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How Algorithms Co-Opt Women’s Content for the Male Gaze
When it comes to women, A.I. has become both a censor and a pimp
Every now and then, someone asks me why I don’t write about female sexual liberation anymore. The answer is longer and more complicated than I think most people are interested in, but if I were to pick out one big factor, it would be that I felt my work was being exploited.
Though I understand most people won’t believe this, thanks to the prevailing misogynistic belief that women only talk openly about sex in order to get attention from men, the reason I dove into the subject was entirely as a way to help myself unpack from decades of shame and abusive sexual encounters, hoping that sharing my thoughts, experiences, and process of deprogramming would help other women.
Instead, I found that the majority of the audience I was growing consisted of men over the age of 55 who were unhappy with their sex lives. At first, I thought it was a lucky miscalculation. Maybe I’d been wrong about my work being helpful to other women — but perhaps the men in my audience might read it and come to understand women better. It seemed like a good thing.
Until the emails started pouring in. Endless propositions for sex from men who said they had lost all respect for their wives and needed…
