Warning: This post contains a graphic description of a scene from video pornography.
A white woman’s mouth in the act of swallowing a white man’s penis fills the screen of my TV. Almost directly in the center of the picture, the shape of his organ glides back and forth against the inside of her left cheek. Panning back, the camera shows her kneeling on all fours in front of him, her lips engulfing and expelling his genitals as if she were the only movable part of a well-oiled machine. She looks up at him and asks, with a lust-filled and mischievous grin, “Does that feel good?”
“You suck a mean cock, Cherry,” he answers, his tone flat, as if he were reading her name out of the phone book.
In response, she gazes worshipfully at his erection, sucks air hungrily through her teeth, and moans with the pleasure of pleasuring him, with the joy of being able to take him in her mouth; and then the scene changes to a picture of the same woman doing the same thing to a second man. Then the scene changes again, and again, and again, and each time the woman is with a different man, and each time the man shows about as much passion as he would if he were lifting heavy boxes. His erection signifies both his desire and his arousal, but he rarely moves his hips, he makes almost no sound that could be mistaken for an expression of pleasure, and, throughout the oral sex she performs on him, his face remains more or less emotionless.
From the way the camera is aimed at the point of oral-genital contact, I know that I am supposed to imagine the penis on the screen and the perspective of the lens as mine. I know that my hand is supposed to acquire the shape of the woman’s lips, that the orgasm to which this movie—a compilation called “Inside Christy Canyon”—is intended to help me bring myself is supposed to become the orgasm to which she has brought me. Yet neither my pleasure nor the pleasure of the men who stand in with Christy Canyon for me seems to be at the center of what the movie is about. Instead, the film focuses on her, minutely transcribing each of her responses to the sex she is having. She moans, she screams, she gyrates her hips. Her arms and legs flail with pleasure, and when she is fucking, she grabs at her partner to pull him further inside herself. Even when he orgasms, at the moment when his body and his pleasure should logically occupy the movie’s foreground, Christy Canyon almost always dominates the picture, grinding, panting, moaning beneath the ejaculating penis as if it and the pleasure it is supposed to represent were her own. I’m reminded of the stereotypical scenes of idol worshippers working themselves into an ecstasy, hoping vainly to elicit some sign of life from the stone or wooden figure that is their god. In Christy Canyon’s case, however, the worship works. God speaks. The phallus ejaculates.
Yet if the “cum-shot” is supposed to represent the pinnacle and proof of male pleasure, I find—except for my prior knowledge of the physical fact—little male pleasure in it, and even less pleasure in watching it. A man thrusts into a woman, or a woman takes a man into her body. He exhibits little or no sign of the sexual pleasure, the tension towards orgasm, that must be building in his body, but then, when the “magic moment” arrives and he pulls out of his partner’s body so we can see that his orgasm is real, he allows himself the further release of a scream or a grunt. Yet I know that I am supposed to identify less with what this man feels physically than with what he does, or with what is done to him. This is the homophobia at the core of most mainstream heterosexual pornography. When he enters Christy Canyon, I am not supposed to imagine his interior experience of that fact; rather, I am supposed to imagine that I have entered her. When she takes him in her mouth, it is not his pleasure that is supposed to arouse me, but rather the fact that she has, metaphorically, done the same to me. Everything sexual this movie wants me to feel, in other words, is directed not towards an identification with the body that is like mine, but into the experience of possessing the filmed image of her body. Our roles, in other words, have reversed. I have become the worshipper who, with the sympathetic magic of my desire, desires to breathe life into the inanimate body of the film that is all I have of her flesh, while she has become the inscrutable object before which I must finally know that I am alone, holding in my hand the proof and the residue of my own mundane humanity.
Cross-posted on The Poetry in the Politics and the Politics in the Poetry–the new name of my blog, which describes more accurately than It’s All Connected where I’d like to take the majority of the writing that I do there. The blog is now the home page of my site, which I am in the process of giving a redesign, since I discovered that the WordPress theme I had been using did not display well on Windows PCs.
This is the homophobia at the core of most mainstream heterosexual pornography.
So you think the constant focus on Christy (or any woman in any porn for that matter) is just as much about focusing on her as is it about keeping the focus off the men (who chances are you never got the names of, which is common)? As in not focusing on the men serves more than just giving the guy watching the ability to picture himself with Christy?
(I’ve been working on a series of posts on being a man over the last several months. Its simpler approach which I think is needed as a starting point for men. I’ve touched on sex but not porn yet, will have to get around to that sometime.)
Danny:
Clearly the answer is yes. Or, more accurately, at least in terms of your first question, I don’t think the two are separable. But what’s your point? All you’ve done here is summarize what I said.
My point was to make sure I understood what you were saying. Like I said in my comment I’m still at a starting point on working on being a man. No ill intent. Just asking some questions.
I am trying to think of how to word my comment/question, but not sure how to do it, so I might just ramble. That the viewer isn’t supposed to identify at all with the man in the video: is that a sexual abjection only, or a bodily one as well? From what I know about people who are professed homophobes, they claim it’s the sex act that disgusts them, but it’s more than that. Or maybe it’s more than the body, it’s identification, which allows for vulnerability or the ability to step outside one’s self, and it’s that vulnerability that’s abjected …?
I don’t know that I have so much a question is that you’ve got me musing today on that enforced disconnect that porn plays into.
Beautiful ending, by the way.
I think this post codifies the reason why porn is uncomfortable for me to watch more completely than anything else I’ve read. Robotic, nameless men who exist as mere phalli to pound into a woman who, while she might be the center of attention, is more main course than person. The circling of men around a woman, men whose only allowed motivation is desire to penetrate her, woman whose only role is receptacle and who must enjoy it.
Honestly, it’s the man reduced to penis and lust that scares the crap out of me. As always, it’s comforting to hear that men don’t find this the natural way to be.
I’ll admit that I indulge.
Actually, lately I’ve been seeing more where the man _is_ a character, thanks to that horrible BangBus type stuff.
The men are included to have the most obnoxious swaggering mysogynistic douchetitude you could ever imagine.
Yeah, I prefer the silent non-character stuff. Maybe out of homophobia, but also because I don’t like to be reminded how hateful the porno industry is.
Silenced is Foo:
You mentioned Bang Bus: Once, for a paper I gave at a conference on porn on the web, I used one of their videos because the camera angle at which they shot a woman going down on a man actually showed the entire man’s body in a way that you just don’t see in most mainstream porn, and then, at some point, the camera angle changed to the more traditional one. The difference was stark and immediate and you could really see the difference–though I want to emphasize it was a visual difference only; the context, the language, etc. of the video was no less misogynist for what I am talking about–and it really, and ironically, helped me to see, in a very visceral way, that there are other possibilities for how men might be depicted in porn. (That there are/ought to be different possibilities for the depiction of women I take as a given.)
Also, Danny: I didn’t think you had any ill intent. I just thought that perhaps there was a point you were trying to make and didn’t, or that I missed. Sorry if my response read as a little snarky.
I don’t know why so much porn is just so… mechanical and fake-looking. I find it, well, boring. And it’s rare that the women involved look like they’re actually enjoying what’s going on; they rarely smile, and they often don’t appear to be sexually aroused, either. The acting in most porn is so bad that even something like the much-derided sex scene from Watchmen is more of a turn-on for me. Pretty much the only porn videos I actually like are “amateur” videos of female masturbation. It all just makes me wonder, “Who buys this shit?”
Its cool Richard I’ve been a little on edge in the blog world the last few days.
I’ve actually noticed my interest in porn drop off in the last few months (from surfing the net almost every night for an hour or so to maybe once every couple of weeks) and have been thinking about why that’s happened.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, as I’ve just happened to run by a lot of bits of Internet featuring variations on the “my partner likes porn and he doesn’t like me/I found his stash of porn should I throw him out?”
I don’t like porn, but not because of its possibly anti-feminist implications, or the idea that a man who likes porn wouldn’t like me. I don’t like it because most filmed, professional heterosexual porn I’ve seen either embarrasses me or bores me or both. I like written porn; I like a lot of cartoon porn. But real people porn? Blech. Aside from the terrible writing and worse acting, usually the erection pounding “Cherry” looks half-hearted and flabby at best, as though it’s being feverishly “fluffed” off camera just to keep it at a photogenic angle, and as though the owner can’t wait to get off camera again for his next coffee-and-smoke break.
I suppose this relates to your previous post, which was a beautifully poetic way of describing the deliciousness of a man’s genuine excitement.
I don’t get turned on by clearly forced arousal, either in porn or in real life. The faked, noisy arousal of the women is bad enough (particularly during acts which, despite the mainstreaming of porn, I and the majority of women I know still don’t prefer), but the detached men? COMPLETE killer. I don’t get it. Even the excuse of “homophobia” still leaves me mystified. For me, as a mostly straight woman, this is the opposite of exciting.
@Katherine
Absolutely. Imho the worst examples are “Lesbian” porn. They look about as exciting and sexual as a pap-smear.
As for the invisible men of porn, there are a variety of reasons for it, not just homophobia. First, obviously, porn is made for men. Men want to see the woman have sex. That’s what we’re here for. Heterosexual men like women, and want to look at the woman. So at best, we’re indifferent to the guy, and at worst (homophobia or just not liking him) we’re annoyed by the camera when it lingers on him.
Personally, I get annoyed at extreme-close-ups, at blow-jobs, etc. For me porn has always been about watching the woman have sex – not just a tiny part of her body, nor about watching her pleasure a guy. Obviously, different strokes for different folks (no pun intended).
I thought this was an outstanding post. You talked about some issues that I have wondered about for awhile now. Namely, how sex is represented in the media. I know you are talking specifically about porn, but you see the same scenario in mainstream Hollywood films. Every movie love scene I have ever watched has focused almost exclusively on the reaction of the woman. I don’t watch very much porn, but I have seen some of its offerings over the years. And your description is very on target with what I have seen.
It seems to me that the media sees male pleasure as irrelevant. Men are supposed to perform not feel, while women feel but don’t perform. Most media depictions of sex place the burden of emotion on the female lead, who acts out for both of them – almost like the chorus in a Greek play. Men are usually depicted as robotic. What I got from your post was that porn (and mainstream film as well) do this as a way for the guy in the audience to safely enjoy the movie without feeling “gay” by creating some distance from the male lead.
I also think that this reflect social attitudes as well. Most men are pretty much raised to focus on performance, not pleasure.
Just want to say thanks to all for the kind words.
Your post made me think of a couple of things. One was a bit out of Peep Show, Joe Matt’s autobiographical comic book, in which he’s methodically editing any shot of the man’s face out of a number of porn videos, and gets deeply upset if he misses a single shot.
The other is something that I’ve seen in internet porn, more than once, in badly-edited videos. Usually the money shot is shown as a climax borne entirely from penetration of, and friction with, the female partner, but in badly-edited porn, the man has to masturbate himself after withdrawal, sometimes for several minutes, in order to ejaculate. In really badly-edited porn, they show his face, and he never seems to be enjoying himself, but rather just wants to get it over with, sometimes stroking himself so fast and furiously that his hand becomes a blur. I hate to say it, but I find myself oddly sympathetic toward the performer, urging him on as one would an athlete participating in some endurance event who’s long since used up his reserves of energy and is just struggling to get across the finish line.
Now wait just a second. There’s GOT to be some distinction between homophobia and heterosexuality. Does not wanting to watch a guy get off mean I’m afraid of/hate gay men? I also don’t want to watch my sister getting off, but that doesn’t mean I dislike her or don’t respect her or think she shouldn’t be allowed to get married. I simply find it unpleasant to visually experience a person to whom I’m not attracted in a sexual context. When I’m not jerking off, I’m a lot laxer about my viewing material, of course. I can watch the sex scenes in Angels in America pretty dispassionately because I’m not in turned-on mode. I still don’t wanna see my sister getting off, though.
Beyond that, though, I absolutely do want to live the fantasy that I’M the one having sex with the woman in the porn I’m watching, and too much focus on the man breaks that illusion. I imagine a straight woman would rather watch porn that focuses on the guy (which is in lamentably short supply, I guess, but that’s another discussion). What breaks the illusion more than anything else, though, is if the guy talks. I don’t mind seeing him, but the reminder that he has an internal monologue that is not my own is intensely jarring. Even if he’s offscreen, hearing him talk to the woman is annoying.
A side effect of this is that I prefer the man in the video to look somewhat like me. If he’s too fat or thin or old, it’s harder for me to picture that I’m him. I don’t enjoy porn featuring white men as much (I’m black), because I can’t trick myself into thinking that’s my dick she’s sucking (or whatever) when it looks so different from my real one.
In response to Lilith Land, I think the man as performing/woman as feeling dichotomy has less to do with gender stereotypes than with point of view. While watching porn and imagining myself as the man in the video, I know that I’m experiencing pleasure and arousal, I don’t need to be reminded that the guy on screen is feeling it as well. But the female is not my self insert. I’m not imagining being her, I’m imagining being with her, so to be aware that she’s also enjoying it, some apparent expression of her pleasure is necessary. It’s the same way when having sex in real life. I like to shut up and not focus on myself, because what’s exciting is that another person is responding to me with pleasure.
Notably, this tendency to prefer focusing on the woman carries over even when the man in the video is literally me. When my girlfriend and I made a sex tape, I found it wholly unappealing, because most of the frame is taken up by my body covering hers. The point of porn is to focus on what you desire, not on what you are. Otherwise, I might as well jerk off in a mirror.