Written by Emma McGowan for Bustle. Originally published on September 3rd, 2015.
The kind of change that the internet is bringing to us as a society and as individual sexual beings is so rapid that it can be hard to even get a grasp on what’s happening before it changes again. To help you find your feet in this ever shifting landscape, I’ve catalogued 12 ways that the internet has changed our sexuality, so far. Some are good, some are not so great, and others just are but all together, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. There is definitely more to come.
1. Cyber Sex Is As Varied As IRL Sex
Sexting. Dirty talk over messenger. Video chat sex. Camming. All of these options for getting down are new with the advent of the internet. We’re figuring out awesome new ways to get each other off via our computers and smartphones and that is hot. With these tools, people are discovering things about their sexualities that were straight up impossible to know 15 years ago. That’s pretty damn cool.
2. We Have A Significantly Wider Access To Porn
This is perhaps the most obvious change but also one of the most influential. While pornography used to be available only to people over the age of 18 who were willing to go through the embarrassment of buying it in the store (or people who found it hidden under mattresses and stuffed in the backs of closets), it’s now available to anyone, any time, at any age. The internet has driven down the value of porn, created new genres, and widened accessibility— and that has brought on a whole host of changes.
3. We View Our Bodies Differently
Running tangentially to the explosion of internet porn is the increase in popularity of plastic surgeries like labiaplasties, which let women change the shape of their labias so that they look “better.” But how the f*ck do people have a standard for what a labia “should” look like? The only possible answer is porn, which is full of pretty, plastic vaginas.
While labiaplasties are undoubtedly at the extreme end of the spectrum, mainstream porn features depressingly few body types. In addition to the onslaught of unrealistic body standards that both men and women are faced with from non X-rated sources, we now have the perky, enhanced, naked bodies of porn stars to contend with. Ugh.
4. We Perform More During Sex
Porn has also influenced how we behave in bed. When you see how sex is “supposed” to look over and over again, it will inevitably seep into your own sexual encounters. Former ad exec Cindy Gallop created her company MakeLoveNotPorn for exactly that reason. In her now notorious Ted Talk, Gallop explained that her younger male lovers were mimicking actions they’d seen on the screen as porn became more and more accessible. Gallop’s response was to create a website where “real world sex” is highlighted so that there’s an alternative out there to the performative stuff that most people are watching.
Head over to Bustle to check out other ways that the internet is changing our sexuality via the original post!
