Relationships, Sex, & Porn

By Felicia A. Reid

PORNOGRAPHY WAS NEVER the talk of everyday conversation but has always been society’s wink-and-nudge open secret. With the rise and spread of the Internet and its technologies, pornography has become less a thing of secrecy or shame and more an acknowledged, if not always accepted, side of sexuality.

But in the last year, pornography has been at the center of increasing scrutiny, even backlash—and the criticism wasn’t coming from social conservatism’s usual moralizations and denunciations. Porn was the subject of common horror story, accused of tearing apart relationships and marriages, even devastating families.

But many of the analyses were gendered, positing women as victims of porn-addicted men. When their bedrooms weren’t places prime for a RedTube or YouPorn recording, the availability of porn had made men uncaring, ignorant, and selfish in their relationships.

Sex and sexuality have long been points of conversation—a conversation that’s expanded with the rapid and blunt charge of women’s sexuality in mainstream media. With the democratization of porn that exists today–where a simple search yields all a nighttime surfer could imagine and more—this “problem of porn” in relationships seemed cherry-picked and narrow.

Determined to dig beneath the issue, thisthatSAID’s editor, Felicia Reid, sat down to talk pornography with friends, all in relationships, who had little social relation and varied in gender, orientation, and ethnicity.* Behind the abstracts and rhetoric, came a conversation about wherefores and whys of society’s dirtiest [not-so] secret.

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FR: Do you remember the first time you saw porn?

Charli, 27, female, straight, in a 2 year relationship: I think I was 10. I was rummaging through videotapes we had at our house and came across one that showed a reggae dancehall party. There were strippers dancing and having sex with both men and women. I remember thinking, “Oh! That’s how [sex] is done.”

Eloise 26, female, straight, in a 3 year relationship: It was my sophomore year in high school and I was at my friend’s house. We were flipping through the adult channels. It was a couple who had moved to a neighborhood and went to a get-together that turned out to be swingers’ [party]. It was ridiculous.

Fred, 28, male, straight, in a 1 year relationship, on and off: It was a naked picture of Pamela Anderson. I was 10, at a friend’s house–he had the Internet before I did. I had a printed copy but didn’t know where to hide it. I hid it in my Where’s Waldo book, but then my mom found it. [Laughs.]

Khloe, 34, female, bisexual, in a 4 year relationship with Santana: I was really young, my older cousin who was 12 or 13 was babysitting me. I walked in the room and she was watching porn. My eyes lit up. She told me to leave and I was like “No, please let me stay, I really want to stay.” I remember that. It felt like a revelation.

Niklaus, 30, male, straight, in a relationship for “too many years”: I don’t remember the specific first time, but I do remember the first time I saw deviant porn. It was three girls, they were all squirters. They were lined up fingering themselves.

Gerta, 26, female, straight, in a 3 year relationship: It was at my neighbor’s and I was 10. He had Penthouse pictures that his dad gave him lining his tree house.

Santana, 30, female, lesbian: I saw Playboy, I think I was 7. My sisters and I were in my dad’s bedroom watching TV and he forgot to put his magazine away. I didn’t understand what I was seeing, but it was making me excited. By that time I was already masturbating so it was just exciting.

 

FR:  Do you watch porn now and do you prefer a certain kind?

Fred: I watch it to whack off. There’s definitely no art to it. I’m just like, “Here’s the goal and I’m going to watch it ‘til I get to my goal.” I like finding videos that are real, amateur stuff, like a person who’s videotaping with his girlfriend. [There] I know it’s not acting or them trying to act, that [to me] is pathetic.

Eloise: I like simple, not the whole scripted thing, but bedroom-taped stuff.  I’ve watched guy/girl and guy/guy, but it’s easier for me to imagine that what’s going on is happening to me if there’s a girl in the picture. I also like seeing a single guy, it’s nice when they’re just masturbating.

Gerta: Porn doesn’t have a place right now, but previously, yes, [with an ex]. I liked scenarios—like a nurse, or teacher or something like that. I have a more emotional relationship now. [My boyfriend,] Will, did watch porn [early on], and that was an explosive fight. It would be intimidating to me if I wanted sex, he rejected me and I found out he then watched porn.

Khloe: One of my favorite things is gay porn. In heterosexual relationships, I think women are the impediment to good sex. They come to the sexual experience with so many emotional needs, expecting it to mean so much. They ignore the whole point of the good time. But I’m obsessed with women, so I can’t watch porn where I feel the woman is unhappy. With two men, you don’t have that woman there and [they’re] freer to just be primal with each other. I get the feeling that gay men are having the sex all men wish they were having.

Niklaus: I really like porn with squirting. Since I was—I guess 16, I don’t know—I was drawn to it. My preferences haven’t changed much, but what [I’m into] does depend on my mood. Right now I’m into the whole lesbian thing.

 

FR: Watching porn is often highly personal, so in a relationship, it can become something different. How does porn work in your relationship?

Santana: I used to just watch porn out of entertainment, and then I started using it as a tool to masturbate. Khloe likes to masturbate a lot, so in this relationship, porn has played more of a role than it ever has before. She tries to incorporate it into our sex life but she always wants to watch these boring-ass bitches. It’s just like “Ugh!” Sometimes I use it to excite her, but it’s hard. She likes White girls and [I prefer] people of color.

Niklaus: I use porn as a quicker way to jerk off. I would like to see porn more in my relationship, but, I mean, as long as you vary your sex life, do you really need porn to be a part of it? I watch enough that I can get any kind of idea I want and just translate that into my sex life.

Charli: In college, it was more of a teaching tool, maybe 70% teaching and 30% pleasure. Now, porn is more for my own personal pleasure. I think [my boyfriend], Harper, prefers that I watch porn because it makes me more sexually open. It does make me feel empowered when I can watch it with him and enjoy it.

Fred: I’ve never watched it with anyone I’ve dated. I’m not interested in watching it with someone. The only time I watch it, really, is when I make my own with someone–having a girl send me pictures or an ex-girlfriend send me videos.

Eloise: My last boyfriend and I watched it together. It would get us in the mood, we would experiment and try different things. Me and my boyfriend now? No. We used to have sex a lot, but  he’s on this medication for anxiety and has no sex drive.  I don’t know if he knows that I use porn. If he did, I think his feelings would be a little hurt. The experience I have with porn in this relationship is [one-sided]. I mean, thank God for porn because I’m not getting it otherwise.

Gerta: Will used to, [but then it became,]  “Oh, you watched porn last week, but the three times I wanted to have sex, you said “No”.” I freaked. He was extremely responsive, like “Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll cut it out if it makes you feel uncomfortable.” That made me less aggressive. I took it less personally when he did reject me. Instead of freaking out I would just be like, “Okay good night, I’ll try again tomorrow.” [Laughs.]

FR: Do you think porn has any relationship to real sex or sex in your relationship?

Santana: I would never compare myself or my sex life to something in porn. If anything, I would like to be a director because I feel like I could actually create legitimate lesbian porn. It’s hard for a camera to capture [it], and what happens is that they compensate for that difficulty with all the excess moaning and moving around.

Eloise: I’m wary of guys, who, when you first have sex with them, want to try all sorts of crazy positions. Porn can be great, but there are definitely some guys who–you can tell when they talk about sex or have sex–just watch way too much of it. Women don’t look like women in porn, fuck, porn sex doesn’t look like sex. They always show it as clean and perfect. Sex is messy, you have to clean up.

Niklaus: The more porn I watched, I definitely wanted to be more aggressive with women, but [my fiancée’s] tastes are more smushy-mushy. She wants to lay in bed naked, cuddle and stuff. I more want to bang her head against the wall and suffocate her in the pillow. I hate cuddling.

Gerta: When we were first together, there were some things that I was like, “What the fuck are you doing? Did you get that from someone else or did you get that from porn?” Now, not so much.

FR: Some people try to limit or contextualize when their partners watch porn. Do you have those parameters in your relationship?

Khloe: I don’t feel like I should have a control of your body or your personal sex life. I’m not the kind of person who thinks that if you’re in love with me, you can’t have a fantasy or you can’t masturbate because it would be a slight to me. If I’m not in the mood or I’m not around, do whatever, masturbate have a great time. I don’t want to have a leash on anybody’s sexuality.

Niklaus: I’ve never put limitations on porn. The [public perspective] on porn is far too puritanical, though there is a question of whether that’s changing when there’s so much contradiction under that.

Gerta: I found a pattern personally, if somebody was giving me enough attention and they were watching porn on the side, I didn’t care, but if I felt that my needs weren’t being met then it made me upset. I don’t think that my stance, necessarily, is the right way. I take it very personally. I don’t expect that every single time I want [sex], I get it. That’s fine. But if I don’t, I can’t get past those speed bumps without feeling that I can control something else.

Santana:  I don’t have any limitations really. Khloe can go watch or enjoy it and use it as a tool to get excited about sex, I don’t care. I believe that most people get horny by people who aren’t their partners. That’s a normal thing.

Fred: I think you can ruin a relationship more by restricting people’s sexuality and what they can do. I’ve never met anyone or dated anyone like that. I may be biased on the point, but I can’t imagine it’s good.

Eloise:  If you put limitations or allowances on porn, you’re going to have a bigger problem. I would much rather watch porn with a guy than tell him he can’t.  If you tell a guy he can’t do something, he’s going to be secretive about it. Once a guy starts keeping secrets, if he has to hide is sexuality and what he does, things are just going to go downhill.

Charli: My needs versus Harper’s are very different; I understand that. I don’t feel the need to intrude in his sex life. Personally, I don’t put any restrictions. If someone has a habit, I’d never try to break them of it. Unless it became an obsession. If porn ever became that big of an issue, I’d just stop dating him.

 

FR: Do you think pornography had influenced your fantasies or  what you want from sex in your relationship?

Niklaus: If I never watched porn I probably would never want to play with toys, or wouldn’t want to choke girls, handcuff them, or whip them. Not that this was never in me to begin with, it was. There’s some visceral thing about being dominant, and porn kind of introduced me to the idea of submission. I can’t explain it; it’s primal, it’s chemical.

Eloise:  If I see something in porn that I want to try, then I’ll try it. It’s expanded what I want to do sexually. Porn makes me feel like empowered, I feel more confident watching it. I’m in control of my own orgasm—it’s me, I’m God. It’s part of being a woman, to make your own orgasm.

Fred: I watch porn and get ideas of things I want to do.  Sometimes you do want to treat your girlfriend like a porn star. I know porn isn’t real life, but people make it real life when they want to do things they see in videos–I’m guilty of that. In a relationship, I don’t think some things are degrading. There’s a difference between what’s unrealistic in porn—things that really don’t happen [in real life]—and what’s actually degrading, but people combine the two.

Khloe: When it comes to what I want in a woman or a man, porn hasn’t had much of an influence. Porn is its own self contained universe that doesn’t bleed much into my reality. It does expose you to things and ideas you didn’t realize were possible, but I do question how much porn is going to reshape who you are. I think porn just let’s you know who you are.

FR: Right now there’s a large, or at least, more vocal, bloc protesting porn’s negative objectification of women. Do you see this as legitimate or cherry-picking? Where do you think the future of porn lies?

Fred:  Oh, porn is definitely changing men’s expectations of women, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. There are so many feminist-type women who think that porn is always degrading to women. But you know what? Some women like it, that’s just a fact. There’s just so much porn out there now that you can’t say that everything is degrading.

Khloe: People always have this thing about how bad porn is to women, but I think that’s largely people who aren’t paying attention, who have issues. Women need to accept and make room for the fact that men have a different sexuality than ours. Women do to men what you might do to dog that shits in the house, anything about men that’s different from us is wrong or bad and they need to stop it, need to fix it. They need to be more like us. That’s bullshit. There’s now this generation of men that’s been pussified, if you will, and I’m all for the depussification of men. I feel bad when I hear men talk about how they struggle with porn and their sexuality with their significant other.

Gerta: My biggest concern with porn is what it does to kids who don’t have any experience. That’s what’s scary; it’s their template, their health class. Porn is an example of consumerism where people create a need. People are making porn and objectifying women in all sorts of ways. They’re telling people “This is new, this is what you want to be turned on by.” With such a volume of things to look at, people end up not knowing what they want. They also end up not knowing that things don’t need to be that extreme–that they don’t need to push it to get off.

Niklaus: Porn definitely objectifies women to a certain extent, but I think, in life, 95% of women are smart enough to use objectification to their benefit. Women in porn get what they want, and that has a mirror in reality. Let’s not be coy here, either through sheer tenacity or their sexuality, women get what they want. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either. I [do] think society is slowly moving more toward a progressive attitude, it has to do with the way the country is becoming more diverse.

Charli: I don’t think porn is wholesale negative in the way it objectifies. There are so many different kinds [of porn], and in a lot of situations, you see women in control—or maybe that’s what I see. There are more sexual images in mainstream culture that are more damaging than porn itself. In porn you know the objective is to watch sex, but in TV, a character is supposed to be one thing [yet] there’s this whole other undercurrent of sex. I think that’s more damaging.

Eloise: I think it does objectify women, but it’s porn. At some point, no matter who the porn is for, that’s what it shows, someone’s going to be objectified. You can’t pick a type of porn and say that represents all of it. I think the porn industry is also becoming more reflective of society, recognizing that society has different tastes and interests than the prototypical. But I think it’ll be a long time before people accept porn.

 

*Names have been changed.