When it comes to pornography there tends to be many harsh critics. Those within American society generally look down on pornography as immoral and perverse. Some feminists argue that the majority of adult films are degrading towards women. It’s controversial in the sense that everyone has their own opinion about it. After taking this course and watching an adult film, I came to some conclusions of my own. Mainstream adult films are geared toward male viewers in numerous ways. Pornography promotes gender inequality by feeding into both male and female dominant gendered sexual scripts creating unrealistic and dehumanizing views of women and sex. After describing my personal experience with pornographic films, I will draw from concepts and articles we learned in class and from various outside sources to argue this claim.
When we were first given this assignment I was excited because I had never rented or watched an entire pornographic movie before. This is not because I had not wanted to, I admit I had always been curious about what they were like. However, due to agents and techniques of social control, in this case my parents and friends outside of C.U., I felt like I would have been ridiculed, ostracized, or gossiped about if I had. I was excited to finally have the excuse to rent one. I went to Video Station here in Boulder. I had intended to go with my partner at the time, but an unforeseen breakup interfered with that plan so I went alone. I had never been inside Video Station so I did not know where the erotica section was. Normally if I was looking for something I would go straight to a salesperson and ask them to direct me. However, I found in this case I was far too embarrassed to ask the employees where it was. Again this was another form of social control and gendered sexual scripts. For women are not supposed to talk about sex(Walden 2008), which in my opinion includes wanting to watch porn. I felt embarrassed to ask for fear that...