NEW YORK – Generally speaking, I take a dim view of how the media covers porn. Far too often, the embedded biases of the author are too palpable: They start with the assumption either porn is a cultural disaster or all criticism of porn is informed by prudishness or a hostility to sex.
Although I read dozens of such articles a week, it’s not often I’ll recommend any of them as a means of learning about or understanding porn, its viewers, or the industry that makes it.
Today, however, I read an article that not only treats the subject in evenhanded fashion, but also makes a very important point — one I think is often lost on people in the age of social media.
I’ll admit, the headline of the piece, “The Case Against Showing Your Porn to Your Partner,” did give me pause. Too accustomed to reading lumps of pseudo-scientific blather about what the “latest research” (which typically turns out to be a survey or meta-analysis of some sort) says about porn’s effects on the brain, I expected to see the same churned out here.
Instead, what I got was a carefully considered and well-reasoned argument against watching porn with one’s partner that was not also a broader anti-porn argument.
Recounting her experience in trying to foster and maintain intimacy in a relationship during which she rarely got to see her partner, Priscilla Pine wrote she eventually turned to an approach “born of the sort of spice-up-your-sex-life pop psychology on which women’s media has traditionally thrived: Watch some porn with your partner! Learn about each other’s fantasies!”
Unfortunately for Pine, porn-sharing with her partner didn’t produce the anticipated connection and understanding they craved.
“So why had I insisted he share, and why had women’s media been telling me since I was 15 that it would be a good idea?,” Pine asked. “Perhaps — honesty and sex positivity be damned — some things are better when you keep them to yourself.”
In a society that has adopted social media to the extent many of us regularly witness status updates from mere acquaintances informing us of the trivial minutiae of their daily lives, telling people porn is something better left un-shared might sound too reserved or old-fashioned to some. Give Pine’s point a fair shake, though, and I think you’ll find it persuasive.
“Sharing porn might sometimes make it easier to start conversations you want to have, but trying to channel your intentions through a third party’s images is a delicate, inexact process,” Pine wrote, relating some unexpected mishaps that befell others who, like she, had tried sharing porn with a partner only to find out the hard way this form of openness might not be such a great idea, after all.
Part of the problem, in effect, is while a picture may be worth a thousand words, none of us has any idea which 1,000 words our partner will extract from the same images that excite and arouse us. In addition to the misunderstandings that can flow from different reactions to the same content, Pine identified another, arguably more fundamental, reason why sharing your porn preferences with others is fraught with potential for trouble.
“Beyond the miscommunication that sharing your pornographic predilections can cause with a partner imperfectly equipped to interpret them, there’s also something to be said for privacy as a sexual concept,” Pine observed. “Getting to know someone’s sexual self isn’t about diving into their preferences as deeply and quickly as possible; it’s a process, and if it’s slow and imperfect, that’s not necessarily proof that visual aids are necessary. Instead, it might just be proof that intimacy is gradual and ever-building.”
One of the more prevalent criticisms of porn among those who argue for banning (or greatly restricting access to) it is porn does not offer a “realistic” depiction of sex, in large part because porn often lacks any prelude to sexual contact. In effect, porn is a shortcut to sexual excitement, which probably goes a long way to explaining the popularity of gonzo porn, a true cut-to-the-chase form of erotica if ever there was one.
While I’m inclined to respond to this critique with a shrug, raised eyebrow and utterance of “Your point being…?,” I’m also inclined to concede this point: Porn isn’t a realistic depiction of sex, because it’s not supposed to be.
At its core, porn is and has always been about fantasy, a form of exploration without experiencing. This a clumsy analogy, to be sure, but as I see it, porn is to sex as rock-climbing videos are to rock-climbing: a means for the viewer to share in the sights without sharing in the efforts, acts and risks that made the sights visible.
When we use porn as something other than fodder for our own masturbatory fantasies, when we try to make it a shortcut not to personal arousal but to interpersonal communication or intimacy-building, I think we’re asking porn to do something foreign, or even fundamentally contrary, to its nature.
As Pine noted, even those who share porn with their partners still express something intensely personal and reserved about the act of porn consumption.
“Almost everyone I spoke with, at one point or another, referred to their consumption of pornography as their ‘Me’ time — for reasons ranging from concerns over potential kink-shaming to a simple desire to keep something reserved for themselves in relationships that span the better part of a decade,” Pine wrote.
None of this is to say porn should never be consumed by couples or should never be something shared. What it means to me is before you share porn within your relationship, you need to do the hard work of establishing enough communication and trust with your partner to forestall the possibility of porn-sharing doing quite the opposite of enhancing the intimacy of your relationship.
“Consumption of pornography is primarily an opportunity to let your imagination run wild, whereas intercourse is fundamentally interactive,” Pine observed. “One informs the other, but letting them bleed together too much risks both the pleasure of personally consumed taboos and the thrill of peeling back a new partner’s layers, one by one, in favor of a frank video demonstration.”
