STEPHEN FRY

This should clear everything up..

Why All Men Love Porn

Okay, I admit it. I exaggerated a bit with the title. Not all men love porno. There´s this guy in Lima, Peru who says he´s lost interest the last few months. But except for No-armed José, all us other guys love dirty movies. We simply adore them. Incomprehensible, isn´t it? On all other subjects related to men, you women readers, with your famous "intuition", claim to understand everything about us men and our pathetic biological urges. But on the subject of sleazy films you women always throw up your hands and pretend to be mystified. "How can you watch that disgusting junk?!?" you complain. "What´s wrong with you brutes?!?" you sneer.
As always you ladies misunderstand and underestimate us. We men, being splendid fellows in possession of enormous warm hearts, love porno simply because we like seeing other people enjoying themselves. (My wise old grand-father used to say that the reason most of you women close your eyes when you´re making love, is because you hate to see your husbands having a good time!)
Yes, we men love to see other men and women happily expressing themselves physically. Especially you women. To explain this generosity on our parts let me back-track a little here. Real life is often quite irritating for us men. In real life we have to screw up the courage to flirt with you women. We have to amuse you with our humour, impress you with our intelligence (or failing that, our success) so that you´ll accept a dinner invitation. And having gotten that far we know we still have quite a bit more performing to do, like some sort of circus poodle jumping through hoops, before we can get your knickers off. And once we do get you in bed we then have to risk our backs and our pride trying our best to perform like some sort of wild sex stallion from your imaginary Pony magazine. And all in order to give you pleasure! This last point is crucial. Never never forget this one essential fact: No man ever feels happy or proud of himself unless he can give his woman the pleasure she seeks in bed. And we never think only of our own pleasure! Even the most sadistic rapist, I am sure, longs only to be appreciated!

Hard to believe, isn´t it, but true! No matter how much fun we men have had ourselves, no matter how awesome the orgasm we´ve experienced, the whole experience is a tragedy and a humiliation if the woman we´re with is left dis-appointed and frustrated. That´s why few men really enjoy sex once we get the chance to actually do it. When we´re actually doing it we´re too busy trying to remember what to do and what not to do, and when, and "is my deodorant dying on me right now?" and "why does she have to have such big hands? My joy stick looks like a lip stick in those huge mitts of her´s!" And what´s even worse, while all this is going on we´re also busy concentrating on images of Mrs. Thatcher in a bikini order to fight off premature ejaculation! Yup, that´s God´s great joke on us. The more beautiful the woman we´re with, the more excited we become and the faster we orgasm and the greater the humiliation. And if you women think we men all envy the fellow who is sleeping with Claudia Shiffer, you´re wrong. No way! We know the poor bastard is desperately thinking of Mrs. T the whole time he´s carefully pumping at Claudia!

Yes, sad to say, the only real personal pleasure we men get out of sex is the 5 seconds between finally getting your clothes off and seeing that "Yes! It´s not a trick! She´s actually going to let me do it to her! Halleluiah!" But then the five seconds have passed and - Damn! Now that we´ve finally been given permission, we´ve got to do it right! And into the breech we nervously sally, stiff upper lip (and less stiff other parts), smiling bravely and thinking of England!
That´s why we love porno. With porno we don´t have to watch some long drawn out Meryl Streep-horror story of some guy making a fool of himself writing cringing love letters, picking out the wrong flowers, spending tons of money in ridiculously expensive restaurants where the waiters treat the poor sap like he´s a leper - and all before he gets in bed with a woman who may neither be enthusiastic nor ultimately satisfied with him. In porno films the women are all wonderfully satisfied. (At this point I must admit I´ve never seen the more "advanced" forms of erotic films in which S&M occurs and women appear to be forced to do things against their wills. But knowing my fellow men like I do, I´m sure that even in these films the women stars all (pretend, of course, to) end up completely satisfied and grateful. Because if they weren´t satisfied and grateful there would be no happy ending!
Yes, that´s all we men want. A happy ending. And to be of service. In this respect we´re all over-grown boy scouts. If an old lady needs help crossing the street.. at your service! If an attractive woman desires tender but thorough intimate massage.. at your service!
But sadly, in real life you women tend to make this servicing difficult. Your genes, sensible little Nazis that they are, ensure that you must test us to see if we are sensitive, generous, patient, persistent, intelligent.. and most importantly - if we are strong enough to let you dominate us without running away. And admittedly, it wouldn´t be such an ordeal if we men had to go through this necessary but excruciating selection process once with every new woman. But you continue testing us as long as you know us! Every day you keep probing to see we´re still courteous, kind, clean, brave, honest and decent. In short, a boy scout! And a porno film simply shows us men the reward for passing all these strenuous tests. A happy woman. Yes, Sarah Young´s face may be all sticky in the end, but she always smiles with gratitude and satisfaction!

(At this point, the average reader is probably thinking sex, sex , sex. I´m sick of hearing about it, reading about it, seeing it in every ad. Enough is enough! But have patience and allow me point out something that almost everyone keeps ignoring in the on-going Sex Wars debate, ignoring as if it were a sad little embarrassment that hurts too much to be dealt with honestly: A Good Sex Life is the Foundation to a Couple´s Happiness. Yes, we all know that sex is not the most important thing in the world. (Personally I can get just as much enjoyment out of Chinese food.) But when something is wrong with a couple´s sex life, nothing else can be truly right. There can be no true intimacy, honesty or generosity. And to go a bit deeper into what is obviously a wide-spread problem, let me point out one terrifying fact: Sex was never designed to be satisfying! Quite to the contrary. The only reason we keep doing it is the vain quest for doing it right! And it´s painfully obvious that we´re not doing it right often enough to keep ourselves happy.
To better illustrate this point, one of the most revealing jokes that we men here in Denmark tell each other, is this one: "Because the average penis is 14 centimetres in length, and the average vagina is 16 centimetres in depth, there is 5,000 kilometres of unused fanny walking around!"

Now we men all find this joke to be funny, but in a sad, ironical sort of way. Because we feel guilty. Because we know we haven´t been doing our jobs when it comes to satisfying you women sexually. And that we are failing to satisfy you, especially in long term relationships, is in no doubt. For one of the strangest media phenomenons of recent times has been the repeated stories in newspapers and magazines that we men have given up when it comes to satisfying you women, and that we have lost interest in sex. That we have given up trying may be partially correct, but that we have lost interest in sex is certainly a misunderstanding. For it is physically impossible for otherwise healthy men to ignore the prodding of our hormones. We are simply too strongly programed for that.
But we men are becoming increasingly reluctant to humiliate ourselves in order to get sex, simply because there are now substitutes available. Once again I think of the heaven-sent benefits of porno video films. Quite obviously one of the reasons that more and more men and women live alone, is that more and more men are unwilling to live with unpleasant women just in order to have a sex life. Admittedly a porno film utilized as manual catharsis may be a poor substitute for the real thing, but it does help a man retain both his sanity and his dignity, and in this respect single men are relatively lucky. Woody Allen´s joke that "masturbation is sex with someone you love," may be funny, but what is not is that researchers tell us that married men tend to masturbate more than single men do! Yes, it´s my unfortunate married brothers that I have the most sympathy for. For without exaggeration, 98% of the married men I know are desperately trying to keep their marriages together, both for their children´s sake and for their own, despite the fact that they all say that their wives have more or less lost interest in having sex with them, and have left them with a life of frustration and humiliation.

Now you women tend to respond to such a sad jeremiad in one of two ways. You either deny that it is true, with some kind of vague and absurd claims that married women in equal numbers are provided a starvation ration of sex by their husbands, and therefore such unhappiness is mutual.. so stop complaining! Or you say frustrated husbands deserve to be frustrated, and then your seemingly endless list is unrolled: lunk-headed hubby is not romantic enough, clean enough, gentle enough, helpful enough, imaginative enough, thin enough. In other words it is the poor sap´s fault and his alone.
But some wives, if pressed, will admit that their husbands are sufficiently romantic, clean, gentle, helpful, understanding, imaginative, thin, but that his desire for more frequent sex is still unreasonable. In other words, these women claim that their own desire for sex once every 14 days or more, is the correct desire, while their husbands´ desires are excessive. And it is here that we come to the crux of the problem: Men and women are generally out of synch with each other sexually - and we are programmed from the start to be that way!
To begin with, one of the main reasons we are out of synch with each other is that women are not governed by their hormones to strictly come into heat only periodically, as all other female mammals are. In other words men cannot tell by a mere sniff when a woman is sexually receptive, which means that we men must be primed and ready at all times for the opportunity to arise! And not only must we be primed and ready, we must be primed and ready with a fresh supply of sperm, for researchers now say that we men are programmed by our genes to get rid of old sperm through self-manipulation if necessary, so that we are always ready to make the best babies. And this constant hormonally induced readiness may add spice and excitement to our lives, but not a great deal of satisfaction. (So perhaps we´d all, men and women, be better off if we came into a sexual frenzy two weeks every July and mated hundreds of times with hundreds of partners, to the point of satiation and exhaustion, and then had the rest of the year to our-selves and to more dignified pursuits? Of course such a solution to our sexual problems would no doubt cause more problems than it would cure, but I don´t know about you but I´d be willing to try it. 50 weeks without a sexual thought.. what a heavenly relief!)

Another way we men and women are out of sync with each other is in our conceptions of monogamy and promiscuity. Most of you women say that mono-gamy is preferable because it emphasizes loyalty. That monogamy protects our children better. But many of my married male friends complain bitterly that you women are nothing but sperm vampires. As soon as you have squeezed some children out of us your interest in sex with us dies, and can only be revived with a new man as our replacement. And absurd as it sounds, we men are more truly loyal than you women are. For no matter how much we men want to have sex with hundreds of other women, it is rare indeed that we lose all interest in sex with our wives (provided of course that she has not developed into a cruel personality.) In other words we men want our cake and want to eat it too, while you women want to hang on to your piece of cake long after you´ve lost interest in eating it.. but you don´t want anyone else to sample it, either.. until you´ve moved on to a new man. What a lovely form of monogamy! To you women´s advantage only!
No, we men and women ought to be honest enough to admit that neither men nor women should be blamed for the ways we prefer to behave sexually, for nature has programmed us that way. But when morality is brought into the equation I believe that there is no doubt that we men have a more moral attitude: that everyone should be more sexually generous, flexible and forgiving. Sadly, for the most part you women´s attitude is still "Concentrate exclusively on me for as long as I´m interested in you.. Then you can live like a celibate until I can replace you."
Is it any wonder that growing numbers of men prefer to live alone?

One final piece of advice to any men who happen to be reading this article: Never watch a porno film with a woman. Don´t do it! Instead of getting inspired, as is intended, women spend the whole time complaining, "Look at that ugly sofa.. and those curtains! ..and did you see her nails? You brute! How can you watch such rubbish?!?"

Sexuality is not just a matter of Nature. It is, and has been proven relentlessy, that Nurture has a grea deal of impact on peoples perceptions not just of their own sex drives, but that of others.

And your experience to how women to respond when watching porn is 180 degree difference from what I have seen.

Some women hae low sex drives, and sometimes they can increase. This is true for men as well by the way.

As for a desire to 'have sex with hundreds of women indeed', that thought repulses me on every level. Not to mention I'm not into women. But I still feel the same way and my 'drive' is quite normal and healthy. But I see sex as an act of intimate connection. I am connecting to a person, a human being, an individual. And many things come into play that matter to me that can make or break wether we ever go on to love making.

The myth, so to speak, that isn't broken, because some men percieve a sense of social power in perptuating it, is that we are all just dieing for a chance to talk about sex with each other or think we are capable of sexing tons of lovers. The reality plays the real truth. It's far more typical for conversations I have with my buddies to have no mention of women whatsoever. World topics, politics, chores, some new interest tend to being the pervasive discussions at hand. Not which porn movie someone has seen lately!!

"But some wives, if pressed, will admit that their husbands are sufficiently romantic, clean, gentle, helpful, understanding, imaginative, thin, but that his desire for more frequent sex is still unreasonable. In other words, these women claim that their own desire for sex once every 14 days or more, is the correct desire, while their husbands´ desires are excessive"

this is the type of statement that perpetuates a myth that all wives are essentailly sexless and all husbands are in a state of continual begging. Nonsense! Have been in relationships myself, and having many close friends both straight and gay, it's just horse shit. The women I know, married or not, would find your descriptions laughable. They have very healthy, geared up sex drives and in fact, it is THEY who tend to wanting more sex and their husbands less. They confide all the details to me about his reasons ( tired, have some chore to do, want alone time to go fishing or pursue soem sport, just have to play that new video game, don't feel well ). IOW, people are people. Men are not 'always ready' or in a perpectual state of readiness anymore than women are. I kow one woman whose husband even told her that he'd rather she had affairs, so long as they didn't involve Love, so her sex drive could be satisfied. He just wanted to work, come home, and sit in front of the TV. Just that type. Sex was wayyyy down on his priority list over time and hers, probably due to it being frustrated a lot, became even more intense.

And many women I know have or do watch porn. Believe you me, they ain't looking at the furniture!

Boring as always.