This week Cosmo tried to explain to people, with side-splitting hilarity, what the key differences were between porn actresses and real women. For example, porn actresses vs real women on doggy-style sex:

Porn star: “This element of degradation and anonymity is definitely not making me wonder whether you are actually attracted to me! I will call you ‘Daddy’ now because that’s not weird for either of us!”

Real woman: “I should really get that wall repainted.”

Performance vs preference

To regular readers, it might seem like I’m stating the spankingly obvious, but there is nothing deeply and inherently different about women who work in porn. They are not genetically-engineered sex-mad creatures whose only true joy in life is gargling with spunk while getting banged energetically by a group of colleagues. Nor are they sex robots, programmed purely to seek out new and exciting ways to get jizzed on. They’re people who are doing a job.

Last week I talked about the obvious differences between porn sex and ‘real’ sex, and the fact that a professional is going to do things a little differently to how you might in the comfort of your own home: it’s the professional’s job to put on a great performance. But just as I Am Not My Job, neither is a porn actress. She doesn’t live her entire life as she would at work.

At work I sign off emails with ‘kind regards’, wash up my coffee mug as soon as I’m done with it, and even occasionally wear make up. In the comfort of my own home I sign off emails with ‘See you tomorrow, twatface’, let coffee grow an inch of mould before I move it to the kitchen, and wear nothing on my face save the occasional chocolate smear. In the same way, porn actresses aren’t constantly acting.

You’re a porn star too

We all put on performances sometimes. Personally, when I’m having shiny new sex with a partner I’m far more likely to lean back when I’m on top and grab my hair with both my hands while I’m riding him. Why? Well, somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain is the idea that it makes my tits look lovely. Eager to impress, I’ll jiggle and grind hands-free so that the fortunate gentleman in question gets something to look at beside my own gurning sex face. This performance isn’t repeated often when I’m deeper into a relationship – I move towards my easier and more pleasurable default of ‘placing his hands on my tits so he can squeeze me while I fuck him.’ It’s not quite as pretty, but it more effectively hits the spot.

The Cosmo article frames what porn actresses do and think as the complete opposite of the thoughts and actions of ‘real’ women, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Sometimes I’m a porn star – with my hands-behind-my-head and my doe-eyed, spluttering blowjobs and my “please please fuck me in the ass”, because sometimes I fancy putting on a bit of a show. Other times I would prefer to just turn my back and have you lazily spoon me into an orgasm before turning the light off and falling asleep.

The problem with the Cosmo article is that it isn’t comparing the same type of shagging for each person: it’s comparing their work shagging to your play shagging. When off-camera porn actresses are the same as all of us: sometimes have the performance sex and other times they’ll have the lazy, comfortable, quick-orgasm-then-a-cup-of-tea sex.

Cosmo might as well write an article entitled ‘Accountants vs real women’, highlighting how hilarious it is that the accountant is careful about their figures, while ‘real’ women jot down a budget on the back of an envelope. Would we actually expect an accountant to get out a calculator and perform double-entry bookkeeping for the household bills, ensuring everything is signed off in triplicate? No. Because accountants, unlike porn actresses, aren’t expected to drag their work kicking and screaming into every corner of their life.

Porn actresses vs ‘real’ women

This matters because I find it a bit creepy to separate porn actresses from ‘real’ women. As if their lives are defined entirely by their jobs, and their jobs must necessarily bleed into every aspect of their daily routine. Separating women who work in porn from women who work anywhere else implies a lot of ‘other’ness that leads to uncomfortable assumptions.

If porn women are different to ‘real’ women, do they behave differently? Could you spot them in a crowd? Do they need to be treated differently, because of the sexual qualities than run through every aspect of them?

The answer, of course, is ‘no’.

It’s important for people to understand the difference between porn sex and real sex: of course it is. When I wrote about Sex Box I got a (probably justified) telling-off for not making it clear that we should educate people (particularly young people) on the difference between porn sex and home sex. Of course this is important – if you’ve never had sex before and all of your beliefs are shaped by what you see on the screen, you’ll could end up with a devastatingly inaccurate view of what a fun shag has to look like. Just as if you only ever watched Eastenders you’d have a terrifying impression of East London.

So the distinction is important. But let’s remember that it’s not a distinction between ‘real’ humans and a porn-making race of sexual superbeings. The people are all fundamentally the same: it’s the type of sex that changes.