Last week’s class and its discussion about pornography, internet and gender made me think more about this. How male porn often leads to objectictification of the woman, is a serious problem. And how the Internet provides a large market for it, by the spread of a product with such skewed power relations, is a problem too.
As I read in ‘Feminist sexualities, race and the internet: an investigation of suicidegirls.com’ by Shoshana Magnet, are feminist potentials not always easy to achieve in a world where commerce is often on the first place.
Yet, I see the principle as a positive thing. In this course we have spent much time on negative aspects of internet culture, things that should be changed. I would now like to turn to the question; ‘what and how should it be changed’? What are solutions, oppurtunities and possibilities for women and more genderequality concerning sexuality on the Internet?
In my opinion it can be useful to look at utopian perspectives, without losing sight of dangers and negative aspects. Utopian cyberfeminists ague that online, women are freed from the rigid norms that traditionally restrict female sexuality. Rather than being reduced to passive female objects that must conform to male desires, cybertopian feminists ague that in ‘feminist-inspired virtual worlds’ a female body is staged as active, intelligent and polymorphously sexual.(Steffensen,2002) And the internet’s anonymity enhances female agency.
To come back to pornography. I think that the Internet could be a suitable platform for female-friendly porn. The accessibility and anonimity factors could lead women to online spaces where the woman as subject is central.
Female-friendly or feminist- porn seems to have emerged in last years. A Dutch TVmovie was released recently and the critically acclaimed Spanish movie ‘Cinco Historias par Ellas’ won the Feminist Porn awards in Toronto.
But what is it that makes porn female-friendly or feministic? A general answer is that it should emphasize the seksuality of women. A different pattern, the presence of a plot, more aesthetic etc. are common requirements. But women seem to be very different in what they want. One thinks it’s to soft, the other thinks it’s to vulgar.
However, the Internet can, more likely than a movie, represent multiple desires. In the Netherlands is the erotic platform from the woman’s point of view www.shespot.nl significantly growing. Apperently there is some need for porn for women. And I’m now curious about situaties in other countries. Do other people notice this kind of rise in their home countries? How is this constructed than and how should it be according to you?
Related to how “Internet provides a large market for it, by the spread of a product with such skewed power relations, is a problem too” and also related to “What should/could it be changed?” different forms of resistance online has also emerged. One example is that in the early stage of Internet you found a lot of pornography if you searched with the term “girl”, this was one of the reasons why people started using the term grrrl and cybergrrrl instead online.