One of the fantastic things about growing older is that you’re allowed to review some of the long-held opinions that in fact were foisted upon you, but held onto as if they were really yours in the first place. One such opinion was this bizarre one we, men and women alike, in this machismo-celebrating society are force-fed, that men don’t cry. It dawned on me some years ago that, yes, men are allowed to cry. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with repressed men. Repressed men who feel it’s beneath them to feel deep stirrings of human emotion like sorrow, love, and, yes, while I’m at it I’m going to say, the possible pleasure to be derived from the buffet that is oral sex. But that last one is for another time, another forum.

When I came to the understanding that men were indeed allowed to cry, I was in my mid-thirties. I didn’t understand it then that this was a watershed moment in my development. It wasn’t that I was involved with or surrounded by men who were breaking down and wailing at the drop of a hat. It was actually quite the opposite. I’d been involved with and surrounded by men, up until that point, who did not know how to cry. Understand this: crying here isn’t necessarily being used in its most literal sense. God knows I did not (and still don’t) need to see men dissolve into a puddle of tears every time Mercury is in retrograde or they see those cute little white puppies in the Cottonelle commercials. But their inability to connect with themselves at the deepest emotional point indicated a missing sensitivity, which, though I did not know it at the time, I desperately wanted them to have. I was just truly coming into myself then and wondering why I was rebelling against all the male figures in my life. Up until then, I tried to be-with not very much success, I must admit-the kind of woman I was expected to be. The kind of woman my mother was. You know, smiling with my mouth closed, shyly looking down, deferring to the man, simply because he is the man. Growing up, I listened in bewilderment when my mother, a measured and thoughtful woman, agreed with my father, who often made irrationality his closest confidant, on some of the most half-witted, sometimes downright reckless theories he’d spout about life and religion. She didn’t want to rock the boat, I suppose. In our household, everybody knew, after all, there was really only one opinion that mattered. Hint: it wasn’t hers or us girls’.

So by the time I reached UWI, and the second Big Love of My Life — a guy who so reminded me of my father, in terms of ridiculous machismo, that it was enough to be the outline for a Shakespearean tragedy — told me I was not “allowed” to be friendly with some gay friends there, if I wanted to be with him, that is. Well, you can imagine how that story ended. Unbeknownst to me, though, I was working out the fact that I wasn’t meant to be the kind of woman who would endure being dominated by a man, and certainly not one lacking the enlightenment and understanding that for some women, control over their lives is the remit of them and them alone. (It doesn’t make them lesbians, by the way. It makes them Type A personalities, and men who can’t deal with that would be well advised to take a wide berth.)

Which leads us, of course, to the recent Seventh Annual Feminist Porn Awards, the brainchild of one Carlyle Jansen, owner of the Toronto sex toy store Good For Her, and created as a way to “acknowledge, celebrate, and endorse films and filmmakers that are redefining what porn can be. For a film to qualify, a woman must have played a significant role in the making of the movie — in the production, writing, or directing. The film must also challenge stereotypes found in mainstream porn about what’s beautiful or sexy”. In other words, this porn utilises people who look like you and me.

What the what? Feminist porn? No, I’m not some weird, trench coat-wearing mouth-breather who hangs out at the back of DVD stores in the XXX-rated section. I’m just a student of life who always wants to learn more about it. But, like other women, I’d written off porn as just another phantasmagorical pursuit of the patriarchy. Those poor girls debasing themselves in that way, I would think sadly as I watched them slithering scintillatingly onto a pole or on the ground on their hands and knees (even, mind you, as I made annotations in my Donny Deutsch-like Big Idea sex notebook).

But while contemplating this feminist porn thing, something struck me. So much hypocrisy exists about porn, about sex in general, really. There are women who put on power suits and go to corporate offices every day of the week, who basically do the same thing porn stars do, or perhaps worse, all in the name of getting ahead. They scheme to have after-hours slap and tickle with their bosses in the boardrooms just so that they can get the promotion they’re after, the pay increase, the better office, whatever. The only difference is that they’re not being filmed while they’re shaking their money-makers in the CEO’s face.

It also dawned on me that, like the good self-righteous and judgemental hypocrite I was, I did not apply the same measuring stick to the male porn stars. Why were the women victims and the men – who, let’s just be honest, are often, well, so damn good to look at – not judged the same way? Why the double standard?

In the end, what do I care whether porn can be feminist or not? Truth is, perhaps it’s good there’s an alternative subgenre that doesn’t try to sell what mainstream porn seeks to: that one’s studly pool boy will spot one reading on a deck chair and drop his net and his trousers, in favour of some mid-morning, al fresco ass-tapping. Yeah, right. I know that I’ll sit poolside patiently waiting for that scenario until the cows come home, because, Lord knows I’ll never look away in disgust from a well-built naked man. But I can tell you now: it’s never gonna happen… never gonna happen…