| dc.description.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. | en_US |
