Can We Blame Porn for Our Sexual Illiteracy?

This morning I caught a tweet from the incredible artist Sophia Wallace linking to a Tumblr post about the sexual incompetence of the straight man. According to Wallace, the problem is that “more men than ever before learn about ‘sex’ from mainstream porn,” where “women’s bodies function as orifices to be violently and competitively destroyed.” Wallace believes that a better option for adult entertainment exists, what she calls “progressive porn,” but fails to define what that means beyond that it “respects all bodies.”

When I think about porn that respects bodies, I think about performers and the labor conditions under which they work. Production, to me, is what makes porn ethical or unethical, not content. The narratives within pornographic films illustrate various fictions, much as the content of Hollywood movies illustrate fictions. Some of these fictions are going to be more alluring to some viewers than others. It’s true that a large amount of porn caters to a specific set of fictions, but that doesn’t mean this fiction is wrong. It means we need to encourage the creation of content that other groups of people will like. Achieving this isn’t a question of lobbying against the porn we don’t like, but fighting to give adult content creators access to payment processors, business loans, and other things that have been historically antagonistic to adult content creators and which have resulted in a very high barrier to entry into the industry.

That said, I don’t think Wallace is wrong in saying that a lot of people are taking their cues from porn and that this isn’t getting good results in terms of personal satisfaction. Most recently, there was a thread on the bulletin board hub Reddit about the things women had picked up as a result of learning about sex from porn. Unsurprisingly, there were a number of comments about consumption resulting in body image doubts not unlike those we hear when we discuss the portrayal of women in fashion magazines. But the most shocking, were the comments about sex itself:

“I thought orgasms were much easier to achieve than they actually are. As a result I thought something was wrong with me for a long time. I just assumed that PIV [penis-in-vagina sex] equaled almost instant orgasm. I was so disappointed to find that wasn’t the case,” wrote astralrayn, adding, “It took me a while, maybe a dozen times or so (all with the same guy) to realize that PIV sex by itself would not give me an orgasm. During this whole time I was trying different positions and reading all kinds of books trying desperately to get it right.”

“I thought penises were going to be much larger,” said maidenlush. Another user quickly agreed, noting that a woman had once expressed surprise when she learned that penises were not usually eight inches in length. A user going by the moniker alaskajane added, “I didn’t know uncircumcised penises existed, because all the porn I’d seen prior had circumcised male performers.”

“The things in porn weren’t always what I enjoyed, but that’s what I thought sex was — and if I didn’t enjoy it, then tough shit,” confessed Danianne. “I also had misconceptions about my own body, but not men’s. I knew not all men would be hung or go for a long time, because this information is well spoken about. Even in sex-ed class we learned about how penis size differed and it was all normal. I didn’t know it was normal for me to not have a porn-perfect looking vulva, or normal for me not to be able to have multiple orgasms. Not until I was much, much older… and even then I had to seek out this information after years of feeling like shit. Didn’t learn about different looking vulvas in sex-ed class.”

“Well, I for one thought all men wanted it all the time and at least pretended to enjoy going down if not for the mere joy of knowing you can please a woman that way,” said Ajrt2118.

It’s hard to ignore the extent of our sexual illiteracy when we encounter threads like these — real conversations among real people who have experienced everything from inconvenience to despair as a result of not knowing what to expect from sex or even their own bodies. But before the blame can be placed on our favorite scapegoat, we must consider some of the other comments, best summarized by darkbloomviv, “I had sex before I had ever seen more than a few pornographic images. My misconceptions were borne from ignorance instead.”

Another user, mg321, echoed this, recalling, “I didn’t see porn until I was 18. I knew in my early teens that touching my clit felt good and I let my boyfriend touch me there so I assumed the penis just slid basically in the vulva and aimed the sperm at the vaginal opening. It made sense based on my abstinence-only education.”

“I had sex long before I watched porn, but movies and media certainly gave me misconceptions about sex!” noted bynL. “I thought it was all supposed to be candles, massages and Berlin playing on the tape deck. It was always going to be slow, passionate, and I had to look grateful and overjoyed, while he had to look determined with perma-flexed biceps. Then we cuddle.”

The user GiveAnOnion agreed, pointing to non-pornographic movies as the source of most misconception. Another user, blanketdog, blamed misconceptions on romance novels, which had suggested that orgasms were easy to achieve, that synchronized orgasms regularly occur, that the body would always provide all the lubrication necessary…

Personally, I don’t think it’s pornography that is the problem. I think the problem is that we have dropped the ball on sexual education. Abstinence-only programs have destroyed what little handle we had on the situation, taking millions in grants to produce no results in either reducing teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection. The most unfortunate side effect is that lacking any sort of education, teens and young adults are turning to books, movies and porn to figure out what sex is all about. But books, movies and porn — things created as forms of entertainment, as spaces to suspend disbelief — aren’t appropriate substitutes for education.

Demanding that porn be educational is delusional. You don’t prepare for the LSAT by watching Law & Order. You just don’t.

It’s true that there are several porn producers who are stepping up to help out with this crisis — people like jessica drake, Madison Young and Nina Hartley, to name a few — but they’re doing this as a service, not because they think it’s their duty. It’s a lot like the Science and Entertainment Exchange, which connects people in science with people in Hollywood to bring some accurate science into movies and television. That’s a service in response to yet another crisis: our scientific illiteracy.

But it’s neither Hollywood’s nor porn’s job to do what education should be doing. If you’re horrified about the content of that Reddit thread, or the fact that men (or women) are horrible in bed these days, ask yourself what you are doing in your community to make sexual education available to people. And not just a sort where the only subjects covered are avoiding pregnancy and disease — I’m talking about a real sexual education where pleasure is discussed, where myths (porn, Hollywood and romance novel alike) are busted, where consent is outlined and shown in practice, and where the body is presented as a wonderful part of each individual, unique from those of others and deserving of pleasure, love and care.

Header image by Peter Sunna.