PORNOCOPIA
PORNOCOPIA
Man, I love porn.
OK. That’s a real overstatement. I don’t love porn. I don’t feel as if I need it to survive. It’s not a physical necessity.
Maybe not. I don’t love it. I don’t crave it. I don’t need it. But sometimes, porn helps. It’s an aid. Sometimes, as a man, there are times when you just wanna get your rocks off. Times when you just want the erection to go away.
Some of you don’t know what its like to be a man. What its like to have all the blood run out of the big head sometimes, and to walk at an angle with a big pointy thing in your pants that won’t leave you alone. Sure, there are minor advantages to being male (for example, we don’t get periods, or pregnant, get to pee standing up, and generally get paid more, which is of course, highly highly unfair).
But John Betjemen was right. Being a man is like spending your time shackled to an idiot. When you get an erection sometimes all you want it to do is go away. Sure, you can lie back, think of Denis Thatcher or someone and sometimes it works. For a few minutes. And other times, it doesn’t. Other times no matter what you think of – Nancy Reagan, Courtney Love, whatever, you’ve still got the horn. Like a Rhino. There’s nothing you can do but make it go away.
SCRATCHING THE ITCH
And then you need porn. It’s like a laxative sometimes – just something that helps.
And this is the thing that a few women in my life just can’t understand. Sometimes, as a man, all you wanna do is come, and get it over with. See, for me, at least, porn isn’t a betrayal. It isn’t cheating. It’s in fact, nothing bad at all.
Which is why we love you. Which is why we occasionally look at porn when you’re out, and it helps us get off until you’re not tired, or on, or whatever. Until we can make love again. Because we know love is what’s important. Which is why when we get a stiffy and you’ve gone to sleep, we don’t try to get you up in the middle of the night. Because we care. Because we love you.
THE REALITY GAP
It isn’t cheating. It isn’t wanting someone else. It isn’t anything like that. It’s just a way to get on with it. A celebration, if you like of the infinite diversity that sexual activity can be. As well as a way for lonely men to get their rocks off. And if that prevents just one rape, then it’s all worth it. Besides which, if you are inspired to rape by pornography, then you’re probably inspired to rape by swimsuit catalogues and tobacco advertising, and can’t distinguish between reality and fiction in the first place. And shouldn’t be outside in the Real World anyway.
Your inability to distinguish between a movie and the real world isn’t a good reason to prevent people doing or seeing whatever they like as long as it does not impair other people’s lives in a negative way. If you don’t realise that a lot of porn is enactment of a fantasy in order to enable men to masturbate then you are living in a dreamworld.
LIVING IN A DREAMWORLD
But some women still see porn as some disgusting thing. Some vile act of betrayal. It isn’t. it could never be. We know porn for what it is : an aid to scratch a physical need. We know that they are fantasies. Wish fulfilment. We know that these things aren’t meant to be real. We know better than that.
Besides, what’s vile and filthy and disgusting about our bodies? What’s so dreadful about skin and sex and being openminded? Why do you need to reduce sex, lovemaking, whatever it is, to the state of merely reproduction between two people who ‘love’ each other? Do you not realise that ‘love’ can exist between people who do not want to reproduce, but express their affection – or their desire?
Pornography is define in the dictionary of Bill Hicks as “anything without artistic merit that induces sexual thoughts”. Firstly, so what if it does induce sexual thought? And secondly, sounds like a lot of commercials to me.
Sex sells. Sex sells because sex offers something that products cannot. Sex offers security. Acceptance. Warmth.
Porn will never leave. Never lie. Never cheat. Never judge. Never say its too tired. Roll over. Smoke. Play dead. Get drunk. Porn will do none of these things.
THE EXPLOITED
Sure. There are people that say porn exploits women. But hey, women get paid about five times more than men do in Porn. And if you’re a woman in porn, let us not muck about. Your punters are seriously exploited. Milked for website subscriptions, lapdances, and contact ad costs. The search for companions and acceptance.
Some of them mistake porn for love. Use it to fill the hole where love used to be. Porn provides security.
But let us pay tribute to porn. Without porn there would be no internet. No PayPal. No Kazaa. None of that stuff. Porn pushes back the technological boundaries of mankind in order to provide content to raincoated men. Or non raincoated men. I don’t even like raincoats. Where porn leads, technology follows.
Without sexual thought we would never be here. And aren’t you at the least grateful for that?
© copyright Mark Reed, 1991-2004 except where indicated