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The No-Sex Class: Men, Women, and Gangbangs in Porn

Sat, 2009-09-26 16:26 — figleaf

Since I’m way behind in my reading I read this first via Echidne, but over at Pandagon Amanda Marcotte just answered a question that for some reason started bothering me almost as soon as I was out of WiFi range. See if you can guess what my question might be from the following snippet:

...from my perspective, the implicit argument —- that women who have a lot of sex, or with a lot of men are sluts who deserve humiliation —- is anti-sex. In other words, for all the sex in porn, much of it adheres to the “family values” narrative, where a sexual woman is used up and deserves nothing but abuse. Being truly pro-sex, in my view, means believing that women who have sex, a lot of sex, or a lot of partners do not forfeit a single ounce of their dignity or humanity.

Read Amanda’s text in context here.

And, because it’s a good post too, don’t forget to read Echidne’s take either.

Anyway, it’s an interesting point that a) women who have lots of sex are considered degraded and yet b) industrial porn is almost invariably about women who have lots of sex.

Straight porn is very rarely centered around the actual performance of the male performers and when it is the focus seems to be far more about how much he’s able to get his various partners to “take” than how much he’s willing to, um, er, I guess, “go.” (I’m sure there have to be exceptions but are there ever non-fetish assumptions in porn that the men’s limits are smaller than the women’s?)

Anyway the thought that drifted through my head, the one I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the one that I think complements Amanda’s post rather nicely, is why do you suppose there’s no “gang bang” porn where one man has sex with multiple partners? Heck, there’s not even a word for the comparable situation!

A few years ago there was a raft of stories about one or more videos of well-known or aspiring porn actresses having sex with up to 500 men. (I think it’s telling, by the way, that so many commenters at the time made much of the fact that the numbers were exaggerated… that it wasn’t “really” 500 different men, that organizers got some participants to go back around and get in line, etc.)

And yet, as far as I can tell, even though porn is allegedly about fantasies of male prowess and all that, as far as I can tell from Googling around, and dredging through more Fleshbot posts than I’d ordinarily do in a month year ok, ok, ever there just doesn’t seem to be that much interest in either producing or viewing one man “taking on” what viewers might see as a taxing number of partners. No male “gang bang” porn. No speculation about male “gang bang” porn. No requests for it either.

I think, at least in part, it’s because Amanda and Echidne have a point about the function of mainstream porn. I don’t exactly agree with them that the point of facials, say, or no-preliminaries anal intercourse, or “ass to mouth” exists only to degrade the women doing it in the sense of punishing them for having sex. Instead I still think it’s a “no-sex” class paradigm-driven fascination about what women can “take” either without saying “no” or before finally saying “no.” Which would, of course, finally satisfy the mythical Rule of Desire #1 — it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.

And meanwhile I think a circumstance showing multiple women sharing the same male partner would violate Rule of Desire #2 — it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

You’d think a male viewer (and this is still assuming not all but a majority of consumers are male) interested in seeing any naked women having sex with a man would be interested in seeing lots of naked women having sex with a man. The grammar doesn’t seem to work that way. Instead to the extent there’s interest (and there does appear to be a lot of interest) it’s pretty much always one naked woman having sex with lots of men.

I’m guessing Rule #2 dominates here — the assumption is that a man with myriad partners is a fluke the average insecure man can’t identify with. Meanwhile I think the logic is that if there’s a woman who’d have sex with 10, 100, 500, or 620(!) men she might let him have sex with her too.

Anyway, I dunno. What’s your take? (And don’t say logistics. Especially if you’ve ever imagined the porn industry rakes in gazillions of dollars. If there was a market for it they’d find a way to do it.)

Australia Bans the Only Porn Movie I've Actually Enjoyed

Thu, 2009-08-27 23:28 — figleaf

Ms Naughty of Porn for Women Blog says the only commercial porn movie I’ve had the patience to watch in years, Jennifer Lyon Bell’s Matinee

In Berlin last year I had the honour of meeting Jennifer Lyon Bell, an American filmmaker with a compelling vision for erotic film. Her film Matinee is a gorgeous work of art, well written, masterfully acted and beautifully filmed. It is a wonderful addition to the growing canon of well-made, female-focused erotic films and I consider it to be part of the new wave of sex-positive movies that are forging a new path in porn.

Naturally this means the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification has banned it.

She said it here.

As I mentioned in my review (I saw it at the Sex 2.0 conference last spring) I had pretty much the same impression of the film. Ms Naughty quotes Bell and her backers as saying that was exactly what she was trying to convey

It’s just two characters enjoying sex in a realistic way that fits with their characters’ personalities. Consensual sex, nothing weird. Why on earth would that be dangerous to watch?

And, seriously, I don’t see how there’s anything possibly offensive or objectionable to the movie except that a) it has direct sex in it and b) the female partner leads the entire way from the first kiss to rousing him to erection to unwrapping and putting on the condom to insertion. Oh, and c) there’s nothing daring or defiant or “gender-bendery” or “toppish” about her actions, nor anything inconsistent with what any two heterosexual lovers might do when they’re both a bit melancholy about their circumstances and are used to finding emotional connection and comfort in sex.

On the other hand that might indeed be the offensive part. Final quote from Ms Naughty:

The organisers rightly point out that the OFLC didn’t have a problem with Lars Van Trier’s Antichrist, which disturbingly depicts a scene of female genital mutilation and seems to be misogynist in intent. Jen’s film, which only shows two people having nuanced, meaningful, tender sex, is apparently more offensive than that.

Not sure what to say here. Violently injuring genitals is ok. Romantic sex heterosexual sex not so much.

Incidentally the OFLC also banned two Tony Comstock’s films about romantic homosexual sex. He and everyone else assumed they were balking at the homosexuality part. Starting to sound like it’s the romance part they can’t handle.

$%!*#@!!!

Mayor/Porn-Star Firings: Stereotype-Driven Double Standards Ought to Cut Both Ways, Right?

Mon, 2009-07-27 13:05 — figleaf

Hexy, guest posting at Feministe, says of the Florida mayor who was recently fired because his wife works in porn,

According to this article, Janke’s wife’s occupation raised concerns about whether he could “remain effective”. This line jumped out at me:

“When you become a public figure you are held to a different level of scrutiny and ethics,” Babcock said.

And, you know, that surprised me, because I don’t see any unusual ethics here. The Madonna/whore dichotomy, the whole idea that certain women are marked as OK to fuck, but not the type you take home? That’s a standard I see everywhere in day to day life.

Read the quote in context here.

In other words what different standards?

Hexy goes on to say the couple seemed to have been together long enough to parent teenage children, which would tend to imply that any alleged character flaws in the couple probably would have been noticeable before and when he was elected in the first place. Although being able to successfully parent teenagers in the first place might have been a clue that maybe she, and by extension he, didn’t have ZOMG TEH MYTHICAL SEX-WORKER DISEASED FEEIND!!! cooties on them in the first place. Because for the most part sex-worker diseased-fiend cooties tend to be, well, mythical.

And not to put too fine a point on it, as of the 2000 census Ft. Meyer’s Beach, Florida, had a population of only 6561. Consider everything mainstream stereotyping “knows” about small-southern-town mayors. When you think about that you might start wondering whether the porn company was exercising poor judgment in not holding the mayor’s wife to higher scrutiny and standards and firing her! Oh but that would be silly right? Because, maybe I guess, what everybody “knows” about porn actors are true but what everybody “knows” about mayors isn’t?

HNT Editorial: Straining Credulity in the Defense of Half-Nekkid Self Photography

Thu, 2009-07-23 14:02 — figleaf

Pam Spaulding of Pandagon has a nifty writeup of yet another “family values” Republican, this time Tennessee State Senator Paul Stanley, who a) pursued a typical evangelical religious social-conservative legislative agenda, including some anti-porn legislation, while b) conducting an affair with a much younger employee that included c) taking “compromising” photos of the intern at his apartment.

Instead of just handwringing or tisk-tisking I’m going to try for a different interpretation. But first here are the specifics…

The boyfriend, Joel Palmer Watts. 28, discovered a computer memory disc with sexually explicit photographs of [the intern, Mackenzie Morrison] that appeared to have been taken in Stanley’s apartment. Watts then blackmailed Stanley, demanding $10,000 in return for keeping quiet.

“Releasing the photographs to individuals or the media would cause embarrassment, both professionally and personally, to Stanley,” according to the court affidavit, as if we needed an explanation for why this might pose a small problem for our family values champion.

While this sounds like a garden-variety Republican Sexual Hypocrite, Stanley takes it up a notch with his legislative CV: 1) he campaigned against the right of gays and lesbians to adopt (“When you’re married, there’s a commitment there,” Stanley said last year, while discussing legislation to prohibit gay people from adopting children); and….drum roll…2) he introduced a bill prohibiting viewing porn while driving (WTF!? Is this some kind of rampant problem in Tennessee?)

...

BTW, this hypocrite Stanley told NewsChannel 5 that he will continue his social conservative legislative agenda.

Read the rest of Spaulding’s post, and follow her additional links, here.

It being Half-Nekkid Thursday and all I’m going to see if I can cobble together some way for Paul Stanley to look somewhat like less of a hypocrite… though not less of a jerk… for legislating against porn while taking his own erotic photos. Here’s how something like that might work:

a) A lot of anti-porn people seem to define porn as the depiction of unwilling, disadvantaged victims performing unwanted sexual acts that leave them feeling degraded and abused. Depending on the degree to which one believes women have any sexual agency beyond the limited right to say no before marriage this may include believing that all persons, or at least all women, who appear in porn are by-definition coerced, degraded, and performing unwanted acts. Although it might not.

b) Sen. Stanley, and possibly Ms. Morrison, may have regarded the images found by the boyfriend as mere mementos of a sexual relationship where no one was coerced or degraded and where no unwilling or undesired acts were performed.

Therefore

c) There might be no contradiction and therefore no hypocrisy if the Senator was opposed to a) porn-as-bad-by-definition and b) provocative and/or explicit images taken with only the intention to arouse the parties involved and, possibly, anyone else the participating parties chose to share those images with. Which evidently would not include the would-be blackmailer, Mr. Watts. Nor, obviously, would the “certain members of the media” Mr. Watts proposed to share those photos with without the consent of Sen. Stanley and Ms. Morrison.

d) Which, of course, creates the distinction most right-minded people need to judge publication of so-called “revenge porn.” Revenge porn is often ordinary erotica taken by consenting parties for their personal enjoyment which is then discovered by or shared with third parties without the consent of all the original participants. Often with the intention of humiliating or degrading one or more of the original participants against their will. Thus, if one prefers the “it’s only porn if it’s bad, it’s only bad if its porn” definition then that’s the point at which ordinary, self-taken images can become porn.

Therefore, if that was Sen. Stanley’s position, it would not be hypocritical to legislate against porn while taking personal photos. I’m not buying it, but I could see someone trying to make that case.

Oh, and e) Bonus supporting point: When confronted by Watt’s blackmail attempt Stanley went straight to the cops who in turn set up a sting and arrested Watts. It’s actually kind of remarkable that a married evangelical ‘winger legislator would be so straightforward, but it’s actually the exactly correct thing to do when someone like, oh, say, the average HNT participant or anyone who’s own images are misappropriated. Because whatever social consequences one might run into (remember, even in socially conservative Tennessee Stanley appears to still be married and still be a Senator) the legal consequences to the blackmailer are way harsher. Anyway, Stanley’s behavior would be consistent with my attempted he’s-a-jerk-but-not-a-hypocrite interpretation of what came down.

Now.

That being all said and done there’s a rather prominent loose end I can now address — the bit about Ms. Morrison being an intern and Sen. Stanley being at least her nominal employer and supervisor. Such relationships may or may not be an issue for evangelical tub-thumpers but they’re considered actionable under employment law. Remember I’ve been attempting to be generous here so while not forgiving or forgetting, for purposes of the first part of this post I’m treating it as a separate offense. (For which, to keep things tidy, he probably ought to be investigated, and sanctioned, under any and all rules, regulations, and statutes.)

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Holly on Naomi Wolf on Sexualization in Porn, and In Wolf!

Sun, 2009-06-07 16:52 — figleaf

Holly of The Pervocracy, in a generally positive, nuanced review, gets to the core of the problem with one section of Naomi Wolf’s long-controversial article The Porn Myth

And then the weird part.

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.” ...And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

Or so constrained. I have — or mostly had — Orthodox friends too, and the way they hide women away isn’t sexy. I went to a Hasidic friend’s Bar Mitzvah once and all the women in the congregation had to sit behind a screen, looking politely at a goddamn white sheet as the sounds of the service sort of drifted through. Being sexier in private (if that’s even true) isn’t worth that shit. It’s humiliating. And when I’m asked to cover my hair, I don’t think it’s because my sexuality is special, it’s because my sexuality needs hiding. My very identity — which is being treated as synonymous with my sexuality — needs hiding.

FUCK THAT.

Read her quote of quote in context here.

A couple of critical points in there. First, it’s a mistake to imagine (as its too easy to do if your primary experiences are via media) that only one major religious tradition obliges women to cover themselves. Yes, there’s probably more controversy over Muslim women wearing scarves or veils but as Holly says, its an obligation in ultra-orthodox Judaism as well. And while we’re most familiar with wimples and veils on Catholic nuns and brides, Christian women of all stations in life were once expected to similarly veil themselves… and even in my paternal grandparent’s solidly American Plymouth Brethren denomination women wore (and may still wear) what I always though of as lace doilies to at least symbolically cover their hair.

The second point, though, is that upon reflection while Wolf spends most of her essay decrying the unreal expectations imposed on women by highly-sexualized imagery of women in pornography, Wolf’s glamorization of acres of swaddling veils and dresses is no less sexualizing.

Final point, of course, is that Holly has a bedrock deep understanding of the difference between sexuality and sexualization. And that she has no patience for the latter in any of its manifestations. Which she makes clear in the rest of her post, in which she largely agrees with Wolf about sexualization (vs. oh, say, largely missing sexuality) in porn.

Cool post.

Shere Hite Weighs In On the Dearth of Options In Depictions of Male Desire and Desirability

Mon, 2009-05-18 11:11 — figleaf

Via Petra Boynton, sex researcher Shere Hite, writing in The Indypendent, tackles a subject that’s very near and dear to my heart: the representation of hetero men in conventional pornography.

Pornography, it seems to me, presents a highly distorted image of men. While my research with thousands of men shows a different picture of “who men are sexually,” pornography imposes a rigid ideological view on male sexual feelings, expression and behavior. They are not the monolithic beings depicted in most porno images, nor do they find their authentic selves in pornography.

Ironically, pornography seems friendly to men — more than to women — but its underlying message makes fun of men. Subliminally, it tells men that their sexual expression is ridiculous, base, insensitive, even grotesque. Visually it frequently makes men look ugly and coarse, foolish and unappealing.

She said it here.

It’s almost cliché that women are presented as one-dimensional and cartoonish in porn. Critiques of women in porn are practically an industry unto itself. Extending that critique to men is rather refreshing.

An emerging criticism of her column and, presumably, her underlying work is that she misunderstands how men are depicted in porn. And while a quick tour this morning of popular porn upload sites like YouPorn and RedTube (we really are presented as almost voiceless, as always having and keeping erections, as uninterested in emotional contact or even non-penis physical contact) suggest she’s not that far off the mark.

But reading deeper into her column that’s not really her point. Even if everything that’s presented about men in porn was sexually enjoyable1 to do, what’s really important is that it’s a really, really limited set of the full range of sexually enjoyable things that men can do with a partner.

Hite speaks in particular to something I think men (and, often, even our partners) tend to shy away from in real life and, evidently, avoid like the plague in porn. Here’s Hite.

Men say they enjoy masturbation because they can fantasize about whatever they want and there is no pressure on them to perform. During masturbation, in my research, men stimulate themselves in many more places than they do when with a partner.

...

But many men cut short foreplay because they are afraid they may lose the erection which they have been taught is necessary to enjoy sex and which would be “shameful” to lose. More men could reach much higher peaks of feeling and arousal if they did not feel anxious about how they should behave sexually.

The great middle of the bell-shaped curve of porn never goes there, never treats men as interesting or, especially, complicated or, quirkily, fun to play with. We’re remarkably fun to play with though.

I think it’s great that Hite has raised the question.

And hey, just in time for Kristina Lloyd’s Man Candy Monday photo over at porn-for-straight-women Erotica Cover Watch. Oh, and check out comments on this porn-for-women post by Jessica Freely.

And if you’re an adult you can click here for yet another entry.

[1: Although seriously, what’s fun about stopping everything to wank out a “money shot” when you’ve got a partner right there who, in real life, would welcome your orgasm in contact and would almost certainly enjoy more active participation in creating it? Especially when it’s done over, and over, and over, and over. And over! —fl]

Jennifer Lyon Bell's "Matinee," Cinekink Award Winner in Best Short Narrative Category

Sat, 2009-05-09 20:08 — figleaf

One of the evening activities after Sex 2.0 (Twitter tag #sex20con) this evening was a screening of award-winning porn, including Matinee, directed by Jennifer Lyon Bell, from the Cinekink 2009 event. Here’s a synopsis of Matinee from Cinekink

Actors Mariah and Daniel play lovers every night, but their onstage romance lacks spark. One slow afternoon, they discover that today’s matinée performance will make or break both of their careers. Daniel wants to make big changes, and Mariah starts to wonder: are Daniel’s suggestions reasonable? Or has he lost track of the boundary between actor and character? Rushed to the stage, in front of a live audience, they must figure it out together.

They said it here.

I came in late and, because the room was very crowded, I didn’t stay long. And so I don’t know much about the premise or plot. But the one sex scene I saw was in my opinion a real eye-opener.

The female lead leads! Every step of the way she’s the active party. The point of view focuses on both of them but she’s the one doing the foreplay, stroking him hard, eating him, unwrapping the condom, pulling him toward her, guiding him into her. Even when he’s on top she’s actively moving up against him as much as he’s moving into her.

They separate before either of them come. She climbs on top of him. He holds himself this time, but more to hold himself steady as engulfs him. Once they’re joined he leans back and she moves. As she gets more excited she reaches down and rolls her own clitoris.

Again they stop before either of them come. She rolls back. Their hands join over her vulva. He strokes her to a well-acted but persuasive rather than porn/theatrical orgasm. Rather than jump to the next scene there’s a really nice enactment of the pause for “aftershock” care.

There were a lot of highly non-vanilla people present and I didn’t think the film was well received (they may have just been really rowdy, or else perhaps the into scenes, which I didn’t see, were unbearably hokey.) But I thought from a gender-role perspective its hetero/vanilla veneer made it all the more transgressive. She put the condom on him even before she began to eat him. The pace and tempo was in regular-intercourse tempo rather than the conventional hyper-porn bippity-bippity-bip pace that, I think, is pitched more for the tempo of male masturbation. There was no money shot. No calling anyone a bitch or grimacing out “give me your fat rutabaga you big stud.” At least while I was there she came and he didn’t. In fact except that there was nudity, PIV penetration, and couple of porn-style moans and groans it missed most of the tropes I remember driving me to give up on video porn.

That last bit is kind of interesting: any bumpkin in porn can cough out a money shot, and many do. The standard routine is, roughly, that the director gets all the shots he or she needs, all the positions, acts, and angles, and then they stop everything re-arrange the shoot, and the actor stands or kneels and quickly wanks out an ejaculation. Usually on somebody else’s body or face. Whee! Just how I always want to finish when I have sex (but, to be fair, it probably helps the target-male customer identify since at that point he’s probably masturbating too.) What’s different about Matinee is that she has the “money shot” using only his hands — considerably more difficult even for porn actresses to produce in male actors (given how rarely they do it instead of him.)

An important point that I probably wouldn’t have picked up on if I hadn’t been watching with other, perhaps more porn-savvy viewers: I get the impression is more of a masturbation aid than representative sex. And so, I think, maybe the stylized, 7-minute naked-step-aerobics of “real” porn is more effective for people who use it to get off than the stuff regular people do. (Sort of like you might enjoy seeing a whole top-chef episode worth of effort to prepare your meal even though you probably wouldn’t want to cook under that kind of pressure yourself every evening.

But by and large? Although personally I like a little more turn-taking when I have sex it was all in all the kind of slow comfortable, cuddly, orgasmic screw I’d thoroughly enjoy spending a matinee-long afternoon doing with a partner.

Anyway, cool scene in what looked like a cool movie. (The Cinekink jury evidently agreed. They gave Matinee the award for best narrative short.

Apples, Oranges, Nutritional Supplements, and Porn

Tue, 2009-03-10 09:55 — figleaf

Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors, posted last week about that zip-code study that strongly correlated online porn consumption and conservative voting practices. It’s pretty clear from her analysis not that she sees porn differently from a lot of progressives who accept porn but what she sees that’s different.

She first ruminates on what kind of porn people in red-state zip codes tend to view (hint: not anything Tony Comstock, Rachel Kramer Bussel or Violet Blue produce or review.) And then reflects on what kind of people produce and sell porn for red-staters.

...no doubt y’all will be shocked, absolutely shocked, to read that in terms of online advertising methods, pornographers behave like evil, unethical jerks…

From the study**:

Some marketing partners engage in unlawful advertising practices, creating possible liability for the providers they promote. Federal Trade Commission regulations (16 C.F.R. Part 316) require that all unsolicited “sexually oriented” emails contain the label “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT” in their subject lines. Furthermore, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 makes advertisers liable for unsolicited commercial email sent by their marketing partners. The FTC has brought suit to enjoin unlabeled explicit emails and to penalize content providers’ whose affiliates send such emails (for example, United States v. APC Entertainment, FTC File No. 052-3043).

Other marketing partners use expired or misspelled web addresses to present adult materials without a user’s request. For example, in 2002, I uncovered Domain Strategy, a Montreal firm that registered domain names after their prior registrants failed to pay for renewals. I reported more than 4,500 affected domains, including bicyclebills.com (previously a Boston bicycle repair shop), ridgefieldhighschool.com, and savannah-bbb.org. Users requested these web addresses in hopes of receiving the content previously available at the specified sites. Instead, Domain Strategy showed explicit images and promoted adult websites via affiliate links.

She said it here.

I think this is a pretty important point when pondering what, exactly, people mean when they talk about the merits or demerits of porn. I’m guessing everyone you know agrees that vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements are ok — somewhere between at best really good for you and, at worst, the placebo effect. But then I’m also guessing everyone you know doesn’t get their information about supplements… let alone their supplies... from spam and spam-driven websites.

To the best of my knowledge neither, say, Rachel Kramer Bussel, nor Mr. and Mrs. Comstock, nor the photographers, models, agencies, nor sites linked to by Violet Blue and Vivian, nor any of the nearly 1000 amateur, non-commercial shared- and self-photographing participants of Half-Nekkid Thursday likely to rely on misspellings of children’s television programming to put their work in front of other people’s eyes. But then… neither are their intent nor their content similar to those who do.

Point being that unless one is willing to be extremely dogmatic (not that there’s… necessarily anything wrong with that) one probably can’t be clear, at all, about one’s position on porn… or about someone else’s… if they’re not clear about the nature of the source, the nature of the content, and the nature of the consumer.

[A PDF called, entertainingly enough, “Red Light States!” —fl]

(Caveat: Today’s “Continue reading…” image is less suitable for work.”)

Possibly Dumb Question About Pornography

Tue, 2009-02-03 17:51 — figleaf

Is there a difference between pornography and photos of self-determined, non-coerced adults, alone or in combination with other self-determined and non-coerced adults, in sexual situations who are knowingly photographed and aware the photos will be published for others to see?

Sounds dumb I know, but I get the impression sometimes that when opponents, particularly on the left side of the aisle, say “pornography” they mean only depictions of coerced, exploited people.

If that’s what they mean then cool, I’m with ‘em and so is every other right-minded person. And it would be nice if the distinction was made more clearly and more often.

If it means more than that? Eh, you probably shouldn’t click “Continue Reading…” below.

Is Sex Ed a "Good" Form of Pornograhy?

Sun, 2009-01-25 18:33 — figleaf

Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors says

I’ve written before that pornography is not necessarily a good form of sex ed. Depends on the porn, in theory.  To me, this much is clear: when porn embraces abuse, degradation, humiliation, torture, that’s not sex ed.  

Consider the question’s flip side: is sex ed a “good” form of pornography? Depends on the sex-ed, I suppose.  I’m reserving judgment for now, but I appreciate the well-done Cherry TV website (subtitle: “Juicy Talk for Women”) for its lively, informative discussions.  It’s far less how-to-please-your-man than Cosmo, and infinitely more interesting than those sex ed films I remember from the 1970s.

She said it here.

See also Holly of The Pervocracy’s discussion of biology texts vs romantic porn in Anything’s wankable when you’re 13. And like Holly I too was far more aroused by the at least nominally (and usually actually) medical/psychological/anthropological references I found on a high shelf than by intentionally pornographic materials I also found such as books of Beardsley prints and the Victorian “The Pearl.”

Which, when you think about it, makes a ton of sense. Porn has a tendency to exaggerate regular sex. Sex-ed manuals have a tendency to show you how to have sex in the first place! Mainstream/industrial porn remains reluctant to leave its Victorian-era roots of guilt, transgression, and resentment. Sex-ed has a tendency to assume sex is healthy, normal, and most important, not so scarce it’s more likely to happen with a stranger on an elevator than with a partner at home. :-)

And finally? Before I had sex with anyone I cheerfully masturbated through the occasional Victorian novel by “anonymous” but I wore out the pages… and myself… on academic works like Masters and Johnson, pop-sexology books like The Sensuous Couple, and the original and then-totally-groundbreaking The Joy of Sex.

As Holly put it

“Among both sexes, the excitement phase results in an increase in heart rate (tachycardia), an increase in breathing rate, and a rise in blood pressure. An erection of the nipples, especially upon direct stimulation, will occur in nearly all females and approximately 60% of males.”

Mmmm

“During the plateau phase, the male urinary bladder closes (so as to prevent urine from mixing with semen, and guard against retrograde ejaculation) and muscles at the base of the penis begin a steady rhythmic contraction. Males may start to secrete seminal fluid and the testicles rise closer to the body.”

OH BABY OH WOW

“Orgasm is the conclusion of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, and is experienced by both males and females. It is accompanied by quick cycles of muscle contraction in the lower pelvic muscles, which surround both the anus and the primary sexual organs. Women also experience uterine and vaginal contractions. “

OH YEAH OH YEAH OHMYGODOHMYGODDDD

Yeah.

Ditto that yeah.

But ditto also when she says

The upshot is that I accidentally became very well educated on sexual anatomy and physiology at a very young age. Not just the obvious parts; being a very thorough reader and rereading the same three pages for months, I learned all the little internal bits with Latin names as well.

Cherry.tv, by the way, really is a cool resource — one that should have been in my blogroll for months (it’s there now.) Its video-style panel-discussion format of mostly young, mostly professional and academic women is perfectly straightforward education today, but attempting anything like that the year the now utterly fusty old Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex came out would have landed all of them in jail on obscenity charges. (Goodness! They don’t just admit having clitorises or knowing about penises, they admit touching them!)

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