EROTIC LANDSCAPES

Abstract

Why is it shocking when women claim the same right to sexual self-expression that men do ? Because of patriarchy, the voices of women are mocked, diminished, and repudiated in every area of society. This is true especially in the area of sexuality. No one judges men, but everyone judges women - on dress, on appearance, on career choices, and especially on sexual behavior. The sexual “roles” society imposes on women are far more restrictive than those it imposes on men. Masturbation, non-monogamy, lust, fantasy, recreational sex - all of these options are open to men... but not to women. These prints depict what it means to assert women’s claim to the same territory men have inhabited for centuries. Asserting these rights is at once liberating - and terrifying. Men are at once the source of pleasure and of pain, the greatest offer of happiness and the greatest threat to it, the safe harbor and the dangerous storm. The mixed feelings that this evokes are expressed in the pain/pleasure, and the desire/fear of the paintings, together with the confusion that results. Increasingly, in the 21st century, women are able to assert their femininity in positive ways, embracing and affirming their own sexuality. This print depicts masturbation as an emblem of female self-actualization, and promotes the selfreliance inherent in self-pleasure.