Sabrina Dacos – The hand that rocks the cradle (2010)

The bumbling mad scientist in me would love to facilitate an experiment on the effects of porn consumption on straight, cisgendered boys.

This experiment would consist of two groups–one left to their own devices while another was granted access to sex positive, body positive, feminist and artfully executed pornography. (In other words, work of the sort for which Dacos is–in my mind–the quintessential exemplar.)

Of course, such a project would never pass muster with an ethics board (primarily for reasons to which I’m almost certain I would strenuously object). And I’m not naive enough to think there would be a total mitigation of heteronormative sexism in the second group; however, I’d like to think the second group would demonstrate a slightly different post-study trajectory of porn consumption.

I admit a strong bias driving this hypothetical experiment–I’m motivated by a retro-active wish that I’d had access to exactly the sort of sensitive, sophisticated pornographic material at the time I was navigating puberty. I suspect it would have diminished much of the guilt I experienced consuming such material given not only the front loading of puritanical bullshit into my Xtian upbringing as well as assuaging the nascent feminist awareness I felt at that juncture in my life.

EDIT: It’s been brought to my attention that my conceptualization of feminism and Ms. Dacos’ diverge significantly. That’s fine–feminism is a big tent. I’m not about to tell anyone else what they should think. That being said, I do find some of her commentary to be disturbing and sometimes even repugnant. So much so that my first response was to delete this post. I’m going to leave it though–to show that I’m not always right and that I make mistakes when I assume things just by only looking at someone’s work and not doing any research about their pubic facing persona.

My sincere apologies if my glaring oversight offended anyone (and thanks to wyoh for opening my eyes).