Passionate
Consumption
of Porn
The modern paths to pornographic discovery resemble Baudelaire’s
intellectual ideal of the flâneur, the passionate spectator,
who strolls down the boulevards of Paris, wandering from one
sensory delight to another, a solitary, gifted with an active
imagination, ceaselessly journeying.
Cruising Pornoland
Of course, the global village of ceaseless cyber-porn is less
like 19th-century Paris and more like 1980s Times Square on PCP.
Even jaded consumers may momentarily be repulsed. Everyone,
even prudes, may find themselves mesmerized with freakish
curiosity, uncomfortable arousal or both.
Although your curiosity is piqued, your actions are mostly
passive; while the people on the screen perform extraordinary
physical feats, the viewer may be immobile, registering approval
or disgust with a click or flick of the wrist.
For all the attention paid to the erotic entertainment
we look for on purpose (the most searched-for porn terms
in America are lesbian and teen ), the map of our less
directed eroticised wanderings is equally revealing.
The porn flâneur takes pleasure in his or her stroll.
This is Balzac’s “gastronomy of the eye,” the opportunity
“to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of
joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies.”
“I keep accidentally watching porn where girls drink their
own pee,” a straight male friend lamented. “I don’t know if
it’s a trend or if I’m using websites that have more of that.
By the way, Urotherapy is a traditional therapy of using
your urine to massage into skin, gums or drinking it.
Another friend made a masochistic game out of challenging himself
to see what sorts of horrible images he could stand yet still achieve
orgasm. It seemed to have the opposite effect. Wasn’t he creating
some sort of Pavlovian sexual-depravity response in himself?
And a female porn enthusiast who prefers “gentle girly videos”
said she took an opposite approach to the onslaught of stimuli,
always pulling in the edges of her web browser when watching
videos, so the ads get cropped off the screen.
“Some of that stuff is so gross. It’s distracting.”
But most of us do watch, even if only out of the corners
of our eyes. The fact that paid porn companies can make
any money advertising on websites that offer nearly
identical content for free (diminished as their earnings
may be) is testament to the suggestive power of flânerie.
What kinds of porn do women search for?
To cope with all the turn-offs lurking in porn clips, women have
developed an arsenal of strategies. They chose their search terms t
o specifically avoid negative content.
Some search for “amateur porn” to avoid staged
sex and find depictions of real pleasure.
Some heterosexual women reported searching for
“queer porn” in an effort to avoid porn stereotypes.
Some women prefer watching porn featuring male
partners: “I think it’s because if I see this
busty blonde with nothing wrong on her body, I
realise it’s never going to be me, so why watch?”