Gonad The Barbarian And The Venus Fly Trap Analysis

Anne McClintock wrote her essay “Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap: Portraying the female and male orgasm” to examine pornography and how it has changed throughout history and its effects on how women perform as sexual beings. McClintock focuses on the various roles of pornography such as its emphasis on voyeurism, pleasure, and the male ego. She wants her readers to know that women are still not represented in pornography to satisfy their own desires, but they are there to cater to men and their subconscious. I will analyze how McClintock argues that due to the history of sexism towards women, the roles that men and women have in pornography are inherently different because of the societal belief that women are only seen as objects of sexual desire and are solely there to satisfy the male audience.

She states that sexism comes from how women have been perceived sexually throughout history and that this heavily influences pornography. McClintock sets up this argument by saying “Women’s desire, by contrast, has been crimped and confined to history’s sad museum of corsets, chastity belts, the virginity cult and genital mutilation” (113). She is saying that women were never given the chance to define their sexual wants and sexual desires because they have always been decided for them. Her main argument is based on her belief that men and women have formed the way that women’s sexuality is portrayed, even before the porn industry existed. McClintock disputes that society wrongly accused women of not wanting to participate as sexual beings and therefore that assumption is why pornography is focused on satisfying the needs of men over the needs of