Pornosophy: Real Sex?

“Francion 15” by Martin van Maele

According to a recent episode of HBO’s Real Sex there are many women who love to have their hair pulled during sex. The interview subject in question was so stimulated when her partner pulled her hair that she felt like screaming out that he should do it more. It was unclear if she was successful enough in disinhibiting herself during sex to be able express these feelings to him. Some of the women interviewed also averred that they liked having collars put around their necks and having their nipples pinched (or one would suppose twisted, sister!). However, there are many men whose wives simply exclaim in an irate tone “you’re pulling my hair” when their husbands try to employ this technique of lovemaking and there the foreplay ends. That’s one of the built-in dangers of watching too much TV. How to explain these two radically difference experiences of human sexuality? Is it simply a case of “different strokes for different folks?”  Or are there more profound reasons why some women like to have their hair pulled during sex and while others do not? And do these reasons relate to the varying ways in which people and women in particular process pain? For instance some women plainly love it. They beg their husbands to spank them while others are prone to dial the domestic abuse hotline after receiving a playful swat. Some women love to be restrained while others love restraint. Naturally the self-same observations can apply to men. There are men who love it when a woman or another man digs his or her fingernails into their backs and others who have an aversion to being clawed at. If their significant other would like to rake leaves, let him or her go into the backyard. In the end it may be safest to conclude that people are going to have different experiences of sensation. For every person that likes to dominate there is someone else who likes to be pushed around and that’s what makes horse races.

Cartegena Journal

Photograph by Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Now that the Secret Service scandal is calming down (with everyone properly reimbursed for the their services), all the girls in Angeles and other brothels have become erstwhile fans of the new HBO series “Girls.” The popularity of “Girls” in the brothels of Cartegena, according to informed sources, derives from the fact that the series actually makes “the girls” who man them feel good about themselves. All of the customers in the Cartegena brothels wear condoms and none of them dares to call any of the prostitutes a whore, as Hannah’s (Lena Dunham) boyfriend did in episode #2 of the HBO series. One of the jokes currently circulating in Cartegena is that if Hannah is looking for a paid internship, she should consider one of the city's love hotels. Hannah’s fears of AIDS, which surfaced in episode #2 of the series, would also attended to in a Cartegena brothel in a way that is far superior to what she experienced in the course of her normal life hooking up with guys in New York City. The Times interviewed a brothel owner who explained the enlightened practices that make life such a bowl of cherries for her girls. “Sometimes, she said, a customer will come to her and say that a condom has broken and he will ask if the prostitute he was with has been tested for sexually transmitted diseases. She will then show the customer the woman’s most recent results. Twice, she said, customers have agreed to take a rapid H.I.V. rest to show that they, too, are uninfected. (“Prostitutes Perplexed As Glare Falls On City’s Brothels,” NYT, 4/25/12). Twice is better than not at all.