Am I a Porn Star?; or: I Hate the Madonna-Whore Complex

I’m staring at page eighty-eight of this week’s New York Magazine and I’m freaking out. Davy Rothbart’s He’s Just Not That Into Anyone covers men who forgo sex with their partners or can’t orgasm with their partners because they prefer porn. The crux of the article is that with the proliferation of internet porn, men have formed relationships with porn stars that compete with the relationships they have with their girlfriends and wives.

I’m personally horrified, because I’ve never taken issue with a boyfriend masturbating or looking at porn; however, I do have issues with a boyfriend not wanting to have sex with me. More than that, I’m disgusted the amount of guys experiencing this phenomenon was great enough to warrant a 1500+ word piece.

Like relationships with real dolls, it mostly makes me want to vomit to think someone would prefer to invest in a sexual bond with anything unable to respond intelligently.* It’s like a perverse form of rape; you’re saying a potential sex partner-a human being-is of less value than the image or video you’d rather jack off to. I have a vibrator, but I don’t give a shit about that thing-I have no “relationship” with it. But if you’d rather pay for a prostitute or porn site or real doll than invest in a real relationship with someone…it makes me dizzy to think about. I don’t like it.

At the end of the piece, Rothbart suggests that some women these days are now trying to behave like porn stars. (This is page eighty-eight, when I started freaking.) Worse, the dudes aren’t into it-one guy compares his girlfriend “acting like a porn queen” to the scene in Ghostbusters where Sigourney Weaver is possessed by demons. I’m dizzier now, and my tummy is turning:

Am I trying to be a porn star in the bedroom?

The way the article simplifies worries me: dirty talk, minimal pubic hair, a tendency to be vocal. I…I do these things, but to be like a porn girl? I’m both grossed out that I could subconsciously porning it up and pissed at the women who are faking it. Like women who dye their hair red and giggle about how hot it looks, I take a small amount of personal offense that someone would copy something that has always been a part of me-something sometimes considered freakish-and re-purpose it for their own convenient use. The narcissist in me wants to know: Can’t everyone just recognize that I’m naturally hot instead of saying “Oh oh, me too! I’m like that!”?

It’s not just being lumped in with porn-queen wannabes that I hate. The comparison of a porn-y girlfriend to a possessed Sigourney Weaver makes my skin crawl. I hate the Madonna-whore complex. I hate it so much, and this reeks of it. For those unfamiliar, please allow me to copy-paste from Wikipedia:

According to Freudian psychology, this complex often develops when the sufferer is raised by a cold and distant mother. Such a man will often court someone with qualities of his mother, hoping to fulfill a need for intimacy unmet in childhood. Often, the wife begins to be seen as mother to the husband—a “Madonna” figure—and thus not a possible object of sexual attraction. For this reason, in the mind of the sufferer, love and sex cannot be mixed, and the man is reluctant to have sexual relations with his wife, for that, he thinks subconsciously, would be incest. He will reserve sexuality for “bad” or “dirty” women, and will not develop “normal” feelings of love in these sexual relationships. This introduces a dilemma where a man may feel unable to love any woman who can satisfy him sexually and is unable to be sexually satisfied by any woman whom he can love.

The whole incest angle might be pushing it a bit, but otherwise, I see this in guys all the time. Either I’m the nice girl or the girl you fucked. It pisses me off. Many (dare I say most?) women are the unfortunate combination of “impossible” extremes: really nice girls who really like sex. And it’s a rare man who can understand that. Especially if you sleep with him too soon.

If there’s anywhere you can act like a porn star for fun and not be judged for it, it should be in the context of a committed relationship. If it’s not for fun, if it-as this article suggests-is to compete with the fantasy girls men are looking at online (and ditching their girls for), then I am wowed by men’s stupidity and/or worried for their inherent mental state.

I could also be angry at women for complying, but I’m kind of biased. You know how every woman is slightly different, sexually? Like a sexual snowflake? Guys are too, even if the equipment itself doesn’t really vary. What varies is what kind of stuff they like to look at. And women have to guess at it, feel out. The problem is unlike when guys literally feel it out and see where you like to get touched, if you try out a dirty phrase and he doesn’t like it, it can change how he looks at you as a person.** (Is this why you’re not supposed to sleep with them too soon?) So if you emulate porn, it almost seems like a safe bet-guys love porn! Right? RIGHT?!

I’m probably being too hard on my gentleman friends here. Maybe I just don’t want to blame the porn; because the upshot of this whole thing is that I shouldn’t be cool with my man looking at naked ladies online. And I really, really thought that was harmless stuff. I always figured guys who had a porn problem just had a problem that they needed to man up and deal with. I’m cautiously sticking with that philosophy, but if I’ve got a man who stops initiating sex-I’m gonna get pissed.

*I understand there can be therapeutic reasons to use a real doll, I’m talking specifically about men who decide to give up on real women.

**I realize I’m being extremely heteronormative here, my apologies to the LGBT community.

Photo by _Fü_.

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