Porn as a Form of Female Empowerment

I really should have talked about Belle Knox before now. I blog about porn, and yet when a porn-related news story gets international attention I don’t mention it? What’s wrong with me? (Then again, my blogging about porn is more related to my own likes and dislikes, so maybe it’s not such a big deal…)

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, here it is in a nutshell: A female freshman at Duke decided to go into porn to help pay for her college tuition, but, as would be expected, she didn’t exactly announce it to the world. An acquaintance of hers happened to find out but he was totally cool about it, and promised not to out her to anyone. He managed to keep his word for all of a few hours before he told his frat buddies, and suddenly everyone on campus knew. Within a few hours of that it hit the media and everyone in the world knew. The guy was obviously a douche, and for some reason a porn studio decided to get “revenge” on him by… offering him a role in a porn movie? Wait, how is that revenge? Starring in a porno is every guy’s dream! (Well, most guys. Personally, I don’t like to show off.) I get that you’re trying to show he’s a hypocrite, except that’s how the world works: women get judged for things that men don’t. If this dude ends up in a porn he’ll get bragging rights and Belle Knox will still get called a slut and a whore by all of her classmates. So… the world is fucked up.

Anyway, that’s the backstory. Then I came across this HuffPo piece which pulls apart the idea of porn as a form of empowerment, but does so from an economic standpoint: it’s true that going into porn to pay your college tuition will empower you personally to pay your bills, but will it help empower women in general? (Don’t even try to start a conversation about “male empowerment,” we’re already empowered.) As the author of the piece says:

The claim that selling sex can help a woman climb out of poverty, on a micro level, is a viable argument. Yet, why put forth selling one's body as a solution to high-tuition, instead of advocating for lowered education costs? When she claims that pornography is a good economic solution for women, she minimizes the systemic inequality that women still face -- minimizing issues like the 31.8 percent of single mothers that live in poverty -- downplaying the need for a social safety net while reinforcing the fundamentally capitalist principle of picking yourself up by your bootstraps.

So sure, becoming a porn actress will help you pay your tuition, but that doesn’t help women in general – unless all coeds go into porn to pay for their tuition. But then that would drive down demand, and each of those girls would get paid less, and they still wouldn’t be able to afford their tuition. But on the plus side I like porn, so the more girls the better. Whether or not it works for them, it works for me.

But that brings me back to something I’ve written about before: setting the economic argument aside, can we really call it female empowerment if you’re just becoming the male fantasy? In exactly the way males want you to? When girls make this argument about empowerment via porn, it’s usually something along the lines of, “I’m doing it on my terms!” Except that you’re not, you’re doing it on our terms: You’re not going to make it as a pornstar unless you look the way we want you to look and do the things we want you to do (and act like you love it). Men have certain fantasies when it comes to women, and if you become a pornstar it’s your job to act out those fantasies.

This just begs the question why there aren’t more female porn producers out there making porn for female audiences, and acting out female fantasies. Not that it’s a cut and dried dichotomy of course, lots of women happen to love porn just the way it is, even if it is made by men for men. But I’m sure there are women out there would like to see something different, and they probably won’t get to see it. That’s mostly a digression.

So back to the point. Let’s examine the situation here: The male fantasy is to have sex with girls who:

• Are thin and have big boobs
• Are in their late teens or early 20s (some guys want them even younger, but those guys need to be taken out back and shot)
• Love sex and are really good at it (but still somehow appear kind of virginal in their non-sex scenes)
• Don’t like condoms, but never get pregnant
• Enjoy doin it in all kinds of strange and weird positions
• Cum from penile insertion – or really, cum just from making their men happy. As long as the man (or men) fucking a porn starlet shoot their loads, she’ll orgasm automatically. Hell, the act of giving a blowjob can cause a girl in porn to have an orgasm.

Are these fantasies realistic? Yes and no. there are definitely girls out there who look like pornstars and are in the right age range, so managing to have sex with one (or more) of them is an attainable goal for some guys (though not for others). There are also girls out there who love sex and are really good at it. And there are girls out there who don’t like condoms, though I don’t recommend condom-free sex (unless you’re in a monogamous relationship). But how many girls have all of these traits? And what about the girls who don’t make the cut; the ones who are slightly heavier, or slightly older, or who have had kids, or who enjoy sex but need to get warmed up before they start having orgasms? (That last point includes pretty much all girls. Including pornstars, by the way – some of those on-screen orgasms are faked. Sorry.)

So one would think that female empowerment would take the form of trying to convince men that it’s a good idea to broaden their ideas about what sex should be like, and what are desirable traits in girls and women. Women in their late 20s and in their 30s and even in their 40s can be very good at sex. (I can vouch for that. I’m guessing that women in their 50s can also be good at sex, though I haven’t personally had it proven yet.) In fact they’re often better at it than younger women with less experience. Women who don’t fit the classical definition of beauty are often amazing lovers (and women who do are often terrible lovers). In real life, insertion of a penis into a vagina is not the only way to get a woman to cum – it’s usually not even the best way.

But that’s not how some girls (the ones who get media attention) define female empowerment; they define it as doing exactly what the men want them to do, but doing it of their own volition. As it turns out, that form of “female empowerment” works out really well for me. It goes kind of like this:

Men: Hey, ladies, we’d like you to become our sex slaves. Oh, and if you could skinny down a bit (but keep your boobs large), that would be great too.

[Some] Ladies: Oh yeah?!? Well we’ll show you! We’ll… We’ll choose to become your sex slaves! And choose to skinny down a bit! (But keep our boobs large – is surgery OK?)

Men: Wow, you showed us. You’re really… what was that word you used? Right, empowered. You’re totally empowered. Now come suck us off – and swallow, please.

[Some] Ladies: You got it! Oh, and should we work on eliminating our gag reflexes?

Men: Yyyyyeeessss….  Yes, we were just about to say that. Do that, too.