Grooming For Sexual Failure: Why Porn Is Bad For You (And Way Worse Than You Think)

Don't get me wrong: I'm all about porn and creative freedom. I don't think porn should be limited or censored in any way - including the ways it is limited and censored today. I think porn is a necessity for our society, if for no other reason than it provides a release valve for the extraordinary amounts of sexual frustration, confusion, and anger that permeate our society. Porn is natural and inevitable, given the norms and confines of the culture we inhabit.

And for those people who will never take their sexuality beyond wanking it to their internet before they go to bed, I say God Bless. If imagining you're fucking Lexi Belle or Jenna Haze, and they're really making all those noises just for you, is gonna get you through your boring, vanilla life, then that's fine with me. At the very least, I know it will make you less likely to rape my sister or go postal in the shopping mall. Porn serves us all in that way.

But I'm not talking to those guys. In a way, they're already sexually dead. I'm talking about guys who want to get the most out of their lives, and their sex lives constitute a strong component of that life, that fulfilled life. These guys have to wade through an enormous amount of misinformation about gender dynamics, sexual dynamics, female desire, and their own core masculine nature to arrive at a sense of themselves as sexual men. This is a trial for many of us.

In that process of weeding out the bullshit cultural programming, I find porn - supposedly our one private gateway to our sexuality - to be more culprit than liberator in this struggle to understand authentic sexual Dynamics. And this is the core problem with porn for me: the miscommunication about Dynamics.

Yes, porn is fake, yes the men are humiliatingly large, yes, nobody really fucks like that anyway, yes the slapping and choking are unbearably weak, and yes the girls' moaning and orgasms are as fake as their boobs. All this is so. But it is on the surface. It is something that can easily be discerned and fairly easily filtered out.

But below the surface, the dynamic that is subcommunicated - the dynamic vis a vis the masturbator at home and the gorgeous sex object on the screen - is not right. It puts the man at home in a passive relationship vis a vis the woman on the screen. It puts all the power to arouse in the woman's hands - a woman whom he will never meet in person anyway. And it completely obliterates the man's understanding that he can - much less how he can - cause the arousal of his woman.

This is Dynamic. And in porn, it is completely backwards. The woman has all the power, and the masturbator has none.

This is not as it should be. This is not how those hot women on the screen desire it to be - at least not in their own love lives. But as a porn-watcher, you'd never know that. Even if you're emulating one of the male porn stars who conveys submissiveness and obsequiousness in his bearing, despite his huge cock, you're missing the point.

Perhaps the only person in porn who conveys any sort of authentic male Dominance is the director behind the scene. "Now switch to doggie. Baby, get on your knees and suck his cock a little. Alright, stop. I want you to swallow this one. Good girl." That's a lot more like what Dominance looks like than what the guy on the screen is doing - but you never see that part in the movies. You just passively jerk until you're finished, and feel only the dim, perverted sense of dominance you get by being able to switch the channel or click a new link for a hotter girl.

This enshrines in men, particularly young impressionable men, the sense that they are not in control of the sexual situation. They are not in control of the arousal process. They are completely at the mercy of what the girl does (with her Director-Dom hidden out of sight).

This is the subtext of porn - way more important than all the obvious fakeness of it all - and this is why porn is bad for you. Because assuming a passive attitude with a sexy, submissive woman will get you nowhere. It will leave you frustrated, angry, and wanting, and it will lead you right back to the computer screen for more porn, thus perpetuating the downward spiral of self-loathing and sexual deficiency.

To me, this is one of the most deadly aspects of porn, this confusion of gender roles in "traditional," straight, D/s relationships. And for what it's worth, personally knowing many people in the industry, it is fairly common for male porn stars to be just as clueless about sexual dynamics as their fans are. By placing all the power in the female's hands, the undoing of the connection is guaranteed. She wants you to have the power. She needs you to have it in order to truly be fulfilled. That's the lesson that's never taught in porn. And it leads to the perpetual confusion of men and the ongoing frustration of women throughout the increasingly global porn-watching culture.

Note again that these are not *explicit* message of porn. They are subcommunicated and speak directly to the unconscious, making them infinitely more dangerous.

Another “sub”-communication (heh) comes from something as seemingly anodyne as camera angles.

How many times have you seen a POV camera staring up at a woman from below? Usually her ass, but it could be anything, videographer on the ground staring up at her as if she were a Greek goddess.

Yes, yes, I know *every* woman is a goddess (lol). But even if you adopt New Age Self-Deification, she is a Goddess to your God, not to you staring up at her like a pleb.

It may seem like a small thing, but this stuff matters. It really does. The perspective of the viewer, from which he derives - or reinforces- his worshippy fantasies underscores the harm that the porn is already doing to him. These become mental imprints that inform - and misinform - his entire view of life and sex. And he doesn’t even know it.

And then there is the larger than life quality of nearly anyone who appears on the screen. Some of you have super duper plus sized monitors and televisions that turn normal looking people into giants.

But even on your phone, the psychological effect of someone filling up the screen transforms them into something larger than life- the makeup, the attention, the framing only inflate their seeming importance (and unattainability) further.

Many people have had the experience of meeting people they only know from television and seeing how unremarkable they look in person. Usually they appear *way* shorter, zittier, basicer, and just kind of unimpressive compared with the primped and maxed version that fills our screens.

And as someone who has spend a *lot* of time on actual porn sets, I can tell you that all of the women are shorter, zittier, and way basicer than they appear on screen. With very few exceptions, they are totally ordinary or worse. These women aren’t just acting with their moans and groans. . .they are acting to create an image of a powerful, impressive woman that is equally fake.

Seeing women in this way - constantly - as larger than life is not good for you past the weening stage - particularly when you anchor the frame endlessly with ejaculations and dopamine drops. You are laying the pipework (not) in a foundation of delusion that will not serve you at all when you encounter women in the actual flesh.

Women need to be seen as they are, just like the movie star you see on the street. Because the constant reinforcement that they are better than you further deteriorates your ability to lead them the way they need to be led and even further saps your desire to pursue them in a serious (i.e. likely to succeed) way.

(Note: Women want you to be better than them. Don’t ever forget this. Reinforcing ideas to the contrary will only bring misery and resentment to you both. Learning to see women as they are is an awakening - and indeed a delight - that we all need to have.)

Because this is perhaps the gravest danger of porn: that it saps your strength and motivation to go out and find a real woman to fuck.

If you can spend your Saturday nights blowing your wad while watching Tori Black, figuring you could never get a girl that hot anyway, and that's good enough, then you're in trouble. Because half of what makes you sexy to a girl - even a girl like Tori Black - half of what brings the arousal to her and not just from her - is actually doing something- getting off your butt, going out, and talking to her. But by the third ejaculation, you probably don’t even have the energy to play a video game before you roll over and call it a night. And do it all again tomorrow.

But male sexuality is active. Action is required to get the girl, to have great sex, and to enjoy a great relationship. Action is what creates the polarity with a woman and therefore the alchemical attraction that can only be resolved by wild fucking deep into the night.

But porn teaches the opposite. It teaches the man to be the passive recipient of arousal, through no effort - or action - of his own. This is the most dangerous thing about porn. Far more dangerous than the supposed "denigration of women" (who, by the way, make 3 times the pay of their male counterparts), or the oversexualization of our children.

By creating and perpetuating another generation of lazy, passive men, we do incalculable damage to the authentic sexuality of women in our culture. Because their basic needs - no matter how hot they now dress, or how hard they try - are not being met by the available pool of men. And the repercussions of sexually frustrated women are as dangerous to the culture, to families, and to other men as anything else I can think of. As the song goes, "if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." And mama's happiest when she's getting regular, competent poundings from an authentically Dominant Man.

Addendum:

Last night, my girl and I found ourselves sampling a few traditional porno clips on the internet. They literally made my stomach turn, despite the beauty and care with which these particular clips had obviously been created. The emotional fulfillment, the sexual dynamism, and real passion (in all senses of the word) that we regularly experience together throw the tepid world of glam porn into such stark relief, that I became almost morally outraged that this is what passes for sex in our entertainment industry - that this is the model we are teaching our children!

Funny thought, I suppose, given what most people mean when they experience moral revulsion at what porn teaches children. But there you have it. Radical egalitarian boogie boredom is not sex. And it is not going to lead to anybody's fulfillment in our culture. Just a permanent, ever-strangling boner bandaid for our sexual woes.