I'm 18, a virgin, and I'm honestly terrified to date because of this stuff. Most guys I overhear around campus, or guys my age who write stuff online, have a huge sense of entitlement about what the woman "owes" them when it comes to sex. I don't even know if I'm comfortable giving blow jobs (the idea makes me want to throw up, to be honest), but I don't think I have a choice; it's something that's just expected of me, and if I don't do it (and act like I enjoy doing it) it's framed like I'm a mean bitch who refuses to give the poor man the blow jobs that he deserves. This applies to shaving pubic hair, anal sex, and so forth. I'm also supposed to be horny all the time. Which I'm definitely not.

To further prove my point, I've been trying to find someplace online where I can read about refusing to do certain sex acts, just for some support, and all I can find is men whining, "How do I get my significant other to give me a blow job?" So I know I'll be coerced too.

I think I just might stay single forever.

I'm sorry if this turned into a rant, but...ugh. I get quite a bit of male attention, for whatever reason, and thus I'm reminded of this stuff incessantly. I needed to get it out.

Yeah, it really annoys me when people argue from the perspective that porn has no affect on real life. I would never argue that it should be banned, but I wish people would look at it a little more critically.

Some of my friends talk about guys they've had sex with whose behaviour is clearly influenced by the porn they've watched, from the things they say to positions and so on. Critics of porn always try to point out that porn is often not much like real sex and I think people forget that.

While I'm certainly sympathetic to a demand that people think more critically about the kinds of representations prevailing in mainstream straight porn, what is the place of queer feminist porn in this critique? The content of Gallop's site certainly seems like a useful intervention, but I'm suspicious of a title that rhetorically posits "love" as porn's alternative, as if the involvement of "love" were necessary to something like a feminist practice or representation of sexuality. What is missing here is an acknowledgment that radical, politicized, feminist porn can (and does!) help shape and archive dissident sexual subcultures, valorize body types and gender presentations that are stigmatized in the mainstream, eroticize safer sex practices, and actually spur conversation and good old-fashioned consciousness-raising about what we desire, why we desire it, and what institutional structures of power have to do with that. A critique of the prevailing hairlessness of women in mainstream porn is certainly a good thing, but so is porn that actually portrays women with natural body hair as sexy.
A lot of my thinking on this, by the way, has been shaped by a somewhat obsessive historical interest in feminist debates surrounding sexuality in the early 1980s (see, for example, the 1984 anthology Pleasure and Danger, edited by Carole S. Vance.)

While it is impossible to ignore the role that porn plays in our culture's understandings of sex, I think it is equally important to remember that there are many people out there who watch porn but can differentiate the representations that are represented there from the sexual experiences and practices that they engage in with their partners. This conversation seems to lack external recognition of the fact that perhaps the larger problem is the idea that these individuals might in theory be exposed to ONLY sexist and/or violent and/or degrading narratives of sex. Gillian above talks about a friend of hers who seemed to be perfectly nice and then proved "creepy". Isn't it important to consider whether larger silence on questions of equality, sexuality, the experience of pleasure - whether sexual or not, within education and/or friendships and/or families creates a society in which sexuality can be isolated within this "pornographic" view?

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/11/01/make_love_like_a_porn_star_not/print.html is an interesting and related article.

Sounds like a lot of these guys who are negatively influenced by mainstream porn are (from your descriptions) young and inexperienced. I remember as a teenage guy I was deathly afraid of messing up and betraying just how clueless I was. Sometimes young guys try to cover for themselves by acting cocksure (har har) and pushy. My advice is not easy - especially for younger girls - but I think it might be best to be frank, but polite. Then see what the guy's reaction is - if he's suddenly looking a bit deflated or shy, or if he mumbles out an apology, then odds are he's just acting tough because he's scared out of his mind. But if he rolls his eyes or makes a disparaging comment then you know he doesn't have any respect for women.

I don't want to suggest that women who are burdened with dealing with guys like this are somehow obligated to educate them. I guess my only concern is this: who will? Because clearly no one else has reached them. I wish sex education was a year-long curriculum, because we could easily spend that whole time breaking down some of these big messed-up ideas about sex that teens carry around. I guess it wouldn't just be sex ed at that point, but rather sexual and social education. But that's probably a good thing, since the parents clearly aren't getting through to their children!

I was out of the dating scene for 13 years, from the time my husband left me in 1996 until my child was grown up and I moved overseas to work in 2009. During those 13 years I was celibate, so I was not really keeping tabs on what was happening in the dating/sex/pornography world. When I moved to Asia I began to date men who were anywhere from 5 years older to 20 years younger than me and one thing soon became evident: the infiltration of western pornography into Korean culture (and I'm sure other Asian countries' culture as well) has skewed the way that men view sex and the way they view western women. There are two things I took note of when I started dating and having sex with Korean men: first of all they all apologize before we have sex because they think they have small penises. They are so used to seeing the freakish performers in porn films that they ALL assume I will think they are underequipped in comparison. Secondly, they assume that all western women want and enjoy anal sex. I have to admit that this was the most shocking aspect of beginning to have sexual relationships again. When I was in my early 20's anal sex was not very common. It appeared in really hardcore porn, but even then it was an act that was considered shocking and taboo. Now twenty years later it has somehow become expected. To say I was shocked that it has become this way would be an understatement. As the woman in the clip stated, it was necessary to re-educate and rehabilitate these men so that they would first of all feel more confident about their own bodies and secondly that they would not assume that western pornography is a realistic representation of normal heterosexual activity. It's not just the younger men in their 20's who have these two common misconceptions, but even the ones in their 40's think this way as well. I'm working on changing that though, one man at a time.

Okay, first thing, correlation does not imply causation. I've heard from another source http://www.amazon.com/Purity-Myth-Americas-Obsession-Virginity/dp/1580053149/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266223695&sr=8-1 that the rise in anal sex has to do with abstinence-only education and America's virginity obsession, that students who are given an A-O education are more likely to engage in sexual activity that won't break a hymen, and less likely to wear protection while doing so. Like she said, it's not the job of an adult entertainment industry to educate our youth on an issue as vital as how to engage in sexual activity. Blaming bad sex manners in todays young people on the pornography industry is like blaming the salt for getting in your uncovered wound. Getting rid of the salt is not going to stop the bleeding, it's just going to make people have electrolyte deficiencies. We need to address the real issue of a lack of real sex education, not blame porn for doing a bad job at something it never intended to do.

I am also a woman who uses pornography. Because of my birth control, I take hours to become aroused, and my fiance, between his 40 to 50 hours of school, 6 hours of commute, and 30 to 50 hours of homework, well, we're lucky to have a few waking hours a week together, total. I am in the most communicative, loving, respectful relationship of my life, and my fiance has been looking at porn since he was in middle school. I've known plenty of guys who seem to feel this sort of sexual entitlement who did not have the kind of socioeconomic background that implies the ready access to home internet required for this kind of pornography inundation. I think the only man to actually forcibly push my head down was born in the late seventies, too early to be a part of the internet porn generation. Television didn't kill the regional accent, as so many feared it would. Bostonians, Georgians, and Texans are still free of Hollywood's California dialect. I don't think pornography is really the only scapegoat for what's wrong with sexual behavior in the US.

Another thing, maybe the kind of twenty year old who would have casual sex with an older woman is the same kind that would take porn's lessons to heart? I've had sex with a socially, but not statistically, significant number of men born after 1/1/1985, and none of them had been "poisoned" by their pornography use. They might have had things they wanted to try they had seen in porn, but only if I wanted to, and we'd only repeat it if we both wanted to.

Really, the only way to have good sex is to have good communication. Don't do something you don't like, and if you don't like something, tell your partner. Get your partner to do the same. Take your time. Don't be ashamed of your body, even if it isn't perfect. Plenty of people know mine isn't. Don't have sex with more than one person at a time without them knowing about it and approving. Even if there is no love, there has to be trust and honesty and protection from STIs. Make sure you know where everyone stands on the abortion issue. Sorry about the rant, but I had so much bad sex before I figured this out.

All in all, the website this is about seems like a pretty useful tool for sexually inexperienced people of any generation, whether or not they enjoy regular access to pornography.

Okay, first of all, I just wanted to say this: To all of your commenters who said that you have been or are afraid of being coerced into doing something you don't want to do, please know that coercion is sexual abuse. It is rape, and it is NEVER okay for a partner to do something to you, or make you do something without your express and heartfelt consent. If this has happened to you, it is NOT your fault. You are not responsible for their actions, they are. They have the ability to control themselves, and they must exercise that, no excuses. Them begging and hoping you will cave in and "let" them do something you don't want to do is coercive and selfish and not acceptable behavior on their part.

Secondly, there are lots of different types of porn. Porn does not exist as a monolithic entity with one singular goal and function. Is there a lot of porn out there that eroticizes the degredation of women, and rides the line between consent and non-consent? Yes. But. This is not an inherently bad thing. Hear me out. First of all, yes, I do think that this type of porn is very, very overrepresented as a segment of the porn available in the universe, but, there are people (myself included) who can (and do, wholeheartedly!) eroticize playing with the exchange of power in sexual activity. Now. The difference is consent.

I personally believe that the problem with sex/uality in American society is the lack of talking. People don't talk about what they want. They are not taught to explore what they want, and they are not in touch with the way their body responds to different stimuli. They don't have conversations with their partners about what they want. People can be great and amazing and wonderfully supportive as dating partners, and be totally uncompatible with you in bed. For me, someone who is not willing to cuddle me and listen to my dreams and fears and support me through hard times and challenge my assumptions AND ALSO slap my ass while holding me down by the throat while fucking me is not a compatible match. I realize that my particular desires are not ones that are shared by a large portion of the population, however, and thus, I have to have conversations about that with my partners. I've had partners with whom I've had very vanilla, typical sex who were incredibly degrading, abusive and coercive. I've also had partners who left handprint shaped bruises on me who were the most loving and supportive people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

My point in all of this is that attitudes in mainstream/majority porn do not create singlehandedly the attitude of entitlement that men have over women's bodies in this society. They are a product of the pre-existing idea that women are property. It hasn't been that long since it was legal for a man to rape his wife. She was his wife--by law, he owned her. She was his property. I think that this historical idea of women as a commodity--think of doweries and coming out balls, and the reason fathers escort their daughters down the aisle in man/woman weddings--is much more to blame than porn. I actually used to date someone who is now a porn star, and he was a great lover. Not coercive. Not degrading.

Degrading is all a matter of perspective.

It's funny how Jensen, an anti-porn advocate, can quote a statistic that to me is pro-porn. Why is an increase in anal sex necessarily a bad thing? Isn't it more likely that before pornography anal sex was something that many people might have been interested in, but it was too taboo for them to even bring up? It seems to me that at least in this case porn has opened up a whole new range of sexual experiences for people.

As the video alludes to, the problem isn't really pornography, it's that pornography is substituting for real sex education. Having your face cum on is something that some people will enjoy, and some people wont enjoy, but pornography lacks the depth to make that distinction, anything that is shown is obviously going to be shown as enjoyable.

"This has translated, he argues, into a real change in what people do in the bedroom. For example, he attributes the rise in reporting of anal sex to the increasing ubiquitousness of anal sex in pornography."

This is a fascinating pair of sentences.

A rise in reporting is given as an example of a change in what people do. Reporting of sexual behaviour does not equal actual occurring sexual behaviour even in the group doing the reporting.

Anal sex is the activity being reported. By whom? As this isn't a direct quote, I can't even check the man's book to find out, but I can guess because every part of this post assumes people=straight people.

Anal sex is increasingly ubiquitous in porn. What kind of porn? Both Jensen and Gallop use qualifiers on the word, Gallop talks about hard core, and Jensen on his website uses the term mainstream. Neither explain if they mean only straight porn, but it certainly seems as if they do.

This introduction only makes sense in light of the referenced material if those sentences are meant to be read as:

This has translated, he argues, into a real [assumed] change in what [straight] people [who are likely to have been surveyed on their sexual behaviour] [say they do] do in the bedroom. For example, he attributes the rise in reporting of anal sex [where a man penetrates a woman] to the increasing ubiquitousness of anal sex in [straight, filmed, mainstream] pornography.

To which I say, you say that like it's a bad thing.

In truth, lots of people of all sexualities and genders enjoy anal sex. If more people are indeed doing it for real, attribution could be given to increasingly available information on the internet, films like Bend Over Boyfriend, the increasing availability of LGBT erotica, or just the fact that you can buy eleventy billion types of lube these days and have it delivered to your house in a nice plain brown wrapper if you're shy.

The real problem Cindy Gallop talks about in the opener to her bit, and the focus of her website, is not the porn=bad influence theory, it's the idea that has to exist in people's minds in order for porn to be an influence on real behaviour that there is one way to have sex. She might be spinning her talk off of the porn influence idea, but she states quite clearly that she likes and consumes porn but she is concerned about the lack of good open communication and education about sex.

Understanding that sexuality is complex and individual and that there is never only one right way to do it is a good thing for everybody, and what Gallop is trying to do is talk about that. Part of that understanding is realizing that anal sex, like any sexual activity is something some people like and some people don't. And yet I think you worded your into to make me want to clutch my pearls and cry, oh no, not the buttsex! And that is a bigger barrier to a healthy discussion about sexuality than pornography, in my opinion.

The Makelovenotporn website is basically a good idea, but I personally felt a bit uncomfortable with some of the "real life facts". The site states that a lot of women don't like anal sex or being choked during oral sex, well, that is probably very true. But for some reason it sounded to me like there is pretty much a 50-50% chance that your girlfriend likes being called a whore while having sex. I don't even pretend to know what every woman thinks or wants, but I would think that enjoying being called a bitch or a whore in bed is not very common. And it is definitely not something anyone should try unless he (or she) is 100% sure the other person will like it. Same thing about having someone come on your face - a very risky move to try with someone you have not discussed it before. I hope I don't sound like a terrible prude, that is not my purpose, just from my personal point of view I would like to stress that those sort of things are not to be taken too lightly as they can be really offensive to some people.

Dear all - this is a great comment stream, on a very difficult and complex area. Facetofcathy is spot on as regards what I am trying to do - which is help address this in one specific way that I can. (I put www.makelovenotporn.com up on no money, which is why the site is very basic and nascent in nature, and I am currently looking for funding to build and develop it out in some very specific ways to be more far-reaching and effective.) Alas, to the last comments, even that very basic point that there are aspects of sex that some people enjoy and some people don't, needs to be made (as per the huge volume of positive responses and gratitude I've received from both male and female, younger and older visitors). Ironically, much overly porn-influenced sexual behavior comes from the right motivations - selflessness not selfishness. We all get vulnerable when we get naked. Sexual egos are very fragile. We desperately want to please our partner, but people find it surprisingly difficult to talk to each other about what they like and what they don't like - I can't endorse strongly enough the importance of doing that, as per many of the above comments. So people will often grasp at cues from elsewhere to try and please, and if you have been brought up on and educated by porn because you've never encountered healthy, honest open sex education from anywhere else, those are the cues you will seize. Just explaining that there is no 'formula' and 'one right way' to have sex, and that mutual sexual enjoyment and fulfilment is about mutual discussion and exploration, is sadly often necessary as a starting point.

I appreciate and am taking on board all of the above input, and hope very much to find the funding that will enable me to do more to help address this huge and complex area.

Thank you for pointing out that it is REPORTING of anal sex that has increased.

The truth is, those elements of porn that average men will actually adapt to their lives are those that were always commonplace-- like anal sex and oral sex. Anal sex in particular is pretty much as old as dirt and as common. The complicated elements are beyond people's capability and most men don't actually want to degrade an unwilling partner.

We in society like to scream about how, woe is us, life is so horrible, people are so horrible... yet it is only reporting that has changed. People always used anal sex, especially before contraceptives. Men always used sex as a tool of power, men always thought of their physical appearance as substandard compared to a given ideal, men always had expectations of their partners that were false-- previously, they were from male bravado of friends and famous paintings, statues, or athletes. Similarly, women have always had worries coming into their first sexual relationships about the expectations of their spouse and they have always struggled by comparing themselves to other women or art. All the sexual revolution did was let us actually talk about our concerns and our fears, and admit to sexual experimentation that was previously not discussed outside of drunken bragging. As a result, men and boys who previously would have gone on abusing their relationships can actually go to a sex therapist and talk about their problems, and solve some of them.

I'm glad men are finally admitting when they like anal (even if I personally think it's icky). Better that than to be ashamed of their sexuality while doing it anyway.

Wait a second, wasn't sodomy (anal sex) illegal in much of the US until the Supreme Court decision of Lawrence vs. Texas in 2003? Maybe the legality of the act, and its association with homosexuality is why there has been a recent rise in its reporting.

I just really feel that it is an understatement, even if the website's purpose wasn't to inform/educate, to basically say that "some women don't enjoy being called a whore in bed". Also, dirty talk does not equal offensive or demeaning talk! (If I was to ask someone to talk dirty to me, I wouldn't expect anyone to start off with "you dirty whore".) And while stressing the importance of communication is super necessary, it is not just about saying if you are uncomfortable with something someone is saying, before all it should be about understanding not to call anyone offensive names (in bed) unless you are 100% sure the person likes it.

I really appreciate the good intention behind the website and I know it still needs work and that everything takes time, but it is surprising to me that some "real life facts" like the one about "dirty talk" are put so softly when some are actually put quite harshly.

I look forward to seeing how the site will evolve. Thank you for the good effort so far.

Something that is oddly absent from the comments is male porn addiction.

Apologies for the current 'heteronormative' nature of www.makelovenotporn.com. I put it up on no money, so it is in a very basic, nascent state. As soon as I obtain the funding I am looking for, I intend to build and develop it out in ways which will encompass both gay/lesbian experience (I've had plenty of discussions about this both with LGBT friends and responders to the site), and more of the nuances that this entire comment thread demonstrates exist.

Could you put a trigger warning for the comments on MakeLoveNotPorn...? I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I got there and was completely taken aback by the demeaning, sick, and abusive comments. I appreciate the idea and I understand the importance of free speech, I'm just asking if Lisa could add a TW in this post.

Thanks.

I like this site but the anti-sex/porn rap gets real tired. This kind of nonsense was really popular on campuses in the 1980's/1990's and I had hoped that people would have grown up since then. Guess I was wrong.

I was introduced to anal sex by a girlfriend of mine, a German studying in the U.S. for a year, when I was in college. She preferred it to vaginal sex because the nerve endings around the anus are plentiful and she found it to be a more enjoyable experience than vaginal sex.

While in college I was involved in campus activism...anti-apartheid, protesting tuition hikes, etc. Through those activities I met a woman and we became lovers. The first time she took me to her apartment she let me know that she liked to watch porn while while she had sex and made me promise not to tell anyone. I told her that I wouldn't then asked her if the campus left was an arm of the Catholic church or the Republican party that would come down on her for not having politically correct sex. How she achieved sexual pleasure was none of anyone's business and she shouldn't have to feel ashamed of her particular kink.

I put these two stories out there to show that sex isn't as black and white or male and female as some have made it to be and anyone who seeks to politicize sexual activity has more in common with conservative Fundamentalist Christian Republibing Republicans than anyone on the left. In fact, some of the comments seem to come out of the Dworkin/McKinney playbook from two decades ago that I had hoped people had tossed aside as utter nonsense.

Instead of being swayed by all of the anti-sex/porn/misandrist postings Gillian and others would be better off listening to Dan Savage's "Savage Love" podcasts on iTunes for some intelligent sex-positive discussions that don't come packaged with a politically correct sex agenda.

Anti-porn isn't anti-sex, it's anti abuse. There are some happy, un-coerced prostitutes in porn, and there are some that are coerced. How do you tell the difference? Do you just disregard the whole issue as irrelevant to your orgasm? If you do, you are contributing to abuse. If you are an ethical consumer of porn, and don't use it to abuse your partners then what are you worried about?

I thought the commenters on this stream might be interested in both this post by Melissa Gira Grant, and 'The Line'itself (if you're not already aware of it):

http://whereisyourline.org/2010/02/am-i-empowered-degraded-or-both/comment-page-1/#comment-455

I think the idea is a good starting point -- and that's it.

The website:

1. presents fewer than 10 examples and seems very slight content wise

2. is a hideous shade of pinky purple -- If you are trying to re-educate to a male audience why design a website for a stereotypical female?

3. the SEO on the site is awful (and she launched this at a TED conference -- WTF?)

4. the content is weak -- maybe this, maybe not (is this not a given?)

5. discussion may be unfettered but it's not effectively moderated/guided -- the discussion here is much better

I'm all for this idea... but bringing money into it is its downfall. It would be great to have a community who are happy to share themselves making love but it should be free (free doesn't necessarily mean available to all, and I don't think it should be available to all for obvious reasons).

You need to find a way of sharing beautiful loving porn without making it a business.

make love not porn is a website where you have to pay in order to watch amateur porn, the excuse for this shit is that other porn sites are getting in the way of sexuality because the people having sex in the videos of those sites do not love each other so it's not real sex, it's "fake sex". FUCK YOU Cindy Gallop, you don't know anything about porn, and your view of porn is extemely ideologically loaded. FUCK OFF.