Shut Up About Love.
If porn teaches us anything, we’re better off with our fingers.
“Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.” Charles Bukowski
Everyone wants love for the same reason everyone wants sex. It’s there, or it would be if we weren’t so flippin’ worried about it not being there. If we’re being completely realistic—and honest—love is as handy as our fingers. So’s sex. Our fingers are love and sex.
We all want to say that love turns us on more than anything. If that were true, the porn industry would be dead. It isn’t, though, is it? It’s a twelve billion dollar industry, predicated essentially on one thing: our hands.
Porn is growing, and so are our hands. Donald Trump has small hands because he has no love. Most billionaires have small hands. It goes with the territory. Money replaces all other human instincts to the point where no compassion exists. Without it, fingers become stumps, and no political party is more stumpish than the Republicans. Mitch McConnell is a stump.
Sure, we love to love, love to think about love, love to expect love, but our habits defy this notion.
What am I on about, you say? We’ve been blasphemed when it comes to love. That’s right blasphemed. Whoever said “love makes the world go ‘round” didn’t know diddley about human beings. Sure, we love to love, love to think about love, love to expect love, but our habits defy this notion.
We spend less time looking for love than going to McDonald’s. That’s why they use the line “I’m Lovin’ It.” Nobody else was using “love,” so why not equate it with something that has the nutritional value of an envelope?
No, folks, we’ve abused love. We’ve cheapened every sentiment associated with love. We’ve kicked it in the stones, sublimating it to point where our last beacon of hope is something we don’t like to admit, and that’s porn.
Sure, we’re crazy about cute doggie pictures on Facebook. Show us an ape curled up with a kitten and we go all goopy. We’re always curious where kittens and puppies and goats are concerned. If the goat dances and sings, we’re over the moon.
Curiosity always turns to naughty. If it didn’t, we’d sit around thinking all apes want to do is snuggle kittens.
Cute is good but it’s fleeting. After a while, we need porn. Okay, we don’t exactly need it, but we want it. Curiosity always turns to naughty. If it didn’t, we’d sit around thinking all apes really want is to snuggle kittens.
Given the choice, most apes would watch porn, too. Ape porn, of course, which exists if you look hard enough. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. It’s our own naughtiness we have to worry about. It’s that thing creeping up on us every Friday night when reruns just ain’t doing it. We’re alone, we’re masters of our domain, we’re horny.
Yes, of course we don’t necessarily say it out loud, but horny is as horny does and men, women, and apes need to do something about it.
Well, we are doing something about it. As of the last Pornhub poll (what they call analytics), numbers are up — way up — and not just with men figuring it’s time to jack the pulpit. Women are watching, too, often averaging more time on porn sites (12 minutes) than men (8.5 minutes).
If it all comes down to fingers, women ain’t men, meaning their diddles don’t match up with their male counterparts.
Charles Bukowski once said, “We’re here to laugh at the odds,” and porn has beaten all odds, laughing or not. What’s funny is how we watch and what we watch, particularly where women are concerned.
If it comes down to fingers, women ain’t men, meaning their diddles don’t match up with their male counterparts. In fact, according to Pornhub, they couldn’t be more different or selective, and that’s where it gets interesting.
Men traditionally watch porn which matches their sexual orientation. That’s a wide playing field. Anything that shows what they’d do to a woman (if they weren’t sitting on the couch) is fine and dandy. The fingers fly, beer gets drunk, a good time is had by all. Women, on the other hand, get up to all kinds of interesting stuff, some not necessarily orientated to them at all.
Women like lesbian porn. It ranks number one followed by gay porn. Even more interesting is “real celebrity sex” which grew by 1028 percent last year.
How this jibes with women in general offers more than a few surprises, not the least of which is why lesbos and queers ranks so high.
“It’s also possible,” she writes, “that gay (and lesbian) scenes simply provide a perfect platform for equal opportunity orgasms to take place.”
In a Salon article, Carrie Weisman claims that gay porn, for example, features fewer degrading acts inflicted on women. “It’s also possible,” she writes, “that gay (and lesbian) scenes simply provide a perfect platform for equal opportunity orgasms to take place.”
This seems to jibe with a study published in The Journal of Sex Research, which concluded that women are basically empathetic porn viewers. They don’t necessarily have to identify with porn actresses, but they do pay attention to expressions. If the feelings shown are genuine, women get off. If they’re phony or unrealistic, you might as well put their fingers in a jar of peanut butter.
Women take their diddling seriously, spending twelve to fourteen minutes on a porn site, whereas men only average about eight. Men are fast trippers. Their beer’s getting warm. Women aren’t so easily distracted.
Not that lesbians don’t have great figures, but it doesn’t seem to bother straight women if they do. It’s those hetero bitches they have to worry about, especially young hetero bitches.
Measuring up to porn star physiques (breast size, pubic hair, grooming) is a big part of why women watch porn which, amazingly, is less of a problem with lesbo and male gays. Not that lesbians don’t have great figures, but it doesn’t seem to bother straight women if they do. It’s those hetero bitches they have to worry about, especially young hetero bitches.
“It used to bug the hell out of me,” Carol, 28, confessed. “I kept thinking, My last boyfriend could be watching her right now. I wanted to go over and stick a knife in both their foreheads.”
Another women said she kept watching porn to see if “those young bitches got fat.” That’s a lot of porn waiting for obesity. Fortunately, women aren’t sitting there counting cellulite. Porn offers a wide variety of themes ranging from bondage to babysitters. Some have complete plots, a definite draw if you’re used to Sex in the City. “I like a good story,” Nora, 25, said.
Some women claim they’ve learned a lot from porn. One said it taught her how to do “a reverse cowboy” while someone else figured out what “glazing breasts” means.
If porn has any sociological worth at all, it’s because it’s not even close to love — and, perhaps, neither are we.
Women are still conflicted by the whole notion of porn, though. They get off, but they’re intrigued by how they get off. They empathize, they internalize. That’s okay as far as it goes. Why it takes fourteen minutes on average is something else again. Maybe it has to do with love, and why we need to shut up about it. It isn’t love. If porn has any sociological worth at all, it’s because it’s not even close to love — and, perhaps, neither are we.
All the sentiments expressed with love make a good song, not a good life story. Porn is there because love isn’t. If one third of all porn watchers are women, there’s more diddling going on than romance.
Diddling’s a loveless act. As much as we want romance, women are “doing it for themselves” in growing numbers. Conflicted they may be, but fourteen minutes of screen time isn’t somebody worried about morality or celibacy.
Hands are handier than men, and a lot less aggravation. When asked if they’d rather masturbate than date, women on Reddit were equally divided.
“I’ll always want love,” Karen, 30, said, “but I’m not sitting around waiting for it to happen. I can masturbate with the best of them.”
“Porn’s tacky,” another said. “I’d rather screw someone I hate.”
Tacky it may be, but so’s love these days. You could end up disappointed in either case. At least porn isn’t pretending to be love. It is what it is. Appropriate or not, it fills the gaps until true love comes along.
“Life is laughing at the odds,” as Bukowski said, and sometimes the odds favour porn.
Until it does, the hands have it. Unlike billionaires and Republicans, we have good hands. We might as well use them. “Life is laughing at the odds,” as Bukowski said, and sometimes the odds favour porn.
Anyone who has a problem with that can wait for love. Some certainly will. The majority would rather laugh, diddle and have fun. It may get lonely at times, but it is less aggravation…until the beer gets warm.
Robert Cormack is a novelist, journalist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Skyhorse Press or Simon and Schuster for more details.
