Dan Kempner
Editor
When I was ten I found a copy of David Reuben’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)1 on my parents’ bookshelf.
As a newly pubescent boy, the various sexy bits (in between the dry, informational stuff) were helpful for my masturbatory marathons, and as other materials came to hand I tried them, too. At ten I was still years away from an actual sex life with real-live females and I knew it, so I used what was at hand.
A year or two later, babysitting for some neighbors, the husband’s Playboy collection – stacked in plain sight – cought my attention, and I graduated to photographs.
Then it was on to the real thing, but for all the in-between times, there were books and magazines. Out on my own, these things were freely available, and I bought them at newstands all over New York city.
At 17 I briefly lived in a yoga community downtown, a move that entailed a monk-like promise of celibacy. I promised – but the magazines followed me even there.
Some years later I married a rather troubled woman who, after a few years of robust sexual relations, suddenly shut off the spigot. Some childhood stuff had resurfaced, she said, and the next fifteen years were barren so far as actual lovemaking was concerned. These were the days of VCRs, and, no sooner had man learned to record on videotape than porn producers migrated to that medium. This was the good stuff: the images were incredibly real, and powerful and, in their way, these sustained me during that endless dry spell.
I came home one day to find she’d located my cache, under a pile of clothes in a drawer. She had an odd look on her face as she picked a VCR tape out at random and held it out to me.
“Don’t blame me for the titles,” I said, “I didn’t make them up.” She laughed.
Some years later, divorced and free at last, I met and fell in love with a woman who did not have my ex-wife’s inhibitions. When we made love for the first time it lasted twelve solid back-to-back hours. It’s not possible to overstate what a revelation this was, after the sterile fields I’d tilled during my marriage.
And yet, despite a robust and incredibly satisfying sexual oddysey, the images – now on digital media of amazing clarity and profusion – remained a part of my sexual life.
It was around this time that I began to really ponder the meaning of all this.
I was, and remain, very grateful to the thousands of women whose work in those movies and photos have been part-and-parcel of my daily life, whether I was in a satisfying relationship or not. They were helpful.
But what about the women themselves?
It’s not a new question. Prostitution has been around a long time, ditto for females modeling for artists and pornographers. And for the past fifty years or so, women have engaged in every type of sex act a man could think up – and some required a vivid imagination – in front of movie and video cameras.
But what of that? Sure, these women were paid, and some apparently did very well. But no woman in a sexual context has ever requested that I do most of those acts to them for their pleasure, or for mine. Few women would, unless they were paid, or forced, or both.
I wondered about the women – hundreds of thousands from every nation, city, town, and hamlet on Earth – and what, if anything, my responsibilities towards them might be. I was a man who had, at that time, a mother; a sister; two grandmothers, a few aunts, a bunch of female friends, and countless colleagues, teachers, and fellow humans to whom were owed certain social niceties. Courtesy. Thoughtfulness. Kindness. Even compassion, and the notion of keeping them safe.
Today I am married again, to a woman with a healthy sexual appetite of her own. Our romantic life is still fairly prolific after fifteen years, two children, and very full schedules. It is also tender, loving, adventurous, even acrobatic on rare occasions. And yet, in the interstices, there are the electrons again: always willing; thrillingly beautiful; and available in virtually any age, form, race, color, specific act, or numbers I might select. What of them?
And what of my two children, daughters both, neither of whom are teenagers yet. They still turn away in feigned horror when two cartoon characters kiss. They say, “eeuw, “yuk!” when their mother and I do likewise. They aren’t quite certain if there is a tooth fairy, or if it is their father behind those cash deposits. Ditto for the Easter bunny and the other conventions children wrestle with when young – including, by the way, how babies are made.
They know their mother and I were both involved, and that mommies and daddies must do something unusual to make babies appear. But they don’t yet know how it happens.
What of them? They are in their room sleeping, usually, when the computer comes out, and the women thereon have unspeakable and probably unpleasant things done to them while appearing to be overcome with pleasure and passion.
What of those girls, mine and all the others? Many of those others have, over the years, become the women on my screens. What about that?
There is a code I have agreed to live by, the Code of Honor created by men in the organization I belong to: Mentor, Discover, Inspire.
This code, with tenets such as, ‘respect confidentiality,’ and ‘be humble,’ was developed in response to men in the organization who were misbehaving towards their women. Under the rubric of confidentiality, these men would tell their teammates of beatings and other abuse towards wives or children, and those other men – under the rubric of confidentiality – had no recourse, no standards to hold those men to, no way to demand better.
And so the Code of Honor came into being. So what am I to do with tenets like, ‘commitment before ego,’ or ‘defend humanity‘? Is participating in pornography – using it and so perpetuating it – in keeping with the code?
And what about the big one, the killer, the tenet that to a dad like me simply cannot be escaped? No matter what I am doing or with whom, ‘be an example to children‘ applies.
I’m not sure there’s a way around this. Though I can’t discuss it with my children, is there any way using such things can be spun as an example for kids?
I don’t know. I do know that my wife sees no harm in it, and even watches porn herself sometimes, as a warmup or cooldown during our romantic times.
It’s a conundrum for, in the modern sense at least, pornography is clearly an industry. There are studios, and well-known producers, even awards ceremonies for heaven’s sake, for the best at this and that.
Far be it from me to put all those people out of work, right? But there are indiustries I don’t believe are ethical and so don’t support. Why have I made an exception here?
As always, the A-listers are doing quite well while the bit-players aren’t. As always, the women involved are putting themselves through medical school, or raising their kids, or living a better, safer lifestyle on the proceeds and as always men are footing those bills in order to get their needs met.
I haven’t sorted out my full responsibilities as yet. But I know it’s absolutely not a career I want for my daughters. And if – as I’m required to do by the Code – I truly ’embrace all men,’ then it’s absurd to hold it differently for their daughters. And since all women are daughters of some man, doesn’t that mean using porn is out?
I know this for certain: I’d feel better if I didn’t look at that stuff. I’d feel cleaner and I wouldn’t have to wrestle with these questions. On the other hand, it helps me satisfy a basic human need.
So, will I put away my computer after work tonight? Or open it to those juicy sites where whatever I want to see is there, all the time, every time?
I don’t know. But I’m afraid my money’s on the latter.
- Reuben, D. (1969). Everything you always wanted to know about sex, but were afraid to ask. New York: David McKay ↩︎
