This is exactly the kind of article that keeps me reading Salon. Here's the but: in order to find this article, I had to use my iGoogle RSS feed. With Salon's baffling, bewildering redesign, I no longer even look at the main page. Nonetheless, thanks for the mythbusting.

I'm of an age such that, when DEEP THROAT first came out, I was just under the legal age to see it. Being a normal lad, I obtained a fake I.D. and a friend and I went to see it at the porno theater downtown, located, (I kid you not) on Beaver Street.

I quickly grew bored with it, as everything about it was cheap and tacky and poorly done, and even the sex seemed dull (never having had sex myself at the time, I had nothing to compare it to, but it sure didn't succeed at its primary task: to excite one's prurient interest).

However, compared to what little I've seen of contemporary porn, DEEP THROAT presented a picture of somewhat human figures who did seem to want to try to relate to each other for mutual pleasure. It seems today, as you point out, all about the performance...but the performance itself is too often grotesque...with the male performers going at it like jack-hammers, literally pounding their partners as if they were non-human objects, trying to break them open. I've also never understood the unappetizing appeal of ejaculating over the faces of the women...it seems to appeal to the desire of men who want to degrade women. (Mind you, I make no judgments about what two--or more--consenting adults do with each other in private, and I can see the appeal in letting oneself go and doing that which seems objectionable to public notions of propriety...that is, "getting dirty." But not everything one might do in private for fun can be depicted on film, as it is the ineffable emotional context that makes certain behaviors exciting; severed from the attendant emotions, one is left with a debased or debasing caricature of human behavior.)

And this is what we seem to have come to: porn in which the performers can't even begin to pretend they or their partners are human beings. Pity the men and women who think they must erase their humanity and who aspire to be, literally, "sex objects."

Good grief I hope THIS one isn't about your ex husband. Please say it's not...

How about the next time whoever says "do you like that, baby?" replying, "no, actually, I'm kind of uncomfortable, why don't we try (whatever) now"? Seems like the only way this ugly gender stalemate will ever move forward is not only for men to be more considerate but for women to stop being so blinking passive-aggressive.

Is most excellent point you make: if no laugh during sex (or even little bit smile), for sure you do it like porn star.

Unfortunate, porn seem for be sex instruction video for many peoples. In Svutlana opinion, porn too often look like assemble line in Barbie fuck factory. Like Svutlana for watch something with little bit more realism. Lose me many neighbors this way.

I once dated a guy who, unbeknownst to me until much later, when we were no longer dating but friends, had been addicted to escorts. That is, prostitutes. He got way in over his head in debt with it. But what happened is that he had no concept of foreplay, of real connection. When we started kissing, he immediately started groping me and trying to get into my pants.

Fortunately I'm the type of woman that speaks up in such situations, and I put him in his place. His feelings were hurt but he later thanked me for it, saying that it made him realize that having all his recent sexual experience as being with escorts had cost him a lot more than money.

The thing is, most men are not honest about this kind of thing. They have a hard enough time admitting that they watch porn at all, much less than they see prostitutes. Another ex told me that at least 80-90 percent of his male friends had gone to prostitutes, many of them fairly regularly. Now, that's for them to deal with, and their wives and girlfriends. But it did make me wonder how much bad sex is from porn, how much is from being serviced by prostitutes, and how much is both.

"...another friend mentioned a man she'd been dating, whose erotic repertoire included withdrawing his member at key moments to thump it on her."

I used to do what I thought was a fanciful riff on that notion--that a guy who'd grown up watching porn would consider this pointless pullout part of the normal routine of intercourse. But I never thought he existed!

Lying inert on your back doesn't make you a good lover, either.

I always wait for him to guide my hand to his penis. It's a way of showing respect for someone else's body. I certainly wouldn't enjoy being with someone testing out porn moves, it sounds kinda self-absorbed frankly and lacking in imagination not to mention an inability to go with the moment. The bedroom is one of the few places where you have that freedom in our increasingly regimented lives.

And that will NEVER be learned watching porn--the land of the televised fake orgasm (for both men and women). Granted, I like some porn--it's stimulating to watch hot men having sex (for me as a heterosexual woman). Men and women faking enjoying it--not so much. It's a huge detraction from the genre.

But porn is about personal gratification, not being a good lover. Being a good lover involves a certain generosity (which is also partially selfish--the best orgasms are seeing your partner in ecstasy--the real version I mean).

Duh!

Another ex told me that at least 80-90 percent of his male friends had gone to prostitutes, many of them fairly regularly.

Wow, I find that astonishing. Where did he live? I've only known a few guys who admitted to using prostitutes (and I'm male). Oddly enough, all were fat hardcore Republicans who were furious about Clinton having consensual sex, and treated women like trash. I believe it's the consent that bothers them.