To be a woman is to grow up with an education in vulnerability, potential violence, and issues of control. Everyone seems to want to control women. It is harder for women to speak for themselves than it is for men to speak for them. Why would men want to be the authority for women's experiences? And what does taking authorship of that voice do to both women and men? It changes how each sees the other; it diminishes understanding and causes rifts in trust and cooperation. Especially in matters of sex, gaps in understanding between men and women can have catastrophic effects. With one in three women being raped in her lifetime, girls must be taught from an early age that men's desires can range between infatuation and violence. Be careful. You can be desired to death.

The sheer volume and availability of pornography has made it the dominant form of sexual discourse. Made principally by men for men, porn has men scripting both sides of the intercourse and generally doing a poor job of it. They often trade the deep, rich, erotic inner life of women for a cheap pantomime of desire and sometimes confuse their own constructions for the real thing. Women in pornography become trophy mirages, above average in beauty and yet strangely disposable, cycling through the internet at breakneck speed. It is almost impossible to see them as actual people, and when we see actual people as less than people, we open the door for abuse, neglect and violence.  

Stag Park, named for the hunting lodge Louis XV turned into his own personal bordello, teases out this complicated relationship between the dominant voice of men's desires and women's own craving to be desirable yet safe. It reasserts women players as themselves, recognizes their complicity or coercion, and reveals the complications of the dance of desire and sex.