My boyfriend and I are straight college students, and he’s always wanting to try new things. Recently, he asked to put a finger in my ass while we were having sex. Someone did that to me before, but it felt uncomfortable and it kinda hurt. I told my boyfriend that he could do it once and then I would decide whether to let it continue. So we tried it. It still felt uncomfortable and still kinda hurt. But I never came so hard in my life!

Now the question: If it’s uncomfortable, but it made me feel amazing and come really hard, what should I do? Continue with it? Or tell him to find some other way of getting me to that point again?

Presently Obsessing Over Totally Extreme Reaction

You could ask the boyfriend to stick a finger in one of your armpits—or in an eye, a nostril, your toaster—but unless your pit/eye/nostril/toaster is wired the way your butt appears to be, POOTER, no amount of pit/eye/nostril/toaster fingering is gonna jack up your orgasms quite the way that finger in your butt did.

So here’s what you’re gonna do, POOTER: You’re gonna breathe deep, you’re gonna take things slow, you’re gonna use more lube, and you’re gonna spend more time warming up the outside of your butt before anything goes in. (Tell the boyfriend he can finger your butt for 10 minutes after he rims it for 20.) Do it right, POOTER, and pretty soon you won’t be able to look at those 10 fingers of his without thinking about the kick-ass, anal-enhanced orgasms you’ll be having when you can only see nine.

I am a 30-year-old woman with a strange problem. I recently started lifting weights, and every time I use the arm machines, I have an orgasm. It is not obvious to anyone else (I think), and my sex life is great outside of the gym. I don’t know if I should stop using the machines, because it’s rude and kind of weird to have that happening, but it just seems to be a physical reaction to using those muscles. What should I do?

Fitness Freaking

Another 20 reps.

I’m a bi 18 year old female. I can’t cum during sex, I never have. Boys or girls it doesnt matter. I can get off by myself but with other people its just uncomfterable. Vagional penatration feels good but head or finger fucking is Not fun. I thought that it was just the people I was sleeping with. You know, age and a small town bla bla bla. I’m off to collage now and in a much biger city and nothing is better.

I Can’t Cum

Off to collage, are we?

Here’s something you may not know about vaginal penetration—besides how to spell “vaginal” and “penetration”—because it’s not something that’s typically covered in small-town high-school sex-ed classes: You can touch yourself during vaginal intercourse. Whatever you’re doing that’s getting you off when you’re alone, ICC, do that thing—touch yourself that way—whenever a sex partner is penistrating you vaginotionally.

And when you’re enjoying sex without penistration—when someone is eating your pussy or fingering your pussy—give that person direction, i.e., put your hand over his hand, place a hand on the back of her head, and show them just how to touch you and/or eat you to create the sensations that are intense or focused enough to get you off.

I am a 24-year-old straight girl. My boyfriend is 31. We have great sex—until the last two minutes. He can’t get off without jackhammering me, so I grab something and hold on for dear life until he comes. I’m happy to do it to satisfy him, but it also means he never gets off when I’m on top, and we can’t have slow, sappy sex every now and then, and it can be painful sometimes. I’ve brought it up a couple of times, but he doesn’t seem to be able to finish any other way. Has it just been too long with a bad habit, or is there a way to bring his dick back?

Holding On Tight

There may not be anything wrong with your boyfriend’s dick, HOT. Just as some women require intense, focused stimulation in order to get off (read: vibrators cranked up high), some guys gotta jackhammer to get off. If your boyfriend is one of those guys, HOT, then there’s no bad habit to break. It’s just something you’ll have to accommodate.

But he needs to accommodate your desire for some slow, sappy sex now and then. And here’s how he can do that: The boyfriend fucks you, long and hard, nice and slow, you get on top if you like, and after you’ve gotten off once or twice or three times… he pulls out… and doesn’t come, at least not inside you. If he’s aching to come, or you want to see him come, then let him finish himself off by jackhammering away at his own clenched fist.

I am a woman in a relationship with a woman. There’s someone else. I haven’t cheated. I’m not a cheater. But I cannot get them out of my head. They are directly in my life. And yes, by “they” I mean “him.” What the F, Dan! I dream about him, think about him. I try not to. I talk about my girlfriend and how much I love her in front of him. But inside I know the truth. It’s becoming hard to be in the same room with him.

So my question: What would Dan do? What would Dan do if he were mind-cheating constantly and experiencing intense feelings of attraction to someone else?!?

What Would Dan Do?

Dan would go to his boyfriend and say, “Hey, honey, it’s been ages since we’ve had a three-way…”

But that’s easy for Dan to say because Dan’s a man and so is his boyfriend, and anyone Dan couldn’t get out of his head would be a man, too. That makes any hypothetical mind- and/or body-cheating on my part less threatening to my boyfriend and less destabilizing to our relationship.

So you probably shouldn’t do what I would do, WWDD. Instead, you should masturbate furiously, avoid being alone with this man whenever possible, and don’t take the wife to see The Kids Are All Right.

Some women like porn and some women don’t mind it. For us women who are otherwise GGG but feel like vomiting at the thought of porn, telling us to use porn—or eat cupcakes—will neither relieve the pain caused by our partners’ use of porn nor meet our emotional and sexual needs if we decide to opt out of relationships with men entirely. I’ve tried my whole life to feel okay about porn. I don’t. I feel betrayed just the same as if the cheating were “real.”

Never Okaying Porn Ever

Porn isn’t cheating, NOPE—but let’s not argue about that.

Instead, let me just say this: You shouldn’t give up on men, NOPE, because I occasionally get letters from men who think a fag sex columnist is interested in hearing them repeat what the insecure, controlling women in their lives have trained them to say (“There are men out there who don’t use porn, and I am one of them!”). If you hang in there long enough, PORN, you’ll meet either a guy who honestly doesn’t watch porn or a guy who says all the right things (“There are men out there who don’t use porn, and I am one of them!”) and is conscientious about clearing his browser history.

mail@savagelove.net

172 replies on “Savage Love”

  1. I completely agree that it’s extremely silly to feel threatened by a partner’s porn. But I also think it’s extremely silly to say that absolutely ALL men like porn.

    I am in a relationship with a man who doesn’t really like porn. I believe him when he says this for a number of reasons: 1) He knows I wouldn’t care if he did. 2.)We’re not monogamous anyway. Just as I fuck other men sometimes, he fucks other women sometimes. It would be a very strange man indeed he feels the need to conceal his partiality to watching videos of other people fucking but not his partiality to actually fucking other people from his partner, for fear of her feeling threatened or jealous. Particularly when she’s got similar inclinations.

    But his feelings about porn or really pretty similar to mine. We’re both visually stimulated, we’ve both watched porn ON OCCASION, we both would be totally open to porn if porn weren’t so ridiculous. But watching bored-looking women screaming unrealistically and then sit there waiting for the money shot with their mouths wide open like they’re at the dentist (and looking like they’re enjoying themselves about as much as if they actually were) is just not very sexy. Waste of a great concept.

    So yes, Dan. There are men who don’t like porn. And not all of them are under the the thumb of some controlling shrew who has them so thoroughly brainwashed that they feel the need to anonymously report their lack of interest in porn to strangers. You’ve got some seriously problematic assumptions here, about women as well as men.

  3. Fitness freaking… if only the rest of America had your problem, we wouldn’t be the fattest nation on Earth!

    Bout porn…here’s a crazy nugget for you. I’m a porn-loving woman in love with a porn hating man. He doesn’t know about my habit, because we’re in a long-distance thing. I think he believes it’s demeaning to women, and therefore to him if he watches it. Plus, he has a daughter. I do think that factors in.

    Mostly, I look at things I’d probably never do, like threesomes, DP, that sort of thing. But with all the searchable things and urban dictionary definitions for sex acts, there’s one thing I can’t find, and I crave. I love to see a woman having her pussy licked while she’s getting fucked. It’s a rare find, especially to see it with two men performing it on her. Anyone know where I can A. Find more of this, and B. find the name of this act?

  5. @26

    You’re right and it makes me want to puke. The culture says that lesbians are just in need of a “deep dicking” all the damn time, but in a relationship between two lesbians, it’s pretty easily laughed off. In a situation like this though… it’s kind of true. Which, like I said, PUKE.

    When you hear messages all the time that as a woman, you could never really meet a female partner’s needs, and all that crap is confirmed in your relationship, it can cut you way more deeply than if sexual orientation weren’t a factor. It doesn’t make the bisexual women involved bad people or anything like that, but it sucks that lesbians are labeled biphobic if they admit that their partner’s leaving them for a man, or cheating on them with a man, hurts more. In our Almighty Cock enshrining culture, experiencing something like this is castrating. Or the female version thereof… I’ll let you ponder why there’s no common word for that.

  7. The other thing that might help us understand NOPE’s distress is getting a clearer idea on the kind of porn her guy is watching. It’s not all the same.

    I’m totally into squirt porn and anything where the women involved seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves. But there’s plenty of porn out there that makes women’s pleasure not simply irrelevant but positively anathema to the guy’s satisfaction. Now, let’s be clear – I often get off on being tied up and choked until I orgasm. I’m not talking about images of BDSM. I’m talking about porn that represents a pervasive, normalized attitude of casual violence towards women. I’m talking about porn that effaces the subjectivity, the personhood, of the woman being fucked.

    Surely we can discriminate here? After thoughtful conversation I’d be likely to break off a relationship with a guy who wanted to watch aggressive ass-to-mouth action for example, but I’ll happily enjoy some pre-fucking mutual masturbation while watching porn in which all participants seem to be getting their needs met. But, if women have only seen their lovers watching the porn that renders women’s active desires unnecessary and distracting, is it any wonder that they have reactions of visceral distress?

    OK – all that, simply to point out it might help NOPE to get some advice that’s less judgmental. No need to react to her with the kind of reflex criticism she’s currently dishing out to her lover.

  9. Wow #58. It must really, really suck to not have any internal fantasies, no sex drive, and no mental images that you call up to get aroused.

  10. Perhaps women will become more comfortable with porn once the same guys watching it stop harassing women on the street (the assuming they should be flattered), calling older women over the hill (assuming women’s looks are all that matters), stop assuming attractive women have all fucked their way to the top, that all women with rich men are golddiggers, that women who put out are whores, that women who make themselves up are at least partly asking to get harassed or assaulted, that porn stars and other sex workers are subhumans and ‘unrapeable,’ stop going to find whores and child brides in foreign countries because American women are all ‘spoiled’…

    I am generalizing, of course. But it’s not as if porn is made or viewed in vacuum (insert fleshlight joke here).

  11. “Wow #58. It must really, really suck to not have any internal fantasies, no sex drive, and no mental images that you call up to get aroused.”

    Wow, #59. It must really suck to lack the basic imagination necessary to picture hot things inside your mind instead of getting them spoon-fed to you by a magazine or computer screen.

    I’ve had several partners who weren’t especially into porn; they preferred their own fantasies, which unlike porn are custom-made and can be called up anywhere, anytime, at a moments’ notice.

    When guys say that every guy watches porn, that strikes me as self-justification. All guys do not watch porn. Most do, probably, but not all.

  12. #61 Can you read at beyond the elementary school level? If he states that he doesn’t utilize porn, and I then point out that it must suck to not have any internal fantasies, I am simply pointing out that his internal fantasies _are_ porn.

    I wonder why you don’t supply the same hatred towards the non-erotic literary and multimedia industries. After all, they also supply things so that your imagination does not have to do all the work itself. It, of course, couldn’t be because you are sex-negative.

    Since any erotic imagery of any kind, whether produced purely inside your brain or seen through your eyes, is porn, then yes, any human with a basic, functional sex drive utilizes porn.

    @60 Your argument assumes that there are men who do not utilize any kind of erotica/porn/internal mental imagery. Since this is nonsense, your argument is also nonsense.

  13. I hope the girl with pounding boyfriend reads this: You do NOT want this idiot to damage your Bartholin’s gland ducts (Google it!). If you start getting Bartholin’s gland abscess, you WILL wish you were dead! They are more excrutiating than anything on Earth. I had a boyfriend who would just rudely cram it in there, and I have had trouble ever since. Make him jerk off. Don’t permanently damage yourself!

  14. On the advice to NOPE: Actually, most major internet browsers now support “private browsing sessions”, which keep bookmarks, histories, etc. keyed to specific, password-protected user profiles, the idea being that if multiple people use the same user-account on the same computer, you can still make sure the kids (or wife or girlfriend or whoever) aren’t finding those problematic link/bookmarks/history entries. You should also set your browser to automatically delete the browser cache on close if you have privacy concerns.

    As for ICC, “vagional” is an understandable typo, as o is right next to i on QWERTY keyboards. The other ones, not so much, particularly when most major browsers (and mobile devices) support inline spell-check. Additionally, most people in this country do not know “standard” prescriptive American written English. In fact, many of my college PROFESSORS regularly confused ‘who’ and ‘whom’ (this is a REALLY simple rule – ‘who’ is a subject and ‘whom’ is an object, always, no exceptions), and ‘which’ and ‘that’ (and ‘that which’), among many other errors. Hell, Dan switches ‘me’ and ‘I’ all the time on the podcast (not in his writing; he has an editor, I presume), so he’s hardly one to talk. Still, that was a notable number of spelking errors, but all of that is going to have more to do with the abysmal state of education in this country than individual ability.

    So take heart ICC: maybe you can improve your spelling skills AND sex skills as college progresses. The masturbating-with-the-other-person-in-the-room thing is great idea: it will help you figure out whether you can’t cum because of nerves or some other psychological block, or whether it’s a matter of figuring out and effectively communicating the mechanics of the types of partnered sex that will get you off.

  15. #62: Yep, I can read just fine, thank you. In fact, I just read Mirriam-Webster’s definition of pornography:

    1 : the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement
    2 : material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement
    3 : the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction

    Do one’s internal fantasies amount to the same thing as pornography? Pretty much, at least from the “both of these things constitute getting off to people other than one’s partner” standpoint. But the word pornography specifically refers to pictures, films, writing, etc.

    The poster who said he’s not into pornography is therefore stating that he’s not into pictures, films, writing, etc. that graphically portray sex. When you accused him of not having any kind of sex drive, etc., I naturally assumed you were asserting that anyone with a sex drive must need to look at sexual photographs, movies, or writing in order to get off. If you were trying to make the point that fantasies and pornography are basically the same thing, you could have said “fantasies and pornography are basically the same thing”. You know, in your outside voice.

    “I wonder why you don’t supply the same hatred towards the non-erotic literary and multimedia industries. After all, they also supply things so that your imagination does not have to do all the work itself. It, of course, couldn’t be because you are sex-negative.”

    Please show me where I said that I hate pornography. It seems you’re the one with the reading difficulties…

  16. @62: “Since any erotic imagery of any kind, whether produced purely inside your brain or seen through your eyes, is porn, then yes, any human with a basic, functional sex drive utilizes porn.”

    You are really stretching the definition of porn here. I think it is pretty clear that when most people talk about being anti-porn, they are referring to something which has actually been produced – video, photos, writings, etc. – and not something which was simply imagined as part of a fantasy. And I doubt that most people who say “I don’t use porn” or “I don’t enjoy porn” are saying “I don’t use (or enjoy) sexual fantasy.”

  17. Wow: another pornography-related barrage. Didn’t we just have one of these?
    Maybe not *all* men watch porn. Maybe porn is constructed in your very own head. Dan’s very valid point is that she can’t be the thought police. Either she gets the fuck over it, she leaves in search of the rare man that doesn’t like porn, or her partner (whether current or future) learns to hide his porn from her and she doesn’t go looking for it.

    She doesn’t say that her bf asks her to watch the porn with her and it doesn’t sound like she objects to the specific kind of porn, DomnaNico, it sounds like she regards any consumption of porn on her bf’s part EVEN IF HE DOES IT IN PRIVATE to be an act of infidelity. (Does anyone else remember Jimmy Carter’s confession of “adultery” as having “lust in his heart” for women other than his wife?!)

    She talks about “the pain caused by our partners’ use of porn” and decides her choice is to be in a relationship and continue to feel as hurt and betrayed as if her bf were cheating if he watches porn, or not “meet [her] emotional and sexual needs if [she] decide[s] to opt out of relationships with men entirely.”

    I don’t like porn. It makes me a bit nauseous. But as long as my partner doesn’t want me to watch it with him, and as long as his porn-and-masturbation routine doesn’t take away from what he gives me, I could not care less how much or what kind of porn he watches. Everyone’s entitled to “lust in his heart.”

    NOPE has got some serious issues to work through.

  18. OMG the PORN thing, AGAIN?!? WTF ladies, we don’t complain when you read romance novels (PROVEN to be the same in terms of brain chemistry as actually having a new relationship….cheating) by the box (pun intended)! Most women are not so visually stimulated, men are period. Please just give us a break. or at LEAST don’t bust out the oh so tired ‘You don’t love me!’
    No I am not a woman hater, just frustrated with the same old thing, like 20 years worth. Pa-lease.

    And just one more word, spellcheck.

  20. @60: I’m not sure how sincere your post is, but the key problem with your equation is that it’s not “the same guys watching it” who are doing those things. If you hold all men accountable for the actions of some, you’re actually working AGAINST feminist causes…because like it or not, if you want to make any further progress towards women’s rights, you need men to be on board. Phrasing things the way you did in your post leaves them no reason to do that, or even to particularly care about women’s rights or well-being, since it’s basically typical “As far as I’m concerned you’re a piece of shit until we get feminist utopia and abolish the patriarchy, then we’ll talk” rad fem rhetoric that accomplishes nothing and goes nowhere.

  21. POOTER could try investing in a small buttplug. Take all the time that’s needed getting comfortable wearing it, and only then proceed to vaginal penetration. I’m willing to bet this would be even better than a finger. Sodomy is best!!!

  22. @64 Yes, there were a number of “spelking” errors.

    As a college PROFESSOR, I have occasionally relaxed the rules of grammar when corresponding with certain students. (We all know that sometimes using “whom,” avoiding a split infinitive, or shirking a dangling participle makes a sentence awkward, and thereby confusing to some).

    Maybe your professors were idiots, or maybe they didn’t respect your intelligence enough to correspond in the manner they would with their colleagues. Or maybe they were human. Just a thought.

    Even so, “who/whom” and “which/that” errors are in an entirely different class than not being able to spell words at a 2nd grade vocabulary level.

  23. HOT, there “may not be anything wrong with your boyfriend’s dick” as Dan says, but on the other hand, there most likely IS something wrong with it – the fact that half of it was cut off when he was a baby! When he was circumcised (and by your description of his “jackhammering,” not to mention the fact that few American men now in their thirties escaped the knife, it’s a no-brainer that he WAS circumcised), he lost about 20,00 specialized nerve endings, lost the protective covering for his glans which would have kept his glans smooth, moist, and sensitive instead of dry and keratinized (which is only going to get worse as he gets older), and he lost the gliding action which also would have prevented the drawing out of lubrication during intercourse.
    You cannot alter form without also altering function. A circumcised penis works differently from and intact penis, and most circumcised men have to hammer away; more so the older they get.
    You also cannot remove such a large amount of nerve endings (and build up a callus over those that are left) without losing sensitivity.
    “Is there a way to bring his dick back?” Yes, it is called “foreskin restoration.” It is a long, slow process but thousands of men have had incredible results and are now enjoying “slow, sappy,” MUTUALLY SATISFYING sex with their wives and girlfriends. Good luck to you and your boyfriend!
    (The good news is, these days about 2 out of 3 boys in the U.S.A. are actually allowed to keep all their genitals, so in 20 or 30 years far fewer women will have to hold onto the headboard, grit their teeth, and endure the jackhammer, and far fewer men will have to go around with tension devices on their dicks for a few years to try to recover what was taken from them without their consent.)

  25. There’s this one killer gym exercise where you “sit” against the wall as long as you can. One minute is a really long time. Total thigh killer. First time I tried this I damn near had an orgasm after I stood up because of all that blood flow to the exhausted muscles. Didn’t quite achieve one. It’s interesting that others have noticed the same thing. I never quite had the discipline to hold this pose on my own for that long while masturbating furiously…

  26. For WWDD,
    I was in the same situation and ended up having an affair with the guy last month, which I admit was a betrayal and incredibly hurtful. My life’s essentially chaos now, so I am getting what I deserve in many ways. But there is a small part of me that isn’t sorry it happened because I discovered that I need to have more sex with men. That said, if you really want to preserve your relationship, you need to stop spending time with this guy. Your feelings will likely just get more intense if you continue to see him.

  27. I think that a lot of the problem with ladies who get jealous/freaked out at their guy watching porn (and I used to be one) is plain old insecurity. Maybe they’re worried that they aren’t as skinny or good-looking as the girls in the vids. Or that their boyfriend will expect them to act like porn stars. Or that his watching it means that he is gearing up to cheat.

    Sometimes these fears are justified. Most of the time, they are about YOU and YOUR FEARS and are totally irrational.

    And I’m not putting the blame on the woman in the relationship totally either. I mean, society tells us gals that men cheat because we don’t give them enough sex or because we gained weight. It’s fucked up. It’s also untrue.

    Ultimately, we as women need to get into a better headspace, become more secure in the relationship and in ourselves. And we need to translate that security into a demand that media outlets stop perpetuating these destructive social messages.

  28. There’s something that gets conveniently overlooked in this rush to declare porn as completely “normal” and ok to consume. Many of the people (especially the women) involved in making porn aren’t doing it out of their own free will. There are degrees, of course – not everyone is trafficked or forced to perform with a gun to their head. But the number of people who have drug problems, a history of abuse, and/or fucked-up family situations is astounding. And then there are those who see it as the only way out of sheer financial hardship in a world where a women gets “valued” more for her cunt than for anything else she could offer.

    If you think these women are all self-empowered sex-positive entrepreneurs you are seriously deluding yourself.

    If you don’t and would rather not think about it you’re a scumbag who has forfeited any right to ever buy free-range eggs again. Go fuck a responsibly farmed salmon.

    If the very real-life degrading of women is part of what you enjoy about porn (even secretly), the word asshole is too good for you.

  29. @78: “There’s something that gets conveniently overlooked in this rush to declare porn as completely ‘normal’ and ok to consume.”

    The issue here isn’t whether the porn industry is ethically run, but the very concept of using visual stimulae for sexual gratification. Nobody’s “overlooking” this issue because it isn’t really relevant. We’re arguing about whether a woman should feel betrayed by her partner’s porn consumption — unless you feel that “you’re supporting an exploitative industry!” is a way to justify hurt feelings.

    As you yourself point out, this isn’t an *inherent* problem of porn. Lots and lots of industries suffer from some degree of exploitation — coffee, bananas, clothing, pets (yay, puppy mills) cleaning services, whatever.

    I’m not going to tag my enjoyment of everything — be it coffee or a clean toilet at work or porn — with a “oh by the way I acknowledge that some people are forced into/exploited by this.”

    It isn’t “convenient” or a delusion to not mention these problems every single fucking time. It’s having some common sense.

    “If the very real-life degrading of women is part of what you enjoy about porn (even secretly), the word asshole is too good for you.”

    And seriously? I have a difficult time thinking there are enough assholes out there getting off on poor employment standards to get outraged.

    “If you don’t and would rather not think about it you’re a scumbag who has forfeited any right to ever buy free-range eggs again. Go fuck a responsibly farmed salmon.”

    Please froth at the mouth elsewhere.

  30. What NOPE should do is get a decent camera or find a decent photographer that does glamour shots and get some really good nudes done. Then she can give these to her potential beaus and BE the porn!

  31. @40 Back then, everybody just watched each other do it in real life.

    @42 I’m jealous. It’s not that I have the opposite problem–it’s not that my bf watches porn instead of effing me. He just likes to eff about 3 times a week and views softcore porn stills about once every 15 days. Sigh.

    @80 I hate to say it, but that doesn’t actually work. He’ll look at the pics of her, enjoy them–then look at the pics of the other girls, too. Most likely. Personal experience.

    As for WWDD, a friend and I were discussing this last night. Once we both accepted that having crushes on other people didn’t mean we didn’t love our partners, we didn’t feel so much of a charge about them. Because your crush is male and you’re in a lesbian relationship, your crush might have extra charge because it’s got you questioning your sexuality, which is a part of our very identity. Feeling this gets you emotionally riled up, so it’s hard to let go. Allow yourself to have a crush, take away the guilt and understand that straight, bi, transgendered, gay, lesbian people have all kinds of crushes for all kinds of reasons on all kinds of people and it possibly says absolutely nothing about your sexuality or your current relationship, and see if you still feel so overwhelmed by it. Also, when you’re in an LTR, it doesn’t feel so charged after a while, so crushes can feel a lot stronger in comparison. They’re often like mirages, though. Beautiful and glittering from a distance, but there’s nothing there when you get there.

  32. @79 Let me clarify: I have no problem with pornographic paintings, drawings, literature, anime, computer games, whatever. I don’t mind “real people” porn if it’s done by amateurs and/or people genuinely enjoying themselves. However, I’d be surprised if that represented the majority of porn consumed and produced today. I have no statistics for this, only anecdotal evidence from a friend who was involved in the “industry” for quite some time.

    The issue of women feeling threatened by their partners’ use of porn is indeed something different, which a lot of people have addressed here already, so I didn’t bother going into it. If you care to know, I have absolutely no problem with my partner getting off to the sight and thought of other people. I do too.

    What I do have a problem with is the cavalier attitude that many pro-porn people seem to have about those “poor employment standards” you mention. Is there a “euphemism of the year” competition?

    My point is – yes, life sucks for other people too, but at least there is some consumer awareness, there are fair trade products, free range chicken, responsibly farmed salmon.

    I don’t see (enough of) a similar movement in porn. Why is that?

    Now, “fair trade” porn, there’s a thought…

  33. @ 82

    I agree. The “sex positive” movement is great in a lot of ways but, in it’s attempt to counter sexual repression, it often seems to ignore that the facts of the sex industry, and the porn industry in particular, are actually pretty nasty. To hear some sex-positive activists talk, you’d think that every female porn star is a Smith graduate with a BA in women’s studies who just wants to spend some time reveling in her empowered sexuality before she enters a Ph.D program. It ain’t so.

    However, at least the sex-positive movement has basically good goals, including the goal to make women’s sexuality and women’s consumption of sexually explicit material more acceptable. Whereas the primary concern of many of the pro-porn posters here seems to be to liberate poor, oppressed men from their ball-busting harridans of wives or girlfriends, with nary an acknowledgment of the fact that plenty of women also like to get off on depictions of others having sex. Oh wait, there has been “Ladies, you have romance novels!” Really, these are are Dan Savage readers here, I’d expect a little less patronizing stereotyping of women as less sexual beings who only want to read about being taken into the manly arms of Fabio and made love to.

    Many, I’d say most (whether they feel comfortable admitting it or not) women do get aroused by sexually explicit images. It’s human nature. However, many women have other considerations that prevent them from being into most porn, such as the fact that a lot of it is produced under disgusting conditions and that that shows all too well in the fact that the women rarely look like they’re having a good time. And, yes, many men also share those considerations. Completely aside from the rights issues involved, it’s just not that hot to watch bored, exhausted looking people have highly stylized, unrealistic, passionless sex.

    When I can find some porn that is actually hot (read: the people look like they’re enjoying themselves, which means it probably wasn’t produced under sleazy conditions) than that is just awesome and my partner agrees.

    But there are plenty of men that are just turned off by most porn as it exists today, and plenty of women for whom “it’s a corrupt industry” is not just a cover for jealousy.

  34. Lady Tenar, I don’t think you should speak for “many” women and their attitudes or objections to porn any more than people who say that women’s porn is romance novels.

    My objections to porn have nothing to do with the conditions under which it is made or the lack of real fun the women are having.

    I get repulsed at extreme closeups of genital penetration. To me, it reduces all the sensations and passion of sex to pieces of meat colliding. Maybe if the camera was always positioned in a long shot so I could get a sense of the body parts belonging to actual people, I would like it more, but even then, since it seems so joyless and boring, I don’t think I could ever find it arousing.

    It’s like eating: wonderful to do, but not so much necessarily to see others doing, and, depending on their style, potentially disgusting.

    But that’s *my* opinion and reaction. I don’t pretend to speak for all, most, many, or even some women–just me.

    Confidential to Schmooze: Aha! I knew there was a reason for my crush: we’re both college professors–and apparently, both English professors. Now I gotta go write some syllabi.

  35. @4 “I have the same problem as Fitness Freaking – except with hamstring curls and leg raises … orgasms at the gym leave me wobbly and incapable of lifting much else for the rest of the session.”

    Do the leg curls last…?

  36. For FF my wife has this reaction to a machine at our gym called the Roman Chair, She says that the key thing is keeping her thighs tightly together while she lifts her bent legs upward. Of course this postion cannot be duplicated in our bed, but, just the same hmmm
    tw

  37. @81 Great advice for WWDD! I can apply it for myself too, so thanks a ton!
    @76 I learn something from your situation also. Thanks!

    A bit about my own situation:

    I’m a married bisexual woman, and I have crushes on different women that I met in life every once in a while. It’s like what they call “fluid sexuality” – there are times I feel very “straight”, completely satisfied with my husband, not thinking of women at all; then followed by a period of craving for intimacy with women to the point that I feel very “gay”, that I could have multiple crushes on women in a short period of time. In between are the fluid times, sometimes more “straight”, sometimes more towards the “gay”.

    My husband does not know about this. He is a sensitive and kind guy, but sometimes he does express his homophobia mildly. Every time that happens, I try to confront, explain, and educate him about homosexuality. He came from a close-minded small town, so it’s not surprising. Over time he has less and less homophobia expressions, and I’m glad about that, but deep down I have no idea how he feels if I tell him I’m bi! So I haven’t told him that yet.

    As for myself, I have only come to completely accept myself as a bisexual woman recently, although I had questioned my sexuality for years, since I was a teenager. Also the knowledge about “fluid sexuality” has helped me greatly with my confusion – you know, the “straight” and “gay” periods!

    All the awareness above help me deal with my periodically crushes on women. I don’t have crushes on men, as my husband is all I need in men, and I love him!

    I used to be very shaking and overwhelmed with emotions during my crushes on women. As @81 said in his/her post, I was questioning my sexuality and my very identity during those periods. It could lead to depression for days or weeks, and husband felt my sadness but didn’t understand why.

    Now that I accept that it is the way I was created, that I will just have to welcome those crushes when they come, as a very part of me, enjoy the emotions that they bring to me when they are here, but not to let them take me over. And wait for them to subside.

    This is my choice at the moment: I don’t deny the “gay” part of me, but I try to keep it under control, and give priority to the “straight” part, because I love my husband, and value our marriage.

    Again, it’s for the present, and I have no idea what will happen to me in the future. I may come to a point where I, like @76, feel no regrets for realizing that my “gay” part wants to take over. Or not!

  39. Dude – for WWDD – seriously awful advice. You’re essentially telling this woman to suppress her feelings and desires, which (per all your previous advice columns up till now) usually ends in tears and a worse situation. She shouldn’t suppress it… she should be upfront and honest with her girlfriend – as you said you would be in your in your relationship. Honesty isn’t just for gay men when it comes to sex – we should encourage a healthy dialogue, even if it’s horribly uncomfortable; the alternative is so much worse.

  40. @82: “I don’t see (enough of) a similar movement in porn. Why is that?”

    Probably because porn itself is something you don’t buy or use as openly as eggs or coffee or chicken, so people don’t — as commonly — share their stories, sources about it, so it’s harder to get a picture of what exactly goes behind the scenes.

    Because porn is a fairly private product, so it’s difficult to be open about its facets. I mean, the “ethical labour and environmentally-friendly materials for sex toys!” cry is minimally there, but nowhere near the scale of, say, “fair trade coffee!”

    Because porn IS stigmatized, so some people just think, “Oh whatever, you shouldn’t be looking at porn anyway and it isn’t a real job and only whores do it.” Not so with earnest poor Third World farmers, adorable animals, and adorabler (yes) children labourers, etc.

    I think you’re right — it should be regulated and protected. Part of the way there is to accept it socially too — tying into “hey porn is normal and enjoyable.” Maybe if more and more people enjoyed porn, they’d eventually care about where it came from too. If people already see it as a social evil, the fact it comes from a socially evil source probably isn’t high on their minds. It’s like an ethical drug dealer. (Ok, I know a lot of people care how they get their drugs, but give me some leeway here.)

    If more women liked porn, maybe more of them would get involved in the industry as more than underpaid, exploited workers — directors, producers, financiers. That could be a step towards a healthier, more ethical industry.

    “What I do have a problem with is the cavalier attitude that many pro-porn people seem to have about those ‘poor employment standards’ you mention. Is there a ‘euphemism of the year’ competition?”

    That was supposed to be flippant sarcasm. Also, I work for a labour organization with lots of bureaucratic jargon, so that was a very “in” in-joke. Not anyone’s fault but mine!

    I guess my overall point is that I understand now that you’re saying that many pro-porn people don’t care, but I was taking offence at an implication that just because you were pro-porn mean you didn’t care (*even if the issues were explained to you*, which I found difficult to believe, much less a significant minority of people who get off on the idea of human trafficking and co-ercion). Your remark just seemed out of blue, so I read you as tying it a lot more closely to the discussion at hand than warranted.

  41. @87 Glad I could help.

    @82 and @90

    I love 90’s point. I was thinking about this yesterday in regards to prostitution, which is not currently legal in this country. I was thinking about how a lot of the “progressive” men I know who advocate for making prostitution legal would NEVER want their own wives/girlfriends working as prostitutes. Some men don’t mind when their partner is a porn star/prostitute, but a lot of men who claim it should be treated as “just a job” would change their minds if it entered their private sphere. To me, this speaks to a double standard. We say in one breath that sex work should be destigmatized (which could be said of both prostitution and porn), legalized, regulated, and treated like any other job. In the next breath, we essentially admit that it ISN’T like any other job. Sure, some people want to be firefighters and some don’t, but the reasoning behind not wanting to do almost any other job compared to the reasons for not wanting to be in porn/work as prostitutes are wildly different for most people. Those reasons aren’t just about legality and regulation. They’re about the way this society views sex. It’s something we don’t want to talk about or be honest about. People are taught to be ashamed of it unless it’s performed within certain contexts. But even people with progressive views on these issues would never engage in porn/prostitution because that’s not what “upstanding” members of the community do. I’ll admit it–I LOVE SEX. I LOVE IT. Really, a career counselor would be remiss not to recommend porn as a good career for me (because I love sex, not because I’m hot or anything). But would I be in porn? Nope. Honestly, partially because of what that could do for my future prospects in other career industries should I want to change jobs as well as to relationship prospects. So, honestly, what’s to be done?

  43. Fitness Freakin’s delightful problem reminds me of the old joke:
    Woman seated on airplane can’t stop sneezing. Passenger next to her asks if she’s coming down with a cold. “No,” she replies, “it’s just that every time I sneeze I have this huge orgasm.”
    “Are you taking anything for it?”
    “Yeah, black pepper.”

  44. {snip}Also remember that before porn was widely available most men managed to subsist just fine without it.
    ——
    @#40: Huh? When, pray tell, was that? Porn, in one form or another, from dirty vase etching to shunga to Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems to Viv Thomas (google it), has been “widely available,” as you put it, for THOUSANDS of years. And when it wasn’t “widely available,” people created their own—artistic or literary. that’s why it cracks me up when douchebags like Judith Reisman try to crusade to eradicate pornography. Good luck with that, bitch.

    For the record, I’m a middle-age woman who LOVES porn. Not all of it, just the stuff that pushes my buttons. And that’s the thing: Everyone has buttons that are going to be pushed by some kind of erotica out there. One just has to find the right stuff, or create it if you can’t. I was writing erotica for myself at age 14. Perhaps NOPE would prefer a site like http://www.forthegirls.com/.

  45. I’m with 47. I’m married to a man who doesn’t like porn. I sometimes enjoy erotica (mostly written, not pictures – hey, I’m female) and I wouldn’t object to his using porn, but he leaves the room if I watch something too racy. He just doesn’t like it. When he masturbates he just fantasizes, he doesn’t look at pictures.

    So there are men who don’t use porn out there. Maybe NOPE could even find one. But it’s probably more practical to look for a man who is willing to be discrete about it, and not use porn where she has to be aware of his use.

  47. @82. If the facts are so obvious, then you’ll be able to provide links to properly constructed, non push-poll, peer reviewed studies that demonstrate these facts. If you can’t do so, then the facts really aren’t so obvious, are they. In fact, if you can’t do so, then to claim that you know anything about the conditions in which porn is produced is an outright lie.

  49. @26: there’s… one scenario where I’d be at least kind of OK with someone asking their SO to never masturbate–and that’s one where, well, they agree to give at least a hand job *whenever* their SO wants some.

    It’s still a little weird and controlling, but at least it’s not a case where you’re forcing a partner to engage in sexual activity only and entirely on your schedule…

  50. About POOTER’s anal dilemma:
    Why try to take it slow with more lube? Why not just get your rocks off on what gets your rocks off? My gf comes real hard when I push my finger against (not into) her butthole while she masturbates (the muscle tissue to be precise) – so that it hurts. I say: if it ain’t torn, don’t add extra-lube.

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