Porn is Candy

Here are a couple of musings about porn that I wrote several years ago...specifically talking internet porn since I haven't owned a hard copy of anything for about 20 years now.

The analogy that keeps coming to mind is that porn is like candy. They even call it eye candy, right? Sex with a real, beautiful, talented, multidimensional, caring and wonderfully responsive wife is like the filet minon and garlic smashed potatoes. If a person hasn’t eaten for a month, and someone offers them some free twizzlers, they’ll probably take some and eat them. It’s not going to satisfy the hunger, and if they’d had a steady diet of spectacular tasting fulfilling food in the past, they won’t forget how great real food is, but the twizzlers will work for a little bit, even if they do cause cavities, to at least mask the underlying hunger.

I don’t ever, ever, remember having sex or doing something sexual with anybody where I was thinking about another person. Likewise, I can't remember ever thinking about a porn scene to get me where I was going in a real life situation. Porn isn’t a huge problem for me like it is for a lot of guys. Although I’ve consumed a lot of it over the years, I certainly don’t think I’m addicted- I’ve gone months without even thinking about it. Likewise, I don’t think I’m a sex addict- neither have ever caused me to be broke, miss work, had a disruption of my life or any of the other telltale signs of addiction.

I think I’m at the very light end of the needing kink. I’ve seen a lot of things- I think every possible kind of sex act that can legally be put on film- I know what I like and can easily turn off what I don’t. I guess what I’m saying is that my porn tastes are pretty bland, but there’s this formula for making porn movies that is pretty stupid, not to mention extremely chauvinistic, that's pretty hard to avoid and doesn't bother me enough to be a deal breaker. It's aimed at dudes, I'm in that demographic.

The ultimate porn, of course, would be having a sexy, mutually pleasurable encounter- with maybe a couple of props or fun outfits, with my lawfully wedded wife. There wouldn’t be any peeing, pain, spanking, demeaning acts, or completely one sided stimulation. Just like in real life- those things don’t do it for us, so why would we want to watch ourselves doing it on a screen? I like spice, but not atomic 911 sauce for hotwings. Yes, I dig school girl skirts and mary janes, but I don’t have to have it to get off. There would just need to be a forum to have some fun and be able to re-watch it later.

I have to admit, the facial thing fascinates me- not necessarily in a sexual way, but how it visibly marks the ending, keeps porn stars from constantly getting pregnant, animalistic marking of territory, and how good the chicks are at acting like they like it. I like to believe that actual porn stars that make movies for studios know exactly what they’re getting into, and if they didn’t like it, they could get a job somewhere else. Human trafficking is a different story for a different post, but for the most part, all the porn I’ve truly enjoyed contains women that are apparently having some fun and convincingly have gotten off somewhere in the process. Again, I’m not defending anybody, and I completely understand how a guy shooting sperm all over a girl’s face could put off a person, but I don’t seem to have that particular icky feeling about it as a viewer. Furthermore, I would prefer it if it weren’t part of every porn in the planet now, as part of the aforementioned stupid formula. I really think I could never see it again and I wouldn’t have any issues. It’s well out of my system.

Moving on to the present day...

"But people say to me, "If you're against pornography, are you against sex?" That's like saying to me, if I'm critical of McDonald's, I'm against eating." That was an excellent quote from one of the opponents of porn in this doccumentary:

The Price of Pleasure referred specifically to top "selling" adult films from major studios. I find it hard to support their claim that the "average" tastes of Americans of legal sexual age can be tracked based on those numbers. There is way too much free, virtually untraceable, independently produced porn out there on the internet that is completely outside the net the documentary maker was casting. It's like saying everybody who enjoys the current summer blockbuster, such as The Avengers, is going to be delusional enough to believe that the real world works like that elaborately choreographed, comic book exaggeration of the world. I may enjoy the movie and appreciate the production value, but I will more likely watch an independent film, like Jeff Who Lives at Home, which is beautifully simple and deeply emotionally meaningful. I would trust my worldview to the stripped down, introspective, interwoven love story long before that of Iron Man or Captain America's obviously fictional perspectives. As Robert Kiyosaki says in Rich Dad Poor Dad, "Best selling does not mean best written."

And just for fun: