What you say doesn’t have to be about porn specifically: in fact, it’s more of the general stuff I’m hearing said in here about self-esteem, about figuring out limits, boundaries and expectations that I think could be really valuable to our younger readers.

They get some of this from me, but I’m only one perspective of SUCH a varied array, that I just would love to offer them some of what y’all have been sharing here.

My first experience with explicit material was science fiction (Robert Heinlein), a fact which probably gave me a better grounding than most other things…for one thing, the woman was completely a sovereign being, choosing, or not to have sex as she wanted, while the male was free to do the same.

Never the less, by the time I reached high school (1998-2002) I had swallowed a bunch of cultural conditioning without thought, about the primacy of heterosexual relationships, the Virgin/Whore dichotomy, and a host of other related issues… there was, and I suspect, still is, the double standard that in order to be cool, a girl had to be sexual, but if she was “too” sexual, she was then a slut, and the most reviled (well, after the bi-sexuals) person in the school. At the same time that we were being gathered in the cafeteria to sign virginity pledges, (yes, a school mandated assembly, where one was not explicitly required to sign one, but strongly encouraged to. I declined, mostly out of an early feminist impulse not to have any religious authority dictate what I would or would not do with my sexuality,) girls were exchanging tips on giving blowjobs and boys were talking about having sex every weekend. There was even a formula for how long one should date before having sex (three months) to prove that the guy was not just out to have sex. The idea of a girl wanting to have sex was nonexistent in this conversation.

My close girl friends, on the other hand, explicitly talked about our sex drives, including masturbation advice and tips, and eventually, supplying each other with condoms and rudiments of safer sex info. My fist porn viewing was at a sleepover as a freshman with my girl friends. I recall pretending to be asleep, watching through slitted lids, because while I was embarrassed by the sight of a naked man (the first erect penis ever!) I was intensely interested in the portrayal of sex, and masturbation. But there was such an air of unreality about it! My girlfriends were discussing how one would masturbate with long nails, and deciding that it was overrated, and the one of us who had had sex was critiquing the whole scene. We knew it was fake and thus could not take it seriously.
So porn never bothered me, even though it certainly didn’t get me off…

But when I fell head over heels for a traditional “very bad idea boy whom my mother hated” ™ all of my knowledge went out the window. I was a nervous and completely ignorant virgin. It was the Pygmalion story… he made me into the girl he wanted, but I didn’t care, because I was finally having sex, and enjoying the heck out of it. But I was aware of the very strict list of things that were ok to do, and what was not, and having to try to fit my burgeoning sexuality into this mold. One of these things was desiring other men, which merely meant that I spent a few years going around his back and feeling guilty… and gradually I felt more and more guilty and used by sex, and it still took me 6 months after the night he raped me to leave for good.
While porn did not have much to do any of this, there were elements of the same desires to control each others sexuality into something oriented solely around each other. And while I got over it, he would spend huge amounts of time accusing me of sleeping with other men. The idea that I wanted to buy a vibrator, or spent time masturbating after he would drop my back home after sex was profoundly threatening to him. The emphasis became increasingly focused on his satisfaction, and what he wanted to do. And I was convinced that this was the way it was supposed to work. I was supposed to “satisfy” my (note the possessive use) boyfriend.

This left me with a host of issues surrounding my ability to choose to have sex or say no, a fear of rejection for any “kinky” thoughts, and a supreme distaste for monogamy, all of which I’m still working through to this day.

This conversation has reminded me how vulnerable my younger self was to what the man in her life told her about herself, and how this shaped, and as much as I hate to admit it, continues to shape my world view, and how lucky I was to have friends that eventually pulled me out of the downward spiral that was that relationship.

It also makes me worry more and more about my youngest sister (now 13) and what she is getting out of the culture as she begins to become who she will be.

(Ladies and germs, my college roomie come home to roost.)

When I was little and first learning about sex, porn was always intriguing more than anything else. When I was old enough to be left alone, I would watch the scrambled channels and visit the sites I wasn’t supposed to and then quickly click the ‘erase history’ button. The excitement of ’sex’ outweighed the guilt.

I think that once I started becoming involved with monogamous relationships, my intrigue with sex and pornography started to dissipate. After reading all of your comments, I hate to admit it, but I was that girl that felt threatened when I caught my boyfriend watching pornography. A lot of it *was* the fact that I was just comparing myself to the women in the pictures and therefore thought that maybe he was unsatisfied with the way I looked, and another part of it was that I felt pornography shouldn’t have to play a part in a happy relationship. All the while, I secretly enjoyed looking at porn myself, but just refrained from it, because I felt tremendous guilt when I did - plus, if my parents caught me, I’d be toast.

So looking back, I think a lot of my reaction towards my boyfriend was just jealousy in a different form. Jealousy, because I wasn’t able to enjoy it like he was…because whenever I do watch it, there’s always something that ruins it for me - like the “moneyshot,” or the fact that there’s no way that I could ever relate to the women in porn (sexually, or otherwise), or that it’s just plain socially acceptable and understandable that men have this need to watch porn, but if a woman does it’s “weird,” or “she must really like sex,” or “she must just be gay.” And as far as I know, there isn’t much of a uniform when casting for male parts in pornographies - which makes the male cast more diverse and easier to identify with for men…whereas for women, it’s just a different story.

But when I learned about the fact that there was an entire feminist porn movement - like candida royale, or even nina hartley - people that were genuinely interested in opening the industry up to women, as well as genuinely interested in *sex* to begin with and not just wanting some quick cash - I got excited about watching it again. It became something that I didn’t have to feel guilty about watching because I’m constantly thinking about how bored the girls look, or how male dominated this or that scene is, or sigh and roll my eyes when the final facial comes (no pun intended.)

The fun, now, is being able to find the diamonds in the rough - and it’s hard. My boyfriend and I do notice that earlier porns are much easier to find. It seems like there wasn’t a uniform that the women had to wear - they’re unshaven, their boobs aren’t synthetic and the sex scenes are (usually) centered around *mutual* gratification - and this makes it seem more real. Some of them are even good movies, like the seven seductions of madame lau.

So I think that if pornography were a resource that was available to *everybody,* men and women, there wouldn’t be such a gigantic division of sexuality to begin with - and women might even stop feeling threatened by pornography as well, if they were able to enjoy it in the same manner as their partners. Anyway, I hope this all makes sense, as it was just me citing a couple of my run-ins with porn. Loved reading all of your comments - keep it going!

As a child of the internet, I’d had some exposure to porn before, but never really cared that much. I don’t remember a huge “eeewww” response or a fascination, merely the classic teenage “whatever” response when presented with images (yay, internet popups!). I do very much empathize with the whole “cool girl who is ok with porn” situation. I always had more male friends than female friends, and remember a few distinct times where I didn’t want them to think of me “as a girl” but just as another person - not necessarily as a guy, but not as a girl. Make sense?

Anyhow, one of my most distinct memories around porn was with the lad I dated in high school. I seriously need to call him up and lavish him with compliments, because he was the BEST introduction to partnersex and relationships I could have asked for.

He and I had talked about porn a few times. I was about 16, he was about 17. I remember him telling me that the first porn he remembered he drew on the computer himself (he’s a crazy-smart computer programmer, so that was extra amusing). After we’d become sexually active (after a year-long slow exploration of each other’s bodies - you can tell why I liked this boy, mmm?) he brought a sheet of paper over to my place one day. On it he’d printed out images, some from porn sites, of positions he’d like to try in our sex life. I was pretty psyched about it. So, in affect, my first situation with pornographic images that I really sat down and LOOKED at were instructional and a positive addition to my sex life. It actually really helped as a dialogue-opener for us on our likes and dislikes.

I think this had a big impact on how I thought of porn after that. Because my boyfriend didn’t have any guilt or shame about the images that he consumed, because he brought porn in as a positive, non-competitive addition to our intimacy, because I’d already grew up “proving” that I was more ok with boy things than girl things (I hated shopping more because of the “girliness” of it than the actual act), I think I had a pretty positive introduction to the idea of porn.

It’s interesting - I consumed porn pretty blithly for years. Finding images that I LIKED was few and far between, but I did my own scouring trying to find them. Often, though, I’d find myself turned on by images that I didn’t find attractive, per se. I still don’t really know what to think about this, though I’ve been mulling over it for a bit. I do know I NEVER enjoyed looking at men in porn. This has a lot to do with my own sexuality, but honestly, men in porn? Not so much. I think what I was hunting for much of the time was dyke porn, not that girl-on-girl stuff. Now as I’m looking at my erotic consumption (and as my feminist worldview is expanding) I’ve become more critical. It looks like I’m going through the reverse of what a lot of these girls are experiencing - I’m going from “porn is totally fine and hot” to “well, I really need to think about this. Some of this isn’t ok” rather than “absolutely not!” to “well, maybe?”. Hell, though, I don’t even know if they’re going that direction.

I fall smack dab in the age range of folks we’re talking about (20), and I’m having an interesting time hearing what they’re saying (and this is my peers sometimes) but not /really/ having a shared experience there. It’s particularly complex because while I hear what they’re saying, I’ve always lived in pretty liberal communities, so it takes some perception shift to get it.

Blah, I’m rambling at this point and need to get myself up to Seattle. I’m really enjoying this dialogue - let’s keep it up!

When I got to university the next year, and finally had access to my own private computer with internet access I went to search out porn, hoping to find some that I felt represented something that I could enjoy, or something that seemed enjoyable for women in general. All the searches I did for “porn for women” just came up with more of the same– images in which I could not enjoy putting myself in the position of the woman at all.

It was the next year that I finally found Scarlet Letters, oh joy! I’d actually found it via Scarleteen, back when the old “Pink Slip” used to be on scarletletters.com. I forget the search that led me to Scarleteen/Pink Slip, but I remember it was nothing to do with pornography. And at last, I had found what I had been looking for. Looking back on it, I realise that I was looking for something with a very different purpose to the pornography that the young man/boy had told me about when I was 17. I never actually used any of the SL material for masturbation, nor anything from other sites in the femmerotic network. But what I liked about it, the reason that I looked at it every day for a while, was because AT LAST, here were women enjoying sex from their own perspective, without needing that absolute objectification I had been taught was this exaulted “male” way of enjoying sex. It empowered me to think about sexuality from my perspective, and helped me realise (without even realising that I was realising it ) that I didn’t NEED to let other people, particular men, dictate the way that I enjoyed my sexuality.

Of course, there are also additional problems in terms of representing sexuality in a patriarchal system, in that even our own desires can be dictated by a system that implicitly privileges male sexuality, but the fact is that finding SL at the age of 18-19 alterted me to the fact that I could at least START trying to define my sexuality for myself. While I may still struggle with aspects of my sexuality that seem to have been developed in response to this idea that I should be “serving” men, at least I know that it’s okay to NOT want that, and at least I know that not objectifying myself doesn’t equate to sexual repression.