P*rn is no one religion

Gracie, a human resources manager, insists she is no prude. She is a willing sexual explorer. But even she was surprised at what her 33-year-old boyfriend, a builder, stored under his "favourites" file. "There must have been 20 porn sites there. I was pretty shocked - not that they were there, only that there were so many," she says.

My thought? "Only 20?"!. Of course, if Gracie's boyfriend was paying $30 a month for all those sites, then it might be a problem- a financial one! $30 seems to be the going rate for many- some are cheaper ... Gam and I subscribed to Wifey's World for a month once, and I think it was about $30. I imagine if a guy couldn't control his spending on porn then it might become a problem. The real problem in Gracie's case seemed to be that her boyfriend confused fantasy with reality:

The sex became impersonal and aggressive: "It became more 'porn' style - pulling my hair, no kissing, slapping around a bit, all stuff I was initially OK with. And always he wanted to come in my face," Gracie says. "There was no real intimacy, no thought about what I might like."

I've seen a lot of porn. Not all porn involves the guy cumming on a woman's face! Not all porn involves hair pulling. Most of the porn I've seen involves some kissing, but in my opinion it only works when there appears to be genuine chemistry between the “actors”. I've also seen a lot of amateur porn, in which none of those things occur: the girls are average, the guys are average, the sex is average, there's just the “naughtiness” of two very normal people doing it on camera. In fact, it's often better, as the two people want to sleep with each other and aren't being paid to do so.

Horin is buying into the myth than all porn involves plastic-surgerified actresses like Jesse Jane and Gina Lynn being contorted into uncomfortable positions all for the gratification of some well hung (but usually not very attractive) guy. I find myself scarcely able to believe that Gracie's boyfriend wanted the same thing every time, because if sex was the same every time it would be boring. Variety really is the spice of life.

Porn is a broad church, Adele, and you'd know that if you'd actually watched some instead of just railing against it.

Ordinary women's desire or desperation to "make it more like porn" has helped fire the popularity of Brazilian waxes [...] Unlike the natural-looking porn stars of the 1970s such as Linda Lovelace of Deep Throat fame, the nymphs populating internet porn today have their pubic hairs ripped out after an application of hot wax. The desired look is "clean" and pre-pubescent. "Women today are emulating porn stars who have no pubic hair," says Etcoff, "and I think men like it".

I'm not sure what Horin is getting at here, particularly with the use of the word “clean”. The implication that pubic hair is somehow dirty is a pet dislike of mine. Brazilians are just a fashion, pushed as much by women's magazines and shows like Sex and the City, and not something that all guys buy into. Women in 80s porn have hair in places that I scarcely knew it grew, and I'm sure men back then weren't thinking "If only there was no hair down there, this porn would be so good". More like they were thinking "Naked chick! Having sex! Alriiight!"

Figures provided by Nielsen/NetRatings NetView show 2.7 million Australians visited an "adult" website in March (this figure counts repeat visitors to adult websites only once); 4.3 million visited in the first three months of this year. More than 35 per cent of all Internet users in the quarter ending March visited an adult website at least once

I take that to mean that about a quarter of the population visit adult websites. I'm one of them. Gam's one of them. We look at a lot of stuff together. We've had a great sex life right from the word “go” in our relationship, and we still have a great sex life now. Some of the porn we look at is simply out of sheer fascination rather than erotic desire (there's some weird shit out there). When we're apart we might look at porn alone. In fact, because Gam is much more patient at wading through crappy porn than I am, I rely on him to save clips that he thinks I might like!

And while we enjoy some of the same porn, we have different tastes too, as you might expect - Gam likes women and I like men. He gets off more on watching women enjoy themselves, and I get off more on watching guys enjoy themselves (that's why gay porn is often better than straight porn!). I also like to read erotic literature, as my imagination can often do a better job than a porn director can. And no, my imagination does not dream up soft, romantic fantasies - it's a horrible stereotype of women's sexuality. Women don't all want the same thing any more than men do.

Do I feel less attractive when Gam takes a look at the big-bootied Latina women of Mexican Lust? Do I feel like I need a bigger arse to “compete”? Hell no! Gam likes me exactly the way I am! It's only when a woman's partner pushes her to change her appearance so that she better fulfils his sexual fantasies that there is a problem in the relationship (if there ever was a “dump him” scenario it would be that). If a woman decides by herself that she needs to change in order to please her partner, I would argue that it's probably a psychological problem on the part of the woman, not a problem that can be addressed by her partner ceasing to view porn, and that both partners might be better off discussing their views and perhaps visiting a counsellor.

Women are also under pressure to emulate the porn stars' apparent penchant for anal sex, according to four consecutive Swedish studies, the latest published in 2005 in the International Journal of STD and AIDS. Young men who are regular porn consumers are more likely to have had anal sex with a girl, and most of the men liked it. Most young women did not like anal sex, with fewer than half saying they would do it again, the studies found.

[...]

Nadine, a 30-year-old accountant, who observed her boyfriend, a 33-year-old lawyer, graduate to harder and harder porn sites over years, says: "He loves anal and I hate it. He knows that I do but he still insists on it. I dread it and honestly, I close my eyes and pray that he hurries up and gets it over with it."

Wow. Another “dump him” scenario. What kind of relationship is that? Here, Horin is using an example of a woman experiencing something that I would argue at best borders on rape to prove that porn results in women having anal sex against their will. The problem here is not anal sex in porn, it's: a) the fact that any woman might feel she has to give in to any kind of sexual activity she does not want to engage in; and b) the fact that there are men out there who feel they have the right to engage in sexual activities with an unwilling partner. That's an attitude that's been around for a lot longer than porn has existed, and it's one that's absolutely and fundamentally wrong.

Basically, Horin's article is one that attempts to lump responsibility for some time-honoured sexual and relationship woes experienced by ordinary men and women onto “porn”. Her article lacks any recognition of the fact that “porn” is a term that covers an incredibly broad range of content that caters to an even broader range of people, women included. If masturbation while viewing porn is cited as a factor in relationship troubles, it's not necessarily porn that's at the heart of the problem.