These are some things I found. I thought you might enjoy watching them while I'm working this weekend. Enjoy yourself.
Love, Rye"
That's the email I found in our inbox this morning when I woke up and lazily drank coffee in my pajamas while poor Rye went to work. He had thoughtfully spent his days off during the week gathering three videos for my weekend enjoyment, and enjoying them is just what I set out to do. His intention, I am certain, was to inspire a jerk-off session, along with a few photos sent to him while he was at work.
He'll probably still get that, but he's also inspired something a bit more... um... verbose.
Video number one came with the following message: "Holy shit, she has unbelievable skills." Uh, he was right.
I love blowjob videos in the way I love watching women do anything they love with great skill. A confident blowjob is a beautiful thing, and this girl is nothing if not confident. I won't sugar-coat it, that cock is huge, and when she buried the entire thing in her throat, I gasped.
This goes on for longer than it should for two reasons: 1) it's a blowjob video! As Rye said, "do something else too, you guys!" and 2) he never comes! How a human could withstand 8 minutes of aggressive deep-throating without blowing every load on earth is crazy to me. She's working hard! We're enjoying it! Aren't you?
My concern about his lack of an orgasm foreshadowed our next video in a way I did not completely realize it would.
Rye had this to say about video number two: "Pro, but I think you'll dig it." And for a moment, he was right.
(Click here to check out the vid, since it's un-embeddable.)
A simple, nicely lit shower scene involving two relatively normal looking people who actually appeared to be enjoying having sex with each other. Lots of close-ups on body parts you don't normally associate with porn. Thighs, shoulders, a lot of touching each other in a way that seemed to indicate they each genuinely wanted each other to enjoy themselves. On top of that, this woman actually appeared to be trying to come, making sure her clit was stimulated, with only the slightest bit of normal, over-the-top, porny cooing with every thrust (you know, "ooh, ahh, ooh, unhh, ooh").
And then this happened.
Right at the moment where it seemed she was naturally about to come, he pulled out, came on her back, AND SHE JUST KEPT GOING.
Look, guys. Most of you know how vaginas work, and I think we can agree: that is not how vaginas work. Ladies, you ever been just about to come, stopped stimulation entirely and just barreled through?? Yeah, didn't think so. And then my head exploded.
Just had a shocking and kind of embarrassing revelation: female porn stars, are you expected to have a real orgasm on set?
— Violet+Rye (@UCAppetites) March 9, 2013
Shocking because, whoa, but embarrassing because I legitimately don't know the answer and didn't really think of it before??
— Violet+Rye (@UCAppetites) March 9, 2013
Obviously male actors are really coming, but do porn producers actually care if their actresses' orgasms are real or fake? Someone help!
— Violet+Rye (@UCAppetites) March 9, 2013
Lots of you were really nice in trying to talk me down off the ledge, but the damage was done. Illusions shattered forever.
And look, I'm not an idiot, I understand that porn is not real life (I mean, obviously, that is basically what this whole blog is about). But I guess that being in a relationship where my mate is obsessed with me having an orgasm, I got used to thinking that's how other people feel. That the point of watching porn is to see two people fuck and eventually come?
I have obviously long understood that many things -- from the positions, to the ridiculous faces, to the body parts, to the storyline -- in porn are fake. But look, this is the business of sex. And for better or for worse, sex only has two potential reasons for happening: procreation and orgasms. So, if neither of those are taking place on the set of mainstream porn, what are we really watching? What are we really doing? And what does that really say about what we jerk off to?
In straight porn, the "money shot" is, like, everything. Most straight porn is targeted toward men. So, by the transitive property (or whatever), what porn producers are telling us is that straight men are most turned on by watching other straight men come? My brain feels like a pretzel.
And then, blessedly, video number three. "Decidedly not pro," Rye said, "but there is some good stuff here." MAN, was he right.
(Click here for the full video.) Look. I know this screengrab is crooked. This video is crooked. They knock over a water bottle in the beginning. They giggle. He is wearing a condom. They kiss.
This third video is the absolute polar opposite of the second video, and somehow, just knowing that it existed out in the world helped put out the fire in my brain.
She swivels her hips around his cock, and her boobs are so nice, his arms so strong and lovely to look at -- and then she turns around and they just grab onto each other like getting each other off is the only important thing in this world.
THAT is what sex is about. And THAT by the fucking transitive property, or whatever, is what porn should be about. RIGHT?
Phew. Thanks for letting me yell all that at you.
(Click here for the full video.) Look. I know this screengrab is crooked. This video is crooked. They knock over a water bottle in the beginning. They giggle. He is wearing a condom. They kiss.
This third video is the absolute polar opposite of the second video, and somehow, just knowing that it existed out in the world helped put out the fire in my brain.
She swivels her hips around his cock, and her boobs are so nice, his arms so strong and lovely to look at -- and then she turns around and they just grab onto each other like getting each other off is the only important thing in this world.
THAT is what sex is about. And THAT by the fucking transitive property, or whatever, is what porn should be about. RIGHT?
Phew. Thanks for letting me yell all that at you.
I appreciate your yelling:)
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more that the last video IS what sex is about. It's very hot and realistic and therefore fantastic. I do not believe that is what porn will ever be though. I think that the industry or business of adult entertainment, at least the "porn" version of adult entertainment, has come to make the word "porn" synonymous with what you find in mass marketed pornography. The unfortunate reality is that with the ease of access to said "porn," boys are coming to believe that all sex should be that way, and that their fantasies should be that way. What this means for women is probably even more troubling to me. I imagine that some girls think that they are expected to act the way that pornstars do. As you have so eloquently expressed, having a man dedicated to making you orgasm is something very very special, and unfortunately something that is not encouraged by the industry. All of this is a disturbing reality, but one that I do not think will change for some time.
I do think that sites as makelovenotporn and the multitude of the blogs such as yours have started would could be a movement of sorts to slowly turn the tide to more realistic sex, or at least develop a noticeable niche in the adult entertainment/education business.
Just my thoughts.
-Rob
Thanks for weighing in, Rob! And you are absolutely right, porn has become completely synonymous with something that a lot of us will never be able to find sexy.
DeleteThis is, like you said, precisely the reason we wanted to be involved with MLNP, especially because if our dear friend Cindy Gallop is correct (and I tend to believe she is), and porn is our de facto sex education, I'd like that education to include enjoyment for both partners, not just the one coming on the other one's back.
I guess the reason this lightning bolt hit me so hard yesterday is that I am a woman who spends a lot of time thinking about porn from a consumer's standpoint, but also from a producer's standpoint. The idea that someone who thinks so much about the differences between mainstream porn and real sex videos could have only just realized that no one cares if female porn stars are actually orgasming really shocked me. I know that no one really fucks like that, I know that no one really comes like that, it indicates that porn is less about sex and more about what we're expecting the performance of porn to look like.
And, once again, my brain is a pretzel. ; )
- Violet
Goodness, this whole thing makes my brain feel like a pretzel too!! Most 'ordinary' porn bores me because it bears no resemblance to anything I want to do or would be physically capable of! I have to admit I've never thought about whether the women are really coming, kind of sad really because I don't think anyone thinks about that, then that transfers into real life and so on..... I agree though that mlnp & you guys have the right philosophy!
ReplyDeletePRETZEL BRAINS ALL AROUND! And yeah, this trend just helps perpetuate shitty sex into the real world and on and on and on. We're hoping to make a little dent in how that works. Hopefully it will affect a few people (and get them off in the meantime).
Delete-Rye
I really enjoyed this post. And I love all three videos (for various reasons, be it hot sex or laughing fodder haha)
ReplyDeleteThe first video, she is so adorably sleepy? relaxed? Content and comfortable with that cock for sure. And those skills are wonderful, she is -well- acquainted there. I felt bad though, because all I could focus on was her huge forehead. FML. Who even does that??
me.
HA HA HA HA! Honesty is the best policy, even if instead of her unreal skills, you notice nothing but forehead. Ha ha! Eyes on the prize, Visible!
ReplyDelete-Rye
Have you read Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema?" It's a 1975 feminist and quasi-psychoanalytical investigation of the acting of "looking" that film asks us to do. It's definitely worth a glance if you've never read it.
ReplyDeleteMainstream porn operates on principles that look a lot like Mulvey's theory of the gaze. The pornographic camera is a stand-in for the male act of looking and thereby possessing. The people on camera, regardless of whatever pleasure they take in one another, fuck for the pleasure of the viewer. And more troublingly, the viewer's looking is an act of ownership and control. Porn is more complicated than standard cinema because it also enacts a male fantasy. The male porn star in the scene stands in for the viewer's body. The male doing the watching imagines himself in the scene by appropriating the male body in it. The presence of the female orgasm is irrelevant (again, let me stress that I'm talking very generally about mainstream porn here--there are good (and necessary) exceptions). The pleasure of the female is always presented in relation to the desire of the male. Her orgasm belongs to him in the sense that he projects himself onto the male body in the scene and imagines himself as the cause of the orgasm.
The female orgasm functions as a marker for male performance. It reinforces male control over the female body (squirt porn is the sort of more extreme extension of this in which orgasm is accompanied by what appears to be a loss of control over bodily function). Mainstream pornographic interest in female orgasms is driven in large part by the marketability of male fantasies of sexual dominance. "She had an orgasm" really means "I made her orgasm." It is a fantasy of male sexual performance, not female sexual pleasure.
The "money shot" reproduces this same fantasy. It subverts the ostensible purpose of sexual intercourse (procreation) and renders visible its pure-pleasure principle. Pornographic sex is not "we are having sex in order to procreate together" which gives agency to both participants, but rather "we are having sex because I (the man) desire it." The act of cumming on the female body also marks that body in all sorts of ways that are troubling to think too deeply about.
It took us a while to respond to this, mostly because it's just a big YES all over the place. We really appreciate the in-depth analysis of this issue and the time you took to craft the response. All we can really do is agree with you in the most FUCK YEAH sense.
Delete-Rye
Yup, the first video is pretty impressive, on the account that she just takes that whole thing in (damn!), as well as the guy never comes. I mean I have a tough time getting off from a blowjob only, but wow, this guy was practically determined. I do wonder however, how much difference it would have made if he had stopped fucking around with the stupid camera. They invented tripods and the like for a reason. This was the reason. (Ok, maybe it wasn't this exact reason, but still.)
ReplyDeleteThat second video, those two are really good looking, but the best thing I liked in that video was the shower they were in. I thought she might get off (I was foolishly hopeful), but it sounded enhanced at best, fake at worst.
In the third, oh damn. Yeah. That's sexy time like it should be (except he could have taken the extra 4 seconds to remove his socks). They seem interested in making the other person get off. Love it.
Ditto, ditto, ditto!
DeleteAnd we don't totally agree with the tripod, since we make our videos with a lot of handheld camera. It's just that we don't only focus on what the camera gets, because after all, we're in it to come!
-Rye