My Experiences with Porn

My very first experience with pornographic material was after my parents broke up and my father moved out, my Mother, brother and I made a surprise visit to my Dad’s, a basement apartment in a house he had bought.  My father answered the door and let us in and as soon as we walked inside there was this huge poster on the kitchen wall facing the entrance way (so it was the first thing you saw) of this woman whose large breasts where being groped by an old man who looked like a very perverted Albert Einstein with his tongue hanging out.

I stood there staring at the poster with a mixture of emotions flooding through me.  I was 10 years old.

Soon afterward, I began my education of porn via magazines like Penthouse and Playboy, as well as Alex Comfort’s classic The Joy of Sex book (Sexual Positions (The Joy of Sex Series)) with photos of couples illustrating various sexual positions, first published in 1972.

My next door neighbor and I found The Joy of Sex underneath her parent’s bed.  I was 11 and she was a couple years younger, at a time when we still dressed up Barbies .  I was very intrigued by the book.  Rather than seem dirty or pornographic (as the poster on my father’s wall had been), this book was more like an educational encyclopedia.  I was amazed at all the positions that couples could engage in during sex, some of which looked like impossible yoga poses.  The text said that many of these “poses” originated from the Kama Sutra, and it was the first time I had heard of such a book, which sounded exotic.

We laughed at the couples, for, rather than look sexy, they seemed pretty comical in these ridiculous positions.  It was like a viewing a naked circus of sexual contortionists.  I wondered if my friend’s parents actually attempted any of these positions themselves, which seemed even more hysterical to think of it, as I had never thought of them as sexual at all.

I had never seen people having sex before (my sex education thus far had been a movie in grade 4 showing frogs reproducing, which looked pretty gross), had never really considered it actually, so this book was both a shock and an education.

Next, we found a box of Playboys and Penthouse magazines in a closet and took a few of them to view in a nearby lot that had abandoned cars in it.  We got into an old Volkswagen Beetle and began to look through the magazines.  It was then I learned to avoid “sticky” pages (gross) and my education into porn continued.  Much different from the The Joy of Sex book, these images were only of women in splayed poses on fur-skin rugs, displaying their furry beavers for all to gaze at.  And, gaze we did.

Origins of the World

I remember feeling a strange tingle inside me that grew as we turned the pages, a ball of excitement that started in my lower belly and spread like electric currents through my genitals.  But, I also knew instinctively that these images were “dirty” (in more ways than one if you count the sticky pages), and that the women were being “objectified” by the male gaze, even if I didn’t quite know what that was yet.  These images aroused me, whereas the couple’s in their sex positions had only been comical.  Why was my response so different?

Of course, I didn’t really KNOW what the GAZE was, but somehow I understood its implication even as a pre-adolescent girl.  Why were females objects and not subjects of the gaze?  Why was it okay for guys to look, but girls couldn’t?  Why were there no books for women like this?  Why did these books feel “dirty” whereas the The Joy of Sex book didn’t feel dirty at all?  And, finally, why were the “dirty” images more arousing than the educational ones?  Was it because the in the dirty pictures the women were objectified, and displayed solely for the pleasure of viewing?

I have come a long way from those early recollections of viewing porn.  And, so has the porn industry.  While women are still objectified in porn (and in pop culture marketing) and the majority of porn is still made for the male gaze, there is a new trend in porn where women producers, directors and performers are claiming autonomy as self-producers and subjects.

Some Good Autonomous Self-Produced Porn for Women

• Bleu Productions
• Burning Angel
• Claire Adams
• CrashPad Series
• Jiz Lee
• Julie Simone
• MadisonBound
• No Fauxxx
• Delta of Venus
• I Feel Myself

My Favorite Porn Films (links to Reviews on PMCR)

• Eon McKai’s Content (Alt Porn) [Review]
• Tristan Taormino’s Rough Sex (Rough Sex – Straight) [Review]
• This Aint Star Trek XXX (Spoof – Straight) [Review]
• Pirates (Mainstream – Feature) [Review]
• Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless (Docu-porn – Couples) [Review]
• Champion by Pink & White Productions (Grrl Queer Porn) [Review]
• The Fashionistas (Fetish/Kink/BDSM) [Review]
• Bride of Sin by Madison Young (Kink/Bondage) [Review]
• Bordello by Courtney Trouble (Queer Grrl Porn) [Review]
• LA Pink by Joanna Angel (Alt Goth/Pink Porn) [Review]
• The Black Glove by Maria Beatty (Avant-Garde BDSM Porn) [Review]

Enjoy!