Feminists who are critical of porn are often painted with the “anti-sex” brush. I’ve always maintained that porn itself is often anti-sex. A pair of articles in New York Magazine has demonstrated why I see things that way. The first–“They Know What Boys Want”–consists of interviews with tweens and young teens in New York City, who describe their Internet habits and the sexual pressures they face (photos at the link may be NSFW).
There’s no doubt that some kids, and even some schools, remain far more sheltered than others. But the average age of first exposure to Internet pornography is widely cited as 11. “It’s pretty much intensely available,” one 13-year-old told me, before adding that he’s actually not as into online porn now as he used to be.
A 13-year-old, not as into porn as he used to be. I realize this is not a scientific survey, and I would like to know more about these kids, but I bet their experiences are familiar to kids around the country (and beyond).
The girls know to be wary of strangers on the Internet—but they’re also wary of how the web is affecting the boys they might actually want to date.
…
“Basically, with certain guys, they’ll see something on the Internet and then they’ll want their girlfriend to do it,” Cristal says when I ask her how the Internet influences dating among her friends—a sentiment that is largely shared by the girls in the Brooklyn pizzeria.
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“I wouldn’t mind if they said, ‘Send me a picture of you,’ just a regular picture, with everything on,” says Samantha on that December afternoon. “But it’s like the way they ask for it? Naked?”Tricey nods. “It affects them, the Internet. The guys expect to just chat girls up online, but when y’all see each other and y’all go out or whatever, the only thing that they want to do is get in the bed.”
Concerns about children and sex are often dismissed as Won’t Someone Think of the Children-ism in feminist communities. But I feel so much sorrow for these girls who describe a sexual gauntlet in school, on dates and online.
This is the paradoxical fear of many heterosexual 14-year-old girls: that the Internet is making boys more aggressive sexually—more accepting of graphic images or violence toward women, brasher, more demanding—but it is also making them less so, or at least less interested in the standard-issue, flesh-and-bone girls they encounter in real life who may not exactly have Penthouse proportions and porn-star inclinations. (“If you see something online, and the girls in your neighborhood are totally different, then it’s, um … different,” one 14-year-old boy tells me.) This puts young women in the sometimes uncomfortable position of trying to bridge the gap.
I don’t think there’s ever been a time in human history when pubescent boys weren’t preoccupied with sex, or when female sexuality was treated or appreciated as anything but performative. But it seems like boys are being groomed to have a predatory sexuality at a much younger age, and in turn, girls must learn how to satisfy the Male Gaze and play defense at the same time.
[W]hile it’s not surprising that adults believe today’s youth are navigating a brave new world, what is surprising is that the kids themselves—who’ve never known anything different—feel that way, too. They get that they are in a strange, uncharted place. “I think kids kind of mature more because they have computers,” Alexa tells me. “Sometimes it can be a good thing, and sometimes it can be a bad thing.” It’s a version of the idea I heard from every group—an awareness that, sexually speaking, the web may be doing them a disservice.
For a glimpse into their futures, see the second article–“He’s Just Not That Into Anyone.” So enamored of their porn, grown (straight) men lose interest in sex with women.
“I used to race home to have sex with my wife,” says Perry, a 41-year-old lawyer. “Now I leave work a half-hour early so I can get home before she does and masturbate to porn.” Throughout the course of our conversation, Perry insists that he’s still attracted to his wife of twelve years. Still, he says, she can’t quite measure up to the porn stars he views online. “Not to be mean, but they’re younger, hotter, and wilder in the sack than my wife,” he says. “Me and her, we still ‘do it’ and everything, but instead of every day, it’s maybe once a week. It’s like I’ve got this ‘other woman’ … and the ‘other woman’ is porn.”
…
“I don’t like to believe that porn is replacing anything I have with my girlfriend,” [another guy] says, “but I’ve always loved sex, and I’ve always had a lot of it, so I really had to stop and think about it when she asked me recently why she always has to be the one to initiate things. And she was right; I guess I’ve been fading from her. It’s like all that time with these porn stars was subduing any physical desire for my girlfriend. And, in some weird way, my emotional need for her, too.”
I don’t really care about these guys’ struggles, but I do care that their dysfunction is having a negative effect on their significant others and/or potential sex partners.
Sadie, 29, a real-estate agent in Boston, quotes performance artist Nicole Blackman to make her point: “ ‘There is no glory in trying to make love to men who only know how to fuck—man after man after man after man raised on porn.’ There have been times in the past,” Sadie continues, “when I would be with someone and thinking, Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck kind of stupid porn have you been watching? Did you just smack my kitty? Dumbass!”
Other women describe trying to emulate porn stars in order to keep their men off the computers and in the moment. It doesn’t work.
Tony, 48, a web designer in St. Paul, who separated from his wife a few years ago after twenty years of marriage, echoes the thought. “I’ve always thought it’s really hot when women in porn movies say dirty stuff,” he says. “Usually, they’re just literally narrating the shit that’s happening, giving the play-by-play: ‘You’re fucking me! Your dick’s in my ass! I’m sucking your cock right now!’ For whatever reason, that’s what does it for me. But recently a woman I was with started saying all that stuff, and it just kind of spooked me. She seemed slightly nuts.”
Just like the girls featured in the first piece, these women can’t win. It’s like their very humanity is the roadblock. I don’t particularly believe porn alone is to blame for the problems explored in these pieces, nor do I think the web is at fault. They are vehicles for patriarchy. Really fast, flashy vehicles.
As someone who loves exploring human sexuality (intellectually, emotionally, physically) and as someone who enjoys professional and amateur erotica, I find it very frustrating that “porn” is often mainstream shorthand for “all sexually-explicit materials.” Not that this is what you’re saying, SarahMC. But as a teenager, I found erotic stories and photographs fairly central to developing my sense of my own sexuality (even as a 12-13 year old girl). They were pretty naturalistic images and vanilla stories compared to what you can find on the internet…but they were sexually explicit and they were definitely arousing. And being aroused helped me think about what it meant to be a sexual being in a totally safe, private environment.
I feel like the value of erotic materials gets lost in these stories about how consumer culture has pretty much flattened, mass-produced, and leeched the sensual humanity out of erotic products. We don’t end up calling for more quality porn; we end up calling for protecting kids from accessing porn. Which seems … sad? to me? from the perspective of a young adult who found value in it?
“I don’t really care about these guys’ struggles, but I do care that their dysfunction is having a negative effect on their significant others and/or potential sex partners.”
Not to paint them as victims of any sort, but you should be able to see that these guys’ struggles -and not just their effects- are central to the question of whether the patriarchy will ever be successfully obliterated.
but you should be able to see that these guys’ struggles -and not just their effects- are central to the question of whether the patriarchy will ever be successfully obliterated
How, exactly? I get that you’re not deliberately being all “what about the menz?!”—at least, I hope you’re not—but that’s a big sweeping statement with nothing to back it up. How exactly are men’s struggles to choose a real live woman over a pornbot central to obliterating—or not–the Patriarchy?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Zoe Stavri and Vyckie D. Garrison, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: Pornography Nation http://bit.ly/frcOI1 [...]
To be honest, I think this is something parenting has to catch up with. It apparently used to be the case that a parent could catch their kid with an issue of Playboy, yell at them, and never have to deal with it head-on. This obviously won’t work any more. No matter what parental controls people put on their computers, kids will be able to get to porn. So parents, I think, should start talking about it — what’s appropriate, what’s (as Dan Savage says) “varsity level”, the difference between fantasy and reality…just hoping that kids aren’t going to find and/or watch it is extremely unrealistic.
I read the second article you mention a couple of days ago and to be honest I just found it to be pathetic. I know a loooot of guys who like porn (obviously) but showering and shaving to watch it like you’re going on a date is crossing a line and it’s one that guys (or, at least, the guys I’ve asked about it) recognize too. There have always been guys that are too into porn, I don’t think that’s anything new (and they’re to some extent a lost cause). To me the more important issue is how guys react when they pull out something from porn and they women they’re with say, “That didn’t really work for me, I prefer it like this instead”. In other words, I’m willing to give someone a little leeway for being an idiot and not being able to tell the difference between Transformers and a car repair manual…..but you only get told once.
Maybe I don’t experience the kind of erotica the men in the second article were consuming. But as someone whose reading of sexually-explicit materials really just fuels my desire to be with my partner … I don’t understand why the porn men consume gets blamed for (by the men themselves as well as observers) for their lack of desire in their partners? Does anyone have insights into that? Why doesn’t “gee, that made me feel horny” translate into, “gee, I want to be with my lover right now!”?
Anna, I think it would have been interesting (and reassuring) to read some stories about porn/erotica positively impacting people’s lives. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about that or point out the omission.
According to the terrible comments (you have to go out of the print-view to see them), it’s perfectly understandable that straight men would not want to have sex with women, because women are insufferable and our independent desires and needs are bonerkillers.
“Their very humanity is the roadblock.”
THIS. I’ve been thinking and talking about porn with the Dude lately (may be a post, I’m not sure yet), and this is always what it seems to boil down to. The vast majority of pornography is carefully constructed to invite viewers (here: straight men) to see female performers as multi-fuck-holed objects to be manipulated and used, quickly and cheaply, not as people.
One can be responsible, and seek out not-horrible porn, but it’s way harder than just dialing up Choke-a-Bitch.xxx to “get your nut.”
@anna:
I don’t understand why the porn men consume gets blamed for (by the men themselves as well as observers) for their lack of desire in their partners?
I think because it acclimates them to being aroused by actresses who play the role of pliant, happy hookers who exist only to service their needs and who have no pesky needs of their own. Then when those men get in bed with women who have their own set of needs, desires and fantasies, and whose bodies may not look like the glorified ideal…well, reality is a slap in the face—and creates a hell of a lot of performance anxiety.
Like you, I came of age sexually on a steady diet of erotica that emphasized sensuality and human connection. If there were better hetero porn in the mainstream—porn emphasized those things and glorified women’s pleasure as well as men’s, I wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with it.
Theres probably nothing in porn the Romans werent doing 2000 years ago, or kids of the pre-porn days weren’t imagining anyway don’t you think? The only difference is the net has people discussing it, which can only be a good thing. Its ironic though that instead of guys complaining about not enough sex, now its the girls, not all equality is good?? Its nice to be older and see how overrated sex can seem decades later (in my opinion)
The sole only reason why I don’t give up on porn is because it is very often the only forum in which the “kinky” (jeez I hate that term) sexualities are represented in any capacity. Admittedly, when I hear the term “anti-sex,” I take it to mean “anti-what I believe sex to be to ME.” The worst porn, in my mind, is the kind that shows any kind of sex being obtained in an unrealistic or unhealthy way.
I’m not totally convinced by the article about men who increase their porn viewing as their desire for their partners goes down. I’m sure many of them are really suffering. My primary question, however, would be whether they’re viewing pornography that corresponds to their particular non-conforming or derivative sexuality and whether they’re in a relationship where their partner either refuses to accomodate their sexuality or he refuses to bring it up. I don’t necessary see the porn as the dominant cause of the dysfunction; I attribute that to the overwhelming culture that still represses sexual minorities and the porn is just the attempt at consolation.
@Joseph: Its ironic though that instead of guys complaining about not enough sex, now its the girls, not all equality is good??
Totally missing the point.
The problem has always been that men have been conditioned not to give a shit about women’s sexual pleasure. That’s a generalization, of course, but so is your comment. It’s the same problem now as it was then.
The fact that men don’t care about women’s pleasure is why men weren’t getting any before—since women don’t want to fuck someone who doesn’t care whether she’s enjoying it or not—and why women aren’t getting any now: since men would rather fuck their hands than actually have to worry about pleasing a woman.
I’d also like to point out that when you say “guys were complaining about not getting enough sex”, there were undoubtedly women complaining about not getting enough sex too, since it takes two to tango. But you didn’t consider that, did you?
@BeckySharper
Like you, I came of age sexually on a steady diet of erotica that emphasized sensuality and human connection. If there were better hetero porn in the mainstream—porn emphasized those things and glorified women’s pleasure as well as men’s, I wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with it.
I’m with you on this point … in that a lot of mainstream culture (porn included) portrays a pretty impoverished view of human sexual/sensual experience. What I’m really frustrated by when it comes to our discussion (“our” meaning the culture more generally, not necessarily this thread) about pornographic materials, is that the narrative so often becomes:
bad porn = bad relationships = get rid of porn!
rather than:
bad porn = bad relationships = create better porn!
I totally hear that argument being made in some feminist/queer/kink, etc., forums. But not on these mainstream articles. Because to advocate for realistic sexual expression to be represented in our culture is somehow still scary and/or gross and/or immoral to many people. Argh!
@anna: I know, I’d love for there to be better porn, and I’ve heard that argument too, esp. from radical feminists who have chastised me for criticizing porn without taking into account the (very small number of) people—many of them queer—making porn that’s supposed to be woman-empowering. Unfortunately, those pornographers and their work are so subsumed by the deluge of bad straight male-oriented porn—esp. on the ‘net—that they’re almost impossible to find without concerted effort.
The fact there isn’t is better, woman-centric porn is just a reflection of the way patriarchial attitudes about sex still dominate our culture. I could go on at length, but I’ll spare y’all the tirade, as it’s one I’ve made before around here.
I’m another big supporter of respectful erotic material and, as Drahill mentioned, I’m in favour of finding respectful ways to express “kink.”
Becky and Anna, I don’t know if it’s something either of you would feel like doing, but I’d *LOVE* a few links to places with “woman-empowering” porn. It might be another post, but I think it would be very cool to send some of us (who are interested) in the right direction to find it (since it’s so hard to find) while also giving the people making it some visibility.
Re: the original post by SarahMC, I agree that (bad, disrespectful) porn has scary, far-reaching effects. I’m so tired of getting fucked up (attempted rape, extreme sexual dysfunction) by men I’ve been with because they never learned how to have healthy, fulfilling sexual relationships with real women.
And that last part is why this all comes back to patriarchy. Because part of having healthy, fulfilling sexual relationships with real women is acknowledging that real women have sexual appetites, desires, and needs. (Radical, I know.) And patriarchy can’t accept that.
Thinking about all of this makes me want to design my dream sex-ed class.
@Skada I can definitely put a “healthy, respectful” erotica post on my list of possible posts. I have to say, I’ve never been a big consumer of het erotica. But I can certainly pull together some ideas/suggestions/resources.
RE: kids watching internet porn, I don’t see this as a worrying trend (if it really is a trend rather than a reporter scrambling to cook something up to meet a deadline).
When I was 12 two kids got caught having oral sex in a closet in school. That was in 1982. A friend from suburban Philly vividly remembers a kid on the school bus handing him a photograph from Hustler of a woman with a Coke bottle in her vagina. That was in 1984. He was 11. My cousin saw the Paris Hilton video when he was 12. And so on, and so on…
Hell, just rent the movie “Kids”. It came out in 1995.
I’m pretty sure that humans of ages 10-14 all over the world have been learning about sex in shocking, and even disgusting, ways for about 70,000 years, and I don’t think internet porn has changed that.
Totally missing the point.
OK Becky I see what you are saying, I was wrong.
@Anna – I’m actually not that interested in het porn, but I think it would be helpful to get some links from you on that just to counter the ridiculousness of mainstream porn. My tastes run toward LGBTQ porn, especially when it comes to erotica. In that vein, it’s hard for me to find woman/woman pairings that aren’t written by and for men obsessed with lesbians. Any suggestions?
Skada: you bring up a good point about respect. I think that the word, in the porn context, really needs to be well-defined. The biggest part of it to me is how to be respectful of other people’s preferences. There are a lot of sexual proclivities and preferences and acts that will turn off a lot of people – that doesn’t mean they are wrong or sick. A great example is violence: for people who are sado/masochistic and in relationships that integrate s/m, images of slapping, scratching or other rough play aren’t disrespectful in the least (provided that the parties are consenting and enjoying themselves). But try saying “violent porn” in most forums and you’ll give somebody a conniption.
To me, the worst problem in porn isn’t the acts themselves. It’s how they’re portrayed to the audience (ex., most s/m porn is portrayed as against one’s partner’s will, or the woman is clearly not enjoying herself, when in reality, most s/m people clearly enjoy the experience and ACT like they do!)
I don’t like that in the firt article, the responsibility is on the young women to bridge the gap. Why our responsibility to fix men? It oughta be the men who change and fix their own problems. But of course not only are women here to please young men and adjust our own expectations/bodies for thm, but the possibility of women refusing to change for men, refusing to engage with them until they start treating women likehumans, is totally ignored.
My partner told me that he quit looking at porn (this was when playboy was porn) when he realized that his stack of magazines was like a picture he saw in one, in which a bunch of women were just literally stacked on top of each other. The picture was of their stacked vaginas. And he realized that the magazines just utterly made the women capital, objects to be acquired.
I was like, 1 good job, 2 who likes to look at stacked vaginas? How is that fun?
A question, just out of curiosity, for those of you who are being so casual about tweens’/teens’ access to vile hardcore pornography on the Internet: do you have kids?
Great post, Sarah. I agree with everything you said.
@Annajcook: I’d venture that there is a big difference between written erotica (which seems to be the main thing you are talking about) and porn films as if you are reading erotica, you still need to use your imagination to fill in the blanks in a way you don’t when you’re just watching. Reading is generally more interactive than viewing.
@Satchel – No, but it’s not so long ago that I was in the age group addressed in the article, and believe me, it’s very, very, very easy for children to find porn if they want to or even if they don’t. Also, as something of a techie, parental controls just don’t work. The reason they don’t work is that hackers try to find ways to make them not work because they think it’s fun to do so.
@Cimorene – “the possibility of women refusing to change for men, refusing to engage with them until they start treating women likehumans, is totally ignored.”
I wish more young women were taught to see this as a good idea, let alone a possibility. ;_;
Also: “who likes to look at stacked vaginas? How is that fun?”
I’m reminded of a new “trend” (?) in porn, namely videos that are just compilations of cumshots. Cumshot after cumshot after cumshot with no narrative or arc or tension or sometimes even any faces apparently. I heard about this and was like…wtf? Why would that ever be erotic?
I would tend to think the problem with the internet isn’t the access to porn itself, but the unlimited amount of porn available to be accessed. See anything enough and you become desensitized to it; what was strange is now normal.
It was never easy to be a teenage girl, but I’d think this just makes it that much harder. “Their very humanity is the roadblock.” That’s so very, very sad.
Good post; thank you.
From my own frustrating experiences, I’ve found nothing is truer than the statement “Porn makes men lousy lovers.”
@Cimorene – “But of course not only are women here to please young men and adjust our own expectations/bodies for thm, but the possibility of women refusing to change for men, refusing to engage with them until they start treating women likehumans, is totally ignored.”
How do you mean, Cimorene? I mean, this sounds very empowering in theory, but in practice most straight women (and most women are straight) will want a relationship (or at the very least sex) at some point in their lives. It sounds like you’re advocating a mass movement of women collectively holding out on sex with men because we weren’t born in some chimerical post-patriarchal future… Which obviously wouldn’t work because not all women are going to agree to give up the possibility of love/sex for themselves for the greater long term good of womankind.
On the other hand, if you’re talking on a purely individual level, i.e. that it would be great if we could teach and empower individual women not to settle for second best, I’m with you.
I don’t have children, but like Becky remember being in that age group. I had parents who worked hard to create protected spaces for us to be where we didn’t have to think about adult things (including sex) if we didn’t want to — but where we could do it safely and in private if we did want to explore those feelings as we were growing up.
What I think is wrong is reducing the conversation to kids having access to sexually explicit materials = BAD. To my mind, it’s not about sexually-explicit materials per se, it’s the content of those materials and whether they’re representing the full spectrum of human experience around sexuality, and whether we’re offering young people tools to interpret those representations. Which we currently are not, as a society, given our dysfunction around speaking about sexuality as adults … let alone speaking about it with children.
A small point regarding the comments that are to the effect of: Why would [activity X] ever be erotic?. Judging other peoples’ sexual quirks and fantasies is kind of problematic. You can judge a person’s lack of safe sex practices, or a person’s willingness to engage in non-consensual sexual activities in real life. But. Fantasies are fantasies and often times they’re a complicated way of working out stuff we find scary, demeaning, arousing, etc., all at once. There probably is someone out there — someone otherwise kind and connected to the world — who finds “stacked vaginas” erotic. I’m not sure it’s productive to judge them for that.
I’m talking about on the individual level in a way that translates into a larger social change.
I mean, I am not saying that women give up hetero sex. I’m saying that women give up changing themselves and adjusting their own expectations for the reward of unfulfilling, dehumanizing sex with men who don’t care about them or treat them as equals. If that happened–if women were taught that this is Right, instead of learning that acquiescence is Right, then men would be forced to change. And I think they would change. And I think the patriarchy would end.
But the real genius of the masculinist system isn’t that women can’t get men to treat them like humans. It’s that our society has taught women think that men can’t or won’t ever treat them like humans.
“not all women are going to agree to give up the possibility of love/sex for themselves for the greater long term good of womankind.”
I’m sorry, but if a man doesn’t treat you as his equal in every way, he doesn’t love you. There is no fulfilling love or sex that is based on a system of oppression. Men who treat women with utter respect and equality–it can happen! I totally live it!–can be in loving and healthy sexual relationships with women; women can have love and sex with men who treat them with love and respect and in which equality is assumed. But the relationships described in the articles–most especially the quote I picked out, about how women are changing/forced to change/expected to change themselves for the men in the world (to change themselves not only to conform to men’s wishes, but to conform to men’s explicitly and, potentially, increasingly sexist wishes)–are not relationships in which love is a possibility. Perhaps some sex could be–one night stands–but long-term sexual and romantical relationships need to be based on equality and respect for there to be healthy and fulfilling relationships.
Most women do not have healthy and fulfilling relationships. If you’re saying that most women do not have relationships with men who treat them as equals, who demand the kind of rejection of patriarchal values I’m espousing, then you’re also saying that most women have fucked up and miserable relationships with their male partners.
My conclusion is only logical. Which is that women should stop having shitty relationships with men. But, like I said, women have been brainwashed by the patriarchal culture to expect shitty relationships with men, to expect sexism and misogyny at every turn. Logic has no part in that.
@Satchel: Our kids are 25 and 22, so they grew up as the internet did, in a sense. Mr MM is a software engineer, so we always had a computer in the house. When our kids were growing up, we kept it in a public space. Nevertheless, our kids found and viewed erotica and porn. A parent cannot keep her kids under her eye 24/7, especially as they get older. But I do think that I failed in not talking to them about what they might see, even by accident, as they surfed. I confess that it simply never entered my head. As someone who has never been interested in porn, it just didn’t occur to me. I would do things differently now, I hope.
However, we did teach them early to respect women and to be aware when someone was treating a female as an object. I don’t think that occasional viewing of porn is necessarily a bad thing, as long as the viewers remember that it’s a fantasy world.
@anna – “What I think is wrong if reducing the conversation to kids having access to sexually explicit materials = BAD”
Quite, but part of my point is that doing so is useless because it fails to recognize the reality that there’s no way of stopping this access completely even if one wanted to. So it’s better to meet it head on and try to teach, etc.
Also, about your second point, I think it’s possible to find it problematic and worrying that something has been eroticized in our culture without necessarily judging the people who find it erotic. I feel perfectly comfortable judging it to be a sign of Bad Things that the moment of male ejaculation is so fetishized in our culture that videos of nothing but male ejaculation for 15+ minutes are in demand, or that fully-grown men feel comfortable regularly consuming a kind of pornography known as “jailbait” that consists of pictures of young girls, some of whom still have braces and are in training bras, that have been taken off their facebooks or shared without their consent. These things are worrying about our culture. I’m not trying to comment on the value or health or what have you of any individual who’s into these things, however.
…but you should be able to see that these guys’ struggles -and not just their effects- are central to the question of whether the patriarchy will ever be successfully obliterated.
Becky, I can’t speak for nope, but I interpreted this as saying that men need to change if the patriarchy is ever to end. If we understand how some men have come to struggle in this way, perhaps we can do a better job of teaching boys to not become those men. This ties into baraqiel’s comment about the need for parents to talk with their kids about porn – and not just to the girls.
@annajcook:
1. I agree that kids having access to sexually explicit material isn’t bad per se; however, right now they only (or primarily) have access to hurtful and bad things, like degrading porn. I wish that kids had access to sexually explicit material that is positive and healthy and examples of people Doing It in respectful and non-degrading ways. Unfortunately, that’s very difficult to find, while the degrading shit is not just easy to find, it’s hard to ignore.
2. I have to take issue with your point about accepting and not judging certain expressions of “sexuality” because everyone’s allowed to have their own personal definition of the erotic. Of course everyone can have their own personal definition of the erotic…but I can judge that shit if their own personal eroticism is degrading to women. Stacked vaginas? Degrading to women. Even if they are kind and benevolent in other areas, the gross objectification of women in that the kind of porn that treats women like things is judge-worthy.
There has to be a balance between being open and accepting of people’s own personal desires, sexuality, and experience of the erotic, with a refusal to accept (or accept silently) those sexualities, desires, and experiences that are degrading or dangerous. And it’s one thing for someone to fantasize about stacked vaginas; but pornography isn’t actually fantasy. It’s the visual representation of [audience]‘s fantasy. And it uses real people and has real effects. So fantasies about things that would be problematic in real life but are ways for people to deal with or work through complex relationships to sex, aren’t actual fantasies in pornography: real people are doing real things to real-life perform/play out/enact those fantastical scenarios.
I mean, there are people who can be kind and benevolent in many ways, who enjoy watching pornography of women getting raped. Even if the rape is fictional, I think it’s legitimate for me to say it’s fucking unhealthy and fucked up that someone wants to get off to the rape of women; in fact I think it’s negligent to stay silent about the subject when pornography has such a strong hand in shaping its consumers’ sexualities and desires. Porn doesn’t just fulfill the desire to see X, it creates the desire for X; violent or degrading porn thus creates an environment in which violent and degrading treatment of women is normalized. Whether men or women are watching that porn, it’s fucked up and creates an atmosphere in which men find it normal to degrade women, and in which women expect degradation from their male partners.
The real-world effects of pornography have been well documented. The kind of porn I was talking about–stacked vaginas, for example–is degrading and objectifying, and it normalizes an environment in which the degradation and objectification of women is normalized in both sexual and non-sexual encounters.
I don’t think I should have to tip-toe around the realities of the graphic degradation of women on a feminist website (or, actually, anywhere–this is why I’m such a hit at dinner parties, y’all!). Obviously I’m not shaming people who are into non-normative but safe and non-degrading sexuality or eroticism. But I have no problem shaming men whose sexuality includes the objectification of women, and I don’t think I need to qualify my concerns or objections to that kind of sexuality.
I have thoughts on this!
Why doesn’t “gee, that made me feel horny” translate into, “gee, I want to be with my lover right now!”?
There is some biology behind this. I do NOT want to be reductionist about this, because there is so. much. socialization that comes into play here, but my experience with trans men and women lead me to believe that testosterone is a huge player in this particular thing. The trans men I’ve know (who felt comfy enough with me to share this) said that their sex drive became much much more *focused* after being on testosterone. Their sex dive became more, “this makes me horny, I want this to keep happening.” When before they might have said, “This makes me horny, I’ll go find my partner.”
Theres probably nothing in porn the Romans werent doing 2000 years ago, or kids of the pre-porn days weren’t imagining anyway don’t you think?
It’s one thing to imagine and fantasize that there might someday be a woman willing to try and put drumsticks in her butt and moan with delight, and quite another to have proof that some woman was. It turns the conversation from “I’d be lucky if someone shared that fantasy or would be willing to do it for me” into, “why won’t you do this thing that this other person is clearly enjoying?”
“Porn makes men lousy lovers.”
Amen! But I think this is true of women too. Most heterosexual visual porn has women moaning like crazy when absolutely nothing is happening to their own bodies. Which is problematic! I know a *lot* of women who think there is something wrong with them that they don’t get as much out of the more “porny” sex acts as the actresses appear to. There also isn’t much in the way of new ideas for female pleasure to be had from watching porn. I think that (most heterosexual visual) porn can contribute to a fundamental disconnect between a woman’s mind and her own body.
bad porn = bad relationships = create better porn!
and
it’s the content of those materials and whether they’re representing the full spectrum of human experience around sexuality, and whether we’re offering young people tools to interpret those representations.
YES! I want my porn to look like the cast of Sesame Street (minus the muppets and children). I want it to look as diverse as a 1980′s middle school text book. Lots of colors, shapes, sizes, abilities, sexualities, and gender presentations.
I would be *such* a happy camper if all visual porn included a scene where the actors say hello to one another and establish some basic protocol for the shoot. Even hearing them say something like, “It’s so much more fun to do x rather than y during our z scene.”
Would it really be too much to ask for a little reassurance that the actors themselves consent to everything that is happening?
Lots of really interesting conversation here, with food for thought about the balance between personal fantasy, cultural narratives, social conditioning, and actual harm to the wider society. My own thoughts on this are far from fully formed.
A few thoughts:
I think it’s legitimate for me to say it’s fucking unhealthy and fucked up that someone wants to get off to the rape of women (Cimorene)
While I understand what you’re getting at here, and agree that rape culture (in this case, glorification of sexual assault) needs to be actively named for what it is … I’m ambivalent about saying that rape fantasies and representations of rape fantasies are across-the-board unhealthy, or something that we necessarily need to make people feel ashamed of being turned on by. I say this as a woman who in real life would be the opposite of sexually aroused by violence or the threat of violence. But for whom erotica containing narratives of bondage, forced sex, and domination can sometimes be sexy. Sometimes we use fantasy to work out troubling, complicated things that we’d never want or be able to face in real life.
Perhaps it’s less the depictions themselves, but how they’re engaged with that could use some interrogation? A bunch of frat boys drunk off their asses and watching nonconsensual sex for entertainment and group bonding is pretty different from an individual person using rape fantasy to work through the trauma of their own sexual assault … or to play with the idea of power and domination.
I feel like a huge proportion of this porn-is-unrealistic issue might be dealt with through a really rigorous education in media literacy and criticism? If people started thinking about pornography as a genre with its own historically-situated conventions … with which they could actively engage and appropriate for their own use, maybe our relationship to the medium would be less destructive. Right now, it’s so shameful to talk about in most situations that no one is encouraged to critically analyze it … they just consume it.
Satchel, I think it’s dismissive to suggest that people who don’t have children are unqualified to talk about the effects of something on children. The most determinedly childless of us still were children. It’s one subject that absolutely everyone has experience with. The idea that childless feminists don’t have a right to comment on this (which isn’t precisely what you said, but does kind of seem like what you implied) is a tool of the patriarchy, in my opinion.
And I do have children. I’m not that concerned about them seeing porn online. It’s not something I have any power over, and I don’t believe in restricting adults’ access to something because children might see it. I am concerned about my ability to teach them how to deal with it. Like so many things about parenting, I suspect it just comes down to talking to them.
@ Cimorene – “I’m sorry, but if a man doesn’t treat you as his equal in every way, he doesn’t love you. There is no fulfilling love or sex that is based on a system of oppression. Men who treat women with utter respect and equality–it can happen! I totally live it!–can be in loving and healthy sexual relationships with women;”
Well, good for you, but that’s not really what I meant.
Apart from anything else, I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of sex as a bargaining chip or weapon that women can wield to manipulate the men in their lives. To suggest that the world would be such a great place if only women, the undisputed gatekeepers of sex, would use the mysterious hold they have on men to force them to act in a civilized manner is actually deeply sexist. Also, you kinda seem to be verging dangerously close to victim-blaming. Are you seriously suggesting that if a woman finds herself in an unsatisfying relationship it’s her own fault for not holding out for something better? That it’s “only logical” that she simply give up on sex and the hope of love till the man of dreams comes along? Look, Cimorene, I’m not currently in a relationship, but, for the most part, the relationships I have been in have been egalitarian and loving. However I do have girlfriends who haven’t been/aren’t as lucky or perhaps, sure, confident in the relationship arena and although, yes, when we discuss these issues I also invariably suggest jilting the bastard as probably the most effective solution, I do understand why they don’t. Moreover I seriously have to disagree that if they did, this would positively impact the male population at all and certainly not in a way that could ever be as potent as porn, particularly if there is no broad-reaching driving force behind such decisions encouraging more of a mass phenomenon.
I was however totally with you for the first two paragraphs of this comment…
@Av0gadro
Just had to say I love the way you put this. Both the ability of non-parents to comment on issues affecting children (most importantly because we once were children ourselves!) and this: “I am concerned about my ability to teach them how to deal with it.” I think communication and encouraging critical analysis is so much more important than fighting to keep children away from stuff we think might harm them.
Sure, we should make protected spaces for children to retreat to when they want to. (No kid, for example, should be forced to think about sex or pornography when they don’t feel ready). But that’s not the same as trying to police the wider world so that they’ll never, ever stumble into it.
I remember once when my brother stumbled into some internet pornography with a friend in middle school. I don’t remember whether it was intentional or just a bad search engine (remember the mid-90s?) … but regardless, he was uncomfortable and ashamed. What my parents did was assure him they weren’t angry, ask if he had any questions, and offer some pretty basic opinions concerning the depictions of people and relationships the images conveyed.
I think the worst thing we can do as a society is make images and ideas in porn unspeakable and shameful, so that children don’t feel able to ask questions and speak up when something makes them feel uncomfortable. How are they going to develop a sense of their own sexuality independent from commercialized depictions of they can’t “talk back” to the images they see?
…I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of sex as a bargaining chip or weapon that women can wield to manipulate the men in their lives. To suggest that the world would be such a great place if only women, the undisputed gatekeepers of sex, would use the mysterious hold they have on men to force them to act in a civilized manner is actually deeply sexist.
So teaching girls to reject sexual partners who do not fully respect them and their needs and desires is tantamount to using sex to manipulate men? Wow.
It’s not like Cimorene was advocating that women withhold sex to get a new car or something. Our starting point here is men who do not respect a woman’s wants and needs, who expect women to change themselves to conform to a pornified vision of sexuality regardless of the women’s feelings. Men like the commenters Sarah mentions upthread. Refusing to engage in (dehumanizing) sexual activity with someone who doesn’t treat you with the respect and dignity you deserve is not manipulation, even if the refusing reaches a volume that makes men rethink and change their attitudes.
Oh, and ask any rape or sexual assault victim about that “undisputed gatekeepers of sex” piece.
I don’t have kids but, in my opinion, it’s best not to talk about sex to your child and, instead, give him/her a link to a relevant and informative website or an online sex ed video, or even encourage him/her to talk about it with a school counselor. There’s no way that I can see having “the talk” as being comfortable and encouraging the curiosity of the child; in fact, I think that all you’ll accomplish is making your child avoid anything related to sex for several weeks or even months. And it’s also likely that you’re not exactly an expert on everything related to sex. All I’m saying is try to keep in open mind and let your kid explore these topics at his/her pace.
@tall-in-heels – I get what you’re saying and also what fuchsia was saying. The issue in my opinion is that consciously deciding that, regardless of one’s own *sexual* desires, one is going to refrain from sex with someone until something about their behavior changes (Lysistrata style) is manipulative and sort of calculating in a way that is inappropriate for romantic relationships WHEREAS deciding that certain kinds of behavior make someone an unappealing sexual partner for you and therefore listening to your own desires (or lack thereof) and not having sex with them is *good* and allowing yourself to reconsider should the circumstances (ie their behavior) change is also good BUT these two patterns of behavior are basically indistinguishable from the outside and the latter is often mistaken for the former — sometimes even by the person in question who can end up with feelings of guilt along the lines of “is it shitty and manipulative of me to not have sex with this person while they’re doing x but if they stopped, I’d totally be interested”.
Ahem. That might be the longest sentence I have ever written on this website.
@schemerdro: it’s best not to talk about sex to your child and, instead, give him/her a link to a relevant and informative website or an online sex ed video, or even encourage him/her to talk about it with a school counselor.
Wait, seriously? One of the most important issues in a child’s development and adult life but it’s better that his/her parents don’t discuss it with them at all? Instead of being honest and providing guidance, you’d direct them to the internet (!) and a counselor at school who they probably don’t know well at all (and who would likely be deeply uncomfortable to be explaining something so intimate to someone else’s kid)?
IMO, abdicating responsibility like that would be a huge parenting FAIL. If you don’t teach your kids about sex, someone else will, and that alternative can be WAY worse.
BeckySharper, I’m not against “being honest and providing guidance.” If your child comes to you with questions, then I think the parent should definitely answer them. I am against letting a parent decide when it’s the right time to talk about it and what to talk about specifically.
Besides, you’d still have some control over the situation because you’re the one who’s choosing the website/video. It’s just that it would have been made by someone who’s, most likely, more knowledgeable on the subject than any normal parent could be.
I’m sorry if I’m taking this off-topic (I know we were discussing pornography) but, I’m wondering, if there’s anybody who had a parent(s) who initiated “the talk” with you and how did that affect you?
“The issue in my opinion is that consciously deciding that, regardless of one’s own *sexual* desires, one is going to refrain from sex with someone until something about their behavior changes (Lysistrata style)”
I wasn’t talking about individuals deciding to stop fucking their boyfriends. I was talking about teaching 11 year old girls that they don’t have to fuck boys who treat them like shit.
Thing is, girls are taught that they have to fuck boys, and if they really really don’t want to then they can maybe fuck girls (but either way they still have to be virgins, of course!). There’s never any, “Well (assuming you’re straight), if there are no good boys to fuck, just…don’t fuck anybody.” It’s like that’s not even an option.
This thread of conversation started when I suggested that we teach 11 year old girls that they are not required to be in a relationship with boys who treat them like shit, and fuschia seemed to think that in order for this standard to be upheld, we’d need to live in a “chimerical post-patriarchal future,” and that teaching girls that they ought not be the passive receptacles of male fantasy, that women ought not change their own sexuality/desires/bodies/beings in order to please the men who they might engage in romantical relationships with, would be expecting women “agree to give up the possibility of love/sex for themselves for the greater long term good of womankind.”
I’m not sure how expecting a partner to treat you well is giving up the possibility of love and sex; I’m not sure how the greater long term good of womankind even comes into play. Because I was talking about women not getting involved with shitty men. And then I suppose I went on a bit of a tangent pointing out that if a man doesn’t treat his female partner with respect and equality, then he doesn’t really love her; so for women to give up sex and relationships with men who don’t consider women their equals, isn’t really giving up love because it doesn’t exist in the first place with the hypothetical misogynists in question.
I understand that women get into shitty relationships with shitty men all the time. I thought I made it clear that I understood that misogyny is the matrix in which all relationships take place, and that heterosexuality is a very precarious state for any woman. Women who stay in shitty relationships with men who treat them like shit are only doing so because we live in a world in which love and sex are tainted with the violence of misogyny. If we lived in a world in which women were equal to men, in which misogyny didn’t exist, in which girls were not taught from the get-go that they are expected to adjust themselves for the boys in their lives, then situations in which women remain in shitty relationships with their shitty boyfriends (for whatever reason) would be nearly eradicated.
This is not victim blaming; this is not putting the responsibility of the shitty relationships on the women. This is blaming the culture that tells women to conform to men’s wishes and desires. And it’s recognizing that a radical transformation of our culture needs to take place in order to end the misogyny that informs so much of our understanding of heterosexuality.
I was really glad that my mum initiated discussions with me about sex, love and reproduction from a young age, and in an age appropriate way (it may have also helped that my mum was pregnant for quite a bit of my childhood as well).
Eventually porn was discussed as well (I think that discussion happened in my late teens early twenties however – I was a late bloomer).
It was these discussions that helped me to be able to go to her when I was a teenager about things to do with sexuality, etc (even though I didn’t always have the best relationship with her during these years).
Maybe because of these discussions I was picky and choosey about whom I went out with and the kinds of relationships that formed (for all of high school I didn’t have a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” for example)
It also meant that when confronted with porn, I felt able navigate my feelings and desires without being pressured by others.
@Cimorene – I understand what you’re saying and pretty much agree with you — I was just trying to clear up what I perceived as a miscommunication between your/tall-in-heels’ point and fuchsia’s point.
@Schmerdro: To answer your question, my mother did the talk in stages. When I was about 6, she got a children’s book about human reproduction that answered the question “where do babies come from?” and read it with me, talked about it with me, answered my questions—”He puts his penis in your vagina?” “Yes.” “Does it hurt?” “No, when you’re a grown-up, it feels nice.”—and that was about it (that’s all kids that age really need to know). At puberty, she discussed getting my period, sex, and contraception with me, and gave me lots of advice about when to have sex and why I shouldn’t have it until I was much older. And both my mom and dad were good about answering questions as they arose—like when I’d seen something in a movie or heard something from a friend.
Talking about sex with your kids doesn’t have to be a serious talk at a pre-ordained time, it’s more about parsing out information on am age-appropriate need-to-know basis and keeping the lines of communication open so that they feel safe and comfortable turning to you for advice.
I simply don’t understand your idea that “I am against letting a parent decide when it’s the right time to talk about it and what to talk about specifically.”
If the parent doesn’t make that call, who does? The child? Part of being a parent is guiding your child’s development pro-actively. Children—especially young ones—are often not able to articulate “Hey mom, I need to know this and you need to explain it to me.” And if you raise a child in an environment where you aren’t pro-active and engaged with their development, they’ll learn that you are NOT someone they can trust or turn to with questions.
@Schmerdro
My parents and I talked about sex and sexual relationships throughout my adolescence (and still talk about those issues today). My mother and I did have a deliberate “talk” when I was reaching puberty about physical changes, menstruation, etc. She read over some materials with me, the two of us in private, and let me know she was available when questions came up. Though I already knew that! She also pointed me toward her reference books (i.e. Our Bodies, Ourselves) and let me have at it. This was in the days before internet-based sex education resources.
I was a little akward about it, in passing, just because I was a very practical child and figured I’d deal with puberty when it happened. I wasn’t interested in sexual relationships or boys so it all seemed fairly distant and irrelevant to my life when I was twelve. But mostly I’m grateful that my mother (and my father, when he has been called upon to step up to the plate and talk with us kids — now 30, 27, and 25 — about sexual intimacy) are willing to talk about the sexual side of human experience without a great deal of shame or judgment.
Sorry for the late responses, but I’m writing from Europe – completely different time zone.
@ Tall-in-Heals – “It’s not like Cimorene was advocating that women withhold sex to get a new car or something.”
Well, no, but she does seem to be ignoring the fact that women also actively desire and need sex and will miss it if it’s eliminated from their lives. She’s asking women to give up sex if they can’t find a respectful partner. But that ignores the reality of countless women who have invested time and energy into bad relationships with men they might themselves sexually desire and/or love but who either don’t reciprocate those feelings in equal measure or do not manifest such feelings in their behaviour. Perhaps these women don’t want to leave their partners, find it too difficult to do so or impossible to imagine a positive outcome for themselves if they attempted it. Maybe they just don’t want to give up on an attachment they themselves feel and are trying their desperate best to inspire in their partners. Laying blame on them for the shitty situations they’re stuck in by saying “well, all you have to do is claim something better for yourself” is way too harsh and incredibly unhelpful.
I just don’t think that it’s women’s responsibility to improve either their own lot or men’s behaviour by forsaking sex with all but the best of men. Women already know that their choices open to them are often shabby – they don’t need that rubbed in their faces. Educating men to be better partners would be a much more reasonable proposition.
“Oh, and ask any rape or sexual assault victim about that “undisputed gatekeepers of sex” piece.”
I was being sarcastic. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
@Cimorene – “Thing is, girls are taught that they have to fuck boys, and if they really really don’t want to then they can maybe fuck girls (but either way they still have to be virgins, of course!). There’s never any, “Well (assuming you’re straight), if there are no good boys to fuck, just…don’t fuck anybody.””
And then of course there’s the girls who actually want to fuck boys (you seem to have forgotten about those?). Maybe some of these girls want to fuck boys who end up treating them badly. And maybe then these girls are caught in impossible situations where to reclaim respect they have to give up on fucking the boy they want to fuck – and that’s tough. That’s all I’m saying here.
Now if you could find a way to arrange it so that girls only ever fall for/are attracted to the decent guys, I’d be all over that.
“This thread of conversation started when I suggested that we teach 11 year old girls that they are not required to be in a relationship with boys who treat them like shit”
If that’s what you meant, it was very badly formulated. As far as I can see this is the first time you’ve brought up 11 year old girls. Also, yeah, again, what if they *want* to be in a relationship with boys who, as it turns out, treat them like shit?
@Cimorene – “so for women to give up sex and relationships with men who don’t consider women their equals, isn’t really giving up love because it doesn’t exist in the first place with the hypothetical misogynists in question.”
Well, perhaps that’s really easy for you – an outsider to a hypothetical relationship – to acknowledge and accept. If you were the one stuck in the shitty relationship however, if you were desperately willing somebody who doesn’t treat you with love/satisfy your sexual needs to do so, if you were desperately loving/wanting that person anyway, isn’t it just possible that that love and desire and desperation might clout your vision just a little bit? Because basically, you’re really not being very compassionate here at all.
“This is not victim blaming; this is not putting the responsibility of the shitty relationships on the women. This is blaming the culture that tells women to conform to men’s wishes and desires.”
And it’s placing the responsibility for changing that culture on whom exactly? Cos it still sounds to me like you expect the victim to do all the heavy lifting.