04 - Get In, Get Off, Get Out

Digging for that old VHS tape under the bed doesn’t hit quite the same as having 25 million porn sites in your pocket—it’s hard to compete with the accessibility and variety of porn on the internet. Dopamine reenters the chat as we discuss the instant digital gratification, quicksand and other niche corners of the porniverse ... and the value of bringing  adult films back to the cinema. 

Featured Guests & Links:

Shine Louise Houston, the founder of Pink & White Productions. Graduating from San Francisco Arts Institute with a Bachelors in Fine Art Film, her works have become the new gold standard of adult cinema. Shine is the creator of queer porn icon CrashPadSeries.com and – the 'Criterion Collection' of adult films – the streaming platform PinkLabel.TV, which also hosts the annual San Francisco Porn Film Festival. 

Follow:
@PinkAndWhiteProductions
@PinkLabelTV
@SF_PFF
@ShineLouise
@CrashPadSeries 

Materials Referenced: 

Janice’s Diner from J & B In The Hills

Stolen Focus  by Johann Hari

Dr. David Ley, clinical psychologist and internationally-recognized expert on issues related to sexuality, pornography and mental health 

HUMP! Film Festival, the World’s Best Amateur Porn Film Festival, touring the US now! @humpfilmfest

Wet and Messy Fetishism (WAM) aka Sploshing

Quicksand fetish porn (Sinking Adventures)

FuckForForest (FFF)

_____

Porn Nerds is a co-production of Squirm and BOOM Integrated, the podcast division of GRAMMY-winning audiobook leader John Marshall Media. Huge thank yous to Adrien Glover, Uri Mansion, and the team at BOOM Integrated.

Squirm is an educational platform that helps people have productive and compassionate conversations on difficult topics related to sex and relationships. We do this through approachable, inclusive offerings, including games, events, workshops, and audio originals. A lot of sex advice ends with “talk about it.” That’s where ours begins.

Sign-up: Squirm newsletter! | Follow: Instagram | Read: Men’s Health, Mashable, Best of Portland 2024

Want to invite us on your podcast? Or feature us in your publication? Or collaborate on an event? Email us at hello@getsquirmy.com

Transcript

Porn Nerds - Episode 04 - Get In, Get Off, Get Out - Transcript

(0:00 - 1:05)

In case it wasn't obvious from the title, this show will feature adult themes and explicit language. Now that that's out of the way, I kind of come from a repressed sexual background, never masturbated until I was in mid to late 20s, a little bit to do with sort of growing up Catholic and all that. So for me, I do relate porn a little bit with a sexual awakening.

Porn has been a way that I could first get to know and understand different kinks I had, that there was a ton of shame around it constantly. It is funny sort of like getting into porn later in life. I feel like I'm having those things that like a 15 year old would have.

It's like, oh man, this is really not awesome to have this. And then it's like, oh, I can't do that all the time. 

I'm Tess. I have a master's in sexuality and have worked with indie porn producers. And I'm Kels. I'm a director, producer, and daughter of a sex worker.

(1:07 - 1:59)

And this is Porn Nerds, a podcast about porn and your sex life. Today, we're talking about porn and our attention spans, the never ending stream of new content, and the profound impact of bringing porn back to the cinema. 

Last week, we talked about how sex is such a vulnerable experience.

And when talking to people while making this show, many of you shared how porn is a way to avoid the vulnerability that's required with other people. In addition to vulnerability, there were two other themes that appear to be on a lot of people's minds, the instant gratification of porn and the endless novelty. 

We did not used to have infinite access to intense sexual stimuli.

(1:59 - 2:34)

What do these two themes, instant gratification and novelty, have in common? The internet. The internet makes it increasingly difficult for us to manage attention, whether it's online gaming, shopping, or porn. The internet makes the space between feeling an impulse and satisfying that impulse a lot smaller.

You want a pair of shoes? You reach into your pocket, click through pages of options, land on a pair or five. And two days later, the shoes arrive. You're bored.

(2:35 - 4:01)

You reach into your pocket and choose from a cookie curated collection of podcasts to listen to. You listen to the first three minutes of history of megafauna before moving on to a show about porn. You're horny.

You reach into your pocket and have 25 million porn sites at your fingertips. A blurb of explicit gifs later, you cum. Today is dedicated to instant gratification and novelty.

And because we are all impatient little dopamine sluts, we'll get right to it with instant gratification. 

I know what I like and I can find it relatively easy and like get off quickly. And that's, that's good, I guess. When I'm masturbating, when I'm by myself, like I know what I like, I can find it and get the job done. 

In 2023, the average Pornhub session lasted 10 minutes and 51 seconds. Fun fact, Maryland had the longest average session duration with 11 minutes and 31 seconds.

They were really taking their time. Louisiana, Louisiana was the shortest at an efficient eight minutes and 21 seconds. Overall, people are getting online, getting off and getting out.

(4:01 - 5:17)

And that can be great. Like sometimes you just want to get off quickly. There's nothing wrong with that.

How convenient is it that we have, I don't know, like a bajillion hours of porn to aid us in these instant orgasms. That's great. It's like when you're on a road trip and you're just trying to get somewhere and you see that there's a Taco Bell just off the exit and you're like, great, I don't have to get out of the car.

I can just like have a chalupa, get back on the road. Really scratches the itch sometimes. And then sometimes you want on that same road trip to take a break, stretch your legs, go see Janice's diner off of exit 16 on Route 69.

And you want that experience. You want to sit down. You want to have the person bring you water.

You want the sticky menu. Yeah, exactly. You're going to have like a conversation with the waitress that's going to change your life.

It's a real experience. And it's beautiful that a highway, the highway of life, if you will, can have both of those things. Just like quick fix chalupas and then like really long, luxurious, surprising, meandering I was with you till you said luxurious.

(5:19 - 7:30)

We're being cheeky, but it is genuinely really nice to have these quick fixes. Sometimes we're horny people.

It's okay that a pro of porn is just that it feels good to masturbate and to be able to get in, get out and get on with your day. 

So the way that it's positively impacted, I mean, honestly, like it's just coming. Coming's great. I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir here. I think I am because it's so, it's so easy, right? 

One of the most impactful books that I've read in the past couple of years is called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. Do you remember how insufferable I was? I would not shut up about this book.

He outlines this framework about attention that I think is going to be really helpful to guide this bigger conversation about instant gratification. Basically he boils it down to four different attention types. We're just going to focus on the first three.

Those are spotlight, starlight and daylight. So spotlight attention is your immediate action attention. And his book is more just about attention in general.

There's not like a porny example, but the example that he gives, you're sitting at your desk, you're trying to work. You realize you're thirsty. You grab your cup.

It's empty. You go to the kitchen to fill it up on the way there. You get an email, you get pulled into the email.

They ask you to look for a document, look for a document and so on and so on and so on. So a lot of the time we're just reacting to whatever stimulus is in front of us. That's spotlight.

Starlight is long-term goals. So maybe you want to buy a house. Maybe you want to start a business.

This kind of attention requires delayed gratification and time. So if you want to start a business, for example, you're going to have to miss some barbecues. Yeah, we definitely missed a lot of barbecues right now.

(7:30 - 9:50)

That's starlight, long-term goals. Daylight is your sense of self and awareness. So it's why are you missing a barbecue for your business? And it's because we want to destigmatize conversations about sex.

It's the stuff about your core identity that's going to motivate you to be able to set the course for what your long-term goals actually are. He talks about how you have to take some time to actually sink into this space. And in the book he lays out that we're kind of almost always now, especially with smartphones, in some kind of spotlight form of attention.

And that interrupts our ability to get into starlight or daylight. I remember when you read this book and you were so excited about it and how it relates to porn. It's really relevant because we often hear from people that they may have this goal of going out and dating or even like connecting with their existing partners.

And porn, because it's so easy and so readily accessible, it kind of takes away that motivation to work on those other things that are a little more long-term. We hear this all the time. It's so much easier to go to porn than it is to set up the date and then choose where you're going to go and find the outfit and put yourself out there.

There's like so many steps involved in those longer-term goals around romance and sex. And porn doesn't require that. Yeah.

And I think what's so helpful to me about that framework of the book is like the packaging of these things where it makes it so much easier to turn to our phone or some kind of like digital connection. That's what doesn't require the things for me that a real life person does. And porn is a flavor of that, but it's not like the porn itself.

That's just the content in this grander kind of design. In this grander package of the internet. Yeah.

Yeah. But there is a special kind of baggage with porn because porn is related to sex and we live in a sex-negative society. So while there are so many behaviors that feel drugified because of the internet, shopping, gaming, what have you, things that are related to sex tend to feel more problematic than things that are not related to sex because of the sex-negative water that we're all swimming in.

(9:50 - 10:20)

You know, this panic around porn has really withstood the test of time. Like it's not a new thing, no matter what the packaging has been. We asked Dr. David Ley for insight into this porn panic.

And Dr. Ley is a psychologist known for his work around sexuality, porn, and mental health. And he shared that the idea of porn addiction as a public health problem was largely introduced in the early 1980s when 7-Eleven started selling Playboy magazines. Playboys and 7-Eleven.

(10:20 - 12:40)

You want your Slurpee and you want your tits. It's like not that complicated of an order. I'm not going to lie.

It's like a nice afternoon. It's like some Haribo gummy bears. If we're looking at the layers here, it's easier than ever to be distracted or get stuck in spotlight attention because a dopamine hit is always within arm's reach.

And porn is a flavor of that. And there is this disproportionate baggage surrounding it because we live in a sex-negative society. But while we may be quicker to pathologize behavior related to sex, what we watch regularly does impact us.

Like what happens when we watch a lot of Love Island UK? Yeah. I just start saying the word mug all the time. All of a sudden my head is scrambled.

It's such a mug. Yeah, exactly. I know, right? Like you start to adopt whatever it is that you're putting your attention on.

I feel like that's a huge part of life is steering yourself into paths of things that you want to consume thoughtfully because you know it's going to shape you in some way. 

Once I finally started having sex again, I was so unused to considering this other person. I was just like, oh wow, this is work. And it was off-putting, you know? Off-putting is the wrong word. There's this work involved that I had gotten unused to. And so yeah, I guess maybe off-putting isn't the wrong word. I wanted it to be more fun and easy. 

As we speak, and as you listen, the holy union of porn and the internet continues to make its impact on the world. Little shower. The shower of cum that is. Against my ass. That's good protein for a slut like you.

With endless clicks and scrolls and squirting gifs and bouncing ass cheeks and oily tits and DP threesomes and horny housewives, queer sauna orgies and bubble butt milks and hotel handjobs and pizza delivery deep dish anal and fantasy fuck three ways and so on and so on and so on. It is almost unnecessary to say that there is just a staggering variety of content available. And if we're talking about the pros here, I mean that's just pretty stinking cool.

There is just so much out there. You could never be bored. You could never be bored.

(12:42 - 13:05)

And there's some true genuine kind of soul pros to this too. There is something to be said about seeing so much variety of sexual representation on screen, particularly for non-normative sexualities or queer people, gender representation. Yeah, to see yourself represented on screen when maybe mainstream sex culture doesn't represent you all that well or all that often.

(13:06 - 15:34)

And it also is a great way to just expand your ideas of what sex even is or could be. Where else do you get that kind of, you know, like there and other people seeing the variety at large within porn has also just shown such a light for me on the variety of people's internal realities and brains. But I think it's very easy to just walk around and assume that everyone kind of has the same like interests and units of understanding as you.

And then you hit these points where you're saying to yourself, this is so different from how I operate. Like this would never really get me off. There's been something really beautiful about just digging into these corners of the internet and just seeing 500,000 views on a video of a fake optometrist or a Simpsons parody porn.

And you're like, wow, like the world is so rich, you know, there's so people are so weird. And I mean that in a very endearing way. Like we all have these little quirks and they can be really different from each other.

And that's pretty beautiful to me. Yeah. When we see so much sexualized stuff around us, like TV and ads and our Instagram for you pages, but we don't actually talk about sex that much.

It can be really, it feels simultaneously like sex is this isolated experience. And also that everyone else around us is having tons of sex and has figured it out better than us. Yeah.

Like you missed the memo. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And porn is a reminder that sex is a valid, natural part of being a person, which I really appreciate about it. And not everyone has access to spaces or parts of life outside of a digital world that really affirm who they are. Like I think a lot about queer kids in rural America, right? Like the internet can also be this safe haven for your sexuality when reality just doesn't cut it.

I feel like you taught me that term of reality privilege. And I really, it's really stuck with me because there's, there are a million scenarios where I feel like for whatever reason, you're not able to actualize your sex life in the flesh. And so like the way that you really want it.

Yeah. You're just not able to, to get there. And I think it's, it's really valuable to have resources for people to be able to have outlets for their sexuality.

(15:35 - 19:20)

And I think it's kind of a big, big buzzkill when people just like shit all over porn as if it's this like morally defunct thing when like for some people it is truly their only like their connection point. Yeah. There is this flip side though, right? To all this novelty on the internet.

Porn can really fuck with our heads. Speaking of buzzkill, there's a flip side. But like, especially if the porn that we're watching has some pretty narrow depictions of body types, I think a lot about like the labiaplasties and bleached assholes.

Like I don't look like that. I hope my sex partners don't expect me to. Yeah.

Or like, I think, I feel like for me, the big connection point to body image stuff is pubic hair, like pubic hairstyle. I would love if we ever decided to do a season two to have a segment of just the tracking of pubic hair trends. Yeah.

Among the decades. I feel like this is part of where the novelty kicks into gear because it really depends on what you seek out, right? Like there is all types of body types. There's all types of pubic hairstyles.

There's all types of labias. And we'll get into this more in a different episode, but it's kind of like if you're going to the mainstream porn, maybe you're going to end up seeing a lot of this like balloon tit, super tight stomach, super tan. But like that's such a limited portion of what's out there in the grand scheme of the porn.

The other challenge I think that novelty brings is with more novelty comes more intensity, right? Because it's like trying to up the ante from what we've already seen. And that can make sex with a real person feel kind of slow or kind of dull in comparison if you're used to this more intense stimuli to become aroused. Yeah.

I remember Pat Bluett talking about that, the sex therapist that we spoke to in episode two about the concept of porn addiction. He was saying that a lot of the time when people are worried about their porn usage, they're not like really worried about their porn usage. They're worried about the impact that it's going to have on their arousal, specifically as it pertains to erections.

Like am I going to be able to get hard if I'm watching all of this stimuli all the time? Am I going to be able to enjoy partnered sex as much? 

At the moment, I'm actually not watching porn at all. I found that it started to feel like my ability to experience pleasure and connection from kind of the more basic aspects of physical, sexual intimacy, like kissing, touching, and just, you know, holding your partner. The pleasure I was able to experience from those things really seemed to kind of be blunted or dulled. 

And in the couple of months that I have been away from porn, I have been finding that I now experience a much higher level of pleasure when I do go out on a date and kiss a guy or just holding each other and kind of more basic things like that. 

If you were to log on to Pornhub today, you would find over 100 categories with hundreds and thousands of videos in them. Many of these categories are what you'd expect.

Lesbian, Japanese, Ebony, Anal, MILF, Transgender, Mature, Threesome. Sneaky fun fact, those were the top viewed categories on Pornhub in 2023. But Tess and I were curious about some of the more niche porn categories.

So we did a little Google deep dive and found some fun fringe fetishes to share with you. And if you didn't know these existed before, well, now you do. The more you know.

(19:22 - 19:45)

Okay. First one, wet and messy. Wet and messy fetishism, aka wham, aka Sploshing, is a form of sexual fetishism consisting of a person or persons getting messy.

What do they get messy with? So many things. It could be food. It could be mud, paint, even chemicals and water.

(19:45 - 21:50)

Don't you want to know? I really want to know. Fun fact, the word splashing originates from a defunct UK fetish magazine named Splosh! Exclamation point!

Number two, erotic activism. We found a site called Fuck For Forest FFF, which features crowdsourced content of sex scenes and erotic photography in nature. All of the proceeds from the site go to ecological development worldwide.

And in the words of the founders, Leona and Tommy, welcome, horny nature lover. You are bored by commercial erotic entertainment. You still wish to masturbate or just watch natural bodies, but feel shame for not being out there planting trees.

You got to the right place. 

Number three, quicksand. Quicksand fetish porn typically shows female models floundering around in bogs and mud pits.

It's very damsel in distress. Yeah. And the audio element is exceptionally gloopy.

So gloopy. This feels bottomless. Please save me from the quicksand.

Actually, Kels and I first saw quicksand porn together a couple of years ago at the HUMP! Porn Film Festival. HUMP! is one of many festivals that happen around the world. These fests are our absolute favorite ways to experience porn and the novelty in porn.

Anyone can submit a film, both a seasoned filmmakers and amateur sex enthusiasts, and one very lucky committee that I hope to be on one day will curate a selection for our viewing pleasure. If you've never been to a porn film festival before, here's what it's like. You'll get your ticket, walk into the movie theater, head to concessions for your beer, your popcorn, and then file into the theater with a room full of strangers.

(21:51 - 22:43)

The anticipation is palpable as you take your seat and the lights dim. And then you will see a truly spectacular variety of porn in front of you on the big screen. Things like intense BDSM, whips, bondage, hot scenes of people fucking in the car.

One that I'm never, ever going to forget is when somebody shoved a stick of butter up their ass, biked over to a second location, and expelled the butter onto somebody's toast and then that person ate it. The next year it was pancake batter up the butt and onto the griddle. And sometimes they're just really tender, loving sex scenes.

(22:46 - 25:57)

There is almost certainly something that will turn you on in these festivals, and there is almost certainly something that you're going to have to close your eyes through. The real power of these festivals is that you will see things you would not have chosen on your own. And while that can test your comfort zone, there is real value in being exposed to different genders, ages, body types, abilities, all expressing sexuality and experiencing authentic pleasure.

It's profound to remember that pleasure is something that everyone can experience, but not everyone seeks it out in the same way, and that's okay. When the show is over, we highly recommend grabbing your friends and some more drinks and having the official porn film fest debrief. 

My experience with porn has broadened my horizons and it's introduced me to new things, different kinds of kink. It has introduced me in different kinds of dynamics between top and sub. I think it's just the variation of the way to interact with another human in a sexual way. It's not just doggie style or missionary. There's so many different ways to interact sexually. 

Well, I had been going to the Berlin Film Festival. That's, I feel like, when I really found my people.

Do you know what I mean? There were other people who were thinking about sex on film the same way that I was. 

Shine Louise Houston is the founder of Pink and White Productions and the streaming platform Pink Label TV, which also hosts the annual San Francisco Porn Film Festival. 

You know, when I went there the first time, my head was totally blown.

I was like, oh my God, look at all this crazy stuff. When you say you found your people, I know exactly what you mean. There's just the sense of community and these shared ideas and values.

But I think a lot of people who have maybe never experienced porn in public in that way, I could see it being like, what? You go to a movie theater and you watch porn with a bunch of people who you don't know. Can you speak to why that's what that has to offer us that private porn watching doesn't have to offer? 

Yeah. First off, disclaimer.

It's just like, if you're not into porn, you're just not into porn. Watching it privately or watching it publicly is like, this is just not for you. I'm not totally into slasher movies.

I don't think watching a slasher movie in the theater would change my opinion of slasher movies. So just put it out there that it's not for everybody. But if porn is your thing, what's interesting about watching it in a theater is where does the audience laugh? And it's very interesting, the collective laugh, the collective tension release.

(25:57 - 26:10)

I mean, if you want to talk about it being physiological and psychological, where do you get these dopamine hits with a bunch of people? It's like, oh, we're all together. My body is sending out happy drugs. I am safe and I like all of you.

(26:11 - 26:31)

You can really feel it in the theater. You're like on this ride together, you know, together. And there's always at least one where everyone is just silent.

Like no one's even breathing. And then like the tensions release, everyone's like, whew. Okay, wow.

(26:31 - 28:51)

Yeah. As we mentioned, Shine started Pink Label TV, which is the home for so many different types of adult films. The idea for Pink Label was born from her love of festivals and the types of films that she would see there.

You know, you wouldn't necessarily see it on AABN, Hot Movies, certainly not Pornhub. You know, people make them for the festival, you see them once and then they kind of disappear. And I was like, well, more people should be able to see these things.

And it would be nice if filmmakers actually made a little bit of money. So anytime we would go to festivals, we would like just shoulder tap people. We're like, saw your film. It's really awesome. Can we put it on here? 

Pink Label is not only a place for indie porn contemporaries like you see at the film festivals. Shine also sees it as an archival project for films that didn't make the leap from VHS to DVD or to streaming.

Films from Metzger, a golden age porn director regarded as highly artistic and often cerebral. You'll also find Candida Royale's work. Do you remember her from The History of Porn, way back in episode one? You'll also find Forbidden Letters, a series featuring erotic, explicit letters between a young man and his incarcerated lover by Arthur Bresson.

Shine spoke about why she felt it was so important to capture these things. 

It needs a home, it needs a place. Also, to remind people, it's like, yeah, people were thinking about these same issues and getting freaky in the 80s and the 90s and even the 70s.

This is not new. Remember, you have a history. Yeah. And it's nice to be able to connect the dots. 

I was really thinking about this after our interview about the slasher film analogy. I do feel like going to porn film festivals did really change my relationship with porn dramatically.

I didn't really like it that much before going to the festivals. And I think exposure to so many different styles of filmmaking and just seeing so much of the creativity, like it kind of like ripped it all open for me and made me realize that it was so much more than what I had previously presumed it to be, which was just Jackhammer City, which is a great name. It's a great production company.

(28:54 - 30:31)

But also, if we're talking about making these topics less taboo, so often watching porn is such an isolated experience, but taking it back to a public space, there's so much power in that. It's such a good jumping off point for conversations. And I really feel like there's a ripple effect to like going to a public place and experiencing porn together that way.

It's a way to share ideas and create the sort of public discourse around pornography that we don't really have a lot of opportunity for otherwise. And I think with that, with the festival, there's a baked in layer of intentionality because you are driving to the theater and you're buying the ticket. You're choosing to go to this experience rather than what we did so much.

The spotlight, like I'm just horny right now. Here's my phone. There's something to be said to having some kind of obstacle or barrier to get somewhere.

Also, I really appreciate you always remind me of this, that it's so fun to be in a situation where you can enjoy porn as it as this erotic art form with others. You're reminded of the artistic value of it. I'm very excited for next week when we get to talk with two women who work in the adult industry and learn all about the decisions that they face to express themselves authentically and creatively in porn.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Porn Nerds. I'm Kels. And I'm Tess.

You can find more from us at GetSquirmy.com. And please follow us on Instagram at Squirm and rate and review this show. It really, really helps. Here is a sneak peek at what's coming up next week.

(30:34 - 31:24)

When you walk into a scene and it's being recorded, and if you respond to that in a negative way, you are going to get a ton of irritated people. Laura, you're messing up the scene. You're making it take longer.

That's a big issue I have with the mainstream industry is it's not that cut and dry. You can't say boy girl scene on Tuesday, show up at this time. You're doing vaginal.

That's all the details you need. Porn Nerds is a co-production of Boom Integrated, a division of John Marshall Media and Squirm. It is an educational podcast made for your entertainment and curiosity.

Any opinions shared by the hosts and guests are solely their own and not intended as therapy or medical advice. Thanks for being here and we'll see you next week.