sexual stuntpeople
Thu Sep 13, 2007
I slept horribly last night, mostly because I am getting too old to have a margarita with dinner without repercussions. Something about tequila, even in small doses, hurts me. Practically every time I woke up it was in the midst of a sex dream, thanks to starting to review Kink.com’s Sex and Submission website yesterday. Not all of their sites are exactly my cup of tea because kink is such a personal thing. But I love that their whole company seems to be comprised of people really into the things they are doing, with some knowledge and experience and sensitivity to go along with it. It makes for a much hotter viewing experience than some of the bdsm schlock on your average mainstream porn site.
During one of these wakeups that was particularly long, I was pondering the nature of adult entertainment, and some of it’s criticisms. One of the big ones that I hear is that with the internet being (as the musical Avenue Q so rightly points out) ‘for porn’, young adults are today getting their idea of what sex is like from the porn industry. After some middle-of-the-night mulling though, that just doesn’t seem all that fair a criticism to me. We’re talking about entertainment, not reality. Just like you wouldn’t get an idea of what really being a cop is like from watching Law & Order, or what being a doctor is really like from watching House. The whole medium of entertainment requires more action, more drama. So while it might be fantasy material for some to watch a gangbang, that doesn’t really translate to regular gangbangs in one’s personal life, or even the expectation or desire for such. I have to think that even if youngish people (let’s say college age) are getting their sexual education from porn, that once they start to get any real LIFE sexual education they’re going to figure out that it’s not - um - what they’ve been jacking off to.
The other thing I hear sometimes is that mainstream porn sets up unhealthy expectations of body attractiveness. Well, that’s definitely a criticism that should be leveled at all media as a whole, but I will say that in my experience once people are into someone enough to have sex, they aren’t trying to dissect any tiny body imperfections in their partner. While I may be self-conscious of my c-section scar and the dimpled backs of my thighs, that’s not what Elliott is seeing when he’s doing me. The internet has also been a pretty great equalizer in bringing regular bodies to a medium that before was dominated by airbrushed bunnies.
As I go through some of these websites, I feel a sort of awe and respect for some of the people in them. Like I should thank them for going out on the limb of providing this content for other people to be aroused by, because they’re like really great stuntpeople doing things that most of us (yes, i qualify that with most, having known well - many exceptions) will never do even in our own bedrooms, much less in front of cameras for the eyes of strangers.
~Jane
September 13th, 2007 at 10:22 am
I learned at a young age the truism that Tequila Is It’s Own Punishment, and it appears to be one of those instant recoil quickly occurring things. After a few dramatic instances, I decided not to continually relearn the lesson.
September 13th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
it was one wee margarita. really wee. no hangover, just jacked up and couldn’t sleep. *sigh*
September 13th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
We are on the same wavelength. I posted something today about seeing “real” bodies in group sex situations.
I so love kink.com too. They are the best. I wish they’d hire me as a model. :D
September 14th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Eh, save that you have to consider how life imitates art (or media, more accurately). Especially when you understand that in most young male-female partnerships, it’s more frequently young men taking the lead and writing the script than it is young women, and young women usually acquiesce to whatever the young man wants to do, without speaking very much to their own desires and wants (which, of course, we also see in most het porn).
We’ve had this conversation before, but amoung peer groups and YA communities where a majority of them are seeing loads of porn before having any RL sex experience, the sex they’re having is starting out modeled by porn. And a lot of it is staying that way. Too, when it comes to sexuality, most of us imprint with our earliest experiences in a pretty deep way, so with those for whom all of their initial sexual experiences are pretty porny….well.
(You also have to bear in mind that while it’s easier for adults whose sexual experiences have varied from porn to tell the difference between reality and media, it’s not so easy for the teens, especially since they’re in a generation where from very early on, the lines between reality and media have been very blurred for them. This is a generation who have come of age AFTER the start of reality TV. Too, a lot of porn — as does plenty of other media in any fantasy genre, but with porn, often, I think all the more so — purposefully blurs that line. It rarely bills itself as fiction. Too, their web skills aren’t as savvy as many adults think, and most of them are not finding the indie stuff, and in the case of the young men, they’re usually that interested in seeking alternatives out in the first place.)
I don’t see the gangbang-as-reality so much as I see things like blowjobs as mandatory, facials as an often-given, women being passive as sexy, a total lack of discussion during sex or negotiation before, women needing to be able to reach orgasm without any activity really centered on them, as well as — and I’d say this is what they express most — the young women needing to be sexually available 24/7 and also aroused (or faking it very well) 24/7 for male partners. They also express pretty pervasive pressures for threesomes, and — of course — those in which there are two girls. Women needing to present for sex (lingerie, makeup, etc.) and men not needing to even so much as wash their freaking hands is another biggie.
And for sure, some of these sorts of things are by no means coming JUST from porn, and a lot of them are ALSO coming from television, Hollywood film, etc.. And I’d agree with you: I think the body-image issues, sparing implants and the like, are coming less from porn than from fashion and mainstream media. It’s safe to say that women’s bodies have never been presented realistically in media culture, period. This isn’t new.
I just know there’s a disbelief I can’t suspend because I talk to a lot of kids every day who bring up these kinds of issues without my bringing them up, and discounting what they are saying and expressing doesn’t strike me as apt or fair: I don’t know better than them per what their experiences have been, per how they feel porn is often a real problem in their sex lives and partnerships, etc.
Regardless, I think we’re in the same sort of spot that some of our parents were with say, the strong media messages of the 50’s. In other words, those were pretty forceful messages that were rarely tempered with discussion about them, critique and questioning of them, etc. I think that you also have to consider the fact that for a lot of them, porn (or the word “no”) is their ONLY sex ed, and how then, it might be understood without other messages. In other words, this is a media-saturated culture, and one not friendly to really impressionable minds, or those without some solid critical thinking skills, AND without strong interpersonal skills and esteem. I think if the conversations about it are had, the deconstruction of it is done with them, and the recognition of the fact that it’s NOT some tiny or insignificant thing for them they can easily seperate from reality — or that their partners can — an awful lot of the problems it presents can be relatively easily mitigated.
But not without acknowledging their reality and what, in open discourse, where they don’t feel like they have to give the “right” answer, they have to say about it. I was pretty amazed, even hearing from them as I had, when I did the surveys for the book to see that in the paragraph I asked them to talk about pornography, a majority of them were pretty strongly anti-porn, and not because of concerns about worker exploitation, but because of the way it made them feel, and the impacts they felt it has on them and their sexual lives. THEY have strong criticisms of it, so I’m pretty certain it’s not really fair for any of us adults to dismiss them because our experiences may have been different than theirs, or for any reason, really.
(Sorry, went on a bit there, but I’m saturated in this, every day, from a perspective few people ever even see, especially on a large scale.)
September 17th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
I would add to Heather’s list of what is deemed normal sex for the younger set (10 or 15 years my junior) is aggressive sex - as in choking, face grabbing, gagging, very hard pounding, and hair pulling. Within a certain context and done with skill I think those things can be fine, but without they represent something, in my mind, clearly influenced by porn viewing and not just exploring kink and BDSM.
As someone who has engaged in sex with younger men (avg age) and with friends outside of the sex industry who have done the same - we have found this aggressivity to be surprisingly popular. Condoms are also not brought up as an option by them. Very different from our peers who came of age during the AIDS crisis.
September 17th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Oh and Heather’s last comment made me think of the recent Nerve article about a man who went to look at some porn with his wife and found such aggressive acts and so little pleasure. He wondered what had happened to people smiling during sex.