As porn plays an ever-increasing role in people’s lives, the physical appearances of the performers and the activities portrayed in those productions has bled through to the mainstream, and changed people’s expectations of physical appearance as well as of what constitutes “normal sex.” Once only the province of pornstars and the gays, extreme hair removal has become standard these days, and formerly big taboos like anal sex are now fairly commonplace practices in the general public.
The mainstreaming of porn, arguably a good thing in some respects has also encompassed some negatives. Women complain about objectification, men feel pressured to perform like the guys on the screen, and everyone has lost sight of the fact that pornography is not based in reality. When you see your favorite mainstream movie star perform a superhuman feat and walk away from a situation that in real life would leave them as a greasy stain on the pavement, somehow you know that in real life, the actor is not capable of such feats. When you see an pro athlete make an amazing play, you’re aware that you’re not capable of performing at their level.
When you watch porn, you are viewing the equivalent of professional athletes at work, aided by the magic of editing. That 15-minute scene could very well have been shot over the course of hours, aided by ED medications and other tricks of the trade that include multiple takes and multiple cameras multiplying the action. Sex in pornography bears as much in common with reality as pro football does to your Thanksgiving family game in the yard, or your morning commute has in common with a chase scene in an action blockbuster.
Granted that by definition you are viewing the equivalent of pro athletes / professional models in porn, it gets particularly pernicious when transsexual porn comes into play. Just as the “lesbians” in porn really don’t cater to actual lesbian aesthetics, but are geared toward titillating straight men; the “transexuals” displayed in typical pornography are more often not actually transsexuals but “chicks with dicks” or “she-males” – men who have altered their appearance for the very purpose of providing titillation for their intended audience. Like the women in porn, these “transexuals” are above average in looks; and unlike most transexuals, they have prominent male genitalia and tend to use it with abandon, invariably performing as tops with their male and female co-stars. In reality, just like you aren’t likely as attractive as the biggest Hollywood stars or fashion models, comparisons of real-life transexual women to their cast-for-their-looks, on-screen, shemale counterparts, isn’t appropriate or fair; and expecting them to perform dominant acts more often than not, is not what they are looking for in an encounter.
Just as the lesbians you know in real life generally bear little resemblance to the bleach blonde, breast-implanted, cosmetic-caked ladies you see on screen performing in lesbian roles, real-life transgender women come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of beauty; and most of all, transgender women want to be treated as women. Women traditionally are on the receiving end of penetrative sexual activities. Just as you innately realize that your favorite 60-year-old action hero would not walk away from that big on-screen explosion in real life, recognize that real transgender women bear no resemblance to their porn counterparts.
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