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lucifrix posted a link to this essay in her LJ and asked for someone who is better at long-piece writing than she is to offer a rebuttal.
Since then, the article has been taken down, but since the author of the article said she was looking forward to intelligent debate I've got a copy saved right here.
XXX PORNOGRAPHIC THOUGHTS XXX - byculloden
This short is a thoughtful exploration of what pornography in its current state has to offer you, the consumer. First off, some questions to get you “in the mood.” You’ll need a scrap of paper and a pen/pencil.
Everybody likes porn, right? We all do it, right? Actually, there are some people who don’t like porn. Amazing, isn’t it? Do you like porn? If you do, write down the reasons why. Are you attracted to sad faces numbly going through “the motions”? Do you suffer from fear of being evaluated by a woman/man that you could actually touch in the flesh? Not sure what sexual relations on an intimate level encompass?
The people that do not like porn—there has to be something wrong with them, right? They’re just jealous because they are not on the screen, being devoured by your hand and a box of tissue, right? Why don’t they like porn? Are they secure in who they are? Would they rather have sex with their partner? Do they feel uncomfortable looking at uncomfortable and unhappy actors (for our purposes, ‘actors’ will cover both women and men)?
Oh, did I say actors? I’m sorry, you thought all that action was real. Did you also think that you were in control of those actors, that they were really taking their clothes off and letting billion-dollar corporations film them in degrading positions for you?
If you are so hot, why are you holed up in your room all by yourself, jerking off to men and women that would never give you the time of day—sounds more like they are so busy fucking other perfect bodies, no? Or was it that coke addiction to numb the senses from the fact that they are the objectified pieces of meat for such people as yourself?
Which brings me to your physical/mental relationship with your partner(s). How is it? Does your partner like watching porn too? Have you asked your partner if they really like porn? Do you talk to your partner about what he/she and you want in sexual intimacy, or do you try strange and uncomfortable porn moves on him/her without asking if it is alright to do so? Have you asked yourself what it is about yourself that draws you to porn?
Maybe it is the fastfood presentation of porn that you are into. Quick, easy, requires no effort—hey, they even have virtual machines that take care of that cumbersome and tedious task of jerking/jilling off (yes, women actually masturbate too, and they deserve their own term, so here it is).
Like fastfood, lots of things go into porn that you, the consumer, never see. There are all kinds of nasty bugs that float around in the unsanitary setting of the fast food restaurant—dirty counters, animals that have been caged in small, cramped quarters, cheap ‘third world’ labour -- well, you know, you’ve heard all about that, right?
The porn industry is the same way. The hot actresses only make roughly a thousand dollars American for each fuck they film. Not bad, you think, eh, easy score? When you watch porn, do you like to see the actors using protection, such as those latex hats? Or do you want to see naked meat being swung around? If you are anything like the corporate porn producers, they don’t like to see such silly pieces of protection being used. So, the actor becomes even more of a disposable commodity (when a “girl” begins to ‘age,’ they toss her out like yesterday’s McDees wrappers) when they have contracted AIDS.
They are, of course, tested quite frequently for AIDS, so that the virus can be contained (or so they say), but it leaks out and beyond the pornography industry. Did you know that the sex you jerk/jill off to is not contained safely in those little tapes and or the internet screen that you so intensely get wrapped up into (hey, you’re part of the burger package now!)? These actors don’t just fuck other industry workers—there are hot looking bodies outside of porn, even some that don’t have the standard issue porn measurements of penis and t&a. So any disease that brews itself quite studiously in the industry leaks out into your community. Sounds pretty hot, doesn’t it? I know my juices are flowing, how about yours?
To pull away from the issue of disease, and into the community, let’s talk for a moment of just that. Let’s go with the job and the grim reality that the ‘girls’ (or maybe, you’d like to hear here, YOUR girls ;) )that begin to age, ever wonder why they are called girls? Would you feel intimidated if they were called ‘women’? Calling them girls makes them sound younger, doesn’t it? It gives you visions of hot young virgins dancing in your head, right? Mmmm, sweet, eh? Speaking of hot, I wanted to ask you, do you have any porn lying around with your mother/wife/sister/cousin in it? I’d like to get off watching it—do you?
I’ll tell you something else that I absolutely get excited in watching. You. What? You heard me, you. I know, I know, you don’t have a desirable 12 inch dick or those wonderfully ballooned breast that stick up, way up, in the air or the taint shaved vagina that makes me think of powerless, virginal girls that you can control instead of women in real life! Dominating young, sad, sacred girls and getting violated by enormous dicks is too enticing, isn’t it? Well, honestly, I just can’t help myself, I guess I like a little variety!
I love watching some lame fuck sitting at his/her computer desk jerking off, all alone, in dirty secret mode. The thoughts of it just make me wet with anticipation. No, really, I am not kidding. The mere fact that you need extreme external stimuli to get your rocks/ovaries off just thrills me to no end. I wonder if the actors think of you and your ass sitting there, in a cold chair in front of a plastic computer screen, jerking/jilling off. My guess is, they are attracted to people who don’t need porn to get them off, people who can hold their own in a night of passion. Yes, that’s right, I said “a night,” some of us are actually into sex that takes more than 30 seconds.
Well, here ends my thoughts on pornography for the moment, I’m about to get touched by another human being in places you would not want to see exposed by your mother—but if you ever do, don’t worry, I’ve got a whole library of her! Enjoy your porn and its fulfilling and satisfying experience!
Then we have my reply:
I thought about doing this line by line but since I ended up having to quote the article here that just seems silly. Allow me, then, to do some more general commentary.
Hi - I like porn. I am also aware of the logic fallacy inherent in sweeping generalizations.
If the tone of this essay is any indication, it shall apparently come as a shock to the author that - to use their word - amazingly, some of us can like porn and be aware that other people do not. Frankly, this is something that tends to be obvious to anybody that does like porn since rarely does porn come in easy to get at forms that do not require showing your age, a credit card, and/or frequenting a store that's right next to, say, a Waldenbooks. Granted this is for America. Your mileage, and nation, may vary. But be that as it may, I daresay that most of us porn-likers get the concept. Some people do not like porn. Some find it silly, some find it nasty. The same opinions can be had about the ongoing career of Adam Sandler. The world somehow manages to move on.
Why do we like porn? Because watching porn produces orgasms. Granted this is a sweeping generalization on my own part, but I feel fairly safe in saying that, bare minimum, some form of pleasure is involved in the watching/usage of pornography since otherwise boy was this a waste of time and money on everyone's part.
We watch porn because we enjoy it. We enjoy it because this is how the human brain is wired. We respond to stimuli. To say that somebody only watches porn because they cannot have and/or fear the touch of a real person is to suggest that people only go to movies because they don't have interesting lives, only read books because they don't have imagination and only go to art galleries because for some reason they're deathly afraid of actually encountering a real bowl of fruit that's been arranged decoratively. In other words - it ain't the same thing. Sometimes we want things live, othertimes we want things on Memorex. Fortunately we have ways of doing both.
No, I don't delude myself into thinking that the people acting in porn are doing anything but acting. I also managed to get through Bad Boys II while understanding that at no time was Will Smith actually a police officer. I'm smart like that. Did knowing that Will was acting ruin my enjoyment of the film? No, since acting was the point. If Will had actually been going around causing all of that destruction I would have been upset and wanted him put away. But luckily movies and the like use a little concept we call storytelling to show us something that is fun/interesting/dramatic/romantic/sexy/you name it without anybody, ideally, getting hurt.
Now, as for getting hurt - I don't delude myself. I know there are people in the sex industry that do get hurt for various reasons. There's STDs, there's drug addiction, there's non-consensual sex. But here's the thing - that's not limited to the sex industry. Those people working in the sex industry? They're right here on Earth. We didn't bus them in from somewhere. So their problems are our problems. I don't look at the sex industry and think that the problems there mean we need to shut the sex industry down. I look at the sex industry and think, first and foremost, we should legalize it to help give these people more rights (as I'm including prostitution in the term "the sex industry" as much as I am pornography) and then we should keep doing more to help the cause of public health and safety in general.
And, by the by, there is no "disease that brews itself quite studiously in the industry". Science has yet to discover the porn-only disease. So the idea that we should stop supporting pornography because that way it will contain those nasty sex diseases that only porn stars get is as false as saying we need to put all those queers on an island to help stop the spread of AIDS. I just had to point that out.
Now then, with regards to pornography and partners - yes, some of us do watch porn with our partners. Just as there are people out there who don't like porn (and we haven't forgotten about you, honest! That's why we don't watch porn with you) there are those who like watching porn with other people. It's a similar concept - though not necessarily the exact same group of people - to the idea that some people like watching romantic movies with their partners. It doesn't necessarily mean they lack on romance, it means they wanted to watch something that had a similar mood to what they're feeling and/or trying to create. Same thing with porn. If you're in the mood to watch a movie with your partner and you're both feeling randy, somehow Schindler's List isn't going to do it.
With regards to partners, the essay also asks: "do you try strange and uncomfortable porn moves on him/her without asking if it is alright to do so?" To which I have to say - uh, what? "Porn moves"? Can we narrow that down to at least a page reference in the Kama Sutra, please? WTF is a "porn move" and how does it differ from "any form of sexual position and/or foreplay that differs from the missionary position"?
But to answer the question as best as I can - uh, yeah, I do try various forms of pleasing my partner when I'm with him/her. That's what we call the point. I also do things that they like and, if it's new and different enough, yes, I will ask first. Consent is a sexy thing and has absolutely nothing to do with sexual positioning and everything to do with making your partner comfortable. If your partner is doing things to you sexually that you didn't give permission for, the blame lies not in the porn industry but in your partner being a fuckwad. Trust me, it's a separate issue.
Finally, porn and porn-likers come (no pun intended) in all flavors. Don't assume that just because someone likes porn that means all they like is "girls" with big boobs and shaved cunts. If that were so the porn industry would be very repetitive, and I wouldn't be watching any of it because fake tits and shaved pussies are not my thing. Instead there's all kinds of porn for all kinds of people. It's the Baskin-Robbins of the movie industry.
Look, don't get me wrong. Hate porn all you like. Heck, you don't even need my permission. I'm just saying that if this essay is a good picture of how you view those of us who do like porn, then your glasses need cleaning. I'm female, Ivy-League educated, sexually active with both men and women and I also like porn. Now go ahead and hate me too if you want, but at least do it for the right reasons.
Now back to the actual writing of porn. Don't mind me.
lucifrix posted a link to this essay in her LJ and asked for someone who is better at long-piece writing than she is to offer a rebuttal.Since then, the article has been taken down, but since the author of the article said she was looking forward to intelligent debate I've got a copy saved right here.
XXX PORNOGRAPHIC THOUGHTS XXX - by
cullodenThis short is a thoughtful exploration of what pornography in its current state has to offer you, the consumer. First off, some questions to get you “in the mood.” You’ll need a scrap of paper and a pen/pencil.
Everybody likes porn, right? We all do it, right? Actually, there are some people who don’t like porn. Amazing, isn’t it? Do you like porn? If you do, write down the reasons why. Are you attracted to sad faces numbly going through “the motions”? Do you suffer from fear of being evaluated by a woman/man that you could actually touch in the flesh? Not sure what sexual relations on an intimate level encompass?
The people that do not like porn—there has to be something wrong with them, right? They’re just jealous because they are not on the screen, being devoured by your hand and a box of tissue, right? Why don’t they like porn? Are they secure in who they are? Would they rather have sex with their partner? Do they feel uncomfortable looking at uncomfortable and unhappy actors (for our purposes, ‘actors’ will cover both women and men)?
Oh, did I say actors? I’m sorry, you thought all that action was real. Did you also think that you were in control of those actors, that they were really taking their clothes off and letting billion-dollar corporations film them in degrading positions for you?
If you are so hot, why are you holed up in your room all by yourself, jerking off to men and women that would never give you the time of day—sounds more like they are so busy fucking other perfect bodies, no? Or was it that coke addiction to numb the senses from the fact that they are the objectified pieces of meat for such people as yourself?
Which brings me to your physical/mental relationship with your partner(s). How is it? Does your partner like watching porn too? Have you asked your partner if they really like porn? Do you talk to your partner about what he/she and you want in sexual intimacy, or do you try strange and uncomfortable porn moves on him/her without asking if it is alright to do so? Have you asked yourself what it is about yourself that draws you to porn?
Maybe it is the fastfood presentation of porn that you are into. Quick, easy, requires no effort—hey, they even have virtual machines that take care of that cumbersome and tedious task of jerking/jilling off (yes, women actually masturbate too, and they deserve their own term, so here it is).
Like fastfood, lots of things go into porn that you, the consumer, never see. There are all kinds of nasty bugs that float around in the unsanitary setting of the fast food restaurant—dirty counters, animals that have been caged in small, cramped quarters, cheap ‘third world’ labour -- well, you know, you’ve heard all about that, right?
The porn industry is the same way. The hot actresses only make roughly a thousand dollars American for each fuck they film. Not bad, you think, eh, easy score? When you watch porn, do you like to see the actors using protection, such as those latex hats? Or do you want to see naked meat being swung around? If you are anything like the corporate porn producers, they don’t like to see such silly pieces of protection being used. So, the actor becomes even more of a disposable commodity (when a “girl” begins to ‘age,’ they toss her out like yesterday’s McDees wrappers) when they have contracted AIDS.
They are, of course, tested quite frequently for AIDS, so that the virus can be contained (or so they say), but it leaks out and beyond the pornography industry. Did you know that the sex you jerk/jill off to is not contained safely in those little tapes and or the internet screen that you so intensely get wrapped up into (hey, you’re part of the burger package now!)? These actors don’t just fuck other industry workers—there are hot looking bodies outside of porn, even some that don’t have the standard issue porn measurements of penis and t&a. So any disease that brews itself quite studiously in the industry leaks out into your community. Sounds pretty hot, doesn’t it? I know my juices are flowing, how about yours?
To pull away from the issue of disease, and into the community, let’s talk for a moment of just that. Let’s go with the job and the grim reality that the ‘girls’ (or maybe, you’d like to hear here, YOUR girls ;) )that begin to age, ever wonder why they are called girls? Would you feel intimidated if they were called ‘women’? Calling them girls makes them sound younger, doesn’t it? It gives you visions of hot young virgins dancing in your head, right? Mmmm, sweet, eh? Speaking of hot, I wanted to ask you, do you have any porn lying around with your mother/wife/sister/cousin in it? I’d like to get off watching it—do you?
I’ll tell you something else that I absolutely get excited in watching. You. What? You heard me, you. I know, I know, you don’t have a desirable 12 inch dick or those wonderfully ballooned breast that stick up, way up, in the air or the taint shaved vagina that makes me think of powerless, virginal girls that you can control instead of women in real life! Dominating young, sad, sacred girls and getting violated by enormous dicks is too enticing, isn’t it? Well, honestly, I just can’t help myself, I guess I like a little variety!
I love watching some lame fuck sitting at his/her computer desk jerking off, all alone, in dirty secret mode. The thoughts of it just make me wet with anticipation. No, really, I am not kidding. The mere fact that you need extreme external stimuli to get your rocks/ovaries off just thrills me to no end. I wonder if the actors think of you and your ass sitting there, in a cold chair in front of a plastic computer screen, jerking/jilling off. My guess is, they are attracted to people who don’t need porn to get them off, people who can hold their own in a night of passion. Yes, that’s right, I said “a night,” some of us are actually into sex that takes more than 30 seconds.
Well, here ends my thoughts on pornography for the moment, I’m about to get touched by another human being in places you would not want to see exposed by your mother—but if you ever do, don’t worry, I’ve got a whole library of her! Enjoy your porn and its fulfilling and satisfying experience!
Then we have my reply:
I thought about doing this line by line but since I ended up having to quote the article here that just seems silly. Allow me, then, to do some more general commentary.
Hi - I like porn. I am also aware of the logic fallacy inherent in sweeping generalizations.
If the tone of this essay is any indication, it shall apparently come as a shock to the author that - to use their word - amazingly, some of us can like porn and be aware that other people do not. Frankly, this is something that tends to be obvious to anybody that does like porn since rarely does porn come in easy to get at forms that do not require showing your age, a credit card, and/or frequenting a store that's right next to, say, a Waldenbooks. Granted this is for America. Your mileage, and nation, may vary. But be that as it may, I daresay that most of us porn-likers get the concept. Some people do not like porn. Some find it silly, some find it nasty. The same opinions can be had about the ongoing career of Adam Sandler. The world somehow manages to move on.
Why do we like porn? Because watching porn produces orgasms. Granted this is a sweeping generalization on my own part, but I feel fairly safe in saying that, bare minimum, some form of pleasure is involved in the watching/usage of pornography since otherwise boy was this a waste of time and money on everyone's part.
We watch porn because we enjoy it. We enjoy it because this is how the human brain is wired. We respond to stimuli. To say that somebody only watches porn because they cannot have and/or fear the touch of a real person is to suggest that people only go to movies because they don't have interesting lives, only read books because they don't have imagination and only go to art galleries because for some reason they're deathly afraid of actually encountering a real bowl of fruit that's been arranged decoratively. In other words - it ain't the same thing. Sometimes we want things live, othertimes we want things on Memorex. Fortunately we have ways of doing both.
No, I don't delude myself into thinking that the people acting in porn are doing anything but acting. I also managed to get through Bad Boys II while understanding that at no time was Will Smith actually a police officer. I'm smart like that. Did knowing that Will was acting ruin my enjoyment of the film? No, since acting was the point. If Will had actually been going around causing all of that destruction I would have been upset and wanted him put away. But luckily movies and the like use a little concept we call storytelling to show us something that is fun/interesting/dramatic/romantic/sexy/you name it without anybody, ideally, getting hurt.
Now, as for getting hurt - I don't delude myself. I know there are people in the sex industry that do get hurt for various reasons. There's STDs, there's drug addiction, there's non-consensual sex. But here's the thing - that's not limited to the sex industry. Those people working in the sex industry? They're right here on Earth. We didn't bus them in from somewhere. So their problems are our problems. I don't look at the sex industry and think that the problems there mean we need to shut the sex industry down. I look at the sex industry and think, first and foremost, we should legalize it to help give these people more rights (as I'm including prostitution in the term "the sex industry" as much as I am pornography) and then we should keep doing more to help the cause of public health and safety in general.
And, by the by, there is no "disease that brews itself quite studiously in the industry". Science has yet to discover the porn-only disease. So the idea that we should stop supporting pornography because that way it will contain those nasty sex diseases that only porn stars get is as false as saying we need to put all those queers on an island to help stop the spread of AIDS. I just had to point that out.
Now then, with regards to pornography and partners - yes, some of us do watch porn with our partners. Just as there are people out there who don't like porn (and we haven't forgotten about you, honest! That's why we don't watch porn with you) there are those who like watching porn with other people. It's a similar concept - though not necessarily the exact same group of people - to the idea that some people like watching romantic movies with their partners. It doesn't necessarily mean they lack on romance, it means they wanted to watch something that had a similar mood to what they're feeling and/or trying to create. Same thing with porn. If you're in the mood to watch a movie with your partner and you're both feeling randy, somehow Schindler's List isn't going to do it.
With regards to partners, the essay also asks: "do you try strange and uncomfortable porn moves on him/her without asking if it is alright to do so?" To which I have to say - uh, what? "Porn moves"? Can we narrow that down to at least a page reference in the Kama Sutra, please? WTF is a "porn move" and how does it differ from "any form of sexual position and/or foreplay that differs from the missionary position"?
But to answer the question as best as I can - uh, yeah, I do try various forms of pleasing my partner when I'm with him/her. That's what we call the point. I also do things that they like and, if it's new and different enough, yes, I will ask first. Consent is a sexy thing and has absolutely nothing to do with sexual positioning and everything to do with making your partner comfortable. If your partner is doing things to you sexually that you didn't give permission for, the blame lies not in the porn industry but in your partner being a fuckwad. Trust me, it's a separate issue.
Finally, porn and porn-likers come (no pun intended) in all flavors. Don't assume that just because someone likes porn that means all they like is "girls" with big boobs and shaved cunts. If that were so the porn industry would be very repetitive, and I wouldn't be watching any of it because fake tits and shaved pussies are not my thing. Instead there's all kinds of porn for all kinds of people. It's the Baskin-Robbins of the movie industry.
Look, don't get me wrong. Hate porn all you like. Heck, you don't even need my permission. I'm just saying that if this essay is a good picture of how you view those of us who do like porn, then your glasses need cleaning. I'm female, Ivy-League educated, sexually active with both men and women and I also like porn. Now go ahead and hate me too if you want, but at least do it for the right reasons.
Now back to the actual writing of porn. Don't mind me.
