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Via Jezebel, I see that Violet Blue has written an essay about why women don’t watch more porn that shades into pressuring women who don’t to feel bad about it, as if not enjoying a genre made mostly by men mostly for men makes you a prude. I know that’s not her intention, and maybe it’s just my mood, but I wasn’t really persuaded by her piece, because she breezed over the hard questions, choosing instead to make women who are turned off by porn feel bad about it, like they’re brainwashed by messages about how women are asexual. Continuing to beat back the slim and vanishing minority of feminists who think that non-misogynist porn is impossible is a strategy that’s increasingly reading like a strawman to me, especially when I read stuff like this:
I’ve also heard, plenty of times, that porn degrades women. That argument always makes me wonder about gay male porn, which lots of women appreciate for all its hunky hotties in flagrante. If heterosexual porn degrades women, does gay porn degrade men? What about porn made by women—is that degrading, too?
Why does she think that straight women watch gay porn? Or that there’s a tiny but growing market for feminist porn, enough that there’s an awards show for it? The popularity of gay porn and the growing market for feminist porn aren’t evidence that porn isn’t misogynist, but evidence that women (and straight men who are the main audience for straight feminist porn) are so turned off by the sexism they see in mainstream porn that they seek alternatives. Or some women do, and others just flip off the computer and find other ways to fantasize. The proliferation of alternatives doesn’t do anything to counter the argument that porn degrades women, it seems. It just creates a space to say that it doesn’t necessarily degrade women, which is a statement of possibility, not an observation of what’s really out there.
But women are very capable of avoiding stuff that’s brutally misogynist and indulging stuff that’s sexist, but not so bad that they can’t compartmentalize and enjoy it. That’s true of Hollywood films, music, and I’d argue, in porn. Contrary to what Violet says about the cheesiness and costumes, my experience is that stuff tends to proliferate in porn that’s aimed more for the “couples” audience, and it often is there to signal that this is all in good fun, and viewers won’t be subjected to scenes with violent overtones or name-calling. But even with the availability of stuff that you can kind of guess won’t be overtly misogynist, women still don’t consume as much. Why?
On one hand, that’s like asking why men don’t read more romance novels. You can usually tell when you’re in the intended audience, you know. Women aren’t stupid. But actually, something Violet said got me thinking.
And yet in my research and experience, the biggest roadblock for women (and men) to enjoying explicit imagery is the fear that they don’t “stack up” to the bodies and abilities of the people onscreen. Erotic models and actresses bring up a whole range of adequacy issues, from breast size to weight, from what you look like “down there” to the adult acne we all periodically fight.
And then she chastises us to just get over it, which is distinctly unhelpful. This is sex; why should people force themselves to do things that they find unpleasant when it’s supposed to be fun? Excuse me. Not people. Obviously, we’re talking about women, and it’s easy to chastise women, because our culture constructs sex as something women do for men, and men do for fun. Which actually goes a long way to explaining why porn often leaves women cold.
I recently watched this short video with Mary Roach, and in it she pointed out something that’s so obvious that I think it’s actually easy for people to miss. She talks about how the most effective---but still, sadly ineffective---treatment for women who are having problems getting aroused or having orgasms is to work on helping them unlearn to “perform” sex for men, and start approaching sex like men do, which is something you do for fun. That’s a tall order, of course, since every time you turn around, you get the message that women perform sex and men are the audience. That’s why the blow job is way more a cultural icon than cunnilingus. Women are so worried about being good in bed and making sure to perform like porn stars that they don’t have the mental space left to enjoy their own sensations. So why on earth would porn be arousing to you, if you’re stuck in that mental space? All it does is remind you of your job to perform---my god, the fake orgasm is the centerpiece of it---and worse, it makes you feel bad because you’ll never be as great at playing porn star as real porn stars.
I hate to trot out the term “objectification”, because people really misunderstand what it means, including a lot of feminists who are really fond of it. It doesn’t mean being looked at with lust. It means that your subjective reality is dismissed in pursuit of upholding someone else’s, reducing you to an object. It’s straight from the grammatical terms subject/object. And you can argue until you’re blue in the face that porn reduces all actors to objects, but I’d point out that the fact that male orgasms in porn are real and female orgasms are merely performances would point straight up to whose subjective pleasure is being addressed, and whose internal feelings are less relevant than their performed behaviors.
Really, more people should just suck it up and read The Second Sex, where a lot of these ideas about the Other and objectification and subjectivity really came from. Simone de Beauvoir has an interesting passage where she talks about how not only are women objectified---reduced to sex, housework, and child care providers whose subjective experiences are culturally irrelevant---but how women really learn to objectify themselves. With varying levels of success, women learn to consider their functions to others as their true selves, and not their internal lives. And that kind of self-consciousness can make you able to charm and seduce and please men like nobody’s business, but it can also make it really hard to get in touch with your own self. And sexual pleasure relies strongly on being able to really feel yourself in your body. But for a lot of women, it’s so hard to feel good, because they’re too busy thinking about whether their thighs look fat. It’s hard to come when you’re worried that your O face is going to be ugly and somehow displease the man you’re in bed with. Porn can really exacerbate these issues for women. Sometimes for some women, you can get yourself into a place where you’re able to ignore the fact that those women are working hard, and imagine that this is pleasure and not work, but sometimes it’s just hard to get past the fact that porn is one of the strongest reinforcers out there for the idea that heterosexual sex is a time when men have a good time and women show them that good time, to be tipped later in flowers or something.
Really, that goes a long way to explaining why a lot of women feel there’s a gulf between porn videos and written erotica. Reading is a very subjective experience. Frankly, the more-than-a-grain-of-truth stereotype of the female bookworm exists in part because reading gives women a lot of relief from feeling constantly on display and at service. Reading is all about the internal life of the mind. Since giving your subjective experience some room to breath is an important component to be able to get aroused, then it makes sense that a lot of women would find reading about sex a lot more arousing than watching it on a screen.
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Posted by
Amanda Marcotte on 11:36 AM •
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Fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction. Thank you kindly.
Though gay sex is still the major content of fanfiction, and while I think that some of that is just the plain old two-hot-dudes-for-the-price-of-one thing, I also think it’s because to many women two male bodies read as kind of neutral and equal - one doesn’t start off coded as passive/receptive or active/aggressive.
And then there’s the whole subset that I think is women acting out their issues with sex on “neutral” male bodies. Pretty much every trope that Amanda has decried as being disturbing in male-oriented porn has a fairly popular fanfiction equivalent.
The only place I’ve heard of a large set of women enjoying “gay porn” is in the anime/manga market where they read YAOI, which is male/male romance/erotic fiction written for women. It’s never (or at least very very rarely) referred to as “gay porn” though because it’s very clearly not meant for male consumption. It’s fantasy fiction who’s existence owes a lot to the gender dynamics of Japan, and for some reason it’s crossed into the United States in imports and become quite popular with female fans, with the idea imitated in fanfictions of varying kinds.
But I’ve never heard of this phenomenon translating to women in the US watching actual gay porn with real people, who’s similarity to YAOI begins and ends with the fact that the casts are male.
Years ago, even the racks of paperbacks in drug and grocery stores had a good mix of different books, some of them very good…
These days they all seem filled with almost exclusively romance novels...is this really all that’s being read these days?
I’m sure there are some well written romance novels, but most I’ve tried to read I gave up on...as badly written and not very interesting to me.
This is the smartest thing I’ve read for a long time. In addition to de Beauvoir, I’d recommend John Berger, who wrote about the idea that men look at women, and women look at men looking at women; women are always living outside their own heads, watching themselves from without. You’re exactly right that posture makes orgasm difficult.
I also think it’s because to many women two male bodies read as kind of neutral and equal - one doesn’t start off coded as passive/receptive or active/aggressive.
YES. THIS.
I can read and am very fond of BDSM between two male characters, whereas a male-dom-female-sub heterosexual pairing has to be very specifically written for it not to be upsetting for me. The most seemingly-innocuous things, stuff that’s normal enough in such fiction not to merit a warning, will turn it in my head from consensual to rape and/or abuse of power, and the male character from a desireable lover into a threatening tormentor.
One other thing I’m fond of that seems quite prevalent at least in my chosen fandom, and is very lacking in mainstream porn, is the characters having and showing genuine affection for each other. During sex, in their thoughts and words and actions, they care for each other.
Re: the gay sex being the major hallmark of it, I suspect there is some degree of characterization issues pushing this: more male characters than female characters in a given fandom, and/or the males having better characterization.
My favored fandom is predominantly populated with gender-neutral aliens who are read as male. Thus most of the possible pairings are male/male. Male/female results in fewer available combinations, and female/female, even fewer. Star Wars, for example, generally has one or two female major characters around at a time; ditto Star Trek. And if most of the main characters, the ones given characterization, are male, it becomes even harder.
For an example of what can happen when this issue is removed, Kim Possible features a strong female lead and a strong female antagonist who tend to steal the show, and from what I can see, Kim/Shego is the predominant pairing in that cartoon’s fanfic.
Great post. I keep starting a comment and then decide it’s pretty superfluous. You got it covered. Maybe the only thing I would add is that in the supposedly feminist or woman-centered porn I’ve seen (and I haven’t seen a ton, so maybe I’m not being entirely fair), it still seems like the audience or the gaze is male. Maybe the woman’s orgasm seems more real (but is it really? these are actors and actresses after all) or the scenes are not blatantly misogynistic, but you still get the sense that a woman is performing for men. And I think that in some ways we have internalized the male gaze so much that in visual media, it’s very difficult to not cater to it. Like straight men are supposed to get turned on by watching attractive women, and straight women are supposed to get turned on by watching attractive women. Huh?
I have to say that the advice for women to act more like men in regard to pursuing pleasure is the best advice I’ve ever seen. Women who have wants are much more fun to have sex with than women who want to fulfill my needs. I can get off either way, but for a relationship it’s better to have someone who actually seems to be getting something out of it. Otherwise, masturbation is better. I sometimes think the women who exist to please men have bigger holes between the ears than in other places, and think even less of the men who are attracted to them. I try not to think about how happy such people sometimes seem to be, figuring them to just be unreachable to reason. But if they’re not happy, as many seemingly happy people are in regards to their sex life, the best advice is to seek fun from sex. They generally won’t listen, but it sure is nice when they do.
Why don’t more men read romance novels? I suspect it has a lot to do with both the covers and the prime male character, who is either some baron or captain of industry or wealthy and broodingly handsome and difficult. In other words, to average guys that translates to the mesage that you, slug, are an epic fail.
We certainly give both women and men some mighty confusing messages about who they are supposed to be, and the indoctrination begins in the nursery…
“Sugar and spice and everything nice; that’s what little girls are made of. Snips and snails (or is it nails) and puppy dog tails; that’s what little boys are made of.”
Think about the emotional traps are laid in those words. Girls/women are everything nice (and how many women describe other women this way?) On the one hand, you get acclaim for being good. On the other, God forbid you aren’t nice… or are doing something society at large deems not nice (like enjoying sex). For boys/men, if girls/women are everything nice, what does that leave them? Everything shitty? Bad? As for snails/nails, either we leave a slime trail behind ourselves or we are only good for our usefulness at being hard, pointy and driven into something else.
I could say more, but I’m off to officiate at a wedding!
BTW, this site always has such excellent, provocative posts! Thanks.
All too often mainstream porn springs these thoughts in my mind, “THAT’S not going to bring a woman to orgasm!” or “damn, THAT’S going to cause a raging vaginal infection!”
Hard to become emotionally involved in or sexually satisfied by something neither orgasmic nor safe from disease (and I’m not even discussing the lack of condoms, yet).
Women in mainstream porn also don’t fake orgasms realistically—hell, I’ve done a better job of it than that.
Which makes me believe that even faking the real thing is something the male directors, viewers don’t want—too messy, too much about women’s pleasure?
revrick, being made of snails and puppy dog tails also give you the freedom to not be always nice, to be a jerk sometimes. Little boys and men get the freedom to be the full range of humans. We make a joke about it and pat women and girls on the head, making them feel better that they are “nice”, when the reality is that women and girls are as dirty and mean as boys and men.
Not to mention that the only time I ever notice misogynists talk about women is to either say how hot they are or how gross they are. If a woman is not hot, or perfect, she is disgusting and gross - that is a lot of perfection to live up to, and it is packaged well in that little phrase that we tell to children. Your attempt at threadjacking is pretty weak.
And 3letterjon, I’m so glad that you “prefer” women that feel open enough to express their desires to you. That it pleases you makes me a lot more comfortable… Your comment betrays the fact that you kind of miss the point. Then you come right out and declare that you missed the point when you show your lack of sympathy for the women that don’t, won’t, or can’t express their own desires just have “bigger holes between the ears thank in other places”. Time for you to check your privilege.
Kyra, I’ve heard the argument about canon character balance before, and I don’t disagree with it. At the same time, I think that the reasons why we as a culture think men make better protagonists in action movies and men make better protagonists in lady-written science fiction smut are probably linked?
The characterization thing is, incidentally, a reason why the queer-het genre is my favorite and precious beyond diamonds. Not only is it usually intensely and intentionally subversive, but it doesn’t rely on finding the one other female character who was ever on the screen at all. Because Hero’s Girlfriend / That One Waitress Who Made a Wisecrack in Episode Three is just not that enthralling. Also, because subversiveness is awesome.
One other thing I’m fond of that seems quite prevalent at least in my chosen fandom, and is very lacking in mainstream porn, is the characters having and showing genuine affection for each other. During sex, in their thoughts and words and actions, they care for each other.
You know, one of my favorite fandom people was talking a while ago about the school of fanfiction in which the characters flirt, angst, confess attraction, have sex, and then that’s it, they’re getting married in Canada and adopting a thousand babies. You know, the romance-novel school of relationships. And the conversation was tending towards “what is wrong with us?”, which bothered me, because if conceptualizing sex as an emotionally intense and emotionally pleasurable experience that leads to an interpersonal bond is what gets people off, I really don’t see how that’s less valid than, say, sexy pizza delivery girls who just really want to have a three-way on the couch and then go away again forever.
so basically what I meant was I’m sick of seeing people (maybe like this article writer) diss emotional sex. Emotional sex does it for a lot of people, and who are we to criticize a kink.
also - Kyra - I am desperately trying to figure out what fandom you are in. Is it one of those anime fandoms I know nothing about?
I immensely like emotional sex. The dynamic of caring just elevates it spectacularly for me. And one thing that fandom and fantasy does for me is let me be both characters at the same time. Writing and masturbation-with-fantasies are similar in that regard, with their ability to make me happy.
The fandom is Transformers---which, granted, in canon tends to give them two genders at times, but I see that as ethnocentric: there’s no reason for it in a robotic species, and as such see their genders as something applied to them by the humans they meet---which makes it interesting to interpret genders and gender presentation.
I also like that fanwriters can create their society, and many of us have them be polyamorous, very open and uninhibited about sex, and possessed of a tendency to view it as a truly positive thing, all of which help to make it easier to enjoy and more enjoyable for all involved.
Your read on feminist porn being still for men is right, chin. A lot of the makers admit that most/all of their paying customers are men. I can appreciate Violet Blue wanting more women to watch porn so that feminist porn makers can experiment with different potential audiences, but at the end of the day, one of the major problems with feminist porn is it’s still women performing sex for men, and it’s going to be read that way.
Now, if men started to exhibit themselves for women, that might be an interesting experiment to see if women will bite. Maybe some, though I suspect that most women’s experiences with porn preclude them from putting a lot of work into finding the stuff that works for them.
Man, one of the cool things to me about fanfiction, as a school of literature, is the complete openness to - how to put this - the eroticization of * the unlikely. (* what the mainstream view of the purpose and place of sexuality would view as unlikely, I mean.) I do not mean that in a pejorative way at all, I just hadn’t heard of Transformers fanfiction before and find its existence charming.
Kyra, purple, while hearing your point, I think a lot of people have emotional sex in their real lives, and want fantasies to be about stuff that’s beyond their reach, but still makes them curious and aroused.
I DO enjoy porn - I also enjoy fast forwarding over the endless scenes of blow jobs and male cum shots onto something that looks more fun for me. (cunnilingus, etc.)
And that’s something that feminist/made by women porn seems to have more of.
It’s not all stuff being done to the male - it’s a mostly even split or more being done to the woman.
I’m happier that there is more penis in “mainstream” movies this year than there has been for a long time - even if there was only 2 - Watchmen & Bruno.
At the same time, I think that the reasons why we as a culture think men make better protagonists in action movies and men make better protagonists in lady-written science fiction smut are probably linked?
I did an experiment once, where I tried to suss out my thoughts and characterization of Chromia, who’s a result of when the show’s creators introduced gender into the race---and then I did the same thing about her again, but thinking of her as Chromius, a male Transformer. And holy shit, did I manage to get a different result.
I’m still trying to combine the two.
But, yes, basically---it seems to be a very solid manifestation of the “male = default, female = subpar replica” ingrained prejudice. I . . . it’s odd, I am very good with liking strong female human/humanoid organic characters, but with Transformers it seems like viewing them as male is default or normal, and femaleness as applied to them---possibly since gender-neutral is the default that I’m jumping off from---seems to be an unnecessary assemblage of stereotypical female stuff---a very, very femme presentation, so to speak, the human equivalent being something like a woman in pants, curves and all, being read as male, and only being seen as female if she’s in heels and a skirt. It’s weird, and I’m still trying to fuss with it.
The tendency for canon sources to differentiate female Transformers by making them extremely small, gracile, and curvy does not help. I shit bricks the first time I saw a toy of Elita-One as a motorcycle, and instantly attempted a drawing of her as a semi-truck, on par size-wise with Optimus Prime.
It’s taken some time and there’s definitely more to go, but I’ve managed a few female Transformer characters that don’t annoy me by showing up in my head as tiny and spindle-thin and The Sex Class, some of whom are canon females and a couple of whom are minor-character canon males re-imagined as female.
Another thing that I’m fond of, is the gender-neutral/male characters run a very nice span of the gender and gender-role spectrum. This might be true of slash and yaoi in general, but there are males who are beautiful, and viewed as universally desireable (wings of any sort often seem to be the equivalent of breasts on human females), who are graceful, who are curvy, who are flexible, who are shy or hesitant in personality, who are very tactile and cuddly . . . so many things that heterosexual males in our culture are rarely known for. Sometimes the perception of some characters seems similar to that of a female athlete, rather than a male athlete (they are all athletic to some extent, being perforce a culture where everyone’s a warrior) . . . it somehow manages to be a very gender-diverse group even when none of them uses female pronouns . . . if that makes any sense.
I like this post’s title question but I’d take it further. Why don’t more wo/men use aphrodisiac foods? Why don’t more people play Barry White to become aroused? Why don’t more people play dress up role-playing games to get in the mood? Why don’t more people do yardwork, getting all sweaty and endorphined so they want to hump?
It’s so easy to forget that porn is just one way to stimulate yourself or yourself and partner/s. Maybe a really expedient way, but it’s not THE way. When porn became mainstream it also became a de rigueur part of our whole idea of sex. Our sexxy sexxy culture of sexxy sexxy ladies being sexxy IS porn, and porn is now sex. Not one or two or six people doing something physically gratifying and fun but this entire vacuous, woman-hating production. It’s surreally stupid.
Kyra, purple, while hearing your point, I think a lot of people have emotional sex in their real lives, and want fantasies to be about stuff that’s beyond their reach
I don’t mean it being about the emotions . . . or even a romantic pairing at all. More about the undertone of liking and being fond of, or admiring of, the person that you’re sleeping with---that the other person is NOT just something to fuck, not a masturbatory aid. Mainstream porn features a lot of caring nothing for the other partner as a person, like if their partner had a different face, it would be the same fuck.
It isn’t the focus of the fic, it’s the background or the undertone, but it’s there. Sex as recognizing and enjoying the other person’s value as a living, interacting person, rather than as, say, a nice tight hole with boobs attached. And her reactions being presented to the viewer as a joy to her partner to produce, a joy to see her feel, rather than a monument to his verility. That they are people to each other, helps the believability and complexity of the work.
On one hand, that’s like asking why men don’t read more romance novels.
Hi! I’m that odd guy out who reads romance novels, and lots of them 
The reason that I read romance novels is that my Mother read, amongst many other things, romance novels, and therefore a lot of the books in the house when I went through my ‘read everything I can lay my hands on’ stage were of that genre. And quite a few of them I enjoyed. So I picked up the habit at an impressionable age and never stopped.
To bring this back to porn, I guess that experience colours my view, so yeah, not the target audience, sturgeon’s law, male gaze, what everyone else said etc. etc. But…
...lots of stuff is down to passed on habit and custom—tradition, if you will—combined with postive feedback loops. So men (for very general and over inclusive values of men) don’t buy and read romance novels *because men don’t read romance novels,* ‘normal’ men don’t do that, and the field is left believing it cater to women only, so it pretty much does. And women (for very general and over inclusive values of women) don’t buy and watch porn *because women don’t watch porn*, ‘normal’ women don’t do that, leaving the field thinking it caters only to the men, so it pretty much does. And yes, because of this, both have something of a tendency to become weirdly ingrown and strange, and even disturbing, with regard to the potrayal of gender roles, even in those instances where they are actually consciously trying to challenge them.
Making this up as I go along, the upshot is that enjoyment of visual porn is something far outside of traditional female roles, whilst being a very traditional as part of male roles. So I imagine that gives an extra level of difficulty (the worry of being slut-shamed) with it above and beyond it just being aimed in the wrong direction. And since most is actually aimed in the wrong direction *anyway* because of the feedback loop shape it toward the tastes of men, why would you want to put up with the potential grief, for such little reward? I’m sure most feminists have more immediate and important constraints caused by traditional roles to pick as their battles.
When enjoyment of good porn (whatever ‘good porn’ means for the individuals involved) becomes a habit passed on from mother to daughter—in a non-skeevy way, and my feeling I have to put that disclaimer in says probably says something uncomfortable about me-- then then we’ll know we’re in a world where the porn actually caters properly to female desire, I guess.
But given the strong feedback loops that tend to keep porn the way it is, I don’t know how you’d get from this world to that one.
I see what you’re saying, but then again, when I read erotica that takes pains to establish the characters, I start to gack. Just get to the sex. I’m not reading this for its literary qualities.
Which isn’t to say that you’re wrong, Kyra. Different strokes, different folks.
Amanda, surely so, and I think that’s a wonderful thing when produced with consideration for people’s human and/or labor rights - but being part of the production and consumption of by-women, for-women erotica, I do feel like I can generalize that many women who are in relationships enjoy reading relationship-based porn (and many enjoy reading porn about anonymous encounters in alleys, you know, people swing all sorts of ways). And of course fictional relationships of the romance-novel sort and the sex in them are often beyond our reach - getting the flu and being bitchy about having to visit your SO’s mother are not, in real life, parts of a dramatic arc that will end in perfect sexual/romantic/whatever happiness. Whatever, I’m not meaning to derail entirely, either - just speaking up for how one subculture’s handled the question of the erotic in media?
’d point out that the fact that male orgasms in porn are real and female orgasms are merely performances would point straight up to whose subjective pleasure is being addressed
Well, to be fair there is a practical aspect as well from the filmmaking perspective: barring a budget for special effects (which porn tends not to have), with full-frontal nudity a female performer can fake an orgasm, a male performer can’t. If you only have N hours to shoot a given number of scenes, which given the timelines of your average porn production aren’t unusual, and you need to show people getting off, necessity means you have to focus on making sure the men actually do climax because, as mentioned, the women can fake it sufficiently well to make your schedule.
It’s the same reason softcore films (the Cinemax variety) tend to show full frontal female nudity but not that of the male actors: even ignoring who the audience is, a woman can do a reasonable job of faking arousal, and the physical effects are not quite as noticeable at a distance as they would be for a man.
Again, this isn’t saying anything about porn in general or the overall portrayal of women and power relationships of anything else, merely looking at it as I would imagine a producer who has to pump out the DVDs on a tight schedule would.
oh, understood, I’ve read stories like that. ("Ethan is a trucker. He has sex in a truck!") and been completely mystified to why ten pages of people I don’t know humping is interesting. Again, the diversity of the sexual imagination and tastes is one of the interesting things about humanity, I think.
I like this post’s title question but I’d take it further. Why don’t more wo/men use aphrodisiac foods? Why don’t more people play Barry White to become aroused? Why don’t more people play dress up role-playing games to get in the mood? Why don’t more people do yardwork, getting all sweaty and endorphined so they want to hump?
I suspect they are not encouraged much to think for themselves about what gets them going. Or to enjoy physicality when it isn’t currently a block of time compartmentalized for reveling in the physical. Massages, sex, porn, and to a lesser extent sleeping in, are the “notice physical pleasure” times, and they have specific actions that provide pleasure in them. We are presented with X, Y, and Z, and told that these are adequate to give us pleasure, so why bother looking for more? And life is to some degree compartmentalized---a different set of instructions depending on whether we’re trying to reach orgasm at present or we’re not, and if we’re not, what we experience has no bearing on pleasure.
We’re not encouraged so much to walk outside in nature, breathe deeply, stretch, and to enjoy these sensations, to associate them with relaxation and physical pleasure, to set them on the continuum between unaroused and orgasm. Enjoy the texture of a leather steering wheel, trace our hands along the stonework of an older building, feel the breeze. We forget, we learn to ignore, because it isn’t “notice-the-physical-pleasure” time.
Ditto thoughts---I take tiny, 30-second breaks from work I’m doing quite often to just immerse myself in the emotional memory/fantasy of being wrapped up in someone’s arms, usually feeling the emotions of a character from some fanfic, some intimate moment that gives great pleasure to both the character on the recieving end, and myself in the character’s place.
Learning to bring the mental impressions and awareness of good things into your life when it isn’t consciously providing them at that current moment does absolute wonders for stress level and happiness level. We often, without consciously trying to, bring less pleasant memories/impressions with us---ask any child who is bullied, who lives in pain and fear even at times when they’re safe. We sometimes don’t know how to turn worries off when there’s nothing to be done at present; we should try to reap the benefits of uncompartmentizing things too.
The tendency for canon sources to differentiate female Transformers by making them extremely small, gracile, and curvy does not help.
Good example of that: in the CGI Beast Machines, whatever it’s other faults (and it had many), it did do the cliché female for Blackarachnia, but then they introduced Strika, who transformed into heavy artillery and in robot form looked nothing like the traditional female Transformer: she was huge, bulky, and decidedly not gracile or curvy. She was so unlike the traditional design that in several instances when they translated the series they used male voice actors for her because they didn’t initially realize she was supposed to be a she.
I see what you’re saying, but then again, when I read erotica that takes pains to establish the characters, I start to gack. Just get to the sex. I’m not reading this for its literary qualities.
Fair enough. My erotica is in a fandom, and interspersed with humor and generic fic and drama and everything else---it’s a component of a larger whole, and not compartmentalized so much. I’ve never been one for short stories, either; I always want the whole universe. I sometimes forget that it’s also available in facet form.
Still, even when the characters are anonymous, there’s a difference to me between when they’re engaging with each other and when they’re basically masturbating with a warm body.
Whenever the question of why more men don’t read romance novels comes up in online discussions (and I’ve seen it come up a lot, since I lurk around romance sites), the first thing men say is invariably that the idealized men on the covers make them feel uncomfortable or inadequate. The thing is, lots of modern romances don’t have covers like that. It’s actually pretty rare to see a full-bore stereotypical shirtless Fabio type these days. But there’s still enough of that kind of imagery for men to pick up on the message that the romance section isn’t for them.
Given that, it should be easy for men to understand why a lot of women aren’t into mainstream porn. Sure, it’s possible to find woman-friendly stuff if you dig around enough (and it’s no problem for me, I live down the street from a Good Vibrations), but first you have to get through a ton of material that seems designed to turn you off.
I sometimes think the women who exist to please men have bigger holes between the ears than in other places, and think even less of the men who are attracted to them. I try not to think about how happy such people sometimes seem to be, figuring them to just be unreachable to reason. But if they’re not happy, as many seemingly happy people are in regards to their sex life, the best advice is to seek fun from sex. They generally won’t listen, but it sure is nice when they do.
Wow, 3letterjon, did you even read what this post had to say about the pressure on all women to approach sex as something they perform for men? Women’s susceptibility to that pressure has little to do with their intelligence, and much to do with their experience of sex and the expectations of those around them. That includes the kind of guilt to which you’d obviously subject women for being unable to behave just like you, despite being exposed to a different set of expectations during sex with which you have not been burdened. Using guilt and put-downs on women who don’t perform the way you expect? Check your privilege, ever?
themmases, also I am creeped out by the denigrating reference to orifices (common in our society, but creepy in a discussion of female sexuality) and the prescription that women have sex like men, which, trying to have sex like anyone but ourselves (unless we’re talking people who enjoy roleplaying) really does seem to be part of the problem. But I didn’t want to engage directly, so I will just say +1 to you.
Maybe it has something to do with much of the pron industry being centered around “what we think men would like to do to women” rather than the other way around?
“...but I’d point out that the fact that male orgasms in porn are real and female orgasms are merely performances would point straight up to whose subjective pleasure is being addressed...”
Are you sure that no woman in porn ever have orgasms? Of course it is naive to believe that most women in porn are enjoying themselves much. Obviously there is more fakeness and performing in women’s porn-orgasms than men’s (but there is some playing it up with the men too, what with all the grunting. And I doubt it is fun for the men *all* the time). Isn’t our readiness to believe that porn is always fun for the male actor and never fun for the female actor a bit close to the cultural assumption that women are asexual? It’s not “feminist” to admit this but some women are turned on by a bit of role-played degradation.
okay I have been thinking about this for quite some time. I think it is fun and nice and natural to be curious about what other people look like having sex, but the porn simply reflects the same old tired ideas about women and gender in the portrayal of sex. I mean, violet blue basically admits it in her essay, but then tells women to suck it up:
“But it’s worth remembering that if porn performers looked like you and me, they’d be out of a job. They’re abnormally thin, they get cosmetic surgery literally (and sometimes frightfully) from head to toe, they have makeup in places you’d be surprised makeup can be applied, they shave and wax everything imaginable, and they’re weirdly flexible. They occupy a tiny end of the gene pool, and that’s why they’re capable of acting out fantasy sex.”
There is so much FAIL with this that it is hard to parse it out. Like Amanda pointed out, why would a woman want to watch something that is supposed to be pleasurable, but in the end it just makes you feel bad about youself. Furthermore, this is the same tired old trope that the fashion industry uses: that the performers and models are somehow genetic freaks. But if they are genetic freaks, wouldn’t their breast be natural huge without implants or they all would be naturally thin without anorexia or exersize bulemia? This also makes normal women feel like they can’t be a part of fantasy. That their real, imperfect bodies are something to be “fixed” in order to satisfy someone else’s idea of beauty.
Maybe it has something to do with much of the pron industry being centered around “what we think men would like to do to women” rather than the other way around?
That, and “what we think men would like to think women like men to do to them.”
Such as everything penis-centric and the focus on women having orgasms from vaginal-only stimulation---the almighty penis does everything.
I patronized the free section of a lesbian-bdsm porn site that catered to a straight male audience for awhile, and one day I realized that in every single scene, the high point was a dildo of some kind. Even among supposed lesbians, in porn directed at straight men, it’s all about penetration.
Men don’t read more romance novels because, in general, men don’t read. They are not the target market for books as a whole. Some genres: westerns, horror, thrillers are marketed to them, but generally, NY publishing, and online publishing, runs on the idea that women buy the books.
This is why SF hasn’t taken off in e-book format and romance, esp erotic romance, has. Most Kindle and Sony reader owners are women.
As for why all you can find these days is romance novels? That’s what’s selling. Sales of almost every other genre are down. Romance is the main one still growing in the recession.
Check the Dear Author blog for endless discussion on both of these points.
I write romance, erotic romance to be precise, usually GLBT. I write male/male sex and romance because I can deal with the sex like I deal with any other action scene, and without my own responses getting in the way. I watch gay porn when I need research or inspiration. X-tube is my favorite.
Why don’t I like mainstream porn? Plastic boobs, shaved twats, expressions that are either bored or pained. Oh, and did I mention the extra, extra long fingernails on the faux-lesbians? It’s very mechanical and redundant, and one hole is traded for another with alarming frequency and no washing in between.
I just wrote a huge article on yaoi for a comics site*, so I could go on for paragraphs about the dynamics of yaoi and slash. One thing possibly worth mentioning is that the earliest shonen-ai manga, in the 1970s, was written from a consciously feminist standpoint by artists interested in exploring gender issues. Keiko Takemiya, creator of Song of the Wind and Trees, even called shonen-ai “a first step toward true feminism.”
In the 1980s, when yaoi became a major part of fandom, the political angle was mostly lost, and shonen-ai stories became pretty much entirely about erotic fantasy. Personally, I’ve often started reading yaoi hoping for some kind of feminist gender-bending message, but more often the same-sex angle seems to be there either to eliminate the issue of gender altogether (as people have already noted upthread, a guy tying up another guy carries less baggage for a female audience than a guy tying up a girl) or to affirm traditional gender roles in a safe fantasy context.
Which is fine; it’s a fantasy. (As my yaoi-loving friend Jason Thompson put it, “What?! Of COURSE the #1 thing people want in their sexual fantasies is political correctness!") But it’s a fantasy that originally stemmed from feminist issues and only gradually became a more generalized exploration of sex and desire from a female perspective.
*I felt a little conflicted about writing it, honestly, because there are already tons of “Why is yaoi popular?” articles out there, with the obvious subtext that there’s something weird and unnatural about girls having kinky sex fantasies--or if they do have sex fantasies, they should be fantasies men approve of or at least find nonthreatening.
kitten parade, since my huge problem with porn is not that it’s naked but that it’s mean, my problem with the enormous physical transformations many porn stars undergo is not that I can’t measure up but that the process that they’ve gone through to look the way they do has been incredibly painful (in the case of labioplasty and breast implants), all-consuming, debilitating, and usually either has nothing to do with or runs directly contrary to what it takes to be a healthy human being with full inhabitation and enjoyment of your body. Before the actresses even get through the set they’ve had to go through so much pain for men to be turned on by them that I start to feel like porn-watching men are all casually and unsafely sadistic.
Plus insofar as I ever like naked ladies I am just not into blondes. But that runs a distant second to “and their whole bodies have been painfully reengineered to look like an R. Crumb sketch.”
magothen, in my case I’m going off anecdata from people who have written about working in the industry and the fact that most porn containing men contains a scene of ejaculation - which can be faked using a clear tube and some egg white / corn starch, yes, but it seems unlikely that that, which is technically complicated, is as common as female actors yelling that they’re coming every thirty seconds no matter how uncomfortable their position.
I totally get what you are saying purple shoes, not only is it mean, but violet blue presents the current state of porn stars as the way it is simply meant to be.
magothegn,
probably some women in porn do have orgasms. I guess the point is that it is really secondary (maybe not even secondary)to the men’s pleasure. If a woman has a real orgasm in porn, it would be more like a happy accident rather than the intended goal, which is pretty messed up don’t ya think?
And I am sure some people can say “How does kitten parade know this?”
well here’s a little TMI, but I have watched a whole lot of porn, I have been involved in BSDM, but the BDSM scenes I have been involved with looked very very little like any porn movie I have ever seen.
Yes kitten parade I agree with you (BDSM was what I was thinking of with that last sentence); it is messed up that womens pleasure is considered secondary (or not considered at all) in almost all porn, as is certainly true as far as its producers and consumers go. My main point was that some people’s willingness to believe that this “happy accident” is a priori impossible is also (to a much lesser, but still somewhat revealing degree) messed up.
Somebody upthread mentioned penis-in-movies. I think this is also a part of why men don’t read as many romance novels. Since most of these novels are supposedly written for women, I think many men find it offputting and strange to be asked by a novel or film to appreciate and admire men and the male body. Considering how massively homophobic our culture is, they probably think that reading a romance, let alone being seen reading one, means butch gay men will break down their doors and have hot, hot m/m sex with their butts, or something.
I don’t think anyone is saying its impossible though. I think the point is that porn is structured in such a way that it doesn’t matter the woman is having real orgasm or not - to the point that even if the actress did have a real orgasm, she would have to fake one in such a way that is constructed as an appropriate sign for male viewers that the woman is having a orgasm. The real orgasm most likely will not reflect the screaming, poutly lipped oh yeah that men come to expect
Nora Roberts (big romance novelist) wrote a new series about a female detective in the future. They marketed it under the name J. D. Robb and it created a large following of males and females. Then when she was hitting the best sellers list they sneaked in that it was her, when it was “safe.” I have to say that my husband loves the series but I didn’t tell him that a romance writer was writing it till after he was hooked.
When I worked at a book store there was a title called “Secret Garden” that was all about women’s fantasies, and we sold that pretty regularly as it was about the only (at the time) book with a female viewpoint.
I suspect it has a lot to do with both the covers and the prime male character, who is either some baron or captain of industry or wealthy and broodingly handsome and difficult. In other words, to average guys that translates to the mesage that you, slug, are an epic fail.
If that were true, then Ayn Rand fans would be primarily female, whereas the opposite tends to be the case.
Someone once told me that Japanese women like yaoi because it’s a kind of “payback for the pain of sex.” Which makes sense to me. If you’ve ever watched Japanese porn, you’ve seen a woman who is NOT enjoying sex, or at very least has to pretend she’s not enjoying sex.
Porn would probably be more enjoyable for women if we could watch it without thinking, “Oh god, someone’s going to expect me to do that.” Somehow, every action hero getting shot 2000 times and not dying, or jumping from one building to another is just fantasy, but HEY, ALL WOMEN IN PORN DO X, Y, AND Z, THEREFORE ALL REAL WOMEN DO TOO! And if you don’t? Prude. We tell women that if they don’t do something they don’t like, whether it’s oral or anal or squirting or whatever, that they HAVE to try at least ONCE and if they DON’T then their partner would be totally justified in dumping them. And that if they DON’T like it it’s just because they have a mental block or some bs. (And maybe some people are suffering from some mental block, but I call bs on most of the advice for women who don’t like blowjobs/anal/whatever. Sometimes people just don’t like shit. There is nothing wrong with that. Yes, you have the right to break up with them over it. And I have the right to call you a shallow douchebag.)
Anyway. In summary. I see it as about performing and also about expectations. And women already have a lot of expectations, including the performance of the sex. Porn just heaps more kindle onto the fire. Also, dude, that was just in her butt and now it’s in her mouth. Gross. Don’t even use the, “Well, it’s HER butt so she should be okay with it!” argument here. That’s just gross.
mag, you’re whipping out the same strawman that Violet Blue did. That .001% of examples may indeed feature a female orgasm is utterly and completely irrelevant to the point. I’m more interested in the 99.99% of examples that don’t.
This only means women are “asexual” if you think the only legitimate expression of sexuality is filmed pornography. My point is that filmed pornography isn’t as interesting to women as men not because women are asexual---god, seriously, read the post---but because porn is about male subjective pleasure and ignores female subjective pleasure. Women are drawn to subjective expressions of sexuality for themselves because that’s how arousal works.
The idea that women should be sexually satisfied by being good performers for male pleasure is not only cruel, but just not possible for most women. But it is interesting how you immediately assumed that if women can’t be sexual the way that a patriarchy wants, that’s the same as arguing that women are asexual.
No, most women are deeply sexual. Just as people, not objects.
So here’s the number one question: is it possible to write porn for both men and women? How would this work? Given the rather extreme level of genre balkanization within the porn industry, is such a concept even sensible? I mean, I’m sure there are both men and women who would be into an “anything that moves” kind of porn movie, but is that the solution, and if so, how do you market it?
(Incidentally, I think we need better terminology here—romance novels are, by and large, a subset of literary porn, and the distinction between “porn” and “erotica” really isn’t very clear-cut, or even useful. “Mainstream porn” might be a little more accurate as a term.)
re: emotional connections in porn - I know that I tend to look for and expect different kinds of things erotic fanfiction than I do in other kinds of erotic literature and the like. This is because, even if I don’t already have an emotional connection to the characters in erotic fanfiction, I do at least already have an emotional connection to the world they are in. This is why I am a fan. So leaving that connection - or even the idea of emotional connection - out of the fanfiction, erotic or not, feels wrong.
******
“Porn would probably be more enjoyable for women if we could watch it without thinking, “Oh god, someone’s going to expect me to do that.””
Which, you know, goes back to the whole idea that sex is something that women do for someone else, not for ourselves. (and then you add in the possibility of violence if we don’t comply) Because the reason why the fantasies aren’t equivalent is because the sexual fantasy is about women but not for women. So of course you are “expected” to do it. You agreed to explore each others sexual fantasies, but only one of you is presumed to actually have sexual fantasies. So really what you have agreed to is to act out his.
It comes from the same place as the idea that once a yes is given, it can’t be taken back, that agreeing to have sex with one man is the same as agreeing to have sex with any....etc.
If that were true, then Ayn Rand fans would be primarily female, whereas the opposite tends to be the case.
Tyro, I almost never disagree with you, but I do here-- without digging too deep into the wealth/accomplishment factor in romances (my sis did her dissertation on the genre, & a good bit of it was devoted to the erotic identification with consumption IIRC), there does seem to be a pretty significant difference in identification & perspective between Rand & the traditional romance. I’d go so far as to call Rand economic romance novels for men, actually, in that it’s designed to impress & flatter them instead of drawing women into the novels’ world. That men are so likely to be flattered by the Randian ideal instead of intimidated, even though-- let’s be honest-- most of them ain’t as special as they like to think they are, is a pretty interesting subject for discussion, though. If romance novels (or porn, for that matter) had a similar effect on women, we’d all be convinced that we were the hottest, most intuitive, kindest, and generally pluckiest women on the planet, and it’s others’ fault that they don’t see the obvious.
Okay, maybe I’m joking a little with that last bit. But not much.
1) I’m just glad that imagination works for me. I don’t particularly like porn, because yeah, too much of it is rather plainly mean-spirited.
2) Angela Sparrow, SF *has* taken off on e-formats--you couldn’t be more wrong here. Romance novels also has taken off, but there’s more of it.
3) I find the fascination with the “reality” of porn to be paradoxial. I also think it’s stupid to desire mutually satisfying porn for the sake of feminism, mutuality, whatever. Porn/certain other media devices is first and formost a way of having it your way, and serves the viewer’s narcissim above all. You just can’t go wishing for porn where the “woman is enjoying it”. That asks for a level of sincerity that really don’t belong to you. Get porn that does what you need. Don’t think too hard about hows or whats when you’re about to get it off.
I as well have enjoyed good romance novels, but I despise the kind Amanda Marcotte enjoys. I also have too many books that I know I will enjoy (with good sex scenes too!) in SF/Fantasy such that I have no need to delve into trash for the good stuff. Speaking of that, how do people like all the frantic gay sex scenes in Richard Morgan’s The Steel Remains. I had a rollicking good time for a het. Is this what people are seeking from yaoi fiction?
Same, I guess, as an action movie.
Ayn Rand and Margaret Mitchell are similar people. You can use one to lens on the other.
BonAppetit:
Porn would probably be more enjoyable for women if we could watch it without thinking, “Oh god, someone’s going to expect me to do that.”
Actually, I would be happy thinking, “that looks like something I’d want to do.” Because the porn I’ve seen rarely shows women doing things or having things done to them that women usually enjoy.
Fucking is fast and furious, almost always. No long languid strokes. It’s all “here take this giant cock” and wham wham wham wham wham.
The fucker doesn’t seem to have any idea about what’s going on inside the vagina, doesn’t seem to be trying to angle to hit a G spot or an A spot or anything like that. Changing body angles is just so you can see a different angle of the penis, which is generally whacking in and out faster than the camera can actually capture. No, angles where there’s the least friction internally are actually favored, because it is less wearing on everyone’s skin, and the guy doesn’t have to have a really good erection if it’s not overcoming any resistance.
Cunnilingus is apparently some guy wiping his mouth and tongue repeatedly all over the woman’s labia, often breathing heavily or going ‘BLBLBLBLBLBL” as if that’s sexy somehow. The fact that he’s “down there” and seems enthusiastic is supposed to make up for the lack of anything like a targeted approach. And again, speed seems to be the goal.
Hey, if you want to convince me she’s getting off, show me something I can identify with my own getting off, like an engorged clitoris or pulsating vagina. Thought not.
Themmases, I get the “pressure to perform” aspect of the post, and I agree with it. I also think you’re reading too much into my thinking someone is dumb because they act dumb. But I honestly believe that if someone isn’t happy, they should try something different. Yes, it isn’t easy to step away and try to act in a new way with a new attitude, but if that person won’t, who will? I’m sick and tired of people being unhappy and not doing a damn thing other than complain. Unfulfilled women are certainly capable of getting sexual pleasure within relationships, but it takes some bravery and it takes some assertiveness. And in some cases, it will scare the partners. But that’s a risk well worth taking, or it’s a risk not worth complaining about. Approaching sex for fun is great advice for women who are stuck in an unhappy role. It’s also great advice for men stuck in unhappy relationships.
3letterjon:
I’m sick and tired of people being unhappy and not doing a damn thing other than complain. Unfulfilled women are certainly capable of getting sexual pleasure within relationships, but it takes some bravery and it takes some assertiveness.
And maybe getting slapped around a little if “could you please do $FOO so I can get off” is interpreted as “you are not a real man, you do not know how to please a woman, I am a castrating bitch and I want to destroy your ego by questioning your manhood.”
Not to mention that we’re not just complaining. Some of us are sharing places we do find interesting things to read or see. And “just complaining” suggests that saying what we want means nothing. Because, uh, you aren’t listening?
@ shah8
3) I find the fascination with the “reality” of porn to be paradoxial. I also think it’s stupid to desire mutually satisfying porn for the sake of feminism, mutuality, whatever. Porn/certain other media devices is first and formost a way of having it your way, and serves the viewer’s narcissim above all. You just can’t go wishing for porn where the “woman is enjoying it”. That asks for a level of sincerity that really don’t belong to you. Get porn that does what you need. Don’t think too hard about hows or whats when you’re about to get it off.
Haha, silly het ladies wishing het men would form their sexual beliefs and ideals around a medium where a woman is more than a dirty gym sock with tig ol bitties. Whaat, our culture consumes such stuff and then it spills over into the culture’s perception of all women (and girls. Including your sister. And mother) as just another accessory designed to Make A Dick Ejaculate? How absurd!
I don’t give a fuck about the level of sincerity in pornography. I do give a giant fuck, several in fact, about the way the world hurts, limits, demeans and oppresses women. Let’s call your ‘private’ porn, created by a public entity, with real human beings, for consumption by the public (also real human beings), a wee little window into that process.
I mean, I don’t think two people who like to have sex with each other need to like the same porn to be happy or for it to be good porn.
At the same time, in the case of the kind of porn that’s actual people actually having sex with other people, I am not comfortable with forgetting that that’s real people, because they are doing a dangerous job under some fairly poor labor protections and the tendency to forget that they have actual lives makes me miserable about the state of humanity.
Mir, I don’t think you got from my post the notion that I wanted to push.
Well shah8, what notion did you want to push?
@shah8,
Forgive me if I’m wrong on this. I seemed to recall reading that e-books were mostly, like 40%, romance and growing, while very few SF publishers were embracing the technology. Tor is one that definitely is, but the ones that are subsidiaries of the big NY houses are much slower to do so.
I’d love information on this, as my googlisimus! spell failed to dig up the article I was remembering.
Sorry for the side-track, all.
1) Angelia, Baen Books is very focused on ebook sales, and they are among the most succesful of any publishers to do so. Tor is also getting deeper into this area. I have to assume that most pirate ebooks are either sf/fantasy/paranomal romance and romance. There simply isn’t a huge nonfiction, or even mystery novels, compared to paper sales.
2) Mir, I didn’t like the way some people in the thread had an interest in whether female orgasms are as present as male. I didn’t think it even matters, given that you can have an orgasm while hating the experience and not have an orgasm while loving the experience. I thought that people weren’t really thinking to the past when there *was* more of an interest in versimilitude. There are actors guilds for a reason, and there are laws about maltreatment of animals for a reason, and it’s just not our business to wonder whether or not that women in to screen is having lots of fun. We shouldn’t demand it either. It’s like expecting actors to actually fall in love with actresses in real life.
I also think, as I have said before, porn is ultimately served to meet our narcissic needs. It is quite naturally reflective of the worst about us, especially given structure of the porn economy (least common denominator). I have no qualms with making working conditions better, and making more “egalitarian” or “mutually loving” sex scenes. I certainly have no illusions about the impact of porn feeding nasty parts of our society. I just think that to get especially angry about porn is like getting angry at the fecal matter instead of the dog. I was thinking quite abit about Dollhouse. Joss Whedon can make it as “feminist” as he wants it to be, but the entire structure of the tv world, especially on Fox, drives it to being about having lots of “feminist” show of misogyny for the men who like real misogyny.
There are lots of I’s. This is very much an opinion that is pulled somewhat out of my ass.
It’s not just that so much standard porn looks like the woman isn’t having much fun (or rather, her attempts to look happy aren’t very convincing under the circumstances of the scene) but that so much of it is violent, and even for women who haven’t been assaulted, could be traumatic to view. Certainly offputting and enough to make you wince. I mean “banging” doesn’t sound so fun to the one who’s about to be banged, if you think about the use of that word; would you rather be the hammer or the nail, after all?
I can’t even stand to watch mildly violent scenes in standard movies, and I know a lot of women like me. Seeing a porn actress get rammed into and slapped around isn’t going to be something I can just learn to like.
I know I am not the only one who, while a virgin, was afraid the first time would hurt. Because culturally, (and romance novels have actually played right into this), that’s what’s hinted to women. Breaking your hymen, or just being penetrated at all, is scary if you’ve never done it. From the get go, many women already equate sex with pain, even if they try not to--that’s a hell of a barrier to pleasure.
As someone who’s seen his share of pron, I find it maddening when you make these generalizations. Yes, professionally produced porn is misogynistic probably 90% of the time. But that represents an ever shrinking amount of the set of porn. These days, there’s an incredible amount of amateur stuff out there of couples or solo women where the focus is on their needs. It may not have the same production values, but it’s out there if you want it.
And, yeah, yaoi is very popular among women in my social circles. There are many straight women who are into gay erotica in general, as baffling as it may seem. I guess (?) it’s an analogue of the ‘lesbian’ porn produced for men, with the difference being the characters are actually gay.
All this said: before video sharing or slashfic became so ubiquitous, I would’ve agreed with you 100%.
I’d guess that men don’t read romance novels for a couple of reasons:
1 - It’s almost always written for women;
2 - Men think that it’s all written for women; and
3 - Men never want to get caught by other men reading it.
Plenty of men enjoy some “chick flicks,” (think Six Days, Seven Nights here) so it seems reasonable to suppose that men could get into romance novels if there were some written at least partially for men, and people knew about them.
I do wonder how many men read Victoria Holt novels left around the house by their wives, when their wives aren’t looking.
oldfeminist wrote:
And maybe getting slapped around a little if “could you please do $FOO so I can get off” is interpreted as “you are not a real man, you do not know how to please a woman, I am a castrating bitch and I want to destroy your ego by questioning your manhood.”
Yet the biggest complain men have about women is that so often women don’t tell us what they are thinking, what they mean, or what they want.
We really do want you to talk to us.
So here’s the number one question: is it possible to write porn for both men and women? How would this work? Given the rather extreme level of genre balkanization within the porn industry, is such a concept even sensible?
Er, no. Even intragender, let alone between the genders, porn is not a democratic activity. Your Kink Is Not My Kink Is Not Your Kink Is Not Her Kink Is Not His Kink - and that’s alright.
This is very much an opinion that is pulled somewhat out of my ass.
So what else is new?
shah8,
I didn’t like the way some people in the thread had an interest in whether female orgasms are as present as male. I didn’t think it even matters, given that you can have an orgasm while hating the experience and not have an orgasm while loving the experience.
I also think, as I have said before, porn is ultimately served to meet our narcissic needs.
I think I get what you’re saying, but I think you’re missing the point of the post and the thread a bit. The post was a response to another post basically taking women and particularly feminists to task for not watching porn. The standard line is that women and particularly feminists are sex-hating prudes, and though Violet Blue puts it a little more nicely, there still is this assumption that we ought to watch it or it would be better somehow if we watched it.
And one of the arguments in the post and in this thread is that a tremendous amount of porn does not meet our narcissistic needs. And a major reason it doesn’t meet our narcissistic needs is the way the female orgasm is portrayed is really alienating and not at all a turn on.
So ... I don’t watch it. I don’t make demands that porn be different. I just use my imagination instead, and fortunately for me, I have a good one. But then we get essays like the one this post is a response to, basically saying there is something wrong with women who don’t watch porn. So women are trying to explain why they don’t watch porn or enjoy porn, and your initial post really came off like “just get over it - sit back and enjoy the show.”
As for the concern about whether it’s “real,” some of it is that most female orgasms shown in porn are not remotely convincing, so it just fails to convey a sense of arousal and satisfaction. And some of it is that I’m not sure it is as true for women as it is for men that you can have an orgasm while hating the experience. So the thinking is that if she really has an orgasm, at the very least she’s not hating it.
“ These days, there’s an incredible amount of amateur stuff out there of couples or solo women where the focus is on their needs.”
Strangely enough, I’m not terribly interested in watching solo women. Go figure. In other words - there is something missing here. In a completely unrelated thought, gosh I can’t imagine why gay porn is so popular among straight women. (rolls eyes)
***
“These days, there’s an incredible amount of amateur stuff out there..... It may not have the same production values, but it’s out there if you want it.”
- Tim P.
“There are actors guilds for a reason....and it’s just not our business to wonder whether or not that women in to screen is having lots of fun.” - Shah8
Yeah, I know, I just quoted part of that first bit by Tim, but I just had to point out, um,there can be only one (statement that’s correct).
(and also, shah8, wtf? It’s been clearly stated that the issue is that the acting isn’t convincing. And thus, you know, the whole things is not much of a turn on. In this particular instance, it’s not really that anyone is worried about actresses being mistreated. I think I’m the first person to bring it up. And I did so mainly in order to punch holes in Tim’s theory that amateur porn is the solution we’ve been waiting for - and it’s already here! wtfever.)
Strangely enough, I’m not terribly interested in watching solo women. Go figure.
Word. I referred to this, in a less specific way, in my first comment. It’s amazing how much “pro-woman” porn seems to consist of videos of women masturbating. I can touch my own damn self, thank you very much! Can you imagine straight men being told they should check out this totally hot new kind of porn that just shows men jerking off by themselves?
This post was really top notch.
Off topic BUT…
She was so unlike the traditional design that in several instances when they translated the series they used male voice actors for her because they didn’t initially realize she was supposed to be a she.
As far as I know Beast Machines was a North American production, mostly Canadian and ported to the Japanese audience later. So I don’t see how there was a “translation” issue, unless it was a Japanese translation error?
chingona and jennygadget beat me to it, so instead of a paragraph or two in response to shah8, I present a small sketch of shah8 at the movies:
Random person: “If this is a funeral scene where everyone is supposed to be sad, why are they...laughing?”
shah8:"None of your business.”
Random person: “But - it’s supposed to be a tragedy! How can I possibly enjoy this?”
shah8: “Come on, it’s not like their mother *actually* died in real life. You expect too much.”
This has been “Shah8 at the Movies.” Thank you.
Why don’t more men read romance novels?
because gender-targetted smut tends to be LIVING DEITY and COMPLETELY AVERAGE LOSER.
For example: the Chiseled Jawed Pirate, Eudaimon Strongcod, who is tamed from his wild ways by the pretty, but not particularly bright or interesting Governor’s daughter whom he kidnapped and fell in love with or whatever. But she must choose between him, or the serious, good natured, courageous honorable Navyman with flaxen hair who has come to rescue her, Tobias Thrustmoore.
who exactly is a hetero male reader supposed to find relatable?
You could split the difference, but then you’d end up with Spiderman vs. The Baroness from GI JOE. Which starts with an evil terrorist plot to blow up mind controlled dinosaur orphans or something, proceeds through EEEEEEVIL Gunshooting accent talking vs athletic dodging and smartmouth, and then ends with hot, breaks-everything-in-the-room sex.
but they don’t publish Romnovels like that. Intellectual property and all.
It’s always funny to me how many people spend their time talking about how 90 percent of romance novels are crap and never mention that 90 percent of mystery and science fiction novels are crap, too. In fact, 90 percent of what gets published in every genre is crap. And yet it’s always romance fiction that’s singled out. Hmm, could it be because that’s the genre that’s mostly oriented to women?
One aspect of romance fiction that a lot of people overlook is that the really good authors will often use it to make social commentary. Right now, I’m reading a new book by Mary Jo Putney and already she has two gay relationships (one lesbian, one gay male) presented as totally normal. Traditionally, gay characters in romance novels have been pure evil (think of Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca) but some authors are changing that. Putney has also dealt with issues like alcoholism and sexual abuse (specifically of boys) through the filter of historical romance. All this and hot sex, too!
who exactly is a hetero male reader supposed to find relatable?
Uh, you may want to read a romance novel published after 1980 if you think that’s still what they’re like. Seriously.
I’m also enjoying that so many people seemed to take the “why don’t men read romance novels?” question literally and defensively, instead of as a rhetorical device to point out the discrepancy with how often people ask why women don’t like porn.
For example: the Chiseled Jawed Pirate, Eudaimon Strongcod, who is tamed from his wild ways by the pretty, but not particularly bright or interesting Governor’s daughter whom he kidnapped and fell in love with or whatever. But she must choose between him, or the serious, good natured, courageous honorable Navyman with flaxen hair who has come to rescue her, Tobias Thrustmoore.
who exactly is a hetero male reader supposed to find relatable?
Stick ‘em in space, replace the cannon with “grav-lances” or something, and have it published by Baen. Problem solved.
Cf Honor Harrington…
Kitten Parade wrote:
““But it’s worth remembering that if porn performers looked like you and me, they’d be out of a job. They’re abnormally thin, they get cosmetic surgery literally (and sometimes frightfully) from head to toe, they have makeup in places you’d be surprised makeup can be applied, they shave and wax everything imaginable, and they’re weirdly flexible. They occupy a tiny end of the gene pool, and that’s why they’re capable of acting out fantasy sex.”
There is so much FAIL with this that it is hard to parse it out. Like Amanda pointed out, why would a woman want to watch something that is supposed to be pleasurable, but in the end it just makes you feel bad about youself. Furthermore, this is the same tired old trope that the fashion industry uses: that the performers and models are somehow genetic freaks. But if they are genetic freaks, wouldn’t their breast be natural huge without implants or they all would be naturally thin without anorexia or exersize bulemia? This also makes normal women feel like they can’t be a part of fantasy. That their real, imperfect bodies are something to be “fixed” in order to satisfy someone else’s idea of beauty”
which is the reason *I* don’t watch porn (or one of)
if supermodels and porn stars are supposed to be “genetic freaks” and etc - exactly why the *FUCK* should i spend my time and energy trying to be one?
why would i watch something that is trying to convince me to spend the time and energy to be one?
and, fucking seriously - most porn that i have seen has women who are supposed to be “hot” (but don’t look like real-life women to me - fake everything, so skinny one has to wonder if she is malnourished, etc) and NOT “hot”, or even average, men. most men in porn seem to be downright “homely”. i am not turned on by women at all; i am not turned on by ugly men (or even a lot of “hot” men, if i am going to be honest. if Brad Pitt tried to get me to sleep with him, i’d turn him down because i don’t like him. at least, i don’t like him based on what i know about him, if he were different in real life, was nice and smart and funny, *then* i might find him attractive...).
porn is not capable of turning me on, in most instances, because the elements that make up most porn don’t push my buttons. and, you know, i am not going to do something that i don’t like.
i think this expectation that sex-positive feminist *must* like porn is VERY much like the expectation that attractive lesbians are only being lesbians because guys like the idea of threesomes.
it’s not true - i have yet to meet a lesbian who *wants* to have sex with a male. they aren’t lesbians because it turns MEN on, they are lesbians because it turns THEM on.
if that makes sense.
that’s why i don’t watch porn - it might make some random dude happy (glad i have a guy who doesn’t care if i watch porn...) but it won’t make *me* happy, and it isn’t worth it to me.
PiaToR -
be fair. HONOR is the “Strong, Heroic Navyman”, and *she* is the one rescuing the Hero!
(i admit - i *really* like the Honor Harrington series, and both the spin-offs, although the Crown Of Slaves is, in my opinion, the best of the choices...)
why are there people thinking that Sci-fi/Fantasy aren’t being made into E-books, and aren’t doing well? Sci-Fi/Fantasy isn’t just doing as well as ever, but it also has new subgenres ("new" in the past 10-15 years) that are doing JUST as well, if not better - Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance, to name a couple - and Paranormal Romance, being a cross-genre thing, is doing even better than straight Romance is.
Also: Baen was the first big publishing company to try E-Book as a regular feature, and dear gods did it pay off for them -
hell, their *free* E-Books have paid off for them HUGELY!
just sayin’
And that kind of self-consciousness can make you able to charm and seduce and please men like nobody’s business, but it can also make it really hard to get in touch with your own self. And sexual pleasure relies strongly on being able to really feel yourself in your body. But for a lot of women, it’s so hard to feel good, because they’re too busy thinking about whether their thighs look fat. It’s hard to come when you’re worried that your O face is going to be ugly and somehow displease the man you’re in bed with. Porn can really exacerbate these issues for women. Sometimes for some women, you can get yourself into a place where you’re able to ignore the fact that those women are working hard, and imagine that this is pleasure and not work, but sometimes it’s just hard to get past the fact that porn is one of the strongest reinforcers out there for the idea that heterosexual sex is a time when men have a good time and women show them that good time, to be tipped later in flowers or something.
Oh god yeah. This is why my sexual fantasies feature me as a glossed-up version of my 19 year old self, despite the fact that I’m 40. I can’t imagine myself being sexy to my boyfriend now, though he assures me that he loves me exactly as I am. It doesn’t help right now that I’m watching an SNL skit doing a send-up of support hose and Crocs as sex props. Thanks guys.
You could split the difference, but then you’d end up with Spiderman vs. The Baroness from GI JOE. Which starts with an evil terrorist plot to blow up mind controlled dinosaur orphans or something, proceeds through EEEEEEVIL Gunshooting accent talking vs athletic dodging and smartmouth, and then ends with hot, breaks-everything-in-the-room sex.
but they don’t publish Romnovels like that.
If I’m deciphering you right, that’s actually a fairly normal sort of romance plot for instances where the heroine is written as an action girl (caution: TV Tropes will eat your life). Look for the covers with with the heroine wearing leather whilst carrying some sort of weapon, and/or summoning fireballs or lightning
Even in staid historicals, where characters can have a tendency to wander around being stupidly noble or nobly stupid (tho’ not in the better ones), everyone I know really likes it when the heroine gets to shoot the hero for acting like a jerk and then calmly deals with the fallout. After all, Heyer put that scene in one of hers way back in 1932, and it’s been a classic ever since.
i think this expectation that sex-positive feminist *must* like porn is VERY much like the expectation that attractive lesbians are only being lesbians because guys like the idea of threesomes.
I too have wondered why “sex positive” means “I happen to want to be exactly what men see at strip clubs and in porno flicks.” Isn’t that convenient.
be fair. HONOR is the “Strong, Heroic Navyman”, and *she* is the one rescuing the Hero!
(i admit - i *really* like the Honor Harrington series, and both the spin-offs, although the Crown Of Slaves is, in my opinion, the best of the choices...)
Snork. You want intelligent female characters starring in space opera, go read this.
I sneer at your plebian tastes, while carefully avoiding any mention of the six or seven Harrington books in my own library. Sneer, I say, SNEEEEEEEEEEEEER.
Make that “while carefully avoiding any mention of the eleven Harrington novels in my collection.”
Damn, I didn’t realise it was that m- I mean SNEEEEER!
Thanks chingona, and everyone else. I reread the post and thread, and I get why people are irritated with what I said (not to mention how poorly I said it).
That being said, I have to admit, I’m just not hugely into porn, and I find porn and topics about porn to be creepy. I’m really ok with fakey climaxes because even as I’m a voyoeur on many topics, I still kinda think intimate happiness should be sheltered. Irrational.
I think another reason I don’t use porn much is that I like plot. I *love* a well plotted sex scene that belongs in the tale, and I’m certainly quite aroused then. I like play and play-acting in my sex. Most porn doesn’t have anything but transparent plots. Comics like XXXenophile are more fun.
Most porn is so damn (numbing) utilitarian, I couldn’t give a flying fuck for whether anyone really gets off in the production. Female minstrelsy is pretty much par for the course. That’s because porn IS an object, and the process and consumption is objectification. To use, or to emulate, porn is to learn how to objectify the person next to you. Yes, I will argue that until I’m blue in the face. Furthermore, I would argue that Amanda’s perspective is wrong. It is the *consumption* of porn that materially objectifies, not the *creation*. It fulfills a *demand* for objectifying from all those people who have so little coercion power over their objects of lust such that they need a proxy. It just doesn’t matter to me whether the woman is performing an orgasm or having a real one and the man actually having a real orgasm or performing--the medium itself is a performance of inequality to be enjoyed by the consumer. It’s supposed to be that way. If it weren’t, we’d be just fine watching balding Joe 2Boob going at it with hairy Jane 4Eyes. We wouldn’t shrink in disgust at the idea of gramps and grams having a little fun either. Porn is (most of the time) just a nasty little feedback cycle between people, porn producers, and society.
There is plenty of good stuff out there, but porn is 90% terrible in the way that it is bad for a reason. Given that women are usually the ones objectified, possessed, and used, I should think it is obvious why fewer women than expected consume porn.
This old thread was pretty interesting if not quite on topic…
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/12/07/treating-porn-like-every-other-media/#comments
I don’t know, Piator, Ellen May Ngwethu of the Cassini Division probably could kick poor Honor Harrington out the airlock. Nothing like a massive case of ruthlessness to lend a bit of spice to a character.
I hate Honor Harrington for the same reasons I hate both Atlas Shrugged and Star Wars.
1: Reprehensible politics. (democratically elected socialists? WE MUST STAGE A MILITARY COUP! We’re GOOD GUYS!)
2: Space Monarchy. don’t care if they’re figureheads. resent all monarchs.
Horatio Hornblower was a progressive figure in the Napoleonic era, in stories written before WW2. Modern books set in the future makes identical politics to his horrifically reactionary.
and yes, I’m aware more recent romnovs are less over the top and silly. my primary excuse is refusing to pay money for things I can get for free. There are at least some decent fanfic authors.
Great essay. I read that book “pornfication” and in it the author interviews a lot of younger women. Really the 18 - 20 somethings. And I really empathized with them. They tell of their male peers simply having learned everthing they know about lovemaking from porn. They keep very bright lights on, expect immediate entry coupled with immediate thrashing about and moaning from the girl, pornified sexual positions that I think definitely tend to encourage that mindset in women of giving a performance rather than of, hey, i’m horny let’s fuck.
I saw porn a few times when I was younger. And of course this was before the internet porn age, which from what I have read is even more degrading and violent. But even the porn I saw back in the late 80’s left me grossed out. So when you describe this attitude that some or maybe even many women unfortuntely have about sex being perfoming for the man, I have never had that at all. And I have never needed porn to indulge in a great sexual fantasy. I mastubate when I am sexually active and when I am not. Always have. Never needed some guy’s fantasy to get me off.
I’m very lucky to be with a guy who doesn’t watch porn and never has watched porn for ideological reasons. He’s one of those 70’s feminists. Our sex life is great and neither of us has ever missed porn. But neither of us were conditioned to need it because we walked away early on. I don’t know what happens once you get your sexuality conditioned to that, or how easy it is then to walk away.
It’s always funny to me how many people spend their time talking about how 90 percent of romance novels are crap and never mention that 90 percent of mystery and science fiction novels are crap, too. In fact, 90 percent of what gets published in every genre is crap. And yet it’s always romance fiction that’s singled out. Hmm, could it be because that’s the genre that’s mostly oriented to women?
This. I read romance novels a lot. A lot. They’re my favorite kind of fiction. And yeah, some of them are utter crap, but some of them are really quite good. Same as with everything else.
And I also really like Mary Jo Putney, but I prefer her historicals to the contemporary.
karpad described:
the Chiseled Jawed Pirate, Eudaimon Strongcod,
Oh, I’m sorry, I thought that his name was the dreaded pirate Roberts.
DonnaDiva wrote:
This is why my sexual fantasies feature me as a glossed-up version of my 19 year old self, despite the fact that I’m 40. I can’t imagine myself being sexy to my boyfriend now, though he assures me that he loves me exactly as I am.
Donna, this is for you!
I think a good start in making porn more female-positive would be in not making the man’s orgasm the ultimate goal of every single sex scene. The sex scenes go on, the woman comes one or two or many times, the sex goes on and on and on (which is when I get turned off. I don’t know about you, but when I have an orgasm, I can keep going for a few minutes, but after a bit, it starts to hurt) until finally the sex scene ends when the man comes.
So really, her orgasm is secondary or even tertiary to the real goal here: Getting the man off.
I would love to see a scene wherein there’s lots of foreplay and fooling around, and finally SHE wants to have some PIV sex, and so they do, and she comes, and then the sex scene fades out. Cause honestly, if I come and the guy doesn’t, he gets really pissed off when I tell him we need to stop because it’s just not doing anything for me or frankly feeling good right now. However, if he comes first, that’s when he tries the “I’m going to roll over and sleep” thing. There’s no parity there.
And since when did male orgasm come to be the be all, end all of sex? If a man doesn’t come, has sex happened?
That’s because porn IS an object, and the process and consumption is objectification. To use, or to emulate, porn is to learn how to objectify the person next to you. Yes, I will argue that until I’m blue in the face. Furthermore, I would argue that Amanda’s perspective is wrong. It is the *consumption* of porn that materially objectifies, not the *creation*. It fulfills a *demand* for objectifying from all those people who have so little coercion power over their objects of lust such that they need a proxy.
shah8,
Obviously I can’t speak for Amanda, but I’m not sure your point here (with which I generally agree) is mutually exclusive from the argument she’s making here. There’s lots and lots of ways to object to porn from a feminist perspective, and I don’t see why you (or we) have to pick just one. I don’t know that I would have put it quite the way you did, but I came to similar conclusions about porn a few years back. It’s why I gave up on it. I’m not really interested in redeeming or reclaiming it, and I think the ideas that you’re getting at are one reason so much supposedly pro-woman/feminist/non-misogynistic/whatever porn falls short of the mark.
I’m also enjoying that so many people seemed to take the “why don’t men read romance novels?” question literally and defensively, instead of as a rhetorical device to point out the discrepancy with how often people ask why women don’t like porn.
Maybe because we can actually see a difference between a novel with plot and characters that incorporates sex scenes and “Bang Bus 3”?
There are mystery novels and thrillers that have just as much explicit sex in them as romance novels, and yet because romance novels are about relationships and mysteries and thrillers are about “real” things like fiendish serial killers, romances are crap and mysteries and thrillers are respectable.
The funny part is that a lot of romance writers like Nora Roberts and Iris Johansen have successfully crossed over into writing thrillers that are basically identical to what they wrote as romance authors except that the covers are different and the violence is more explicit. And yet somehow those aren’t equivalent to porn.
I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive either. I just thought that the exercise in valuing feminist porn is besides the point and veers close towards “men rape for sex” reasons. I used minstrelsy for a reason, because I think that most porn is created as an advertisment of a certain power relationship, which is integral to how the product is consumed. It is besides the point to connect better porn for women with feminist ideals. Fantasy is as often about privilege as it is about escape.
I’m not saying we should find all porno tapes and set them up in a pile and burn it all. I’m also not saying that a good person should avoid porn. I’m saying that we should have more of an interest in the concept of fantasy. Accept that porn feeds some dark aspects, and just be more aware of the markers between consensual reality and private fantasy--for yourself and for explaining to others.
heh, porn decriminilization...Public ads about the dangers of porn to your sex life...the imagination goes on…
This Alas thread is also pretty interesting (and not because I participate heavily in the comments section, or at least not just because).
As for minstrelsy, I think that’s a good word for it, but I’m going to quibble a little bit here with your analysis. I’m sure you are familiar with the concept that performance of femininity amounts to female drag performed by women. And that places porn on an extreme end of what women are expected to do every day just to get by. Note how many women on this thread said they would have less of a problem with it if they didn’t think men were watching porn and then turning around and expecting the women in their lives to behave like that and look like that.
So even as I said I am not holding out hope for feminist porn and am not particularly interested personally in redeeming porn, I think it is not beside the point to connect better porn for women with feminist ideals or at least some feminist analysis. I agree with you that fantasy is often about privilege, but because porn consistently reinforces certain power relationships, women never get to access that fantasy.
And again, you can dispute whether better porn for women should be our goal (and I don’t think the post is about better porn for women so much as saying enough already with trying to guilt women into liking porn), but if better porn for women is your goal, I think there has to be some feminist analysis in there.
You know, I never caught on to the whole “guilting women to liking porn” angle. Hmmm. I can see in the latter part of the post where it’s like that…
Some days, my reading comprehension truly sucks. Tho’ I think it was also compounded by not natively understanding the textual impacts of the words. I tend to be very face-value, even at the obvious.
shah8,
The starting off point of the Alas thread I linked is the way in which feminist discussions of porn end up being lots of heat and not much light because very slight differences in the meaning assigned to certain words, the weight assigned to certain concerns, can lead people who normally are pretty close politically and/or philosophically to very different conclusions.
And to clarify, it’s heat and not light not because what people are saying isn’t smart, but because everyone ends up talking past each other.
i think this expectation that sex-positive feminist *must* like porn is VERY much like the expectation that attractive lesbians are only being lesbians because guys like the idea of threesomes.
Not necessarily. Don’t forget, we’re talking about porn-in-principle rather than porn-in-reality—look at all the ASOTV products out there. Granted a lot of them are crap, but don’t you occasionally see one or two that would actually be pretty awesome if the execution (materials, workmanship, whatever) was better? It’s the same with porn—just because it isn’t being done right doesn’t make it a bad idea; what it means is that people need to step up and make the kind of porn that they like.
Looked at from another perspective, there’s a great deal of live-and-let-live as well—just because you wouldn’t personally take off your clothes and fuck someone on camera doesn’t mean you should hold it against someone who actually wants to do that. (Coercion, obviously, is a different issue, but isn’t quite germane to my point.)
Some of the comments in this thread are disgusting. Part of being a male feminist/ally is knowing when your Fresh Manly Wisdom (tm) is not wanted. Instead of spouting off about all those stupid women with sex hang-ups and lamenting that they don’t think like you and that’s why they’re unhappy, how about some critical thought about WHY they don’t think like you? Tip: I use my brain first, and THEN I use my mouth/keyboard.
It’s always funny to me how many people spend their time talking about how 90 percent of romance novels are crap and never mention that 90 percent of mystery and science fiction novels are crap, too. In fact, 90 percent of what gets published in every genre is crap. And yet it’s always romance fiction that’s singled out. Hmm, could it be because that’s the genre that’s mostly oriented to women?
really? Romnovs get singled out as a separate entity, to be sure, but it’s still considered a legitimate hobby, but Sci Fi and Fantasy (the genres about which “90 percent of everything is crud” was coined) seem to have more aggressive hatred. that is, Romnovs get “Well, at least you read something you enjoy” where SF gets “Why do you READ that crap?” which is odd, since the two genres aren’t really that different, and these days overlap quite a bit. (the difference between Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and Laurel K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series amounts to “Butcher has yet to experience the precipitous drop in quality usually associated with an Author getting famous enough to start thinking they don’t need an editor anymore.")
which is why that prick Terry Goodkind (who, lets be clear, is a tone deaf, sexist creep of a Randroid) insists his books are not FANTASY. They’re “Books with Important Human Themes.” There are similar denials from less assholish SF writers that they don’t write scifi, don’t call it that. I don’t recall a similar denial of genre from Romance Novelists (which might be more of a cultural thing, since Romance Novelists are often women, and god forbid a woman state publicly that she has an opinion of her own work that is different from the currently accepted interpretation.)
of course that’s just my experience, plural of anecdote is not data, YMMV. also kind of rambling.
Jim Butcher was never as intelligent as L K Hamilton, and he is, ultimately, more annoying than John C Wright on theism in his work. Yeah, Hamilton has fallen far, but her body of work at her best was far better than Dresden.
Romnovs get singled out as a separate entity, to be sure, but it’s still considered a legitimate hobby.
By whom? People basically think you’re either (a) reading porn or (b) pathetically living in a fantasy world because you can’t get a man. Imagine for a minute the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention getting the slavishly glowing coverage that Comicon does. After all, Comicon covers vitally important topics like the next James Cameron movie, but the RT convention is just a bunch of undersexed middle-aged women sitting around talking about their pathetic lives.
Sorry, but science fiction as a category hasn’t been looked down on in 20 years.
“Violet Blue gets it”
Hey thanks for that WrongSideofthetracks. Gets what? That men don’t really want to know that the average woman will not get off like in a porno.
Porn is work for everyone involved in the production. I think susie bright once referred to mainstream porn as like hamburgers. It feeds you, but it certainly isn’t nutritous
As far as I know Beast Machines was a North American production, mostly Canadian and ported to the Japanese audience later. So I don’t see how there was a “translation” issue, unless it was a Japanese translation error?
It wouldn’t be the first time. Japan turned Airrazor into a guy for no reason in their Beast Wars dub (which was a hackjob all around, I hear). Hell, some country in Europe mistook Starscream for a woman because of his high-pitched voice iirc…
You could split the difference, but then you’d end up with Spiderman vs. The Baroness from GI JOE. Which starts with an evil terrorist plot to blow up mind controlled dinosaur orphans or something, proceeds through EEEEEEVIL Gunshooting accent talking vs athletic dodging and smartmouth, and then ends with hot, breaks-everything-in-the-room sex.
...fund it?
I stopped reading the Butcher after the sixth deus ex machina in four novels.
MonkeyShines:
If that’s your problem then all that is necessary is to teach your man the Sam Kinison Alphabet technique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns0rPJKhk14
Absolutely guaranteed to improve anyone’s performance.
Where the fuck did I say I was having problems with my partner’s performance of cunnilingus on me?
Dana:
Yet the biggest complain men have about women is that so often women don’t tell us what they are thinking, what they mean, or what they want.
We really do want you to talk to us.
Except when you don’t. Men aren’t all the same, you know that, right? And when you say “tell me what you like and what you don’t like” and we tell you, we sometimes hear “stop complaining” or even “you’re wrong.” That doesn’t even include the emotionally withholding or violent reponses.
BrianX -
HUH?! either you didn’t understand what *I* wrote, or i am completely confused by what you wrote.
really, really confused. can you please elucidate?
Shah8-
i get that the Dresden files aren’t for everyone. i like them a lot, they hit most of my “action i like” buttons, and etc. are they pretty much boiler-plated? sure, but that isn’t always bad.
but… um… LKH? you think Anita Blake (who calls people “FLAVORS” for Pete’s sake! as in “he wasn’t white, but i wasn’t sure exactly what flavor he was” pretty much *verbatim* quote) is better than HARRY DRESDEN!?
PiaToR-
i SNEER at your SNEER! i SNEER at your STROSS! and no, i will NOT let you borrow my signed first edition of Accelerando! and stop eyeing my pristine library-cover GlassHouses. i SNEER at your paltry 11 Honor books!
(Dude, but seriously - Crown of Slaves is probably one of the FUNNEST books you will EVER read. i have a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE crush on Victor Cache [the Havenite “superspy” who kicks ass *everywhere* and is just *mmmmmmmm*] and there is just SO. MUCH. FUN!)
OK, I’m late to this conversation and I haven’t read any comments yet, but I just want to add my opinion. The porn thing drives me nuts. It’s a perfect demonstration of the societal myth that women just don’t like sex. The reason I don’t watch porn is because it’s made for men and I’m a straight woman. Watching lesbians won’t do anything for me. Even in straight porn (although lesbian porn is usually made for straight men), there’s just nothing there for me. There’s at least one sexy woman, and then a mediocre man who basically acts as a place holder. Even on the off chance that the man is hot, the camera will focus on the woman much, much more than the man. The woman will start out in skimpier clothes and the man is usually wearing typical stuff. The scenes revolve around pleasing the man. The woman’s pleasure is only taken into account because some men get off on seeing a woman enjoy being a slut. Even in those cases, it’s not that the man is doing things that please the woman; instead the woman pretends to enjoy things that also happen to please the man. Porn is just not made for straight women to enjoy. Then when we don’t watch it because it doesn’t give us what we want, it’s assumed that we wouldn’t like any porn, even if it were made for us. Really, my only option is gay porn. It’s not ideal, but at least I can see some hot guys. I don’t like romance novels because they’re boring and don’t have pictures of the guys involved. I also don’t get turned on by “romance”. The plots are just too corny for me.
It’s not just porn either. On almost any TV shows, there are some hot women in skimpy outfits, and some “handsome” or “distinguished” older men, fully covered in a suit. One reason I don’t watch Deal Or No Deal is because they have no hot men. Guys who watch it get to see 25 female models in miniskirts, and women get a mediocre male host to look at. Also consider Wheel of Fortune or The Price is Right. Again, men get to look at one or more hot female models, and women get an average or even less-than-average old guy as host. Just because women aren’t necessarily attracted to other women doesn’t mean we don’t like porn or aren’t sexual. Give us some hot guys and we’ll watch a lot more.
I sneer at all of your Harringtons, but mostly because of the pornographic descriptions of the space battles, where there seems always to be the ejac—er, decisive emanation of gamma rays by some weapon or other that penetrates the enemy ship lengthwise, leaving lovingly detailed destruction of property and individual bodies in its wake.
Not trying to do an “it’s worse for men” but rather “it’s also pretty creepy for men”, but I gotta think, if it’s not particularly fun to fake an orgasm on cue, what must it be like to actually have one, or at least the outward physical signs of one, on cue, and to have your livelihood depend on it. Takes a special kind of person, but it’s culturally OK for men to aspire to that level of out-of-body experience.
PiaToR-
i SNEER at your SNEER! i SNEER at your STROSS! and no, i will NOT let you borrow my signed first edition of Accelerando! and stop eyeing my pristine library-cover GlassHouses. i SNEER at your paltry 11 Honor books!
I SNEER at your lowly signed first edition of Accelerando. I have a signed hardcopy edition of Iron Sunrise from Charlie’s own stash, and my name in the credits of one of his novels (which I will decline to name for privacy reasons). And I know what CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN means…
I migt give Crown of Slaves a try at some stage - I was avoiding getting any further into the series.
Some of the things that Mary Roach was saying in the video were very interesting; however, I find it difficult to believe anything that she says or take her professional demeanor seriously after watching her laugh at the idea of a man having a difficult time achieving orgasm. My partner has always had difficulty achieving orgasm through intercourse, and the only surefire way for him to reach climax is though either masturbation or oral sex (sometimes with the latter proving to be extremely difficult as well). I find her lack of sensitivity or knowledge on the issue of male orgasmic disorder completely disquieting, and I don’t think I’ll find myself taking advice or information from her to heart any time soon.
I’ll echo what Catgirl and Speedbudget have said above - “I think a good start in making porn more female-positive would be in not making the man’s orgasm the ultimate goal of every single sex scene.”
A couple of other commenters have made the point that most porn produced right now, whether it’s the ridiculously shitty, misogynist gonzo stuff or the relatively tame amateur-produced webcam stuff, is made for men. It is made with the intent to give men something to look at and masturbate to. Catgirl recognized above that this focus can be in really specific content, like the script and actual sexual activities, but it also exists in more subtle ways, like camera angles. A lot of mainstream porn provides a conventionally attractive woman, in full-frame, and a dude’s penis. Often, the viewer can’t see the male performers’ faces because they aren’t important - the dude is there to serve as a cipher for the male audience.
If porn were made that was primarily targeted towards straight women, I bet the response would be pretty good, but it would require focusing on sexual activities that actually cause women to orgasm.
Monkeyshines: that “alphabet technique” is total crap. Either you delight in an opportunity to kiss and lick a woman’s genitals or you do not. No alphabet, (not even the swirly Arabic one!) is going to help you or your partner if you can’t imagine simply exploring and enjoying the occasion to the delight of both parties.
And Sam Kinison, seriously?! Dude was a raging misogynistic a-hole. You wanna talk about a genre not appealing to women?! That is the only context a Sam Kinison performance could even pretend to be useful on this thread.
Thank you thank you thank you for this post!
To Dana: I believe that men want women to talk to them. The problem isn’t that we don’t talk--it’s the reactions we get when we DO. If you truly want a woman to open up to you, JUST LISTEN. Don’t go through the checklist of all the stuff they need to do to ‘fix’ themselves, because though your intentions might be good, it comes off as dismissive and condescending.
And unfortunately even when you DO hear us out, Oldfeminist is right--the emotional withholding is a popular response. (And people think it’s just for women, but lo! it bridges the gap between the sexes!) I got a ton of guilt trips (I was raised Catholic, and somehow developed an immunity to this, by the way--I can see right through a person who’s trying to emotionally manipulate me, and strangely, it does not make me want to fuck them.)
For the record? I hate blow jobs. I will NOT do it. No, I’ve never tried it. The thought makes me want to vomit. And the old ‘just TRY it’ is ridiculous. Stop talking to me like I’m six years old--that’s not a turn-on, either.
PiaToR - i sneer at your mention! SNEER I SAY - (but, hey, that’s really cool. John Ringo has decided to use one of my nicknames for a character in his next series. so yay! i gets to be a kick-ass Petty Officer First Class whose job is to whip the main character wet-behind-the-ears-Lt. into shape!)
Crown of Slaves actually starts a new series, that follows the spys-and-escapades side of things. it is possible to read just that series, and not need to read the main one. which i have been considering
Sneering is exhausting, man. i sneer at sneering, it makes me tired
hey, have you read Vatta’s War (i think) the new Elizabeth Moon series? those are also pretty kick-ass, *and* have mercenaries (when used right, mercenaries are great. when used wrong, mercenaries take over your city...)
Paul - i rather like the battle scenes. but that’s because i cheat - i skim. so i get an over-all impression, and i have one of those imaginations that translates everything i read to movie format - so i can “watch” all the space battles - better than Star Wars! explosions! fire! gravity manipulation! it’s kinda fun. it was shocked when i found out (i was 12, i think) that most people *don’t* get this sort of imagry from reading…
aJenniferOriginal:
that “alphabet technique” is total crap. Either you delight in an opportunity to kiss and lick a woman’s genitals or you do not. No alphabet, (not even the swirly Arabic one!) is going to help you or your partner if you can’t imagine simply exploring and enjoying the occasion to the delight of both parties.
Thanks, I couldn’t quite put into words what was wrong with that technique. But it’s the same thing as telling a woman “pretend it’s an ice cream cone.” If you can’t enjoy it for what it is, you’re probably going to suck at it (no pun intended).
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Fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction. Thank you kindly.
Though gay sex is still the major content of fanfiction, and while I think that some of that is just the plain old two-hot-dudes-for-the-price-of-one thing, I also think it’s because to many women two male bodies read as kind of neutral and equal - one doesn’t start off coded as passive/receptive or active/aggressive.
And then there’s the whole subset that I think is women acting out their issues with sex on “neutral” male bodies. Pretty much every trope that Amanda has decried as being disturbing in male-oriented porn has a fairly popular fanfiction equivalent.