Robbie Cooper’s “Immersion: Porn” gathers a group of six individuals to talk about their experiences with pornography. Their question and answer sessions are inter-cut with intimate footage of them “doing the deed.”
The two answers I found most intriguing came from the females of the group – Lindsay and Kristin.
Lindsay believes that porn is empowering to women because when it comes down to it, even while they’re being assaulted by 8 monster dicks, they are still the object of desire on screen – making them the person who is ultimately in control. I think this argument definitely has some validity to it when speaking about ‘vanilla pornography’ – or in other words – typical softcore Skinemax porno. When speaking about actual hardcore pornography – what I assume takes up the market share of internet porn – I have to disagree with her. So much modern pornography is focused on humiliating the female for male enjoyment (facials anyone?) thus removing the females postion of power and replacing it with the image of a dominant male literaly soaking your face with his seed. How is that empowering?
Kristin pretty much lays out my thoughts on the issue. Porn has become exploitative and overtly derogatory because of the sheer amount of the stuff that is available nowadays. I’m not going to go on a crusade against pornography – because who am I to try and tame your inner freak? – but when you step back and actually think about the images that are flickering across your screen you come to realize that the industry and the values that it promotes are WAY fucked up.
ps. Why does everyone look like a zombie when they jerk it?
i’ve heard a lot of arguments on behalf of porn, the erotic dancing industry, or prostitution being ultimately a source of female empowerment. While I can understand a lot of the points people make on behalf of any of these examples, when it comes down to it- i really think there are some major issues that are starting to rise out of this incredible saturation of porn that now is a major part of many young people’s first perception of sexuality.
One, the idea of female figure as object of desire or figure in control seems to be overshadowed or perhaps morphing into object of humiliation, tool to achieve ejaculation, or object to conquer. Whether porn is releasing hidden desires society has always been interested in behind closed doors, or whether porn itself is only pushing these desires more and more to the extreme- we have to face that porn is getting more flashy, more aggressive, more humiliating, and seems to be working towards only topping the latest outrageous stunt spreading around on the internet. It’s too complicated of an argument to really post about in a comment box, but i feel that these more aggressive and objectifying forms of pornography are only threatening the way woman feel about their own personal sexual power. Not only do they have to compete with a body type or sexual hunger continually being presented to them as the “ideal” object of desire- they feel pressured to be able to perform in the ways these women in internet videos do. How do you feel like the presence of your own naked body is nearly enough to arouse anyone anymore? Maybe back in the day when sex and the human anatomy of the opposite sex was a little more mysterious. The pressure presented by this always-ready-to-please sea of porn almost feels like a competitive mistress.
And so much emphasis seems to be placed on the male ejaculation- the visual product itself- and the way a man can satisfy himself, or what a woman(or women) will do to reach this climax. So little focus seems to be placed on pleasuring the woman that I think women today feel intimidated to get their own physical needs met during sex, or even override their own orgasm as being secondary to their partner’s.
I know there’s so much more involved, but it just feels like sex itself and orgasm is being drained of a sense of shared intimacy. I mean, if orgasm has a condition-response relationship with the human mind like so many other physical emotions/reactions to stimulus- whats happening when we start to share our orgasm infinitely more with a computer or television screen and find our arousal there than with another human being? Maybe the more we exclude our sexual pleasure to the person we’re having sex with, the more we mentally condition ourselves to even be stimulated by them.
And i certainly don’t make these arguments with only the female as victim here- the male figure as ultra masculine pleasure machine must be quite a large order to fill as well.