Porn: The sexual teacher of the last generations

Pornography as the new teacher of sexuality…

I remember being a young girl, the first time I masturbated in front of a computer screen. We only had one computer at home, so I had to be careful and alone when doing it.

While pornography, with its intense depictions of sex, is nothing new, how we interact with it after the millennium is. Today, you don’t have to worry about collecting money from your parents and asking your friend over 18 to buy you a Playboy or Penthouse magazine.

The digital age has made it possible to get every type of pornography imaginable, for free, in a matter of seconds. It is therefore worth examining whether, as a generation raised in the glitter of internet porn, younger generations have related to their sexuality in fundamentally different ways.

The sexuality “teacher” at hand

“I was just trying to figure out how things would work out,” a millennial customer tells me. Most of the other kids at my school were virgins when we watched Xtube and Brazzers fill in the blanks left by school sex education programs.

“Pornography showed me what sex could be” and if I had any questions, the internet was there to answer.

If you watch any porn scene, there is the guy who sticks his penis in his partner’s vagina a bunch of times, and she just moans and screams … and then when you’re in bed with a real girl, you realize that things are a way more different.

Female actresses in straight porn are notoriously vocal, expressing satisfaction with their scene partners in exaggerated ways. While this is certainly a choice encouraged by directors, it can foster unrealistic expectations of sexual response.

It is in this capacity that online pornography can become a dangerous tool, a negligent educator feeding its viewer’s false descriptions of sex.

Young people naturally internalize what they see, especially if it is the only action they know. This can send the message that this type of behavior is acceptable without consent and, worse, that women expect it.

Who is porn made for?

Most of the videos seem to favor the fantasies of one gender over the other, and the women act as a vessel for the satisfaction of their male partners. In mainstream pornography, it is not unusual to see an actress choke on the actor’s penis while he yells “dirty whore” among other dirty expressions.

The artists involved likely planned this exchange, and this behavior would be fine if consent was reiterated on screen. However, it almost never is. And it is not likely that a young man, with an erection in hand while he watches this interaction on his laptop, is going to consider under judgment whether or not what he sees is correct, he just wants instant satisfaction.

If this is the case, is it possible that pornography is conditioning a generation of boys to believe that this dynamic is the norm and that a generation of girls expect it?

While not all porn features male-favored circumstances, female-centric content is less popular with male viewers.

But not everything is bad in pornography

For a generation going through puberty with a monitor available, the discovery of pornography often coincides with the discoveries of our bodies: to openly condemn pornography is to ignore a vital component of the sexual development of the new generations.

For many now, the erotic exploration begins in front of a computer or cell phone screen; our lust acting as a compass as we navigate the hidden depths of the world web. This demystified sex introduces many to future problems that they will have to face, and in some cases, it also helps a lot to discover their sexuality and for some, even their sexual orientation.

While older generations (and even some of our own ranks of age) will never tire of labeling today’s youth as emotionally stunted, it seems that much of what this generation craves sexually is the truths of real-life sex. : messy and clumsy intimacy as we have all experienced at the beginning of our sexual lives, at least while they get the experience that only time gives.