"Make Love, Not Porn"??? Really?? How About Making Love AND Porn Together??

Nothing like a bit of myth busting to get through the night...'ya think???

I'm someone who watches and gets off on a lot of porn these days...and I have my own personal tastes as to what turns me on and gets me off the most. And yet, I don't claim to be an expert or to diss other people's personal desires and likes and dislikes. "To each his or her own" has always been my favorite motto.

Unfortunately, some folk tend to believe that they can pass judgment on adult sexual media based on their own personal squicks about what they think porn should represent and what it says about how humans engage in sex. Not necessarily a problem in my book...until they decide to use their personal squicks to dismiss others and sell stereotypes and untrue generalizations about what porn is supposed to do.

Take, for instance, the recently created website Make Love, Not Porn, which claims to be a myth-busting juggernaut against what they perceive to be the falsehoods that porn allegedly promotes about "real sex".

Now, to give the site it's fair credit, it doesn't go down the path of the usual "porn is the Devil that degrades and abuses women and turns them into mindless cumdumpster sex objects" riff of the GenderBorg radicalfeminists, or the "Porn is simply The Devil that corrupts pure womanhood" meme of the fundamentalist Religious Right freakazoids; it does openly promote the notion of free choice and allows women and men the idea that they should choose for themselves their sexual autonomy. I will give them that benefit.

Problem is, though, that on the way to that solution, they put forth some gross generalizations about how porn allegedly promotes some ideas about sex....mostly based on taking one particular style or genre and making that represent the whole diaspora of porn, in full ignorance of the full diversity of sexual media and the people who make and participate in it.

Many others have said their peace on how MLNP distorts the notion of "fantasy" versus "real" sex to suit the authors' personal biases (Lux Alptraum, editrix at Fleshbot.com has one of the more excellent dissections over there, endorsed by Violet Blue; and my pal Aspasia over at LaLibertine's Salon has her own smackdown at her own blog here). My focus, though, will be on the way that the MLNP authors, through some thinly veiled assumptions that only lie underneath the surface, tend to ignore some basic truths.

As with the other critics, I will use the illustrations used at the original piece for my own friendly fisking.



OK, fine...so a lot of women aren't into facials. Neither are a lot of men, either...and to assume that just because every skit at Brazzers or Naughty America or Reality Kings ends in the guy spewing his come all over her face this means that ALL porn sells facials as THE ONLY WAY WOMEN LIKE SEX is kinda like..you know, saying that because some people are into NFL football, then everyone can be as fast as Larry Fitzgerald.

Sorry, but that's just not the case...as Lux pointed out, not all porn concludes with facials. Some prefer their cum blasts on their tits; some on their backs, some on their asses, some on their feet or toes. A few might even like to swallow. And some might even prefer creampie inside their pussies or asses...with or without a condom.

The issue here isn't in the notion that women shouldn't have a choice in how they like their men to come on them; it's more the notion that porn is a monolith that only conveys that message that women should only like coming on them. In short, it's MLNP projecting their own notions of "real sex" onto their stereotypical strawmen of what they think "porn sex" is.

Onward we go:



Ahhhh...first off, porn's very purpose is to get people turned on in the quickest time possible. That means that easily aroused men and women who are capable of getting off at the touch of a button, or even thinking of getting off, are kind of essential to the central mission. I'm sure that the folks at MLNP wouldn't recommend seeing women who had a hard time getting off, now wouldn't they???

And secondly....I really hate to break this to y'all, but there are in fact REAL women who are so sexually developed and so wired that they ARE able to become sexually aroused at a simple thought and touch....and not just near the clit. Granted, as Doc Betty preaches so much, the clit does the job quite well for most women, and it has been ignored for far too long; but most sexually assertive women I have known can get turned on and can even get themselves off by sensations well before they even reach to tickle their clits...as in their nipples or thei toes or their fingers or their tongues through kissing, or merely caresses and touches of their asses or backs. Ask any woman who enjoys erotic massages whether they really need to manipulate their clits to get aroused.

And thirdly....such tunnel vision these folk must have, because do they ever notice that most porn scenes -- even the most typical ones they seem to generalize about, often contain lots and lots of direct clitoral stimulation as well...you know, the kind they say that "real sex" requires?? Do they notice that almost every sex scene in most porn contains the obligatory "man eats pussy" scene...how's that for "going anywhere near the clit"??? And what about those solo masturbation scenes and those "girl-girl" sex trysts where women eat out women???

Once again, the reality of porn is a bit more diverse than the strawpeople that MLNP invents.


This is the silliest one of the bunch....Yeah, right, as if they've never seen enough "landing strips" and other coteured nether regions. And....even seen alt.porn flicks, where pubic hair is making a comeback?? Not to mention the popular subgenre of fully-bushed porn that even dominated the old porn of the 70's??

And OK...it may be that for some women, shaving their pubes is a huge PITA (pain in the ass), but what can be shaved can always be grown back, unless they resort to waxing or electronic removal.



Oh, pullllleeeeeeeezzzzee.....yeah, if you assume that the only porn that people watch is the one that features that particular act. Or, if you assume that the people who enjoy that kind of porn are so dense to believe that the women who are performing such acts represent ALL women in real life. Plus, as Lux pointed out, you just don't come out of the street with a gaping asshole to take a gargantuan cock up your ass; as my other gonzo sex guru blogger colleague Renegade Evolution points out, anal scenes require much preparation and a lot of lube prior to the grand act. If people saw the prep that anal sexperts put in to prepare, then maybe they would appreciate the act...and maybe exercise it a bit more safely.

But then again, the fact that not all porn performers do anal, or that most performers might even like anal in their own personal sex lives (What...you mean that porn performers HAVE private sex lives that are different than that they show on screen or on the Internet??? No shit, Sherlock!!!) might not permeate through the thick skulls of MLNP. No shit there, either.



This is one that I will give them...the positions and angles used in porn usually don't have much relation to how most civilian folk (civilian in this case being non-performers) really do sex at home). On the other hand, however, there is a reason why most porn uses those seemingly impossible positions and such "deep insider" closeups: it's to further arouse the viewer by showing that there really is sex going on there. There is a place, though, for those who want to see less gynocological shots and more "human interaction"....it's called "softcore erotica". Is that any more "real" than hardcore is assumed to be???

And, are the folk there that dense that they think that the only shots that exist in porn are the close up dick-in-pussy or dick-in-ass or drive-dick-down-throat shots?? Sometimes, they do happen to show the woman's face once in a while....even in those noted facials you decry.



OK...not everybody likes spitting and gagging and lots and lots of saliva. On the other hand...lube isn't quite edible, and doesn't taste so good, so sometimes you have to go with the lube you have, not the lube you want to have. Plus, shoving a large dick down a woman's throat is liable to produce a lot of saliva...so does shoving a lot of lasagna down one's esophagus, too. Maybe not your cup of tea, but don't demonize those who might not be as squickish about it as you might be.



Really, now...do they really think that "real sex" should be about overhyped romantic bodice ripper novels where all the actors do is kiss and rub and whisper sweet nothings in each other's ear?? Do they actually assume that real people in the midst of sexual passion are going to scream as they come, "Oh, yes...oh, yes....make love to me....make me orgasm...I so love you....stumulate my clitty....pump my vagina hard....make me orgasm....ahhhhh...AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" Eeeeeeeeeee-yeah.

And...."abusive terms"??? Sez you??? A lot of women get really turned on by the words "bitch" and "whore" (hey, what happened to "slut" and "cunt"???) within the context of a sexual encounter....just because you might not doesn't mean that you have to hate on those who might.



Oh, brother....for people who claim to be representing women, they are sure blind to real women's needs. Surely they know that for a woman to react positively to having her pussy fingered, she must already be aroused by the person present. Trust me, a finger entering a dry pussy is NOT particularly arousing...and a unwanted finger invading same twat that's not prelubricated by already existing arousal can even get quite painful and dangerous. And who says that the finger has to be one of a man...or of another person??

And how mightily progressive -- more like stereotypical -- of them to promote the old saw about women wanting all-over-the-body sensations while men focused only on their dicks. As if men aren't just as capable of full body sensations. Or that they had just said (see point #2) that women can only really come with direct clitoral stimulation and aren't so sensitive to other points of sensation. One message, please.

And we reach the last panel, finally:


Again....nice stereotype, but a bit untrue, and not even representative of the majority of porn. Some viewers like gagging and deep throating, because of the thrill of seeing a woman taking a 10+-incher down her throat; it's the "WOW...did she actually do THAT!?!?!? KEWL!!!!!" kind of thing...similar to the woman taking the baseball bat up her butt or the cucumber or banana up her twat, or having 50 men blast their spooge all over her body. Once again, maybe not the preferred image that turns your crank, but hardly worth belaying the point of how supposedly "unreal" it is and how it's supposed to allegedly represent the one true message for all women.

All in all, these folk try to pretend through it all that they are not being judgmental, just passing out information comparing what they see as "porn sex" with what they think should be "real sex"; albeit with the disclaimer that they aren't imposing their preferred choices on everyone. The very fact that they name this site "Make Love, Not Porn", and the thinly veiled moral judgments that porn should more reflect their view of how "real people" act in the bedroom, tend to expose their biases quite openly. Apparently, "making love" should be a higher aim towards "real sex" than merely "fucking", which they think that "porn sex" represents so badly.

Well....I call bullshit on that, both as a sex pos thinker and as a human being who understands that love and lust are more like related cousins that work well with each other, but have their own independent dynamics rather than the fused, totally intertwined entity that these people assume it to have. You don't have to love the person you are fucking and sucking, any more than you have to fuck the person that you love. Yes, it is nice to have deep personal feelings for the ones you are so intimate with sexually, but we as human beings aren't wired to want to marry or permanently hook up with everyone we lust after; were that the case, there would be no masturbation or gay sex or even sexual desire.

Nothing wrong whatsoever with making love...and nothing wrong with just wanting to fuck and suck and lick and come, either. Porn no more threatens love than football threatens baseball, or comedy threatens drama, or the Internet threatens the existence of radio and television; humans are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Perhaps the folks of MakeLoveNotPorn.com should give the creators and viewers of porn a bit more credit for knowing the difference between fantasy and reality. Or, maybe...they should question whether their own beliefs are as much shrouded in their own fantasies as the porn they accuse of being not so "real".

The final image of the MLNP slideshow is supposed to make their point clear:


Reverse the positions there, and it seems to be a lot more true and real to me. But then again, I live in the real world.