A recent Canadian study of young people's sex lives found that many aren't happy with what's going on between the sheets.
The issues ranged from inadequate education to low desire, but an overarching theme was the main problem — a lack of satisfaction.
And while pornography was raised as one of the culprits, it remained where it's always been: the domain of straight males. Even the study's author tacitly acknowledged it.
You don't just rely on your dad's porn magazines anymore.
"Access to porn is broader, greater, bigger, more frequent and more extreme than ever before," psychology professor Lucia O'Sullivan, who led the study, said. "You don't just rely on your dad's porn magazines anymore."
But as Indy100 points out, that isn't necessarily the case. After all, PornHub has noted that a quarter of its visitors are female, so there are plenty of women out there watching the same unrealistic situations unfold, whether they're men who can have sex for hours on end, or orgasms that result in squirting — every time.
In a Reddit thread from 2015, one user asked women what unrealistic expectations porn gave them in terms of sex. One woman's answer seems to sum it up:
"That men have huge nice looking dicks. That foreplay isn't needed. That I'll loveeeee getting the life pounded out of me. That I'll have an amazing orgasm after said pounding. And i'll moan my vocal cords to death."
Of course, part of watching porn should be the recognition that it's a fantasy, and not reality. But unfortunately because porn might be some young people's first introduction to sex at all, it can be unquestionably confusing, and yes, disappointing.
Because porn might be some young people's first introduction to sex at all, it can be unquestionably confusing, and yes, disappointing.
So what's a sexual being to do in light of all this disenchantment? Probably the thing that the best kind of porn seems to encourage in the first place: engage in sex with a consenting partner, experiment with ideas that, yes, you may have gleaned from a video or two, and most of all, have fun doing it.
Remember, no one's watching you — unless you want them to, of course.
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