{"id":817,"date":"2008-06-16T18:28:38","date_gmt":"2008-06-16T08:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.msnaughty.com\/blog\/?p=817"},"modified":"2008-06-16T18:28:38","modified_gmt":"2008-06-16T08:28:38","slug":"a-weird-feminist-critique-of-porn-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/16\/a-weird-feminist-critique-of-porn-for-women\/","title":{"rendered":"A Weird Feminist Critique Of Porn For Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BoxObsessing about my place in Google once again I found a rather long winded feminist essay about women’s porn, entitled: Rape Culture: Renegotiating Sexual Subjectivity on Porn Sites for Women<\/a>. The piece takes a rather large philosophical stick to Sssh.com<\/a>, which is an adult site for women that’s been around for roughly the same time as For The Girls. It does this in an attempt to make a general point about porn for women, which is that it somehow upholds the patriarchal “rape culture.”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the author, Caroline Godart, does not bother to define what “rape culture” actually is so I was confused from the very beginning about what point is being made. I can only assume that it’s the same ol’<\/a> same ol’ – that women’s erotica, in the form of adult sites like Sssh.com and FTG, reinforces gender roles and stereotypes<\/a>. At least, I think that’s what she’s saying, although the piece is so full of academic-sounding references to Foucault, the Panopticon, the Lacanian Symbolic order, “haptic space” and other obscurities that I started to glaze over a little. I may call myself a feminist but that doesn’t mean I’ve done any study or serious reading on the topic, and this means I get kind of bored with extensive critical academic discussions about feminist theory. <\/p>\n

Yes, I’m a philistine. What do you expect from an evil pornographer?<\/p>\n

In any case, what did get my attention was the bizarre argument the author uses to conclude that Sssh.com reinforces “rape culture.” She says that because Sssh.com does not depict any rape fantasies, which many women have, it’s essentially not empowering women to fight against patriarchy and thus helps to perpetuate rape. So, no rape on the site equals rape.<\/p>\n

I can almost see the logic here… but then it eludes me. Especially when the author is using descriptions like these:<\/p>\n

Far from being traitors to their own kind, women who indulge in rape fantasies disguise themselves and poly-identify; they transform and appropriate a prototypical narrative that inherently dismisses the possibility for them to access power, especially in order to reach sexual satisfaction. They enable the fantasizing subject to use an oppressive culture over which she has no agency, by a clandestine appropriation of cultural “products,” i.e. the omnipresence of rape.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmmm. But of course. It’s far more complicated than I thought.<\/p>\n

My understanding of the idea comes from Nancy Friday’s original research into women’s sex fantasies. In My Secret Garden<\/em> (1975), she first discovered the prevalence of rape fantasies among the women she interviewed and concluded that they were primarily about women escaping sexual guilt by having pleasure forced upon them. In Women On Top<\/em> (1991) she found that rape fantasies had actually declined among the younger generation because the guilt about sex was not nearly as prevalent.<\/p>\n

In any case, in pondering the rather confusing idea that no rape = rape I found myself wanting to defend Sssh.com and, by association, FTG. While I don’t mind a good philosophical feminist argument about what constitutes porn for women and what it means for feminism, I’d like to at least be able to understand what the hell the critics are on about.<\/p>\n

How do you depict heterosexual sex in a feminist way? That’s the big question here folks. Because for some feminists, any depiction of hetero sex is about men oppressing women. They can only see a negative power exchange and patriarchy in the act of penetration – this may be the “rape culture” the author speaks about. <\/p>\n

But an awful lot of women don’t buy that. It’s why you get so many young chicks disavowing that they’re a feminist. I’ve argued before that women shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed of their fantasies or desires if they are “stereotypical” or sexist… what gets you off may be seriously politically incorrect, but it does the trick, giddy up.<\/p>\n

So who is Caroline Godart to applaud rape fantasies but reject the “normative” depiction of hetero sex? If porn’s intent is primarily to arouse, then you need to consider that fact when making a critical judgement of what’s being depicted. <\/p>\n

I also want people to remember that, in the end, it’s just a porn site<\/em>. That means it essentially exists to make money. In doing so, a site like Sssh.com aims itself at as broad a market as possible and tries to make the majority of surfers happy. Usually that means catering to middle class women who are keen to indulge in a little porn without all the offensive crap. They also want to feel comfortable with their sexuality and not alienated or threatened. This means that you’re probably not going to find cutting edge sexual representations on that kind of site. <\/p>\n

I like to think that FTG has a strong feminist ethic and we do feature a range of perspectives and ideas within the site. At the same time, we still rely mainly on the stuff that others brand as “stereotypical” because that’s what our members (and we the site owners) want to see.<\/p>\n

I like to think we could feature a rape fantasy within our Wicked Ways (letters) section at some time in the future although that would depend on someone actually submitting one. I acknowledge that women do have rape fantasies and that they should be expressed. But even making sure it’s in context may cause problems. We have to deal with our credit card processor who occasionally does a scan of our content and orders us to change certain words or content if it is deemed offensive. Thus, I once had to change an article discussing rape so that the “r word” became “sexual assault.”<\/p>\n

As with a great many things, commercial factors do come into play and they do make a difference to the final product. I’m well aware that I straddle a line between my feminist philosophy and my desire to make a living from porn. No doubt I could sit down and produce a adult site that ticked all the boxes when it comes to critical feminism but I’m not sure it would be very sexy, or that it would make much money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obsessing about my place in Google once again I found a rather long winded feminist essay about women’s porn, entitled: Rape Culture: Renegotiating Sexual Subjectivity on Porn Sites for Women. The piece takes a rather large philosophical stick to Sssh.com, which is an adult site for women that’s been around for roughly the same time as For The Girls. It does this in an attempt to make a general point Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15,20],"tags":[912,317,602,621,664,789],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-pornforwomen","category-raunch-culture","tag-feminism","tag-feminist","tag-philosophy","tag-porn-for-women","tag-rape","tag-theory"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}