Monday 28 November 2011

erotica and porn

Chatting with a friend the other day she said that she could deep-throat and often enjoyed it. However she hated it when a man held her head and forced himself into her mouth.

I wondered if the easy availability of so much porn with this kind of activity has made some men believe that behaviour like this is acceptable without having gained consent. Has porn made too many men confuse the line between fantasy and reality?

This is even more the case in BDSM. There is so much porn available of women being seriously hurt and appearing to enjoy it and get off on it. It is of course fantasy but is presented as reality. Yes there are many subs who can get off on pain in certain circumstances but as with vanilla porn what appears in videos is very different from what goes on in most peoples bedrooms.

I am worried that in a BDSM context it could cause inexperienced Doms to have inappropriate expectations that could put their subs at risk.

In terms of presenting unrealistic fantasy I am guilty of that myself. Some of my fantasies have appeared in writing in my Beau blog and the Dragonfly Geisha blog as well as elsewhere. They are fantasies and there is nothing wrong with that - unless of course readers expect real life to be like that. Then it can get dangerous.

Have any readers had experience of unrealistic expectations possibly caused by porn? Do any of you have views about the good and bad use of pornography?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Should I even get started? This is exactly the problem with porn, a lot of men think that's how sex should be done. I expect that the less experience a man actually has in the real world, the more he thinks he's missing something if his sex life isn't like porn.

So now men think women should all be bisexual, should have their perfectly healthy breasts sliced open to have fake boobs inserted, should have screaming squirting orgasms, want to be called insulting names, and are into pain.

NOT.

Anonymous said...

I started to say I had no experience and then I remembered husband number 1.

We were very vanilla. He had lost his job and stayed home watching alot of porn.

One night I came in from work and to my amazement the house was clean and dinner cooked. I went to read in bed afterwards and fell asleep. When I woke up, he had my hands bound and was planning on sodomizing me.

Yes, I freaked. I was 18 and nieve. He was 25.

Turns out he had laced my food with some sleeping drug he got from the mens magazine.

Thus, the divorce.

Yes, it does affect some men too deeply.

Conina said...

@Mindset: OMG that's horrible. That's beyond horrible. Oh. My. God.

I think a lot of people have difficulty with the difference between fantasy and reality, but with sex it's even worse because it's so much harder to find any representation of real people's sex lives, so porn is what you wind up stuck with.

It's a case of life imitating "art" because there's no life to imitate. What t1klish said about less experience leading porn to have a greater effect is very true.

K said...

Great question.. yes porn can add to problems but ultimately porn is not the problem...its when ignorance and sexism/masoginy/etc are mixed with it.

I've had some degree of negative experiences of feeling pushed in an unwelcome way, both in vanilla and D/s context. There is such a difference of someone arrogantly intimidating versus mindfully dominating. It's night and day. i can see how porn can further confuse already confused people. Consent is absolutely essential no matter the lifestyle context. I have heard it put this way, that consent is not just about stopping at "no"...it's about waiting for a "Yes." It is easy to see how this gets tricky with bdsm. That's why such posts and discussions are so important. Thanks Pygar..


Mindset..I'm also very sorry to hear you went through that. Not your fault. I'm sure you know that but just had to say..

G.E. said...

Have any readers had experience of unrealistic expectations possibly caused by porn?
Um is there room to list the experiences and expectations that I've encountered.

And working in the industry has left me at times wondering what's going on in the six inches between some people's ears. It has left me a tad jaded that people rely so heavily on experiencing fantasy like moments than appreciating real life ones.

I would love to be one sided and say that only men have this problem but oh no honey, it affects women as well.

Thanks for posting this.

Christina said...

I dont watch Porn but I do occasionally read "Erotica" that which is written in good taste! But there have been many times when reading blogs [submitted by not only dominants but submissives too] about the infliction / pictures of how some Dominants treat their submissive that has turned me away from wanting to delve into "this thing we do"!!

Pygar said...

Thank you all for these very thoughtful, open and honest answers. I think there is a theme - and much of it from very personal experience. Am I summing it up correctly to recognise that while some porn can be fun, and perhaps written erotica may be less harmful, the attitudes and activities portrayed in porn can have a harmful effect on those who are inexperienced - perhaps especially men?

t1klish makes it clear that she feels that men's attitudes are strongly affected negatively by porn

Mindset - and thank you for this - gives a very personal view of how this can impact so hugely.

As Conina says - so many have difficulty in distinguishing between fantasy and reality - and how does one find the reality in sex lives?

How also in BDSM?

K develops this so well in recognising it is not just porn but how porn can affect people who already have problematic attitudes. Thank you too K for sharing some of your experience.

GE's post has left me wanting to read more. Perhaps GE you may write more on your own blog? I'm interested that you seem to have seen it from the other side of the camera as it were, which gives you a different perspective. But also that you see it as a problem for women and also raise the issue between fantasy and reality.

While I do find some porn erotic I am also with Christina in that some descriptions and pictures of BDSM activities between Doms and subs have left me troubled.

Also because I know some of the erotica I have written I would not act out in reality. However I hope some of what I write may be "hot". Is that a contradiction?

Thank you all - very much.

P xxxx

Anonymous said...

Most forms of "entertainment" are more fantasy than reality whether they are soap operas, sci-fi films, pictures of the perfect home at holiday time in glossy magazines or porn. It is easy enough to forget that these are fantasies.

Our expectations and perceptions are altered by what we watch. If you want to test my theory, stop watching television and cut back on your consumption of news in any form for several months and watch how your perceptions and expectations change (and rather positively) and how you seem to have more money in your pocket.

I think that visual forms of entertainment often lean toward extremes because watching is a passive activity and the other senses (as well our analytical minds) are not actively engaged. The goal is to provoke a reaction whether it is to get you to buy something, to become emotionally drawn into a story or to get physically aroused. As we become jaded by an ongoing barrage of glossier and more graphic images on a daily basis and have more forms of entertainment at our finger tips than ever before, the competition for our sustained attention is intense.

No doubt, some people are guilty of allowing their expectations and perceptions of sex to be unreasonably influenced by porn, their spouses/lovers have had to deal with the fall out and their relationships have suffered as a result.

But how different is this from how the influence of glossy home magazines has pushed some couples too far into debt as they try to keep up with the Joneses, driven spouses batty with never-ending DIY projects and turned some individuals into almost obsessive-compulsive housekeepers?

In my opinion, acting on unrealistic expectations and perceptions is always a recipe for disaster.

Danger Girl said...

Interesting. I find that I'm excited by extremely violent porn, even as I recognize that it's acting, and that I wouldn't enjoy the treatment myself... because it's about control.

In real life, I want to be lured, not forced into submission. I do however enjoy the more rough displays of unemotional and cold dominance seen in some porn...I can only think that most men are the same. What works in fantasies doesn't work in real life always.

David said...

I agree..sadly for me..alot of guys I've been with have made porn such a staple in there real sex lives that they can't distinguish between real and fantasy..my biggest problem has been guys just assuming that a "bottom" wants to be dominated fully..and be called derogatory names..Communication should be the first thing that is done before anything..but for some reason..guys tend to think your mind readers and that you'll know what they like after having a drink at a bar or after the first kiss..plus the rise of unprotected sex in porns..has also troubled me. Alot of guys I've met have all wanted to bareback me..knowing full well that I'm positive..I tell them I'm uncomfortable with that..and yet..they still push the idea thinking of convincing me that it will be okay..it's seems some guys don't think about the long term repercustions of there fantasies..they just want there fantasy's a reality.. it's said..

Anonymous said...

I hadn't checked in on this topic after I posted, and now that I have, I'm inspired to add more.

When I was younger, in porn, women had real breasts, pubic hair, none of them squirted, there was no hair grabbing, no slapping, no strangling, no rough breast play, no super-speed finger-banging, no super-speed fucking, no dirty name-calling. And no one I knew in real life expected any of those things.

Now, in porn, women have fake breasts, no pubic hair, they squirt, their hair is grabbed, they're slapped, they're super-speed finger-banged, they're super-speed fucked, they're name-called, and now that's what the men I know in real life expect.

My poor sister pretty much had to take a survey of all the men in her neighborhood to find one willing to suffer through having sex with a woman with pubic hair, and these are men approaching 50 who spent the majority of their lives lusting for women with pubic hair.

I won't even get into the whole absurdity that men now think all women are participating in homosexual acts with their friends. Good grief.

Pygar said...

"I won't even get into the whole absurdity that men now think all women are participating in homosexual acts with their friends."

They're not??? Oh, T1cklish - you have shattered all my illusions!

;)

Seriously though, thank you for coming back to the topic.

Thank you also SubRosaNoMore for the suggestion that it is part of a wider culture of us being given unrealistic expectations. Very interesting and thought provoking.

I agree Lyla that what we fantasise about might be very different from what we wish to experience in real life.

Thanks too David for giving some very real examples from a different perspective.

- P xx