Girl on the Net

After he’s come, he likes to stay inside me. Chatting and whispering and feeling the post-fuck squeezes of my cunt when I giggle. I used to think this was rom-com bullshit – too cheesy and cute for me to bear. But fuck it, it makes him happy, so it’s crept into my repertoire – this post-fuck clinch with him inside me and me enveloping his cock. It’s one of a number of things that don’t tend to happen in porn.

Have you ever seen a porn scene where the performers paused partway through to take a drink of water? Or to apply lube? Or to fish a stray pubic hair out of their mouths during enthusiastic oral? These are things which happen on a regular basis in my house, but they don’t show up as often in the average porn scene.

Let me make it really clear up-front that this isn’t going to be a post where I advocate that every porn scene should show the funny/weird/mundane/romantic/boring/cutesy parts of sex as well as the entertaining and sexy parts. Porn is entertainment. And it’s a huge and varied genre of entertainment. So like any other genre of TV/Film, it can be educational, political, comical, dark, or just plain entertaining – an individual scene doesn’t have to be all these things at once, any more than the latest Netflix boxset needs to span every genre on the menu list.

But it’s worth remembering that because porn is primarily entertainment, you’re not going to see every aspect of human sexuality represented on the screen. Directors make choices, and the choices they make about what does and doesn’t happen in porn they shoot influences the way you people perceive sex more broadly.

Things that don’t happen in porn

I went to a talk at Eroticon by the fabulous Jet Setting Jasmine and King Noire of Royal Fetish Films (click the links, go see their work!) in which they talked to us about some of the things that go on behind the scenes at porn shoots. For instance, detailing the prep that goes in to a fire play scene (making sure you’ve got smoke alarms and extinguishers at the ready!) or the lube that needs to be sitting off-camera, ready to be re-applied throughout a shoot.

Some of their examples are things you may know already. For instance: BDSM porn fans probably know that ethical studios will include behind-the-scenes content where performers negotiate their limits and discuss what they would like to happen in a scene. But others might come as a surprise. Do you ever see the behind-the-scenes material in which performers show each other their STI test results? Those discussions happen too!

Then there are the bigger issues, which I suspect most of you are aware of: casting for porn shoots is often based on fetishisation of people for things like age, race, body size and more, meaning porn – particularly mainstream porn – offers only a very limited window onto the diversity of human sexuality that exists on the planet.

But for me perhaps the most intriguing insight came when discussing the ‘money’ shot.

Ejaculation and intimacy

I like having my partner come in me or on me – I’m a massive fan of spunk – and I am sure we’ve recreated a hell of a lot of porn climaxes in our time, getting inspired and turned on by scenes as well as playing jazz with our own pervy desires. And as I mentioned at the start, my other half has a big ‘thing’ for staying inside me even after we’ve finished the hot stuff: he likes the closeness and intimacy of giggling and chatting together when he can still feel the soft, wet clinch of my cunt around his dick.

But during the talk, King pointed out that during a shoot, when he has ejaculated, he has to immediately step aside so that the camera can move in to get a close-up, detailed shot of the spunk itself. Hot for you, the viewer, if you like looking at facials, creampies, etc, but for the performer it’s a radically different experience to the one you might have when there are no cameras rolling.

This is one of those things I knew deep down but had never really considered in depth. I’ve often thought about why, in porn, the cowgirl position usually involves a lot more bouncing and a lot less grinding than it does when I do it, or why legs are often spread into positions that look painful – it’s because the camera needs to be able to access angles and close-ups, and because viewers expect to see particular things.

But with the money shot, it had never occurred to me just how significant it is that a performer is asked to step away from their partner the second they have climaxed. There are a lot of things happening to your body and your brain at the moment of climax – it can be intense. To have to not just pull away but leap away, quickly, so others can rush in to film where you were is… yeah. Different. Not bad or terrible or something we should Absolutely Ban Because Porn Must Imitate Real Life Exactly OMG. Just… different. Something that’s worth mentioning, especially given that many of us who enjoy watching porn find the ‘finish’ parts don’t translate well to real life: I love a facial as much as the next horny sex blogger, but in real life there’s something satisfying and intimate and hot about my partner coming inside me.

The ‘doesn’t happen in porn’ image

The image that I’ve used to illustrate this post is by the fab artist Hazel Mead. I met her at Eroticon and I kew as soon as I saw this picture that she went to the same talk that I did – Jasmine and King discussing the difference between porn sex and real world sex. But when the image got shared more widely on Twitter the solid message of Jasmine and King’s talk (be aware of all the things that are happening behind the scenes to make this porn look super-sexy!) morphed into something a bit more nebulous: many people criticised the image because they felt it was claiming porn should show all these things, or because they thought there were other things that had been missed off the list.

I don’t think anyone expects porn to show every single possible aspect of sex. There are valid reasons you don’t see people accidentally bumping their heads together (because it’s not that sexy!) or period sex (payment processing companies have strict rules around what can and cannot be shown – blood falling firmly into the latter category). But that wasn’t the point of the image – or the talk. No one’s saying that any individual porn film can and should show all the weird, romantic, funny, awkward moments of sex: just that it’s important for viewers to watch any media – porn included – with a critical and understanding eye. Recognise that although this guy on screen, who has trained hard for years to build muscle-mass and dexterity, is able to pick up his co-star and turn her upside down for some standing 69, Joe Average is unlikely to be able to achieve the same thing. While these two performers look like they capable of going at it hammer and tongs for sixty minutes without a single break, that is a fiction: behind the scenes they’ll be breaking for a sip of water, a quick giggle, a scripted change of position or the reapplication of a handful of lube.

Ironically, in the criticism that this image received, lots of people were essentially saying: “Look: porn isn’t the same as real life, and we shouldn’t expect it to be.” Which is exactly what Jasmine and King’s talk was saying, it’s just that the message got lost as different people put their own interpretation and spin on it. Others explained – quite rightly! – that there are some fantastic indie porn producers who are creating scenes which do show a lot of this stuff. Jasmine and King do this themselves – on their websites and Twitter feeds, as well as in real life. Throughout the whole of their talk there were outtakes and clips from their own scenes playing in the background, many of which showed the ‘things which don’t happen in porn’ we’d discussed at the start, many of which went on to inspire this image.

Some things will never happen in porn like they do in your bedroom

While it’s brilliant to see more porn that shows some ‘behind the scenes’ of sex, most porn will never look truly like the sex you have in ‘real life’, because in ‘real life’ our priorities are different: we’re fucking for pleasure, not performance. Like most sex bloggers, I’m incredibly keen for porn to be taught in schools (not shown in schools, taught – in the same way we teach young people to be media literate and understand the context for TV, film and books) because without that kind of education there genuinely is a danger that people will grow up thinking sex should look the way it does when it’s filmed by a camera crew, treated to scripting, direction and post-production, and performed by skilled professionals who have worked hard to hone their craft.

There are plenty of weird things that happen in my bedroom that I’d never expect – or want – to see in porn, but I still want to discuss them, if only to remind myself and my partners just how different these two things can be. That the gulf between pleasure and performance can be as simple as a camera cut to get a better angle on someone’s bum, or as profound as the difference between a squirt-and-run orgasm, or a lengthy, intimate cuddle in the afterglow.