"I really don't have a good answer to why semen would be considered dirty"
Every bodily fluid is considered dirty, particularly in the age of AIDS.
Not to get too post-modern feminist on yo' ass, but my theory is that the porn consumers with the biggest attraction to that particular mise en scene probably do harbor some latent (or overt) hostility toward women. The mechanics of a facial place the woman in an undeniably inferior, supplicant even, position, to be hit in the face with what is, being divorced from any reproductive function, a waste fluid. A spin through the darker corners of the internet's underbelly will show plenty more examples of this, involving other fluids.
I suspect a lot of that has to do with some men feeling that in their lives women hold all the keys of authority in sexual relations, namely, being the one who gets to say yes or no. The money shot, though as vicarious as vicarious gets, allows them to (briefly) reverse the power dynamic.
But I think your point about the flinch is pretty spot-on, too.
Comedy Central currently has a little cartoon bumper.
A man is standing there watching two toasters. One toaster has clearly mounted the other, and is humping furiously. The "dominant" toaster apparently climaxes, which sends the contents of the toaster... which looks like a slimy slice of bread, into the nearby man's face. There is absolutely no mistaking the fact that a toaster just jizzed on a guy's face, and when the jizz dripped off it said "Comedy Central."
I'm not a prude, and don't care one way or another, but I was pretty surprised to see it on CC at 2 in the afternoon.
Humping jizz-shooting toasters just might turn me into a prude.
It's a watered down D/S thing. And that's a pretty natural inclination. But I think it works so well in porn, because it's so closely tied to the blowjob. And swallowing. And you get a good shot of how much she loves it. I'd bet it's also one of the easiest money shots to film.
I do think, though, that the degradation aspect is most appealing to men. Sullying a pretty girl's face with your powerful man-juice? I can't explain it. You either dig it, or you don't. And sometimes, even when you don't... you do. See? D/S.
As for the flinch being the one "real" moment in porn? Mmm... I don't know if that's it, so much. It's real when a girl's moans turn from pleasure, to pain and exhaustion. It's real when you know she hates giving blowjobs, but does it anyway, half-heartedly. But that's not the sexy kind of real, is it?
But that's not the sexy kind of real, is it?
Great point. You're absolutely right.
the degradation aspect is most appealing to men
That's my first guess too, but I'm not comfortable with it as the whole answer. I think I don't agree with the apostropher that semen is just a waste product. Given the crudeness of most porn, this will sound completely naive, but hang with me for a second: don't you think guys relate to their semen partly as a bashful offering? It's not just piss. It's mine. And the woman who will have it on her face is accepting me in a very intimate and powerful way, no?
But it's a very small step from bashful to ashamed to the flip to degradation. If I'm ashamed of my semen and a woman will have it on her face, then she is degrading herself in my eyes, right? So whether a woman is being accepting or being degraded seems to depend on whether the guy feels embarrassed or ashamed. (Obviously, we're not talking about porn anymore, but real relationships.)
Speaking as a woman who's frequently on the recieving end of this kink, I have to report that the degradation (or, more properly, domination) element is key. But is this necessarily bad? Do you have to have a repressed hostility to women to think that Betty Page all tied up is sexy? Is there anything wrong with a little light bondage? There is a mild S and M element to much mainstream porn and many people's sexual fantasies and kinks. "Why would we be so keen to debase women?" Well, ogged, because it's kind of sexy? Now, I am talking about real life relationships here. I admit I'm surprised when advertisers allude to this practice, but mainly because it seems so sexually explicit and raunchy, not because it's demeaning to women per se. I agree that our sexual culture is fixated on this, and perhaps it says something about our love of spectacle, just as le vice Anglais says something about British boarding school practices. But it doesn't strike me as indicative of deep hostility towards women so much as of the influence of porn on people's sexual tastes and the bare fact that most sexual kinks are intimately tied up with issues of control and abasement. I guess if everyone in America started thinking it was cool to pee on women I'd be worried, though.
But is this necessarily bad? Do you have to have a repressed hostility to women to think that Betty Page all tied up is sexy?
I'll answer the second question first: well, yeah, of course you have to have repressed hostility to think that tying women up is sexy. But I don't think that changes the answer to the first question: no it's not necessarily bad. At least, it's not incompatible with deep and meaningful respect.
But, while I thought it needed to be acknowledged as a possibility, I didn't mean to push the "deep hostility" line at all. I'd still like to hear, in fact, if anyone believes the "male as supplicant" angle.
The rest of your comment seems just right; particularly your mention of spectacle (also alluded to by nameless): it's not as if coming on a woman's face feels better (or even as good) as other ways and places, but it sure can look cool.
My opinion is that you have to remember that watching porn is not the same as having sex, and that most who watch it are addicted to it, it is an addiction. And what is addictive is the adrenaline rush of doing something "wrong". Sex itself has a level of being wrong, being dirty. We were all shamed about sex as kids, and got over it to one extent or another but it is that child or teenager part of us that gets engaged by "dirty porn". There is a sense of rebellion, of doing something Mom said don't do. In addictions, like drugs, once you are hooked a certain level gets boring, doesn't do "it" for you anymore. So you up the dose. The higher dose in porn is to do something even more taboo, like cumming on the woman's face. That's really really bad, ooooh. I remember a line from "Leaving Las Vegas" where the prostitute played by Elisabeth Shue describes a trick who came on her face as a way of explaining why she was suicidally depressed.
This also explains why porn bores a lot of people--they are not motivated toward sex by the rebellion of breaking taboos.
What seems to be the big happening in porn now is anal sex
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1222393,00.html
which is even more taboo, and frankly disgusting to me. It injures people.
Men are naturally dominant in the sexual situation, so it is hard to seperate that out from overly domineering behavior. A lot it depends on the intent and how the woman feels about it.
I dig the term "bashful offering". I think there is a certain bit of embarrassment shame that men must feel, as they unload. You think that we think you're dirty for wanting it. And you are. We're angels for allowing you inside in the first place.
And then there's the NEED for it. If facials, or anal, or threesomes (all potentially degrading situations for a woman) are things you get off on, then aren't you actually the needy one? And maybe that makes you less respectable. We're always on the receiving end of things, but I don't think that makes us submissive. We remain fully in control, with each new consent.
The last time a... uh... *friend* of mine received a facial, I'm pretty sure both parties walked away feeling equally powerful. And equally degraded. He felt like the porn star for a moment, but was responsible for dirtying the face of his sweet girl. She was able to give him that elusive moment, but also went home with a certain stink in her hair.
But hang on. I don't think you need to have some repressed hostility to enjoy tying someone up. If you tether someone to your bedpost, with the interest of smacking your bitch up, and doing things to her that she wouldn't normally consent to, then, yes. Sure.
But tying someone up is a pretty selfless act, really. I'm tied up, and he's 100 percent responsible for my pleasure. I'm all for that. And wouldn't feel degraded in the least. In fact... maybe I still feel in control. I let him tie me up in the first place, didn't I?
Hang on, doesn't everybody know that the bottom is the one in control? Because the top has to do all the work? Honestly, the state of modern sex education....
Related to that, I was watching some Japanese pron which featured a lot of this -- it wasn't the trad bukkake, where a woman gets tied up and repeatedly cum on while acting distressed about it, this was where an actress (not tied) gets banged by one guy with enviable stamina while lots of men cum on her and she acts like she's having a great time -- and I found myself thinking about why a JAV actress would repeatedly do this kind of thing. Besides the yen, of course.
And it occured to me that a successful bukkake actress might be thinking something like, "All these men, they're cumming because of me. I'm making them cum." Which I imagine might feel quite delicious, especially as the evidence is right there under her nose (sorry), rather than buried inside her.
Personally, I don't like facials where the actress doesn't look like she's enjoying it, or is too obviously faking enjoying it. And I prefer it if the cum is on her tits or ass rather than her face, anyway. So, yeah, violation of certain boundaries, but for myself, I don't want to go very far into that Abu Ghraib territory. I still want to think that it's consensual at some level.
By the way, cum in eye, very uncomfortable, but it's not because of the saltiness, it's because it doesn't dissolve very well in water and gets stringy. Not dangerous, as far as I know, if you're sensible about washing it out.
By the way again, what's the state of play in gay porn? Are facials popular over there? Is that about debasement of men?
AkiZ beats me to my follow-up post. I haven't seen enough gay porn to judge the popularity of guy-guy facials, but they do exist. An interesting case.
I think a distinction might be helpful about "control." It's hard for me to see how the person tied up, as per nameless's comment above, is in control. But, I can see how the person more willing to become vulnerable by giving up control is the "stronger" partner.
And I'll add at this point that in my personal map of sexual activities, facials have their place, but tying up (either the doing or the watching) does absolutely nothing for me. They don't even seem to be in the same ballpark, so it's interesting to me that the women have generally grouped them together.
Semen has always had a privileged role in the economies (in both senses) of male sex and pleasure: for the ancient Greeks it represented men's "vital heat," which is why its release was (and has remained) so restricted. "Excess" ejaculation weakened men and made them effeminate. Contemporary representations of semen still reflect this long history: the role of the money shot is to show a narrative and sexual climax that would otherwise remain invisible (rather defeating the purpose of watching porn). Coming on the face is an externalisation of the blowjob. Elizabeth Grosz'z Volatile Bodies contains a good discussion of this.
I have enjoyed giving facials since they were somewhat new (20 years ago.) Some girls did not seem to mind, and some would get a little freaked out, especially when they did not know when to close their eyes (ouch.)
I think the desire to unload on a pretty girls face in collage (OK, and the ugly ones as well) started as sort of a sub-conscious payback to all the uptight high school girls that gave me blue balls for years. Well many years later, I now know that high school girls do not need to be sucking the cocks of these high school dipshit boys with their fucked up saggy pants. (Who would ever give these fuckheads the time of day, let alone a job or blowjob?)
High school girls should be studying and not letting some dude straddle their face.
Most misogynistic comment ever on Unfogged? Or just the nastiest, period? Hard to say. And "close your eyes" is a very good way to let the "girls" know, eh?
I suppose I should be embarrassed to comment here under my own "initials", but this isn't a revealing comment. The phrase "bashful offering" reminded me of the following:
"At last he is brought by his intermediary into the presence of the Devil; he asks through the other to be admitted to a share in the teaching. That abominable ruler says it can by no means be done, unless he denies his Christianity and offers sacrifice to him. He asked what sacrifice. " That which is pleasing in a man." " What is that? " " You shall make a libation of your seed," said he; " When you have poured that out to me, then you shall enjoy the reward of your sacrifice." Oh, crime ! Oh, shameful act ! And he of whom this was demanded was a priest ! And this Thy ancient enemy did, O Lord, to cast the dishonour of sacrilege on Thy holy order and Thy Blessed Victim ! Be not silent; restrain not Thy vengeance, Lord. What shall I say? How shall I say it? The unhappy man did what was required of him, he whom Thou hadst abandoned, Ah, would it had been in time ! And so with that horrible libation he declares his renunciation of his faith." (emphasis added)
From the Autobiography of Guibert of Nogent (d.1124)
Yes, this is a real medieval text. I read it for a class. Most of it isn't all that racy.
hi! i was with a beautiful woman for over 9 months (not, not a pregnancy!), and she was incredible. she often *demanded* that i cum on her face because she honestly loved it. most times it was internal (she loved that too and we never used condoms), and countless times via BJ she would always insist on swallowing every drop (and always checked for "seconds"). But for facials, she absolutely (according to her) loved the feeling of warm sperm on her face and was almost greedy for it, and it also made her even more horny and ready and willing for even hotter sex the next time or 5 around. for me it was nothing to do with "dominance" (from either of us), but pure pleasure. as mentioned, she also *always* swallowed, and facials would be wiped onto her fingers and then sucked clean. i did always avoid as best as possible her eyes, as i didn't want it to hurt or sting her. point is she loved it on her face, and wasn't faking it. i have seen (unoftunately) some porn where it is obvious by the look in her eyes that the girl doesn't want a facial, in the mouth, or swallowing, but did it anyway (likely for the money), and this practice sickens me, as well as others who've posted here. degrading a lover is not on my to-do list. This girlfriend also surprised me with a few other tricks that some would find degrading, but that she reveled in. regardless of who was on their back, we both had a great time and the thought of domination/degradation never came to our minds. she just loved sex and cum and experimentation, and the taste.
the girl i lost my virginity to also loved sex in many ways/styles, and the first night i warned her that i was about to cum, and asked her where she wanted it. her reply was "anywhere but inside", and on "day 1" i had the pleasure of cumming on her face and tits, and she loved it.
it's true, unfortunately, some men may view facials as a dominant act or degrading, and do so because of their own insecurities and desire for "control". however, the girlfriend i mentioned first was also a "squirter", and going-down on her and taking the blast anywhere/everywhere possible (including my face) was a huge turn-on for both of us. we also always continued to kiss and makeout regardless of who had the other's fluids in their mouth or on their face. many could see this as too kinky for their own practices, but she and i savored every second of it (the only place i'd draw the line is if anything going into my/my lover's mouth had any anal contact- *that* is gross to me and surely can't be healthy).
it just depends on who you are and who you are with. i'm a nice guy and considerate yet very passionate lover, and i'd never do anything to a girl that she didn't want for my own "domineering" satisfaction. porn is about money, and if girls in pornos don't want to do certain things, they still have the right and ability to say "no", even if it means not getting paid.