Editor’s Note: This column from porn director, screenwriter and producer Erika Lust originally ran on Playboy.com in August 2020.

Throughout history, sexually active females have been seen as posing a particular threat to social order, with responses that range from burning sexually titillating witches to the Victorian illusion that respectable women are passion-free creatures.

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For too long, we have been given the choice to be one of only two types of women: the respectable kind, who doesn’t want, enjoy, or think about sex; or the fallen woman, the temptress. Fast-forward to the last ten years and a lot has changed. Sexuality, in general, has become a less taboo subject, yet women’s sexual liberation still has a long way to go.

The orgasm gap, a lack of anatomical knowledge of the vagina, clitorises that are removed from drawings of vaginas in science textbooks, slut shaming, an attempt to return to draconian abortion laws, doctors who do not take women’s sexual pain seriously, and horrendous practices such as female genital cutting show that there is still a deep rooted cultural fear of female pleasure.This fear is instilled in us from a young age, when we receive sex education in school. Boys are taught about their puberty through erections, ejaculations and masturbation; young girls’ sex ed is focused on what not to do, whether it’s pregnancy or an STI. At no point does she learn about pleasure. No one tells her about the different types of orgasms she may be able to have, or about the organ she has that’s sole purpose is for pleasure, or about why she, too, should be masturbating. Most girls grow up feeling huge amounts of shame for touching themselves and end up not knowing anything about their own bodies. So, when the time comes for their first sexual experience, most girls have it with someone else, whereas most boys, we know, have their first sexual experience alone, through masturbation. This means that from the very beginning of our sexual lives, girls are taught to understand their sexuality and pleasure in relation to someone else, while boys can depend on themselves. We grow up not knowing what we like, how to pleasure ourselves, or how to ask for what we want. We are taught that our pleasure is always secondary.

Then we leave school and set foot into our androcentric world, where the fear of feminine pleasure continues. Our society sustains gender inequality by disguising the male experience as standard: everything is built by the male vision and its ideals. Mass media shows us that men are at the center and their bodies, thoughts, and experiences are the focus.A clear example of this is in advertising. Just look at New York City’s MTA. When a female sexual health company, Dame Products, went to the MTA with their advertising campaign in 2018, they were rejected because it promoted a “sexually oriented business.” But Dame’s ads didn’t feature any sexually explicit photos—most of them had the slogan “toys, for sex” written alongside pictures of their colorful toys. In fact, the most explicit part of the advert was probably the copy that said, “Thank you from the bottom of my vulva.”

Meanwhile, the MTA has historically allowed a whole list of sexually explicit, revealing and even objectifying ads that advertise erectile dysfunction medication, breast augmentation, and other goods and services that either play on or directly promote sexuality. So, what’s the difference? It’s clear: these are all ads that promote male pleasure, and the MTA will prioritize space for tools that make sex better for men. When it comes to the “fairer sex,” though, pleasure is too vulgar.

Of course, Dame is not the first company to have had this problem. Period underwear company Thinx was told by the MTA that its advertising campaign was too “suggestive,” and last year, female sex toy company Osé was given an Innovation Award at the annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association, only to have it later retracted for being “immoral, obscene, indecent and profane.”And the problem only persists if we look at social media, with something I like to call “biased banning”—unfair censorship on social media that disproportionately affects women. It’s seen most blatantly when a man uploads an image that is deemed acceptable by the Instagram algorithm; but when a woman uploads an image of the same nature, it is flagged and removed, as was a photo I recently shared from Playboy’s feed. Unsurprisingly, my photo was removed for violating the platform’s guidelines, while Playboy’s version is still live—even after I reported it as a test, Instagram still deemed theirs acceptable and mine explicit. This comes from an inherent prejudice that is built into algorithms by the people who make them, leaving us with technology that has patriarchal bias coded into its very DNA.

But of course, it’s impossible to look at the patriarchal fear of female pleasure without looking at my own industry: pornography. Most of the stereotypical mainstream pornography on free tube sites represents a very biased and androcentric view of sex that completely disregards female desire. Men and their fantasies are portrayed definitively, and everything outside of this is labeled “other.” And although female performers are the driving force behind the industry, the characters they are given are often there only as vehicles to provide pleasure. In other words, they are there for the man.For years, women have been told that we wouldn’t—or shouldn’t—be turned on by porn. But we are sexual beings that can be aroused by the representation of sex on-screen just as much as men can. A few years ago, when the industry finally began to realize that we wanted more from pornography, they gave us the category of “porn for women,” and expected that we would be happy. But we will not take one category or one type of pornography. Our fantasies and desires are as varied as men’s.

This is why I and other female filmmakers have entered the adult industry: to show that there is a whole world of alternative pornography that prioritizes the female experience and shows that everybody’s pleasure is equal—and equally important. Through our films, we show women’s sexuality in a way that’s not framed as reactive to, or dependent on, men. Because here’s the thing: porn isn’t just a male entity. They don’t own it. They’ve just presented it to us like they do.It doesn’t matter what the subject is or how hard the sex, “porn for women” doesn’t exist. It’s just porn, and can mean many things. The most important, for me, is to capture the female gaze, and to do that I need women in leading roles behind the camera. When women control the gaze, female characters are no longer displayed as passive objects from a predatory perspective. Working with an almost entirely female crew, we create sex positive spaces for women to reclaim their pleasure, both on the camera and for those of us watching at home.

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It’s time for all of us to define our own pleasure, independent from what we are told we should or should not be watching or doing. I want women to watch porn, or do whatever turns them on, and I want them to masturbate. I don’t care about the health benefits—I want you to do it because it feels good and you deserve to feel good! But don’t stop there—talk about it with your friends by recommending adult films that you like, or toys, or erotic books. Make time in your schedule for self pleasure and teach the young girls in your life that sexual exploration is a completely normal, fun, and healthy thing for them to do.

All of this is our radical act of resistance against a history that has suppressed our pleasure for far too long. Now is our time to tell the world that our pleasure matters.