How teenage access to pornography is killing intimacy in sex
An article in today’s Sunday Times explores the downsides of internet-driven acceptance of pornography. Author Natasha Walter recounts her conversation with porn addict ‘Jim’, and his quotes will strike a chord with many readers here:
I was unable to think of women except as potential pornography. I looked at them in a purely sexual way… I had no idea how to interact with women as people.
Jim explains how his obsession with porn fantasy has blighted his real relationships with women:
The power of pornography has continued throughout my adult life. Nothing has really measured up to the world of porn, for me. I’ve seen thousands of strangers having sex. So when I have sex, I am watching myself having sex.
You can read the whole article here.
Wow. That’s one of the best articles I’ve read on porn/sex addiction in the mainstream media–and I’ve read a lot of them. It’s quite in depth and honest.
YES! an extraordinary article well written & incredibly honest and true. It really gets down to the key features regarding porn and its corrosive effects on both genders. I totally agree that the long term consequences of all pervasive porn in our society is the death or loss of intimacy. And the damage is too the younger generation I’m sure this is true.
The entire paradox of porn is that it displays the sex act explicitly in various forms but porn IS ONLY about fantasy, however we tend to forget that sex itself is really essentially about the expression (not just lust) of love for another person, that sex is ALL about intimacy. Indeed that is “the purpose of sex” not so much procreation or even pleasure i.e. orgasm for me the central meaning of sex is intimacy. It is through sex that intimacy with my partner is reached, the intimacy of sex is what strengthens the bonds of a relationship. But that can only happen if both partners are full present emotionally & psychologically during the experience of sex, if you are disconnected from the other person during sex then that’s very sad and probably very disappointing unhappy sex.
Not only IS porn being so widely and easily accessible a problem, the effects on the individual is a problem and its wider effects on the entire society is also a problem. Not only is porn having a bad effect on men & women but it appears to be having a detrimental effect on our ability to relate and to find intimacy with each other and surely thats even more worrying?
Thus porn has become a sort of pact with the devil. Meaning we have swapped using & consuming porn ( become obsessed with our fantasies) and being self absorbed with our own egotistical sexual fantasies driven by watching porn. With face to face relationships with real people, with real feelings & desires, expressing our love through sex and gaining intimacy in the process.
The problem with our sexual feelings is that they are NOT rational, nor is our desires, nor is our animal lust. Porn is not rational either and the use or obsession with porn is also not rational. The reasons people (me included) use porn is irrational and the most rational answer as to why people (anyone) uses porn because they unconsciously wish to avoid difficult feelings, such as anger, stress, boredom, pain, anxiety etc the list is a long one.
“The most rational answer as to why people (anyone) uses porn because they unconsciously wish to avoid difficult feelings, such as anger, stress, boredom, pain, anxiety etc the list is a long one.”
Alex, I think that in order to have intimacy with another person, one needs to have intimacy with oneself–meaning, being present to one’s feelings. And that’s the vicious cycle of porn. It depicts sex without intimacy, watching it becomes an escape from intimacy with oneself, which leaves the viewer unable to be truly intimate with his/her partner, which replicates the type of relationship on the screen, and then the isolation from one’s loved ones leads to even further isolation from oneself. It’s as though merely watching this stuff turns a person (and, though his eyes, everyone else) into the one-dimensional “performers” in porn.
The really sad thing is that I don’t think this is just affecting those who are habitual porn users–it’s an attitude and an outlook that’s bleeding into the rest of the culture, which Walter does a good job of pointing out in her article.
Hi Margaux,
Thank you for yet another wonderful reply.
QUOTE:- It depicts sex without intimacy, watching it becomes an escape from intimacy with oneself.
ANS:- YES! I 100% agree with this point completely, this is at the heart of the damage that viewing porn has on us (male or female). This is called alienation or dis-association, or disconnection from ones core emotional self. Porn causes a split within the self, causes or creates a divided self and in this sense it can be quite dangerous for some individuals. Porn damages the persons psyche that’s the bad news but like any wounding if given a chance the psyche (human being) will heal itself or will re-balance itself.
**Yet another paradox of porn is that people who view porn a great deal, the one thing they actually want more than anything else in life is to be & experience loving intimacy but are either really fearful of it even though they desire it badly. Or just don’t know how to be intimate with themselves as a negative consequence of using porn.
**IMO you cannot be intimate with someone else unless you are intimate with yourself first. Porn damages the ability to be fully connected to ones emotional body & thus to be fully in-touch with our deepest self i.e. intimate with yourself.
I have to agree with you both, Alex and Margaux, and all the points raised in the Times.
One line in the porn addict’s quote really rang true with me: “So when I have sex, I am watching myself having sex”. It describes so well the dis-association that Alex talks of. Not only are we numbing ourselves from appreciating the person we are making love to but we are unable to appreciate ourselves either. Like a permanent voyeur – titillated but emotionally numbed.
Even now after getting to grips with my own addiction, I still feel this experience when making love. I always knew that porn was influencing the way I felt about my performance (am I lasting long enough, do I look ok at this angle and other embarrassing thoughts). Now I understand more fully just how detached and robotic I had become.
Something that was interesting to me about this article is that Walter’s book “Living Dolls,” from which the article is an excerpt, seems to examine the porn issue from a feminist slant. (I believe the subtitle to the book is something like “The Return of Sexism.”) However, the article seems to do a very fair job of depicting how porn and the resulting sex-saturated attitude of the viewer hurts BOTH men and women (I think you pointed this out, too, Alex). That’s not to say that many feminists don’t acknowledge this dual wounding, but it seems that the “official” feminist stance on porn seems to be male as perpetrator and female as victim, which to me, does more to perpetuate the shame cycle that feeds porn viewing than to truly wake people up to the detrimental effects of porn. (It also overlooks the fact that more and more women are becoming addicted to porn, and that many men are porn stars.)
Though I consider myself a feminist (in the general sense of equal rights for men and women), I’ve always been hesitant to use feminist rhetoric when discussing porn because I think it does overlook the fact that men are being hurt just as much as women by the attitudes presented in porn. Talk to any male porn addict, and it’s impossible not to come away with the knowledge that this person is in deep pain and isolation, is dissociated from his own body, and finds it nearly impossible to trust and relate to the opposite sex.
Hi again,
YES! but another aspect of the porn industry that the feminist critic (I may be wrong?) dont seem to mention much is the whole issue of who is exploiting who? In reality the power balance can often appear to be different from what is outwardly perceived. In fact its the female porn stars that are exploiting the men. No female bodies no porn almost, yes! of course there is gay porn but the largest % of the porn market is hetro-sexual in nature not surprisingly.
That the most successful porn stars are in fact female and that they can make literally multiple milions in the life time of their careers I’m thinking of some of the most well known stars like Jemma Jaimason or Silva Saint or Tara Patrick,etc.
Frankly most main stream porn where the female models or actresses are either submissive or victims I dont personally find at all interesting. I find the opposite scenarios far far more interesting where its the males that end up the submissives etc.
And who said women cannot be macho or dominant, or take advantage of the males. Women are quite capable of being equally nasty, dreadful or badly behaved as the males. For example:- In fact look what happened here in the UK when we had a female PM who appears to have out macho’d the male tory MP’s in her own party & cabinet. Margaret Thatcher the so called Iron lady, & YES! look what terrible damage she did to this country, we are still paying the price of the legacy she left us with. I disgress but what I’m trying to say is that women can be just as power crazy and equally exploitative when given the same chances as men. Its called human nature sadly, it appears to be hard wired.
Using porn is like eating sweets, you first get the rush (adrenaline rush) the climax followed rapidly by the crash, the low, that all too familiar emptiness.
Of course eating sweets is terrible for your teeth and doesn’t do much for your health & wreaks havoc on your blood sugar levels. Plus sweets contain few beneficial calories so are dreadful for your poor old colon & digestion.
Alex, I’m not so sure I’d agree that, on a widespread level, female porn stars are exploiting men to make huge profits. Yes, there are the select few–Jenna Jameson and the couple others you mentioned–who have gotten rich off porn. But I doubt that it’s a lucrative profession for the vast majority of female performers–it’s probably enough to pay rent on a crappy apartment. And I’d guess that any money that is made is earned at a much higher cost (self worth, acting out childhood abuse (I would guess a lot of these women are sex addicts themselves), plus a lot of these women become addicted to drugs just to be able to deal with the psychological effects).
All that said, I’ll go back to my initial point on this subject: Basically, it’s a cycle of sick people depending on other sick people and becoming more sick in the process. Both the porn star and the porn viewer have issues that aren’t being addressed (they probably share a lot of the *same* issues), and those issues are perpetuated through the relationship between porn star/porn viewer or, to strip it down to what that “relationship” really is, supply and demand.
Neither the porn star nor the porn viewer are “bad” people or are to blame for the others’ problems, but those problems aren’t going to go away unless the porn star stops making porn and the porn addict stops looking at porn.
Hi Margaux,
Hum! well yes I’d have to agree with your analysis because I think its a very confusing kind of industry and I although I still think many of the porn stars do exploit men (the viewer consumer) in the making of the porn. I would conceed perhaps the female exploitation is not as big a part of the industry as I might think. YES! perhaps your right that the vast majority of porn models & movie actresses & actors get pretty badly paid. And that to get larger (large) fees it seems the porn star has to endure more & more horrible sexual gymnastics (read anal etc) and if taken even further it ends up being more depraved like torture,etc.
I had never quite considered porn as being produced by sick people with issues and that porn is used by people with “issues” but frankly I think thats an entirely accurate view. But on the other hand I’ve never met anyone who didnt have some kind of issues around sex or sexuality. But I’m sure its a matter of degree we are talking about. Sadly, I do agree that porn itself only serves to keep the “issues” from being resolved if thats possible.
Alex,
Yes, it is a pretty confusing industry. I would guess that the people who are making the big money are those who produce/distribute the porn, and that most of those who are performing in porn become “slaves” to the point that those who are addicted to it are.
I totally agree that the majority of human beings have sexual issues of some sort, but I would guess that anyone who makes porn a lifestyle–either by performing in/creating it or watching it so regularly that one’s choices and views are shaped by it–have sexual issues that go much deeper than the average person’s sexual issues. I think we tend to fixate on the things that we’re trying to work out–whether we’re aware that we’re tying to work it out or not.