Porn Perspectives

Unraveling the Eternal Mystery of Women

 

A fascinating article in Sunday's Times discussed a number of research efforts attempting to define female desire. The whole article is worth a read, but I've pulled out a few provocative insights for your consideration.

A Canadian researcher conducted an experiment where she measured physical (genital) response to sexual materials, and also asked participants to consciously report their arousal level. The stimuli included hetero sex, homosexual male and homosexual female sex, a man masturbating, a woman masturbating, a naked man walking, and a naked woman exercising. She also showed a video of bonobo monkeys copulating.

The male participants reacted true to form - the straight men were aroused when watching hetero sex, lesbian sex, and the naked women. Gay men preferred the gay sex and naked men. Neither group of men was interested in the monkey sex.

The story was quite different for women - they were aroused across the board (including monkey sex), but only genitally. Mentally, they reported arousal in accordance with sexual orientation. Also worth noting is the women were more aroused at the sight of the exercising woman than with the naked walking man.

One explanation could be that women are simply out of touch with their true desires. But according to this explanation, women want to have sex with bonobos. This was unlikely, so the researcher's tentative conclusion was that in terms of evolution, it made sense for women's vaginas to lubricate in response to any sort of sexual stimulation. It makes sex possible and less painful.

Another explanation is that female sexuality is reactive, while male sexuality is aggressive and direct. Evolution wouldn't want two motivational forces - complementary forces would be more stable and productive. This could have something to do with the strong role that being desired plays in female sexuality. This would also help us understand the issues some young, "liberated" women face today of not being able to say no to boys (it's hard to say no when you're not sure what it is you really want) - I'll write more on this in my next post.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of women having a passive/receptive sexuality, but I am compelled by the notion that women are able to react to a wide variety of sexual stimuli. This creates a much more fluid sexuality, which, on the downside is hard to pin down, but also has the benefit of being hard to pin down. Categories aren't sexy - mystery is. How delightful women's infinite complexity is - we never have to explain ourselves when we're weirdly attracted to a pair of shoes or a tall building or the metering light pattern on the Bay Bridge (uhm..).

Another interesting insight, related to the above. If the feeling of being desired is central to women's sexuality, then what happens when women enter monogamous relationships?

Another researcher who works with women suffering from dyspareunia (vaginal pain during sex), as well as women experiencing loss of desire. Loss of desire is much more common among married women than married men; additionally, women tend to have a lower libido. This means women need a lot more stimulation to spark desire. And if we accept the premise that being desired is important to women, then monogamy necessarily kills desire. Husbands have no choice than to have sex with their wives. So no matter how he may try to dress it up, she knows that she is his only option; his sexual pursuit of her is not completely inspired by her ravishing beauty.

I'm not saying that this explanation is widely applicable, or even true - but it is an interesting development in the study of female desire. Aspects of this research are well worth consideration.

Really, I urge you to read the full article. There's tons more material there, including a shockingly provocative discussion of female rape fantasies which would have landed the writer and researchers in major hot water among the feminist community 10 years ago (and maybe still today?).

Women are so gay

I have pondered before the not-so-straight sexuality of heterosexual women. A recent study covered in the Times provides further evidence that unlike men, women are not at all straightforward in their sexual responses.

Specifically, this study found that when shown photos of naked people, heterosexual women's biological sexual response was stronger in response to the image of the female. Photos of naked men were about as exciting as a landscape photo.

There are numerous conclusions to  draw from this data--perhaps women are "naturally" bisexual; maybe men's bodies are not the site of sexual attraction for women; perhaps the constant objectification of women has caused straight women to sexualize each other's bodies. I really don't know what to make of it. At the very least, it 's nice to know that women's sexuality is broad enough to appreciate non-hetero images

Other theories?

When porn addiction is really just a bad relationship

"He's addicted to porn!" is fast becoming the latest relationship scapegoat. Wit Fox News columnist Yvonne Fulbright's article guiding women towards this false conclusion (via Jezebel). While porn certainly has its faults, being the universal cause of bad relationships is not one of them.

Here's Fulbright's list of clues your partner has a porn addiction:

1. Your partner is not as social as he used to be.
2. Your partner lacks interest in sex or is sexually unresponsive.
3. Your partner is being uncharacteristically demanding or rough during sex.
4. Your partner does not seem “present.”
5. Your partner has started to nit-pick your appearance.
6. You feel like you’re no longer getting straight answers from your lover.
7. Your partner is practically wed to the Internet.
8. You’ve noticed a change in your partner’s demeanor.

Well Jesus, who doesn't have a porn addiction? I have no doubt that I myself have fit the criteria in nearly all of my relationships.

Her advice is not only wrong, it's actively destructive, since bringing accusations about porn into the midst of a deteriorating relationship is only going to make things worse. So moral of the story is don't scapegoat porn--it's rarely the cause of your problems. Your bad relationship with an ill-suited partner is more likely the culprit.

The Science of Sexual Pleasure

I wanted to shout from the hilltops upon the publication of a recent article in the Scientific American on the neurological roots of sexual pleasure. Among the myriad insights in the article were these gems:

• Women are aroused by visual images just like men are
• Sexual arousal is complicated and inextricably linked with the mind (like my momma always said, the most important sexual organ is your brain)
• Women's brains go blank at the moment of clitoral orgasm--notably the emotion regions--while men experience heightened activity in the part of the brain governing reward circuitry
• Vaginal/"deep" orgasms may result in stimulation of the limbic system, which deals with emotion (my personal theory is this has something to do with childbirth)

As readers may be aware, I have always vigilantly disagreed with the widespread assertion that women cannot be aroused by visual images. How incredibly condescending it is to presume that women can't become sexually excited in the absence of emotional outpourings and piles of chocolate. Women's imaginations are, believe it or not, able to extrapolate suggestive imagery into erotic ideas. Their bodies are capable of a physical response, even without a bouquet of roses and soft lighting. Viva pornography!

It is true that this article deals almost exclusively with heterosexual biologically-identified "women" and makes huge generalizations within this group. Nonetheless, it embodies a major step forward out of regressive pseudo-scientific ideas that have hindered female sexual development (e.g., women's genitalia is essentially an inverted penis, women do not possess a sexuality, orgasm is female hysteria, and so on).

In any event, check out the article--it's a worthwhile read.

Getting it on and on and on....

What's up the the NY Times' obsession with old people sex?*

They seem to really want the public to know all about the mechanics of the elderly having sex. Between reports on safe sex classes in retirement homes and studies showing sexual activity continues into old age, we all know more than we ever wanted to about our grandparents' bedroom activities.

Thank heavens for Viagra , right?

*Don't get me wrong--I think it's great that we all have many decades of sexual activity in our future!

Child pornography has NOT been linked to molestation

Despite the New York Times' leading headline "Debate on Child Pornography's Link to Molesting," the article goes on to detail a study that did NOT prove a link. It didn't disprove the link, but it has not proven it. The distinction I'm trying to make is really important, because it's headlines like this which engrave ideas in people's minds that seem to never fade.

The study inciting the Times story is methodologically questionable and has not yet been peer-reviewed or published. Additionally, "the prison bureau in April ordered the paper withdrawn from a peer-reviewed academic journal where it had been accepted for publication, apparently concerned that the results might be misinterpreted."

The study was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Prisons among convicted Internet offenders. Of this sample, 85 percent had committed acts of sexual abuse against minors, including inappropriate touching and rape. This is a huge increase over previous studies, which have found that 30 to 40 percent of those convicted for child porn have molested children.

In terms of methodology, there are a number of questions about the sample. The list of abuse victims only came to light after treatment, during which convicts were encouraged to disclose all their victims as part of the theraputic treatment. At the time of sentencing for these people, it was believed only 26% of them had been "hands on" offenders. Additionally, another complication is that the study was conducted on a volunteer basis.

So the question here becomes, can we extrapolate findings based on a sample of people who: (1) have been caught and convicted, (2) are in treatment, and (3) volunteered to participate in the study.

It's an important question because the findings have huge ramifications--those who are arrested on charges of possession or distribution of child pornography generally receive lighter sentences and shorter parole periods than sexual abusers.

This study also has huge implications in our understanding of the power of porn to incite action. If this study could find a link between viewing child porn and acting out molestation, then, people might argue, why could not all porn have a similar effect?

This relationship between simply viewing images and being impelled to act has been debated and misunderstood for decades ("Porn is the theory, rape is the practice," and so on). Many people still believe in a link between porn and rape, which usually stems from a couple of 1970/80s studies which found a tenuous link. All the studies which found this link, however, used VIOLENT porn. Nonviolent porn was not implicated, but this was lost in the translation between the study's findings and public opinion. (Interestingly, nonsexual violent images also were found to produce a negative reaction. Yet somehow we're not crusading against violence in the media....)

Because the public is so eager to condemn porn, it is important that (1) the child porn study be methodologically sound, peer-reviewed, etc and also that (2) people understand the difference between child porn and consensual porn. The nuance between the child porn offender study and my porn at-large argument is contained in the fact that simply viewing child porn is in itself unethical and illegal (due to the fact that minors cannot give legal consent). So the link between one unethical/illegal act (viewing child porn) and another unethical/illegal act (molestation) is not such a huge leap. Whereas consensual porn is neither unethical nor illegal, so the link between this sort of porn and an illegal/unethical act such as rape is a very big leap. Thus, any finding that viewing child porn is linked to molestation cannot and should not be extrapolated to legal, consensual porn.

This is an important issue from a public safety standpoint, and as such should be rigorously reviewed by the scientific community. At the same time, responsible coverage in the media is vital. Sensationalism around this story could lead to a hysteria which would set us back 30 years. Would be quite a shame...

Do Women Have a Sexuality?

Very interesting article in the latest New York magazine--The Science of Gaydar. A particular passage caught my interest. I'm pasting the entire thing below because it's really worth reading:

In many other studies, though, lesbians have appeared less unique than gay men, leading some people to wonder if their sexual orientation is innate. Michael Bailey—who, as a heterosexual researcher, is a minority in this field—even doubts the existence of female sexual orientation, if by orientation we mean a fundamental drive that defies our conscious choices. He bases this provocative gambit on a sexual-arousal study he and his students conducted. When shown pornographic videos, men have an undeniable response either to gay or straight images but not both, according to sensitive gauges attached to their genitals—it’s that binary. Female sexual response is more democratic, opaque, and unpredictable: Arousal itself is harder to track, and there is evidence that it defies easy categorization. “I don’t yet understand female partner choices very well, and neither does anyone else,” Bailey wrote me in an e-mail. “What I do think it’s time to do is admit that female sexuality looks in some ways very different from male sexuality, and that there is no clear analog in women of men’s directed sexual-arousal pattern, which I think is their sexual orientation. I am not sure that women don’t have a sexual orientation, but it is certainly unclear that they do.”

He contends that what they have instead is sexual preference—they might prefer sex with women, but something in their brains can still sizzle at the thought of men. Many feminist scholars agree with this assessment, and consider sexuality more of a fluid than an either-or proposition, but some don’t. “I think women do have orientations, but they don’t circumscribe the range of desires that women can experience to the same degree as men,” says Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, who is writing a book on the subject. “For women, there’s more wiggle room. You can think of orientation as defining a range of possible responses, and for women, it’s much broader.”

Bailey stops short of saying that lesbianism is a myth (although he has notoriously declared that true male bisexuality doesn’t exist and dismissed many transgender people as peculiar sexual fetishists, drawing lasting enmity from gay and trans groups). But it may be less hard-wired. And it appears to have separate triggers and correlates that haven’t been identified yet. In studies of twins, there is a lower correlation of sexual orientation between female siblings than male siblings, for instance. “We’re at a place,” agrees Diamond, “where everyone agrees that whatever is going on is quite distinct between the sexes.”

Fascinating, right? Most would agree that women's and men's sexuality is different (I'm including gay/lesbian sexuality, and recognize this discussion is confined to a binary for ease of analysis). Whether this difference is biological or social is difficult to determine--the fact that Bailey is basing his conclusions on a study which tested arousal (which can be both socially and biologically determined) doesn't do much to settle the matter.

The social influences are a given. I would argue that biology definitely influences sexuality as well. Since that which makes biological men different from biological women, by definition is sex (both organs and role in sexual behavior and reproduction), it makes sense that the two sexes would have some deeply-rooted difference built into their sexuality. The determination of the form or extent of that difference, however, is nearly impossible.

The Lisa Diamond comment in the second paragraph above comes closest to capturing the distinction between male and female sexuality--women do have orientations, but their orientation does not necessarily confine their desires (at least not to the same degree it does men).

This discussion falls in line with the reason pornography has historically not appealed to women. It has traditionally been created around a very rigid and direct concept of sexuality. The way it's shot, the action captured, the appearance of actors, and so on, all were built upon a very male definition of sexuality. "Women's Porn" has not tended to be very good either, because all it is (generally) is a slight variation on male-oriented porn. Different looking actors, different angles, etc. The foundation is still fundamentally generally incongruent with female sexuality. (Yes, I know I'm essentializing here--there are obviously exceptions on both the people and porn front--but I'm ok with making general statements to make my point clear.)

So what's the answer? Innovation! Creativity! Injecting FUN into portrayals of sex! A few directors are getting it, but there is a dire need for creative people to experiment outside the bounds of what's been getting created for the past 40 years.

Visual aid: Tinto Brass with model