THE RISE OF WOMEN’S EROTICA: DOES PORN EMPOWER WOMEN?

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Written by:✓

Tatyana Dyachenko
Psychologist and Relationship Adviser

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Veronika Matutyte
Medical Doctor

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Katie Lasson
Sex and Relationship Adviser

Pornography is an avenue that helps empower women. Porn works on helping women in question to show off their sexuality. Porn also helps reveal a woman’s true identity and the fetishes they have hidden in them. Porn is not about watching two or more people having sex in a room only, but it is about capturing the feelings and emotions portrayed by the people being recorded having sex using different angles to catch and attain every feeling effectively. Pornography is a fantasy, the creation of fictitious characters, and unreal positions are used and the images created will help to culture the imagination of the viewer. This, therefore, empowers a woman because it will help show them off and their raw sexual desire.

Pornography Helps To Express Freedom.

According to Strossen (2000),  pornography is an art of expressing total sexual freedom. People working in pornographic companies are no longer stigmatized as “selling their bodies” or “losing their virtues”. Its viewed as a profession where a person needs to attain several skills to help them work efficiently and compete with the other veteran pornography actors. Women who have chosen to venture into the pornography industry are not perceived as sluts or morally ill but are viewed as women like any other, as Salter (2016) discovered. This works well in empowering them and aversing any of the stigmas that may be put on them because of the porn industry. It shows that they made a deliberate decision to be there and legally earn money like other women in other professions.

Porn Helps To Eradicate Myths

The coming out of women in the pornography industry has helped in debunking the myth that women do not enjoy sex but are there in the feeble hope of getting babies while having sex with the different male actors. McKee (2005) revealed that women screaming and moaning in all positions go a long way to ascertain and confirm that things like vaginal, and nipple orgasms exist. They also show how to do it perfectly to give that woman the best orgasm she has ever had in her life. In all the porn videos involving women, they will portray the female characters as self-conscious, and also realistic so that it shows the importance of maintaining the sexual pleasure for the female too. These videos also show that not only males matter in sexual matters but females also play a role in achieving sexual fantasies and pleasures while working as a team.

Porn Upholds Women

Ferree (2003) stated that the pornography industry has come to expose the dominant side of the female population which was underestimated in the past. The videos show how fierce these women can get when wanting to achieve something they wish for. This acts as a measure of the balance between the male and the female genders. Also, the porn industry gives women the perfect chance to be publicly and overtly sexual not because they are being forced but because they want and have a conscious choice of having kinky and pleasurable sex. Baumeister (2000) revealed that pornography also shows that women can also have high sex drives comparable to men or rather have higher sex drives than the male gender.

Women erotica helps in allowing women to understand their sexuality, take control of how they want to be handled sexually, and engage actively in it. This is to build up the woman image and allow for changing of the notion that women were only used as sex objects. In many fiction erotic stories, women are only used as mistresses, sluts who are manhandled and used for the sexual pleasure of the male figure. Female satisfaction did not matter at that point. Erotic stories and pornography videos are common and they are showing the different sides of a woman that is put in the dark for a long time. These will help in the cultivation of erotic stimulation, fantasies, and the introduction of new fetishes. This has led to the incorporation of women-friendly all over the internet, the embracing of nudity in films, and the development of roles and characters that will be used to demonstrate how women's dominance in sexuality and their bodies has developed. This has also led to the growth of feminism as a culture and the feminists who will help in enriching the other women in how to maneuver the issues of sexual continence and comprehending how to go about it. These feminists have fought for the rights of women in porn and also cultivate the culture of appreciating the role women play in delivering pornography videos. This has also led to the coming out of other groups who have stayed in the dark because they fear being cajoled and stigmatized. These groups include lesbians, transgender women, and bisexual women who have also joined the pornography industry.

However, some argue that women's involvement in pornography videos is still degrading to their question, and it's not true or false. They argue that most women are dominated, man-handled, and seen as objects but in the true sense of the matter is that these women are fully aware of the scenes and roles they are going to play in a particular video. They also make the decision and are fully conscious of the situation they are in and are allowed to withdraw from the agreement any time they feel overwhelmed by it. However, no one should make the judgment that women in porn are being mistreated and used as objects, their rights are exercised fully.

References

Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Gender Differences In Erotic Plasticity: The Female Sex Drive As Socially Flexible And Responsive. Psychological Bubulletin126(3), 347.

Escoffier, J. (2003). Gay-For-Pay: Straight Men And The Making Of Gay Pornography. Qualitative Sociology, 26(4), 531-555.

Ferree, M. (2003). Women And The Web: Cybersex Activity And Implications. Sexual And Relationship Therapy, 18(3), 385-393.

Salter, M. (2016). Privates In The Online Public: Sex (Ting) And Reputation On Social Media. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2723-2739.Strossen, N. (2000). Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, And The Fight For Women's Rights. NYU Press.