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pornography, he seems to have based his research on the equivalent of
what excites men, i.e., do women like to see naked men, or men stripping?
Also a very small percentage of pornography is produced by women (one
was Margaret of Valois, wife to King Henry IV of Navarre, who in
1558 published
The Heptameron).
Pornography created by men is gen–
erally concerned with detailed description of male genital performance
or copulation. "These are elements to which females according to our
data, are not generally interested [Dr.
A.
Kinsey]." This is true, but
women enjoy erotica and some pornography. Of the writers, they enjoy
the ones who don't insist on detailed descriptions of men's performances
and probably they prefer the "perverted" writers (De Sade, von Sacher–
Masoch). A lot of women I have talked to like striptease more than
their husbands. This is not a form of lesbianism, but of aesthetics and
voyeurism; the female body is far more harmonious than the male's.
Women are the passive partners in lovemaking, they are the natural
voyeuristes,
obvious intellectualizers of sex. Although producers of erotica
and pornography cater mainly to men, some have obviously realized
the potentiality of a woman's market. First of all the advertisers: scents
and stockings in women's magazines are not advertised by handsome
men smelling scents or looking at legs with delight, but by marvelous
girls, often seminaked. Magazines like
The New York Review of Sex
in its
Special Anal Intercourse Issue,
talks to women, explaining how
new frontiers of excitement are offered to them. Another American
publication,
Climax,
has a cover story of a woman who explains to
another girl how she should give pleasure to her husband, who is other–
wise on the point of leaving her for the uniformity of her sexual
postures.
Pleasure
goes further.
(I
confess to having been rather em–
barrassed when, asking for a copy of the magazine, the newspaper seller
screamed to his helper, "Hey, give
Pleasure
to the lady.") It publishes
a long letter by a woman explaining why she enjoys reading the maga–
zine so much and why more women should buy it. The letter is pure
pornography and, like another article signed by Tina Bellini, it is clearly
written by a man. (Like so much erotic literature which is published
under female pseudonyms, like Pauline Reage, etc.)
It
is
interesting to note that there is a specific effort to conquer
the female pornography reader. But places where one buys erotic pub–
lications or striptease clubs are generally exclusively for men.
When I went to buy some pornography on Forty-second Street, the
owner of the shop tried to send me away. I reassured him that I was
there in order to buy. Later, seeing me there, other women entered the
shop. Another time, walking in the forbidden street of shop-window
prostitutes off the Reeperbahn, a "professional" started screaming at me.
