My "Research" on Porn

Did my title get your attention? Good, read on because it does(n't) get better.

Last weekend, I treated my 16 year old cousin to a movie. Had I known that me spending twenty bucks for an hour and half of raunchy cinema would make for a great blog post I would have done it sooner. Anyways, throughout the film my cousin demonstrated no negative reactions to heterosexual activity but in the heat of two girls making out my cousin jumped on her seat and covered her eyes. I was surprised by her reaction. I asked her if she was homophobic, in her defense she said she has gay friends. I know I should have pointed out her negative behavior towards homosexuality but the movie was still playing and I was confused, angry and disappointed about her attitude and the awfully scripted movie.

My cousin is taught to recognize and accepted homosexuality but hasn’t recognized the LGBQT’s own sexual feelings. In the same way that girls are “taught to recognize and keep a lid on the sexual desire of boys… [but never] recognize their own sexual feelings" (Tolman 348). She has gay friends and understands that her friends have different sexual preferences, but her attitude in the movie theater completely dismisses her acceptance of the gay community. If one can’t tolerate seeing two women kissing each other without crouching in disgust what’s the point of claiming tolerance?

If this “limiting version of sexuality” is harming girls’ isn’t this also harming the LGBQT community too? If girls cannot confidently state their sexual orientation and confess that they’re satisfied with whom they’ve become, this confusion is only denigrating, suppressing and amplifying the dangers of what is girls’ sexuality which in addition, creates contradictory messages about women’s sexuality (Tolman 350). These same messages are being fixed towards the gay community as well.

One of Tolman’s interviewees mentions the lack of lesbian images accounts for her confusion in her lesbianism. Take porn for example, mainstream porn traffics in male fantasies made and sold by men, with not much of women's pleasure or interests in mind. In my “research” of finding how different types of pornography adhere to different audiences my findings conclusively pointed out the target audience as male. Like in the same way pop culture is oriented towards a heterosexual audience and ignores the gay community. A male oriented, male powered and male built culture revolved on ideas of what is a women’s sexuality has created a limitation on gay’s “sense of self, entitlement, and empowerment" (Tolman 357).