The Pleasure Threshold

Porn can be both progressive and reactionary, oppressive and liberating and it is naive simply to welcome or denounce its representations. Debates in Britain have tended to pivot on the oppressive nature of power without often recognizing the possibility of women's pleasure. Heterosexual analyses of porn have rarely applied their theories, often rooted in a binary male-female, subject-object discourse, to same-sex erotic representations. Socialist-feminist men have seen other men's need to watch porn as a social lack: 'A narcissistic substitute for really effective and socially interactive power-sharing' (Bloom, in Day and Bloom, 1988: 21). Many radical feminists have strived to protect us from its corrupting force: 'It is perhaps the greatest tragedy of our oppression that it can be from images and fantasies of that very oppression that we draw what we have been encouraged to see as empowering and liberating, i.e., sexual pleasure' (Jeffreys in Chester and Dickey, 1988: 139). Just as it has been taboo for women to express an interest in sex and sexual satisfaction, so feminism has prescribed further taboos declaring 'politically correct' ways of having sex and seeking arousal. To watch, never mind admit to enjoying porn, is equal to treacherous collusion with the most sinister component of hetero-patriarchy. As porn is visible and explicit it could be seen as an easier target to focus the fight against sexism and male violence. However, antiporn campaigners have often conflated sexually explicit images with violence against women, rather than see porn as a socially constructed part of a much

Aesthetics · Art · Feminism · Human sexuality · Lesbian · Pleasure · Pornography · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Anthropology · Cinema and Media Studies · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

• Black Macho Revisited

  Marlon T Riggs, Marlon Riggs•African American Review•2017

  Incluir item

• Crisscross”

  Sabrina Barton•Camera Obscura Feminism Culture…•1991

  Incluir item

• Freud's "Fetishism" and the Lesbian Dildo Debates

  Heather Findlay•Feminist Studies•1992

  Incluir item

• "The Queer Voice in "Marnie

  Láisa Emannuele Pereira Knapp, Lucretia Knapp•Cinema Journal•1993

  Incluir item

• What Do You Call a Lesbian with Long Fingers? The Development of Lesbian and Dyke Pornography

  Open Access•Heather Butler, H Lee Butler•Porn Studies•2004

  Incluir item

• Lesbian porn. Anything girl on girl’

  Claire Meehan•Porn Studies•2020

  Incluir item

• Carnal fantasizing

  Ingrid Ryberg•Porn Studies•2015

  Incluir item

• Wanting Pictures After Feminism

  Laura Guy•Women a Cultural Review•2019

  Incluir item

• Invisibility, homophobia and heterosexism

  Linda Steiner, Fred Fejes et al.•Critical Studies in Mass…•1993

  Incluir item

• Women and Film

  E Ann Kaplan•WOMEN AND FILM•1983

  Incluir item

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  Laura Mulvey•Screen•1975

  Incluir item

• The Body as Evidence

  L Stern•Screen•1982

  Incluir item