return to worldwidereview.com, the home of critical reviews

Just off the Gran Via Madrid

From:     sad
Category: Life
Date:     29 June 2009
Time:     10:44 AM

Review:



If you have forgotten that sexism exists (lucky/stupid you) a trip to Madrid will remind you.  All
down Calle De la Montera are many, many women who are prostitutes. This must mean that there are
many, many men who pay for sex. There are many men who see women as some kind of sexual commodity.
These are women who can be bought (and sold, I didn’t recognise the pimps). This to me is an
extension of pornography, where women are objects enacting male fantasies (of power). I think that
pornography and prostitution are both things that are damaging to sexual relationships between men
and women. I think that our sexual tastes are shaped to a certain extent by our culture, I think
that if teenagers’ first introduction to sex is through pornography I believe their expectations
about sex must be coloured by this experience (as research has corroborated).  Similarly if men can
buy women’s for this invasive and intimate act, I can not imagine that these men will really be able
to think of women as equals, but instead as some thing (an object) they dominate and rule. I think
it is very depressing that clearly so many men want relationships of this kind. The women were out
from early morning and all through the night. Obviously they must be making money from their hours,
and that money is coming from men. Poverty is a factor, and clearly men have the money that the
women need. The men I was with ‘had a good laugh’ by asking the women how much they charged and
their bourgeois values were probably titillated. I think that these things reflect our Victorian
attitudes to sex, where it is a taboo, enjoyed not because the act is pleasurable but because it is
‘sinful’. I think that the porn industry is a product of this attitude to sex and women whilst also
propagating it. I don’t think that the objectification of women as seen in porn does appeal to all
men, just as many men won’t be able to be turned on by paying for sex. It is interesting though that
‘educated’/middleclass men are ready to admit that they are porn watchers, while prostitution
remains a no go area.  Men who watch porn do not feel implicated in the degradation of women, though
of course they are, they provide the market. Women who watch porn must get their enjoyment from it
through the desire to be desired by men, alienated from their own desire, Lacan can say it better.
Women who act in porn do so voluntarily and I am sure that women who alter their bodies do so
voluntarily as well. Who do they do these things for? Whose ideal image of ‘woman’ are they
enacting?  Our culture is to blame; the desire for power in men (often describe as masculinity) is a
recurrent theme. As I get older I realise that I will have to put up with the fact that many men
will be happy to be in relationships with people half their age. It seems a shame that all many
people want is power rather than challenging and meaningful interaction. Go see it for yourself
Calle De La Montera. 


return to worldwidereview.com, the home of critical reviews