Look, I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum. Consenting adults can do whatever they want to do to each other. Bondage, dominance, submission, polyamory, swinging, toe sucking, whatever. Go for it. Just be safe. But I have complicated feelings about porn. I think access to porn has fucked up fucking for a lot of people. When I say porn, I am almost exclusively talking about film pornography. Even pornographic photos don’t have the same impact as pornographic film, video, motion pictures, movies or whatever you choose to call it.
I’m also talking about straight, heteronormative porn.
There is a lot of bad porn out there. I don’t just mean bad lighting, terrible acting, and crappy costumes. Although there is plenty of that. I mean porn that is exploitive, violent, othering, and/or hateful on many different levels. Pornography is not sex. Porn is performance. More, women are generally not the ones that porn is made for. Or by, for that matter. Despite the fact that women are the main subjects of porn, behind the cameras and providing the funding you will find mostly men in the industry.
This is changing. The internet has allowed more women, more people, to work independently and to take direct ownership of their work and of their brand. The brand part is really important, as with many performance or arts based careers in the modern era, the real money doesn’t come from the sale of videos, albums, books, etc. It comes from merchandise and live/virtual shows. For now, however, the big companies, from Mindgeek to AVN to old standards like Playboy and Hustler are not only run by, but dominated by, their target audience- men. And not just any men. Cisgendered, straight, white men.
That means, that while porn is really, REALLY, not meant for kids. Any kids. Not even teens. Even for adult women/femmes most porn is not made for us.
There are lots of questions about porn. Most of them are unanswered. Does it cause impotence? Probably not. Does watching rapey porn make men more violent? Maybe. Can porn cause distance in a relationship? It depends. What it comes down to is that porn may be a factor in the answers to many of these questions, but just one of many. Maybe aggressive men prefer to watch aggressive porn. Maybe a person in a distant relationship is more likely to turn to porn. It’s hard to isolate.
One thing that is absolutely true is that porn is NOT a tutorial. When a woman says she had porn sex with a guy it is generally not a compliment. Using porn to learn about having sex is like learning to drive by watching the demolition derby. The goals of porn and sex are completely different. One might even say they are diametrically opposed. Most straight porn is about penetration and ejaculation. The people involved are moved and positioned based on camera angles, not pleasure.
Again, I am speaking mainly about cisgendered heteronormative porn. My exposure even to that is limited, mainly because I just don’t find it that interesting. When it comes to graphic sexual fantasies, I prefer the written word. Not that reading romance or erotica is anymore of a sexual tutorial than porn.
If you want to learn how to have sex there are some excellent videos, books, articles out there- many of them free on the internet. Look for tutorials that prioritize consent and fun and remember that porn is made for entertainment purposes only.