Pink Slips - Everybody's Doin' It
Looking at porn, that is. Don’t even try to pretend I’m not talking about YOU.
Your parents did it, and their parents did it, and their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-great-great-great-great-grand-Biblical parents, all the way back to the beginning of recorded human history.
Ever since our monkey ancestors (shut up, you creationist eedjits: if you don’t believe in evolution, stop using your thumbs to text and masturbate) started making cave paintings of the dirty deed, humans have been creating visual depictions of all the interesting ways we can bone each other.
Why? I didn’t know, so I had to do some actual research for this post. Though it was much deeper research than I normally do. Much. Deeper. The things I do for you….
Hot Upper Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 years ago) cave paintings and carvings show an abiding fascination with the penis. Because most societies were (still are, hello!) patriarchal, the phallus was symbolic of power, control, fertility, social stability and continuity, signaling the dominance of male sexuality and the survival of the human race’s dependence on the male member’s – perkiness.
And what does a male member need to stay perky? Boobs, apparently. The 24,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf carves a straight line to a table at Hooter’s and your father’s crinkled Playboys. (Sorry, but it’s time you knew about that. As if you didn’t already.)
In second century B.C. India, the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana propagated sex as a path to spiritual enlightenment. At about the same time, the Moche people of ancient Peru painted sexual scenes on ceramic pottery. The aristocracy in 16th century Japan were fond of erotic woodblock prints, while at the same time, the Italian Renaissance produced a body of art and literature that reflected a culture of (uncircumcised) frank, open sexuality charged with political and gender power dynamics.
Apparently, our ancestors felt little or no shame about their bodies, or about their need for visual stimuli. We know that the ancient Greeks and Romans created public sculptures and frescos portraying hetero and homo sex, threesomes, fellatio and cunnilingus. The doomed city of Pompeii incorporated the erect penis into their everyday art with domestic paintings, statues and bowls illustrating eager youths and maidens frolicking with reckless abandon. But they’re all dead now. Coincidence?
Today, of course, we have instant access millions of erotic images on the Internets. Just Google “sex” and take a few years to browse over half a billion results. And that’s just in English.
Forbes.com cites sources that estimate the domestic porn market is worth anywhere from $2.6 to $14 billion in annual sales – somewhere between the GDP of Brazil and the United States.
I’ll leave the debate over the social consequences of easily available porn to another post. I just wanted to prime the pump… so to speak.
Post your reply to this question: How old were you when you first saw a pornographic image, and how did you feel about it?
Today’s Sexy Submission: Whew, that was a lot of hyperlinks. Have you noticed that they don’t all point to Wikipedia? I do some work for you people. I hope you appreciate it. Especially when I find stuff like this.
So, we know everybody is doing it, but what are you recommending? Maybe I should have asked this on the last column!
Where should we be going to find the good stuff? Yes, 2012, it is readily available, and there is plenty of data, but where shall we go????? And what shall we do with it? How do we apply it in a relationship?
BTW - my Dad never had playboy, so I had to find other ways, but being the resourceful guy I am, it really wasn't too hard.......well, maybe it was hard at times, very hard....
Sweet Reader,
I recommend that you employ your own resourcefulness and your InterWebs browser to find the "good stuff." These days, there's a website, blog, portal, link, subscription or webcam for any prediliction, kink, fetish, obsession or mania you dare to entertain. If your thing is polka-dotted ponies eating peanut butter, somewhere there's someone getting off to it and hoping to share with you.
As for the applications of porn to a _relationship_, Pink Slips will have to save that for another post.
For all of you who think today's internet pornography is akin to Dad's Playboy or movies like "Behind the Green Door" or "Deep Throat," think again.
Read Pamela Paul's book: Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families. I am not a prude and neither is Pamela Paul, but research on today's pornography, its violence, its easy access and its objectification of women and men is sobering for someone who viewed and read Playboy and Penthouse regularly at one point in my life.
I urge all of you to rethink your assumption that pornography is harmless/ progressive/ empowering to women and read a description of or look at today's offerings.
There us a vast difference between sexuality and its artistic representation, erotica and what is on the internet today.
Sexual representations in caves, the kama sutra and elsewhere are a far cry from what Pamela Paul describes as the
content of one porn site: "Viewers are 'educated' as to how multiple men can anally penetrate a woman and then force her to drink the ejaculated semen from her own anus." I am almost puking as I write this.
This bears no relation to erotica or Playboy. This is what is out there at the click of a mouse today. While it may seem extreme, Pamela Paul writes of the increasing content of multiple men on women and the depiction of the use of force. Teenagers who have not had a sexual relationship come to understand that this violence and anal sex oriented porn content is common and that women love it--that's how it is depicted.
I have gone on too long, but you struck a sensitive chord.
Sweet Reader,
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response. We're lucky to live in a society that enables -- and expects -- us to self-regulate consumption of any product, whether it's Big Macs, staplers or porn. I get to choose where I click and what I read. No one forces me to consume violent, degrading or shocking material. And if Pamela Paul's defense for writing a phrase such as "how multiple men can anally penetrate a woman..." is that she's not writing porn, she's writing ABOUT porn, how does she know some reader won't turn the image created by her words to his or her own erotic ends?
Excellent Article. I remember dipping into Dad's monthly addition to playboy during my teen years.
You should write something about the growing trend of people using webcam's, most of the time with complete strangers.
Cheers
Sweet Reader,
Doesn't Playboy seem so tame and even artful compared to the full-on, unsubtle raunch that seems to have become the standard for porn? Ah, for the good old days when we objectified women without having to fill their every orifice simultaneously.
As one who demands at least a modicum of art in her porn, I've yet to have more than a cursory glance at the webcam phenomenon. What might you say to recommend it?