Understanding porn in the wider sense – by Alex
Drawing on his own experience, Alex kindly shares more of his insightful reflections on the wider issues of porn:
In our sex-drenched culture, I think it’s all to easy too lose sight of what sex is. I mean the down to earth reality of sex, as opposed to ‘sex in the head’. When it comes to using pornography, when a relationship with porn becomes problematic, when porn becomes an obsession, a struggle… so many of us are living too far removed from the reality of sex.
OK let’s take a step back for a moment here. Your sexuality is your relationship with your sexual self, and everyone of us from puberty onwards has to deal with our sexuality in one way or another. That includes heterosexual people, gay people and people who don’t have a neat label for who or what they are. But sex in a relationship with another person is ideally the expression of love and is the desire for the ultimate form of intimacy. Sex is NOT called “making love” or “love making” for nothing. Sex is the process which strengthens the bonds of a loving relationship above and beyond reproduction. Good sex is what keeps relationships rich, loving and meaningful in a world of chaos and absurdity. Sex within relationships can make all the difference to the quality of our lives.
However, paradoxically (and confusingly) pornography has little or nothing to do with the reality of sex. Let’s be clear and honest here: pornography is an industry, driven by capitalism and profits. To that end, it exploits our sexual feelings and our emotional vulnerability.
The porn industry knows that sexually explicit imagery is very powerful, that sexual imagery taps into something very primitive; our most basic animal instincts. This kind of imagery has every potential to hook us into a kind of dependency, a kind of obsession. The pornography production companies like people to become increasingly dependant on what they create. This is part of their sales and profit making strategy. This kind of dependency is what makes these companies literally millions of pounds.
Have no illusions – the pornography production companies are large and vastly wealthy corporations. Many have stocks and shares listed on the worlds stock markets (like NASDAQ-listed Private Media Group). This is what pornography is all about; making money through the exploitation of our sexual responses. It’s an emotional manipulation of sorts.
People use pornography for a wide range of reasons. Some of these might be obvious, but many are not obvious at all . The reasons a person uses porn on a regular basis might be quite unconscious. Often the motives for using porn are not fully understood by the user/consumer. Using pornography might be for reasons of comfort, or for escapism from the sheer boredom and dullness of everyday life. It could be to create a little bit of excitement, it could be used to numb out a deeper emotional pain (an inner wound) from childhood or from our past. Porn can be used just like an anaesthetic drug. The numbing effects are sometimes subtle but can run very deep.
I also believe that using pornography is commonly used in order to cope with strong feelings of anger. Anger from past events in our lives; events which we haven’t resolved or been able to face. If this is the case, we are in real danger of turning the anger inwards upon ourselves. This has the potential to become self hatred, guilt, despair, and full-on depression. Why? Because using pornography in this way only hurts us and keeps us stuck. It constantly opens up the wound, which remains festering and unhealed.
Perhaps the biggest lesson I have learnt in recent times is that if I stop using porn, I like myself a great deal more. Not using porn means I have to face and really feel my deeply wounded heart. Porn only keeps my heart shut down. It only prevents the grieving and healing. I’m sure I am not alone or unique in this regard. The bottom line is “not using” porn allows me to feel good about myself again. This is yet another paradox, but it works and that’s the bottom line.
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This is a highly insightful article.