Men are terrible in bed. Porn sells them on the idea that this is as it should be.

[elfs]

Emma Lindsay has a long post entitled Porn Makes Men Terrible in Bed, in which she talks about how porn is a terrible teacher of the things women like, that much porn shows women not in physical pleasure but in either a workaday mode or actually disliking what's being filmed. She talks about how the messaging for women is terribly fucked up, and she talks about how the message "Women don't care about looks" is fiercely anti-woman because it basically messages that women don't care about pleasure.

Maybe that's the point.

I left a comment on this quote:

When I think about wanting to have sex like a man, I think about wanting to enjoy sex with reckless abandon the way men enjoy sex.

The phrase "reckless abandon" there is really the money quote of the whole article: It's "reckless" because the men she's describing don't care about their partners; it's "abandon" because the men she's describing aren't actually enjoying it; they're seeking something other than pleasure. I go with the Marquis de Sade on this: the men she's describing are not interested in pleasure, they're interested in relief. Relief from their sex drive. Relief from this bizarre urge that hit them during puberty, the most confusing time of their lives, that drives them to associate with "gurlz."

Lindsay finishes with this gem:

If you are not actually receiving pleasure in sex, you are the one in power; your partner will always crave you more than you crave him. This gives you some degree of control.

Exactly. And in this patriarchal society, I have yet to be convinced that it's physical, sexual pleasure that most men are after. It's power. It's the power to get the relief they want and need. The frustration she talks about, when marriages go celibate because the woman isn't getting her needs met, the anger she hears from men, is the anger that their power isn't working, their relief isn't coming anymore.

That's why the "women don't care about looks" meme evolved. Lindsay begs men to at least try to care about their looks, to communicate "I care about your pleasure, even your visual pleasure." But let's face it: most men don't.

If you want to know why porn evolved into this marketable resource primarily depicting women doing uncomfortable acts, your answer is simple: that's what the market wanted. Not women in pleasure. Not women expressing their own pleasure. It wants to sell the viewer on the idea of women who'll grant him the relief he wants, regardless of the cost to their own bodies.