Check out http://www.nerve.com/voicebox/MenOnPorn/ to read what Buttman John Stagliano has to say about pornography and its influences on the adolescent.
According to nerve.com, "It's safe to say the majority of people consuming porn are male. Men and visual pornography have a long and tight relationship. For decades, American boys have looked at 'girlie magazines' during formative periods of their sexual development, and ever since porn films infiltrated hotel chains across the country, they too have reached a mainstream audience. There is little doubt that these images affect heterosexual male desire in subtle ways - the cropped body hair of porn models, for instance, is preferred by many men - but there is more controversy over whether these images encourage men to objectify or mistreat women.
"Though most American men have consumed, we would wager that the great bulk of them also feel a sense of shame over it, and a broader sense of guilt over the carnality of male desire. Now, with porn so easily accessible and prevalent on the Internet and with more and more sexually explicit images (deemed pornographic by some) being used to sell products, these issues are particularly resonant. Should the porn go? Should the shame go? Does porn have positive effects or only negative ones?"
Some of those questions were addressed to a panel of men including Stagliano. They included Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight, Perv - A Love Story and the cult-classic porno Cafe Flesh; Ian Gittler, author and photographer of Pornstar; Matt Labash, staff writer at the Weekly Standard; Stagliano, and Rufus Griscom, CEO and cofounder of Nerve.com.
Question 1: Puberty and Porn Go Great Together
"Someone once remarked that in adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography." - Edmund White paraphrasing Edward Albee
"One of the arguments I would bring against pornography, especially the pornography of my adolescence, is that it encourages fantasy and romance." - Norman Mailer.
The panel was asked to describe their first experience with pornographic material, considering the following: Is porn consumption a rite of passage for American males? At a young age, do pornographic images naturally appeal to a deep-seated attraction to not just the female form, but to a particular female form (long hair, gravity-defying breasts, trimmed pubic hair), or do they create a highly specific set of appetites that are not natural?
John Stagliano: "My first experience with porno was when I found a deck of playing cards that belonged to my father. The back of each card featured an image of a woman wearing only a mink stole. Her large round breasts were almost completely exposed; the fur only covered a little more than the nipple of each breast. I was perhaps seven, eight or nine at the time. I remember this incredibly good feeling in my groin area. I snuck one of the cards out of the deck and looked at it often. I wasn't masturbating yet, in fact I had no idea what I was feeling, only that it was similar to what I felt when my mother tucked me in at night and I caught a glimpse down her nightgown of her large breasts as she leaned over me.
"When I was a little older I noticed that I got the same feeling when I saw a woman with a round ass in tight pants at the local shopping mall. After that I sought out these images in magazines like Photoplay or Pageant. They were only mildly risqué but they were the only ones available to me at the age of twelve. I started masturbating to these images. I remember seeing a layout of Raquel Welch in a bikini back in 1965 in one of these magazines; at thirteen it was the most incredible thing I had ever seen in my life up until that point.
"I think most young boys experience something like what I felt when they first see these kind of images. They are motivated to seek out more and masturbate to them. It's a primal urge, just like hunger. It's not something learned. It's something we are irresistibly and inexplicably drawn to. Is this a rite of passage for a youth? That is, is it something that is experienced, then dropped when a young man starts having sex with women? I think all men to some extent enjoy these images throughout their lives. Whether or not someone chooses to consume pornographic images when other sources of sexual arousal are available depends on how high a sex drive he has innately. In my experience, the men who get into the adult film business all have a very high sex drive and pursue sexual arousal more than the average male. I've known many adult stars who not only fuck a lot of women, but who also masturbate often to porno. However, I've talked to some men who seem to be satisfied just having sex with a women every once in a while; they only consume porno when they haven't had sex in a long time. We're all born different.
"The question about whether a young man's sexual responses are somehow learned through exposure to certain types of images or are innate has been dealt with extensively in the popular press over the last several years. All the studies and reports I've seen support the conclusion that a man's response to women sexually is innate. It is shaped by evolution and it is a response to the perceived reproductive value of a woman. I've seen no new studies or writing of any kind in the last fifteen years that proposes male sexual response is determined or influenced by the images they are exposed to in youth. We look at and get aroused by certain pictures- ones that we choose to look at. The choice is made by our dicks, not by someone telling us that this is supposed to turn us on. Either it does or it doesn't and this response happens instantly. No amount of exposure to a certain type of image is going to make that type of image more sexually arousing to anyone. If a gay man looks at a nude female and is not turned on, is this because no one told him he was supposed to be aroused by this?
[Gene sez link on to nerve.com to follow the continuation of a most engrossing debate]
