Why Porn Matters

Porn is fantasy, but like many fantasies, it tells us something about the reality from which it helps us to escape.

If the female characters of porn lust after big cocks, it is to help us escape the fact that real women generally do not care about dick nearly so much as men do about pussy.

If the female characters of porn can't get enough fucking, it's because women in life typically keep their men on rations of three fucks a week, if that.

If the female characters of porn want sex with "no strings attached," it is because with real women there are so, so many strings.

If porn "degrades" its female characters (as is often claimed) it is only to bring them down to a level equal with men, where they must lust like men, and suffer the consequences of that lust as men do.

In this way porn is a fantasy of equality.

As we all know (but nowadays admit only with great reluctance) the sexualities of men and women are different. This difference gives women a tremendous sexual power over men. Porn creates a fantasy in which this power is eliminated through making men and women more alike—usually by imposing a male-like sexuality onto its female characters.

In porn, if nowhere else, women and men are equal in their lust.

But porn is more than fantasy. It comforts us by reassuring us that the need to escape is necessary and normal.

When we read or watch porn, we are aware, if only in the back of our minds, that we are part of a mass audience. There are thousands out there like us, all making do (when we have to) with the fantasy of porn.

There is security in these numbers: if so many people find it necessary to escape into a sexual fantasy, it must be because they, too, have found the sexual reality harsh, even intolerable at times. In this way porn is a communal acknowledgment. Porn brings us together to admit, however tacitly, that as a society we are not nearly so sexually sophisticated or uninhibited as we like to pretend. Just the opposite, we are oppressed by the sexual reality—more so than ever, judging by porn's current popularity.

The logic works like this: If we are so sexually free (as is now popular to claim) why are we reading a gang bang story? Why has the author bothered to write it?

Shouldn't we all be too busy fucking for this kind of make-believe?

In this respect porn has become more honest than much of today's mainstream storytelling. Read just about any recently written novel, whether popular or "literary"; browse a newspaper, magazine, or blog; go to a film; turn on your tv; tune in to the radio talk show; or just listen to the stories that ordinary people around you tell each other; and you will find everywhere female characters whose sexuality is like that of men: they want sex with less getting-to-know-you preamble, a greater variety of partners, and much greater frequency. Only the tendency to be attracted to men remains intact. These women are, in short, mainstream versions of the heroines of pornography.

However, unlike pornography, which rarely pretends to be anything more than sexual fantasy, our mainstream stories often claim to represent our reality. Frequently they even strive to TEACH us this sexual reality, convince us that it is indeed real. The monolithic uniformity of the message is much like that of propaganda, and in fact it IS the propaganda of today's "correct" gender politics. As a result, our stories now tell us less about our reality, sexual or otherwise, than they do about pop ideology. If we wish to see a true reflection of the sexual reality, we have few places left to turn.

One of the remaining options is porn. Don't get me wrong. As mirror of sexual reality, porn is a poor one. It is distorted, blurry, and inverted. It does not give sight so much as a vague feeling of the truth. It is one step away from being totally blind. It is certainly nothing compared to a well-told story that reflects the truth of our feelings, as the great novels, films, and even the conversations of previous generations often could.

But we live in a society that lacks the courage to face the truths that stories can reveal, especially sexual truths. We have chosen simplistic ideology instead, and in doing so we have gouged out our own eyes. We wander blindly where we most need the sight that stories can give, and porn, of all things, has come to serve as our white cane. We tap around with it, trying to feel out what its real, and when we do find it, we keep our mouths shut. We don't dare tell anyone what we have found.

Haven't you heard? Admitting the truth of our sexuality is no longer permissible.