BONNE EXCITATION, ORGASME ASSURE - THE REPRESENTATION OF LESBIANISM IN CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PORNOGRAPHY

This essay is a Lesbian radical feminist analysis of the representatio n of Lesbians in contemporary popular French pornography. It is an int ervention in the pornography debate which shifts the ground in signifi cant ways. Pornography is defined from a practical marketing standpoin t as consumer product. The writer is not concerned with sensational, o r overtly violent porn, but with the most widely sold, banal magazines . Curiously, Lesbianism emerges as the dominant fantasy produced for h eterosexual men. But it is a particular version of lesbianism, confine d and contained within familial relations. The implications of the way in which Lesbianism is presented as part of the heterosexual continuu m are examined and contrasted over against Lesbian pornography and the political perspectives of Lesbian radical feminism.