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Mainstream Pornography and “Women”: Questioning Sexual Agency

The purpose of this paper is to engage in a critical analysis of the possibilities for sexual agency for North American “women” given the current patriarchal and heterosexist social landscape that is inundated with mainstream pornographic material and where very specific socially constructed female sexual performances are promoted. This paper evaluates the benefits of an experiential essentialist theoretical paradigm in exploring the possibilities for agency for “women” in their sexual lives. The paper draws on various images of female bodies and sexual performances that are presented and, in turn, promoted in mainstream pornography and examines their effects on “women” in order to show that even though various aspects of postmodernism and phenomenology regarding “women's” experiences should be applauded and embraced, they cannot be separated from experiential essentialist arguments that deal with “social truths”. Questions that are addressed are whether “women” can renegotiate the terms upon which mainstream pornography has functioned, whether “women” can use any type of pornography to explore independent sexual subjectivity and whether “women's” current sexual experiences reflect personal choice and autonomy.