Is porn as disempowering as Euphoria’s Cassie makes it seem?

“Woof woof” says Sydney Sweeney to her on screen fiancé in the new season of Euphoria, doe-eyed in a little dog costume with cute blushing cheeks.

Sweeney claims she asked for this: “Give me more”, she said to the show’s creator Sam Levinson in an interview from 2023, referring to her character’s all-consuming hypersexual mania. So how come when I look at Sweeney, who plays Cassie, being held on a leash by Jacob Elordi in a scene written by a man, all I feel is pity? We’re told sex work is empowering these days, but the male-conceived Euphoria seems to want to put us back in our box.

The sense that you’re a peeping tom on someone’s deepest humiliation ritual isn’t ever really present in porn made by women though. We generally have higher ethical standards, less need for controversial fetishes, alluding to a constant tug of war between ethics, pleasure, empowerment, and judgement. So, at what point does monetising a woman’s sexuality transform from being true autonomous feminism, into falling for the patriarchy’s biggest scam?

Cassie in Euphoria season threeHBO

A 2020 study on female porn consumption concluded that the subjects ‘recognise that pornography reproduces and promotes patriarchal discourses of sexuality, but they manage to use it in order to reach a state of pleasure.’ Essentially, women are aware of the ethical boundaries of porn consumption, we just don’t have much other choice if we want to get off.

Emma Richardson-Gerard is the owner of two sexual wellness brands, Knude Society and For Play. Alongside her businesses, she runs courses with a semantic sex therapist for women to reconnect with their bodies in order to feel more sexually liberated. She said consumption or involvement in porn is often part of that detachment, as mainstream porn is so different to what real life sex is like.

“I think most women have never seen their own pleasure reflected back at them in a healthy way… so I’m not surprised that women do feel this disconnect when it comes to their bodies.”

She added that it then seems obvious for higher ethical standards to come as a by-product of healthier pleasure: “you can’t really have one without the other.”

Erica Lust, founder of female focussed porn site Lust Cinema told Indy100 in 2024 that they always have meetings to discuss what actually stimulates the performers, as well as involving intimacy coordinators, and always ensuring a comfortable environment on set. She added that when they hire a new actor, they make it abundantly clear that being involved in porn is going to change their life: “We ask questions in the beginning such as ‘how is your mum going to feel?’” Maybe there is room for truly empowering ways of making adult content, but I’m not sure Cassie’s asking herself the same questions.

“I’m not against porn”, Emma confirmed, explaining that if society was to ban all adult content, it wouldn’t go away, it’d just make the films harder to regulate. “I think it’ll always be there, so why not make it as safe and good as possible rather than just leaving it to fester without people looking at it?” From this angle, maybe there’s an argument to be made in Euphoria’s defence: at least we’re talking about women’s problems, or maybe we’re just making new ones.

HBO

The drastic aspects of porn, according to Emma, shift like an Overton window. As society becomes increasingly desensitised to extremes in adult content, we alter what’s normal and what’s radical, slowly tipping that power balance back over to the men.

“I imagine most mainstream pornography sites don’t even really look for vanilla content anymore and I think that’s because there’s been a rise of women’s liberation in terms of platforms like Only Fans allowing women to monetise their own sexuality, and that’s led to the Overton window shifting and now that [Only Fans] has become exploitive again, because those women have to chase whatever the trend is,” she explained. In Cassie’s case, the trend is sexually sucking on a dummy while your housemaid films you for Instagram reels.

At one point in episode one of this new season of Euphoria, Nate accuses Cassie of being a prostitute, as if that’s the worst thing a person can be. I certainly don’t remember this much discourse when he strangled his high school girlfriend in season one.

In fact, the notion that women-led porn is mortally different from old-fashioned sex work is furthered as Cassie responds in outrage when Nate suggests that Only Fans and prostitution are even remotely the same. One is gross, one is normal – some women deserve to be judged for their supposed empowerment through monetising their bodies, some don’t. Or at least, she doesn’t. Esteemed academic Bell Hooks famously said once that “feminism includes everyone.”

Interestingly, Sam Levinson, the show’s creator, describes Cassie as a ‘cunning’ and ‘ambitious’ character. But although it pains me to identify a lack of empowerment in any way women express eroticism (whether they’re a TV character or not), through sexualising Cassie to the point of humiliation, I see no ambition, I see a fool.

Cassie may not be real, but the men who created her are, ultimately reminding us that women are constantly chased by the male gaze, and sometimes in trying to run away from it, we end up right back where we started.

Why not read…

• Sydney Sweeney's 'weird baby scene' in Euphoria season 3 sparks debate: 'Disturbing'
• OnlyFans model slams Euphoria for Sydney Sweeney’s 'rule-violating' baby scene

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