Visual erotica for women

[SparklingExplosionGoldBrass]

Because the discussion on this at Ladyfest was fascinating but didn't go on long enough, I fancy continuing it here.
Soo, iirst off, why aren't there proper erotic magazines (with pictures of naked men in them) for heterosexual women?

I agree with SGB above. But am fed up with the way this thread has, yet again, become a shouty argument about "Prostitution: Right or Wrong?" I don't see prostitution mentioned in the title or SGB's OP. I'm buggering off out of it - again. Yawn.

My apologies for my part in the derailing, Grace; please don't leave, your contributions are brilliant.

Gosh, thanks, OLKN!

That's a good question, Leningrad. I have assumed the 'blocking' occurred due to simple conditioning - well, not so simple really - though decision-makers must have sat behind desks and justified their pulling of funds. While I suspect the justifications would have been "there's no market for it", this is demonstrably untrue. Bodice-rippers continue to pull in millions, and TV directors acknowledge the real purpose of historical drama series.

Taking the long-term view, I'm not sure a blossoming of female sexuality & erotica would lead to fewer outlets for 'traditional' (male-directed) porn. It serves a widespread purpose and, surely, could be expanded upon by existing sex media owners? One of the early backers for that cinema project was a porn king. I tend to suspect it's all down to a barely-thought, but powerful, belief that women's sexuality must not be encouraged ... a 'civilised' take on the same principle that leads to female castration. Remember, castration of girls is carried out by women enacting what they believe to be a moral necessity. Are female erotica suppressed by a similarly male-influenced set of thoughtlessly-held, moral beliefs?

I am still putting aside the rights and wrongs of porn, as I think this thread is about a slightly different issue.

I'm interested in this idea that women are aroused by images but perceive themselves not to be.

I think that leads on to two further questions:

1. The point of pornography is frequently masturbation/orgasm. Is there not a difference between someone being aroused by an image and someone going through the psychological processes required to take that further. Maybe that decision to not take that further is about attitudes to porn, or maybe it is just about the way women think about sex. So is it in the nature of the visual medium that doesn't match up with how women think/feel?

1. The idea that women become aroused by these images seems to follow a male template that porn is an area of their lives that they can compartmentalise and doesn't have impact on their lives in general. Someone on here was saying that they think women are aroused by a wider variety of things, so maybe women have less boundaries between everyday sensuality, emotion and sexual response. SO could their benchmark for what is and is not arousing be higher than mens, because women don't sharply define arousal/non-arousal in the way men do? So women report as not being aroused because their idea of what constitutes arousal is different?

Also, I disagree that women's erotica is supressed. It is all over the internet and often produced collectively or with reader imput. It simply isn't commericalised that often, but I'm not convinced that is a bad thing.

I'm not hugely convinced that the absence of visual porn aimed at women is just a conspiracy.
Written porn (admittedly with a veneer of story) sells in enormous quantities to women, and sex toys sell very nicely thank you - surely that would be threatening to the patriarchy?

Also not convinced by the argument that if you really enjoyed having people watch you have sex you wouldn't do it for money - I enjoy a good spreadsheet debug as much as the next geek, but I'm not going to turn down anyone who wants to pay me for it. Part of the problem with porn in practice as I understand it however is that too many of the people who do want to have that much sex in public do so because they're screwed up to start off with - not all, but too many. But I'm not an expert.

LG, all over the internet in the form of fanfic. I agree that that if they could commercialise it, they would. Although there have been attempts to create commercial forms of some fanfic genres. There is an article on attempts to commercialise here, although my friend wrote an internet piece on why it mis-represents the genre.

Original article here:

out.com/detail.asp?id=27242

Response here:

lobelia321.livejournal.com/712043.html#cutid1

Sorry, this is all a bit off topic.

No, I don't think there is very much visual stuff. I didn't say there was in my post, although I can see that my post was misleading as went from talking about visual images to erotica. Sorry, I typed that post in a rush at work as I was leaving.

I don't think that visual erotica is that appealing to most women, other than as a short part of a longer mainstream film. I don't know why that is. I don't know if it is something about women or something about the poor quality of the images.

Has there been any since Emanuelle?

Oh, there was that spate of early Nineties films - Eyes Wide Shut, Nine and a Half Weeks ... and some others, weren't there? If they'd made the sex scenes explicit, though, the titles wouldn't have made it to general release. Crash appealed to female audiences, too, but nobody admitted to enjoying it

Thing is, all the Hollywood money guys know how to draw in a female audience sexually. This means the off-Hollywood guys, who make porn, know too. I guess they'd be more expensive to make, so it could be a simple matter of economics, but I don't think so. In mainstream films, the sexually proactive woman gets a comeuppance. I feel sure this isn't driven by audience research amongst women, but some kind of received moral imperative.

I so wish somebody would cut through the crap and make a high-value film where the women are sexy and successful! Until they do, this discussion's always going to be theoretical ...

Let's invent it, then

I want to see:
Ballsiness and humour ~ Thelma & Louise
Forbidden sex ~ Eyes Wide Shut
Lust & Power ~ Basic Instinct
Gritty sex ~ 8 mile

I've gone all blank on film titles
Help me out!!

Positive relationship ~ Pulp Fiction

EWS was really quite edgy for Hollywood. I didn't want to 'be' any of the characters, but to me it's a fascinating and beautiful film. The wife wasn't stereotyped, either.

I found that masochism film sexy, too - the secretary one? I don't identify with a single one of the characters and find it a bit depressing as a concept - but it worked as a stimulus.

"we like, because we two are one"

have never seen "Eyes Wide Shut"

does Tom Cruise manage to get anywhere near sexy ?

He is one of my top-ten unsexiest people

Those Diva covers are just boring

It worked well, AF: he was playing a bit of an awkward twat, out of his depth.

Wouldn't there be copyright issues with fanfic that would go against commercialisation of it?

There are many women on here who say they do enjoy mainstream porn, the milder end, with a nod towards a storyline and no violence.