Sappho Speaks: Pornography – A Rebuttal

What Would Sappho Say?

Lectori Salutem! or L.S. (Greetings to the Reader!)

On one of the other sites this blog is posted on a woman trying to discover her sexuality asked innocently, “How does one know if she's a lesbian before actually engaging with a girl if even straight girls like lesbian porn? I started out with gay porn (of the fan fiction variety) I think in part because it was a safer place to start for me thinking about homosexuality and myself.”

Another reader commented, “Why do all these women use pornography? I thought lesbians at least would be above such smut.”

Now, I expected the second response as of course everyone who has seen pornography has a collection in the box in the back of their closet or someplace equally as discrete, bowing in shame if anyone were to ever know they owned it or watched it with any modicum of regularity as deemed by the morality police who have just stepped out and shown themselves to be alive and well living amongst our homosexual kind. For those of you who read Liberals, Labeling and How Much We Lose, just think of those who have seen porn as another label. Having watched it makes you neither a better nor worse person, more or less moral, it simple happens as a product of our sexualized society and we are marketed towards its taboo from almost birth.

Most people have seen pornography at least once. There are some reports that indicate as much as 70 to 80% of the female population views pornography or sexually explicit material but little is known about what they are feeling about that viewing (lust, excitement, humiliation, disgust). At least 35 to 40% of the purchasers of online porn are women so there seems to be a large group of smutty people out there, straight and gay.

One of the most interesting things I found out though and this will begin to address the first woman’s question was what happened during the famous Kinsey Report. If you are unfamiliar with it, please read about it at The Kinsey Institute. While only 17% of the 17,000 women in the study (this was in the 40’s and 50’s) admitted to enjoying pornography, laboratories at the Institute since have had women stating a dislike or disgust at porn watch these films and invariably almost all of them showed physical signs of sexual excitement as determined by increased vaginal blood flow. This happens as they are protesting their disdain for the material.

So with this knowledge, I add my own two cents that it has been my experience not to rely on your reaction to pornography as an indication to your sexuality. As a gay woman who desires only pleasing other women and vice-versa I have found over the years that in different instances I have responded to straight, gay, three-way, real and fake lesbian porn erotically.

Now, there would be something wrong with me if I didn't since the porn industry makes an incredible living, greater that the entirety of the Hollywood movie-making machine, ensuring that I do just that. It is not just the graphic and raw sexual images that tantalize us but what they kick start in our brain as we watch since every woman knows the key to her orgasm stands not between her legs but between her ears. If a woman can get past what ever hang ups or barriers we have put up between ourselves and whoever we are f&*king, then the mechanics almost always happens naturally (except those all for themselves people out there that were never going to look further than between your legs anyways).

Women and men are curious about sex in general – not necessarily sex with the gender of the person they are typically attracted to, but that doesn’t affect their sexual identity. Just as many people who watch sexually explicit images of group sex, bondage, anal sex, or oral sex do not partake in those types of sex in their real life. As sexually explicit and graphic as pornography is, at the end of the day it is all just fantasy. We all indulge in fantasies we would never be capable of living out for real.

The first times I ever watched straight pornography (or any porn for that matter) was as a "educational series" given to my college roommate and myself freshman year during one of the few snow storms in Austin, Texas. University of Texas had shut down, the roads were icy and impassable and by the time we thought to go get some movies on VCR to watch everything had been pretty much picked through so it was decided we would make our foray into the pornography arena behind the black sheet where only middle-aged men go in with nothing and come out with paper bags.

Our paper bag was filled with some of the great classics of all time, Cafe Flesh, Behind the Green Door, Devil in Mrs. Jones, and of course, Deep Throat. We got them back to the dorm, turned out all the lights and watched them as a foursome, two gay boys and two lesbians watching classic straight porn. What a riot!!! Deep Throat was so stupid my roommate and I couldn’t stop laughing..... but then there was Cafe Flesh and I was aroused. WOW. I couldn’t believe it. Me, a hardcore lipstick lesbian, was getting turned on by a very strange movie with a whole lot of straight f&*king. So did my roommate, so did the gay boys down the hall...

A few months later a new indoctrination was happening. They were bringing home some primo gay male porn and we had to watch it. I couldn’t think of anything more disgusting at the time. Two men, ugh! And there is was again that unmistakable feeling between my legs as one man dominated the other and these two god-like men had each other completely, with strength and conviction. There was nothing fake about these orgasms. This was real sex, raw, emotionally intense. It was powerful. I would not be the last time I watched to beautiful men get it on.

The only thing that doesn’t do it for me is the butch-femme or the so-called “real” lesbian porn. If I wanted to watch my girlfriend and me screw, we’d tape. Pornography is for fantasies. To me, the best “real” lesbian shit is the Ocsar-nominated, Rated R, great story with beautiful women and a believable sex scene like Aimee and Jaguar. They may not show everything but enough to really make me happy. The truth of the matter is though, I do not own porn, watch it on a regular basis or have even seem any in over ten years but I fervently defend everyone's right to each their own. The times I have seen it have definitely been eye-opening but I express my sexuality in my own different ways and it has evolved over the years. I do however watch The Hunger and Bound over and over again and own just about every Hollywood or Indie good movie depicting lesbian sex there is. So where is the line.

So to the woman who wants to know if she’s gay from her enjoyment of porn, obviously there is no answer here but the fact that your asking the question gives me the greatest indication you may be batting for our team in the near future.

Much Love.


Inspired by Sappho’s Muse

MUSIC OF THE DAY
Well, there was a little problem with the music for a few days, but it’s back for the few of you that even listen to my picks. Today’s, to sync with our theme, I’ve got a remake of the Rolling Stones Satisfaction done by the sexually charged Adam Lambert and then the song by Britney Spears that really got the parents up in arms for it’s title, say it fast if you haven’t gotten it yet, iF U SeeK Amy.

Satisfaction       Adam Lambert
If U Seek Amy   Britney Spears

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?
Bill Hicks