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)