When I was younger my family had a storage shed in the back of the garage that one day would be turned into a spare bedroom so my little brother and I would not have to pretend to be sleeping at the same time. Before the interior overhaul, all sorts of fantastical things were kept in there: life jackets, old backgammon games, wedding licenses, dusty photos, beer posters from when my father was younger, and boxes and boxes of things that would normally make up the junk drawer in your kitchen. In one of those boxes I happened to come across that outmoded carrier of media, the VHS tape. What was it doing tucked away in the dark corners of a storage shed, I wondered? Then I read the title: Too Hot to Touch.

“What the hell is this?” I wondered as I examined the golden logo on the front of the black box. I tucked it under my shirt and wisely waited until my parents left to discover what could possibly be on the hundreds of feet of plastic tape inside.

I plopped in the tape, sat back, and watched as trailer after trailer for “blue movies” from the 1980s appeared on my screen. Classic tag lines like “What would happen if Ingmar Bergman were to make a porn movie?” were attached to the grainy images on the TV. Brief clips of what I quickly realized to be fucking were first presented to my pubescent brain. I had discovered porn.

Of course, it was straight porn, but I didn’t care. People were engaged in acts that I knew were “forbidden” and my viewing it was just as forbidden. Why else did I have the instinct to watch it alone, with the ‘rents away? It was a thrill I’ll never forget.

I love porn, all kinds of porn. Of course, some pornography does certain things for me while other porn does not, but I still enjoy the concept of it in all kinds of ways. Classic porn has informed our popular consciousness and I still get a kick when I watch Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat and think that her actions are going to be a reference to one of the biggest political scandals of all time. There’s a wonderful kind of perversity in the idea that The Opening of Misty Beethoven is based on the film My Fair Lady.

Pornography these days is a lucrative business, with reliable statistics difficult to find, but its stature in business culture can be seen in the GayVN Awards that were held in San Francisco this year for the first time. The lavish set-up, with red carpets and celebrity photo shoots beginning the evening, lights illuminating the sky, and designer clothes on every toned and trimmed body, was proof to me that pornography is serious stuff. The award show spotlighted a crucial idea about pornography in America - that dealing with sex is not always about dealing with sex.
At one particularly anti-climactic (excuse the reference) moment during the award ceremony, the crowd started yelling for a hunky xxxxx to take his shirt off. As the potential for sex appeal heightened he got stuck in his shirt, only to be rescued by Kathy Griffin who dropped to her knees in mock fellatio to help him get if off (once again, excuse the reference). That comically murdered striptease was the closest thing to eroticism at the award show, but without sex there would be no reason for the show to even happen.

Pornography serves many functions in today’s culture, from the erotic to the informative. Here are just a few ways to watch the XXX.

EDUCATION

Pornography is the great informer. As most of us know, sex education is not as much of a force in academia as, say, algebra, but I guarantee I’ll get more out of porn in the long run than I will out of x and y coordinates. If we learn anything at all from sex education in school, it usually has nothing to with the act of sex itself. It’s a shameless ploy to shame us out of sex. The images in porn may (sometimes) be unrealistic and fantastical, but in a culture that is silenced on sex, for many of us it’s the only way to learn that there are several more ways to go than heterosexual and missionary.

“I think the world needs a bit more sex education,” declares Peter Berlin, star of early 70s skin flicks That Boy and Nights in Black Leather and attendee of the GayVNs. “Because they feel guilty about [sex]. All sort of wasted time, you know. Guys and girls growing up with all this sort of guilt, and take all the rest of their life to get rid of what you learn. Rather than being free. That’s why the world is the shape it is, in a very dismal shape, because sexuality is just completely misunderstood.”

VALIDATION

XXX-rated films don’t just educate us, but provide us with some sense of validation. If sex is silenced in Western culture, porn is the only thing whispering dirty deeds done dirt cheap into your ear. People need to see their own desires reflected back at themselves. With a denial of validation comes repression. Who are we to go to if we don’t know that our tastes are shared? In The Trouble With Normal, Michael Warner writes “What is traded in pornographic commerce is not just speech, privately consumed; it is publicly certifiable recognition.”

CHALLENGES TO MAINSTREAM CULTURE

Pornography opens up avenues for talking, and not just the dirty variety. Whatever we might see on screen, whether privately or publicly, it will eventually be discussed. As discussion of any given topic grows, so does its public knowledge of the topic, and that’s where the boundaries get pushed. Just like pin-up girls have pushed the boundaries on what is socially acceptable for women, images of two men kissing or having sex leads to dramatic public events like the GayVN Awards. And the taboo busting doesn’t just stop at gay sexuality, but extends to all sexualities. Things like bondage or S&M have all been granted a little more lee-way because of a proliferation of those images.

Dirty movies may not exactly be the cure-all for societal repression and ignorance regarding sex, but there’s definitely something more to them than just getting off. Images of sex have been around forever, yet they still fascinate us. As porn has to get more and more out there, the images in pornography also become more “extreme.” And that’s the crux of what makes pornography important. As Janey Kemp, a 25-year-old sex toy producer for Vixen Productions told me, “It's something that I can get something out of that isn't in my everyday life. Plus, for the most part, you can eventually find something that you're into, however strange or particular.”