Do you ever worry about whose visiting your website?

When you join the online feminist community, you're fairly savvy to the fact you're going to have at least one ugly run in with an anti-feminist. Or two. You know there's bound to be a couple of misogynists lurking around forums or chatrooms, just waiting to spout trash about rape statistics in the U.S.A being part of an elaborate conspiracy to overthrow the Patriarchy. But you wade through it, get involved in a (menstrual) blood slinging flame war or two, throw facts, theories and statistics around like stiletto heels, and sneer with fellow feminists over the ignorance/arrogance of those poor, deluded creatures. Eventually you find yourself a comfy 'net nook with a few damned fine girls to hang out with when you're spending time online.

The advantage of the internet is you get to meet feminists of all cuts, sizes, shapes and moulds. You'll get an 18 year old Jewish Feminist in Australia posting at the same place a 50 year old Indian Lesbian Feminist in China. You'll get stay at home mothers, working women with no families, homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals and transsexuals. Young and old, big and small, Christian and Pagan. You'll have old, radical feminists from the '70s and brand new little gals who'd previously associated the term with man-hating femi-nazis, or butch dykes, or both. With such richness and variety in founts of feministic wisdom, gung ho inspiration is bound to hit in one form or another. And everyone has something to contribute, no matter how small or even how big.

So, if one little lady isn't already involved in a multitude of offline & online activities - support groups, web communities, adventure societies, charity runs, you name it - (or even if she is) she calls a corner of the web and sets about designing a site around her contribution. Sometimes she teams up with a friend, or two, or three. It can be an ongoing, ever-expanding, out-reaching project, or an itty bitty little thing which holds all the meaning in the world to her. The point is, she's made it and she's proud. This, this is what she has to say in Feminism Today. This is her feelings, her thoughts, her opinions, her ideas, her desires and dreams.

Naturally, she'd like to share it with others of like-mind.

So, she hooks up with webrings, drops a note in her favourite forums, shows her friends and signs up on search engines. She carefully fills out her meta-tags, making sure every keyword imperative to her site's content is punched in. And if she really cares about who finds her site, where they find her site, and HOW - she's going to have counter stats and search engine keyword reviews available.

This is where it gets interesting.

Now, the internet is famous - infamous, rather - for its massive pornography content, as easily accessible as typing in a few keywords in google.com and hitting 'Go'. When parents think twice about getting internet on their PC for little Ricky and Betty Sue, pornograhy and Creepy Old Men are the reasons. Censorship on the internet is a continually blazing debate, and for the same reasons you get a wild kalediescope of feminists on the internet, you get an equally diverse variety of people with unusual 'fetishisms'.

Every feminist knows she's gonna have a run in with a misogynist on the internet. But when she's snug in her on-line community of Blood Sisters and Cuntlovin' Babes, she really doesn't expect the perverts to come knocking.

'Unmasking the Gorgon' is a site which aims at stripping taboos from previously "unsuitable" or "vulgar" subjects. We discuss in length such topics as female genitalia and how it works, masturbation, menstruation, the part femalia and attributes associated solely with the feminine have played in religion and mythology worldwide. Any given page will have the words 'cunt' or 'vagina' on it. Lesbians are mentioned, as are orgasms and sex. In context, these words clearly have a purpose and relevance; they are used in a way designed to empower women, open minds and take away the shame or obscenity associated with them. They are also the favourite keywords of 13 year old boys to 40 year old men looking for some cheap and easy porn on the internet.

When we began building 'Unmasking the Gorgon', we weren't *entirely* naieve. We were aware such frank terms were bound to show up in someone's pornography search, and thus lead the searcher to our site. The introduction on this site states as much. However, we *were* certain that the revealed material would be a deterrant to such people, who would click on their way and out of the site. The very design of the site would surely be a hint there are no free pics of hot lesbians licking each other out available here.

Checking our counter stats, we expect to find an occasional google search for 'lesbian pornography' as the originator. It happens. Slightly more discomfiting, however, is to check the site's search engine stats and see that one of the last fifty searchers sought the same. This is because the site's search engine is located two pages into the website. It's highly likely that He Seeking Porn went through the introduction to get there. Furthermore, the great big slab of daily updated women's issues news just before the search engine didn't sock a hit home with He Who Just Clicked Randomly.

So what's going on? Is the message in blood red not clear enough? Are these people so driven by hormones they just miss the general theme of the site? I mean, I doubt the fellow searching for 'clit pumping photos' wanted the latest news on labiaplasty, or that the one who looked for 'nude cunts' wanted a short diatribe on worship of the Yoni. Furthermore, these terms are ones used on pornography websites. If these guys were content to just do a quick jerk off to a medical photo of an open vulva with the different parts labelled, they would've entered something like "open vulva" or "female genitalia".  So are they not seeing the surrounding content? The guy who looked for 'feministic porn' definitly got a double take from me. What did he mean - did he mean 'feminine porn', or was he really looking for the kind of porn he assumed feminists would look at/take part in?   Then there are the searches I'm not sure about. Like 'vagina homepage' or 'my menstrual blood pics', 'masturbation' and 'vulva'. Some of these could be from the curious and naieve, simply wanted an answer to a question. Or not.

Is it disturbing? Upsetting? To an extent. When you create a site like this one, the *only* things you want it do is inspire, motivate, encourage, help and entertain. Cuddled into a safe haven of fellow feminists, you don't expect your website to be violated by those in need of harcore porn. And, you think angrily, it should be OBVIOUS this site isn't about that shit.

Which brings you to the next thought.

How can these people really miss the theme of the website? It's literally blazoned EVERYWHERE. It surely cannot be hard to spot. So are we taking the wrong approach?

Is this aggressiveness and determination in blasting down the taboos surrounding the feminine merely encouraging the pornography seekers they may find something to use for their own satisfaction, much like the sexual revolution of the 'sixties did? Do we have to tone it down to make the prospect of finding jerk-off material seem unlikely?

As aware as we were that one or two hits were going to come from a less than savoury source, we didn't expect our site to be constantly pillaged by people needing their fix of "women submitting" or "my wife's nude pictures". Admittedly, the ratio of Those Seeking Feminism to Those Seeking Porn is about 50:1 - and yet, it's aggravating, this idea that what we've worked so hard on is not being viewed entirely by the audience we want, and that at last some of the audience we're getting will miss the message no matter what. That these people will plunge in continuously thinking they'll get some explicit lesbian action - perhaps because we're about reclaiming out sacred feminine in the most confrontational of ways.   But to stop now would concede defeat; we'd be taking a step - no, a LEAP - backwards. One that is definetely not worth taking, no matter how many searches for 'masturbating vaginas' is done.  If saying the word 'cunt' makes people think 'cunts being fucked' will naturally be found on the same site, we just have to deal with it. I hope they get a nasty shock when they reach the 'vagina dentata' section. Chomp, chomp, boys, jerk off over that.

At least I can take comfort in knowing our 'clit pumping photos' seeker (five times and counting) keeps turning up 0 results. He might get the hint one of these days.