What Porn Taught a Generation of Women

Sophie Gilbert’s article, “What Porn Taught a Generation of Women,” is a sweeping cultural critique that argues that pornography—not just as explicit content, but as a broader aesthetic and worldview—has profoundly shaped millennial women’s sense of identity, sexuality, ambition, and self-worth. Its core thesis is this:

Porn didn’t just reflect culture; it remade it—and trained us all, especially women.

Porn’s Infiltration into Mainstream Culture: The late ’90s and early 2000s marked a cultural shift where pornographic aesthetics—objectification, degradation, and hypersexualization of women—pervaded fashion, music, film, and even politics.

Britney Spears, American Beauty, Abercrombie catalogs, and Snoop Dogg’s porn ventures are cited as examples of normalized porno-chic. Sexualization as Faux Empowerment: Women were told sexual expression was “empowering,” but Gilbert argues this was often a trap—young women learned to internalize male desires and perform sexuality as a means to be seen, not to hold power.

“Being in on the joke” often meant being the punchline. The Internet Codified the Gaze: Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Google Images have origins tied to sexual voyeurism (e.g., the search for Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment or hotness rankings at Harvard). Early webcam culture (e.g., JenniCam) revealed how quickly women became content—objects for constant watching.

From Third-Wave to Postfeminist Performance: As feminism became postfeminism (the idea that women had “won” equality), media encouraged women to enjoy objectification as freedom. Pornography’s logic—male pleasure as paramount—replaced meaningful empowerment.

Cultural and Political Consequences: From Girls Gone Wild to political porn parodies (Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?), women’s public personas were sexualized as fast as they were elevated. Clinton, Palin, Harris—all faced gendered ridicule rooted in porn logic.

Normalization of Violence and Control: Porn turned more violent, and so did sex in real life. Choking, slapping, and degradation became common. Shows like Euphoria illustrate how teens have internalized porn scripts in their real and digital lives.

Porn as Political Blueprint: Trump’s rise, and the misogyny surrounding both his campaigns, is seen as a culmination of decades of cultural training that dehumanized women. Misogynist influencers now mainstream male supremacy narratives once confined to the margins.

Hope through Cultural Awareness and Rejection: While porn logic has saturated the culture, there’s a growing cultural fatigue with it (The Idol flopped). Gilbert sees power in “unlearning” internalized misogyny and reclaiming identity and narrative on women’s terms.

The article contends that porn shaped not just what we watched, but how we understood womanhood, power, and desire—and that true liberation starts by recognizing and rejecting those scripts.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/porn-american-pop-culture-feminism/682114/