happy (and not so happy) porn
Wed Mar 14, 2007
Yesterday in the car, Elliott and I were discussing porn on the way into Seattle. Basically, he’d looked at some videos and watched some content that squicked him enough that he just had to share. I won’t get into exactly what, except that it violated every tenet of safer sex, and was basically just sorta yucky.
At any rate, we were talking about where that kind of porn came from, and why it is that it’s so difficult to find porn in which the woman (if it’s M/F sex) is actually getting off. Because in my experience, most men consider it pretty damn hot to watch a woman have an orgasm. I know Elliott enjoys that in porn, if he’s looking at porn, and definitely enjoys that in private. (and yes, I’m a lucky lucky girl to have that be my love’s big turn-on.) I also believe it’s got to be a wide spread thing, because otherwise adult personals wouldn’t be so filled with men looking for women to pleasure orally. I swear to you that has to be at least half of the men seeking ads, or at least it was when last I read such things a few years ago.
So why is it then that mainstream porn still has such a hard time breaking out of the “once the man comes it’s all over and who cares about the woman’s pleasure” box? I mean yes, there are notable exceptions. And if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the performers who are winning at the AVN awards the last couple of years have been female porn stars who actually ARE happily appearing to have massive orgasms for the camera. Like Chloe, or Tristan Taormino, or Cytherea?
I guess what it comes down to for me is that I wish ALL porn, regardless of it’s orientation or kink, had a focus on everyone in it having a good time. It can be done, it is done in almost every genre by at least a few people. But the extent to which it’s NOT done in mainstream het-oriented porn is one of the things that gives het guys a bad name. Being married to a thoughtful and wonderful het man, I think it’s a shame that so much of what is available to porn consumers shows men in a particularly unflattering light.
~Jane
March 14th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
This looks like an excellent point. At least
there can be acting like an orgasm has occurred. Now it looks like it is not cool to have a woman in orgasm on video – wrong, wrong, wrong, in my view. If every het sex scene had in the script roughly balanced male and female orgasms, with the female o realistically portrayed (meaning 80% not caused just by penis in vagina), then things would be lots more interesting and balanced. How hard is that?
March 15th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I think there are SO many arenas to touch on when it comes to answering this question. It’s a big one, but you probably know that.
From what the experience of the women involved in making the porn is (and what their lives are like outside that: bear in mind HOW many women in the world still rarely reach orgasm or experience real pleasure of their own in sex); to who is directing and what their agenda is; to how for some, porn is for masturbation and masturbation is — again, for some, though I’m inclined to say many when we’re talking about men and how a lot of men are conditioned — the sexual time when you are only self-concerned/how desires in porn don’t always and often don’t correlate to desires per partnered sex; to what segments of what populace are being served; to how women’s sexuality and pleasure is still so invisible culturally, period, and of course, to what the differences are in fantasy and reality….
…big question. Lotsa answers. :)
Of course, the hard answer is that porn is a supply-and-demand business like any other, as you know. So if these approaches did NOT work for most folks who buy it, the people making it for the purposes of profit would clearly make changes because that profit is their previaling interest.
But again, you know that already.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Porn is a supply and demand business, but what I think should be noted is that pre-internet porn was much worse because nobody took the trouble to find out what was wanted – consumers took what they were given. Otherwise there would never have been such a boom in “alternative” content of one kind or another, from the most obscure fetishes to GLBT to regular looking men and women instead of models.
So… I think there IS a demand for it, it’s just that the status quo is so much easier to find.