The Fear Girls

Siena

The other day, I happened across some advice column where a woman mentioned that she had tried watching porn with her boyfriend as a way to spice up their sex life, amongst other things. The columnist’s response? “How open-minded of you!” And I said to myself, “Oh, right, people still think that women don’t watch porn, or shouldn’t watch porn, or some other antiquated bullshit like that.”

This, I think, goes hand-in-hand with women and masturbation. There are a lot of things to discuss here. The biggest question is, why do women masturbate less than men? And let’s not pretend like that isn’t true anymore. Women are still not as in touch with their bodies, sexually, as men are. At the very least, there are two sides to this problem. The first is that well, it’s a little harder to figure out what to do with a vagina, given no experience, than it is to figure out what to do with a penis. There’s only so many ways you can touch a penis, and hey, you simulate penetrating something, and bam, orgasm. Women are a little more subtle. You can stick things in it, sure, but unless you really know what you’re doing, you’re not going to achieve an orgasm just like that. No, it takes a deeper curiosity to discover the clitoris. It’s just like in the South Park movie. The search for the famed clitoris. (Is this directly related to how sex is portrayed in the media? All penetration and no love for the ladies? Yes. How else do impressionable youths learn about what sex is supposed to be like anyway?)

The second big reason women masturbate less is shame and guilt. Masturbation is pegged as dirty, unnatural, a sin. Girls who touch themselves are sluts. Sex is a man’s game, women have no place feeling sexual without a man present (see: all those age-old questions about how can lesbians have sex if neither of them has a penis?). Because of these stigmas, girls still don’t try. And you know what that translates into? Girls who do not know how to pleasure themselves cannot tell a partner what they like best in bed, and that will create frustration for both parties. If you don’t know how to get yourself off, how can you expect someone else to figure it out for you?

Right, but we were supposed to be talking about porn. Porn. Should we, as women, not watch porn because most of it is degrading to women? This is a question I have struggled with myself, and save for the really bad rape-like porn (I’m looking at you, Japan), I don’t find most porn to be demeaning to women. What I get out of porn is identifying with those women. She feels good, I feel good. She has the same parts I do, and I know how those parts work. If the woman doesn’t look like she’s having a good time, then of course that’s a turnoff. I also don’t get anything out of watching just blowjobs. I don’t know what getting a blowjob feels like, so it’s hard for me to relate. I don’t actually need a man to be present in my porn at all, and really, sometimes the videos I like the best don’t feature men, but rather one or more woman experiencing her own pleasure.

What with the Internet and speedy connections and more and more high school kids getting their own laptops, current and future generations have access to tons of porn, right at their fingertips. It’s an important time to figure out your sexual preferences, because like I said before, how can somebody do what makes you feel good if you don’t know what that is?

Granted, this is just all my personal opinion, and I’m sure there are plenty of women out there who have plenty of their own reasons for not liking porn. I just wish people would stop acting so damn surprised that women do consume pornography, and that more women would realize that there might be something out there that they like, too. And just for the heck of it, I will say that more porn that caters to a woman’s pleasure would be a good idea, too.

Further reading: There is a surprisingly detailed Wikipedia article about the divide amongst feminists over porn.

Patricia

Oh porn, I have so many feelings about you. Frankly I don’t like 98% of the porn I’ve come across, I’ve done the whole “watch it with your partner to make things ~steamy” thing as well as attempted to watch it by myself and I just end up getting mad or scoffing at it. Since porn is such a big business its been made to cater to specific categories of people, the majority of them being heterosexual men. The titles, women, and “story lines” contained in most porn obviously shows this. Like you said Siena, we don’t know what its like to get a beej but we know what its like to give one and I doubt that most women are into getting choked and gagged by their partner’s dick while in the process of one, but I might be totally wrong about this, idk. When I’ve talked to other women and feminists about porn the ones that seemed to be the most satisfied with it were ones that liked porn that catered to tastes different from the “mainstream”, like kink.com. This was largely because that site in particular is really in touch with what their users like and make a conscious effort to accommodate different tastes in what they show, from broad ranges of their customers like the straight men and women as well as members of the lgbt community. The lack of more accessible porn is likely due to the idea that women don’t need or want to watch porn for themselves and maybe if we can find a way to make our needs known as consumers things will change, we can only hope!

Sophia

I’m going to be the prude in the room and go out and say it – I don’t like porn.
I mostly understand why guys watch it, and why women do, but it’s just not for me. This is all subject to change, I’m 22 after all, I’m open to coming around to it. But for now, it just seems so synthetic and fake.
I just don’t get anything out of other people fucking, or making love. It’s not that it makes me uncomfortable, but I just don’t get into it. I’ve been there, I know what it’s like – porn is just an artificial representation of the real thing – and it doesn’t work for me.
I think sexuality in movies has its share of problems, like you said. Especially because movies (like porn) depict sex from a heterosexual male point of view. Male sexual pleasure is the focus, and it’s disturbing. There are great exceptions, and my personal favorite is in Pedro Almodovar’s ‘Talk to Her’ – it’s the ‘Shrinking Lover’ scene. Granted, I don’t get off on this, but unlike porn, and most movie sex, it has something more to say then just two people doing it. It’s deep. Damn you youtube for not having a clip!

Siena

Hey guys, thanks for joining the conversation! I totally agree with everything you’ve said. I should probably mention that mainstream porn, e.g. big-budget, made-for-straight-men porn involving some ridiculous plot, does have a tendency to treat women like objects and focus solely on a man’s pleasure. That is not the kind of porn that I am into. There’s such a huge wealth of Internet porn out there these days, what with amateur videos and websites where users can upload their own videos (be it ones they made or ones they just like), that I find it incredibly easy to avoid choking bjs and dudes just hammering away at blond pigtailed girls. I should also probably tip my hand and mention that I am a fan of hentai (porno anime), the nature of which makes it easy to do things like emphasize female orgasms and not rely on really bad actors with fake tits. It puts it way more in the realm of fantasy rather than videotaping gross people going at it. The important thing here is exploration, and knowing what you like and don’t like, which of course can mean knowing you don’t like pornography.