On Women & Porn

[joreth]

I want to write about some of my complaints about porn, but I want it to be clear that this is not a criticism of porn itself. First of all, I like porn and I do not agree that porn is inherently bad, for whatever value of bad any given activist wants to give it (i.e. misogynistic, degrades women, breaks up marriages, unrealistic expectations, etc.). Oh, I'm sure anyone can find examples of whatever complaint they have about porn, so I'm also not dismissing that these "bad" things exist, I'm just saying that I think "porn" encompasses a huge spectrum and does not have to be whatever bad thing someone accuses it of being.

Second, I am not criticizing the quality of porn itself because I'm not actually a good judge of what is "good" and "bad" porn. To me, entertainment has 2 metrics: quality and enjoyability. Quality seems to be something that people think of as an objective metric - there are standards to which an object is held, and if it meets those standards, it is "good quality". Classic literature that we are forced to read in high school falls under this heading. There are some types of art that I can assess as "quality", but some types of art that I can't. Movies and books are types that I can't, and that includes porn.

Enjoyability is not the same as quality. Back to those classics of literature that we have to read in school, I didn't like many of those books. Many of the movies and books that I actively enjoy, I'm told are crap. I don't care. I like what I like and I don't like what I don't like. You can keep your Picaso in his blue period or whatever and I'll keep my cheap print of the seascape at sunset because it makes me happy.

So all of this is to explain that I cannot distinguish between "good" porn and "bad" porn, I can only tell what I like and don't like. I can tell when a movie has decent production quality, and I can tell when there isn't even an attempt at acting, but generally what I like doesn't seem to be what everyone else likes. So, my point here is that what I am about to discuss is not whether something is "good" or "bad" in porn, but in how it affects me personally and what I enjoy. I'm writing about it, not as a book or movie review where I want to recommend or warn people about a particular work, or even a particular genre, but to explain one person's quirks, for 2 reasons:

1) In case there are others like me who feel alone in their tastes so they will know that they're not alone;

2) For people who do not share my tastes or interests to simply be aware that there are people like me who exist, so that maybe some bit of accommodation can be made for the variety of human interests.

So, now, onto the complaints about porn.

This is not about anything specific, it's a trend I see in movies, books, fanfic, erotica, kink, romance novels, anywhere there is a story about sex that includes pleasure for the female. And it's a trend that makes it very difficult for me to find porn or erotica that I like.

See, I discovered something about myself a few years ago that research suggests may not be unusual. When I was a teenager, I thought I was bi-curious, because I enjoyed watching attractive women and I enjoyed watching or reading about porn & erotica that included women. What I didn't understand at the time was the difference between how I viewed the women and how I viewed the men in my porn. I have always been attracted to men - the thought of male body parts and men's bodies and men doing things to me gets me aroused & gets me off. Women don't do the same thing, but it was not easy to understand what the difference was.

The difference was that, when I read, watched, or imagined sex scenes, I would mentally put myself in the place of one of the characters. I would be the one receiving the actions of the males (or performing the actions on the males). I was not attracted TO the women in the porn, I was imagining BEING the women in the story. But I imagined being WITH the men and I was attracted TO the men.

Now, there is a particular twist about this that threw me off and had me confused for a long time. In addition to the whole wanting to be the female but not be attracted to her thing, on occasion I did find myself wanting to do things TO the women in the stories. I believe that this is what convinced me that I was bisexual and made it difficult for me to see the difference I explained above, about wanting to be WITH the men but to BE the women. It wasn't until only recently that I discovered that the only time I wanted to be the character doing things TO the women was when that character was male. In other words, lesbian porn does nothing for me. But hetero porn can sometimes make me want to do things to the women in the scene.

And that's where the confusion was. datan0de asked me recently how I can justify calling myself straight when I had fantasies about using strap-ons with women. And the answer was because it was less about being with a woman, and more about being a man. So this particular quirk of mine, that so confused me for so long and had me believing I was bisexual, was not about sexual orientation at all, but about gender orientation. I'm not attracted to women, but I really like the idea of having male parts, and one of the things that you can do with male parts is to fuck women with them. My interest in this gender role play also has an element of D/s about it. In these kinds of scenarios, I'm not just fucking women, I'm being aggressive and demanding, and maybe a little demeaning. I like the idea of doing that with men too, it's not attached to the gender of the recipient. For instance, fucking a man with a strap-on has about the same level of arousal, and the same TYPE of arousal, as fucking a woman with a strap-on. Because, to me, the idea is about me being a man, not about the gender of my partner. For some things, like blowjobs, I'm all about how it makes my partner feel. But for things like strap-on sex, it's all about how it makes ME feel. Even making my partner feel good when I fuck them with a strap-on is about how I feel, because it's about learning a skill and performing well - basically learning how to be good at being a "man".

But the end result of all this confusion and analysis is that I am not attracted to women at all in the sense that I don't get aroused by the thought or the reality of female bodies, but that I am extremely aroused by male bodies doing things to me and by the thought of having a male body with which to do things to other people. This means that the kind of porn that I enjoy has to be the kind where I can put myself into one of the characters. So if the characters are doing things that I don't enjoy doing, then the porn doesn't work for me. If the characters are too far removed from my own personality, or they do things that I don't understand, or I can't figure out their motivations, then the porn doesn't work for me. It doesn't matter how well written the porn is, how well shot the porn is, how "good" the porn is - I have to identify with a character somehow in order to get into it. I have to be able to imagine myself as one of the women in the scene, or I have to be attracted to the men, or I have to want to be one of the men in order to get into it.

And here's where my complaint about porn finally starts. There seems to be very little porn written with my own sexuality in mind, so I can't identify with the characters, which means I can't get into the porn. In much of the porn that I see, women seem to all love penetration, they seem to be multi-orgasmic, they seem to have high libidos, they seem to never need a pee or a water break, or they seem to need to be "in love" in order to have sex (which promptly makes them all the previous statements), depending on what target audience the writer is going for.

I don't get off on penetration. I need clitoral stimulation, and only with enough of the proper type of clitoral stimulation will penetration even be bearable for me. With the right type of stimulation, I may actively want some kind of penetration in addition to the outside stimulation sometimes, but having it be too big, or moved in the wrong way, or replacing the clitoral stimulation can make me completely lose my arousal. But in movies and books, the women always want some kind of big cock to penetrate them repeatedly and hard. That's a major turn off for me. I like rough sex, but once something is inside of me, *that* part can't be rough.

I am not multi-orgasmic. The most I have ever managed was two, one right after the other, with a Hitachi Magic Wand. That happened once, maybe twice, ever in my life. And it overstimulated me afterwards, to the point that even clothing was painful, and I did not need or want another orgasm for weeks. When I orgasm, I'm pretty much done. Everything becomes too sensitive and touching is painful. I want to go to sleep, or I want to eat something. And I cannot become aroused for at least 24 hours afterwards. I can become "interested", but not aroused.

I have this state for which there is no word I have discovered. It's where I am mentally interested in sex, and I may be able to make my body physically accommodate sexual activity, but it's not arousal, and it most certainly does not lead to orgasm. It's not a grudging acceptance of someone's sexual attention, I am sometimes very frustrated at my body's refusal to cooperate and become aroused. Mentally and emotionally, I may be interested in sex, but it's going to feel for me like a good massage or a good workout - something pleasurable, but without those other sensations of arousal, y'know, that "fire" in the groin, the tingling of the clit, the non-painful sensitivity of the nipples, the desire to reach orgasm, etc.

So when the women in stories seem to have orgasm after orgasm, seemingly without any recovery time necessary or oversensitivity, or even desensitivity, I just can't empathize with that character. I believe that there are women out there who can do what the women in these stories can do because I believe that we are an extremely varied species, but I just cannot put myself in their position. I can't imagine what it feels like and I don't even want to. To me, being that easy to orgasm does not sound appealing.

Which brings me to a tangent that is orgasm denial in kink stories. For some reason, a lot of BDSM is about bringing people to the brink of orgasm and then refusing to allow them to go over that edge and actually complete the orgasm. I simply do not get this. This does not sound appealing to me and it does not work on me. Because of my low libido, I am actually quite content to go without an orgasm for days, weeks, sometimes even months at a time. Not having one doesn't bother me in the slightest. Because it is difficult for me to achieve orgasm even when trying, I have had years of practice of being brought to the edge of orgasm and not being able to follow through. Pretty much all of my teenage through early 20s involved this kind of sexual activity (and I was sexually active around age 12, so that's a lot of years & a lot of partners). If I make it to the edge of an orgasm but can't find release, then after a few minutes, a couple of hours tops, the arousal gradually fades away and I don't need the orgasm anymore. Frustration at lack of orgasm only happens for a few seconds at the moment of realization that the orgasm is beyond my reach, and then my arousal pretty much starts the fading process right then and there, with the length of time that it fades completely being the only variable.

So when I read or watch stories where someone is teased mercilessly and then prohibited from coming, I just can't get into that character's head space. I don't get it. It is not torture for me and it does not make me more pliable or biddable. Someone dangling an orgasm in front of me as a carrot to make me behave in a particular manner is not enough incentive because if I just wait a few more minutes, I won't care about the "carrot" anymore. And then once the arousal subsides, it's a crapshoot whether or not I can be aroused again right afterwards. If I get the female equivilent of blue balls, where the engorgement of my clit and lack of release causes an ache, I'm pretty much guaranteed to be done with sexual arousal for the day at least, and possibly a few days.

On top of that, when my body thinks it's time for an orgasm, it will give me one with no outside assistance. In those periods where I have not had a partner for a long time, or when my libido has crashed and I haven't had any interest in sex in a long time, every few weeks I will have a wet dream that culiminates in orgasm. I don't have to think about it, I don't have to plan it, I don't have to want it or do anything to encourage it. I'll just have one. I don't touch myself or move or do anything physically. I just dream and have an orgasm. And that will carry me for another few days or weeks so I can go about my life without a partner, without masturbation, and sometimes even without any interest in sex at all.

So when I read or watch stories about people being chained up, or wearing chastity belts, or, as in the Beauty series, having devices placed over clits and nipples to prevent physically accessing those areas the writers think are responsible for orgasm, I just don't get that. I don't have to touch my clit - if my body wants me to have an orgasm, it will give me one. Which is ironic, considering how difficult it is for me to achieve orgasm when I'm trying to have one with a partner. Which brings me to my next point...

I do not orgasm easily. I know, that sounds like a contradiction after what I just said about being able to orgasm in my sleep with no external stimulation at all. But that kind of orgasm is involuntary. It doesn't happen when I want it to, it happens when my body thinks it's time. Kind of like going to the bathroom - my body will insist on going when it needs to go, and no amount of coaxing it before it's ready will change that. Only, with orgasm, there can be some coaxing, but it's not always successful. In the stories, the women are either extremely easy to orgasm, or they are with men who posess some kind of magical power to be able to consistently and reliably perform exactly the right method to make their partners come.

In my experience, even with the most skilled and intutive of partners, my orgasms are not reliable. I may come, I may not come. I may come quickly or it may take hours of work. What worked last time may not work next time. And my ability to orgasm, as well as the length of time to reach orgasm, seem to have no correlation at all to my state of arousal before beginning the sexual activity. I am just as easily surprised by reaching orgasm quickly when I wasn't aroused at all when we started, as I am frustrated by being aroused all day but not able to orgasm for hours, or at all, when I finally get some sexual activity.

By myself, I am fairly reliable and consistent at acheiving orgasm when I want to, and I can do it very quickly. But with a partner, I have yet to discover any sort of pattern that we can use to reach reliable results. Even doing it myself in front of a partner is not reliable, mostly because of a few hangups I have about that.

Another major complaint I have about porn is that they don't ever seem to accommodate for unavoidable life necessities, like going to the bathroom or eating or having other things happen. I get that a story would probably be very slow moving if it accounted for every minute of the day, and probably turn off a lot of people if it mentioned bathroom habits. So I'm not asking for a detailed itinerary. But I am asking for writing that leaves enough space in the timeline for the characters to do those things that we all have to do. Being chained in a crouching position overnight? Not realistic. It doesn't allow for the character to wake in the middle of the night needing to pee, or for the long-term damage that constricted blood flow can do to the limbs.

I read a book recently about a tomboy who gets "tricked" into a sex game with her three male best friends. You'd think this would be right up my alley, and it kind of was. But she managed to drink several beers and have several orgasms, over the space of several hours, and never once need a pee break. Nor did she get hungry, in spite of the game taking place over lunch time. Nor did the beer make her drunk or sick or dizzy or anything else other than "relaxed", in spite of not having had any food.

I want to read or watch stories where, if the writer doesn't explicitly mention it, at least the timeline has enough gaps in it that I can believe the characters had time to do things like pee and eat and brush their teeth and even just sit and read the newspaper for a while because they got peopled-out or wanted a moment of quiet, or where they got sidetracked from the sex by a particularly heated political discussion. Even with my highly-sexed partners, we can occasionally discuss science or history or the Matrix films (although, to be fair, my partners can discuss those topics while simultaneously engaged in sexual activity too, and have done so on numerous occasions). As one recent magazine article put it, sometimes we even watch movies!

Another major complaint I have about porn, specifically porn aimed towards female audiences, is the need for the female character to be "in love" before she can be sexually attracted or sexually active with another character. Don't get me wrong, I like love stories, and I like sex and love combined better than I like either solo. But what I don't like is the underlying message that sexual activity must be justified by being in love. I don't like stories where the characters struggle against their attraction for each other until love is acknowledged and/or a committment of some sort is obtained. I don't like stories where the characters are frigid until "love" frees them. I'm fine with characters who prefer combining their sex with love or who don't tend to choose casual sex. What I'm not fine with is the tacit motivation for these choices being that sex is dirty and only love makes it acceptable.

There are plenty of reasons for people to choose to have sex only within the confines of a loving relationship. There are safety considerations, there are people who are attracted to the personality rather than the person - sex and sexuality are complex things. I just don't want to feel moralized at in my porn. I happen to like casual sex, and my fantasies often explore those kinds of casual sex that I would never explore in real life because of the danger factors. So, again with needing to empathize with the characters, I need to have characters that don't feel that the kind of sex I like is dirty or wrong, even if they happen to have practical reasons for not engaging in it. But because porn is (usually) fictional, it is often a safe place to explore exactly those kinds of sex that we can't explore in real life. So the idea of reading or watching fictional porn that specifically avoids certain scenarios because of their so-called moral implications seems to me to defeat some of the purpose of reading or watching fictional porn.

It's a very fine line to walk - writing fantasy scenarios that the audience can feel safe in exploring while retaining enough realism to give the audience that connection to the characters or the scene. On the one hand, I want my porn realistic enough to contain bathroom breaks and headaches. On the other hand, I sometimes want my porn to examine scenarios that are not practical for me to attempt in real life. I guess, like my non-porn fiction, I want my porn to be internally consistent. If the characters live in a world where the laws of physics are the same as my world, then they need pee breaks and will sometimes have leg cramps. But they can also win the sexual lottery where they can have sex with strangers and not catch an STD or try out a new toy and have it work right the first time. These things are all possible in my own world, they just carry risks that a fictional character can be lucky enough to avoid. If it's in another universe where physical laws are different, then, again, just be internally consistent.

So, I don't really have a good ending to this post. No real call to action or moral to the story. I just wanted to point out that some women like porn and that some women are not like the women in the porn, and these two statements can sometimes be mutually exclusive. It's difficult for me to like porn where the characters are too far removed from who I am. And that includes women who orgasm at the drop of a hat; women who get off on penetration (especially on penetration alone); women who like big cocks; women who can get turned on easily and stay that way for a long time; women for whom orgasm denial works; women who never need bathroom breaks, meal breaks, who don't mind not brushing their teeth, who don't get leg cramps or headaches or who would rather read a book or watch a movie right now instead of having sex or who are willing to not risk getting fired by leaving their job early for a quickie in the copy room; and women who need love to justify sex.

Because none of those women are me, and since the purpose of women in my porn is to give me a character I can empathize with, someone whose shoes I can step into, porn with these kinds of female characters do not work for me. I also need male characters that I can like, but since I'm more interested in being with the males, and not necessarily being the male characters, they don't have to be quite so similar to me in order for me to like the story. If he is similar to me, however, then I may step into his head and imagine myself as him, instead of just being with him, even if his partner is female. But if I don't like the female character, then I have no where to put myself in the story. I can only be an outside observer. As a voyeur, this is still a possibility for me to like a story, but then it only becomes meta, because as a voyeur, I'm still imagining myself in the scenario that I'm watching. When he touches her clit, I'm remembering what it feels like to be touched in a similar manner. When she gives him head, I'm remembering what it feels like to have that hard, yet delicate member in my own mouth. If the characters are not people I can identify with, and/or they are doing things I don't like doing, then I don't like the porn.

And, unfortunately, much of the porn I've seen is filled with characters I can't identify with doing things that I don't like doing.

Comments

Porn

[ewen]

And, unfortunately, much of the porn I've seen is filled with characters I can't identify with doing things that I don't like doing.

I think that porn easily meets or exceeds Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap"). Combined with the fact that most porn is bought -- and made -- for the perceived stereotypical market (which seem to be basically "men who want to believe they're real studs with women" and "women who want to be swept off their feet by a real gentleman"), and thus not really aimed at your... desires, it doesn't surprise me that most of it doesn't work for you. (Most of it doesn't work for me either, but that's because I'm rather attached to the people involved appearing interested in being involved in the activity, and that too seems relative rare.)

I actually wonder if there really is anyone that most porn really works for. Or whether it's like "off the rack" clothes, such that the combination of it "sort of works" and a belief that it is "supposed to" means that it's made/sold like that because it's historically been made/sold like that. But perhaps like "off the rack" clothes it has the little that is in common amongst everyone's desires. With the rest being not sufficiently in common to be, regularly, included in anything "mass market".

Ewen

Re: Porn

[joreth]

I actually gave up mainstream porn years ago, but this is still true of niche porn. Too many stories have the women being multi-orgasmic, high libidos, and don't leave space for necessities and bodily functions.

Because the span of human sexuality is so great and so varied, I would say that there probably are people for whom mainstream porn works for, but I would hesitate to say "most porn", because, even if you include mainstream porn in the equation, porn is also about as varied as the humans who watch, read, or look at it.

I think it's more accurate to say that, no matter what you're into, there is porn for it somewhere. The trick is finding it amongst the mountain of porn available.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

"I just don't want to feel moralized at in my porn." This!

Most of the time, when I go looking for porn, I want pretty serious BDSM kinds of fare; I usually like a very dark slant, so I often find myself looking at something that would be amoral (and not sexy at all) if it actually happened in the real world. So oftentimes I am deliberately suspending my morality, which is its own pleasure. Romance and love are wonderful and all (and I am far too much of a romantic for my own good), but if I'm in that sort of a mood I'm more likely to think about my lovers, or go read something that I already know has characters I care about, than to go looking for smut.

Which leads me to many of the same issues you seem to have about it: if the activity discussed is going to be excruciatingly uncomfortable or dangerous, if biological needs will intervene, etc., this should be addressed in the piece or I can't suspend disbelief. If the author/artist doesn't seem to understand the biology she's writing about, or if I have major issues about that being physically unlikely, she's lost me. This includes the...I want to call it unexamined use of devices like female characters who are multi-orgasmic with little to no recovery time and are fond of excessive penetration. I personally am multi-orgasmic and enjoy penetration rather a lot, and I usually orgasm several times daily as part of basic personal maintenance. Even so, porn that brings such elements up without explaining how they work with this particular character, or worse yet assumes that this is just how women are, is going to leave me cold for lack of reality.

But then, writing porn is tricky...creating a character who feels like a real person with a unique sexuality while not distracting from the eroticism of the piece is a rare balance. I can usually find something that will do the job, as it were, but I rarely find porn that I really like.