Here at Boinkology, we’re fans of porn — hell, you might even go so far as to call us proponents of porn. Maybe it’s cause we like looking at naked people, maybe it’s because we like looking at sex faces, maybe it’s because we think sex is a wonderful, beautiful thing that’s great to look at.
Or maybe it’s because we’re just a bunch of pervs.
Whatever the reason, we like porn: and more often than not, that means we find ourselves getting into debates where we have to defend porn. “Doesn’t porn degrade women?” we’re often asked. Doesn’t it cheapen sex? Hasn’t it ruined fucking for all the normals out there?
Well, in a word, no.
We could (and often do) talk about this for hours, but we’ll spare you the grad level discussion and just hit on a couple important points.
1) Porn is just pictures of sex. Or pictures of naked people, or erotically themed photos that send the blood rushing to your genitals. Regardless, porn is simply a genre — one that can include many different things. Yes, violent films full of rape and facials and women being abused count as porn. So do tender, loving films that are heavy on plot, have no external come shots, and are, for want of a better phrase, “woman friendly.”
If it’s got naked people and it gets you going, it’s porn — and within that category, there’s a lot of range. To make broad generalizations about such a diverse medium is ignorant at best. To say that porn degrades women is ultimately to say that the act of sex degrades women — but we’ll get to that in a moment.
2) Sex is ruined by the fact that women are taught to view themselves as passive objects, rather than active participants. Women get fucked. Men fuck them. Men perform sex on women — or so we are taught. Women are raised to see themselves as gatekeepers, as the ones who set the pace, who slow things down, who keep men from being overwhelmed by their raging libidos.
Women are not taught to say yes. Women are not taught to ask for what they want, to think about what they want, to be active, engaged participants who enthusiastically pursue the things that turn them on, the things that get them off.
No, women are taught that sex is something that is done to them: and if sex is something done to you, then of course it’s degrading. And if sex is fundamentally degrading, then porn is fundamentally degrading — but really, it all ties back to how we view sex and sexuality.
3) A sex-negative society ruins sex. Imagine, for a moment, that we lived in a world where sex was not viewed as dirty or taboo. Imagine a world where sex is viewed as a pleasurable, special activity that’s wonderful and enjoyable for everyone — that sex is something we’re all capable of asking for, of discussing, of pursuing however we choose to pursue it.
Now imagine someone saying that images of this wonderful, enjoyable activity have somehow destroyed said activity: that the mere act of committing it to film has made it degrading, disgusting, and wrong.
You see where we’re going with this, right?
It’s not porn that ruins sex. It’s not porn that makes sex bad or unpleasurable. It’s our inability to discuss sex, our inability to ask for the sex that we want, our deeply ingrained shame about sex.
Porn hasn’t ruined sex at all. We, as a society, have ruined sex — and, perhaps by extension, we’ve ruined porn as well.
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Comments
Amen! A long time ago, when I spent about 15 minutes studying to be a priest, we learned that St. Paul was most likely impotent. His resulting bitterness toward sex became Christian dogma.
Sixteen hundred years later, about the only people who still believed St. Paul’s teachings about sex were the Puritans, who wanted to enforce their sex-negative message in the society in which they lived. They were kicked out of every decent country in Europe as a result.
So they came to the wilderness of America, where they could lay down the law and make sex bad once again.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:24 amI said something very similar a few months ago on Dethroner, and I still have crazy women coming by to talk about how finding their SO’s porn stash made them realize what a piece of a shit he was. http://dethroner.com/2007/08/01/im-still-not-back-but-naomi-wolf-forced-my-porn-clawed-hand/
December 13th, 2007 at 2:22 pmJoel:
That piece is awesome.
Personally, I’ve never felt threatened by porn or porn stars. But then, I’ve also never seen masturbation as in competition with sex, either.
December 13th, 2007 at 2:37 pmThat was incredibly succinct and well-written. Kudos.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:28 pmI’d like to point out that when the Puritans came to America, the other immigrants thought they were nuts as well, and ran them out of town. America was not started by Puritans, the idea that is was is a common misconception.
December 14th, 2007 at 12:53 pmI just disagree. I don’t like porn. I’m not turned on that way. I DO think it ruins sex. Doesn’t mean I’m a prude. Or maybe it does, I don’t know. I don’t exactly think it’s wrong for other people to like it…but I wouldn’t want to date someone who did. They say it isn’t infidelity, but I think it is–people are doing things for the express purpose of getting you sexually aroused and well, you’re getting sexually aroused, and probably touching yourself. So it’s a sexual act with someone other than your partner or whatever. Equals infidelity.
Also, our society IS sex-positive. But maybe I just get that impression because I spend so much time on the internet. You act like everyone is against your opinion, but I think they’re really against mine.
…I hate porn
January 7th, 2008 at 3:34 amEmily:
You don’t have to personally like porn and you have a right to see watching porn as infidelity (we all have the right to decide for ourselves what infidelity is).
But I’m hard pressed to agree with you that we live in a sex-positive society. The mere fact that our government only funds sex education that stresses abstaining over any actual information seems to disprove your assumption.
January 7th, 2008 at 9:07 amI have never understood why certain women are so intimidated/disgusted by the idea of their spouses or boyfriends looking at porn. Emily and others certainly have a right to their opinion, but I simply don’t understand their “hatred” of porn, or their belief that it constitutes some form of infidelity. So long as the porn involved isn’t kiddy porn, or porn of women being physically harmed, or something truly horrific, why should I care if my boyfriend watches a porn movie or looks at a copy of hustler or even goes to a strip club once and a while? I have a strictly look but don’t touch policy myself. I don’t care if he occasionally likes to watch other attractive women just so long as he isn’t physically or emotionally involved with them. Besides if looking at an occasional porn movie makes your SO happy, keeps them from feel bored or hemmed in, doesn’t that actually benefit the relationship in the end? After all, a happy SO is less likely to have a genuine affair.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:13 pmLeave a reply :