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William Ifeanyi Moore: Sex & the Media

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At first glance, it is easy to make the mistake that romance is the only part of love Hollywood has murdered with their unattainable standard of expectations and happily ever after endings where majority of people we know in long-term relationships appear to be far from happy. But guess what, the media also got to sex, and especially for women, this is not good news.

Unfortunately, the pornographic industry and erotica fiction are the two major media influencers on how we think of sex as a society; erotica fiction being targeted towards women and porn for men. This is not to say men haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey or women aren’t burning data on Pornhub. Just saying in general, men are more notorious for watching sex and women for reading about it.

Marshal McLuhan, Canadian philosopher on communication theory, was not far from the truth when he suggested that the effect of a medium is incidental. Just from the nature of watching porn it makes us think of sex as a performance even without our being aware of it. It is acted to look good for the audience, and not to feel good for the parties involved. Reading on the other hand involves our imagination and with a backdrop story and lack of visuals, we have to think of feelings attached to the sex, which produces the resulting pleasure.

The result of this divide is that while women think of sex as an act with pleasure at the center, men think of it like a performance (or just think to cum quick and roll over). When a woman is lucky enough to escape an absolutely selfish lover, she faces the problem of the sex performer more worried of how his performance goes than how much pleasure she gets. You know that guy that will try to change position ten times in one session without being aware that a woman’s likelihood to orgasm goes back to square one every time you break momentum. Or the guy that has seen a dude nibble on the clit in a porn film and will near enough circumcise you if you let him anywhere near your clitoris with his head. Women are also guilty of the performance problem when it comes to giving fellatio. All that deep throating and other balls cupping are just side orders. The smallest research will tell you the tip should be your place of focus. But this isn’t an article about sex education (kinda).

To rethink sex as something about pleasure is very important in any sexually active relationship and requires open communication about the act between couples. This can be a bit problematic because suggestions of changes to sexual behavior can easily be mistaken as criticism, which doesn’t go down well with either gender. I guess we have to ask ourselves if we rather retain the image of being sex gods and goddesses in our head, or open up to development by communicating our needs.

Do you have an experience of a sex performer or self-serving pleasure monger? Well tell us something about it in the comments section.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime | Bryan Creely 

William Ifeanyi Moore is an MPharm graduate from the University of Portsmouth, UK. His true passion is in novels and poetry but he cheats on them with movies, plays, and music. He believes sacrifice and compromise is the bedrock of any healthy relationship. His debut novel Lonely Roads is out on 10/12/2015. Blog: www.soulsyrup.space Twitter: @willifmoore Instagram: willifmoore

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