Wouldn't the whole "could get pregnant" explain the heteronormative first date reluctance? It's built into the culture.
I think they've got that one figured out these days, old man.
Dana at EOTW recently linked to Stephen Fry claiming, essentially, that women don't like sex because if they did straight people would meet anonymously in parks and have sex like gay people do. I have to think that a lot of that comes down to different expectations with respect to personal safety for men and women -- there's a good shot there'd still be behavioral differences without that, but my snap reaction to the idea of cruising in a park for anonymous sex is that the odds of getting raped, assaulted, or killed would be unacceptably high.
That's why we need regulated, well ordered sex parks, LB. Be the change you want to see, etc.
I think they've got that one figured out these days, old man
Oh, Ok then. We'll just abandon 10,000 years of culture because of the invention of latex. My bad.
Oh, 2 was to 1. I thought it was to the OP, and I was confused.
I'm surprised by 3. Fry's smarter than that.
3 is satire? Gay men cruising in most cities run much more serious risks of physical harm than drunken motorcyclists, I think. They're low-status victims if they're attacked, equivalent to homeless in their inability to lodge a complaint.
8: But also fairly loony and conflicted about sexuality, no? Taking pronouncements about female sexuality from a gay man who was celibate for decades of his adult life (despite being, you know, attractive and famous) seriously seems like a mistake.
9: I'm not saying cruising is safe for gay men, but that gay men accept higher levels of risk than straight women would. (And, you know, at least gay men are on average as large and strong as their prospective anonymous sex partners.)
my snap reaction to the idea of cruising in a park for anonymous sex is that the odds of getting raped, assaulted, or killed would be unacceptably high.
Please forgive my ignorance, and if this is offensive to anyone I apologize. Are there instances of rape in the gay cruising environment? Obviously I don't mean prison rape type behavior, but I would suspect that it happens, and probably never reported, or rarely.
3 isn't satire and the opinion isn't a new one to Fry. He's said similar things before. The "apology" he offered afterward was also of the "I'm sorry you got mad when I called you a fatass" variety. An annoying bit of misogyny from someone who was so messed up with respect to his own sexuality that he was celibate for 15 years.
We'll just abandon 10,000 years of culture because of the invention of latex.
Balloons just make some people really happy, you know?
Anyway, prostitution, one-night stands and various other kinds of hasty hookups are also a part of that 10,000 years of culture, so I don't know how much you can generalize about sexual caution from fear of pregnancy.
Oh come on. Where are the commercial responses to straight women interested in anonymous sex? Porn and prostitution catering to both gay and straight men are significant markets, often causing social problems. Straight women with money have the same impulses but are better?
The risk for gay men isn't one-on-one with a partner, but a gang of bored kids looking for someone they can safely hurt. The kids will set out isolated bait.
And of course Fry should also have noted that the anonymous cruising in parks population isn't the whole of the gay community.
Straight women with money have the same impulses but are better?
Again, think about the prostitution market for women from a risk point of view. Most prostitution aimed at straight men is with poor, screwed up, likely drug-addicted women. Put yourself in the shoes of a woman looking to get laid, and ask if paying a guy with a disorderly enough life that he's doing low-end illegal sex work sounds safe.
I don't know how much you can generalize about sexual caution from fear of pregnancy.
Good point. Just some late night bacon from me.
a guy with a disorderly enough life that he's doing low-end illegal sex work...laydeez.
poor, screwed up, likely drug-addicted women
In the US catering to americans; elsewhere, they're foreigners; here also pretty often, judging by local police reports. The idea that men are safe because they're big has very limited scope. Men need to fear whoever is behind the hooker unless they're sure she's working alone. Anecdotally, visiting hookers stupidly seems to lead to ripoffs and beatings pretty often. So I do not think that this is a safe trade for men, any more than buying drugs is, and raising safety is just rounding error, only brings up the question of why risk tolerance differs.
Porn is safe though-- how big is any market aimed at solitary women? Who's the girls-gone-wild entrepreneur of straight lady porn?
5 was actually designed to make a semi-serious point,which is that if fear of safety was all that is keeping women from the joys of anonymous sex with strangers, there are plenty of ways to solve that problem (organized sex clubs, controlled escort services, whatever), but there seems to be no demand for such things from straight women.
20: Can I ask where "here" is lw? Feel free not to answer, but I had you mentally checkboxed as USian in the US, so now I'm curious.
20: Men and women tend to show different level of risk tolerance even in nonsexual circumstances. So saying that women accept lower levels of risk in sexual circumstances doesn't demonstrate lower sex drive.
And the straightwomen's equivalent of the GGW entrepreneur probably writes erotic fanfiction and doesn't make any money from it.
And the straightwomen's equivalent of the GGW entrepreneur probably writes erotic fanfiction and doesn't make any money from it.
Tiger Beat?
I live in the US (DC burbs) and have a US passport, but I'm naturalized and have lived elsewhere.
Locally, there are apparently completely disjoint markets for prostitution, one set of brothels catering to central americans that seem unspeakably exploitative and mobbed-up, judging from the crime column in the paper, and another catering to better-integrated people that seem more like depressing but ordinary businesses.
23. So where's the safe but smaller market? You've described bodice-ripping romance novels, roughly? The difference between those and men's porn doesn't raise any questions?
Nobody said anything about drive. I though the discussion was about interest in uncommitted, possibly impersonal, contact, and its manifestation on the first date.
doesn't demonstrate lower sex drive
Is anyone arguing that women have lower sex drives? "Women are less interested in casual sex with strangers, even adjusting for any perceived concerns about safety" and "women have lower sex drives" aren't interchangable statements, nor does one necessarily imply the other.
another catering to better-integrated people that seem more like depressing but ordinary businesses.
Burger King depressing or Arby's depressing?
Is anyone arguing that women have lower sex drives?
Yes, Stephen Fry, in the piece LB first mentioned.
30: oh. Well, that's silly, especially if that lack of anonymous park sex is his main evidence.
Pseudonymous park sex might be interesting, but it's kind of nippy outside.
You could try getting the laydeez to send in photos, Stanley.
it's kind of nippy outside.
Dec 7th already?
31: Yep. His argument is: "Women don't like sex, and don't want/need it the same way men do, otherwise they'd be cruising, like men do. Women do want money and security, so they trade sex for that."
Where are the commercial responses to straight women interested in anonymous sex? Porn and prostitution catering to both gay and straight men are significant markets
I'll grant you the prostitution thing, mostly (Poland's got a big sugar mommy thing going on, and there is a long tradition of that in upper class European culture). But a pretty quick search on the internet will find you plenty of sites that, while they probably cater primarily to men for revenue, are workable due to the existence of a large subset of women interested in casual sex. There's also a huge market in porn for women, the difference is that for whatever reason women tend to favor written porn over the visual variety and are less honest in naming it pornography.
Also, if we're going to be appealing to ten thousand years of cultural traditions, then I give you the pre Enlightenment European one that society needs to place strict controls on women's autonomy because they're both hornier and less able to control their impulses than men.
So not only are women men but gays are now straight? Good to know, always so hard to keep up with the latest in Things That Aren't True But It Would Be Useful to Pretend That They Are. By the way, if anybody has read about the Swann Street Truple, it's a really fascinating attempt to recreate a straight family as a gay three way. They even had two kids through surrogate wives, one for each. It's really bizarre, and an Asian lawyer gets killed, but you'll never read about it on andrewsullivan.com.
There's also a huge market in porn for women...
Really, "Grey's Anatomy" could be ten minutes of plot to drive men and children away and for all anybody but women would know, the rest could be hard core action.
OT:
Does anyone know how many cups of dry orzo make for 1/2 pound?
42: Retail or wholesale? And I'm assuming today's exchange rate.
42: I am guessing, via recollection, that a 1 lb bag of orzo is roughly 2 cups?
Just skimming the thread, but I thought Fry's mistake was confusing how much a person likes sex with the kind of sex they like. There is plenty of reason to think that women like the act itself as much or even more than men. (Tia recently linked to a nice fMRI study of women turning the lightswitch on and off repeatedly)
Locally, there are apparently completely disjoint markets for prostitution, one set of brothels catering to central americans that seem unspeakably exploitative and mobbed-up, judging from the crime column in the paper, and another catering to better-integrated people that seem more like depressing but ordinary businesses..
There is also, in most U.S. cities, what is likely the largest and least immediately visible market, which are call girls who arrange through the internet.
44: Thanks! I went with one cup dry (for half a pound).
"Women don't like sex, and don't want/need it the same way men do, otherwise they'd be cruising, like men do. Women do want money and security, so they trade sex for that."
I just read a very nice working paper arguing that there's little to no evidence that this kind of exchange in partnering-up is all that common. Specifically, once you control for matching -- birds of a feather and all that -- the appearance of exchange disappears.
once you control for matching -- birds of a feather and all that -- the appearance of exchange disappears
What does that mean? That men who want to trade money and security for sex partner up with women who like money and security?
That men who want to trade money and security for sex partner up with women who like money and security?
No, it means that evidence for the standard trade depicted in the exchange/market literature -- where women trade good looks and sex for money and social status -- largely goes away once you control for matching, i.e., the similarity of the partners in terms of looks, status, etc. It turns out, for instance, that decades of research on marriage markets framed by this market metaphor never bothered to measure whether the men good-looking women married were themselves pretty good looking. (Seriously, the first study to do this seems to have been in the early 1990s.) It turns out that, in general, they are.
the men good-looking women married were themselves pretty good looking
So the good looking, rich men get the good looking women. Science never ceases to amaze.
I wonder if this researcher ever been to Mastro's Steakhouse or the Penninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. I'm not saying that this is statisitically significant in the grand scheme of things, but it's common enough.
Science never ceases to amaze.
Well, this is the point. Previously people were all like "So women trade looks for status, duh with the Econ 101, dudes".
@52: No-one's saying it never happens; just that to hear some people talk you'd think it was standard behavior expressed courtesy of your Veldt Module.
Women can trade looks for a Dodge Stratus if they have a modeling job and poor taste.
When I was single, I loved having sex with new guys. The adrenaline was the best.
25: I though the discussion was about interest in uncommitted, possibly impersonal, contact, and its manifestation on the first date.
Right. Of course plenty of heterosexual women have sex on the first date. Plenty don't. It's probably not an iron-clad rule: you might go through a period in which you do that, and another in which you don't. I'm with Stanley: it's likely that the gay male population is similarly varied. The idea that gay guys are all running around cruising/hooking up all the time seems to generalize from particular subcultures.
OK Cupid's data blog had some nice data on this recently.
56. Your mom was hot to trot as well
58: That data would be specific to the online dating community as well, wouldn't it? (I don't mean that to sound combative; just thinking out loud.)
I'd be kind of interested in knowing just how much of dating has moved online, actually.
60 cont'd: That is, the OP referred specifically to exchanging nude pictures before the first date. This would be something that would come up only for online dating, or, I suppose, blind dates in general.
61: There is apparently a lot of Brett Favre style sexting going on out there that isn't mediated via online dating.
Having read what Fry said in context and his non-apology, I think there is a case to be made that he was trying to talk about straight men's fears about what straight women are like, and left off too many qualifiers.
However, he's trying to get by without admitting he was running at the mouth. Interestingly, he's recounted almost doing the same thing in the past:
But some mad pixie of pride in my head had got me rather riled by this time. It wasn't helped by the fact that some of the letters I received were of such a bombastic and dictatorial nature that any spark of apology was extinguished before it was born. So I just ignored the whole incident and pretended to myself that I had been misunderstood, mischievously misunderstood, you might even say; that it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that I had never meant to suggest...
In that case, he ended up reconsidering and fully apologizing, which would be more appropriate here.
62: Good point. There are ways to get people's contact information without having met them that still don't involve online dating sites.
Random hot 18-year-old girls send me nude pictures of themselves all the time. And they search for me on Facebook.
64: I think the vast majority of sexting occurs between people one knows / has met. It's just that the "raising sex to salience" part of the relationship gets established via exchanging texts, which in some cases builds to sending explicit photos.
Svetlana and Marina have been really hot for me lately.
66: There is that.
67: I really don't understand why texting is preferred over email.
Time to watch some Jeeves and Wooster.
Just skimming the thread, but I thought Fry's mistake was confusing how much a person likes sex with the kind of sex they like.
I tend to push back against the 'men are like this, women are like that' discourse, but let me offer a generalization about differences in male and female sexuality (or, to ungeneralize it, a difference between my sexuality, and a joke about sex from a presumably typical man's perspective) that might help account for differing appetites for random anonymous sex.
The joke is "Sex is like pizza: when it's good, it's great, and when it's bad, it's still pretty good." And that sounds way, way off to me --for me bad sex has the potential for being annoying, unpleasant, anywhere from uncomfortable to actually painful, and not pleasurable at all. Someone whose attitude toward a random sexual encounter was that the worst possible outcome was still pretty good would be a lot more willing to hook up with a partner on literally no acquaintance than I would; my minimum likely one-night-stand would involve at least an hour or two of evaluating whether he seemed likely to be good in bed.
Assuming I'm reasonably typical in that regard, and the 'sex is like pizza' joke reasonably represents a typical male attitude, that'd be enough of a difference to make anonymous park cruisy sex attractive to significantly more men than women.
Any thoughts?
69: I'm guessing three things: not everyone has an email-enabled phone, but everyone has a text-capable phone. Text messages are immediate, while email can have a delay. Finally, text messages are ephemeral: you (can) keep your email forever, but a naughty text message doesn't have to become a permanent part of history.
Random hot 18-year-old girls send me nude pictures of themselves all the time. And they search for me on Facebook.
That hasn't happened to me in a while. I figured they were cracking down on the fake accounts.
I have, on the other hand, gotten a few friend requests from physics-obsessed young women in third-world countries, which is kind of weird. I ignore them, but some of them are Facebook friends with like 20 or 30 physicists I know.
Any thoughts?
I just got home from a business trip and want some pizza.
73: If you think the physics groupies might be trying to exchange looks for material security in the first world, don't tell Gonerill.
71: Well, I'm in agreement, personally. It would mean that what counts as "bad sex" is a bit broader for women (on this view) than it is for men.
I really don't know; we'd have to ask men who don't mind what might be called "bad sex."
There's a lot of room for sex that's just kind of lame in various ways, but not actively bad. I tend to try to pass on that as I've gotten older, but not everyone does, and I didn't always.
There's something to it, but I would say the sex is like pizza joke represents an anxious norming rather than a typical attitude.
For me, bad sex has the potential for being annoying and unpleasant, though not IME physically painful. And memory is kind to bad sex -- encounters that weren't particularly fun still left me with an immediate feeling of "hey! I got some!" and remain diverting to recall IYKWIM.
That doesn't exactly debunk the pizza thing. There's also the disconnect that LB has pointed out --men who say they want anyone but strangely don't want the girl who wants them.
75: No, it isn't like that. Some of them don't even post pictures of themselves. They just... really want to be Facebook friends with lots of physicists, as far as I can tell. I guess if you're a student in a place with no good local mentors, you reach out to random strangers on the internet?
78: Before you know it, they'll be asking you to mail the a particle accelerater and a gross of neutrons.
78
... I guess if you're a student in a place with no good local mentors, you reach out to random strangers on the internet?
Unless you are getting similiar random requests from guys this doesn't seem like the explanation.
Unless the local physics community is willing to mentor men.
Going back to the OP, women certainly run a bigger risk sending nude photos to somebody they don't know. Even if the consequences didn't vary by gender, the velocity and range of the photo's circulation will be much quicker for women's photos.
Going back to the OP, women certainly run a bigger risk sending nude photos to somebody they don't know. Even if the consequences didn't vary by gender, the velocity and range of the photo's circulation will be much quicker for women's photos.
This seems like a good place to quote Anthony Powell's line about the mystery of the sexual yearnings and proclivities of even one's closest friends, much less strangers, but I gave away my copies of A Dance to the Music of Time a while ago, so, you know, just imagine that I quoted something succinctly apt.
You had more than one copy? Or do you mean your copies of the books that make it up?
Finally, text messages are ephemeral: you (can) keep your email forever, but a naughty text message doesn't have to become a permanent part of history.
As various people have discovered to their sorrow, of course, this is just not true; texts are really no more ephemeral than any sort of digital file.
I get plenty of emails from Russian women interested in meeting me, but none from Russian men at all. No Facebook physicists, either, except the ones I went to college with. It's a shame, because I think physicists are hot.
87: I recall giving away a few copies of the first book of 12/volume of 4.
89: Russia is a land in which there are only women (as anybody who knows the internet knows).
Well, first of all, it's no a full-size pitch.
Having said that, I think the risk-tolerance aspect mentioned above is very key -- not the only criterion of course, but a major one. I'm aware of one young woman, for instance, who seems to be currently engaged in a project to sleep her way through every scene she's part of, including the one where she makes her money. Just for fun, and because her risk-tolerance seems exceedingly high at this point in her life. My expectation, although I would be happy to be proved wrong, is that there are some negative consequences waiting out there (mostly of the hurt feelings type) that she is going to run into in not too long, and this may very well cause her to adjust her attitudes. Alternately, perhaps she is already discounting for this, and sowing her wild oats while she may.
Totally different aspect of the thread: On prostitution, I think there are several major types out there, and the ones we're aware of are generally dependent on our own SES and geographical particulars. For instance, I had never in my life been solicited for prostitution in person until a few years ago when I walked through a predominantly working-class African-American neighborhood late at night on a weekend. And then it was twice in a mile and a half. Likewise, I've never seen the kind of professional, high-end brothel that features prominently in literature and film, but a friend of mine did a few years ago: He was recording a song with his band, and the studio happened to be in the same non-descript downtown commercial building as a very obvious brothel, which featured a catalog of prostitutes and large posters of them. This, just blocks from city hall and the downtown police station. Mobbed up? I'm guessing so. Alternately, you've got the independent Craigslist/dating site/back of the free weekly escort services. And the disorderly houses run by and for recent immigrants. And the dungeons. And presumably some other formats that I never have occasion to see.
I'm aware of one young woman, for instance, who seems to be currently engaged in a project to sleep her way through every scene she's part of, including the one where she makes her money.
And that's a bad idea at the Hepatitis Research Center.
And that's a bad idea at the Hepatitis Research Center.
Mötley Crüe's biography is surprisingly respectful of the scientific method.
"Going back to the OP, women certainly run a bigger risk sending nude photos to somebody they don't know. Even if the consequences didn't vary by gender, the velocity and range of the photo's circulation will be much quicker for women's photos."
afaict, this was posted in support of the 'men and women are actually the same' argument
I think it tends to be the case that men don't perceive risk in the same way as women, particularly in younger age groups, no? Like 95% of people who end up in trauma wards are young men, and the other 5% are people they hit with their cars?
All of this seems reasonable. To the extent that a satisfying sexual encounter is less likely to result for women from choosing an anonymous partner in a random fashion, yeah, different calculus. I guess I agree with LB's pizza objection, with allowance's for k-sky's "I got some, bitches" on occasion.
But also there's the whole infrastructure / societal norms thing. It really hasn't been very long that open discussions of female sexuality have been ok, and for some people, they're still not. Obvs same goes for women openly pursuing sex. Of course rich people can get away with whatever they want (one of the main incentives to becoming rich, IMHO, but that's neither here nor there), but most porn is marketed to lower and middle income groups, right? (I like to imagine that rich people have their own, hilariously weird porn.) In my experience, straight women consume porn that either isn't directly marketed to them, or isn't directly marketed as porn. They're still flying under the radar. But consume they do, at all ages, if we're going with "porn is stuff meant to be sexually stimulating". (Btw: the Queer as Folk phenomenon -- more than just hearsay and a few of my straight friends?)
Probs needs a few more years, is what I'm saying. And of *course* safety is a factor. It actually really annoys me how often men seem completely or partially ignorant of that fact, mostly bc I really resent that I can't be. Privilege, etc.
Oh wow. That was, like, no added value. Eh. Stephen Fry's moronic statement kinda seems like one of those things people say as they get older and mentally lazier, right? That's a thing?
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
The joke is "Sex is like pizza: when it's good, it's great, and when it's bad, it's still pretty good." And that sounds way, way off to me
No kidding. There was Domino's at a school function the other night, and man was that some bad pizza.
Women can trade looks for a[n]anal Dodge Stratus if they have a modeling job and poor taste.
99 was me, though I'm not entirely sure why I feel compelled to claim it.
Porn is possibly an interesting comparison here. As DQ says, it's not generally marketed to women, and then we're told that women must not be visually stimulated. Of course, there is visual porn that some women enjoy, but you have to wade through a lot of potentially unpleasant stuff to get there. And by the time you've seen a lot of stuff that not only doesn't turn you on but makes you feel sort of gross and unhappy, you're not in the mood to jerk off anymore.
That is, I imagine this is part of it. As I get older, I am less disturbed by porn that I find unappealing, so I find more that I like. When I was younger, I think I tended to get upset imagining the intended audience for some of the stuff I came across. Now I figure this is just one of those things one can't ever understand about other people.
W/r/t sex, it isn't that women don't want easy, casual sexual relationships for the sake of sex. It's that it's really hard to imagine it going well. It would be great if people were really as easy-going about sex as they claim to be. But unfortunately, one doesn't usually find out how someone really feels about casual sex until you've already done it and now he's decided he thinks you're a slut, or his new wife-to-be, or whatever. I don't tend to feel very differently about someone after I've slept with them, but I've learned the hard way that other people react really strongly and unpredictably to having had sex.
Considering how busy and miserable my life is right now, if there were a way to have good, quasi-anonymous sex with someone who would not treat me like shit or try to take over my life, I would do it. But the effort required to make this happen, given that too many factors are left to chance, is way too high. So I live like a nun.
Smearcase and I were discussing this last night, and there are a number of other unappealing scenarios. I briefly had a sexual relationship with someone who was extremely polite, and that was depressing to me, though it might be perfect for someone else. It's not as if there is a good protocol for these things.
101.last But one of the fun nuns. More The Sound of Music than Dialogues of the Carmelites. Just not "slutty nun" which has that been a Halloween thing yet?
And of *course* safety is a factor. It actually really annoys me how often men seem completely or partially ignorant of that fact, mostly bc I really resent that I can't be.
I think this is a (red state/blue state?)(Some sort of regional) thing. I find that here, people are hyper-concerned for women's safety in a way I find completely overblown and ridiculous. Some of it is nice - I do appreciate the offer to escort me into a parking garage late at night. Other times it's completely ridiculous, though, although now I can't think of an example that's clearly enough ridiculous that here won't argue with it.
104: Corollary to Rule 34, I guess. Alas.
I wish the Sexy X costumes would remember that unless there is some hint of the irony of being a Sexy X, it's not actually sexy, or a costume. How is this a nun? The headband? Wouldn't it be actually a lot more perverted and hott if she looked more like a nun?
That, sir, is no wimple. It's a headband.
107: More importantly, is she lacking a nipple?
Google returns nothing relevant for "assless habit." There is money to be made here.
...a sexual relationship with someone who was extremely polite, and that was depressing to me....
I wish I were more iconoclastic in this respect, as in so many, but I find graceful, ladylike manners embarrasingly pleasant because I'm a feminist I read the Howard Pyle/N.C. Wyeth books about King Arthur and Robin Hood a lot as a lonely child I spent a lot of time in Protestant churches of the liberal media.
there is visual porn that some women enjoy, but you have to wade through a lot of potentially unpleasant stuff to get there
This phenomenon is not gendered.
This phenomenon is not gendered.
Like the Persian once said, doesn't anyone just fuck anymore?
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_5486.html#413767
Oh man, that thread. A classic. Toodle pip!
I'm not picky about what the people in porn are doing or who they are, but I do find it appealing when everyone seems to be having a good time. Watching porn in which people are phoning it in, self-consciously staring at the camera, or acting over-seriously hateful or fakey-loving is irritating. There should be an easy-to-find category for porn like this: Porn for people who like to see other people *enjoying* having sex.
Is this portraying a cruisey park scene or just real estate marketing spin:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/14/realestate/20101114liv_ss.html?ref=realestate#3
116 gets it right. Was comment 536 ever used as mouseover text?
117 I think I tried to think of an appropriate search term for xtube once. People come up with all kinds of really specific tags, but I don't think "affection" brought up a whole lot of hits.
120 -- including the word "wife" can help.
119. There were giants in the earth in those days.
121: Well...
123: I thought your name was Buchanan.
I wonder what 'wholesome' would get you -- for straight porn, probably gingham outfits.
I would say there's no wholesome porn at all that isn't within the category of "amateur" porn, so search for that word to narrow it down.
126: Depends what you mean by "wholesome." I think there has been a rise in professional porn that features actors who seem to enjoy what they're doing, interact well with each other, and have personalities. It's still a small percentage of what's out there, but it exists.
"A good clean love .... Without utensils."
127: Come on your face? I hardly even know you.
The idea of wholesome porn is pretty amusing. "You want me to put my WHAT? WHERE? You know what, we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time. Say, why don't we just have a nice talk instead!"
Cue: My Dinner with Andre. (Hey, add to the endless list of porn titles based on real movies: My Dinner was Andre.)
Cue: My Dinner with AndreThe Whore of Mensa.
"My Dinner André 3000" has potential as a spoof movie title.
Porn for people who like to see other people *enjoying* having sex.
Sounds like so-called amateur porn, per 126. For some reason I have a hard time wrapping my head around the notion of professional porn that's well-enough acted that goddamnit! it sure looks like they're enjoying themselves immensely, and that's what I like to see! Can you really get past the fact that you know perfectly well they're acting?
I'm tempted to answer myself with: of course. It's no different from any film/theater production in which you buy into the action. But somehow, porn seems different. There is always the sense that you're being shown or presented with this ... production ... which is not about the characters but about your own voyeurism.
133: I can think of a few examples, but they are quite rare. Lesbian and gay professional porn seems to show this more often, but a few times I've seen it in straight porn.
134: Heh. I've heard that. I'd originally typed a query: "Titles?"
I can easily see that porn that involves a bit more of the lead-up, the mutual seduction, the struggle or decision-making (all the components of dramatic engagement!) -- even if those things take all of 15 minutes -- and then the fruition would be hotter.
I basically never watch professional porn, for all sorts of reasons, so this conversation is happening in left field for me. What I've seen is so terrible in terms of acting, dialogue, 'plot' and action that I have no idea of the range that might be out there.
It's not so much that there isn't professional porn where the actors seem to genuinely be enjoying themselves, it's that it's a fairly small proportion and seemingly completely random. I've gone through the reverse evolution of AWB. When I was in my late teens it was 'yay, naked women, having sex' and that blotted out all other considerations, not so much as I grew older. Also, and file this under second hand anecdata, but a (female) friend of mine who knew some porn actresses told me once that the number who are enjoying it is higher than it seems, it's just that they are encouraged to play it in stereotypical porn style, often making real pleasure look completely fake. In any case, take hundreds of millions of women with the tech to create amateur porn and make it accessible, then even when only a very small proportion both find the concept enjoyable and don't worry about potential negative consequences, that adds up to what is for all intents and purposes an infinite amount.
it's just that they are encouraged to play it in stereotypical porn style, often making real pleasure look completely fake.
This I have no trouble believing. I read (skimmed) at some point something like a series of production notes by, or among, some high-volume porn directors: it was all about which actors and actresses had strengths in presenting this or that type of shot and sequence, how to direct their movements and poses, and, interestingly, a fair amount about the actors' private lives: Jackie doesn't like working with Rod lately, because he fucked up the filming of this other thing and wouldn't back off his execution of X, so she's leery of him, and they tried to discuss it, but he pulled a prima donna and said he didn't give a shit about her bad back right now. Blah blah, etc.
Weird.
92: OK, 'little' women; & not necessarily blond.
I briefly had a sexual relationship with someone who was extremely polite, and that was depressing to me, though it might be perfect for someone else.
What? I'm having a hard time processing this. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting "extremely polite." Are you using it here with shades of "diffident"? I just don't usually associate "opposite of rude" with "depressing."
Lesbian and gay professional porn seems to show this more often, but a few times I've seen it in straight porn.
Heh. I've heard that. I'd originally typed a query: "Titles?"
I've heard good things about 'The Crash Pad' series, for those who're into the whole urban genderqueer scene. This is a total guess, but if I were told to come up with an algorithm for regularly finding such 'authentically into it' porn, I'd start by looking for weblogs of porn actors/producers who also see themselves as sex-positivity activist sorts, and working from there.
Gah, stupid italics. Anyone who feels like fixing my prematurely-closed HTML tag, go ahead.
sex-positivity activist sorts
Ugh. These are even worse for me than the dead-eyed porn stars. See? See how I'm enjoying this because unlike you I own my body? My orgasm is educational, you poor dear!
This came up at the dinner table last night with a lesbian and a straight woman who (I promise) started it. We were all agreed.
But yes, some of "Crash Pad" is quite good, in part because Syd Blakovich is involved and she is a fox.
My orgasm is educational, you poor dear!
Brought to you by the letter...
Speaking of the emptiness of modern existence, my roommate and his ex-bf are heading to nearby Mannheim this evening to wait in line for hours in order to get a hug from Amma, "the hugging saint of India."
Surely this has been covered before ATM?
117: The phrase "happy sex" crops up occasionally.
porn that involves a bit more of the lead-up, the mutual seduction, the struggle or decision-making (all the components of dramatic engagement!)
This reminds me of the joke: Why do women watch porn movies all the way through? So they can see the wedding!
Stupid joke, bearing no relation to what I wrote!
(/grump)
The canonical response is "That's not funny". Go back to bed, grumpypants.
Don't worry, the higher class of Unfogged commenter understood you were mourning the tragic unfamiliarity with Aristotle's 'Poetics' among today's porn directors.
The canonical response
Oh. I'd never heard that joke before.
The canonical response
Oh. I'd never heard that joke before.
Well, JMcQ didn't give the canonical set-up, either. It's supposed to be targeted specifically to feminists, e.g. "how many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
WTF--so a carriage return auto-closes the italics? I disapprove.
154: I believe it has always been thus. You have to restart your italics tag after a carriage return.
Why do women watch porn movies all the way through?
So they can be sure the copier gets fixed right.
158: I was making a joke that the women were following the plot.
Re: Boris' 2nd wife-- "She has painted the covers for 2 albums by rock-icon, Meat Loaf--Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose and Hang Cool Teddy Bear."
