I first noticed Nicole‘s profile on Seeking a month or two ago: a beautiful, poised, well-dressed blonde, in her mid to late 20s. This is not a post about Nicole. That will may come later…. Nonetheless, this is a post about some thinking that Nicole inspired….
Her pictures caught my eye.
On top of that, she wrote intelligent, thoughtful words. Catnip.
The problem? She was looking for something I have zero interest in. That’s not quite right: I’m a little interested in it, but not as a participant; as an anthropologist. She was looking to establish findom relationships.
I don’t remember if i messaged her or if she messaged me, but we quickly established that we were seeking different things. I kept her message in my inbox as a reminder that I wanted to think about, and to write about, the phenomenon of findom. But i never got around to it.
Then, a week or two ago, I noticed her message sitting there, winking at me, alone in my inbox.
I clicked on her profile, thinking it might refresh my “findom” thoughts and maybe get me started on a post. It did not.
In fact, gone from her profile was any mention of “findom.”
I messaged her: I see you’ve changed your profile. Do you have any interest in what I might be offering? Her first response, delivered quickly, was no. “I sell content,” she wrote. “I’m not interested in PPM [Seeking jargon for ‘pay-per-meet’].” But then she seemed to think a little bit more about it. “Wait,” she wrote. “Would this be clothed?”
“Yeah,” I replied. I followed up with a longer explanation of what stretching with me entails. That I’m not really the creepy guy you might imagine on reading such a proposal/proposition. And, I encouraged her to take a look at my blog.
There was some back and forth, and we set a time to meet.
Between setting the time and meeting, she messaged me again: “No pressure, but if you’re interested, I do sell content. Is that something you’d be interested in?”
“Nope!” I said, instantly.
I wrote: “I have literally terabytes of porn. From dozens of women. Women who’ve been turned on by the idea of me jerking off to their content, who have accepted compensation from me for their images, their, film, their audio, in the form of orgasms. Or words. Who haven’t wanted my money.”
“Fair enough” said Nicole. “No worries. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She got me thinking, though, and as our scheduled meeting approached, I noticed myself looking at porn online – a couple of websites I pay for porn – porn that looks very much like the porn many of the women who’ve sent me porn have sent. In particular: MetArt, MetArtX, and OnlyAllSites.
“What’s that about?” I thought. Why is it that I like the idea of, say, Nicole, sending me a photo of her thighs and cunt in leggings, or a video of her teasing her pussy through yoga pants, or an audio of her getting herself off, and I also like all those things on a web site for which I pay, but I have zero interest in paying Nicole for that content?
And it’s not just that I have zero interest: it actively turns me off to imagine paying her to create something for me.
The porn I pay for? It’s made for thousands of men. What’s the difference?
I think it has something to do with power, and with desire: if I pay Nicole to give me what I want, the money makes it evident – transparently, inevitably, undeniably – that she’s not giving me what I want because I want it, because she wants me to have it. Rather, it’s abundantly, unavoidably clear that she’s giving it to me because I’m paying, and for no other reason.
Remove my money? Remove the porn.
When I get an image from MetArt, I suppose there’s the possibility – remote – minuscule – but nonetheless theoretically possible – that the woman depicted might choose to perform for me, gratis. Not that I actually imagine she would, but rather, that that possibility remains at least imaginable. I think that’s a big part of what’s going on here.
Query for future pondering: and so how does all this interact with commercial sex? In commercial sex, some of the same dynamics apply, but there are some subtle differences, as well: part of the allure for me in commercial sex always was the near-perfect control it permitted me to exercise over my partners – and the near-perfect insulation it provided me from shaming and rejection – and from obligation. This last bit seems somehow important to understanding my own relationship to commercial sex: it’s always been true for me that, notwithstanding all of the things I don’t like about commercial sex, there are ways in which I prefer it either to vanilla consensual sex or dominant/submissive sex. It’s just always been true that, given the choice between, say, a “happy-ending” massage or a sexual encounter with a nearly perfectly calibrated submissive partner, it’s often not a no-brainer for me in terms of which holds greater theoretical appeal. There’s lots to think about there…..