Professor Shimizu Discusses Effects of Transgender Pornography in Society

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES -- “What’s exciting to me is the expansion of what we understand to be normal and abnormal sex acts and bodies,” said Celine P. Shimizu, visiting professor in Cinema and Sociology (Sexuality) Studies at San Francisco State University and author of “The Hypersexuality of Race” and co-author of “The Feminist Porn Book.” “I find the emergence of pornography itself is useful in our society where the language of sex act is so limited on screen, so there’s always been an element of sex education in pornography,” she says. Shimizu cautions seeing trans porn as inherently progressive, however, and she says that it depends on just how fetishistic or obsessed with genitalia the porn is. “A rise in the interest of trans people doesn’t necessarily translate to recognition of the struggles of people who live those lives. So fetishism isn’t simply positive — it can aggravate their exploitation,” Shimizu said.