Carol Queen, "The Four Foot Phallus"

In “The Four Foot Phallus,” Carol Queen talked about the first time she was exposed to porn at her graduate school because they wanted the students to be “desensitized” porn. Before going to going to graduate school, she was an anti-pornography feminist. She thought that pornography was awful and dirty. While watching “The Fuckarama!,” she began to come to terms with her sexuality; “the promised desensitization didn’t seem to be happening to me; my clit was positively buzzing. Everything made me horny, even things I thought I’d never do” (Queen 141). It first struck her when she saw a penis, which she stated to have “taken up four feet of wall” because she had never really looked at a penis that close up before. Because of this discovery, Queen realized that pornography is educational. Pornography had helped Queen discover her orgasm and she states that “the visuals of a porn movie [had] simultaneously inspire and distract me” (143).

This experience helped her change her views on pornography, which she thought as an anti-feminist that pornography was only really made for men but now exposed to pornography she understood that it is also for women. After watching “The Fuckarama,” the penis had changed her in a way that she states: “The four-foot phallus-[had became] a much deeper acquaintance with my own eroticism” (144). She was no longer afraid of sex, but began to explore sex. Queen was able to not only explore but be in touch with her sexuality which she has never done before.