What Do People Gain by Watching Porn Together?

When I was 18 and living in my first apartment—a small studio in a seedy neighborhood of Milwaukee—one of my favorite activities on a weekend was to invite my best friend and my boyfriend over to watch porn. Despite what you might expect, this is not the set-up for a torrid threesome tale. Rather, we would munch popcorn, critique the heavy 90s-style eyeshadows worn by the performers, and offer a running commentary somewhat akin to Mystery Science Theatre 3000, except with fewer robots and more money shots. What we didn’t realize at the time was that we were part of a long tradition of communal erotica.

Before film, there was dirty photos. Dirty daguerreotypes. Dirty etchings. Go back far enough and you’ll reach dirty cave paintings. These images were inherently public, because they were disseminated person-to-person, friend to friend. With the advent of film came the nickelodeon. Drop a shiny five-cent piece into the machine on the boardwalk and everyone can watch you press your face against the viewing pane, hoping to catch a glimpse of what lies under the can-can dancers’ skirts. This evolved again into the stag film—16 filthy millimeters passed from town to town by those in the know, offered for private viewing… just you and 20 of your closest friends at the social hall. These experiences, recorded in a recent exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Sex in New York City, mirrored my own college evenings: social, erotic, humorous, and generally non-sexual in nature.

The rise of small screens has increased our solo consumption of erotica

Source: Photo by Jonas Leupe on Upsplash

Something changed when VHS came onto the scene. We could watch these movies in our homes, without needing to contact the guy who owns the projector and his buddy, the one with the screen. The era of the stag party ended, in favor of truly private showings: porn was watched alone, or maybe with one or two close friends. As screens got smaller, so did audiences. VHS gave way to DVDs. Now, we didn’t even need to use the television but could indulge in our penchant for smut privately, on our laptops, in our bedrooms, earbuds firmly in place. With the rise of streaming services, the screens got smaller and the opportunities became more portable. Smartphones! Virtual Reality headsets! We can literally strap the naked novelties to our faces these days! Accessibility, portability, affordability—these have all created a world where we can view whatever we want, when we want, as fast as we want… but we almost always do it alone. Farewell, Stag Night.

I can’t help but believe that something has been lost, even as we discover ever more ways to indulge humanity’s desire for visual stimuli. If we’re not watching sex together, are we talking about sex together? If we’re hiding away in a car, a bedroom, a bathroom stall in order to indulge our desire for niche vegan vore videoes, are we cultivating a sense of isolation and shame? What do we lose when the porn gets smaller? We’re just beginning to explore what role porn has had in culture, and vice versa; and primarily this has been the work of historians, looking backwards. This is fascinating work, but I wonder if, by the time we understand what we’ve lost by drifting away from social viewing, we will have gone deeper into the internal world of solo-screen-sex. Especially today, after a year or more of quarantine and isolation, loneliness and horniness, sharing erotic material with one another (consensually!) can be a wonderful way to stay connected. Sending a lover the latest Litrotica story to catch your eye, along with a note saying “I kept imagining you and I while I was reading this,” can be incredibly seductive.

In my practice as a Sex Therapist, I encourage the couples I work with to watch porn together. This serves multiple purposes. When we watch porn together, we inevitably offer commentary—just as I did with my friends back in the day. Without directly offering feedback or criticism to our partners, we are giving them an opportunity to hear more about what we like… and what we don’t. Sharing our thoughts about, say, rubber catsuits versus silk nighties can inform our partner’s gift (or apparel) choices without us ever saying the words “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that.” Likewise, videos can be a great point of entry into exploring a new kink or fetish with our partners. The beautiful thing about the internet is that Rule 34 is a thing. If it exists, there’s been erotica produced about it. This means that no matter how avant garde or obscure your interest may be, you can almost always find an example online to share with others.

Finally, communal viewing can be normalizing! The vast range of body diversity, penis sizes, labia shapes, orgasm faces—to say nothing of positions, sexualities, and relationship styles—that can be found in porn can be incredibly helpful in showing the viewer that they are not alone.