Most people will have an amusing story about the first time they were introduced to pornography. Other people will have a more traumatic experience. It generally depends on the person’s age at the time.
I found pornography at the right age, but I still didn’t enjoy it as some might expect.
I was 14 years old. I had been aware of pornography for a long time - soft porn was on page 3 of a few newspapers and comedians would joke about hardcore porn on TV. However, I had never seen pornography before.
Our PE lesson was in the sports centre attached to the school. The changing rooms in the sports centre were much smaller than the school gym, getting changed was always a crowded experience when we had a lesson there. On this particular day, the kids who usually played truant turned up for class and the teacher had no option but to turn away some of us because of overcrowding. I was in a group of 6 that was directed into the sports hall and asked to change in the corner of the hall.
We got changed quickly and waited for the rest of the class. We were playing basketball today and the teacher had placed two bags of balls in the hall ready for the lesson. I was trying to untie the bags when I noticed all the other lads had gathered round each other, kneeling on the floor.
I went over to have a look - it must be something interesting, like the latest Nike trainers or maybe this week’s Score! magazine. I was partially right, it was a magazine; it was a magazine with naked women.
The other lads had crouched over the magazine which was laid flat on the floor in the middle of the group. I stood over them and peered in from above. Two pictures of the same woman were on either page with bright lettering that blasted words like “Phwoarr” and “Gorgeous” into your eyeballs. I guess if the lettering wasn’t bright you’d never notice them.
After a moment I had taken in all I could and suggested we turn the page. I was pretty sure there’d be more naked women on the next page. No one took any action. They continued to gorp and drool. Maybe they were seeing things on the page I couldn’t appreciate from a distance - maybe they were reading the text. So I bent down to get a closer look.
Top tip for pornography: never, NEVER read the text in the article.
“Stacey likes it rough. Stacey loves the feel of a rough hand across her breast. Stacey likes it four times a night.”
Even as a naive teenage boy I wasn’t convinced. Who would really ask those questions? There was no way would a reporter be sent to each photo shoot to ask such superficial questions.
“Excuse me, love, while you’re putting your clothes back on, can you answer some questions for the article? …. Firstly, how exactly do you like it?”
Totally ridiculous. Much more likely is that these words have been written by an old hack - a fat, middle-aged, balding man sitting in a six-by-five office plugging away on an old clunky typewriter, imagining what his hot date would say to him.
The words I was reading were from an old man’s fantasy, not from the mouth of the model.
That realisation ruined pornography for me forever. Every time I see pornography I envisage the photo shoot, the set, the photographer and the hack who would write the words. I see the men who are orchestrating the content and realise I’m merely hooking into their fantasy, not the woman’s and not my own. I felt there was so much more to discover about myself and a potential lover. Porn was more equivalent to watching an orgy than enjoying sex with a lover.
Ultimately it made me realise that a picture of a naked woman is nothing compared to a real woman. I don’t think I’m odd to say that I’d prefer to have a passionate kiss with a fully dressed woman than be looking at a picture of a naked woman in a magazine. Yet the stereotype is that men love women naked, and that makes me feel I’m unusual in having this preference, which in turn reinforces the stereotype. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pornography is usually labelled as an evil of our society. Like many things considered evil, the damage is done by the wrong people having access and the lack of restrictions.
Many younger people (say, under 30) would be surprised that I reached 14 without seeing pornography. When I was growing up pornography was much more difficult to come across and there was a simple control mechanism that worked very well. Porn magazines were kept on the top shelf in newsagents. This barrier sounds make-shift and easily circumvented, but was actually very effective. You needed the guts to ask a stranger to reach the top shelf for you, keep repeating that request until you find a stranger who would cooperate and then the guts to pay for the magazine at the counter, making sure the person serving does not have any connection to your parents. Add to this, having the money to buy the magazine, which was rare where I grew up, and you have three barriers to accessing porn.
Today, porn is too easily found and, for most children, found too soon.