On my laptop there is an ever-increasing  folder of images.  Some of them, like this one (found here) end up as photos on Rabbit Write. But many, you’ll probably never see. They are, plainly, porn. I have this worry-fantasy, where a friend or someone will pull up my laptop to find these naked bodies projected on the screen, or worse, a video on pause.

This is all the more mortifying if the friend I am imagining is a woman. Women, in my experience, don’t really talk with each other about porn. There seems to be some silent rule which says: “No!” And “…seriously? Ew.”

There are a lot of reasons that women don’t watch porn, aside from the background noise that brainwashes en masse “porn is wrong porn degrades women.” It seems a lot of women just don’t connect with porn. But  I don’t think it’s because women aren’t as visual. There is not lot of porn out there made for women, especially straight women. Yet, new research shows that while men are the large purveyors of porn, women audiences are steadily increasing, growing louder in our silence, apparently.

In junior high, boys started talking about jerking off. It was something to roll your eyes at but it was okay–we knew all boys did it.  When we talked about masturbation amongst each other it was with the idea that it was just weird and gross. As I’ve gotten older, that has lessened, we do talk about masturbation. But it’s through glamorizing it, Hitachi and the rabbit and Sex & the City, some faint hot pink echo of “you go-girl-isms”. But talking about porn, remains taboo, and kind of embarrassing. Talking about porn gives our masturbation a desire.

It seems women are more open about porn with guys.  But in talking with dudes about porn and bonding with them over porn, we often just show we are sharing in their desires, also ogling the women. Not having our own.

I like some porn and I want to like more porn, but most of it is so bad: the telemundo lighting, the army of women that appear to have been poorly cloned from Pam Anderson circa 1986. Even when porn hits the rare hot spot, it often misses straight girls. Have you ever noticed how in porn the men are strangely objectified? We barely get names or faces. Just disembodied penises, bobbing in and out of mouths and various black-holes.

My friend Fruzsina and I were loudly discussing bisexuality, over a jukebox and pitcher of beer. “So I think that women are just trained to see other women as sexual,  because of advertising and art and televison, we are groomed to look at them as sexual objects.” I was into this. “The male gaze” I confirmed. Most porn is made by, and can only be viewed through, the male gaze. It avoids lingering on the woman’s point of view in a blowjob, passively capturing images of penises or ab muscles.

There are more women directors than ever. Feminist, lady-friendly porn is being made. Although, a lot of it is queer, not directed at straight women. Burning Angel is a straight porn site that boasts popularity with women. They also try to employ hot young alt guys. But the way the site is set up I can’t search for James Deen or Zak Sabbath. There’s a drop-down “choose a girl” section, but what if I want to choose a guy?

While the numbers are rising, I don’t think the majority of women are watching porn. But I advocate that we start talking to each other about why we don’t watch it or do, what we like or don’t like. And let’s take a cue from the boys I knew in junior high and share our finds. Here, I’ll go first. This and  this is good. This and this also this and this and sometimes this and this also this is helpful for finding new stuff and this as a guide for renting/downloading. Our collective muffled moans are getting louder, let’s use them for good.