Why do men (still) like porn?: A response B. Ruby Rich will never read

Disclaimers

1. Needless to say, this essay deals in topics that are NSFW
2. This essay has been updated in accordance with feedback relating to clarity of argument. If you have read this essay before, some things may have changed.

Introduction

In her 1983 essay Anti-porn: Soft issue, hard world, feminist film critic B. Ruby Rich made a request of male feminists.

Finally, here’s a proper subject for the legions of feminist men: let them undertake the analysis that can tell us why men like porn (not, piously, why this or that exceptional man does not), why stroke books work, how oedipal formations feed the drive, and how any of it can be changed.

This is an important request to make, as it is a rare event in which men can be uniquely knowledgeable in a feminist subject. Unfortunately, only one response is visible from a search on either normal Google or Google Scholar: Confessions of a Feminist Porn Watcher by Scott MacDonald, published later that year. While I admire that MacDonald was up to the task so quickly, I personally find the essay itself to be a little on the defensive and self-pitying side.

Yet, given that males dominate in the culture, why would they pay to see sexual fantasies of male domination? Wouldn’t one expect fantasy material to reveal the opposite of the status quo? Further, if going to porn films or arcades were emblematic of male power, one might expect that the experience would be characterised by an easy confidence reflective of macho security. For me, however-and, I’m guessing, for many men who have visited porn arcades or film houses-these periodic visits are always minor traumas… From the instant my car is carrying me toward pornography, I feel painfully visible, as if everyone who sees me knows… precisely where I’m going. The walk from the car to the door — and later, from the door to the car — is especially difficult… This fear of being seen has, in my case at least (as far as I can tell) less to do with guilt than with a fear of being misunderstood.

Nevertheless, MacDonald’s essay is not without its insights. For example, he makes the interesting point that porn was how a lot of boys learned about the female body growing up in the 50s’; during which you were expected to just magically know “how to handle women” after over 18 years of sexual puritanism. Needless to say, that’s less of a problem for boys growing up today, but I still feel the need not to completely write MacDonald off as a contributor to this discourse. Furthermore, I will quote him throughout this article when appropriate.

Film poster at unidentified theatre by City of Boston Archive. Taken from Wikimedia commons

But regardless of the quality of his analysis, porn is a very different beast now. Tragically, many feminists who were already deeply concerned at the industrial misogynistic abuse in the porn industry both on and off camera would rather it returned to its state in the 1980s than continue to take the form it has now. The feminist accelerationists of the past could have reasoned that, the more extreme and abusive pornography got, the more likely it would be to cause a destructive backlash. But, like most forms of accelerationism, it would fail to account for the speed and efficiency of cultural normalising. It thus seems that Rich’s original question has only gotten more important as time has passed: as porn has become ever more unlikable, why do men still persist in liking it?

Nearly 40 years after the original question, I have decided to post my own response by virtue of three facts. First, I am a male feminist (or feminist ally, if you prefer) who has watched porn in his lifetime. Second, I have a reputation both on the internet and in real life of being able to articulate arguments and analysis with at least a respectable degree of competency. Third, I reiterate that there has been a staggering lack of answers to this and it seems any good faith answer is better than none at all.

But while the demand for information has held up, I insist that the sub-questions in Rich’s request be changed to ones that are less dated. The availability of video pornography has made ‘stroke books’ extinct as a term and nearly extinct period. Pornographic still images are now comparatively minuscule in popularity. Besides, magazines like Playboy and Penthouse are before my time, and thus outside my experience. “Oedipal formations” have also been ignored for reasons relating to Freudian psychoanalysis’ lack of academic relevancy in the current day.

As such, I substitute Rich’s wording with two questions which I believe strike at the heart of the feminist concern with male consumption of pornography (as I understand it).

• Why do men go out of their way to consume these highly stylised and inaccurate portrayals of sexual intercourse to mentally project themselves into while they masturbate?

Most fictional media people consume is unrealistic and idealised in favour of an enhanced consumer experience. But what is considered ‘ideal’ in sex, and why?

• What makes consuming said depictions worth supporting the horrible ethical reputation of the industry they are born from?

The Cultural Outline

I begin by defining what I will be referring to when I say ‘porn’, as there is debate among even the most staunchly anti-porn feminists as to what ‘counts’ when considering how diverse and varied sexual media are. This essay will focus on the kinds of porn it can be reasonably assumed will appeal to the average man. My first qualification is that it will be ‘mainstream’ as, by definition, it is representative of the things in porn that appeal to the most generalisable selection of men. The most obvious things that set mainstream porn apart from other kinds are the following:

1. It is live action and contains real-life performers (unlike illustrated porn e.g. Hentai).
2. Performers and creators are usually not one and the same (though more and more performers seem to be making their own content).
3. Because performers are not the people who write and direct the scenes, they are often made to perform the routine regardless of their level of genuine enjoyment or comfort.
4. Related to point 3, the content is designed with demographics in mind, rather than being made for fun.
5. It is intended for the heterosexual male gaze

Deep Throat poster 2 by employees of Bryanston Pictures or a subsidiary. Taken from Wikimedia commons.

Let’s get out of the way that no one needs any kind of porn. This is evidenced by people getting by without it during their masturbation sessions for centuries. It’s true that it tends to ‘help’, but it is much more of a luxury than a necessity. In fact, many people prefer to use their imagination as a masturbation aid, or none at all.

But in the current day, porn is ‘the thing you use’ while masturbating, to the point where not using it is considered unusual. It can, in fact, be argued that men’s consumption of porn is partially due to a self-perpetuating hegemony of the mindset that masturbation habits are inseparable from porn in the same way driving is inseparable from listening to the radio. The idea that huge swaths of men would stop watching porn if they realised they don’t need to is a comforting proposition: one which requires little feminist insight. But even such a decrease in viewership would likely result in rates returning to how they were around the time Rich asked her question, so the issue is still far from resolved.

The base-level answer to Rich’s inquiry is that, being fantasies, there are obviously many aspects of pornography that are idealised and unreasonable to expect from real life sex. These include:

1. The conventional attractiveness of partners
2. The safety of unprotected sex
3. The minimal or absent objection to otherwise taboo sexual activities
4. Who the partner is (how available they would be given their relationship with the fantasiser)
5. What locations sex can occur in with little consequence
6. The ability for all participants to seemingly mind-read each other so explicit communication is not necessary.
7. Stamina and proficiency of sexual performance (power fantasy?)
8. The ability to sexually please a woman through penetration and minimal foreplay alone
9. Penis size

Note that points 4 and 5 do not apply to porn without plot (e.g. casting couch).

The following (and more) are things offered by pornography that are desired by men, but are very rarely the case for real life sexual encounters. If a regular person asked why men watch pornography, this is what I would answer with (or at least, what I could remember off the top of my head). There are other reasons why men would still like porn (with all things considered). First, they could be sexually inexperienced, and thus not be familiar with the differences between real sex and porn sex (especially considering how difficult to articulate many of them are). Secondly, they could fail to see porn as being exceptionally exploitative compared to other industries.

But Rich made the request as a feminist, and so it is more appropriate to answer these questions through the lens of sexual health and gender relations. My ‘feminist’ response to Rich’s question centres around porn simulating a sexual culture that is ideal for male sexual interests and validates male sexuality on an emotional level. I believe the cultural qualities of the narrative worlds in which porn takes place can tell us about how men want real life sexual culture to be. The events and attitudes depicted in porn are not merely sexual ideals: they are cultural ideals.

A Deeper Satisfaction

Human sexuality has always been presented through a male lens, as it has been described and shaped almost entirely by men (look no further than this essay’s subject). Men dominate sexuality, much in the same way they dominate everything else. And yet, the male sexuality celebrated under patriarchy can hardly be considered erotic, as everything patriarchy touches is turned into a method of enforcement. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Lyrics in trap and hip-hop, the two dominant music genres currently, portray male sexuality primarily as a means of proving themselves to others: bragging about women the rapper supposedly slept with, often emphasising certain notable traits that increase the sexual value of the women.

Got a bitch that’s looking like Aaliyah, she a model.

The Box by Roddy Ricch. #3 on the 2020 US Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart.

Got some bitch from Follies with us
She gon’ fuck the squad, what else?
I’ma fuck her broads, what else?
Bitch from Pakistan, what up?

Low Life by Future. #30 on the 2016 US Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart.

Among the more common tropes is the rapper successfully convincing someone’s partner to commit infidelity through their superior charisma and performance.

Get caught with your ho when I’m poppin’ ’em both

I’m out with your bitch and I only want knowledge

Suge by DaBaby. #24 on the 2019 US Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart.

It appears that the sexuality embodied by the bad boy idols of today’s male youth is almost entirely separate from any kind of fulfilment. A lack of romantic involvement is tautologically expected from casual sex, but these passages regard ‘scoring’ as if they were scoring in football: something to be experienced and forgotten shortly thereafter. The audience is tempted to wonder whether these rappers have sex just for bragging rights, or if they find women attractive in the first place. Consider the Donald Trump “grab ’em by the pussy” scandal. The common defence to the accusation that Trump effectively admitted to sexually assaulting numerous women was “It was just locker room talk”, which translates to “he was just fabricating a sexual assault to appear impressive to his male friends.” In this case, not only was sex not about pleasure; it wasn’t even about power over women. It was about reputation amongst other men.

My point is that the most culturally omnipresent forms of sex are un-erotic. In the realm of media, sex is about luxury, marketing and victory, rather than human intimacy. In many ways, sexuality in popular culture has adapted to be non-threatening to conservatism, and patriarchy as a whole. The conservatives, despite still insisting open sexuality would cause the downfall of civilisation, still live in a world in which sex — actual sex — is locked away in a private cupboard in the human psyche and hated until it is needed.

‘Sex comedy’ films like Animal House (1978) and American Pie (1999) used comedy as an excuse for people to acknowledge, and maybe even open, the cupboard with something other than resentment by using humor as an ice breaker. These were used as ways to get people more comfortable with sex: to put the training wheels on. But the fact is, we never took the wheels off. More sex in more places has not changed people’s general sheepishness towards it. Take, for instance, how it is seen as “awkward” or “uncomfortable” for two people who once had casual sex meet again in a regular context, as if they committed a heist together are were told not to contact each other again. A great portion of films which feature sex as a central component are still comedies (e.g. The 40 Year Old Virgin or The To-Do List). Others place sex in the context of a tragedy or drama (e.g. Stoker or Take this Waltz) to exploit its connotations of vice and temptation. Comparatively rare are the sex-celebratory films like the Magic Mike series, which are thankfully well received.

MacDonald describes how, even when indulging in porn, the need to not appear to take sex seriously or positively permeates social desirability.

Meeting someone I know [at a porn theatre] would, I assume (this has never happened to me), force us to join together in the phony macho pose of pretending that our interest in the pornographic materials around us is largely a matter of detached humor, that we’ve come for a few laughs.

Porn itself, however, remains unambiguous. Sex is the main attraction, rather than a ploy to draw your attention to something else. It is a reminder that sex-as-sex exists, and reassures people that they are allowed to want it. Porn depicts sex happening in all kinds of situations and between all kinds of people with little in the way of shame. Spontaneous sexual activity is treated as a pleasant surprise, rather than a moment of weakness. It is true that porn productions often feature some form of comedic relief, but this is often to provide the audience a feeling other than horniness to mitigate potential boredom. While it can be convincingly argued that porn is one of the many ways in which patriarchy uses sex as a weapon, it does so in ways that are more affirming of legitimate sexual desire than most other parts of sex culture. It then makes sense why porn has become such a defining part of sexual culture, even in a world where sex can be found in most places. The ways porn regards sexuality can be described with many negative words, but ‘shy’ and ‘deflective’ are not among them.

But what does this have to do with men specifically? Besides the fact that the only sexual desire porn cares about affirming is men’s, I believe the differences between how female sexuality is portrayed in porn and how it is expected to be ‘in real life’ tell us what they really want female sexuality to look like.

Keys like easy locks after all

There has always been an ungrateful hypocrisy in how lots of men that watch porn also partake in slut-shaming. The fact is that most porn scenarios depend on the women characters being at least a little promiscuous. Even when these women don’t initially show interest, it is often implied that they are experienced. This inclusion of female promiscuity in idealised portrayals of sex contradicts the conventional logic behind slut-shaming: that promiscuous women are the fast food of sex, and someone who is less ‘used’ is much more desirable. The most timeless relations of female porn characters to the male characters are acquaintances (e.g. co-workers, babysitters, in-laws, teachers) or location-specific (e.g. nurses, masseuses). For each of these kinds of relations to result in a sexual encounter despite a lack of closeness or sexual precedent, both the man and woman would have to be remarkably ‘easy’. When considering that porn in which the female character has a common relationship to the male character is often consumed to fulfil a real-life fantasy, this hints that the male viewer wants, on some level, for the real life equivalent woman to be similarly ‘easy’. Even porn that does not have a plot (in which the porn stars are just themselves) emphasises how the woman character’s experience makes for an overall more pleasurable experience for the man. These tendencies in porn plots suggest that many more men value female promiscuity than are willing to admit it.

So why do so many men deride female promiscuity while clearly recognising its ability to benefit them? I doubt I need to tell you that the answer is plain old misogyny, but we can go more specific than that. Consider that everything in porn — from cosmetics to camera angles to dialogue to physical technique — is optimised to arouse and sexually pander to men. MacDonald provides some useful insights.

Some acts appear so uncomfortable and pleasureless for the actors that the camera’s presence seems the only possible explanation.

The camera angles, the length of shots, the lighting, all of which are usually (or at least this is how I remember them) overtly functional, providing a clear view of the sex acts… In most films “aesthetics” are rigorously avoided in service of clarity.

This includes the female characters’ behaviour. Female characters in porn are ‘slutty’ on men’s terms and men’s terms alone. In real life, promiscuous heterosexual women are likely to act in ways that are not primarily for men’s enjoyment even in a sexual context. They are likely to consider their own pleasure as much, if not moreso, than their male partner’s in their choice of position, cosmetic appearance or movement (should that apply). These decisions are not for men primarily. And to the objectifying man, anything not for him is useless. It is a basic understanding among feminists that men who slut shame for reasons other than ‘blending in’ delight in the humiliation of those who give them the privilege of intimacy, thus receiving their own kind of pleasure. But I advance the additional hypothesis that these men believe women who express sexual agency are also likely to gain sexual opinions and preferences which discourage them from doing exactly, and only, what men want.

Porn script at porn set by The Naughty American. Taken from Wikimedia commons

In conclusion, I see good reason to believe that men watch porn, despite the many alternatives, because it represents an alternate world in which sexual norms are more open and relaxed in ways that validate male sexuality for its own sake. Porn works fine as a masturbation aid, but what it excels at is providing a glimpse into this world. Men often watch porn in response to a need to masturbate, but often porn watching is a recreational activity which only reaches its full pleasurability when masturbating happens in parallel. This is MacDonald’s understanding as well:

In my experience, the masturbation itself seems less important as an experience than as a way of releasing the excitement created by the imagery.

So why would porn be a valuable activity if masturbation is not the sole point? My answer is: because it allows for a deeper kind of sexual satisfaction than an orgasm can provide. It allows people to feel okay with sex on a cultural level: something so rare and needed that it just might convince people to overlook how the sausage is made. And until there is a substitute for that, there will be at least one reason why men like porn.