Ever since hearing you say on your podcast that all men use porn, I have had a burning question: What about us women? If all men get a pass to have this whole other sex life, which is (mostly) external to their partnerships and is sexually satisfying, then all women should have a pass as well. Ideally, it would be a pass to enjoy something universally arousing to all women, something that would sexually satisfy us, but it wouldn’t be something that turns most men on, perhaps it might even repulse them. If there were something that met my criteria, I wonder how it would play out in our relationships? Also, I am not sure what it could be, as women are a little bit more complicated.
Desires Erotic Balance
Something women enjoy but men do not… something erotic… something that repulses most men…
Cupcakes?
The now-ubiquitous cupcake isn’t explicitly sexual, I realize, but our culture does encourage people—women in particular—to sublimate their erotic desires by stuffing their faces with food. And most of those squat, round, and pink-frosted things look, to my jaded eyes, like so many squat little cocks, DEB, so many growers-not-showers with pink sprinkles, and most of those cupcocks are inhaled by women. So, cupcakes.
But if cupcakes don’t do it for you, DEB, then how about a free pass to enjoy, eyedunno, maybe porn?
“We’re actually in the middle of a porn-for-women revolution as millions—yes, millions—of women are loudly, even proudly, proclaiming their interest in porn,” says Violet Blue, author, blogger, activist, and tireless foe of antiporn boneheads everywhere. If you were reading Blue’s blog—www.tinynibbles.com—you would know that one out of every three consumers of internet porn are female, according to a Nielsen NetRatings report released in 2007.
“What’s interesting isn’t just the growing number of women using porn,” says Blue, “it’s that they’re doing exactly what DEB suggests. It’s part of their own private sex lives that are mostly external to their relationships.”
What women have lacked up to now is the same “free pass” men enjoy.
“Guys are encouraged to have this other sex life with porn,” says Blue, “that’s seen as normal and healthy. But despite the numbers, our culture is having a hard time admitting that women like porn. Antiporn feminists ignore the female viewer. The only people, besides Oprah, acknowledging the female viewer are the antiporn Christians who see it (and female masturbation) as a disease they can cure!”
Blue directs female porn consumers to Our Porn, Ourselves (www.ourpornourselves.org).
“On OPO, women are talking about liking all kinds of porn, even stuff that goes too far for some guys,” says Blue. “Women are making each other feel comfortable about their newfound access to porn, openly having their desire to watch sex (and jack off to it) validated the same way that guys do.”
I am a man who has been in an open marriage for 10 years. My wife dates men on her own, and I get to enjoy the occasional threesome with her and one of her partners. (We had no luck dating women or couples.) The problem is, she is clearly more interested in “her” dates than in “ours,” probably because the hotter guys are more interested in her alone than in us together. My wife is GGG, but it is hard for her to persuasively feign interest in the guys who are interested in us both. And it is frankly depressing to watch her go through the motions with one of “ours.”
Does being GGG require her to be a good actress, or does it require me to pretend that I believe her when she claims she enjoys the three-ways we have together?
Is This A Silly Problem?
This isn’t a silly problem. You’re not happy, which means your relationship isn’t working, which means it’s time to renegotiate terms: Tell the wife to stop fucking other people for a while. (And, yes, you should have the authority to do that—both partners in an open relationship should be able to call a time-out.) If your wife balks, concede that you’re asking her to pass up on some opportunities for hot sex. Then remind her that you’re the guy she married, that you’re the guy she’s hoping will stick around once hot guys aren’t lining up to get in her pants anymore, and that there will still be hot guys out there who want to fuck a year from now.
While you’re not fucking other people, fuck each other, fuck a lot, work to reestablish your sexual connection.
Then when you’re ready to start fucking other people again—and you’re not ready until you’re both ready—your wife should agree that over the next year she will fuck only guys who are interested in fucking you both. That’s going to mean passing up on some hot guys who are only into her, of course, but that’s a sacrifice she should be willing to make in order to save her marriage. It also means that she’ll have to work harder to find hot guys who are into you both—do whatever you can to help—but she’s likelier to make that extra effort if it’s the only way she gets to fuck a hot guy who isn’t her husband.
Hopefully by the time your three-way-or-the-highway year is up, ITASP, you’ll have a few regular thirds on deck—hot guys who are into you both, guys your wife won’t have to pretend with—and then she can do some solo adventuring without shredding your self-esteem in the process.
What is your favorite kink? What fucked-up thing does Dan Savage get up to?
Nosy Reader
My kinks aren’t interesting, NR, and my marriage vows specifically forbid me from disclosing that sort of information.
Here’s something interesting: “A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew,” the Guardian reported last week. After the dude “introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship,” the two “had consensual sex in a nearby building.” The woman went to the cops to report that she had been raped only after she learned that the man wasn’t Jewish.
Now I don’t think there’s anything wrong with fucking the shit out of a guy you’ve only just met (that’s how I met my husband), but I gotta say: When we have consensual sex with strangers—when we go to “a nearby building” with someone we’ve only just met—we’re not just taking a chance on a person we know very little about. We’re taking a chance on our own bullshit detectors. And no one’s bullshit detectors are 100 percent accurate. So someone who can’t bear the thought of accidentally fucking an Arab or a Republican or a married man or a guy who makes less than $250,000 a year really has no business fucking strangers. That person owes it to himself/herself to get to know people a bit better before visiting any nearby buildings with them.
Not because it’s okay to lie. But because people do lie.
I’ll never think of cupcakes in the same way again…
For ITASP–I’d also consider the idea that the wife likes the men who are into fucking her because it’s not the hot sex she likes, but the ego boost. So when a guy is into the threesome and not just her, she doesn’t get the rush. Sounds like she could be getting off on flattery. I’ve known quite a few women who are guilty of just that.
The cupcake letter is very interesting because this very morning as I was driving to work, one of the local radio station dee-jays brought up the idea that romantic comedies are to women what porn is to men. The argument he made (and that the two other males agreed with) was that porn gives men unrealistic expectations about sex, while rom-coms give women unrealistic expectations about relationships. Being a women, this completely infuriated me. I would take a porn over a rom-com anyday, but that isn’t even the point – anyone who looks at porn and thinks that’s what sex will always be like is an idiot. And anyone who watches a romantic comedy and thinks that’s what their relationship will be like is an idiot – male or female! When are we going to drop these gender stereotypes and just let people be people?
Oh boy, here comes another debate between anti-porn and pro-porn women for the ‘right’ to irrefutably characterize the female gender. But the debate will be weighted unfairly, as most pro-porn women will be occupied with the link above.
Ahh, that was a bit to cheeky. Good column as usual. Love hearing from Violet Blue. And the link above is more educational than explicit; she is trying to challenge the same tired old anti-porn mantras with modern facts.
Universally arousing to women, repulses most men = Romance Novels.
You already have societal permission to indulge, Dan’s permission is just icing. (so to speak)
First intelligent response I’ve heard so far concerning the Arab “rapist”. Thanks for that!
And as for porn for us ladies — I’m 24 and have been enjoying it since I was about 12 (all of it guy-on-guy, by the way). And every girl I know has dabbled in it or steadily consumed it since adolescence as well. The fact that women as a whole still think it’s odd or even funnier, rebellious, need to wake the fuck up. And porn in the form of the written word counts too, girls — just because our imagination is a little more vivid doesn’t get us off the hook.
Ugh, forget the romance novels and go for the erotica! I don’t really dig seeing strangers have sex, but I have been happily reading steamy steamy stories since I was a teen — and writing them too. There are a million places to go online, and plenty of other women who’d also rather read sex than watch sex.
Haven’t there been some studies about how many women read erotica rather than watch porn? I personally know of one women *ahem* who started reading a filthy sex advice column when she was 12 in order to get off, and then would read all the x-matches afterwards to see if there were any local people into the disgusting kinks mentioned in said column.
I wonder how many Savage Love readers are masterbating to Savage Love. And does that creep Dan out, or make him happy?
Romance novels? Arousing? Maybe Kushiel’s Dart, if that even counts. (I don’t really think it does, personally; it has a solid, interesting, and tightly woven plot.) But me and every female friend that I’ve talked to about romance novels just laughs at them.
More likely? Yaoi fanfiction. It’s by no means universal, but in my friendship groups, that’s what women turn to, and it repulses most men.
But it’s porn, too, so maybe that rules it out?
@9 Romance novels (Danielle Steele) … that was exactly what I thought. Generally women like them, men turn their noses up at it. And it satisfies a sexual / romantic desire in women.
I thought everyone loved porn. I love porn. Also erotica, and cupcakes. I’ve never masturbated to Savage Love though.
That woman humiliated Jewish women everywhere. She cannot be all that religious if she is having premarital sex with a stranger. I understand having a preference for fellow Jews, but accusing someone of rape is not a joke, and in this case, complete bullshit.
I have a hard time believing one out of every three customers of online porn is female. And even if that is true, I’d like to see the data on hours/dollars spent. I think it still skews hugely male.
@Learned Hand: Romance novels?!? Eew…
@Dan: Cupcakes, mmmm…but a bit fattening in excess.
@namae natne iranai: um, excuse me while I google Yaoi non-fiction…
Can’t there be shades of gray to the whole porn thing? I’m a feminist. I am by no means anti-porn. But I do feel like SOME porn is problematic, in the way it creates unrealistic expectations of female beauty (anal bleaching and labiaplasty anyone?) and how a lot of straight porn seems to hinge on the objectification of women. Once a clip leans towards the more misogynistic side, it ceases to be hot to me, but I’m not trying to say that people aroused by that kind of thing are gross. I’m saying that there are teenagers, male and female, whose ideas and expectations about sex, and their roles in sex, develop while watching porn; some of them don’t have awesome parents or good sex ed or access to this column, making porn a pretty big influence. And we can’t pretend we don’t live in a society that degrades women. Porn is not the cause, but maybe deeply misogynistic porn is both the result of a woman-hating culture and one of the things that helps to perpetuate it? Maybe that will change as the number of women admitting to watching porn increases. It’s complicated. Dear porn lovers and/or feminists: just think it over.
@12 It’s not really about religion. It’s pretty much like a white woman who had sex with a black guy in Jim Crow era Alabama and then complained she was raped out of lover’s remorse (like buyer’s remorse for fucking). She is a member of the privileged class, made a regrettable sexual decision, and now is calling “backsies” and if a pleb gets his life ruined, who cares? He’s just an Arab, anyways.
Written word porn! Yes! Men (most, not all) like to look; women (most, not all) like to imagine. Rom-coms? Ick, and yawn! Cupcakes? Yum! Of course, my husband happens to love cupcakes!
Romance novels have plenty of sex, but I’ll take a nice naughty erotic short story any day. And yeah, I prefer my erotica, written or visual, to have a modicum of a plot. And for the sex to make sense in context. Yeah — I’m picky. I’m also old and set in my tastes. Sort of!
You’re obsessed with that Butch Bakery, aren’t you Dan?
I absolute believe that one third of porn consumers are women. I am one of them. The internet has provided a free pass for all of us who do…no having to enter a XXX shop on my own, dealing with creeping leering looks form strange men. Plus the variety and ease of access to one’s particular tastes is spectacular!
Waitaminute waitaminute waitaminute…
DEB’s request is totally off-base. Men (most men. I think.) don’t like porn because they desire some sort of “free pass” away from their partner, they like porn because they like having sex a lot… no, scratch that… they like to orgasm a lot. Porn isn’t some trick or deception men (most men) use to sneak away from their partner, they do it because they probably believe (and rightly so) that they would drive their partner crazy if they asked them to constantly do new shit to get them to orgasm quickly.
Porn for men is relief. Not some kind of pleasurable spa-massage vacation. They load it up, jerk off, and get on with the rest of their day.
Women, if they NEED to have something similar, should feel more than welcome to have a “free pass” on something that they really really want and that their partner does for them out of love but maybe doesn’t always love doing themselves. If that’s cupcakes, fine. If it’s porn, fine. If it’s a spa-massage day, fine. Whatever. But to imply that men have some “special privilege” in getting a free pass with porn and they want that special privilege too? I resent that. Having a super high sex drive is not always a huge benefit. In fact, for many people, it’s a huge detriment. Porn is the poor-man’s way of getting that “benefit” taken care of. It’s nothing to envy.
And… rant done.
I’m all for removing the whole society taboo of women being into porn. I think the problem isn’t women being into porn, though; I think it’s the fact that most porn seems to be aimed specifically toward men. I think I can probably count on one hand any porns I’ve seen that involve someone who looks like they enjoy going down on a woman. Juxtapose that to the number of facials I’ve seen, or blow job porn in general (not that I don’t immensely enjoy blow jobs in porn, but double standard? Yes), and I think one can see a pretty clear rift of intended audiences.
What an interesting continuation of the discussion about female arousal, which continues to be elusive (see Mary Roach’s book ‘Bonk’). Anyway, to throw in my two cents: I would agree with The Wild Sow @17 about the necessity of plot and context, which is missing from male-centred porn, and thus I’d recommend Second Life. I don’t know why Second Life has never been mentioned before, (perhaps we are all a bit shy about letting our geek show?) but I have found it to good solution for discovering and playing out one’s fantasies, whilst avoiding the risks of real life. It sure saved my marriage. Although, like porn and other forms of sex that go beyond what you and your partner(s) have agreed, I think it is important to discuss, reassure and get a pass.
As for the Israeli woman who fucked an Arab man posing as a Jew and then blamed him for rape:
First, it should be noted that they’ve only spoke for 10 to 15 minutes before proceeding to a “nearby building”. And just for the record, they actually did it on the roof!!! Which is somewhat funny considering how King David, living in the same city thousands of years ago, spotted an attractive woman “washing on the roof” one evening (from the biblical text it’s hard to understand whether she was washing her clothes or her body, and I read the original text few times as a horny native speaker teenager). He then sent her husband to the front line to be killed in the battlefield just so that he can fuck her. Which he actually did.
As for the poor Arab guy, he got 18 (yes, that’s EIGHTEEN!!!) months of jail for this ridiculous charge, though it should be noted that him and his lawyer accepted a “plea bargain”.
All agree he had a lousy lawyer, but that can also point to a judiciary system that can intimidate and discourage Arabs, as I’m sure some of you will point to and unfortunately rightly so (Hi Pamela, how are things these days?)
It should be also noted that most Israelis commenting about this obviously-ridiculous sentence sided with the guy.
Let’s just hope that Arabs and Jews living throughout the Holy land will now concentrate on fucking and pleasing each other in the sexual context only, and that words like “shooting” and “blowing” will get a new, positive meaning in the Middle East and all over the world. Amen!!!
Characterizing porn as “this whole other sex life, which is (mostly) external to their partnerships and is sexually satisfying,” is bullshit. What porn is, is an aid to arousal and stimulation. If porn is “this whole other sex life,” then so is a vibrator.
I like my porn to have just enough plot to get to the sex.
And generally prefer gay porn, since that focuses on the man. Most straight porn focuses on the woman. Being a straight woman, I’m not interested in watching another woman.
Show me the cock! Stiff, please. Can’t believe how many I’ve seen where both guys were like cooked pasta. >
Could ya use the phrase “preserve the marriage” rather than “save the marriage”? The latter indicates that it is always in peril. I hate to think of it that way.
@5 Exhibit A: Twilight
But I think that only works for preteen girls.
Twilight is vile.
I used to go to Literotica for written porn, but I got so tired of sifting through really dreadful writing, and the lack of “tags”. I mean really is it too much to ask for girl/girl without the fear of incest???? I do not think so!
@28:
Try StoriesOnline. The quality of writing is much better.
Must it be either porn or Erotica/fanfic? To me they’re very different kinds of turn-on.
If I just feel like some quick solo release, sure, I go online and look for some porn, preferably anal (doesn’t matter much which gender the ass belongs to, as long as some nice cock is working it) to masturbate to.
If otoh I feel like making a nice steamy evening out of it, with hubby’s participation, I find myself something hot and written that helps me really get in the mood.
Women, we’re complicated, I know. We want it all :).
I’m a feminist who’s not into porn at all and never watches it, but I’m certainly not an anti-porn crusader. I have no moral objection to porn and don’t begrudge anyone their enjoyment of it, including my husband — it’s just not my thing. When I whack off, I just use my imagination.
Am I weird?
I do not think it is that weird. As it has been mentioned a lot of porn is just geared towards the male audience. Most of them do not require a “lead up” to get to the sex and more often than not women prefer it.
I typically take what I’ve read and use it later if I like the story.
Thanks for clarifying why the Israeli girl crying rape is absolutely appalling under those circumstances. Never mind the inherent racism. At the risk of sounding judgmental the judge’s statement on the case seems wrong too. “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have co-operated. The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls.” We don’t care what she thought. She didn’t bloody ask. This was a horny girl who saw a hot guy, felt free enough to fuck him there and then (oh, yeah, don’t forget to praise israel for giving its women such freedom and being the ONLY democracy in the middle east!) but then gets pissed off and squirmy because somehow she finds out he’s an arab after the fact. Now the guy has been charged with something called “rape by deception” and the only reason he got caught is because he called her up and wondered if she wanted to be “raped” again. Oh my lord. 18 months in prison for having a quickie.
Romance novels? Blech. Cupcakes? Meh. I like porn as much as the next porn-using person (of any gender).
@Freche_Lola: Amen to Kushiel’s Dart as the rare exception…hot, hot, HOT!
@avast2006 and Urgutha: I agree…sometimes hard to sift through the straight porn that seems to be made for 20-something frat boys to hoot over with their friends during their “we’re so straight we like to get boners together watching those dirty sluts”. The gay porn has more of what I like…hot guys doing hot stuff.
@coyote69: It’s not a men/women thing…it’s a variability of human traits thing. Some PEOPLE have really high sex drives and porn/jacking off is a good way to release some tension/energy. It’s saved my sanity in libido-mismatched relationships and now that I’m with a guy who runs at my speed, we’re BOTH happy as pigs in mud doing it all the damn time…and watching porn together and separately.
I’m one of those tedious guys who claim not to use porn. But then I’d get the derision, I must be a liar, like claiming not to masturbate (which, yes, I do). FWIW, I generate the necessary fantasy in my head.
Talking of lies, now that the precedent has been set for rape by lying about things beforehand, how’s about a guy prosecuting for rape, for entrapment to marriage – the woman pretended to be keen on sex, until the ring was on the finger. Or fraudulently claimed that he was the father of her kid. Must be rape, n’est pas?
I have this vision of a dystopian world where, prior to the dread act of intercourse, forms in triplicate have to be signed and witnessed by a costly team of lawyers, backed by DNA samples, forensic and medical tests, binding pre-nuptial agreements and of course, continuing witness during the act itself to ensure that it continued to be consensual. Perhaps it’s not a vision but reality.
ITASP: This is a situation where not only are the terms of the agreement unequal, but the practical aspects of fulfilling those terms makes the inequality way worse.
On her end of the agreement, she gets to go find and have sex partners who are focused on her. On your end of the agreement, you get to have — you don’t get to find, you only get what she brings you — sex partners who are either focused on HER, not you, or the ones that are interested in both of you together turn her off, which spoils the mood. Here it is, your fantasy sex, and you don’t even get to be a primary participant. That is seriously fucked up.
Why is she free to seek sex outside the relationship without regard to you, but you only “get to enjoy the occasional threesome with her and one of her partners”? Why don’t you get to find sex partners on the same terms that she enjoys? Is it that threesomes really are what you want, and it’s just that the ones you are getting are mediocre? If not, your agreement is seriously unfair.
What is missing here is a sex partner who is focused on YOU. It’s clear that role isn’t going to be fulfilled any time soon by the guys that she brings home. (If at all. I can’t tell from your letter whether you are bi and the guys are into you, or if your threesomes are two men focusing on the woman.) That role is either going to have to be her, or it’s going to have to be another person of your choosing, independent of your wife, using the same freedom to choose that she herself enjoys. If she is not comfortable with you dating outside the marriage independently, she is going to have to stop doing it herself, and focus her attention on you.
@31: No. It’s just that people don’t tend to talk about how imagination oppresses their sex lives, so nobody is defensive about it.
Besides, if you’re using your imagination, that’s porn … in your head. (To me, pornography *tends* to be shorthand for videos, photos, etc., but generally it just means scenarios and ideas intended to curry sexy feelings.)
@37: Although I guess that broader definition is a little silly if the word includes the word for “image.” Oh well.
I always enjoy reading the Don but I do get a bit tired of “Please let me usher you out of the cage of old definitions of normativity into the cage of new definitions of normativity. As you transit, please be sure to enjoy your five seconds of actual freedom to be yourself.”
Stop with the generalizations and pronunciations of what’s ‘normal’, FTLOG. Anyone of any gender can like or not like porn. Or monogamy. Or anything else. And open marriages can work (only ever seen it not working myself, but remain willing to take it on theory) but they tend to come with more baggage than a Samsonite factory and more drama than Italian opera.
“…one out of every three consumers of internet porn IS female…” Is the editing staff on holiday? Sheesh.
If there was more porn where the woman looked like she was REALLY enjoying it and was having a GENUINE orgasm, I’d be much more interested.
And I agree with above comments about the porn featuring guys with REALLY stiff cocks! Limp noodles are not going to do much for women – we want to see that hard cock and imagine how it feels thrusting inside. A medium sized hard cock is much better for me than a huge squishy one.
Thank heavens for the news item about the Jew/Arab rape case; it’s the only thing mentioned in this week’s column that isn’t insanely uninteresting and pointless.
Oh, and #23? That couldn’t have happened; David was only interested in boning Jonathan, whom he met on boychick.net.
Jews are the new Nazis with their racial apartheid laws.
No Israel = Know Peace
If we’re looking for something for straight women that repulses most straight men, I’d have to go with /slash fanfic. Written by straight-identifying women, it refashions (weird choice of word) male pop culture icons into lovers–think Harry Potter/Malfoy, Kirk/Spock. While I’ve only sampled a little of it, it’s XXX erotica, as in it has graphic sex preceded by an elaborate emotional build-up–i.e. the characters slowly realizing they’re in love is “the” erotic trip switch. I don’t see many straight dudes being into that–seems to me it primes feminine longing as desire, esp. romantic narratives of over-coming obstacles.
In my own life, I’ve been sorry to discover over and over that too many straight men see toys as a threat. Such a turn-off.
In the cases of toys and porn, I wish both straight men and women, respectively, would confront their insecurities. Being turned on by openness myself, I lose interest almost immediately when I hear any declarations of “real men don’t do that” or “good women don’t like that.” Makes me feel isolated and not at all horny.
Count me in as yet another woman who likes her porn to be verbal rather than visual. I don’t know why I have this preference, but I don’t think it’s because I suffer from the stereotypical feminine thirst for romance or some prudish aversion to “real” pornography. Language just gets me going in a way that pictures generally don’t.
GrammarSnot – at least be right if you’re going to correct someone/something.
One (blah blah blah) IS Female.
One is the subject, not consumers jackass.
DEB is an idiot.
“If all men get a pass to have this whole other sex life, which is (mostly) external to their partnerships and is sexually satisfying”
Porn is a means to an end. The end being an orgasm. Do you really think men would pass on real sex with a willing partner for porn instead?!? I mean really.
Porn is just a substitute until you can get your hands on the real thing. It’s hardly this entire separate relationship men (or women like me) are having on their own to the point of excluding their partners (and if it is then that silly DEB is called an addiction – and addictions are always cause for concern).
And DEB is also an idiot for the generalizations she makes about women not enjoying porn.
I watch porn. Lots of it. More than my husband because hey I like to get off. I don’t care about a plot, misogyny etc. It’s just a tool to get me off. So just about anything on say XVideos will do. And you know what else? Many of my girlfriends do the exact same thing.
Ugh. I’m not quite sure what it is but everything about DEBS letter + tone irritates the shit out of me. It’s not rocket science. People eat ice-cream because it’s yummy. People watch porn to have orgasms. C’est fini.
Add me to the 1/3 of women who watches and *le gasp* buys porn. I/we are a huge fans of Adam & Eve’s productions and it took us 6 different sessions to make it through Pirates!
On the other hand, when it comes to masturbation, I love to read/listen to romance novels (long commute) and have a dozen hentai novels I brought back from Japan that are kept near the toys. Something about the onomatopoeias… 🙂
@47: This pretty much said all I needed to know about DEB: “[W]omen are a little bit more complicated.” *facepalm* So grating and condescending.
romance literature is hot to women, because it taps into what’s turning us on, without showing us the details that turn us off.
Sure, i’ve tried watching porn. Too bad all of it sucks (ya including the stuff aimed at women. Fat chicks in their forties fucking sluggish looking balding chubby boring people. They look like my parents, ick). If I like the porn actress, I almost invariably hate the actor. If I like the act, the porn actress is making a stupid face and screaming like a stuck pig the entire time or wearing a onepiece hot pink leotard. You know what, I’m actually pretty happy with anything that happens as long as the guy is hot, but the guy is NEVER EVER HOT.
I have found ONE good porn in my life, ever. It’s Kenny Styles and Asa Akira. He’s hot, she’s hot, he looks into it when he’s doing things to turn her on, she looks pleased, etc. THATS ALL I WANT.
Anyway, that’s why women turn to romance literature (or gay porn, where you can actually sort porn to look for hot guys). Romance literature/fanfics taps into all the mental hottness of “Ohhh, the temptation! I must resist! Nay I am seduced” and leaves your imagination to fill in the sexy details, without some ugly actor ruining it for you.
@20: I can’t believe no one has called you on this post yet. The suggestion that women don’t have high sex drives is ridiculous! Even more ridiculous is the suggestion that all men do.
The simple fact is this, and hold onto your hats because it might rock your preconceived gender notions: some women do want more sex than their male partners! For you to imply that all men have high sex drives is perpetuating a myth that has left more than a few highly-sexual women feeling downright duped.
@49 Totally agree!
@47 Actually, I’ve heard from more than a few women about their male partner turning down sex in favour of porn. Usually there were bigger issues involved — porn is easier, the male partner is less attracted to female partner after a baby or weight gain, male partner feels inadequate, etc — but the fact is that some men turn to porn because real sex is too “difficult”.
It’s not a bad thing about the porn industry, and I’m certainly not busting on that. I’m all in favour of porn, for people who like to watch it, and I read erotica myself.
It’s just that I think we all really need to dispel some of the myths we have about porn and how it fulfills sexual needs (women don’t like it, men prefer sex, men need porn because of a higher sex drive) in order to really get a clear view.
Thanks a lot for the cupcake reference. I was about to make a huge batch for my grandma’s 100th birthday. Now I get to have horrific images your cupcocks stuck in my brain while I’m making cupcakes for my nana. I might also be making a batch for my pregnant sister-in-law’s shower. I would rather read about filching ATM sex than hear you refer to cupcakes as cupcocks. Not everything has freudian meaning, unless you go out of your way to look for it. Thanks, again, Dan. Thanks…..AGAIN.
I mostly read porn, but I watch porn too. Sometimes both. I’ll read if I want a nice buildup to a great orgasm, or I’ll watch if I want to have an orgasm NOW (these never seem to be quite as satisfying, though). Sometimes I’ll read and get off and then watch right after to get off again. The problem with a lot of porn I watch is that the people in it look bored or the guy is silent while the woman makes a lot of noise. I don’t have a problem with women making noise, but a lot of it sounds like it’s done just to please the guy. Anyway, I want to hear the guy being satisfied! It’s hard to sift through a lot of videos which turn me off to get to the good stuff where both people are genuinely enjoying having sex.
Women should demand more porn that we like. It’s good that we’re talking about it more openly now. Hopefully it will become more mainstream.
I agree with 47 (except the “DEB is an idiot,” part. She’s not an idiot–I think she’s mostly trying to be cute.) I am one of those women who enjoys porn that’s more hardcore than the porn enjoyed by her boyfriend. He likes mostly posed nude stills of women with big tits and the occasional blowjob clip. I like to watch women getting fucked, preferrably by multiple men at one time. Also, I’m not a fan of storyline. I don’t want romance. I want to see people fucking.
I once asked my boyfriend about his “relationship” with porn. He said it’s just about wanting to get himself off in a completely selfish way. You know what? I can respect that. You know what else? We have plenty of sex, and I have no cause for complaint. I’d love to have more sex, but christ–we have jobs and other stuff to do. I don’t feel that porn is in any way a hinderance to our relationship. In fact, as me and a couple of gay male friends were discussing last night, I think it helps. I’ve seen it said that porn helps monogamous men stay that way. It gives them the opportunity to engage in a sex act while looking at another woman, providing them with something that they want while keeping their promise to be faithful. I can buy that argument. My gay male friends who are in monogamous relationships concurred.
“…probably because the hotter guys are more interested in her alone than in us together. My wife is GGG, but it is hard for her to persuasively feign interest in the guys who are interested in us both.”
Wait, I think this was overlooked. He is pissed because the men his wife brings home are not interested in sex with him and the guys who are interested in him do not interest his wife. It sounds like he needs to get out and date some men on his own instead of expecting his wife to bring them home for threesomes.
Not sure if another commenter mentioned this, but gay porn is highly enjoyable to some women and highly not enjoyable to their men. So there’s that. I second the yaoi fic and other forms of Japanese boy/boy animated porn. Now, if I find a man who can enjoy these things WITH me, I’m gonna marry that man.
A sex positive shoutout to all the married woman at #47-54 on the blogue! I too am a married man and my wife has inspected the porn I purchased for myself on Dvd. After talking to her about the details after the fact she has masturbated to it even though it’s not exactly her type. She figured he spent “our” money on it I better get something out of it! She has, and she likes big black porn studs in action! American women have been shown to be aroused by videos of ordinary naked women doing arobic type excercises. This is from a contemperary US psycho-sexual human studies program.
For Deb, how about Erotica? Men tend to be less interested in it than women.
Erotica? That was Madonna’s most underrated album!
For women who find mainstream porn (and womens’ magazines!) boring – I recommend having a look at Filament Magazine (http://www.filamentmagazine.com/). It’s published by a woman in the UK who got sick of how [a] most porn marketed to women was just repackaged gay porn, and [b] most womens’ magazines were nothing but catalogs for beauty products, clothes, and celebrity gossip. Filament is founded on the idea that women can enjoy perving on hot men while still having brains: the photo spreads are intentionally shot for what they call “the female gaze”, and there are well-researched and interesting articles on subjects ranging from the limits of social tolerance to the history of cocaine to the mounting popularity of boylesque. Excellent stuff, I highly recommend it.
Puh-leez, Dan. You like cupcakes. I know you do. You spoke lustfully of a cupcake you had pictured on your desk.
Thank god somebody called DEB an idiot. Does she even know what porn is and is for? “Free pass on external activities” . . . bitch. Are you seriously that insecure?
I’m going to go drown my anger in a cupcake.
First off: if you think of cupcakes as mini-cocks, you check these out: http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/vagina-cup…
I think it is pretty obvious in reading this thread that–guess what?–different people are aroused by different things and different people use whatever constitutes “porn” to them in different ways. PEOPLE, not men, not women.
I am a woman who happens to find visual, pictorial hardcore porn rather repulsive, but am a huge reader (and writer) of erotica.
I am linguistically oriented, and like dirty talk during sex, and often when I masturbate I replay a particular evocative phrase from something I’ve just read.
Although I don’t like porn, I don’t care if the man in my life watches/uses it, but if we’re using it together it can be tricky because so much of it actually puts me off sex. So I assume that he watches it without me, which is fine; why would I want to begrudge him pleasure?
Sometimes I share the erotica, but it’s generally a solo act for me. However, occasionally I think about/visualize some of the scenarios (and the words themselves) I find especially hot while having sex to get me to orgasm. I assume that sometimes my partner does the same, using mental images of real images he’s already masturbated to.
Lastly, please do not assume that all women like or are turned on by either romance novels or romantic comedies. Some of us really hate both of them.
@53: Yes. Exactly. My main complaint is that actors in pornos often look like they got hit in the face by a truck.
And my boyfriend has said to me that he definitely has more still images than videos, and the videos tend to be short, selected clips, and not just because he wants to skip plot filler.
It’s much easier for him to find something that works overall for him when it stays simple. The more factors you throw in — like in porn film — the more likely there’s going to be something that kills his buzz.
I mean, combine the facts (1) I’d never pay for porn, (2) lots of porn sites are virus cities, and (3) there’s too much crap or stuff that may actually be well done but isn’t my taste, and ready-made porn just isn’t a common habit for me either. I still like it, but there’s just very little that I can find and like.
If the religions were reversed in an Islamic country he would be torn to pieces by a mob and she would probably be flogged.
@47 Unfortunately there are lots of men who would rather jerk off to porn than have sex with their partners. Porn widows are a big and growing segment of the population.
porn for women: romance novels? yaoi?
i new this little old lady once with an entire room stacked floor to ceiling with trashy romance novels on a third grade reading level.
@66: “Porn widows are a big and growing segment of the population.”
We should lobby city hall to get them reduced bus fare!
Eva @51,
I’m not suggesting all men have higher sex drives than women or that all men want it more than women. If a woman (in a straight relationship) had a higher sex drive and watched porn to relieve herself and her guy partner wrote in complaining that HE wanted a free pass too, I’d have said the same thing but with the genders reversed. My only real point was that porn is just a relief valve, not some kind of fantasy second life that DEB is envious of.
@62 by way of 47: I don’t think it’s cool to call DEB an “idiot” because she’s got some hangups about porn. It’s just a flat out insult, and it does nothing to illustrate where a lot of women get off base when it comes to their men looking at porn.
My boyfriend looking at porn doesn’t a) mean he’s going to cheat on me, or b) he finds me unattractive. I think some women believe that one or both of these things are true when it comes to their partners looking at porn. For whatever reason, they can’t imagine someone not bonding with their source of stimulation, so they see an emotional connection that just isn’t there. Meanwhile, a lot of men just see porn as a low-hassle way of getting off, which has already been pointed out. When I pointed out to my boyfriend that I understood that neither a nor b were true, he said, “THANK YOU!” with relief about the fact that he’s finally found a woman who didn’t view his porn through her own completely different perspective–even though my own personal perspective is a lot like his.
I’m sure none of this is new, but it may be a perspective that’s new for DEB. Women are surrounded by the message that they should worry about their partners’ sexual appetites and therefore try to control them out of fear instead of trying to be more open and understanding of the different ways in which people view sex. Now I’m gonna go have a cupcake because I’m at work and can’t look at porn.
I suddenly have the urge to shove my dick in a cupcake.
Porn widows are a big and growing segment of the population.
Bullshit. If anyone is “widowed” by porn, it’s because their relationship is already dysfunctional. There might be some compulsive porn users that are exceptions, but generally porn is consumed as a side dish, not the main course, in healthy relationships.
@#13: Chone: You don’t buy that 1/3 of people watching porn are women? Where are your studies? Your numbers? What supports your opinion? Dan cites his sources, but you’ll keep your opinion based on how you feel. Nobody cares how you feel…. give numbers to back yourself up, or your opinion is worthless.
What language, religion, and porn have in common is that they are representational.
– words are not interchangeable with what they represent
– religions are established to form a vocabulary for our experiences; what we consider authentic religions have references to their own deadness ie the commandment against idolatry in the Abrahamic religions, the portrayal of the universe as a theater in religions like Hinduism, and things like the koan in the eastern religions
-porn establishes a vocabulary for arousal that refers to its own deadness in the form of crappy scripting and acting
Because of this deadness, porn can’t constitute a “pass to have this whole other sex life” any more than Christianity can enforce a literal rapture. At its core, porn provides men a vocabulary for female lust. Sex is, after all, interactive, so for a man to live without a vocabulary of a partner’s lust is to live without a sexual identity. Which in the 21st century still means interacting in society without a gender role. (Otherwise our children would be enforcing their own masculinity and femininity by their abstinence.)
Women don’t need a vocabulary for male lust, because the penis they are working with is either erect or it isn’t. Or even just the sexual suspicion women go through men don’t have to go through. And going by some of the studies Dan cites, women experience arousal as an inversion of how men experience it, so there is no default benefit of such a vocabulary of arousal for women. Porn for women is paradoxical.
The closest analogy to porn for women seems to be a guy who refuses to look at porn. Maybe this explains the initial attraction women with a healthy appetite for sex will hold out for men disinterested in sex. Someone should do a study of normal men in heterosexual relationships, have half of them live without porn for 6 months or a year, and see what the increase is in their partner’s interest in sex.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me.
@ Kylara7 it was actually the person after me who mentioned the Kushiel series, though I have read it and like it a lot. However I like it for the plot more than for the sex. To me it’s a good fantasy series in which sex is a large component rather than an erotic novel with a plot.
@#60 (roseneko): Thanks! That looks awesome. Signing myself up.
Is there any other woman friendly porn out there? I have been largely turned off by free porn sites on the internet and would love to be pointed in the right direction!
@ #74:
“The closest analogy to porn for women seems to be a guy who refuses to look at porn. Maybe this explains the initial attraction women with a healthy appetite for sex will hold out for men disinterested in sex”
What??
I am mystified.
I have to vote for adult fan-fiction as the female answer to video based porn. Regardless of the genre, it seems to be by far a female ‘thing’ and not enjoyed by most men.
To DEB, I’m going to go ahead and say look into yaoi.
I’m big into yaoi, and in many ways it is for me exactly what DEB described. Maybe you should look this up Dan, I’d love to see your take on yaoi. There’s even a convention for it, yaoi con in San Fran, and I’m talking rooms full of women screaming for cock and unabashedly discussing what they think is hot.
Yaoi is, for those who don’t know, basically an umbrella term in the English speaking word for Japanese comics centered on the relationship between gay guys. Unlike most porn, which focuses on boobs and pussy, yaoi is all guys, but it isn’t just drawn gay porn. It’s written by women for women, and although there is sex there’s also some plot, and a lot of emotions.
Personally, I think a lot of porn is gross or just boring. Yes people are having sex, but who cares. A lot of girls I’ve talked to say that what makes something interesting to them is the idea that these aren’t just bodies fucking, but people who care about each other. Tender kissing is just as erotic as sex acts, and in yaoi the shot of one guy getting a towel to wipe cum off his partner’s face while apologizing for cumming on his face like that is more interesting than the cum shot because it shows these two people care about each other, they’re human beings in a relationship.
Yaoi isn’t for everyone. It’s idealistic, and essentially romance with all the tropes attached to that genre. Except instead of a boring female heroine, you have another hot guy. It’s also a visual medium because it’s mainly available in the form of manga.
Now, I’m not a comic book person, which kept me from trying this stuff out for quite a while, but now I’m hooked. I have quite the collection of yaoi manga, do yaoi based rps online with other girls (not so much cybering as two girls writing erotic fiction together, this stuff is generally a good mix of plot and porn, and the rps read more like a romance novel than a chat as we aren’t playing as ourselves but writing characters. But it’s still hot, and turns the players on, but not in a lesbian way, because it’s very much an expression of I like boys!)
And that’s sort of what’s great about it. Because women aren’t supposed to say they like boys, not really, as in we’re not supposed to say that heaven forbid that they like cock. They’re supposed to say they like boys to fulfill a heteronormative role. We’re supposed to like guys, but not sex, women are supposed to want to get married and have kids, women are supposed to be sexy, be something that turns guys on, but not sexual because then you’re a slut. Slut bashing still exists as do gender inequalities in terms of sexual expression. Guys are pushed to lose their virginity’s and brag about it, but when a girl loses her virginity she still faces the risk of social stigma. Men get a free pass to watch porn, while a lot of women, even sexually active women, would never masturbate because it’s considered wrong somehow.
I like that yaoi was made by women for women and I like liking it, because it shows that it’s ok to be a woman, and be sexual. Guys can have their sexual fantasies in porn, and women can have ours. Because the way guys act in yaoi isn’t realistic behavior for gay men, or any men really, it’s idealized, it’s a female ideal of what is hot for guys and for porn.
Yeah, not all women are the same. Some men don’t like porn, and some women don’t like yaoi. Some because they see as too gay, and think that watching something with gay guys because guys are hot will somehow make them lesbians, while some say they want a female character to identify with. Some people just don’t like romance and don’t like the romance fluff that makes up most yaoi. Most gay guys I know don’t like yaoi for that reason, they say it’s a bunch of guys acting like girls and talking about their feelings during sex.
So it’s not for everyone, but it does fit the criteria of what DEB was asking for. Check out “Sensitive Pornograph.” if you can , it’s a classic.
@77: What you’re quoting from me was written very badly, but everyone here knows that every time Dan gets a request for help from some distressed woman trapped in a marriage with a guy who never had a strong sex drive in the first place, an angel gets his wings.
Women do not encourage men who ogle, because they aren’t attracted to men who ogle. They are attracted to men who don’t ogle. And who ogles less than a guy with a low sex-drive?
When men see a horny women, they get horny. How do women get horny? From watching someone attractive get horny? Not by default. We don’t even know. They scan a woman in a state of physical arousal, and she might not even know she’s what men normally consider horny.
According to various articles floating around, a man’s unavailability boosts his attractiveness to women. How attractive then is a man unavailable by default? A man unavailable by his own lack of a sex-drive?
If you have a more plausible explanation — speaking as a guy — we are standing-by to hear it. It will be twittered everywhere.
I was in a relationship where my boyfriend masturbated daily and occasionally watched porn while he did so (the other times, he did it in the shower to wake up in the morning). We had sex once or twice a month (his preference, not mine, I was horny as hell!). So it is definitely possible for some people to separate porn from sex, creating a very unhappy partner in my case.
And some advice that nobody has mentioned for ITASP: perhaps your wife has a cuckold fetish, as in she fantasizes about cuckolding YOU. Which could be why she’s not very into it when you’re involved. A compromise I’d like to suggest: she is allowed to have sex with guys like she is now, but you have to be able to watch. Maybe she could tie you up and make it seem like she’s forcing you to watch? It’s worth a try anyway 🙂
Oh, and! I’m female, and my favorite erotica are disturbed hypersexual novels with uncontrived BDSM acts in them. Like the Sleeping Beauty trilogy by Anne Rice, or the published works of the Marquis de Sade.
Romance novels have the right idea, but they don’t usually take the sex far enough to be interesting.
Thanks, CameoAmalthea,
your post was intelligent and informative, and although I don’t usually like comics or Manga, I’ll check out yaoi because your description was intriguing. And we’re back to straight women getting turned on by gay-themed porn–interesting.
I hate 99% of the porn I’ve seen, which has always been straight. The men are unattractive and silent, the women bother me for unknown reasons, and the contexts are stupid. But mostly, I just find that closeup of penis-in-mouth or penis-in-vagina leaves me cold. So I guess I’ll have to check out some gay porn, too, if only to see stiff cocks on hot-looking men.
But I suspect that gay porn won’t do much for me, either.
I’ve never seen porn–even when I’ve seen homemade stuff between real couples who really love each other–that accurately conveys the sense of DESIRE I find arousing. I do find it in well-written erotica, and even though I am a straight woman, I like gay and lesbian erotica as much as het stuff. As long as the need and passion is conveyed well, I “become” every character in the story.
@50/Caralain Check out Tristan Taormino’s “chemistry” series (I’ve only seen 1&2). Everyone is hot and everyone is into it. Its vaguely reality-esque as she got a bunch of porn stars who wanted to work together, stuck them in a house for a weekend and filmed it.
Super hot.
The female equivalent to porn is erotic romance novels. Men are more visually stimulated than women, whereas women need the emotional stimulation that comes with the passion described in romance novels. Women consume those things far more than men, who often find them sappy or silly.
Mike Leung:
You’re not making a logical connection between your statements that woman aren’t aroused by seeing a man get horny (and yes, they often are, if they think that the arousal is triggered by them; noting is more attractive than feeling desired) and the idea that woman want men who either ogle other women or are unavailable.
On what do you base this?
I once had a boyfriend who frankly lusted after every female we saw. But he turned me into the object of all that lust, and I was one happy camper. I loved the evidence of his libido.
Contrary to what you may believe from your obviously skewed reading of this column, women with high libidos don’t prefer men with low ones.
@47: “Porn is a means to an end. The end being an orgasm. Do you really think men would pass on real sex with a willing partner for porn instead?!? I mean really.”
Yes I do. Because sometimes you just want to get off and it’s too much work to go w/yr willing partner. You can take care of business in 5 minutes. Sometimes it’s just much much easier that way.
@45: YES! Language turns me on, too. When I wank-fantasize, I’m visualizing people doing stuff while a voiceover narrates it. True story.
@50: This is an excellent description of why some women don’t enjoy porn. I’m totally down with the idea of watching pretty people fuck (M/M, M/F, F/F, doesn’t really matter), but it’s difficult to find porn that’s to my liking. I’m fairly particular both with regards to who I find attractive and what acts I want to watch (me trying to get off to a woman giving a blow job is like most people trying to get off to a kid getting jabbed in the eye). Also, as much as I’m able to find women attractive, their junk sort of freaks me out – and all the porn I’ve seen so far insists on big squelchy EXTREME CLOSEUPS of the genitals in action. Bleh.
I hate being stereotyped as “Oh, she’s a woman, she wants rainbows and candles and plotlines and romance and emotional connection.” That’s not it. I’d be perfectly pleased to watch porn where two strangers jump right into the action and do all kinds of raw, kinky stuff – but I want to find both people attractive and I want them to seem like they’re enjoying themselves and I want them to have the kind of sex that I actually like. And I want the women to actually seem like they’re having orgasms.
And although I do appreciate fanfic and erotica, most of that isn’t up to my exacting standards, either. And romance novels are a) usually horribly written, b) feature a submissive, idiot woman falling for a guy who acts like a total asshole, and c) use stupid, coy metaphors for body parts that irritate me much more than they arouse me. It’s not a sword or a sceptre or a love-wand, people: it’s a cock.
My wife got upset I looked at porn, so I’ve stopped. Guess what? I went from hot sex with her every day to sex once a week maybe. I’m just not turned on. Niether one of us is happy at the result, but hey, porn is evil, right…
I’m 100% monogamous, never cheated, even a little, but without porn, I’ve just lost interest in sex.
I’m going to save my marriage and just go look at some porn. And then have a long multi-orgasmic sex session.
Those who don’t follow VB’s OPO facebook group: too late. FB’s guardians of Disney-flavored good taste have decided it shall no longer their site grace, and nixed it.
@81 – I wonder about this “sex drive” issue and how this is related to “porn addiction” – how much of that lack of desire for sex with a partner has to do with a broken relationship or loss of attraction and how much has to do with substituting porn. In other words: the porn seems like it was a side-issue, and the daily masturbation seems to suggest the guy’s sex drive wasn’t nil. However, the desire to masturbate rather than have sex with a real live woman suggests that the guy might have had issues with intimacy or was emotionally immature. I dunno…
I don’t think the porn is the evil; I think it’s a convenient avoidance/escape route.
I am a guy who likes erotica (literotica) better than visuals, and I can’t stomach Romance Novels…so I’m going with the latter as the female equivalent.
I’m a woman and I hate romance novels (no offense) and erotica. I also just like the hard core fucking and group gang bangs. I’m 25, I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I was pretty much raised by the internet and exposed to porn at an early age. I guess my round-a-bout question is: do think age has something to do with it? I used to watch porn with my girl friends in college for entertainment purposes, not to get off necessarily, too.
I’m another woman who just (as in within the last couple of months) found the world of yaoi. There’s different levels. Do you just want hot men pining after each other? Shonen-Ai. Do you want sex? It’s normally labeled as smut or “lemon”. Hentai is more or less straight up graphically drawn sex. A lot of hentai isn’t yaoi, but I’ve found some. Plus you can look up doujins, which are basically fanfiction drawn out. So if you have two favorite pop culture male characters having hot sex with each other, you can probably find that too. Yay, right?
I’ll tell you the female equivalent. It is of course, going out and being picked up by a hot man. That is the only equivalent because women want most to be desired. The sick rejection our male partners would feel if we acted on this equivalent as regularly as they enjoy thier porn, would comepletely cripple them. I say we all start taking up our birthright. Afterall we deserve to feel desired by someone as much as our partners desire their women online.
What about ITASP?!
Dan, I’m surprised you didn’t catch something right off the bat- the couple had no luck dating single women or couples, but have had success with bi men?!!! In my experience, it has been completely the opposite. There are LOTS of couples out there interested in dating other couples. And my partner and I have had many successful threesomes and couple swaps. ITASP expects his wife to settle for bi men that she’s not attracted to? Seriously. I’d be pretty pissed if I was that woman. She does all the work! Not only does she find hot dates for herseld, but she sets up the threesomes, too! Why should she settle?
ITSAP needs to get off his lazy fucking ass and pick up a girl or a couple on his own.
I want to clarify that I hate most of the crappily-written garbage that passes for erotica online, especially. And I, too, hate euphemism; nothing like a good four-letter dirty word or two in combination to get me going. The erotica I mean is written by Rachel Kramer Bussel, Alison Tyler, Thomas Roche, et al.
Interesting thought, Roadflare, about age having something to do with taste. I suspect that women who were raised on the Internet and saw different kinds of porn regularly might have a different reaction to it than those of us who are older.
@36 – I can’t believe I looked through almost 100 posts and yours is the only one that said what I was thinking!
If ITASP is reading this, you are being taken advantage of, and if you’re too weak to do anything about it, then you deserve what you get. Maybe you’ll like #81’s idea – to help increase you’re status as a cuckold.
But seriously, what is the point of an open marriage if you can’t get any pussy on the side?
Eva @ 51…”Actually, I’ve heard from more than a few women about their male partner turning down sex in favour of porn.”
The questions is are they turning down sex JUST because of porn? Or are they turning it down because their partner is not interesting/attractive/enthusiastic/take your pick or because they have some personal reason why? To me the REASON is key. Turning down sex JUST because you can watch porn instead is unheard of to me. Turning down sex because you are tired, don’t feel your best, are holding a grudge, aren’t feeling your partners new look etc, AND then turning right around and using porn to get off…that’s NORMAL.
For instance I prefer to have oral sex performed on me right after a shower. It’s a mental thing, silly I know. So yes I have turned down oral sex, kissed the husband good bye and turned on some hardcore Katja Kassin the minute he’s gone. He’s done the same. I’ve offered sex, he’s said “Uh no I just feel like a quick hand, my muscles hurt from my run this evening.”. I say okay, give him some privacy, and let him do his thing…YES to porn.
Why? It’s not because either of us are placing porn above the other. It’s just at that particular point in time there is an underlying reason that makes getting off to porn a better alternative for us. This happens in a normal relationship. Everyone likes easy, and getting off on your own to porn you like can be easier than full blown sex. Still doesn’t mean porn is king shit over actual sex. One could argue I’m arguing a fine point. But to me it’s crystal clear.
Take Mmmmm @ 87. He’s not rejecting sex because PORN is above sex. He’s rejecting sex at a particular point in time because he’s tired and wants an effortless quickie. I can relate to that! That to me is perfectly normal and is not the equivalent of having a “serious relationship” with porn that competes with your relationship with your partner.
Shahnahnah @ 70, DEB’s not an idiot because of her take on porn or whatever. DEB is an idiot because she makes several grandly stupid assumptions e.g. what porn symbolizes to all men, that all men watch porn, that all women find porn repulsive, that all women are so darn complicated etc. DEBS an idiot because of the bevy of assumptions she makes with seemingly no critical analysis of WHY she holds those assumptions.
Mariaw @ 94 please speak for yourself.
Nothing is more of a turn-on to my husband than my being ogled and chatted up by men. I think it’s silly but it gets him going that other men want his wife. So yeah I don’t know what the fuck you are on about…
I don’t want the hot men who are attracted to me sleeping with me. And my husband doesn’t want the hot porn actresses sleeping with him either. The hot men who chat me up and the hot women in porn he looks at…spice us both up for…wait for it…for us! Unbelievable isn’t it? 🙂
Everytime the subject of porn comes up in Dan’s column or Savage Blog the comments go through the roof. I think there should be a forum (no pun intended) for just this topic. Anyone want to start one?
By the way, yay porn! As long as it’s consensual and safe. And it’s not that hard to find actresses who are pretty clearly having a good time. I’d put it at about 30-40%.
Romance novels are this particular intellectual woman’s dirty little secret. When the narrative suddenly devotes an entire paragraph to describing in vivid detail the color variations of a male character’s eyes, that’s the clue.
Porn, meh. I find it depressing – but maybe I wouldn’t if I were just watching it “for entertainment value” rather than feeling that I was expected to get off on it somehow.
What is missing for me from most porn is an element of humanity, humanness. Tenderness. There should be suspense at the outcome, at least in terms of WHEN and HOW – most porn has such a foregone conclusion that the tension of uncertainty, which is a huge turn-on for me, is missing altogether.
Adult fan fiction, yeah. I loved those Kirk/Spock cartoons. It felt so intimate to watch some character I knew from seasons on TV and suddenly I could watch his cock. It wouldn’t have meant anything if it had been a stranger.
June @95: The wording of his letter — “My wife dates men on her own, and I get to enjoy the occasional threesome with her and one of her partners” — indicates pretty strongly (to me, anyway) that the agreement is that the husband doesn’t get to pick outside partners, not that he is lazy.
Why that might be is not explained in the letter. Is she insecure about letting him off the monogamy leash unattended, while he is perfectly cool with her doing the same? Is it that threesomes are his favorite thing, but for her to find them palatable she has to be the one to choose the third? (So of course she is going to choose a partner that makes her the most comfortable, which is to say, one of her guys. Again, there is no indication from the letter that either of them is bi.) Whatever the reason, it really looks like the wife is in control of the situation.
At the risk of repeating myself: ITASP, your wife is getting her fantasy life pretty much the way she wants it, while you are getting at best a warmed-over simulacrum of yours. That isn’t fair, and it isn’t very GGG of her. (And no, neither of the options that you present — whether it’s her continuing to bring home the same losers but pretending more convincingly to enjoy them, or you taking her at face value when she claims to be happy, while obviously just going through the motions — is GGG either. This needs to be fixed.
One fix might be what Dan suggested: she can either make sure her guy waiting at home is properly satisfied (i,e, make the effort to bring home people who make the threesome satisfying), or forfeit the right to go get her own satisfaction elsewhere without regard to him. Another fix might be to that she makes sure he is satisfied at home or else forfeit the right to keep him there. In other words, he gets to go out and meet his own needs, just like she does, instead of relying on her to meet them. (Depends on whether this is something he actually wants.)
Something that (straight) guys generally aren’t into, perhaps even repulsed by:
gay porn.
I am a woman who enjoys man on man love. No straight man I have dated has enjoyed it. Most were repulsed. Though cupcakes are amazing, the porn sounds sounds way better for sexual needs. Two men fucking while eating cupcakes? Even better.
@Maddy811:
“Written by straight-identifying women”
Hold it right there, buddy. We queer ladies like our slash, too.
(Sorry if I come across as snippy, but if I never hear “slash is written by/for straight women” again, I will die happy.)
@Maddy811:
Written by straight-identifying women
Hold it right there, buddy. We queer women like our slash, too.
(I’m sorry if I come across as snippy, but if I never hear “slash is written by/for straight women” again, I will die happy.)
Boo, double post. Sorry about that. In my defense, it took literally twenty minutes for my first comment to show up on the thread.
Porn equivalent for women? Romance novels.
There are a lot of women, especially older women, the ones who would never in a million years be comfortable with something identified as porn, who get their erotic/romantic thrills in the pages of a Linda Howard novel.
Once, on a considerably less sex-positive board, I threw out this notion – that reading romance novels was roughly the equivalent of a little internet porn surfing, or going out on Saturday night to see the dancers, and my, you should have seen the feathers fly.
As a middle aged, pretty sexually conservative straight woman myself, though, I can’t really see the difference – a pleasant little thrill, external to the marriage and no threat to it unless devotion to it excludes the real human being in the bed there with you. Same same.
Women have another sex life that repels men, is completely external to their relationship, and most find quite satisfying.
It’s call the Romance Novel.
In my opinion it’s not as good as porn, but for women like my mother and sister, it is used the same way.
What’s more, romance novels also have the same negative side as porn. They create unrealistic expectations that your average man is completely incapable of living up to.
Now I don’t think we should ban romance novels, the same way that I don’t think we should ban porn. Nor do I think women should be ashamed of reading them.
But you can’t deny that there is a real similarity.
Opps. Sorry for repeating your point, agony.
@25 A bit late to the party, but, EXACTLY! Gay porn is twice as many hot men! And what’s with the limp dicks or no dicks in straight porn? Last time Mr. Canuck and I were in a hotel and ordered up the porn, he had plenty to look at, and I was like, “what the? show me the money!”
@108 The last romance/erotica I read, the man was an ex-navy SEAL, had “abs like paint rollers,” was 6’4″, 240, had a jaw that could cut glass, gorgeous, and was an alpha-male who was just waiting for the right woman to come along and make him into putty….what am I missing? That’s EXACTLY like my life… 😉
Jesus Wanking Christ. Where has Deb been for the last twenty years? The whole issue of “is porn okay for women, do women like porn, is it okay for women to like porn, you’re perpetuating sexual repression, you can’t tell me what to like, slut, bitch, pornpornporn blahblahblah…” has already been done to death.
And seriously, Learned Hand – romance novels? Maybe you and Deb should get together for a good ol’ fifties-style stereotype flinging.
@102
I see your point, but ITSAP said “we had no luck dating women or couples”. That sounds fishy to me. How could they have had no luck with other couples? There are so many events, venues, websites, etc. to facilitate couples hooking up with other couples! and his wife doesn’t seem to want the threesomes. It’s the husband who wants the threesomes with his wife and another man, and he expects his wife to fuck people she isn’t into just to make him happy. Seems like his energy would be better spent finding a hot couple or threesome girl for them to enjoy. I don’t see why they couldn’t find one of those situations.
Romance novels and fan fiction, boring. This het woman likes gay porn – lots of cock.
I’m a woman, and I’d like to find some good porn, but here is an example of why porn is sucking for me: I thought I would like to see something about 1 woman being ravished by more than one hot guy, and they are so totally into her, and are completely focused on HER pleasure. So I go looking for porn like that, assume something like “gang bang” should be a good search term, and all I find are videos with a bunch of guys waiting their turn to be serviced by one girl. They barely even touch her, let alone care about her pleasure, and everyone looks bored. LAME.
ps. if anyone knows of a video like I’ve described, post the link!
Wayne @ 42 and all others who are truly interested in history/politics of sexuality…
I’m the one behind post # 23 and am so- like -totally- absolutely- delighted to find out I’m not the only one who’s into the historical and political aspect of sexuality, not to mention my very own absolutely- right perspective on it…
As for your post, King David was shagging everyone in sight and he also defined his “friendship” with Jonathan as, “My love to you is wonderful, much more so than loving a woman”. And this is the real translation from the original soundtrack, so disregard what you’ve read on the subtitles.
The bible, at least the Old Testament, is full of the really important stuff.
It should be noted that Sarah couldn’t conceive and allowed Abraham (ladies and gentlemen, the original GGG!) to fuck their maid, Hagar, who then gave birth to Ishmael (also known as Ismail) who is believed to be the first Arab.
Later on, after she kicked the maid and her son out (ladies and gentlemen, the original jealous motherfucker wife) and reached menopause, the Big G sent two angels to Sarah to let her know she will soon have a son. She first laughed at them, then thought to herself, “Oh well, what the heck”, screwed them both, and then- WHAT DO YOU KNOW- had a son!!! Isn’t it amazing???
And her stupid cuckold husband was willing to slaughter the boy as a sacrifice for G. What a submissive idiot!!!!!!!
I just hope we could all continue pleasing each other, be happy and go on with our lives. I’m sure it will promote world peace.
And speaking of submissive idiots… If you are or know of a lovely Palestinian woman who is interested in an Israeli cross dresser, please let me know… And she can even strap it on every once in a while…
laugh all you want, but that’s the ultimate offer for a WORLD PEACE!!!
But unfortunately no one will read this because you’re way too busy scolding a smart gay guy whose attempting to positively redefine female sexuality…
Nevertheless, God bless you and plenty of kinky orgasms to all of us.
‘@Porn widows are a big and growing segment of the population.
Bullshit. If anyone is “widowed” by porn, it’s because their relationship is already dysfunctional. There might be some compulsive porn users that are exceptions, but generally porn is consumed as a side dish, not the main course, in healthy relationships.’
How old are you? ’cause there’s a whole generation of internet users growing up thinking facials are first-date material, anal doesn’t take any lube and women should shriek then cum within six minutes. Saying porn isn’t affecting these kids’ lives and perceptions is like saying commercials aren’t influencing them (or anyone).
Oh and for the guy whose wife isn’t so in to men who want to fuck her and her husband – perhaps it’s because she suspects, perhaps correctly, that a lot of guys willing to do this are really just into her husband (and men in general) and simply putting up with her? Not particularly hot.
Women’s porn has been available right at the grocery check-out for decades; gown-ripper novels, romance novels, harlequin romances. There’s something for everyone. You can get your porn and cupcakes in one stop, its awesome!
Of course, porn flicks are pretty awesome, too, but they were less accessible when I was a teenager….
@86: “You’re not making a logical connection between your statements that woman aren’t aroused by seeing a man get horny (and yes, they often are, if they think that the arousal is triggered by them; noting is more attractive than feeling desired)…”
NoCuteName, I want you. And I can show it. Shall we get together, seeing as you will arouse me and, going by what you seem to be saying, you are often aroused in reciprocation?
@86: “…and the idea that woman want men who either ogle other women or are unavailable.”
I said, “Women do not encourage men who ogle, because they aren’t attracted to men who ogle,” so I don’t seem to need to make the first logical connection you refer to.
As for women’s attraction to unavailable men, I again refer to the steady stream of requests for help Dan gets from distressed women trapped in marriages with guys who never had strong sex drives in the first place.
It’s just an idea.
@86: “I once had a boyfriend who frankly lusted after every female we saw. But he turned me into the object of all that lust, and I was one happy camper. I loved the evidence of his libido.”
Thank you for confirming, as I said, that women “are attracted to men who don’t ogle” — other women. Was that not clear? May I submit the rephrasing?
@86: “Contrary to what you may believe from your obviously skewed reading of this column, women with high libidos don’t prefer men with low ones.”
I referred to the steady stream of requests for help Dan gets from distressed women trapped in marriages with guys who never had strong sex drives in the first place (am I really asking anyone to take my word that this is what’s happening?) as evidence women often “are attracted to men who don’t ogle” — other women.
And I said “According to various articles floating around, a man’s unavailability boosts his attractiveness to women.”
I never said anyone preferred men with low libidos. I’m saying winding up with a man with a low libido is a consequence of women not thinking far enough ahead about where their default inclinations will take them. Everyone’s path has its boobytraps, no?
I can’t speak for other women, but porn just doesn’t do it for me. I’m not wired visually. Watching other people have sex is rather…tedious actually. However, a properly written romance is a whole other story, so to speak.
ITASP, I can’t answer your question, but this is why I’m monogamous. I was trying to read Dan’s instructions and it reminded me of that souffle recipe that I just can’t face. Way too complicated.
hurray for women who like porn! i watch porn both with and without my partner and have been watching since before he came along. most of the porn i watch on my own is, as Violet Blue suggests above, of a tenor that would not arouse my partner. those private fantasies that i indulge in through porn or in my head while we’re fucking, but not the kind of thing that he’s into so we don’t share that. we share other fun porn and fantasies instead 🙂
Dan, I’d agree that a stranger lying about many things would not justify a rape conviction – but is there a line to be drawn? What if the person lies about being HIV positive, or having some other STI? What if the person lies about contraceptives? Would you consider any of these scenarios rape, or some kind of assault?
The advice to ITASP sucks. Maybe there was a bit too much editing of the letter, but where does it say the LW was unhappy with his wife’s dates? He was expressing concern about her not being that enthusiastic about their MMF sex sessions.
Maybe she doesn’t have a particular thing for group sex? I’m poly, and I don’t like it AT ALL. Maybe she finds two guys fucking each not that hot? You can find the moment adequately enjoyable in itself, but still not be particularly excited by it. Obviously ITASP REALLY likes these threesomes … she doesn’t. Some people like fucking more than oral sex. Whatever.
As for people who doubt whether they have as many problems finding other couples or women as ITASP professes, it can be hard finding “unicorns” (as women into het couples are labelled). Personally, if I was interested in a woman in an open relationship, I wouldn’t consider the guy as part of the package. Maybe ITASP is not particularly attractive and (sorry to stereotype) less-discerning men are just up for whatever they can get, no matter what the package is.
I think ITASP should talk to his wife and if she reiterates the fact that she finds their MMF encounters as “fine”, then take that at face value. However, taking away the one valuable point that Dan makes, it’s important to check whether THEIR intimate relations are measuring up – it’s all very well having adventures with other people, but not at the expense of neglecting your core relationship. If she’s preferring the bits-on-the-side over one-on-one with ITASP, that’s more of a concern.
I always assumed the female equivalent to porn were those awful “women’s interest” magazines like Cosmo and Glamour. Both have pictures of sexy women on the front and they’re both full of unrealistic depictions of the opposite sex. Of course, in pornography, women are usually intended to be attractive, where as in women’s interest mags, men are portrayed as oafish and childish/childlike.
@107: “As a middle aged, pretty sexually conservative straight woman myself, though, I can’t really see the difference – a pleasant little thrill, external to the marriage and no threat to it unless devotion to it excludes the real human being in the bed there with you. Same same.”
You rule. Keep on rockin’.
@118 – “How old are you? ’cause there’s a whole generation of internet users growing up thinking facials are first-date material, anal doesn’t take any lube and women should shriek then cum within six minutes. Saying porn isn’t affecting these kids’ lives and perceptions is like saying commercials aren’t influencing them (or anyone). “
I’ve heard this complaint before, but it’s a pretty myopic view, frankly. There’s some apparent presumption here that kids would have a more informed view of sex, or were poised to grow into better lovers, if porn wasn’t accessible to them. Kids in the pre-Internet era would just have different dumb ideas about sex – the messages they got about sex came from sources misleading in their own ways (Hollywood movies, freaked-out parents, ignorant high school teachers, etc.)
Which is why the real answer to “Porn is skewing kids’ views of sex!” is better sex ed – something that (certain segments of) the US will probably forever be squeamish about, unfortunately.
“And, yes, you should have the authority to do that—both partners in an open relationship should be able to call a time-out.”
People in open relationships “should” have the authority to declare things that they may never have discussed or agreed upon? Bullshit. I would find that an unacceptably disrespectful way to be treated. I want my partners to tell me when they’re unhappy, and I want them to ask me to dedicate more of my attention to our relationship if need be, and I’d want them to let me know if there was something else they wanted, like a time-out. However, if a partner suddenly decided that they had the “authority” to suddenly announce how things were going to be, I would be extremely upset. That would go against the way we have agreed to treat one another.
It’s fine, of course, for a couple to have agreed that either of them can call a time-out! I’m all for people making whatever agreements allow them to have a happy relationship. What’s not fine is deciding that it’s the default and doesn’t need to be agreed upon.
124: “I think ITASP should talk to his wife and if she reiterates the fact that she finds their MMF encounters as “fine”, then take that at face value.”
I disagree. Clearly she looks so not-into-this that it is messing up the experience for him. Electing to take her at face value is to resign himself to the fact that, while she gets as much hot sex as she can go find, his fantasy fulfillment will just have to be second rate.
They need to discuss exactly what it is about these encounters that she doesn’t care for, and either fix that, or find something else to do that both of them can be excited about. Either that, or find something that he can be excited about without involving her. I continue to wonder why that option appears to be off the table for him, even though she gets to do it.
“However, taking away the one valuable point that Dan makes, it’s important to check whether THEIR intimate relations are measuring up – it’s all very well having adventures with other people, but not at the expense of neglecting your core relationship. If she’s preferring the bits-on-the-side over one-on-one with ITASP, that’s more of a concern.”
I agree with this. He doesn’t mention their private sex life at all. But the details that he does include (her dating actively on her own, her preferring her outside dates, her “hotter” partners not wanting to participate, and her acting disinterested during the “occasional” threesomes) creates a pretty clear vibe of “she’s into her outside guys, but she isn’t into what I’m into, which means she isn’t into me.” It almost paints the picture that maybe she isn’t much into any sex that involves him. That would be a huge problem, and that is what underlies the suggestion that he yanks the emergency brake on all outside sex until they get their own intimacy back on track.
128: Naj, you are hanging up on a semantic quibble.
If your partner told you out of the blue that some unexpected thing was making them unhappy, I would like to think that you would take their concerns seriously, even to the point of calling an immediate halt on whatever it was that was bothering them until the two of you could work through it. That is for all intents and purposes “authority … to call a time-out.”
It’s not possible or practical to separately pre-negotiate the option to accept or reject each and every situation that might come up in a relationship. You will find yourself with ridiculous, Byzantine codes of agreement that you can ask to stop Situation A, but you aren’t allowed to ask to stop Situation B. What that implies is that in Situation B, your partner’s feelings are irrelevant, and you intend to do as you damn well please regardless if they are unhappy. Now THAT is disrespectful. Your partner’s feelings should NEVER be irrelevant.
What the default agreement should be is that your partner’s opinion matters as much as your own. That’s what makes it a partnership. Otherwise it’s you and your junior partner.
Don’t forget that if you pulled that “you don’t have the authority to make do that” crap, your partner can always conclude that you don’t care about their feelings, and invoke the “authority” to end the relationship.
Dan’s kinks aren’t boring but they are normal. He is into smells and clothing, not gross smells and not gross clothing (Leather, sorry dudes).
So he likes it when his man comes home from the gym in a cute gym outfit smelling of sweat.
Not boring, just natural.
I don’t understand why everyone is so horrified at the conviction of an Arab man who lied about being Jewish to get into a Jewish woman’s pant. In any other legal arena, misrepresenting oneself in order to gain access or consent to someone or something that one would not have been access or consent to otherwise is legally actionable fraud. In paricular, if it occurs with in the context of a marriage contract it is grounds for annullment. Why should ying to get into someone’s pants not be considred rape?
130: I disagree. I see a very broad- and important- range in between “authority to call a time-out” and “partner’s feelings are irrelevant”. Whatever you might like to think about me and my relationships aside, I wouldn’t necessarily call an immediate halt to whatever was bothering a partner, no. That doesn’t mean I’d ignore their concerns, or that their feelings would be irrelevant!
If the issue was that I was spending a lot of time with a group of friends, and my partner was feeling like she never saw me, that’d be an important thing to pay attention to. I’d start looking at my schedule to see how to fix things and make sure we had enough time together- and we’d negotiate to figure out what “enough time together” looked like to each of us, and possibly need to work out a compromise. What wouldn’t happen is for her to announce that she wanted me to immediately stop seeing my friends until we worked out the issue, and tell me that she had the authority to tell me to take a time-out from having friends. That would be inappropriate and a bad sign. This isn’t just phrasing; it’s phrasing that reflects expectations that are really important in relationships.
Now, the difference between the examples is that in most relationships, people go in expecting each other to have friends but not expecting each other to have other folks they date. Depending on the open relationship, though, that may not hold. My partner and I have always expected that we’d be seeing other people, so for us, it’d be a lot like saying, “I’m uncomfortable, so you should stop having friends until I’m comfy again.” That’s why I don’t think “open relationships should work this way” is reasonable advice when it gets more specific than “people should be good to each other”.
I’d also like to point out that Dan has in the past advocated that removing a condom during sex when unprotected sex was consented to was tantamount to rape:
You consented to intercourse with protection, and that asshole deceitfully initiated unprotected intercourse. When a fucker removes a condom during intercourse—gay or straight, vaginal or anal—it invalidates the fuckee’s consent to the fucking. (And what is sex without consent, class?) So your “more experienced” boyfriend sexually assaulted you, JC, and placed you at risk of an unplanned pregnancy—and for what? An ever-so-slightly enhanced orgasm for him?
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Savag…
Why is misrepresenting your ethnic background to gain another’s consent to sex not at least analogous?
“Why should lying to get into someone’s pants not be considred rape?”
Because it should be considered fraud.
She was entirely free to say no at any time. She decided to say yes. True, it was based on false information, but it was still her decision, freely done. Freely? Hell, recklessly. Having sex with someone within fifteen minutes of meeting them doesn’t meet any reasonable standard of due diligence. She did it because she wanted to. That is why it is fraud, and not rape.
i’m a female who is into porn, and for me, it satisfies a curiosity and a turn-on i’m never going to get from my marriage. i enjoy watching gay porn and bisexual porn, and there is no way my husband would ever join me in this. so, it’s ALL MINE. i don’t care what he’s watching…more power to him…as long as we are still having satisfying sex together at a frequency and intensity that makes both of us happy, i couldn’t care less what he’s watching and/or getting off to (within reason…if it was kiddie porn, i’d feel differently).
@avast2006 (#135)
She was entirely free to say no at any time. She decided to say yes. True, it was based on false information, but it was still her decision, freely done. Freely? Hell, recklessly. Having sex with someone within fifteen minutes of meeting them doesn’t meet any reasonable standard of due diligence. She did it because she wanted to. That is why it is fraud, and not rape.
Consent obtained by fraud is not consent.
Do you think the woman whose boyfriend removed his condom during sex was guilty of rape (as Dan implied), even though she had consented to have protected sex with him?
Are women who have sex with men who they have just met asking for “it” (whatever “it” may be)?
OH-MY-GOD!!!!! Dan, you’re a GENIUS!!!
Who needs a man when you can have cupcocks???
Brilliant!!!
“Are women who have sex with men who they have just met asking for “it” (whatever “it” may be)?”
Of course not.
If he beat her, that would be battery, and of course she wasn’t asking for it. So prosecute him for battery. To the extent that the beating coerced her against her will in the commission of the sex act, that would be battery AND rape. Prosecute for both.
If he threatened her with a knife or with violent words, that would be assault, and of course she wasn’t asking for it. Again, the threat would interfere with her ability to say no, so you add rape on top of the assault charge.
If he impregnated her or infected her with a disease, that would be (I’m not sure what the correct charge would be. Reckless endangerment? Battery?) and of course she would not be asking for it. Prosecute him for those.
And if he lied to her, that would be fraud, and of course she wasn’t asking for that either. But I don’t believe that it was coercive or compromised her ability to resist.
So prosecute him for fraud.
Would you call someone who lied about his age a rapist? How about someone who dressed for a night on the town in a way that implied a higher salary than he actually makes? How about someone where his toupee fell off during sex? A woman could, after the fact, choose literally anything as a criterion without which she never would have consented, whereupon the man becomes a rapist.
Kindly point out where I said she was “asking for it” in any way whatsoever. I said she made an affirmative, though reckless, decision to proceed with sex. Sex is all that occurred, not anything else, “(whatever “it” might be.)” Because the sex occurred as a result of this affirmative decision on her part, not coercion on his part, it wasn’t rape.
It was, however, fraud.
I’m a woman. I don’t like chocolate or cupcakes. I HATE romance novels and romantic comedies.
But I’m all over the yaoi. I guess I’m a little cliche after all.
P.S. Dan has inspired some PG-rated yaoi of his own:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/87243
It probably makes no sense if you don’t know the fandom in question (random manga), but still…
I know some of you are allergic to this, but let’s play the reverse-the-genders game and see how the situation looks.
A Palestinian woman passed herself off as an Israeli looking for a serious relationship. She introduced herself in this manner to an Israeli man. After approximately fifteen minutes, the two of them retired to a nearby building, and they had sex. Afterwards, the Israeli man discovered that the woman was in fact Palestinian. She was arrested, tried, and convicted of raping the man. “If I had known she was Palestinian at the outset,” said the man, “there is no way I ever would have consented to have sex with her.”
Well? Did she rape him? Really? Or did he decide to do something fun with her in the heat of the moment, without thinking it through first?
Also, do the unsavory racial overtones shine out any brighter when the genders are reversed?
An alternative to porn for women? Ever read fanfic online? ESp slash – there is a lot of great fic written by women and read by women and I may be wrong but I think the majority o readers and authors are women – and it can be highly erotic and have a plot and romance
I have to agree with avast2006 on this one. People lie to get laid, all the fucking time. They lie about their age, their career success, their relationship status, their emotional investment in the person they want to fuck, their hobbies, their personality, their politics, their religion, and so on ad infinitum. And unless the lie they happen to be telling is something along the lines of “I’ve got a gun in my pocket and I’ll shoot you if you don’t take off your pants and lie down on the floor right now,” then they aren’t guilty of rape. Assholery, yes, but not rape.
To mjpam – are you fucking serious? As if people don’t lie to get into someone else’s pants all of the time? Really? Of course people do. It’s really not always cool and in fact, can be sleazy. But rape? Hell no.
I’m with Dan. You fuck a stranger, you take your chances. Although if said stranger harms you physically, that’s an entirely different matter. If he/she just told a lie, too bad for you.
So the basic defense against lying for sex is “everyone does it”?
The fact that the majority of people jaywalk doesn’t mean jaywalking is not a crime. (This goes for any illegal action that someone might engage in, lest anyone think I’m trivializing rape by equating it with jaywalking.)
Dan, I think your advice to ITSAP was great. All to often individuals in an open relationship feel they cannot renegotiate the terms, but any healthy relationship should be based on mutual respect and on the ability for all involved to have equal input on the terms of the relationship.
As for the much publicized Arab “Jew imposter” case out of Israel, the real substance of the case has been somewhat distorted in the media for the sake of playing up the Arab-Jewish angle. From interviews I have watched, it seems the main issue for the woman was not that the man was an Arab who purported to be a Jew, but rather that he was a married man who purported to be single and seriously interested in marriage. I think the case is rather bizarre, but Israel has much stricter rape laws than most other countries. Apparently, prosecutions for rape by false pretenses are not uncommon and Jewish perpetrators have been prosecuted under the same statute, too. Personally, I think the prosecution trivializes incidents of real rape (i.e. rape by force or coercion or rape of an incapacitated, elderly/infirmed, minor, or mentally-challenged individual), but I think it is a matter for the Israeli Knesset to deal with through legislative reform. Also, before we get too high and mighty here in the U.S., we should take note of the fact that in a least a few states in the U.S., including California(!), it is possible to be prosecuted for rape under the same legal theory (rape by false pretenses) used to prosecute the man in Israel.
Women have been enjoying our “cupcocks” for decades, and it’s called erotic literature. The majority of erotic anthologies and novels are aimed at women, and also written and edited by women.
Lately lots more women are finding the same appeal in gay sex and romance that many straight men find in lesbians. I’m a queer woman who wrote slash (male/male) fanfiction for years, and found out that both the readers and writers are about 95% women (both het and queer). Now the trend is getting more and more mainstream, with publishers like Dreamspinner churning out eBooks and everyone making jokes about some Edward/Jacob action. But it’s still predominantly women writing sexy stories about two (or more) male characters getting it on, in order to get other women off.
Most men don’t get why we need 2,000 words of foreplay before getting to the action, or why we’d prefer text to XTube. So I think that meets all of Desires Erotic Balance’s criteria 🙂
Women have been enjoying our “cupcocks” for decades, and it’s called erotic literature. The majority of erotic anthologies and novels are aimed at women, and also written and edited by women.
Lately lots more women are finding the same appeal in gay sex and romance that many straight men find in lesbians. I’m a queer woman who wrote slash (male/male) fanfiction for years, and found out that both the readers and writers are about 95% women (both het and queer). Now the trend is getting more and more mainstream, with publishers like Dreamspinner churning out eBooks and everyone making jokes about some Edward/Jacob action. But it’s still predominantly women writing sexy stories about two (or more) male characters getting it on, in order to get other women off.
Most men don’t get why we need 2,000 words of foreplay before getting to the action, or why we’d prefer text to XTube. So I think that meets all of Desires Erotic Balance’s criteria 🙂
To 135, 137, 139, 141, and 143, regarding the Arab men who was sentenced to 18 months in jail for lying about his both identity and marital status….
I’m no legal expert, just an Israeli guy residing in Seattle for the past 25 years. And it is my observation that this case has been blown way out of proportion, and that him being an Arab and her Jewish indeed played a major role.
You may recall my comments about the issue at #23 and #117 if you ever read them, but I think you really need to understand the mentality of the country as well as the discriminating judiciary system.
And just so you know, most comments about that issue came from Israelis who were appalled that a man, an Arab or a Jew for that matter, would be the one to pay the price. This happens to be in an environment were most posts are written by supposedly paid right wingers, but nevertheless many of them sided with the guy stating that women, at least in Israel, often lie about their age, appearance, as well as the use of contraceptive with the hope of getting pregnant and “encourage” the man to marry them.
This is not a happy picture, but the whole thing smells racism. As I often tell soccer players in my hometown, whenever playing or refing co-ed teams, equal rights for women also mean equal duties. And if a man and a woman collide it should be called against the person who caused it regardless of their gender.
Pamela, where the hell are you when I need you?
@140 – HELENA HANDBASKET!!! I adore her work <3
@141 Ok let’s play this game. What’s the punishment in the Sharia for a woman having pre-marital sex with a non-muslim? Had the situations been reversed she’d be facing much much worse according to her laws than 18 months in prison, and that’s before any claims of rape.
Yeah the unsavory racial implications are really unsavory. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s what you meant.
That business with Arab-Jewish sexual encounter is an unpleasant one, but the male did lie in order to get a romp in the hay. His motives weren’t that great either.
151: Immaterial. We are talking about whether she raped him or not, based on the concept of faulty consent being no consent. What her culture might have to say on the subject of her sexual activities is an entirely separate question. Yes, she might will get killed just for being seen with him unchaperoned — at which point the question we are discussing, was-HE-raped-by-her-or-not, doesn’t even arise. Try to stay on topic.
The racial implications I was referring to was the attitude underlying “I would never fuck a Palestinian.” Surely a Jew, of all people, should understand the evils of demonizing another ethnic group. You want to talk about the evils of Sharia law, go right ahead, I’ll probably agree with everything you have to say — but again, it’s changing the subject.
I am a married woman who tries to be GGG as much as possible, and I’ve always been confused about why my husband won’t share his porn with me. I know he has porn and uses it, but for some reason it’s important for him to hide it from me. I guess maybe for him it is a private thing — that never occurred to me. I just wanted to share his sexuality with him.
Most porn doesn’t do much for me — I actually find it pretty boring. I do enjoy erotic literature, however, and in contrast to many women who have written in to these comments, I don’t enjoy gay erotica — but lesbian erotica really turns me on. I tried to share this interest with my husband, but it made him very uncomfortable — also confusing to me. I think I understand, now, that he interprets porn enjoyment as a very private thing, which is OK.
@Gloria – re: “Although I guess that broader definition is a little silly if the word includes the word for “image.” Oh well.”
actually, “pornography” does not mean image at all. the ending “-graphy” actually pertains to writing or drawing. Pornography is believed to have referred to the practice of prostitutes writing their price list on the wall.
-graphy: recording” or “a writing, recording, or description,” from Gk. -graphia, from graphein “to draw, write,” originally “to scratch” (on clay tablets with a stylus), from PIE base *gerbh- “to scratch, carve”
@155: Hah. Sorry. I knew I should have checked to get the specific etymology. I suppose I figured since the act defined in “-graphy” resulted in pictures, “image” would suffice.
But naturally not. The internet proves me wrong yet again!
Re: prostitutes writing price lists, I find that dubious. But I’d definitely be interested if you can point me to a source that discusses it. Would be a good read.
I was reading books like the “The Happy Hooker” by the time I was 11, and thank GOODNESS I did because otherwise given the way I was raised I’d have never been any fun in bed! I learned a lot from Xaviera’s column actually and yeah, reading her started me reading other erotic books and that led me to watching porn and GASP actually liking it.
I still don’t care for porn that disrespectful of either gender. Playful S&M is one thing, hard core nasty beatings are another, and I definitely don’t want to ever see kids or animals participating in my porn, thank you, but otherwise I have no problem with porn at all. The things that don’t particularly turn me in male-oriented porn, like the girl on girl and guy on guy scenes? Well, that’s what the FF button is for to keep me from losing my interest at an inopportune time, ahem.
I haven’t exactly had a multitude of sexual partners, but those I have had they haven’t had any complaints in regards to my erotica collection. Literary, visual, audio, I’ve got a bit of each actually, and usually once the guy gets over the shock of a woman admitting she likes porn he’s fine with it and usually ends up enjoying it with me.
Porn doesn’t have to be the enemy. It can enhance a sex life too. Fantasy is fun so long as you remember that reality is always there in the bed with you.
I’m a female in a relationship who pretty much watches porn very often. I could say everyday but then people might think I have a problem. I’m also NOT on xanax or any other anti-depressant. Go figure?
“Tell the wife to stop fucking other people for a while”??? NOT!
Tell your wife you’re feeling like you’re missing out on the pleasure she’s enjoying in her one-on-one encounters with other really hot men, and you’d like to renegotiate the terms of your open relationship. Say that while the two of you are working this out, you’d like the two of you to take a break from having sex with other people.
There’s a big difference between ordering her to do this, and requesting it.
Strangest, longest responses ever. I don’t get it.
That’s not Violet Blue. That’s the woman who destroyed someone’s career to steal the name, but that’s not her.
To Dan Savage —
If you’re not familiar with Robert Jensen’s work (research and calls to take back power from the porn industry — to promote our basic humanity), please take a look.
For example: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freela…
I’m so often pleased with your insight into power and privilege (particularly your understanding of heteronormativity) that I felt especially let down with the response to “Desires Erotic Balance.”
Advice to “eat cupcakes” and “look at porn” fails to engage gender issues — issues of power and privilege — involved in both activities . . . and ignores the fact that many women (and men!) cannot “get off” while supporting the porn industry. What about advice for imagination and lit-erotica and, as this is your specialty, other creative play?
Or, you might have responded to the issue of men getting a “free pass” instead of treating Desires Erotic Balance’s post as advice-seeking. I read it as seeking co-complaining and reassessment instead. So, could you reevaluate the free pass?
RE: ITASP, in an open marriage, i always assumed that it didn’t matter who the spouse fucks, you can just assume he/she is fucking someone else, but always comes home. Why would husband get to tell wife to stop fucking altogether?… it’s an open marriage, for God’s sakes.
@ 149 … i totally agree, it is 100% racism, and anyway, within 30 minutes she was fucking him, so what does that say about her? Race aside, doesn’t anyone get to know the other person at all before they decide to swap body fluids????
I can’t believe that nobody has mentioned birth control as a revolution in the way that women think of sex of any kind, real or porn.
159: I’m not sure why “Tell the wife to stop fucking other people for a while” implies that it necessarily will be phrased as an order, complete with “Achtung!” at the beginning. On the other hand, just because something is preceded by a “Please” or an “I’d like it if…” doesn’t necessarily mean that it is optional.
Certainly, be polite and respectful. But if something is non-negotiable, don’t phrase it as if it is. Your newly ex-spouse won’t thank you for allowing them to think that it wasn’t something they had to take seriously.
163: if a marriage can be opened, it can be closed again, if being open is causing problems. You don’t set something in motion if there is no way to apply the brakes when problems crop up.
A marriage is only open if both partners are happy with that. If only one partner is on board, it isn’t an open marriage, it’s an impending divorce. Saying that you don’t get to require changes to the situation leads only to “Fuck this, I’m outta here.”
As a man the only only friend I have who I can talk about my emotions, hopes, and feelings with is my wife. My wife is free to talk with all of her girlfriends about these things, because she needs/wants more of this connection than I do. Just like I desire more sex than she does. On average men view more porn and women have more gossip.
@133
The problem is that a sexually-open relationship is much more difficult to navigate for most people. Emotions are tied in with sex, as are feelings of desirability. On some level, I suspect the writer is more concerned that his wife is less interested in *him* than that she’s less interested in *threesomes*. Especially if a relationship did not begin open, it’s up to both parties to say “the person I’m coming home to is this, so if I have to sacrifice, I’ll sacrifice”.
Your relationship(s) may work differently, but I’ve not met many people who can thoroughly divorce sex in a long-term relationship from feelings of love and being desired. Even in most open relationships I’ve seen or heard of, it’s “this is my main relationship, everything else is a side-dish”. This gentleman is feeling like he’s been moved to being a side-dish, and his wife prefers to have something else for the main course, that’s not what he signed up for.
Since those feelings aren’t likely to go away until he feels like he’s the main-course again, it’d be unfeasible for her to continue sleeping with other guys; he’ll still feel like she prefers their hot bods, and that she’s only begrudgingly being with him; that’s not fair to either of them. It’d be like having a girlfriend who I fairly vocally expressed I preferred spending time with my other female friends. At some point she gets to say “we’re going to spend time together now and rebuild this, or we’re done”.
@147/148
I can’t speak for most men, but I understand the appeal of erotic literature. What we don’t understand is why so much of it is sheer crap, yet sells like hotcakes. And, on some level, I think we’re not generally as big fans of stuff like fanfiction. I can’t substantiate that, but I’ve known many more girls and women who write fanfiction (or slash, or lemon, ect.) than boys and men.
In the interest of full disclosure I should say that I read the first eight Anita Blake books, and stopped reading when it turned to pure smut. The problem wasn’t the smut, it’s that it was bad smut. That said, I do think the difference in audience is important, and that it goes back to the point I’m making with a lot of the porn-negative people: the audience makes the product. If more women seemed like a viable porn audience, I have little doubt there would be more porn geared toward them. It’s the same issue with comic books (if I may nerd out a bit).
@149
A small quibble, but they’re actually likely of the same race. It’s why “antisemitism” isn’t just “hating Jews”.
I do agree, though, that the entire thing has become way more than it should have been. She was not raped, simply lied to. There are cases where fraud leading to sex is rape, but those are limited. The only cases I can think of off the top of my head here in Colorado are ones where someone has impersonated a woman’s husband. Lying about age, religion, job, money, breast size, whatever, is all fair game.
@159
I get where you’re coming from, and if she agrees to it under that explanation that’s great. But he needs to be ready to say “I’m your husband, the guy you want to come home to long-term, and I’m not happy here. If you want the guys with the hot bods, there’s the door”. Any relationship that becomes open still has to be predicated on the understanding that “this is my main relationship, the actually important one”. She violated that.
@162
I think Dan’s implicit point was that the “free-pass” so-called should be just as open to anyone in any relationship. So, to that end, it’s probably something to take up with a prospective partner.
But, the bigger issue is that you make some basic assumptions with which many people here seem to disagree. I, personally, see nothing inherently against our human rights in the porn industry, it (like everything else) is responding to basic desires and filling a market.
I read Jensen’s articles (or as many as I could stomach) and a theme emerged in his interaction with porn in general, and especially with porn actresses: it’s inherently wrong, patriarchal, and anti-feminist. He views haranguing women about their choices to appear on Abby Winters as being reasonable because he respects them… Odd that someone who respects women would engage in a tactic similar to the browbeating of women seeking abortions. I’m calling foul.
I will agree that most of pornography is geared toward men, and that should change. There should be a stronger female audience for it, and that would push it away from male-dominated fantasies (please, do remember that it’s an industry, not a shady cabal bent on keeping women down, they’re out for money, not societal change). Even femdom and other porn showcasing strong female “leads” (for want of better terms) are geared toward some male fantasy. I’ll never get the sadistic CBT or “eat your own cum” stuff, but some people must like it.
Is porn exploitative? Maybe. Women are using themselves as a commodity to sell a product to an audience and make money. Of course, the only difference between that, then, and working as a junior associate at a law firm is that the latter is considered at least somewhat prestigious. There’s a series of articles you ought to read:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/pornwrit…
I think ITSAP sounds kind of pathetic. Why should she lose her fun on the side? It doesn’t sound like he puts any effort into getting his own solo dates.
If I were that lady I’d be bummed out.
If DEB wants something for women that really parallels porn for men, it’s also going to have to be something that men dump moralistic bullshit all over, and accuse women of being emotionally and socially inadequate for enjoying, and accuse women of hating men because they use, and shame and revile women for, and …
@DEB
I agree with Dan in general.
you know- female baboons are the ones with the colorful and flamboyant asses, not the males
women are the ones who paint their lips red, not (usually) guys
it’s a psychological fact that males are the more visually-oriented sex, not females
you want female oriented porn? it’s called “soap operas” and “romance novels”
utterly abhorrent for the most part
womens’ equality doesn’t mean you take over male physiology, just our jobs
lol
Romance novels used to be ‘women’s porn’ because it was socially condoned. But as several fellow addicts have already pointed out, a lot of us (especially those who hate romantic novels) have discovered porn. Personally I like stories without a lot of exposition. I wonder how many women are into visual porn compared to pornographic stories…
@169… Damn, dude. Bitter much?
For DEB, I personally love romance novels. My husband thinks it’s silly (I wouldn’t go so far as to say they repulse him) but he does refer to them as my girl porn. And he is right, a lot of the writing is HOT and I definitely get off on it. Maybe try looking into that? Romance novels make up the largest percentage of book sales so I think a lot of other women enjoy them the way that I do!
Why the hell would anyone classify something as “universally arousing to women?” WTF is that? It sounds like gibberish to say out loud, and if I can get it out at all, I can’t stop laughing.
It’s probably less funny to talk about things that are “universally arousing to men,” but it would mean just as little.
What a bad joke, but it still makes me laugh.
Also, I don’t understand this thing called “a free pass.” I didn’t know anyone needed an OK to like sex, or other things. Who is this free pass given to in exchange for the Thing one likes? One’s spouse? (Huh?) Other people of your gender? (Double huh?) Michelle Malkin? I don’t think she accepts passes. Although, I have it on good authority that it is still free to try to fantasize about fucking her while she’s hanging out over a fourth-floor window.
‘It’s probably less funny to talk about things that are “universally arousing to men,” but it would mean just as little.’
Well, there is Viagra.
My understanding is that Viagra does to women what it does to men, but that not all women connect those sensation with arousal. That’s why it seems fair to say from the studies floating around that women experience arousal as an inversion of how men experience it.
@#176 (Mike Leung): I’m a woman and I’ve tried viagra. First of all, whether in men or women, viagra doesn’t affect libido; it affects blood flow. So if a man with no interest in sex takes it, it doesn’t give him the interest. He still needs to have desire all on his own. Blood flow and erection dysfunction aren’t usually women’s problems. The biggest complaint is a low libido, and increased blood flow does nothing for that.
I tried viagra not to try and overcome a dysfunction, but because I was curious about whether it would make my clit more swollen when aroused.
All I can say is that in my case all the blood did gather in one place: my face, which got beet-red and hot for an hour or two. Like a good scientist, I tried viagra again to see if the results I got the first time were repeatable. It happened again.
@169: not a point I’ve seen made yet, so thanks for saying it. To elaborate, something analogous would have porn titles labeling any man who enjoys sex as a ‘slut’ or a ‘whore’. Women and men both deserve better.
DEB, both men and women are more complicated than the porn industry assumes (I’m basing this on the men I’ve dated as well on myself and my female friends). It’s not that women are more complicated than men, it’s that the big corporate sex film industry makes as many stupid assumptions as the big corporate mainstream film industry. However,…
Here’s my wish-list of simple things the industry could do to make things more ‘universally satisfying’ to women. Maybe some producer out there will actually read this.
1) putting the camera where the woman’s eyes are. Years of good sex have conditioned me to be really turned on by looking up at a man’s abs as he’s thrusting away. Since that’s a pretty common sex position, I’ll bet a lot of women have the same reaction. Not everyone, of course, but a lot. Instead, they show us close-ups of a woman’s clit. Meh.
2) the industry needs to stop ruining films in which both actors are obviously enjoying themselves by adding the words ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ to the title. These terms alienate 1/3 of the potential viewers (apparently 1/3 of porn viewers are female) by telling us ladies that we should be ashamed of enjoying sex, and that we’re victims of sex. They probably also alienate some male viewers. Not a good way to get us to spend our money. I get that some people use these words in the reclaimed, sex-positive, ‘ethical slut’ sense, but for a lot of us they trigger an instant anger reaction.
3) makers of porn for women have to stop all making their websites entirely pink. Of course some women like that, but there are also a lot of us who hate pink and associate it with being 5 years old. Not exactly the way to turn us on.
4) condoms! Please, please, please use condoms – not only because it makes the actors safer, but also because it helps the viewers associate condoms with being turned on, which promotes increased condom use. I might enjoy a movie a bit more if I didn’t have to overcome feeling a bit grossed out by the lack of condoms. Kudos to the makers of gay male vids for being a bit better about this than the makers of the hetero vids.
5) those making porn aimed at women need to give us enough free previews that we know the videos are something we might like rather than something that will anger us. As it is, someone like me making their first foray into watching porn will form opinions based on the free stuff in places like rawtube, and decide that there’s no way we’re spending money on that crap.
6) there are a bunch of us understandably uncomfortable with having some porn company’s name on our credit card statements. What if we could pay cash at a female-friendly sex shop like Womyn’s Ware to set up a nice, confidential, no-names-attached paypal-type account for online porn?
7) this one’s gender-neutral: set up feature-based rather than category-based websites. For example, I’d be searching for things in which condoms were used, and things with erect rather than floppy wrinkly penises, things in which the woman’s pleasure was audible, things in which the man’s pleasure was audible, and excluding anything with the words ‘slut’ ‘whore’ or ‘pussy’ and anything in which the man is overweight (don’t worry guys, some women I know love a buddha belly – I’m just not one of ’em).
to D.E.B.
I just wanted to mention Yaoi or Boys Love graphic novels/manga because this genre has a huge female fan following I personally enjoy it as porn/erotica and perhaps I should mention I am a mostly straight open minded female. ^-^ and if that doesn’t flot it for you there’s always harlequin romance novels. My mom has boxs full of them.
@53 I got as far as your comment and have to say, “I agree”!
Although my libido has diminished significantly post-menopause, I am still turned on by both written and filmed porn, including animated. I very much enjoy gay porn (prefer watching men to women) and written, homoerotic slash fiction as well.
I don’t have to have visuals. I have a very active mental fantasy life, engaging in directed dreaming where I compose elaborate slash stories for myself. I have dabbled in writing them down, but find I am not particularly good at that. I’ve found many excellent writers online, thank goodness.
It was always hard to find any straight porn videos that appealed to me. As others here have said, 99.99% of straight video porn is still skewed towards the type of men who spent the most money on it. I used the past tense on purpose. I’m hoping wider online access and more women customers, the product will improve.
Perhaps most men do like that robot-like, generally degrading to women stuff to jackoff to? I just have a suspicion many would be more pleased with porn closer to something women would also like better.
I have always wished I was rich enough to start my own porn film business to create what pleases me – and see if my theory held up.
@#177 (NoCuteName): “I’m a woman and I’ve tried viagra. First of all, whether in men or women, viagra doesn’t affect libido; it affects blood flow. So if a man with no interest in sex takes it, it doesn’t give him the interest.”
The comment I was responding to was what makes for “universally arousing to men.” If his penis is turgid, I don’t think the guy you’re referring to is going to deny he’s aroused, which was what I was talking about.
As for your libido qualifier, yes, there are circumstances in which men with erections get frustrated.
@#177 (NoCuteName): “The biggest complaint is a low [female] libido, and increased blood flow does nothing for that.”
You seem to be confirming what I’ve been saying.
@#177 (NoCuteName): “I tried viagra not to try and overcome a dysfunction, but because I was curious about whether it would make my clit more swollen when aroused.
“All I can say is that in my case all the blood did gather in one place: my face, which got beet-red and hot for an hour or two. Like a good scientist, I tried viagra again to see if the results I got the first time were repeatable. It happened again.”
Well, guys’ faces get hot when they’re aroused too.
@116: I had the same experience as you; I long had a fantasy of having a couple of guys (double the cuddles plus double the cock – yay!), and was disappointed by the gangbang title. ‘group sex’ and ‘bicurious’ are a bit better. I’ve found the most evidence of the actors mutually enjoying each other in the ‘interracial’ category, although you have to suppress your annoyance that the guys are being objectified so much for their ‘big black cocks’. But since, like me, the actors don’t consider it taboo at all, they just see the scene as a chance to have sex with hot people, and tend to enjoy themselves. I found one gem where one of the guys started off by going down on the lady. She (missy monroe) was so turned on she was leaking a bit and left a puddle on the bed, and she showed how my fantasy of two cocks in the vagina is possible. I haven’t been able to find it again though. Somewhere on rawtube in the middle of all the lame and offensive stuff. What I really wanna see is a scene like that where the guys are hot for each other, and stealing the odd kiss over the woman’s shoulder. Mmmm…
I’d have to mark slash as the #1 thing that turns girls on but repulses guys. Erotica + romance + gayness = win. Even gay guys aren’t really into it.
Hey, and how about linking some actual porn women would be into instead of some blog/hand-holding site?
Oh, and by slash, I guess that also encompasses yaoi/boys love/whatever.
@184–beat me to it. I was gonna say slash fan fiction=girl porn. And believe me, almost all the women I know either watch or read porn (meaning, romance novels or fan fiction with the intention of getting off).
So, Dan, you prefer eclairs then?
@182 Missy Monroe is an enthusiastic performer of double penetration, and likes it enough to do it on porn sets during the breaks between filming. You can see this occasionally in her behind the scenes footage. If double vaginal penetration is your interest, there is a line of movies just for this called, oddly enough, Double Vag. Missy is on the cover for the first one, Double Vag #1. I can’t help you in terms of finding threesomes where the guys kiss each other, but if you find movies with Steve Holmes and Eric Everhard, they often kiss the women. This is especially true of Steve Holmes. Here is a link to Missy’s Videography, it will show you which scenes she has done with double penetration, double vag and so on. She is definitely a good person to start with when you look for these scenes because she likes it so much.
http://www.iafd.com/person.rme/perfid=Mi…
Ok, I’m a woman and I just want to go on the record to say that I like what is known as “male oriented porn”, and I like it alot. But as anonymously as possible. I am terrified…make that stark ravingly terrified, of the social stigma of admitting it. That is what I can’t handle. Men creepily assume that I want to have sex with them, and women throw it in my face. A friend who loaned a couple of tapes to me announced, to a large audience of friends, that I watched porn, and was his “porn buddy”. Whatever that means, I was not. Sooooo, I quickly learned to tiptoe around it, even with boyfriends (again, shocked reactions) and will NEVER publicly admit to it. For all I know, 30% of the female populace is just like me, but we’ll never know until the brutal social stigma eases up. And I sure as hell am not brave enough to do more than write this post.
@145 So the basic defense against lying for sex is “everyone does it”?
No, it’s a basic defense against rape, which is about reasonable consent. It doesn’t mean full disclosure otherwise the human race would die out.
If you want to redefine what rape means to include all lying, evasions, half-truths and unverifiable interpretations of what one person said to another, you’re in an impossible minefield. And you would have to accept that cases of fraud such as a woman failing to inform a man that a child might not be his – in which case he would unlikely wish to continue having sex with the woman but has been caused to do so by lies, are not only fraudulent but also rape.
Seriously, after all the multiple kinks that this site has mentioned over many years, it’s Romance Novels that get an ‘eww’?
For anyone that hasn’t read a romance novel since the 80’s when it was all Fabio all the time on the covers, the romance market has come a huge way. It’s not just historical or those crazy Harlequin books with titles like, “Prince’s Virgin Mistress’ secret baby”, Romance novels come in all genre’s – Suspense, Thriller, Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Comedy, Horror – I’m sure you get the point.
Also, digital publishing has opened up many niche markets, and that does include erotica and erotic romance. As an aside, M/M is huge in the erotic market and you can find many quality offerings if that is your interest.
As with any entertainment, some crap does indeed get through, and yes, the whole ‘Virgin Mistress’ segment of romance does still exist (why not, there is a market that enjoys it. Shouldn’t they be able to enjoy what brings a little kick to their life?) That said, anyone who simply dismisses Romance Novels out of hand is just being an elite snob with an “I’m better than this” type attitude, and seriously, since we are all on the Savage comment section, can any of us truly pull off that attitude?
personally, as a female in a loving relationship with a male, i have no problem with porn. as long as it’s in moderation. i live in a different state than my boyfriend so i need something to hold me over til i see him again. while i enjoy pics & vids sometimes, i much prefer erotic stories because you can imagine whatever you like about the people. it can conform to your turn-ons. my go-to site is lustylibrary.com but there are others. i think you should just find what you like 🙂
I’m a bisexual woman and “younger”, I’m 20. Romance novels SUCK. TOO MUCH PLOT and so poorly written. Same goes for almost all erotica. I just want a dick going into a pussy. I get turned on by sex, hardcore sex. I don’t get turned on by feeling that the man “desires” the woman other than he wants his dick in the pussy. Sex isn’t always about love, for me it’s mostly about SEX! I don’t project myself into the female’s body. And since I’m bi, I totally perv off the hot females. Big boobs, tight twats and ass, etc. Actually, since I’m in a relationship with a man right now, porn probably satisfies my yearning for female bodies. It was interesting reading most of the comments and only catching a few scattered comments that reflect how I feel about porn. Porn doesn’t disgust me unless it totally looks super exploitational (kiddie porn for example). Everyone has different things that turn them on. For me, I usually feel like I’m wired more like a dude, my boyfriend says I have the libido of three men! So hardcore porn works for me and not for others. Don’t get rid of it!
@188: except that she’s used titles like ‘filthy whore’, which totally ruins it for me. Calling me a whore is not a good way to ask for my money. Can’t they figure out that insulting a potential customer is bad marketing? This is the big problem with the porn industry. It’s incredibly sexist.
I love the people who are defending the woman who accused a man of rape, for lying to her to get into her pants. I have to wonder a few things, and would love it if these people would post their answers:
1) would you support the prosecution for rape, and jail time, of everyone who has told a lie to get sex? If so would you help me prosecute three women I had sex with? One told me she was unmarried; she was lying. Another told me she was STD-free; she had herpes. The third told me that she was a Unitarian, because she had misunderstood and thought I was; later she told me over drinks that she had no idea what a Unitarian was. I still have their contact information… I’m thinking of calling the police and accusing all three of rape. God it would be satisfying to see all three in jail . (Oh, excuse me, I’m sounding like that Israeli woman again.) At the very least I could get them labeled sex criminals.
2) Would you be just as happy to see a Jew convicted of rape if if he/she lies to an Arab about her ethnicity or religion? What, you wouldn’t? Funny thing… or do I detect the stench of Arab-hating in your postings…
3) I would love, love, LOVE to see a Jewish man or woman accuse an American Christian of rape in the same circumstances, and see an Israeli court deliver a guilty verdict. But that’ll happen when several hells freeze over.
4) While we’re passing ridiculous laws and expanding the definitions of rape to include everything short of sex without a notarized consent form, let’s not leave out the radical Vegans who have been insisting that eating eggs is a form of rape, presumably because the chicken that laid them didn’t give its written consent. (I am not exaggerating… as somebody or other once said, he who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news…)
About the Jewish woman, I can understand that she might feel upset, but really? Must we prosecute every man or woman who lies to a potential sex partner? What about once you’re in a relationship? I told my fiance that I don’t hate his cat. I totally hate his cat. Am I raping him every time we have sex?
The Arab man said that he was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious relationship, but the only thing he could have been prosecuted for is for saying he was Jewish. You can’t determine whether or not he was interested in a serious relationship. Maybe he was, but then he decided he didn’t like her anymore. Or maybe he was interested in a serious relationship someday, but at the moment was just playing around.
Suppose that, thirty years down the road, my fiance and I get divorced (because I’m hoping we’ll have gotten married by then. Thirty year engagements=not cool). In our wedding vows, we’re going to say the whole, “‘Til death do us part” thing. Does that mean that we’ve been raping each other for thirty years, because we said that we were going to be together until we died, but that turned out to be a lie? It’s just impossible to judge that kind of thing.
Don’t get me wrong, the guy’s a douche, but he’s not a rapist. And if we went around locking up all the douches in the world, I would be out of a job–our customers would all be in jail, and so would about half the managers–and then I wouldn’t be able to get Internet and read Savage Love.
Fan-fiction, Dan. Fan-fiction is women’s porn.
Are we really calling it yaoi? The last time I heard slash referred to that way was 5 years ago at least. Its a bit like hearing “Information superhighway.”
The thing I love about fanfiction is that theres so much diversity in it. With erotic novels theres going to be little plot and a ton of porn, with romance novels its going to be all (cheesy, terribly written) plot and little (cheesy, terribly written) porn. With fic, if you get in the right communities or read the right authors, you can find both kick ass stories and writing as well as amazing porn with every kink you could imagine. And, unlike literotica, there tend to be rec sites to tell you where the good stuff is (and its not adultfanfiction.net, oh god)
http://community.livejournal.com/newbieg… is a good place to get started
It seems a little odd to me that the readership of a Gay man’s sex advice column would fall victim to pre-prescribed notions of what “men” and “women” are like. I have a male friend in the sex trade who could tell you a lot of things women do (most commonly, ask him to pretend to be their son, or a kid they met in high school) that would repulse men and are external to their relationships.
Since women are supposedly more interested in emotional relationships than men ( who are incredibly oversexed in opposition to the apparently sexual drive-less women wandering around hating porn, men, and the entire thought of orgasm, which they will only endure if money is involved, or a ring if I am to understand these normative statements) I would suggest emotional relationships with other men as an alternative.
Hand holding, cheek kissing, snuggling up and watching a movie, even sleeping beside other naked men who are external to the “relationship”. There’s a great song about this “gay boyfriend” Youtube it. 😀
For the record, if I want to see a couple of crack whores fuck for money, I’ll go downtown and at least make a direct payment. I hear they even take debit….ha,ha.
Interestingly enough, historically women were viewed as so highly oversexed that one had to cover the table legs to ensure the wife wouldn’t shove everything in the house, in her. Women were dirty, filthy creatures constantly looking for their next orgasmic “fix” while men were civilized intelligent creatures, incapable of…sound familiar? Only backward?
By the Libertine revolution the world had realized that women, too, had a sexuality. In fact, ladies of the internet, if you are really interested in verbal pornography, with a female focus, I suggest looking up John Wilmot. Read “The Imperfect Enjoyment”, a premature ejaculation poem from simpler times when men weren’t pompous asses who were incapable of admitting their own flaws and the sexuality of women, and when women were human beings not fake princesses or little children on billboards. An excerpt:
“Then, with a thousand kisses wandering oer; my panting bosom: is there then no more? All this to love and rapture’s due: must we not pay a debt to pleasure, too?…but I, the most forlorn, lost man alive, to show my wish’d obedience vainly strive”
Gets me off. But hey, I’m not ashamed that the thought of an adoring-but-helpless-to-please man in a society where women are portrayed as helpless, hapless, sexless, and external, turns me the hell on.
God people, if you’re going to have a discussion, stop being so damned superficial. And Dan, you are the most conservative gay man I’ve ever heard of. Cupcakes? wtf?
Who gives a crap about porn? My fiancee and I have a lot of sex, and when we can’t access eachother we find a private place like a bathroom and text eachother nude porn. Or he sends me a picture of himself in the gym shower, while I’m in class. Does nobody enjoy their own relationship, or have a modicum of creativity anymore? Are we really so superficial that delving the full depths of another human being has been dumbed down to finding someone with a different pair of tits who we can rub ourselves up against? Has the entire complicated beauty and intimacy of sex been reduced to a bodilly function for you fuckheads? Gawwd!
@200 Western womens’ diet changed considerably in the last century or two. It changed the typical female libido from much stronger than a man’s to much weaker than a man’s. That’s the reason for that historical puzzle.
@198 Jon/Stephen 🙂
In the Israeli rape case, I think there are two different arguments here, one of which is valid, the other which is not.
I think it is fair to argue that lying to get sex should not be a crime because of the difficulty in proving the case, or because the courts would be inundated with frivolous cases.
However, it is a bad argument to say that a man’s actions are not rape because the woman should have been more careful. This second argument is victim-blaming and it is sexist.
IF (and I emphasize IF) lying to get sex is considered rape, then the woman should have no duty to exercise due diligence. In fact, she should be able to be careless or reckless.
It would be the same as a provocatively dressed woman wandering into a dangerous neighbourhood late at night. Her decision is obviously unwise, but if she is raped, the fault is properly placed on the rapist. It is the rapist that is entirely to blame.
@203: “It would be the same as a provocatively dressed woman wandering into a dangerous neighbourhood late at night. Her decision is obviously unwise, but if she is raped, the fault is properly placed on the rapist. It is the rapist that is entirely to blame.”
No, it isn’t the same. Deciding to walk into a dangerous neighborhood isn’t deciding to have sex. It is simply deciding to walk into a dangerous neighborhood.
Deciding to have sex, on the other hand, is indeed deciding to have sex. That is what this woman did: she decided to have sex. She didn’t decide to walk into a dangerous neighborhood with him. She decided to fuck him.
While the principle that you put forward is a good one, this case is not an example of it.
@204:
You have missed my argument. My argument is that looking at due diligence, recklessness and whether the woman was careful are irrelevant as to whether a rape occurred.
If it is rape for a man to sexually assault a woman dressed provocatively late at night, then we don’t need to ask whether she exercised due diligence. Whether or not it is rape for a man to lie to obtain sex, we do not need to ask whether she exercised due diligence or should have been more careful. We only need to ask whether his acts were rape or have negated her consent.
I notice you have dropped the arguments that you made earlier that she should have exercised due diligence or was reckless. Perhaps you agree after all that those arguments are irrelevant?
Hey Dan,
I appreciate that you are a great cheerleader for non-monogamy and alternative relationships. However, I’m starting to get a bit sick of the way you seem to believe that people’s secondary partners are essentially masturbation tools, which can be discarded at the drop of a hat without a single thought. It’s disrespectful and selfish to treat people that way, and I wish you would stop telling people to do it.
cupcakes! try dildos . most guys have about as much animosity towards there girlfriends dildo/vibrator as most girls have for finding out there boyfriends watch porn . not a completely fair comparison but whatever
@205: The reason it is rape for a man to sexually assault a woman dressed provocatively late at night is because she didn’t agree to sex AT ALL. All she agreed to do was walk through the neighborhood. The only thing that is irrelevant here is your dumb example. If you want to talk about whether lying invalidates consent, go ahead, but stop bringing up the walking-through-a-bad-neighborhood-late-at-night-while-provocatively-dresssed analogy. It does not apply.
The woman in the Jewish/Arab incident DID agree to sex. She agreed to it specifically and affirmatively. As far as we know, there was no force applied nor threat of force. As far as we know, there was no chemical impairment involved in her decision. As far as we know, she was in full command of her reasoning faculties. He did not inflict the sex act on her; she decided of her own free will to participate. That is why it is not rape.
Maybe it was fraud, however. So let’s take a look at that. It is hard to treat her claim credibly that ethnicity was a material deal-breaker, given her actions. If it wasn’t a deal-breaker, then consent was not negated. That is what I meant by due diligence. It’s not that she was required to do certain things in order to be beyond reproach; it is that it appears that she didn’t really care all that much in the moment. One cannot reconcile her actions with her concerns stated after the fact.
Let’s be clear: I’m not excusing the guy for lying to her. Let’s just be clear on what his crime was, and wasn’t. If we were talking about money rather than sex, it would be as if I handed over my wallet to some guy on the street based on a lie that he told me, and then later, when I discovered his deceit, I wanted the police to charge him with robbery for taking the money that I handed him. Fraud is not robbery; similarly, fraud is not rape.
For the win, #5!!! Romance novels are, in term of the chemical levels in the brain, NO DIFFERENT from a relationship. As in, if I take chemical samples from a women reading one, she’d have the same the SAME chemical levels in her brain she would have if SHE were actually falling in love. Those chemical are addictive! Hence the term ‘new relationship energy junkie’!
@DEP: Erotic fanfiction.
You can find *anything you want* there – any kink, any characters, any level of sex including the illegal, immoral and completely impossible, and definitely any level of quality. It’s all right there for you to choose from! And it’s sexy and hot and the women writers know all about turning on women and hitting their buttons because they are women and they are writing for themselves.
I never knew how much I was into gay BDSM before I met fanfic, and it’s not like I could get any in real life is it? Fanfic is even better than gay porn videos, because it’s ME who creates the images and sees the action – there are no so-so actors with real appearances that don’t completely match my desires to get in the way of my fantasies.
And if you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for, after a short time wandering around the genre you’ll be able to write your own!
@14… I know that this is late, but that’s because I never checked back for a reply until now. Um. Where did you get yaoi nonfiction? I was talking about fanfics.
And, rethinking the matter, I have a sampling bias because all my good friends are really big nerds, and so am I… But still, fanart and fanfiction of anime, manga, even books and movies (but mostly anime and manga) are the most consumed in my friend group. Romance novels are thoroughly mocked.
Now I’m just going to head off and not read any further in the comments.
Aha. I just did a quick ctrl+f for “fanfic” and found that there are quite a few people talking about it! That’s great. I’ve been a fan of fanfiction ever since I hit puberty, for exactly the reasons described by @210. It’s nice to know that it’s not just my in-group. The sheer volume, of course, suggests that…
And @199, I just wrote an essay on BL (Boy Love) works and fandom in Japan and the US. (Most interesting research I’ve ever done, I’ll tell you that.) In Japan, ‘BL’ is the more common term, but ‘yaoi’ is still popular in the US. ‘Shounen ai’ and ‘slash’ are also in use, depending on the fandom.
Also, as for the people confused by the overwhelming volume of bad fics out there, well, there’s always going to be a lot of junk to get through when searching online. This is true for research, porn (fanfics included), what have you.
Okay, now that my curiosity is sated, I’m off. If anyone is interested in any of the BL articles I found, let me know! Fascinating stuff.
http://www.butchbakery.com/
I’m skipping over most of the comments to avoid getting into pointless arguements with people, but I wanted to add myself into the YAY!PORN side of the arguement.
I’ve been reading fanfiction smut for quite some time, and also love looking at porn. I lean towards gay porn because I find that most hetro porn does nothing for me. It’s not the “objectification of women” or whatever that gets to me, and I like naked women a lot, but I just don’t get off on it.
A bit late to comment now, but a suggestion for the woman looking for female porn-type habits; while my husband watches porn on his computer I read horny stories on http://www.literotica.com and then we both rush off to the bedroom to enjoy the fruits of our browsing 🙂 Only problem is I seem to have developed a bit of an addiction to feeling this way and spend waaaay too much time reading those damn stories. He says he really doesn’t mind though, and now is happy to make dinner just so I can read another one. Try it!
Never too late to comment. To the woman who wrote in whining about wanting equality (since men have porn), I have the ultimate response…
Men get to have porn. Final.
Women get to have multiple orgasms. Final.
And if that isn’t leveling the playing field, I don’t know what IS.
Never too late to comment indeed:
The Jewish woman was, in fact, forcibly raped, and went to the police with bruises immediately after. The story about her only flipping out upon finding her rapist not to be Jewish was a lie told by the rapist’s defense lawyer. The court filings were actually that he pled to a lesser charge, and prosecutors felt that having a public court case would be worse for the victim, especially since she had worked as a prostitute and had been previously raped by her own father.
@ 35 – Please buy a dictionary or look up one online for the definition of the word “rape.” Are you seriously comparing someone having a different sex drive to you as “rape?”
Your post is chilling and it’s astonishing that no one else picked up on it.
Better yet, go and learn what rape actually IS and you will never write such a flippant comment again. Or, maybe you will but that would just make you a dumb fuck.
Sort yourself out.
You’re one of those people who compare “foreplay” with buying flowers and I’m willing to bet that you bitch to your buddies about “women are this” and “women are that” yet never take responsibility for your own actions.
Asshole!
Regarding the Palestinian Man who was Convicted of Rape for having consensual Sex w/ a Jewish woman. This is just another way that Palestinians are considered 2nd class in a Jewish Supremacist society. I guarantee you a Jewish Man would not go to prison for doing the same thing to a Palestinian woman. In Israel it is illegal for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. It is even Illegal for a Jew to marry a gentile who converted to being Jewish. For Israelis it comes down to having ‘Pure Blood’. It is amazing how similar Israel is to Nazi Germany. From having minority ghetto’s, pure blood laws, ethnic cleansings, etc. It’s like the abused child who becomes a child abuser syndrome.