Has pron become de facto sex education?

[midwestyankee]

That's the judgment, based in part on personal experience, of Cindy Gallop. She did a short presentation at TED 2009 in which she outlined her thesis: that the wide availability of hard-core porn on the Internet coupled with various constraints on young people receiving thorough education in how sex works has led young people to model their sex lives after what they see in porn. This influence of Internet porn is pernicious and to counteract it, she launched a website to promulgate an opposing approach to sex: MakeLoveNotPorn.

Here's her talk at the TED conference (4 minutes, 29 seconds).

What do you think? Is she right? Have you experienced this influence in your own life or in your partners?

ETA (I should add this: the misspelling in the thread title was unintentional but I think that it is quite appropriate for the discussion, don't you think?

 

[Netzach]

That's the judgment, based in part on personal experience, of Cindy Gallop. She did a short presentation at TED 2009 in which she outlined her thesis: that the wide availability of hard-core porn on the Internet coupled with various constraints on young people receiving thorough education in how sex works has led young people to model their sex lives after what they see in porn. This influence of Internet porn is pernicious and to counteract it, she launched a website to promulgate an opposing approach to sex: MakeLoveNotPorn.

Here's her talk at the TED conference (4 minutes, 29 seconds).

What do you think? Is she right? Have you experienced this influence in your own life or in your partners?

ETA (I should add this: the misspelling in the thread title was unintentional but I think that it is quite appropriate for the discussion, don't you think?

The problem?

I think a lot of people only have their serious conversations on the internet. When we're fucking people and finding it easier than talking to them- we're reaching a point of going up our own ass and living life for our own indie media.

That someone is more likely to livetweet her bad sex than she is to turn around and put the dude's hand on her clit is what I mean.

It's not just that we can't encourage people to talk about sex as pleasure or discussion point in out abstinence only sex ed clusterfuck, we need to remind people they can talk. That girls are not this foreign species who can't understand syntax that boys are not just a braindead dick on feet, that we can cover things like "what I like" and "put on a rubber" without ruining the moment. It doesn't have to be a heart to heart it can be six seconds of talking and back to the nasty.

So a website addressing this is kind of good/bad. Kind of like fixing cavities with switching people over to licking sticks of butter instead of eating cookies.

 

[midwestyankee]

The problem?

I think a lot of people only have their serious conversations on the internet.

That someone is more likely to livetweet her bad sex than she is to turn around and put the dude's hand on her clit.

It's not just that we can't encourage people to talk about sex as pleasure or discussion point in out abstinence only sex ed clusterfuck, we need to remind people they can talk. That girls are not this foreign species who can't understand syntax.

So a website addressing this is kind of good/bad. Kind of like fixing cavities with switching people over to licking sticks of butter instead of eating cookies.

Good points about other influences on sex from the Internet.

I'm sure she doesn't expect her website to solve the problem all by itself, of course, but it seems like one of many necessary steps.

That porn has become so influential surely is evidence that we have a sex ed clusterfuck, don't you think?

 

[Netzach]

Good points about other influences on sex from the Internet.

I'm sure she doesn't expect her website to solve the problem all by itself, of course, but it seems like one of many necessary steps.

That porn has become so influential surely is evidence that we have a sex ed clusterfuck, don't you think?

Is it? I dunno. I think it's weird, but I'm not sure that people's willingness to get ideas from porn is bad as long as people are empowered to be like "dude I saw that movie, is this something you LIKE or do you just think it's what you should be doing?"

Honestly, do you think that sterile sex ed class info is going to outweigh the visual programming of porn in our animal hind brains? It seems to me like having the power of face to face communication is the key.

Another forum to passively aggressively whine about it doesn't really seem to be that important. There is a ton of passive aggressive whining about bad sex on a million sites, but women feel offended that they *should have to say anything* and I think that's absolutely weird. I hope that suggestions for how to have the conversations you need to have independent of "stop spitting on your hand and rubbing it on your dick" are part of this site.

Maybe it's just my partners, maybe it's just that I'm an asshole steamrollering over how people *really* feel but every single guy I've been with has been *relieved* that I'm willing to talk about the experience, tell them *why* they were good. Men are actually *starved* to talk about sex - talk during sex, talk prior to sex, hear when things are really awesome and "can you just move a little to the left" is not ruining anyone's night.

Good sex is not about being a superhuman who doesn't get ideas from videos and it's not *given* to you sweetie.

It's kind of like mainstream movies. Mainstream porn serves up a couple of dishes and I find that a lot of men and women - at least the ones I wind up in bed with, are usually left pretty cold by that kind of Chilis and Outback Steak House sexual-visual fare. I can't really answer this as a non-vanilla person I think because my partners have all been bored shitless by blowjob, spit, cowgirl, cum on her face porn.

 

[Kikori]

My life? I think the only thing it could've introduced me to and bred my desire for would be smothering. But too much of what they do for that in porn is fake, so it's more of it brought it to my mind for me to experiment with.

For the sake of people and relationships, though, I certainly hope it doesn't become the 'education' more than it is now. :\ Cindy certainly has it right that with all the restrictions in America on when sex talk isn't 'embarassing' (nearly never), proper education is pretty much out the window and left up to whatever each party sees (or preferably does, however uncommon it is) and decides they like.

Biggest porn world mistake I can count is that women are finished whenever the man has cum.

 

[midwestyankee]

Is it? I dunno. I think it's weird, but I'm not sure that people's willingness to get ideas from porn is bad as long as people are empowered to be like "dude I saw that movie, is this something you LIKE or do you just think it's what you should be doing?"

It's kind of like mainstream movies. Mainstream porn serves up a couple of dishes and I find that a lot of men and women - at least the ones I wind up in bed with, are usually left pretty cold by that kind of Chilis and Outback Steak House sexual-visual fare. I can't really answer this as a non-vanilla person I think because my partners have all been bored shitless by blowjob, spit, cowgirl, cum on her face porn.

Gallop explains that she came to this conclusion in part from experiencing sex fairly often with young men in their twenties. Maybe it's also something of a generational thing.

I have a corollary question that I might ask later (so long as I remember it later) that applies more to wider bdsm practices.

 

[Netzach]

Gallop explains that she came to this conclusion in part from experiencing sex fairly often with young men in their twenties. Maybe it's also something of a generational thing.

I have a corollary question that I might ask later (so long as I remember it later) that applies more to wider bdsm practices.

From my twenties I remember that "find one thing that works and do that" seems to be where men are at sexually. Look, if people *start* their fucking careers responsive to porn I'm totally not surprised. If you stay there the rest of your life you have a problem.

 

[JMohegan]

That's the judgment, based in part on personal experience, of Cindy Gallop. She did a short presentation at TED 2009 in which she outlined her thesis: that the wide availability of hard-core porn on the Internet coupled with various constraints on young people receiving thorough education in how sex works has led young people to model their sex lives after what they see in porn. This influence of Internet porn is pernicious and to counteract it, she launched a website to promulgate an opposing approach to sex: MakeLoveNotPorn.

Here's her talk at the TED conference (4 minutes, 29 seconds).

What do you think? Is she right? Have you experienced this influence in your own life or in your partners?

ETA (I should add this: the misspelling in the thread title was unintentional but I think that it is quite appropriate for the discussion, don't you think?

Interesting Ted talk. Maybe those 20-somethings are treating Gallop like a pornstar (whore) for reasons other than an inability to fathom alternative forms of lovemaking.

Tough to know without more information on her dating connections, of course.

I'd say that the way a guy fucks depends, in large measure, on the relationship he has (or wants) with the woman at hand. Which is not necessarily to say that madonna/whore lives in all cases, but simply that I find it highly unlikely that most males don't perceive at least two broad flavors of fucking. And if the relationship is important to him, a guy will at least check for compatibility before he starts calling her bitch or spraying her face or whatever.

 

[ownedsubgal]

imo, porn has done more harm to body image than to sex education. while i have definitely noticed that younger people tend to pick up sexual "technique" from porn, the vast majority of folks grow out of that. what is more damaging is that many men feel like their penises are freakishly small and inefficient, and many MANY women feel like their genital areas are freakishly deformed and ugly, all because they do not match up to what they see in hundreds and hundreds of pornography films. somehow i do not think there would be such a concept as cosmetic vaginal "rejuvenation" surgery, if not for pornography.

 

[Stella_Omega]

What a fugly website!

 

[Keroin]

I don’t have time to watch the TED thing right now but I will later. Just wanted to toss my two cents into the mix.

I have a good friend, R, who is a psychologist who told me that she noticed a big difference in the kinds of problems clients came to her with as the Internet became more and more prevalent in people’s lives. The biggest change, she said, by far, was the number of young, married couples who came to her because one or both (sorry guys but it was usually the man) had been exposed to a great deal of online porn growing up and this comprised almost all of their sexual education. It had also formed their ideas of what sex should look like and how partners should respond. They then found themselves in a relationship with a real human being who did not live up to what they imagined sex should be, (not even close), based on what they had viewed.

R said it is a surprisingly large problem and is affecting lots of young couples in a very negative way.

 

[JMohegan]

I don’t have time to watch the TED thing right now but I will later. Just wanted to toss my two cents into the mix.

I have a good friend, R, who is a psychologist who told me that she noticed a big difference in the kinds of problems clients came to her with as the Internet became more and more prevalent in people’s lives. The biggest change, she said, by far, was the number of young, married couples who came to her because one or both (sorry guys but it was usually the man) had been exposed to a great deal of online porn growing up and this comprised almost all of their sexual education. It had also formed their ideas of what sex should look like and how partners should respond. They then found themselves in a relationship with a real human being who did not live up to what they imagined sex should be, (not even close), based on what they had viewed.

R said it is a surprisingly large problem and is affecting lots of young couples in a very negative way.

No Internet, but we had plenty of spectacular Playboy pics, back in the day. We also had plenty of Penthouse Letters. But only a fucking idiot would have considered it likely that a perfectly proportioned substitute teacher would show up one day and initiate a wild gymnastic after-class encounter, culminating when she shrieked in ecstasy while he spurted three quarts bareback during simultaneous orgasm.

Are people postulating that young guys are more gullible today?

Also, what assumptions are folks here making about sex ed, back in the day? That is, what is that people assume Internet porn has replaced, in this regard?

 

[midwestyankee]

Interesting Ted talk. Maybe those 20-somethings are treating Gallop like a pornstar (whore) for reasons other than an inability to fathom alternative forms of lovemaking.

Tough to know without more information on her dating connections, of course.

I'd say that the way a guy fucks depends, in large measure, on the relationship he has (or wants) with the woman at hand. Which is not necessarily to say that madonna/whore lives in all cases, but simply that I find it highly unlikely that most males don't perceive at least two broad flavors of fucking. And if the relationship is important to him, a guy will at least check for compatibility before he starts calling her bitch or spraying her face or whatever.

One can never know much from one side of the story. However, her observation does have some solid justification.

As for how men fuck, it seems to me that neither you nor I can accurately say how much the wide availability of online porn has affected the nature of sex for people who learned about sex from that source because we're just not of that generation. Our ideas about the doings of sex came about under quite different conditions and have evolved over the course of our adulthood. As I see it, I don't know what I don't know because I don't have the necessary perspective.

imo, porn has done more harm to body image than to sex education. while i have definitely noticed that younger people tend to pick up sexual "technique" from porn, the vast majority of folks grow out of that. what is more damaging is that many men feel like their penises are freakishly small and inefficient, and many MANY women feel like their genital areas are freakishly deformed and ugly, all because they do not match up to what they see in hundreds and hundreds of pornography films. somehow i do not think there would be such a concept as cosmetic vaginal "rejuvenation" surgery, if not for pornography.

Yes, this is almost certainly true. Of course, I think that the effect on body image was always there from print porn and erotica, but the widespread availability of porn online to any 12 year old with a closed door and an unguarded Internet connection means that kids get inundated with these unrealistic examples on the screen.

What a fugly website!

And limited, too. The number of porn world vs. real world examples was quite a bit smaller than I might have expected.

I don’t have time to watch the TED thing right now but I will later. Just wanted to toss my two cents into the mix.

I have a good friend, R, who is a psychologist who told me that she noticed a big difference in the kinds of problems clients came to her with as the Internet became more and more prevalent in people’s lives. The biggest change, she said, by far, was the number of young, married couples who came to her because one or both (sorry guys but it was usually the man) had been exposed to a great deal of online porn growing up and this comprised almost all of their sexual education. It had also formed their ideas of what sex should look like and how partners should respond. They then found themselves in a relationship with a real human being who did not live up to what they imagined sex should be, (not even close), based on what they had viewed.

R said it is a surprisingly large problem and is affecting lots of young couples in a very negative way.

This is pretty much precisely what Ms. Gallop said in her talk, which is quite amusing and also short (less than 5 minutes).

I'm reminded of a snippet of conversation I overheard. Two adults, presumably parents, were walking through a school hallway in front of me on a night when parents came to visit their kids' school. One said to the other something like, "It's not as if they haven't learned it all from Playboy anyway." As if seeing bare breasts was "it all" in the realm of sex ed. If that was true, why not just give every kid a subscription to National Geographic?

 

[midwestyankee]

No Internet, but we had plenty of spectacular Playboy pics, back in the day. We also had plenty of Penthouse Letters. But only a fucking idiot would have considered it likely that a perfectly proportioned substitute teacher would show up one day and initiate a wild gymnastic after-class encounter, culminating when she shrieked in ecstasy while he spurted three quarts bareback during simultaneous orgasm.

Are people postulating that young guys are more gullible today?

Also, what assumptions are folks here making about sex ed, back in the day? That is, what is that people assume Internet porn has replaced, in this regard?

A couple of thoughts come to me. One is that young men have always been gullible.

Another is that online porn is not so much replacing anything as making access to erotica and porn far more democratic. Forty years ago, it was easy to score a tattered Playboy and get a look at some pictures even when you were young, but learning what to do when you had personal access to those improbable gazongas in real life was a different matter. I don't know when Penthouse began publishing its infamous letters, but I know I was already married when I first encountered them. At least in my experience, living in a smallish city quite a long ways from Boston, access to long-form erotica where I might have found step by step descriptions to follow was severely limited. Guys growing up in cities may have had wider access.

 

[midwestyankee]

JM, I forgot to respond to your question about the assumptions that people are making about sex ed. In my experience as a student and as a parent, even thorough and well-thought-out sex ed rarely includes more how-to information than where Tab A fits into Slot B and how to get Slot B prepped up for insertion. The art of sex was and is left to the imagination. In these classes we learned, as did my children, the mechanics and the biology of sex. But how one might actually use sex to relate to another person just ain't in the curriculum, even at those evil liberal schools that refuse to teach Just Say No.

 

[JMohegan]

One can never know much from one side of the story. However, her observation does have some solid justification.

As for how men fuck, it seems to me that neither you nor I can accurately say how much the wide availability of online porn has affected the nature of sex for people who learned about sex from that source because we're just not of that generation. Our ideas about the doings of sex came about under quite different conditions and have evolved over the course of our adulthood. As I see it, I don't know what I don't know because I don't have the necessary perspective.

We'll have to page MisterSir, I guess.

But even that won't tell us much. Not just because he's just a sample of one, but also because he's got no more grounds for comparison than we do.

I'm just not buying the notion that young guys today A) automatically want to treat every female like a pornwhore, and ONLY like a pornwhore, and B) automatically assume that all females want to be treated that way right off the bat.

 

[JMohegan]

A couple of thoughts come to me. One is that young men have always been gullible.

Another is that online porn is not so much replacing anything as making access to erotica and porn far more democratic. Forty years ago, it was easy to score a tattered Playboy and get a look at some pictures even when you were young, but learning what to do when you had personal access to those improbable gazongas in real life was a different matter. I don't know when Penthouse began publishing its infamous letters, but I know I was already married when I first encountered them. At least in my experience, living in a smallish city quite a long ways from Boston, access to long-form erotica where I might have found step by step descriptions to follow was severely limited. Guys growing up in cities may have had wider access.

"Personal access." Yes. Access, self-confidence, curiosity. That's all a guy needs.

Before they invented the printing press, somehow people were fucking! And if art is any guide, some of that fucking was quite imaginative.

I don't know. On the one hand, I can't imagine why a self-confident, sexually curious guy with personal access would use porn as a substitute for actual exploration. On the other hand, I am repeatedly stunned by the number of guys who show up here and ask something like, "My girlfriend wants me to tie her up and use her, so NOW what should I do?" I'm also stunned by the number of people who respond to that type of thing by saying, "It's great to read the library!"

So maybe porn is to general sex as online BDSM info is to kink? People now have this notion that there's a standard to follow. Or something. Again, I don't know.

 

[intothewoods]

We'll have to page MisterSir, I guess.

But even that won't tell us much. Not just because he's just a sample of one, but also because he's got no more grounds for comparison than we do.

I'm just not buying the notion that young guys today A) automatically want to treat every female like a pornwhore, and ONLY like a pornwhore, and B) automatically assume that all females want to be treated that way right off the bat.

I agree with you. My suspicion would be that if there's any difference now, it's the sex-version of how we all have ADD now that we watch a lot more tv and are at computers all day long.

On a semi-related note, does anyone else watch Madmen? I'm about midway through last season, so no spoilers! Anyway, doesn't it seem like most of the sex depicted is sort of M-Dommish? Is that really accurate? It may have been in those particular instances that men (white and straight) just had the power and privilege, including to fuck however they pleased.

 

[Keroin]

No Internet, but we had plenty of spectacular Playboy pics, back in the day. We also had plenty of Penthouse Letters. But only a fucking idiot would have considered it likely that a perfectly proportioned substitute teacher would show up one day and initiate a wild gymnastic after-class encounter, culminating when she shrieked in ecstasy while he spurted three quarts bareback during simultaneous orgasm.

Are people postulating that young guys are more gullible today?

Also, what assumptions are folks here making about sex ed, back in the day? That is, what is that people assume Internet porn has replaced, in this regard?

I'm not actually postulating anything, I'm just passing along information that I was given, by a professional.

My friend and I were discussing her practice and how it has changed and evolved over the years. This is when she brought up the point about the very noticeable increase of sex problems among young couples, almost all of which seem to stem from internet porn. I assume she has no reason to lie to me about this and I certainly don't have a vested interest in the subject. So...who knows.

I grew up with porn, too - my dad's Playboy & Hustler mags and the like - and I don't think they messed me up. However, the stuff that's out there and easily viewed these days is far, far different from the stuff I saw/read/watched as a young person. Also, I think the way it's presented is different. Looking at Playboy or watching "The Devil in Miss Jones",I was always aware that this was "fiction", no matter how much the actors or models were enjoying themselves, (or appeared to be enjoying themselves). YouPorn and other sites, on the other hand, are presented more as "Hey this is real! This is how real people actually behave all the time!" - even when it's obviously staged.

I can't say if that accounts for the difference but I have a feeling it does, based on the way people view "reality TV". I cannot believe the number of people who sincerely believe that what happens on reality TV is, in fact, real.

 

[JMohegan]

I agree with you. My suspicion would be that if there's any difference now, it's the sex-version of how we all have ADD now that we watch a lot more tv and are at computers all day long.

On a semi-related note, does anyone else watch Madmen? I'm about midway through last season, so no spoilers! Anyway, doesn't it seem like most of the sex depicted is sort of M-Dommish? Is that really accurate? It may have been in those particular instances that men (white and straight) just had the power and privilege, including to fuck however they pleased.

Sorry, no. My TV knowledge is abysmal. But this reminds me.

Presumably, young guys today are at least getting mixed messages. A dichotomy between the portrayal of romance/sexuality in some TV or film, and the fucking that goes on in porn. Even if they're not regular chick flick watchers, they must have some exposure to non-porn sexuality of sorts.

 

[JMohegan]

I'm not actually postulating anything, I'm just passing along information that I was given, by a professional.

My friend and I were discussing her practice and how it has changed and evolved over the years. This is when she brought up the point about the very noticeable increase of sex problems among young couples, almost all of which seem to stem from internet porn. I assume she has no reason to lie to me about this and I certainly don't have a vested interest in the subject. So...who knows.

I grew up with porn, too - my dad's Playboy & Hustler mags and the like - and I don't think they messed me up. However, the stuff that's out there and easily viewed these days is far, far different from the stuff I saw/read/watched as a young person. Also, I think the way it's presented is different. Looking at Playboy or watching "The Devil in Miss Jones",I was always aware that this was "fiction", no matter how much the actors or models were enjoying themselves, (or appeared to be enjoying themselves). YouPorn and other sites, on the other hand, are presented more as "Hey this is real! This is how real people actually behave all the time!" - even when it's obviously staged.

I can't say if that accounts for the difference but I have a feeling it does, based on the way people view "reality TV". I cannot believe the number of people who sincerely believe that what happens on reality TV is, in fact, real.

Okay, so maybe a certain percentage of the population is (and always has been) gullible, and youporn et al exploits that gullibility in a way that has started to cause new sexual problems for some.

That makes sense. I'll buy that, if we leave it at "some."

 

[BiBunny]

My "professional" opinion is, yes, young men are incredibly influenced by porn and think that's how sex actually works. Which is most likely the reason they aren't getting laid in real life.

 

[Keroin]

Okay, so maybe a certain percentage of the population is (and always has been) gullible, and youporn et al exploits that gullibility in a way that has started to cause new sexual problems for some.

That makes sense. I'll buy that, if we leave it at "some."

Yes, I don't think the "majority" of young men are having these problems but I think they do exist.

Personally, I found sex-ed in school confusing and the presentation of it embarrassing. Most of what I learned was through a combo of porn and trial and error...and I did just fine with that. Porn, especially video porn, was exciting mostly because it was so hard to come by, and it was very tame by today's standards. But I'm actually glad I didn't have access to the sexual buffet that's available at everyone's fingertips now - I like feeling like an explorer, like I'm discovering something that no one else can possibly know about!

 

[Daddy2mylilgirl]

I don't think it's "sex education", but porn does give guys unrealistic views on sex and women.

 

[infinity706]

I'm only 24, so I grew up in the porn generation. I don't really think it's quite as bad as some people seem to think. Hell, I wrote my first BDSM story before I even knew such a thing existed or even saw a porno. I was actually a bit surprised once I got to the internet and found out that it wasn't really that original. Really, the only thing I was off base on was a certain member's pet peeve, the clit. I didn't know it existed until I got into researching techniques. I did assume that women got oral too, though, since they sucked guys' dicks.