Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - The effects of Porn on young men and women

MrFriendly · 05-03-2010, 12:18 AM

So I read a rather interesting article in my local rag where feminist Naomi Wolf talks about the effects of porn on teens and young adults. The whole article is quite long, so I'm just going to quote the relevant bit.

Quote:

So when Wolf wrote an essay in New York magazine in 2003, centred on the effect of porn on young men's sex drives, there was quite a stir. "The onslaught of porn," she wrote, "is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women ... Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention."

Critics ridiculed the idea that young men were turning down sex with willing, flesh-and-blood women, and although I believe Wolf when she tells me that "many, many men" have written to her since saying, "Yes, it's true", I remain unconvinced that this is a generation-wide phenomenon. Nevertheless, returning to the article seven years later, I'm forced to admit that when it comes to the effect of ubiquitous pornography on the sexual self-confidence of young women, she has a point. When I first read Wolf's claim that hers was "the last female generation to experience that sense of sexual confidence and security in what we had to offer", I scoffed. Now, I tell her I hope she's wrong, but am increasingly worried that she's not.

In the past few years I've spent a lot of time talking to women in their teens and early 20s about porn, sex and body image. There is a profound difference in the context in which these women have come of sexual age compared to that of my adolescence only a decade earlier. The difference is that most young people now have witnessed countless sex acts long before they even get naked with another human being.

It could be argued that such exposure is educational, but only if you've never seen any mainstream porn, which is, most industry insiders and observers agree, getting more and more extreme. This may be, at least in part, a reaction to the adoption of soft-porn aesthetics by mainstream popular culture. Porn needs to be nastier and more hard-core to differentiate itself from beer ads and music videos.

Anal sex, for example, is now a standard part of heterosexual porn, and although this is not necessarily a brutal act, the way it's performed in these films usually is. A bit of spit on the woman's orifice is all the preparation and care the men take. On visits to college campuses, Wolf learnt from health educators and counsellors that women are coming in with anal fissures caused by sex. "I'm not making a [moral] judgement about it," Wolf says.

"But it's an intense act and on a first date, or on a hook-up on a Saturday night with someone they don't know, girls feel like they have to provide anal sex. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing they'd be doing if they felt, 'I'm 100 per cent fabulous, I'm setting the pace, taking my time.' It seems like the kind of thing girls do when they're trying to live up to one ideal or another."

The other big trend in mainstream porn is to end a scene with a man ejaculating on a woman's face. Again, there's nothing wrong with the act in itself, but there's something disturbing about the way it has become the norm within what has become a widely watched and imitated form of media. This is especially worrying when you realise that the context in which it's presented is often one of deliberate humiliation. The idea seems to be that no matter how hot and confident the woman is at the outset, by the end she'll be a sticky mess, with smudged make-up, watery eyes and no hope of getting satisfaction herself now that her partner has finished with her.

Sexually experienced adults may understand that what they're watching is a fantasy, carefully choreographed, performed by professionals and shot for maximum visual impact rather than physical pleasure. But many teenagers don't know this; hence the horror stories of first-time sex that begins with rough, sudden penetration and finishes with semen in the eye.

To be clear, the concerns Wolf is raising are not about the morality or otherwise of watching porn or having sex of whatever kind; they're about the effect that early, repeated exposure to pornography is having on young people's sexuality. "Young women do compare themselves to pornography and they do have porn running in their heads when they're in sexual situations. I'm not a prude, but I don't think that's good for their sexual confidence or confidence in their bodies."

Indeed, young women I speak to often express anxiety about the appearance of their genitals, which seem to them so much "messier" than those they see in high-definition close-up on the screen. Although no statistics are collected in Australia, surgeons specialising in labiaplasty (basically a nip and tuck of the labia) claim it's a growing field. One Australian surgeon recently told a cosmetic surgery conference that he used to see only "the professionals - the pole dancers, the strippers" but now he was seeing a lot of "young girls who are concerned that their partners in sex may in fact be put off by the appearance of their vulvas".

Contributing to the problem is the fact that it's illegal in Australia to publish images of vulvas that show anything more than "a single crease". This means that even women's magazines aren't allowed to show real, un-pornified, un-photoshopped female genitals for educational purposes. I'm reminded of something Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth: "We are asked to believe our culture promotes the display of female sexuality. It actually shows almost none. It censors representations of women's bodies, so that only the official versions are visible."

This in turn brings to mind the argument that certain kinds of pornography are liberating because they do show human bodies and sexualities in their uncensored, infinitely variable glory. What of the young gay, lesbian and transgender people who say pornography is empowering to them because it celebrates their sexualities when other forms of media shun or ignore them?

What of the young women who say that non-mainstream pornography helps them to accept their bodies and become more confident in their sexuality? Can pornography be a positive force?

"Oh, you're wading into a thicket," Wolf says. "You're right to, but ... it's so complicated. I know that seeing a sexuality that's been kept hidden or criminalised can be liberating for gay and lesbian people, certainly. I'm also really interested in sex; it fascinates me and I'm not going to say there aren't erotic images or works of art or works of theatre or paintings or photographs that don't appeal to me." She pauses. "I guess I go back to that's why I don't think feminism will ever triumph if it's saying, 'Okay, this kind of erotic image is legitimate because the people look like Smith [a private liberal arts college] graduates or are overweight and this is not okay because it's made by a big studio.' That's hair-splitting and I think we need [to resist the] reflex to label something good or bad. Thinking for yourself is a lot more liberating. I'm always going to return to asking a person how does it make them feel. What's the lasting effect on their love life, their sex life? Research shows that pornography desensitises; if you consume it a lot, you need more or more extreme or more and more intense images in order to get the same sensations over time ... If you care about your sexual response - you want to protect it, keep it fresh - you might want to not look at pornography for that reason.

Ok, I know that's a lot to get through, and I appreciate it if you've made it this far.

I think this article raises some very interesting points and concerns about what effects porn is having on young men and women.

I'm really keen to hear what people of both sexes here think. Porn has never been easier to get a hold of, and by that same extension, more extreme porn such as rape fantasy.

I think that porn causes just as much anxiety in young males just as much as females due to both parties having a misguided ideas about what each party expects of eachother. As pointed out, women can develop a misguided idea about what vaginas should look like, just as young man can develop a misguided idea about penis size.

But as I thought about it a bit more, when didn't we have strange ideas of sex growing up? Who here hasn't had some incredibly sexual awkward moment as they were maturing and figuring this stuff out on our own?

I think what our youngsters need to be taught, especially young women, is that they should never feel like they have to do something they're simply not comfortable with and to understand porn in a better context.

Your thoughts?