by Pamela Paul
In other ways, pornography reveals men’s insecurities with their own sexuality. Psychologists point out that much of what is portrayed in pornography assuages men’s fear of and disgust with their own semen; they need to see women revel in it and adore it in order to allay their own feelings of unattractiveness and discomfort. Many male performers in pornography are notoriously unattractive; this, too, feeds into men’s fears and hidden desires. If the men were anything other than pathetic, unattractive, wooden, and stupid, they could pose a competitive threat to the men who are watching. The viewer instead can imagine himself as “better” than his pornographic counterpart, and thus can imagine inserting himself into the scene. After all, if a female porn star would stoop to this lunk, then surely she would be eager to be with him. (Ironically, some men find male porn actors so fake and unappealing as to be “degrading” and insulting to men.) Pornography literally creates the man’s world as he would ideally have it, free of exclusion, discomfort, stressful competition, and rejection.
The Power of Pornography
Walking down the street, a man has permission to look at a girl but not to look too hard. In the office, he can notice a woman but must look her in the eye—not her cleavage. In a bar, he can glance at a woman to signal interest, but not lasciviously run his gaze over her entire body. In so many ways, a man’s ability to observe is restricted by social norms that demand men not treat women as sexual objects, no matter how provocatively tight her jeans. But in the porn world, none of those restrictions apply. Men can look at whatever women they want in whatever way they choose for as long as they desire to do so.
Walking down the street, a woman has the ability to look the other way or to sneer at the man who passes by her. In the office, she can write a more effective business plan than her male coworker or outperform him in a board meeting. In a bar, she can refuse to give a guy her phone number or brush off his attempts at conversation. But in the porn world, she has none of these options. She may retain the power to reject a man by the very nature of her femininity, but in pornography she chooses not to reject. In porn, she treats a man the way he wants to be treated, relieving him of the fears that plague everyday male-female interaction. In the porn world, men retain the power and the control. It’s an incredibly seductive fantasy.
Jacob, a lanky thirty-three-year-old journalist, has mixed feelings about pornography. He has spent quite a bit of time, more than most guys, mulling over the causes and implications of men’s fascination with pornography. For Jacob, the arguments of evolutionary psychologists are powerful and convincing. Men are biologically programmed to reduce women to something that exists only for their sexual pleasure. This is a natural impulse to which all men succumb, he believes. However, natural does not mean moral. Even though it’s natural, as Jacob puts it, to “fuck as many women as possible” in order to “spread the seed,” that doesn’t make it right. But it’s hard to argue with biology and history. “Look at the Bible,” he says. “That’s the way men lived back then. These urges are very basic.”
According to Jacob, if men weren’t looking at the images of pornography to release those urges, they could very well “be out raping Girl Scouts.” In place of such real-world acting out, pornography gives men a sense of power, an aura of sexual power in particular, that can be exercised in a fantasy world without real-world implications. “Powerless people tend to think a lot about power,” Jacob explains. “A lot of sex is wrapped up in power and a lot of porn is a fantasy about power.” The combination is intensely alluring, especially when real-world relationships leave one feeling insecure and out of control.
That’s what compelled Jacob toward porn in the first place. His heaviest pornography period took place after college, when he was living in Washington, D.C., where dates were scarce. “When I watched a ton of porn, and was subscribing to Playboy and watching videos, I was feeling very cut off from my sexual power,” Jacob says. “I even questioned whether it existed. I think a lot of men experience this sad paradox of pursuing this ideal of having power from a position of powerlessness. And sadly, that behavior then deflates that power or pushes them even further away from it.” If a man is getting a sense of validation and power over women by looking at pornography, he’s not actually out in the real world getting real women. If he were, he would feel sexually powerful and wouldn’t need to go searching for power through pornography. It’s a vicious cycle. And for Jacob, who has enjoyed pornography, a real conundrum.
Pornography has traditionally been the province of males, a place where, despite the recent incursion of women into the industry, men dominate production and consumption, often learning to appreciate pornography in the presence of male friends, colleagues, and family members. Pornography is a kind of male utopia that men are keen to protect:
Let me tell you boys, the Mommies are coming for our Internet. We’ve been beaten by them into submission about drinking, smoking, speeding and just about every other fun guy’s activity….
Then along comes a beacon of light … the Internet. And it features … pictures of girls wearing things that our wives won’t wear anymore and doing things that our wives won’t do anymore. Yes, this harmless activity can be done in the safety of our own homes … and costs far less than a night at the local gentleman’s club (so it doesn’t drain the family budget).
Sound good? Absolutely not! The objective of Mommydom is to control every aspect of a guy’s life.
—“Bob” on MarriedtoMommy.com
Perhaps in a world where women have gained near-equal footing and sometimes surpassed their male counterparts in some traditionally male arenas—higher education, professional graduate schools, certain industries—pornography offers a safe haven where men can still dominate, undisturbed. Outside, life has become “feminized”—it’s a world of Oprah, therapy, parenting, work/life balance, and yoga. Inside the porn fantasy world, men are most definitely on top. David Marcus, a San Jose, California-based psychologist who specializes in treating men who use pornography excessively, says use has risen in part because of the tremendous stress men are under. “More is being asked of men emotionally these days,” he explains. “Many men are still providers and they’re still in the workforce, where the skills required often demand a kind of calculating callousness. The workplace is more competitive and there are fewer jobs. It’s tough out there. But at home, the kind of behavior that works in the workplace is simply unacceptable. Men say they have chronic anxiety as a result of those two clashing worlds. They feel like they’re mastering neither home nor work and that, overall, they’re not in control. So they go online to look at pornography. It’s a place where they can get release from that stress. Voyeurism offers a certain kind of control.”
Not surprisingly, workplace incidents revolving around pornography and power abound. In 2004, forty-three employees in Kentucky’s state transportation department were suspended or fired for viewing pornography on their office computers. A twenty-four-hour monitor found that 212 computers were used to view pornography on a given day.12 In 2002, a computer-abuse sweep at the Virginia Department of Transportation found that seventeen employees were accessing the Internet on their computers for more than two hours daily to look at pornography online; fifteen were subsequently fired and two resigned.13 At a freight services company in Minnesota in 2002, female employees accused their male colleagues of using office e-mail to disseminate pornography in ways easily visible to women in the office, creating a hostile work atmosphere.14 In February 2004, an audit manager at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston resigned after fifteen investigations documenting employee visits to pornographic Web sites in the workplace resulted in only four terminations. In her most recent investigation, ten male employees were found viewing pornography; eight of them were visiting teen pornography sites. Frustrated, the manager, Cynthia Davis, explained that it was “disturbing” that one of the employees, a pediatric dentist, was logging on every morning to visit sites with graphic depictions
of sex with young teenagers and then seeing child patients later in the day.15
It’s easy for men to feel more powerful and in control when they look at pornography. Women who pose for pornography must be stupid, many men say. Or addicted to drugs. Something has to be with wrong with them; otherwise they wouldn’t sell themselves in order to get strangers off. It’s only natural for men to feel superior to women who are mere fodder for their fantasies. Sandeep, the trauma surgeon, would never seriously date a porn star, because he would never date someone he wasn’t willing to marry. “I wouldn’t want to have to face my mother!” he exclaims, laughing. “I mean, shit! God, she would freak out! She would say, ‘This woman has sex on camera for all the world to see—what are you thinking?’” Sandeep can’t see how any of the women in porn could possibly be capable of having a normal relationship, at least not the kind of relationship he’d want. “I think all of them have had some kind of sexual trauma, if not abuse, then some seriously shitty boyfriends in high school.” The strippers he knows from the Houston strip club scene are all “relatively messed up people”—whether that’s the type of person drawn to stripping or because of how stripping affects people, he’s not sure. Either way, he isn’t interested. Nor would he ever want a daughter of his to land in that world. “I would do everything I could to discourage my daughter from posing in Playboy” he says. “I’d tell her there are other ways of looking good and making money while keeping your clothes on. The only people it opens doors for are those for whom there are few doors to open. You don’t fulfill yourself by posing nude.”
Pornography is not only a place where men can exert control over their own lives; it’s a place to validate one’s maleness. Online pornography, with its message boards and chat rooms, is particularly adept at creating a place where men can enjoy pornography in an all-male arena. As sociologists Michael Barron and Michael Kimmel explain, “Internet news groups are the closest things to the all-male locker room that exist in the pornographic world: a world, in a sense, entirely without women, a world in which men control absolutely all facets of the scene and in which women do not insert themselves as corporeal beings, even in the highly stylized forms offered by magazines or videos.”16 An atmosphere of posturing and competition pervades such chat rooms. By commenting on women as a group, men keep women at a distance, parading their masculinity and proving their potency to one another, and to themselves, like roosters strutting their stuff in a barnyard competition.
“Bjoobies!! I love dem Asian features,” exclaims one man in a bulletin board of responses to a series of online photos showing a half-Asian, half-Caucasian woman, dubbed “Kitana,” frolicking naked in a bathtub. “Dammit,” writes another man. “I thought it was Kitana Baker … oh well this chick is still decent enough. She has a weird midriff though.” He’s not alone in his opinion. “Looks like she’s had a few too many sandwiches!!!” exclaims another viewer. “Or she needs to stick to light beer!! She has no waistline—goes straight down from her shoulders!!!” A third man chimes in, “She does nuthin 4 me. Maybe the fugliness, I don’t know.” A man who calls himself “Drexel” agrees. He writes:
I’m confused. Whose idea of beauty are we subject to? What are the qualifications needed to get one’s boobies on [this site]? The reason I ask, is that there doesn’t seem to be anything extraordinary about this particular young lady. No shocking hair color, exceptional beauty, fancy outfit, giant boobs, etc, etc, that separate her from any other bathing booty. She’s fine, I’d hit it and all but, I’m sure I could find 50 more interesting versions within a few keystrokes.
Then there are the dissenters. “I’d hit it! I’d hit it! I’d hit it! I’d hit it! I’d hit it! I’d hit it! I’d hit it! I’d hit it!” writes a man who goes by Root Boy. Another Kitana fan adds, “I’d slice it,” while someone named Mr. Guy notes, “Ahhhh, dammit, is that a wedding band I see on her finger? I don’t wanna have to share.”
Another Web site, another forum: a blonde peels off her white bustier, French-cut bikini, and garters in a frame-by-frame montage, ending with her legs spread wide. She poses from the front, and now from the back, squatting, lying down, smiling. “I dunno, man, her face is screwy…. The eyes/eyebrow combination is off one way or another,” writes one observer. “What’s up with the beaver rash?” asks a second. “Nice granny panties,” sneers a third, the self-proclaimed I Dig Chicks. Yet another viewer piles on: “This chick’s boobies are weird. How come her nipples aren’t somewhat centered within her areolas? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.” Nobody seems to like the blonde very much: “Call it nitpicking,” writes a man who calls himself Half Mast Trousers, “but I’ve got a problem with those stringy inner-thigh tendons that seem to show up on a lot of these anorexic-type models. I like to see that little connecting tendon part just sort of peek out on either side of the spread cooter and disappear into some decent thigh meat.” When one man complains that the others are being unduly harsh, a debate breaks out on the board. “Any skank who appears naked on the Internet automatically gains immunity from criticism?” replies a poster. “I’ve seen plenty of nasty meat [online] that I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole…. Actually, now that I think of it, you’re right, from now on I’ll commence heaping praise on every used up skanky butterface implant ridden ho-bag that gets posted here.”
This isn’t quite the aesthetic appreciation that men make pornography viewing out to be, nor does it seem to be about men loving women. Comments in such porn forums generally fall into two categories: whether the viewer would have sex with the woman depicted or not and whether the image inspired him to masturbate, accompanied by a dissection of the woman’s attributes that turned him on. The prettiness of her face, the curve of her ass, whether she’s been too airbrushed or not airbrushed enough. Women become objects to be praised, scorned, and sized up according to the degree to which they appeal to men. Such banter and debate might sound harmless, but it solidifies certain attitudes about the ease of judging a woman’s merit solely on the basis of her appearance.
Not all pornography is so controversial. Some images meet with near universal approval. A brunette with long hair, wearing a white men’s shirt, dripping wet as she climbs out of a pool, solicits a cacophony of praise and enthusiasm. “When she gets out of the pool I’ll be glad to dry her off with my tongue,” writes a man who calls himself Eat More Possum. “That has to be one of the hottest chicks I’ve ever seen,” seconds Cubansaltyballs. “I wish her career would fall apart so she would be forced to become a stripper … like all the ex-adult film chicks that are strippers here in Vegas.” The men seem to like this one and even to wish that she weren’t merely a feature of pornography, but a real woman they could somehow insert into their own lives. “I’d do ’er,” writes a third guy on the board. “I’d eat her out, that’s for sure. She could suck my knob anytime. I would even lick her ass. Yes, I would. I’d lick her from her ass to her clit. Until she came multiple times, then I’d make love with her. All night if she wanted. Then I’d cuddle her.” But most of the commentary sticks closely to form: “Sweet lord,” writes Buckshot. “Them breasts are either natural or an excellent set of implants. The first pic, where she’s sitting down pushing them together with her arms. So innocent … I’ll be back in minute.”
Porn Is Easy, Porn Is Safe
Compared with the ease of masturbating to women in pornography, sex with real women involves a lot of effort, and often time and money to boot. Real women may get angry when men gape, gawk, and get hard at inappropriate times. In pornography, the women demand it; sexual arousal and gratification are the whole point. The contrast between the demands of sexual conquest with real women and the instant gratification of pornography are seductive enough to win over many men, at least some of the time. A man can have his cake without the calories. “I don’t see how any male who likes porn can think actual sex is better, at least if it involves all the crap that comes with having a real live female in your life,” complains Frank in an o
nline message board discussion about the prevalence of pornography.17
Men say that women underestimate the fear they, and men’s desire to have sex with them, inspire. In the real world, women hold a power: the power to judge and to rebuff, spurning a guy’s desire and making him feel inadequate and unwanted. The rejected male, particularly during his teenage years when he is most apt to discover porn, is constantly subjected to humiliation and frustration. Each rejection gets tucked away into the private place where men mull over their excessive body hair and insufficient paychecks; where pride is swallowed and humbleness dwells, accumulating the emotional debris of ongoing denial and frustrated desire. And this becomes the emotional impetus that brings them to pornography and the ineffable release of masturbation.
In the face of what appears to be such intimidating control by women, many men experience frustration and even anger. Austin, a twenty-nine-year-old musician from Chicago, is one of several men who described the experience of “The Street Dilemma.” Walking down the street, he says, you see all these girls you want to have sex with. “And it makes you angry in a way. Not violently angry, but just pissed off. It pains us every time we see another woman we can’t have sex with. You want to see all these women naked and you know you never will. It’s really frustrating.” Guys talk about this sort of thing with friends, Austin explains. “You’ll say to your friend, God, I saw this really hot woman walk by today and I was just like, ‘Fuck!’” Sure you might get to see one woman, but the point is you can’t get every one. There’s always another woman who will walk by and torment you. It makes life seem incredibly unfair: all temptation, with little reward. First you’re single and you can’t get the women you really want; then you’re married and you’re tied to one woman for the rest of your life.
