NEW YORK—The mainstreaming of porn is now a cliché, a meme in its own right, but it still manages to intrigue us when we see it played out in the pages of a stalwart like New York Magazine, which just published a thoughtful look at the way in which porn has integrated itself into the lives of 20 couples. Nothing too earth shattering is revealed, but the 20 tales, though abbreviated in length, make for an interesting read, if only to remind us how differently—that is to say, individually—each of us approaches pornography.
Researched and written by Meaghan Winter, who specifically asked the couples how they discuss porn with their dates and partners, "What Porn Means to Us" actually delivers on its headline, and also with the subheads introducing each couple's story, such as "Porn is fantasy," "Porn is liberating," Porn is a substitute," "Porn is abstract" and "Porn is threatening," to name a few.
In a snippet from one couple's story, titled "Porn is disquieting," Winter writes, "Ava could feel Gabriel’s attention slip away when he thought about porn during sex. She felt porn’s 'constant presence because it’d formed his sexuality.' When she inadvertently saw an ad picturing a gyrating woman on his computer 'it felt so disgusting.' She says she’s grateful Gabriel was honest with her. He says he wishes she’d wanted to talk more about it."
The narratives are brief, a few hundred words at most for each, but combined they are more affecting than one might expect. It turns out that as universal and mundane a subject as porn is, for many people it remains or has become something that actually affects their lives for better and worse, and about which they have strong feelings.
Indeed, the idea for the article came to Winter from unexpected source. "A man I was dating told me that he liked watching anime scenes of sea creatures raping schoolgirls with their tentacles,' she wrote. "His arousal bothered him. I was surprised to discover that it didn’t bother me, but my live-and-let-live attitude gave me pause: Was I colluding with misogyny?"
Winter actually saved the number 20 slot for her own story, titled Porn is fleeting. "Soon after he told me he liked tentacle porn," she wrote, "my ex and I watched some together, fully clothed and eating macaroni and cheese for lunch. He narrated and moralized, as if I needed help understanding what the scenes meant. Yesterday I called to ask if he remembered that afternoon. “There’s no way we weren’t joking around,” he said, “I never would have thought you’d really like that … I know we talked about my guilt … the ultimate part of the scene is when a girl is forced to come to having her civility stripped.” He repeated that his “very, very brief, maybe two-week-long” penchant for anime tentacles has long passed. But it’ll be a long time before I forget that afternoon. Rarely has a man invited me to sit next to him to look at something that makes him so uncomfortable with himself. I wish it could’ve happened more often, with him and with others."
