Three email questions from women on the men and porn post. (Babes, I really wish you would post these comments to the blog and open up the discussion.)
1. Is there a difference between a man masturbating to his imagination and masturbating to porn?
Where does he get the images in his "imagination?" Sometimes from memory, sometimes from fantasizing sex with your best friend or even your mother, sometimes from, as Rebecca would say, his "sexual Rolodex," in this case, his inner porn file.
Women like the idea of him using his imagination vs. porn because they can pretend his mental images are more romantic than they probably are. Some women and a few therapists/researchers have concluded that men who watch a lot of porn require increasingly harder material to become aroused and ejaculate. That may be true. Or not. I am searching for reliable porn studies and will get back to you on that.
2. Why do many women "endorse masturbation" but feel angry and resentful about men masturbating to porn?
Two reasons:
The desire many women have to control sex in the relationship.
Historically in nearly every culture, women have controlled men through the withholding or dispensing of sex and men have controlled women through the withholding or dispensing of money. The Sex/Money status quo has been shaken up rather a lot in our time, but the mentality still persists even in empowered women. The belief that he should not be doing anything with his dick that you don't approve is endorsed by The Relationship/Therapy Industrial Complex--all those therapists and workshop leaders and relationship coaches and authors and their emphasis on "working on the relationship." (Yech. One of my least favorite terms.)
So. You will let him masturbate but only in the approved way.
A lot of porn is truly degrading to women.
Who wants to believe that her wonderful BF is turned on by double anal penetration or several men jerking off on a woman's face? That is the inherent conflict in his porn/her relationship. The porn makes you angry because you personalize it; and your resent its powerful effect on him.
A woman in her thirties recently told me that she and her girlfriends are turned off to sex and find men in their age group both "flat and lacking passion and oddly misogynistic." She asks: Does porn make them hate women or do they watch that porn because they hate women?
Most men don't hate women. Let's ask them why they watch some porn we find offensive. Guys, thoughts on that?
3. Doesn't Western culture construct female sexuality--and isn't porn part of the construct?
Doesn't every culture construct and constrict female sexuality? And male sexuality, though in different ways?
Yes, porn does seem to play a part in how women define their sexuality now. The "girls gone wild" phenomenon--young women dressing provocatively and acting out sexually--was likely inspired in part by porn and fueled by x-rated imagery on the web. You, however, are smart enough to make your own choices about your sex life. You might decide it would be fun to have sex in your stilettos because you saw it in a film, but you don't have to do that or anything else. I would assert that organized religion has constructed and constricted female sexuality more than porn has (or ever could.)
Remember: There have never been more choices for women in porn of our own. Have you checked out Candida Royalle's Femme Productions?
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