Censorship of the Female Orgasm

            Recently, the British Board of Film Classification met to revisit some of the regulations set for DVD porn. The Board of Film decided to ban different paraphilia from appearing on screen.  A paraphilia is the experience of intense sexual arousal to abnormal, atypical or inappropriate objects or people. Many paraphilia’s, though considered an abnormal attraction, may be considered common. For example, an intense attraction to a person’s buttocks would be considered a paraphilia. Yet, how many songs on the radio do we hear that glorify and obsess over a woman’s backside? Some paraphilias, however, are not so common. In fact, when a paraphilia becomes harmful to an individual or others and/or clinically distressing to the individual, it is considered a psychological disorder listed in the DSM-5 and patients are advised to seek treatment.

            The British Board of Film Classification wanted to ban certain paraphilias from appearing in porn, as they felt it could have damaging effects on the viewers. They banned imaged of BDSM, in which people experience pleasure from violence. They felt that these images showed or encouraged potential physical harm. However, they also banned female ejaculation, female orgasms, from appearing onscreen. As the Daily Beast, an online news blog, wrote, “The fact that female ejaculation is even considered to be in the same category of offense as acts that are, one could argue, potentially physically harmful, is ludicrous and pretty plainly sexist.”

            Porn is a very explicit image and is not typically realistic, have potentially damaging effects on viewers. But leaving out female orgasms perhaps makes the industry even more unrealistic.  In the United States, female orgasms on screen are rated R, while male orgasms would be rate PG-13. Clearly, a female’s pleasure is more explicit than a man’s. This shows that the women in the films are simply props to fulfill a man’s desire and not their own. With ads, music videos, tv shows, movies, even the news, objectifying women’s bodies, the message about female sexual pleasure is clear: women do not own their own bodies and their own pleasure.