You know I’m the type of guy who doesn’t have a problem criticizing the things I care about. The world’s not a mess because people are too reflective and problems are being chronically over-thought. Of course all that critiquing can leave people wondering where I stand (look at my trousers and you’ll see where I stand darling. Mmmmn). Truth is I think porn’s pretty awesome. Here are ten reasons why:
Great sex
I wasn’t alive in the 50’s and 60’s and really only qualified as a person in the late 80’s. By the time my junk was ripe, porn was a major cultural force (though hardcore was effectively illegal here in the UK until 1999).
Thanks to porn I’ve never been with someone who thought blowjobs were unnatural, sex could only take place with the lights off or who thought a goat with socks on its hooves couldn’t be trained to do that shit. Until the porn seeing other people have sex was a serious effort, and getting an idea of what other people did sexually was mostly guess-work (which is why people lined up to read the Kinsey Report).
Porn’s given us a universal bedroom we can all peek into, changing sex permanently and for the better.
Sexual liberation
I don’t mean the effects of feminism (though without the Women’s Liberation movement many of the people making ‘loops’ in the 70’s wouldn’t have had reasons to believe they were challenging convention instead of simply prostituting themselves). Thanks to porn people can explore their sexual identity in private without fear of an ass kicking or social humiliation. A teenager can see explicit material, even if their school runs an ‘abstinence only’ sexual (mis?)education program, the only place to buy porn for a hundred miles is the 7-11 (which has Playboy), and they think they might be gay.
The advancement of women
Don’t laugh. Without porn how many ex-junkies from broken homes would be running business empires and buying planes? Before the internet sex-work meant a career that ended when your looks faded and zero security. Websites have allowed women to bypass the establishment and gain control of their careers. Money is power, and porn’s funneled it to smart women who previously enriched other people and then faded away.
The modern internet
Despite the lies of Amazon’s evil patent attorneys, the vast online books-movies-shit-we’ll-sell-anything store didn’t invent e-commerce. The affiliate program, video streaming, voice-over-IP, compression technology and online credit-card processing were all pioneered by pornographers. PayPal was built on porn (they only stopped processing for porn sites in June 2003) and credit card companies still rely on the aggressive fraud porn-sites attract to hone the tools they use to keep mainstream sites secure (if you’re not constantly exposing your systems to fraud you can’t fight it effectively because you don’t know what it looks like.) If you’re thinking of buying a phone you can watch TV on, thank the pornographers who worked out how to make it work.
Deep throat blowjobs
As unnecessary and utterly desirable as a McLaren F1 loaded with you, Nella, Kyla Cole and an English-Czech dictionary – the world is better for them. Before Deep Throat they were the sole preserve of rumors, circus folk and Hell’s Angels initiation ceremonies. Now anyone who wants to can learn to give head without choking (it’s not all about receiving, not gagging’s a huge bonus for a schlong-ingestee) and penis owners get to watch a trick that Siegfried and Roy have yet to perform. On stage.
Decent plastic surgery
Any decent surgeon will tell you that women check out porn-stars before getting work done and often show up asking for stuff they’ve seen. They’ll also tell you that if your boobs cost less than five grand a side you may as well just pad your bra with mince and start crying now. Unlike most women (and few male performers are getting significant work done) porn pros need to look good in order to eat and demand the best. Where else can you meet people who’ve had nine sets of implants in less than a decade? They are the Mercury Astronauts of plastic surgery procedures pushing the frontiers for mankind. Movie stars cannot be relied upon to maintain standards.
HBO
The Home Box Office channel produces some of the best long-form drama on the planet and it’s not cheap. Rome, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and similar shows cost millions an episode which means HBO can’t afford to run 24 hrs of original drama a day. In fact HBO can’t afford to run one hour of original drama a day.
The shortfall is made up by their documentary unit, who stock the channel with content that’s compelling enough to keep people paying a monthly subscription and stands up to being endlessly repeated. What can you make a ‘documentary’ about that people will watch 20 times without complaining? I GOT IT! Taxicab Confessions, Kim Catrall’s Sexual Intelligence, Pimps Up Ho’s Down, Family Business – it’s all softcore porn and it pays for the Sopranos. You’re welcome.
Free speech
The vanguard of First Amendment law in the US work is the defense of pornography. While even idiots realize that stepping on political opinions they don’t like endangers their own, many people are more than happy to ‘clamp down’ on obscenity without thought for the consequences. Provocatively named, badly written laws like The Child Online Protection Act and PROTECT do harm far beyond the jizz-bizz, but the people who risk jail time and spend millions fighting them are pornographers.
Even companies trying to extort licensing fees on old patents (i.e. they’ll claim Windows Media Player contains an idea they hold a patent on and attempt to charge users a fee for use of ‘their’ technology) chase pornographers first. Every time a pornographer beats back legal insanity we all win.
Education
For all the bad, cheesy, unreal gonzo stunt-sex in porn there’s also a huge amount to learn from watching other people fuck. Everyone born since 1980 knows that men are supposed to last longer than 12 seconds (15’s fine guys) and that using your hands during oral sex isn’t ‘cheating’ (unless you’re using them to cover your partners eyes while the dog handles it).
Most people today see porn before they experience another person sexually themselves and whatever its flaws, the reality of hardcore and its lack of impossible glamour, is a far truer representation of sex than the magazines packed with women whose genitals have been airbrushed-out which prior generations had to suffer.
The weather
That’s right, aerosolized jizm combats global warming (I can’t prove this but it’s a strong hunch).
