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Sex is an interesting thing on the academic level.
Ok, it’s pretty goddamn interesting on the practical level too, but stick with me here.
Culturally (western culture in particular), we’re brought up to think of it as something that’s supposed to be private and intimate, strictly between two people – preferably with a strong emotional connection.
In practice… well, not so much. In fact, humans as a whole aren’t just interested in keeping sex to private sessions; we’re also – as a species - interested checking out other people’s sexin. If there’s anything that has remained constant over the millennia of human evolution it’s this: we may love having sex, but we’re also always up for watching other people bone too. It seems to actually be hard-coded into our systems; there’s evidence that female copulatory vocalizations – which is fancy talk for “women’s screaming orgasms” – are specifically for arousing other people, especially men. Not just the man currently having sex… other men. Like, anyone else in ear-shot. Getting other men hot and bothered by advertising that sex is going on rightthefucknow has a number of benefits including possibly inviting other partners to have sex (with her) and induce an element of sperm competition into the mix.
Porn – watching other people have sex in various forms and mediums – has been with us from the beginning of human existence. As soon as we figured out that abstract symbols could represent external concepts, somebody scrawled boobs on the cave wall.
Pompeii? PUMPeii more like!
When we realized that stone could be carved into representative shapes, they started carving marble wangs and basalt naked chicks. All those nude paintings hanging in museums weren’t just celebrations of the human form expressed in a visual medium – they were also created with an eye towards the erotic; having nude paintings in your collection was considered to be scandalously naughty.
Art collectors liked to get seriously goddamn freaky.
Fast forward 50,000 years and we get to the age when watching other people fuck is as simple as typing “fucking” into Google.
Go on. Try it. I’ll wait.
It’s interesting – since the advent of mass-market pornography, we’ve found ourselves at odds with our own desires. We’re told that porn is horrible, damaging and degrading for everybody involved by one group, while another points out that not only are there no reliable studies on the effects of porn that show all these horrible results, the question is based off a profoundly biased view of human sexuality. Then there’s the fact of porn’s enduring popularity despite all attempts to kill it, the way it’s influenced modern culture in more ways than just teaching people that maybe they wanted to try positions other than missionary or that they might like to try a finger up the jacksie… needless to say, porn is an indelible part of both culture and the human psyche.
Now to be fair up front: I’m unabashedly pro porn. I’ll freely admit there are troublesome aspects – it’s rife with sexism, misogyny and racism… just like mainstream entertainment, really – but I’m not here to argue the pros and cons or play “my study that validates my point of view is more scientifically rigorous1 and accurate than YOUR study”. I’ll also be riding hard2 on the comments section; if things get too heated, I’ll start deleting comments. If people start picking fights, I’ll drop the hammer3, so let’s keep it civil there.
Now… let’s talk a little about porn, shall we?
The First Rule of Porn Club is…
Right off the bat, we must acknowledge a simple truth. There are two kinds of men in this world: Men who look at porn and liars.
This isn’t my being glib, by the way. Three years ago, researchers at the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Family Violence and Violence Against Women were working on a study that examined the impact of porn on male concepts of sexuality, masculinity and their views on women.
Now in order to conduct the study properly, they needed a control group – that is, men in their 20s who have never consumed porn.
They didn’t find any.
The fact is, every time technology has advanced in a way that allowed us to jerk off to porn in greater privacy and convenience – transitioning from having to go to the infamous XXX theaters of the bad-old-days in New York’s Times Square to VCRs to Pay-Per-View – the consumption of porn by the general public has grown exponentially.
Now, as tempting as it is to roll one’s eyes, sigh and say “men”, it ain’t just guys who’re digging having easier access to porn. Women are consuming porn in rapidly increasing numbers. In fact, when you want to tally up other mediums besides video, then suddenly women are consuming porn – even producing - at an equal or greater level than guys.
Surprise!
Women Dig It Too.
Now, nobody’s questioning that men make up the vast majority of the audience of RedTube, YouPorn and all the other streaming video sites – not to mention members of porn website networks like Brazzers and Naughty America… although we’ll come back to that. But while men are profoundly visually oriented, women consume their porn in a wider variety of mediums than men. Y’see, once you break away from defining porn strictly as video and into areas like text and comics, you start getting into some interesting areas.
For example, take fan-fiction4. The predominant genre of fanfic is, not surprisingly, porn. What is surprising is that the majority of erotic fan-fiction is written by and for women – even in fandoms, like Star Trek or shonen anime – that are overwhelmingly male. Even back in the 1970s, when trading fanfic meant shelling out for envelopes and postage, 90% of fanfic writers were women… and they wanted to see Kirk and Spock fuck.
This trend hasn’t changed, by the way. Just going to fanfic.net and doing a search on yaoi – a Japanese portmanteu of a phrase that alternately means “no climax, no point, no meaning” and “stop it, my ass hurts!” and generally refers to a genre of homoerotic male sex written by and for women – brings up over 82,000 stories tagged “yaoi”. Even when you filter out yaoi, the number of explicit sex stories is rather staggering. Take, for example, Harry Potter. There more than 100,000 tales of the students of Hogwarts merrily shagging one another, including some rather disturbing alternate uses for the petrificus curse (helpfully, Hermione traded in her vinewood wand with the dragon hearstring core for a Hitachi…) and creative interpretations of what can be used as lube.
There are over 130,000 Twilight fanfics in the archives. Of those, more than half are all about fucking.
It doesn’t stop with fan-written pastiches of their favorite couples, official and otherwise. If you head over to your local bookstore’s erotica section, you’ll quickly see that women authors dominate the shelves.
The top selling book in America right now? 50 Shades of Grey, 520+ pages of BDSM sex. Written by a woman. For a female audience.
And it started life as a Twilight fanfic.
However, as much as it’s an accepted truism that men prefer to consume their porn visually and women prefer text, studies have shown that women and men respond to porn vids with equal levels of arousal. Women are also an increasing customer base for porn videos and websites as well… and not just the soft-focus “erotic” videos marketed to them by the studios. It’s actually possible to track the growing influence of the female audience base by the evolution of porn stars from “any freak with a giant cock” to “dude-bro” to “sensitive, kinda geeky guy you met at Hebrew school”.
More sausage than an Oscar Meyer factory!
In fact, all those new female viewers have turned porn star James Deen (lower right) into a smut film anomaly. It used to be that the male stars were nothing but an interchangeable cock – someone to be the insertion point5 for the viewer while nailing the women that they’re really there to see. You could switch out Dale DaBone for Charles Dera, then again for Evan Stone without missing a beat. Nobody cared… until James Deen. He has an incredibly large… fanbase. He’s one of the few men in porn that is actually is a draw. If you do a Google search, you end up with a network of Tumblrs devoted to the man – almost entirely run by teenaged girls – that look like Tiger Beat tried to crossbreed with Brazzers and then promptly exploded into a sea of glitter and animated gifs.
Much like with comics or video games, the impeccably waxed, tanned and toned Brosephs represent a male stand-in fantasy. It’s the kinda skinny, scruffy dude with the dreamy eyes that the ladies are fantasizing about.
Why You Think The Net Was Born? Porn, Porn, Porn!
Now, while porn has also been great for inspiring boners and introducing new standards of body-hair grooming to both men and women, it is also the driving force behind half the technology you enjoy using today. As soon as we invent a new form of communication, somebody finds a way to use it to see naked people. Naughty daguerreotypes developed almost as soon as the ink was dry on the patent application. Edison’s kinetoscopes were notoriously used to view nudie-cutie films like What The Butler Saw.
"Oh I say! I have the most inconveniently timed erection!"
When VHS and Betamax were competing for dominance of the nascent home-video market, porn studios signed exclusivity deals with JVC, promising to produce films only for VHS players. The potential to watch porn in the privacy of one’s own home instead of having to sit next to a masturbating stranger at a skeezy theater gave VHS the victory in the format wars, despite the fact that Betamax was actually the superior product.
Like using the Internet? You can thank porn for it.
Almost every innovation that you take for granted nowadays came from porn. Watching cat videos on YouTube? Catching up on Buffy and Angel on Netflix via your Xbox? The ability to watch streaming movies is due to porn; adult websites were the first to utilize jpeg push technology – allowing you to watch videos in your browser, without a plugin.
Do you buy stuff from Amazon? Richard Gordon created the first secure web-based credit card transaction system specifically for sites like ClubLove, which was busily making a fortune charging for the Pamela and Tommy Lee sex tape.
Do you Skype? Use TinyChat? Maybe your job uses web-based conferencing software like GoToMeeting? Once again: you can thank porn. As soon as smut peddlers realized that people would pay HUGE dollars in order to actually interact with a live naked woman rather than just passively watch her on videos, they started investing in live chat and video streaming. What started with a cam-girl, a stuttery 15 frames per second stream and a glorified instant messaging client eventually turned into real-time two-way video streaming… and then into the first VoIP telephone system.
Because folks realized that this was another way for people to get their rocks off.
It Is The Most Democratic Entertainment Medium In Existance
Say what you will about porn, if it’s done one thing well, it’s that it has something for everyone. If you like big boobs, there’re websites that specialize in big boobs. If you like skinny Jewish guys, you can find a kosher smorgasbord. Get off on mind-controlled superheroines? Well, you’re in luck because holy shit that’s a fertile field of onanistic delights. Some people like doing it with clowns. Other people get off on watching other people smoke. Still others have a fetish for watching women – fully clothed women – sit on balloons and pop ‘em. No other sexual content; they’re not touching themselves or pretending to have mind-blowing orgasms. They’re just sitting on balloons.
And there are websites devoted to it, bless their freaky little hearts.
Frankly, if there’s some incredibly random and utterly bizarre combination of circumstance that gets your motor running, you can almost certainly find it online for your masturbatory pleasure.
Rule #34 of the Internet states: If you can imagine it, there’s probably porn of it. And my God it’s true.
We live in a world where not only do macroherpetophiles exist, but they can actually find (badly drawn) kaiju fuck pics. Photoshop provides ample fodder for those who get off on the idea of Boytaurs – bringing the term “barebacking” to a whole new level.
The beauty – and frankly, the horror – of the Internet is how it brings people together, even when the world would probably have been better off for them to never have realized that other people liked to get their freak on in the exact same way. No matter what you’re in to, somebody else out there is likely into it as well. And a third party has realized that he could make money supplying porn to this underserved section of the Internet.
Because when a niche sexual interest realizes that there’s someone there to serve their needs, they bring their get-a-life savings.
It’s Kinda Killing Your Sex Life
So here’s the part that we really need to talk about.
Now, there have been studies out there that raise questions about whether excessive (however you want to define that) consumption of porn – and the masturbation that usually follows – actually desensitizes your brain to sexual stimuli that leads to endorphin release. And you have to admit, it does kind of make sense; after all, there was a point in the lives of most guys of a certain age when even the merest hint of nipple might leave them harder than Chinese trigonometry.
Seriously, in the days of scrambled pay-perview channels, this would've kept dudes hard for days.
Of course, that does bring up the question of whether that provoked such a reaction from us because that was all we had but that’s a chicken-and-egg problem for another day.
However, this isn’t the problem I wanted to bring up.
No, what I want to address is how porn can completely mess up your expectations for sex.
Porn Makes You A Lousy Lover
When you’re exposed to something over long periods of time, it can color how you think. It can desensitize you. Change your ideas about what’s normal, accepted or even expected. And then, when you interact with the majority of the population that doesn’t have those same expectations, somebody is gonna end up disappointed and upset.
And odds are, it’s gonna be you.
There’re a lot of guys who have let porn guide their expectations for sex. They think sex is supposed to be like porn sex. And the problem is, porn sex isn’t real sex. In fact, most of the time, porn sex is completely incompatible with real sex. It’s not even acting; it’s kabuki, a performance so stylized and marked by exaggeration and ritual that it can’t be replicated in the real world. The part that people don’t understand about how sex in porn differs from real life are the parts that, ironically, directors work the hardest to ensure are invisible: the camera and the editing.
To start with: almost all porn these days is based around the presence of the camera. Regular, old fashioned vanilla sex by regular folks is actually kinda boring on film; it’s two bodies smushed together with hips grinding on one another. You can’t see anything interesting; no nipples, no real view of penetration… nothing but watching people slap up against each other in the same position for 10 minutes or so, really.
In order to be visually interesting, porn sex has to be “open” to the camera; the actors have to angle themselves in such a way that the majority of their bodies is pointing towards the cameraman – and thus, to the viewer. This is part of the reason for all of the odder positions with legs twisting and torsos bending in opposite directions; they’re making sure that even in the height of passion, the audience can still see the goods. This makes for great film, but in the real world, it’s actually pretty goddamn uncomfortable; these are poses that are designed to look good rather than allow for satisfying friction and genital contact.
The cum-shot, by the way, is also a product of the camera; audiences wanted proof that the guy was actually ejaculating instead of just faking it with a couple of thrusts, a grunt and a shudder. Hence: the money shot – spraying ones load over his partner’s face, boobs, ass, what-have-you. Looks good on film with an added bonus of a certain level of fetishization of the “power” and potency of a man’s semen. In the real world, 99.999% of women are not going to be cool with a guy who wants to blow his load on her face, and the ones who are would really like to plan it out in advance than let it come as a surprise.
This is the best I could do and still keep this mostly safe for work.
Porn sex is sex by the numbers. It almost always plays out the same way: play with the nipples, blowjob, cunnilingus, then straight to slamming away in Vaginatown. Total time spent before penetration: 3-5 minutes.
Real sex on the other hand is a fairly drawn out affair when it’s done right; you have foreplay, mutual oral sex, perhaps stopping to grab some lube, applying the condom, a little more foreplay, having to be guided in… all of which makes for great sex but lousy film.
Porn sex doesn’t allow for things that would occur in real life. Porn sex’s version of foreplay isn’t sufficient for real arousal and lubrication on the woman’s part – yet you will also never see someone reaching for the KY either. Guys who’ve watched too much porn usually don’t understand that you can’t just play with a woman’s boobs, go down on her for a few seconds and then just start pounding away… not if you expect to have her enjoy it anyway. But that’s how they’ve seen it in film, over and over again.
When it comes to advanced stuff like anal sex it’s even worse. Anal sex in porn is practically the same as vaginal sex: insert yourself and just start plugging away. In the real world, that’s a wonderful way to hurt someone. Real world anal sex takes time and preparation. You need to go slowly. Incredibly slowly. Trying to treat it like they do in movies is an invitation to tearing the lining of the rectum. But, again: the real world makes for lousy film.
Then there’s the editing. In porn, once they get to penetration, guys seem to be able to last forever as they bend their lover into pretzels, plunging in at full speed for twenty minutes non-stop. Guys raised on a steady diet of porn start to think that this is how women like sex: being pounded by a piston for a half hour. What they don’t see – assuming the editor has done his job right – are the cuts. It’s rare that any penetration scene is done in one take – guys lose their erection, they cum too early, their partner gets tired or sore. If the editor is good, you’ll never see the transition between takes; instead, you’ll watch what appears to be a seamless whole from penetration to money-shot.
You also never see the real-world issues. In porn sex, nobody varies the speed or intensity of their thrusting. In porn sex, you never have to slow down because trying to keep pumping at full speed is actually more of a core workout than you were expecting. The women never need to stop because they’re starting to go dry and the friction from his cock is actually starting to hurt. Muscles don’t suddenly cramp up. His arms never get tired from holding himself up over her. Her thighs don’t start to burn with the effort of pushing herself up and down when she’s riding him.
You never have those human moments in porn. And if you’ve built your expectations for sex around what you see in porn… well, when reality hits, you aren’t going to be ready for it.
Porn makes for great fantasy sex. But those fantasies just can’t apply to the real world. As much fun and as arousing as porn can be, it’s never going to make you a better lover. The best thing you can do is appreciate it for what it is but leave the porn fucking on the screen, where it belongs.
- That’s what she said, ho ho ho… [↩]
- That’s what she… oh never mind [↩]
- The hammer is my… oh, come on, you’re not even trying anymore… [↩]
- Please! <rimshot.mp3> [↩]
- HEYOO! [↩]
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Hey Doc, could I get this comment deleted? Now I'm feeling uneasy about mutual friends (and frequent blog readers) seeing this and putting 2 and 2 together… Thanks!
Done.
This is one of the best pieces I've ever read about porn and sex. Just the sheer humaness (?) of having sex. Before I had sex the first time, a friend of mine said that she sometimes preferred really good chocolate over sex. I did not understand what she meant but now, many, many years later, I know that sex is really one of the many pleasures of life. And sometimes chocolate can be more satisfying. Especially if you're tired.
The worst is getting charlie horses during sex and you end up screaming but not in a good way.
Another thing: cunnilingus. Not. I repeat: NOT in real life like in porn. Probably the thing with the least in common between the two. In fact, chances are if you can see the tongue, that's a good sign you're actually doing it wrong. As with just about any sex position or new technique, the very best thing you can usually do to ensure squishy good times for your partner is ASK what they like. And even if they don't, then that means you just get to experiment, which is always fun.
And… yeah. I can definitely attest to the truths of the Doc's arguments. The first couple times I had sex, I was so nervous about my inexperience and looking at a vulva like it's one of those massive dashboards on a 747 with a million switches and dials I don't know what to do with, that I defaulted back to doing what I saw in videos.
All things being considered for a first-time, it turned out okay, but it's one of those "hindsight is 50/50" things where I can see how actually going spelunking for 45 minutes straight (no matter how ego-boosting it might be for the guy) is significantly less fun for your partner's ladybits than you think. It's… quite humbling. XD
Slight nitpick: I think you mean "hindsight is 20/20".
Whoops! You are correct, sir.
I feel physically ill watching porn because it's so violent against women.
also people in porn are all ugly. I hate muscular guys.
Check out James Deen. He may well be more to your liking.
Possibly not a good idea if she doesn't like a bit of violence in porn — Deen seems to alternate between gentle scenes and rough ones.
I'm find with a little roughness, I just don't like seeing women pounded and choked to death
I like to refer you to http://orgasms.xxx/ and http://x-art.com/.
They have some beautiful videos, not at all voilent against women.
I can't account for the hotness of the guys, since that is hard for me to judge, but I can say they are not all muscular.
Not all porn is violent. I've seen plenty that's good-humored, playful, and not at in the least bit violent. My favorite was a collection of fairy tale porn that Vivid put out a few years back. I also really liked a particular Star Trek porn parody that I saw ("Deep Space Sex," for any of you who are interested) because it seemed like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, and that they really enjoyed getting to throw in a bunch of jokes, too.
One can't make the blanket statement "porn is violent against women," any more than one can make the blanket statement "Hollywood movies are nothing but sex and violence," or "books are nothing but fiction." Some are, and some aren't. As with most things, the consumer needs to sort out the good from the bad.
oh I know not all porn is. just most from what I've seen was though…thats why I stick to ameture usually
What is "ameture"?
Watch Fem Dom, Reverse GB, etc.
I am with Nikki on this one… And it isn't just the Acts of violence it is the positioning of the body.. There is one position I have seen that is particularly disturbing to me. Basically, the lady has her arms being pulled behind her back, uncomfortably. I don't care about porn one way or another, (I worked in a porn store for almost 6 years), but I do feel it has some negative impacts… One study in particular said that young girls (teenagers and young adults) felt overly pressured to do things they saw in porn that they otherwise would not do. That is terribly unfortunate. And I am not saying ban porn, I am saying violent pornography has statistically proven negative affects. That's just the reality. Not all porn is violent, several website have a "female friendly" section and a lot of porn is created by women as producers. However, the majority of the most popular labels, titles and "most watched", have undertones of gang rape, domination and violence towards women. Also, James Deen is quoted as saying that in order to do porn you have to have an innate disrespect for women.
I will not lie when I aside from aside of feeling ill watching it I've almost cried on a few occassions because..it just really disturbed me thats it's ok to portray women this way….
Nikki, you've been watching the wrong kind of porn. Sounds like you've been watching gonzo porn.
Try checking out the films of Erika Lust. She's one of the main directors coming out of a wave of feminist porn directors. Her films are really lush, intelligent and sexy. Shot incredibly well and there's obvious chemistry between the two performers and the woman always gets off. The men are usually pretty attractive too.
I'd recommend 5 Hot Stories for her and Live, Life, Lust.
Make that way of feminist pornography.
Make that wave of feminist pornography.
Awesome article. Between the overview and the wakeup call, this is one of your best posts. Keep up the great work!
Is it my imagination, or did you find 1,000 year old hentai? D000D.
200 year old hentai. That's "Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" by Hokousai.
They need to make a new genre of sex and call it "consensual". I'm sick of getting half way through a video and have the guy start choking her. Instant lady-boner killer.
Then fact that I even have to write that sentence is pretty messed up.
Oh man, if I had a dollar every time I found something that I thought was to my liking, but then it turned out it was some Freudian rape fantasy…
Few things are more of a turn-off than the "what have I done with my life" look in a porn actresse's eyes.
It's an instant guy-boner killer, for me at least. There are people who like that kind of thing in a safe way, but it just seems violent the way most porn does it. Violent and controlling. Not for me.
The slapping the face thing? Yeah, that one is right out too. I stop watching immediately when that happens. Seriously, we need more porn produced by women. Hook up with the erotica authors, and give us a story, dammit, and while you're at it, could we get dialog that is in some way tender or loving, or even teasing in there once in a while instead of "f* yeah, f* oooh f* yeah f* me." Honestly!
And while we're talking ridiculous porn positions, I'm ready for a moratorium on Standard porn position #1, (Reverse girl on top reducing guys to a pair of knees.)
Porn can be titillating and arousing, but for as easy as it is to find women popping balloons, it seems nearly impossible to find sites that are dedicated to gathering/reviewing/posting female friendly porn that aren't all lesbians. (Not that there is anything wrong with lesbians, that's just not my thing.)
That's just it. Porn is great– fantastic– when it's done right. When it's consensual sex between two people having fun pleasuring each other, and not some fucked up fantasy of male power and domination over a breathing sex toy. Not when you see the woman grimacing or looking like she wishes she were somewhere, anywhere, else right now. Not when the man is just looking like he's pumping away without bothering to communicate with his partner or even stop to see her reaction and respond to it.
Sex is like two people dancing together. Most porn seems to consist of people dancing separately in the same space, and doing it poorly at best, and breaking each others' toes at worst.
I understand that the appeal of porn is getting to see stuff and exaggerate it, but we have a problem when it's exaggerated to make violence against women "acceptable" or even "sexy".
I understand the defensiveness against sex positions that look "non-consensual" (choking, arms pulled back, etc) being demeaning, but some ladies (and guys, for that matter) get off on the restriction/pain, what have you.
I'm curious, for the ladies who field an objection towards that, is there a specific reason you categorize it differently than consensual bondage/BDSM, where a submissive partner [b]wants[/b] to give control away to a dominant partner?
Mostly because in a lot of porn, it's not billed as D/s or BDSM porn or what have you. It comes up unexpectedly in "regular" porn and reads of coercion or rape to me. In the context of bondage, etc, I'd know it's not and be OK with it.
Me too, if it is branded as D/s play, then on the one hand I'm intellectually okay with it, but it still isn't MY personal cup of tea. It's getting blindsided with a feeling that the whole thing just crossed and ugly line that is a turn off.
It's like it's also impossible lately to find any porn where something DOESN'T go ATM. That is disgusting, and I hope everyone enjoys their dysentery for the next two weeks. Why? Porn people, Whyyyyyy!!!!!!!! I hate seeing that and thinking some teen is going to think that is okay and safe to do.
Excellent article. I came here looking for something to discuss, but I pretty much agree with everything. The last point is excellent (and, hey, there's alt-texts, why did I never know?!).
Something that bothers me personally is that I *have* to watch guy-on-guy porn to get men who look like they're actually into what they're doing. I like gay porn, but sometimes I want variation. In the straight porn I've seen, the dude looks either bored or downright hostile, which is a huge turn-off. Then again, I've never actually ventured into the female-oriented porn. I guess it's time to go shopping.
Thank you for teaching me about macroherpetophiles, that's one kink I never expected.
That's funny, because that's the reason I usually prefer girl-on-girl porn. Everyone involved seems to be having a much better time.
Oh, yeah, that too. In the movies I've seen, the actresses seem more comfortable. But then there's the really long fingernails involved in fingering at times, and that just looks uncomfortable at best. But my main point is that in straight porn, the woman sounds like she's having fun, and the man is silent. Or mumbling insults. All I get are some grunts at the moneyshot. That's just no fun.
Aww its cute that you think the reason women like "James Dean" is because he's a scruffy guy with dreamy eyes. Lol
Don't get me wrong the fact that he's not but ugly (and has a big "wi-wi") certianly works to his advantage. But it has more to do with how he acts than the way he looks. I won't bother going into a long explaination but you were on the righyt track when you brought up the popularity of erotic lit amoung women. Dean is popular for the same reason "Antonio the young stable boy" is popular and even edward from twilight is popular. "Dangerous yet exciting…but not to dangerous". Im really surprised you didnt make the connection.
And if im not projecting here, dirty talk is a very common yet rarely mentioned fetish…
Anyway great article! I once attempted to do scholarly research on the effects of porn on sexual relationship (although i chickened out in the end because i didnt want to be "that girl") it seems we followed a similar path of logic.
I remember reading an article once in which a young pornstar said the sex she doesnt even enjoy the sex she has in porn. "Its not about what feels good its about what looks good."
Side note: i have always wondered why more gay men arent offended by the popularity of yaoi. It is not the reverse of the lesbian feitsh (which very rarely reflects real lesbian relationships)? Except its somehow more twisted since its like 14 year old girl virgins.
About the yaoi: I know what you mean. When I was a 14 year old girl, I liked that too, but now I'm a bit older and eiser, it's just disturbing. I try to find manga or (web)comics that I'm more into, but sadly, it's quite difficult.
While I don't dig "yaoi" all that much, the vast majority of porn that I read is of the M/M persuasion. I really can't speak for the general public, but I switched over to primarily M/M stuff because I didn't like how the women were written. Primarily, they'd always have five orgasms in a row or something and it would, inevitably, make me cry my eyes out. Why? Well, it never seemed fair, I haven't managed to have just one yet.
I'd really love to go on a rant about how the women were always degraded and I never had anything in common (which is true for a lot of the shit I found)… but mostly, it was the orgasms and how ridiculously easy they seemed.
M/M stuff gave me the option to read about romance, falling in love, and inevitably fucking without having to compare myself to anyone and fall so. utterly. short.
I was excited to see this post! As a female who likes a good "viewing" every now and then, I was glad to see this come up. I don't have a problem with my partner watching it unless he was doing it instead of me, or expecting me to act/look like a porn actress.
I was interested to see this James fella, who seems like a real cutie, though I was a little disappointed when I checked out a few of his videos. He doesn't really seem that different from a lot of the other "standard" porn guys in the way that he acts. What I mean to say is, it seems to be all about male pleasure from viewing, not female. (I'll point out, I'm not a huge fan of the BDSM, dominant/submission thing for either party).
I must admit, I have trouble finding porn videos that appeal to me. I don't have to see holes or poles right up close – I want to see that they are actually having pleasure! Not the "I'm going to fuck you so hard you scream and moan" type, but something that feels a little more authentic. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Erika Lust. Check her out.
I think once I sat through an entire porn 'movie.' Most boring thing ever.
The kind of porn I look at tends to not involve men so at least I'm not caught up on unrealistic expectations of what I'm supposed to do.
I also tend to look at porn just long enough to get off and then stop. I'm horny enough as it is, if I don't immediately put it away it usually means another round. =P Then again if often means another round anyway. >.>
So I look at porn, a little, but I don't think I have any crossover to real-life expectations. =/ That I know of, at least.
Doc, one thing that might be important enough to edit into the actual article:
Porn very, very, VERY rarely has any discussion of consent. Everyone's just completely up for any and all sex acts all the time (you know, because if they said no there wouldn't be a film). If you're a virgin getting all your expectations from pornography then that's not just going to be unpleasant for your partner, it's DANGEROUS.
You touch on this in the section about the 'money shot', but it might be worth explicitly mentioning that one of the biggest differences is that in real life people will say no, and they might say it a LOT. It's so important to have actual conversations with your partner and not just do things without asking, and if you have high expectations of what acts your partner will be willing to participate in you can get coercive very easily when refused. I really can't stress enough how important I think this point is, I've heard so many accounts from young women whose partners have tried to pressure them into things they didn't want to do, or just went ahead and did things like anal or a 'facial' without asking, because that was what online pornography taught them to expect. The lack of consent discussion is one of the most toxic things about pornography, in my opinion.
(I think there are MANY toxic things about pornography, but since your article is for porn-users who don't intend to stop using it, the consent issue seems most crucial.)
Here here! With that one.
I find it kind of disturbing that I have to exclude "forced" from my searches..
Yaoi is also often used in art. Having been in several fan-phases (still going through some) and me being an artist, I've come across many examples that I wished I had never seen. Not that disapprove, because that's simply artistic freedom. It's not only through text and one doesn't even have to look for it to find it.
I find it difficult to start a discussion about porn being demeaning to women, because I often find defensive comments and it always ends the discussion. My opinion mostly doesn't matter on the subject (I guess because I am a woman I'm not supposed to complain for some reason), even though it's been proven that far more women watch porn that the general public believes. You would think with the 'if you can imagine it, there's porn of it' it would be less focused on the male audience, but it's really hard to find videos with even averagely attractive males (that's not high standards there, trust me) that are even on screen, the reason for this being that it's off-putting for men to see a second of 'dude' between all the women.
I'm also of the opinion that it shouldn't be a daily hobby for people, but rather something you watch on occasion. I know it sounds weird, but it's an addictive thing and there's a lot of people (mostly men) who wouldn't be able to go without, even when in a healthy relationship with a good sex life. As great as it is, and I'm not against porn, I think we're all going a little too far. I don't want any future partners having any weird expectations of me, but I guess it'll be up to me to make this clear then.
Well, It's interesting to see how many different opinions you can find on this.
I'll give my here here! To this one too.
Minor correction: It's FanFiction.net (also known as the pit of voles) not fanfic.net. The latter doesn't seem to actually go anywhere. (There's also archiveofourown.org which is another great site for yaoi/fanfic in general.)
I'm kind of please/surprised that after all my years reading/watching at porn and yaoi, I had to look up what a Boytaur was. I'm kind of glad fandom hasn't picked up on that yet because I so do not need that in my life… though it is a great thing to bring up next time I do a panel on strange fetishes in yaoi.
This is a really impressive article, just in how it handles porn, dissecting what happens within the porn industry and the film techniques used to make it look all the more appealing and even more so with the history of porn.
Here's one thing I would ask, just in terms of image-porn before video porn. Personally, I tend to look at images than actual video porn. (Like, 99% Image, 1% Video Porn, honest) Would you say it's having similar psychological effect? Because more people just look at the image and go wild than get ideas from looking at the porn itself. If you are more likely to look at just images of picture than the actual act of penetration/scissoring, are there new concerns to worry about? Is it different?
In regards to the consent in porn thing–there's one company, kink.com, that has really over the top BDSM-y stuff, but before and after, they always do an interview with the girl. "Yeah, I'm really excited. I love being tied up. Hope it doesn't hurt too much, though!" It's really refreshing. I don't know why this isn't standard.
Anyway, I'm having some porn problems of my own. Maybe someone wants to weigh in?
I've only ever had sex with one person, and I think what we learned from porn might have been holding us back. Neither of us felt comfortable asking for things. There was no indication that he was enjoying himself. There was no spontaneity. We did everything in exactly the same way every time. It didn't feel very intimate or affectionate. He and I are broken up now (thank god), but next time, I want things to go differently. Can people give me some advice about how to do that?
Communication is huge. Just being able to talk about sex, kinks, and general turn-ons casually and comfortably with your partner is key. Also, knowing your own body well enough to be able to ask your partner to do something mid-sex helps a ton. If you're afraid of bruising egos in the bedroom (which understandably, is a place where they can be especially fragile), try using "I" statements in place of "you" statements.
Ie. "I really like it when you/I want you to X" , replacing "can you stop doing X in *insert uncomfortable fashion*"
Given that a lot of people started masturbating when younger in secret (and, especially with women, the culture of shame surrounding sexual expressiveness), trying to hide it from parents, many people can be self-conscious when it comes to being vocal during sex. I know with my first partner I was ninja-quiet until I learned to let loose. Once again, the "I" statements can apply here. Imagine how hot it would be for a guy when you say, "I like it when I make you scream…" and the like. Admittedly, getting used to dirty talking without being self-conscious is also something that just takes practice. Figuring out what words you're comfortable with, which you find sexy, and which are a turn-off is just a matter of playing around and finding what you and your partner like!
If you're worried about falling into a rut, taking a trip to your local sex shop together, or just talking ahead of time about stuff you'd like to try in the bedroom are great ways to get new ideas, get to know each other better, and just generally establish that communication link that I mentioned was so important before.
Hope this helps! Good luck.
PS. If you want an informative, fun little resource, try listening to the Sex Nerd Sandra podcast run off of Nerdist.com. I know I learned a lot from it! ^^
Hey Doc,
I really enjoy your website and you have made very topics palatable.
this porn topic starts nicely but I feel you never really go under the surface of why porn is this way and how it work. the comments here speak to that as it turned into a discussion whats needed etc.
Porn is a male fantasy. Its what Men want. The customer speaks and the studios deliver. If the majority did not want "hard" sex there would only be softcore. Porn was a males sex fantasy. Not what is realistic but what men wanted it to be like. The above comments all have something in common for me, they argue that porn is not realistic. Of course its not! We dont want the woman to say NO to things, we want her to be readily available for sex, no questions or strings, do whatever we want, even better beg us to do whatever we want to her. is te males dream to inverse the power dynamic of the real world, where woman hold the power and say over who gets laid or not (this i not meant to exclude the homosexual audience, just making a point). Do men care if the pormnstars are having fun? some do, most dont. some men enjoy domination. apparently the majority otherwise there would be more soft porn.
I think there is a reason why porn is 18+ so that young teenagers dont get influenced "wongly" and by that I mean that a 15 year old girls with twilight crush cannot distinguish between what porn is and what she is really supposed to behave like with her non vampire boyfriend. I think you cant make it all right. for the record im a 31 year old european male geek, sexually experienced and not at all against sex in the media. in fact sex is more part of life than violence i think so the constant ban in US TV of sex in the favor of violence is annoying at best.
It's interesting that after all that "I will kill you if you make this a giant flaming argument" stuff, there aren't any comments.
"Much like with comics or video games, the impeccably waxed, tanned and toned Brosephs represent a male stand-in fantasy. "
Precisely. Why have women chosen text in the past? Because you can control the point of view. Nearly all porn out there is told for the man, they're all man-view camera angles looking down on a girl sucking off a guy, or a shot from behind of the woman during sex…. this does not, as a female, reflect my experience of sex and it's somewhat boring for me. I watch a lot of gay pornography for this reason – there is a large amount of video out there to cater to both sides of the equation (and it's really never a bad thing to have even more attractive dudes on camera at the same time). I'm sure there's "woman friendly" porn out there or some crap, but that seems to follow the same tired story of women wanting intimacy or whatever, and means some stupid story or whatever…. I just want to get off and have options other than videos that aren't able to sell an experience I can identify with.