Porn An Oral History

June 6, 2025 — Polly Barton

Table of Contents

Review

Review

I love an eye-catching, one-word title. “Porn” is about as good a one as you could think up, though at times I wondered if “Taboo” might be a more fitting title for Polly Barton’s exploration into the scandalous arts. Through interviews with 19 people, most of whom she already knew, the author reports more about societal expectation and anxiety than the specific “oral history” of the porn industry. What is common, what is kink? What is normal, problematic? At a few points, this question comes up: “Do we fuck this way because of porn, or does porn look like this because it’s how we fuck?”

A few themes stand out against all the differences in race, gender, orientation, and age. The sense that certain things are ‘taboo’ (and, sometimes, what a thrill these can be), the porn as educator, violence, and what men and women expect from one another in relationships.

Early in the book I started noticing the word “taboo” appearing unprompted, reliably, to the extent that I created an index (the word appears on pages 27, 37, 54, 89, 105, 213, 220, 257, 283, 293, (and, thematically, 308)). Some talk about their first experiences with porn, which one person describes as exciting and “a bit forbidden” (surely, this is the origin of the excitement?). Some talk about shame, quite frequently, but in different ways.

Alongside taboo, the interviewees often speak of porn as an educator – positively, and negatively. The depictions of violence, the programming of men to view pain as pleasure… These echo through many of the interviews, and where they are absent the space is just as noticeable. However, some describe porn as opening up entire avenues, teaching them things that they never would have known. #13 describes his religious upbringing and how it engendered within him an understanding that women simply did not desire sex (“women were supposed to be pure”). He describes how this went on to make the idea of women experiencing pleasure a taboo, and eventually programmed against depictions of violence in porn. How common is this? Does it offset, at all, the common violence in straight porn? (All of my money is on, “not common” and “no,” unfortunately.)

Despite the title, I found the “oral history” lacking, or at least misleading. We learn nothing of porn as an industry or practice (apart from some spurious claims uncited). What we learn, mostly, is a history of porn in the lives of these 19 people, and sometimes at (exhausting) length in that of the author. There is quite a bit of trauma exploration – sense of betrayal at discovering porn in a relationship, for example. Often, this revealed more about gender expectations and communication than it did about sexual practices.

I found some of the interviews remarkably without insight. Particularly the straight people, who seem so rigid in their ideas of what the other person in their relationship “should” do, almost never thinking that they should communicate with each other. I have a friend that has such little patience for relationship problems, “JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER,” she says!

One interviewee describes a few of their previous relationships as being variously pathetic (“Oh, you poor child” she says of one of them, “Aww, go work through your issues,”), and comes across as supremely condescending. It is perhaps no surprise that they’re insulted when one of their partners will not have a vulnerable conversation with them!

I felt shock at the stark difference between straight-identifying and variously queer-identifying people in their approach to relationships. In general, I would characterize the queer folks (11 of the 19 interviewed) as being more open, not necessarily to “non-traditional” (whatever that means) sex or porn, but in their communication in relationship. Where some of the women judge “all men” for watching porn (several of the straight-identifying women have exceptionally broad brushes by which to paint all men. One has this to say: “I was very angry, and felt like I was being forced by the world to not be with men because they’re all inept and incapable.” (p190)), and some of the (quite few) straight men appear as awful tropes (with the exception of the 80-year-old), the queer folks appear to have had to think quite a lot about these issues.

Perhaps I am being hard on these 19 acquaintances of the author, or overly kind to queer people as more thoughtful. That’s almost certainly not true. Though, when the world is fascinated by your sexual practices, maybe it forces you to think about them more, and perhaps at least these interviewees are approaching people with more empathy. Throughout the book, when people talk about what porn is saying about them (their bodies, their identities, their roles) to society in general, and how that makes them feel and interact with other people, that exploration is terribly interesting.

But talking about porn… Now I hang out with progressive feminist women, in a culture where it feels like the gender politics of porn are so atrocious. That’s the taboo, more than anything else.

(#1, page 19)

Yes, the gender politics shines throughout this book as the single most interesting dynamic. Aside from all the other problems that porn introduces to people (but particularly young people, and more particularly still young men), the gender roles are probably the most glaring. Multiple interviewees discuss the pornographic liaison of pain and pleasure, and how the distinction is actively obscured in straight porn.

(PB): Men’s bodies aren’t really shown, and it’s all about the women’s body, so that even when it’s not a point-of-view camera, it’s still the male gaze replicated by that third eye. Is seeing the actress in pain incompatible with being turned on?
(15): Oh, yes, it’s impossible. But I understand that for other people whose boundaries are blurred. That takes you into the whole arena of fetish and that’s something else. I don’t think the majority of people are into that. It’s interesting though: in fetish stuff, the boundaries of pain and pleasure are blurred, whereas in the mainstream pornography I’ve seen, that pain is constantly there, and that’s interpreted as pleasure. It’s not seen as painful. Do you know what I mean? It’s not really identifiably S and M, is it? It’s just part of the accepted sexual practice.

“It’s not seen as painful” — I wonder if that is the most harmful thing that pornography may be programming people towards. I was frequently surprised at the descriptions of straight pornography, and also the descriptions of straight men having sex with some of the interviewees. To the point that I wondered just how alienated I am from other men. The women in this book share very consistent reports, and the reports I found depressing.

I do not know the extent to which porn is “responsible” for these reports. I do think it is an educator, especially as (in the US), the State has abandoned teaching sex education. In the absence of guidance, people improvise. “How to give a blowjob” – what is a Google search now would have been a late night talk amongst friends years ago (at least for straight women, I’m not sure the closeted gay boy in Southern Illinois would have been chatting about this with anyone).

The stigma that we perpetuate around sex and “deviancy” (which, by Protestant definition, means having fun while having sex) is what allows porn to be the troublesome teacher it is.

What I’ve come to realize about porn over the course of these conversations is that what scares me the most about it - what I now believe has always scared me the most about it - is the way that the shame and the silence and the guilt and the awkwardness surrounding it, in combination with its compulsive and private nature, work to produce a sense of passivity, a lack of agency and responsibility, that come through on the rare occasions we do speak of it in any earnest way.

(page 352)

Barton’s interviews are compelling in their honesty and in their vulnerability. These conversations would be distinctly uncomfortable (at least to begin), and so it’s praiseworthy that Barton ventured here with these 19 people in all of their openness.

We are all performing all the time (which I joyously see remarked upon in several interviews), and sometimes that performance falls into tropes and old role expectations. Interrogation of those roles happens best in dialogue rather than silence.

If you are interested in a loose exploration of societal expectation as it relates to sex and relationships, this would be a good book to pick up. If you are looking specifically for a history of porn, that is some other book. Barton writes that she hopes to start conversations. I think that’s admirable, and this little book can do just that, if one is willing to approach it without too much judgement.

Demographics

| # | Gender | Sexuality | SexCollapse | Age | Rel Status | Page Range | | — | —— | ———– | ———– | ——— | ———- | ———- | | 2 | Man | Gay | Queer | Early 40s | S | 51-70 | | 3 | Man | Straight | Straight | 30s | LTR | 71-85 | | 5 | Man | Straight | Straight | Early 20s | S | 104-119 | | 10 | Man | Gay | Queer | 30s | S | 196-208 | | 11 | Man | Straight | Straight | 80s | LTR | 209-226 | | 13 | Man | Straight | Straight | Late 30s | LTR | 244-259 | | 14 | Man | Gay | Queer | Early 30s | S | 260-275 | | 17 | Man | Straight | Straight | Late 30s | S | 305-318 | | 19 | Man | Bi | Queer | 30s | LTR | 335-350 | | 6 | Other | Queer | Queer | Late 40s | LTR | 120-135 | | 1 | Woman | Straight | Straight | Late 30s | LTR | 33-50 | | 4 | Woman | Queer | Queer | 30s | LTR | 86-103 | | 7 | Woman | Questioning | Queer | 30s | LTR | 136-156 | | 8 | Woman | Queer | Queer | Late 20s | S | 157-175 | | 9 | Woman | Straight/Bi | Straight | Early 20s | S | 176-195 | | 12 | Woman | Pansexual | Queer | 30s | LTR | 227-243 | | 15 | Woman | Straight | Straight | Early 30s | LTR | 276-288 | | 16 | Woman | Questioning | Queer | Late 30s | S | 289-304 | | 18 | Woman | Bi | Queer | 30s | LTR | 319-334 |

#p30 - (PB) ‘Do we fuck this way because of porn, or does porn look like this because it’s how we fuck?’

p37 - (I) But talking about porn… Now I hang out with progressive feminist women, in a culture where it feels like the gender politics of porn are so atrocious. That’s the taboo, more than anything else. (TB: context is author discussing taboo against talking about porn, then talking about masturbating, interviewee points to the gender politics as the taboo).

p42 - (PB) When heterosexual women watch straight porn, who are they identifying with? (TB: interesting question for gay people who watch straight porn, too.)

p48 - (PB) The Right to Sex touches on profiles on Grindr and other gay male dating apps, and how it’s very common for men to specify ‘no Asians, no fats,’ in this very balls-out way. Of course, essentially the same thing happens in straight dating sites…

p53-54 - (I) Watching that porno was the first time I’d ever really seen erections and stuff, so I felt, Oh my God, this is really exciting, but also sort of scary and a bit forbidden. It felt aggressive, in a strange way. Frighteningly so. But I was really excited about it because I finally understood what people actually did when they had sex. …It was exciting, but it also felt really dark. … I remember feeling a bit sad too. As if there was nothing left to discover, almost.

p58-59 - (PB) That one makes me think about porn as information source. … I remember worrying about that kind of stuff when I was young: how do I give a hand-job? How do I give a blow-job? …so I’d get found out as a fraud or a saddo. (TB: On porn as an educator, but also on the shame of being expected to know something, but not knowing it.)

p66-67 - (I) I find it difficult when people casually talk about personal experiences of extreme sex. … People will tell stories about a certain person, a mutual friend or something. … Even if people say they’re just joking and they think it’s part of being queer… But I know I’m in the minority here. … (PB) What function is the darkness serving in [a club where people can have anonymous sex in dark rooms]? (I) Maybe the danger aspect? Maybe that’s part of the allure. I’m sure a lot of it is so you don’t have to face up to it. (TB: Emphasis mine. Fantasy vs. reality. What is hot in fantasy and what’s hot with someone else is a Venn diagram, not two circles. Also, what about the excitement of simple anonymous sex?)

p78 - (I) Then it becomes a question of who makes the porn and what power dynamics play out. Starting with a potted history - a personal one, but one that also takes in an aspect of the history of pornography on the internet… I’d say pornography is 10,000 times better and more ethical in terms of power dynamics than it has been. (TB: they are talking about the democratization of porn, easy access to produce and for people to make and sell their own without market infrastructure, e.g., via OnlyFans.)

p88 - (I) Then in the queer community, it’s almost the opposite. There’s this assumption that you’re going to be into porn, and there’s an assumption that there’s a specific type of porn that you’re into, which is that body-positive, naturalistic, Crash-Pad style, basically amateur… That’s just as alienating to me as people assuming that porn is for dudes and irrelevant to women.

p105 - (TB) This person (Five) is a straight man in his early 20s. On the second page, I’m already finding him relatively annoying.

p107 - (I) In regard to porn, even the taglines for porn are worded in a way that fantasizes violence: … and stuff. I do think that porn has created a fantasized ideal in people’s heads about sex, and the physicality can bleed into people’s lives.

p132 - (I) Others were very clearly not like that - some people were doing things that they wanted to try out because they’d seen them on TV and they weren’t nice things. Or they saw it that way. You can feel it. You can feel it in any situation when somebody is not seeing you as a human being. And that really sucks when you’re naked and you’re sucking their dick.

p143 - (I) What does gender look like in a post-patriarchal society…? That’s interesting. The question of how to own this stuff, to face it and do the sieving out so you can separate the power dynamic from the harmful stuff, is probably something the queer community and the kink community have worked through and dealt with. I feel as though everyone needs to go through that kind of thing. But I find it very hard to do that work, as a woman. (TB: idea that something/anything has been “worked through” and thus is done and finished.)

p145-146 - (TB: context for this note: (PB) and (I) discussing dissonance between ‘enlightened’ people and them going home and jerking off to distinctly unenlightened porn.) (PB): I don’t really watch much porn, deliberately, certainly not of the generic kind. … As if, intellectually I don’t want to be turned on by it, but on some animal level - (I): Why don’t you want to be turned on by it intellectually? (PB): Because it feels so aesthetically horrible to me a lot of the time. (I): Is that just shame around sex? (PB): No. I don’t think I feel embarrassed about being turned on by a - it sounds really ridiculous, but - a sex scene in an arty film, where it’s sensitively done… (I): You don’t feel embarrassed about that? (PB): I don’t feel embarrassed about that, no. But if it’s schlocky and badly done, then… (I): That’s just because you’ve got taste, and that’s coming out in your preferences… (PB): But I imagine that a lot of people that we think of as having ‘taste’ go home and jerk off to super tacky stuff. (I): I don’t know anyone who does that, though. But then I wouldn’t. (TB: they go back and forth for a while, then resume…) (PB):…in every relationship I’ve had with a man, the issue of porn has come up and I feel worried about whether or not they’re watching it. (I): Why does it bother you? (PB:) The idea of going out with a secret misogynist is scary. (TB: this is a super interesting exchange. What is being turned on, what parts of the brains are activated by it? Is it shameful to be turned on? What are our anxieties around porn consumption of the people in our lives, specifically in relationships, but also otherwise?)

p146 - (I) I don’t think it’s the case that all women outside of the kink community are naturally submissive or get off from being submissive, or that more men enjoy being dominant and that’s what turns them on about porn… (TB: If you accept a premise that, presumably all or most, men enjoy being dominant, do they enjoy it because they like it, or because society says they must? All of life is performance.)

p164 - (TB: I find this respondent/interviewee quite condescending and lacking insight. There are a few interactions on 164-165 that make me think they’re pretty sexist.) (PB): It sounds like you had those conversations with that ex about what you were both watching? (I): No. It would come up when related to specific acts. I discussed it with him after we broke up actually, because when I look back, I see signs in our sex that I think are a result of him watching too much porn, or being too reliant on it. Do you know what’s so funny: he even told me that he specifically didn’t talk to me about some stuff he watches because I once told him the story about that gang-rape discovery with that other ex, and after telling him, I said, ‘If you watch anything, ANYTHING, that isn’t feminist, don’t ever tell me because I’ll never look at you the same,’ and so he was hesitant to ever talk about it. When the feminism comes in it messes with it. That’s what’s sad - the conversation gets shut down. (TB: The feminism isn’t what killed that relationship. The speaker revealed porn-related trauma from a past relationship and set a hyperbolic boundary, phrased in a rather threatening way, and reaps exactly what they sow.)

p168 - (I) A huge worry for me when it comes to porn, especially with regard to my sister, is that it leaves nothing to be discovered, and that she’s straight in at the deep end.

p185 - (I) Gender is learned so young and it’s not like I wouldn’t at that age have known subconsciously about sexual desire and how people are allowed to express that, so it’s not like it couldn’t have been a learned thing at those ages, but I feel like there’s something more than the learned stuff. It’s not that I don’t like romantic sex as well, but there are whole worlds of other types of sex, other kinks, that aren’t interesting to me. So it does feel like there’s something about submissiveness specifically which I like. It’s coming from a place gender has interacted with of course, but feels like maybe it’s not.

p190 - (TB: I find this person super condescending too. Exchange…) (I): I can think of one partner who clearly was incredibly insecure and had a difficult relationship with porn and sex, and he would want to watch porn whilst having sex. And that’s obviously completely fine. (PB): Is it completely fine? (I): It is, but it wasn’t in this instance. I can see how hypothetically in certain situations, it would be. In this instance, I just felt, Oh, you poor child. I knew he was quite interested in me, that we were having a really nice time, and actually watching porn wouldn’t do anything for anyone, but his relationship with it was such that he needed it. I felt: Aww, go work through your issues. (…) (PB): A lot of my best friends are queer men, and I often find myself wondering why I don’t meet straight men who have this degree of awareness about this stuff. If you are in a relationship with a man, are you likely to talk to them about porn and feel curious about their consumption? (I): Yes. I would be likely to talk to them about it. I don’t think I would be very curious about it. I wouldn’t really care unless it was problematic. (PB): Do you find that most men’s relationships to porn are not problematic, then? (I): No, on the contrary, I do find that most are problematic. In the las year or so, after quite a big heartbreak, I was very angry, and felt like I was being forced by the world to not be with men because they’re all inept and incapable. That I was being forced into the position of deciding that I couldn’t be in a relationship with a man.

p195 - (TB: I have written here in the book, ‘Need to think about why my reaction to this person is so overwhelmingly negative. She seems so condescending, and says basically everyone is bad. At what point, if everyone around you is an asshole, are you the asshole? She talks about all the ways men should be, then says she’s attracted to the exact opposite! She talks about shame and men, then says they’re all babies! She actually speaks very similarly to the young/straight white guy earlier.)

==p207 - (I) There’s an infinite number of things that people get off on.==

p218 - (I) [on watching porn with other guys once] The women looked good - this is the other thing, of course, that’s worth mentioning: gradually through the development of pornography, both the male and the female actors or stars became more attractive. But aside from that, it was really a shock. YOu couldn’t quite believe what you were seeing…

p224 - (I) One of the lovely things about sex is that you grow into these things. You find someone and you take a journey, and if that journey is leaping onto the fastest train possible, you wonder what else is left.

p238 - (I) That’s why I switched to English, because I realized I don’t know how to defend myself in Japanese. That’s not because my Japanese isn’t good - it’s because the right language doesn’t exist.

p256-257 - (I) I think a lot of men don’t want to think about their girlfriend masturbating. I’ve heard people say, It makes me feel like I’m not enough. But it’s like, You do it. (TB: (I) goes on to discuss how in his religious upbringing, he saw some porn featuring women very ‘into it’ and this created, in his words, a sort of fetish because that became taboo to him, and ended up being a healthy thing…)

p261 - (on what ethical porn would look like) (I) Porn that’s less about cum, more about intimacy. Less about these ‘sexual scripts’ that seem to be a really tried-and-tested formula for what sex looks like when visualized. There’s a real lack of alternatives. I’m less comfortable watching some of the stuff I used to watch because I feel like it’s programming me or it has programmed me and will continue to program me if I continue to consume it. (TB: emphasis mine.)

p262 - (I) Are we just acting out porn every time we have sex? Are we just watching porn and then recreating it? Where’s the enjoyment? Where’s the actual pleasure? It’s so easy to go into autopilot and forget how fun sex can and should be.

p267 - (I) But fuck me, there aren’t many things that teenage boys consume on such a regular basis during that critical period of identity formation. It’s like learning a language. That’s what I was doing, I was learning a language of sex.

p273 - (I) It’s not that I don’t want to be dominant sometimes. It’s just that that’s not how I always want to have sex. The expectation is that that’s where my preference has to begin and end whereas I’m like, Well, sometimes I want to be thrown around too. Being boxed in like that pretty much ended one of my earlier relationships. I’d initially accepted how fixed his views of me were, and it transferred outside of the bedroom, where he didn’t expect me to have feelings. It made me feel like a piece of meat. I’m a whole person! He wasn’t a bad person, it was just a bad fit.

==p275 -== (PB): It’s hard to imagine a six foot four guy with abs feeling really upset after sex. Your mind doesn’t go there in the same way as it does with other people. (I): Because we don’t see enough of those stories. If we slowed down a bit we’d see everyone has feelings, regardless of their height or shoe size. We all have feelings.

p277 - (PB): Men’s bodies aren’t really shown, and it’s all about the women’s body, so that even when it’s not a point-of-view camera, it’s still the male gaze replicated by that third eye. Is seeing the actress in pain incompatible with being turned on? (I): Oh, yes, it’s impossible. But I understand that for other people whose boundaries are blurred. That takes you into the whole arena of fetish and that’s something else. I don’t think the majority of people are into that. It’s interesting though: in fetish stuff, the boundaries of pain and pleasure are blurred, whereas in the mainstream pornography I’ve seen, that pain is constantly there, and that’s interpreted as pleasure. It’s not seen as painful. Do you know what I mean? It’s not really identifiably S and M, is it? It’s just part of the accepted sexual practice. (TB: how to determine the line between ‘standard’, ‘kink’, and ‘fetish’ ?)

p285 - (TB: An exchange where the author and the interviewee, both women, are putting conjecture into why men do things. Very frustrating when the author could be asking these questions of men!)

p288 - (TB: I have written here a long note: Some things I’m noticing about my reactions to the book so far. I am really alienated from the straight women. They speak with such generality and condescension that it is not surprising to me at all that their partners aren’t willing to have vulnerable conversations with them. Second, and at the same time, I’m wondering if I’m alienated because of this specific ‘sample’ or because I’m actually so alienated from straight men. Third, the queer people all seem much more open to nuance, whereas the straight people all seem very role based, rigid, and hypocritical.)

p293 - (I) In order to engage with or seek out ethical porn, I would have to ask myself some real questions about what it is I am looking for, and that’s partly what stops me. Do certain things that turn me on do so because they are abhorrent in some way? Do they turn me on because they are in some sense forbidden and therefore shameful? Can you have that same experience within a framework of ethical consumption? Maybe I just don’t know enough about it.

p293 - (TB: they are referencing a post from “Girl on the Net”) (I) …The clearest example that comes to mind is that she had an affiliate partnership with a particular sex toy manufacturer, and in order to fulfill her commercial responsibilities to them, she had to review this vibrator, but she had just broken up with her partner of many years. She’d been writing about him and their relationship for years, they owned a house together, their lives were very intertwined, they’d broken up a few days before and she was obviously devastated, and she wrote this piece that was simultaneously a review of this vibrator and a confession to all the people that follow and read her that she had just broken up with her partner and was totally broken-hearted. She framed it as, Is this vibrator good enough to make me orgasm when I’m crying all the time?

p297 - (I) The fact that it’s entirely possible to masturbate and orgasm without engaging with yourself in any meaningful way or being kind to yourself or trying to bring yourself pleasure on any other level than a strictly utilitarian one is bizarre. (TB: people can also mentally self-harm while doing it. Using self-pleasure as self-harm… Also, theme of being kind to oneself. What does self-pleasure mean when the pleasure, isn’t?)

p304 - (I) [An ep of 30 Rock where a character experiences an episode of vaginismus, but really talking about bodies not aligning with want]’s an example of something where there’s a feeling that if my body doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, I’d feel I was failing to be a proper woman, to function properly as a woman.

p305 - (I) I think porn is a mechanism for not touching each other.

p306 - (I) (TB: paraphrasing, there is a long section where the respondent discusses feeling like women expect him to be a certain way, follow a certain script in bed. He is self-conscious and feels like he is being made to act out porn.) (I): Wow, I’m doing a ballet show, but I don’t really have the moves. (I): But also, I was thinking, I met you literally two hours ago and you want me to strangle you? It felt forced. Like we were actors inhabiting a script. Maybe I’m just not enough of a man. Maybe there was some weird masculinity anxiety there.

p313 - (TB: I have a note here, ‘this person isn’t being vulnerable, they’re abstracting the topic away into academics.)

p315, on the democratization of porn / regular people making amateur porn - (I) …the democratization of the porn industry so that anyone can make it was actually a disaster because it means everyone is making algorithmic porn - determined by likes and views and the internet marketplace - and then their sexual relations become porn and they post them on Pornhub or whatever… That seems pretty bad: we have reduced our lives to the dimensions of the algorithm.

p316, on performance: (PB): The performativity of it is a difficult subject. I fully accept Judith Butler’s lesson that we are continually performing ourselves, our identities. And yet when I have good sex, it doesn’t feel performative. It doesn’t feel like I’m doing it for an outside eye. (I): I don’t think we are performing. I’ve read Judith, but I don’t think that’s true… there are moments of vulnerability … which are predicated on the performance breaking down.

p324, on this person being bothered by their S/O watching porn: (I) At this point, I feel quite trusting… I can see myself being bothered by it if he preferred to do that than talking to me or watching things with me - if he were just locked in his room watching porn. Even then I would be bothered more by the fact he was ignoring me than the fact he was doing that. I don’t feel any competition or threat or anything.

p339, one of the few mentions of gay porn: (PB): When you’re watching gay porn, does that feel less worrying to you? People talk about being worried about porn performers, but my sense is that usually they’re worried about the women. When I hear my gay male friends objectifying men, I find it a lot less objectionable than when I hear straight men objectifying women. I suppose I’m curious how porn fits in with that. (I): Yeah, I think you’re right about people worrying more about the women. … Since the stuff I’ve watched is extremely soft, and it’s more just about the scenario, I’ve never thought about it. But neither have I ever watched gay porn and asked myself about the ethics. I’m certain the same issues apply, without question.

p342, on the plethora of categories of porn: (I) But then the question is, did the desire to do all of those things come out of having seen them? To return to the original question: do people think, I really would like somebody to come on my face! Or I’d really like to come on somebody’s face! Or did they see it and think, Oh, that looks interesting!

Notes by interview

Interviewee 2 Gender: Man Sexuality: Gay Age: Early 40s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 2 discusses themes including: - p53: (I) Watching that porno was the first time I’d ever really seen erections… - p54: …It was exciting, but it also felt really dark… - p66: (I) I find it difficult when people casually talk about extreme sex… - p67: (PB) What function is the darkness serving…

Interviewee 5 Gender: Man Sexuality: Straight Age: Early 20s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 5 discusses themes including: - p105: (TB) This person (Five) is a straight man in his early 20s… - p107: (I) In regard to porn, even the taglines for porn are worded…

Interviewee 6 Gender: Other Sexuality: Queer Age: Late 40s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 6 discusses themes including: - p132: (I) Others were doing things they saw on TV and didn’t like…

Interviewee 7 Gender: Woman Sexuality: Questioning Age: 30s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 7 discusses themes including: - p143: (I) What does gender look like in a post-patriarchal society… - p145: (PB & I) Discussion about watching porn and taste/shame… - p146: (I) I don’t think all women are naturally submissive…

Interviewee 8 Gender: Woman Sexuality: Queer Age: Late 20s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 8 discusses themes including: - p164: (PB & I) Reflections on porn affecting a past relationship… - p165: …When the feminism comes in it messes with it… - p168: (I) Concern for sister: porn leaves nothing to discover…

Interviewee 9 Gender: Woman Sexuality: Straight/Bi Age: Early 20s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 9 discusses themes including: - p185: (I) Gender and sexual preference origins… - p190: (I & PB) Partner needed porn during sex, and broader critiques… - p195: (TB) Overwhelmingly negative reaction to this interviewee…

Interviewee 10 Gender: Man Sexuality: Gay Age: 30s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 10 discusses themes including: - p207: (I) There’s an infinite number of things people get off on.

Interviewee 11 Gender: Man Sexuality: Straight Age: 80s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 11 discusses themes including: - p218: (I) Shock of seeing real porn, more attractive performers… - p224: (I) Sex as journey; fast-forward ruins discovery…

Interviewee 12 Gender: Woman Sexuality: Pansexual Age: 30s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 12 discusses themes including: - p238: (I) Switching to English—lack of sexual self-defense language.

Interviewee 13 Gender: Man Sexuality: Straight Age: Late 30s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 13 discusses themes including: - p256: (I) Men threatened by masturbation; religious fetishization… - p257: …fetishization because that became taboo…

Interviewee 14 Gender: Man Sexuality: Gay Age: Early 30s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 14 discusses themes including: - p261: (I) Ethical porn—less about cum, more about intimacy… - p262: (I) Are we just acting out porn every time we have sex? - p267: (I) Porn like learning a language during identity formation… - p273: (I) Boxed into dominant role; emotional erasure in sex… - p275: (PB & I) Everyone has feelings—even buff men…

Interviewee 15 Gender: Woman Sexuality: Straight Age: Early 30s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 15 discusses themes including: - p277: (PB & I) Pain in porn mistaken for pleasure… - p285: (TB) Women speculating about men without asking them… - p288: (TB) Alienated by straight women; queer people seem nuanced…

Interviewee 16 Gender: Woman Sexuality: Questioning Age: Late 30s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 16 discusses themes including: - p293: (I) Ethical porn reflection—are some turn-ons inherently shameful? - p297: (I) Masturbation without kindness; mental self-harm… - p304: (I) Body not doing what it’s supposed to—failure of womanhood…

Interviewee 17 Gender: Man Sexuality: Straight Age: Late 30s Relationship Status: S Summary: Interviewee 17 discusses themes including: - p305: (I) Porn as a mechanism for not touching each other… - p306: (I) Ballet show; forced dominance script… - p313: (TB) Not being vulnerable—too academic… - p315: (I) Democratization of porn = algorithmic disaster… - p316: (PB & I) Performance vs. vulnerability in sex…

Interviewee 18 Gender: Woman Sexuality: Bi Age: 30s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 18 discusses themes including: - p324: (I) Partner watching porn not a threat unless it displaces intimacy…

Interviewee 19 Gender: Man Sexuality: Bi Age: 30s Relationship Status: LTR Summary: Interviewee 19 discusses themes including: - p339: (PB & I) Ethics in gay porn; softcore vs concern differential… - p342: (I) Origins of desire—did porn shape wants?

Author: Polly Barton

Last read: 2025-06-06

Rating: 4

Form: Theory

Genre: Essay / Criticism

Times read: 1

Copies owned: 1

Fun score: N/A

Tags:

bookreview culture queer philosophy