It’s widely believed that the lack of sexually stimulating material available for women is the direct result of a lack of female demand. The two examples I describe below, tell a very different story.
First, google is discriminating against cougar dating sites, but not similiar, or even more explicit and offensive dating sites for men. Second, Hollywood discriminates against movies about females seeking sexual pleasure, while movies about males seeking sexual pleasure are commonplace.
If the real reason for a lack of sexually stimulating material for women is lack of demand, why do we do we need the sexual double standard to keep female behavior in line? The double standard not only functions to make women feel uncomfortable taking an interest in their own sexual pleasure, an incredibly strong deterrent to female sexual exploration on its own, but once women get past this hurdle and decide make sexual material available to other women, there are major barriers when it comes to gaining funding, advertising, and publication.
Google recently made the decision to disallow cougar dating service ads on its site, but not similar men’s dating service ads. (link from the NYtimes.com article below) The owner of CougarLife.com is fighting back.
Google said it made this decision after classifying CougarLife.com as “non-family safe.” and says that all companies and websites containing the word “cougar” will now be considered adult and will not be able to run on Google’s “content network.” (The Google advertising system has two components: one for ads that appear next to search results, and one for its content network). This means CougarLife’s ads will no longer show up on more than 6,700 websites, accounting for 60 percent of its traffic.
CougarLife’s describes it’s services as “…classy, confident women that already possess many of the finer things in life – but now want the young, hot guy to go with it.” However, sites promoting sugardaddy’s, like date-a-millionaire.com and ArrangementSeekers.com, which describes itself as “the original Sugar Daddy service catering to ambitious and attractive girls seeking successful and generous benefactors to fulfill their lifestyle needs!,” and even more sexually explicit dating sites are allowed to advertise. So, if you a woman looking for a man, now you’ll see ads to help you find “sexy Latin women” rather then attractive men.
Ms. Opdenkelder, the owner of the cougar dating site says googles actions gender and age discrimination.
Link to NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/fashion/16cougar.html?src=tptw
Movies
Recently I wrote the following column about the movie, “Coming Soon,” under my media reviews section:
This movie is not the most highly-rated, nor is it easy to find (you can find it on Amazon.com using the movies title, along with the director’s name Colette Burson). This movie is, however, important and worthy of your attention. Writer and director, Colette Burson, tells a realistic story of the common, yet rarely discussed, experience of a teenage girl as she becomes sexually active: inability to have an orgasm, discomfort addressing the problem, uncertainty regarding what an orgasm feels like (Did I have an orgasm?), and dishonesty about the experience of sex due to desire to fit in. Despite its racy cover, this movie was not as crude or offensive as one might expect, especially in comparison to American Pie, Porky’s, and other coming of age films about the sexual experience of teenage boys. Even so, this movie was highly controversial. The producers found that the sexual double standard was powerful and had a hard time gaining support in its production or sale. The MPAA refused to give this movie an R- rating, even though it lacked nudity, and although frank, was not exploitative or titillating. Instead it was rated NC-17. Director Colette Burson said her MPAA representative admitted the board has a double standard when it comes to depicting female sexual desire.
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