Dr Zahra Stardust will release her book, Indie Porn: Revolution, Regulation and Resistance (Duke University Press) Zahra is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision-Making and Society based at the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology, and is also a member of QUT Centre for Justice.
In Indie Porn, Zahra Stardust examines the motivations and interventions of independent porn producers as they navigate criminal laws, risk-averse platforms, discriminatory algorithms, and rampant piracy. Herself a porn performer and participant, Stardust takes readers behind the scenes, offering intimate insights into this sociopolitical movement. She finds politicians who watch porn in parliament, protesters leading face-sitting demonstrations, sex workers making COVID-safe pornography, and artists reverse-engineering porn detection software. Against the backdrop of a global gig economy, Stardust documents the promises of indie porn to democratize content, revolutionize production, and redistribute wealth while outlining the fantasies of regulators, whose illusions of what porn is and does foreclose possibilities for transformation. Inevitably, as these paradigms collide, porn producers engage in creative tactics to hustle for survival and visibility, from ethical certification to law reform, sometimes reproducing hierarchies of stigma themselves. By highlighting how porn stigma is bound up with intersecting oppressions, Stardust identifies these junctions as coalitional opportunities for changing social relationships to sex, work, and capitalism.
Zahra is involved in a number of upcoming events to launch the book and speak about her research. Read more about Zahra’s research here.
Sydney Book launch:
Zahra Stardust in-conversation with Tilly Lawless | Better Read Events
Public porn panel in Perth:
Policy Taboos: Let’s Talk About…Pornology, Pornucation & Pornocracy
Perth Book launch:
BOOK LAUNCH Indie Porn: Revolution, Regulation, and Resistance
Melbourne Book Launch:
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