His Porn, Her Pain, Confronting America's PornPanic with Honest Talk about Sex

by Marty Klein

  WHEREAS, recent research indicates that pornography is potentially biologically addictive, which means the user requires more novelty, often in the form of more shocking material, in order to be satisfied;

  WHEREAS, this biological addiction leads to increasing themes of risky sexual behaviors, extreme degradation, violence, and child sexual abuse images and child pornography;

  WHEREAS, pornography use is linked to lessening desire in young men to marry, dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity;

  WHEREAS, this link demonstrates that pornography has a detrimental effect on the family unit; and

  WHEREAS, overcoming pornography’s harms is beyond the capability of the afflicted individual to address alone:

  NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah, the Governor concurring therein, recognizes that pornography is a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms.

  BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislature and the Governor recognize the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation.

  Figure 3.1

  Pornography Availability and Decrease of Social Problems

  Source: Author

  Yes, the rates of rape, divorce, suicide, and child sexual exploitation have all decreased since porn flooded America.

  So why is Utah (and Concerned Women for America, and the National Center for Sexual Exploitation, and Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council, and Covenant Eyes, and so many others) so committed to fighting the wrong thing?

  PART II

  Brief Interludes

  Interlude A

  THE NATURE OF SEXUAL FANTASY

  Although virtually everyone has a voyeuristic streak (hello, People Magazine? Entertainment Tonight?), at the very same time there are things most of us don’t want to know: the handsome guy who picks his nose. The perfect woman with rotten produce in her fridge. The wise therapist who loves guns, bullfighting, and Fritos. We don’t really want to know.

  The same is true about others’ sexual fantasies. On the one hand, we’re eager to see behind the erotic curtain—what kind of underwear, what kind of positions, what kind of orgasmic sounds? On the other, the potential for ick is everywhere: you get off imagining what? I’ll defend your right to imagine it (or watch it) until I die, but really, dude—you get erect thinking about that? Disgusting!

  And that’s part of the issue about ubiquitous, 24/7 Internet porn: it documents what everyone’s fantasies are, and invites us to confront what used to be people’s private sexual imagination. Some of us are pretty dismayed by others’ fantasies.

  Because the totality of porn, like the totality of, say, shoes or beer, is a statement of what others find interesting. They wouldn’t make your favorite shoe if you were the only one who bought it. They wouldn’t make your favorite beer if you were the only one who ordered it. And they wouldn’t make your favorite porn—that is, cater to your particular fantasy—if you were the only one who found it hot. So just like the shoe department at Nordstrom or Target is a living inventory of the kinds of shoes people like, porn is a similar living document, a compendium of human sexual fantasies—from the popular to the esoteric.

  The difference is that, unlike Nordstrom or Target, pornography is a compendium of fantasy—not desire, but fantasy.

  We have a love–hate relationship with others’ fantasies: we want to know—until we don’t want to know. And then it’s too late. How am I ever going to forget I’ve seen that porn? Or forget that some of my fellow humans think that’s hot? We shouldn’t blame porn when our voyeurism leads us to places we wish we hadn’t gone. Rather, we should smile at the naiveté we didn’t realize we had about the enormous range of human sexual fantasies. It’s a reminder to love our fellow creatures, whose bizarre fantasies are just like ours, except different.

  Another issue regarding porn is the common misunderstanding that our fantasies have meaning—specifically, that that’s who we really are and what we really desire in life. And so with a feminist who gets hot imagining being spanked or the gentle guy who gets hot imagining spanking, both feel guilty and ashamed.

  But fantasy does not equal desire.

  Many anti-porn crusaders (and even smart people like the authors of A Billion Wicked Thoughts1) make the mistake of assuming that what arouses people on video or on a page indicates what they want to do in real life. But that’s wrong: people watch Matrix or The Terminator and don’t go crashing their cars; people watch RoboCop or Natural Born Killers and don’t go out and kill; people read Fifty Shades and don’t go looking for someone to tie them up; heck, people watch Olympic curling and they don’t go out and curl.

  We know that in general, fantasy has limited predictive value. Why imagine that’s different when the fantasy’s subject is sexuality?

  The panic about the truth of others’ sexual fantasies depends on the persistent myth that enjoying a fantasy is the same thing as desiring it in real life. If that were true, millions of our neighbors would be punching their bosses, sleeping with their brothers-in-law, selling their homes to start over in Boise, or urinating on the very next TSA guard that hassles them.

  One of the ways healthy people cope with the pressures and complicated decision-making of adulthood is fantasy. We watch Star Wars and Star Trek, CSI and Grey’s Anatomy, Batman and Wonder Woman. We watch NASCAR and Wimbledon. And we daydream, “If only that were me … if only I had the chance.…” But we don’t expect to actually find ourselves on Daytona or Center Court, and generally wouldn’t accept the invitation if it were offered.

  Some people say sexual fantasies have meaning—that, like dreams, they’re a psychologically safe place where we’re working out our issues.2 While that might be true for some people some of the time, I don’t think that dynamic is at all universal. People find things hot for infinitely varied and impenetrable reasons.

  But even if you want to say that fantasies have meaning, decoding that meaning for any given person is impossible. Male college student–female college professor? It could be acceptance by Mom, a desire to surrender, nostalgia for feelings from 2nd grade, yearning for a skillful partner, rejection of younger women who have been rejecting you, desire for older sister, imagining increased prestige from peers.

  Two men kissing? It could be acceptance by Dad, same-gender curiosity, discomfort with women, feeling masculine, or imagining two big penises in those two male mouths.

  Watching a man being cuckolded by his wife? It could be guilt about being sexual, an impulse of generosity, imagining being more sexually adequate, surrendering to an adult container, or giving away something that you don’t really value.

  So you never know. I think we’re better off assuming that any given sexual fantasy is an opaque combination of cultural memes, biographical vagaries, visual punch, serendipity, and the phase of the moon divided by what you had for dinner. What percentage of each? We have no idea. Ultimately, it’s more important to accept and enjoy our fantasies than to understand or decode them.

  The answer to the question of “why that porn rather than this” for most people most of the time is “um, I don’t know—I just do.” It’s similar to explaining why you prefer the ice cream flavor you do—which most people can’t do, either. If you give me 10 flavors and ask me to rank-order them, I can—but don’t ask me how I do it, other than “I just like this more than that.” Ditto porn—most people can rank-order a dozen videos, but can’t tell you why, other than to describe them. (“This one has big boobs, that one doesn’t.” “Why do I like big boobs better? I don’t know.”)

  Regardless of why you like the specific things you do, why do you look at/fantasize/read (i.e., consume) what turns you on? Why do people in general like to watch sexy images, read sexy words, look at sexy people?

  It’s fun to look at naked women and
/or men who look like you’d like them to (regardless of what that is—and it is not always the social definition of perfect).

  It’s fun to watch people having sex, which one almost never gets to see in real life.

  It’s fun to imagine doing what those people do, feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling what they do.

  It’s fun to imagine having things you don’t have, or will never have.

  It’s fun to imagine having things you’ve lost.

  It’s fun to imagine knowing what to do (and how to do it) if you only had the chance.

  It’s fun to imagine being accepted, desired, dominated, or dominating.

  It’s fun to imagine being seen the way you see yourself—or the way you’d like to see yourself.

  It’s fun to imagine enjoying things that definitely won’t, absolutely can’t, certainly couldn’t, and better not happen.

  It’s fun to imagine doing things that you wouldn’t do in a million years. That’s exactly what fantasy is for—to “have” experiences without any consequences whatsoever.

  Each year, Pornhub, one of the world’s largest porn sites, reports statistics on popular search terms and viewed video categories.3 Last year it reported on over 32 billion video views in the United States alone. The most popular search terms include lesbian, stepmom, stepsister, and ebony/black. The most viewed categories are teen, lesbian, and throughout the South, ebony.

  Some women are shocked, shocked, that their partners fantasize, and what they fantasize about—young, beautiful, enthusiastic partners. Or taboo power dynamics, whether with the young, the old, or in-between. The data on the nation’s sexual fantasies was also accompanied by a lot of hand-wringing and predictions of evil. OMG—fantasies about teens!

  The concern about porn and teens is amusing, and as completely ignorant of history as only Americans can be. Teens have been the center of human erotic attraction since the beginning of time. Evolutionarily, they’re perfect for mating. And their bodies are as close to perfect as human bodies get. Of course they’re attractive to us today—they were attractive in Shakespeare’s time, in the Middle Ages, in Jesus’s time, and in Roman, Greek, Persian, and Hittite civilization before that. Nothing novel about it.

  You do know that until only about 100 years ago there was a special word for teen girls, right? “Wives.” Abigail Adams was a teen when she married John, as was Marie Antoinette when she married Louis XVI. Shakespeare’s Juliet is described as 13, normal for Renaissance women who married as soon as they reached puberty to overcome the era’s high infant mortality rate. Cleopatra ascended the Egyptian throne as a teen, the most desired woman on two continents. No man would have been admonished for fantasizing about her—as we read the words Shakespeare puts in Anthony’s mouth, it appears he did, too.

  But let’s be consistent. Because Pornhub’s top search terms also include lesbian, MILF, and stepmom, where is the outcry about porn consumers at risk for turning into, or desiring, lesbians? Or all the porn watchers suddenly turning toward older women, thereby depriving younger women of the relationships they deserve? Don’t forget granny porn—does its popularity predict an abandonment of all women under 50?

  Many women are even more baffled by the non-teen fantasies men apparently have (according to the data on porn site visits): older or old women; lactating or menstruating women; men; ordinary-looking people; groups; domination, submission, deception, even violence; and, of course, every fetish the human mind can conceive or struggle with (shoes, cigarettes, gloves, urine, crushing bugs, even—gasp—white cotton panties).

  The thing about these fantasies is that it’s harder for a woman to imagine her guy truly wanting these experiences (which of course he generally doesn’t). And so the question of “why do you deliberately watch that when you want to get aroused” becomes more urgent. To an anxious, misinformed woman, it starts to seem that her partner is less known, more complex, possibly “kinkier” (meaning less known and more complex). What else does he imagine that she doesn’t know about or understand? Being confronted by a loved one’s actual sexual fantasies is to lose your innocence—regardless of how sophisticated your own sexuality is.

  Interlude B

  DEEP IN THE VALLEY: GOING TO A PORN SHOOT

  I’ve been on movie sets and I’ve been on network TV, and I’ve spoken with people working at almost every job in the porn industry. But in all these years I’d never watched a porn film being made.

  A few years ago while in Los Angeles, I finally accepted an invitation. After lunch, I drove out to the San Fernando Valley, parked in a neighborhood of modest homes and small warehouses, and walked into the studio of Brash Films. I spent about two hours there, watching and occasionally chatting. Everyone involved made me feel welcome.

  The most interesting thing I have to say about it all is—nothing.

  But maybe not for the reasons you think.

  Sooner or later, watching the same people having sex is repetitive and boring—unless, of course, you’re adding to it via fantasy, imagination, arousal, and voyeurism. I didn’t do much of that, because I was there working (yeah, I know—tough gig). So yes, watching the shoot did reduce the sex (along with the filming itself) to a technical craft. She used her left hand when the camera needed it, even though she’s right-handed. He stopped right in the middle of licking her when a bit of his sweat dripped into a bowl of fruit.

  Some people condemn how watching porn at home supposedly does the same thing—it reduces sex to “mechanics.” But the critical difference between watching a film being made and watching it at home is what the consumer brings to the experience. And that transforms the “mechanics” into something stimulating.

  Those who say that watching porn reduces sex to mechanics aren’t adding anything to the film. Nothing positive, that’s for sure.

  This is the same dynamic when consuming any media—whether it’s Seinfeld, or The Mona Lisa, or Star Wars. In fact, both Bach and the Beatles are just noise unless the listener adds something to them. Ever listen to Chinese classical music and think, “This isn’t music”? I went to China last spring, and sure enough, most of their tunes sounded like noise to me—because I didn’t know what to add to the sound to turn it into what I recognize as “music.” On the other hand, the Chinese architecture, although certainly not Western, looked like art to me, because I was able to add something to it. But I couldn’t make the Chinese music sound like “music,” so it sounded like noise. The same is true with Coltrane or Miles Davis, if you’re not conversant with their hum. To be truthful, I’m not wild about their stuff, either.

  But back in L.A., what I brought to the porn shoot was nothing. And because of the situation, I was perfectly willing to have a bland, non-erotic experience.

  What a consumer brings to a porn film is imagination, privacy, a little time, maybe lube or a toy. And that gives the images meaning—erotic meaning. When anti-porn crusaders take the same film and add fear, anger, and a sense of helplessness, they also give the images meaning—but distinctly un-sexy ones (such as “exploitation” and “immorality”). So:

  Porn + nothing = neutral meaning

  Porn + fear + loneliness + anger = negative meaning

  Porn + privacy + time + imagination = positive meaning

  * * *

  In all, it was just like being on any other movie set: a bunch of working people wearing t-shirts and shorts (except for Her, Him, and Him), intensely concentrating and cooperating for short bursts of time—and then stopping to adjust a light, mop a brow, snip a loose thread, or find some damn beeping that only the sound guy can hear. Then another short burst of activity, stopping when a scene is completed. Or when an actor really needs to pee.

  Of course, the focus was on the people having sex. Her underwear was gorgeous, and she had exactly the body it was designed for. The guys had abs and muscles on top of their abs and muscles, and pretty fair penises, too. But what I admired most about all the bodies was their backs. You gotta have a stron
g back to thrust and thrust and keep thrusting. You gotta have a strong back to twist around and service a guy at each end, changing positions without missing a beat.

  I imagined what these people do in their spare time—a little bit of sex, and a lot of time at the gym. And some Pilates, definitely.

  * * *

  I wasn’t on the porn set on a political mission—in fact, I had no agenda at all except to just be open to whatever happened. But I finally couldn’t help asking myself—what is there to complain about here? Crew, actors, actresses: they’re all adults, they’re all getting paid, they all know exactly what they’re doing. No one’s exploited, no one’s been tricked into thinking they’re making Art. They know they’re not working with Pixar or Spielberg, Natalie Portman or the Coen Brothers. And they’re also not working the breakfast shift at Starbuck’s.

  They’re making a living. Like most working stiffs, they’re not brilliant, they’re good enough.

  I saw a few orgasms (perhaps), spoke with a couple of tech people, and thanked the director. Several people on break thanked me for coming. I gave them a copy of my book America’s War on Sex, which they admired.

  They have their craft, I have mine. Different in some ways, not so different in others.

  * * *

  Reminiscing about my trip to a porn shoot reminded me of the wonderful coffee-table book American Ecstasy.1 It’s sexy, funny, artistic, thought-provoking. What else could you ask for?

  OK, here’s something else: its photographer/author Barbara Nitke raised hell when she (and others) sued the federal government a decade ago, challenging the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act, which criminalized the posting of “obscene” content on the Internet.