Feminism, Pornography, and female desire
Overview
Socio-cultural factors encourage women to suppress their desire.
I was speaking to a female acquaintance over the phone and said to her that, in my opinion, men were more afflicted with sexual desire compared to women, to which she replied instantly, “but that’s not true, who told you that.”
After reading feminist literature, I found an answer that can partially explain this difference, that the sociocultural factors encourage women to suppress their desire.
I was speaking to a female acquaintance over the phone and said to her that, in my opinion, men were more afflicted with sexual desire compared to women, to which she replied instantly, “but that’s not true, who told you that.”
I was taken aback by her reaction but responded by saying that in my experience of growing up in India, I had noticed that most of my female relatives who lost their spouses in their middle age chose not to remarry, but the majority of the middle-aged widowed got married again. Secondly, I had also noticed that men were more into watching pornography compared to women, and that is why I concluded that men were more focused on sex, whereas women were more into seeking gratification through relationships.
After reading feminist literature, I found an answer that can partially explain this difference, that the sociocultural factors encourage women to suppress their desire.
Simone de Bouvier, a French philosopher, said that women were not biologically different from men but were made to believe so, as a result of oppressive sociocultural factors. According to her the psychological differences between men and women had no biological basis and they were pure of cultural or social origin.
Although difficult to prove scientifically it does seem to me that there are many genuine psychological factors that are in the default settings of the two genders, and they may not be socially learned.
In real life, for most women, sex should happen within a social context and the act should not be divorced from it, the same preference goes for their choice of pornography. The sexual activity happening within a storyline or a film holds a greater attraction to them than this happening completely cut off from its social context.
Pornography for women
The porn made for and by women is different from conventional porn which has rightly been described as degrading to women. The porn for women has such scenes/dialogues – “there is no life without you, I have left everything behind, my family, my home, and my country for you,” and a man showing that he really cares about the woman above everything else, etc.
The porn for women is not as visual and graphic as that for men. The audience wants things to be left to their imagination rather than putting everything out in visual details. Maybe because their imagination is richer and more romantic than what the film director is able to capture in the camera. Also, there should be romantic music playing in the background, better if it is a famous romantic song known to them. The images of lying next to each other and waking up in the morning with the man rather than just having sex with him hold a greater appeal.
In the porn films made by and for women, one sees things in slow motion, less rough sex, men being gentle and kind, women being in control but not in the way of being a dominatrix (which is perhaps the unconscious wish of a man, who is domineering in his daily life, to be dominated).
Another difference is that while men are willing to pay for sex, very few women would be willing to do so, this indicates the difference in gender psychology. One can argue that this is also culturally learned, but a careful examination of world history across cultures may not support that assertion. Agreeing to have sex means a woman is giving away something very precious to her and the man, once having received sex feels the need to do something in return as if he has received something special. There may be a biological basis to it. As she has only one egg and it should be given to that special man, whereas a man has millions of sperm, and it does not hold much value to him. Men, when having an extramarital affair, are not careful about the social status of the female and don’t particularly look for a woman of their age, whereas women are very cautious about the age of the man and his social status, although in modern times we occasionally do come across women who want to have toy boys, and lady Chatterley’s lover was a gardener, not of equal status.
During sexual activity, men are more visually oriented wanting to see things, whereas women are more tactile, auditory, and olfactory. A man feels more connected with the woman before having an orgasm, whereas a woman feels more connected after achieving an orgasm.
A man can still have sex with a woman even if he’s angry with her but it’s not possible for a woman to do that, as if for a man the sexual activity compensates for the wrong that the woman has done to him and his anger gets neutralized after sex, whereas for a woman having sex with a man who hasn’t been kind to her is like someone rubbing salt in her wounds.
Even the psychosexual disorders are different in the two genders, under stress women normally suffer from reduced sexual desire as well as arousal, and anorgasmia (inability to achieve orgasm) is also more common in women compared to men. It may also be that high prolactin, a female hormone, levels lead to reduced sexual desire seen in women, making them more vulnerable to having desire problems.
For men, the common sexual disorders seen during stress periods are premature ejaculation and erection problems and not a loss of desire. Can these be culturally determined? perhaps they can, but with a stretch of the imagination.
According to one study examining the affective responses, attentional capture, or sexual stimulation in women with or without hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), women with HSDD did not appear to have a negative association with sexual stimulation, but rather a weaker positive association than women without HSDD.[1] Sexual aversion disorder is also more common among women, and one can successfully argue that this could be culturally determined.
Feminism and porn
If women are not coming out and claiming their place in the marketplace to create porn films, author erotic novels, and poems, and run clubs that are geared towards the satisfaction of female desire, it is blamed on men. There may be some justification there, as no decent or respectable person who is highly placed in society will do that, and there is no legal sanction for that as well. As a result, such activities and the porn industry have become the preserve of people who are not law-abiding and a no-go area for most women.
The four waves of feminism
The first and second waves of feminism, apart from taking up a number of other feminist views, took a strong anti-porn view, both at personal and political levels.
The third-wave debate has focused less on the political implications of pornographic representation than on the personal ambivalences to which it gives rise. It falsely suggests that pornography has ceased to be relevant to contemporary feminism. At a time when the visual and textual vocabulary of pornography is being speedily absorbed into the West’s cultural mainstream.[2]
Nina Hartley, herself a porn star and a porn film director, has said that anti-pornography feminism is beset by a major contradiction: in an attempt to speak up for women who have been silenced by pornography, inhibit the speech of other women, or, when these women speak, simply deny the truth that they have to tell about their own experiences.[2] These supposed victims of society feel that the second-wave feminists don’t listen to their stories, their truths- it is a no go with them.
She further says that anti-pornography feminism’s well-intentioned eagerness to understand female sex workers as victims has resulted in the disempowerment of women whose experiences do not fit well with this narrow outlook. Most sex workers are not victims, in fact, they are the ones who come out in hordes to protest in front of parliaments wherever anti-prostitution laws are enacted. The feminists would argue that women who have been brainwashed into subordination will not be the best judge of their predicament, however, it does not mean that their subjective experiences, their judgments, their stories, and their free will to act out their libertarian values are of no significance.
In support of third-wave feminism, Stoller claims, ‘In our quest for sexual satisfaction we shall leave no sex toy unturned and no sexual avenue unexplored’.[3] The third wave’s attempt to make feminism more agreeable to a generation of young women who have been fed the myth that feminists are fat, man-hating, no-fun lesbians. Distinguishing this revamped version of feminism from that of her feminist ‘foremothers’, Stoller promises that third wavers, unlike second wavers, do not dare to assume that they ‘know what “female sexuality” is all about’, and are therefore unwilling to make judgments about the appropriateness of its manifestations.[3]
Stoller recognizes in ‘Sex and the Thinking Girl’ that feminism has made, and it still needs to make, huge advances in terms of increasing employment opportunities for women, she suggests that we temporarily ‘set aside’ the problem of gendered income differentials in favor of addressing ‘an orgasm gap … that hasn’t budged since the days when Donna Reed actually believed in the stereotyped gender roles in the American sitcom – ‘Father Knows Best.’
The third wave remains divided on the issue of pornography. For Kegan Doyle and Dany Lacombe, the anti-porn stance would be depriving women who produce or consume pornography the right to their sexuality, whereas for MacKinnon if pornography is part of your sexuality, then you have no right to your sexuality’
Shulamith Firestone wrote in The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution “The end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”[4]
The fourth wave of feminism also argues for equal opportunities for boys and men as well to overcome gender norms i.e., being more involved in childcare and household duties, ability to express emotions and feelings, achieving a greater linguistic proficiency, etc.
Curing Porn and Sex Addiction with Pornography
Just as addiction to the internet can be cured with the help of the internet, a software virus can be eliminated by another anti-virus software program, the perils of artificial intelligence can also be solved by artificial intelligence, in the same way, addiction to pornography and sex can also be cured through pornography.
Pornography in its present incarnation only focuses on the apparently attractive side of sexual experience thereby not allowing individuals to experience it in its totality. It should be possible for psychotherapists and sex educators to create pornographic material that will address the issue of sexual addictions, wherein they can start depicting the less attractive side of sexual activity. The messiness, the unattractiveness of the activity, faces without make-up, the troubled and inadequate minds that get addicted to sex, the loss of inner peace and conflicts that result from sexual excesses, the troubled real-life stories of porn actors, the illnesses they suffer from, the loneliness and sadness in their lives, the instability in their relationship and inability to lead a normal life, etc. can also be weaved into the porn films that can be used for therapy. In the last sentence in the film Alfie, Michael Caine, and in the second version Jude Law says, “in the pursuit of happiness and sexual satisfaction I have achieved a lot, but I have lost my inner peace in the process.”
Western Societies place too much emphasis on keeping one’s sex life alive for as long as possible and the desirability of having sex till the time you die, and it places undue emphasis on keeping one’s sexual side alive. We see the contrary happening in the spiritual, moral, and social values in Eastern cultures. In some sections of Eastern society, the purpose of marriage is not seen as enjoying carnal bliss endlessly till the day you die but a gradual maturation and progression out of sexual activity so that one can engage in more mature ways of connecting with one’s spouse, a sort of companionship, harmony that fosters inner peace. Without marriage, this job would be difficult as one is constantly engaged in adjusting and readjusting to different relationships and the gaps in between relationships can make it difficult for one to adopt a healthy attitude towards sexual gratification. This will stop individuals from progressing higher up in Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human needs and actualizing oneself.
Conclusion
Just as with alcohol addictions, it would be difficult for the addict to move from addiction to control drinking and abstinence if one does not follow a clear process of detoxification and rehabilitation and then move on to control drinking. Applying the same logic to sex in marriage one can see that marriage first introduces the individual to the intoxication of romantic and sexual gratification and, if one remains committed in the relationship, gradually move them on to a process of detoxification and therapy to control gratification of one’s romantic desires, and eventually transcending it.
Some have argued that porn, instead of distorting social values and reality, is the representation of social reality, but other theorists argue that, in that case, pornography is no less an act than the rape and torture it represents.
Many ancient agricultural societies around the world were matriarchal in nature, although some authors such as Cynthia Eller have disagreed.[5] According to them, it was only during industrialization that men started to work in factories and offices and they acquired greater power and control over money, and women were pushed into the domestic roles of unpaid labor. There is no reason the patriarchal nature of our current society cannot be changed; in fact, it has started to happen.
The leadership role that women have assumed in society in making a valuable contribution to the advancement of society is still not seen in the porn industry, partly because of the stigmatization of this whole industry by mainstream society and the media. Greater integration of this shadow side of society into the persona of our society will enable women to assume more leadership roles in defining what pornography is, what it does, what it should do and how it should be shaped for future generations, and how it should reflect the aspirations of the future generations.
References
1. Brauer, M., et al., Attentional and affective processing of sexual stimuli in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2012. 41(4): p. 891-905.
2. Waters, M., Sexing it Up? Women, Pronography and Third Wave Feminism, in Third Wave Feminsm, S. Gillis, G. Howie, and R. Munford, Editors. 2007, Palgrave macmillan: New York.
3. Stoller, D., Sex and the Thinnking Girl, in Guide to the New Girl Order, M. Karp and D. Stoller, Editors. 1999, Penguin: London.
4. Shulamith, F., The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York, 1970.
5. Eller, C., The myth of matriarchal prehistory: Why an invented past won’t give women a future. 2000: Beacon Press.
I was speaking to a female acquaintance over the phone and said to her that, in my opinion, men were more afflicted with sexual desire compared to women, to which she replied instantly, “but that’s not true, who told you that.”
I was taken aback by her reaction but responded by saying that in my experience of growing up in India, I had noticed that most of my female relatives who lost their spouses in their middle age chose not to remarry, but the majority of the middle-aged widowed got married again. Secondly, I had also noticed that men were more into watching pornography compared to women, and that is why I concluded that men were more focused on sex, whereas women were more into seeking gratification through relationships.
After reading feminist literature, I found an answer that can partially explain this difference, that the sociocultural factors encourage women to suppress their desire.
Simone de Bouvier, a French philosopher, said that women were not biologically different from men but were made to believe so, as a result of oppressive sociocultural factors. According to her the psychological differences between men and women had no biological basis and they were pure of cultural or social origin.
Although difficult to prove scientifically it does seem to me that there are many genuine psychological factors that are in the default settings of the two genders, and they may not be socially learned.
In real life, for most women, sex should happen within a social context and the act should not be divorced from it, the same preference goes for their choice of pornography. The sexual activity happening within a storyline or a film holds a greater attraction to them than this happening completely cut off from its social context.
Pornography for women
The porn made for and by women is different from conventional porn which has rightly been described as degrading to women. The porn for women has such scenes/dialogues – “there is no life without you, I have left everything behind, my family, my home, and my country for you,” and a man showing that he really cares about the woman above everything else, etc.
The porn for women is not as visual and graphic as that for men. The audience wants things to be left to their imagination rather than putting everything out in visual details. Maybe because their imagination is richer and more romantic than what the film director is able to capture in the camera. Also, there should be romantic music playing in the background, better if it is a famous romantic song known to them. The images of lying next to each other and waking up in the morning with the man rather than just having sex with him hold a greater appeal.
In the porn films made by and for women, one sees things in slow motion, less rough sex, men being gentle and kind, women being in control but not in the way of being a dominatrix (which is perhaps the unconscious wish of a man, who is domineering in his daily life, to be dominated).
Another difference is that while men are willing to pay for sex, very few women would be willing to do so, this indicates the difference in gender psychology. One can argue that this is also culturally learned, but a careful examination of world history across cultures may not support that assertion. Agreeing to have sex means a woman is giving away something very precious to her and the man, once having received sex feels the need to do something in return as if he has received something special. There may be a biological basis to it. As she has only one egg and it should be given to that special man, whereas a man has millions of sperm, and it does not hold much value to him. Men, when having an extramarital affair, are not careful about the social status of the female and don’t particularly look for a woman of their age, whereas women are very cautious about the age of the man and his social status, although in modern times we occasionally do come across women who want to have toy boys, and lady Chatterley’s lover was a gardener, not of equal status.
During sexual activity, men are more visually oriented wanting to see things, whereas women are more tactile, auditory, and olfactory. A man feels more connected with the woman before having an orgasm, whereas a woman feels more connected after achieving an orgasm.
A man can still have sex with a woman even if he’s angry with her but it’s not possible for a woman to do that, as if for a man the sexual activity compensates for the wrong that the woman has done to him and his anger gets neutralized after sex, whereas for a woman having sex with a man who hasn’t been kind to her is like someone rubbing salt in her wounds.
Even the psychosexual disorders are different in the two genders, under stress women normally suffer from reduced sexual desire as well as arousal, and anorgasmia (inability to achieve orgasm) is also more common in women compared to men. It may also be that high prolactin, a female hormone, levels lead to reduced sexual desire seen in women, making them more vulnerable to having desire problems.
For men, the common sexual disorders seen during stress periods are premature ejaculation and erection problems and not a loss of desire. Can these be culturally determined? perhaps they can, but with a stretch of the imagination.
According to one study examining the affective responses, attentional capture, or sexual stimulation in women with or without hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), women with HSDD did not appear to have a negative association with sexual stimulation, but rather a weaker positive association than women without HSDD.[1] Sexual aversion disorder is also more common among women, and one can successfully argue that this could be culturally determined.
Feminism and porn
If women are not coming out and claiming their place in the marketplace to create porn films, author erotic novels, and poems, and run clubs that are geared towards the satisfaction of female desire, it is blamed on men. There may be some justification there, as no decent or respectable person who is highly placed in society will do that, and there is no legal sanction for that as well. As a result, such activities and the porn industry have become the preserve of people who are not law-abiding and a no-go area for most women.
The four waves of feminism
The first and second waves of feminism, apart from taking up a number of other feminist views, took a strong anti-porn view, both at personal and political levels.
The third-wave debate has focused less on the political implications of pornographic representation than on the personal ambivalences to which it gives rise. It falsely suggests that pornography has ceased to be relevant to contemporary feminism. At a time when the visual and textual vocabulary of pornography is being speedily absorbed into the West’s cultural mainstream.[2]
Nina Hartley, herself a porn star and a porn film director, has said that anti-pornography feminism is beset by a major contradiction: in an attempt to speak up for women who have been silenced by pornography, inhibit the speech of other women, or, when these women speak, simply deny the truth that they have to tell about their own experiences.[2] These supposed victims of society feel that the second-wave feminists don’t listen to their stories, their truths- it is a no go with them.
She further says that anti-pornography feminism’s well-intentioned eagerness to understand female sex workers as victims has resulted in the disempowerment of women whose experiences do not fit well with this narrow outlook. Most sex workers are not victims, in fact, they are the ones who come out in hordes to protest in front of parliaments wherever anti-prostitution laws are enacted. The feminists would argue that women who have been brainwashed into subordination will not be the best judge of their predicament, however, it does not mean that their subjective experiences, their judgments, their stories, and their free will to act out their libertarian values are of no significance.
In support of third-wave feminism, Stoller claims, ‘In our quest for sexual satisfaction we shall leave no sex toy unturned and no sexual avenue unexplored’.[3] The third wave’s attempt to make feminism more agreeable to a generation of young women who have been fed the myth that feminists are fat, man-hating, no-fun lesbians. Distinguishing this revamped version of feminism from that of her feminist ‘foremothers’, Stoller promises that third wavers, unlike second wavers, do not dare to assume that they ‘know what “female sexuality” is all about’, and are therefore unwilling to make judgments about the appropriateness of its manifestations.[3]
Stoller recognizes in ‘Sex and the Thinking Girl’ that feminism has made, and it still needs to make, huge advances in terms of increasing employment opportunities for women, she suggests that we temporarily ‘set aside’ the problem of gendered income differentials in favor of addressing ‘an orgasm gap … that hasn’t budged since the days when Donna Reed actually believed in the stereotyped gender roles in the American sitcom – ‘Father Knows Best.’
The third wave remains divided on the issue of pornography. For Kegan Doyle and Dany Lacombe, the anti-porn stance would be depriving women who produce or consume pornography the right to their sexuality, whereas for MacKinnon if pornography is part of your sexuality, then you have no right to your sexuality’
Shulamith Firestone wrote in The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution “The end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”[4]
The fourth wave of feminism also argues for equal opportunities for boys and men as well to overcome gender norms i.e., being more involved in childcare and household duties, ability to express emotions and feelings, achieving a greater linguistic proficiency, etc.
Curing Porn and Sex Addiction with Pornography
Just as addiction to the internet can be cured with the help of the internet, a software virus can be eliminated by another anti-virus software program, the perils of artificial intelligence can also be solved by artificial intelligence, in the same way, addiction to pornography and sex can also be cured through pornography.
Pornography in its present incarnation only focuses on the apparently attractive side of sexual experience thereby not allowing individuals to experience it in its totality. It should be possible for psychotherapists and sex educators to create pornographic material that will address the issue of sexual addictions, wherein they can start depicting the less attractive side of sexual activity. The messiness, the unattractiveness of the activity, faces without make-up, the troubled and inadequate minds that get addicted to sex, the loss of inner peace and conflicts that result from sexual excesses, the troubled real-life stories of porn actors, the illnesses they suffer from, the loneliness and sadness in their lives, the instability in their relationship and inability to lead a normal life, etc. can also be weaved into the porn films that can be used for therapy. In the last sentence in the film Alfie, Michael Caine, and in the second version Jude Law says, “in the pursuit of happiness and sexual satisfaction I have achieved a lot, but I have lost my inner peace in the process.”
Western Societies place too much emphasis on keeping one’s sex life alive for as long as possible and the desirability of having sex till the time you die, and it places undue emphasis on keeping one’s sexual side alive. We see the contrary happening in the spiritual, moral, and social values in Eastern cultures. In some sections of Eastern society, the purpose of marriage is not seen as enjoying carnal bliss endlessly till the day you die but a gradual maturation and progression out of sexual activity so that one can engage in more mature ways of connecting with one’s spouse, a sort of companionship, harmony that fosters inner peace. Without marriage, this job would be difficult as one is constantly engaged in adjusting and readjusting to different relationships and the gaps in between relationships can make it difficult for one to adopt a healthy attitude towards sexual gratification. This will stop individuals from progressing higher up in Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human needs and actualizing oneself.
Conclusion
Just as with alcohol addictions, it would be difficult for the addict to move from addiction to control drinking and abstinence if one does not follow a clear process of detoxification and rehabilitation and then move on to control drinking. Applying the same logic to sex in marriage one can see that marriage first introduces the individual to the intoxication of romantic and sexual gratification and, if one remains committed in the relationship, gradually move them on to a process of detoxification and therapy to control gratification of one’s romantic desires, and eventually transcending it.
Some have argued that porn, instead of distorting social values and reality, is the representation of social reality, but other theorists argue that, in that case, pornography is no less an act than the rape and torture it represents.
Many ancient agricultural societies around the world were matriarchal in nature, although some authors such as Cynthia Eller have disagreed.[5] According to them, it was only during industrialization that men started to work in factories and offices and they acquired greater power and control over money, and women were pushed into the domestic roles of unpaid labor. There is no reason the patriarchal nature of our current society cannot be changed; in fact, it has started to happen.
The leadership role that women have assumed in society in making a valuable contribution to the advancement of society is still not seen in the porn industry, partly because of the stigmatization of this whole industry by mainstream society and the media. Greater integration of this shadow side of society into the persona of our society will enable women to assume more leadership roles in defining what pornography is, what it does, what it should do and how it should be shaped for future generations, and how it should reflect the aspirations of the future generations.
References
Brauer, M., et al., Attentional and affective processing of sexual stimuli in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2012. 41(4): p. 891-905.
2. Waters, M., Sexing it Up? Women, Pronography and Third Wave Feminism, in Third Wave Feminsm, S. Gillis, G. Howie, and R. Munford, Editors. 2007, Palgrave macmillan: New York.
3. Stoller, D., Sex and the Thinnking Girl, in Guide to the New Girl Order, M. Karp and D. Stoller, Editors. 1999, Penguin: London.
4. Shulamith, F., The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York, 1970.
5. Eller, C., The myth of matriarchal prehistory: Why an invented past won’t give women a future. 2000: Beacon Press.
