Can Porn be Women-Positive?

I hate porn.

I'll admit it. The little porn I have seen had me reeling back in disgust.

Hanging out with my guys friends after our first year of college was interesting because it had seemed they had lost all filters with me. They explored the internet in front of me and laughed at the disgusting porn they came across.

I laughed from what I could see in between my fingers, too. Then I remembered that they were real people and that most of these people were getting hurt.

I don't think erotic images are bad. And I do not think sexualization is necessarily a bad thing.

But I think women who are porn stars or 'escorts' or strippers are doing it wrong.

Yes, you heard me. They are doing 'it' wrong.

It's common fact among scholars that investigate the sex industry that most women in the sex industry may not see a lot of what they earn. Porn stars have agents, Escorts have johns and strippers...well, strippers are stripping in a joint that is usually owned by someone other than them. Most of their money that they earn go to those 'third parties'.

Agents, Johns and Owners of strip clubs are usually men.

So women are selling their bodies to men, to give more money to men.

That doesn't sound very sexually liberating to me.

As I searched for statistics on how much a women in the sex industry makes in a lifetime, I realized that I wouldn't find a lot of results. Sites like this one focused on how much money the 'porn industry' makes overall and who pays for it.

They didn't split up where this profit goes. My guess is that most of the money goes to the producers of these films, not the actresses. My guess is that these producers are mainly men.

My point? Women in the sex industry need to take control. They deserve most of that profit that the porn industry brings in. In order for these career choices to be liberating, they need to be making the majority of the big bucks.

Yes, I'm saying that women need to be the owners of porn companies. Why? Because they are the one being degraded, used, and sexualized on computers and televisions screens across the world.

When I brought this up to my guy friends, they scoffed at me. "Women don't know what a man wants in bed." They told me. I looked at them with disgust, "You're telling me that you've never been satisfied by a women in bed before, now that's kind of sad." Yes, women know what you want in bed, women satisfy you, why can't they take over the porn industry?

I believe that women can use their sexuality to get ahead in life. I believe in choices and that in the right cases, women can be financially stable and fiscally responsible from the porn industry. It's a women's body and her choice to make, but let's make sure it's a good choice to make and that she isn't being cheated.

But let's do this right. Let's make the sexualization of women's body's our choice and to our benefit. That's a fair compromise, if you can't beat them, make money off them.

(Note: I focused on straight porn, I tried to find studies on gay porn because I heard that gay porn is more 'healthy' in the terms of income for the actors, I could not find any. I do not know if the sexualization of gay men is an issue.)