Make Love Not Porn (2009)
thetyee.ca
thetyee.ca
So, the author starts with an academic study of the sex lives of modern young people, which drew some conclusions that porn is not the devil: "pretty conventional, almost identical to their parents," and "pornography has been demonized and that its effects are negligible." Then, she spends more than a thousand words trying to refute that entirely by anecdotal evidence, capping it off with "porn is having a profound impact on our culture."
I know asking everyone to act like good scientists is too much. But I would like it if people would at least try to act like bad scientists, and selectively use studies that support their predetermined conclusions. What a world, where you strengthen your point by citing only studies that refute it.
Edit: My tone here is a little combative. Sorry, it's not intended as an attack on you.
If it's so hard to study, for example, the climate scientifically, then it must be orders of magnitude harder to study something like the effect of pornography scientifically. I simply don't think it's a scientific question.
That's not to say that the article should be confused for an academic study of any sort, but it's certainly useful insofar as it will encourage some readers to think about a specific aspect of pornography prevalence that they'd never thought of before.
Recently, a facebook group against water fluoration started in my town. A few of my friends being in it, I checked it out, and saw a few things that didn't make sense in their affirmations: bad chemistry, selectively picking facts and misinterpreting them. I made a comment on the group to clarify them and was careful to put myself as neutral and mention some good points.
Well, they promptly deleted my post. I have a hard time understanding why they want to convince people with scare tactics and bad data, when they could do a perfectly credible stand without doing so. My opinion of democracy went significantly down with that. I wish I could refer them to Eliezer and Less Wrong... but I think these people aren't interested in truth.
(The group, if you speak french: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=262927717140&ref=m... )
Sex isn't something that is happening to you, it is something you participate in. So it is your damn fault if it is bad sex. Speak up about what you like, porn related or not.
One friend said she's dreading her boyfriend's upcoming birthday because he views it as his "anything he wants" night. While she doesn't mind dressing up, she's dreading the "porn requests" (she didn't specify what those are, so we can only imagine).
That's not porn that is the problem. What is stopping this lady from simply telling her boyfriend what she does and does not like? And what kind of dysfunctional relationship is this if the boyfriend doesn't get to do "anything he wants" as a matter of course? Why is it a special birthday present for him to receive the satisfaction he obviously needs? Sounds like they're not really such a great match after all and porn is just a scapegoat.
They are saying that too many younger males have had their perspectives skewed by pornography and that something needs to be done about this. Maybe what the boyfriend really wants is something similar to '2 girls 1 cup' and that this want is the result of porn?
I don't know, it just seems the whole thrust of the article is "sex is bad enough, but hardcore sex is even worse, and it's all porn's fault!".
And for what it's worth, myself and pretty much everyone I know have seen our share of pr0n, and I cannot imagine any of us thinking that 2girls1cup-style behaviour is desirable. I mean geeze, talk about the absolute worst example imaginable. Well, except SWAP.avi.
And yeah I'm aware I'm not arguing with you except as a proxy for the site .. ;)
I think the point is less about the mechanics of sexual contact (which is what your more talking about I think) as the interaction and emotional experience.
I watch a lot of pornography in my job; not in a sexual context but in a more abstract have to see the content way. It's quite an eye opener to see so much in an objective way.
In most porn the woman is highly submissive and either pleading for more pleasure or eager to provide sexual favours to the men. I find it hard to disagree with people that say pornography shows people (mostly, but not exclusively, the women) as objects - I do disagree with the conclusions they ultimately draw from that; but if people are emulating what they see as pornography in real life it's not the basis for a healthy relationship.
I have never known a man who was selected against because he was dominant.
Harem attendants where eunuchs for reason. :P
So, where do you find this... not most porn?
There is also a small genre of pornography which shows realistic sex.
I do not agree with you, but that is a very interesting point of view. Never thought it like that. :)
Is it not more reasonable that people watch porn and then adopt the things that they see which appeal to them? If so, then this whole argument is about whether or not people should be allowed exposure to new ideas which they might agree with and adopt into their view of the world (and/or expectations of it).
It's perfectly legitimate (not to mention a fact in 99.99% of relationships by my estimate) for partners to have different needs and wants. And limits. Yes.
Compromises are a way of life for a good couple. Having 'special occasions' is not a bad way to go about these compromises, doing something for your partner you wouldn't want to do on a regular basis, with a nice socially acceptable rhythm to it.
To pick an example at random, I wouldn't buy my jewelry every day (or week, or month), but a couple of times a year for special occasions (birthday, anniversary) are cool.
Wrapping up, if there was an increasing cultural effect making my wife expect (and hint at) increasingly weird and tasteless things that she'd like for her birthday (I'd getting shivers just imagining examples), believe you me I wouldn't be happy about it, and saying no would still not be easy.
BTW: if you comment above was sarcastic and I missed it, consider this comment moot.
I think there's a big difference between buying people whatever they want, whenever they want it, and sexual satisfaction. Of course you do not buy your partner jewellery every day or week. Good jewellery is expensive. And you can only wear so much.
But sexual satisfaction is different. Sex is free. And if the guy is not satisfied in their normal sexual behaviour, and has to wait until his birthday when he can really do all those things he wanted to do the rest of the year - well, I think that is weird and kind of pathological.
So yes in summary, in bed, of course each person in a couple should be able to "do whatever they want". Why wouldn't they? Just like they should be able to talk about whatever they want and watch whatever they want. If they can't do these basic things then .. what's the point of even being a couple?
Everyone should feel fulfilled by sex, but that doesn't mean that the woman should be expected to do depraved sex acts that she's uncomfortable with, just like the man shouldn't be expected to spread rose petals on the bed and sing sonnets each time.
If a woman really wants rose petals/sonnets, she shouldn't have to wait for her birthday to get it. It's hardly an unreasonable request every 1-2 weeks. And if her partner can't give it to her, she should move on.
Sex is a partnership. It's (generally) two people and (generally) one bed. If your sex life isn't to people participating, it isn't sex. The author sounds like she's a 'lays down and take it' kind of 'lover', which gives me the shudders.
Sex is a lot of things, but non-participating in it is IMHO akin to trying to be raped. It's nonsensical, and it IMHO sounds like non-consensual sex. I clearly don't comprehend it, but perhaps that's because when I wasn't even sexually developed I was aware of what sex was supposed to be.
i think it's great that gallop started MakeLoveNotPorn - being aware that both men and women can / should speak up when you like / don't like something is a good first step towards taking responsibility for having a good sex life.
The fact that people seek out porn where sex 'happens' to women and/or adopt it as their point of view says more about society than about porn. Porn is just a scapegoat.
It's the age-old causality question: do men choose porn based on existing sexual preferences, or does porn dictate people's sexual preferences? I'm more inclined to think that it's mostly the former and a bit of the latter.
Both are also frequently made scapegoats and blamed for problems with society at large, be it lack of adequate sex-ed in school, unhealthy gender role models, or deeper, unacknowledged cultural glorifications of violence.
I am so thankful for my girlfriend right now.
Near the end of the piece, she says herself more or less what you say here:
So When Mr. Jackhammer asked, "Does that feel good, baby?" he may well have really been trying. And did I pipe up and say no? I did not. I ran away and never saw him again, prompting a friend to say with a sigh, "Now he's just going to go do that routine to some other poor woman."
For all the sex we watch and all the fancy moves we know and all the people we've ever seen without their pants, sex remains one of the hardest things in the world to speak truthfully about.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/11/01/make_love_like_...
On a related note, I think that a lot of the complaints can be attributed to a kind of pluralistic ignorance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance), where individuals are under mistaken impressions about the preferences and comfort level of their partners. In a sense, this is the flip side of impressionability, where we expect that other people are similarly impressionable.
Of course, everyone I know is reasonably intelligent. In my humble opinion, you'd have to be an incredibly silly person to think commercial porn represents a model to aspire to. Frankly, if she's sleeping with guys in their 20s who act like commercial porn actors, I bet she has pretty poor taste in men.
Sex in porn is reall incredibly different to real life - it takes a level of naievity and, probably, peer pressure to form that sort of impression.
I think it's disingenuous to suggest it's causing these issues for everyone.
Most of the described relationships just sound tucked up generally. The girl who dreads her boyfriends birthday seems as much the victim of her own silence as anything else!
That's why this "porn request" thing is blown to such ridiculous proportion. If the main stream perception of sex was not skewed but rather much more open-minded, this discussion would have been as casual as a discussion about ice cream flavors.
Any boy who thinks like that is a jerk.
especially on behalf of younger women who might mistakenly think they have to put up with the new status quo if they want their guy to put out.
And any girl who thinks like that would be described as an idiot.
Seriously folks anyone who thinks being superior to your own sex partner is manlike and anyone who thinks they should just accept what ever is coming from there's is seriously a wimp.
I don't like articles like that...
I hate to tell you this, but people have very little control over what turns them on and what makes them feel good. A boy isn't a jerk for wanting to give a girl a facial, just as a girl isn't a jerk for enjoying wearing leather and whipping her boyfriend (or vice versa).
What determines if you are a jerk is not what you want, but how you behave in the pursuit of it.
It's long been known (as the root of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) that the order of neurological operations is
Event --leads-to--> Perception of Event --which-leads-to--> Emotion
Some of these neurological responses may have become so ingrained and automatic that they seem "uncontrollable", but they are the results of many smaller controllable choices as to how to perceive a specific event.
It's the same reason why I find something enjoyable that you do not, and you find something attractive while I do not... we've made different choices along the way. It is a clear sign of emotional immaturity to believe that you are not in control of how you perceive events (which in turn creates the emotions you experience)
You are certainly not in control of the events that happen, nor the emotional release, but you can control how you perceive and choose to interpret things.