Question 1: Puberty and Porn Go Great Together
"Someone once remarked that in adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography." — Edmund White paraphrasing Edward Albee
"One of the arguments I would bring against pornography, especially the pornography of my adolescence, is that it encourages fantasy and romance." — Norman Mailer
Okay boys, let's start on a personal note. Describe your first experience with pornographic material. Is porn consumption a rite of passage for American males? At a young age, do pornographic images naturally appeal to a deep-seated attraction to not just the female form, but to a particular female form (long hair, gravity-defying breasts, trimmed pubic hair), or do they create a highly specific set of appetites that are not natural?
My first experience with porno was when I found a deck of playing cards that belonged to my father. The back of each card featured an image of a woman wearing only a mink stole. Her large round breasts were almost completely exposed; the fur only covered a little more than the nipple of each breast. I was perhaps seven, eight or nine at the time. I remember this incredibly good feeling in my groin area. I snuck one of the cards out of the deck and looked at it often. I wasn't masturbating yet, in fact I had no idea what I was feeling, only that it was similar to what I felt when my mother tucked me in at night and I caught a glimpse down her nightgown of her large breasts as she leaned over me. When I was a little older I noticed that I got the same feeling when I saw a woman with a round ass in tight pants at the local shopping mall. After that I sought out these images in magazines like Photoplay or Pageant. They were only mildly risqué but they were the only ones available to me at the age of twelve. I started masturbating to these images. I remember seeing a layout of Raquel Welch in a bikini back in 1965 in one of these magazines; at thirteen it was the most incredible thing I had ever seen in my life up until that point.
I think most young boys experience something like what I felt when they first see these kind of images. They are motivated to seek out more and masturbate to them. It's a primal urge, just like hunger. It's not something learned. It's something we are irresistibly and inexplicably drawn to. Is this a rite of passage for a youth? That is, is it something that is experienced, then dropped when a young man starts having sex with women? I think all men to some extent enjoy these images throughout their lives. Whether or not someone chooses to consume pornographic images when other sources of sexual arousal are available depends on how high a sex drive he has innately. In my experience, the men who get into the adult film business all have a very high sex drive and pursue sexual arousal more than the average male. I've known many adult stars who not only fuck a lot of women, but who also masturbate often to porno. However, I've talked to some men who seem to be satisfied just having sex with a women every once in a while; they only consume porno when they haven't had sex in a long time. We're all born different.
The question about whether a young man's sexual responses are somehow learned through exposure to certain types of images or are innate has been dealt with extensively in the popular press over the last several years. All the studies and reports I've seen support the conclusion that a man's response to women sexually is innate. It is shaped by evolution, and it is a response to the perceived reproductive value of a woman. I've seen no new studies or writing of any kind in the last fifteen years that proposes male sexual response is determined or influenced by the images they are exposed to in youth. We look at and get aroused by certain pictures — ones that we choose to look at. The choice is made by our dicks, not by someone telling us that this is supposed to turn us on. Either it does or it doesn't and this response happens instantly. No amount of exposure to a certain type of image is going to make that type of image more sexually arousing to anyone. If a gay man looks at a nude female and is not turned on, is this because no one told him he was supposed to be aroused by this?
Matt Labash (Q1: #2 of 13)
Next to Buttman, I feel like the house prude, which, I suppose, is arguably not a bad thing. I can't recall experiencing a tingling sensation in my groin area when my mother tucked me in, though I must confess, if John's mother tucked me in, and I spied a glimpse of her large breasts down her nightgown, I'd likely have suffered the same symptoms (with all due respect to your mother, John).
As for the question, I largely reject the premise. I believe John's correct that we are attracted to whatever puts lead in our pencil (I paraphrase). However, I don't subscribe to the idea that all men — or young boys, in this case — are attracted to pornographic images. I for instance was not. Sure, if little Jimmy snuck a stroke magazine to school in his bookbag, I'd line up out of curiosity to take a gander like everybody else. But when having my way with myself, I much preferred the underwear section of the JC Penney catalog. Not only did their models have an air of mystery, with a little leg poking from beneath all those layers of terry cloth, but when I left the bathroom with flushed cheeks, my parents simply assumed that I was an obsessively frugal shopper.
I do believe that pornography slowly cultivates a desensitization. For instance, the other night, I went to a friend's house to watch the Tyson fight. Since my friend steals cable with one of those de-scrambling boxes, we ended up skipping the undercard and making frequent passes by the Playboy Channel. Now, the Playboy Channel, to old pros like John, is tame fare: no pop shots, no golden showers bringing May flowers, etc. But as I sat there, watching Playboy After Dark (where the hostesses curse like sailors and twist their nipples a lot), I found myself getting bored. In real life, two naked women stripped down to the waist and twisting their nipples would grab my attention. However, since my friend and I had earlier watched two other comely lasses lick each other like postage stamps, we now felt as if we were watching the Disney Channel.
I engage in all this self-disclosure not to portray myself as a closet pornography enthusiast, but to avoid further discussion of my first masturbatory experience. Actually, I find most pornography a turn-off precisely because of its explicitness. Does it create unnatural appetites? I don't know. I'd posit this: it is impossible these days, even in softcore porn, not to see an airbrushed pubic-shaven model, spreading her nethers so that you can see clear to her cervix. Even for the more adventurous among us, how many of you have brought a girl home, disrobed her and said, "Hey darlin', how about you give me a peek at your entrails?" It's just not erotic.
It's like the actor James Woods said in a recent interview with Movieline magazine: "A woman wiggling her pussy in your face isn't seductive to me. I like women with a sense of mystery, an aloofness, a promise of something more seductive. I don't find strip clubs sexy. Watching someone gyrate around in a G-string for a fistful of fifties doesn't do it for me. I like women to be Everest, a great conquest." I'm with Jimmy.
Ian Gittler (Q1: #3 of 13)
Stagliano gets it right when he draws the connection between the origins of a man's palette of sexual stimulation and his early contact with his mother. Deal with it.
Jacking-off to porn, judging and criticizing women, outlining distinct rules for what is and isn't considered attractive in women — any arena in which a man puts himself in the position of evaluator, of value-assigner (and that includes writers who sit around watching a video and saying how unattractive some woman's vagina is) — this is the fabric of a pervasive, global, collective hatred that men — all men, to varying degrees — have toward the more powerful sex: women. Mother. Hence, our culture's tremendous investment in the two-dimensionalization of women; as if by marginalizing femininity through a constant barrage of cardboard cutout definitions of "the ideal" (i.e., porn, ads, fashion mags), the sexual balance of power might in some way be altered to change the fact that women gave birth to us and not the other way around. The unfortunate fallout is personal isolation and emotional deficits in personal relationships.
I first encountered porn at five, when some older kids discovered a discarded collection of girlie magazines in a neighborhood dumpster. There wasn't enough time to really look — someone's dad scattered the gang — but I was drawn to the spot later. The only evidence left was a torn image of a curvaceous torso. It was powerful. Palpable. To deny that the elicit nature, the naughtiness, the wrongness of it all — in whose eyes? the law's eyes (read: Mom) — was a central element in the fixation is just a way of avoiding discomfort. If you're fucking someone in the back of a getaway car right after robbing a bank, then the cops' role in your orgasm must be factored into that equation.
The reason porn is so diverse is because it caters to, as opposed to dictating, what the consumer thinks is sexy. And what the consumer thinks is sexy is definitely set in motion way before they ever see a dirty picture.
Finally, if you stroke to JC Penney, then JC Penney is porn.
Matt Labash (Q1: #4 of 13)
Um, Ian, while you were out, the Lost Tribe of the Freudians called and said they'd like their position paper back. I didn't know anybody still subscribed to that stuff, but it's always nice to make the acquaintance of an endangered species.
So let me get this straight: Because I express distaste for gaping pink shots, I not only hate the vagina (news to my wife), but in my role as "evaluator" I am a party to objectifying women, in order to control my resentment at their being the mother of civilization. Ye gads, Ian, you make it sound as if I went out and took a bunch of pictures of down-at-the-heels porn stars and published them in a book (oh, I'm sorry, that would be you). What I'm trying to say is, I think you're mistaken. I'm quite happy that my mother birthed me. In fact, I actually prefer it to getting squeezed out of my father (she's got milk, more room, etc.). You can call me a "value-assigner" if you'd like. But conversely, I don't know too many women who are begging to see photographs of the inside of a man's penis. (Are they negating men's value?)
Forgive me for sounding a bit crotchety. But I could not sit idly as you defamed the good ladies of the JC Penney catalog.
Jerry Stahl (Q1: #5 of 13)
I have to apologize. I would have answered sooner, but after I popped online, I'm not sure what happened, but somehow I ended up on this really nasty site, Hot Young Taiwanese Amputees, and next thing I know, well . . . let's just say I got delayed, and when I was done, I had to kind of take a nap, right there with my head on the keys, and . . . well, I won't bore you. The important thing is I'm here now, ready to tackle the important topic of "Men, Smut and Shame." One of the towering issues of the Twenty-first Century, no doubt about it. And one I'd love to weigh in on, were it not for the fact that porn, visual porn especially, is so damn cornball. It's almost sweet, the way it kind of harks back to those halcyon days of beating off to Uncle Bobo's dog-eared Swanks, the ones he used to keep in his footlocker, under the army uniform. Oh yeah, I get misty-eyed just thinking about it . . . But guilty? Shameful? I don't think so. Not these days.
If anything, after leading the life I've lived — which, if you're the kind of freakazoid who reads Nerve, is probably not that different from yours — but anyway, after leading that life, doggone it, the idea of looking at pictures, getting turned on by them, and golly gee, launching into a little Five Against One while staring at some glossy, shaved-twat vixen bent over a loveseat, well, what can I say, it's about as shame-packed as eating turkey dinner with your grandmother. Unless your grandmother's dead, in which case you're working that whole necro thing, and yes, by Dahmer, that probably does pack some angst.
Call it the Bettie Page factor. Check out those old Irving Klaw Bettie pics — the one's where Bettie Baby's tricked out in leopard skin, roped to a chaise lounge, or better yet, where she's got some other '50s sweetheart trussed up and ready to rhumba. Cool. Definitely. Retro. For sure. But jerk-off fodder? Well, not for the last twenty years or so . . . And, from that perspective, the difference between Bettie, God bless her well-spanked bottom, and the most fetished-out split-beave piss-up-the-ass shot you're likely to find on the Net is basically one of degree. It's still, be still my heart, dirty pictures. And, as such, way down on the Innocent Pleasure side of the Lust-O-Meter. You can slap all the trendo adjectives you want on a photo — "Oh, gee, Wally, it's so transgressive!" — but by and large, if it's trying to get you off, it's inherently corny.
For this reason, when you look at a photo by, oh I don't know, Joel Peter Witkin, and see some 900-pound creature with tits the size of bowling balls, wearing a bird-beak and sackcloth, well, yeah, that'll fuck with you. For the simple reason, you don't know whether you're supposed to get turned on or not . . . You don't know what the fuck you're supposed to feel. That's why it's dangerous . . . Reminds me of the time I was working as a mailboy at Redbook when I was about nineteen, and coming home on the IRT Uptown one day, at the screaming hell, packed-like-kipper-snacks height of rush hour. I'm about halfway to my stop on 110th when I feel this hand on my cock. In front of me is this intensely hot Puerto Rican girl, her breasts jammed into my chest. She's smiling at me. I'm smiling at her. Knowing that, out of sight of the other passengers, this incredibly hot chick is massaging my johnson, giving me an IRT handjob.
Of course, when she got off at 96th, and I still felt that hand wrapped around my organ, you can imagine what went through my mind . . . Shame? Confusion? Something you might go so far as to label terror? Well, yeah, all of the above. More or less. Whatever the hell I was feeling, it was a fuck of a lot more than I'm going to get as a grown man looking at porno. Smut, by now, is nothing short of nostalgic, in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. But come to think of it, if you really want to get pervy about it, Norman Rockwell's hotter than Helmut Newton anyday.
John Stagliano (Q1: #6 of 13)
As my girlfriend, Tricia Devereaux, and I read the previous posts from our panel of "experts," she exclaimed, "Hell, that's why there has to be so much of it out there." She'd like to add more . . .
Tricia Devereaux (Q1: #7 of 13)
Porn is always evolving, therefore preventing it from becoming nostalgic. It is a person's ability to use their mind creatively that lets them see it not as something corny, but as a jumping-off point for fantasizing. Viewers do not need to look at videos, mags, etc. as a static object. They should make it into whatever they want it to be.
John Stagliano (Q1: #8 of 13)
I just want to add that I'm so glad that I don't react to porn the way Jerry and Matt do. I truly enjoy so much of it. And I find that I can enjoy almost any kind if I just don't judge it, if I simply look at it and try and find the aspects that can turn me on. I think I'm better off, much better off than these guys because there is so much more of the world that I enjoy.
Ian Gittler (Q1: #9 of 13)
The book Lambash knocks is Pornstar (Simon & Schuster, 1999, Hardcover, 114 duotone photographs, 60,000 word narrative text, serialized in Rolling Stone, 7500 words . . . .).
The reference to James Woods — Lambash's role model in matters of the heart? — is inadvertently prescient. Regardless of whether or not those words were ever uttered, the quotation from Movieline does speak to one of the basic tenets of my "endangered species":
As long as an individual's status is effectively reduced (i.e., someone who will "gyrate around for a fistful of fifties") or inflated unrealistically (i.e., "to be Everest, a great conquest"), the evaluator is never in danger of relating to that individual as an equal, thereby avoiding the potential discomfort — and ultimate reward — of real human intimacy. Married or not.
Since these qualifications at opposite ends of the spectrum serve the exact same purpose (conveniently, the same purpose porn serves) — sanctuary, a temporary respite from the messiness of the three-dimensional emotional universe — and since neither accurately addresses the complexity of an actual human being, the drawing of lines in the sand regarding "standards" is pointless vanity.
If pornography centered on the use of meat grinders and pornography centered on the use of airbrushes serve the same function for consumers of divergent sexual proclivities, where's the value in "reviewing" their worth or lack thereof? Stagliano may not agree with my assessment that pornography is more likely to foster isolation than intimacy, but when it comes to "judging" it in general terms that imply "right taste/wrong taste," he's right. Nobody cares.
Rufus Griscom (Q1: #10 of 13)
Yeah, pornography is basically a very simple service — it helps men get off with a pretty small and predictable range of body types, positions, lighting (the more amateurish it is, really, the more interesting). Turning men on is about as hard as hailing a cab — a well-drawn stick figure will do the trick for most guys. I don't look at the stuff much these days but porn was pretty much the canteen that got me through the sexual Sahara of my teen years (and I think it can be an interesting twist for couples — note to self: pick some up). I am not sure I agree, Ian, that porn distracts people from intimacy — I think your causality is reversed: people are isolated to begin with and consume porn for lack of access to intimacy.
What I find extraordinary about my early relationship to porn is that I had Christie Brinkley posters on the wall and a stack of dog-eared mags in my closet before I had any sexual desire for them or anything else — it was simply the thing to do. As soon as I felt the first flutter of sexual arousal, I raced to my collection of skin mags (which I had acquired along with my bottle rocket supply through the neighborhood black market) and my bottle of Coppertone. The first orgasm I ever had was while looking at a Penthouse or something — I preempted wet dreams with that combo early on.
I think the most dangerous aspect of porn (which I generally consider healthy or at least innocuous) is the way that it narrows the range of male desire. It's textbook, laboratory conditioning: look at an image, have an orgasm, look at an image, have an orgasm. Conditioning doesn't get any more effective. Consequently, we all like women who look pretty similar with pubic hair trimmed and edged like rich peoples lawns, as I've said before. You can make a case that attraction is biologically determined, but I would argue that men's physical appetites are further narrowed by the conditioning of porn. That sucks because it limits the pool of prospective mates and creates a booming, largely unnecessary bikini-line waxing industry.
But all that said, I think few women understand how humbling it is to be a teenage boy, wracked with unfulfillable desire, and more broadly how disempowered most guys feel looking at porn. Sexual arousal is, by definition, objectifying — the battle against objectification is misplaced. If porn does anyone disrespect, it's the guy with his dick in his hand, who more often than not would spend twelve hours scrubbing floors in a tutu for a few minutes of being treated like a sex object.
| Introduction | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
|
To participate in the virtual roundtable discussion yourself, visit "Men, Smut & Shame" in the VoiceBox folder of NerveCenter Message Boards.
