Stop Trying to Choke Me: The Rise of Rough Sex Culture / Elle

By Rose Surnow for Elle. Originally published on May 5th, 2016.

“…With so many Americans regularly watching porn (there are no reliable statistics, but the one most cited online is 40 million) there is bound to be some kind of influence on sexual behavior. A meta-analysis of 22 studies on porn found that “the accumulated data leave little doubt that, on the average, individuals who consume pornography more frequently are more likely to hold attitudes conducive to sexual aggression and engage in actual acts of sexual aggression than individuals who do not consume pornography or who consume pornography less frequently.” Duh, right? Another study at Yale showed that exposure to porn makes men “animalify” women, increasing the likelihood that they will treat women as though they lack the capacity for complex thinking and reasoning.

Porn isn’t inherently bad. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to watch sex on-screen. But I just want the content to be more pro-woman—something like what you see on Cindy Gallop’s website, Make Love Not Porn, where you can rent and watch videos of couples having more sensual “real world sex.” When I asked Gallop why so many men are copying the bad kind of porn moves in bed, she said, “Rough sex and porn-associated behavior often takes place because nobody has ever had a conversation about how to be good in bed. The issue isn’t porn; the issue is that we don’t talk about sex in the real world.”

This is why Gallop started her website in the first place: to create a broader spectrum of what sex can look like and how we talk about it. “The day we have a porn industry that is 50-50 equally informed, influenced, led, designed, and driven by women is the day we have a porn industry that looks completely different. It would be more creative, more innovative, more disruptive, and a better, healthier industry overall,” she says. Amen, sister.”

Head over to Elle to read the rest of the article!