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How his porn affects your sex life

Over the course of my career there have been few things that have left me as concerned as answering the sex questions posted by 18 to 23 year old women.

Apart from the usual body worries and relationship problems, one thread seems to weave it’s way through many, if not most, of their questions: How to fuck like a porn star. Whether it’s how to perform like one or bend their bodies like one, from squirting to squealing it seems that how they stack up against the Playboy story is what makes sex good.

And that’s really, really bad.

Last year I came across Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn.com and now MakeLoveNotPorn.TV. MLNP was her way of busting a few porn-inspired myths about sex.

Interviewing her for a feature about her new endeavour, she told me how as a 40-something year old she had started dating men in their 20s. It was grand for a number of reasons, but she found that their approach to sex (and how they believed women like to be pleased) was deeply influenced by porn.

Being a successful businessperson of a worldly nature, she decided to tackle this problem with a site dedicated to a simple truth: Porn sex is not real world sex.

It wasn’t until this year, as I started listening to much younger women navigate their sex lives, did it become painfully obvious how necessary this sort of education is.

The maps they were using were the lame yawn-porn vids they and their boyfriends had been introduced to at a decidedly younger age than I would consider appropriate (yes, I just said that). 

It made me wonder what experiences women in their late 20s to 40s had of porn influencing their sex lives or the expectations they felt around sex. Some of the porn versus real sex issues include (this is combo of Gallop’s list and mine):

Squirting: This is becoming a ‘thing’. Squirt porn is to 2013 what blowjob porn was to the 70s and young ladies are getting their verbs and nouns in a knot about cum versus come and wet versus squirting.

It’s confusing for everyone. Not all women squirt and even if they do they might not know it – squirting can happen in cupfuls or teaspoonfuls. Can’t we please just enjoy an orgasm without trying to make more MORE all the time?

Positions:
One of my faves is women wanting to know how to get into all those crazy porno positions. Here’s a news flash: Those positions are for the benefit of the camera, not her orgasm.

Maximum visual exposure generally means that the parts your body that need pressure and rubbing for orgasm – your clit and labia – aren’t getting any of that.

It also means the only part of your bodies touching are your genitals. Boring. How are you supposed to get your nails down his back if you don’t have your arms wrapped around him?

Rough and ready: On the MLNP site, Gallop points to the lack of foreplay in lot of porn: ‘All a guy has to do is start touching or sticking his fingers into a woman’s pussy and she’s instantly wet and roaring to go.’ Gentle, take-your-time, top-to-bottom foreplay is a rare consideration and women are simply expected to be ‘on’ all the time.

No wonder yawn porn is so maligned for it’s flavour of objectification of women.

Look, these are not all of them. But they’re the ones I come across the most. Those and the fact that there seems to be the assumption that all women love anal.

So when the huge debate about whether or not porn channels on SA television should be allowed to rot the foundations of the country’s strong moral fibre where online porn was failing (*snort*), my only concern was that they were choosing such boring, old-fashioned channels.

Where is all the new porn to be had? It’s out there. Fem porn producers Erika Lust, Petra Span and Anna Span are pulling out all kinds of sexy-time movies that cater to more refined porn tastes that take real sex and her pleasure into actual visual account.

But maybe that would be too much of a challenge to bust that one last porn myth: That women don’t care for porn or need to be catered to.  

Read Dorothy's blog, like her Facebook page and follow her on Twitter.

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