#MeToo and feminism have long pushed the image of women as victims of male oppression. This is particularly true in discussions of pornography and prostitution, where women are depicted as “innocent victims” of men’s sexual desire.
The truth is that far from being victims, women are willing, active participants in both activities.
Pornography
For years, feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon (not worthy of links, you can Google yourself for info on these man-hating monsters) railed against pornography as the “objectification” of women and as male sexual domination. They also claimed that pornography was a form of that old feminist bogeyman — sorry, bogeywoman — “violence against women.”
In the 1980’s these two hateful, close-minded women ran a campaign to impose censorship laws against all forms of pornography, although there are myriad views on pornography, even among feminists!
The unspoken assumption was, of course, that women who appeared in pornographic magazines and films were the oppressed, innocent victims of men’s evil sexual desires, with little or no agency in their own decisions to take part in pornography.
Instead of complaining about male behavior, anti-porn feminists should consider female behavior, about the female contribution to pornography. They should ask themselves “Why do women actually participate in pornography?” Or “Why is there lesbian pornography, or even feminist pornography?”
There is a simple answer to these questions:
“Because women like it.”
Women like to view porn and they like to be in porn. Some are, like men, addicted to pornography. A Psychology Today article, Why Do Women Become Porn Actresses? lists a variety of reasons, with “money” at the top (53%, making porn “prostitution-with-a-million-men”), followed by “sex” (27%), “attention” (16%), and “fun” (11%). Note that “coercion” was less than 1%.
So, as Herbert Purdy says in his book Their Angry Creed: The shocking history of feminism, and how it is destroying our way of life, women are active, willing participants in creating porn:
“…it is stating the obvious that liberated women are the primary players in the pornography that excites men. These are liberated women exercising their freedom from hitherto guiding social mores; they are hardly unwilling victims. Pornography is everywhere. From the organised [English spelling] industry it is in California, to the plethora of amateur web sites where ordinary women are uploading their own explicit acts for the world to see. Yet this is all, somehow, men’s fault? The sheer hypocrisy of feminists, let alone their totally disjointed thinking, is astonishing.” [bold emphases added]
So, ladies and feminists, instead of just blaming men, how about considering the active female role in pornography, most notoriously exemplified today by women who maintain their own porn sites where they upload their own explicit sex acts? Don’t believe it? Just Google “amateur porn”.
It’s long past time for women to climb down from their pedestal and do a little less self-filming and a whole lot more self-reflecting.
Prostitution
Feminists and I agree on at least one thing: forced prostitution is real, it is worldwide, it is sexual predation at its worst, and it is evil.
Where we likely disagree — no surprise! — is that it’s also perpetrated by women!
Although exact statistics and their interpretation can be complex, studies show that women also force other women into sexual slavery. (So much for the sisterhood!) One such study, Female offenders of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, summarized the situation:
“Female offenders are seldom studied by criminological scholars. This is certainly the case regarding offenses like human trafficking and sexual exploitation. However, the number of women suspected of being a perpetrator of human trafficking should not be underestimated. [emphasis added]”
Don’t believe it? Just Google “woman pleads guilty to slavery”. Even I was surprised by the number of results: 5,310,000! One notable example is the participation of women, including Smallville actress Allison Mack and Seagram company heir Clare Bronfman in a strange-as-hell sexual slavery conspiracy.
Why can’t women see their own #MeTwoFaced, sex trafficking hypocrisy? It’s simple. As was noted in the discussion about mothers who abuse their sons (see link below), women won’t, or even can’t, admit to their own role because they’ve been on a pedestal for so long, they’re no longer capable of admitting, or even seeing, their own dark side. No matter how much they believe otherwise, the facts conclusively show that women are not all sugar-and-spice.
But beyond forced prostitution, what about women who willingly prostitute themselves? Women have for millennia capitalized on the sex drive of men.
Sadly, we must admit that some women do it to survive or to support their families… much like men who have to go into coal mines, or work in the “death professions” where men are ten times more likely than women to be killed, or die in the nation’s wars.
And what about women who willingly trade sex, not for survival or to support families, but simply for money or other quid pro quo arrangements?
Women like our #MeTwoFaced Madam, Asia Argento, who, despite her dishonest claims of Harvey Weinstein’s predation, willingly traded sex for advancement in the film industry. In his book Men. Women. Relationships: Surviving the Plague of Modern Masculinity, Paul Elam perfectly described Argento’s hypocrisy:
“Uh, yeah. I’m sure that Argento’s desire for fame and fortune in Hollywood had nothing to do with her letting a powerful Hollywood producer go down on her. After all, women don’t do those things for movie roles, right?
“Anyway, twenty years later, Argento made an Oscar-worthy performance of her totally unsubstantiated claim at the Cannes Film Festival. Coincidentally, this was when the #MeToo Movement was gaining traction. In other words, Argento got really brave as soon as there was blood in the water.”
Or women like young “sugar babies” who sell their bodies to “sugar daddies” to pay student loans, make the rent, or just enjoy gifts that their rich “benefactors” buy them, as described in Vanity Fair’s Daddies, ‘Dates,’ and the Girlfriend Experience: Welcome to the New Prostitution Economy.
And true to form, Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan magazine doesn’t see anything wrong with women prostituting themselves — forgive me, “finding an arrangement”, the euphemism used by Cosmo to hide the true “prostitutorial” nature of these arrangements. Incredibly, their web site had not one, but several sugar daddy stories. And all part of their “love/sex/relationships” section!
So much for true love.
The level of female ignorance and hypocrisy about their own role in pornography and prostitution is completely unbelievable!
By Stephen Bond on October 4, 2022.
Exported from Medium on February 28, 2023.