Embracing Our Sexuality: Is Porn the Answer?

A SYTYCB Entry

Trying to embrace your sexuality with porn? You’re not alone. A recent article in the Huffington Post, “Women and the New Pornography-Embracing our Sexuality”, explores the idea of women using pornography. As a doctoral student who researches positive sexuality, pornography, and romantic relationships, I can’t help but cringe when I see an article like this. So little is actually known about how and why women use pornography and more importantly how it contributes to their actual sexual satisfaction in their real lives with real people…all we have is opinion flying all over the place.

When men use pornography, the respective public opinion camps are typically “Boys will be boys” or “He is a misogynist”. Regardless of public opinion, both academic research and anecdotal articles point to the fact that using pornography is associated with rating real women as less attractive and thinking that more aberrant forms of sex (anal, group, S &M) occur more frequently than they actual do, thus leaving us to believe our real sex lives are boring. Please note there is nothing “wrong” with having a variety of sexual experiences, it just turns out that seeing different acts in porn, makes us think everyone else is doing it too, when in fact, the frequencies are quite low. In contrast to their male counterparts, when women use pornography, they are seen as “embracing their sexuality”. However, no one really knows what “embracing sexuality” means because little is known about what our sexuality actually is.

Yes, we have moved beyond the oppressive Victorian “good-girl-virgin-head-trip” Era, but the Era we’ve entered is not exactly as liberating as the 60s would have liked it to be. Not only do you need to be extremely attractive and do whatever it takes to maintain your attractiveness (pluck, starve, wax, tan, bleach, sweat, pay) you have to embrace and “act” sex as we know it: Porn sex. However, the sex that we know from porn isn’t a reflection of the female orgasm, or female sexual satisfaction in its truest form, it is simply women “acting out” sexuality. Playing a part. In turn, women watching this portrayal of sex, begin to act it out too in the quest for becoming sexual. However, this is not embodied sexuality. It does not come from within. We are mimicking what we watch.

The problem is, young woman who use pornography are more likely to self-sexualize than those who choose to masturbate to their own fantasies. (Self-sexualization is when women treat themselves as sexual objects; e.g. girls gone wild). Is pornography made by women for women the answer? It certainly is more nuanced than what is marketed toward men, but it is only a blip on the porn radar. In the year 2000 there were over 16, 000 pornographic websites, today there are over 4, 689,000. Only 43 of those sites are marketed solely to women. Further, we don’t know that “art-core” films don’t also contribute to equally unrealistic ideas about what sex with another human being should actually be like. For example, Fifty Shades of Grey is considered erotica for women and not pornography and has certainly made American women hot, but has it made us more satisfied with our own bodies and sex lives? Or do we just want to buy some hand cuffs and have an emotionally unavailable man call us a slut while we attempt “Grey Sex”?

So the question becomes: Does getting fake boobs, tanning, waxing EVERYTHING, masturbating to porn and acting out the scenes in real life really make women more satisfied with their sex lives? Are we really having better sex? Are we really having better orgasms? Or have we just learned how to perform oral, moan and rock lingerie like the pros?