Disturbing Arousal

'We're the 4chan generation – can't get off unless it's at least borderline disturbing.' – Anon (via Twitter)

Recently I participated in a research project examining female desire and pornography. As part of the project I was asked to watch a short female-directed adult film and answer a series of questions about my expectations versus my actual responses (this is what happens when I answer adverts on the back of toilet doors).

Once I got past the awkwardness of watching an adult movie in an empty university tutorial room, I actually found the film surprisingly sexy. It wasn’t like other porn that I have seen. There were no plumped up lips, plastic boobs or monster cocks. The actors were attractive and natural-looking. The costumes and sets were likewise visually appealing. Attention was paid to both the male and female characters’ needs. None of the activities the actors engaged in appeared painful or gravity-defying. There was no spitting, no hair pulling, no anal savaging, and no one looked as if they were in pain. The actors displayed passion and desire for one another, not just each other’s orifices. They kissed and caressed like lovers, rather than, well, porn stars. This might be what two good-looking people who are actually into each other get up to in an ideal session of loving hot sex.

But when it came to answering the questionnaire about my expectations and what I valued as important in such a film, I hesitated. I wanted to say, 'Yes, this film is exactly what I want as a woman. It’s not crude, it doesn't objectify the characters, it contains emotion and eroticism: THIS is what porn should be!’ The problem was, if I am honest, it didn’t turn me on as much as other porn that I have seen (and I don’t think I can entirely blame the situation I was in while watching).

I could easily answer, 'Yes, I found this movie enjoyable.' But by that, I mean I could see myself happily sitting down to watch it for an evening. In lingerie. With popcorn. Possibly even with my lover beside me. But it's not likely to do the trick if I'm looking for a quick get-me-off-before-the-housemate-comes-home fix.

The hesitation came because in saying this, I feel like I am somehow letting women down – not that I am any kind of ‘spokesperson for all women’, but you know what I mean. I feel as though this is an opportunity to have input into the kind of porn produced by women, for women, and that I should be fighting for quality material that doesn’t objectify or degrade, which addresses a lot of the things I hear women complain about in more male-oriented porn.

In Even Better Than I responded to an article that dealt with men’s complaints that porn is ruining them for sex in real life by setting up unrealistic ideas of how they (and their partners) should behave in the bedroom. Women, I argued, are equally ruined by the sorts of images and ideas they are conditioned to like, which can set up equally unrealistic expectations of sex and relationships and leave us reliant on our imaginations to fill in the sexually-satisfying gaps. Because I have been exposed to both romance-fuelled Fabio-ideals during adolescence, feminist ideals during my late-teens and early twenties, and hard-core pornography during my Dirty Thirties, when asked to put pen to paper, I struggled to distinguish between what I thought I should want, and what I actually responded to. The 'conditioned woman' in me felt I should want 'nice' porn, the 'feminist' wanted porn that was all about the woman's needs, while the 'hard-core watching woman' had to admit to not responding as strongly in the absence of power-play and objectification.

The truth is, when it comes to how the brain is wired, objectifying images may be less comfortable and more confronting to watch, but they evoke a more direct physical response. At least, they do in me.

One of the questions I was asked was whether or not I felt disgusted at any point during the film. I was also asked about feelings of guilt or shame, to which I answered that I experienced none. Had I been asked these questions about some of the male-oriented hard-core porn that I have watched, I may not have been able to answer the same, and yet watching that porn was more physically arousing. I found myself asking, is that because I have already been exposed to more hard-core porn and this has somehow desensitised me, or is this an innate physical response hard-wired to get me off on more graphic images?

I have seen porn that I haven't enjoyed, that I have found so uncomfortable watching, I switched it off. This was porn that to empathise with made me squirm in imagined pain, humiliation, or disgust. But on some level, there was still a physical response going on – an involuntary one, and one that left me feeling disturbed.

Mental stimulation is very important for me during sex. I respond keenly to role-play and dirty-talk. This is the stuff that hits deep inside my psyche and will get me off even when the scenarios being evoked are of things I would dread happening in real life. On one level my brain is firing, 'Yes!' but on another, 'No, really – no.' And I don’t think I can blame these responses on exposure to hard-core pornography. For me, at least, something more innate is going on.

By contrast, the porn I was shown during the study was both arousing and enjoyable to watch. I suffered no inner conflict, was left with no residual guilt or disgust. I thought to myself, this might be a good introduction to pornography for individuals with waning libidos, who don’t want to watch anything too confronting, or perhaps a good antidote for those who have lost their lust for sex in the real world, in that it might help them re-connect emotion and eroticism.

But just at the moment, I don’t fit into either category. I'm somewhere in the middle. My ideal pornography would be something with enough power-play and objectification to be stimulating, but enough emotional connection and respect between the characters that it doesn't leave me feeling conflicted and dirty.

Because what if there is an emotional cost of continually engaging in a kind of ‘disturbing arousal’? Whether the impact is on the level of intimacy in my relationships or an inability to ‘get-off’ with my partner, or manifests as scars upon my psyche from residual feelings of shame and disgust. I’d rather not take the risk if I can help it, and instead make use of material that is arousing minus the emotional disturbance. I just wish there had been space on the questionnaire to write that.

--RP

'Nobody buys flowers for the porn-pile girl'

Rhonda Perky goes under the covers to discover what it means to be a Modern ‘Slut’.

'Men want women to be sluts and now they're buying in,' -- Professor Gail Dines, quoted in the Brisbane Times.

Until a few years ago, my sexual experience was about as vanilla as you can get (you might remember my previous post on Married Sex – A fairytale in three parts). My first ‘real’ partner was the man I met at university and later married, a monogamous relationship that lasted almost ten years. Don’t get me wrong, I was a horny-as-hell teenager, but ‘sex’, actual intercourse, was something I felt very strongly should be tied to love and commitment, that engaging in casual or even kinky sex, was something I would be judged for, and for which I would judge myself.

How things change.

'Where are you and why aren’t you on my cock?' was a typical text message from my most recent ex. We dated for over a year, during which time he called me a 'cock-craving bitch' and boasted to his friends that I was 'up for anything' and 'always wet'. He even kept a tally of the number of times we shagged versus the number of times his coupled-up friends did. 'Do you realise we’ve f---ed more times this weekend than X and his fiancé this entire month?'

I mentioned this to a girl-friend once. 'Doesn’t that make you feel degraded?' she asked.

I remember I had to stop and think, because at the time it didn’t. I felt empowered. A divorced woman in her dirty 30s, embracing her sexuality, eager for as much sex as was on offer, anywhere, anytime: 'up for anything', indeed.

I had begun to actively seek out and initiate sex. I enjoyed being objectified in the bedroom, responded eagerly to booty calls, and issued booty calls of my own. I began to masturbate outside of the bedroom, to explore pornography and embrace raunch culture.

I refused to be judged, and I didn’t judge myself.

Yet I found myself wanting to qualify my position, to point out that for that year and a bit I was in love and remained faithful to my lover, that I was enjoying exploring sex within the confines and safety of monogamy, so clearly I was more judgemental than I liked to believe.

Jump forward in time some more.

Picture a single woman, happily shagging multiple partners, men and women, sometimes even on the same day. A woman who openly discusses (and writes about) masturbation, sex and pornography. In each engagement there is respect, for the partner and for the single woman: me.

There are no feelings of shame or regret on my part. I haven’t lied or cheated, and out of respect I have avoided shoving in a lover’s face that he or she is not my only lover. The rules of our engagements are the rules that we define between us, explicitly or implicitly. There is as much ‘friendship’ or ‘relationship’ as we establish. I haven’t tended to have one night stands, not because I think there is anything wrong with them, but because they don’t meet my present needs. If this changes and I start exploring one-off encounters, I certainly won’t think any less of myself.

What judgement is to be had here?

According to Dines, 'Young women today have two choices... to be f---able or invisible.'

I’d like to say I’m choosing neither.

I am embracing my sexual freedom – something my mother and her mother were never able to do – reclaiming the old labels and declaring with pride that this is my Year of Living Tartily, but while no one is actively calling me a slut, or openly passing judgement, they’re also not inviting me home to meet their mothers.

Mostly I can overlook it. After all, I don’t particularly want to meet their mothers, but every now and then it bothers me. It’s not that I feel disrespected; it’s because there is no room for much beyond sex in this scenario. No romance, no partnership, and only limited friendship. It seems to me that the girl who craves sex is the girl who is overlooked as anything more. F---able AND invisible.

'Slut' may no longer be a dirty word, but it seems old prejudices are very much alive – they just wear a more euphemistic face.

More and more my female friends complain of men describing them as 'too forward' or 'too sexual', while male friends relate stories about women they have dumped for being 'demanding' or wanting 'too much sex'.

Other women suffer from the reverse, describing text messages that only come late at night, including to one friend who received a message demanding she wear 'pigtails and a g-banger'. 'He only ever contacts me when he wants to get off,' she told me. 'I feel like his wank sock.'

It’s not the scenario Dines describes, but an old dichotomy just the same: Virgin versus Whore, and it’s kicking me and my girlfriends in the guts.

If we're not supposed to judge ourselves or be judged, how should we respond? Should we shrivel into our repressed and Virginal selves, shy away from ever asking, ever demanding the sex that we crave? Or do we reciprocate and act out the Whore, objectifying men as they objectify us, only make contact when we want to shag, and if a man feels threatened or can’t provide it, well, we’ll just find it somewhere else?

Because the me today knows that if someone is going to put me on the porn pile, I am going to write and direct that porn myself, and damned if I’ll think any less of myself for doing so. Maybe this makes me a Modern Slut, not a Virgin and not a so-called Whore, just Visible being Me.

--RP (Modern Slut)

‘Use it or lose it’

Rhonda Perky’s guide to DIY

‘If women just fucking got over themselves… to [women like that] it is about men having needs that are lesser because they are physical rather than emotional and that sex is somehow an animal thing… a degrading thing, and that if you engage in sex you have somehow let the man “win” and all that other stuff that is so great about having good sex with your partner is lost.’ – The Desert Foxx

I am going to put it out there. I think women should take responsibility for maintaining their own libidos.

Not as some ‘feminists’ would argue, to kowtow to the whims and desires of men, but for themselves. To feel alive. To be more than a role-extension to the lives of those around them.

The death of a women’s libido is a well-documented phenomenon. Bettina Arndt’s The Sex Diaries details case after case of women whose libidos have withered and died, while their male counterparts shrivel in hopeful longing. Arndt goes on to argue that this is evolutionary and natural, that women are geared to lose their libidos. Unfair, but biologically unavoidable.

In ‘When difference of desire is sold as a deficiency’ (The Age, June 6, 2010), Leslie Cannold also writes, ‘While men tend to find their partners more desirable over time, women often need a new partner to rekindle desire.’

You may recall from my post, ('Married Sex: a Fairytale in Three Parts'), I suffered a massive loss of libido while I was in a long-term relationship. I was a text-book case, and would probably accept the theory that libido loss is unavoidable, except I have since managed to do just that. I have regained -- and successfully maintained -- my libido through two subsequent relationships.

I would instead argue that I contributed to the death of my own libido.

When I first met my then future husband, my hormones when crazy. I took it for granted that they would stay that way. They didn’t.

I can point to a long list of things which may have slowly poisoned it. Being in a long-term relationship was just one of them. I got sucked into living my life day by day. I did what I thought I was supposed to. I became a wife and a mother to my cats, and a faithful employee, and a daughter, and a sister, and there was never enough time or energy, or desire. I had secured a partner (*tick*). I could worry about him (and me), later.

First, I had to look after everything else.

During that time I didn’t even think about sex. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want sex with my partner. I didn’t want sex at all. I didn’t even want to masturbate. It became way too easy to surround myself with the bland unsexiness of routine and responsibility. It was what was accepted and even expected of me.

Besides, there was always tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the week after that. There was no urgency anymore.

There was also no stimulation.

This is where society – including women – has got it wrong. Men are stimulated constantly. It’s no wonder they can seem like walking Viagra-fuelled hard-ons. They are sold sex and more sex, while women are sold motherhood and washing detergent.

Looking back, I wonder if I would have felt differently if I had ready access to sexual stimulants in the same way as men (0). Because now that I have my desire back, I realise how precious it is. Something to be nurtured and maintained. I never want to feel that downstairs deadness again.

The Sex Diaries advocates women not waiting for the stimulation to come to them. Leslie Cannold agrees: ‘Sometimes, women won't want sex until they've started having it.’ I would advocate taking it one step further, and making use of third-party stimulation to get themselves there BEFORE their husbands / long-term partners make their clumsy advances (1).

For me this is where DIY comes into play. It’s all too easy for life to get in the way and for the sex part of your brain to be clogged with everything but, however it is possible to make it happen solo if you make the effort and take the time. And once you start you will start to want it, and then want it more and more, and yes, you may even want your partner again and not inwardly (or outwardly) groan when he pokes you in the back, saying, 'Hon...?'

And here I risk being slaughtered by my feminist peers again when I say, if you're having trouble finding the time or the mental energy, why not try using porn? It's quick and easy and direct (2).

First you have to get over the stigma. After all, you don't use porn for the articles, which means admitting to using porn = admitting to DIY. There is a public perception that many women do not use porn to masturbate (3).  There is only a growing perception (acceptance) that women masturbate at all. I don’t want try to guesstimate the accuracy of those perceptions, because I think masturbation, whether assisted by pornography or not, is still a taboo topic for many women, and therefore skews this perception. Hooray to Cosmo for all those G-spot and Clitoris specials that made women seeking self-pleasure more socially acceptable, but I think there is still a reluctance among women to admit, even to themselves, what sorts of things truly turn them on.

In ‘Even Better Than…?’ I alluded to some of the more ‘acceptable’ sources of stimulation available to women, and how this differs significantly from that which is available to men. I’m not convinced this difference is our natural inclination. Were we to climb The Magic Faraway Tree and step out into ‘Topsy-Turvy land’, we might see men fantasising about romantic leading ladies sweeping them off their feet, while women dream of anally penetrating hardcore male sex slaves. I suspect the difference in the materials available to us has more to do with the diet of acceptability on which we are raised than any innate difference in our sensibilities.

For instance, The Desert Foxx and I spent an afternoon perusing Good Loving, Great Sex, by Dr Rosie King (‘Australia’s leading sex expert’), which discusses libido enhancers and suppressors. Following an extensive survey, Dr King came up with a shortlist of what turns men on versus what does it for women, and conversely, what turns each of them off (4). To our surprise, Foxx and I found we related more to the guys’ list than the girls’. Rather than conclude we were more ‘male’ than ‘female’ in our thinking, we wondered at the voracity of the survey results, which seemed VERY clichéd, and VERY 1953. It was almost as though when presented with a list of checkboxes, women gravitated to the socially acceptable and familiar, rather than the stuff that would actually get them ‘percolating in the nether regions’ (-- Mr ‘Longrod’ McHugen Dong).

It occurred to me there was no ‘control group’ in this experiment. No group of participants divorced from societal pressures to tick particular boxes.

Similarly, The Sex Diaries examines the libido of women throughout the lifecycle of a relationship. It does not consider a woman’s libido on its own; in one sense, in its natural habitat. It wasn’t when I entered a new relationship that I rediscovered my libido; it was in the privacy of my bed-made-for-one.

But this lack is reflective of our society. What is the norm and what is considered ‘acceptable’ is pervasive, and creates a loop in which we are trapped and in which we trap ourselves. Foxx and I are quite unabashed with each other when discussing sex, and this was reflected in our survey results, but not everyone is like us.

I would go on to argue that these societal expectations are reflected in the masturbatory marketplace.
Perhaps if there was a wider acceptance and acknowledgement of women needing secondary stimulation, the porn market might shift to more women-friendly material (5), which may in turn make it more appealing to women entering the market, and we may find a rekindling of our libidos by the increased presence of external stimulation (6). We might end up as horny as (if not more so) than men.

Yes, life gets in the way of desire, and this is rubbish, but when I hear women describe sex as a chore, something their partners demand of them, and that they (grudgingly) mete out, I am horrified. I want to scream, ‘Don’t you want to enjoy sex for yourselves? Don’t you want to feel alive?’

Because you can. You simply have to want to enough.


--RP


(0) Whether or not I maintained my desire for my partner is another thing entirely. We had all kinds of issues. But while we weren’t having sex, we weren’t communicating either. Domestic-bliss 101 we could share. True intimacy eluded us.

(1) A word to the wise, men: nagging at a woman for sex / complaining about not getting sex / not making an effort to entice your woman to want sex are sure-fire ways of ensuring you do not get sex. Try wooing your woman as you once did to get into her knickers in the first place. You succeeded then, you will probably succeed again now. Just because you’ve worked through the bases once, doesn’t mean you get to ‘skip to the end’ every time. Try working the bases again. You might be surprised.
 
(2) Remember, it’s geared towards men.
 
(3) I once bought an FHM over the counter, only to have the man who served me say, ‘Um, there are some Woman’s Days out the back… I can go and grab one for you…’
 
(4) A list which pretty much described my marriage.
 
(5) What a good friend describes as ‘Couples’ porn, rather than ‘Single Guy’ porn.
 
(6) The shift in the type of porn that is produced may also go some way to helping reduce men’s difficulty in relating to women from over-exposure to hardcore material where ‘consumers are catapulted into a world of cruel and brutal sex acts designed to dehumanise women,’ ('Porn has hijacked sexuality and is destroying men,' Gail Dines, The Age, October 14, 2010).

‘Even better than …?’

Rhonda Perky ponders the place of porn in the ‘real world’

‘Of course I don’t fantasise about my current partner when I masturbate – I get to have real sex with them.’ -- Mr ‘Long Rod’ McHugen Dong

Modern men have access to more hardcore porn than ever before, but according to Gail Dines in ‘Porn has hijacked sexuality and is destroying men’ (The Age, October 14, 2010), this isn’t necessarily what they want. Constant exposure is causing men to complain of being porn-reliant, or even forming an addiction to hardcore pornography, and that this is having a flow-on effect to the way they relate to women in the ‘real world’.

I'm not arguing a case for or against porn, hardcore or otherwise, but I do want to look at some of the issues Dines raises.

Dines makes the point that due to an increased exposure to hardcore porn, men report needing to fantasise in order to achieve orgasm during sex.

‘What troubles many of these men most is that they need to pull up the porn images in their head in order to have an orgasm with their partner. They replay porn scenes in their minds, or think about having sex with their favourite porn star when they are with their partners.’

I hate to disappoint all the men out there who believe their women are being taken over the edge by their awesomely sexy presence and superior technique, but chances are those moans are as much about what is going on inside the woman’s mind as what you are doing to their body. (Don’t get me wrong, what you do is important -- VERY important -- it’s just that a combination of mind and body is usually required to get us there).

Certainly there is a case for the argument that hardcore porn desensitises men. If they’re accustomed to watching extremely graphic images, a tame session of pink-lace lingerie, muffled moans and missionary probably isn’t going to compare. But to be fair, it’s also a stretch for women to imagine that beer belly and B.O. is really a tanned and deodorised six-pack.

Men are also complaining that real sex doesn’t live up to the fantasy of porn sex.  

‘These men have become so accustomed to porn sex that some are disappointed by their own sexual performance. When they compare themselves with the male porn actors, who can sustain Viagra-fortified erections for long periods, the guys I talk to often admit to feeling like sexual losers, and worry something is wrong with them.’

The issue for me here is less to do with the use of porn and the images it makes use of, and more to do with men confusing fantasy and reality. For years women have been accused of having unrealistic expectations of men, resulting from a steady diet of Walt Disney, Bridget Jones's Diary and Sex and the City, because no relationship will ever possibly live up to the ones of our imagination. Prince Charming doesn’t exist, and nor does Mr Darcy. Certainly the revolving door of available, successful and good-looking Sex and the City men aren’t there for the taking. Perhaps it’s time men were given the same bitter pill we've had to swallow for years, that what they are watching isn’t real.

And as for men feeling inadequate compared with their male porn-star counterparts, do they not realise women have the same issue, having to live up to the standards set by Angelina, Jenna Jameson and Felicia Fox? We can’t all be man-eating stunners who represent charities by day and act as bisexual BDSM fetishists by night. I’m not saying that makes it okay, it’s just something we all have to deal with in a consumer society.

At its heart this article seems to imply that men are having difficulty doing what women have always had to do: use their imaginations.

‘Many of the men I talk to believe that porn sex is what women want, and they become upset and angry when their sex partner, perhaps their wife, girlfriend, or a one night hook-up, refuses to look or behave like their favourite porn star. The women often refuse to perform the sex acts the men have routinely enjoyed watching, and next to the screaming orgasms and sexual gymnastics of porn sex, real sex with real women starts to feel boring and bland.’

I won’t talk here about the questions the article raises on the content of hardcore porn – I’ll save that for another story (watch this space), but I will argue that the difference here for men and women is that women have had to make do with very little hardcore stimulation for a very long time. Mills and Boon, the pages of our favourite novels that fall open at the mention of a lifted skirt and heaving bosom, or a movie scene where the heroine is pressed up against the wall in a passionate embrace by her robust anti hero (this may be part of the reason for women’s reportedly low libidos -- again, I’ll leave that for another story), but this has in some ways kept our ‘boudoir’ imaginations relatively active. We have to continually fill in the blanks.

Male-oriented pornography on the other hand leaves very little to the imagination (though I would argue it takes a ‘special’ kind of imagination to believe she really wants you to shove that enormous dildo up her ass and then lick it). Men become desensitised, but they also become lazy. When the images are presented to you, when you are slapped in the face with them, you don’t have to do the work.

This is possibly the real tragedy.  Like tobacco or caffeine or any other stimulant, it is to the advantage of the supplier to build user-dependence. A dysfunctional sex-life is a by-product but also a market-force, turning users into repeat users, and ensuring a constant market for more and more extreme stimulation.

Men and women are the losers here.

--RP

the look of lust

Rhonda Perky pays homage to the website that aims to please by bringing you the look of being pleased… for real.

Tired of seeing porn stars who look as though they'd rather be hanging out the washing, watching test cricket, or repeatedly stabbing their eyeballs with a fork?

A couple of weeks back a girlfriend and I spent a drunken evening bemoaning the pitiful artificiality – and lack of interest – displayed by your average porn actors: no real build-up, no natural lubrication (didn’t your mother tell you not to spit?), and a sea of faces that look as though they’d rather be anywhere else.

Not particularly panty-dampening, let alone earth-moving.

The following week the same friend sent me a link to Beautiful Agony (for which I owe her a drink or three). Nominated at the Australian Adult Industry Awards as the Best Adult Website (source: Pop Matters), Beautiful Agony’s claim to fame is as a website ‘dedicated to the beauty of human orgasm.’

What I discovered there was a catalogue of ‘money-shots’, only the shots aren't of some over-endowed dude shooting a load over some girl's tits or arse, but the face of each contributor (known as ‘Agonees’) captured during their moment of climax. There is no nudity, no fluids, and no visible interaction, but every single orgasm, we are assured, is genuine.

The site boasts that the videos (all taken from the neck up) ‘were made in private by the contributor (and sometimes their partner). We don't know what they're doing, or how they are doing it, we just know it's real and it's sexy as hell.'

‘Make your ears blush,’ the site suggests, ‘by putting on your headphones and turning the sound to eleven.’

Well, that’s what I did, and I can assure you, my ears are bright pink.

Beautiful Agony seems to house a curious kind of voyeurism. It’s about what you don’t see as much as what you do. In some ways it reminds me of one of the few truly erotic photographs my father ever produced: a view through a keyhole of a naked woman, only she was a jigsaw puzzle and all of the ‘good bits’ were missing.

Justin Dimos on Pop Matters, writes that what we see on Beautiful Agony is 'real nudity', which he believes ‘comes when a person drops the act, wipes the makeup from their face, doesn’t force a smile, and sure as hell doesn’t dress in disguises, be them emotional or fashionable.’

I’m not sure I found it quite as wow-worthy as Dimos seemed to (the bulk of his review read like a promo), but I do agree ‘the best part about watching the Beautiful Agony videos is the lack of bullshit.’

In an interview with Cherry Trifle for SEXIS what you want it to be, site creator Richard Lawrence was quoted as saying, ‘We get a lot of subscribers who’ve run the whole porn circuit—from softcore to X to hardcore—and wind up at Agony telling us it’s the first time they’ve actually been turned on for years. Most people reach the point where it all gets filed away with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.’

It was also evident from this interview that Lawrence is completely jaded by modern porn. ‘I recently met a woman in her late 20s who told me she didn’t like anal sex, but had been doing it for years because she thought it was expected of all women, just as she’d seen in all the porn DVDs. And isn’t it incredible that not all women like to have five guys come in their face at once?’

And maybe this is where Dimos was coming from in his OTT review. Certainly Lawrence and his partner Lauren Olney (who vets the videos) have found a niche among users tired of navigating the same-same ennui of colour-by-numbers porn. People who are prepared to pay when so much porn these days is free.

Lawrence also argues it isn’t about profit. You won't find pop-ups luring you to dodgy pay-per-views or Russian teens waiting to talk to you, though there is a 'shop' page for merchandise and tools-of-the-trade. The fee, he says, is to pay contributors and cover the costs associated with running the site.

And you’re not just getting access to the 'money-shots' you’re also paying to hear real-life 'Confessions', where Agonees (all ordinary people rather than porn stars) share their most intimate sex stories. Educational and enlightening, though you may never see your dentist, mortgage broker or local butcher in the same way again!

Don't want to pay? Send in your own ‘Agony’. As my friend informed me, Agonees ‘get $200 and free access for a month!’ Now, where did I put my camera?

-RP