Degrading Women

Everyone watches porn.  Porn has become a staple in most people’s daily lives in fact.  Not too long ago, porn was only something for “dirty old men” and perverts.  In the not too distant past, you had to go to a store to rent a video, buy a magazine and hide it in your closet, or go to a seedy theater with sticky seats to view erotic images.  Today, most people, male and female, have porn websites bookmarked on their computers and they check in daily for some sort of stimulation, whether it be pictures, videos, stories, chatting with other people, or a host of other options available.  You can have porn downloaded on your phone and be a member of a virtual porn world; you can have access to porn 24 hours a day if you are so inclined.  Porn has become so commonplace, so much a part of our daily lives that we don’t even realize how much the constant access to it has changed us and our perceptions about sex and sexuality. 

Porn has evolved since its early days.  While still very much geared towards and created for men, there are very few women who don’t get aroused by porn today.  It wasn’t all that long ago that FREE porn on the internet was a rarity; most porn sites were pay sites and most free sites were just teasers to direct you to a pay site.  Today, one needn’t pay anything to access full length videos, webcams, and communities with other people who have the same preferences and fetishes you share. Women are seeking out porn as a viable career, they are producing and directing it, they are complicit in the objectification of the female image. 

What hasn’t evolved is our collective sexual maturity.  People still aren’t comfortable with their sexuality.  Our sexuality is still steeped in shame, lies, and self-deception.  Women are still lying about the number of partners and experience they have; men are still in denial about their practices and preferences.  We are still ruled by Victorian mores and conservative guidelines that are unnatural.  Sex is, or it should be at least, a tool for communication, a meditation, an expression of love.  Sex should be about two people coming together and exploring their passion for one another.  Sex has become about the power exchange that makes women into nothing more than objects for men’s arousal, frustration, and release.

There can be little question about the fact that the daily consumption of porn desensitizes people.  Whereas we once were aroused by just the act of two people having sex, scintillated at what can only be considered tame, now, we need to see people doing more extreme and deviant things in order to maintain our same level of arousal.  Whereas we could once could get off on seeing a solitary image, now, we need to see hundreds of images, in search of that illusive image that will get us off; we need to see hours upon hours of porn to get a nut. 

Today, without question, porn is largely about degrading women.  Exploited, abused, punished, brutal, disgraced, humiliated, tortured, gagged, and forced are very common tags for porn, so much so that we don’t get offended or even blink an eye when we see them.  Even rape is eroticized in porn.  If a clip isn’t promoted as particularly brutal, it’s nothing to see a woman being slapped, spanked, spit on, gagged, and roughly fucked in almost every scene.  Women are routinely subjected to being called a bitch, slut, and a whore during sex, shown doing things that no self-respecting man would ever do if the situation were reversed. 

What effect does seeing these types of images do to a sexually immature nation?  First and foremost, we accept this sort of treatment as normal, we never question it being sexist or misogynist, and we become aroused by seeing it.  Men, who learn everything they know about sex from a computer screen, NEVER see images of seduction, intimacy, tenderness, or love-making.  They assume all women want to be treated like a slut, called names, abused, and pounded like a nail during sex.  Women want to emulate the images they see, they want to be considered sexy so they adopt the persona of the video slut, begging for more abuse, aroused by being treated like shit, without regard for or even awareness of their own desires.  Sex has become about the degradation of women and no one seems to care.  Everyone is too concerned about pretending that they don’t watch porn, that they are sexually frigid and intolerant of any sort of sexual expression.  We are on a high-speed, runaway train careening towards sexual dysfunction and porn that degrades women is the fuel. 

As one of the only unapologetic, card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, true feminists left, (and as a woman who consumes a fair share of adult material) I have made some shocking and uncomfortable discoveries about my own tastes and preferences in porn.  I have always been a staunch advocate for, and creator of erotica for couples.  I write stories that appeal to both men and women; I will not objectify or degrade Black women in any of my work.  I have never in my life dominated a woman because I can’t bring myself to oppress, even under the auspices of sexual roleplay, the already oppressed.  All of that being said, I too, have become victim to the plague of porn desensitization.  I have watched, sought out, and been aroused by images of women being degraded.  I am aroused by women (and men as well, but for this conversation we will focus on women) who are proud of their depravity, who revel in it, who are unapologetically ravenous in their need to be degraded. 

While I can say that I’ve never been victim of the unknown force that entices women to want to be degraded or humiliated during sex, admittedly, there are times when seeing a woman dominated sexually pushes all my buttons.  I have to admit that because most of the images of women doing obscene and perverse things are of white women, my “fetish” if you will is limited to women who look nothing like me.  Seeing white women degraded is arousing because I can completely distance myself from the act, I can objectify them as “other” because it becomes arousing to know that they would so readily display themselves doing any manner of unspeakable acts for pleasure.  I can get off on white women doing things that relegate them to nothing more than filthy whores who will do anything, no matter how depraved, and enjoying it.  Do I think my preferences are healthy?  No.  Am I okay with them for the time being?  Yes.  Most people won’t even acknowledge what gets them off in the privacy of their homes in front of their computer screens.  The simple fact is that I’m willing to discuss it publicly and that I’m at least aware that my fascination isn’t the most healthy expression of sexuality. I feel comfortable in knowing that I am aware of the issue, addressing, and working on it.  That is more than most people can say. 

Where does that leave the rest of America, the ones who aren’t as self-aware as I am nor are they cognizant of their own misogynist behaviors?  Well, men are now socialized to think that seduction and romance are unnecessary, that women are only deserving of being treated like objects.  Women have never been socialized to have a voice to ask for anything other than being spanked and/or abused.   Behind closed doors, in the glow of the computer monitor, the degradation of women is being eroticized day in and day out, and it has become the norm.  It is my strong belief that the degradation of women is symbolic of the destruction of our society.  If women can’t be seen as equals, as objects worthy of adoration and exaltation, the very foundation upon which relationships are formed is shaky.