Porn For The Female Gaze

by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com. 

By now, I should know to be careful what I ask for!  For several years I’ve been bitching about the terms “feminist porn”, “ethical porn”, “female-friendly porn”, “green porn”, etc. – all right-minded attempts to give some definition to porn that might be able to fit into a genre that might attract women consumers, but, invariably, have ghettoized a growing segment of the adult industry that is seeking to expand their film making styles (and, ghettoizing porn-watching women as well by indicating what is “appropriate” for the female viewer).

And, now my wish that those terms might fade away has happened, but only to be replaced by yet ANOTHER marginalizing descriptor:

Read on…

PORN FOR THE FEMALE GAZE

When I first heard about this, it was in a verbal conversation with one of the other editors at sssh.com, and I heard it wrong.  I thought she said “Porn For The Female Gays”.  Huh?  Well, she spelled the word “gaze” for me and that clarified it, but not much.  What is this “Female Gaze” phenomena? It sounds a bit like a line out of some obscure Moveable Feast poet in 1920s Paris.  So, some research was in order to what this might actually mean…..

It turns out that “Gaze Theory” is a very old one, originating with the French Existentialist psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in the 1930s.

According to a very pedantic and long-winded treatise on “Gaze Theory” and it’s metamorphosis into feminist philosophy years later, Wikipedia informs us:

In her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey introduced the second-wave feminist concept of “male gaze” as a feature of gender power asymmetry in film. The concept was present in earlier studies of the gaze, but it was Mulvey who brought it to the forefront. Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera. Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia. The concept has subsequently been influential in feminist film theory and media studies.

The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may linger over the curves of a woman’s body, for instance. The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as for the spectator who is watching the film. The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of ‘patriarchal‘ order and it is often seen in “illusionistic narrative film”. Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze, reflecting an underlying power asymmetry.

Mulvey’s essay also states that the female gaze is the same as the male gaze. This means that women look at themselves through the eyes of men. The male gaze may be seen by a feminist either as a manifestation of unequal power between gazer and gazed, or as a conscious or subconscious attempt to develop that inequality. From this perspective, a woman who welcomes an objectifying gaze may be simply conforming to norms established to benefit men, thereby reinforcing the power of the gaze to reduce a recipient to an object. Welcoming such objectification may be viewed as akin to exhibitionism.

Griselda Pollock, in her article, “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity” argues that the female gaze can often be visually negated. Robert Doisneau‘s photo named “An oblique Look” supports this argument. In the photo, a middle-aged bourgeois couple is looking around art gallery. The spectator view of the picture is from inside the shop but the couple is looking in different places than the view of the spectator. The woman is commenting on an image to her husband, while the husband is being distracted by a nude female painting. The nude female painting is hung with view of the spectator. The woman is looking at another image, but it is out of view of the spectator. The man’s gaze has found something more interesting and he has chosen to ignore the woman’s comment. The woman is also in contrast to the nude female in the painting, and instead of passively accepting the male gaze, she presents herself as “actively returning and confirming the gaze of the masculine spectator”.

Clear As Mud Yet?

Short of falling down some Jean Paul Sarte bunnyhole looking for the complete answer, I was coming to form the idea that “Gaze Theory” simply means “Men and Women Often See Stuff Differently”.  Fair enough.  Sort of a throwback nod to John Gray’s 1993 Book, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” (which is much easier to read than Jacques Lacan, btw).

But how did this come to be the new better mousetrap for creating porn that women might find worth buying and watching?

Time to go read up on this from the women in the porn industry….

In a 2011 article by QuietRiotgirl, she says:

Suraya on writing about LadyPornDay said: ‘A few re-occurring comments caught my attention, in which women agreed that finding explicit male photography online that involved an erection and was surely aimed at women was near impossible.

This is both disappointing as a fact, and comforting to hear. Half the time when I say ‘there’s sod all erotic photography of men out there that’s aimed at women’, I am told I’m obviously not looking very hard, or my absolute favourite, ‘Have you tried the internet?’’

Now. I don’t think the ‘female gaze’ or the ‘male gaze’ exist. I think people get turned on by a variety of different things, regardless of their sex, gender identity or orientation.

Well put, QuietRiotGirl.  All women and men are individuals with individual tastes and what turns them on.

Seeking more opinions, I headed over to MsNaughty.com.  She is one of the most hard working, thoughtful and articulate female pornographers around, and in her article on the topic, she summarizes it nicely, saying:

I think my frustration also occurs because decrying terms like “porn for women”, “female friendly” and “the female gaze” (however flawed they are) can have the effect of denying straight women their own space in the pornosphere. As I said in this post two and a half years ago, these phrases are about creating a space in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry. They’re about putting up a flag so that it’s easier for straight women to wade through the crap and find something different. I’ve been making porn for ten years and I’m still one of only a handful of people who are legitimately trying to offer erotic content to straight women. Sure, the big porn companies have lately started to make an effort but they’re not very good at it.

I guess the ultimate conclusion is that labels are problematic but, for me, useful. And that maybe it’s personal: I’m a straight woman, I want to offer porn to straight women like me who like the things I do. But sometimes I feel that arguments over labels suggest that what I’m doing isn’t legitimate or politically correct or wrong somehow. And I know that what I do IS worthwhile. Because boring old married vanilla-type straight chicks like me do like porn and I think we deserve our space at the table as much as anyone else.

No sightings of commentaries from  Tristan Taormino on the “Gaze” topic (yet), but MsNaughty is really on to something here.  As much as the various terms that have been put into the lexicon for “what is porn for women” are marginalizing and result in ENDLESS debate and slut shaming amongst female pornographers, I agree with the “putting up a flag” metaphor.  Signage is part of the human condition to give people cues on where the most appropriate place might be to go to fulfill their needs without wandering around aimlessly.  Think of the carnage that would ensue if we didn’t have those little icons of the guy in pants and the girl in a dress on public restroom doors.

The BDSM and Fetish film producers and communities have been “putting up flags” for years to give folks a clue and a roadmap to find what they want, and it goes FAR beyond a single descriptive word or phrase like “Kinky”.  Under that big tent of “kinky”, for folks with a bit of the twisted fuck gene, imagine the horror for some guy with a balloon popping fetish to wander into a film screening of 17 transgendered folks peeing on a Hells Angel hairy large fellow, just because the only sign over the doorway said “Kinky” with no further breakdown to make some informed choices!

Perhaps “porn for women” needs to be the big tent flag, and inside is all of the variation signage for “romantic”, “epic”, “bi-curious”, “really nasty”, “big dick”, etc.  But, make the name of the big tent “Porn Made For Women” which shows the “intention” of the film maker having created the films with women in mind (even if they did it badly). That at least sends the message of not what you are supposed to watch as a woman, but flips the onus back to the producer to indicate that was their intention.

As for “Porn For The Female Gaze“, I happily suspect that this is a short-lived term. Let’s face it: this is one of those “coined” terms that most people, upon stumbling across it, are going to go Google it and then be thrust into the Augean Stables of Wikipedia for a heavily footnoted journey into 1930’s French psychoanalytic theory and second wave feminist philosophy.  Sort of kills the sexy buzz right there, eh? (Oh, and if heard verbally, it sounds like “Porn For The Female Gays” which makes it even more confusing.)

And, for one of the little signs under the big “Porn For Women” tent, may I suggest a “Porn For The Transcendentalist Poet Gaze” (a new genre specifically for female English Literature and Poetry Majors), using my favorite poem by ee cummings as the voice-over for it:

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which I will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh…And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new 

Let’s go make some porn for women and not get our underwear in such a knot of what to call it!
Coleen at Sssh.com