Rocco Siffredi: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)

This article was published in the 2021 number 17 of Vanity Fair. We propose it again today to retrace the changes that Vanity has been the protagonist of in the last 20 years. Here all the articles we are republishing.

Does shaving your genitals make a penis look bigger? Yes. Can a woman feel discomfort during penetration if he “bends” to one side? Is sex dirty? Sure, but only if it’s done right. In 1972 Woody Allen signed a film that explained sexual relations from within, fifty years after the world’s most famous porn star, Rocco Siffredi, wrote a book on sexuality seen on the outside. Thus comes out on April 27, fifteen years after his autobiography, Sex Lessons (Mondadori, pp. 120, €17), the first sex education course of the star, who lives in Budapest with his wife Rózsa and their sons Lorenzo, 25, and Leonardo, 21.

You, so libertarian, don’t you feel uncomfortable in the Hungary of Orbán’s ultra-conservative government?
“Are you talking about the same Orbán who expelled one of the party’s founders from the party last December after he was caught in an orgy with 24 men?”

Exactly.
“Well, I’d say. But in Italy it is even more complicated to do my job, with the Vatican nearby. Even if I now see that, thanks to social media, no politician can any longer repress anyone’s sexuality: for the new generations, heterosexuality will no longer mean anything. We are moving towards a beautiful sexuality that represents us, towards a man or a woman».

Speaking of new generations: statistics say that most kids have no information about sex either at home or at school, but they all watch porn videos on the Internet. What do you think?
«That we are already educating the second generation of kids with online pornography. Years ago I launched an appeal to the Ministry of Education to make sex education compulsory in Italian schools, as it happens all over the world. I also offered to promote the initiative, but the reaction was lukewarm: Rocco is fine, but we’ll take care of these things. The students want me, principals and rectors prevent the meeting. A porno star is not welcome: I like you if you have to jerk off, but closed your pants it’s a world to hide ».

Let’s make an appeal again today.
“If the principal of a school calls me tomorrow, I’ll go right away, and for free. I like the confrontation with the boys».

So your battle turned into this book?
«No, it went like this: the publisher noticed the videos I made on YouTube to answer the many questions they ask me about sex and asked me to turn them into a book. I don’t claim to be a sexologist, the one who has it all figured out, my approach is the advice of my older brother. I know the world of porn so well that I can find the differences with real life, also because I’m a married man, father of two children, I see the subject from different points of view. And having thirty years of experience in the field, I pass it on».

However, her son Lorenzo surprised her, she recounts in the book, confessing that she hadn’t learned sex from porn, but having it with her lifelong girlfriend.
“They’re ten years together now. She shocked me because I didn’t think there was anyone who could do without porn. But there is: being my son, it is normal for him to have a detached approach. Everyone else watches my videos, and a lot of people think that’s real sex.”

What is it instead?
«The sexual experience is made up of the relationship with the person you have it with, it is an exchange of feelings, fun, communication. Girls, on the other hand, have performance anxiety, learning that every relationship ends with a cumshot on the face, because 90% of PornHub clips end there. It must be explained that pornography serves adults to motivate them, excite them, it is not a manual”.

In the book he deals with the theme of “first times”.
“There are those who look like porn stars at 13 and 26-year-old girls who write to me that they are still virgins because they haven’t found the right man. I am for experimentation, even if first you need to know your body. And using condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, because on the set there are a thousand controls, not in real life. You have to be careful about consent, because if the other says “no”, it’s “no”: in porn, on the other hand, everyone seems willing to do anything. I reassure males about erection: it’s not like in the 90s anymore, now everyone uses chemistry in movies, they’re not authentic performances. Internationally renowned urologists, however, tell me that the “pumps”, the ones we met with the Cavaliere, are now made to thirty-year-olds, with all mental erectile dysfunctions ».

Women have paranoia too, especially about the body.
«I had wonderful relationships with very thin or overweight women, far from the “classic” canon of beauty: they were self-confident. Self-esteem makes eroticism».

Does it make sense to “redo” sex education when you’re older?
«Yes, because there are couples who have been fucking in the same position for twenty years, and women who have never had an orgasm. The truth is that we don’t talk to each other, we are ashamed. We don’t even get to 10% of what sex can give.”

For long-term couples, he recommends swapping, or otherwise watching while your partner is with another person. Is it always necessary to introduce a third party?
“The truth is that it’s everyone’s problem: after years passion wanes, there isn’t any, and novelty always wins over monogamy at a certain point”.

She says that her wife doesn’t want to do swinging: so how do you solve it?
«With her from the beginning I was clear: I was shooting with other women, on the set, and she should have done it too. But she always replied: “They are all ugly”. Obviously it wasn’t true, but she’s part of that type of woman who prefers one at a time: if I’m in love with you, I’m with you. I even tried to take her to a club to have a threesome. She told me: “But you are stupid!”. He is my opposite, perhaps for this reason we have been together for 27 years ».

How many times a week, or a day, do you have sex?
«We have no rules, when we feel like it. But my wife doesn’t like to do it when there are others in the house, and we have the housekeeper who comes every morning…”.

In the book he also talks about social networks, which change sex.
«Everything is different both on the set, where there are actresses who arrive and two seconds before making the scene they are there to post, and in life, where the kids instead of enjoying the moment live with their cell phones in hand to film everything. But sex is something one must be willing to do, without desire we are machines. Those kids who fuck without getting involved, because it’s fashionable, without bringing home an emotion, then they’ll get bored, and monsters are born from boredom. I know something about it, I’ve been addicted to sex.”