Yes, porn.

Girls don’t talk about porn. Well, few do.

Girls don’t watch porn. Or do they?

If porn is a guy thing, why is it so? This week I had a rare moment of time in front of the TV and in one of the random drama shows I zapped by, porn was the issue. The police officers (or whatever they were) were discussing if porn made you a rapist. My first thought was that if that is true, we should have a lot more rapists in this world. But then, no one really knows how many rapes there are in a country every year. I have heard that most rape victims know their rapist, at least that they are not complete strangers, so that porn makes you a rapist doesn’t seem that probable to me.

But back to the porn. One of the female officers in the TV show asked her colleagues how they could watch porn, when porn is just another way of abusing women. She was appalled at how even soccer moms do Brazilian bikini waxes to look like porn stars. And then I thought, why do we see women in porn movies as abused or taken advantage of? Or rather, why aren’t the men in porn movies taken advantage of? I haven’t watched that much porn, but I have watched some. And the movies are not all about a guy doing what he wants to a girl. Sex is something two (grown up) people do (at least it’s more fun when you’re two) so it is sort of strange assuming that it is a disgrace to one of them. Why is porn a terrible way of displaying women and not men? They are both there.

Because everybody wants sex, not just guys. Some want sex more or less than others, but this doesn’t really depend on your sex, on whether you are male of female. It’s unfair to say that porn is wrong because it gives a distorted picture of female sexual life. You might be right, but in that case, it should give a distorted picture of male sexual life as well. Not that many guys have sex as they do in the porn movies, trust me. Porn might not show normal sex, but is it wrong?

All this thinking about female sexuality, especially how we think about it in my culture, got me thinking about rape. There was an article in Dagbladet about four guys getting off on a group rape charge at a camping site. They got off because the girl was known to have sex with guys she didn’t know while drunk and because she really couldn’t remember anything. My first reaction was that this was terrible and that the four of them should all be in jail. But how do you know that something is rape? Can a girl wake up after a night out, and when she can’t remember anything because she was too drunk and she doesn’t like the look of the guy beside her, is she allowed to call it rape? Who decides if it is rape? When you are over 18, you are your own responsibility. That means that you are responsible for your actions, and getting too drunk is not an excuse for stupid actions, because getting too drunk is still your own fault. But on the other side, when someone is too drunk to take care of themselves, that does not mean that you are free to do as you like with them. And how fun is it to have sex with someone who is too drunk anyway? Don’t tell guys not to rape girls, teach them that sex isn’t something a guy does to a girl, it is something they do together.

Both when it comes to porn and rape, I think it is time for girls to take some responsibility, responsibility for their sexuality. You need to know what you like, what you are comfortable with and you have to say no. NO. But more importantly, you have to say YES. Yes, I like this. Yes, do it like that. If you don’t get used to giving feedback, you could (and would, I think) suddenly find yourself in a situation where someone is doing something that you don’t like. Nobody can read your mind, so speak your mind.

A female porn actor is just as empowered as a male porn actor. And a girl is just as responsible for her sexual life as a guy is. And if you don’t like the porn they’re making, do something about it. I’m not saying that girls shouldn’t get drunk and wear short dresses, just that sex is a two way interaction. Neither part should think it natural that the girl doesn’t contribute.