Pornography does not inspire violence, but you can break a leg trying to imitate it. – Mason Cooley
Like most women, I don’t really care much for porn. I have nothing against it in principle; I understand most guys like it and I consider neofeminist claims that all porn encourages violence against women to be ludicrous. I’m just not as visually-stimulated as guys are; though I find some erotic pictures to be stimulating, I generally like stories better so porn movies without interesting stories tend to bore me. My extensive sexual experience also makes me hypersensitive to fakery, so what passes for “acting” in most porn annoys me and the ridiculously unrealistic and unfeminine behavior of many of the actresses actually turns me off. In addition to all this, I also understand firsthand how difficult some of the actions and positions are to achieve or maintain, which takes me out of the action and shatters my willing suspension of disbelief.
Let me give you an analogy; when you watch a movie or television show which involves some aspect of your profession, don’t you find yourself watching it with a far more critical eye than you might watch another program? If there is a character who is supposed to be a member of your profession, don’t you unconsciously dissect everything that character says or does without even meaning to? And if the situation, “facts” or character wanders too far from reality, doesn’t it tend to ruin your appreciation of the show because you just can’t ignore the mistakes? If I watch a movie about doctors or scientists or detectives, I know that they’re making mistakes and diverging from reality, but because I’m not a doctor, scientist or detective I can ignore that because I don’t usually recognize the mistakes when I see them. But since my business is sex, I understand it intimately; I know what’s comfortable or even possible and what isn’t, and I know how people tend to behave in real life. So when movie trickery, camera angles and staged situations are used to make it look as though, say, a really punishing activity is going on for a tremendously long time, I automatically recognize that such tricks have been used and my mind pulls back out of it as abruptly as you might pull back when you see the zipper on the monster costume or the wires holding the spaceship model up. And then there’s character motivation; when I see some porn chick get into a room with three strange guys I ask “why is she doing this?” If they just included a scene where the men paid her I would enjoy it a lot more, though I understand it might have the opposite effect for guys.
Porno movies, like all movies, are fantasies, but since sex is a real-life activity some men seem unable to separate porn from reality where whores are concerned. I really don’t know if most men try to act out things they see in porn with their wives or girlfriends because most of the porn available when I was dating (early to mid ‘80s) was pretty basic so there was little there we didn’t already do (except maybe big orgy scenes). I would suspect at least some do, but many try it with escorts for the obvious reason that we are professionals and our business is to cater to male fantasy. The only problem with that is, a lot of porn is unreal even when the willingness of the woman is assured by sufficient payment. There are four main reasons for this: 1) Clients are not porn stars; 2) Not all women have the same abilities and characteristics, so just because Slutyoni Soverydeep can take a 10” cock to the hilt with her knees pressed against her shoulders doesn’t mean every woman can; 3) Porn movies are not filmed in real time, so what seems to take 15 minutes might have been filmed over several hours and two dozen takes with breaks in between; and 4) Porn movies are filmed under rigidly controlled conditions with prescreened actors posed carefully by a director and photographed from the best angles with crew all over the place so that everything is safe; consent has already been obtained from everyone before filming starts and nobody has to worry about being arrested in the middle of a scene.
I hope you can see where this is going. A middle-aged, overweight businessman on blood pressure medication could not perform like a 28-year-old porn star even IF the film was done in one take, but Aphrodite knows he’ll try. And then there’s the girl; porn starlets have their specialties and their movies feature those specialties and avoid things they aren’t good at, but some clients expect every working girl to be skilled at every specialty of every porn starlet he’s ever seen, even though the stars themselves aren’t! Then, some clients want to try things which look easy on film, but are difficult in real life; or they forget that when porn actresses say how great something feels they may be ACTING, and in reality that position or activity might be uncomfortable, unpleasant or even acutely painful for the woman. Finally, some men forget about the safety factor; porn actresses know their coworkers and are surrounded by chaperones, and they’re all regularly tested for diseases. But hookers are alone with men they do not really know and are therefore not usually willing to participate in activities which may risk their safety (such as choking or bondage) or health (such as ingestion of semen or “bareback” penetration).
Obviously, most girls don’t mind catering to reasonable porn-inspired requests; I never minded guys giving me “facials” or ejaculating onto my tits, and I pretty much expect to be slapped on the rump periodically when being taken from behind. Many girls even specialize in the “Porn Star Experience”, an energetic performance which includes such porn staples as cowgirl, deep throat, loud noises and dirty talk, etc. But porn can also have a more widespread effect; it was after porn models started shaving or waxing off all of their pubic hair that many strippers and escorts followed suit and many clients came to expect it, and since the advent of “squirting” videos (showing women expelling fluid due to “G-spot” stimulation) a lot of girls now advertise themselves as “squirters” and some men will seek them out.
Rocco Siffredi, one of the most popular creators of the milder sort of misogynistic porn
But in the last decade or so a lot of porn has been getting a lot more misogynistic. Now, hear me out; y’all know I don’t use that word lightly. I don’t simply mean (as the neofeminists do) that the on-screen whores are catering to their on-screen male partners or off-screen male customers; that isn’t “misogyny”, it’s simply good business. Nor do I equate onscreen male dominance (either implied or overt) with “misogyny”; as a sexually submissive woman I recognize that domination does not automatically imply hatred, no matter what the neofeminists (and even many mainstream vanilla women) seem to believe. I and many other women are strongly aroused by the fantasy of being captured, controlled, forced and/or enslaved by men, even to the point of being whipped; I therefore can’t see how it suddenly becomes “misogynistic” for a man to share that fantasy. But from what I’ve seen, read and been told, a lot more porn is moving away from the stylized enslavement-fantasy of BDSM and toward realistic-seeming depictions of assault, violent rape and undeserved cruelty (including strangulation, mutilation, etc). One popular subgenre shows forceful irrumation to the point of tears, gagging and even vomiting, which is definitely outside of my comfort zone.
Of course, this is all filmed under controlled conditions; the women are in no more danger than actors who are “murdered” in a thriller. Even if their physiological reactions to being slapped, gagged, choked or whatever are real, there are still a dozen people standing around to stop things if they get out of hand. But anything which appears in porn is going to inspire some clients to want to try it, and indeed there have always been some girls who will allow themselves to be choked, gagged or whatever. The problem lies in the fact that, because of our prohibitionist laws, this kind of activity generally takes place nowadays outside of the controlled environment provided in the past by brothels. As the prevalence of such practices increases, more and more girls will cater to them, especially girls in depressed markets like Dallas who are desperate to win a larger market share at any cost. In an ongoing BDSM relationship such risky practices are at least bounded by procedures the couple has established (safewords, etc), but in a typical hooker/client session there is no established trust or procedure, and I cannot help but think that when an inexperienced dominant tries a risky behavior he saw in a movie on an inexperienced submissive he has just met, possibly even without securing her permission first, it is a recipe for trouble and possibly even tragedy.
