This week Cosmo tried to explain to people, with side-splitting hilarity, what the key differences were between porn actresses and real women. For example, porn actresses vs real women on doggy-style sex:

Porn star: “This element of degradation and anonymity is definitely not making me wonder whether you are actually attracted to me! I will call you ‘Daddy’ now because that’s not weird for either of us!”

Real woman: “I should really get that wall repainted.”

Performance vs preference

To regular readers, it might seem like I’m stating the spankingly obvious, but there is nothing deeply and inherently different about women who work in porn. They are not genetically-engineered sex-mad creatures whose only true joy in life is gargling with spunk while getting banged energetically by a group of colleagues. Nor are they sex robots, programmed purely to seek out new and exciting ways to get jizzed on. They’re people who are doing a job.

Last week I talked about the obvious differences between porn sex and ‘real’ sex, and the fact that a professional is going to do things a little differently to how you might in the comfort of your own home: it’s the professional’s job to put on a great performance. But just as I Am Not My Job, neither is a porn actress. She doesn’t live her entire life as she would at work.

At work I sign off emails with ‘kind regards’, wash up my coffee mug as soon as I’m done with it, and even occasionally wear make up. In the comfort of my own home I sign off emails with ‘See you tomorrow, twatface’, let coffee grow an inch of mould before I move it to the kitchen, and wear nothing on my face save the occasional chocolate smear. In the same way, porn actresses aren’t constantly acting.

You’re a porn star too

We all put on performances sometimes. Personally, when I’m having shiny new sex with a partner I’m far more likely to lean back when I’m on top and grab my hair with both my hands while I’m riding him. Why? Well, somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain is the idea that it makes my tits look lovely. Eager to impress, I’ll jiggle and grind hands-free so that the fortunate gentleman in question gets something to look at beside my own gurning sex face. This performance isn’t repeated often when I’m deeper into a relationship – I move towards my easier and more pleasurable default of ‘placing his hands on my tits so he can squeeze me while I fuck him.’ It’s not quite as pretty, but it more effectively hits the spot.

The Cosmo article frames what porn actresses do and think as the complete opposite of the thoughts and actions of ‘real’ women, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Sometimes I’m a porn star – with my hands-behind-my-head and my doe-eyed, spluttering blowjobs and my “please please fuck me in the ass”, because sometimes I fancy putting on a bit of a show. Other times I would prefer to just turn my back and have you lazily spoon me into an orgasm before turning the light off and falling asleep.

The problem with the Cosmo article is that it isn’t comparing the same type of shagging for each person: it’s comparing their work shagging to your play shagging. When off-camera porn actresses are the same as all of us: sometimes have the performance sex and other times they’ll have the lazy, comfortable, quick-orgasm-then-a-cup-of-tea sex.

Cosmo might as well write an article entitled ‘Accountants vs real women’, highlighting how hilarious it is that the accountant is careful about their figures, while ‘real’ women jot down a budget on the back of an envelope. Would we actually expect an accountant to get out a calculator and perform double-entry bookkeeping for the household bills, ensuring everything is signed off in triplicate? No. Because accountants, unlike porn actresses, aren’t expected to drag their work kicking and screaming into every corner of their life.

Porn actresses vs ‘real’ women

This matters because I find it a bit creepy to separate porn actresses from ‘real’ women. As if their lives are defined entirely by their jobs, and their jobs must necessarily bleed into every aspect of their daily routine. Separating women who work in porn from women who work anywhere else implies a lot of ‘other’ness that leads to uncomfortable assumptions.

If porn women are different to ‘real’ women, do they behave differently? Could you spot them in a crowd? Do they need to be treated differently, because of the sexual qualities than run through every aspect of them?

The answer, of course, is ‘no’.

It’s important for people to understand the difference between porn sex and real sex: of course it is. When I wrote about Sex Box I got a (probably justified) telling-off for not making it clear that we should educate people (particularly young people) on the difference between porn sex and home sex. Of course this is important – if you’ve never had sex before and all of your beliefs are shaped by what you see on the screen, you’ll could end up with a devastatingly inaccurate view of what a fun shag has to look like. Just as if you only ever watched Eastenders you’d have a terrifying impression of East London.

So the distinction is important. But let’s remember that it’s not a distinction between ‘real’ humans and a porn-making race of sexual superbeings. The people are all fundamentally the same: it’s the type of sex that changes.

OK, fine, I’ll do it. I’ll talk about the sex box.

‘Sex Box’ is a new Channel 4 programme that gets couples to have sex in a box, then interviews them immediately afterwards about their experience. It has been described as ‘edgy’, for reasons I can’t quite fathom. It is also a part of Channel 4’s ‘Campaign for Real Sex’ season, a response to the terrifying tidal wave of pornography that threatens to engulf the entire country and turn us into unthinking wank-zombies.

I have a number of issues with this, but I’ll watch the programme anyway because I like it when people talk about sex. It’s hot, and interesting, and usually well worth a listen. However, I’m not entirely sure that the programme is going to do what Channel 4 is hoping. Here’s why:

It’s not as ‘edgy’ as they think

Some people have described this programme as ‘edgy’ or implied that there’s something seedy about the idea of couples having sex in a box then talking about it. Presumably because ‘edgy’ gets viewers, and they’re hoping to pull in a crowd of moist-knickered perverts like me who are hoping to hear a few groans or slapping noises (we won’t get them – apparently the box is soundproofed).

Let me just state for the record that talking to people shortly after they’ve had sex is not ‘edgy’. I’ve been to parties where three or four couples were shagging on the floor in the lounge, occasionally exchanging requests that one or other couple ‘give us a bit more room.’ On one memorable occasion, I was being vigorously shagged by my boyfriend while in the twin bed opposite, the equally genital-locked couple paused for a swig of beer and to ask us how it was going. Not the sexiest moment of my life, I have to admit, but certainly more edgy than shagging in a darkened room.

If at any point you’ve been to a house party, or popped round to a couple’s house for dinner, or even gone in to your parents’ bedroom on Christmas morning to gleefully pull toys out of your festive stocking, I guarantee you you’ve had a conversation with a couple that have recently had sex. You edgy maverick, you.

The actual ‘sex box’ serves no purpose

Given that having a post-sex chat is not particularly unusual, why the fuck do they even need them to have sex in the box beforehand? What purpose does the box serve? It’s as if they think that people forget what having sex with their partner is like, and they need a quick reminder before they get down to the discussion. Do we do this with anything else? If a medical expert is invited to give her opinion on BBC Breakfast, do they insist she performs a quick tracheotomy backstage to refresh her memory?

Unless we suffer from short term memory loss, we’re all sexperts when it comes to our own sex. We know exactly what kind of sex we’re having and – should someone ask us about it – there’s no need to pop home for a quick one just to check you’re not remembering it wrong.

The Campaign for ‘Real Sex’

I get what they’re doing with this: I do. And broadly I agree – most people don’t have the kind of sex that professionals have in porn, and so it’s important to understand that what we see on the screen is usually different to the sex that Joe Bloggs has with his partner on a Friday night.

But this is an obvious, trivial truth. Just as most people don’t repoint brickwork like a professional builder or drive like Jenson Button. Professionals do things differently to non-professionals, because they have spent time developing a skill to serve a particular purpose. Jenson wants to win Formula 1 races, the builder wants to please the client, and porn performers want to do things that will visually entertain you. The average person just wants to drive to the supermarket, build a wall that won’t fall over immediately, and have sex that gets them off.

There’s no problem with porn sex being different to real sex as long as we recognise why and how it’s different.

But pitting ‘real sex’ against pornography, as if the two are diametrically opposed, is bloody odd. Because ‘porn’ and ‘sex’ are not opposites. Sitting on the sofa rubbing one out to xhamster is just as real a part of my sex life as sitting on a guy’s dick. Sometimes people want to fuck, and sometimes they want to watch the professionals fuck, because they either can’t do it or can’t be bothered to do it. I watch porn sometimes, just as I’ll hire someone to tile my bathroom: sometimes you need to call the professionals.

What do I think of the ‘sex box’?

I love that there’s sex on telly. And not just the lovely creamy-breasted, taught-buttocked romping that’s almost the whole point of Game of Thrones, but actual conversations about sex. I like that this programme will bring more discussion about sex to our screens and our lives.

But crucially, I think the way it’s being framed will achieve the opposite of what Channel 4 says its after: “a frank conversation about an essential element of all our lives.” Instead it turns sex into a giggly, ‘edgy’ thing rather than something utterly normal which most of us enjoy in some shape or form. It also puts itself at the heart of deciding what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t. And I’m sorry to disappoint you, but when it comes to ‘real sex’, humping furtively in a ‘sex box’ in a TV studio is no more ‘real’ than porn.

Somewhere in the world there exists a blurry night-shot video of me sucking a guy’s dick. Don’t hit google, you’ll never find it. The guy who filmed it, whose dick starred in it, is not an arsehole. I’ve had odd moments of panic when I wonder if his computer ever got stolen, or if the tape from the camera was mislaid and picked up later by a curious friend, but I know with utter conviction that he’d never have deliberately shown it to anyone without my consent.

Kate Middleton’s tits

This week some tawdry celeb mags have published pictures of Kate Middleton sunbathing topless.

The pictures (for I have seen them – they are on the internet) are nothing special. They are exactly what you’d expect them to be. They are not newsworthy, or shocking – they’re unnecessary, and the taking of them was hurtful and intrusive and offensive. The buying of them equally so.

And yet I looked. I looked because I was curious. Everyone’s talking about these pictures. I wanted to confirm my suspicions that the fuss was about nothing, and that publishing them was something I could easily condemn.

“Oh, how awful. They invaded this poor woman’s privacy for nothing. How disgusting they are. I’m so horrified I’ll shut this web page in a minute.”

I fucking disgust myself.

Because so rarely in life do I do things that I think are genuinely wrong. I’m happy batting away the judgment of other people when they call me a pervert or a slut, because I have the moral high ground. I usually have enough ethical awareness to avoid doing the things that – although tempting – are actually morally wrong.

And yet I looked at Kate Middleton’s tits.

Prince Harry’s bollocks

A similar dilemma arose during the recent ‘Prince Harry gets naked in Vegas’ shock. It turns out that a young, attractive man got naked in his hotel room with some people.

The resulting storm that brewed was both disgusting and weird. While Clarence House played whack-a-mole with the images that had popped up online, individuals were loudly asserting their right to see the pictures. “It’s a public interest issue,” they said “We pay for him,” they continued. And then, flailing vaguely around the issue of just why, exactly, someone they pay for should be compelled to let you see his bollocks they added “it’s a security issue.”

Well, no. It’s not, is it? Perhaps there are security issues associated with what happened, but the pictures themselves are not a security issue. No one is more or less likely to assassinate Harry on the basis that there is photographic evidence that he has testicles. The fact that the pictures were taken might form the basis of a story about security surrounding the prince, but the actual pictures themselves add nothing to that debate.

Nevertheless, a debate was had. Justifications were made, counterarguments swept under the table, and the prince’s own assertion that – you know – he’d rather we didn’t all cop a look at him in the nude went unheeded. The Sun knocked the whole thing out of the park with a grand announcement that it would publish the pictures because it was the ‘right thing’ to do.

Hooray for press freedom! Hooray for the Sun! Hooray for them posting naked pictures of someone without his consent! What larks, eh? Who wouldn’t shell out 20-odd pence to have a quick glimpse of the prince’s privates?

Well, I guess nice people. People nicer than me.

I’m going to put aside the spurious debate about press freedom for a moment and talk about ethics. Because hey – I’m not a fan of banning people from doing things if at all possible. If I were ruler of the world, I wouldn’t want to have to issue a diktat saying ‘newspapers cannot print pictures of members of the Royal Family in the nude.’

So let’s instead talk in more general terms: is there ever a compelling reason for a national newspaper to publish naked pictures or videos of someone without their consent?

I don’t think there is. Moreover, I don’t think there’s an honest justification for anyone to publish naked pictures of someone without their consent.

Tulisa’s blow job

A few months ago a video was released of FHM’s sexiest woman – Tulisa – giving an ex-boyfriend a blow job. Blogs were ringing with the sound of gleeful dudes rubbing one out, frowning moralists calling Tulisa ‘loose’, and bitchy women criticising her blow-job technique. Someone suggested to me that I jump on the bandwagon, grab myself some cheap SEO traffic, and review the video.

As you can probably tell, I didn’t. The idea of pointing and laughing at someone doing something that they clearly believed was private gives me the shivers. With the certainty that comes from knowing I never want my blurry night-shot blow job video to go online, I know that posting sexual pictures of someone without their consent is unethical and wrong.

Whatever you think of some of the more controversial things I’ve written, I have very strong views on consent, and ultimately I don’t want to be part of anything that tramples all over it. So even if you’re saying that Tulisa’s sexy, Kate’s an English Rose, even if you’re saluting Prince Harry and calling him a ‘top lad’ for playing naked games in his hotel room, the fact remains that he’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t want those pictures published. So we shouldn’t publish them.

But I looked

Here’s the tricky part. How do we ethically justify the fact that, although we’re disgusted by the idea of releasing hot blow job videos, or tit shots, or blurry mobile-phone snaps of a prince frolicking in a hotel room, some of us are happy to watch those things when they appear? The answer is we don’t – we can’t. There’s no need for me ever to see this stuff – it will add nothing of value to my life.

The people who publish this shit are hideous. The people who either take photos without consent or release photos without consent are doubly hideous. But if we’re completely honest with ourselves we’re not much better.

No matter what our reasons for looking, we are still disgusting. What makes me angry is that not only do these situations demonstrate how pathetic I am as an individual, but how pathetic we are as a species. We cannot bear to admit that we googled the pictures out of cheap curiosity or lust. Instead we cite press freedom, security concerns, or the hazards of celebrity.

But the very fact that we want an excuse shows we know deep down that seeking out these pictures might not be our most glorious moment – that we’re crossing a moral line. So let’s drop the excuses altogether, shall we? We can admit that we want to look whilst trying to avoid looking, and while this internal battle rages we can stop lying to ourselves and everyone else.

Let’s not invent bullshit excuses to try and wriggle out of guilt. Accept the guilt. You’re not looking at Prince Harry’s bollocks because you’re a freedom fighter. You’re looking because you’re disgusting. We’re disgusting.

I am disgusting.

There are few things that make me want to rub one out more than a seriously lovely pair of tits. Firm, perky tits trapped in something really tight – a corset, a low-cut t-shirt, or occasionally just squished together with a belt or a length of rope.

I was casually perusing the internet recently when I came across a fantastic example of this – a woman with beautiful, hard tits wearing a top stretched tightly over them, with a hand-sized peephole in the middle displaying cleavage, and a rise in the top beneath so you could see the curve of the underside of them. Stunning.

Naturally, I immediately pulled down my jeans and rubbed quick one out – imagining a guy pushing the end of his dick against her chest and wanking until he spurted thick spunk through the hole in her top.

Hypocrisy and self-disgust

Immediately afterwards I felt pathetic and amoral. Not for wanking – if I felt bad for wanking I’d have lost the will to live before I hit my fourteenth birthday. No, I felt pathetic because the picture was:

a) not of a real woman, but of a video game character
b) being used to illustrate an article about the objectification of women in video games.

Not only did I crack one off to an article that explicitly frowned upon crack-offable video game characters, but I subsequently read the article and agreed with it.

Some video game design is shockingly objectifying, and borderline offensive. The women are usually inhumanly pert-breasted, unnaturally slim waisted and wearing clothes that are deeply impractical for fighting. Even the moves seem designed to draw attention to whichever feminine features are expected to most excite teenaged boys. Those who learn the right Dead or Alive moves will be rewarded with a flash of Kasumi’s panties, or a hypersexual throw in which she leaps, cunt-first, at her opponent’s face, squeezing her muscular thighs around their cheeks before hurling them to the ground.

On an intellectual level it disgusts me. But on the very basic, primal level at which I operate when I’m at home in my knickers, it makes me wet. Playing video games against women with massive, hard, well-framed tits leaves me panting and desperate to be touched. I see Ayane’s tits jiggling and I want boys to touch mine. I see her being hurled to the ground and I want to be hurled to the ground. I imagine that after a fight her opponent takes her into the woods, and she stares in awe at him with her impossibly-wide manga eyes as he triumphantly seals his victory by fucking her in the mouth.

Just show me your tits

It works no matter which role I’m in. Whether I’m playing as a male character or a female one. Playing Xbox with a boy today, in between bouts of screaming “die, DIE, eat my fucking AXE, you cuntbag” I was imagining my male character pinning his girl to the floor, and taking her with quick, rough, angry thrusts. Ripping her clinging top from her jiggling tits and spraying jizz all over them.

But although I’ll revel in it at the time – trash talk my opponent and encourage him to join me in my questionable perving (“Look, kiddo – I can see your fucking panties. When I’ve beaten you we’ll watch the replay together so you can imagine me tearing your top open“) – I know it’s wrong. It’s not bad to look at tits, but it is bad to appreciate these particular tits, which have been put there by designers with teenaged boys and quick sales in mind. The game’s been drawn so that – in between beating monsters and stabbing slick-haired sword-wielding princes – players will be imagining the characters fucking.

I don’t know what my conclusion is here – I want there to be something that will square the circle, and explain away my vague sense of self-disgust. I want an excuse for wanking to material that morally I should condemn.

But I’ve got nothing. So I suppose this is a bit of a plea – tell me what the answer is. I figured if anyone would know about masturbating to pixellated images of tits it’d be the friendly hordes of the internet.

So, people – is this OK, or is it reprehensible for a feminist? Should I carry on, safe in the knowledge that no kittens will die in the making of my tragic wanks? Or should I pull up my knickers and grow the fuck up? If you can think of a way I can fight to end female objectification while simultaneously pressing buttons to make tits jiggle, I’d be ever so grateful. I don’t have a penny for your thoughts, but I can start by offering you this picture.