I have never met another women who has had (or is willing to admit having) even remotely the same experience with porn as I have. As such, I can’t say how common my experience is, only that I hope it is unique. Essentially: porn took my healthy bisexual (or at least bicurious) teenage female sexuality and mutated it into a person who can’t be aroused and/or satisfied by any gender partner, any porn video, any real sex, and definitely not by myself. For this post, I’ll mostly just stick with how porn has affected my sex life with different genders.
By now you all are aware that the overwhelming majority of porn (99%, if I dare to be hyperbolic) is viewed through the male perspective, with women as the object that serves male needs and onto whom male fantasies are projected.
Because I have become so accustomed to seeing sex where the visual focus is on the female object, I don’t know how to participate in – let alone be satisfied or fulfilled by – sex where I don’t have a female object to visually focus on. And because the dichotomy between objectified/objectifier is so prevalent and rarely subverted in porn, I feel that it is my role then, as the only woman present, to be the object. Because I’m not a confident person, what happens is one of the following:
- I feel completely unappealing/unsexy (and thus ashamed and inferior) because I feel I can’t even begin to compete with the women in porn who are paid to be naked. The widespread availability and easy access to porn featuring women of any-and-every body type has also made me incredibly picky about the kind of female bodies I am attracted to. Because my own body is nowhere near similar to the body of my ‘ideal’ woman, I find it difficult to imagine why some one would find me even remotely sexually attractive. And because the ugliest women in porn are usually the ones doing the most extreme and humiliating things, I end up feeling like I have to do the same (no matter how much I don’t want to) to ‘make up’ for how unsexy I am.
- I feel threatened and vulnerable, because I know the kinds of things that can happen to objects in porn. Unfortunately, I also know some of these things firsthand and know what happens to objects who try to resist. Whenever people talk about the ‘fight or flight’ response to danger, they never mention the third option: freeze. I go limp, because it’s the most resistant and most compliant I can be at the same time. I can’t be aroused.
Because I’m so used to objectifying and getting aroused by the sight of women’s bodies in porn, it is now impossible for me to find the male body sexually arousing. My body might become aroused in response to stimulation by my male partner, but that’s subconscious and biological – my mind is not ‘horny’. I still feel pleasure and at least like it sensually-speaking, but the penis and person attached are more a means to an end and not something to enjoy , especially visually.
Sex with women however, is also completely off the table, because of one small but significant issue. This may be the hardest part of this post to understand, so here goes: Because porn is shot and staged from the male perspective, I am attracted to women as if I were a man. Now I can’t be aroused by porn.
Yeah.
To clarify, I am not transgender and I don’t think I truly suffer from ‘penis envy’ as these feelings only arise when I try to have sex or try to imagine having sex with a woman. When I’m watching porn, I’m completely unaware that there is a distinction between me the audience and the male performer onscreen, regardless of whether its POV or not. As far as my mind knows in that moment of arousal, the penis on screen is mine.
In fact, while I can be sexually attracted to the women in it, lesbian porn isn’t arousing to me when there is no penis or penis-shaped substitute involved in the equation. Porn has made my sexual attraction to women based entirely my (in)ability to dominate, objectify and be ‘serviced’ by them as a man.
To top everything all off with a nice fucked up little ribbon, porn managed to successfully implement all the above strangeness and confusion in my sexuality BEFORE I could manage to bring myself to orgasm solo. Which means that any attempt at masturbation (i.e. the most – if not the only – sexually satisfying and straightforward option I have left) results in a Vatican-sized, dildo-shaped, why-is-this-not-lethal dose of shame, humiliation, frustration, anger, self-loathing and self-disgust.
And where do I turn to when I can’t be aroused and I feel this low and sub-human?
To porn, of course.
The land where women are sexual objects who don’t need sexual satisfaction, and where I, hidden in the audience, can at least pretend I’m not one of them.
LINK – Performer in the Audience; or How Porn Destroyed A Bisexual Woman’s Desire for Men and Women
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