Porn

As requested by a number of you, here’s the article I wrote about watching pornography for the first time, published in The Brighton Source for their ‘Source Virgins’ series of features earlier this year. This is my version as handed in, although the final published article was slightly edited. It was written to fit the house style and feature format of Source.

The March 2008 edition of Source in which it appeared turned out to be the final edition published under the ownership of Newsquest (themselves owned by American media giant Gannett), after almost 10 years of publication in Brighton. Since then, Source has been taken on independently by editor James Kendall.

The Brighton Source is available free in shops, cafés and venues around Brighton and is the city’s leading provider of free arts and culture information.

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SOURCE VIRGINS: PORNOGRAPHY

Kendall’s snowboarding injuries put him out of action this month, so Source challenged one of our mates – indie singer Chris T-T – to try something new.

The Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts. Hmm. Sounds like every fucking commercial on television, doesn’t it?
- Bill Hicks

A few weeks ago, me and Kendall and some hard-bitten news journalists were chatting in the canteen of the local paper, when the subject of pornography came up. I had to admit I’d never actually seen any. First astonishment, then contempt-filled hilarity erupted and – for the first time – I was embarrassed about it. So when Kendall got bashed up on the ski slopes and Source needed a feature, it seemed like an obvious ‘opportunity’.

Porn is mainstream now, not even a taboo. Its language has filtered through to general use (‘money shot’, ‘milf’) and its imagery pervades culture. I’ve stopped feeling smug about being porn-free and started feeling a bit ignorant. Now, though, I’m dead nervous. I’m downloading buckets of filth from Pirate Bay, hoping Virgin don’t kill my broadband account in disgust and secretly trying to figure a way out of the assignment.

THE EXPERIENCE
The plan is to start gentle with some Playboy-type shenanigans. Unfortunately the first movie has been mis-titled and I’m immediately faced with an enormous wobbly middle-aged woman having vicious sex with two 70s-styled guys who look like extras from Smokey And The Bandit. She’s very loud. Seconds later, the camera pans out to reveal an alsatian about to climb aboard and I hit ‘escape’. Bad start.

The next few films are relatively normal. So, this is porn: people in different costumes do it to each-other in the same eight positions. Plotlines involve girls improving their college grades, or office juniors earning promotion, or botoxed mums fucking everyone they meet for the hell of it. Sometimes they get nasty, sometimes it’s business-like and sometimes they really seem to be into it. Americans like fake breasts, Japanese like bondage and Europeans like the woods.

I was expecting films ‘by and for women’ to have more kissing and better looking fellas, yet if anything, they’re just as harsh as blokey stuff but have better character development and no subjugation. Which is nice. And funnily enough, the most committed movies of all are also the worst filmed – when married couples feed their private lives into the Internet for kicks.

At first I think lesbians are fun, until I realise I’m just relieved that I don’t have to look at a penis.

You get used to it scarily quickly. I look at the clock and scarcely an hour has passed. Hell, I was supposed to do this all day. Then I realise the curtains behind me have been open the whole time and our old neighbour who throws fagbutts into our garden is probably watching right along with me. Doh!

Then you cannot avoid the point at which things get heavy… there’s the half-starved eastern European teenager and the much, much older man and he says: “How old are you?” and she looks at the camera to lie: “I’m nineteen.” She looks miserable. There’s no way she actually wants to be blowing this dick. Christ! I hit ‘escape’ again and wonder if I should be phoning some hotline. I glance around guiltily and I feel a bit sick.

Overall, I’m most unprepared for the final shot, over and over again. Before watching, I just hadn’t considered the obvious – that they’re not going to finish off boring, they’re going to make a mess at the end. But I reckon more than half the films – especially the newer ones – end the same way, until I can’t watch anymore. Am I really a prude, for not wanting to see endless women get spunked on?

Finally, here’s something fascinating: a folder full of vintage shorts, from the 1890s through to the 1920s. It’s all in Harold Lloyd-style flickery black-and-white, complete with superb captions: “Bernadette has taken a fancy to the Captain.” and “Oh me oh my, what a delightful filly you are!” Turns out, in the olden days, they always left their socks and shoes on.

WAS IT WORTH THE WAIT?
Honestly? I could’ve happily lived my life without this. So no, it wasn’t worth the wait. Good points? I’m better at sex than I’d imagined, looking at these twits. And here’s another positive thought: body fascism is far less prevalent in pornography than in womens’ mags or high fashion. Catwalk models have to be 19, six-foot and stick-thin, yet porn stars can be almost any shape, size and age. It reminds me of another discussion, about the roots of mysogeny and whether women are their own worst enemy when it comes to body fascism, since they seem to be far more demanding upon themselves and each-other than men. But that’s for another time I guess.

The big negative: I always assumed that ‘real’ porn was somehow less sexist than adverts or softcore like burlesque or lapdancing, because these solely expoit women, whereas your actual porn is just people having a bonk. It’s one of the few industries where women are paid more for the same job. However my ‘equality of porn’ myth is shattered by the sheer prevalence of facials. It makes me cringe to think about it – but it’s gotta be what the consumers want, because it’s everywhere. Why on earth are men jerking off to the image of spunk all over a woman’s face? Does fake lasciviousness have to have a fluid dynamic?

Fuck it, the world is even worse than I thought! Plus now, it’ll take hours to ‘Secure Empty Trash’ all this gunk from my hard-drive.

Chris donated his fee for this feature to www.womenaid.org