Make Love Not Porn (2009)

http://thetyee.ca/Life/2009/12/16/MakeLove/

by mmphosis • 16 years ago

95 55 16 years ago

cgranade4• 16 years ago

Because articles about sites should have links to the sites being discussed: http://makelovenotporn.com/

necrecious2• 16 years ago

The quote "I wasn't just having bad sex. I was having bad porn sex." from Mary Elizabeth Williams pissed me off.

Sex isn't something that is happening to you, it is something you participate in. So it is your damn fault if it is bad sex. Speak up about what you like, porn related or not.

sailormoon4• 16 years ago

I agree. I also disliked this:

One friend said she's dreading her boyfriend's upcoming birthday because he views it as his "anything he wants" night. While she doesn't mind dressing up, she's dreading the "porn requests" (she didn't specify what those are, so we can only imagine).

That's not porn that is the problem. What is stopping this lady from simply telling her boyfriend what she does and does not like? And what kind of dysfunctional relationship is this if the boyfriend doesn't get to do "anything he wants" as a matter of course? Why is it a special birthday present for him to receive the satisfaction he obviously needs? Sounds like they're not really such a great match after all and porn is just a scapegoat.

yequalsx• 16 years ago

I think the perspective of younger women is that they have to acquiesce or else they will not have a boyfriend. That is, if it is fairly universal that younger men demand such things from their girlfriends then women must decide to acquiesce or be celibate. I'm not saying this is the case but it is the author's point. Well, I believe it is her point.

They are saying that too many younger males have had their perspectives skewed by pornography and that something needs to be done about this. Maybe what the boyfriend really wants is something similar to '2 girls 1 cup' and that this want is the result of porn?

orp• 16 years ago

Do you seriously think that in a functional relationship (as opposed to a dysfunctional one) a boyfriend get to do 'anything he wants'? Or a girlfriend, for that matter?

It's perfectly legitimate (not to mention a fact in 99.99% of relationships by my estimate) for partners to have different needs and wants. And limits. Yes.

Compromises are a way of life for a good couple. Having 'special occasions' is not a bad way to go about these compromises, doing something for your partner you wouldn't want to do on a regular basis, with a nice socially acceptable rhythm to it.

To pick an example at random, I wouldn't buy my jewelry every day (or week, or month), but a couple of times a year for special occasions (birthday, anniversary) are cool.

Wrapping up, if there was an increasing cultural effect making my wife expect (and hint at) increasingly weird and tasteless things that she'd like for her birthday (I'd getting shivers just imagining examples), believe you me I wouldn't be happy about it, and saying no would still not be easy.

BTW: if you comment above was sarcastic and I missed it, consider this comment moot.

kareemm• 16 years ago

the tone of the article is that sex is something that happens to women. this perspective is damaging because it both precludes women from taking responsibility for enjoying sex, and gives men responsibility for their partner's satisfaction. sex is, to a certain degree, about selfishness.

i think it's great that gallop started MakeLoveNotPorn - being aware that both men and women can / should speak up when you like / don't like something is a good first step towards taking responsibility for having a good sex life.

pyre4• 16 years ago

The idea that porn is to blame is wrong though. There is plenty of porn where the sex is not 'just happening' to the woman.

The fact that people seek out porn where sex 'happens' to women and/or adopt it as their point of view says more about society than about porn. Porn is just a scapegoat.

dkarl• 16 years ago

Totally. I mean, he's begging for feedback. It's not like "You like that, baby?" has a subtext of "of course you do, because I'm awesome" or "of course you do, because my power to treat you like this turns you on." It's an honest question.

cgranade4• 16 years ago

As much as I think that the article is problematic, I can totally imagine someone saying "you like that, baby?" in a rhetorical sense, rather than meaning it as an honest question. If that is the case, however, then it is a real problem that needs to be addressed rather than being blamed on porn.

necrecious2• 16 years ago

I laughed when she mentioned the asking seven times part. First of all she counted, and she doesn't respond, and then she blames the guy.

I am so thankful for my girlfriend right now.

jff• 16 years ago

"You like that, baby?" is pretty porny, though. Guy just needs to grow a mustache and a mullet, he's all set.

rauljara• 16 years ago

You are absolutely right that you should speak up if something bad is happening to you. For example, if someone is smacking you in the face, you should speak up about it. But that person shouldn't be smacking you in the face in the first place. The author's complaint about porn is that it makes a lot of people think that unacceptable behavior is acceptable. I know I only have anecdotal evidence to back it up, but I went to a boarding school where a couple of guys had a pool going about which one of them could cum on their girlfriend's face first. The reason they had a pool going is that all of them knew their girlfriends wouldn't be cool with it. There definitely exists a class of men who do shitty, immature things in things in the bedroom. Don't blame the victim.

pyre4• 16 years ago

I think that the point is that she wasn't even blaming the guy. She was blaming the porn which is stupid. "He wouldn't have been such an asshole if porn wasn't around," is a naive statement to make.

DougBTX• 16 years ago

I really disagree with your reading of that quote - other example uses of the verb to have without connotations of helplessness: "I am having a bowl of cereal", "I have a web site", "I wasn't having fun".

telemachos• 16 years ago

I got curious, and for what it's worth the actual Mary Elizabeth Williams article is better than this one quotation might suggest.

Near the end of the piece, she says herself more or less what you say here:

So When Mr. Jackhammer asked, "Does that feel good, baby?" he may well have really been trying. And did I pipe up and say no? I did not. I ran away and never saw him again, prompting a friend to say with a sigh, "Now he's just going to go do that routine to some other poor woman."

For all the sex we watch and all the fancy moves we know and all the people we've ever seen without their pants, sex remains one of the hardest things in the world to speak truthfully about.

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/11/01/make_love_like_...

cgranade4• 16 years ago

I think that a lot of the complaints brought up in the article aren't really complains about porn so much as they are complaints about how impressionable we are as individuals. We let so many of our tastes, preferences and behaviors be dictated by mass media, so why are we then surprised to find that we let our sexual behaviors be dictated by mass media as well?

On a related note, I think that a lot of the complaints can be attributed to a kind of pluralistic ignorance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance), where individuals are under mistaken impressions about the preferences and comfort level of their partners. In a sense, this is the flip side of impressionability, where we expect that other people are similarly impressionable.

stratomorph2• 16 years ago

Single page version: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2009/12/16/MakeLove/print.html

So, the author starts with an academic study of the sex lives of modern young people, which drew some conclusions that porn is not the devil: "pretty conventional, almost identical to their parents," and "pornography has been demonized and that its effects are negligible." Then, she spends more than a thousand words trying to refute that entirely by anecdotal evidence, capping it off with "porn is having a profound impact on our culture."

I know asking everyone to act like good scientists is too much. But I would like it if people would at least try to act like bad scientists, and selectively use studies that support their predetermined conclusions. What a world, where you strengthen your point by citing only studies that refute it.

tome4• 16 years ago

I think you've misunderstood. Sure, the author agrees that porn is not the devil, i.e. it doesn't lead to violent crime and it's not going to lead to the collapse of civilization, but nonetheless wants us to knows there are serious negative consequences that we should be aware of.

stratomorph2• 16 years ago

You see, that's my point. How do we know there are serious negative consequences at all? Because of the anecdotes she mentions? She didn't cite any rigorous study that concludes pornography is harmful, but simply appealed to our gut feeling that it's got to be hurting us somehow. While I may agree or disagree, my complaint is that her anecdotal evidence is somehow supposed to sweep away the presumably well-designed study cited at the start. That's the opposite of science.

Edit: My tone here is a little combative. Sorry, it's not intended as an attack on you.

ramchip• 16 years ago

Couldn't agree more. [Edit: rest is unrelated to the article]

Recently, a facebook group against water fluoration started in my town. A few of my friends being in it, I checked it out, and saw a few things that didn't make sense in their affirmations: bad chemistry, selectively picking facts and misinterpreting them. I made a comment on the group to clarify them and was careful to put myself as neutral and mention some good points.

Well, they promptly deleted my post. I have a hard time understanding why they want to convince people with scare tactics and bad data, when they could do a perfectly credible stand without doing so. My opinion of democracy went significantly down with that. I wish I could refer them to Eliezer and Less Wrong... but I think these people aren't interested in truth.

(The group, if you speak french: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=262927717140&ref=m... )

yread• 16 years ago

I find this article somewhat related: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/14/techno_toys/

ErrantX3• 16 years ago

I think this is more a product of some aspects of society than just porn.

Sex in porn is reall incredibly different to real life - it takes a level of naievity and, probably, peer pressure to form that sort of impression.

I think it's disingenuous to suggest it's causing these issues for everyone.

Most of the described relationships just sound tucked up generally. The girl who dreads her boyfriends birthday seems as much the victim of her own silence as anything else!

rwmj• 16 years ago

TL;DR summary: A writer compares a proper peer-reviewed scientific study vs. asking her friends what they thought.

azgolfer• 16 years ago

Sensitivity to something is invariably decreased by exposure. In my life, I've gone from a picture of bare breasts being a big deal and a huge turnon, to seeing graphic movies of any kind of sex imaginable free 24/7 on the internet. I don't think there is any question that this has made the average male expect their partners to do things that their partners mothers would never have considered doing. Whether this is bad or not is a separate question.

ellyagg• 16 years ago

Everyone I know prefers amateur porn. I probably wouldn't be interested in a woman who was uncomfortable with what goes in in most amateur porn.

Of course, everyone I know is reasonably intelligent. In my humble opinion, you'd have to be an incredibly silly person to think commercial porn represents a model to aspire to. Frankly, if she's sleeping with guys in their 20s who act like commercial porn actors, I bet she has pretty poor taste in men.

noonespecial• 16 years ago

The focus of these kinds of articles always seems to rest much to heavily on there's too much evil porn and not on there's not enough good sex education, which I think is the real issue.

_delirium• 16 years ago

This feels weirdly old, despite being published in 2009. These are almost verbatim the kinds of criticisms old-school feminists were levying against porn prior to the advent of sex-positive feminism in the 1980s.

jaytee_clone• 16 years ago

Look at this from another angle, it is equally valid to say that the sexual oppression that exists in our society has skewed many women and men in to thinking that there is such thing has a normal set of sexual behaviors.

That's why this "porn request" thing is blown to such ridiculous proportion. If the main stream perception of sex was not skewed but rather much more open-minded, this discussion would have been as casual as a discussion about ice cream flavors.

rick_2047• 16 years ago

It was the happiest moment of my young life. There is just something about blowing a load in a chick's face that makes you feel like a man.

Any boy who thinks like that is a jerk.

especially on behalf of younger women who might mistakenly think they have to put up with the new status quo if they want their guy to put out.

And any girl who thinks like that would be described as an idiot.

Seriously folks anyone who thinks being superior to your own sex partner is manlike and anyone who thinks they should just accept what ever is coming from there's is seriously a wimp.

Tichy2• 16 years ago

That quote was taken from another article. It could be faked, or the author of that other article searched really long to find somebody who would say that.

I don't like articles like that...

yummyfajitas2• 16 years ago

Any boy who has a hormonal response to a certain sexual act is a jerk?

I hate to tell you this, but people have very little control over what turns them on and what makes them feel good. A boy isn't a jerk for wanting to give a girl a facial, just as a girl isn't a jerk for enjoying wearing leather and whipping her boyfriend (or vice versa).

What determines if you are a jerk is not what you want, but how you behave in the pursuit of it.

kirse• 16 years ago

I'd hate to break this to you also, but being "turned on" is just another emotional state that is subject to the mind's interpretation and perception.

It's long been known (as the root of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) that the order of neurological operations is

Event --leads-to--> Perception of Event --which-leads-to--> Emotion

Some of these neurological responses may have become so ingrained and automatic that they seem "uncontrollable", but they are the results of many smaller controllable choices as to how to perceive a specific event.

It's the same reason why I find something enjoyable that you do not, and you find something attractive while I do not... we've made different choices along the way. It is a clear sign of emotional immaturity to believe that you are not in control of how you perceive events (which in turn creates the emotions you experience)

You are certainly not in control of the events that happen, nor the emotional release, but you can control how you perceive and choose to interpret things.