Porn and Sex and Feminism and STUFF

I wrote this post and it turned out to be quite personal and I almost decided not to post it at all. However, I decided I would and now I would like to say that whatever I've said here is based on the few pieces of writing I link to in this post and also conversations with friends over the years and personal experiences. I don't mean to generalise, so if and when I do, bear in mind I don't mean to.

I got a bit distracted whilst writing (well, pretending to write) my dissertation and read a couple of articles and blogposts that were all interlinked. It all started with an article the 'girl with a one-track mind' had written. She was talking about female sexuality and male dominated world etc. You know, sort of feminist stuff.

Now, if you know me at all, you'll know that I find much of feminism a bit bollocks (well, not bollocks, it just seems to go a bit too far at times, I believe in equality) and when it comes to sex related issues and such, well, I quite like watching porn. However, it was only when I read this blog post, that I realised that it is only really certain stuff that I like watching and I found that I too, have become somewhat conditioned to adapting certain expectations about sex. I mean fantasies and such, that have rather clearly, now that I think about it, been affected by things I've watched, read etc. Even by an ex-boyfriend, who in turn, I think was basing most of his assumptions about sex and what women want on the porn he had seen. In the middle of all of this I'm wondering what it is that I really like, and had I been exposed to different stuff, would I then like different things.

Anyway, to come back to the point I wanted to talk about, the articles, blog posts and such only just really made me realise how much of porn is made for the male audience and is enforcing images and ideas of male domination especially in sex. The Ms. Naughty blog, I think really made this point well. This is what she said: 'I make porn sites for women. I'm trying to cater to the millions of female surfers that go online every day trying to find something that will turn them on. I spend my days trying to find hardcore adult material that women will enjoy, and trying to present it to women in a manner that they will find accessible, arousing and inoffensive.' Now, obviously people like different things and you can't really generalise too much, but much of the porn (that I've come across) is empowering men and presenting women as being there for the pleasure of men. Ms. Naughty continues: 'Never mind if there's been no female orgasm (and I'm talking vaguely real ones here, not the 15 minute endless moany fake ones), in porn the money shot is the official end of sex.' (Oh I wish my dissertation was on something like this as opposed to what it's actually on.) Having thought about this, I realised that I very much like porn where the female orgasms look real. And no, I'm not turned on by lots of cum all over the place.

This all also reminded me of a conversation I once years ago now, (it must have been about 3 years ago) with a friend of a friend who was moaning about not liking anal, having a boyfriend who wanted it, liking to watch porn but not wanting to watch anal stuff, and most of the porn she could find (this was by browsing the internet, and sex stores etc. she'd done a rather thorough search) had anal stuff in it. Or as she pointed out, much of what she'd seen, she disliked because of the rather obvious faking by the women. I think porn poses "problems" for the female viewer as well, on the side of men getting "wrong" ideas about sex and sexuality on the bases of watching porn, also women can be conditioned to the idea that when having sex their only object is pleasing the man. It doesn't matter if she doesn't enjoy it, she might even fake her orgasms just to keep the man happy, and I might be wrong, but this can be due to the image of what sex is and should be like that we get from porn.

Oh there's so much I want to talk about. When it comes to men being empowered by porn there's also an example I want to draw from a blog I've been reading, written by a woman about her sexlife. (I won't link you to it because it's in Finnish.) I quite like it and I think she has a rather healthy attitude to her sexuality and she knows what she wants and all that. But still, she writes about how she likes men taking her hard, "raping" her and I think that again is an example of how, even though porn can empower women, and mostly I'd like to say that she's a good example of women being empowered by porn, but then at times she manages to lose that position of being equal in sex by subjecting herself to the man in question. I like her blog, it's just the usage of the verb "to rape" that really puts me off. I think that is where she stops being equal, let alone in power and is merely used by the men who "rape" her. If you know what I mean.

Now, I don't think porn should be banned or anything, porn can be a good thing. And as Zoe Margolis said: 'But banning it will achieve nothing because it's just a symptom of a wider-ranging sexism in society, rather than the cause of it. Porn doesn't become mainstream in a vacuum.' And I'm not going to suggest how things could be changed, I don't have the answers. But I hope, that this'll make some of you think about things. This may also be a bit incoherent and rant-y, I really should proof read these things, but then who cares. And I don't know if anyone actually reads this either. Comments are very welcome.

Post Scriptum: What really sparked me to write this was me getting furious because of the "harvesting" by footballers. Read about it here.