Porn Scorn by Gillian

To be honest, I don’t scorn porn.

To do that I’d have to think about it, and I don’t.
I never have.
I barely, no joke intended, know what it is.

I have a vague vision of assorted people in assorted numbers and assorted combinations doing assorted things of which I can have no concept as my imagination begins to falter somewhere in, I suspect, the early stages of so-called ‘Soft Porn.’
The reason I don’t think about it is not that it freaks me out or sickens me, except for child porn, which is a different thing all together, I’m talking about consenting adult stuff here, but simply that it does not affect my life.

At least, as far as I know.
Perhaps in a general societal way it does, but for every study that shows it’s negative effects there’s a corresponding one demonstrating the opposite.

So, I simply don’t know.

What, I asked myself, if it affected me personally?
What if Betsy was in fact playing the lead in some geriatric triple X movie?

Or what if I discovered that she was off with a whole group of dirty old wrinklies watching dirty old movies when I thought she was at the Senior Center doing Yoga stretch?
Sorry, but really! Can you imagine this group?
What did he say?
I don’t think he said anything. It was kinda grunting.
What’s he doing now? Could you do that?
With my arthritis?
Did you ever do that?
If I did I don’t remember.

The fact is, that unless you want to fly away on attitudes and prejudices formed by others, it is realistically impossible to hold an informed opinion about a subject on which you are completely ignorant.

Every argument has an opposing one and statistics on pornography I imagine to be about as accurate as 1950 statistics on homosexuality.

As to fiscal concerns the guesstimate seems to be an average spending per capita of less than $50 per year, so nothing to break the family bank. And, by the way, I couldn’t help myself and I had to get something to compare that figure with, and found that in 2007, just as an example, the Iraq war budget equaled an annual per capita expense of $121 thousand, and hey, I don’t have to contribute via taxes to support porn watchers so…..no worries there either.


Perhaps in the end my lack of opinion and concern is simply a result of my naivety, and if I really knew what porn was, I would have definite opinions.
But at my age I doubt that I’m going to find out.

And this quotation from Erica Jong would scare me off.
I’d be afraid of staying too long.

She says,
"My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live."

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.