sexual media

Part two of Alice O's exploration of mainstream porn to help increase your sexual media literacy. Includes information about sex positions, orgasm, consent and communication, boundaries, birth control, safer sex and more as they exist (or don't!) in mainstream porn, and how this can or should all go in real-life-sex to compare and contrast.

A clear-eyed, in-depth exploration of mainstream porn that can: amp up your sexual media literacy so you can better suss out what's really going on with and in porn, fill you in on how it may or may not -- and sometimes just plain shouldn't -- match your expectations or experiences of sexuality offscreen, and tell you more about its politics and behind-the-scenes realities.

What is sexual media, how might we think wisely about it, and how can we figure out how to feel and what choices to make with it?

Jiz is a nonbinary performer, speaker, author, and the driving force behind Coming Out Like a Porn Star, a collection chronicling how different porn performers have "come out" to family, friends, and loved ones. I asked Jiz their thoughts on identity, ethics, and the realities of making porn.

"He was genuinely trying to understand me and listen and everything, but he just didn't get it, because he's been watching porn for years and never really known anything else? About a week ago we were texting and he asked me if I had ever sexted with anyone before, and I said I had (which wasn't a...

The big emotion that comes through what you've written here isn't love or loyalty. It's anger. Big, big anger, in giant waves, in what you're saying and in how you've said it. There is so much here -- far more, I think, than your boyfriend using porn, or what's in the porn he's looking at -- that a...

What a person wants and enjoys in media -- including pornography -- may or may not have any relationship to what they want and enjoy in real life. That's often particularly the case with fantasy media, which pornography usually very much is. A big part of viewing, reading, or otherwise engaging in...

I don't think that how we feel emotionally is ever about a matter of rights. We cannot control what we feel, after all: we can only control how we process, hold, express and manage our feelings. You feel upset: whether or not you or anyone else thinks you have a right to have those feelings, there...

Actually, that's not true about animals. But I'm glad you brought it up, because these are some of my favorite kinds of questions. We can find groups of animals engaging in almost any kind of behavior we find human beings engaging in. When it comes to oral sex -- be that with a partner or done by...

Well, not all men do freeze up when asked (and not all men watch porn, either). For that matter, some women also watch pornographic movies, and they don't all become mute when you ask them about it, either. As someone who has written on these issues a lot over the last ten years, and asks others...