The tyranny of Pornography

When I grew up I was taught to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil -----> Sex. And naturally because it was forbidden it was fascinating but except for an occasional Hustler page torn and hidden under clothes and brought to school by some naughty kid there was no occasion to see, hear or speak about Sex. And then at some point, when I was a teenager, E-tv started showing pornography at night and I would sleep early just so I could sneak up later to watch the Lady Chatterly tales among other such saucy titled movies. To actually see human flesh, to actually see the illicit meeting of the organs was more than just exciting for my young and impressionable mind, it was mind blowing. I started being conscious of my body, I started to fidget with my clitoris because the woman in one of the movies did so with such abandon and looked so blissfully happy that I thought it must be the happiest feeling to ascribe to in the whole world. There were boobs everywhere, there were penises everywhere and I found myself getting increasingly dissatisfied with my almost non-existent cups and wondering what it would be like to be a porn star, getting paid to do something quite as enjoyable as they made it out to be on the Television.

I started to pout when I spoke with boyfriend because I subconsciously thought it made me look prettier, more desirable. I then grew up and I have found that the pressure for the acceptable bedroom antics has gone to unacceptable levels and thanks to 50 shades of grey a friend of mine has a deep laceration in her back because her boyfriend wanted to experiment with sadistic tendencies in bed. I found myself being caught in the vortex of a paradox of choice: the background of a culture that celebrates elongated labia and porn stars who do not have them; to pull or not to pull, became the question. I found myself getting confused about should work for me: And while my initial thoughts are that I don’t care what my next sexual encounter thinks about my having or not having that labia, I have a gnawing fear that I may be sexually inadequate either way. Sex has come to define who is and who isn’t a real woman. Right up there with the fact that if I do not scream in millisecond hyperventilate intervals at the top of my voice then it means I am not enjoying the ministrations of my deeply devoted boyfriend.

I find that I am judged if I am not a certain size, if I do not have certain hair, a certain skin. I find myself judging men based on their sizes. Yes those sizes and the number of hours a man goes before ejaculating. A recent boyfriend of mine said that I would need to go to the gym to remain just the size that I am. Of course he is history but I wondered if I should care about that shit as much as I am expected to because in certain circles it screams that I am progressive and smart and that I fit in. At another point one sent me a porn video that I assumed I was supposed to emulate. And I was nauseated, why? Because pornography is about emotional disconnection, not emotional connection - it fills a gap in emotional maturity and never the twain shall meet. It defines women's role as sexual objects available for men's consumption: defines women by how we look and according to how we can be sexually used. … Pornography participates in its audience's eroticism through creating an accessible sexual object, the possession and consumption of which is male sexuality, as socially constructed; to be consumed and possessed as which, is female sexuality, as socially constructed. Now, do I care for that? certainly not.

According to a website called projectknow.com, 420 million web pages are dedicated to porn, Now I wonder how many young people have watched this abundant porn and at which ages. And how much a lot of their sexual socialisation has been informed by what goes on in porn movies and how much of the dissatisfaction in marriages as well as sexual relations is fostered by the fact of porn. Oh the things that I wish I had known before watching porn! We must resist the tyranny of porn culture.