I’ve been writing about porn’s impact on us (from a purely amateur, “armchair sociologist” point of view), and I don’t think any discussion of porn’s impact on society would be complete without a discussion on whether and how our consumption of porn impacts our views on sex. Do the images and videos we see on our laptops and tablets and smartphones colour the way we think about or carry out activities in the bedroom? Do the depictions of sex we consume impact our views of the real thing?
Where Do We Get Our Information On Sex?
I think we need to come to terms with the fact that porn is the main source of information about sex for many people, even more of a source than the actual act of sex itself because a lot more porn is consumed than sex is had. Whether or not porn is a good source of information on sex is kind of irrelevant; we’re past that now. We are where we are, regardless of whether it was a good idea or not. Not that anyone made a conscious choice on the matter; I doubt anyone woke up one morning and decided, “Hey, let’s make porn the go-to source of information on copulation!”After typing that paragraph I spent a minute or two thinking about whether “Information on Copulation” would make a good name for a band. I’m leaning toward thinking it wouldn’t, too wordy, but feel free to leave your opinion in the comments. Maybe it would make a good name for a techno dance song? Someone get on that.
It used to be a common lament among parents that they only had a small window of time in the day during which they could influence their kids’ lives, that narrow band of time after school and before bed, whereas kids’ peers and friends had all day to influence them. To use a very old fashioned example, if you get three hours a day to tell your kids that smoking is dangerous and their peers and friends have seven or eight hours to tell them that smoking is cool, it’s a lopsided fight. (Kids, I’m not saying smoking is cool, that’s just an example. I’m saying that smoking pot is cool.)
The same thing is happening with porn: if you’re a teenager, let’s be honest, you’re not getting laid very often. (Don’t lie teenagers, times have changed but they haven’t changed THAT much.) Even in this day and age, when daytime talk shows make sensational claims about teens spending all day every day fucking and sucking like overworked prostitutes, making it seem like high school bathrooms are the brothels of the 21st Century, the reality is that they really aren’t having that much sex. Even two teens who are in a relationship and who both love sex can only do so when they find an available time and place; they need to sneak around parents and teachers and find a place where they won’t be bothered (and can be somewhat comfortable, if possible, though if they’re anything like I was that’s a secondary concern). There are limitations. But there aren’t any limitations when it comes to finding porn! Any time, day or night, they can pull out an electronic device and find it.
Remember the days when “pulling it out” used to mean a cock, not a smartphone? These days if you’re female and semi-good looking I’m much more likely to let you handle my dick than my phone – touching my dick is less personal.
Fake vs. Real; The Fantasy vs. The Reality
So let’s suppose you’ve been consuming porn and then started having real, actual, physical sex, but you’re finding that when you do it for real it’s different than the porn version. Maybe it’s more awkward, or maybe your partner doesn’t like to perform certain acts which pornstars seem to love, or maybe guys don’t last as long in real life as pornstars do, or maybe girls don’t always reach climax (whereas pornstarlets seem to live with perpetual orgasms – which must be awkward in their day to day lives). There are lots of ways sex in real life can be different from sex in porn. But if you’re having sex a couple of hours a week (or a month, or a year) and watching porn for a couple of hours a day, tell me: which is going to have more influence on the way you think about sex? In fact, let me not even go that far; even if you’re only consuming porn for a couple of minutes a day, it’s still getting into your brain on a much more regular basis than you’re having real sex and getting first-hand information.So in this case, how are you going to react? When real sex is not like what you see on the screen, there’s a good chance you’ll think you’re doing something wrong. You’ve seen lots of porn but only had a bit of sex, so you’ll probably think that you’re messing something up in your awkward attempts at copulation. (Just to make things more complex: it’s possible that you are doing something wrong.)
“Oh, but hold on!” I hear you saying. “Everybody knows that porn isn’t real! Everybody knows that those people are actors!” And you’re right. Everybody knows that porn isn’t real, and that those are actors on the screen. They’re not just fucking, they’re fucking for public consumption. It’s a job. Sex in porn is not like sex in real life. But tell me this: how much of porn is real, and how much is fake? Because although pornstars are actors, they’re also human beings. Although they’re having sex for public consumption, they are having sex. They’re getting paid for it, but they’re performing real acts with and upon each other.
So porn isn’t “real,” but neither is it “100% fake.” Porn is actual sex which is exaggerated in some ways, but if you aren’t in the porn industry do you ever really know all of the ways things are exaggerated? And if you aren’t having constant sex with multiple partners, can you really know what’s realistic and what’s not? There was a great comment from Wylde in the post I linked to:
Yet, from a fantasy standpoint, the gangbangs look great when they’re pulled off well. It’s over-the-top sexual bravado. The pornographic equivalent of a Michael Bay film. Proof that no matter the medium, people enjoy spectacle.“The pornographic equivalent of a Michael Bay film.” I love that, it’s a great metaphor. And I’ve already written about the fact that I love gangbangs, so I’m right there with him. But there’s a key difference: We all live in the real world, we have experience with the laws of physics (even if we’re not physicists), so we can usually tell when something is exaggerated for the purpose of an action film. We know that there aren’t really huge robots from another planet, so when we see the Transformers on screen we know that they aren’t real; we know that they didn’t really send Bruce Willis on a rocket to a meteor with nuclear weapons to blow it up; most of us also know that even if you were to detonate a nuclear weapon in space it wouldn’t look like it did in the movie, because with no atmosphere, especially no oxygen, you wouldn't get huge plumes of flame shooting out; we know that Sean Connery was 153 years old when he filmed The Rock, so it probably wasn’t really him doing all the stuff his character did in that movie, it was a stunt team.
We know these things because we already have a basic working knowledge of how the world works before we ever walk into the theatre. We can watch these movies and be entertained without being confused about the laws of physics. No matter how realistic the CGI is, we’ll never walk out of a theatre thinking, “I wonder how much Optimus Prime got paid for doing that movie?” we’ll walk out thinking, “Wow, the CGI made Optimus Prime look realistic!”
But I would argue that most teenagers don’t have that kind of working knowledge of sex when they start consuming porn. It’s all well and good that we tell them “porn isn’t real,” I’m guessing most of them know that, but when it comes to the specifics they have no way to figure out what is real (or realistic) and what’s not.
Let’s look at the examples I gave earlier.
What if sex in real life is more awkward than it is in porn?
The people involved in porn are called “actors” for a reason. When they switch positions during sex on screen they will do so smoothly, like a well-oiled machine (maybe even with real oil!), because if they don’t get it right during the shoot they can just try it over and over until they get a take which does look smooth.So it’s very possible that the reason sex is more awkward in real life is because you don’t have a director handy to help you choreograph your positions. But it’s also true that some people are better lovers than others, which means it’s also possible that sex is awkward for you because you’re bad at it. Going only based on your own experience and what you see in porn isn’t enough information for you to know which is the truth in your case.
What if your partner doesn’t like certain acts which pornstars seem to love? What if YOU don’t like certain acts?
Is that normal? Is there anything wrong with you? In this case, even asking whether or not it’s “normal” probably isn’t the right question, though I wouldn’t blame someone for asking it because it’s a natural question.We all have preferences, we all like some things and dislike other things, and not everyone is the same. I don’t tend to enjoy having my dick sucked, which porn would lead me to believe is atypical for a guy, but I’ve heard enough other men say that they also don’t enjoy felatio that I honestly don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. (Maybe it’s atypical, but not to the point that it’s freakish?) I’m old enough now and confident enough in my skills as a lover that I don’t care if it’s normal or not; I move past that to sexual acts I (and my partners) do enjoy and leave it at that. Or sometimes I let a girl suck my cock because she really wants to, and it would make her happy. I’m all about making girls happy.
Leave a comment below if you’d like to participate, preferably with a picture. I don’t take credit cards.
And speaking of cock sucking, most girls I meet these days claim to love giving head (and a small minority of them are even good at it), but ten or fifteen years ago that wasn’t the case and guys had to beg their girlfriends to “put it in their mouths.” I assume it’s the influence of porn which has suddenly made girls claim that they love to suck dick. Anal seems to be the new felatio, in that it’s incredibly common in porn but I don’t believe most women outside of porn enjoy it, or will even let their partners try it. (“C’mon, baby, just the tip!”) When it comes to acts that people do or do not enjoy, tastes tend to change over time. If and when anal becomes commonplace, I hesitate to guess what sexual act porn will be promoting next. I just hope it doesn’t have anything to do with bodily waste. Eugh!
Editor’s Note: In editing this post 10+ years later, removing the dead images and whatnot, I chuckle to re-read this: Yes, anal did indeed become the next oral; every girl I talk to claims to love getting it in the ass. And, unfortunately (for me), I also see piss everywhere in my social porn feeds, so I guess I was right on both points...
The key takeaway on this one: just because every actor in every scene loves every act, it doesn’t mean that these are all universally loved acts outside of the porn world. If an actress or actor doesn’t like a particular thing, then the director (or whoever makes these decisions) will simply cast someone else for the scene. Or, if it’s not a strong preference, maybe the actor will do the scene and pretend to love it, similar to how I’ll let a girl suck my dick if she really wants, and do my best to enjoy it. (What can I say? I’m a humanitarian at heart.)
Whether you (or your partner) like particular acts or not has nothing to do with normality, it’s all about preferences, but knowing that porn is fake wouldn’t help you answer this question.
What if a guy doesn’t last as long as pornstars do?
I can be a bit more definitive on this one: I almost guarantee that the vast majority of guys don’t last as long as pornstars do, because even pornstars don’t last as long as pornstars do! When you see a scene where a rock-hard cock has been pounding away at a pussy for ten minutes straight, you should remember that in order to produce that scene they’ve taken numerous breaks, perhaps involved a fluffer (again, I have no idea how porn works behind the scenes or when and how fluffers are involved), maybe he’s lost his erection and got it back, maybe he’s accidentally cum and they had to let him recuperate to start again... who knows what all went into it? But then they took all of that footage and cut it together to look like 10 minutes of solid in-and-out, with maybe a couple of changes in camera angle to keep it interesting.So chances are pretty low that any guys, even in their prime, are lasting as long as pornstars are. In this case knowing that porn is fake might actually be helpful.
Though... it’s possible that you’re still not lasting as long as “normal” guys do. If your girlfriend has nicknamed you “quickdraw,” it’s not a compliment. Maybe you need to start jerking off before sex or something, to try and last longer?
What if a girl doesn’t always reach climax?
It’s well known that pornstars often fake orgasms (as do women outside of porn), but it’s also true that some of their orgasms aren’t faked. After all, again, although they’re doing it for public consumption, and it’s a job, they are having sex. I’m not saying that even a large percentage of orgasms in porn are real – not being in the porn industry I have no direct experience, but I assume that having to stop from time to time to adjust camera angles and move lights and reapply makeup probably takes one out of the moment – but in some cases scenes can play out a bit longer, and the actors have a bit more of a chance to get into it. I’m not trying to be naive, I know this is a job, but it is still sex, and the occasional real orgasm is going to sneak through. So what percentage of on-screen orgasms are real? And when female pornstars aren’t in front of the camera, when they’re having sex in their personal lives, how often (and how loudly) do they orgasm? They’re professionals, after all, so do they take that expertise into the bedroom? Does their off-camera sex resemble their on-camera sex? Or are they less vocal when they don’t have to perform?Even if we knew these behind-the-scene details, would the knowledge help the average girl or woman consuming porn? The reality is that every woman is different, and not every woman can reliably reach orgasm every time she has sex. (That statement may be controversial, but I hold to it.) In some cases this might be because she doesn’t have an attentive or skilled partner, in some cases there may be physical issues getting in the way, and in some cases she might just be having a bad day and is distracted, making it harder to climax. Women are different from men in this regard, though there are pills for women that are similar in nature to Viagra and Cialis which do very similar things as they do for men – help blood flow – to help her reach orgasm.
All that aside, the main point is that chances are low of a woman in real life cumming as hard or as often as pornstars do, meaning that a matter of degree is not necessarily anything to worry about, while a woman who rarely or never has an orgasm may need a different partner or may have actual issues that need to be looked at. This is another case where going based only on her own experience and what she sees in porn may not be not enough information. She knows that she’s not like the pornstars, and that’s fine, but it still doesn’t help her figure out what’s “normal.” Knowing that porn is fake might help with the question of degree, meaning that a girl isn’t expected to be as constantly vocal as pornstars are, but that’s about it.
If she decides to fake it, and be as loudly vocal as pornstars are, some of us guys will be fine with that. I tend to like it. But if she’s worried in her head that she has to fake it, and these orgasms aren’t coming for real like they do on the screen, it could be a problem for her.
What if a guy’s dick is smaller than pornstar dicks?
Is that normal? We can probably all agree that pornstars have larger than average cocks, so having a smaller dick isn’t necessarily a problem. But what IS average? I could be smaller than a pornstar but still be bigger than average, or I could be average, or I could be smaller than average. How am I to know?I would imagine girls have similar thoughts about breasts. (After all, men pay a lot of attention to them!) Many pornstars have fake tits so it shouldn’t be surprising if a girl’s boobs look different than what she sees on the screen, but do her breasts look “normal” compared to other girls’? Are they too big? Too small? Do her nipples look weird? And... Jesus Christ, are they different sizes?!?
Every set I’ve ever seen look different, they’re like erotic snowflakes, so for sure when a girl compares her breasts to the ones on the screen there will be differences, but what where do you draw the line between “normal variations” and “weird deviations”? And you could probably substitute any other part of the body and have the same conversation.
Knowing that porn is fake is of absolutely no value in answering this question, yet consuming porn might prompt the question in the first place.
Context?
Wylde’s post argues that at least part of the answer to these problems is more context. We all know that porn is an alternate reality version of sex, not the real thing, and the internet is a wealth of information where you can find not only porn but also accurate information about sex and making love. And that’s true... as far as it goes, though I don’t think it answers the core of the problem.But yes, for sure, it helps. For instance, take one of my examples above: how big is the average man’s cock? The answer to that question is a fact, and you can look that fact up on the internet and find an answer. You can even find instructions on how to measure yourself to be sure that you’re comparing apples to apples when comparing your size to the average. So if you look at the screen and see cocks that are bigger than yours, and it makes you curious as to how you compare to the typical dude, you can look that up and get an answer. Badda boom, badda bing.
But now look at the gendered mirror of that example: what about the girl who wants to know if her boobs look “normal” or “weird”? How are you going to look that up on the internet? That’s not a “fact,” it’s an opinion. Google cannot tell you if your boobs look weird.
I think most of the potentially messed up ideas we might get about sex from porn are not the type of ideas that can be proven or disproven by facts that we can Google, they’re questions of degree and societal norms and differences of opinion and attitudes. Most of the misconceptions we get from porn aren’t even things that we’re consciously thinking about, they’re the opinions that are forming much further down in the subconscious.
Another example: In porn it’s remarkably easy for a guy to get a woman to have sex with him. That’s what porn is about; the pretext for getting two or more people in bed (if there even is one) is an unimportant facet of the movie/scene which is gotten out of the way quickly. It’s taken for granted that the women in porn want to have sex, and are just waiting for opportunities, just like the men are. “Hi, my name’s Melissa.” “Want to have sex?” “Hell ya, I’m wet already!”
In real life, it’s not quite that easy to get a girl in bed. Obviously. We all know that. Even the most out of touch porn addict knows that it’s not that easy to talk a girl into getting naked. But... how easy IS it, in real life? Porn exaggerates it, but how much does it exaggerate it? Is it easier to talk some girls into bed than others? Is it easier for good looking guys than for ugly guys? Is it true that confidence plays a part? How big of a deal is the context of a situation? People fuck in all kinds of situations and locations in porn, but in real life is it easier at a bar or at a club or at the laundromat or at the grocery store, or … ?
Some of these questions are painfully obvious to my older readers; if I have any teenage readers (I kind of hope not) who have had more exposure to porn than they have to social situations where they try and get girls in bed, these questions might not be so obvious. Like everyone else they know that it’s not that easy to get a girl in bed, but unlike others they might think it’s only slightly exaggerated.
Let’s use the Michael Bay example again: if you’re watching an action movie and you see a house get blown up in a huge explosion you’re going to know (if you think about it) that there were some special effects people involved in that explosion, making it look just right for the camera, but will you know whether it was a real house that exploded or a miniature model of the house? Will you be able to tell if all of the flames on screen are real flames or whether they added in some extra flames and smoke in CGI in post? You know that the explosion was probably exaggerated for the film, but how exaggerated was it?
Kids (I’m thinking mostly of boys) who don’t spend a lot of time smooth talking girls know that the ease with which girls drop their panties in porn is exaggerated, but they don’t know how much it’s exaggerated.
One could even argue that porn is less exaggerated than action movies, because there’s not nearly the level of special effects involved. Most porn scenes involve multiple people getting naked and having sex. Behind the scenes there are things like makeup and adjusting camera angles and adjusting lights, just like in “regular” movies, but there’s not much in the way of special effects. (Unless you count fake boobs.) At the end of the day those are still real people fucking. Unless you’re into cartoons.
Conclusion
Part of Wylde’s point is right: we live in the age of the internet, and there is definitely much more information about sex available to us than there ever has been before. In fact, let me add to that body of knowledge: ladies, it’s completely normal for your two boobs to be different sizes. (If you have three boobs that’s not normal, but I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll get lots of attention because of it.)But I think there are a couple of reasons why, despite the wealth of information at our fingertips, porn is a much bigger source of information for us on sex than anything else.
Values and Attitudes
First, as I’ve stated earlier, much of what we learn about sex from porn has nothing to do with “facts,” it’s more along the lines of our attitudes toward sex, what we value when it comes to sex, what we aspire to when we enter the bedroom with our lover(s). We’re born imitators; our attitudes toward work and life and love and pretty much everything else comes from TV and movies, and we emulate what we see on the big and little screens. Often we don’t even do it consciously, but we do it. TV and movies don’t show explicit sex, so we can’t emulate them in the bedroom, but porn does, so that’s where we get our attitudes toward that.When it comes to romance we all want to end up with a Brad Pitt or an Angelina Jolie and we want to have a movie-like marriage where we never fight, never get old and never have money problems. When any of those things isn’t perfect we feel like we’ve failed. When one spouse gets food poisoning and spends a night alternating both ends on the toilet between the diarrhea and the vomit – and then has to do both at the same time, leaving a mess in the tub – one of the reactions (for both spouses) will be that “this is not what marriage is supposed to be like.” Well... why not? Who says this is not what marriage is supposed to be like? It’s actually quite normal, so why don’t we think it is? Because we don’t see it in TV or movies. Even though those two people are going to be much closer after that experience, and have a better marriage, it’s not the norm according to what is portrayed to us. Our hardships, big and small, are what shape us, and what strengthen our relationships, but when the movie fades to black at the end it’s always hinted that the hardships are over.
Similarly, when it comes to the bedroom we all want to be Danny Wylde or Tori Black, where the husband has a huge, rock-hard cock which stays hard for twenty minutes at a time and the wife has bed-shaking orgasms every thirty seconds, until he finally unloads copious amounts of cum on her face (causing one or two more orgasms for her). Then we want her to invite her best friend Isis Taylor over so that they can 69 and cum all over each other’s faces while the husband pounds one of them in the ass – it doesn’t even matter which one.
Um... I may have wandered off the point again. And apologies if there is beef between any of the pornstars mentioned; I don’t know what kind of drama exists in the porn world so if it turns out that Tori Black and Isis Taylor hate each other for some reason I’ll feel terrible. (Then I’ll mentally substitute different pornstars, have the fantasy over again, get hard, and forget about feeling terrible...)
You can use the internet all you want to research love and marriage, but it won’t change the fact that you’ll always, for the rest of your life, be measuring your marriage against what you see in television and the movies. And you can use the internet all you want to research love and sex, but it won’t change the fact that you’ll always, for the rest of your life, be measuring your sex life (and your body parts) against what you see in pornography.
Candy vs. Broccoli
The other reason that porn will always be a bigger source of information for us on sex than any other source is because that’s where we want to go for information. Porn is fucking awesome – we love it. In a previous post I talked about why porn is so addictive for us, and the fact that it’s like candy for the brain.If I want information on how sex works I can do an internet search and find information just as easily as I can find porn. And when I get there I’ll find... words on a screen. I have to read. I have to think about what I’m reading. It may be very interesting, and very informative, and once I’m done I’ll probably be glad that I read it. (Hell, you’re doing it right now. Hi reader! You’re reading my words at this very moment!) But it’s almost like... homework.
I could find good information and read it. Or I could just pull up a porn video, turn my brain off, and let the candy wash over me. It’s not better, but it’s easier and more enjoyable. Hell, even if I do go and “research” love and sex and get real information on the subject, I might yank it to porn afterward as well. As a reward for my hard work.
Think of it this way: There are a number of fruits and vegetables I happen to like; I love asparagus, I love mango, I think snow peas are pretty cool, sweet red peppers are very tasty. If I’m looking for something to eat for lunch when I’m at work it would be great to get some of those things together and have them. Not only will I enjoy it, but it will also be a healthy choice, and in the long run I’ll feel really good, having nourished both my taste buds and my body.
But you know what? I will never, ever do that. What I will do on a regular basis is go down the street to the McDonalds and get a burger, fries, and Coke.
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