By now, we’ve all heard about the Duke university student who found a thriving career in porn to pay for her education. In 2014, you’d expect a few raised brows and maybe some slut-shaming from Rush Limbaugh. Instead, Lauren was severely harassed and has taken it upon herself to defend her position. Realistically, she shouldn’t have to – Duke University costs $61,404 (including room and board) per year -- a tough sum to cough up yearly.
Women have fought for the right to be educated. And education is supposed to be empowering. In fact It should reduce the chance of poverty for your future generations. We know that social mobility is low and the American Dream is not all it’s cracked up to be. Why demonize the last freakin’ woman who believes that is pulling herself up by her garter straps (I mean, boot straps) to get ahead? Young Lauren believes she has answer: patriarchy fears female sexuality.
In a funny, yet terrifying, bit, David Wong at Cracked.com argued that men are trained to hate women in wake of the Sandra Fluke chaos (remember that?). They pointed out that when men are turned on at a bad moment (liiiiike a funeral, whoops) they take their anger out on the subject of their arousal. (Note: “we” and “us” in the Cracked excerpts applies to the hairier gender)
“We get mad at the girl showing the cleavage. Because we, ourselves, our own rational personality that knows right from wrong and appropriate from inappropriate, knows this is a bad place to get a boner. So it comes off like cleavage girl is conspiring with our penis to screw us over.”
Thankfully, they pointed out that it’s not fair for men to feel this way. Yet, it still happens. It’s a common joke that women can hypnotize a man with a look – and this makes them feel powerless. Given cavemen and evolution and all that, men are “supposed” to be the dominant gender. Feeling weak just isn’t kosher. How do they react to that?
“The result is a combination of frustration and humiliation and powerlessness that makes us want to get it back in the only way we know how: with petty, immature acts of meanness,” Cracked stated.
So, men want to punish us for expressing our sexuality? Our lady friend at Duke would agree. Lauren says:
“We want to oppress [women] and keep them dependent on the patriarchy. A woman who transgresses the norm and takes ownership of her body -- because that's exactly porn is no matter how rough the sex is -- ostensibly poses a threat to the deeply ingrained gender norms that polarize our society.”
Though the debate about feminism in porn rages on, we have to give her comment merit. This has been her experience, as a porn star.
Yet Cracked would argue that the oppression and punishment results in deep-seated anger:
“No amount of male domination will ever be enough, why no level of control or privilege or female submission will ever satisfy us. We can put you under a burqa, we can force you out of the workplace -- it won't matter. You're still all we think about, and that gives you power over us. And we resent you for it.”
I am envious of Lauren. I wish I could own my sexuality without fear. At this point in my life, I can’t. I imagine other women feel the same. I wish I could give Lauren a big sisterly hug every time someone is a jerk to her. She shouldn’t suffer abuse because the rest of us are twisted.
Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Leg_Fetishism.jpg
