Upfront, I’ll admit it – I’m not all that visually oriented. I find language infinitely more erotic than images – probably because there is space in language for me to create my own mental imagery that suits me better. That said, there is certainly some visual porn that turns me on. And there’s a whole lot of it that I can take or leave. However, there is also some porn that can set me off in snark mode faster than anything else on the planet. And, yup, this is it.
Why?
I’m not entirely sure, and I’ve set about trying to deconstruct both the image and my unaccountably negative reaction to it.
This woman is naked, kneeling in front of two seated, naked men, both with erections… how come she looks like someone just informed her that her drycleaning was ready? Why is she made up like she’s about to make a visit to her bank manager?
I see it a lot in porn: this facile misrepresentation of the erotic as moronic happiness. See? She’s sex positive. She’s HAPPY. She’s not horny or lust addled, or thinking about which one she’d like to sit on and which one she’s going to fuck. She’s just DELIGHTED. And what is she delighted about? Well, she’s just DELIGHTED to be there. Someone’s taking her picture and she KNOWS she should look happy. There is an eerie, disassociative, contextless happy. It’s the expression people think they ought to wear when they’re supposed to be happy. So…this is what ‘happy to hold two cocks’ looks like
This is what ‘happy to drink 10 ounces of cock’ looks like.
This is what ‘happy to figure out how to jerk someone off’ looks like:
Somehow, that pathetic woman in the first image looks like she’s trying to sell me something. She’s trying to sell me the idea that she’s so utterly delighted to be jerking off two men. She’s trying to SHOW me so hard, that the actual erotic act is lost in the mad drive to SHOW me.
I’ve done a pathetic job of desconstructing this, I know. But this moronification, this marketization, this horrific de-erotification of sex pisses me off.
Philip Pullman said that no one has the right to go through life without being offended. I agree. But similarly, no one has to go through life pretending not to be offended when they are.
As a woman, I’m offended. As a sexual being, I’m offended. As a creator of erotic material, I FUCKING offended.
End rant.
– 30 –
(please feel free to tell me what, if any, kinds of sexual imagery offends you)
Dear Remittance Girl
Very interesting post. I think there’s a big overlap between the imagery of mainstream pornography and that of advertising. It’s not that surprising really.
The photo is bizarrely un-erotic — almost anti-erotic. I’m not offended by it but I know what you mean. It’s almost not recognisable as porn: more like a still from a game show. Ugh!
PL
p.s. I can’t find the 27 responses. Are they hidden somewhere after a deadline? How can I read them?
PL
My site went down and I think they got lost. Sorry
Yup! It’s difficult to find porn that at least appears honest. It’s worth savoring when it happens though.
I think it’s quite easy to find porn that’s honest, in as much as there is a lot of amateur stuff around that is just couples going at it. But do we really want it to be honest? Do we really want to see the sex we have reflected back at us? I prefer something more alien, and story-like.