Does Porn Really Hijack Human Sexuality?

Author Gail Dines wrote and published a book, suggesting that pornography corrupts human sexuality and says that it interferes with our natural ability to form ‘meaningful’ sexual relationships. I agree to a certain extent, but I do not agree with Gail Dines’ logic or purpose in it’s entirety. I have stopped watching porn nearly 3 years ago and I must say that since then, I have been more productive, outgoing and my sex drive has been rising to perfection. Right after I put an end to my ridiculous and extensive porn viewing, I fell in love with a lady – a long distance relationship. She screwed me over for another guy who turned out to be a jerk and thwarted everything her and I ever planned to have together. After that, I stuck to my guns and said “Fuck love”. Since then, I’ve begun to have a smorgasbord of mediocre-to-fine pussy and I must say that I’m very happy. Everything falls in place, right?

Now, this is not an attack on pornography, nor those who choose to watch it. Years ago, I ran into an old elementary school friend who lives minutes away. I paid him a visit, which at the time, he lived in his parents’ basement while attending college. In the basement, there were storage tote bins filled with x-rated VHS tapes and DVDs: I want to say there were close to 200-300 of them. When he shown me his stash, I’m giving this uncontrollable look of shock, disbelief and a lack of enchantment. I ask him “Why do you watch so much porn, man, goddamn?!” His response was simple: “Man, one thing you’re gonna realize is that bitches ain’t shit. I’ve been through a lot and women put you through so much shit just to be in relationships with them. I mean, the benefits are great, but sometimes, the benefits are not worth all of the shit they put you through.” I discovered later on that he would visit adult video stores weekly and rent as many as 20 x-rated DVDs, skimming through them all to find feet scenes, making home-made compilations of his favorite feet scenes (yes, he’s a proud foot fetishist). Now, he had no problem dating women, although, in my humble opinion, the guy was not only very immature, but discriminating. He would only date within his race. Foreign women outside of America, White, Latina and Asian women were not an option for him. Before I took my first trip to Mexico, he looked weird and said “I don’t see what it is with you and them, man.” Them implying Latin women. I am reminded of a blogger who stated that because American women are so fucked up, it is better to masturbate to porn than to marry, due to the fact that men get screwed and screwed over repeatedly. Which, I agree with. I’ve always been anti-monogamy, but that makes for another story.

One reason why I indulged in so much pornography was for the fact that I was no established in a career, plus I was very overweight to the point to where most women would not glimpse at me, unless she assumed I had ‘issues’, not to mention my lack of confidence. I was a chronic masturbator and it got to where my dick stayed soft as melted margarine. I can honestly tell you which porn director shoots ass the best, based on my extensive viewing. 2006 was the year where I took my very first Carnival Cruise and I started to expand my social horizons and became face to face with women who I thought I’d only see on ‘The Idiot Box’ (television). Something I was not ready for. This was also the year when my stepfather confronted me consistently about my porn viewing – He admitted he had the same masturbatory problems and insisted I stopped that shit before it became too late. The last time he confronted me, he yelled out “You need a girlfriend!” My mother, on the other hand, stupidly preferred I masturbated instead of interacting with real people. My stepfather was sincere, even though my mother could never get over the fact that he cheated on her, on her birthday when he maintained a tiresome blue-collar job and made more money than he ever did in his life. That led to my mother trying to dumb him down with religion and one night, she had broken a DVD copy of Hustle & Flow, which he borrowed from a fellow co-worker of his. (Marriage? You think I am going to put up with shit like that?!) My porn viewing consisted until 2011. Now, I cannot stomach the thought of watching such nasty bullshit (even though I can tell you my 5 favorite porno-flicks today), especially as a pathetic replacement of having an elegant woman by my side. Personally, I got to a point in my life where I stopped watching this bullshit before it became worse, but most importantly, for the sake of my own personal growth. It really interfered with my finances, my time and my stamina. And in the words of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing.” Life is not worthy of living, in my brutally honest opinion, if one is socially impotent as he is sexually impotent.

The first time I laid eyes on pornography, it was during the summer of 1994. A wonderful time in my childhood, but also a time when I was exposed to some real-world, adult shit that many would say I should have never witnessed. This included my father’s small stash of x-rated VHS tapes, which he kept hidden in a laundry bin in our family basement, where my father stayed in most of the time, during his rocky marriage to my mother. I popped one video in out of blatant curiosity and what I’ve encountered became engraved in my psyche forever: An insanely beautiful bronze-skinned black woman getting roughly hammered from behind by a man who had stamina out of this world. Her screams of ecstasy, her being mercilessly jammed up the ass for a really long time until he climaxes all over her sweet, black, jiggling ass. Did I mention that summer, an older cousin of mine spent the summer with the family and he sat with me watching this madness? Him being 5 years my senior, he was already sexually active and would tell me about the pros and cons of cunnilingus. He performed such an act with one of his bedfellows for 3 hours and him telling me this made me question “Why so long?” I assumed then he was either in love with her or he was in love with the feeling. This cousin of mine always stressed to me the importance of self-respect, hygiene and not taking any shit from the opposite sex. He would stay on my ass about using profanity as well as generalizing women as “bitches” and not wearing any underwear.

As I aged, I would sneak and watch porn as a guilty pleasure and a substitute for my adolescent social ineptness and I’ve noticed something: As the years go by, porn viewers – just as normal people – get bored with the same ole’ normal sex. That means the missionary, vaginal routine: A routine that the Christian right and other religious fanatics find to be the right way and the only way sex should be had. Not to get religious, but as rapper Ice-T once said years ago in a book he had written, religious fanatics not only believe that sex should occur only after holy matrimony, but some believe it should only be engaged in for the sake of reproduction, in addition to the fact that some do not believe in doggystyle, multiple partners, 69 and certainly no butt-fucking. Missionary, vaginal sex only. What a fucking bore, to say the least! Anyway, most porn viewers and regulars in human sexuality get tired of ‘the usual’. In my own personal sex life, I enjoy vaginal sex, but find it boring after a while and I enjoy certain things (i.e. BDSM, rough sex, butt sex, acrobatic, athletic sex, etc.), which I will not blame on pornography. I love ass. I can play with a woman’s buttocks for hours. I won’t blame pornography, although some people would love to, just to further their own skewed agenda. But me? I’m not that weak! These things are already out there, whether it gets televised and photographed or not. But I notice over the years that porn viewers want certain fetishes (and many of them, abnormal, even in my view of things) to be shown to them and they will pay top dollar to see it come to ‘life’. However, others do not need  pornography to see certain deviant sex acts which even I find disgusting. Just ask those who get off on rape scenes in mainstream movies (i.e. Those who get off on the rape scenes in Pulp Fiction, Irreversible, etc). Anyone who uses porn and televised sex scenes as a replacement for real human interactions and/or as an instructional self-help tool does not even remotely deserve the finer things in life.

Gail Dines (the author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality) admits herself that “today’s brutal pornography looks nothing like it did 15 years ago”. Anal sex is no longer exciting as it used to be. In the late 1990s to mid-2000, porn viewers loved watching a beautiful woman get drilled in the butt. Now, the avid porn viewer desires to see violent sex (pornographer Jake Malone comes to mind as his bizarre BDSM-themed Fuck Slaves series is pretty brutal, with some of the roughest sex ever depicted in film – one scene in the series involves a woman being buggered with a noose around her neck as she’s nearly hanging from a ceiling with her hands tied behind her back), disgusting roleplay fantasies, such as incest, pedophilia, double-anal, gangbangs where a woman takes on anywhere between 5 or more guys, creampies, etc. None of which sparks my personal interest (with the exception of BDSM-induced sex). These are not my father’s porn videos where themes of ass-obsession, big butts and anal sex were enough to put the average 18-year-old in a state of shock during the summer of 1994; an era where seeing female talent squirting milk and pushing golf-balls and strawberries out of their rectums were unheard of or probably nonexistent. Like any sexually healthy, or dare I say, psychologically sane person, I become desensitized to watching any more than 10-20 minutes of pornography. I have heard even the most sexually active people refer to it as “filth” (although I’ve heard many more refer to any natural human sexual act that goes against the unnatural grain of matrimony with the same contempt).

I am not one who will waste my time debunking feminism (which is taken completely out of context) and engaging in gender wars, battle-of-the-sexes pissing contests. I already know that many aspects of feminism is full of shit and has turned into nothing more than female supremacy and female tit-for-tat domination over men instead of it being about gender equality, which I am all for. Gail Dines seems like the kind of woman who wants to blame pornography for a majority of societal ills (assuming that it ‘degrades women’), sexual racism and who wants to pick fights with the porn industry for the sake of ‘female empowerment’ or some other hidden personal vendetta, which makes absolutely no sense. For one, none of us can ever determine what is degrading to one person and to do so alleviates an individual’s responsibility for their own actions. Should we blame porn and “evil men” for why Miley Cyrus twerked directly in front of Robin Thicke at MTV’s 2013 VMA Awards ceremony, or is it just her exploring her own sexuality as nature intended, even though it was done in a ratchet way? By the way, before Miley Cyrus twerked her ass in front of millions worldwide, African-American girls has been doing this for years publicly and even gone as far as making videos of their ass-shaking antics, posting them on YouTube and World Star Hip Hop. I’m pretty sure the outcry was not as obnoxious and loud as it was until Hannah Montana has done it (even though I’ve heard many African-American men denounce this kind of behavior from their own race of women, yet could care less if a woman of another ethnicity perform the same sexually-charged acts. Their lame excuse? “We are at the bottom of the food chain!”). Does porn hypersexualize black women? I wouldn’t think so. Maybe young black girls, like young Latina girls, enjoy it because it attracts men or it could be a celebration of them being built that way!

Many of us work jobs we despise for a living, some of which is more degrading than any human sexual act, but the last time I’ve checked, some of us do have the ability to say “No, I’m too good for that.” Plus, the last time I checked, we all have been classified, marketed and we all sell ourselves (out) for a living. Not saying it’s right, but that is life! While some of us enjoy what we do, others do what they have to do to survive or get to their main destination. In addition to that, what is evil to you may be a virtue to me (I am pretty sure sex workers and homosexuals would agree – although it is absurd that America is debating on legalizing gay marriage, while prostitution is illegal everywhere, except Nevada, which is fucking retarded)! Some women who love to go on ‘porn degrades women’ rampages are the same ones who praise books like Fifty Shades of Grey (which is pornographic literature at it’s finest). Not to say that it is acceptable, but I do understand that when it comes to sexual stimulation, stereo-typically, men prefer visual, while women prefer psychological stimulation. Then again every individual is different: The only visual stimulation that I prefer is that as it deals with real women who I come in contact with or plan on coming in contact with. Nina Hartley looks great on television, but I am more focused on what’s here… What’s in front of me… What I KNOW I can have. Otherwise, I refuse to waste my time.

Gail Dines did a radio interview with legendary pornographer John ‘Buttman’ Stagliano (one of my favorite visionaries)  and threw various low-blows at him, even going as far as telling listeners to check out his website, but do not pay for it. This is enough for any straight-thinking person to realize that it is personal, on her part. Dines also attacks the likes of Ernest Greene (another pornographer whose life partner is Nina Hartley, a sex-positive feminist) by referring to him as “a savage torturer of women”. Again, personal. I am sure Gail Dines means well and she is right that pornography corrupts human sexuality to a degree (although this does not happen to every individual and I, for one, won’t blame pornography for why I love nasty and rough sex or why I will never marry and prefer multiple partners), I also agree that America has become hypersexualized. I’ve heard porn-king Lexington Steele say years ago while he was on The Michael Baisden Show that porn racks in more dough than American sports and the American movie industry combined. (Sad, isn’t it?!) This, because as Marlene Dietrich once said, “In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact.” We spend more time reading about, hearing about and watching sex in the media (TV, internet, books, magazines, music) instead of having strong sexual relationships with human beings, as nature intended. And this is highly pathetic, to say the very least.

P.S. Pornography is just as popular in Japan and The U.K. as it is here in America. Is pornography hijacking or corrupting human sexuality in those countries? Or is it, like Michael Moore said about gun violence in America in his Bowling For Columbine documentary, just us?

Photo courtesy of www.gdefon.com