An action hero at the Camptown Races?
"Zippedee Doo Dah, Motherfucker."
On some blog a while ago I saw it put: "Learning how to have sex by watching porn is like learning to drive by watching action movies."
I'm not saying it wouldn't be dorky.
I'm probably going to have to have this conversation in two or three years. I should start taking notes.
The more I think about it, the more I think that teenage pregnancy isn't really a big deal at all, and anyone who tells you otherwise is (consciously or unconsciously) slut shaming. This is one of those things that I manage to convince myself of, without actually looking at any evidence. It is definitely not a big deal if you think abortion is not only a women's right, but something women and girls can always do without hesitation or apology. Even if a teenager keeps a baby, though, I don't know if it is really a problem. I think your long term economic consequences actual improve if you get your childrearing out of the way early. I think there's data on this, and I plan to get it sometime in the next two or three years.
The main counter argument I can think of is that even if teenage pregnancy isn't a particular problem, teenage marriage generally is a mistake, and the one often goes with the other.
Actual sex is like a three-legged race.
It's a miracle you and Jammies have kids.
I would kind of like to see a movie where Samuel L. Jackson wastes dudes at minstrel shows. There should probably be a sex element, too. Let's make it happen.
2: Worked for me. And I only had my license suspended for two months.
4: If your teenager has a baby, it's very likely to negatively impact *your* economics and quality of life.
The more I think about it, the more I think that teenage pregnancy isn't really a big deal at all, and anyone who tells you otherwise is (consciously or unconsciously) slut shaming.
You are definitely going to be the "cool Dad."
Teen pregnancy seems wildly more common now that I'm around slightly lower SES, and a lot of them probably Catholic or fairly religious, compared to when I was in high school and college. And I did know people who got abortions, and my passing thought was "Oh, that sucks that they had to deal with that, but glad to hear they're doing fine".
What I mean is that it barely registered to me that the alternative would have been watching them get more and more pregnant and giant, dropping out of that semester of school/college and re-enrolling elsewhere, and having a freaking baby. Now it seems like there are so many young adults carrying the pregnancy to term. (I don't think it's an illusion; I think my sample has changed.)
7: these days they make you join some kind of registry and stay on it of a lot more than 2 months. Oh, wait, this was actual driving?
@7
Maybe I'm misremembering. Maybe the writer was advising against learning to drive from watching porn and learning how to have sex from action movies.
It's a miracle you and Jammies have kids.
Whereas your first time out of the gate was a graceful tour de force?
13: If Harris Teeter saved its security tapes, we wouldn't have to guess.
To have good sex, all you need to know is that one party needs to represent Queens, and the other Brooklyn.
Oh man, helpy-chalk. That's a hard case to argue. My first thought was of Coco and Jessica in Random Family. Obviously they had a lot more going on, but if I had only one wish for them, it would be that they hadn't had children until their thirties.
Having LL Cool J's lips doesn't hurt, either.
I think your long term economic consequences actual improve if you get your childrearing out of the way early. I think there's data on this, and I plan to get it sometime in the next two or three years.
I think there's good data on that for very poor women. I'm not sure that it works that way for women in other economic strata.
I do see the attraction -- every time gswift mentions how old he and his wife are going to be when their kids move out, I have a pang of jealousy. But getting yourself on a firm enough economic footing to both take care of kids and (oh, god, does this language sound awful but imagine I thought of a better way to put it) invest in your own education and professional development if you have kids in your teens seems really hard for most people.
Just because having an abortion isn't anything to be ashamed of doesn't mean that just using birth control is a hell of a lot less unpleasant. As for having the kid, I'm dubious about teenagers getting married single parenthood is going to be an enormous time and energy suck.
I think if the teenager does not get married, the two routes become co-raising the kid with the the teenager's parents, or quasi or actual homelessness.
I'm starting to feel as if I should watch more porn or porn at all, so that I'll be able to say informedly helpful things like this to my kids. Honestly, I have no idea how unrealistic most porn is, or if any is realistic, or what. I assume it's mostly wildly unrealistic, based on the things that I've accidentally clicked through to from the comments here, but I don't know much at all.
21: I think most porn is less focued on dinosaurs having sex with cars than what you might get from links here.
But the Roy Orbison part is accurate, right?
It seems like this analogy breaks down for children who have both participated in three-legged races and watched Action movies, and also know that they vastly prefer to watch action movies than participate in three legged races.
What 19 said modulo misnegation.
Abortion is no fun. Teenage motherhood is no fun. Accidental pregnancy is largely due to ignorance and/or embarrassment about sex. Don't fight slut-shaming to destigmatize teen pregnancy, fight slut-shaming to minimize its frequency.
Unrelatedly, I had this brilliant idea the other day about how I should make porn for stay at home Dads, with the sexy lady 'plumber' stopping by for a visit. I was like, 'finally! a way to get rich!' then I remembered I don't actually want to make porn.
I do see the attraction -- every time gswift mentions how old he and his wife are going to be when their kids move out, I have a pang of jealousy.
Is that any different from thinking that the past is always a good time to have done some strenuous task?
24: But the point being that action movies might be great fun to watch, but would actually be quite miserable to participate in.
28: You have to make sure they haven't watched a lot of 'making of' special features propaganda. that shit would brainwash anyone into thinking it would be fun to participate in.
No, I mean it would actually be quite miserable if a contagion swept the country and wiped 90% of us out, or aliens bombed NYC, or whatever. It sucks when lots and lots of people die.
30: Super Gonorrhea isn't going to be that bad.
26: I mean, you could totally just be like a porn impressario; that'd be cool, right?
Allow me to be the first to point out that heebie is BANNED.
I did think that someone would have gotten there sooner.
26: A sexy lady plumber and her friend, a certified child care provider with CPR training, references, and no other transportions. She may as well hang around in the other room with the kids as she is afraid of wrenches.
Whereas your first time out of the gate was a graceful tour de force?
Masturbation is like a three-legged race for me.
Action movies are great to participate in!* You go off to some remote location, people treat you well, people do amazing technical things, and you get paid money. What's not to like. Way better than a three legged race.
*Theres an above the line/below the line joke in here somewhere, and also a net/gross/points joke, but both are beyond me.
I did think that someone would have gotten there sooner.
Sorry, I ran a lot of three-legged races as a kid.
I think teaching your kids on any level that sex is related to three leggedness might give them the wrong idea. Of course, it might also cut down on teen pregnancy.
Wait so the assumption in these days of "internet" an MTV video games is that kids have seen porn? O brave new world that has such peepshows in it!
21 Spiegel had a long piece that after a sexual panic intro (all kids, including girls, watch at least a little bit of porn if only to see what the big deal is, OMG we're doomed) said that it doesn't seem to have any effect on how teenagers behave in real life and that they're quite aware that it's not a realistic how-to guide.
41: or, at least, have played video games and gotten confused and thought they were porn.
"Come on baby, let's stomp on these mushrooms so I can get in the pipe and we can pick up some coins."
41: Pretty much. Unless the kid is never alone with an internet connection, in your domicile or anyone else's, they have access to porn at will. Doesn't mean they've all looked for it, but I would guess that after sometime in early teenhood most have.
they have access to porn at will
A new service for the lonely soon-to-be-divorcee.
We didn't even have cable, the internet was still a couple of decades away, there was never anything remotely porn-y in our house, yet I still managed to see a bunch of it as a kid. And I turned out-- okay, I'm probably not a good example. But it wasn't terribly difficult then (we almost never searched it out; it just randomly appeared discarded here and there), and it's orders of magnitude easier now.
42 Also meant to say that commercial porn is obviously unrealistic, or at least most of it is. There are subgenres that try to cater to those who want things more realistic, but the worst that'll happen there is that kids will quickly learn that certain body configurations are designed for good camera angles rather than comfort.
There is a wide variety of porn (I say, again), and also wide varieties of sex. I would be pretty uncomfortable with any statement that "porn does this" and "sex does that."
it just randomly appeared discarded here and there
This was a real thing! Finding rando Playboys in gutters, etc.
hat it doesn't seem to have any effect on how teenagers behave in real life and that they're quite aware that it's not a realistic how-to guide.
I really don't think the kids are doomed, and I'm not hyperventilating over porn, but I think this is an over-simplification. Plenty of teenagers will say "Sure, porn is totally unrealistic. I'm not naive," (eye-roll) and simultaneously think Am I as hot as the girls he's seen on porn? How do I compete?
48: There is a wide variety of porn, but there is not a wide variety of mainstream porn that is two clicks away if you google "penis" out of idle curiosity. That is a rather specific dominant kind of porn.
It's true--there probably is quite a bit less discarded porn under the park bushes these days. You rarely hear that mentioned when people are discussing the societal benefits of the internet.
Am I as hot as the girls he's seen on porn?
The answer that should be (but I guess isn't) obvious: You're an actual teenager that probably isn't strung out on drugs. You're wildly hotter than the girls he's seen in porn.
Let the anecdote and counter-anecdote wars begin.
I have found that my female partners who were regular consumers of porn and other erotic entertainment were better at basic technique issues, negotiating the right positions of the three-legged beast with two backs, and just generally more sexually adventurous and less anxious around issues of sex. Obviously, sorting out the causality there is an open question.
51: People who watch enough porn to try to imitate it don't usually just google "penis." I think people tend to try to find stuff they find arousing. Even these kids today seem to be aware that there are different kinds.
Years ago, I never watched porn, and I participated in more than a few online conversations about porn in spite of not being a consumer and not knowing much about it. A few years ago I picked up the habit of watching it myself, and while this say something about my sample of porn, and definitely says something about me, I find its crazy lack of realism to be overstated. I can definitely imagine that porn depicts sex in a way that's not representative of the way most people have sex, but what I see there doesn't seem that alien to me either. It seems more like porn depicts a subset of the ways to have sex, with emphasis on prominent visual display. I wouldn't want to tell my kids that the stuff in porn is just insane (depending on what the porn movie is), because it's not really true. Real guys do come on women's faces and bodies. Real people have anal sex. Real women do enjoy penetration without a half hour of foreplay. Real people get into weird positions when they have sex. I'd more want to tell them that they shouldn't assume they were supposed to have sex that way, that their expectations of themselves and their partners should be flexible. I'd tell them that the sex scenes in porn are removed from the context of relationships or negotiation, and in real life you should have a conversation about what both of you want and feel comfortable with, neither pressuring the other, both endeavoring to make the other feel cared for and desired within whatever limits you have.
oh, pwned by AWB. I didn't preview and took a while writing that comment.
56 is exactly what I'd say, minus the having kids part. Sexual representation is a political act, and saying "people don't fuck that way" is also saying "there is a normal way to fuck that is OK and then there are bad ways to fuck and wanting that is wrong."
Other situations in which children imitate movies: in conversations, at school, with their parents, while playing, when working or thinking--all the time. If a kid does silly wrestling moves when fighting because he doesn't know how to fight, do parents sit him down and say, "Honey, it's time to talk about how professional wrestling is not an accurate representation of martial arts"? Young people imitate because they don't have any experience. Romantic comedies are also dangerously inaccurate and imitated.
Maybe I've just seen an unrepresentative subset of it, but my worry with having kids watch most mainstream porn isn't that it's so "unrealistic" as much as that it's wildly misogynistic.
Romantic comedies are also dangerously inaccurate and imitated.
Indeed.
Frankly, I'm wondering more about what to do when my kid starts asking about the pink van I occasionally see with a mobile billboard advertising "Topless Maids: $99."
Romantic comedies are also dangerously inaccurate and imitated.
Yeah, but in that situation you don't have to actually talk to your kids about it, you can just point them to this.
two clicks away if you google "penis" out of idle curiosity
Friend of mine's 10 year old daughter had a similar-aged girl friend to visit. Small friend has 2 female parents, and asked my friend's daughter if she could find a picture of a man's penis on the internet. Oh yes, she could!
Anyway, what happened to the analogy ban? I fear that if I start talking to my teenagers about action films and three-legged races they'll ask me if I'm on crack, and then tell me I'm banned. Just sort of talking like a normal person about things seems to suffice.
I'd say romantic comedies are more likely to cause trouble for people than porn.
Anyhow, as I've said before, we've been running a gigantic social experiment now since at least 1995 on the effects of mass distribution of porn on teenagers, and the effects seem to be . . . basically nothing, except maybe a little bit more sexual awareness and confidence on the part of young people. This seems like 993rd on the top 1000 list of things to worry about.
Romantic comedies are also dangerously inaccurate and imitated.
I really like this point.
I bet the hardest part of trying to have sex like a porn star is perfecting that "can I have my $500 now?" stare.
67: You should start watching better porn.
68: I was waiting for this to turn into a recommendation thread.
62: "Well honey, topless maids just clean the floors and windows and stuff. They don't dust the tops of the refrigerator or clean off light fixtures. You know, stuff that takes ladders and climbing. You have to pay more for that kind of maid."
On the one hand, probably lots of teenage boys see horribly misogynistic things. On the other hand, I would guess that a larger fraction of them know what a clitoris is than would have been true decades ago.
Romantic comedies are also dangerously inaccurate and imitated.
I have actually had this talk with Sally, who was watching How I Met Your Mother. Not a long talk, but I think I may have literally used the action movie analogy.
Anyhow, as I've said before, we've been running a gigantic social experiment now since at least 1995 on the effects of mass distribution of porn on teenagers, and the effects seem to be . . . basically nothing, except maybe a little bit more sexual awareness and confidence on the part of young peoplemany more heavily manicured pubic regions.
If you're looking for porn in which the actors seem to genuinely be enjoying themselves, that's really big in mainstream stuff right now. (I'm thinking of like Kayden Kross or Stoya--genuinely intelligent, beautiful people who enjoy what they do for a living and have good contracts.) Even in some of the more violent gonzo porn, you have actor/directors like Bobbi Starr, who gave up a career as a concert oboe player to think up incredibly weird shit for people to do during sex. Certainly in queer porn most of it is people who are just blushingly perverted and adore the whole thing--James Darling comes to mind, or Madison Young.
Mainstream culture is generally just as misogynistic, if not more so, than mainstream porn.
Bobbi Starr and Stoya don't shave or wax, either.
For my money, I'd rather a young man spend his time watching porn and trying to figure out how to give and receive pleasure than watching torture porn horror flicks about how bad girls have to die in horrible ways.
Either I just got everyone kicked off by their net nanny or you're all busy googling.
or they've finished googling and one-handed comments take longer.
AWB: here's a sincere question... if I went to any random mainstream porn video site right now, and watched the ten most recently uploaded videos, how many do you think would present the sort of sex-positive messages you're talking about? Vs. how many would just be misogynistic male fantasy?
I'm not going to run the experiment from work. (And probably not from home, either.) And I'm not a big porn consumer, so I could be way off base. But my guess, based on limited experience, 9 out of every 10 videos at 9 out of every 10 sites would be offensively misogynistic.
(And porn may be no more misogynistic than mainstream culture--I don't really know--but the misogyny in porn is certainly stripped bare in a way that you don't necessarily see in a lot of other everyday contexts (or rather, that you often only see in other contexts that I think you would uniformly disapprove--the worst of frat boy culture & etc.).)
For any parent that wants to cause both themselves and their kids to die of embarrassment, a few things that are common in hetero mainstream commercial porn that they should probably refrain from when beginning to have sex in real life:
Seriously problematic: rough anal - this is dangerous. Not dangerous but something that most women will find very unpleasant - hard face fucking that makes the woman choke on the penis.
Then there are the various things which, basically, who cares since they're not harmful and they'll figure out on their own.
I'd rather a young man spend his time watching porn and trying to figure out how to give and receive pleasure
And this is core part of the issue: do you think mainstream porn is in any sense a good guide for a young man trying to figure out how to give a woman sexual pleasure?
An interesting question is how the collapse of the porn industry as an industry (which is happening right now) will affect the quantity, quality, and exploitation-factor of porn. On the one hand, space for indie-sex positive female directors and the like, on the other hand space for gross dudes taking advantage of their girlfriends. And less money all around, not that (AFAICT, and despite wildly overreported bullshit statistics) there was ever all that much in the first place.
It seems really possible that my sense of what's "mainstream" in porn these days is very far off base.
81: I don't know what "random mainstream porn video site" you mean. That's like asking, "If I went to any random mainstream movie production company website and watched the ten most recently uploaded trailers..." No one watches movies that way who is watches them because they care about movies. You have subgenres that speak to you.
If you're genuinely asking for knowledge and recommendations, I really think Fleshbot has a good sampling. Yes, there are a lot of posts in which someone collects a lot of tit photos and writes appreciations of bodies. There are reviews of movies that sound more or less good or bad, so it's a mix of stupid misogynistic stuff and more interesting fare.
But I can't think of why anyone who knows very little about porn expects it to be universally flattering and reflective of their own political or personal worldview. Not even I want to watch pornography that is people respectfully affirming one another's personhood and shit; I want to watch people get fucked, hard, and enjoying it.
82.2b: Of course it's dangerous.
83: I could recommend some titles.
85: What's "mainstream" in porn these days is mostly user-uploaded home videos.
A related issue, particularly for girls, is the amateur stuff. While I wish we lived in a society where the fact that at some point in your life you happened to get off on the idea of random strangers getting hot and bothered by seeing nekkid pics or vids of you had no more consequence than a report that you had a drunken make out session with some stranger at a college part, that's not the case.
I don't know what "random mainstream porn video site" you mean. That's like asking, "If I went to any random mainstream movie production company website and watched the ten most recently uploaded trailers..."
Yes, it's exactly like that, and that's exactly what I mean. (This is not sarcasm.) Would the trailers show misogynistic shit, or would they show people getting "fucked, hard, and enjoying it", as you say?
Certainly the ads, which I see more often than the porn itself, seem like they're mostly offering misogynistic shit.
86 and 87 seem deliberately unrespsonsive. Of course you can recommend some good titles. My question is what is the likelihood that the average searching teenager will see those good titles, instead of garbage?
90: By misogynistic shit, do you mean rape/humiliation? I find that unwilling sex scenarios are quite rare in mainstream pornography. If you mean mommy walks in on the babysitter with her husband and teaches her a lesson she'll never forget, that's a lot more common.
As far as really hardcore BDSM/humiliation porn, those are not mainstream, and usually include interviews with the actors explicitly stating that they know what is going to happen to them, and "after" interviews explaining that they are OK. I find this weirdly comforting.
90/91: I guess I don't know what teenager you're talking about. When I search for porn, I don't enter misogynistic terms if I don't want to see misogynistic movies. If you enter "jealous bf punish bukkake" or whatever, you'll get different stuff. Honestly, I don't see how it's unresponsive--it's like if your grandmother asked whether you have to look at pictures of penises when you do a search on the Google. Well, grandma, maybe you should stop searching for pictures of penises.
An effects-based analysis of porn seems unfruitful. Let's grant Urple's theory that most porn is misogynistic (which at a minimum needs clarification); is there any evidence at all that the barrage of porn has made young men more misogynistic? I'd say that all available evidence points in the other direction.
I worry more about the production side -- are the performers being horribly exploited? For many commercial titles, but not all, it's clear the answer is no -- but this is less true of the "amateur" or small-production side, which is now taking over the business.
DON'T YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO YOUNG LADY
Second 88. A lot of it is Nonbeautiful people, some teenagers and some elderly and most in between, doing what they like to do. Missionary is dull for the viewer because you're looking at a butt and back acne.
The most pernicious thing about that sort of porn is that kids get the idea that the normal way to have sex is with a camera running.
is there any evidence at all that the barrage of porn has made young men more misogynistic? I'd say that all available evidence points in the other direction
This is a fair point.
I also get the sense that people who keep using the word "mainstream" have some idea that "mainstream" porn is the gross kind and that other kinds are maybe cool and queer and life-affirming. That is not true. I mostly avoid amateur because that's the gross dude making his girlfriend act out some crap, and she doesn't even have the protection of a professional contract. Mainstream porn--even the kind with gross titles--is mostly people getting screwed and liking it. Whether you find the circumstances misogynistic or idiotic, or the sex doesn't remind you of what you do with your spouse after 15 years together, is another matter.
93: I have no idea what I'm talking about, but is it a fruitful question to ask what sorts of things show up high in the search results for fairly neutral search terms? What are the first couple of pages of results for "hot girls fucking video" or something like that?
The more I think about it, the more I think that teenage pregnancy isn't really a big deal at all
well quite. I'm going to be about 55 by the time my youngest daughter is 18 and the idea of having another baby around the house in between now and then is really not at all an unpleasant prospect.
"Honey, it's time to talk about how professional wrestling is not an accurate representation of martial arts[.]"
That talk sounds pretty fun, actually. Good bonding material.
99: On a porn "tube" site? Probably some nice thing from that movie where Faye Reagan's female friend just dumped her boyfriend and needs a place to stay for a while and they end up making out and it escalates from there.
You're more energetic than I am. I'm looking forward a great deal to grandchildren eventually, but I want them where they're not going to be waking me up most nights.
102: There really are only seven plots.
I can provide some data later on what relatively representative videos might be.
As far as really hardcore BDSM/humiliation porn, those are not mainstream, and usually include interviews with the actors explicitly stating that they know what is going to happen to them, and "after" interviews explaining that they are OK. I find this weirdly comforting.
The irony in all of this is that you basically have GW Bush and Alberto Gonzales to thank for that. About 10 years ago the DOJ went after a couple of producers of that sort of stuff; after that the folks who stayed in that corner of the industry started doing the interviews you're talking about.
To have good sex, all you need to know is that one party needs to represent Queens, and the other Brooklyn.
I thought it was Gambia and Senegal?
By misogynistic shit, do you mean rape/humiliation?
No. Or yes, but not only that. Circling back to a point raised earlier in the thread, one way to get at it would be: things that are not in any sense likely to be a good guide for a young man trying to figure out how to give a woman sexual pleasure.
hot girls fucking video
I just typed it into the search box of fapdu and the first result was:
"Kinky Sister Making Her Brother Cum Homemade Incest (with Sound!!)"
When incest became industrialized, porn stepped in fill the void.
84: An interesting question is how the collapse of the porn industry as an industry (which is happening right now) will affect the quantity, quality, and exploitation-factor of porn.
I had no idea the porn industry was collapsing.
108: I have quoted this before, but James Deen tells the story of how he got into doing porn this way. He was listening to an interview with Jenna Jameson, who is taking all these calls from dopey guys saying, "Yeah, I could totally do a scene with you" and stuff, and she gets tired of them and says, "Look, here's what I want you to do. I want you to get a folding chair and put it in an empty room. Get 30 people to stand in there watching you while you sit naked on the chair and masturbate. They'll talk, move a camera around, tell you what facial expressions to make, tell you to stop sometimes, ignore you, whatever. Do it for 45 minutes without cumming or losing your erection. Then, when the director tells you to, you have thirty seconds before you have to cum." And Deen hears this and thinks, "Oh, I can do that."
I think it's not a bad story to tell young people who seem already overinterested in porn, to the point of thinking they are little porn stars. It sounds like torture.
When I search for porn, I don't enter misogynistic terms if I don't want to see misogynistic movies. If you enter "jealous bf punish bukkake" or whatever, you'll get different stuff.
That's why I specifically asked about someone who just went to a porn site and watched the ten most recently uploaded videos. And I have enough firsthand experience to know that's certainly a readily available option at most, and probably nearly all, porn sites. It's not the absurd question you're making it out to be.
113: My guess is of those ten videos, at least nine of them are amateur, too muddily filmed in poor light to show anything other than a bobbing pimple on a thigh. No one watches porn without searching for something.
Also, recently uploaded stuff doesn't have ratings. All the "tube" sites let you rate videos, and the higher-rated ones really are better, often.
I just went to clit/i.com, I site I visit when I'm looking for porn. I clicked on the first video in the first category, which was German. It featured a pretty, statuesque, completely shaved blond woman with glasses getting dressed and ready for her lover. She puts a dildo into her own anus to get ready for him. He arrives with flowers and champagne to wait for her. They exchange oral sex, he shoots some champagne into her vagina, they have vaginal intercourse in lots of positions (she leaves the anal dildo in). In the end he comes in her mouth, and she spits his semen onto a piece of cake, which she eats. The only part of that I don't think I would enjoy is the eating the cake part. It's called "Happy Birthday, Anne," and the tone, as far as I can tell without words, is upbeat.
I don't know if I want to watch ten right now.
If you are interested in this experiment, why don't you do it yourself? I don't watch porn like an imaginary vulnerable 12-year-old who is mysteriously bad at using the internet. (NB: I know a lot more about this conversation than I can really talk about here because it's kind of my job. I apologize if it seems like I'm being evasive, but I do think--and am writing a book about--why your question is wrong-headed.)
I don't know if I want to watch ten right now.
If ever there was an occasion for crowdsourced research opportunities, surely this must be it.
No one watches porn without searching for something.
I think that might be false.
119: it's obviously false as stated. Maybe non-searchers are a relatively low percentage of porn consumers, though; I don't know.
Yeah, I have no idea about porn watching and porn searching habits.
I generally endorse the distinction heebie sketches in the OP, though!
106: What's funny is porn cartoonists doing pre- and post- interviews with their drawn characters to prove they know what's going to happen and they're all okay afterwards.
he shoots some champagne into her vagina
Wait, what?
Erosexotica
X-art
Can be searched for at youporn for examples, or direct to sites
Both specialize in HD supermodel romantic porn without roleplaying or kink. Boring compared to 116, but perfect.
X-art has more masturbation and lesbian. No gay male. Also, no personalities.
AWB is right about a lot of amateur porn. There is some that is ok, but it can be a hard slog finding it. Odds are you will find more particularity here, but also discover that most people stink, actively or passively.
Since we're talking about what the kids are doing, I have a question. We have a dead flatscreen tv. My fourth grade son wants to disassemble it with screwdriver and hammer if needed, just to see what's inside. I'm kind of curious too. Is there anything inside a flatscreen that will give us cancer or turn us unto spidermen or anything?
There's porn inside most flatscreen TVs these days. That's where it comes from.
125: Yes. At the very least there's almost certainly a fluorescent tube in it.
123: He takes an already open bottle of champagne, holds his thumb over it and shakes it a little bit, and then releases it into her vagina. I imagine this is impractical in that it washes away vaginal lubricant, but other than that seemed to produce a tickling sensation for our heroine, or so she pretended.
saying "people don't fuck that way" is also saying "there is a normal way to fuck that is OK and then there are bad ways to fuck and wanting that is wrong."
Skipping a hundred comments, but this is not what I said. Sometimes it's fun to pretend you're an action hero. But there's still checking in with your partner and making sure there's room for conversation, etc. Let's not pretend that I said that porny anal sex is for sluts and whores.
125, 127: Mercury from the fluorescents, lead from the solder. I'd suggest screwdriver and gloves, no hammer.
It seems really possible that my sense of what's "mainstream" in porn these days is very far off base.
Based on the Dan Savage conversation with the woman who was making all these porn distinctions, they definitely believed that the vast majority of easy to access porn is fairly hostile towards women. Again, not a problem as long as the viewer has a broader context to fit the porn into, but a big problem if the porn exists in a vacuum.
The hammer might be overkill. If the kid wants to deploy a hammer, take him out to the woods and let him loose with a sledgehammer on an old abandoned shack (without asbestos or lead paint). It's way fun to do that.
By misogynistic shit, do you mean rape/humiliation?
Not exactly. I would mean a scene where the girl's function is to be a moaning holed apparatus for guys. Where the gaze is strictly het male with a tad of hostility towards conventionally beautiful girls.
How many abandoned shacks are there on public property out in the woods?
There likely a Cold Cathode fluorescent light, which contains mercury, but that is about it.
Thanks for the tips, it will be screwdriver only, closely supervised, and well ventilated, probably in the backyard.
Now back to the porn.
135: Public property? Anyway, there were at least two when I was a teenager. One of them had been rehabbed into a sort of fort retreat by a couple of 14-year-olds. We took it down a few years later. I learned some carpentry things. I've certainly seen abandoned shacks on public property as well, though they tend to be close to 100 years old, and I'd hesitate to smash them down.
18: If it helps abate the jealousy, I see the more common outcome: pregnant at 19, married before the kid showed up, no need for mom to go to school because she's having babies, marriage breaks up in her early 40s, she's crying in my office because she's trying to get her associate's and she's ten years older than the young woman with the doctorate who is her professor.
It doesn't mean that it's wrong to get married young, or that she'd have necessarily been better off waiting, but there are real downsides for a working-class/lower middle class woman, if she had wanted to get ahead economically and didn't have a lot of people supporting her education. It's easy to fall into a default pattern.
138: Growing up, it seemed that every abandoned shack was haunted, mostly by murdered babies.
4: Even if a teenager keeps a baby, though, I don't know if it is really a problem. I think your long term economic consequences actual improve if you get your childrearing out of the way early.
I think this is false.
Maybe a distinction should be made between what I think of as truly teenage childbearing (age 15-17), and childbearing at age 18 or 19. Either one is a serious problem for kids whose parents aren't financially well-off. I'm a little shocked, to be honest, that helpy-chalk would think otherwise.
This has nothing to do with slut-shaming: rather, kids should use birth control, plain and simple, and turn to abortion if need be.* Sorry to feel so strongly about it.
* Caveat for those who are morally pro-life. I don't know what to say there except that the choice is theirs, of course. And use birth control.
140: And filled to the rafters with discarded pornography.
So here's a strange thought I sometimes have in meetings. Where is the office-themed pornography out there that actually captures the total surreality of the bureaucratic experience? The office themed pornography that pops in casual searches features a lot of bosses harassing secretaries, and not much PowerPoint and mission statement drafting.
I mean, you go to a meeting, and you are told at the outset that this is your chance to give your input. They are here for a listening session. Then they talk to you, without pause, for a half hour. And you think "this is completely random, why is there no fucking? if people are going to be bizarre and irrational, they can at least be primal." Why don't people make a movie of this?
I guess "kafkaesque" and "pornography" are not commonly paired search terms.
http://pervscan.com/2008/08/17/porn-claims-outrage-kafka-scholars/
We hired a very attractive adjunct whose presence startled me into recognizing what an unusually homely bunch we faculty are at Heebie U. Some dress well, others don't, but on the whole we're on the less genetically blessed side of the beauty bar. Compared to other academics, I mean. We're a very, very nice group, though. Which is nice.
145: How anonymous is your pseud again?
I'd say we're extremely good looking for lawyers, but the Aus/trailian entertainment reporters next door blow us away. That is one good looking country.
He takes an already open bottle of champagne, holds his thumb over it and shakes it a little bit, and then releases it into her vagina.
So is the whole "Shooting air bubbles up in your junk can kill you" thing false? Or was this insanely dangerous? Or did the dude really just mostly spray the champers around on her vulva?
143: surely it'd be orgies. Because things have to be filled out in triplicate?
Most of the porn I find online is just tractors.
149: Any way you parse it, it's super exciting, Oudemia. You just have to admit that.
155 -Super-disturbingly, that was my kid's Halloween costume last year. I'm not even kidding.
Your kid is pretty fly for a white guy?
Im pretty sure theres a picture of her in costume at a pumpkin patch riding on a tractor. DAMN YOU MONSTERS.
That's a really rude word for a prostitute, tweets.
Interestingly, when I was first finding porn on the internet, I was more likely to search for terms ("sexy blog commenter punishment"), whereas now I've found a few different sites that I browse around. Sometimes I want a specific category, but not all that often anymore - I've kind of seen those scenarios enough times by now.
Which is to say that IME 81 is a perfectly legit way to think of the issue. Go to the front page of xTube.com and browse. What kinds of things do you see?
My answer (and I wouldn't say that I have a statistically significant sample) is that there's a high percentage that meets H-G's definition of misogyny in 134, but that there's also plenty that's more like the birthday vid mentioned upthread: pretty sex-positive, albeit using conventions with misogynistic undertones/origins.
Let me put it this way: there's zero chance that a teen looking at porn on the internet won't see a lot of misogyny, at least some of it pretty gross (the choking BJ ones are IMO egregious; somebody is into every possible thing, but I don't think any part of those portrayals has the message "women are human beings"). And I personally believe in talking to my kids about the misogyny (and racism and various other forms of othering and hate) that they encounter in our culture. AWB's example of romcom is well taken, but there's a weird implication that parents don't talk to kids about the misogyny in those movies. If they don't, they sure as hell should!
Oh, and how has this discussion of the effect of porn on teen expectations not included any links back to that Ogged-linked video of those 2 boys humping an ottoman?
Or has everyone RTFA?
God I love that video so much.
Oh, and how has this discussion of the effect of porn on teen expectations not included any links back to that Ogged-linked video of those 2 boys humping an ottoman?
It's pretty obviously been the subtext of the whole thread. A link didn't seem necessary.
162: I thought it was like 5 boys, each taking turns introducing themselves to the camera, giving their real name and their hip hop name, and then dry humping an ottoman. I'm also pretty sure I saw it via Tedra. Truly a classic.
Maybe that Greek guy wasn't just telling me jokes because he was prejudiced?
It was definitely more than two boys humping the ottoman. That was awesome.
How about "overhearing things through thin hotel walls" as a method for giving young people realistic impressions of how sex is practiced in the real world?
145: How anonymous is your pseud again?
It doesn't look like heebie's department has photos of everyone online.
I think my group's webpage makes everyone look more attractive than they actually are.
I sometimes think that when I'm watching porn, I'm watching it as myself and thinking, aw yeah, I wish I were that hole, and heebie is watching the same porn thinking, oh man, some guy is thinking of her as just a hole while he watches this crap. Like I think maybe there is a lot of hardcore porn that I like because it is hardcore and about body parts that, if you analyze it in the terms that bodyparts+no talking=misogynist, would render it not pleasant to watch.
Porn of maybe 10 or 15 years ago did not make me identify with the represented people because there tended to be a whole story about how she doesn't really want it or she's acting coy (turn-off) and he's going to give it to her, but the apparently-consensual hardcore dehumanized bodyparts stuff I'm 100% fine with. Sometimes you just want to see well-lit attractive genitals.
Porn of maybe 10 or 15 years ago did not make me identify with the represented people because there tended to be a whole story about how she doesn't really want it or she's acting coy (turn-off) and he's going to give it to her
Look who's generalizing now!
Well, I'm trying to sympathize. I just think that people watching porn to analyze it and people watching porn to masturbate might be different people, and very little that we masturbate to holds up to scrutiny as a clear expression of respect between two people with equal power. A lot of what I find hot is extremely troubling; that's why I might watch porn instead of doing that shit in my real life.
Sometimes you just want to see well-lit attractive genitals.
Mouseover text!
Sometimes you just want to see well-lit attractive genitals.
I am curious how much manscaping has caught on among avid fratboy porn watchers. I remember the issue being discussed on a College football message board a couple years back. It was quite contentious.
Sounds like we need some field research.
Throwing a hat in the ring, because there really should be no dispute: porn has been awful for sex.
Four in any ten women any person knows (and that's a charitable estimate) has horror stories to relate about dudes attempting anal sex out of the blue, without lube, because they've seen it in a porn movie and imagine women actually like it that way. I've encountered more than a few women who thought I would like it if they asked my to cum on their faces the way it happens in porn movies. Porn very clearly promotes super-unrealistic ideas of what sex is and should be, of what people's bodies should look like or what they shouldn't (niche "fat person" porn is not significant enough to be a negation of this rule), and overwhelmingly encourages people to perform what they think their partners would like in a porn-sense instead of finding out what they actually like.
I don't know what porn has done overall for "misogyny," though I doubt it's an unequivocal win to put it mildly, but it is awful, awful, awful for sex.
OK. Big paysite, like Netflix in that it purchases, categorizes, and makes available a large quantity of movies, but unlike it in that you can download them DRM-free. Quite cheap; reputedly popular among those who pay anything; covers many niches though with a mainstream feel throughout.
I just took the first 10 scenes marked "recently popular", all posted within the past month and rated 4/5 or 5/5 with at least 100 ratings each. I watched the beginnings and ends and skimmed the middles.
I would say only four of the ten actively transmitted misogyny through the title, plot, or dialog. And even of those, only in two was the woman treated more as an object than as a partner. The majority were one-on-one sex that generally conveyed mutuality, happiness, and enthusiastic consent in both words and actions. Very little irrumatio and almost no derogatory language. Not that plenty couldn't be read into the actions (most had facials, for example).
Of the two with plots, or more accurately setups, one had a bad core concept (an "audition" scene) while the other lacked uncomfortable implications (man at a sex-addiction meeting).
I'm surprised at the results; I thought there would be more to object to, as the site has its share of heinous shit. Perhaps the general run of members have better sensibilities than I thought, and I only notice when something annoys me.
I would say only four of the ten actively transmitted misogyny through the title, plot, or dialog.
I'm not sure what qualifies for this. The bog-standard discourse that's the backdrop to any porn scene, however vanilla, is that the woman is a slut and that the dude is a stud.
I wouldn't want to tell my kids that the stuff in porn is just insane (depending on what the porn movie is), because it's not really true...I'd tell them that the sex scenes in porn are removed from the context of relationships or negotiation
Exactly (from Jane Adam's great comment 56). It's not that porn qua sex is necessarily unrealistic, it's that porn has zero to do with relationships and real sex is always embedded in relationships. (Even with strangers there can be all kinds of emotional stuff going on). If you truly wanted to organize your life around relationship-free sex you could end up living a lot of your own real-life porn. On the other hand, if you get in a relationship and have kids you could find it difficult to have any sex at all for a while. You never see that in porn videos.
The issue Castock raises in 178 is interesting, although I think mostly separate from the issues addressed in the rest of the thread. I don't have enough sexual experience myself to really weigh in on it, but I'm interested to hear what others think.
180: That's one of the things that could certainly be read into it (though not always! sometimes it did feel quite equal); I was looking for words rather than implications.
On the other hand, if you get in a relationship and have kids you could find it difficult to have any sex at all for a while. You never see that in porn videos.
Porn without sex! Brilliant! Someone could make a fortune exploiting that market niche.
I don't think I have often felt that dudes were trying to do anything porny to me, except maybe a few times and their ideas of porny things to do were ridiculously hot, so it was fine. I have never asked someone to cum on my face or titfuck me or whatever. I'm just trying to figure out who gets to decide whether something is a turn-on or just a porny come-on from anyone else. Someone was telling me recently about getting asked by girls to fuck them in the ass, and he was doing the "ah, pornography!" line and I was like, "oh, sometimes girls like getting fucked in the ass because it's awesome."
Thanks for doing that research, Levi. I'll confess to also being surprised. But hooray for pleasant surprises.
And hooray for LC's 178--we were getting dangerously close to comity there.
I was going to bring up the anal-sex-with-no-lube thing, too; LC's 40% estimate may indeed be conservative, and one recent study
found that about half of women (49 percent) stopped their first experience of anal intercourse because it was too painful to continue - not surprising considering 52 percent of women report not even using lubricant when they first had anal sex! An additional 17 percent of women also experienced pain or discomfort during their first anal sex, but didn't stop their partner. Only about one-quarter of women said their first experience with anal sex was pleasant.
The number of folks who've tried anal sex has gone up quite a lot over the past two decades, possibly doubled, though some of this may be simply more truthfulness in reporting. This is probably on balance a good thing, insofar as many people do come to enjoy it. But I do think that this change, along with trends in public hair grooming, is one of the few things that does seem plausibly at least partially attributable to what Halford rightly characterizes as our massive social experiment with the ubiquity of hardcore porn.
On preview, I'm not disagreeing with AWB's "oh, sometimes girls like getting fucked in the ass because it's awesome"--I'm just saying the massive change in reported behavior does call out for an explanation; the ubiquity of porn seems a likely if, yes, only partial explanation for why more folks might think to try it than once did.
I do think there is a fair amount of explicitly misogynistic porn out there right now, but I'm not sure that's inherent to the nature of porn. I think it has to do with particular kinds of anger felt by men toward women today.
Porn... overwhelmingly encourages people to perform what they think their partners would like in a porn-sense instead of finding out what they actually like.
I agree with that. That's the problem with the fantasy of relationship-free sex, actual sexual skill has everything to do with learning how to be responsive to the emotions and desires of the actual person you're with. I think people who porn-ify their sex run the risk of numbing themselves emotionally.
I would mean a scene where the girl's function is to be a moaning holed apparatus for guys. Where the gaze is strictly het male
But the male actors function is generally to be a perpetually-erect mechanically thrusting ramrod for insatiable girls. Equally dehumanizing in its way, unless you think that being the one penetrated is always more degrading. Doesn't saying that this is inherently prejudiced against women rely on some theory of the differences between how males and females enjoy or fantastize about sex, or how a particular vision of sexuality victimizes women but not men?
"Shooting air bubbles up in your junk can kill you"
This has to be an urban legend, right? I bet you could take a shot of liquid nitrogen up there and have nothing but comical side effects.
Steven Marcus' concept of pornotopia is relevant. Although it was written almost 50 years ago about Victorian pornography it seems almost prescient about internet porn. (Read past the opening throat-clearing about Weberian ideal types).
He's writing pre-feminism but gets at the connection between porn and misogyny:
Inside every pornographer there is an infant screaming for the breast from which he has been torn. Pornography represents an endless and infinitely repeated effort to recapture that breast, and the bliss it offered, as it often represents as well a revenge against the world--and the women in it--in which such cosmic injustice could occur.
Participating in sports with a number of younger guys, there is a distinct correlation between manscaping and younger age.
The thing that strikes me about a lot of porn sites is that a great majority of the ads are "Find a real girl/guy in your area!" followed closely by "Live webcam sex!" Both of those strike me as... I don't know, unwise to the point of unappealing?
Equally dehumanizing in its way, unless you think that being the one penetrated is always more degrading. Doesn't saying that this is inherently prejudiced against women rely on some theory of the differences between how males and females enjoy or fantastize about sex, or how a particular vision of sexuality victimizes women but not men?
One argument to this effect (which was in fact made on behalf of gay male porn) is that a little sexual objectification is good, but constant, inescapable objectification is bad. In our patriarchal society, women are subject to the latter, and men are not, so occasional male objectification is experienced as a treat rather than an exhausting ordeal. (This is also one reason asking guys to imagine "what if someone did it to you?" w.r.t. street harassment often fails to make an impression; they imagine it happening once, and think "cool!")
I would say 178 is totally wrong, IME. Obviously this is not a fertile ground for generalization, since one's experience changes over time and with age, but I'd say sex has gotten better since I started having it in the late 80s as people have gotten more kinky and interesting. For every one weird unfortunate move learned there are at least a few more interesting ones that, probably, people wouldn't have come up with on their own. The weird moves aren't particularly horrible and the interesting ones are great, so go porn.
Only about one-quarter of women said their first experience with anal sex was pleasant.
I wonder what percentage of women would say they "enjoyed" their first time having vaginal sex. (Mine hurt like fucking hell at the time and I got a UTI.)
I've encountered more than a few women who thought I would like it if they asked my to cum on their faces the way it happens in porn movies. Porn very clearly promotes super-unrealistic ideas of what sex is and should be
Or they asked you to do that because they liked it. If so, that's due to related to porn, but who cares? Unlike no-lube, no-asking anal it's neither dangerous nor non-consensual. And given that anal scenes in porn often do include a bit of footage of lubing up, I'm not sure they're increasing the percentage that is trying it without lube. When I was sixteen, back in the mid eighties, a girlfriend suggested it based on 'somebody told me that people do this and it can be fun.' Neither of us had ever heard of lube, so we tried it dry. Fortunately more of a comic failure than a painful one, and no damage was done.
195: Or they asked you to do that because they liked it.
Yeah, I am highly skeptical that any significant number of people "likes" having sticky, smelly fluid ejaculated onto their face and potentially into their eyes strictly for its own sake.
194: that's a good point, and the link I gave actually does highlight how much more common vaginal/vulvar pain (whether during intercourse or chronic) is than one might think from its invisibility in media coverage.
It seems to me almost certain (though I obviously have no data) that younger people are "better" at having sex now than when I was a teen, when what you knew was based on half-remembered stories, the odd magazine, and a lot of really terrible ideas. I have a bunch of stories that are somewhat similar to Teraz's; not really a big deal, but things that watching some semi-realistic sex (not the relationship part around it, of course) might have helped improve.
I think teraz's question makes sense, though. If you don't like that, then you can refuse, of course, and even take offense at being interpellated into someone else's porno fantasy, but it might actually be her porno fantasy. I like a lot of things in bed not because they physically feel pleasant but because they push my buttons. Maybe you just don't like those particular buttons.
I guess I can understand from the perspective of someone who has been subjected to the oral ministrations of men who read bad men's mag advice about cunnilingus, but it just makes me too sad to go through with it. I don't think he doesn't really enjoy spelling the alphabet with his tongue--he obviously enjoys it a hell of a lot more than paying fucking attention to what he's doing--but I'm not going to assume that, poor man, he's a victim of culture. I feel pretty confident in thinking he's got shit taste in sex advice and should have tried harder at the level of watching better porn.
Fortunately, my high school latin teacher made sure we all understood that lube is typically employed in anal sex.
If I am not mistaken Ezra Klein can confirm that.
Did they use olive oil, like the Japanese?
196 Why are you skeptical? Other than the problem of potential eye-pain I'm a little surprised that anyone who is into sex with men finds semen disgusting or even unpleasant in the context of sex. Same goes for the reverse for people who are attracted to women. FWIW it's not really my thing and I've only been with one woman who was into it (which made it somewhat fun), on the other hand of my admittedly small sample size of partners, most ended up at some point getting a bit on their face accidentally and none seemed bothered by it - more amused at the silly messiness of sex.
I certainly had some very inaccurate, porn-derived ideas about sex based on my pre-internet experience of porn. Among other things, standard, 80s-vintage het porn was VERY penetration-centric; I had no real sense that sex existed outside of something being stuck in an orifice (even oral I thought of as involving rather more penetration than I think most women would prefer). On the one hand, it's clear to me that pornotopia has nigh-infinite counter examples to this; OTOH, I'm not at all convinced that a random teen clicking around will get a significantly more balanced impression than what I had. And more teens are exposed to it, at greater detail, than were then.
I guess I'd put it down to this: does pornotopia increase the likelihood of a 16-yo boy grabbing his date by the nose and shoving his dick in her mouth, and does it increase the odds that she finds this acceptable behavior*? I have trouble coming up with a plausible "no" to either of those questions. And that seems problematic.
On a broader note, I'm not anti-porn, but I don't think that my best friend showing me his dad's Playboys when I was 6 did me even the slightest bit of good**. It's not clear to me how that kind of premature exposure has changed.
* presuming here it's not preceded by 20 minutes of frank, respectful discussion of the nature and limits of desire.
** and yes, playing doctor has always happened. Different category IMO.
204.2: You are joking about nose-sex, though, right? WTF porn are you watching?
" I feel pretty confident in thinking he's got shit taste in sex advice and should have tried harder at the level of watching better porn."
This seems question-begging in terms of "better porn", as if more stars on RedTube correlates with sex depictions likely to lead the viewer to be a better lover. I'm not that sold on the wisdom of crowds.
First, 16yo boys are just as awkward and weird as ever, and as far as being liable to push partners too far too early, I'm not sure I see that as any different now as from any other time. (You should see the shit they pull while going out with chicks for the first time in 18th-century novels; for real, your eyebrows would get singed off.) Either they're too shy about sex entirely or they assume anyone who would fuck them is a whore. I don't think porn invented this dichotomy at all, but that it is related to class and its relationship with sexual desire. The greater the class position, the more freedom to desire that person has. The adult man "takes liberties" with the woman or child; the woman and child never "take liberties" or are "too free" with the adult man. Pornography often represents people in relationships that are more socially free of these distinctions than real life is. The woman can express desire, can ask for things. Even if those fit into male fantasy, she isn't, like in real life, supposed to sneer at the request but comply.
Did they use olive oil, like the Japanese?
I can't remember!
He and I don't have much intercourse.
This could be the perfect opportunity to (re)connect.
209 Have you read French 18th century novels, e.g. Marivaux or Crebillon fils? There you have a pretty common scenario where the teenaged boy is awkwardly flirting with the older woman like he's heard he's supposed to, gets humiliated by her amused mocking of his flirting skills, and is later pressured into his first sexual experience. The older woman then teaches him the abc's of seduction and sex and he goes on to aggressively seduce innocent virgins and virtuous wives.
215: That's sort of the Danceny plot in Laclos as well.
Yeah, I am highly skeptical that any significant number of people "likes" having sticky, smelly fluid ejaculated onto their face and potentially into their eyes strictly for its own sake.
Read and be enlightened.
In particular as regards the existence of ocular herpes.
217: Yeah, I don't think 178 tells us anything about porn, women and sex in general. "Button pushing" is what it's all about once you're past the first few lessons in the beginner's manual.
I just went onto the TES site to look for some maths stuff, and was the first thing I saw was a link to this article about teenagers and porn.
The article in 220 turned out to be somewhat more interesting than the pearl-clutching at the beginning implied.
220: I was at first puzzled by your looking for mathematics resources on the website of the oldest and largest BDSM support & education group in the USA. But I suppose the "maths" Britishism should have clued me in.
The URL might also have tipped you off.
My vertical pixels are too precious to be squandered on a status bar. (I actually really dislike this UX quirk of Safari's; Chrome handles URL mouseovers much better.)
As little as 10 years ago, experimenting with sex was considered to be something you gave a great deal of thought to.
Oh, sure, teens giving a great deal of thought to sex about other than how to get some. This multiple universe thing has become much more believable.
Chrome handles URL mouseovers much better.
I don't know from Safari, but it definitely handles them better than Firefox, which was one of the things that induced me to switch.
I do see the attraction -- every time gswift mentions how old he and his wife are going to be when their kids move out, I have a pang of jealousy.
You mean like how I'll be turning 41 the same month my younger one graduates from high school? Bwahahaha.
Seriously though, what Cala said. This area had relatively low unemployment and I was a clean cut middle class white guy who tests well and didn't have a lot of trouble finding work with health benefits. I also was raised in a fairly liberal two career household and it didn't bother me to work a late swing or grave shift and watch the kids while my wife finished her undergrad. It's worked out pretty great for us but unfortunately I think we're more of an example of how things could be in a better country rather than a likely outcome.
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Last night I didn't fall asleep until 6 AM and today I got up at 10 and wrote some shit and graphic designed some shit and then did an interview with a rather aggressive reporter about a living wage campaign and then held Mrs. K-sky's hand through an emergency ultrasound (and everything's all right with the baby who's due in March bee tee dubs) and then marriage-counseled my friend whose marriage is on the rocks and wrote the Monday Movies and worked on a screenplay with a new writing partner via Google Hangout and then did an improv show at midnight and I am some kind of tired. K-sky OUT.
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and oh yeah, second that pang of jealousy. I'll be turning 41 the same month my fetal one graduates from diapers maybe.
I am 41!
Nothing more useful to add, apart from thanks x.trapnel, the TES will make me snigger from now on.
Oh and of course, yay for baby-k-sky!
My Mum was 34 when I left high school. My sister was, I think, 35, when my nephew left high school, although my niece just started high school. I'm 40 now, myself, and only just getting round to babies. So, I'm out of step with the rest of the family by quite a lot.
Congrat's K-Sky. Ours also due in March.
It's going to be a babyful spring for unfogged. Congrats, k-sky!
Congrats, k-sky! This IS a lot of Unfogged babies coming up!
This status in my fb feed made me laugh. The couple just had their first baby about a week or two ago:
To all you thrill-seekers out there: having a baby is the ULTIMATE adrenaline rush!
Mm-hmm. I've got bad news about your daily life for a while.
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This is off-topic but more closely related to this thread than to any other. I read an article in the New Yorker by Jerome Groopman about antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.
It pointed out that in the era of AIDS many people had come to think of fellatio as safe sex that didn't require a condom--even though you can transmit gonorrhea pretty easily that way. I went to look at the sex education site for Fenway community health, because I was curious about what they said about dental dams and cunnilingus. They don't give out a lot of data. They just say that herpes can be transmitted that way. So, I'm curious: is there a good source of accurate data on the risks of various types of sex for transmission of disease, broken down by disease?
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What a good thread this has been.
Meanwhile, I now really want someone (ideally Chris Morris, but I suppose K-LOL has dibs and possibly copyright) to do a spoof moral-panic documentary about whether the media is influencing our children to discover relationships by acting out scenes from manic pixie dream girl movies.
237.2: whereas now I want somebody to make a fan-pastiche early-steampunk porno called The Difference Fucking.
238: if the kids are watching porn on the difference engine, you can tell because the whole house is shaking.
238: Surely, you mean The Difference Fucksaw.
240, of course, being on the topic of the OP, refers to a kiloörgasm.
I'd hate it if this thread was to degenerate?
Ok, so maybe this is OT, but it is about kids:
My college team is being honored at halftime of our college football game this weekend. They have told us that our kids will be allowed to walk on the field with us.
My son is nervous that his sister will not leave the field. So you might want to look out for youtube videos of a 20 year old autistic girl running around a football field while her dad and brother chase her.
Just remember, clean hits. If you get called for clipping, it's 15 yards and first down.
Perhaps y'all have moved on, but I wanted to say something similar to AWB's 171/174 as well. If you're watching porn and think you'd like being in the on screen woman's position, or if it's exciting for you to imagine doing what's happening on screen to a woman, or both, the scene reads differently. It is sexist in that of course it borrows from and reinforces wider gender norms -- most prominently, IME, that the woman's whole body is going to be of inherently more interest than a man's -- but it less frequently reads as hateful. If you look at a scene with what you could call a doe-eyed hole, like a laughing, giggling Japanese girl being penetratred and masturbated by men whose faces are mostly hidden (video number 2 I looked for) you think less, "yeah, fuck that cunt" and more something like, "it would feel good to be an object of so much desire and attention," or "I'd like to have access that free to that woman's body," or both. Of course it's problematic, in an intellectual, analytical way. But it doesn't have one emotional meaning to one homogeneous audience, either. In an explicit fantasy context, it makes sense that sex is easily had, that no one's withholding or rejecting or has to have their emotional needs met, that women are always ready to go and men are strong and can fuck forever and come on cue. (Though of course there are other kinds of gendered fantasies that aren't well-represented.) Porn is the place it's most appropriate for women to be doe-eyed holes. The more you find it erotic, the less it looks like subtle humiliation and degradation, and the more it feels like a powerful visual projection of the satisfaction of your own desire, desire which feels the power of women's bodies without necessarily excluding, in another context, an interest in the woman's person.
I can't even begin to imagine having a sex talk with Rory about porn vs non-porn sex. Few things could make sex less sexy, I would think, than having discussed particular acts with your mother. Basic concepts of trust and safety, sure. Beyond that? Ewww.
OT, but on the subject of what to tell your kids, (and maybe this is an ATM bleg). I'm the Career Day chair this year for Rory's school. 8th graders. What kind of jobs should I try to include? I want to have options for the non-college-bound as well as the kids gunning for grad school. What's likely to be a good field ~10 years from now when they are really entering the workforce? Why did I volunteer for this?
What kind of jobs should I try to include?
You shouldn't include RIM jobs. Nobody uses a BlackBerry anymore.
I totally get 247, and I'm certainly not judging any woman who'd be turned on watching a doe-eyed hole (although I still have my doubts that that's a great model for a teen girl who's never had sex). My concern is more on the other side - teaching teen boys that a doe-eyed hole is the ultimate sex partner. I'm not convinced that even the most traditional virgin-whore dichotomizing communicates that message as effectively as 50% of het porn. And please don't tell me that that notion won't survive exposure to actual sex.
Here's something I wonder: in this brave new world, with such porn in it, has joint watching of porn increased or decreased? ISTM that nowadays everyone can just watch on his/her own device, as opposed to watching videos or passing magazines, but I have no idea. ISTM that a bunch of 15-y.o. boys sitting around watching a doe-eyed hole are likely to have a lot of mind-opening discussions on the topic, but rather will encourage each other towards increased misogyny.
In ten years everybody will be a brogrammer.
Few things could make sex less sexy, I would think, than having discussed particular acts with your mother.
In the case of 8th graders, this might be a feature rather than a bug? The yuck factor will wear off quick enough when the opportunity presents itself.
What's likely to be a good field ~10 years from now when they are really entering the workforce?
Subsistence farmer, specialised for arid terrains; flint knapper; itinerant ballad singer, with a repertoire of epics about the heroic past; shaman; cattle raider...
According to Halford, the porn industry is collapsing. So stay in school, kids!
247: But look. This is obnoxious. I'm not pearl-clutching and claiming that women all need to make sweet, sweet love and get the icky sweat away from me. Of course attention and desire can be super erotic. Of course porn-style sex can be totally fantastic for the woman.
Despite all that, sex needs to be approached as a collaboration, especially for novice teenagers. By all means, collaborate on creating hot porny sex scenes. But keep your wits about you and pay attention to what you like and don't like, and have a sense of autonomy about how things unfold.
Also, there's varsity-level sex and there's JV level sex, and it's reasonable to advise your teenager to start with the latter.
Also, there's varsity-level sex and there's JV level sex, and it's reasonable to advise your teenager to start with the latter.
And it is ok to take a redshirt year until you are better prepared to play.
Congrats, baby people - ksky and nattar!
I can't watch professional sex anymore because of all the concussions.
I like to think I'd be a good shaman for the Unfogged tribe.
Congrats, k-skies!
(Also, please refrain from making me feel even older with this "I'll almost be 41 when the k-sprog is out of diapers!" stuff!)
I was a dorky kid so this may not generalize well, but I imagine that if I was a teenager today who was curious about sex I'd look for how-to videos as well as just whatever cooked my beans. Nina Hartley has a series of how-tos that are up on various free porn sites, and I've seen other ones knocking around. I don't know if it would be appropriate for a parent to point a kid at them, but I'd be kind of tempted to at least mention their existence.
255, 256: so how many years of eligibility do you get?
Awl is ritually unclean, everybody.
Break out the cleansing sticks, and prepare the beating-circle.
Break out the cleansing sticks, and prepare the beating-circle.
So just the guys participate?
I completely missed the innuendo.
I completely missed the innuendo.
Things have really gone downhill around here.
In my defense, 'circle-jerking' is an American concept, unheard of in north Knifecrimea.
Or in south knifecrimea. I think I can work out what it means, but I've never heard of anybody doing it. I thought it was just an excess for effect expression.
re: 270
Yeah. Even the expression [as an idiom, rather than a hypothetical act] I only heard of via US references -- music, mostly.
245: Note to self: attend the football game this weekend.
So teenage boys in the UK just literally sharpen their knives together?
Bave wants someone to offer him their whetstone.
Congratulations, k-sky! Babies babies babies.
196: it's more fun in the anticipation than the actuality but yes, people like it. You've described it in a disgusting way because you think it's disgusting. Any sex act could easily be described to sound gross or ridiculous instead of hot, but people seem to like sex.
Time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man. Or pay a $25 cancellation fee.
But look. This is obnoxious. I'm not pearl-clutching and claiming that women all need to make sweet, sweet love and get the icky sweat away from me. Of course attention and desire can be super erotic. Of course porn-style sex can be totally fantastic for the woman.
That comment wasn't actually about whether porn-style sex can be fantastic for women. It was about what it is like to watch porn.
You wrote:
they definitely believed that the vast majority of easy to access porn is fairly hostile towards women.
and later you clarified that what you meant by "hostile toward women" and/or "misogynstic shit", though "misogynistic shit" was not originally your phrase:
. I would mean a scene where the girl's function is to be a moaning holed apparatus for guys. Where the gaze is strictly het male with a tad of hostility towards conventionally beautiful girls
I was responding in part to what I understood as a claim that a scene in which a woman is a "moaning, holed apparatus" is necessarily read or experienced as hostile toward women by the audience. In part I was also just expanding on my own thoughts, not particularly responding to anything.
I would also write about how I think the idea that porn is an unrealistic depiction of women's bodies is also overstated, but I'm already being obnoxious, so I'll just leave it at the bare assertion.
But it doesn't have one emotional meaning to one homogeneous audience, either.
The history of pornography, into which I can't get too deeply here, reflects this. Objects used as masturbation aids by one person might be moral treatises on chastity to someone else. Medical textbooks become sex manuals. And everyone frets about whether it's possible to make any references to sex at all without "the wrong people" getting "wrong information" about what kind of fucking they should be doing or not doing.
because I was curious about what they said about dental dams and cunnilingus.
Not that I go around asking people "so, have you ever used a dental dam?" but it is my impression nobody I have ever met has used one.
In ten years everybody will be a brogrammer.
In 28 years, high school seniors will never not have known that everyone was always not a brogrammer.
it is my impression nobody I have ever met has used one
In college I volunteered at my university's women's resource center, and we had both condoms and dental dams available for the taking. We would have to order more condoms every few months. We would have to order new dental dams every few years when the ones we had sitting in the center expired.
I agree with 282. I have no idea what a dental dam looks like, and I don't even remember ever seeing one in a package. Do they even have them in drug stores in the sex stuff section? I have never heard anyone discuss using them or buying them.
the idea that porn is an unrealistic depiction of women's bodies is also overstated
Agreed. At least in porn there is variety, and they're mostly a few sizes bigger than fashion models or regular movie actors. Stoya has been doing more fashion modeling and has lost a lot of weight for it. She's one of the thinner people in porn, but now she's noticeably way thinner than anyone else in a sex scene. Fake boobs? Yes, some of them, but natural boobs are also fetishized. Interesting faces are desirable, and people with unique looks (Skin Diamond, Joanna Angel, Arabella Raphael).
286: There is, near as I can tell, more variety on the various alt servers on usenet. There's something for everyone.
Objects used as masturbation aids by one person ...
Somewhere in the desert, Ogged sits in front of a computer screen ......
Oh yeah. If someone of my size were on TV, I would be gigantically fat--the pitiable but plucky/funny coworker. But I'm nowhere near big enough to be among the popular BBW queens (Kelly Shibari, Courtney Trouble, April Flores). Those ladies are huge and extremely hot. I think that although at first one might fetishize an image that feels strange, like being invited to perv on a large woman, it can ultimately change one's perception for good. If all you watch is mainstream TV and movies, you'd get the sense that if you're even a tiny bit overweight, no one would be caught dead alone in a room with you.
Fake boobs? Yes, some of them
And that's really something of a dated look now. Porn actresses are, on average, younger and thinner than the median American, but that's true of film and TV in general. By and large, female bodies in porn aren't all that different from what you see on most college campuses. Young, fit people are young, fit people.
Courtney Trouble
That's a cute stage name.
Or in south knifecrimea. I think I can work out what it means, but I've never heard of anybody doing it. I thought it was just an excess for effect expression.
So the 'spunkbread' stories the Brits told us back in high school were just urban legends? You're ruining my image of Brit 'public' schools being seriously fucked up.
Young, fit people are young, fit people.
Old, fit people are probably faking it or overcompensating for having an annoying personality. At least that's what I tell myself.
Thanks, everybody! I'll have to print out this thread to share with the little pisher at the appropriate juncture.
116 and 247 were so good at getting across a sex-positive view of porn, thanks Jane Adams.
Now I went and started a subthread, so I guess I'll add: I might go so far as to say that in the sample of porn that I've experienced, representations of women's bodies in porn are more inclusive than in any other major entertainment media. Even if fat or older women get separate categories, you still see them and they're still presented as exciting and desirable. Among the younger, fit people, there is no aesthetic demanding an anorexic or even skinny look. In fact, it's a common moment in a porn movie to knead the woman's ass for the camera to revel in just how fleshy she is. Porn movies tend to celebrate the physicality of the body, whereas everywhere else you see airbrushed, photoshopped mannequins, or women who are dressed up in a way that conceals much of what about their body is unique. In porn you get to see what real women's bodies look like. They're most commonly young, fit bodies, but there's still a ton of informative variation, and it's all treated as desirable. And the lighting is often not so carefully designed as to conceal cellulite or other flaws. I actually think that considering this issue alone -- what does porn teach about what kind of bodies are desirable? -- watching some porn would have been corrective and salutary when I was young, compared to what I learned from the rest of the body-hating culture (unless porn was very different when I was young -- I don't know).
(You don't see a lot of visibly disabled women, even in their own categories, on the mainstream aggregator sites. But I did stumble across some photographed artsy erotica of a woman who was a triple amputee once. Both it and she were beautiful, and it did some work in me to expand my point of view about what kinds of disabled bodies I could consider attractive.)
You're ruining my image of Brit 'public' schools being seriously fucked up.
Maybe different schools have different cultures. At the 'public' school I went to there was one lad who was given the spare room in the housemaster's apartment because of an overcrowding problem, so he was given a key; so he moved his girlfriend in.
But I never heard of mass masturbation parties. Most of us were too high to organise that if we'd wanted to.
253: The yuck factor will wear off quick enough when the opportunity presents itself.
I'm sure that's exactly what Mrs. Gein always told herself.
Not that I go around asking people "so, have you ever used a dental dam?" but it is my impression nobody I have ever met has used one.
If you come to the meetup in NYC I can change this! (I blame the combination of hypochondria, an intense devotion to rule-following, and coming of age during the late '80s and early '90s.)
When I first heard the Circle Jerks in the 1980s, I just took it for granted that circle jerking must be an urban legend. No one would actually do that--it is just something people talk about because it is scandalous.
Now that we have the internet, I have the exact opposite assumption. Someone has probably done this somewhere, and there is a shaky cell phone video of it available with a few short google searches.
My direct evidence of circle jerking has not changed an iota, but my idea of common sense has been completely inverted!
Oh, what a brave new world that has such sex practices in it!
300 Wow! Next you will be telling me you used finger cots. These things all came in safe sex kits. Or "safer sex" kits as I believe we were supposed to call them so nobody would ever forget that sex was essentially Russian roulette. I think it was without exaggeration the 21st century before I ever had sex without thinking about death. Good times, the 90s.
I must have been a rollicking lay. "We're all gonna die!"
I accidentally walked "in" (they were outside, but anyhow) on a bunch of my friends having a circle jerk. I went to wait elsewhere and they were very apologetic about it afterwards.
(Not because it's gross or anything, but because it was sort of antisocial if they were going to invite people who wouldn't necessarily be interested to come visit them.)
I read 300 as a more apo-esque offer than I think Josh intended.
306: You don't give me nearly enough credit.
Not because it's gross or anything, but because it was sort of antisocial if they were going to invite people who wouldn't necessarily be interested to come visit them.
You knew you were signing up for Wank Camp. It's all on you.
308: that's basically what I said, yeah. Far be it from me to intrude on their good time.
In the book used in my seventh grade sex ed class (taught by a the wife of a character actor from Police Academy) there was a way way too long discussion of circle jerking, presented as if basically every kid in America did this. Most of us were like wtf really this is what's going on at the sleepover I didn't get invited to?
In my driver's ed class, we used a book written by the I'm Okay, You're Okay guy.
I'm Okay, You're Okay, Now You Eat The Cookie
Most of us were like wtf really this is what's going on at the sleepover I didn't get invited to?
Yeah, I'm pretty bitter about having apparently been left out of all the proto-lesbo doctor-playing that kids who have friends apparently do.
all the proto-lesbo doctor-playing that kids who have friends apparently do
I guess I only thought I had friends?
This girl in my afterschool program when I was I'm going to say seven wanted to play doctor with me but if there were lesbian overtones I missed them.
A friend of mine in high school told me that one time, in kindergarten, she spied me take a matchbox car, and demonstrate to a boy how I could put it in my underpants and then shake it out the leg hole. So that is evidence of my proto-lesbo-experimasomething.
And now you've spent your adult years looking at cars having sex with dinosaurs. The circle of life.
300, 302: Likewise a youth of the 1980s-1990s, dental dams yes (hilarity), finger cots no (checked for broken skin), long long foreplay courtships while various blood tests became meaningful. Good times.
"We're going to die! Let's have sex!" has worked for centuries.
I have a colleague who uses a finger cot during meetings to turn pages and such. Also he's a total fruitcake. But the pointer condom is funny. I always want to ask if it's got a reservoir tip.
Thanks Smearcase and Blume. That's kind of what I thought, but it is said that there is a herpes and hpv risk, but nobody gives out hard data. I think that giving accurate info is important, because otherwise it's all..."well they said that pot was going to destroy you, but it never happened to anyone I knew, so you can't trust these scaremongers.
I should go presidential for this, but apparently someone I know just got penile MRSA from a combination of toothy blowjob plus unsanitary fishing trip. At least that's the story Mrs. Someone is telling, though I'm not entirely sure why she's telling the story at all and am afraid to ask.
I have never used finger cots in a sexual way, but may have penned faces on some to make finger puppets back in college. Never used a dental dam either, but took one out of the package and found the texture really off-putting, like a gummier clingfilm.
325.2: I could make a tiny rubber hat! Or a tiny rubber brooch! Or a tiny rubber pterodactyl!
325.1 is the most horrifying thing I have ever read.
That's kind of what I thought, but it is said that there is a herpes and hpv risk, but nobody gives out hard data.
How much 'hard data' is there about HPV in general? I was under the impression that a lot of the stats about it are estimates, since there are so many different kinds (most of them asymptomatic), it's so contagious, and it usually gets cleared without treatment.
Did Mrs. Someone lick the fish first or was fishing relevant only because it explained why there was no soap and hot water?
no soap and hot water?
Or hand sanitizer?
331: There's some story about an unsanitary outhouse on the fishing trip for which the bj was a going-away present or somesuch, but I don't know the details or how they could pin down the source of infection so clearly. I'm really not sure about any of it, except that it seems unlikely she'd lie about any of it and totally in character that she'd overshare this.
If I'm ever foolish enough to ask for follow-up and his penis had to be amputated, please lie. Thanks.
There's some story about an unsanitary outhouse on the fishing trip for which the bj was a going-away present or somesuch
Verily, there is nothing under the sun which isn't a fetish for someone.
Now I went and started a subthread, so I guess I'll add: I might go so far as to say that in the sample of porn that I've experienced, representations of women's bodies in porn are more inclusive than in any other major entertainment media
When I was complaining about porn's awfulness for sex and body-image above, I was dismissive of the niche-ification of porn. But it is true that niche porn has grown a lot more prominent and that the high-profile porn star body type has diversified from one type to about three, with niches for many more.
On the other hand the expanded access for more diverse body types to being "celebrated" by the porn industry is as mixed a blessing now is at ever was, maybe more so. This is an industry that had to coin the term "fuck party" because its customers could not be relied upon to understand the word "orgy," and in which cruel and degrading content (I mean content specifically produced to be cruel and degrading as a selling-point) has a growing market share as its audience grows jaded by the Internet. So overall I'm still on Team Porn-Sux-for-Sex over here.
I mean content specifically produced to be cruel and degrading as a selling-point
I know I sound like a broken record, but I find it interesting that this point needs to be emphasized over and over, as if the people here who are talking about actually watching pornography are the ones who are ill-informed, that we can't possibly be aware of hardcore BDSM and humiliation porn. But this is precisely the point above; people who do not get their buttons pushed by watching that stuff cannot imagine what the people who do are getting from it. I get that you don't personally experience anything button-pushy from watching hardcore BDSM. But it sounds like you're implying that everyone who does is... I don't know. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you realize there are people you could ask about it, rather than imagining their lives, right?
growing market share
I'd love to see some data on this factoid, too. It doesn't reflect the shifts I've noticed, but maybe you have some numbers you're not quoting.
336: referring to the trip, not the outhouse. Apologies for unclear phrasing, but I kind of don't want to think about this, though obviously not to the point where I didn't tell you.
I'm not saying anything about who is aware of which porn or what their personal reaction to it is. I'm saying that the overall social effects seem shitty to me on the whole. (Take the mainstreaming of BDSM, for instance, and the resultant rise of amateurs attempting "breath play".)
And I hear he's responding well to whatever heavy-duty antibiotics are standard of care. I suppose I could refriend his anti-Obama wife on facebook to see if she's discussing it there....
339: Data is from the Statistical Department of My Ass at the moment, I'm afraid. It's an impression on my part, I could well be wrong about it. (I don't think I am, but it's possible.)
Kind of silly to go pseudonymous for this, but whatevs. As someone who does peruse porn at certain periods (mostly the depressed ones, gotta admit), I find a serious lack of the body type I usually want to see. Try searching for e.g. "curvy" women on a porn site, and you only get very fat or huge breasted women. I just want to look at regular women in their 30s! Like someone I would consider dating? A bit full maybe, slight imperfections so I can fantasize about actually meeting her and hitting it off or something. Why do I have to search for hours to find something like that?
I'm torn between not wanting to make this a recommendations thread and not wanting WJC's assertion to stand uncontradicted. The search terms to find women like that are (and I just verified this, as one of the thread's resident researchers): MILF, mom, mother, wife, housewife.
Do films found with those search terms tend to have some kind of MILF/dirty housewife setup as well, or do they just get you a woman who's somewhat older?
They'll get you both plus a bunch of random mid twenties to mid sixties couples/women who have uploaded their homemade stuff.
Sometimes they get you a dirty housewife setup, or sometimes a younger man/older woman coupling, but they also work as nets to catch movies that just have thirty- or forty-something women with imperfect bodies.
345 is interesting. I knew perfectly well that those niches were popular, but it never would have occurred to me as a way to find more ordinary bodies. I have to admit I do a lot more listening to Dan Savage than hunting up porn, though. Most of my beliefs are probable things that he asserts as "truths that everyone knows".
So more on the erotica side of things than the porn side, is it a "thing" that as writers get older and more established, they tend to put fewer and less explicit sex scenes in their novels? I'm thinking specifically of Wm. Gibson here, who hasn't written an actual people-are-having-sex-in-the-diagesis-of-the-novel scene since at least The Difference Engine, and maybe not since Count Zero. Also, my guiltiest pleasure, SM Stirling, has pulled way back from his earlier predilection for embarrassingly silly, explicit and male chauvinist sex scenes, to a standard PG camera-cuts-away-and-then-it's-the-next-morning type of deal.
I'm thinking specifically of Wm. Gibson here, who hasn't written an actual plausible people-are-having-sex-in-the-diagesis-of-the-novel scene since ever.
(I love the guy, but I support his decision in this case.)
Rowling has increased the amount of sex in her novels.
Oh yeah, I mean, if you were reading early Gibson for the sex scenes then, I don't know, you were not reading the right books or something. They were pretty silly too. Not as bad as Stirling. Sterling was kind of a mixed bag.
Counter-example would be Tom Wolfe, I guess.
Asimov increased the amount of sex in his novels towards the end of his career, which I think we can all agree was a terrible, terrible error.
I'm not sure I've ever read an Asimovian sex scene, but I can tell you anyhow, I'd rather read than be one.
I tried to read Neuromancer a few years ago and found the sex stuff pretty offputting.
I read Count Zero first, which I think is the way to go. The sex scene is awful, but there's only one and it's over very quickly.
Oh whoops, did I just derail the porn thread into an SF thread?
345/8 is true. If I were in porn (imperfect, not thin, not big enough for BBW), I would be a "MILF" type. No, it's not always cuckold scenarios.
I don't remember sex in Neuromancer. But I guess I have a pretty bad memory for most things I read, beyond the broad outlines, unless I read them more than once.
355- You think he should have started earlier in his career?
In a pinch, a condom can be made into a dental dam, but not vice versa.
There's one sex scene in Neuromancer, which I remember more as a depiction of a weirdly drugged-out encounter (since Case is in a weird place with respect to drugs), than about the sex as such.
363: you pinch with your teeth?
The only William Gibson sex scene I remember is Molly Millions paying for her eyes.
I read Neuromancer a few years back in a failed attempt to get myself to like sci fi. Don't really remember the sex scenes but I found something off putting about the book in general.
366: Case and Molly have sex at one point, which 364 describes pretty well. I re-read Neuromancer a couple of years ago and while I got a lot more out of it than when I first read it at age 15, I don't know that it holds up that well.
(Speaking of books that don't hold up that well, I've gone on a little bit of an '80s kick lately and boy is it hard to see what people thought was so great about Bright Lights, Big City and Less Than Zero. The music references in Bright Lights, Big City are pretty awesome, though. Were people really listening to the Stones in Manhattan night clubs back then?)
That sounds about right. I don't remember too much detail about the book, because I found it generally kind of word salad and gave up about a quarter of the way in. But I think it's not that long after he meets the asskicking chick? And she all of a sudden is screwing him, and I was thinking, I am not the reader this scene was written for.
Current top 10 titles by recommendation on big search/community site:
Sexy former WWE Diva, Women want women 23, tiny anal teen, Joi 30 seconds, great t-girl Alexia Noguiera, Teagan Presley as Marcia Brady, super ladyboy trio, visibly throbbing cocks compilation 3, horny cheating brunette wife, handjob instructions teen.
[hmm, actually kinkier than I was expecting when you make a list of it.]
Amateur/upload top 10:
me and my girl making each other smile, slapping and sucking on a big fat cock, squirter, BJBJBJ, My girlfriend and I fucking on my bed (Part 1), tits*, [no title], "ana saldana, analilia saldana cantu,regia sexi ,nalgona,milf,puta,warra,mecos en la cara,cum on her face"**
* no point overcomplicating things
**turned out to be a BJ
355: The sex scene in The Gods Themselves is hott.
Hmm, quoted text from porno websites looks remarkably like the ToS's output.
I'm actually surprised at how un-misogynist those titles sound. One thing I find distracting about amateur porn site titles is that the scene might be of two lovely people enjoying sex together, but the title is "super-skinny cumdumpster fucked in all her holes." That might be led by the mainstream--a video with some super-gross-sounding name might have a plot and humor and people enjoying themselves, but we still might call it "Stupid Bitches XXXd" or whatever.
