HYPERALLERGIC: How Porn Holds Up a Mirror to Society Through the Ages

Anyone who is interested in porn’s history — or how, unexpectedly, it serves as a social metric — should check out Stag. Much of what is addressed will be frustratingly familiar. Women are presented as dangerous beasts who must be controlled, lesbian sex is harmless and ripe for male voyeurism while sex between two men somehow shreds our collective moral fiber, gender is a binary state, brown and Black people are marginalized and objectified, and sexual harassment is par for the course (the Museum of Sex could stand to learn a thing or two about this). Stag demonstrates how no matter how far we’ve evolved socially, and as much as media and technology can inform an inclusive worldview, our pornographic entertainment can be just as hamstrung by racism, homophobia, and misogyny as our mainstream entertainment. But there is hope. This delightfully perverted exhibition offers a subversive path into these complex issues.