Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography (3/10)

"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele." - Bagdikian's Observation

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Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography / David Loftus


The Image of Men in Pornography

"“They always had a kind of sleazy look about them, always needed a shave,” recalled a 53-year-old who saw 8mm black-and-white films at Idaho Jaycees “smokers” in the early 1960s as well as the first mass-market porn movies of the mid-1970s... A philosophy scholar in France said, “In the late seventies, they were mostly ugly and often looked like bums.”

Several men suggested the unappealing appearance of the men ruined the viewer’s ability to believe in the sex: “Some men in porn are criminally unattractive and it defeats the willing suspension of disbelief: Why is this gorgeous woman having sex with this jerk???” The men struck another viewer as “always ugly, or heavy set” so “I really couldn’t fathom the thought that these lovely ladies were having casual sex with the gross guys.” A third called the men “butt-ugly” and concluded, Those women must be miserable...

'In still shots, the men always seemed sort of phony and posed, with stupid looks on their faces,” wrote another man, adding that “I find with porn specifically (and with any sort of modeling or fashion photography in general), the models usually seem to have the most unappealing expressions, sort of the ‘You killed my dog; now I’m going to have to kill you’ look.'.

An Australian programmer/analyst agreed: “They often don’t seem to be enjoying it much. Also, many of the guys in videos seem to be a bit limp even when they’re supposed to be hard.”

This fact also struck another man as odd:

'I’ve seen so many videos in which the people take their clothes off, and the man still is not fully erect. The woman spends time getting him hard with her hands and mouth. This is nothing like my experience—by the time my clothes came off in most of my sexual encounters, I was hard as a rock. I wonder if having done it over and over for cameras has made sex with almost anybody less exciting for them. Bottom line: it’s unrealistic and it’s a distraction that takes my mind out of the fantasy.'

One man pondered the emotional state of such men:

'They all seem so empty. I’ve found the men a real big turn-off at times. And it’s not really a competition thing for me. It’s not that I identify them as competition and don’t want them in the picture. It’s that I know there is a lot more to being sexy than just having a big dick and keeping it up for an hour. Most of the men in porn lack any kind of subtlety or expression of desire other than grabbing the nearest vagina and sticking it in.'

Some men said the males in pornography were less intelligent or interesting than the females. “The guys were usually dumber than the males,” one man noted. “Most of their roles are so shallow that they ould easily be replaced by dildos,” said another; “Roles for actresses tend to be considerably deeper than those for actors in pornography— though that really isn’t saying much.”

“In general their purpose seemed to be to demonstrate how good the female was,” wrote a 27-year-old married chemical engineer. He added they seemed “devoid of any character or personality, almost like a person who was asleep or drugged or at work, who could do nothing except have sex.”...

John Stoltenberg, a gay antiporn collaborator of Dworkin’s, wrote, “Male supremacist sexuality is important to pornography, and pornography is important to male supremacy. . . . Your penis is a weapon, her body is your target. . . . Because men are masters, women are slaves; men are superior, women are subordinate; men are real, women are objects; men are sex machines, women are sluts.” But not one of the men I talked to said pornography made him believe “that we are just like the
in pornography: virile, strong, tough, maybe cruel,” or that “women want to be raped, enjoy being damaged by us, deserve to be punished,” as Stoltenberg ridiculously asserts."


How Men Use Pornography

"Opponents of pornography routinely assume men use it only to aid misturbation. In Only Words, MacKinnon writes, “Pornography is masturbation material,” and adds this “is an empirical observation,” as if she had actually studied men doing it.

But quite a few other men indicated that MacKinnon’s “empirical observation doesn’t always hold. A 28-year-old editor/publisher, married seven years, who said “most of the time when I look at porn I do not masturbate at all,” explained: “I have on occasion used it with friends as an element of foreplay, and I have also used magazines such is Playboy to demonstrate poses when taking my own pictures.” The latter consisted of “personal pictures we [his wife and he] have taken for our own pleasure, or perhaps something to give to a close girlfriend of my wife.”

A 42-year-old electronic publishing specialist in his second marriage said, “I sometimes look at erotic materials without any intent of arousing myself to orgasm, but this is because I have developed an intellectual interest in the subject.” [Ed: HAHAHAHAHA]...

A corporate manager said after using porn, he felt “ready to go on to something something else, like playing the piano. Music and sex, what else is there?”...

[A] 35-year-old, a married programmer, described his response thus:

'When I use magazines, particularly bondage magazines, I often find that I feel a little bit stupid about the whole thing after I cum. I think what happens is that the magazine starts to deconstruct itself in my hands. Before I cum, I’m wrapped up in my sexual response to the women I’m looking at. After I cum, my sexual response fades, and I’m left with just the women. And then they’re not women, they’re just pictures of women. And then it’s not pictures, it’s just little dots of color on the pages of a magazine. And finally it’s not even a magazine, it’s just an object in my hands. And I paid $8 for it. How stupid. I’m happy to report that this doesn’t happen after I’ve been looking at porn on my computer. I suspect this is because there is no persisting object to deconstruct itself after I cum. Close the window, exit the program, and there’s nothing left.'...


Sharing Porn with Others

"If the story of pornography is men exercising control nver women, then it would make sense if, as adults, men gathered to enjoy the experience and direct one another toward the choicest bits of female humiliation and degradation.

However, half of the heterosexual men in the survey said they never even discussed pornography with other men, let alone perused it in their company...

“Many of the frats would hold Saturday night showings of porn flicks as a way to raise money for the house,” a married science teacher said. [Ed: New idea for Hall Inmates!]...

The most surprising finding about the shared use of porn with a spouse or lover was that just as many men said their wife or girlfriend was totally supportive of their use of pornography as those who said their significant other absolutely hated it...

Several men had seen Playgirl magazines among a lover’s possessions. “My last girlfriend and I actively enjoyed reading erotic materials together and watching videos together,” recalled a 24-year-old audio engineer. “A few actually surprised me,” a Bangladeshi man said. “The didn’t seem the type. You could imagine the expression on my face when this quiet, shy woman pulls out a 12” dildo and a bunch of Playgirl magazines.”...

Many men felt romance novels constituted female pornography. The largest consumers of porn are women, and the best-selling porn genre is written for them,” a 49-year-old British man declared. He asserted further that force is used in this women’s genre more often than in male pornography. “It’s called ‘romance,’ but usually referred to as 'bodice rippers.' The prevalence of rape fantasies in this literature has often been remarked upon. That doesn’t worry me; in fact, it’s a useful thing to cite when hypocritical feminists attack men’s pornography.”

Another Englishman ventured the opinion that “many women are interested in porn and much of what I have recently read in ‘women’s magazines’ is very sexually explicit. I know that recently a U.K. women’s magazine got rid of naked centerfolds because women were not interested in them without erections!”...

'I’d never admitted using pornography to any other girlfriend until my present one. Originally she was rather perturbed by the thought that I needed a magazine to get satisfaction. She felt inadequate and jealous that I would be giving my thoughts to a picture. She finds mental images much more satisfying and hence has trouble understanding why I would need a picture. After some very long and open conversations, I finally got her to realize that I have no kind of mental attraction towards these women. I merely use it as a visual stimulus for masturbation; I have sexual urges and pornography helps satisfy them. While she thinks of the magazines as being very pathetic, she no longer feels jealous or inadequate—it’s just a pathetic guy thing she has to put up with.'...

Of all these examples—men whose partners enjoyed sharing pornography, men whose partners were not as interested but sometimes shared porn use for the man’s sake, and men whose partners tried it once or twice and indicated they did not want to anymore—none conforms to the scenario depicted by opponents of pornography, in which men routinely cajole women into unhappy viewings of porn and force sex acts upon their partners after seeing them portrayed. In nearly all the relationships described by men in this survey, both partners sought to be considerate and discreet...

There are even gay men who accept antiporn ideology, though none that I talked to. A 32-year-old graduate student in the social sciences reported:

'Once in a while, I will take home a guy who believes the Dworkinite crap (not to insult coprophiles with the comparison) about how porn is degrading, un-PC, etc. I try to explain the importance of porn in gay male culture, and how homophobic the antiporn 'feminists' really are. I talk about how antiporn laws have the effect of facilitating government repression of gays - specifically those who are marginalized and most defenseless: rural gays. I cite the ways the Dworkin/MacKinnion legislation in Canada has resulted in confiscations of gay and lesbian political literature by customs. And that I like porn.' [Ed: In a previous chapter, it was revealed that porn is extremely important in helping gays discover their sexuality, and thus to be antiporn is to be antigay.]"