Thoughts on Porn and Sex
well, ok...
Do you think it's alright to be confused on some issues? I was taught to believe porn was bad. It is an addictive behavoir that can sometimes lead to marital indescresions, unreasonable spousal expectations, low self-esteem in women, lower social respect for women, higher sexual harrassment, less career advancement for women, or even violence against women or children, sexual abuse and abberrent public behavoir. I believed this too. They have all those studies out that cite the porn-crime/porn-evil connection. On top of that, in my social psychlogy class, I learned about studies done where men were exposed to certain imagry of women as a sex object then put in situations to interact with women on what is meant to be a professional level (I think it was a job interview situation). The men exposed to the imagry treated those women in a more disrespectful and objectifying manner, some were outright crude, and they took the women less seriously as potential candidates for a professional position and were less likely to listen to what the women said.
But now I'm faced with more than one person I respect that seems to think porn is pretty harmless overall and just provides fodder for sexual fantasy to enhance your personal love making experience and doesn't necessarily lead to all the things I believed it leads to. Some women peops I know even see the sexual "power" exercised by women as a good thing and like to be able to exercise that power. Even I, an exceptionally curious individual, have seen porn or soft porn images (hard to entirely avoid in this day and age) and though as a rule I don't seek porn, the images interest me. I want to understand exactly what it means for a woman to work as a stripper, a porn star or a prostitute. I feel like I've skirted this somewhat myself, having worked as a belly dancer, which to many Middle Eastern men is interpretted as akin to a stripper, although initially, I didn't think of it that way myself. In our popular culture, the music videos and television shows seem to often heavily sexualise women, show them in skimpy outfits, doing vulgar dance moves that really clearly are meant to incite sexual excitement, or imitate the act of sex, which of course go well with many lyrics all about sex, or television plots centered on sex, and this is in religious conservative America. In much of Europe, porn is regular fare on nightime TV and if there is a sex scene in a regular movie (not a porn movie), they often actually show people having sex, even women enjoying it. (Apparently male pleasure is more accepted in the USA movie rating system than female pleasure.)
Sex is a big driving force for us humans. True. But I know if my man were to get into porn, I'd feel hurt by it. I'd feel somehow inadequate like I wasn't good enough or pretty enough to keep him interested or satisfied. Maybe that wouldn't be right for me to feel that way, but I know I would. When I think about it, I even feel hurt by the fact that my man has had sex with other women besides me. Sure, that was before we met, but still. I feel jealous of those women. I wish he had saved himself for me. I can't say I was the symbol of total purity myself, because I had issues with petting and making out with one boy before my husband and I've kissed a few boys, but I can honestly say, I had my first sexual orgasm with my husband, he is the only man to have seen me naked (since I was grown) and he has been my one and only sexual partner and I have every intention of keeping it that way.
When I was little I found my dad's playboys. I looked through them to read the comics, most of which I didn't really get. I also found my parent's massage vibrator, which if I remember correctly I tried out, but then I felt bad about it and hid it all away again, this was a hell of a long time ago, I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7, maybe 8. I saw films when I was little about famous strippers and for a while there thought that would be cool, to grow up and be a famous and well loved beautiful, sensual and sexy stripper. I drew some of my own sex comics, which my mom found and chided me for. I even played pretend stripper with some of my girl friends. Something I'm pretty embarrassed about now. I was pretty young, this would have been elementary school. I knew all about sex. My dad gave us all sex lectures on our family car trips, I think more intended for my older sisters, he explained in detail what sex was, how girls get pregnant, how boys masturbate and his ideas on the evolutionary psycology associated with the sex drive. I think this was a less than healthy developement for me. When I got a little older, they started teaching me in church that you shouldn't date until you are 16 and then it should be in groups and you shouldn't date steady until you are older and looking for a marraige partner. Any kind of sex was wrong before you marry, masterbation was wrong, petting was wrong, french kissing was wrong. I was to keep my mind and body pure. And I tell you I did my level best. My first non-family serious kiss on the lips was when I was 13, from a boy you manipuated me and pressured me into an exceptionally uncomfortable situation, he was 18 and it sucked as a first kiss, he tried to slip me tounge which grossed me out. The dickhead. All my friends at the time had boyfriends that they made out with and I'm pretty sure at least one of my good friends was already sexually active, although she would never own up to it to me, nor did I ask her to. I had a boy friend (not official boyfriend), but we weren't kissing or making out or anything, we just hung out together. We'd give hugs goodbye and we would play fight, wrestle and stuff, and hold hands but that was it for physical stuff. I avoided dating, and I, for the most part, avoided the boys I was seriously crushing on. Until I was 17 or 18, then I met a boy who had some serious issues when it came to sex. He fell for me, because I'm damn cool and pretty unique. Also he wanted to get into church and stuff, get his life on track. But he was very emotionally needy and he would always want to hold me and he would just hold me close and too long, then he'd start to feel horny and so would I, but I didn't want to go there, so it was just super frustrating. We both felt like crap all the time and we fought a lot. I started to tell him I didn't want to get close to him, I don't think he understood how naive and innocent I really was, but he would always need my love and attention, then when I got feeling horny and frustrated and backed off him, I'd blame him, and he'd blame me. It takes two to tango, he told me. Yeah, but he had problems with porn from the time he was a kid, and was sexually active before he ever met me. It was like he had really low self control, and me I was innocent, but (and this is something I wouldn't learn until years later in a very hurtful experience) I had no boundaries. I didn't know how to stop people from crossing into my territory(even now, it's a struggle). I think it was because my parents, especially my dad, didn't let me have boundaries. It was always his way. I didn't have a lock on my bedroom door and he would never knock, even when I was a teenager, he would just walk in. And if he wanted a hug or a kiss from me he would just take it by force, for as long as I could remember, whether I liked it or not. He was always running my life and making my decisions for me, for the most part. He had to control. He was manipulative and abusive. He was the only man in my imediate family, no brothers, and no really close extended family. He was what a man was to me. So every man, especially an authoritative, emotionally manipulative man like my father, could just cross into my boundaries and take what they wanted and I aquiessed, unfortunatley too predictably. I'm fortunate not to have been much more taken advantage of. I'm very lucky to have had a few strong protectors in my life that have helped to keep me out of worse trouble than I got in. Even the kid I messed up with, on another level protected me from people who would most definately been much worse than he was. He actually loved me and didn't want to hurt me. We were just too messed up ourselves to keep everything right like we wanted.
But it's weird, now I'm married and have sex pretty regularly, which I enjoy. Sometimes sexual images I've seen pop up into my head, sometimes not so much, sometimes I just like to be in the moment (my favorite), but if I'm bogged down with distracting worries then I'll dream myself away, but I prefer my own dreams to the one's made for me by the outside world. The outside world makes me feel like I need to be different than I am to be sexy and beautiful, and that I'm forcing the feeling, but my husband thinks I'm sexy now, as I am, I get hard proof of it daily and this after 8 years of marraige and I think he's sexy too. Thing is, I don't want there to be any porn as a part of it. I just want it to be my husband and me. I want to think of us together when I close my eyes and I want him to do the same. Because that way it seems real. Like it's our love that we are expressing and we aren't acting out some fantasy. I want to be respected and adored and not objectified and controlled. And for me porn has no place in that. Porn would be to me like having another woman to compete with and I hate the thought of it. I get one man, and he gets one woman. That's it. Nobody else gets to participate.
I can't judge for my friends, but for myself, I think I still believe we are better off without porn as part of our lives.
Do you think it's alright to be confused on some issues? I was taught to believe porn was bad. It is an addictive behavoir that can sometimes lead to marital indescresions, unreasonable spousal expectations, low self-esteem in women, lower social respect for women, higher sexual harrassment, less career advancement for women, or even violence against women or children, sexual abuse and abberrent public behavoir. I believed this too. They have all those studies out that cite the porn-crime/porn-evil connection. On top of that, in my social psychlogy class, I learned about studies done where men were exposed to certain imagry of women as a sex object then put in situations to interact with women on what is meant to be a professional level (I think it was a job interview situation). The men exposed to the imagry treated those women in a more disrespectful and objectifying manner, some were outright crude, and they took the women less seriously as potential candidates for a professional position and were less likely to listen to what the women said.
But now I'm faced with more than one person I respect that seems to think porn is pretty harmless overall and just provides fodder for sexual fantasy to enhance your personal love making experience and doesn't necessarily lead to all the things I believed it leads to. Some women peops I know even see the sexual "power" exercised by women as a good thing and like to be able to exercise that power. Even I, an exceptionally curious individual, have seen porn or soft porn images (hard to entirely avoid in this day and age) and though as a rule I don't seek porn, the images interest me. I want to understand exactly what it means for a woman to work as a stripper, a porn star or a prostitute. I feel like I've skirted this somewhat myself, having worked as a belly dancer, which to many Middle Eastern men is interpretted as akin to a stripper, although initially, I didn't think of it that way myself. In our popular culture, the music videos and television shows seem to often heavily sexualise women, show them in skimpy outfits, doing vulgar dance moves that really clearly are meant to incite sexual excitement, or imitate the act of sex, which of course go well with many lyrics all about sex, or television plots centered on sex, and this is in religious conservative America. In much of Europe, porn is regular fare on nightime TV and if there is a sex scene in a regular movie (not a porn movie), they often actually show people having sex, even women enjoying it. (Apparently male pleasure is more accepted in the USA movie rating system than female pleasure.)
Sex is a big driving force for us humans. True. But I know if my man were to get into porn, I'd feel hurt by it. I'd feel somehow inadequate like I wasn't good enough or pretty enough to keep him interested or satisfied. Maybe that wouldn't be right for me to feel that way, but I know I would. When I think about it, I even feel hurt by the fact that my man has had sex with other women besides me. Sure, that was before we met, but still. I feel jealous of those women. I wish he had saved himself for me. I can't say I was the symbol of total purity myself, because I had issues with petting and making out with one boy before my husband and I've kissed a few boys, but I can honestly say, I had my first sexual orgasm with my husband, he is the only man to have seen me naked (since I was grown) and he has been my one and only sexual partner and I have every intention of keeping it that way.
When I was little I found my dad's playboys. I looked through them to read the comics, most of which I didn't really get. I also found my parent's massage vibrator, which if I remember correctly I tried out, but then I felt bad about it and hid it all away again, this was a hell of a long time ago, I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7, maybe 8. I saw films when I was little about famous strippers and for a while there thought that would be cool, to grow up and be a famous and well loved beautiful, sensual and sexy stripper. I drew some of my own sex comics, which my mom found and chided me for. I even played pretend stripper with some of my girl friends. Something I'm pretty embarrassed about now. I was pretty young, this would have been elementary school. I knew all about sex. My dad gave us all sex lectures on our family car trips, I think more intended for my older sisters, he explained in detail what sex was, how girls get pregnant, how boys masturbate and his ideas on the evolutionary psycology associated with the sex drive. I think this was a less than healthy developement for me. When I got a little older, they started teaching me in church that you shouldn't date until you are 16 and then it should be in groups and you shouldn't date steady until you are older and looking for a marraige partner. Any kind of sex was wrong before you marry, masterbation was wrong, petting was wrong, french kissing was wrong. I was to keep my mind and body pure. And I tell you I did my level best. My first non-family serious kiss on the lips was when I was 13, from a boy you manipuated me and pressured me into an exceptionally uncomfortable situation, he was 18 and it sucked as a first kiss, he tried to slip me tounge which grossed me out. The dickhead. All my friends at the time had boyfriends that they made out with and I'm pretty sure at least one of my good friends was already sexually active, although she would never own up to it to me, nor did I ask her to. I had a boy friend (not official boyfriend), but we weren't kissing or making out or anything, we just hung out together. We'd give hugs goodbye and we would play fight, wrestle and stuff, and hold hands but that was it for physical stuff. I avoided dating, and I, for the most part, avoided the boys I was seriously crushing on. Until I was 17 or 18, then I met a boy who had some serious issues when it came to sex. He fell for me, because I'm damn cool and pretty unique. Also he wanted to get into church and stuff, get his life on track. But he was very emotionally needy and he would always want to hold me and he would just hold me close and too long, then he'd start to feel horny and so would I, but I didn't want to go there, so it was just super frustrating. We both felt like crap all the time and we fought a lot. I started to tell him I didn't want to get close to him, I don't think he understood how naive and innocent I really was, but he would always need my love and attention, then when I got feeling horny and frustrated and backed off him, I'd blame him, and he'd blame me. It takes two to tango, he told me. Yeah, but he had problems with porn from the time he was a kid, and was sexually active before he ever met me. It was like he had really low self control, and me I was innocent, but (and this is something I wouldn't learn until years later in a very hurtful experience) I had no boundaries. I didn't know how to stop people from crossing into my territory(even now, it's a struggle). I think it was because my parents, especially my dad, didn't let me have boundaries. It was always his way. I didn't have a lock on my bedroom door and he would never knock, even when I was a teenager, he would just walk in. And if he wanted a hug or a kiss from me he would just take it by force, for as long as I could remember, whether I liked it or not. He was always running my life and making my decisions for me, for the most part. He had to control. He was manipulative and abusive. He was the only man in my imediate family, no brothers, and no really close extended family. He was what a man was to me. So every man, especially an authoritative, emotionally manipulative man like my father, could just cross into my boundaries and take what they wanted and I aquiessed, unfortunatley too predictably. I'm fortunate not to have been much more taken advantage of. I'm very lucky to have had a few strong protectors in my life that have helped to keep me out of worse trouble than I got in. Even the kid I messed up with, on another level protected me from people who would most definately been much worse than he was. He actually loved me and didn't want to hurt me. We were just too messed up ourselves to keep everything right like we wanted.
But it's weird, now I'm married and have sex pretty regularly, which I enjoy. Sometimes sexual images I've seen pop up into my head, sometimes not so much, sometimes I just like to be in the moment (my favorite), but if I'm bogged down with distracting worries then I'll dream myself away, but I prefer my own dreams to the one's made for me by the outside world. The outside world makes me feel like I need to be different than I am to be sexy and beautiful, and that I'm forcing the feeling, but my husband thinks I'm sexy now, as I am, I get hard proof of it daily and this after 8 years of marraige and I think he's sexy too. Thing is, I don't want there to be any porn as a part of it. I just want it to be my husband and me. I want to think of us together when I close my eyes and I want him to do the same. Because that way it seems real. Like it's our love that we are expressing and we aren't acting out some fantasy. I want to be respected and adored and not objectified and controlled. And for me porn has no place in that. Porn would be to me like having another woman to compete with and I hate the thought of it. I get one man, and he gets one woman. That's it. Nobody else gets to participate.
I can't judge for my friends, but for myself, I think I still believe we are better off without porn as part of our lives.
posted by She-burtsy at 5:41 PM
5 Comments:
Wow. Lots of stuff to respond to, here.
First, can I say how much I love your thoughtful posts? They're really refreshing, and it's really cool to hear your unfiltered thoughts on things. Your honesty is one of the reasons I value you so much as a friend. :)
Yes, I think it's totally normal to be confused on issues, particularly one as fraught with emotion and political overtones as porn.
That being said, I do have a true comfort level with porn, masturbation and all that. My boy masturbates separately and so do I, and we're both pretty open and honest about that. If our singular activities ever had a negative impact on our sex life together, yeah, I would have a problem with that. But so far, I haven't seen that happen. I don't think that porn is necessarily addictive, although certain personalities probably find it so. Ditto gambling, alcohol, and caffeine - some people are (I believe) predisposed to becoming addicted to any of these substances/activities, and others aren't. I've never had a problem with porn, gambling, alcohol, or nicotine -- but Lordy, caffeine is my DRUG. Your mileage may vary.
Anyway, GAH, I'm running late for work (again!) so I have to jet for now, but I'll come back and write some more later. :)
you actually read this stuff? How so you even know when I write it - I'm so intermittent... Well, it's aight for you to read, I trust you and I don't mind telling you my thoughts on stuff. And so far I don't think anybody else I know, actually knows I have this blog. That's cool too. I don't mind strangers reading this and not knowing me, but I figure not to many strangers bother. I tell you, I just need to write sometimes, especially about the stuff that bothers me, but wrtiting here is better than talking to the wall.
Yeah, I read it -- I don't know when you update it - I just check in every so often. :) However, if I wanted to, I could add you to this thing called mybloglines, and it would automatically show me when you updated yer blawg.
If you ever want me NOT to read it, just let me know. However, you should know that anywhere you leave comments under the She-Burt name, there's a link back to this site.
I know, but does anybody besides you even know who She-burt is? I created this entity solely to leave smart alec comments on your blog, then I figured I could use it as a venting outlet at the same time.
Toya, you freakin' rock. Naw, you're alright. If I really wanted to keep it all to myself, I wouldn't be writing it on the www. That being said, I don't want my mom popping on here, or well, everybody. So I don't advertise it. I guess I'm not that hard to figure out. So what's the dead give-away, I wonder...
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