Women deformed by the pornographic sexual templateperceive other women as masturbatory objects.

I refuse to have my vagina photographed because I have nointerest in being desired on the basis of its appearance. It hastaken me decades to appreciate its power and beauty, and notmerely because it birthed a child. Responsive to tenderness andthe source of a luminous ecstasy, my vagina has enabled me totranscend an otherwise limited sense of self. I feel no need tomake it conform to another’s aesthetic or have it applauded bystrangers.

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.

In the twenty-first century, the vagina has come to eclipse the female face.

Grey's chalky, flat, impassive face, dead eyes and squeaky monotone are now virtually emblematic of extreme mainstream pornography. For the uninitiated: her pornographic videos are something like plumbing tutorials by Eli Roth. Some women pride themselves on their quilting; Grey prides herself on choking on oversized genitals.

The way Grey speaks, one would think she had been garlanded in rubies and peonies rather than the semen of men who address her with a contempt that borders on revulsion.

Grey's thing has always been transgression – conscious, and without the interference of shame. In a world of people uncertain about the acceptability of their very bodies, such bold – some would even describe it as sociopathic – self-belief acts as a kind of fire against which the disordered, insecure and sexually nervous can warm their hands.