By “Chad”
Special to YNOT
PHILADELPHIA – I’m a dog lover, a foodie, a Capricorn — and a recovering gay porn addict.
OK, OK, confession time: My name isn’t really “Chad,” but the part about being a recovering gay porn addict is totally true, which means I owe all you women out there the hugest apology ever. It’s not totally my fault though, because I didn’t realize all those times I was watching gay porn, I was watching laboratory-grade misogyny in HD.
I didn’t know this until I read a really scary, riveting, eye-opening interview with psychotherapist Mary Anne Layden, whose name makes her sound like a character from “Gilligan’s Island.” She must be fully qualified as a brain scientist or something, because otherwise it would be kinda weird for Philly.com to print her claims without offering any sort of countering viewpoint or scrutiny of them whatsoever, right?
This is why I haven’t watched any gay porn since 15 minutes before I read the article, and I’m never watching gay porn again — unless maybe Dave, this one really hot guy from work (who says he’s straight but sets off my gaydar like a Scientologist at a bathhouse) needs watching gay porn as an excuse to loosen up and make a new fuck-buddy.
Anyway, according to this Dr. Ginger Grant person, or whatever, porn conveys messages like “all women like anal sex, or women like being raped” and I must admit, this is something I completely missed in all the Sean Cody stuff I’ve watched.
I guess maybe I was more fucked up on white wine than I realized during a lot of my extended gay-porn-and-masturbation sessions, because I could totally swear there weren’t any women in those videos at all, much less women who liked getting raped.
But hey, I’m no Director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, so what the heck do I know? Obviously, all the subtext about women being dumb, useless, anal sex-loving super whores was lurking somewhere in my formerly beloved gay porn. I must have simply lacked the insight, training and education to discern it amongst all the six pack abs and cock-throbbing gay sex taking place on my screen.
You know, the more I think about it, the more convinced I become gay porn is the most pernicious form of misogyny out there, exactly because of how nuanced and subtle it is in delivering its message of violent, predatory woman-hate.
No wonder so many of my young gay friends with socially-conservative parents have issues with their mothers: They’ve been tainted by the subliminal and hypnotic movements of Darius Ferdynand’s hips as he symbolically fucks their mom — albeit while literally fucking someone who probably looks a lot more like their dad.
So, I brought this all up with my friend Paul, who I used to have kind of a “thing” with. Not a real thing, exactly, but a pretty-close-to-real thing.
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is we used to watch gay porn and masturbate together, but he was totally weird about me doing anything more than stroking him off. Like this one time, I just kind of leaned over a little bit like I might pop his cock into my mouth, and he jumped off the couch like a scorpion had just stung his butt. (Someone still has a few issues about being gay, eh?)
Anyway, Paul thinks this Mary Thurston Howell woman is “a few beakers short of a working in a full lab,” as he put it. He thinks she’s just so totally freaked out about certain kinds of porn, she’s blind to the fact a lot of other porn doesn’t really fit with what she’s saying.
Maybe Paul has a point, but I’ll tell you what he doesn’t have: A history of testifying in front of Congress, like this Mary Quite-Contrary lady and other noted and highly credible anti-porn activists — like Judith Reisman, a totally sane, rational woman who is an expert on the myriad horrors of porn and not at all obsessed with discrediting the work of Alfred Kinsey.
If Paul were someone smart enough to be allowed to testify in front of Congress, I might listen to him when he says it’s nuts to believe porn is “the most concerning thing to psychological health … existing today,” as Maria Anna-Whateva told the Senate Commerce Committee’s Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee back in 2004.
It’s too bad the senators didn’t listen to her back then, because as Mary Antoinette Labrum now points out, “porn has contaminated the whole society.”
Of course, being the smarty-pants, Mr. Know-It-All that he is, Paul just had to point out another person who spoke to the same Congressional committee in 2004 was Jeffrey Satinover, an advisor to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, knowing it would make me projectile-puke to admit anyone associated with those homophobic assholes could ever be qualified to “testify” in front of anything other a congregation full of fundamentalist Christian queer-haters.
I’m not falling for your rhetorical tricks this time, Paul, because I know Mary Anne Blige wouldn’t stretch the truth or overstate her case out of some misplaced socially conservative zeal. She’s a scientist, remember?
And because she’s a scientist, we know it’s true when she says something like, “The more pornography women use, the more likely they are to be victims of non-consensual sex.”
Oh, great. Now I’m not just worried about gay porn being misogynistic. I’m really worried about the screening process for guys cast in 3D virtual porn.
Anyway, my real point here is if the rest of you guys want to tempt fate with the structure of your brains, function of your genitals, ability to control yourself and maintain respect for the women in your lives, just go ahead and keep watching gay porn as much as you like.
Just don’t come crying to me once it turns you into such a woman-hater, you can’t even stand to listen to Bette Midler anymore.
“Chad” is a YNOT reader and former gay porn fan who resides in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
