A friend shared this thought-provoking piece with me recently entitled Porn Makes Men Terrible in Bed. It got me thinking. I'm not sure I agree with everything, but there is a key point I find important for heterosexual men to understand:
Women are different than you. They get turned on differently, they orgasm differently, and they enjoy intimacy differently. As with any massive generalization of half the human species, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt as there are always outliers to the center of the bell curve.
Four months ago I argued we should talk more about sex. If you're not sure where I'm coming from here, maybe give that post a read first. Sex is a beautiful, natural, amazingly pleasurable thing. Let's not screw it up.
So, I'm a dude. Like most dudes, I really enjoy seeing the human female form. Thanks in part to evolution up to this point, I especially enjoy seeing and hearing the female human form engaging in sexual activity. It's just the way things are. People around the world understand this generalized fact about male homo sapiens which is why the porn industry is massive. But here's the problem, pornography is mostly:
#FakeSex
When I consider what I saw in college and the stereotypical porn scenes most people think about, it has very little to do with my actual love life. If you're in a healthy, fulfilling heterosexual relationship, you hopefully understand how women need around 20 minutes of foreplay before they really start enjoying things. In addition, they need direct clitoral stimulation, not just "sticking it in there." Most likely, they don't love giving head (but hey, if you've found one who does, good on you, sir).
What we see in most porn is a woman pretending to enjoy things she doesn't. It trains male sexual responses to be aroused when women are faking it, maybe even while they are experiencing pain. That's destructive on so many levels.
At the same time, how many guys enjoy seeing 20 minutes of talking, teasing, petting, and such? BORING. Those pornos probably wouldn't sell, at least not in this toxic culture. But they'd sure do a lot more to help educate men and be much less demeaning of women and their needs.
So what do we do about this problem? We have millions of men who are ignorant or deceived on how to please women in a culture that doesn't talk honestly about sex but shows twisted versions of it everywhere. Women aren't freely seeking their deserved pleasure and men are acting like idiots because they are trying to recreate some version of #FakeSex which turned them on while watching porn.
Now, I get that many men (myself included) feel loved when people meet our needs with acts of service. I'm not saying it's wrong for a woman to go out of her way to please her man and do things she knows he loves, even if it's not her favorite activity. But let's be real here, what we see portrayed in most pornography is so far removed from a mutually-beneficial relationship as to be ridiculous. Real intimacy between lovers involves deferring to one another, for sure, but it's a rewarding process for everyone involved. That's not what porn demonstrates, and I think it's more destructive towards women than we realize. Not only that, it deprives men of the truly fantastic intimacy they could be having with their partners if they knew how to properly please them.
So what, if anything, should we do about it?
Maybe the solution starts by shaming the porn industry and those who promote it in its current form. I'm all for sex-positive messaging and moving away from religious-based shaming of sexual pleasure. Who knows, what is being called "feminist porn" may even have a healthy place in peoples' sex lives. I know some people who enjoy making their own private porn for their own personal use. What's wrong with that? Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. #FakeSex is an entirely different beast which should (IMO) be exposed.
What if we got #FakeSex trending on social media platforms?
What if we started creating memes to show how silly this whole thing is?
Here are just a few I thought up:
Does the sex reenactment you’re viewing include about 15 to 20 minutes of foreplay? No? Sorry, it’s #FakeSex. You’ve been had and porn is playing you.
Are those actors (usually the women) pretending to experience pleasure? That’s #FakeSex. If you can’t tell the difference between real pleasure and fake pleasure, you’re a tool, and the porn you're watching isn't helping.
We get it. You like pretending women actually enjoy doing things they don't enjoy. When you’re done being juvenile and delusional, be a man and give up on the #FakeSex. Learn how to properly defer to your partner so you both enjoy it. Skill up, son, porn isn't real.
Can you think of any more?
What do you think about this whole conversation? Does it make you uncomfortable? Should we be talking about this stuff more? If you think we should, resteem it and let's get the conversation going.
If you're a heterosexual woman, what's your opinion of how most porn portrays female pleasure and sexuality?
If you're a heterosexual man, do you care how your body is being trained to sexually respond to lies which will hinder your real sex life?
Great post, and good conversation.
Here's the thing you have to realize though. Like all good forms of "art" there are many different genres, creators and levels in which you can get your porn in. I agree whole-heartedly with your comments here, but only in relation with "pop" porn.
Think of it like music. As with music, porn has it's Pop, Country, Metal, Indie, and all have different flavors while the core is the same. I've come to find porn is the same way, but agree that most the porn is centered around this false dichotomy of male vs female pleasure.
Thanks to the internet, is much easier to find the porn that is more true to what real sex, intimacy, is like. I think the education of those consuming has also increased because of this.
So my point to all this is you have to be careful with the proposed protests of the industry as there is a whole section that is producing great, honest, porn that you'll alienate at the same time.
If I was asked to pick a solution, I would always pick education without insulting. You don't want to alienate the good producers and more than that, you don't want to alienate the consumer because their first reaction would be to reject anything you say.
Great points!
One thing I wonder though, is porn a fundamentally unique art form? Unlike sculptures, music, or paintings which are mostly enjoyed individually which reenforces dopamine-releasing brain connections, porn directly influences the important real-world activity of sex which is not an individual activity. It involves someone else. The porn we program ourselves to enjoy does influence our expectations and pleasure response in the real world. If it's an honest representation and the people involved in the real world who genuinely enjoy the process via mutual consent, more power to them all! But that's so far from the norm that I think some shaming may be in order here.
Let's try another example: If we have art which represents a certain ethnicity as being subhuman and that art directly influences how people who enjoy that art treat those people, we can directly say, "Hey, that art is immoral. We should shame those who create it and those who enjoy it." The key here, to me, is that it's fundamentally based on a lie. There are no subhuman ethnicities. As you said, "pop" porn creates a fiction that women in pain or at least discomfort are actually experiencing pleasure. It's a lie. Not only is it a lie, it directly influences people in real life.
I'd love to know what you think of the post I linked to at to top. She goes into much more detail and quotes professionals in the porn industry to make her point. Porn based on lies about female pleasure does negatively impact real-world human intimacy which, to me, should be shamed because it does directly impact human wellbeing in negative ways.
Can we also support positive education about porn which isn't based on lies? For sure! Because things are so far in one direction now, I think a bit of shaming is called for. Many young men, I imagine, don't even know they are "learning" something which will harm them.
In my short personal history, I've always been grossed out by porn. I was married for close to 7 years, no matter what I did my partner couldn't enjoy intimacy. By 2005, she had grown tired of being unsatisfied and left me. After spending the next 2 years slowly killing myself with booze, I found techno. Life was new with unlimited possibilities! Women actually sought me out for pleasure.
My life was moving pretty fast until I met the cougar who decided she needed to train me. I was on the abused side of a conflicted relationship. I didn't feel good tying her up, but she demanded it. She controlled most of the men in my circle of friends, it's because of her that I moved to Tennessee. Before the relationship crashed for it's final time, we went to a small festival in Ashland called Pranafest. I sat in a small mens' circle and witnessed most of the men agree to having bad symptoms after watching porn.
It was a surprise to me.
Most of these guys were committed to doing yoga and meditation, I had no idea there was such a violent impression in the community. I no longer have any communication with Ashland, other than watching the news virus outbreaks and the CDC fighting the anti-vax rebellion. That's a different story...
I will continue to voice my opposition to porn. I will fall back on my original feeling that it's gross and manipulative. Women deserve better, why not be the best man you can be?
Thanks for sharing that personal story, Terry. I'm so sorry for the troubles you've been through. I hope you're on the road to repair now.
Great discussion item. Maybe trying to push the industry more towards #realsex (the stuff that shows more of what you were talking about) is a good way to go. I actually enjoy watching material along those lines, but it is hard to find with all the #fakesex material out there.
I think that's what the feminist porn and "make love not porn" campaigns are about. Thanks for chiming in, Tim.
Thank you! This is a really important discussion that really needs to be had. And not in a shaming way, but in an informational and educational way.
You know, I always was led to believe I was "weird" because I didn't like or get into porn, even in my late teens and 20's. Nothing to do with being prudish or repressed, although people tried to persuade me of that... but it felt fake and "artificial," somehow and I just didn't get anything from it.
Yet I really enjoyed reading (and creating my own imagery from) what could be loosely described as "erotica," in which the actual sex act was more like an end point than the "star" of the show, if that makes sense.
Thanks for your reply!
I do think respectful, informational, and educational conversations are key, but I also think we have to ramp things up a bit if people are being harmed. The argument here is porn, as it is today, does actually cause a lot of harm. We should expose that as being "bad" and that process, I think, can include some shaming. Shaming based on a well-supported moral position ("Don't do that, it provably lowers human wellbeing") is much different than shaming based on ignorance, insecurity, etc, etc. It's just a tool and to me it's a much better tool than something as extreme as censorship or anything the government does which is always backed by violence.
I remember a good while ago I found myself single after a long time in a relationship. Being male, living in my own place I downloaded some porn and set about watching it. I hadnt watched any or much porn in years before this. Te be frank I was slightly horrified by what was on display and I am quite the open chap when it comes to sexy stuff but this wasn't realistic sexy stuff, this was utterly #fakesex as you say. I think it was the general mysogynistic treating women as utter objects thing that totally turned me off. A terrible thing for young guys to see and think is normal also.
I think there should be more talk like this :o)
Well said! Unfortunately, many young men don't have experience with real human beings so they are not only taught this is normal, they are actually programming their brains to respond to these fake situations. That's destructive.
Absolutely, there have been articles in the media about how this is being in adolescents. Yikes. Not nice at all
I thought the most real kind is just sticking it in there, much like animals? Lol.. imo, people are free to experiment however they want, as long as there's mutual consent :)
For sure! Much of the porn out there today is based on a lie that the woman is not only consenting, but enjoying the process. That lie is the problem, IMO.
Say it a little louder for the people in the back!
How do we teach this to all young men and women? Being a teenage girl was the worst; even if you weren't sexually active, there was always that underlying expectation that if you were, you needed to be "slutty," but not so slutty that you were considered gross.
This is a great post.
Thanks Kelsey!
Yeah, there's a lot of negative education of women regarding sexuality. I've heard some good arguments that it starts young. Instead of "Don't touch yourself there, that's wrong!" we use phrases like, "That's a private, special thing. Please do that in private." The moralizing of human sexuality leads to the opposite outcomes of those who are doing the moralizing. If there is no victim, there really is no crime.
Hopefully we can promote positive examples of what healthy sexuality looks like and save our shaming for people who actually promote lies and nonconsensual interactions which lower wellbeing. Hopefully we can talk openly and honestly with young men and women about what real intimacy is.
No! Porn is NOT (a) sex at all! It is a kind of sexual gratification, a release of sexual tension. A good thing and a positive thing if you're oversexed and/or young and your hormones make you basically a jerk. Not such a good thing if you're married (but who knows? some couples just watch it). Not needed (that much at least, people are different) if you're in a good (and sexually rewarding) relationship.
What is really #FakeSex is a sex when a woman cannot orgasm, or she simulates orgasm, or she's thinking about something/somebody else while in bed looking at the ceiling and thinking 'or, the quicker the better', or a man thinking about some porn star during a REAL intercourse (not in porn), something like this.
Well, if you're watching some film, you wouldn't blame them for being fake - they're actors and they're acting, the same in porn.
"Are those actors (usually the women) pretending to experience pleasure? That’s #FakeSex. If you can’t tell the difference between real pleasure and fake pleasure" Oh, baby. You're in a marriage and you don't know women? The don't need to fake it, they can get off on thinking about how much they earn while being filmed, or being sexy on film or something. Actually, for a lot of those women it's not just money, they DO enjoy doing it on camera.
"Maybe the solution starts by shaming the porn industry and those who promote it in its current form." Why not establish some kind of Shariah Law? Or moving to places like Iran? 'Cause it's just that SIMPLE - if you don't want/need/like something, just DON'T watch it.
Boys will be boys (with pretty straightforward kind of sexuality), but they/us better find more healthy venues to use our sexual drive, like being creative, for example
P.S. To porn I prefer cute girls-models posing or teasing or dancing on camera.
https://www.makelovenotporn.com/
Flagged for not marked as NSFW!!! ---angry stares---
Just kidding. ;-)
(but seriously, people, don't get fired for clicking on stuff on the Internet)