Make Love Not Porn

Maybe it's just me, but sex (and, more specifically, the intersection of love and sex) is terrifying. I mean, I know I have intimacy issues and so most things that involve other people are terrifying in one way or another, but man. Feelings and sex are the worst.

It's pretty easy to have sex when you don't care. Really. (I'm sure someone out there will mutter "Slut" under their breath. I could write you a whole different blog about slut-shaming and sex-shaming in current culture. I probably will. In the meantime, just don't say it to my face, ok? I'm likely to burst into tears and embarrass both of us.)

But the reality is that we now (for better or worse, and I happen to think it's a little bit of both) live in a culture in which sex is divorced from most of its traditional meanings. We hold onto the vestiges of those past associations, but really, everyone's out there doing what they do, and not a lot of people think that intercourse equates to commitment anymore. It's just sex. It feels good. It's a biological need like any other. Take your pick of rationalizations.

In a permissive culture, it's really easy to end up having a lot of sex. (I have.) And it's really easy for that sex to be utterly, completely, and absolutely meaningless.

And that, my darlings, is called a defense mechanism. It's really easy to just have at it when you really, truly do not give a flying fuck about the person that you're fucking. Said with less profanity, when you don't care about the person you are engaging in intimate acts with, the acts are no longer intimate. Intimacy (like arousal and attraction) are first and foremost states of mind, not states of body. The brain is the most highly developed and intensely sensitive sexual organ we possess.

But there's a lot going on in the act of sex without intimacy, and on the whole I think that it can contribute to a whole host of sexual dysfunctions that are increasingly common, or, increasingly talked about. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a rise in actual instances of a thing, or just a rise in the number of people willing to talk about a thing.

I came across an interview with a woman who's working on getting a campaign called "Make Love Not Porn" off the ground. It's not what it sounds like. There are no prescriptives about waiting for true love or marriage, there is no moralizing or shaming involved. Rather, she's concerned that because the focus of sex-education initiatives have been on these lines, young people are learning what sex is from porn. Porn has become the standard by which we fuck.

And that's awful. I think we can all agree on that.

Porn is not real life. Porn is entertainment of a specific variety, and it's direceted primarily at men. Porn is all about the money shot. Porn is about male pleasure. The focus is getting a guy off.

And that's how we're having sex these days. Like porn stars. And rather than a give and take, rather than an intimate exchange between two people that have feelings and are engaging with each other, we are all of us focused on the idea that good sex is sex in which a man has an orgasm and a woman moans a lot. I think that's supposed to mean she's having a good time, too, but it's hard to tell. I mean, the last time I (accidentally) watched some porn, I was actually sick to my stomach because the woman in the scene was so obviously drugged out of her goddamn mind that I was watching a rape, and painfully conscious of it. There is no way she could have consented, much less have been enjoying herself.

So there's some feminist undertone to this whole sex-as-porn thing; it is enormously detrimental to women, since the focus in porn is men. But I also think it's detrimental to men. There is no intimacy in the way we, as a culture, approach sex anymore. In that way, my own issues are part of a much larger malaise. We don't know how to be intimate with each other even when we want to, because porn-as-sex is so steeped into our consciousness.

And I believe (despite my intense feminist leanings and occasional rage) that we are all human beings first, and gendered human beings second, and men/masculine-leaning beings desire intimacy just as much as anyone else. And they, too, are being denied the tools to achieve it physically with their partners by this culture that replaces sexual intimacy with caricatures.

I can't put my own problems with intimacy on the porn industry. I was never much of a porn watcher. I mean, I've put in the minimum requisite hours for someone of my generation on redtube and I've read far, far more erotica than a lot of people I know, but I never really got into it. Porn consumption is essentially masturbation with some technological twists, and I've never really got the point of masturbation, either. But it certainly doesn't help. Being trapped in the idea of porn as sex means that even when I want to care, even when I find myself desperately longing to actually achieve intimacy, all I can think about is whether or not I'm any good, and good is measured by the unreality of porn.

So, Cindy Gallop: I am with you. Let's make love, not porn.