At first glance, it is easy to make the mistake that romance is the only part of love Hollywood has murdered with their unattainable standard of expectations and happily ever after endings where majority of people we know in long-term relationships appear to be far from happy. But guess what, the media also got to sex, and especially for women, this is not good news.
Unfortunately, the
pornographic industry and erotica fiction are the two major media
influencers on how we think of sex as a society; erotica fiction being
targeted towards women and porn for men. This is not to say men haven’t
read 50 Shades of Grey or women aren’t burning data on Pornhub. Just
saying in general, men are more notorious for watching sex and women for
reading about it.
Marshal McLuhan,
Canadian philosopher on communication theory, was not far from the truth
when he suggested that the effect of a medium is incidental. Just from
the nature of watching porn it makes us think of sex as a performance
even without our being aware of it. It is acted to look good for the
audience, and not to feel good for the parties involved. Reading on the
other hand involves our imagination and with a backdrop story and lack
of visuals, we have to think of feelings attached to the sex, which
produces the resulting pleasure.
The
result of this divide is that while women think of sex as an act with
pleasure at the center, men think of it like a performance (or just
think to cum quick and roll over). When a woman is lucky enough to
escape an absolutely selfish lover, she faces the problem of the sex
performer more worried of how his performance goes than how much
pleasure she gets. You know that guy that will try to change position
ten times in one session without being aware that a woman’s likelihood
to orgasm goes back to square one every time you break momentum. Or the
guy that has seen a dude nibble on the clit in a porn film and will near
enough circumcise you if you let him anywhere near your clitoris with
his head. Women are also guilty of the performance problem when it comes
to giving fellatio. All that deep throating and other balls cupping are
just side orders. The smallest research will tell you the tip should be
your place of focus. But this isn’t an article about sex education
(kinda).
To rethink sex as something
about pleasure is very important in any sexually active relationship and
requires open communication about the act between couples. This can be a
bit problematic because suggestions of changes to sexual behavior can
easily be mistaken as criticism, which doesn’t go down well with either
gender. I guess we have to ask ourselves if we rather retain the image
of being sex gods and goddesses in our head, or open up to development
by communicating our needs.
Do you
have an experience of a sex performer or self-serving pleasure monger?
Well tell us something about it in the comments section.
Photo Credit: Dreamstime | Bryan Creely
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