One of the sticking points in many of the debates and conversations that I’ve participated in around porn is that porn sex doesn’t look like real-life sex. Unfortunately, if the only images that we have about how to have sex come from porn, it’s easy to see how that can skew people’s perception of sex.

I’ve heard of a growing number of people in their early 20’s, especially men, who have trouble in their sexual relationships and say that it’s due, at least in part, to their porn viewing habits during their adolescence. Of course, nobody under 18 is supposed to look at internet porn, just like nobody under 21 is supposed to drink alcohol, right?

Some folks argue that any sexually explicit media is inherently problematic, while others claim that the porn industry as it currently  represents  sex is the problem, not sexually explicit media per se. After all, porn in the 70’s showed sex that looked a lot like everyday sex- no cameras between the legs, etc.

Most modern-day porn focuses so much on what works for the camera that there’s little room for anything that actually looks like it feels good. Crazy contortions that most people can’t manage, hard & pounding sex with no warm up or lubricant, a fairly predictable formula of acts- these are all chosen because of the perception that they look good. And of course, real passion and chemistry is quite hard to fake, especially when you’re a “performer” rather than an “actor.” I also think that after making porn for a while, many of the folks in the industry develop a different perception of what looks good than folks who aren’t in the biz.

Now just to be clear, I don’t think that porn’s focus on what looks good on camera is necessarily a bad thing. I also know that porn can be lots and lots of fun for many people. It’s just that I also think that it’s important to remember that most sex in the real world isn’t going to look like that and if you’re so focused on having “porn sex,” you might miss out on many of the joys and pleasures of sexuality.

In many ways, it makes me think of how television and movies  portray, well, pretty much anything. When you watch a detective movie, you’ll see someone sit at the computer, type for 10 seconds and get the information they want. When you watch Law & Order, you never see how appallingly slowly anything having to do with police work or courtrooms actually happens.  Medical dramas never shows anyone waiting for hours in the emergency room. Life in TV shows and movies is generally super convenient, except in the ways that move the storyline along. Expecting the real world to work like TV is almost always going to lead to disappointment. So why should we expect porn to be any different?

Personally, I’d love to see more sexually explicit movies that showed sex that looked like it feels good. There are  some, like Tony Comstock’s movies, as well as the movies that Abby Winters has made. There are also the classics, which still have a lot of fans. And I have to give a shout out to Good Releasing (GV’s new video production arm), with some super hot movies that feature truly pleasurable sex.

Ultimately, what’s pleasing to the eye can be pretty compelling. But when you lose track of what’s pleasing to the touch, that can be a problem. Personally, I’m all about the both/and. I think we can have the ability to have both. Perhaps not always at the same time, but that’s OK.

What I think we really need is better education and portrayals of real-life sex and sexual relationships, along with the fun-to-watch, but unrealistic erotic movies. And we need to stop singling out porn for something that pretty much every form of entertainment does. There’s plenty of other stuff that I would change about porn, but expecting it to be any different from TV in terms of how it caters to the camera and makes everything look unrealistic is just silly.

As some of you may know, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a document produced by the American Psychiatric Association. It serves as the official list of how we define mental health and mental health disorders. In a nutshell, if it’s in the DSM, it’s officially a disorder.

The hope, at least for most ethical, well-trained, and compassionate professionals, is that the diagnoses are based on clinical evidence, scientific research, and fact. That’s a tall order, given that our understanding of mental health processes is constantly growing. So every few years, the APA gets a bunch of folks together and revises the document. It doesn’t happen often and it has been about 10 years since the last version (the DSM-IV-Text Revision) came out. The DSM-V is currently being developed and is scheduled to be published in 2012.

One of the goals is for the diagnoses to be both reliable and valid from a scientific perspective. Reliability means that different care providers assessing similar clients will come to the same conclusions regarding what diagnosis to make. Validity means that the diagnoses are consistent with mental health theories. Unfortunately, both of those are hard to ensure when it comes to mental health, for a number of reasons. For example, there are many different theories that people claim account for variations in mental health and until we develop a unified model of mental health, claims of validity are hard to back up. And each therapist tends to bring their own interpretation to their clients’ sessions, making reliability tricky.

But when it comes to the sexuality diagnoses, things start to get even messier than usual. (Isn’t that always the way!) Given the erotophobia and sex-negativity that runs through US and Western culture, it really doesn’t come as a surprise that the DSM diagnoses rely on a set of assumptions that re-create a model of “normal” sex. Less common sexual practices are held to a different standard than those that are more widely accepted and in many cases, there’s no way to distinguish between the behavior and the supposed problem. One of the ways that they’ve tried to work around that is by making one of the required criteria “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.” In a nutshell, the intent is to make it clear that if the situation doesn’t cause distress to anyone, then it’s not a problem.

While there are clearly some good reasons for that, it also creates complications. After all, how do you decide that the solution is to change the behavior of the person with the presenting issue instead of changing their circumstances? If someone feels just fine about something that their partner has problems with, where does the solution lie? When does a strong interest become an obsession, and why do we have a different standard for sex than, say, football? After all, a football fan who organizes his life around his favorite team is much less likely to face stigma than someone who organizes their life around sex.

These are the sorts of issues that mental health professionals struggle with, and it’s especially challenging when the therapist has a negative reaction to whatever their client’s sexual desires are. I have a lot of compassion for them. It’s not an easy job and the best tool they have is their entirely fallible, human intuition. It’s no wonder that some of them are trying to standardize things and that’s why it’s important to have the DSM based on empirical evidence instead of prejudice and sex-negativity.

The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is circulating an online petition to remove BDSM practices, fetishes and cross-dressing from the DSM. These sexual practices, preferences and desires are not, in and of themselves, the result of or the cause of mental health disorders. It’s true that some people with serious conditions also engage in these behaviors, but so do many millions of other people and the empirical evidence simply doesn’t support the erotophobic belief that these sexual expressions are inherently unhealthy or dangerous.

Further, quite often, the problem is with the lovers, family members and communities of the people who engage in uncommon sexual practices. The distress comes from the external sex-negativity rather than the sex itself. Until and unless the DSM makes it possible to distinguish between the behavior and the supposed disorder there is no reason to attach the stigma of a mental health disorder to people when it’s not warranted, especially given the impact that can have on child custody, employment, self-esteem and medical care.

The effects of the DSM on people’s lives are expansive in both scope and scale. We deserve diagnostic criteria that are accurate and scientifically valid. Otherwise, we’re letting the APA be the sex police and we are worth better than that. I invite and encourage you to go to the petition site and sign it. You can make your signature anonymous on this secure petition site so it doesn’t appear on the Internet or when the petition is delivered to the APA.

If you want more information, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom has a wonderful document called the DSM Revision White Paper (catchy name!) The White Paper shows in great detail how the sexuality diagnoses are biased and how these sexual practices are held to a different standard than those that are more widely accepted and how the DSM makes no attempt to distinguish between behavior and dysfunction when it comes to sex. Check it out and pass it on.

First off, I want to honor what I think is the real question: what movies feature non-surgically altered women? I 100% support people speaking their desires and asking for what they want. I 100% recognize that there are plenty of people who prefer to see women in porn without breast implants, or with pubic hair, or whatever. That’s great and there are plenty of movies for folks with those preferences.

Second, I think it’s totally fine to question/critique/discuss how limited and limiting definitions of beauty trap all of us. That-which-is-considered-attractive™ causes untold harm to everyone, especially women who try to force themselves into a mold that doesn’t fit. Given that pretty much every image we see in the media these days has been digitally altered, I really value the process of seeing past the packaging and discovering ways to not let it skew our self-perceptions. Personally, I find that not reading magazines full of unrealistic or literally impossible photos has done wonders for my ability to perceive the beauty that exists in every person I see. I highly recommend trying it, although your mileage may vary.

At the same time, what bugs me about the “real bodies” questions is that everyone’s body is a “real body”. There’s no such thing as a fake body- there’s only different degrees of body modification and we all do it.

Think you don’t have any body modifications? Do you have any piercings (yes, ear piercings count!) How about tattoos? Pins or rods in your skeleton to help you heal after an injury? Do you shave, wax, or tweeze any hair anywhere on your body? How about dyeing or cutting your hair? That’s a modification, too. Do you wear makeup? Eyeglasses or contact lenses? Have you ever had a mole removed? Those are all body modifications. And every body that I’ve ever seen has been modified to one degree or another.

Of course, some of them are temporary and others are more or less permanent. Some are easy to do and others require some help, such as those that require surgery. Some of them are for cosmetic reasons, others for medical reasons, and still others for both (such as glasses, which may be medically necessary but the frames are chosen in order to look good). And some of them fit within a given culture’s definition of acceptable body modifications and others don’t.

In all of this, whatever the reason for a particular modification, whether it’s to look a certain way, to help your body after an injury, or to make it easier to move through the world, none of them makes your body “fake.” Every body is a real body.

Even so, I do think that it’s worth exploring why some people choose to modify their bodies in the way that they do. The cultural pressure that we all face to look a certain way weighs on all of us. And in particular, the pressure that most women in US culture face to fit a particular mold has devastating consequences. So yes, we can question and challenge that. But once we start labeling some people as having “fake bodies”, we deny them their full humanity and that is a very steep, very slippery slope. Because that often leads to ascribing moral judgments to people because of how we judge their bodies. And in my experience, that quickly ends up in reinforcing the either/or, good/bad model that causes so much harm.

If we want to be sex-positive, then we need to honor both the real bodies that we each have AND the fact that we are each attracted to different types of bodies. We need to have room to question the messages that we receive about bodies AND honor each person’s autonomy to make  decisions about their own. And we need to stop using words like “fake” when we talk about very real, very human bodies,

Does it seem to you that the anti-gay marriage folks are getting a little desperate to come up with a logical, reasonable explanation for why they don’t want gays to marry (besides their homophobia, I mean)? You’ll love this one, then.

GOP Chairman Michael Steele has proposed that if gays are allowed to marry, that will hurt businesses by adding to their health benefits costs. Here’s what he said:

“Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,” Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. “So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”

If that’s the case, then maybe we shouldn’t let anyone marry. Wouldn’t that make sense? I mean, then nobody would have to pay any spousal benefits to anyone. Or we could, you know, have a health care system that wasn’t profit-driven in the first place.

In any case, it really seems like he’s trying to defend the indefensible. Which is, I hope, a sign that this sort of institutionalized homphobia is on the run. Keep your fingers crossed…

Related at Good Vibrations:

Bachelorette Gifts (fun for all marriages)
Erotic Honeymoon Sampler Kit
Mini-Peni Cake Candles
Party Tiara W/ Veil

Now, I agree with him in as much as I would like the ads for Enzyte and such to go away. But not because they’re indecent. I want them to go away because they perpetuate the idea that sex = intercourse, which requires a large, hard penis. (doesn’t it?) I want them to go away because they play off of men’s insecurities, they limit our notion of what sex is, and they use coy euphemisms. I think that euphemisms reinforce the habit we have of not talking about “down there” and when we talk about “those parts” instead of penises, vulvas, vaginas (or even cocks and pussies), we reify sex-negativity by sending the message that those are the “organs which shall not be named.” In essence, euphemisms recreate and transmit shame and there’s enough sexual shame in the world without adding to it.

But indecent? Well, only if you’re so ashamed of sex that you can’t tell a child that “ED is a medical condition that some men have and this medication helps with that.” Check it out- an age-appropriate (at least for some ages) way to talk about Viagra without mentioning penises or using euphemisms at all. Now, is that so difficult? Well, Jim Moran thinks so and he seems to want to be protected from having to deal with it. And he’s sure that everyone else needs to be protected, too.

True to his word, President Obama is proposing funding programs based on “evidence-based and promising models” to lower teen pregnancy rates that are based on science. You know- that system of developing models of how things work based on evidence, research and peer review, rather than lies. Pretty darn cool.

Of course, there are still some unanswered questions, such as what exactly “evidence-based and promising models” means. And the question of how funding for comprehensive sex education for teens, which we desperately need,  will work still seems to be up in the air.

This is a big step. Let’s keep it going!

First off, nothing that Kink.com is illegal. They get the consent (and enthusiasm) of their models, they treat their models and staff quite well, they pay their taxes, and they were transparent about what they were going to use the training for. But Smith got all worked up because Kink.com produces porn.

Not only that, but he’s angry because he’s convinced that Kink.com shows torture. And that bugs me for two reasons. First, when we draw the comparison between something that people do willingly, consensually, and (perhaps) even enjoyably and torture, it invalidates the experiences of real victims of torture. Victims who, by definition, are unwilling, non-consenting, and aren’t enjoying it. They’re not the same thing at all and I really dislike it when people talk about them as if they are. Second, it invalidates the consent, intelligence, and decision-making ability of the people who choose to engage in BDSM, whether for the camera or in their bedrooms. By definition, if you consent, it isn’t torture and if it’s torture, you didn’t consent.

Of course, some people will argue that if someone is doing something like BDSM voluntarily, there’s something wrong with them and they can’t really consent to that. But as Kleinplatz and Moser show in their book Sadomasochism: Powerful Pleasures, the stereotype that people who engage in BDSM are damaged are wrong. So how about we let that go?

There’s a crucial difference between doing because you CHOOSE to and having something forced upon you. It’s similar, in that respect, to the difference between choosing to have sex and being sexually assaulted. It’s about the agency of the people involved. Duh.

Smith also quotes noted anti-porn propagandist, Melissa Farley:

“In this economy, this is something women would rather not do, but they feel they have to,” she said. “This is a form of economic coercion. But people would rather not think of it that way. People think of it as a matter of rights, rather than ask the question, ‘Should people have a right not to do this?’”

“Something that women would rather not do?” How about taking a look at Maggie Mayhem’s blog. By Farley’s logic, either Maggie is lying, or she’s not a woman. And I think that’s the worst part of this- the anti-porn folks disregard the actual experiences of many of the people in the biz. Yes, there are some people who have negative experiences. That’s true. But it’s not the whole story. Some people actually enjoy making porn. And some people actually enjoy BDSM (not to mention, some people like making kinky porn). Yes, I agree that people absolutely have a right to not do this. And I invite you to talk to the people who have modeled for Kink.com before you make these outlandish, inaccurate claims.

Rights go both ways. We have the right to do something, and we have the right to not do it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone suggest that we don’t have a right to not make porn. So Melissa, what in the world are you talking about?

Whether the state of California can decide to pay for training people who work at Kink.com (or other porn makers) or not, Smith’s characterization of the company and kinky porn is way off the mark. It looks to me as if it triggers him and he’d rather lash out and blame the porn than deal with that. But then, that’s nothing new when it comes to some of the anti-porn folks, is it.

Apparently, Massachusetts state representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein seems to think that adults over 60 and the disabled aren’t able to consent to pose nude or appear in a sexually explicit movie, regardless of their mental capacity. She’s introduced a bill that will make it illegal to take sexually explicit photos of elders, without taking into account that many of them are fully able to consent.

I get that part of the motivation for this is the increase in sexual assault of the elderly and the disabled. I think it’s a great idea for society to care for people who aren’t able to protect themselves. But when we take all seniors and lump them together into a single category, we forget that lots of them are absolutely able to make informed decisions about their actions. The elderly and the disabled already deal with enough attempts to infantilize them without adding this to the mix.

By the legal definition, minors aren’t able to consent. OK, I get that, even though I know some 16-year-olds who are much more self-aware and able to make decisions than some 30-year-olds I know. But to say that all people over 60 or all disabled folks are similarly unable to consent does then a serious injustice. And that’s just what the bill does.

According to the Massachusetts governement website, the proposal is to insert the phrase “an elder or a person with a disability” and similar language throughout the law that regulates child porn. So there you have it. If you’re over 60, you’re automatically included in the category of children and people with disabilities, regardless of your mental capacity. Further, it equates all people with disabilities into a single group, even though lots of people with disabilities are fully able to give or withhold consent. It depends on exactly what their disability is.

Not only is that just patently ridiculous, it also seems like the first step down a slippery slope. After all, if you can’t consent to having a nude photo taken of yourself, then how can you consent to owning a house, holding a job, driving a car, going grocery shopping or anything else that plenty of elders and people with disabilities do.

If we want to protect people who can’t care for themselves (and I think that’s an important thing to do), then all we need to do is make sure that laws like this reference whatever each state’s definition for “sound mind” is. And whatever laws exist to protect people who are of sound mind who are filmed against their will would apply to elders and the disabled, too.

But then, that would require lawmakers to understand the complexities of sex, consent, and other issues. I won’t say that it’s never happened, but it certainly seems to be uncommon.

Note: a documentary reports what actually happens. Propaganda looks for anything that reinforces the message that has already been decided on. That’s how you can tell that SPC is all about the propaganda.

One of the things that anti-porn folks have a long history of is trying to get people to feel disgust for porn. Disgust is a really strong motivator because it’s really visceral. According to Silvan Tomkins, we evolved disgust as a way to avoid things that taste bad. Anyone who has ever bitten into something gross knows how quickly you spit it out- even before you’ve fully registered the taste. That’s the root of disgust.

Since it’s such an automatic response, if someone can get you to link that sense of disgust with something else, it becomes really hard for you to think clearly about the issue anymore. Our emotions are great motivators, which is why the two words have the same root. So when you link disgust with sex, you’ve created a motivation to stay away from it. That’s also why many household cleaning products are designed to taste bad- it keeps kids from drinking them.

One of the ways that disgust for porn can be created is through presenting selective facts. For example, I’ll acknowledge that I’ve seen some internet porn that really does look to me as if the women involved are not having fun. They may look unhappy and in one or two cases, they’ve looked really triggered by the experience. It’s not common and it generally seems to happen with women who are new to the business, which makes them more vulnerable to being taken advantage of. So yes, there is some of that out there and I personally feel disgust when I see it.

Usually, the very same website has another scene with very similar sexual acts, but the woman involved is clearly having fun. Plus, when I see her on several sites doing much the same acts, or when I read interviews with her in which she makes it clear that they’re doing the same things on camera as she does in her personal lives, I feel pretty safe in assuming that my interpretation of what I see is accurate.

Unfortunately, that means that we need a certain amount of discernment to try to figure out when someone is having fun and when someone isn’t. It’s not always easy to tell, and it’s even harder when an emotion like disgust is in the way. So when someone talks about porn in an inflammatory way, makes sweeping statements about it, and focuses almost entirely on the types of porn that trigger feelings of disgust, our ability to look for the more subtle nuances evaporates. The same thing happens with anger, but disgust is such a deep physical response that it’s especially prone to being manipulated.

The main reason I find this so troubling is that there are some really problematic aspects of the porn biz and some people’s use of porn. But rather than inspiring people to look at them and ask what we can do to make the industry better or help people deal with their personal issues, the anti-porn folks try to get everybody else to feel the same disgust that they do. And that sort of either-or approach almost always gets in the way of finding a real solution.

So here’s a message to the folks at Stop Porn Culture, as well as anyone else who is anti-porn. If you genuinely want to make the world a better place, stop trying to make everyone feel like you do. Take a moment to actually listen to what other people say. And when there is a genuine problem, ask them what you can do to help. Then do it. See how simple that is?

I agree with Kuono that it’s ironic that the anti-porn people are using porn to make their point. And that they’re not ensuring that everyone who attends one of their events is over 18. I think that’s completely irresponsible, not to mention unfair and illegal.

I also want to acknowledge that there is a grain of truth to what they have to say. There is a lot of porn (mostly on the internet) that is all about humiliating women. And there is a lot of porn that reinforces some very limited and limiting models of what beauty means for women. There is a lot of porn that fetishizes racism, sexism and homophobia. There’s a lot of porn that shows unrealistic sex- most of us aren’t that flexible and it would be nice to see some lube every now and then, too. I do think that it’s worth looking at porn with a critical eye because there are a lot of ways in which it’s problematic.

At the same time, the people at Stop Porn Culture present porn in some incredibly biased ways, almost as if they think that if they showed you a more balanced view of porn, you might not agree with them. <gasp!>

For example: they conveniently ignore the existence of gay porn, queer porn, and dyke porn. They focus entirely on heterosexual porn, while talking about it as if what they have to say applies to every genre. I think it’s worth asking what makes some porn different from other porn- it would offer us more insight into the issues. Instead, they present a hegemonic view of the industry, and they do it in such a way that it’s difficult to recognize it unless you already know a lot about it.

My guess is that they present porn as one dimensional because it makes it easier to argue that porn is bad. After all, if we admit that some porn is problematic and other porn isn’t, then we have a much more complex issue and that doesn’t fit into a sound bite.

Another example: some of the things that they identify as porn’s problems have similarities to larger trends, which they seem to not think about. As I mentioned above, there is some porn that seems to be partially or largely about humiliation. But so are some reality TV shows. After all, how many people watched American Idol in order to see someone make a fool of themselves or to be humiliated by Simon Cowell? Getting off on someone else’s humiliation may be one of the less endearing traits that some people have, but porn isn’t the only place it happens. I think it’s a good thing to question how it shows up in porn, but let’s not pretend that it’s because of porn.

Yet another example: they talk about the ways that porn trains men to objectify women. As a sex educator, I’ve spoken with quite a few men (especially younger men) who have relationship challenges because of the unrealistic expectations that they learned from porn. So yes, there’s some truth there. At the same time, there are plenty of other ways that men experience porn. In fact, the book Watching Sex is all about that. Rather than projecting his experiences onto men, the author actually interviewed men about how they think and feel about porn. And it’s a lot more complex than the anti-porn folks would have you believe.

Of course, if they showed a wider range of men’s experiences, that would make it harder to blame porn. I also notice that the anti-porn folks never ask about the experience of the men in porn. Let me ask you to name five men in heterosexual porn? Can you do it? I’m willing to bet that most of you can name more women in the industry. So if we’re going to talk about objectification, let’s look at all of the ways that people are objectified. Or shall we admit that we’re fitting our discussion into an ideology?

I also find that the anti-porn folks disregard the range of sexual desire. Some women actually do enjoy the sex acts that they portray in porn. I’ve spoken with thousands of women about their sexual experiences and I can promise you that some of them enjoy double penetration, deep throating (even to the point of gagging), having their faces slapped, facial cum shots, spitting, golden showers, name calling, and anything else you may see in porn. It may not be the preferences of many women, but certainly, some women find these things fun.

I 100% acknowledge that many of the people in porn don’t always enjoy what they’re doing. At the same time, it’s simply not helpful to assume that any specific sexual act is inherently degrading. It would be more useful to ask what factors influence someone to do something that she doesn’t want to do, and explore what the industry would be like if nobody ever did anything that they didn’t enjoy. And it’s really important to remember that any and every sexual act that makes you uncomfortable is someone else’s turn on, and not just a man’s turn on.

As I said, I think that looking at porn with a critical eye is important. But if you’re going to do it, I think you have a responsibility to know as much as you can about sexuality and the actual scope of the industry. Either that, or you need to acknowledge that there are issues outside the scope of your argument and stop using sweeping, innacurate statements. It would also be more responsible to stop cherry picking the examples that support your ideology and actually look at the real situation.

I don’t expect that the folks at Stop Porn Culture are likely to do any of those things, and I still invite them to. If any of them are interested in learning more about sex, they’re welcome to get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help them out.