Ideal Pornography
"We might not admit it but porn is an educator even if it’s not a very good one."
Image: Michelangelo’s studies and sketches (nudes and men’s maliciousness)
A love for porn is more complex than it might seem at first; part of it is about some really important and good things.
Sympathy
Pornography pays special attention to our erotic needs. It won’t criticize you for being fascinated by orgies, or the idea of a sultry nurse or of films of people ejaculating on one another’s faces. Rather than condemn and judge you a porn site is welcoming and offers acceptance.
A reduction of loneliness
In our everyday encounters with other people we never get to see what they’re turned on by, they seem so sane and reasonable a lot of the time so we feel alone in our wild desires. But porn reassures us that we are more normal than we think, so we can feel less ashamed of our sexual desires because maybe they don’t run very much against what is normal for people to want.
Distance
People’s efforts around sexual exploration are often not realized because familiarity in a relationship may bring with it some complications that may crumble our dreams of sexual exploration. There’s usually a history of unresolved issues and the daily need to deal with the unreasonable sides of one’s partner. Porn sites don’t care if you did house chores, if you chew with your mouth open, or if you only replied ‘fine’ when asked how your day went. Porn doesn’t mind about anything else in your life, it removes the challenges of intimacy and removes sex from the emotional arena.
Drawing by: Robert Stoller of RobertStoller.com
Education
Porn is an invitation into an atmosphere where we can accept that there is still so much about sex that we still don’t understand. Porn looks to answer some of the important questions: What things make me feel aroused, What do I need from another person? And what can I offer another person?
What we’re searching for is not just a quick thrill but for emotional education and guidance. But, unfortunately, porn does not provide satisfactory answers to these questions. So when we lament that porn objectifies women or gives people inflated expectations, we are recognizing how much influence porn can have on people and we are concerned about how the influence can go wrong. We might not admit it but porn is an educator even if it’s not a very good one. Alain de Botton says we should come to the conclusion that porn should ideally be improved rather than just blamed for its shortcomings, porn is where most of us learn about sex, so we should be open to imagining a kind of porn that can educate us better.
Good Porn
Most of us are used to seeing porn as ‘bad’ and the idea of good porn may be self-contradictory. Yet when people are obese we don’t tell them to totally quit eating, we try to help them improve their diets. The aim wouldn’t be to do away with all food because some food is bad but to make good food easily and widely available. So the aim should not be about doing away with pornography but to get good pornography. It wouldn’t necessarily be something even less inhibiting and more exciting, it could just be something that is less divergent from our lives.
The longing for sexual stimulation isn’t going to go away, so maybe we need to channel our talent, wisdom, intelligence, maturity, and imagination to it. Many respectable careers haven’t always been what they are today, what usually changes is that people realize that we need more serious, honorable, and thoughtful people to go into these fields since many people hunger for the services.
Great post as usual. Any examples of good porn?