In a world of free-speech, pretty much anything goes whether we like it or not. And whether we like it or not, because of free-speech, sex is one of the hottest selling commodities. It's been true for years in the United States, and at least since the sexual revolution of the 1960's, sexual images are unavoidable.

At the newsstand, "Playboy," "Penthouse," "Hustler," and "Jugs" sit amongst news and homemaking magazines. In the video store, the hard stuff is usually found behind a curtained "adults-only" doorway, but in Blockbuster, soft-porn sits on shelves between comedy and action flicks.

       Travel down the seedier streets of just about any American city, and behold the collage of underground porn shops or the neon signs that beckon entry to witness "Live Nude Girls." You don't even have to travel to the seedier sections to find prostitutes anymore, you can find them on any street corner, clutching a handbag, looking up and down the street as though waiting casually and inconspicuously for a theatre companion. Bikini clad women lean against hot red sports cars on giant billboards all over the country, and 900 numbers are still raking in the millions.

       In a free, capitalist society if sex sells the product, or sex is the product and it sells, then it should be acceptable practice. In fact, it really doesn't make any sense at all that prostitution is illegal in America.

       If the sex industry is so profitable, then let the hookers sell their product and pay their taxes. After all what's the difference between selling the sexual image versus selling the real thing? Nevertheless, the portrayal of women as objects of male fantasy, whether it be in magazines, live sex acts, or in the movies, perpetuates stereotypes that most women find loathsome and vile, but in a free world there's no accounting for taste, judgment, or intellect. In a free society, if you don't like it, you have the right to protest its existence and try to force it into bankruptcy, but no one should have the right to ban it.

       What is objectionable is that the sex industry is almost completely one-sided, using erotic female images as consumer enticement appealing only to the male sex drive. Is it possible that sex does not sell to women? That images of half-clad men bent over the hood of a sports car wouldn't sell that product to female consumers? Most magazines and videotapes containing nude men are geared toward the male homosexual community, not toward heterosexual females. The mistaken belief in the sex-selling industry is that women want the same thing as men. Just take what sells to men, reverse it, and sell it to women, thus "Playgirl" magazine and male strip joints. That's not to say that these products don't appeal to women at all, it's just that the lack of sexual product sales geared toward women exemplifies societies' ignorance of female sexuality. There's a whole untapped, unconquered market out there that still seems to dumbfound even the sleaziest of entrepreneurs.

       The secret is to find the answer to an age-old question: what do women want? It's really very simple and starts as early with girls as it does with boys who discover themselves through their first "nudie" mag., and I'll give this example from my own experience:

       Shortly before I put Barbie down for real life experiences, she deserted Ken and headed off into the sunset with GI-Joe. He was rugged, broad-shouldered, and had a scar that stretched diagonally across his left cheekbone. With Barbie in her 70's style hot-pants, and Joe in his army fatigues, he clasped her around the waist with his "kung-fu" grip and whisked her away from her "Barbie dream house" and boring preppie boyfriend. The story always ended with "happily ever after" because that's how all stories for little girl's wind up, and besides, my little brother always came looking for Joe to send him off for more daring jungle adventures. The difference between my story and a story from a book is that it I created it, acted it, and ended it. Joe belonged to the unknown world of fantasy and intrigue. He was the ultimate male hero created by me. Eventually Barbie got packed away in moth balls, or sold at a garage sale, GI-Joe went off to fight other battles, the little girl grew up, but the fantasy remains the same for women in the image of the romantic hero.

       The one product that caters profitably to an almost completely female market is the romance novel. Women have written them, and read them for centuries, and now more than ever, these books are being churned out as fast as they're devoured. This is what turns women on in the mass marketing of sex.

       So how can we sell sex to women in the 21st century? Hell, if you can't beat 'em join 'em. I say put it on the Internet. Statistics show that the Internet is still a male dominated medium, but more and more women are going online unleashing never-ending possibilities for gender equality in the media. Instead of having a constant barrage of offensive stereotypes paraded before their eyes on a daily basis, women now have a medium they can control.

       Sure, the images will still be out there, the difference is, you have to go out and find them instead of them finding you. The marketability of the female sex drive has never been fully explored perhaps because it's never been fully understood. In our blissfully ignorant polar thinking of big and small, lesser than and greater than, it's a myth that women do not have as active a sex drive as men. It's just completely different.