PORN – Do You Watch It?

Words: Faith Thurnwald
Art: Micah Rustichelli

Do you watch porn? I don’t. It’s not appealing to me. The fluorescent lighting, and oiled up bodies, to me they aesthetically equate to a raw chicken getting stuffed –excuse the euphemism.  While I recognize that not all porn looks like this, especially with the rise of the amateur category, it’s just not something that gets me… cooking. Perhaps it’s the performative nature of it all, and the utter ridiculousness of how sex is portrayed, besides the acting it terrible. How am I meant to follow a narrative I can’t believe? I need a storyline, a little something I can get behind, before I want to get it from behind.

But that’s enough about my proclivities; we don’t need to delve too deeply into my pursuit of getting off.

The generation/s of men I sleep with, have undeniably been brought up on porn. It is a fact. Logically then, we can deduce that porn has and will continue to affect how whole generations of people interact with one another. To me, that’s a scary fucking thought. We bring quirks and kinks we learnt as a 12 year old with a tissue, into adult relationships – but do we stop to question why we like what we like? Some kids (and adults) consume porn on a daily basis, evidently, then the way we have sex today, and certain things we bring into the bedroom and bestow upon our partner(s) hasn’t occur in a void, and does not originate organically.

So how do we know what we like, when we are force fed such a spectrum of content as children?

Do you watch porn? Due to the sheer amount of content out there, our fantasies are not just catered to, but born from how exact and precise they can afford to become. Long gone are the days where the mere sight of an ankle would be committed to memory and stored safely in one’s wank bank.

It seems the libertarian left loves to throw a blanket over anything sexual and label it progressive. Porn is seen as sex positive, but is it? Is a whole industry that stands on the exploitation of its workers and acts as a grotesque sexual education for the impressionable really a positive thing? I believe in sexual experimentation, I believe in ironing out your kinks and I believe in the harmless and ever healthy pursuit of the orgasm, but to me porn just aint all that.

At what point does fantasy become something more sinister, where do we draw the line? Certainly not at some light BDSM, which has pretty much become the norm in heterosexual sex. Do you watch porn, and when you do, what goes too far? Are rape fantasies the tipping point, abduction play or diaper lovers? Fetishes flourish in our new sexual order of acceptance, but when did we stop questioning this shit, and shouldn’t we sometimes just send someone to a therapist, instead of abducting them?

I end this weird little opinion piece feeling like a sexually repressed 50’s housewife, shocked to discover that a pearl necklaces can be more than just what she wears while baking. I promise I’m not a prude, I merely suggest to keep an eye out; for paraphilia can turn pedophilic, and masochism can become misogyny.

For More: Freud’s Castration & My Objectification