems lie. I don’t know of any ethically produced porn, but I love what you said about it not just being about production but representation. In the disability community, a big issue with porn is the lack of disability representation.
Becky Mollenkamp: I don’t think either of us are here to kink shame. So just to be clear, in any conversation I’m having about this, I have no kink shame, no nothing. The problem is when that’s the only option, right? When the way you show up is only seen as a kink. Same for fat women; it’s only seen as a kink. Same for older women. All those things—it’s fine if they’re a kink, but they shouldn’t only be a kink.
Taina Brown: Yeah, because that’s what shifts the power dynamic. When it’s only a kink, you’re disempowering someone from that community. If there’s wide representation that’s consensual, ethically made, equitable, safe, allowing people to show up fully, I think a lot of the issues people have with porn and sex work wouldn’t exist. There’d be space for people to explore everything. Have you read—well, do you have anything else to add? I’m sure you do.
Becky Mollenkamp: Well, since you mentioned Uses of the Erotic, which I absolutely love, I pulled it out so I could read something. Here’s a paragraph I think speaks to what we’re talking about, particularly about the term "pornographic." This is a quote: “The erotic has been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, and the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.”
I love Sister Outsider; every essay in here is amazing, but Uses of the Erotic is special. You can read it in so many ways. It covers eroticism and pornography but also broader concepts of pleasure for women. Pleasure—especially for those with marginalized identities—has been made into something used against us, denied to us. And I think this quote captures it. The problem isn’t porn or sex work itself. Watching people have sex isn’t the problem; it’s that it’s been turned into this pornographic version that’s plasticized, devoid of feeling, and centered around power imbalances. What we’re saying is, where is the erotic? Where are the true representations of pleasure, the images that center our experiences? Even so-called lesbian porn is often still centered around the male gaze.
Taina Brown: That’s not how it happens. A lot of times, that’s not how it happens.
Becky Mollenkamp: That’s not what I want to see, because it doesn’t represent reality. I’ve noticed audio porn does a better job centering women’s experiences, possibly because men have been conditioned—not biologically wired, I don’t think—to be more visual.
Taina Brown: Yeah, I don’t believe that either.
Becky Mollenkamp: Audio porn is more geared towards female listeners, based on this belief that women are more into stories and feelings than men. Again, I think much of that is conditioning. But because of that, audio porn does center women’s experiences powerfully. But if you want visual porn as a woman, it’s tough to find. That’s why I think OnlyFans is worth exploring, though I wonder if independent creators there still end up centering the male gaze. And then there’s the piece we haven’t talked about—shame. Women have been made to feel shameful about desires that are completely human. We all have sexual desires. It’s how we exist as humans. But women specifically are made to feel bad about it, so we often seek out porn quietly.
Taina Brown: Secretive.
Becky Mollenkamp: And so they’re not making it for us because I don’t know that they believe we actually want it. Even those who may approach it in a more empowered way still feel they need to center it for men in order for it to be profitable. And ultimately, work should be paid. Sex work should be paid. I want those women to make great money. But it sucks that there’s this belief that you can’t make money by centering the female gaze.
Taina Brown: What you were talking about earlier, about the connection of the erotic and Audre Lorde’s definition of eroticism and pornography, made me think of a conversation I had with a client about embodiment—how we embody our lives. So much of Western society is focused on thought, rooted in ideas like "I think, therefore I am." Cartesian philosophy is the basis of objectivity and the scientific method, which is still taught in schools. We buy into that so much that we lose touch with what it feels like to be in our bodies. I theorize that’s partly why sex work is as prevalent as it is; it’s an avenue for people to feel in their bodies. But you can’t choose one or the other. You can’t be fully embodied but not think, and you can’t only think without embodiment. Marrying those two is essential for a fully actualized person. Most people feel they have to pick and choose, but you don’t have to. You can engage in sex work, pornography, or kink in an ethical, consensual, and holistic way—while also thinking critically about what you’re doing. It becomes dangerous when we go to the extreme of full embodiment without critique of the systems we're participating in.
Becky Mollenkamp: I totally agree. It made me think about how we’re made to be disembodied from our bodies, especially as women. Girls’ bodies are objectified from a young age. For white women, our bodies are like precious things to be protected until we reach a certain age, then suddenly, we become objects to be ridiculed, abused, touched—everything but valued. For Black women, as we discussed, that shift often happens much earlier. White girls might experience a period of protection, but then it’s like, now suddenly, I am nothing but a body that is not mine to value. Many of us are forced into a contentious relationship with our bodies at such a young age, almost made to hate them because they’re the source of so much trauma and pain.
Let’s be real about men and their experiences, too. Young boys are often victims of sexual assault at a higher rate than girls, though this changes as bodies mature. Older girls and young women experience much higher rates of sexual assault. But in childhood, boys experience more molestation. So they’re also disembodied in ways, made to believe their bodies are meant for defense or aggression. The only emotional avenue allowed to them is anger, so they deal with trauma by projecting it as anger, often through hurting others. That trauma cycle—boys being hurt, growing into men who hurt others—leads to a culture where men feel entitled to harm because they were harmed. Meanwhile, women learn to be the source and object of abuse.
When you look at how bodies are treated within our puritanical culture, with its ingrained shame, trauma, and disembodiment, it raises a question: Can we create truly ethical porn? Given everything we just discussed, can anyone fully separate from those systems and know they’re consuming or creating without perpetuating harm? It’s complicated. You can’t escape the larger systems, even if you try to create something a little better. So I think, sure, make money selling feet pics. But is that something we’d do if we weren’t inside a system that profits from objectification? It’s complicated. That core question is still there for me, and I don’t have an answer.
Taina Brown: That’s an important question to sit with because we often say, “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” If I believe that, I have to apply it to sex work, too, because it’s a consumer-based service. For me, it’s about acknowledging that while there’s no ethical consumption, I still buy groceries, technology, and go to movies. We can’t fully escape it, so we have to view it on a spectrum. If you’re into sex work or porn, how much of your engagement is pulling you into toxic capitalism versus away from it? What are the means of production, distribution of money and power? How does it inform your daily interactions with others?
If you’re engaging in sex work or consuming it and it starts affecting how you think about power dynamics in the bedroom, then that’s when it becomes toxic. If you can engage without it becoming toxic, great. But if you feel yourself nearing that tipping point, you need to be able to pull back and have a community that holds you accountable. What we haven’t addressed is this idea: we shouldn’t be telling people what to do with their bodies.
Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, it’s like with abortion. If you don’t like sex work, don’t participate. Don’t consume it. But don’t tell other people what they can and can’t do ethically.
Taina Brown: Exactly. It’s both an individual’s decision and a community matter. If you’re engaging in sex work without community accountability, that’s toxic. You need a safe space to discuss questions or experiences you encounter in sex work. As an individual, you can’t just say, “I’m doing this for myself” without considering how it affects your community and how sex work impacts society as a whole.
Becky Mollenkamp: And talking about ethical consumption—watching free porn isn’t ethical. If that’s your only source, it’s worth exploring why, because it’s not ethical. I don’t want to shame people because it’s often shame-based: they want to dip in and out quickly, clear their browser history, and move on without anyone knowing. If you’re consuming it shamefully, you’re likely not making ethical choices. Doing the work to unpack shame around sex helps bring that critical lens to consumption, whether that’s in buying groceries or choosing ethical sex work. We should be thinking about from whom we’re consuming and how we’re doing it.
For example, Dipsy is an audio service centered around the female gaze, created by two women, and they try to approach fantasy and eroticism in a more ethical way. It’s only audio, but I’d love to see this approach brought into video, too. And we haven’t even talked about sex toys, which are also part of the sex work business. Where are you buying sex toys from? Are they made ethically? Who’s profiting from them? We need to apply that same critical lens in the sex space that we often do elsewhere, though the shame around it keeps it hidden.
Taina Brown: If you’re listening and want to explore what it means to marry your thinking brain with your embodied self, I recommend Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown. It’s an anthology from writers and organizers on how pleasure can be part of resistance and anti-capitalist work. We’ll put links in the show notes for websites owned and run by women, prioritizing women and non-binary folks’ pleasure.
Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, I found ethical sources for audio porn and some sex toys, but video is tougher. So, if anyone has found more ethical ways to consume sex work—like ethical OnlyFans creators or porn sites—email us at messyLiberation@gmail.com. We’ll keep it anonymous if you want. We’d love to share those resources. And, wish us luck with the election tomorrow. If it’s post-election, maybe some masturbation will help calm your nerves. Enjoy your body and the pleasure it brings. Thanks for listening.