I saw today that the singer Billie Eilish told an interviewer that she deeply dislikes porn because she blames porn for the bad, or at least deeply unsatisfying, sex she had as a teen.
She's a fine singer, mind you. I quite like Billie Eilish's music, and she's an attractive girl. But...I will have to disagree with her on this.
Teens have been having bad sex-- or just unsatisfying --sex since, well, forever. There's no way around that. Sex is like any other learned skill. There's a learning curve involved. Short of classes that actually teach sexual technique, sex is a learn-by-doing skill. When you start having sex-- or move on from the Solitary Vice to sex with a partner --you're starting with no experience and very little knowledge. I'll also note here that even the most thorough sex-ed class at school won't be able to give you more than academic knowledge of what you're doing. There's no way around the idea of a learning curve.
No one expects that you'll be a good driver or a good writer or a good pianist the first time you take up any of those things. I'm sure Ms. Eilish spent years working at becoming a musician. If you want to be good at sex, you need to do exactly what you'd do to be a writer or a chess player. You practice. You learn. You get better over time.
We expect something-- romantic love, maybe --to magically make you able to enjoy sex, to please a partner, to feel pleasure. But there's no magic available. At sixteen you just stumble through a learning process-- all the physical awkwardness and bad timing and awkward conversations. You learn to get over being uncomfortable with bodies. You gradually acquire a sense of what your own body wants, of how to use your body to give pleasure to a partner. There's no way to get around the awkwardness and clumsiness of being new to sex.
I completely fail to understand Ms. Eilish's dislike for porn. She seems surprised that "real people" don't look like they do in porn and that "real people" don't reach orgasm the way they do in porn. All I can say is that using porn to teach yourself about "real sex" is pointless. It's probably more pointless than using noir detective novels to teach you about criminal procedure.
What did I learn from porn? I remember being in my teens and reading porn novels (oh, yes, I go back to a time before porn video and anything like PornHub) and...making notes. I do mean that literally-- making notes about things I wanted to try. I didn't expect that things in my own life would ever go exactly like they did in porn novels, but I knew that I was writing down things that I could try-- places and positions. I knew that one day I'd ask a partner about those things. They wouldn't work exactly like they did on the printed page, but they were things I could experiment with. Porn gave me things to try, things that might-- might --be useful as I acquired partners and lovers.
The same was true when I finally did see porn on video. I knew I wouldn't likely be with girls who looked like porn actresses, and in truth my own aesthetic preferences weren't for the porn actresses of the day. But I knew that what I was looking for was a set of possibilities. I wanted to see what was possible during sex. What were the positions that looked useful? What was there that you could try? I didn't expect to learn much more than that-- a range of possibilities, a list of things to experiment with. And of course I wanted to get a sense of what I'd be expected to know about if more experienced lovers questioned me.
Porn let me know that certain activities were available to try. Porn gave me ideas about places where I could have sex, about places that I could turn into the settings for stories, about what things ( library stacks! a graveyard! an office desk!) could go on my checklist and could become part of stories shared with lovers. I didn't expect porn to be didactic, or even to be "true". I did expect it to serve as raw material that I could re-vamp and re-work and use.
I've always been suspicious of any advice about bringing a partner to orgasm. I'm not sure that any advice really works. Or more exactly-- there's advice to be had about not being completely awful, but all the relevant advice is just defensive: not being awful at things. Being good at sex, though...that's something else altogether. I've taught myself over the years to assume that any signs of orgasm by a girl I'm with are polite social fictions. I will always try to give pleasure to a partner; I will always ask what pleases a partner. But I will also take as a given that any results I see or hear about are simply courtesy...or a way to provide closure to what we're doing. Which is fine. I'll do what I can do, and I'll take any individual advice or suggestions a lover offers. But I don't expect-- I've never expected --orgasm in "real life" to look like it does on video.
Everything has a learning curve. Ms. Eilish seems to assume that practice isn't needed, or that artifice isn't just as much a part of sex as it is of any other social interaction. Porn is useful as a source of raw material: ah, yes-- her legs over my shoulders! Ah, yes-- sex in the rooftop infinity pool! We should try that! Porn isn't there as a textbook. It's there as bricolage, as a set of things to pull out and try in new configurations.
Porn was good for me, back in the way. It did give me ways to enhance the learning curve. It gave me things to try, some of which turned out very well indeed. It helped me believe that so many things were possible.
There's always a learning curve. Whatever talents you possess on your own, you'll need to practice, to work through all the awkwardness of the new. If you're having sex, if you're starting out on your sexual history, the first year or two will be awkward and not particularly about massive pleasure. But you learn. And porn? Porn can help. It can at least suggest things that are worth trying and show you that people can do...those things.
And that's important.
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