When you are a woman in India, you have to keep your sexuality hidden under the pallu. While men go about talking boisterously about their porn habits, a woman mentioning the ‘P’ word usually draws a blank stare. An ominous silence. A collective exchange of judgmental looks.
Don’t you agree, ladies? But now that we have broached the awkward (but very real topic) of porn and in a natural extension to it, that of female lust, we must ask ourselves, do we need a porn that answers our desires and does not merely reduce us to sex dolls? I hear a hell yes!
Indian Women Watch Porn
In 2015, when Kamlesh Vaswani, the lawyer behind India’s porn ban, had made the erroneous statement that, “To say Indian women watch porn is an insult to their dignity,” the group Feminism in India initiated a Twitter chat asking women to share their experiences of watching porn.
The responses were real and interesting!
Many Indian women are today looking for erotica that is created keeping in mind their pleasure too.
Feminist porn director Erika Lust, who is one of the pioneers of the feminist porn movement, has in the past talked about the need for alternative erotica that offers tasteful cinematography and a storyline that appeals to women too.
Editors Shimizu, Miller-Young, Penley and Taormino, in their anthology The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure, write, “Feminist porn seeks to unsettle conventional definitions of sex and expand the language of sex as an erotic activity, an expression of identity, a power exchange, a cultural commodity, and even a new politics.”
Tumblr, FYI, is Also a Storehouse of Free, Female-Friendly Porn
However, since not everyone can subscribe to feminist porn or pay for that kind of content, an interesting alternative is Tumblr, where some blogs are curating free porn for women.
Sex is beautiful, My Feminist Porn Blog, Treating Porn As Art are some examples of accounts that have culturally inclusive , female-friendly porn.
India is a Big Market for Porn for Women
Unfortunately, most porn available on the internet is still very phallocentric that treats women as objects of pleasure – as if a woman has no agency in sex. But like men, women are sexual beings too and equally enjoy sexual imagery.
A Pornhub survey reveals that Indian women are one of the highest consumers of pornography, with nearly 3 in 10 (30%) women consuming pornography. Just imagine, how the numbers could shoot up if we had a porn that answered the desires of desi women!
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