This, the “Vagina Effect”, is one of the saddest byproducts of pornography: to attract the attention of jaded males, female performers now feel they have to flash their vaginas – not too obviously, lest more orthodox fans be alienated, but 'accidentally' so as to sidestep disquieting accusations of vulgarity.

Referred to euphemistically to children as 'privates', the vagina is no longer permitted to be private. Instead, it is photographed independently of the face, stripped of identity, of emotional and historical and economic context, and in the service of men: public.

Sex has, through being photographed, become a thing to beobserved, to be performed, rather than experienced so deeplythat it is unnecessary even to open one’s eyes.

Repudiating the vulnerability I felt had wrecked the lives of women around me, I modelled myself on my controlled father. I wanted his freedom and his focus. To him, a family was an aquarium: controlled, contained. To the women I knew, a family was everything.

The bar is masculine, and women must adopt traditionally masculine characteristics – cultivated insensitivity, goal-orientated thinking, the prioritising of the material – to compete.