Our contributor Katherine Chen, an English major at Princeton University (check out her personal site here), is penning a series of confessions for EMandLO.com collectively called “The Virgin Diaries.” In her first installment, she wrote about how her sex education began (hint: poorly). Here she elaborates on how it improved:
My first porn video: A woman with large breasts and reddish brown hair sits in what appears to be a dentist’s chair. Her legs are sprawled apart, revealing her shaved vulva. A man enters the room, dressed in a doctor’s jacket with a stethoscope around his neck. She tells him, “There’s something wrong with me. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t feel anything down there.”
Now, at this point, having had absolutely no sexual experience myself and being completely ignorant about anatomy and sexual function, I silently registered to myself that insomnia and hunger were somehow related to sex. I did everything but jot this down on notebook paper.
The man in the doctor’s jacket grins and says, “Well, let’s see what I can do” and unzips his pants. He pulls something out.
I had never seen a penis before — not my father’s penis, an animal’s penis, or another kid’s penis. So I wasn’t really sure what exactly he was holding in his hand. The whole scene felt like some kind of colossal joke, and I began to laugh. But then:
The woman begins to groan. Her back arches. The camera zooms back and forth between the woman’s face, breasts, and vagina. Her vaginal lips look shiny and wet in the fluorescent light of the room.
Were they like that before? I couldn’t remember, and I was too entranced with what was going on to rewind back to the beginning. I could feel myself get tense, and then it happened:
The man begins to thrust into the woman. She puts a finger in her mouth and sucks on it like a baby. Occasionally, she laughs.
I thought his…thing looked a little bit like a purple-tipped club, and I couldn’t imagine that it was doing the woman any good. But she seemed to enjoy it. Before things got really heated, I quickly X-ed out of Windows Media Player for fear of getting caught. I walked very quickly out of the room, holding my times table assignments in one hand and a mechanical pencil in the other.
I suppose most people would assume that such a graphic lesson in sex would be traumatizing for a young girl. For me, it wasn’t. A few minutes of this sex scene explained more to me than any book on menstrual cycles ever could. From that point on, I was intrigued by and curious about sex, which from the looks of it seemed like a wholly positive thing. From my first foray into the adult entertainment world I concluded the following:
- Sex can be healing.
- Sex can be satisfying for both parties.
- Sex is rather like giving a baby its bottle.
- Women seem to enjoy sex more than men.
Those were certainly much more sexually positive messages than the ones I’d gotten from my mother or my school. My mom always classified every single sexually active female as either a prostitute or a “dumb animal” who had nothing better to do with her time. I would have probably agreed with her, if it weren’t for Asia Carrera, the Mensa genius and musical prodigy who performed at Carnegie Hall twice before turning 15, taught English at a college in Japan when she was 16, and became a successful porn star at 20 (pictured above).
And the fact that the porn star Belladonna had semi-retired in 2007 because she was concerned about contracting STDs like herpes had a much bigger impact on me than my sex ed teacher insisting I memorize the side effects of every genital infection out there. Plus, the messages in the classroom were so mixed and ambiguous: According to Mr. X, some people should have sex (married people), but others shouldn’t (unmarried people). I didn’t buy it.
Of course, I realize there are some drawbacks to relying solely on porn for my sex education. My view of sex is undoubtedly limited and skewed: in my mind, couples romp around, women can’t stop groaning, men’s hips can’t stop gyrating, and everyone basically acts animalistic and crazy all the time. I can’t imagine sex as a spiritual or even a “lovely” thing. It’s fun, enjoyable, adventurous and satisfying, but never sentimental or even loving.
On the other hand, I’ve never considered porn misogynistic or sexist. Fortunately, the videos I’ve watched didn’t portray the women as victims, but as active and enthusiastic participants that like to feature in videos that many can find using websites such as hd tube movies .xxx and others online. As I said, they always seemed to be enjoying it more than the men (although I guess that could just be “good acting”). And even I realize that the scenarios of porn films are unrealistic — they’re fantasies that most viewers understand can’t be replicated in real life. Even if you “set up” a scene with your partner, it’s just not going to be the same.
So whenever I finally do get around to having sex myself, I’m pretty confident that, like the best porn, I’ll have some good moves, I’ll use a condom, I won’t be self-conscious, and — most importantly — I’ll have fun.
— Katherine Chen
