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posts about #womenandpornography more → 
Why Don't Women Watch More Porn?
Women Have A Complex Relationship With Porn
New York, 4:19 AM
Sat Nov 28
29 posts in the last 24 hours
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Why Don't Women Watch More Porn? |
Women Have A Complex Relationship With Porn |
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07/27/09
07/26/09
These people almost never smile.
So clearly, I'm not using porn as a model for my own sex life, because I tend to smile, and also look my partner in the eyes.
I have found one or two films that are rather good, a few reliably good actors, but still despair that for the most part porn is filled with ugly men fucking artificially enhanced women. That is not to say that I can't get off to it, if I don't think too much about it.
07/26/09
Also, the very acts being performed are more geared to what guys want. Almost 100% of what porn I see features endless BJs and women being jerked off on at the end. The guys may think that's the best thing ever, but it's not doing much for me.
07/25/09
07/25/09
I don't like the images and values that I feel a lot of porn promotes (plastic surgery, name-calling, coming on people's faces, poor sex technique, complete loss of sense of reality). Too many men and women use it as their educational tools, without talking with their partners.
I have no problem with the idea of porn - watching 1+ people have sex is totally fine by me. Morally, I don't care, but I worry about the framework of how the sex workers got there. Especially if it's from certain areas of the world where sex trafficking is common.
I usually read "erotic" comics, because then I am certain no one has been trafficked, and I can usually find something that appeals to me beyond the gonzo porn. I recently read a comic that had no dialogue at all and I thought it was both very sexy and fun to read. I hate pretty much any word we use for genitals (I won't use the word "cock", "dick", "pussy", "vajayjay" or any other slangish term. It's straight-up "penis", "vagina", "vulva". Which can be a mood-killer and it's embarrassing anyway), so I hate reading things like the things they say in so many porn films.
Wow, this is a ramble and I will stop. I just feel like there's so little to enjoy in mainstream porn, and that "alt" porn is really just the same thing with dyed hair and piercings (at least, that's what I've seen).
07/25/09
Like you, I also highly dislike genital slang, and used penis and vagina up until five years ago. Now I use penis and cunt. Vagina in Latin means "sheath"; as in a sheath for a sword. Hmmm... after I learned that, I could not use the word vagina anymore. This led me to research etymologies of sex, which led me to a nice librarian who recommended "Cunt" to me by Inga Muscio, in which one of the points she stresses is the very liberation of that word.
On the topic of erotic graphic novels: have you read "Lost Girls" by Alan Moore and Melinda Gibbons? I found it a great blend of storytelling. I wish they would team up, darken their pallate a little land illustrate "The Story of O"! Or "Pamela"....
Oh, it's time for a vegan cupcake!
: )
07/24/09
IMO, you're kind of missing the boat here. In a lot of today's porn, it's simply a question of physical comfort and health. The women in porn often engage in acts that are just fucking painful. The men do not engage in these acts. The bottom line is that, despite what female performers say, straight porn is made by men and for men. Of course women don't enjoy it! Gay porn is kind of a red herring. I admittedly don't know anything about the dynamics of a gay sexual relationship (and I don't want to assume it plays out in a way comparable to hetero ones), but in straight porn, the woman is never a peer. Unless one of the players in a gay film is overtly Tier 2, the comparison just doesn't work. There may be some women who are genuinely just into kinky sex and who also get a kick out of being filmed, but "agency" is not a word that generally applies to anything to do with the sex industry. The reality is that women who have choices do not choose to be in porn.
Shauna Grant's suicide has been rewritten as a tragedy of what happens when an openly sexual being is "held down" by a repressive society. Shauna, one of the first real porn stars, was raped as a child. She returned to LA, the scene of that crime and engaged in rape-on-film because she didn't think she deserved to live a better life. She shot herself at 20. This is the legacy of the porn industry. No, it's not fucking empowering.
07/24/09
07/24/09
I'm not sure if it's just that I haven't found the "right" porn, or if it's just not my thing. I'm more of an exhibitionist than a voyeur, and I wonder if one needs to have voyeuristic leanings to fully enjoy porn.
07/24/09
interesting that girls being aroused by porn is considered a negative thing...
08/03/09
I'm on porn overload, obviously.
07/24/09
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07/24/09
07/24/09
07/24/09
07/24/09
This makes perfect sense for porn aimed at heterosexual men, but it makes it difficult for a heterosexual woman to enjoy.
Close-ups do nothing for me.
07/24/09
07/25/09
07/24/09
What I generally don't enjoy, however, is stuff that's considered "mainstream"--and what many people immediately imagine when they think of porn. I don't like fake tits (except in the very rare circumstances where they're well done), I don't like overly made up women with big blond hair, I don't like fake girl-on-girl. However, there's a *lot* of porn out there that's *not* that, and that's worth looking for if you're willing to put in the effort. (Granted, this is easy for me to say, given that watching porn is, ahem, my job.)
One caveat: I consider myself queer, and though I like men, I'm predominantly attracted to women, which makes watching porn directed towards hetero men more enjoyable for me than it might be for predominantly hetero ladies.
That said: things that I really, really like: "Champion," the tale of a lesbian MMA fighter and her various conquests (starring my friend Syd Blakovich, who's this gorgeous butch girl who's starting to work in the mainstream porn industry); "Hardcore Circus," directed by Erica McLean (lots of sex in a fantasy circus); and Tristan Taormino's "Rough Sex," a series built around the rough sex fantasies of the female stars (who pick their co-stars--who are, IMO, hot men).
I am happy to suggest porns to any ladies who wish to email me.
07/24/09
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07/26/09
07/26/09
07/24/09
The reason I don't watch porn is because why the hell would anyone who actually likes sex and/or people watch porn? Having sex commodified, packaged and sold to me by some corporation doesn't appeal, thanks. This has nothing to do with being a woman, and everything to do with being a human.
Asking "Why don't women watch more porn?" frames the question through a patriarchal lens, assuming men get to set the behavioural standard and anything women do differently is defective. That question is, therefore, inherently antifeminist. A better question would be: "Why is not watching porn now considered abnormal?"
07/24/09
07/24/09
07/24/09
Also, bring back the retrobush.
07/26/09