Dear Kings: Stop Letting Porn Teach You How to Have Sex

Pornhub should not be where you go to for lessons on a healthy and fulfilling sex life

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I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that most of the men reading this essay enjoy sex. And you know what? I get it; sex is great. It’s kind of like ice cream in that even if it sucks and leaves a bad taste in your mouth; the experience is almost always better than having never had ice cream at all. And if you’re good at it, then baaaay beee, you will have a lot of fun. At the tender age of [Redacted] years old, I hope that I have had more partners who walked away from our exchanges satisfied with the experience than not, and for those who weren’t, know that it wasn’t me, it was my evil twin brother with trash dick I’m sorry. But here’s the thing about sex: as much as many of us are obsessed with it, most of us didn’t have the best teachers, and as a result, many of us were, or are, having bad sex.

As ridiculous as that sounds, did you know that In 2017, the Kinsey Institute conducted a study on sexual behavior, and after surveying 53,000 Americans, they discovered that while Lesbians reported orgasming during sex 86% of the time, straight women were only cumming 65% of the time. It gets worse; another survey done in England found that out of 7000 women, half of them between the ages of 25 and 35 “did not enjoy their sex life.”

The orgasm gap is just the tip of the iceberg; when it comes to learning about consent and why it’s crucial, what sex is, and how to have it, there are very few tutors, especially for men and boys. Instead, we learn by trying to take advice from friends who are just as ignorant, go out into the world doing things we watched on TV, or find toxic tutors in weird places.

When I was growing up, no one talked about being bad at sex, and I was a 13-year-old virgin. All of my friends were sexually active and apparently very good at it; So I assumed that there was just something wrong with me. I remember sitting in the back of the class listening while my best friend, Kareem, shared his latest sexual adventures. He was a God among 14-year-old boys, and I wanted to be like him.

What I didn’t want was for Kareem not to like me, and if he knew that not only wasn’t I good at sex, I was a virgin, he would clown me. I considered going to my father for advice, but the last time I broached the conversation, he instructed me to “never pull out while in a hot tub” because the “jets would shoot your seed into her” and that a “$3 Durex condom was cheaper than $500 plus gas” It wasn’t the worst advice, but it wasn’t the type of counsel I was looking for.

There was even less support at school; I assumed there would be a sex-ed class that gave you all of the basics. Instead, I sat through a mish-mash of random teachers telling students to save ourselves for marriage because that’s what “Jesus would want.”

These circumstances led me to the route that most men my age or younger go to, PORN. Judge me if you want, but I had a lot of questions that needed answers and no one I felt safe talking to. The only other option was porn, and there was a lot of it.

Without access to a stable internet connection, I was forced to shop at the blockbuster of Porno, The Barbershop. Through the suggestion of my barber, I purchased Booty Talk Parts 1-5. I returned home and began the “Educational Sessions.” It was a disaster. The truth is, Booty Talk not only didn’t have the answers, but it's also aggressively unrealistic. I was watching videos where every man was 6’5, buff, and had a dick the size of a toddler. At 5’11 and scrawny, those visuals did nothing for my confidence.

I also noticed that the women were always covered in baby oil, and if they weren’t at the start of the video, they would somehow be lathered by the end. After spending years watching videos like the Booty Talk series Rain Woman 1 and 2, as well as the “Lusty Witch of Blair Farms,” I was convinced that one session of sex was supposed to last for at least three hours, EVERY TIME, WITH NO BREAK. Years later, I discovered Dr. Nerd Love, who talked through what a healthy and realistic sexual encounter could/should look like. But I didn’t make that discovery until years later. Until then, it was all a mess of misinformation and baby oil.

Through this education and my love affair with Roxy Reynolds, I never asked myself critical questions about what was happening in those pornos; there were a lot of things I had to question and unlearn. For example:

1. Why did no one ever ask for consent? They would just whip out their junk and take the express train to Pound Town. In real life, you should always ask for permission.

2. Why did every scene seem to have 40 straight minutes of violent backshot mania doggie style? Sure, some people enjoy that, but come on!

3. Why was Brian Pumper cracking eggs over women's heads during sex, and was that something I should be doing, too?

4. Why was Brian Pumper cracking eggs over women's heads while also wearing Construction Timberland boots during sex?

5. Why was Lexington Steele rapping while putting his legs on the backs of women?

6. And again, WHY WAS THERE SO MUCH BABY OIL?!

If I had known about publications like “Everyday Feminism,” I might have spent time reading articles that humanize women and encouraged healthy sexual encounters that were pleasing for both people.

When I finally did start having sex, I tried to do some of the things I learned from watching porn, it did not go well. I couldn’t understand why, during sex, the Cherelles and Samanthas of the world didn’t react like Luna Star did in “Lusty Yoga 3.” Despite what I saw in Booty Talk, having sex in boots was uncomfortable, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to use baby oil! I remember the first time I had sex after some extensive lesson learning from pornos. My partner didn’t look or act like Pinky; she didn’t moan or wear 10-inch heels either. I had to think about something else to enjoy the experience. All of that porn had made reality feel like a drag.

Relying on a porno to understand sex is a bad idea. Porno is not real; women do not look like that in real life; sex rarely goes the way it’s depicted in porn; the average person does not have a ten-inch penis. But the most dangerous thing about porno is the way it depicts women. How women are portrayed in porn is a farce. In almost any porn you watch, the woman is only there for the man's pleasure; even when the person she’s having sex with is doing something that should be pleasing to her, she still has to find a way to make the viewer feel good and turned on. Not only isn’t that realistic, but it’s also not healthy. Sex is fun; it’s also for everyone, porn teaches us that women are only involved in sex for our satisfaction, but the best sex is a shared pleasure, not a service.

Can porn be entertaining, sure, but it’s also deeply problematic, and if you’re using it to teach you how to have sex, you’re in for a world of hurt.

Congrats, you made it to the end! This was initially posted in 2020, but it aged poorly, so I rewrote it. What did you think of the post? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!