Porn: A misunderstood world

Mike Sholars
Features and Opinions Editor
Our dirty secret
I keep my porno alphabetized on my shelf at home.
The Da Vinci Load is displayed proudly beside Finding Nemo, and Pirates sits beside The Ring. Guests and family members have come to accept this about me, but I have nothing to hide; I am nothing short of a porn connoisseur.
Unlike knitting or FarmVille, there is no outlet where I can discuss my love of the industry with like-minded individuals. When I bring it up with company, I am greeted by skeptical looks or nervous laughter. Simply put, I am often made to feel like I’m the only person I know that’s really into porn, but that can’t be true.
The fact that porno is considered taboo in Western society wouldn’t surprise anyone; I’m more interested in how this came to be. The adult entertainment industry reportedly generated over $12 billion in 2006 in the U.S., $1 billion for Canada and $97 billion worldwide, and that type of money just simply isn’t generated by a small cottage industry. This is a type of media that many people consume and enjoy, yet a staggering amount of them deny that they do this.
Why are people ashamed of porn? What is the reality of the porn industry, and what, exactly, is the proper way to look at this billion-dollar industry?
An industry analyst
Lux Alpatrum, a former high school sex educator with Red Cross, is now the editor of Fleshbot.com, the largest porn industry blog online. The site covers everything from interviews to sex toy reviews, and Lux personally writes several blog posts per day. The site caters to gay and straight tastes, and covers all of its topics in an entertaining, balanced fashion. By all accounts, she is a porn expert, and I brought my questions to her.
“When you make sexuality into taboo, you have more control over people,” Lux began, “because their fundamental desires are now off limits.” She believes that sex, by the virtue of it being something “everyone wants,” will always be used as “a powerful tool.”
Lux cited the recent wave of sex tapes floating around the web: “We all know that celebrities have sex, but because it’s this ‘shocking thing,’ whenever a story breaks we pretend to be scandalized […] and then show it to our friends.” The taboo is what gives the sensationalism behind sex its power, she explains.
“When you make something so basic and so natural seem like a rarified commodity, you can make money/get attention/exert power of the populace.” In contrast, Lux concluded, “when you treat it as a normalized thing and it doesn’t have that sensationalism, you don’t have the power to exploit it.”
All of her points are valid. In my experience, sex education in school consisted of my gym teacher listing off STDs and vehemently denying the fact that many of the students were already sexually active.
It seems that the powers that be want to inform kids of the dangers of sex, but are also scared of what young people will do with all the information. As Lux put it, “If something is wonderful and amazing and natural, you should be able to talk openly about it.”
If the inability to comprehend porn as anything less than hedonistic trash is a failure of society’s lack of sexual maturity, then I felt it would make sense to talk to someone from the production side of the industry.
Lee Roy Myers, the director of the recently released Simpsons: The XXX Parody and last year’s excellent The Human Sexipede, was more than happy to oblige.
The art of parodic pornography
Lee Roy Myers, born in Montreal, dabbled in adult entertainment (softcore, websites, etc.) during college before eventually finding his way toward mainstream TV production. After working with comedians, video-on-demand and pay-per-view companies, he was eventually tapped by people in the porn industry to write his first hit, a porn parody of The Office, in late 2008.
Since then, Myers has made a name for himself (and garnered mainstream attention) with his porn parodies. His films tackle franchises from The Big Bang Theory to Golden Girls, mixing an obvious love for the source material with copious amounts of hardcore sex.
Myers described his approach to moviemaking thus: “I’m just making what I would watch if I was at home, drunk.”
When asked about the role of sex in mainstream society, Myers’ response was similar to Lux’s: “I think we’re in a society that is still really repressed. Sex is taboo, even if we think it’s not.”
He went on to explain that people in the porn industry are comfortable with their sexuality, and he believes that this overt acceptance of sex flies in the face of how the public at large deals with the topic.
On the other hand, he recognizes the benefit of having a stigma attached to his industry: “I honestly think that it helps our industry, [porn] being taboo […] I think if it wasn’t, there’d be a lot more people doing it, and there would be a market that’s completely flooded.”
So while Lux and Myers both blame a lack of conversation about sexuality for creating a porn taboo (Myers even compared our society to Europe’s, claiming that for all their open sexuality, their sex-related crime rates are no higher than ours), Myers sees the advantage of selling a forbidden product.
The statistics agree with him: according to a 2009 study conducted by the Journal of Economic Perspectives, eight of the top 10 porn-consuming states overwhelmingly voted Republican in the 2008 election.
While there are many reasons for North America’s puritanical views on sex (New England was mostly populated by actual Puritans), a lot of it may simply come down to poor PR.
A bad impression goes a long way, so it’s time to get the facts straight.
What you get wrong about porn
“Reality porn” is real
Websites such as BangBus and My Real Ex-Girlfriend sell an illusion to their audience: the former features men driving around with a camera, soliciting women on the street and proceeding to bang them in the titular bus (which is actually a van).

As Lux put it, “If a group of guys were driving around South Florida in a bus, fucking women and then throwing them off on the side of the road, they would be in jail. Anything that looks incredibly abusive has to be staged, because it’s not legal.” Myers added to the sentiment that reality porn is anything but, explaining that “most of the girls and guys in the industry are making a choice. They’re not being forced or kidnapped.”
Porn, by its very nature, blurs the line between fantasy and reality. While these are real humans, and they are having real sex with each other, that doesn’t mean that everything is as presented onscreen. Many roles are played in-character, from the obvious (a pirate) to the subtle (a physically dominating spouse).
Porn should be taken as seriously as any Hollywood movie, and Lux supported this view by calling porn “an extreme fantasy.”
Porn is exploitative
“Is porn an exploitive industry?” muses Myers. “What industry is not an exploitive industry? Are you exploiting people if they are exploiting themselves?”
Both Lux and Myers agree that while some people may get into porn for the wrong reasons, the majority of people working in the industry today honestly want to be there. “Nobody is being trafficked into the porn industry,” says Lux. “It’s not an industry for people who don’t really want to do it; it’s not for the faint of heart.”
Myers went on to compare the common interpretation of porn stars being exploited to a secretary hating her job: “you feel she’s being exploited, but [the porn industry] is what gets frowned upon.”
Both of them echo the same sentiment: working in porn is a job. While the end product of this job may present a fantasy environment for the consumer, porn is made by paid, consenting professionals.
What you watch is what you’re into in reality
“A lot of times, people watch porn because they’re not into [what’s depicted onscreen],” says Lux.
Every teen sex comedy in the last decade has had a scene where a guy’s disturbing taste in porno is revealed to his buddies. Likewise, many people dread discussing their favourite types of porn because of the assumptions that people will inevitably make.
Just like watching gay porn won’t make a straight man gay, watching anything else (from footjobs to felching) doesn’t automatically mean you’ll mimic that behavior in the bedroom.
Lux concurs. “Lots of straight men watch gay porn, just to see what it’s like. It doesn’t mean you’re gay. Lots of lesbians watch gay male porn, and it doesn’t mean they want to have sex with men. I know straight women […] that just enjoy watching women have orgasms. We have a hard time understanding that fantasy and reality are very different; what’s fun to fantasize about may not be what we want to do in real life.”
While some people may use porn as a jumping-off point for their personal life (I can’t be the only person who has tried to recreate a move I saw in porn), Lux urges that people should know how to separate the idea of porn from the reality of sex.
Porn is in the eye of the beholder
The recurring theme of my interviews with Lux Alpatrum and Lee Roy Myers has been that sex and porn are about perception. Some people need to believe in the fantasy of the depicted scenarios to get off; “paid consent porn” doesn’t have the same ring as rape porn.
Others perceive the entire industry to be exactly as it appears, when it really has the same ups and downs as any other field of work. In the end, porn is malleable enough to be whatever you want it to be, and there’s enough of it out there to meet your demands.
Perception of porn is logically linked to opinion (and understanding) of sex and sexuality.
I asked Lux and Myers how people, specifically young people, should view sex and by extension, porn.
“Just because you see it in porn,” warns Lux, “doesn’t mean you should do it.” She reinforced her belief porn is an extreme fantasy. “What you’re seeing is a fantasy, what you’re seeing is professionals that are trained to do this.”[sic]
Myers would like porn to be seen solely as entertainment, divorced from heavier interpretations of its subject matter. “If anything should be taken away from porn,” he enthuses, “It’s that sex should be fun.” As a final thought on the nature of sex, Myers believes that “it becomes serious when you’re embarrassed by it.”
“Consensual sex should be fun, and I think your generation of Canadians is getting closer to having people accept that,” concluded Myers. “Keep fighting the fight.”