Dr. Helen: Is Control over Porn Really about Control over Men’s Sexuality?
National Review Online recently ran an article entitled “Getting Serious About Pornography” with the following warning: “It is ravaging American families.” The author is “a psychologist who lives with her children in Virginia.” She wrote the piece anonymously. Anonymous states:
Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment.
“Hmmm,” I thought, “is the First Amendment really ever-expanding?” I don’t think so; it seems to be ever-shrinking, but that’s a topic for another article. My main problem with this piece is the insinuation that porn is to blame for an entire generation not being able to form lasting marriages and that it is damaging families and leading to rape and every other kind of ill in society.
The author of the article thinks that she lost her husband due to “porn” (he ran off with another woman). She mentions a number of reports that point to porn’s “harmful effects,” such as one released by the Witherspoon Institute. ”The Social Costs of Pornography” claims that pornography has negative effects on individuals and society. The ominous video on the report’s website, however, makes me wonder what its real motive is. Perhaps it’s controlling the sexuality of males?
WELL WHEN-EVER SOME FEMINAZI TRIES TO TELL ME WHAT KIND OF PORN TO WATCH THATS WHEN I SAY ‘WELL SHE CAN TRY AS HARD AS SHE LIKE BUT SHE IS NOT GOING TO GET A DATE WITH ME’!
Sorry, Helen, you are full of more crap than a Christmas goose. And sorry all of you need to justify your habits.
I can verify Anonymous’s experience. My husband got more and more into porn to the point that it took away his interest in participating in family life, and certainly took away his interest in sex with a wife. He said he didn’t want to make the effort to relate to a person. It was too much trouble (and no, I’m not demanding; anything but). And no, I’m not 300 pounds and ugly.
When I put pressure on his addiction, he took up with a mentally unstable woman who promised him he could have his porn. According to what she said to others, the addiction grew, and he was masturbating to it.
Helluva example to the kids. You guys can justify this all you want, and I feel sorry for your women. There are lots of studies out there that back up what I’m saying. Read them.
Now he’s got no woman at all, other than the pictures online to masturbate to.
Enjoy.
Anna,
Latest study shows the same as all earlier studies:
70% of married men masturbate
30% of married men lie to pollsters
If you think the masturbation started after you finding the porn, you are wrong. Men start masturbating in their early teens, and their parents train them to hide it well by punishing or ridiculing, or god-bothering whenever they are caught.
He’s been masturbating before, during and after your marriage.
“Addicted to Porn” means that a man wants to look at somebody other than the spouse as well. Lots of somebodys that are young, fit, blemish free, flexible, and as perfectly beautiful as makeup, an airbrush and photoshop can make them. In the words of Christy Brinkley, supermodel of the 80′s: “Even Christy Brinkley doesn’t look like Christy Brinkley”.
You aren’t going to be able to distract a man away from looking at other women. We’re just not wired up to look at only one woman. We’re talking at least many hundreds of thousands of years of genetic selection, and more likely hundreds of millions. You should be grateful that he’s looking at porn. Grateful, because porn is quiet, 100% disease free, perfect looking, folds for easy storage and never nags, and rarely asks for jewelry. Porn is perfect, and when men start wandering towards new, living, breathing females, these differences become very obvious and irritating. Porn is unreservedly accepting of erectile disfunction, and never is disappointed. The physical intimacy of masturbation includes a perfect partner that always knows exactly when and where to touch, and exactly the correct timing, technique and speed. Wives are almost as good, from nearly as much practice. New girls are awful.
Like Italian sports cars, new lovers are great fun for about 1 week. Then the bills start. The parts require constant tweaking. The paint job requires protection from the weather, sun and all touching. The dollars per mile cost is unbelivable. Half the time the car won’t start for one reason or another, and it will leave on it’s own to be in “the shop”. The car never pays for what happens in “the shop” but it keeps going back. It’s always in your mind, and sometimes in her conversation, that to really drive the new model to the limits, you need to be one of a handful of highly trained professionals, with incredible natural gifts. Like her previous driver, not the current one.
And, of course, sooner or later they always get stolen. Usually sooner.
Men know this, and my experience is that men think about wandering, fantasize about wandering, and occasionally do wander, but if it’s serious or for any length of time, it’s just a symptom of a marriage that has run it’s course. Other partnerships and joint ventures get started, work, make all the parties happy for a while, then dissolve. Marriage is often the same. Nowadays, a woman doesn’t become ‘damaged goods’ and can only marry once. Consequently, the downside of divorce is lessened today. Any economist will tell you that as an action such as divorce becomes less damaging and painful, the more it will happen.
Be glad that you don’t live in areas of Asia that I’ve visited, where there is no divorce; the wife is just beaten into submission, and the mistresses are paraded along in front of her. This isn’t new. In the old testament, they’re called ‘concubines’. I vastly prefer today’s system.
And don’t go thinking that this is brand new, with the internet. Or with color printing, or black and white printing. Or oil paints. Or tempura paints. Or charcoal sketches. Or sculpture. Or stick figures on the wall. We’ve had pornography for a long, long, long time. Some of the earliest sculptures ever found were of the ‘earth mother’. Remembering being 15, I can assure you that a doll that can be easily carried in one hand will work very well as the fantasy stimulus required to get the job moving.
Face it, if your marriage is just based on sex, it’s doomed anyway, because eventually one or the other of you just aren’t going to be biologically capable enough as you both age, and you’re just praying that you both slide into decrepitude and disinterest at about the same rate.
And no, I don’t believe in “porn addiction”. If exposure to porn were harmful, I’d be as dead as the triceratops.
If porn were addicting, I could not have taken the time to type this, when an entire planetful of porn is literally three clicks away.
Having worked for a market research firm for too many years, let me correct one point in your lengthy comment. 100 percent of people lie. Lying – it’s not just for men anymore, and no less about masturbation. If someone tells you that they never lie, they already have, and you might want to trust them the least. Just an observation, a point of order, if you will.
suicidal idiot said:
“Like Italian sports cars, new lovers are great fun for about 1 week. Then the bills start. The parts require constant tweaking. The paint job requires protection from the weather, sun and all touching. The dollars per mile cost is unbelivable. Half the time the car won’t start for one reason or another, and it will leave on it’s own to be in “the shop”. The car never pays for what happens in “the shop” but it keeps going back. It’s always in your mind, and sometimes in her conversation, that to really drive the new model to the limits, you need to be one of a handful of highly trained professionals, with incredible natural gifts. Like her previous driver, not the current one.”
Do you know some people here likely know who you are????? Do you know who you are???? Won’t you ask us????
/sarcasmmode but man you DO sound like Yoshiki. Right down to your screenname.
You serious? What puritan enclave are you living in? If you think your man wouldn’t masturbate if he didn’t look at porn, then you live in wonderland. You stigmatizing him like that and blaming porn for his family neglect might be a prism indicating you bigger issues in your former marriage than just his porn “habit.” I didn’t want to personally insult you, but your response to Dr Helen was classless in itself so I don’t feel so bad for my lack of restraint.
These women who “lost their husbands to porn” seem to assume everything else was fine in the marriage. Maybe they thought so, but maybe their husbands didn’t.
Is there such a thing as “porn addiction” or “sex addiction?” People can become unhealthily obsessed with all kinds of things, so yes, I’m sure there is. But “sex addiction” has come, in many cases, to mean male sexuality, as Dr. Helen has written on more than one occasion. The feminization of our culture has made womens’ worldviews, including sexuality, normative and mens’ pathological. Many men, maybe most men, like sex a lot, often. they like variety. Compromises need to be made in marriages, sure. But why must they always favor the womens’ norms? It’s a good thing that extreme patriarchal dominance, like that described by another poster in Asia, is gone or receded in this culture. But it is not justifiable or healthy to simply substitute the cultural dominance of female sexuality as the ;healthy” norm. Women don’t seem to understand that the more they try to stamp it out, the more it pops up elsewhere.
Wives claiming they lost their husbands to porn or sex addiction will become like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, an organization that has bullied governments into criminalizing perfectly safe levels of alcohol consumption because one of their family members got killed by someone blitzed on several times that much alcohol.
At the same time, I wonder how many men, caught cheating or looking at porn, claim “sex addiction” as a way of avoiding relational conflict, embarrassment or moral shame, choosing instead an “addiction” that offers victim status (it’s an illness, you know) and the option for absolution through “treatment.” Instead of the monastery, one goes to “rehab” to be cleansed not of sin but of “illness.”I couldn’t help myself, honey, I’m sick, I need treatment. And understanding.
Here’s a clue:
If a man is actually getting “more and more into porn,” and not the more likely scenario of just you taking increasing notice of a steady habit, then chances are it’s because he’s unattracted to you. It’s far more likely a SYMPTOM than a cause. And given the wantonly insulting nature of your post, I have a feeling what was turning him off wasn’t how attractive you think you are on the OUTSIDE.
Anna -
When I read these stories I have to ask one question – what was your sex life like with your husband? No – I don’t want you to answer me or anybody on this site, but i want you to honestly ask yourself what was it like.
I “hear” stories where intimacy has become a chore in the relationship, where couple no longer sleep in the same bed or where there are no physical relations at all. Additionally, I have “heard” other rumblings where one partner (typically the female) will withhold sex as punishment or only as a reward, as if her husband is pavlov’s dog.
I am very sorry your marriage did not work out – but like many stories, I want both sides before I make a call.
Marriages do fail to cheating and over indulgence to porn but those issues were typically rooted in those individuals long before they said their vows – at least that is my theory.
I had a wife who chose to withhold sex as punishment, and allow it as a reward, and considered my sexual interests perverted, who referred to my interest in intimacy as being “horny”. She is now an ex-wife.
I would guess that porn can have deleterious effects on the viewer, but is so pervasive those effects are hard to identify. However, isn’t porn a “victimless” crime? I would think the feminist would accept porn, and no need to scorn their sisters in the sex trade, so prostitution must be acceptable as well.
I would blame feminism, and the feminist who constantly denigrate, minimize and scorn their partners. How about the article on the last dozen women winning the Best Actor category to break up with their boyfriend/husband after winning the Oscar. Were all those guys watching porn?
Apologies, all, for the “wantonly insulting” and “classless” post. But it makes me angry when people are willing to deny and negate a very painful experience from my past. And one that I know is repeated thousands and thousands of times across the country — but we are jeered into silence.
The porn that gets a lot of mileage today is not historic “erotica,” it would be considered way beyond the pale in any culture that I know of except this one. It is connected to a very nasty industry.
You are right, of course, he had lots of other problems. And working with his multiple problems wasn’t easy. (And no, I never “demanded jewelry.”)
Frankly, I don’t know of any marriage that doesn’t have problems. One poster said he “wasn’t attracted” to me. I did notice an inverse relationship to being attracted and porn exposure.
The point is, in any long term marriage, people will go through periods where they aren’t attracted to each other. Most people, for example, aren’t sexually turned on by cancer patients — and yet I was one for awhile. He had a disabling stroke in his 50s — I’m not normally attracted to crippled men. But I learned to be attracted to HIM, because he was my husband.
In the old days, this used to be called love. You love the person, not the body parts. The person who compared a new relationship to a car more or less illustrated my point. A woman is there and exists for satisfying your needs — a car that needs work. How sad.
I am healthy, and have had other relationships, and better ones. He is alone now, and will probably remain so.
I guess if you think jacking off in front of a screen (sorry, classless, I know) is a richer and more fulfilling life than actually loving someone, I have nothing to add. Except a life which is driven by sex, rather than having sex be an expression of a fulfilling life, is sad, sad, sad.
No wonder more and more women are choosing the Cynthia Nixon option.
p.s. Anticipating the next objection, Nixon said it was indeed a choice. CNN ran an article about how women are “choosing” sex with other woman as an alternative.
Uh… thanks but no thanks. There are already enough humorless, anti-sex lesbians out there giving us lesbians a bad rap, we don’t need another one.
Tango takes two Anna . . . but the saddness and distruction that happens because of the addiction or being driven to distraction is a family catastrophe of the ultimate category. It makes no difference who the social failure is primarily associated with, the male for becomin distracted or the female for driving him to it, it just absolutely does not matter. What does matter is the lost souls, the entire family and in my case the totally extended family, have their lives destoryed and their souls damaged.
Anna, you say your husband had a “disabling stroke,” his personality and sexual habits deteriorated … and you blame pornography for the change? I’m sorry, lady, that’s just bizarre.
I am sorry about your divorce.
Do you think your bout with cancer scared him? It sounds like he didn’t want to relate to you not other women — otherwise he would not have run off with another woman, he would have been content with his porn. I’ve heard that sometimes people try to distance themselves from their spouses when there is a grave illness, it makes the prospect of loosing them easier.
As for the dissolution of his next relationship, I’m sure he felt like an absolute s—, and probably didn’t have the courage to make it work.
I know my husband has porn, I’m positive he umm…takes care of business while he looks at it. I just don’t care. Our sex life is fine, our marriage is fine, he’s a great dad.
Even if porn addiction is a real thing I think for most people porn is no more harmful (and maybe as helpful) as a glass of red wine at night. Making it illegal for everyone because of the excesses of a few is wrong.
Perhaps a bit of research on your part might have turned out the link between strokes and hypersexual behavior. Here is a link that will help you out.
http://www.sexualityandaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Bowes_Kellogg-Spadt-Hypersexual-Behavior-Following-Stroke.pdf
You wouldn’t be the only person who failed to make the connection between serious brain injuries and changes in behavior.
Other types of brain damage, such as brain stem damage, can result in the opposite result: partial or complete loss of libido. That is not a good thing either.
Every time you were “too tired” or you sighed and crossed your arms and spread your legs grudgingly you drove your husband to porn. Every time you manipulated him or bargained sex for chores or broke his spirit by withholding, you drove him to porn. I have a VERY hard time believing any man would prefer his hand and the internet to the real thing – but when the real thing became a bitter sullen withholding manipulative shrew, it is certainly understandable he preferred porn. Porn is something men use when they are between women, or when the woman they are with does not satisfy their libido.
Hummm. I think I see your problem.
Anna, not many man need a woman around on a full time basis.
Why do you have a problem with a man masturbating? What do you expect a guy to do when you are too tired, have a headache, have your monthly visitor, just did it last (night, week, month, year), etc… ?
The girls in porn come in all varieties. They are never ‘not in the mood’ nor do they find it necessary to unleash a stream of criticism for the slightest mistake.
I think the author has a good point.
Trust me dufus……she wouldn’t want a date with you. She’s too smart and classy for you.
Trust me dufus…she wouldn’t want a date with you. She’s to smart and classy for you.
Thanks Dr. Helen! I feel better already! I saw that article linked at Hot Air, and it worried me, as I have been known to, ahh, sneak a peak every once in a while. I thought I had a pretty healthy relationship, too, so reading that I was experimenting with the most dangerous drug known to man was rather disturbing.
As an aside, I’d posit that some higher education can do a lot of harm to women’s ability to maintain healthy relationships. I knew women in college who seemed to go in pretty OK, and then radicalized in more ways than one. One result seems to be, in my own observations, the inability to stay with a partner happily. IMHO.
…although at one time women with higher education were more likely to get divorced, the stats have reversed. Women w/ higher education are *less* likely to get divorced now. Makes sense. If you want to raise healthy children you have a better chance with a man around.
On the subject of porn. Doesn’t bother me, although I don’t really want to see it. I’m far to slender to be my husband’s ideal, and don’t want to think about it…but I guess that does prove he likes me for my mind!
A study some years ago pointed out that all (in the study anyway) sexually oriented serial killers and rapists had sexually repressive childhoods devoid of porn. If this is true then the way to stop these individuals from developing is to, yes, you guessed it, provide everyone with free porn. It could be part of the new health plan. Why, oh, why, didn’t Congress think of this sooner? Hey, wait a minute is this April first?
Not so sure about that. I remember my dad reading us a story about Ted Bundy where he talked about how he got his start reading Playboy. It was an attempt by my dad to sour us on porn. Didn’t work – maybe because I realized even then that in bundy’s case (which is .0001% of the norm), porn was a symptom, not a cause, of his criminally psychopathic behavior.
The “porn” that Bundy consumed as a child consisted of the EC crime comic books of his day that routinely depicted women in states of bondage, etc. When he was later apprehended he was found in possession of cheer-leading and majorette magazines. These things were pornography to Mr. Bundy because of his sick, twisted mind, they did not cause his demented mental state. Check out a documentary by the name of “Natural Porn Killer” for more details (if you so desire.)
Does this ‘blame porn for everything wrong in the world’ attitude remind anyone else of the post-Columbine ‘video games make kids into killers’ argument against Doom II and other violent games in the mid-90′s?
Indeed, whenever something goes wrong in any instance, it’s almost human nature to want to blame something. Nine times out of ten, the blame is pointed at the wrong thing, usually something widely used. People like to think that outside stimuli is to blame for most problems, without ever blaming the individual. Everyone is different and have different mechanisms working inside our brains, different triggers, different desires, etc. Yes, perhaps an outside stimuli may have set off one of the ‘triggers’, but that trigger had to have been formed prior, or even play on triggers that are close to another. But most of the time, it’s a giant network of triggers inside one’s mind that has been developing for an individual’s entire life. Humans are very interesting in this regard and to flat out blame something like video games or porn instead of the individual is a failure of human intelligence and reasoning.
Interested if there are any other guys who think that some of the sexiest women keep their clothes on in public. I am not out to ban porn myself,I just find it unnecessary (I must have x-ray eyes or something).
Dr Helen may be right about women’s expectations. Marriage is becoming less attractive to productive men as they may lose control over assets they have worked hard for. Women have to compete harder with each other and to explain what the benefits are to men.
I think more people will live together apart if you follow my drift?
Like your stuff Dr Helen.
I’ve sat in the airport in Riyadh on many occasions waiting for a flight undressing women mentally despite that they were wearing abayas and niqabs. Some real hotties, I’m telling ya!
nothing like getting a peek at a wrist in Riyadh. Seriously, they were probably dudes in disguise.
A high acceptance of the anti-marriage mindset dooms society. The nuclear family is indispensable to its very survival. Furthermore, we must have families with at least three or more children. They must make up for those not “doing their share”. Much of Europe has no future. The drop in population has resulted in an outright disaster.
Mr. Thomson:
Western society does not want children. Instead our popular culture stigmatizes those who have children. Our government and most businesses penalize those who choose to procreate responsibly by laying a huge financial burden upon them. Popular culture sets a perpetual teenaged, childless, Peter Pan, of either sex, as the model to emulate.
In most of western society today the only people who can afford to have more than one or two children are the wealthy who can afford a comfortable lifestyle employing a nanny and private schools, or even more splendiferously, with only one spouse working, and the poor who can put all the expense of raising children on the government, at taxpayer expense.
Why would any skilled, educated, hard working middle class couple choose to give up nearly all hobbies, all chances at “great” vacations and fun, and devote thousands of hours each year and literally millions of dollars to raising children in a middle class household today. To make such a decision, that runs counter to today’s conventional wisdom, they must either be stupid, or ideological fanatics of some kind.
Where’s the pay off?
You will see middle class birthrates go up when our society changes to make childrearing less of a horrendous burden, and when it provides some advantage instead of endless headaches, worries, and sacrifice.
I’m trying to parse the amount of sarcasm in this post, so forgive me if I missed it. I’m a “skilled, educated, hard working middle class” father of two, and frankly my kids are the greatest thing in my life, much more fun that vacations, hobbies or anything else (although those have their place). Where’s the pay-off? Raising my kids IS the pay-off, whether it’s the simple innocent joy that my five year old radiates daily or the sense of accomplishment and maturity that my idiot teenage son experiences as he marches to adulthood…man, I can’t imagine how empty my life would be with out them in it. Sure, I might have more time and money but at what cost? At what cost?
Agree with Dave. My wife and I decided to live on one income after our first child was born and we lived on one income untill our third headed to college. Always considered that decision to have been one of our best with a PhD, MD and a financial analyst in the family to show for it. Helped the two of us to grow up also and that was an unexpected Bonus.
I’m sorry but your comment is an almost perfect example of the “Me generation.”
In most of western society today the only people who can afford to have more than one or two children are the wealthy who can afford a comfortable lifestyle employing a nanny and private schools, or even more splendiferously, with only one spouse working, and the poor who can put all the expense of raising children on the government, at taxpayer expense.
My wife and I had our first child when I was a third year medical student on a scholarship. She quit work to care for him and his brother and sisters as they came along. I have a file of funny stories on how we survived for the next eight years. Let’s just say we didn’t go out to eat much. Now, I am very proud of my five kids and, when I am asked why I had so many, I reply, somebody has to be a taxpayer. I made five of them.
Children are by far the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life. Thank god I finally found a woman I trusted enough to have children with…took me till I was 40 but I found her. Now I have 3 wonderful children who are right this very second bouncing off the walls with anticipation of our Disney World trip. Nothing, no reward, award, vacation, past beautiful woman can hold a candle to the memories already formed…
Been in both worlds as I was playing until I found my wife. Playing was so self centered and truth is I don’t remember most of it…the bimbos, the booze, the trips and concerts all fade away into a blur. But I can remember every single moment of every single birth, I can remember all the victories, defeats, arguments every single moment of my life is delicious. All thanks to my family and my wife.
To the original author of the NR article…sorry but I don’t think that porn destroyed your marriage. I think expectations did.
Helen as usual you rock.
Rex–are you crazy? American society is entirely set up for the benefit of the traditional family. The government provides tax breaks for making babies, society lionizes and popularizes the “Octomoms” and Jon and Kate’s of the world. Single people are looked at with pity, a childless couple even more so….Having kids is great (I’ve got three of my own) but not for everybody–and many people should stop and think a lot longer before bringing another human being into the world. To characterize our society as somehow anti-family or anti-children is to live in a delusional fantasy world–we’re exactly the opposite.
Jacksonhunber31 – I suspect you have no kids. The minor tax breaks for having kids don’t begin to meet the costs of having kids. As noted in another comment, the government help is great if you have no money and/or don’t care how your child turns out. But most parents care a great deal and will spend all of their time and money trying to give their child a good life – and in today’s United States that means a million per kid if you give them private school, private college etc. Sure you can do it on less, plenty of people do, but giving a child an upper middle-class life style is a million dollars.
Then, after not helping you raise your children to be highly productive members of society, capable of earning good salaries, the government steps in and takes 50%+ of those earnings in taxes and gives them to people who did not raise any kids or did not invest the same time and money in their kids.
I wouldn’t call 99.9% of porn “sexy,” nor 99.9% of porn actresses for that matter. Harsh lighting, extreme closeups (*shudder*), inane dialogue, and shoddy excuses for “plot” reveal that the whole point is instant gratification. It doesn’t bother with atmosphere or ambiance or foreplay for that matter.
There’s a great quote out there, though I don’t know the source:
“It is more erotic to wonder if you’re about to be kissed than it is to be kissed.”
Masturbation is healthy for both sexes. Whatever gets you ‘there’ safely in the privacy of your own domain…
Maybe when men stop being intimidated by women’s private toy collections women will stop bitchin’ about men’s porn watching and even join in. Wait. Hasn’t that already happened for a lot of enlightened couples?
kwitcherbitchin’, people and have a happy marriage!
Bravo.
I think porn probably increases frequency of masturbation in men … and that part of the reason men watch so much of it is that many women are too busy (or cannot be bothered) to satisfy men’s sex drives.
To assert that it breaks up marriages, I suspect, is to get the causation involved exactly backwards.
Er. Uh. Eh. You do realize women have sexual needs too, right big fella? Perhaps if some men spent a little time on the woman’s love button she’d be more (ahem) interested in Mr. Happy. lulz
In my marriage, porn is a great safety valve. I have a much greater desire for sex than my wife, so when my wife is unwilling/uninterested in making love, I can use porn to “self-service” my needs. This is much better solution that me being angry at her because my needs aren’t being met. And it also avoid the other option of me trying to guilt/pressure her to make love when she isn’t “in the mood”.
This. In my ideal world, I’d be having sex with my wife once a day; that’s all I need (I know guys who ‘need’ a lot more than that). She’d be totally happy with once a week. So what happens? On average, twice a week. Now, that’s not terrible in the grand scheme of things. But if I didn’t masturbate, I’d go crazy. And you can only masturbate so many times to the images of the vanilla sex that your wife lets you have (and don’t talk to me about communication – I have brought up the idea of experimenting with positions, fantasies, etc. many, many, many times). So porn it is. It makes me no less randy for my wife, and when we do it, I do not envision some porn babe in her place. It’s simply a steam valve that is a lot safer and cleaner than the ways of the past (prostitution, adultery).
This could have been written by me. Second.
yo–
my husband is not shy about sharing his bizarre fantasies. They don’t really turn my crank, but I try to oblige him ocassionally, even if I don’t really feel 100% into it. My question is: why do a higher percentage of men than women seem to like the kinky stuff–domination, bondage, role playing, dress up? What do women have to do to really appreciate or like the less traditional stuff? I’ve tried . . . I really have. I think he’s just grateful that I’m willing to try something at least once. Maybe it’s the whole thing about men being more visual, and women needing that emotional connection. I just don’t know.
Somehow, I don’t think porn has much to do with it.
MC
Women are happy with the ONE they pick . . . Men instinctively seek many . . . so you get to be anyone you want to be and he’ll be made happy by the variation on a theme.
That is a communication problem- your wife isn’t listening to you. Not your fault, but a communication problem nonetheless.
There are two kinds of porn:
The visual, which is primarily for guys.
The literary, which is more, um, democratic, but is easier to market because it isn’t so, you know, visual.
And by “literary porn” I mean that if you write the filthiest, most hard-core story you can think of; if you can translate the visuals of, say, a XXX bondage video into words, it’ll have a place on a big-box bookstore shelf, probably as a trade paperback with a title like “Rough’n'Ready.” I work at such a store. In fact, as I type this, it occurs to me how much socially acceptable, utterly nasty literary porn is marketed in so many different categories:
Magazines: There are a few, one or two each to cater to each of the following interest groups: White straight males; black straight males; white homosexual males. “Closeted” persons of both sexes have a wide variety of other magazines to choose from. They don’t involve graphic sex. Just naughty bits in various stages of readiness.
If you’re into gay hardcore fiction and/or “urban” or black hardcore hetero- fiction, you’ll find your titles marketed in “Fiction/Literature” and “Romance.”
“Gay” and “Lesbian” hardcore literature makes up more than half of the titles in the “Gender Studies” section. Pedarasts particularly can find illuminating material in a sneakily sleazy series called “My First Time.”
If you’re into white female-driven hardcore mostly-hetero- fiction with themes ranging from “regular” sex to bondage to threesomes (or more) to whatever involving the “undead”, then the “Romance” section is your place to get your smut on.
Guys looking for a literary thrill can go to the “Penthouse letters” volumes in “Human Sexuality.”
If you get turned on by graphic descriptions of the kind of deviant and perverted sexual activity that, if you pursued it in your real life, would win you life without parole, then you can find every disturbing/sick appetite fully satisfied in the “True Crime” section. (I despise you most of all, btw.)
If you’re a teenager trying desperately to develop a life-long fetish for [1] schoolgirls [2] panties [3] homosexuality or just plain old gender confusion [4] pedophelia – all of your needs will met by acquainting yourself with the “softcore” contents of many of the “Manga” comic books in the “Graphic Novel” section.
If you require instruction in how to employ bits of all of the above into your “boring” sex life, the “Human Sexuality” has more than enough literature – fully illustrated, but without showing anything naughty (and that just barely) than a nipple or two. I don’t recommend actually buying one, since the local junior-high and high school student body – male and female – have already made every single copy unsellable in their after-school homework sessions.
And stay away from the middle-aged guy who’s just standing there, reading the Penthouse letters.
Oh – I almost forgot to mention just how much porn accounts for the glossy books in the “Photo Essays” section. Quite a bit, as it turns out.
I’ve been selling this stuff for five years now. Gay magazines, manga, and the titles in the Romance section get bought. Everything else gets read in-store. Hetero-magazines simply get used in the men’s room, or conspicuously examined over in the “Current Affairs” section by guys looking for a hook-up. The Photo Essay books get stolen.
Hardcore, on sale now at your local bookstore.
I think the reason written porn is easier to market is that it’s easier on the conscience. Not everyone who uses visual porn is aware that a large percentage of the women involved are prostitutes and drug addicts, sex slaves etc, but some are aware–and writing has no actual person that is or can be seen as a victim. It’s just somebody’s imagination. The same goes for visual porn which is CG–no real people (or children) were harmed, or so it would seem.
The real trouble here is that science no longer exists. Just think of how many things you’re expected to swallow based on nothing but assertion of a scientist. This Dr. Helen person sides with studies that show rape is diminishing and porn is the cause; but it could also be the increase in women buying pistols that explains the cause–criminals go for soft targets, and avoid uncertainty if they can. There are other studies that say rape is actually increasing, and others that say there has been no statistical change. When we have this ‘the science is settled’ argument cast up, my skeptical nerves start to jangle.
The fact is the overall effect of pornography of every kind is unknown except in anecdotal individual cases. Sociology resides in the fuzzy-studies building for a reason; it’s not a hard science. It might someday be, but thus far it’s not as accurate as the odds-makers in Vegas. What’s happened to science (and medicine, and really any ‘expert’ opinion) is that you can pick what you want to believe because you can find a scientist (or expert) who agrees with you, or who has an axe to grind, or who can be bought by any moneyed interest, be it libertarians or environmentalists or ‘Big Oil’ or ‘Big Porn.’
In that sense the reality-distortion effect of porn is irrelevant. When nobody believes in objective reality anyway, what difference does it make that some guys can’t find a girl ‘dirty enough’ to date?
Jim Wilson,
I have great news for you! Go buy Freakonomics and give it a read. There’s a pretty good breakdown of how internet rollout correlates very, very closely with drops in violence against women, particularly rape. There are areas that were bypassed for a while for tech/cost reasons, and those same areas lagged behind in the rape incident drop.
Regarding the models being drugged out, helpless waifs…. Well. I’ve known a few models, and I can tell you that nowadays, there is so much competition that for a girl to make money showing her body, it has to be almost perfect. Crackheads, heroin addicts, and other ladies in desperate conditions are rarely able to muster the self control to diet religiously while at the same time spending a couple of hours in the gym every day.
Take a really close look at some centerfolds (I have) and try to tell yourself that these girls are strung out addicts. Nope. Usually they’re students or young professionals who really like the idea of making some very good money for laying around in no clothes getting their pictures taken. Meanwhile, they have undeniable, documented irrefutable proof that they are extremely beautiful and desirable.
Maybe you just need to update your porn collection. I agree that some of the girls in ’70′s porn do match your descriptions, but absolutely not nowadays.
You are right on about science. Social science is an oxymoron, as mostly morons enter the field. Same for political science.
When the fuzzy minded can train Black Widow female spiders to not kill their mates, then they can comment on male and female sexualiity and how to modify it. What is, is what is.
1. Any field of study (“political science”, “social science” “climate science”) that includes the word “science” isn’t one.
2. EVERYBODY masturbates. The ratio of “Admits to it”/”Lies about it” varies by year and gender; when I was young, 90% of men admitted to it, while the other 10% lied about it, while for women it was more like 60% admit/40 lie.
The first thing psychologists do is establish that the victim’s mummy and pappy were so dysfunctional that they caused permanent brain damage to the child. That removes the good doctor from any accountability regardless of the lack of progress no matter what behavior modification or pill tinkering takes place thereafter.
Dr. Anonymous in Virginia betrayed her own cause as a doctor and as a woman. Blaming porn is the socially safe way to preserve the original character assessments she made about her husband, plus never have to reveal any of her own dirty marital laundry to anyone.
Normally, men do not dump their wives because of or in the pursuit of pornography. Dr. Anonymous got dumped. It appears (from this article) that she isn’t interested in confronting, nor dealing with the truth of why it happened. Maybe the guy was an ass. Maybe she was a flaming bitch. Poof! All gone.
Pity her children.
Pity her patients.
And God forbid the next poor soul she chooses for a mate.
It’s the same mindset that thinks that prohibition will save humanity from itself.
They confuse people who have a free will with animals, who have instincts, and this permeates through almost all their thought — they are often are tedious, difficult people to have to deal with every day, because the concept of personal responsibility does not exist in their mind and they think that blackmailing is sufficient motivation, and when they mess things up, it never ever is their fault either.
Besides that any father who abandons a family with 5 young kids is either mentally vacant in the first place (and so a bad choice to set up home with) or totally desperate to get away from a crazy wife.
The ‘pornstar girlfriend’ is not the reason for leaving, meeting her may have made the decision easier, but the real problem is a mad, obsessed therapist who believes that porn is addictive and that men have no control over themselves. She probably hounded the poor guy and used her professional training to ‘fix him’ for quite a while before he finally fled.
It is because Traditionalist women and traditionalist white knights view men as animal’s compared to the “feminine divine”. Go read up on traditionalist literature from the early 1900′s. It is all there.
When it comes to boy’s, young men and men, society doesn’t give a damn. They are more interested in beating us into line(treating the symptoms) then figuring out the root causes.
Look at prohibition, women complained to Mr.White Knight ministers about their coal miner, factory worker and (insert dangerous profession here) husbands spending all their free time drinking.
That is what started prohibition. Never did these supposedly “loving Christian” wives ask “why is my husband drinking so much?”. Gee wiz could of been seeing his buddy die on the job, or waking up every day knowing he might not be around tomorrow.
It is like that with education, white knights and conservative/traditionalist women’s answer to the boy crisis so far is: “train them to do cheap labor” or blame them for their own problems(another beat them harder response).
A part of me can’t wait for world war three(I know it is horrible), because when that happens traditionalist women and Mr. White Knights/Mangina’s are in for a very rude awakening when the vast majority of America’s Son’s say “No way!”.
Some thoughts:
First, we have surely had enough of laws against this because it “leads to that.” Such laws are almost always predicated on fantasy, are covertly founded on unsavory, anti-Constitutional agendas, and quite frequently cause an increase in undesirable consequences: in the behavior targeted for reduction, in the destruction it supposedly causes, and in the trustworthiness of law enforcement and the judicial apparatus. So from both Constitutional and utilitarian perspectives, a law banning or restricting porn because it “leads to” rape, or marital dissolution, or the Boston Red Sox in the World Series yet again, is right out.
Second, there is no imaginable argument by which discussions and depictions of sexual activity can be separated — politically, artistically, scientifically, or any other way — from discussions or depictions of any other event or idea. Porn has a deep history; what’s changed about it is that it’s now available through high-tech channels that the Victorians didn’t have. What has a shallower history by far is feminist harridans looking to castigate and demonize men for masculinity-linked behaviors. From Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon forward, militant gender-war feminism has been the moving force to criminalize porn.
Note also: The Victorian culture of Nineteenth-Century England, which was supposedly the pinnacle of sexual repression, featured a great deal of sex-for-hire. Porn was available then, though it was much harder to come by and didn’t arrive over Pay-Per-View or the Internet. Yet at a time when the population of London was a little over one million, London’s prostitutes entertained Londonian men at an estimated rate of 2,000,000 per week. So subtracting porn from our milieu, or making it harder to acquire, is certainly no guarantee of marital stabilization.
Maybe then easier access to prostitutes is the key to stable Victorian marriages?
Great essay Dr. Helen. Maybe marriages will come back when women act like women and men act like men.
This Ladies husband turned to porn because he was so turned off by her constant Psycho Analyzing of everything thing he did shortly followed with “Your doing it wrong!”
I had the exact same thoughts when I read that National Review article. Even though the author tried to cloak her opinions in gender-neutral language, I knew exactly what she meant — and thus noticed how she failed to include the female end of the so-called “porn problem” (the romance novel is essentially the female equivalent.)
Misandry sickens me, but what can I expect from a Republican magazine?
P.S.: The Democrats are no better in this respect, and my browser doesn’t recognize the word “misandry.” It does recognize “misogyny.”
Perhaps the problem with modern day relationships (whether single or married) is there is so little left in our populist culture which is non-sexual that Viagra, pot, alcohol and heavy-duty kiddie porn are the only sexual desires remaining for those who lack passion for their partner or themselves.
Speak honestly Dr Helen; I’m a 48 year ‘sexually liberated female’* and I have no doubt that today’s teenagers know more about and have more ‘sex’ than you or I could ever dream of imagining. In today’s highly-sexual populist culture the adults are the innocent and the children are the experts.
This is by design-market people to be stuck on an eternal hard-on and they won’t have the wherewithal to take care of themselves. Or rather, the Infant Nation hooked on pot, porn and Viagra to keep adults mind-numbingly dumb.
*’sexually liberated female’- means being a stupid female who was part of the Sisterhood movement which insisted that all reproductive decisions fall entirely on the female’s shoulders; or rather, I get to have that orgasm but the consequences are entirly my responsibility even though I am only half the equation.
We are all equalized chauvinist pigs and women did this to ourselves, not men.
Gloria Steinem may have burned our bras but she left a legacy of sagging sized-DDD siliconed tits hanging off anorexic skeletal bodies with botox-stiffened faces screaming like wicked witches about the plight of Eve Ensler’s skanky disease-filled va-jay-jay.
beautifully put! btw, anna is correct as well!
I have never read a post that screams ‘sexually frustrated’ more loudly than this post. It’s filled with a long series of unsubstantiated assertions about ‘everyone else getting laid’, except you. I agree that feminism hasn’t helped women, but the rest of your post is hogwash. Keep your insecurities about not getting any to yourself in the future or try to participate in the conversation in a constructive way rather than projecting.
She lost her husband to porn? Yep, he ran off with the new Penthouse.
That right there is funny, I don’t care who you are.
I considered declaring it the winner of the thread but didn’t want to foreclose future comments.
Of course it’s about control. But that itself is not a bad thing. We always want to control men’s sexuality. When it’s “too far out there” we say, “uh, no more,” and we send people to jail if they do it anyway. And that’s a great thing to do for a lot of things that are obviously too far out there. It seems like a great thing to ask whether or not porn is too far out there, but it seems kinda silly to suggest that we might not want to control men’s sexuality.
I think what you might really mean is that society has an interest in controlling behavior which rises to the level of unwanted violence. Sexuality and unwanted violence are two different things.
(to understand the difference between acceptable and unwanted violence, go to a rugby game)
I think that women don’t like “visual porn” and male masturbation because they don’t like the competition for guy’s attention and money. It’s as simple as that.
Yeah, but ever wonder why women don’t like competing over that part of their lives?
As much as men “have needs” and are “visual creatures”, women “have needs” as well. . . most women have the need to be loved and cherished. And to know that they are worth a man dying to himself for. . .
Why do women choose movies and books that involve noble heros and men that ultimately willing to give themselves up for ONE woman? Same reason men look at porn and masturbate. Women have needs too. And they are just as important.
“As much as men “have needs” and are “visual creatures”, women “have needs” as well. . . most women have the need to be loved and cherished. And to know that they are worth a man DYING TO HIMSELF FOR. . .”
Indeed! Women’s fantasies are by far the most obscene.
Of course, women want a man who is willing to give himself to one women! It makes it easier to exploit him. If you don’t believe me, look at the American laws regarding paternity fraud, starting here:
http://www.sptimes.com/News/061800/Perspective/Can_it_truly_be_Fathe.shtml
After all, marriage is, historically and cross-culturally, a breeding contract.
Bimbette, honey, if you don’t think men need to be loved and cherished as well, you might want to consider what effect that has on other relationships in your life.
I think it’s just easier to blame porn than to admit she chose to marry a douchebag.
This whole article on National Review is not about porn. It is about finding someone or something to blame for an individual’s personal problem. What we heard was “it is not my fault or my husband’s fault. It is the availability of porn that is at fault.” Hence, I am a victim and my responsibility ends at my attempt to eliminate the external cause.
I had the same response to the article. I can certainly understand how *some* men might be harmed by over-consumption of porn. But in reading Anonymous’s article, I simply could not believe the set of events she laid out. I felt like a very large chunk of the narrative had been left out. The fact is, most men do look at porn to one degree or another, and nearly all of those men are fine. And the same goes for women who look at porn or read romance novels.
I’m far more likely to believe that over-consumption of porn as itself an indication that there is something wrong in the marriage itself. Many couples watch porn in moderate amounts in the same way they read books on better lovemaking or relationship building. It helps them to connect with their partner. If sexual needs aren’t being met, then turning to porn as a means of fulfilling those needs isn’t irrational. I’m not saying it’s the woman’s fault, either: the man in the couple might very well be incapable of expressing his needs adequately.
In any case, it seemed very clear to me that Anonymous was speaking from a position of severe emotional pain and not a little bit of anger at her situation. Some of that is justified. But in the end, the people responsible for the failure of the marriage are the two people *in the marriage*. People make choices, and need to face those consequences. Anonymous clearly doesn’t want to blame her husband for the marriage’s failure, but if her narrative is close to the truth, then that is the conclusion. The fault is *his*, not the fault of porn. We don’t blame cocaine for drug addition. We blame the person making those choices. That there might be some ameliorating circumstances doesn’t change the core truth of it.
You’re one to talk about controlling others.
Im libertarian when it comes to sex. So long as its “safe” sex. I have found that those who complain the most and want to control others, usually end up being the most wierd. Now where did I put my box of feathers?
I’ll also add to my prior comment; as a woman who was experienced in the Art of Liberal Sex (ie lots of sex partners in multiple ways, all free of charge) my specific thoughts on porn relates to differences between those who do and those who don’t.
In my results I have found that men who do not habitually engage in porn (film, mag, internet) are far more passionate towards the sex act and in-tuned to both our specific needs as compared to those habitual viewers who are disconnected from the activity as they often are having sex with the porn image stuck in their brain-it is impossible to sexually satisfy an image.
Regrettably, so few men avoid porn so few women will ever know the difference.
Susan:
I’m just curious how you know which sex partners use porn and which don’t? Do you survey them? Have you run a statistically significant sample (at least 30 different partners, some who use porn, some who don’t?).
Methinks you doth protest too much.
“a psychologist who lives with her children in Virginia.” Of course.
And she’ll raise a new crop of dysfunctional males and dissatified females.
Pity her patients, and her patients’ children, and their children, and . . .
Anyway, the New Deal, the Great Society destroyed the family, and Trillions in handouts and grants from the current gang of social interventionsists keep up the destructive wave.
Ain’t gonna change. Nothing to do about it. Go Galt.
Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO is a complete f*&%ing idiot. An overcontrolling nanny-stater too dumb to realize that’s what she is. That site would improve instantly if she’d just stop posting.
The whole thing is premised on “blame men”, and also blame any excuse that happens to be handy for this woman’s (the author’s) failure in her marriage. The man ran off? OBVIOUSLY it had NOTHING to do with HER, why she’s just a perfect little angel! It’s those evil outside influences. Spread the blame! Don’t take responsibility! And above all don’t let men make their own choices.
You’re not being fair to Ms. Lopez. She followed up the original post that linked to Anonymous’ essay with a variety of responses and her comments indicate that she understands that both partners are involved in the dynamic. K-Lo is not hostile to men.
Fueled by a combination of access, anonymity and affordability, online porn has catapulted overall pornography consumption—bringing in new viewers, …. Cyberporn is even giving rise to a new form of sexual compulsiveness. …. 15% of online-porn habitues develop sexual behavior that disrupts their lives. “The Internet is the crack cocaine of sexual addiction,”…two-thirds of…. 350 divorce lawyers …the Internet played a significant role in divorces in the past year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half of such cases.
Cyberporn is also a major problem for employees with internet acces at work.
I don’t think online pornography is the root of the problem when it comes to compulsive behavior. Pornography does not drive the compulsion, any more than cocaine creates an addiction. Predisposition to compulsion is a symptom of something beyond the object of intent. I would think it would be safe to say; if not porn then ______. (fill in the blank.)
Looking at the situation from the point of view that pornography is the cause of compulsive behavior is an excellent way to see how personal behavior gets legislated, such as the prohibition and criminalizaton of drugs for personal/private use.
Source?
I think you should look closer at your statistics regarding the divorce lawyers. First off, looking at internet porn is frequently cited as a reason for infidelity, per attributing culpability in the divorce settlement (it’s also relatively easy to legally establish), so that part of that figure can be attributed in part to the gold digging factor. Secondly, among the leading reasons the Internet is being cited in divorces is linked to the use of Facebook and other social networking sites, which are allowing spouses to pin down (with real or imagined relatinoships) their spouses for being too intimate on-line with acquaintances.
So, would you suggest we ban or limit FB for married couples?
While porn consumption might be cited in many divorce cases, let’s not for one minute assume that any trial lawyer is primarily interested in uncovering the truth. What trial lawyers are interested in is winning their cases, and that had better be true, especially if you are their client. Citing porn consumption is just one many routes trial lawyers travel to paint their opposition in the least favorable way possible.
Why is accepting pornography (a legitimate tool of self-gratification) always looked upon as “enlightened”? Marriage (for those who are married and know this) is infinitly complex. Pornography is just one of many facets that face an individual that is part of a couple; like doing the dishes, listening, spending time together or apart – whatever it takes to make the two-person lifetime endeavor work.
I regard porn as good mental hygiene. We are not all paired with partners share our sex drives. Plus, porn in and of itself is only visual, which is mildly arousing but it is what you do with the image, by use of fantasy, that is creative activity, even artistic, if you allow me the license. In my experience, people who are exposed to porn and accept it without harsh judgment, both men and women, are much less inhibited and open to exploration well beyond the missionary position.
The NRO article is part and parcel of the personal Jihad of Kathryn Jean Lopez (aka JLo) at National Review. She is a huge Catholic scold/prude and she’s been on this rant for years.
Please, no “Catholic prude” name-calling. As a devout Catholic and a non-prude, I can assure you that Miss Lopez is a good distance from our norm. Most of us are more sexually active than non-Catholics — or did you think we reproduce by fission?
Well, Democrats reproduce by frisson apparently.
That would be KLO, not JLO. While both Catholic, I’m sure JLO’s sexual attitudes are 180 degrees away from KLO’s even though they are just one letter apart.
I read that article by Anonymous as well. I have a bit of unsolicited advice:
Lady, your marriage didn’t fall apart because of porn. Your husband turned to porn because your marriage was falling apart.
Woman say this all the time: “Men are simple creatures. Keep them fed, keep them f**ked, let them watch a football game every now and then and they’re yours for life.” I’ll admit, it’s pretty much true. But if we’re so simple and it’s so easy to keep us happy, why the hell don’t you do it?
Some good thoughts here (as always)…
I would submit that pornography (and erotica, for that matter) are subjects where men and women often simply don’t understand one another. It’s possible for some to achieve an intellectual sort of understanding, without getting it on an emotional level. But that’s not new, or special; plenty of us have hobbies we’re fanatical about, which our spouses have learned to sigh and accept.
So I’d suggest that we acknowledge this fact — that this is a subject where men and women generally don’t understand each other — and move on. I don’t need to understand everything my wife does.
I’d also suggest that referring to porn as an addiction is misleading, unless you can prove that it’s harmful — which, so far as I know, has not been done. Simply saying that men want it and are reluctant to give it up isn’t enough. (I confess: I’m addicted to oxygen.)
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Pornography is isolating and commodifies women.
This is the fundamental problem. Pr0n teaches solipsism with respect to sexual arousal: the other person in the sex act becomes immaterial, merely a vehicle for getting oneself off. That’s why the girls in pr0n mostly look interchangeable: same silicone bodies, same robotlike expressions, same trashy getup. In effect, the viewer is conditioned not to look at these girls as real individuals but as anonymous members of the mythical species “lusty women”.
Every civilization that has ever thrived has found the necessity to control sexuality, period (male and female alike). Sexuality, like fire, is good in its proper context but must be kept contained to avoid causing massive societal damage. Indulgin in pr0n is like shooting off bottle rockets in the middle of a field of hay; it may be fun for a while but if you get away with nothing bad happening it’s merely due to luck.
“Porn destroys marriages” isn’t any more extreme of a position than “tobacco kills.” It’s a statement of fact. An extreme position would be to claim that every single user of porn will become an addict and have his marriage fall apart. The statement, “porn destroys marriages,” only implies that at least two marriages were destroyed by the use of porn.
I’m an educated, social, non-isolated, community involved female who watches porn when regularly seperated from my husband. I find it quite satisfying and manage to have as much of an emotional sexual relationship with my husband as I did when we were first married. He ironically does not watch it, but he certainly enjoys the benefits of having a wife that is quite comfortable with her sexuality. These archaic ideas about porn, in my generation and non-christian-fundamentalist social groups, are insulting to women like me and an attempt to illicit moral shame. Get over it and I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that my husband does not “feel” objectified…
I don’t think either extreme opinion (“porn destroys many marriages” / “porn is harmless”) is tenable.
First note that while it’s essentially impossible to find men in their 20s who have never seen porn, that does not mean they have all had significant or comparable exposure. Some have seen porn for less than an hour in their lives and decided it wasn’t for them, and some have seen porn for 3 hours a day for years.
Second, I think many people get some notion of what is normal sexuality from watching porn. For example, I have a friend who was invited back to a girl’s place after a few group dates, and decided that foreplay should be followed with some spanking. The girl was taken aback; spanking would have been OK with her at some point, but first sex should be more vanilla. I don’t know where he could have gotten the notion that spanking was then acceptable, except he did watch a lot of porn. Even without searching for spanking titles, it seems that spanking was on many of them in the 1990s. (I confess that I watched porn then too, but its notion of what is normal did not rub off on me.)
Third, I have heard from educator friends that high school girls now get a lot of pressure from their boyfriends to engage in anal sex. This was pretty much unheard of 20 or 30 years ago in high school or college, even though a lot of people were having sex. Perhaps that was because back then “anal” was a niche product on a video or magazine, which you would likely not see unless it had “Anal” or “Back Door” or some such in the title. Whereas now many (most?) hardcore scenes include anal sex as the final or penultimate act (followed by ejaculating on the girl’s face or into her open mouth; ass-to-mouth, which used to be quite rare, is now commonplace).
Finally, I think that dissatisfaction with normal women’s bodies probably is in part due to porn, especially as breast implants and other surgeries have become common, but also to images from fashion and television. This is pretty much the inevitable result or modern technologies, as people like to look at beauty, and we have far more efficient means of disseminating images than we did 100, let alone 300, years ago.
I gotta agree with Semper Why. Men are ruled by their stomachs and their sex. You satisfy both urges and that’s all it takes. Its as simple as that. Women are totally different and I can only figure out my wife about 15% of the time. The other 85% is a total mystery. I would like to get that figure up to 35% but its not something that’s ever gonna happen soon.
Remember: we men can never achieve perfection as husbands. We can only aspire to “adequate”.
Not so! Just ask the men who associate with widows. Those dead men were absolute wizards about everything she could ever have wanted. Adequate doesn’t begin to describe them.
“And I wonder — does porn distort men’s attitudes as much as romance novels and Lifetime TV distort women’s? Maybe we should discuss the many social institutions that are giving women unrealistic expectations of men and a sense that they have the right to control men, and men’s sexuality, in their own interest.”
Right on, Helen. You nailed it.
I’ve had this pet theory about porn for awhile. Its not exactly a secret that men have a very deep instinctual desire to ‘spread our seed’ that women, who can only have one child at a time, just don’t have. Women don’t like to hear this, but its true. Now, you get porn involved, and I think its a way to trick this deep seated, but simplistic part of the brain into thinking that you’re cheating when you’re really not. So in a way I think its a safe outlet for this potentially hazardous instinct.
Me too! I’ve been trying to list all the things that women don’t want to hear, but I need to eat and sleep…
“So in a way I think its a safe outlet for this potentially hazardous instinct.”
Talk about understatement. In light of AIDS one wonders why we are even debating this.
I would suggest that the female views that when “her man” views the exposed body parts of any female that the perspective of competition now enters the picture (pun intended). . . results female can not compete with a commercial product so cheaply available on the market. Fear that she will lose the “sperm donar” who is supposed to allow her to produce the most viable of offspring. Thus the tissue in the trash becomes the death warrant of her commitment to him.
I’ve got news for Anonymous.
A guy doesn’t leave his wife because his mistress has an awesome computer with more porno on it…
I’m not on any kind of crusade but to nullify the potential for destruction from porn so cavalierly seems equally shortsighted as the original article. Pornography, at least for some percentage of people, is habitual and the study you reference seems dramatically far afield from my experience and the experiences of many. We have all heard or read stories similar to the authors and to believe this is the result of her “not satisfying her man” is juvenile. I don’t believe every man will react to porn as the man in the article but I do believe that a percentage of men will and I strongly believe that exposure before or during puberty is just dangerous. My first exposure was around ten or eleven finding an old pulpy Penthouse in the woods. The smell of wet paper can give me an erection to this day. It was like a hit of the strongest drug imaginable. I spent years chasing that initial “shock” feeling being pulled ever deeper and into ever more aberrant elements of porn. To say women aren’t objectified in this mindset makes me question what the bias is toward porn that would make someone deny this.
Again, I don’t believe every man will react in this way but to think that at least some or many men don’t react in dramatically negative ways to this stuff and that it is just an outlet is just factually wrong.
Right, look at traditionalist’s/conservatives record so far. They are no better then the marxist’s. Marxist’s want to control the economy/property and Conservatives/traditionalist’s want to control males for the benefit of traditionalist/conservative females.
They will use any issue as an excuse to up the pressure. Look at child support, most guy’s paid their fair share(in fact child support law’s haven’t really increased non-payment rates at all) and conservatives/traditionalist’s used that to create law’s that made men chattels of women. Look up the definition of “chattel”, then look at the child support system.
And then the DV issue, look at how traditionalist’s/conservatives worked it so now the Mistress of the house(traditionalist/conservative women) have the ability to punish their slave(husband) if he refuses to do as they command.
And yet Traditionalist’s/conservatives also worked it so women can murder, rape, kidnap, assault or mutilate men with little to no penalty.
Women have the legal right to rape men in America!
No, they will use this pornography debate in such a way as to ban men from using the internet all together to suppress the MRM(apply hacking/computer related crimes with pornography or something).
I’m a single woman, so I can’t speak to the issue of porn when it comes to men. But I couldn’t agree more with the unrealistic expectations women have about men, due to being influenced by romance novels/movies, and I’d add TV and music as well.
From the youngest age women have been taught that there’s one special person out there for them – one man that’s going to sweep them off their feet and make them happy forever. Listen to any song on the radio and it’s about love/romance. There’s rarely a movie or a show in existence that doesn’t have a love story of one sort or another, even if it’s not the main plot.
Women AND men have been brainwashed by this society to think that unless they have a relationship, they are nothing.
Before you buy what you’ve bought culturally, I dare you to find a woman whose husband is addicted porn or consumes it regularly enough that it affects her and the marriage relationship.
I think you’ll be in shock.
Your comment about “women having to be in a relationship or their worthless” is a totally different topic. Every human being is worth something, and I think you would agree with that. Tell me how pornography makes a woman feel like she is worth something? Or is she just worth her physical appearance and sexual performance?
Paul A’ Barge hits it on the head. KLO has been on the anti porn soapbox for years. It’s her brand of prudish conservatism. I’ll stick with the Ace of Spades HQ version thank you very much.
I suspect that “Anonymous” was slim and attractive until she got married, and then suffered from a fatocalpyse. Her husband lost interested and turned to porn. Rather than striving to improve her own appearance, she tried to guilt him into being attracted to a fattie and he didn’t respond well. Then she blamed him and porn rather than herself and the twinkies.
A very logical hypothesis, Lamont. It’s apparent that you deductive abilities are not wanting.
A Hat tip from a fellow crime-fighter.
Holmes
Banjo said:
“Pornography is isolating and commodifies women.”
I disagree; human trafficking commodifies human beings. Pornography perhaps commodifies images of men and women. There is a difference.
If the woman felt that her husbands urge to look at or watch pornography was a contributing factor to the dissolution of their marriage, I see no reason to discount her.
Certain pornography is legal, yet that does not mean that all should be forced to accept it as “normal” for them or acceptable for their partner to engage in. There are those who truly feel it is immoral and want no part of it in their life or in their home. It’s a choice, and that means someone who does not want to engage in watching pornography or be partnered with a person who watches pornography, certainly has the right to object and than could truthfully cite it as a reason the breaking up of that relationship.
I also think that AKD is spot on in his/her analysis.
The study cited that found that “all men watch porn” was tiny — 20 subjects at the time of the report in December — and relied on self-reporting. What I found significant was that the subjects started watching porn as little boys, which is likely to skew their view of what a healthy relationship might look like.
… just like reading romance novels is likely to skew women’s perception of what a real relationship with should be like. Or reading feminist nonsense, for that matter.
“does porn distort men’s attitudes as much as romance novels and Lifetime TV distort women’s?” As I guy, i haven’t read my romance novels lately…but my guess is that at one point these novels highlighted strength and courage as part of their leads character. So yes, they were illusions, but they still had some + value to their characters (much like superheroes.) Porn does not. It is weird how most of the guys I work with can’t see a lady without the conversation going down the tubes right away. That porn has made a difference in the way they view women is very obvious.
“In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional” conventional by whose standards? Tiger’s? Jesse’s? kind of a meaningless statement if you ask me…
Dan C: By their own standards, which were formed, or malformed, as little boys (average age 10) when they started using porn. It’s hard for me to imagine that their views of healthy sexuality weren’t shaped by the pornography they consumed. More on that study here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/34242866
“It is weird how most of the guys I work with can’t see a lady without the conversation going down the tubes right away. That porn has made a difference in the way they view women is very obvious.”
How is this any different than say in the ’20s, the 30s, the 40s? Ever seen Mad Men? Men have been catcalling and objectifying women since the dawn of time. The only difference now is that the men don’t actually say the vulgar things to the women.
I’m a man, and I’ve also been a nurse for a very long time. Nursing is dominated by females (no surprise) and my consistent experience has been that females initiate and extend the conversations you are talking about far more than the men do. I’ve also worked in exclusively and mostly male environments (the military)which reinforced these observations.
I can personally attest to the power of porn and it’s devastating effects. It starts with seeming innocuity and results in a compulsion focused on vapors which don’t really exist. It messes up real sexuality with real women. I am fully in favor of the First Amendment but I also support the idea of making porn less available to our young men.
I can personally attest to the power of real p*ssy and it’s devastating effects. It starts with seeming innocuity and results in a compulsion focused on vapors which don’t really exist. It messes up real life as there are few real women out there. I am fully in favor of the First Amendment under any and all conditions. If you aren’t free, You’re a slave. I doesn’t matter if you’re a slave to congress, the president or a woman.
Well, then you’re not really fully in favor of the First Amendment, only uses thereof which you approve. I’d also not that they’re not “our” young men, they each belong to themselves and get to make their own choices. I don’t recognize your right individually or acting through the government as your agent to restrict their access to information or entertainment.
Women have their own version of porn. The “princess” movies put out by Walt Disney Studios.
I can’t tell you how many men I know whose girlfriends (before they were wives) were not only sexually available, say X times/month, but who were also actually interested in sex. And, then literally within weeks of getting married the interest fell off, followed by the frequency. An old girlfriend of mine confided in me one day (well after we stopped dating and had become friends) that she couldn’t wait to get married (to no one in particular) so she could a) stop having sex so often and b) stop being as “adventurous” as she was with sex. Lovely, no?
I am not saying I don’t some men who are jerks – not by any stretch. But, we’ve created a world where women’s feelings, no matter how irrational, counterproductive, manipulative, or downright misandrous are to be indulged at seemingly every cost. I don’t like looking at porn because it messes with my motivation to do productive things. At the same time, I absolutely refuse to cheat on my wife. So after 6 months of no sex and I can’t tell you how many years since my wife was last actually interested in sex, it is an occasional relief.
Seriously, men. Can any of you recall the last time your wife initiated sex with you? When was the last time your wife gave ANY thought to planning time to be alone with you. Or when your wife flirted with you? Or made you feel like she wanted to be with you?
L, of course I can, nearly every day of my life. Not actual sex, but some sort of sexual connection — even if only flirting, a long kiss, sending a dirty SMS, or copping a feel, every day. My wife has a slightly higher sex drive than I do, so she will initiate. (No, she’s not a “nympho”, I have 40 years of feminist brainwashing that male sex drive is evil and must be suppressed, and she does not. She’s normal, not me.)
How is this possible? After we first met, it took a few years of acceptance, love, encouragement, and fidelity to convince her not to be ashamed of her own desire.
I would be willing to make a very large wager that pornography has saved more marriages than it has destroyed. It gives men variety and an outlet for their sex drive when their partner’s desire or “give a s@!t” level doesn’t match their own. For some men this will be enough and they don’t need to move on to finding another woman to have a relationship with. No man would ever tell a woman that the only reason they can bear their monogamous sex life together is because they can fantasize about sex with other partners but it is true more often than not. I’ve never cheated on my wife but if I were forbidden access to pornography I would start looking to do so immediately. Most men with any self-respect and a working libido would do the same thing.
Plus it isn’t right for women to enforce their idea of sexuality on men. We all make compromises but it is necessary they be reasonable. Asking men to forgo even the most harmless outlets for their instincts is only asking for trouble. I put women who want to control what their men watch in the same category as men who want to control what their wives wear. Neither are fit for cohabitation. We can have preferences for when we are together but it is asking for trouble to try to dictate these things even when we are apart.
This discussion reminds me a bit of the cold war. Some women seem to be saying “you will only have one type of sex and it will be rationed according to the five year plan as set forth by me. You shall not look at foreign propaganda on the subject because the motherland shall provide for all of your true needs. Now comrade, please make an appointment for next year’s blow job.”
I would be willing to make a very large wager that pornography has saved more marriages than it has destroyed.
And the irony is that nearly all of the women will be totally freakin’ unaware of this, because the men do it in secret and don’t — can’t — tell them.
When was the last time “Anonymous”made enthusiastic love with her husband, and how often? I suspect she let him walk around hungry for years and was shocked, shocked that eventually he started going out for his meals. The use of sex by women to control men is as old as the oldest profession, but it doesn’t work forever and breeds bitter resentment. Men and women each have their needs that must be tended by their spouse or the marriage will fall apart, social customs be damned. A shared life is not only about what the wife wants and expects. It’s also worth noting that most divorces are initiated by the woman, not by presumably porn besotted men.
I think the problem with porn is that it’s become pervasive and mainstreamed. This offends a lot of people, even people who don’t mind a little porn now and then. The more in your face it is, the easier it becomes for the social cons to turn it into a punching bag. Then the people who really, really like porn stand up and the people who make their living off porn stand up, and usually (not always, but usually) they’re not the most mainstream type of person. Then you get the “porn crisis” freakout and the wave rolls back a bit and it becomes harder for me to find my giant girl covered in vegetable porn. I have to buy it from the Russians, the Russians use my porn money to buy off polititians, and pretty soon Europe has no natural gas.
So keep your porn private and your wife happy. The future of Europe depends on it.
“I think the problem with porn is that it’s become pervasive and mainstreamed. This offends a lot of people, even people who don’t mind a little porn now and then.” – Lost My Cookies.
Damn right, and I like a little porn quite often. But there’s a time and a place for everything – context, people, context!
I’ll agree to demonizing porn as creating unrealistic images of women the day fashion magazines stop airbrushing surgically enhanced anorexics. When women stop objectifying women, maybe then we can talk about mens part of it.
I’m also sick of men getting blamed for every nutty issue women have with their bodies, particularly their weight (size zero etc), as the women are generally doing it to each other! And the images they consume are from fashion industry & mags (with trickle down to Hollywood) which re largely controlled by *women* or gay men.
Or the flipside of fashion, the women’ ‘fitness’ genre which pushes ‘abs’ to the detriment of all esle, the exercises for which destroy the hourglass figure (as seen from front or rear). Then combine the exercize which results in boyish butts and loss of boob due to body fat reduction, leading to water balloon implants over ribs you can practically count.
Ugh. But tha crap is somehow our fault.
Yet we get the blame. Infuriating.
Me? I thought the most beautiful Playmates are the naturally pretty ones from the late 60s thru mid 70s
You might want to reflect on this article, Secularism and Human Sexuality, the last paragraph of which is particularly pertinent to this thread:
In a society in which females are taught to view males as sperm guns at best and as irrelevant at worst, women and men are released from the deep structures of being mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, daughters and sons, and sisters and brothers. With the advent of secularism, the feminists’ struggle for equality changed to one of independence. Are we surprised, therefore, that men have responded by viewing women as sex objects, the only female-male relationship left to them.
If the woman felt that her husbands urge to look at or watch pornography was a contributing factor to the dissolution of their marriage, I see no reason to discount her.
Really? None? You don’t think there might be any reason to suspect denial, no possibility that she might be looking for an outside reason for the divorce to divert (even subconsciously) any guilt she might feel?
Huh? A husband/wife looking at pornography is an outside reason? If pornography is not intimate, you must only be speaking of perhaps the persons behind the camera or the person being filmed. To me they may be the only ones who are not being “intimate” with the pornography, although there may be some voyeurism involved both by the watcher and the watched.
I contend that there are those in the world who find pornography objectionable and do not want to be partnered with someone who depends on it for sexual gratification. I think that would be a legitimate reason to dissolve a marriage.
Many of the women on this thread, starting with Dr. Helen herself, are intelligent, rational, understanding, and excellent. I won’t speculate about whether they make better lovers than the other women with whom about to address in a second.
Except to say, “Yes.”
“I’m absolutely sure you are.”
Now let me move on to addressing the other women here, many of whom seem quite bitter and unhappy and rather than expect the world to change to make you happy, you might consider changing some of your own internal attitudes and tastes in order to bring more of the best parts of the world to yourself, and keep them.
My comment:
You notice that many of the comments from women on this thread are about how awful the men are for having outside sexual desires and how the men should be totally satisfied with their one woman, and it’s wrong for men to look at porn, desire other women, pursue them, etc?
But you notice how LITTLE of those same women make any mention of efforts on THEIR part to SEXUALLY satisfy their lover’s mind and his CO*CK?
Agree or disagree?
I read that yesterday and also thought the First Ammendment “ever expanding” comment was odd and wondered why that article ever appeared at NRO.
“Lady, your marriage didn’t fall apart because of porn. Your husband turned to porn because your marriage was falling apart.” – in many cases, yes.
Or perhaps the husband is cognizant enough to realize his desires eclipse his wife’s', and starts (or more likely, resumes) the habit to avoid another source of arguments and marital problems. He might just be looking out for his marriage in his own way.
While I am fearful of recent attacks on the 1st Amendment, especially “hate speech” and McCain-Feingold, I do think that, looking narrowly at the issue of pornography, the 1st Amendment has indeed been expanding. Look up “pubic wars” on Wikipedia, for example. In 1968 Playboy had never shown pubic hair; then Penthouse came out, competing on just that point. Within a decade Penthouse was showing gaping genitalia. (At that time, adolescent boys could often find a Playboy or Penthouse, but had little access to hardcore porn.) Before “Deep Throat” (1972) porn movies were basically underground operations: low budget, hidden, rarely encountered or tolerated outside of a few red-light districts. And 1970s classics such as “Deep Throat” or “Debbie Does Dallas” while technically hardcore, were pretty tame compared to what we have now. It wasn’t moral scruples which kept porn relatively tame, and which made its increasingly hardcore nature such a slow progression, but rather fear of obscenity prosecutions. If someone had done anal closeups and “ass-to-mouth” in 1972, I dare say they would have gone to jail, even though such would have been displayed in theaters which would exclude minors. Now anything goes, with any motivated 10-year-old able to figure out how to find it. I don’t think seeing Playboy at 10, and Penthouse at 12, screwed me up, but I suspect watching a lot of hardcore and extreme anal would have done so.
Boy oh boy, where to go with this…
“I suspect that “Anonymous” was slim and attractive until she got married”
And I am sure her husband had the body of an Olympic sprinter through their marriage. This seems to be right up porns alley of the “you don’t turn me on anymore” excuse. Climbing up the porn hierarchy ladder from nude photos of women to bukkake and double-anal and all sorts of humiliation porn is a desensitizing journey. That’s the reason you climb it – the lower rungs don’t do it for you anymore. Porn is for men who can’t get turned on by the presence of a nude woman anymore (or cannot secure the presence of a nude woman).
For God’s sake, Christie Brinkley’s husband was addicted to this – if you need whacking material while married to Christie Effin Brinkley, then you got problems, the kind associated with rampant porn consumption.
As to Helen’s attempt to create some sort of equivalency between bukkake and a romance novel – REALLY? You’ve crossed the line between passionate advocate of rational gender parity into the land of a frenzied zealotry of contextless equality. There is nothing equivalent between creating an idiom of rugged men who bring women flowers and rescue them from their distresses and riding them off into the sunset and an idiom of women who will engage in ass-to-ass dildo foreplay with their asian twin before being ridden like Seabuscuit and slapped around while moaning like a banshee waiting for you to face shot her so she can fake female ejaculation and snowball for you. (Yes, I’ve seen it all, I work on the Internetz). Not equivalent, and not realistic in the least. If you are expecting this action on your wedding night, prepare for a confused wife and tremendous disappointment.
Of course you leave her – she doesn’t turn you on sexually anymore. And it’s her fault isn’t it…
It’s the same with gambling, too. I quit online poker even though I was winning because I realized that playing 12 hours a day, increasing the stakes every time I won was seriously messing me up. $.25 buy ins get boring once you win a tournament (or come in second).
By the way, I rescued this comment from the spam queue. it would appear Akismet gets twitchy about on line card games.
MEC, have you actually read any romance novels? I have, and a lot of the sex in them is stuff that would be considered rape if it happened in the real world — there’s a reason why they call them “bodice rippers”. But since the man in question is always a 28-year-old multigazillionaire with totally ripped abs, who is just dying to marry her and set her up so she’ll never have to lift a finger ever again, that makes it OK. Who’s being objectified here? BTW, I’m told the latest trend in these is that the heroine who is so passionately desired by the multigazillionaire is already pregnant with another man’s child.
Speaking of myths about porn, am I the only one disheartened that this whole conversation can happen and nobody debunks the idea that only Men enjoy it? Many women also enjoy pornography; either by themselves, or watching it with their partner. We’ve made the social price for Women enjoying porn so high that we’ve put it in the closet because the Male is (by long standing mythology) the sex craved horndog and the Female is the forever recipient of his advances. This view of course hurts both men and women.
Like annonymale, my experience is that exposure to porn at a young age can skew ones developing sense of sexuality and make establishing healthy relationship — with sex as a component — that much harder. When I was around 14 I found a bunch of VHS porn (pre-WWW) while house-sitting, and I was instantly hooked. Biggest problem: seeing all those gargantuan members convinced me that my own completely normal penis was embarrassingly small, so I got totally depressed and *avoided* situations where pretty girls would discover this (non) shortcoming. Talk about wasted opportunity! And when I did finally get a girlfriend, it was a letdown compared to the phony acrobatics and 4-on-1 lesbian cheerleader etc etc scenes that played constantly in my head. I’d often choose solo porn over a night with her.
I still watch porn from time to time, but the idea that my little kids are going to bumble into it online at tender ages makes my heart hurt. And the stuff today is light-years more intense than what I watched as a kid.
Focus group of one, FWIW.
I think for some guys with a fairly low sex drive porn is not a big deal – that probably accounts for acceptance of it among the intellectual classes.
But for normal guys with a normal sex drive porn can easily be highly addictive, and is a lot like a drug – a mood altering, reality altering drug.
But….but….that doesn’t fit into the Libertine…er…I mean Libertarian world view. And what about the studies, yeah if a study says it is harmless then, golly it must be so.
Just like scientific studies found that cigarettes had no link to lung cancer.
“Porn only leads to a sandwich and a nap.” Bobby Slayton, comedian.
I’ll always remember reading a statistic that claimed that local rape rates drop when cable internet access becomes more easily available. In other words, more porn, less rape. Why aren’t more women in favor of it?
Keating Wilcox is correct.
The days when porn availability was limited to magazines and videos and therefore limited its consumption usually to adults has changed dramatically with the internet. Young boys can now access it and there is no doubt that it forms their ideas of sexuality.
I have personal experience with my husband becoming addicted to internet porn. Through psychological counseling he was able to control the addiction. It took several years. He can attest to the fact that it is disrupttive and damaging to a person’s life. Nothing of value can be accomplished when a person spends eight hours looking at porn and masturbating.
There are help sites as well as AA meetings for families with members who are addicted to P and M. Porn amd masturbation. This is a very real problem.
Km, having been a young boy well before the Internet, I can assure you, young boys got access to porn then too.
Excellent, sober, and realistic analysis of an ill-thought-out piece which is unlikely to make most people think more highly of NRO.
What most disturbed me the most was Anonymous’s advocacy of government intervention. Coupled with her contention that pornography is a drug, what are the implications? Should the war on drugs be expanded to include this new “drug”? Or should pornography now be regulated by the FDA? Sorry, but you don’t have to love porn to think this is ridiculous.
There is a reason your husband ran off with the other woman. They love each other.
That is what broke up the marriage, a lack of love.
I could have quietly followed her and her husband throughout their days while married and immediately figured out why the marriage was failing.
The BIG sin of American women is they rationalize all their own sins and failures by blaming it on something else, and projecting their sins/failures on primarily men.
Before he ran off, did you show your husband even one molecule of true affection during the six months before he ran off with the woman who loves him? I doubt it.
Men are in fact human beings who need love too. If a woman does not show at least a minimal amount of appreciation or affection towards her man, it sends the signal that you don’t love him.
He cannot feel your love through some kind of telepathy. You MUST show it, and you must show it with some passion.
Love is a verb, and is action.
They don’t teach that at Brown, Wellesley and Berkeley.
Wow, a psychologist says porn is a-okay.
I guess that settles it then.
I think FemiNazis are the biggest threat to male sexuality (some of them look normal but try to strike up a conversation and the next thing you know, wham! you are a eunuch!). That and silly expectations brought about by women’s magazines (and TV shows) that suggest that men are just “remodelling projects” with the idea that you should get whatever you can and just keep pounding away until you get the prescribed metrosexual boy-man you really wanted.
As far as outlawing porn, let us review the success that the govenment has had with drugs before we create another whole area of contraband that criminals can profit from.
Lost My Cookies:
I haven’t laughed like this in weeks. Thank you.
Funny how a lot of people blame the husband if a marriage breaks up. If he runs off with another woman it is never the wife’s fault. I have been in a marriage where the wife lost ALL interest in ANY intimacy. It was me who kissed her before going to bed every night! It was me who kissed her every day before going to work and then coming home! Trying to talk about it only got me accused of only wanting sex. It was porn that kept me going for so long (4+ years) of trying to keep the marriage together. It took not only me telling her that I want out, but me finally seeing another woman to snap her back to reality! She then wanted to work on the marriage. I am happy to say that we are still together and that the marriage is strong(er?).
It takes TWO people for a marriage to work. You will only get out whatever effort you put in. Miss “Anonymous” took the easy way out. Blame everything/everyone else but not admit she was just as much at fault.
You’re doing good work Dr. Helen. Thank you, and please keep it up.
“For God’s sake, Christie Brinkley’s husband was addicted to this – if you need whacking material while married to Christie Effin Brinkley, then you got problems, the kind associated with rampant porn consumption.”
Really? And how often was Christie having sex with her husband? As often as he felt necessary? Consumption of porn has a great deal to due with a discrepancy between the personal need for sexual release and the availability of an outlet for that release.
It’s not that, you say? It’s that he shouldn’t need to see images of someone else when he’s married to such a hottie? Tell me then… did Christie make a set of pornographic videos of herself for her husband? A great many men are highly audio-visual when it comes to stimulation. It’s not that SHE’S not as stimulating as someone in a porn video, it’s that IMAGINATION is not as stimulating as audiovisual materials.
That goes for any other wife out there who thinks no one else should be “starring in” mental images associated with sexual gratification. If your frequency of (at least helping in) satisfying your husband’s sexual desire is less than what is needed, then bridge the gap by offering to star in your own homemade videos, and let him use that as a substitute for other pornography.
Or you could just pay more attention to bridging that gap in person, and preserve your marriage the way it should have been being preserved to begin with.
I have to buy it from the Russians
Well, you don’t HAVE to buy it from the Russians. You can do what people used to do before the internet came along – use your imagination.
I do get the impression though that a large part of the Russian economy depends on Europeans and Americans buying porn.
I personally find this article hopelessly one sided.
The porn issue may have been the cause or perhaps it was the result of this bad marriage. Does she really believe that porn caused him to spend his nights alone? A “few years he had taken to sleeping in the basement”? This situation could not have been satisfying for anyone involved. What happened to the 5 kids in this broken marriage?
“Anonymous” describes what her ex found attractive: “physical qualities of a porn star… bleached blond hair, heavy makeup, provocative clothing, and large breasts” That describes nearly all actresses on TV or movies, not porn.
As the author has chosen to stay unknown, we will never find out how real her version of this story is, as we only have her version of the truth.
I still watch porn from time to time, but the idea that my little kids are going to bumble into it online at tender ages makes my heart hurt. And the stuff today is light-years more intense than what I watched as a kid.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Youve got fourteen year-olds today watching stuff that the wierdest perverts of twenty years ago could never have dreamed of.
Cody, I’d reply to you as I did KM above: I was 14 well before the Internet, and I don’t think there’s anything much new in porn.
I do think its more of a mixed bag than you’re willing to credit. In moderation, porn can be a useful cushion between differing libidos.
But my boy is eleven now.
I grew up on sneaking my dad’s playboys collected from the late 60s-late 70s.
Occasionally a Penthouse.
I got a more natural view of what pretty women should look like. I don’t think he will be the same. He certainly shouldn’t get the idea that ATM is the norm.
May I borrow your computer? Eeeww, what’s all this sticky stuff on your keyboard?
I see a political parallel: The efforts to malign the Tea Party members with a pornographic insult is strictly used by our detractors to control its natural, healthy political expression.
They State-Run media may wish to allow freedom of speech to have its way on the Internet, lest the real inducement to “socially criminal behavior” redound to their oppressive tactics.
Joan, you’re just as smart here as you are on the other sites. Good on you.
Like any other human activity, if taken to an extreme it will lead to lasting damage or death. I believe it should be easier for parents to shield their children from it with one click of a mouse or a switch on the TV, and those who create this material should be actively engaged in creating this solution. Having been to college and done a little side work with a private detective in the past, long before pornography was this pervasive, pornography is the least of our problems as adults re marriage. As for children it is a big one and we must address it.
My husband’s porn fetish ruined our sex life. It was there from the beginning and at first, I went along with it because it was supposedly “healthy and normal”. Problem was, things got weirder and weirder and I started to feel like a participant in Stupid Pet Tricks. I felt like nothing I could do could possibly compete. It eventually turned me off completely because in my mind,sexually, he was morphed into a drooling 14-year-old or a dirty old man in a raincoat. These are not sexy images. There’s a reason why most guys don’t mention porn among their “hobbies” in personal ads.
The final straw was when one of our little girls stumbled across an item from his stash.
I don’t advocate censorship, but my advice to guys is keep this stuff the hell away from your future wife.
OH and by the way, I am still regarded as “hot” judging by the looks I get from men, but it is still not enough.
What do you mean “Last straw”?
Did you force him to get counseling, or did you make it look like a suicide?
Are you hot? Cool, can you send me a photo or post again with a photo in your avatar?
Please, please can you send me a photo?
– SWM in raincoat, 65yo
Can’t go with you on this one Dr. Helen no matter what your husband’s predilections. Harnessing sexuality to family building is the definition of civilization. We will never control porn with laws but if you love civilization and the family, then you must cultivate society’s opprobrium to porn.
Harnessing sexuality to family building is the definition of civilization.
Wow, really?
Yes, it is. Read your history of civilization(s). There is a reason certain societal mores developed over the centuries.
You mean it wasn’t, oh, mutual defense, or the increases in productivity that come from specialization, or the rise of agriculture leading people to live in fixed locations instead of wandering groups of hunter-gatherers, or the end of the ice age allowing rapid population growth, or the migration of various tribes into the Fertile Crescent leading to leisure that our ancestors previously hadn’t had, but some primordial desire to control randy people to build families — family-building being, by the way, a commonn characteristic of pretty damn near all mammals, very nearly all birds, and a surprising number of cold-blooded terrestrial and aquatic creatures — that is the sole factor that leads to human culture?
Do tell.
Dang. How do you mod people up on this?
Read your history of civilization(s). There is a reason certain societal mores developed over the centuries.
Yes … and virtually all of those civilizations were patriarchal and polygamous, and treated women as property.
Let’s hear it for old-fashioned values!
Just like the whole issue with Tiger is to use him as an example of how a man will be punished for his sexuality.
Nice try, Ms. Smith, but like all porn-ostriches, you’re ignoring the actual point: the massive, overwhelming prevalence of porn has an increasingly negative effect over time. A 12 year old looking at Dad’s Playboy? Not such a big problem. A 50 year old looking at depictions of the violent rape of little girls? Just a step away from another little girl raped and murdered in the real world. And that 50 year old started with the old man’s Playboy.
I have no doubt that all or at least the overwhelming bulk of men have looked at pornography – I sure as heck have. But, ask the boys – does a pair of boobies in a Playboy get the blood rushing as much as it did 30 years ago? No – because men who look at pornography get increasingly desensitized to the beauty of the female body and become increasingly obsessed with mere sexual release…and that takes madder music and stronger wine.
Think a bit before you comment on pornography, next time.
Mark, there are other reasons why, 30 or 40 years after puberty, the blood doesn’t pump like it used to.
Sorry to say.
Wow, Mark, you’re a super-hero. Able to leap tall strawmen in a single bound! Watching or looking at porn for 30-odd years does NOT lead directly to desiring paedophile rape porn. Sheesh!
And at ten this theoretical serial-murdering pedophile was eating potatos and looking at the Sears Catalog. Your point is –?
In Science something that happens only .000001% of the time is probably not caused by something that occurs 99% of the time. There is an unknown cause.
Okay admittedly, I didn’t read all of the comments. There may be someone else out there who posted something similar to this, but what’s with all the porn-bashing?
I always felt the Pornography, like alcohol, guns, drugs, or nearly any other supposed evil, is merely a human nature amplifier. It either reveals or brings to light aspects of our psyches which are already there, just under the surface. If you like to watch abusive, perverse, and bizarre sexual acts being performed, then you are likely an abusive, perverse,and bizarre individual. Like the guy who beats his wife, but only when he drinks, it’s something that’s always there. The loss of shame or inhibitions because someone else is doing it on camera, or because you ingested a mind altering drug, or because you can get away with it, is not an excuse for bad behavior. If watching porn altered your perceptions of sex, then your perceptions were probably incorrect in the first place.
As for porn having a negative effect on relationships, ignoring a problem, or finding another outlet doesn’t make the problem go away. Porn is a symptom of problems in a relationship when experienced privately, in secret. Is it good to keep anything private or secret in a relationship? Do you hoard all of the cookies and pizza as well? If you want something in a restaurant, you have to ask for it. The waitress can’t read your mind. The same is true in the bedroom! Healthy relationships are not effected negatively by pornography.
Personally, I feel that pornography has made me a better lover. You don’t learn how to do these things in Sex Ed class at school, or watching PBS. It taught me how to spot a fake orgasm very early on. The chick who’s eyes are open who’s looking at something off camera while she screams is probably faking it. It taught me that it’s okay to talk during sex.
Eye contact is important.It taught me that sex is a full body experience. You watch a well done lesbian show, where the girls are really into each other, and you’ll see them spending more time kissing and stroking each others arms, backs, and stomachs than rubbing their genitals. You wanna know what women like? Ask a woman.
Asking questions is very important. Most modern internet porn has interviews with the girls before they start, and these are often surprisingly candid insights as to what different women like, and gives easy to follow trends. Interviews with porn stars in porno mags also offer such insights, but few people who peruse porn intermittently because of a sense of shame actually read the articles, which is ironic, considering it’s a classic excuse.
Most of all, porn has shown me that women like a guy who’s confident, assertive, and interested in fulfilling her needs as well as his own. Not to toot my own horn but when I lost my virginity, I was asked “I thought you said you were a virgin! How many women have you really been with?” My reply? “Thousands.” I’ve never had a complaint. My thanks go out to all the hard working professionals of the porn industry.
“[...]porn has shown me[...]”
Porn has shown you squat. Women are FAKING it in porn. THAT is why they get PAID to ‘ACT’.
Women are drugged up and screwed up mentally who make pornos:
http://www.shelleylubben.com/
Women fake it to make it in porn. That’s all it is. You men have been duped and your women are suffering because of it.
Time for a reality check.
MEC2,
I don’t think Helen means “rugged men who bring women flowers” when she talks about “romance novels and Lifetime TV”. I think there is something less innocent and more sadistic about the images of women-men relationships projected by our mainstream culture, where men are women’s toyboys at best. Bukkake porn is no more pervasive than “Sex and the City”, and these two kinds of entertainment mirror each other in more than one way.
“She found that after viewing porn, men looked at women more as objects than as human beings.”
I am awaiting the article that makes the observation “He found that after years of marriage, women looked at men more as wallets than as human beings”.
What I wonder is porn’s effect on girls. Unless you buy the theory that girls only do what boys want them to – a completely untenable argument, in opinion – what are we to make of how girls of all ages display themselves on social networking sites? There they are, on their own pages, where either themselves or their girlfriends are posing provocatively in their own bathroom mirrors. Look at Facebook. Everyone must have a “friend” who’s friends with an attractive high school girl. 95% likely there is at least one soft-porn picture of them, taken by them, posted by them. If you look at less reputable sites that exist to collect and display such pictures in a giant archive, you’ll how depraved these little victims of male expectation can get.
Do I object? No way – unless she were my daughter. But since this was all preceded by the “stripper tween” phenomenon by several years, usually funded by Mom, I wonder – are we really to believe that girls don’t like displaying themselves this way, that it really is so degrading to them, that they don’t enjoy it? I had always more or less thought the answer was Yes, but frankly the more Facebook pages I see the more mirage-like that argument becomes. Buyer’s remorse experienced after the fact, however profoundly, does not mean that the original impulse was insincere or coerced, only that competing values eventually caused her to feel shame. Well – the world is large and contains multitudes, people contradict themselves. Why can’t both sensations be sincere?
In my opinion, the democratization of porn will have a profound effect mostly by radically – forgive me – actualizing the ego rather than for any other reason. A really hot 16 year old girl is going to be even more intensely trapped in her “hot bubble” once she learns that 100 males from her high school are worshipping her one photo with Janey where they’re both displaying their panties, cleavage, swimming-toned abs, and long tongues that they took that one night after the Fall Formal. The pitiful victim thing is real in some cases, I’m sure, but most? I think that’s just propaganda maintained because no matter what innovations the subversives devise, the vast majority of men will never prefer a sluttish girl to a virginal one. And on that Darwinian imperative bedrock the whole enterprise may crash. We’ll see what happens when these 12 year old girls and boys raised on the expectation that double-penetration is normal (or fun or hot) grow up and become parents. Should be interesting.
Good article, Dr. Helen. I like how Anonymous tosses off her possible part in the dissolution of her marriage with a blithe “I was far from a perfect wife.” Putting aside the fact that none of us is the perfect spouse, that phrase could indicate a wide gamut of behavior on her part. Either she doesn’t want to give us details that might spoil the “porn wrecked my marriage” story line, or she is amazingly non-introspective for a psychologist.
Thank you for this well-constructed brief of “the other side of porn.” I’d never encountered some of these ideas, most particularly the study you cite. It’s hard to set aside my prejudices about the subject — I’m still sure of it’s deleterious effect in my own relationships — but you’ve made me consider the possiblity that my own attitudes and expectations play into the scenario more than I would have thought.
Perhaps pornography is more of a symptom than a cause, in most cases. A person can easily get addicted to any activity or substance and it can take on a life of its own. Most of the time there is an underlying need or desire for adventure or maybe the thrill of something that is looked upon by society as “forbidden fruit.” If it is something that is serves a purpose, does not cause problems, and is kept in the open between couples, then perhaps there might be a place for it. It could be something similar to sexual role playing. If it could cause problems, then it should be shunned. Each person reacts differently. Some people can drink one glass of champagne on their anniversary and none for the rest of the year, others let their lives be ruined by alcoholism. Children need to be protected, but adults need to look at the issue realistically, and not at the same time they are looking at pornography. Open, honest communication by both spouses is what makes a marriage work, and that goes for issues like this one as well.
From the study:
“Not one subject had a pathological sexuality,” he said. “In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional.”
Yes, if you start with the premise that addiction to porn is not a sexual pathology. That statement is akin to saying of a drug addict, “He was temperate in all other things…except his drug use.”
Another gem:
“Pornography hasn’t changed their perception of women or their relationship, which they all want to be as harmonious and fulfilling as possible,” he added.”
What does this prove? Porn addicted men may want a harmonious and fulfilling relationship. But it doesn’t follow that because this is so porn is not counterproductive to those aims.
The author here is a psychologist. She should ask some of her colleagues who treat men what the number one issue facing men today is.
There seems to be a notion floating around that because it is natural for men to be turned on by these images it must be healthy and, therefore, it has no deleterious effects on a man’s relationships with actual women. What is being ignored is the obvious: Porn is intrinsically self-centered. It’s not about promoting genuine intimacy between couples. It’s not about communication, love, sacrifice, and unfettered giving of the self. It’s about self gratification. Much easier than working at an actual relationship.
Perhaps the author is willing to promote the idea that all man’s baser instincts are healthy and should be acted upon?
Didn’t think so.
Good insight Dr. Helen. I suspect that if “anomymous” didn’t blame porn and men in general she would be blaiming something or someone else. If she in fact is a psychologist then she is a damn poor one. Can you imagine her in counseling sessions on the search with her hapless victim clients to place blame rather than take responsibility. She doesn’t even have the courage, integrity, or basic responsibility to give her own name , let alone siting data from the other side of the argument. Now she will regard herself as victim of Dr. Helen. Did she mention who is buying all the trashy pulp novels ? Or watching the trashy daytime sit. coms. ? Pity the next poor fool who moves in with her as he will eventually become the next object of blame.
Watching pornography is only ever a symptom of something else going on. The only time it can unequivocally be considered harmful is if the viewer is a child. If someone finds the sex fetishes of their partner “weird,” it isn’t due to their consumption of porn; the porn is merely an outlet. Something else is going on either with the person or with the couple, in which case it becomes a decision whether or not perhaps to seek counseling.
I would hazard a guarantee that a good percentage of wives who see any male consumption of porn as vile also view erotic sex (versus procreative sex or maintenance sex) with their spouse as something dirty, unnecessary or unhealthy for their marriage. For husbands who watch porn surreptitiously from their spouse, I would hazard a separate guarantee that it is because they are unfulfilled sexually within the relationship, either with quantity or quality or both. If the spouse discovers it and is unwilling to consider that perhaps it’s her views of sexuality that are unhealthy and have contributed towards his seeking an outlet through porn, that it’s most likely a symptom of their relationship and not just a fetish of his, if she ignores this possibility and chooses not to engage with her husband to try and better understand each others’ needs, then she shouldn’t be at all surprised when he chooses to leave the relationship.
Finally, if you are a woman who views the above statement as sexist or misogynistic, I would urge you to reconsider that stance as well. Men are not wrong or disgusting for desiring more or more erotic sex with their partner. Whether they choose to suppress these desires to make for a more harmonious relationship or in favor of some greater need within the relationship (health reasons for one of the partners, perhaps), the spouse had damn well better make it incumbent upon themselves to understand what’s going on and why.
I used to believe that porn was something harmless. Sure, there were some people, mostly guys, who became obsessed with it. But if anything, I thought it was a phase many teenage boys went through and a few men who were not “getting it” at home. I have since learned a bit more.
I run a group for men who are dealing with all types of issues across the board. I have been blown away at the way porn- particularly internet accessible porn, has wreaked havoc on lives and marriages of so many of these men. Each man takes personal responsiblility, but like alcohol or drugs, this element introduced into their lives has become like a tumor in their relationships.
Many of these men have beautiful, healthy, and very sexual wives. For a few of these men, the door to prostitution and affairs has even been opened. Just as the man who sneaks off to get his drug fix, these men can step into their office to get their fix.
As a recovering heroin addict who works with addicts, there are some similar effects on how the brain reacts to porn- it’s the pleasure center. There is a reason why heroin addicts compare the needle to sex. It’s all about the endorphins.
Eventually these men I have been working with come to a point where they can’t get the same “rush” from their own relationships with their wives. There is shame, lies, covering up of tracks, and more lies. It is a cycle that reminds me of my own drug addiction.
It all clicked with me when I listened to a man share how he once smashed a porn video that he had bought and viewed. Feeling guilty and frustrated, he threw the smashed cassette in the trash only to dig the smashed video out of the trash the next night and fix the broken cassette so he could view it again.
What was even more amazing was that he wasn’t the only man in the room who had done this.
Is porn the only thing to blame? Of course not. But since these men have taken the porn out of their lives- the major “tumor” of their marriage has been removed so they can begin the real recovery.
Helen Smith’s view on the subject seems to suggest that “men just can’t help themselves”. They will go underground to get their porn and be resentful about it! Where does it say that we should condone men getting their sexual enjoyment by watching perverse acts performed by other people? Who says this is normal behavior? Watching porn is cheating plain and simple. You may tell yourself that it is okay, but in your heart you know it is wrong. The posts here saying “Thanks Dr. Helen! I feel better already!” prove this. Back up! You were right to feel guilty the first time. You are watching someone’s daughter/sister/mother degrade herself for your enjoyment. You deserve the guilt!
Who are you to condone or disapprove of behavior between consenting people? If a consenting couple watches porn, or if a spouse is open about watching porn (that is made by consensual participants) by themselves, then who are you to tell them what is wrong or not? If you think it’s wrong for and your life, fine, but don’t try and push to legislate my totally legal behavior just because YOU disagree with it.
Good god, now every time I masturbate to the visions in my head I’m cheating on my wife. Since I’m likely to have, between my ears, visions of people I’ve actually met maybe this is a more egregious cheating than pr0n.
Seems like we’re defining cheating down, considerably.
Porn could be said to have wrecked the anonymous psychologist’s marriage only if the woman her husband ran off with was from Eastern Europe and named “Porn”. He “ran off with a woman”, which indicates there was more going on than her husband in another room jacking off until she had enough of the terrible abuse (self- in this case) and filed for divorce.
Funeral Guy is right. The real story of the story of how a woman named Porn wrecked this psychologist’s marriage is hidden in the phrase “I was far from the perfect wife”. How far exactly? We’ll never know due to the ubiquitous human ability to rationalize one’s own behavior and demand that others read our minds and judge us by intent rather than result.
Of course, attempts to ‘control’ women’s ‘sexuality’ have never happened right?
Hell, I’m randy almost all of the time and my boyfriend barely ‘puts out’ so if he’s whacking one off to a magazine and not giving me some of that, yeah, I take issue but I gave up caring when 5 minutes max was all he could muster in the sack. lol But, I masturbate at least 2 times a day so there’s no pressure for him to perform and I’ve actually become a better master of my own domain anyhow.
As far as porn itself goes. It grosses me out. Why? It’s not the sex. It’s the sad (many drugged up) people performing in front of the camera who have messed up lives and many have horrible, traumatic childhoods. So, for me, watching porn is like watching a prostitute and I personally don’t need to go there just to get my rocks off.
Maybe some men are just lazy and can’t use their imagination though, which is probably why they aren’t all that good at making love.
Here is the prime example of the differences in the female and male . . . the female has he entire instinctive nature centered on finding the ONE set of genes that will produce the most viable offspring . . . the male has his entire instinctive nature centered on incresing the probability of his offspring being viable by having many different partners . . . now we get the marriage. The female is ready, prepared and willing to participate in the act as often as she can (and now days that is a freedom provided by birth control). Keep in mind that just because the act is birth controlled does not take away the instinct to do it as often as possible. The male, kind of sad, but now he is reduced to accepting the fact, rationalizing if you will, that he can no longer go spread the good genes. Strange that he still has the instinct to do so . . . but if he does . . . that female that he married will whack the crap out of him (control). Strange it is that human beings consider ourselves civilized. LOL
Hmm. If society didn’t reign in female sexuality, I think women would be effing every hot guy that they could easily nab and get in the sack with for a quick tryst. Men are called ‘normal’ when want to poke it in every available hole but women are called whores if they want to hop on more than a few throbbing knobs. Double standard much eh?
Women also cheat as much as men too. They are just better liars.
Trust me, if there was no chance of STDs or pregnancy I would be the biggest she slut and have no shame in it whatsoever. Love between the sexes is for fools anyway!
Truly find myself in agreement . . . and we call ourselves civilized? . . . heck to me we are hardly domesticated . . . and rapidly returning to the wild.
I was a young teen when I walked in on my father watching porn (he quickly pulled up his pants and turned it off – thinking I didn’t see anything). Later, I found he had a rather large collection (this was pre-internet). I was crushed. I had been raised in a Christian home and brought up to believe sex was supposed to be special bonding between two people who love each other. Sure, I had seen sex in mainstream movies, but nothing like what was on these videos. It was disgusting. And he was doing this while I was home. My father had been a stability in my life and after my discovery, I didn’t even want to hug him.
The long term effects have been strong. My view of sex and what it is supposed to be is very warped. I can’t think of it as anything but dirty and wrong. I want so badly to be married and have a life partner, but I can’t get past my aversion to sex. If sex is what I saw on those videos, I want no part of it. I can’t picture it any other way, though.
As for my father, he still doesn’t know that I am aware of his behavior. I know from visits back home that not only does he still engage in porn, what he is watching has gotten more and more hardcore (including tranny porn and fetishes with bodily functions). I also suspect he has cheated on my mom with many women. Another reason I am afraid of marriage. I don’t want to end up with someone like this.
Looking at porn may start off innocently enough (and I’m sure for some it stays that way) but for many, they become desensitized and need more to satisfy their needs. This could include escalating to violent types of porn and to acting out the fantasies they see. It is a very slippery and dangerous slope.
And if you think porn doesn’t hurt anyone, look at me. Other than what I saw on my father’s video that day, I have never looked at it. Yet, here I am, very hurt and wounded by it. It has warped my view of men, marriage and relationships. I sometimes wish my father would die so I wouldn’t have to pretend not to know anymore.
I’m sorry for the strained relationship between you and your father Anastasia, but it wasn’t porn that caused it, it was the fact that your father was irresponsible enough to masturbate with the door unlocked. Every man masturbates – with or without pornography – and to do so “out in the open” like that is either a sick invitation for someone to catch you or sign of somebody with reckless social behaviors.
I think the problem is that it showed the porn controlled him instead of vice versa. This was more than just a “cleaning the pipes” situation. He couldn’t even wait until his young daughter was out of the house to watch. That’s the danger with something like this. A girl’s view of her father is so important and something like this can be deeply scarring, especially if it is so contradictory to what he presents in public. Again, this was not basic, healthy masturbation. He is into some sick, demented stuff.
I understand people have different opinions on it, and I’m not asking anyone to share mine. I’m just giving my personal experience in response to Dr. Helen’s article.
Carl, how do you know that every man masturbates?
That’s irresponsible to make that statement to try to okay the activity. I’m not saying it’s wrong to masturbate, but this smacks of, “If it feels good, do it!” Liberal, hippy jibe.
It also feels good to a baby to go potty in his diaper. It’s a natural urge too, but is that okay? It feels good to satisfy the natural urge to smite an enemy when he’s offended you, but is that civilized, okay behaviour?
There are a lot of natural urges that feel good. . . If every man masturbates, then I’m pretty certain every man eats his boogers too.
Speak for yourself. Just because a therapist tells a man, “Porn addiction does not exist, therefore, don’t worry about what you’re doing. I’m not going to give you any coping skills to help you over your habit because it’s the cultural norm,” doesn’t mean that his life and relationships will not continue to be destroyed.
I find your response to this lady irresponsible, irrational, and unfeeling.
She’s hurt. How is, “Oh, it’s normal,” going to make her feel any better when she seriously has been emotionally traumatized? If she okays what her father did, will it really change her life for the better? Will it improve the lives of many people who have been debased by porn consumption/excessive masturbation? Most likely not.
I’d tell this lady to realize that men are not perfect, but I believe there are men out there who have higher standards and are willing to be noble in the sense that they would give up selfishness in any form (especially if it hurt her so deeply) for her.
The men’s liberation movement always happens historically before a women’s lib movement. Go study some history. I’m not a feminist, but I do believe that men’s failings to be unselfish and their penchant for selfishness destroys cultures. Men usually fail as leaders before women have to step in and attempt to take the lead.
I think you do culture a great disservice by your irrational thoughts.
But on the other hand, if you enjoy masturbating and porn and your partner doesn’t find it disrespectful, that’s you’re freedom! Enjoy it. As for people who don’t want it in their lives, don’t succumb to the bunk that Carl-Just-Another-Voice-Who-Speaks-For-Everybody-So-He-Thinks. . . set your standards, draw the line and don’t settle for less.
You “walked in” on dad years ago (innocently?), and have been spying on him ever since. I submit if anybody has a problem, it’s you.
Yes, at 13 years old, I walked in to my father’s office hoping to catch him masturbating to hardcore pornography.
Are you joking? My mind could never have comprehended something like it until I actually saw it. That’s why it was so traumatic.
Yes, I have a problem with snooping when I visit – I don’t deny that. It’s difficult for me to let it go. I care about him and this is something that scarred me very deeply.
I submit that you refrain from making judgments about someone you don’t even know.
Expect to get what you get here in the blog world . . . if you don’t like what people have to say . . . don’t post your personal stories . . . keep the post to perspectives and opinions.
Anastasia, in complete seriousness and without any snark, consider looking into therapy. Don’t let something that happened years ago keep afflicting your life.
Thank you, Charlie. It is something I have been considering for a while.
I did some years of therapy, and it made an immense difference for me.
Anastasia, you have just written the single most ridiculous thing I have ever read. You walked in on your dad whacking off. Big deal. It’s no different than if you walked in on him taking a dump. Awkward? Yes, but hardly worth ruining your life over. Would you be forever traumatized if you caught your dad on the can? Would you have trouble taking a dump yourself?
The first step is for you to acknowledge that you are acting silly. Whatever your father’s problems may or may not be you need to get over it and quit using it as an excuse for how you are behaving and feeling now. The other thing for you to realize is that your father’s sex life is just that… his sex life and it is private. Unless he tried to molest you, you really have no business loading all of your baggage on his shoulders. That is wrong. I hope he doesn’t know how you feel and that you don’t use it as a lever over him.
Finally, I think your problem is rooted more in the guilt inflicted by your religion than by the pornography your dad was watching. This lifelong, life affecting guilt over essentially nothing is just the sort of thing religions promote and it is one of the most devastating side effects of religious addictions.
UD, you might do well to look at Helen’s previous post. Anastasia’s reactions are her own; if they’re not like yours, that doesn’t mean she isn’t expressing real trauma.
Charlie, Anastasia’s reactions are definitely her own, and snooping on her father’s masturbation-fodder knowing perfectly well that he masturbates and that what he masturbates to (allegedly) bothers her is something which a reasonable person can criticize (UD) and another reasonable person with a different emphasis (yourself) can suggest warrants therapy.
Anastasia,
I regret that you were misinformed by your parents and clergy (who misinformed your parents on the nature of the universe, human beings, and) who gave you an unrealistic view of sexuality to the point where you consider it dirty and awful.
I don’t believe you were hurt by porn nor even by catching your dad masturbating briefly (which, while embarrassing among family members, has been known to happen from time to time and life goes on). I believe you were made overly fragile by the ridiculous nonsense you were taught.
And yes, your father may have mated with women other than your mother, which is natural and — in evolutionary terms at least — a good (or at least necessary) thing, without which our species would never have sexually outcompeted other species.
In other words, without a certain amount of promiscuity, there would be no nuns. Children. Or what have you.
I realize what I said is distasteful for those who “believe in” monogamy as the right way to live in in every case.
Yet it’s factual. And — Biblical (not that I’m a Christian).
That said, I can see where it would be distasteful for a teenage girl walk in on her dad looking at porn.
However, I just remembered I’ve walked on my parents having sex once ages ago and I don’t condemn them for it. These things happen. Hardly the highlight of my childhood, but stuff happens.
I think a person has to develop more resiliency than to let such an experience scar them for life.
I mean… and this is terrible; I don’t claim otherwise… as you know many people are sexually assaulted. Especially women, and children: female and male.
And they have to find the courage to go on and heal. Some do, some don’t.
Walking in on someone you know looking at porn, etc., just isn’t that uncommon of a life experience. I’m not saying it’s happened to everyone, but it shouldn’t destroy a person’s relationship with sex or their father.
That’s why I conclude it is more what you were taught about sex, including the conflict between what your dad claimed to believe and what he actually does, which is the problem.
And to me the answer is most emphatically honesty, gaining a better understanding of how people really are, and not relying on what I consider false sources to inform our beliefs. Yes, I expect you will disagree with that. I’m sure many people will.
It seems to me that looking at people you’re not married to’s images (or reading words about said people) and thinking about coiting with them IS a sin according to the Bible, particularly the New Testament.
So if a person insists on believing that’s true, I can understand how they conclude porn is just awful, and that it damages their relationship with a family member looking at porn.
But I think the available evidence tends to be much heavier on the side of we’re evolved primates descended from other primates (and our 2 nearest relatives are also quite sexual).
And when a person begins to look at things this way, then our sexual drives become quite understandable.
As far as your dad being into bodily functions or transvestite porn or whatever, I can only say that it isn’t my cup of tea, at all, but it isn’t immoral in the sense that violence, simulated rape, and child porn are. It’s personal taste (or distaste) not harming another person.
So I really would just let that be and not worry about it.
It really isn’t your business.
There was a time during my marriage when i spent a year on a course. During that year i wasn’t bringing any money into the home. I lost all interest in my wife, but not (visually) in other women, and i watched a lot of porn (i’d previously only looked at it occasionally for example if she was working nights). I stopped when i finished the course and started earning again.
I think a porn obsession is *much* more likely to be a symptom than a cause. I also think it’s just as, if not more likely, to be related to a pride problem than anything else as in my focus-group-of-one view, male sexuality is as much to do with pride as libido.
On the other hand i think the market in the past was limited and so porn was mostly limited to a common denominator i.e Playboy style porn. The internet taps into such a vast market there’s money to be made providing images that only 1 in a 1000 or 1 in 10,000 men find arousing and which many people might find horrifying. Another aspect of this is i think some porn is actually more like a branch of the horror genre where the main purpose of the film makers is to shock and disgust. The big worry for me is children coming across something like this that disturbs them for life.
What i did with my boy is buy some artsy “erotica” smut books which were relatively tasteful and placed them in the upper bookshelves when he was coming up to the right age in the hope he’d “imprint” on those kind of images rather than anything too horrible from the internet.
In short i do worry about the influence of internet porn on children and in some cases on the mental and physical health of the performers however the importance of the internet for political freedom is too vital to risk easily. I’d like some kind of compromise i.e laws forcing websites to have a rating which could be blocked by parental controls but currently my attitude to any kind of government control of the internet is *extremely* hostile as i feel they’ll use porn control for political control.
Ok, so porn distorts a man’s perspectives of his wife so completely that it destroys his ability to have a marriage. Guess that applies equally to fishing, drag racing, Harley scooters, running, woodworking, working for a living, . . . got a hobby of any kind that impacts your marriage . . . well it can destroy your marriage. Of course, if the female perspective is that it is “done to HER” then is when it really gets “bad”. Looking at the above list and I am sure that someone out there other than me knows of a marriage that has been destroyed by something as simple as “He runs so much” and “He does it everyday”.
To me there seems to have occurred a major cultural values shift, perhaps it was with “Rosie the Riveter” or maybe birth control but something happened and it “killed” June Cleaver! That entire perspective is deader than a door knob. Is it good that June is dead? . . . you got me . . . but all I can truly say is that there is a loss of respect and valuation of individuals throughout our culture.
So he watches porn . . . well it is cheaper than cocaine and if he’s smart he will do it at home . . . watching porn at public libraries and at work can destroy ya, just as quick as to much fishing, lol.
Keep this in mind . . . once the destruction begins, due to the loss of respect between the individuals (husband & wife) . . . the marriage is doomed.
James 1:13
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Porn has added a new dimension to me and my wife’s sex life. It’s great. If you object to pornography, don’t watch it, and leave the rest of us alone. Just as I was happy to see hands-off conservativism rising again, a bunch of social vice-cops have to raise their heads again. Sigh…
Um, has anyone even bothered to track the divorce rates in this country since the flood of porn began in the 80′s (with the VCR) and the 90′s (with the Internet)?
The divorce rate has DECLINED as the availability of pornography has risen.
Check your facts, people, before forming your theories.
Sorry, Doc, I think you’ve badly missed the point on this one.
It’s been eloquently pointed out in earlier comments that equating pictures of nekkid gurls with the festival of misogyny and brutality that comprises modern-day porn is disingenuous at best. What has been most notable in the overnight tsunami of pornography that has arisen from greater “freedom of information” has been the speed at which erotica has descended into all-perversion-all-the-time. Check out a few of the websites that start their name with an X and you’ll find that they have little to do with eroticism, and arguably little to do with sex.
The equation has been drawn above between pornography and “romance” novels. It’s a good one, too, since both have the primary effect of depersonalizing the object of desire. “Relationships” are difficult because Relationship Is Difficult. It could be argued that we, men and women, are made the way we are in order to confront our avoidance of self through gentle confrontation with the other – none of which can happen if the means of avoidance are more available than the encouragement to stand in there and fight it out.
Women have for generations been encouraged to regard men as beasts; men have similarly been encouraged to regard women as adorable little airheads. “Serial Monogamy” has served as a convenient outlet for those unwilling, on both sides, to confront the real issues, which go far beyond sexual incompatibility. Retreating into Bukakke and Bodice Rippers has not improved the situation.
Choosing to get stuck in the genital stage and opting for eternal adolescence is no more admirable than staying in the oral and anal stages, and has the same relationship with maturity – which is to say none at all.
Okay. So let me get this str8. A guy uses pr0n because his wife feels sex has become a chore rather than a fun, tempting, mutually pleasurable thing? The most likely reason the woman is feeling that way is because you’re doing it wrong, boyz. Believe me, if she’s having incredible orgasms when you make love to her, there is no way she’s not going to want more of the same. Of course, making love is the key and that includes making love to her mind and then her body but, I know most of you bust-a-nut-and-run types don’t have a clue about that anyway.
Also, don’t some of you man-children see the irony? You complain that the little woman treats sex like ‘work’ and then you masturbate to p0rnos where the woman has sex for ‘money’ as her line of ‘work’. Der.
For you ugly men with pot-bellies and wrinkled prune faces who want a young hottie, don’t complain when the hottie takes you for everything you’ve got and runs off with a hawt dude. Also, don’t forget that some women like the chase and once she’s gotten the guy from his wife, she tires of him. Look at Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Poor Brad looks miserable. haha
P.S. You some men are selfish pigs under the sheets anyhow. Proof? Once a supposedly hetero man lands in jail he’ll even bang another dude to bust a nut. boo yah
I love my wife dearly. She is a wonderful woman and I find her extremely attractive. She loves me. I would probably be happy if we had sex twice a week. She would probably be happy if we had sex twice a year. As it is, we have sex about twice a month. This leaves me very frustrated and angry- which I hate because I adore my wife. I also don’t want to force her to do anything. It is not her fault she is not interested. I think it is a question of biology.
The alternative is much less satisfying, but it is a lot better than extreme anger and frustration. Sexual images speed the process along.
I read the NRO article and was relieved to find this article. The issue of porn has been studied to death. Guess what…it’s harmless. A recent survey found that 70% of med view porn on the internet. In a related study: 30% of med lie on surveys.
Hey, here’s an idea: Change all of the divorce, alimony and palimony laws that penalize men for doing what men do – falling in love – and then perhaps some of us will rejoin the pursuit of relationships game, which has been perverted into a fool’s errand for those of us who inherited some money. Sorry, but I don’t think bailing out some idiot single mom who is where she is because she made bad choices is the best use of my money. If I’m going to deal with children, I’ll do the fun part myself. Likewise for college graduate chicks with big student loans, and ALL single women, who seem very adept at running up credit card debt. No thanks. I’ll take any fantasy girl over those realities anytime, thank you very much. That said, graphic porn is gross. Just give me the old fashioned Playboy type of idealized girl next door, and I’m fine. If you want to ameliorate this, “problem” the first thing you need to do is realize that men are not responsible for perverting the natural order of male/female relationships, lawyers are.
One half thinks porn is harmless while the other half believes it is destructive to our society.
The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. For adults who use it simply as an outlet from a less interested spouse or as a tool in their lovemaking, it’s fine and personal.
For people who have compulsive tendencies or a predisposition to addiction, it can be dangerous and hurtful to their families if the behavior escalates to an unhealthy level.
It is also dangerous how easily accessible it is to children. This is really key. A twelve year old latch-key kid with a computer can easily access some pretty disturbing things. Being exposed to this at such an impressionable age can be extremely damaging to how a child or teen’s mind develops.
Just a comment about the study cited by Helen Smith – although I have not seen a published article upon which this study was based (the text of the study does not appear to be available on the Universite de Montreal website, nor on the website of The Interdisciplinary Research Center on Family Violence and Violence against Women (CRI-VIFF), the institute that funded the study), the half-dozen news items I found covering the story, including the bulletin that appears on the UdeM website, consistently report that “To do so, he [Lajeunesse] has so far recruited and interviewed 20 heterosexual male university students who consume pornography.” The AFP reported that “A handful of universities permitted him to address their campuses, and after appealing to some 2,000 mostly women students to take part, 20 heterosexual men agreed to discuss their sex lives in depth.” To deduce from this that “..virtually all men watch porn” is quite a leap. All that can be posited from this is that very few people were willing to talk to him. To proceed further and make broad claims about the effects of pornography based on a survey of a small number of respondents, all university students, all within the same age range, is not very informative. I would think Pajamas Media (which I respect very much) could do better.
I had the exact same reaction: how irresponsible to draw conclusions about “all men” based on interviews with 20 college aged men! And to conclude that porn has no harmful effects, based on 20 interviews! Dr Smith is usually more serious than this.
WRT to other posts in these comments.
1. As long as we are quoting anecdotes and personal stories, let me add this one: my family law attorney friends are telling me that compulsive pornography use is a growing factor in the divorces they are seeing. Call it addiction or whatever you want. Wives are feeling abandoned by the husbands to the computer screen.
2. All you apologists for porn use, consider this: Masturbating in front of a computer screen, when a live and willing woman is available, cannot possibly have survival value to the individual’s genes or to the species. Anybody who prefers an image to a real sex partner has no business playing the “nature card.” Nothing natural about it. If it is really an “understandable” biological response to something, to prefer a fantasy to reality, I suggest you take seriously the possibility that the biological responses have gone astray somehow….
I posted a similar comment on my own blog http://www.ruthblog.org/2010/04/02/more-on-porn/
Sorry, JRM- you stated the issue with a gigantic assumption and thus negated the point. Having a live and warm wife does not equate to “available”- years ago, Ann Landers replied to a letter of the “What does she have that I don’t have?” variety by asking “What has she given that I haven’t given?” It was true then, it is now.
And you need to show cause and effect data on the harm of porn, not anecdotes from friends. I’m not saying that porn it good, or positive; I am, however, suggesting that it may often be an important outlet when wives decide that sex is for when she’s “in the mood”. That one never works for a normal husband, no matter what a good guy he may be. It’s pure biochemistry.
Jennifer, I’ve got two questions for you:
(1) What do you suppose the men felt abandoned to?
(2) Is it fair to assume that a married man necessarily has a “live and willing woman” available?
Divorce lawyers citing some behavior as a cause of divorce doesn’t make it so. Divorce lawyers are interested in making their client’s opposite appear in the worst possible light, to maximize their own client’s gains. Uncovering the truth is for Perry Mason and Matlock. Years ago “recovered memories” were cited by all kinds of authorities. Those citations didn’t make recovered memories any more true than unicorns, though.
As to the second point, I’ve been in many adult relationships during my life. Having a partner in the vicinity isn’t the same as having a willing partner in the vicinity.
I’ll take a page from Ann Althouse’s detractors, Dr Helen: you, a psychologist! – quoting a wholly inadequate study of twenty – twenty! – college students and extrapolating from it that all men are unaffected by porn usage. It hardly rises above the level of anecdote, and could scarcely be called a study at all, but you’ve based your defense of porn on it.
I disagree with Anonymous on NRO’s conclusion that porn killed her marriage, and I vehemently disagree with her call for government studies on the issue. But at the same time, I recognize that porn can be destructive to relationships, and it’s simply foolish to deny that there’s a problem here. How big a problem? I can’t say. What should we do about it? Be thankful for parental control software, be sure to use it, and talk to your kids about the pernicious effects of regular porn usage. Be respectful of your marriage partner and attentive to each other’s needs, physical and emotional.
A young female relative recently updated her facebook profile picture: she’s posing with a friend, they’re both in bikinis, in an overtly sexual pose — her latest status update said something like “future porn stars!!!” followed by a declaration of love for a particular boy she knows. He replied, “Oh yeah! Can’t wait!!!” It’s probably a big goof to them, but it’s disturbing to me. First of all — don’t they realize that we (parents, aunts, uncles, etc) can see it? Second, why aren’t they embarrassed? Good knows how many people did “right-click, save” on that photo, and will have it forever. The girls’ real names are attached to it, too — this isn’t some anonymous internet forum. So far I haven’t said anything — if it was my daughter I would’ve said plenty already — should I? Or is simply too late, and I have to accept the “pornification” of youth culture?
Great Article; _Amazing_ comment section.
Is it a coincidence that the Instapundit pointer to this article
appears just after the one to Dr. Mosher’s survey of American women’s views on sex in the 19th century? The contrast is instructive.
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine
/2010/marapr/features/mosher.html
It will be no coincidence that, if our socio/economic situation
reverts to 19th century norms, so will relations between the sexes.
Two conversation starter quotations:
Women and cats. Men and weather. – Heinlein
Sexual desire is aroused by the sight of the face,
and not any other part of the body. – M A Foster
Blaming porn for an individuals addictive behavior is no different than blaming the cocaine, gambling, or addictive behavior for the addiction. This is a sad outcry, and the author is probably denying other reasons for her failed relationship.
Maybe Anonymous should have experienced some porn, and she wouldn’t feel so threatened by it.
ms,
I think you just drew an analogy wherein you suggested that people should try a little cocaine so they won’t feel threatened by their addicted spouse.
Is porn really going to help solve the types of underlying problems that ended Anonymous’ marriage? Or will it make those problems worse? I think the latter.
Riddle me this?
Why don’t men exclusively date porn actors (key word being ‘actor’)? I mean, if that’s what gets you going why not date the people who do for a living what you like and prefer a mate to do? And don’t give me that ‘madonna whore complex’ crap.
Be honest, men. Why don’t you date and/or marry porn actors?
Don’t let your double-standards get in the way of your answer either.
two points immediately come to mind in response…
1. who is saying that men aren’t interested in dating porn actresses? i imagine there are a couple issues between “anon dude on this forum” and “that chick in movie X” – namely supply: how many men watch porn? how many women perform? i imagine the number of men watching is thousands of times larger than the number of women appearing.
2. don’t the girls themselves have a say in this? perhaps they simply don’t want to get hitched or “tied down” with a relationship.
i imagine most guys who view porn do not have access to a performer, let alone a performer interested in reciprocating that interest.
i also love another assumption that has been asserted earlier here… that porn is responsible for objectifying women as well as the impetus of all sorts of voluntary cosmetic procedures.
right, because Hollywood has never shoved certain body type images down our throats (er, eye sockets)…
at no point in time has any director uttered the phrase “Lose 5 pounds or get off the set”, nor any actress required, by contract, to remain a certain weight, etc.
i imagine you’ll find a much greater variety of body types in the adult film industry than amongst leading ladies than on tv shows or regular Hollywood flicks.
Why did Jesse James want a ‘good girl’ like Sandra Bullock to marry and yet cheated on her with the opposite type of women. What is it about men wanting to marry the good girl and cheat with the supposed ‘bad’ girl?
Perhaps women should be praised for being slutty rather than denigrated.
Wouldn’t you men all be much happier if women were hot, horny and did multiple males?
Think about it! FUN for EVERYONE and no SHAME or GUILT!
“Wouldn’t you men all be much happier if women were hot, horny and did multiple males?”
Paternity. Men are sexually attracted to overtly sexual women but at the same time they want to know their kids are theirs. Hence the virgin-whore syndrome.
Why did Jesse James want a ‘good girl’ like Sandra Bullock to marry and yet cheated on her with the opposite type of women. What is it about men wanting to marry the good girl and cheat with the supposed ‘bad’ girl?
Perhaps women should be praised for being slutty rather than denigrated.
OK! Sandra Bullock is wonderful … because she schtupped Jesse James when he was married to someone else! Good on ya, babe! And what a big, honkin’ surprise it must have been to her to discover that if he’d do it for her, then he’d do it to her, too …
wow…fun reading here today
my 2c..nothing wrong with porn. Anyone who blames it for there marriage falling apart is kinda sad. I would bet there were a LOT of other factors. I think in general porn is good but like all things in MODERATION. Some do get addicted, and only they can help themselves change it.
Trying to stop it is pointless, except letting young children see it, not good. That being said, way back in the olden times…couples would have sex in the same room as their children and they(children) learned early on that it is a normal behavior. Nowadays…kids are taught(mostly indirectly)that sex is bad, BUT they see it everywhere so they are big time confused. Sex is fun and TOTALLY normal…so get over it…
Anywhoo..I love porn and the wife is fine with it and knows that i masturbate to it and its no biggie. In fact she is on her way home now and we have had some good sexting going on! Ill be waiting and rdy when she gets here..so gotta run
What country/century are you posting from? Where are children taught that sex is “bad”?
he left her because she treated him like a wallet with legs. he left her because she, by choice or design,stopped being the sensual being he married. he left her because she used her witholding of sex to control him. he left her because he thought she loved him, and when the children came along it became apparent that she had gotten what she wanted and his needs/ desires/ dreams were a distant secondary to her plan. he left her because he was willing to be enslaved to alimony/ child support/ societal demonization to have a sliver of a chance of redeeming his manhood. God bless him.
From my own experience as a woman, often times wives don’t want to have sex as often as their husbands because physiologically they don’t feel the need for it. If you are not “hot,” you are not “hot.” Period. Having orgasms is hard for many women via conventional sex, which diminishes the returns a woman gets from having sex. Imagine if you men only had orgasms 20% of the time, or not at all. How would that change your interest in sex overall?
Also, bringing a woman to orgasm takes work and most men just want to get off and not have to actually satisfy a woman. He expects all the pleasure, meanwhile she ends up faking it to protect his fragile ego. lol
If that stops you, you had best not be married. Period. There are many many women who should not be married- put the old boy out of his misery. Now.
I see a lot arguing against Anonymous with either:
1) Your husband left because of problems that preexisted his turn to porn
or
2) I love porn because it helps me fix/ignore the problems in my marriage
But it would be more interesting to me if the people arguing 1 and 2 got in a room and duked it out with each other.
Problems –> Porn –> ?? obviously doesn’t work for everybody.
Dr. Helen, I can speak from personal experience that while it is certainly not the cause of all problems in marriage (divorce statistics show that disagreements about family finances cause more divorces), porn has an absolutely chilling effect on marriage. The reasons are many and varied.
The more active a man becomes in his use of pornography, the more his need for greater and more significant contact becomes. Let’s be absolutely real here…a man who is sexually satisfied with his partner will have very little need for porn. On the other hand, a man who isn’t having his needs met for human intimacy with his partner will seek to have those needs fulfilled through other means. Looking at a magazine is fine for a while, but it’s not nearly the same experience as watching a video, which isn’t the same experience as seeing someone in a “live” setting, which isn’t the same experience as actually connecting with another “live” human being. It’s an incredibly dangerous and slippery slope.
Personally, I was exposed to porn at a young age. I was in the 8th grade when I found my first magazine. From there, it wasn’t long until I got my own mailbox in college that the subscription to Playboy started. After that, I needed to increase the intensity by moving from Playboy to Penthouse, and from Penthouse to videos. It was at that point that I had a life-change experience and realized that porn wasn’t helping me in my relationship with my then-fiancee but was actually hurting. As a man in my mid-30′s, I started having performance issues that I couldn’t overcome, issues that would lead to my wife and I pulling away from each other sexually when we should have been at the height of our sexual relationship with each other. These are issues we’re still dealing with right now, issues that have created a distance in our relationship that we must battle daily to try to overcome.
What I’ve realized through talking with other men, through the books I’ve read, and from attending men’s conferences is that our experiences with porn, because they’re tied to the powerful life-giving force that is sex, form indelible images on our brains that are difficult to near impossible to erase. The sexual act creates a bond between two people that’s as tough as duct tape to remove. As a former porn addict, I’ve still got images in my head of sex scenes that I masturbated to that I can’t erase.
Another area where porn hurts men is in the reality of day-to-day relationships. In porn, the woman NEVER says no, never has a headache, never doesn’t want to do it. She’s always available, always ready, always willing. Real life doesn’t play out that way, and because of that, our real-life sexual experiences can pale in comparison to our sexual experiences with porn. Real life bodies can’t compare, real life conversations can’t compare, real life situations can’t compare to the world presented by porn. For the woman with a porn-addicted husband, there’s got to be some hurt for her when she realizes that she’s not enough to meet her husband’s needs.
Other men aren’t as fortuante as I was to realize the hold porn has over them until it’s too late, and eventually move on from computer images and videos to affairs and paying others for sex. Here’s a great example of that:
http://www.iamsecond.com/#/seconds/Nate_Larkin/
I realize there are men out there, men reading this that watch a little porn here and there, or who subscribe to Playboy or dabble with different internet sites, who feel like they’ve got this under control. I can only speak from my experience, and from the experiences of other men that I know that deal with this same deadly attraction, that there’s no such thing as a “safe” level of porn. Once it sinks its teeth into a man, its nearly impossible to overcome it. If you’re a man reading this, and you struggle with an addiction to porn, I highly recommend checking out a book called “Samson & the Pirate Monks.”
I used to read and comment occasionally on a marriage-enhancement community board, and there was a category for dealing with “porn addiction”. The most common comment was by a wife who had just “caught” (that word suggests some issues about the relationship all by itself) her husband looking at some on-line picture or video. The most common line was “I was just DEVASTATED, now I don’t know if I can ever think of him the same way again!”
Um. So that’s the big problem in your life, huh, lady? He isn’t a drunk, he’s not gambling away all of your assets, he goes to work every day and brings home food and housing money, he doesn’t chase the neighbor women around and have affairs. He looked at a video of people fooling around, and they were naked. Gawlee. Tell that to the woman in Haiti or Sudan or wife number 4 in Yemen.
Well. I certainly can see how that would be a big blow, given that there isn’t much else to complain about. This author referred to in Dr. Smith’s piece seems to me to be a bit like that standard reaction. And my standard counter-reaction is, “Why would he have the strength to stare at some picture or video if you are actually taking care of his sexual drives the way you promised to when you got married?”
And the response to that is, of course, that she isn’t. She has really important things to do- her job, the kids, maybe the girl friends, golf, even the health club (if she hasn’t gained 50 pounds since the wedding). Killing an hour a week (e.g., twenty minutes on each of Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday evenings, pick your own days) on something so difficult and unpleasant as making love to your husband just doesn’t rate on the priority list. The one pastime that historically first made marriage unique and committed and different from every other pairing isn’t worthy of attention. You prioritize and make time for what you believe is important. For a lot of porn “Devastated!” wives, wanna bet that this priority doesn’t really show up on the radar screen?
There are two basic types of married porn viewers. First, those who have a real issue with compulsiveness, and they are likely to show the OCD in other ways as well, unless they are among those who have a true sex disorder. The second category? I would bet that this is the vast majority of males. They are regular guys who don’t get enough for whatever reason. Their wives tend to fall into two broad classes as well: either they don’t care that much about sex unless they want a baby- they may also have been taught (often in church) that sex is sort of dirty unless you are procreating. Or they are oblivious to the differences between men and women due to repression or gender feminist-driven popular culture that says that a couple should have sex when both parties “feel like it” or are “in the mood”. With most couples, that frequency is about every day for him, and once every week or three for her, because of pure biochemistry. So if she isn’t in the mood, he should stifle it till she gets to that, if ever- after all, she can control her lust.
I will bet that this is exactly the category where the writer of that article fits.
I would happily predict the results of an anonymous survey of husbands to say that “in the mood” means about 10% or 20% as often for her as it is for him, and he wants more more more. For an average male with an average testosterone level, it builds up after release, and after about 48 hours he is again feeling quite itchy, that preoccupied driven sensation trailing only the needs for food, and avoiding pain/discomfort, and tied with the need for sleep. After a week, he’ll find Ethel Merman sexy. Do you see that this is a more basic uniquely male drive than any of the social interactions that motivate women? That is why he can be aroused by almost anyone, certainly not the case for her. And that, in turn, is why the massive majority of erotica is delivered to men. Chippendales is a novelty; “Sex World” is ubiquitous, and 95% frequented by men.
Regarding the very religious, go read the Song of Songs, then Proverbs 5, and then 1 Corinthians 7. St. Paul recognized that men would be preoccupied and “burn” unless they were married- and Paul then told the couples to Do It as much as was necessary to take care of the burning. Martin Luther said the same thing. A primary reason for marriage is to take care of the sex urges, and if they are there, you ain’t doing it enough. Husbands who are taken care of by their wives gravitate toward alternate choices because biochemistry pushes them that way. They can control it, sure. They should not have to, and really can’t, according to Paul, barring some actual pathology- which is a lot less common than, perhaps, Daphne, might admit- because they are simply made this way. The legalists disagree, of course. Mark Driscoll, a prominent evangelical minister in Seattle preached 10 weeks on the Song of Songs, and Philip Johnson of John MacArthur’s “Grace to You” broadcast basically accused him from the pulpit of being a sensationalist porn artist. Well, OK. I know who I’d listen to.
I may be nuts, but I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who prefers a two dimensional picture to a warm and willing wife. The only interest they usually have in bleach blonde bimbos like Pamela Anderson is the exciting idea that Pamela is Interested. The biggest draw for porn is not youth, long blonde hair, big chests, or odd positions- it is the fact that the female performers act like they WANT to participate- a bit of a change from real life.
Now, all men look. Period. We are built that way; we don’t know the objects of the looks. But we almost never touch, and usually don’t even stare, if we are not starving. If we are, we will peer intently and longingly at the meal that is sitting there. We’d prefer our own wives any day.
And the correct alternative takes one lousy hour a week for a willing spouse. And if 75% of the “porn widows” were honest, they would admit that they are mostly not willing, no matter what phony rationalizations they sell.
And of course, this applies equally to men. A woman has a right to experience pleasure from having sex with her husband. Now, it doesn’t have to be perfect every time, but you need to figure out a way to make it work.
AMEN, Kurmudge.
I read this article on NRO yesterday. What were they thinking when they published it? The writer, who I’ll call Anonymous wife, is creepy and disengenuous. I simply must perform a small Fisking. My emphasis is sparingly added with caps.
Okay…
“Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by DISTORTING A MAN’S PERCEPTION OF HIS WIFE.”
Based on the article, it seems to me that Anonymous wife’s husband doesn’t like her very much, doesn’t trust her, and maybe even thinks that she’s a jerk (I’m trying to be nice.)
I’ve never met Anonymous wife, but if my wife wrote an eloquent, yet vacuous internet appeal labeling me as a drunken, hapless, alcoholic-whore-chasing, internet-addicted pervert, I’d probably say she was a jerk. What family good can possibly ever come from irrevocably trashing the father of your five children on the internet? That stuff stays out there forever. Please don’t say she’s protecting him behind her anonymity. Any estranged Dad within a five-mile radius of anywhere with five kids is going to get squinted at, and she’s probably already put the link to her NRO article on her Facebook page so all of her friends and family can see it and commiserate. So… …hubby probably perceives her as a jerk. She comes off as a jerk. Sorry, no case for distortion there. And it has nothing to do with sex.
“Consider a narcotic so insidious… …thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment”
It would be really easy for Anonymous to get away from that nasty, ever-expanding, First-Amendment (and probably porn, too) by moving to China or Saudi Arabia. Ah, but on the other hand, the world might then also be deprived of HER literary excretions. And that would be unfair.
A few snippets that go together “…my husband of 13 years and high-school sweetheart” and “…the home he shared with me and our five young children”, and “he began to reject my sexual advances outright, claiming he just didn’t “feel love” for me like he used to, and lamenting that he thought of me “more as the mother of our children” than as a sexual partner”
IMO, in a best case sexual scenario for hubby, the young children would differ in age from oldest to youngest by approximately eight to ten years (allowing for about a year between pregnancies to recuperate). That would mean that Anonymous wife has been pregnant or recovering from a pregnancy for nearly a decade. In the worst case sexual scenario, she’s been pregnant or recovering for the entirety of their thirteen year marriage.
Consider the time she’s been spending having kids, hubby’s sexual perspective of Anonymous wife as the mother of his children is pretty much spot on, and has been reinforced continuously throughout their marriage. Consider that sex during and following pregnancy is far from a sure or regular thing. Consider the strain that caring for baby-> infant-> infant-> toddler-> toddler puts on any marital sexual relationship. Couple all of this with the fact that Anonymous wife is a psychologist. Depending on whether she has a PHD or not, she has spent between 6 and 11 years since high school earning her undergraduate and graduate degrees, and hubby –her high school sweetheart– stuck with her through all of that (with possibly even a pregnancy or two mixed in). Any way you look at it, Daddy would have had to continually step up. Anonymous wife’s article doesn’t offer any information on that score for or against hubby. Wonder why?
I just have to ask. Have to. Have to. How many of the five pregancies were planned by both Anonymous and her husband, and how many were just “whoopsies”? To stave off the argument that it takes two to tango, I will emphatically state that MEN NEED TO TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES. If the husband didn’t want that many kids, he should have taken control. On the other hand, I have overheard too often from women chatting with their friends that “I thought a second (third, etc.,) would be nice, so I just got pregnant”. If Anonymous was making the reproductive decisions unilaterally, hubby might have been having trouble rectifying the dichotomy of maintaining continuing blissful sexual relations with her vs. more mouths to feed and take care of (maybe even while she’s off doing some post-graduate work). Yum.
“In retrospect, I believe he succumbed to the allure of the secret fantasy life he had been indulging since his adolescence.”
Unfortunately, his “secret fantasy life” included living away from her in the basement. Some fantasy. Judging by Anonymous wife’s article, it probably improved his life. If she had manipulated him previously into having some of the children, he may also have been afraid of her getting pregnant again. It seems to me that when she felt her control of him slipping away, she began taking steps to re-establish control of the relationship. When that didn’t work, she looked to position herself for the courts to appear as though she were trying to repair the relationship (and he wasn’t). Too bad that the kids will be the ones who will pay the steepest price for both of their parents’ indiscretions.
Thank you Ms. Smith! That anti-porn article made it sounds like our wives are dying to have sex with us, but we just can’t pull ourselves away from the computer. That is not the case. “Not tonight honey” is a common phrase in many a household. Porn, to the contrary, is making alot of relationships bearable.
And since when does NR allow articles by anonymous writers?
I agree that there are probably few men who develop porn addictions who start out with a vigorous sex life with their wives. But unfortunately, I’ve seen a marriage collapse where what started out as looking at whacking material turned into requests to the wife to dress like a prostitute–then dress like a little girl. Yeah, it freaked her out real bad. The marriage was already in bad shape. (Of course, she was busily having steamy IM conversations with some guy in San Diego.)
LMFAO! Clayton, you iz nawty! Steamy IM conversations? *innocent look* bahahahaha!
I think it depends on the man, and all men, like all women, are different.
Most men can’t make themselves look away when they see something sexual.. but also, most men respect women and love their wives and would never degrade or objectify a woman.
Visual sexuality is male, period. ONe can spend too much time and energy watching that stuff, certainly… but it’s wasted time and distracted energy, not a runaway train to psychosis and misery.
THis woman has an axe to grind, clearly.
I really doubt at this point that our country is a great risk of suffering a cut-off of opportunities to view porn, and I don’t take the question of women trying to control men’s sexuality seriously. Of course they are. Nothing new here. But it is a bi-lateral struggle, don’t you think?
My question is this: don’t people have something better to do than look at porn? The problem with reading or viewing porn is that there are so many better ways to spend one’s time. Porn is not worthwhile just because we should be free to look at or read what we want. I think it is a serious problem simply on the basis of the time it displaces. I don’t advocate banning it, if that were possible, but I certainly think it is a waste of the time that men devote to it.
Oh lordy.
Men can’t have it both ways.
If you want Mom/Sister/Daughter to be ‘pristine’ and ‘pure’ and then you want to marry a woman who is a sex-crazed maniac, uh…hmmmm.
I have a sex-drive stronger than my husband’s, so should this give me license to fantasize about other men? What if ‘he’ finds pictures of naked men with unrealistically huge schlongs on my computer and gets upset? Should I tell him to suck it up because he doesn’t pleasure me even when he does get it up?
You guys that complain about your wife not wanting it much do realize you’re giving yourselves away as sh*tty lovers, right?
If you can find me a male who has complained about his wife “fantasizing” about other men, let us know; I’ve never encountered one, and I am not young. Most men would love it if their wives were that interested, and stared, or masturbated, etc.- it would at least give hope that they were actually interested in sex. I’ve never in my life heard of a male who complained that his wife watch porn or was jealous of her noticing a guy. It may happen- I’ve just never heard, read about, or seen it. I have, however, seen/heard/read of many women who try that argument. It tends to show that they have no real clue about the biochemical differences between men and women. Go read Prof. Steven Rhoads’ “Taking Sex Differences Seriously”.
We take you at your word that your sex drive is stronger than your husband’s, but pardon us if we are just a little bit skeptical of such anecdotes. Most cases where they Do It, because the wife initiates most of the time, are because he got tired of being rejected or persistently encountering the “cold shower subtleties”, that is, “leave me alone” body language. So he simply doesn’t initiate any more. Why lean into the punch? Now, if you are rubbing against him every other day and striking him through his jeans and he pushes you away that often, yeah, we might- might- buy it. After all, there are a few women who have higher than average testosterone levels (women make less but use it more efficiency, the net result is still not even close for most couples). But not as many as people pretend.
You’ve never even heard of insanely jealous men? Come on. I’ve known women whose husbands have a problem with them hanging out even with their female friends. Granted, that sort of control-freakism is not as rampant among married couples as it is in high school, but that’s not saying much.
That said, I personally never had a problem with the half or so of the women I’ve dated who have gotten excited by porn. But if they frequently spent hours with it in the basement, I’m pretty sure I would.
The other possible explanation is that there are a lot of women who are exhausted from working full-time, then coming home and doing nearly all the household chores. What a surprise that they lack energy for sex!
‘Unless there’s some trauma in her past, how many women are that completely uninterested in sex?’
More than there are men. Sometimes it’s for medical or psychological reasons, but sometimes her (or occasionally, less commonly, his) natural libido is just low. The former can be treated or sometimes dealt with, the later is not really ‘fixable’, because it isn’t a malfunction. It may be inconvenient, or troublesome, but it’s not something working other than its ‘supposed’ to.
This can sometimes wreck a marriage, if a high-libido person (not always the husband, but that’s more common) is married to a low-libido person (again, not always the wife but that’s more common). The ‘high’ one tends to be frustrated all the time, with emotional ramifications, the ‘low’ one gets sick of the constant pressure and starts to resent it. In some cases, there’s no real solution, either they find a way to make it work or they break up, but in the cases when the difference is just hardwired it rarely changes. (In cases where the low libido is treatable, that can be different, but sometimes there’s nothing to treat, just a natural low interest).
Nature plays a nasty little trick here sometimes too. A normally low libido person sometimes termporarily develops a high interest in the early stages of the relationship, and in those cases s/he can be just as dismayed as the partner when it fades away and s/he goes back to ‘normal’…and the other one doesn’t.
As for porn, almost all the comments here so far are true, or half-true, sometimes, for some people. Religious prohibitions against porn are inarguable, either you believe that it’s wrong or you don’t. The ‘pragmatic’ arguments for and against are debatable, most are valid at least in some cases or some of the time.
It’s unquestionably true that the popular-culture images of male/female relationships pushed through porn, romance novels, comic books, fairy tales, etc, _are_ damaging. Real life is _NEVER_ like the movies, something most of us realize when talking about car chases or the like, but too many of us forget when watching romantic comedies.
Too often married couples get together with heads full of ideas of how things are ‘supposed’ to work, only to reach with anger, frustration, resentment, or puzzlement when the reality is different. This can involve sex, family ties, money (a common one), attitudes, just about anything. Often it’s just a shock of discovering that your spouse is simply not the person you _thought_ s/he was, and in fact never was.
Is this avoidable? Not 100%. But our modern popular culture has become so poisonously toxic, in ways that include but go far beyond the nasty side of porn, that’s it difficult to avoid being zapped by it, it comes at you whether you zig or zag.
What about studies in Japan? I remember reading how they have quite a huge porn industry, especially with graphic novels (anime). Moreover, being able to access all this porn served as an outlet for “sexual energy,” such that there were less sex crimes in society.
There’s also a lot less sex in Japan period. Don’t know whether porn is a cause, symptom, or either or both. Their birth rates are at record lows. There are enough lonely singles that there’s a market for girlfriend robots and boyfriend-shaped pillows.
You might want to look into the actual statistics. Japan is, after all, the home of the Love Hotel.
Well, I have and here they are:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-02-japan-women-usat_x.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/30/japan
http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/sexless-in-japan
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/15/health/main2572925.shtml
Rapey/tentacle cartoon porn genre is very popular in Japan. I would not be surprised if viewers of that genre have an even harder time relating to a real-life partners than those who watch porn with real-life actors.
I will tell you what I think Helen. I enjoy people who bring a keen analytical sense to a conversation as you have done. Years ago I started doing what you do here, turn things around and look at different slants to see what that feels like. It is an excellent strategy for getting out of the stereotypical frames we are handed everyday.
One thing I have always marveled at is the “Visual Male” meme. This sexist nonsense is in utter disregard to reality.
I’m not so sure if it’s so much about controlling men as it is about allowing women to maintain their sexual boundaries. What are you supposed to do when your partner begins consuming porn and desires to reenact porn fantasies that fall far outside your comfort zone?
Anyway, porn users often prefer to keep their usage a secret to keep a wall of separation between fantasy and reality. My husband became a rabid consumer of porn after a layoff and hid his usage expertly. I watched him morph from a patient, kind, and devoted husband and father into an emotionally distant prevaricator. He became miserable to live with because he preferred his secret fantasy world to his real world. He would pick fights with me just so he could withdraw into his office undisturbed. Making your reality more miserable may make your fantasy world more pleasurable and justified I guess.
My point is that porn addiction, like any addiction, is surrounded by deception and emotional withdrawal. I believe the author when she says it was the root cause of her divorce. It was the reason I almost left my husband.
I was more fortunate than her, however. My husband chose his marriage and family over porn. The man I married has returned to me.
I figure the other side in this debate constitutes two types:
1. Those who don’t view porn and thus don’t understand what its really about and
2. Those who frequently use porn and are desperate to justify it.
Human beings are rationalizers: we can always find excuses for bad behavior. Pity is the best attitude to have towards them – and a careful exposition of just how utterly nasty the “industry” really is. Its not like high minded, dedicated professionals gravitate towards getting 19 year old girls – who like they’re 12 – to have sex with middle-aged me on camera.
We’ve made a terrible mistake this past 40 years or so in allow pornography to come out of the gutter and in to our living room – we’ll be at least that long shoving it back down in to the sewer.
You know, that’s funny. I kind of got the impression that other side of this debate consisted of:
1. People too sexually repressed to recognize the pleasurable effects of sexual material, and
2. People so damaged by a sense of shame about sexuality that they desperately search for an external basis on which to blame their internal conflicts.
Yeah, that’s it – we’re just sexually repressed. And we need to be liberated – by using porn!
Seems I heard this before…back in the 70′s.
You know, the most amusing part about being subtle is how rarely the target catches on.
At least you were kind enough to see the illness of the man. Considerate and compassionate is virtue beyond this world. I read my story in your lines. I was the one left behind. Never to see his love again. Never to see the ones he thought friends. Kids and grandkids no longer here like a lone cry of the nights hoot owl. Never to see the grandkids walk, no plays, no recitals, gone and totally lost. Hate is the wound left where excitement once lived. The huge empty hole, a distruction in whole. No life is worth the five minutes of fun, when a life time of distruction is nothing but an empty lost soul. Porn is the posion of Satan for those who chose to sip the wine.
Glenn is a lucky man. He did a lot better choosing a wife than he did with his adopted daughters(Althouse,McArdle).
I probably would be addicted to pornography, but I’m too busy playing video games.
That was one of the funniest things I’ve read all week!
The insecure always want to force others to adapt to their insecurity rather than confront it and grow beyond it themselves.
“What about studies in Japan?”
Let’s not. Surveys show that the Japanese have less sex than darn near anybody, at least in marriage.
They are at least as conflicted as we are, despite being basically non-religious. The porn is pervasive and weird, but at least it’s wrapped in plastic and not easily accessible to kids anymore. (The beer machines are locked at night as well.)
I’d take the claim of fewer sex crimes with a grain of salt as well. For example, if anyone recalls the Mike Tyson rape case, my wife says there would never have been a prosecution in Japan. A single woman going to a man’s hotel room without expecting anything to happen would strain credibility.
If that doesn’t convince you, we could talk about the young lady who was raped by four Marines in Hiroshima. The Japanese police wouldn’t prosecute, because the girl was drunk and a girlfriend of one of the guys and her story was inconsistent. To their credit, the Marine Corps tried and fried the guys.
News flash: We’re all over-sexed. It’s absurd really. I suppose it all really started to go round the bend when man started living in cities but the last hundred years the curve has gone off the charts. It is not natural to see sexually charged images dozens of times ( at least ) a day and it starts at childhood now. It’s a great way to cause societal decay. C.S. Lewis thought it was all about breaking down our sale’s resistance but its a lot more than that. It may be a plot but it is definitely sick sick sick.
Reflections-
Background:
I ended up in a marriage that was sexless, and little affection also. She really didn’t like it so even when we did it, there was the sense of “lets go quick”. Besides for feeling devalued and worthless myself even though I had a successful career, I was very frustrated. I turned to porn more as a release, then strip clubs. Yes they were female bodies, but it felt cold and raunchy. I felt desperate, not attractive and approaching 50.
On a business trip to Reno, I went to the Sagebrush house, didn’t do a lineup but went to the bar. Started talking to a smart and fun lady – decided to give it a try. A fantastic night – she was a real woman. I’ve seen upscale internet escorts off and on for the 8 years since. At least the ones I see are not the pornstar type. I got to sample different cultures, ages, attitudes, styles, body types, enhanced bodies, athletes, and couch potatoes. I found that most of the women I was seeing were very smart and educated – at least college grads, often more. They were all there willingly and were often single mom’s that needed a job that paid well. The sexiest part of them was their brain! The good ones delivered intimacy as well as great sex.
I endured a year of marriage counseling, although a skilled psychologist it seemed like there was a lot of “how did that make you feel” Babel. Pretty useless. Later, I found a Life Coach that performed erotic massage; she was a former nurse that was also into new age, very smart and incredibly beautiful (and yes 41 years old). Best thing to happen in my life – 3 or 4 times a year keeps me tuned up and very positive about life, women, relationships, and sex that my partner enjoys.
I am now comfortable with who I am, happy, respectful of women, love intimacy, foreplay, cuddling, and quite in tune with women as friends, equals and partners. Interestingly, I’ve gone from most of my friends being guys to being friends with women. In contrast to the Hollywood and Porn industry stereotypes my preferred women are either 40+, size 12 dress, brunette Irish type professional or Asian 30+ with their small slender bodies. It is the rare woman that I don’t find something attractive with.
My points:
1. Sex / intimacy is the only area where we do not get hands on instruction by a professional (except underground as I did).
2. Couples should be working hard to have a healthy intimate relationship including sex. That relationship should take into account the differences in sex drives.
3. Porn has a place in society, but it bothers me how it has crept into the mainstream. Ie why did Titanic need a sex scene with exposed breasts.
4. Our society imposes monogamy onto a marriage when poly could be healthier.
5. I’m actually impressed how K-Lo broached the subject and followed up. It got a lot of discussion going that might not have otherwise.
There are two types of people in the world: 1) the type that masturbates/looks at porn, and 2) liars.
Porn is a good scapegoat for lifeless marriages though.
I didn’t know that conservatives have sex?
Of course they do. They spend all their time screwing the working people.
Really? Conservatives make the jobs, libs spend the tax money generated on social welfare programs. We’re the ones getting screwed.
I think you should give classes in deadpan sarcasm. Dang my sides hurt.
Where do you think little conservatives come from?
If porn is what a man/woman wants to do, who am I to stop that individual?
BUT, I will contend (from observation and experience) that it has the powerful ability to dehumanize individuals. Like it or not, men were created as instinctive visual creatures. “Men got needs”. But any man playing that game also needs to accept, “Women got needs too.” (And woman’s needs are no less important.) Like it or not, women were also created to have an emotional need to be treasured highly above any other women. Which this explains why an attractive woman will settle for the ugliest man as long as he makes her feel like she’s the most important and only woman for him.
Unless one accepts God’s creation of man and woman and His plan for them, one will never understand this. I know some will guffaw at this, but ALL the women I know (and yes, I know many including non-Christians) seem to emulate the “church” (Christ’s bride) instinctively. They have a natural need for one man to give up himself UNSELFISHLY for her. . . protect her, cherish her, willing to die for her, and even protect her from himself and his selfish ways. (It’s selfishness and disrespect ultimately in the details of a destroyed marriage. And sorry, folks, but porn is a selfish hobby that destroys. It’s not the only selfish hobby BTW.)
Ultimately, it’s not he PORN itself that consumes its victims and destroys marriages, families, and even the individual (married or single, young or old, rich or poor). It’s SELFISHNESS.
Okay, okay. Some men and women are not bothered by it. Or at least, they have soothed themselves with the idea that it’s culturally normal and accepted. I’d love to see the number of women, afraid to take a stand in public, actually come out in private and admit, “Yeah, I try to accept it, but it’s hurt me.”
It amazes me the number of women who say in public they are okay with it, and in private, they are hurting so badly and trying to cope and accept it.
Nonetheless, I wouldn’t impose my morality onto someone else. And again, SELFISHNESS in all forms, regardless of the gender exercising it, can hurt others. The issue is about respect really.
If you are okay being in a relationship with a porn addict, go for it.
If you aren’t okay with it, DON’T GET IN A RELATIONSHIP with someone who would disrespect your feelings. Set your standards, and don’t put up with anything less.
And yes, there are some mighty fine, decent males (and females too) who are not into porn. Not everybody looks at it, contrary to what culture will have you believe.
By some of the comments here you’d think a guy wouldn’t be able to pull one off without porn. lmao
Man, I’m appreciating my husband more than EVAH!
I completely agree: the core problem in just about every marriage is selfishness. It used to be that it was largely a man thing–because women were socialized to be obedient little helpmeets. But in the last several decades, I’ve seen a disturbing side effect of both liberation and the collapse of Christianity in the U.S.: widespread selfishness among both men and women. In traditional America, a selfish guy would just drive his cheery little wife into depression, then alcoholism or prescription drugs. But in post-Christian America, two selfish people can’t make a marriage last. I can only hope that they get the divorce before they have kids–who really get the shaft from a divorce.
There’s another consideration in the way men and women relate to each other, and that is that we’re attracted to the same people, over and over. By which I mean that very often, if you look at the various members of the opposite sex that someone has been attracted to over the course of their lifetime (whether anything came of it or not), the looks, personality, etc, are similar. Sometimes this is harmless, but sometimes it’s a problem, like the abused spouse who finally gets away from the abuser, only to get together witih the same kind of person next time, _because something about that sort of person attracts them_.
Often, when we hear a woman say ‘men are such-and-such’ or ‘women do such-and-such’ in a sour or bitter way, we find a person who is drawn precisely the sort of man or woman who does the thing s/he hates. In this case, self-knowledge can be a (very painful) source of freedom.
Sorry, Helen, you are full of more crap than a Christmas goose. I really don’t care about “controlling men’s sexuality.” Men are so afraid that somewhere Mommy’s going to come back and tell them not to touch lil’ willy anymore. Honestly, are there any real men left anymore?
I can verify Anonymous’s experience. My husband got more and more into porn to the point that it took away his interest in participating in family life, and certainly took away his interest in sex with a wife. He said he didn’t want to make the effort to relate to a person. It was too much trouble (and no, I’m not demanding; anything but). And no, I’m not 300 pounds and ugly.
When I put pressure on his addiction, because it was violating his marriage, he took up with a mentally unstable woman who promised him he could have his porn. According to what she said to others, the addiction grew, and he was masturbating to it.
Helluva example to the kids. You guys can justify this all you want, and I feel sorry for your women. There are lots of studies out there that back up what I’m saying. Read them.
Now he’s got no woman at all, other than the pictures online to masturbate to. And I learned that sometimes breaking up is the happy ending.
Enjoy.
Now, let’s rescue our sons and daughters from the cultural lies that porn is okay before they buy it.
Ahead of us lies an entire generation who will greatly benefit the therapy industry if we don’t at least get the message out.
“And I learned that sometimes breaking up is the happy ending.”
I’m sure I’d feel that way if I were in his shoes, too.
The anonymous writer claims that porn “produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined.”
In 2006, Hewlett-Packard alone had net revenue of $91.7 billion.
The anonymous writer was playing fast and loose with reality.
You do know the difference between net revenue and profit margin, don’t you? HP spend an awful lot of money to make that money champ. Porn is more profitable than HP by some order of magnitude.
Not that I really care. Porn is freely available and I don’t care what people do in their own homes.
Original said “revenue” though, not “profit”, so the complaint stands from my reading…
I agree that pornography is not the disease, but merely a symptom of it. Married men wouldn’t be turning to it (and, of course, relationships with other women) if they had any integrity.
I don’t know what kind of “doctor” this Helen quack is but she must’ve got her PHD thru Cracker Jack’s or saving enough cereal box tops for a certificate.
There is MORE THAN ENOUGH scientific PROOF and FACTS that porn is one of the most dangerous ‘drugs’ in the world. If you cannot see the effects of porn and violence and how it’s shaping out culture,lives,history then you yourselves have been blinded,duped,and controlled by it.
May God–Who resurrected Jesus roughly 2000 years ago to free us all from these sins–open your eyes and set you free.
You’re right! We need to return to traditional Biblical values to discover the true meaning of marriage.
Now: On your back, Rachel, and give me a son, or else I’m sleeping with your maid Bilhah tonght. Or maybe I’ll do your sister Leah, or Leah’s maid Zilpah. It’s all good.
Umm…It was Rachel who was angry at Jacob for not giving her a son. She was frustrated that Leah was able to produce sons, but she could not. So she asked jacob to sleep with her maidservant who would produce a son on her behalf. Leah did the same.
Put up or shut up. Lets see some “facts” that porn is a dangerous drug.
With porn, the pill and masturbation aids being widely available without social stigma, it’s a wonder we have any birth rate at all. Those too dumb to have sex without getting someone pregnant are probably lowering the general IQ.
I’m not really sure what your title means. “Men’s sexuality” or just the term “sexuality” just seems like a vague buzz word to me. Is there such a thing as “inflatable woman sexuality” or “magazine/porn site sexuality?” Sex refers to the mixture of genetic material from a male and a female partner, no? In that case, everything else is just eroticism. A self-sustaining society needs more than just eroticism. It needs sex and, being human, it needs an arrangement for raising and socializing its young. Sorry to be so clinical, but those basic facts pretty much answer the assertions about pornography being either neutral or positive. If personal satisfaction or orgasm becomes the most important part of eroticism, why bother with “relationships,” which these days seem to be almost universally condemned as ill-fated or very difficult to maintain, at best?
Has any study been done on how mass media portray marriage vs. “hooking up?” How broadly accepted is the preference for life-long marriages any more? Is it even concurred in by social scientists? They always seem to tell us that such things are hang ups to be shed in order to be mentally healthy.
As far as feminism goes, I don’t believe that anything about it is healthy. It perpetuates the view of the sexes as a competition for power, an application of Marxism to sex roles.
Helen, you are pulling to the left.
A libertarian/leftist would only speak of porn in such fond terms.
Considering the incredible explosion in porn availability over the past few decades, the huge story here is the LACK of obvious social consequences. However, attempts to control other human beings by declaring them sinful or pathological are as old as the hills. I think Dr. Helen has it about right.
I think there is a big difference between someone who looks at hard-core, BDSM porn 3 hours a day vs. someone who looks at a Playboy once every couple of weeks. I think the former is a sign of a deviant, the latter just symptomatic of a normal, red-blooded male.
I read the article on the day it was posted. Then I read Dr. Helen’s, who seemed to be writing about a different article. I re-read the original and decided Dr. Helen was misrepresenting it. “My main problem with this piece is the insinuation that porn is to blame for an entire generation not being able to form lasting marriages. . . .” I didn’t discover the insinuation, nor did I leave the article with the distorted conclusion. There are plenty of studies that demonstrates what Anonymous was arguing for in the article. Dr. Helen’s dismissive attitude toward an arguable public health threat does not seem to line up with either the facts or a sanctified form of common sense.
Dr. Helen is quite correct.
Anything that is “forbidden” or has excess control from someone else results in the behavior going “underground”.
My favorite example is prohibition.
Speak easies flourished, illegal alcohol was rampant.
Prohibition did not make people see alcohol as anything other than an illicit thrill.
The same can be said for many drugs. Marijuana for instance.
Men are visual creatures, and have been going to see “porn” for hundreds of years.
Burlesque, saloon dancehall girls, peepshows all go back many hundreds of years and have been called many things.
Most of the people that seek to “abolish” porn are well meaning, but totaly unrealistic.
I am staring 50 in the eye, have been married 26 years, and dearly love my wife.
I will accept the abolition of porn, if it includes “romance novels” ,those stupid “valentines day movies”, and lifetime television.
If you want to take mine away, you can’t have yours either.
Dr. Helen, I agree with you. There are women who have never grown up, who think that sex is dirty and can’t have a sexual relationship without guilt, even with a loving and committed partner. These women then try to stamp out all sexual feelings in their partners. Yep, it’s a control issue.
I feel as bad as the next person that her marriage didn’t work out, but isn’t it possible that she….
– kept putting on the pounds and made no effort to get back in shape
– became frumpy and uninterested in sex
– wanted her husband to see her give birth, emotionally blackmailed him to be there, which not only caused him to stop seeing her in a sexy way, but also lead to other underlying emotional issues
– flat out completely refused to let him even try to put it in her poopslot
– didn’t even once try to watch some porn with him, instead used it as a cudgel to increase the emotional division in their marriage even further
Porn didn’t ruin her marriage, it just gave that poor bloke a chance to try and recapture what she would not do anymore. Maybe he was only looking into the loving eyes of Ashley Blue, Amber Rain, or some other young woman, as opposed to other parts of their sweet nubile anatomy.
Oh I was quite open sexually with my younger ex Guy. I was and still am in great physical shape (even when he had a pot belly) and I wore the purple penetrator strap-on and had guy take it like a man because that is what turns me on and he should accommodate my sexual needs right? If he refused I retreated into my pornorama room to masturbate in frustration or had my pool boy walk around on a leash for me or I’d hire some of my male dancers to strip tease for me. I also liked watching men on men having sex in pornos which is more realistic than men on female porn but Guy become uncomfortable like a little priss who couldn’t handle such beautiful acts of lovemaking between two hot men (much hotter than those hideous troll men in hetero porn) and we eventually divorced and I moved on to greener pastures and greener men who were willing to experiment. I guess I’m just more woman than most men can handle but I’m still on the prowl.
Hell! I wrote the SEXbook for heaven’s sake! I’m all about SEX!
I need a man with an open mind, a passion for gay porn and a ready and willing anus so that I can pound his a-spot. Is that too much to ask? I think not.
He’s out there somewhere. . . Oh yes, he’s out there somewhere. . .
Sincerely,
Madge
Thank you for writing this. I couldn’t stomach to read the entire article you are responding to, a fine example of the kind of “social conservatism” I was hoping had been left behind in the early 90′s.
It is this kind of nonsense that leaves so many among the young vulnerable to the siren song of the left. The leftists portray themselves as liberators, and conservatives as tyrannical fuddy-duddies. The leftists are NOT liberators, but that doesn’t mean that their depiction of (some) conservatives as would-be social tyrants is incorrect.
Pornography is in the mind of the beholder. Reactionary opposition to sexually arousing materials is not based upon a careful contemplation of their costs and benefits, but upon irrational feelings of fear and disgust about sex itself.
Sex is not evil, but some people feel that it is. The reasons some feel this way are steeped in flaws within the culture of America that come to manifest themselves as flaws within the psyches of some Americans. In other words it’s irrational nonsense that these people have been carefully conditioned to believe by others who were equally irrational, usually when they were quite young. Sex = bad becomes a reflex for them. How they are able to marry and have children is still quite surprising to me.
Sex is good, but only when it is handled with wisdom. An automobile is good, but in the hands of an incompetent driver can lead to death and destruction. Sex is the same way.
No sane person has a conniption at the sight of a car, or of people driving cars. Yet when the subject is sex it seems that all sanity goes right out the window for these people and they begin acting like paranoid schizophrenics.
Crazy is as crazy does.
I’m just thankful that I’m not one of them.
As for me, I don’t really like porn. I don’t watch porn for the same reason that I don’t watch wrestling: It’s fake. I don’t think it is damaging to anyone, I just don’t think it is worth watching. It isn’t interesting because it isn’t real.
Show me a video in which a woman I’d want to have sex with is truly enjoying sex with her husband or boyfriend and I’ll be interested in watching that. Unfortunately that isn’t what the people who make porn actually produce. What they do make seems to cater to adolescent males, or at least males who never matured past that point.
In a world where the left is attempting to create a Marxist dystopia here in the United States, we don’t have the luxury of indulging the neuroses of “social conservatives.”
I disagree.
Any woman knows that guys who look at a lot of porn are lousy in bed. And in regards to rape, a few years ago my psychology textbook reported that the areas with the most porn purchased per capita were also the areas with the highest incidents of rape, and that in my hometown a police psychologist reported that every rapist was heavily into porn.
As for “all men look at it”, well, you may be right, many struggle to control their addiction to it, it is very alluring to us guys. We have all succumbed at one point or another – but many of us are trying to muster the self control to turn away from it, just like we muster the self control to go to work every day to earn for our families.
Common sense tells us that married men who look at a lot of porn are probably not servicing their wives, and that looking at porn can make wives seem unsatisfactory (who wants go to all the trouble to be romantic when you can just quickly and quietly masturbate to some sex scene?). And do you really think that even when those guys sleep with their wives, the way they have been programmed to jerk of quickly and quietly makes them great lovers?
Porn is bad for relationships. To note that is not to take away anyone’s rights, it’s just a statement of fact.
On reflection, it seems strange that the Americans expect men and women to defer sex and family, or at least family, for a decade after puberty. That seems to be the characteristic perversion of this time, the one so widespread and customary that most consider it virtuous.
Kralizec, I’ve often wondered about this. We have a situation in which the age of consent has been going up for some time, while the age of puberty has been going down. It would seem there is a real conflict there.
I love how the media and society tries to cast pornography as a “male” problem even though a recent study in Australia found that 1 in 3 women watch porn: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/one-in-three-women-watch-porn-study/story-e6freooo-1225828848899
Here are some more details statistics about the viewing habits of women and pornography: http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics-pg6.html
The truth is that pornography is just as much a female problem as it is with a male problem. The only thing is that we’ve attached stigma to men watching it.
Porn in marriage is mostly about difference in sex drive level. Or its about lack of attraction. You still love your partner but 50 lbs is 50 lbs and no amount of love makes it attractive. Porn is obviously natural. It’s been around as long as civilization has. Prostitution would almost certainly be much more prevalent without it. I’d venture it saves far more relationships than it severs.
You can take anything ‘natural’ and make it ‘disgusting’ and ‘unnatural’.
Eating is ‘natural’. Obesity and overeating to the point of gluttony is ‘unnatural’.
Masturbating is healthy (especially for men’s prostates) but, you don’t need ‘porn’ to go there.
Example?
If you’re stranded alone on a desert island without any porn, I can guaranfreakin’tee you that you’ll be fine and dandy using your imagination.
Just as Prostitution needs ‘Johns’ to keep going so too does Porn (the other ‘P’ word).
But, hey, keep the smut industry rich with your dependence on it.
Men don’t need porn to masturbate huh? You know what else men don’t need? Women trying to tell us what to do. Buzz off and stay out of our private lives.
If you don’t grow-up and continue to be the 15-YO boi whacking off, I could care less. I just feel bad for any female you might encounter that you haven’t given full disclosure of your porn addiction to.
If you’re so ‘proud’ of it, tell every girl you date that you’re a porn-freak.
At the very least, be honest about it.
I agree with the Insta-Wife. Porn is an outlet for male sexuality in a world where women increasingly control which males get to procreate. I know many women look at porn and cringe, but they should not be afraid of it.
Porn is far safer than prostitution.
Porn is prostitution. The line is so blurry as to not exist. The only difference is that one is legal and the other not. Prostitution is sex-acts for money–so is porn. Check out the stories of some women who’ve ‘escaped’ porn at http://www.thepinkcross.org/
Make sure you’re not feeling queasy when you do.
It needs to be pointed out – apparently – that Helen Smith’s essay neither advocated for porn nor against it; she was addressing the more specific and much narrower topic of the over-the-top and wildly inflated claims certain people make about the harm it causes. In the same way that demurring in the face of someone’s assertion that spitting on the sidewalk will cause the plague and result in millions of deaths doesn’t make one an advocate for spitting, people can disagree with some of the more outlandish claims made about the harm caused by porn without in any way advocating for porn.
Few reasonable people would argue with a straight face that pornography – depending on how one defines it – is good for society. (The – inevitable – men who make such a claim are basically saying, in a proudly recalcitrant and vaguely prurient way, “I like it” – an entirely unnecessary assertion, because no one on earth would dispute it.) On the other hand, over-the-top claims that “porn destroyed my wonderful marriage” and so on will – and should – always run into reasonable doubt. The urge to claim that one’s marital problems are entirely caused by some outside agency – porn, in this case – rather than the husband’s personal psychological problems is understandable, but not necessarily reasonable. While it’s obviously not conducive to a sound marriage to have one’s husband obsessively consumed by porn, it’s highly doubtfulthat self-loverboy would have been, you know, a really Tom-terrific husband if only he hadn’t stumbled across some online porn one day.
I sometimes wonder if some of the more over-the-top over-reactions to porn might be a subconscious, practically genetic-level, and justified reaction to the low-level pornification of the public sphere, which is so much more beyond personal control. Popular music specifically marketed to teen and pre-teen girls often shows women dressed like hookers performing squatting gyrations and making sexual-pleasure faces; rappers who are wildly popular with young people often refer to women, in violent terms, as disposable and worthless sex toys.
Such public behavior, on a mass-marketed, social level, has a greater negative effect on far more families and children, by many orders of magnitude, than men’s private viewing of naked women does. For 99 percent of men – or, if you question them directly, about 12 percent – the old adage “once you’ve seen one naked woman, you want to see them all” is true at a limbic level. The fact that some men’s brains light up like a Christmas tree covered in klieg lights that won’t shut off is a different problem altogether, but it’s not a new problem, and it’s not caused by images of naked women. Across the centuries and around the globe, long before there was online porn, a certain subset of men have had problems with violence, despondency, obsessiveness, depression, incommunicativeness, etc. It’s understandable that some concerned and sincere women who see the rather pointed, modern, time-bound visual manifestation of these tendencies in their husbands and loved ones might convince themselves that removing the visual evidence will enable them to control the tendencies of the such inevitable outliers, but sadly it’s just not true.
I’m beyond speechless right now. I’ve found PJM to be quite entertaining and informative regarding issues of economics, but this is absolutely ludicrous.
1) As my name suggests, I choose not to masturbate. I also reject any claim that “All men” masturbate. They don’t. Some men, believe it or not, experience real sexual freedom.
2) Freedom in our sexuality is not about being able to have access to many different experiences or partners. Freedom in Sexuality is about being able to direct all of our sexuality in an authentically human way. This is primarily in a human’s ability to sacrifice itself for the benefit of others – a total gift of self. A total gift of self is a uniquely human ability. It happens in war, when a soldier sits on a grenade and saves his fellow soldiers lives. In the sexual act, the gift of self occurs not in seeking your own fulfillment sexually, but in seeking your spouse’s fulfillment. That is why masturbation is ‘wrong.’ It is a less than human act, because it is about self indulgence rather than self donation. Not only that, but there is nothing more pathetic than sitting in front of your computer screen with your pants around your ankles, looking over your shoulder to make sure your spouse/girlfriend/roomate/children don’t see you pleasing yourself.
3)The author is correct that there are problems beyond pornography that affect marriages, but it is ignorance on her part to say that pornography doesn’t have a particularly harmful effect on them (though I include romance novels as a type of porn).
Eliminating pornography is is not about controlling men’s sex lives (would we say that eliminating prostitution is controlling men’s sex lives)? . It is all about helping men act more like real men… men capable of true freedom… capable of self mastery and self donation so that their wives can have a wonderful sex life as well. In this gift of self is where men find a fulfillment deeper than an act of masturbation.
Don’t buy into the lie that this type of freedom isn’t possible for you or your spouse.
Now procede to mock this post.
Good post. I skimmed the bulk of the posts and was surprised at the lack of self discipline and the emphasis on self-gratification. My wife and I are very happily married, even though sex is limited due to illness. But when we have it, it is very good, and very normal. No kinky stuff needed. What seems to be missing in the vast majority of posts I’ve seen here is the recognition that there is more to sex than the physical. My wife and I enjoy that non-physical aspect immensely, and that is why neither of us will stray or turn to porno. Like “The Man Who Chooses Not To”, we have real freedom, real happiness, and really good sex.
I won’t mock it but alluding to self actualization or having a spiritually deep relationship through sex with your spouse in a thread about masturbation and porn is asking for attack. You are a man who has taken sexuality to the place where it was intended to go in a way that fully integrates body, mind and spirit. I’m sure there will be those who want to shoot the messenger.
Porn has taken the place of moving forward in relationship. It’s a way of standing still. It serves a need, but just like donuts are not a meal, visuals are not a relationship.
You hit the nail on the proverbial head when you speak about giving. It’s so easy for people to speak about needing something, but responding to a partner and giving them what they need seems to either be low on the list or non-existant. If both parties are willing to move forward, and both are giving, then they both end up receiving.
Porn, romance novels, romantic movies, all of those things are narcissistic. Singular, insular, solitary activities. The anthesis of interpersonal relationship. At the same time, it’s just a symptom of the refusal to give, to be involved, to ask for what you need and to give what is needed.
A man barks, ‘eh she’s demanding and doesn’t give me what I need’. A woman retreats, he doesn’t want me, he won’t give me what I need. Two solitary beings walking around without getting their needs met and blaming the other.
People have to be willing to move past the ego or it won’t go anywhere. And so much of the time the answer is not what is that person willing to do for you, but where are you willing to go in your head?
Aw forget it, click click click is just so much easier…
Will you marry me?
Anna – Sorry. Can’t marry you. I’m taken, so to speak. But there is an observation a very smart man once made that I found extremely profound when I was in college and still ponder today:
“Pornography is not ‘wrong’ because it reveals too much of a person. It is wrong because it reveals too little of a person and reduces them to an object.”
If this is true, and I believe it is, the consequences should be obvious. If he objectifies a particular woman he will very likely objectify other women, including his wife. The Witherspoon institute research supports this, and if anyone here hasn’t already, I really recommend that you give it a visit.
One thing I found interesting from the report is how it shapes the users brain to determine what is ‘normal’ sexual activity. As the porn user continues viewing, he becomes increasingly exposed to fetishes or other forms of gratification. Consider anal sex… men who watch porn believe this occurs much more frequently among married couples than it actually does. If this is research is true then it can be expected that these men will expect their wives to engage in the act even if it is repulsive to her. Pornography, of course, never shows the damage that this does to the body of the receiver (whether the receiver is a woman or a man) since the actor always pretends like she enjoys it.
Next time a man wants his wife to engage in anal sex, I would ask him to consider whether or not he enjoyed his last prostate exam.
Suicidal Idiot sez: “…You should be grateful that he’s looking at porn….” *********** Why should I be grateful that my husband is looking at porn?? When he masterbates over Internet porn, he doesn’t want to do me. He will hold pleasant conversations with me, but dodges a goodnight kiss. And he views porn and masterbates 15 minutes before we leave to go see our grandkids. How is that a good thing?? It interferes with our sex life, and our sexual intimacy is non-existent.
A man that chooses not to masturbate (1:41):
First of all, I assure you that you’re neither speechless nor ineloquent. I do feel compelled to point out, though – once again – that neither Dr. Helen nor any commenter in this thread advocated masturbation or porn-watching, nor suggested that either activity, either singly applied or in combination, is either commendable, recommended, or finally rewarding. That being said, the general tenor of your comment entirely corroborates the good doctor’s point, which is that the spectre of particular women blaming porn itself for the behaviour and attitudes of their husbands/spouses is a misdirection, because it drives the blame away from the husband or spouse and in the direction of the inchoate harm known as “porn.” Inasmuch as you positively claim your own sexuality with an iron grip, and in the name of causes far more noble than porn, you clearly understand that your sexual offerings, being a gift to your spouse, are borne on a force far greater than the otherwise dominating force known as porn, and that this personal choice/responsibility is a godsend of sorts to the woman in your life.
By honorably putting the onus for your listed potential behaviors directly upon yourself – in a quite enlightened fashion, to be honest – instead of blaming “porn” for any past or potential fall from grace on your part, you actually make Dr. Helen’s specific point, which is that those women who blame “porn,” rather than the potentially stalwart men in their lives, are engaging in a form of spiritual misdirection; your evident inclination to own up to your own behavior reflects, in a roundabout way, the root of Dr. Helen’s post, which is that individuals’ choices – including wifey’s choice of spouse – carry more weight than does the blaming of some inchoate category of societally-available pleasure – “porn” – for any consequential shortfall in life satisfaction.
You wrote eloquently of your own personalized decision to not waste the special gift that you have specially reserved for your special loved one “in front of (a) computer screen with your pants around your ankles, looking over your shoulder to make sure your spouse/girlfriend/roomate/children don’t see you pleasing yourself.” Doesn’t this sacrifice on your part, and the reasoning you’ve provided for making it, at least suggest that you understand that if it ever comes to pass that your wife or the listed others ever find you in such an awkward position it would be entirely reasonable for her or them to blame you, and solely you – and more to the point, your judgement, and perhaps your general lack of wherewithal – for that uncomfortable scenario, rather than blaming it on the rather inchoate catch-all phrase known as “porn”?
The point you make, A man who chooses not to masturbate, is, in a nutshell, Dr. Helen’s point. Your iron grip on your own sexuality is admirable, and if you knock away the surface differences with appropriate vigor, your comment and Dr. Helen’s post are actually not so very far apart.
I think there is such a thing as men, or women, becoming obsessed with porn, but it’s a symptom of problems in the relationship. I met my first husband when we were teenagers. He was afraid and embarrassed to buy his own porn magazines and I would buy them for him. I was a cheerleader in high school and considered myself to be quite cute. He had come from a very strict religious background and being the only boy (because his father had left), he did not have a lot of male modelling in handling relationships. I wasn’t threatened by the porn and didn’t object to it until years later when we had kids, then I asked him to just keep it where they couldn’t find it. After the birth of our first child I became aware of his need to masturbate a lot. Still, I wasn’t concerned. I don’t believe that he was doing anything any differently, just that I became more aware of it. When our second daughter was about three, I asked him to move his magazines out of the hall closet, because the girls might find it. He failed to do that, so I burned the entire collection. That seemed very harsh to him and he felt like I had changed my viewpoint. I hadn’t, but I had two small girls in the house and I didn’t want to explain why Daddy liked to look at naked women. I was still a lean, trim and pretty woman, so I wasn’t threatened by the porn. In fact, often before I would leave for work, he would want to watch me get dressed or see what kind of panties I was wearing. Eventually, he was unemployed and I was working three jobs to keep us alive. I became less available in the marriage and he began to feel powerless. He seemed to have become obsessed with porn and with masturbating, and being more open about looking at other women. When he did finally go back to work, he had an affair with a co-worker. He decided he wanted a divorce and I left. At times, I think he preferred porn to a real woman. To me, porn doesn’t seem any worse than a fantasy, the biggest difference being that you can turn off the TV, PC or you can close the magazine. Most of the images are already in a person’s head anyway. Women have fantasies, too, but they often won’t admit that they enjoy masturbating while remembering a past lover or an imaginary lover, or that they enjoy fantasies about doing sexual things that they would never actually carry through. We women are afraid to tell our men that we might think of someone else when we have sex with them, and rightfully so. They will probably accept it in the moment, but like us, when they examine the idea they can’t be objective about it and think they aren’t measuring up in some way. Let’s think about a common fantasy that both men and women share. Every man believes that a bigger penis means he will be a better lover. He thimks sex will be better for both him and his partner. Every woman, at some point, may wish that her partner’s penis was bigger. The woman’s idea of a bigger penis is probably very different than a man’s idea of a bigger penis. A woman is usually thinking about a little bit bigger while a man is thinking about a lot bigger. of course, this is my own POV, I have no idea what other women imagine, but I do know that when I was presented with a monstrous penis, it was just a physical impossibility and incredibly frustrating for both of us. Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last long. I thought I was weird for not being physically able to accomodate my partner, and maybe that is true. But there are lots more guys out there with average-sized equipment, so I’m not too worried that I can’t find someone. I think the biggest thing for most people, whether you’re a man or a woman, is feeling secure in the relationship. We often treat marriage like it’s the end of the relationship, but it should be treated as a time where we will concentrate and grow together with another person, in many ways, especially sexually. I don’t approve of how available porn is but once a boy becomes a teenager, sexual fantasies are normal and looking at pretty (or whatever you like) girls are normal.
Reminds me of a quote….
“One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone’s sex conduct. We all have sex problems. We’d hardly be human if we didn’t. What can we do about them?…..”
I guess if you are interested and can find the quote you could read their suggestions.
I found your article interesting.
I notice everyone in the comments seems to be attacking porn as awful and men who view it as disgusting pigs, but totally ignored your superb point about the expectations romance novels and sappy movies give women. Many of those romance novels women read are just as trashy as hardcore porn, without the stimulating pictures.
Porn isn’t a cut and dry issue. There are COUPLES who view it together as a way to get through a libido low, etc. Many men watch it without raping anyone or messing up their marriages. If it works for you to not watch, more power to you. But not everyone is some lecher going to hell for discriminately choosing to view it.
The problem is not that it ‘shows’ too much of the sexual act but that it shows too little- of THE SOUL.
God bless.
Erotic images in the mind of a man can be an aid when having sex with a wife or long-term girlfriend. The brain acts as a sex organ, a stimulus. If the partner is all the man needs for stimulation, that’s great. If images in his mind, however, can add to his intensity or supply something that’s lacking, it’s also good. Of course, re. assessing porn, it depends on what kind of porn, how much and in what way the guy uses it, etc. A normal male looking at pretty ladies is not a problem we have to worry about. A psychopath looking at sadistic porn–is. It can make him worse.
Perhaps when Anonymous was writing this article, she should have taken a look at both sides of the porn issue. Had she been less emotionally distraught, she might have seen this study that found “all men watch porn” and that porn did not change the men’s perception of women or their relationships:
The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful.
Prof Lajeunesse said pornography did not have a negative effect on men’s sexuality.
“Not one subject had a pathological sexuality,” he said. “In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional.
“Pornography hasn’t changed their perception of women or their relationship, which they all want to be as harmonious and fulfilling as possible,” he added.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I quit reading when I got to that part. If you truly think that all men watch porn, and these answers are accurate for all men, you are delusional.
The woman who wrote that article obviously knows more about the dangers of porn than you do. I don’t know that she is 100% accurate, but I know you are starting from a 100% faulty premise.
Perhaps when Anonymous was writing this article, she should have taken a look at both sides of the porn issue. Had she been less emotionally distraught, she might have seen this study that found “all men watch porn” and that porn did not change the men’s perception of women or their relationships:
The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful.
Prof Lajeunesse said pornography did not have a negative effect on men’s sexuality.
“Not one subject had a pathological sexuality,” he said. “In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional.
“Pornography hasn’t changed their perception of women or their relationship, which they all want to be as harmonious and fulfilling as possible,” he added.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I quit reading when I got to that part. If you truly think that all men watch porn, and these answers are accurate for all men, you are delusional.
The woman who wrote that article obviously knows more about the dangers of porn than you do. I don’t know that she is 100% accurate, but I know you are starting from a 100% faulty premise.
I wonder if this woman ever thought that the main problem was that she is a psychologist?
Most men detest getting analyzed for everything they do and say, and somehow she strikes me as the type that just *has* to offer her opinion on everything.
He has probably told her that “I watch pr0n because when *she* opens her mouth, it’s not to shrink my head”.
In other words, the problem is likely not pr0n, but *her*.
I think the problem lies not with adult men who grew up sneaking their Dad’s playboy magazine, but with the generation who spend their formative years self-gratifying in front of the computer. The computer then becomes the thing that turns them on.
The fact is, that the human sex drive IS powerful. There’s a reason! Without it, the population would die off. It’s not the responsibility of government to limit or regulate porn, it’s the job of parent to teach their kids about their sex drives and how to manage them.
I usually like Dr. Helen’s point of view, but here she just does a shoddy job. Her rebuttal is to site a study? Oh, yeah, that settles it.
Everyone knows, deep inside, that porn has a deleterious effect. It divorces men from reality. Too much daydreaming does the same thing and it ain’t good.
There are an awful lot of things that “everyone knows, deep inside” that turn out not to be true.
Here’s an idea. Dont get fat, look hot, and act sexy. Profit.
I think the author of this article is a liberal and it is so obvious. Leave it to a liberal to cover up and help satans evil influence continue to rot societ’s last few morals away. This is the mindset of all seculars so it is to be expected. I for one know how addicting porn is, because I myself am addicted to it. I know it is evil but I DO NOT CARE ENOUGH TO STOP. You would have to be a moron to think it is not sinful. Anything that is this fun has to be wrong. Anyways I know one thing, if you doubt porn is a cancer in society just ask yourself why so many males enjoy homesexual sex and love to masturbate on their webcams. Communism seems to have won. Nations fall not from war but from a lack of morals. America lasted 200 years plus now, it will not be long till we collapse at this rate.
I think the author of this article is a liberal and it is so obvious.
You’re new here, aren’t you?
I believe this article misses a major factor in porn – what it does to women, and NOT just the wives. Sure, porn can destroy a marriage, however I believe porn can be like alcohol. Many people can handle it, but others cannot. I avoid porn for what it does to women. http://thepinkcross.org/
Thanks for linking to the Pink Cross. Shelly is doing amazing work, and reading the stories of women who have been abused is truly powerful.
I think the underlying issue IS being missed on this discussion. It’s called “the human condition”, which is fallen and depraved nature. We incline to that, many philosophers have observed for thousands of years.
Porn is yet another selfish indulgence; erotica have been around many thousands of years (that doesn’t make it right) – look at Soddom and Gommorah – but now, it’s available in your own living room, your office, your iPhone….you no longer have to even go out of your house to see it!!
Porn didn’t invent sex – God did! In Genesis, God said that all He had made was “good” and “very good.” However, when it is twisted and perverted and used inappropriately (outside the bounds God designed for it to function in and be good within), it always will hurt you. Every time.
If you struggle with porn, the way out is through Christ. He is the only one that can transform your mind and heart. Just ask Him.
btw, there have been studies PROVING that porn literally changes the brain waves in those who are addicted to it – it goes from being mental, to actual physical changes.
I can speak for myself specifically on this issue. I filed for divorce from my husband of 19 years. We have 3 kids and this was a grueling decision. Pornography was the issue, sort of. It had more to do with the choices he made. I often said people would be more understanding of my plight if it was booze. I left, and it didn’t stop. I came back, and it didn’t stop. He lost his job, it didn’t stop. His 3 daughters were one room away in broad daylight, and it didn’t stop. In this sense, it is an addiction for him. When a grown man cannot resist something so destructive on his and his family’s life, it’s an addiction. It could have been drugs. No, I’m not the perfect wife and it seems misplaced to put the blame on the object rather than the person.
2 Questions:
1)
Did his watching pornography directly lead to him losing his job, or is it more a case of his sex drive didn’t die when he lost his job?
There is a huge difference between the two.
I gather you hate pornography.
Many men watch too much wrestling, or visit too many political blogs, or maybe even spend time at a local slowpitch league.
In theory, if they took that time and used it to make swashbuckling real estate deals, you and your family would be multi-decamillionaires, but that isn’t really a realistic standard.
So how did porn cause him to lose his job or is it your position he should cease all interest in sex until he’s back at work? (Because, you know, all available evidence shows low testosterone males are the ones who achieve the greatest business success).
2)
You say your daughters were in the next room, not in the room. Do you not see an important distinction between the two things?
Now full clarity. If he took no steps to ensure his daughters could enter the room and see him masturbating (or having loving hot sex with his soon to be divorced wife, which I suspect was a rare occurence, and not entirely his fault) then, yeah, I would fault him for that.
But if a person lives with others (including kids) it doesn’t make sense to think they will have no sex drive or activity unless the kids are x hundreds of metres away.
Moving away from your situation, how many people masturbate despite other people being home? Parents, siblings, for example.
They’re doing so as privately as the circumstance exists and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they’d just as soon be alone and then could really let loose with some aural expression.
But they have to make do.
Are you saying your ex-husband exposed your daughters to sex? In which case, he’s a criminal. Or are you saying your ex-husband privately masturbated without exposing your daughters to sex, but you not so slyly implied he did?
In which case you are despicable.
Cokie Roberts must have read and agreed with this:
Cokie Roberts Blames Raquel Welch for Celeb Cheating (VIDEO)
In case the link didn’t go through:
http://insidetv.aol.com/2010/04/02/cokie-roberts-blames-raquel-welch-for-celeb-cheating-video
We need to stop confusing fantasy with wishes. My wife enjoys reading murder mysteries. It’s fantasy (as in, “not reality”), and I’m sure she doesn’t really want to find herself in the middle of a murder investigation, threatened by the murderer because she’s the amateur sleuth that knows their identity. Similarly, I look at and read sexually explicit material as fantasy. I do it for the same reasons. It’s entertaining AND SAFE. That doesn’t mean I want to seek out such experience. I watch it because I can enjoy it at a safe distance.
Many of the women on this thread, starting with Dr. Helen herself, are intelligent, rational, understanding, and excellent. I won’t speculate about whether they make better lovers than the other women with whom about to address in a second.
Except to say, “Yes.”
“I’m absolutely sure you are.”
Now let me move on to addressing the other women here, many of whom seem quite bitter and unhappy and rather than expect the world to change to make you happy, you might consider changing some of your own internal attitudes and tastes in order to bring more of the best parts of the world to yourself, and keep them.
My comment:
You notice that many of the comments from women on this thread are about how awful the men are for having outside sexual desires and how the men should be totally satisfied with their one woman, and it’s wrong for men to look at porn, desire other women, pursue them, etc?
But you notice how LITTLE of those same women make any mention of efforts on THEIR part to SEXUALLY satisfy their lover’s mind and his C*CK?
Agree or disagree?
I took some sexy [nude and semi-nude] photos of myself for my husband as a gift for when he wants some ‘visuals’.
One thing men have to understand is that if a woman is having ZERO orgasms during sex/foreplay/afterplay, the idea of sex for her is going to be pretty low on her wants/needs. If a man is premature that’s going to make it near impossible to enjoy love-making.
Just as relationships take actual WORK, so does satisfactory sex. You can’t expect your wife/girlfriend to be doing every nastyass thing you dream up to get your rocks off when she barely has lift-off herself. Get it?
Delia said “I took some sexy [nude and semi-nude] photos of myself for my husband as a gift for when he wants some ‘visuals’.
One thing men have to understand is that if a woman is having ZERO orgasms during sex/foreplay/afterplay, the idea of sex for her is going to be pretty low on her wants/needs. If a man is premature that’s going to make it near impossible to enjoy love-making.
Just as relationships take actual WORK, so does satisfactory sex. You can’t expect your wife/girlfriend to be doing every nastyass thing you dream up to get your rocks off when she barely has lift-off herself. Get it?”
You have a wonderful approach, pics of yourself for him. Satisfactory sex is very important, our society should accept &/or encourage sex training for couples, as we do for sports. A good man makes sure that his woman is very satisfied be it with finger, tongue, or c**k. If he’s good with his tongue, she won’t care if he is premature.
My girlfriend of 7 years knows I look at porn, she doesn’t feel threatened because I show her that she is special to me. Like many things in life, giving is better than receiving and makes intimacy very good. With that there is little want for “nastyass” things. I think a lot of couples miss the boat in making and keeping a good sexual relationship – the key to the whole thing.
Communication is the key! SO RIGHT.
Anything done for $$$ for an ‘audience’ is a performance.
Something to remember though.
The above almost three hundred comments need to be put into book form and read by every mature teen and young adult. Maybe everybody above the age of 13 should read it.
It tells more about human sexuality and psychology than any book I have ever read on the two subjects. Some smart and savvy publisher, who wants to improve human understanding and make some money will jump at the chance.
Am I being moderated because of “doubleblack4?” It is a skiing term for level slope difficulty. I live in South Lake Tahoe, which is ski country. If you have never skied Heavenly or any other of the great ski resorts here, you are missing a great experience.
“I think the underlying issue IS being missed on this discussion. It’s called “the human condition”, which is fallen and depraved nature. We incline to that, many philosophers have observed for thousands of years.”
You are so wrong it isn’t funny.
We used to be a species that hunted down our fellow humans and, according to the Bible, slaughtered them to a man, woman, and (male) child (while keeping the female children to grow up as sex slaves). All ordered by Moses and approved of by God.
Lovely.
Now we’ve reached the point where the great United States Army defends people around the world from terrible oppression. Women in our country are allowed to vote, to decide who they wish to sleep with (thankfully), or whether they want to do so at all.
We have adequate quantities of food and generally excellent health care. While people commit crimes, there are hard working police, courts, and legal officials working to ensure a modicum of justice.
There are SO many instances where we have come A LONG way morally and ethically over our primitive ancestors.
Getting rid of the often religiously approved of slavery, for example.
Yeah, don’t tell me Christians opposed slavery. I know that. They also supported it. And the Bible itself condoned it in many instances.
It isn’t man’s “fallen nature” that’s the problem.
The issue is much, much simpler.
WE ARE PRIMATES!
We’re a branch of the great apes.
A cousin of chimpanzees, we share many of their warlike (and sexual) instincts. I wish we were closer to those lovely, mild, passionate sexual and loving creatures, the bonobos.
You’d hate them, Racquel. They have sex, openly, a lot. Homosexual sex, heterosexual sex, friend sex. For pleasure and bonding.
And they hardly ever hurt each other, and have never, ever been observed to kill each other.
Unlike our branch of primates which has murders in any town of any size… or our cousins, the often genocidal chimpanzee.
So stop with the “man’s fallen nature” shtick. The reality, is we are slowly raising our nature, and it’s an uphill climb.
In the meantime, males will (at a minimum) want to do females. Multiple females.
Shocking, huh?
Whodathunkit?
“btw, there have been studies PROVING that porn literally changes the brain waves in those who are addicted to it – it goes from being mental, to actual physical changes.”
So does anything you think about. What the heck do you think “brain waves” are?
But seriously. Someone looking at a member of the opposite sex, fantasizing about coitus, and having an orgasm. Do you think it’s remotely possible to do such a thing without affecting your brain waves?
C’mon!
I want to say you’re smarter than that. I don’t actually believe it. But I want to say it.
I cannot believe the justification regarding pornography WAY TOO many posts contain. Simply put, it’s a disgusting objectification of anyone portrayed in the porn-whether it’s the usual women, or men, or horribly, children. Where’s the proof re: Ted Bundy’s specific porn? There is no way to prove that his type of porn was all in his head, and anyone who believes that fairy tale is incredibly naive. Also, I’ve worked with sex offenders and ABSOLUTELY they have a porn problem. They have MANY PROBLEMS- they could get aroused from a fly, if that were one of their problems. It’s INSANE to think a SEX OFFENDER doesn’t do porn, for any of the idiots out there that want to believe that.
Too many of you are refusing to put the responsibility of a porn problem on the men. Exactly how does a wife bear blame for her husbands choices of getting addicted to porn? How could it be that a 300 lb frigid woman somehow forces a man, TOTALLY AGAINST HIS WILL, to seek out and get hooked into pornography? If he had problems with his wife, and she has problems being a 300 lb frigid woman, address the problems, but don’t make the WIFE the fault of HIS ADDICTION. I also know people, including a close family member, whose marriages broke up over pornography addiction. It truly is an awful practice and degrades families and societies as much or more than drug addictions.
Last, I am simply STUNNED that there seems to little consideration to the horrifying logistics of producing the awful smutty porn. Consider that it is you, or your child, who is being filmed faking crazy sex with who knows what- other women, men, ANIMALS, objects, dead things, etc. This is repeated ad nauseum for hours during filming, and then replayed ad nauseum to infinity over the internet. Can someone with a brain and a human conscience somehow explain to me how this is not DEGRADING and DEHUMANIZING to mostly women, but to the totality of humanity? I am absolutely not a prude and I’m shocked at the level of justification of too many posts. Though I was never a fan of Jerry Falwell, he once said, years ago on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” show that there was simply NOTHING redeeming about pornography. Hang out with a hooker for a week and see what joy is in her life. Go to the sets of pornography production and see how “wonderful” the “actors” lives are. I DARE YOU. Then tell the world what a wonderful thing this is for all human kind.
The sex in porn is fake?
“Last, I am simply STUNNED that there seems to little consideration to the horrifying logistics of producing the awful smutty porn. Consider that it is you, or your child, who is being filmed faking crazy sex with who knows what- other women, men, ANIMALS, objects, dead things, etc.”
Men? Women? Sex with those disgusting entities is bad enough. But…
Objects! Oh no!
Not sex with the dreaded ‘objects’!
And as Charlie Martin pointed out, I’m pretty sure they’re not ‘faking’.
Speaking of logistics… does it occur to you that some people like having sex, and like earning large paycheques, and like showing off their sexuality to others (flaunting it)?
The Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn
by
Shelley Lubben — Former Porn Actress
Dedicated to all the porn actresses who caught HIV, died from drug overdose and committed suicide.
Sex-packed porn films featuring freshly-dyed blondes whose evocative eyes say “I want you” is quite possibly one of the greatest deceptions of all time. Trust me, I know. I did it all the time and I did it for the lust of power and the love of money. I never liked sex. I never wanted sex, and in fact I was more apt to spend time with Jack Daniels than some of the studs I was paid to “fake it” with. That’s right, none of us freshly-dyed blondes like doing porn. In fact, we hate it. We hate being touched by strangers who care nothing about us. We hate being degraded with their foul smells and sweaty bodies. Some women hate it so much they can be heard vomiting in the bathroom between scenes. Others can be found outside smoking an endless chain of Marlboro lights…
But the porn industry wants YOU to think we porn actresses love sex. They want you to think we enjoy being degraded by all kinds of repulsive acts. The truth, porn actresses have showed up on the set not knowing about certain requirements and were told by porn producers to do it or leave without being paid. Work or never work again. Yes, we made the choice. Some of us needed the money. But we were manipulated and coerced and even threatened. Some of us caught HIV as a result of that coercion. I personally caught Herpes, a non-curable sexually transmitted disease. Another porn actress went home after a long night of numbing her pain and put a pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. Now she’s dead.
It’s safe to say most women who turn to porn acting as a money-making enterprise, probably didn’t grow up in healthy childhoods either. Indeed, many actresses admit they’ve experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse and neglect by parents. Some were raped by relatives and molested by neighbors. When we were little girls we wanted to play with dollies and be mommies, not have big scary men get on top of us. So we were taught at a young age that sex made us valuable. The same horrible violations we experienced then, we relive as we perform our tricks in front of the camera. And we hate every minute of it. We’re traumatized little girls living on anti-depressants, drugs and alcohol acting out our pain in front of you who continue to abuse us.
As we continue to traumatize ourselves by making more adult films, we use more and more drugs and alcohol. We live in constant fear of catching AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases. Every time there’s an HIV scare we race to the nearest clinic for an emergency checkup. Pornographers insist on giving viewers the fantasy sex they demand all the while sacrificing the very ones who make it happen. In other words, no condoms allowed. Herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, and other diseases are the normal anxieties we walk around with daily. We get tested monthly but we know testing isn’t prevention. Besides worrying about catching diseases from porn sex, there are other harmful activities we engage in that are also very dangerous. Some of us have had physical tearing and damage to internal body parts.
When porn actresses call it a day and head home we attempt to have normal healthy relationships, but some of our boyfriends get jealous and physically abuse us. So instead we marry our porn directors, while others prefer lesbian relationships. It’s a real memory making moment when our daughter accidentally walks out and sees mommy kissing another girl. My daughter will vouch for that one.
On our days off we walk around like zombies with a beer in one hand and a shot of whiskey in the other. We aren’t up to cleaning so we live in filth most of the time, or we hire a sweet foreign lady to come in and clean up our mess. Porn actresses aren’t the best cooks either. Ordering in is normal for us and most of the time we throw up after we eat because we’re bulimic.
For porn actresses who have children, we are the world’s worst mothers. We yell and scream and hit our kids for no reason. Most of the time we are intoxicated or high, and our four year olds are the ones picking us up off the floor. When clients come over for sex, we lock our children in their rooms and tell them to be quiet. I used to give my daughter a beeper and tell her to wait at the park until I was finished.
The truth is there is no fantasy in porn. It’s all a lie. A closer look into the scenes of a porn star’s life will show you a movie that the porn industry doesn’t want you to see. The real truth is we porn actresses want to end the shame and trauma of our lives but we can’t do it alone. We need you men to fight for our freedom and give us back our honor. We need you to hold us in your strong arms while we sob tears over our deep wounds and begin to heal. We want you throw out our movies and help piece together the shattered fragments of our lives. We need you to pray for us so God will hear and repair our ruined lives.
So don’t believe the lie anymore. Porn is nothing more than fake sex and lies on videotape. Trust me, I know.
This may have been true for some but certainly not all actresses. Further, that porn industry is in trouble financially, because the most popular porn now is the amateur produced porn posted by the couple producing it. These amateurs are doing it for fun and pleasure and that’s why it’s in such demand. The stereotype big boobed blond porno is going away – the internet and digital cameras are killing it. Sorry, but millions of wives and girlfriends are participating and enjoying it. (Yes, some men and women will always be unwillingly involved, but there will always be alcoholics, drunk or poor drivers etc. but most people engage in drinking, driving, sex responsibly.)
Re: First Amendment rights for porn. Let’s accept for sake of argument that porn is not and should not be regulated by the govt. To my mind, that INCREASES the need for intelligent discussion of the issue. People cannot make responsible decisions about anything, without being informed. We have no business dismissing other people’s experience out of hand. The 13 year old girl who walked in on her father masturbating, the women who have tried to get and keep their husbands’ attention, the guy who says he doesn’t masturbate, the guy who calls himself ex porn addict: they deserve to be taken seriously just as much as those of you who say masturbation and pornography are harmless.
You just might learn something you couldn’t have learned otherwise. And that is all the more valuable, actually, in a First Amendment environment where you must make your own decisions.
Putting it another way, Racquel.
Now we travel the world taking in Tiesto concerts with people of other races, religious backgrounds, and nations. And enjoy doing so.
Not too many thousands of years ago, we were constantly trying to conquer our neighbour and enslave them before they enslaved us.
Not long ago at all we bought and sold our fellow man on this very continent.
If man’s nature has “fallen” since then, I’ll take the trade.
Meet Christoph. The face of porn.
‘Nuff said.
lol
What a particularly classless ad hominem attack, Delia.
I’m disappointed that the moderators allowed it since it’s clearly against the guidelines.
However, I’ll live.
I notice is this is exactly as intellectually lazy as these cheap shots you took on “Godwin’s Law” below rather than seriously disagreeing and debating an idea:
And then this one:
You’re not only not classy, you sound like you’re unable to discuss concepts here with the calibre of people here. Not only myself, but with other commenters too.
[I'll cross post this at the mini-thread below so the commenters you were mindlessly attacking there can get another example of your debating "style". I use that word loosely.]
Delia is the face of misandry.
If it’s a choice between porn and Delia, porn will win every time.
Thanks a lot. My “liberal” friends saw this place and are content that they have proof that conservatives are jerkoffs, having now “come out,” crossing the barrier of vague suspicion.
Raquel — btw, there have been studies PROVING that porn literally changes the brain waves in those who are addicted to it – it goes from being mental, to actual physical changes.
Indeed. Anyone with impressive forearm musculature is probably a conservative, and sagging forearm skin is indicative of them being born again.
Confession time:
I did some soul-searching and I had to reach back to a time and place when I first encountered porn. I was a 9-year old girl home alone after school and my mom’s boyfriend had left a Hustler magazine out which immediately caught my keen child’s curious eye. Instead of being shocked I became embarrassed over being titillated by the images and wanting to see more. So, every day after school when my mom and her boyfriend were at work I searched his bedroom and finally found his stash of magazines. Hundreds and hundreds. I poured over them and couldn’t get enough.
When my mother eventually broke-up with her boyfriend I was cut-off from my new addiction. So, being an artistically inclined child, I began drawing my own sexually explicit drawings. By the time I was in my mid-teens I was making my own homemade ‘mags’ and bringing them to school to shock all of the girls. Eventually I got caught by my mother who went ballistic and I got in huge trouble in school as well and that ended my love-affair with porn imagery.
To say only males are visual is a lie though. I paint, sculpt and work in computer/graphic art so I’m as visual as they get. Yes, a man who is out of shape, saggy and badly aged in the face is a turn-off for me but love (real, genuine love) is not just about having the most sexy, handsome, studly, buff looking guy in town. Sure, I would have liked it if my husband would have lost his gut and would have taken better care of his skin and not look old enough to be my father even though he’s only six years my senior but I didn’t marry him expecting him to stay eternally youthful. Me? I’m lean, fit, beautiful and young looking because I expect that of myself because I have set high standards for who I am both inside and out, but even that can’t last forever and I’ll eventually have to become an old lady too (albeit, hopefully a fit and trim old gal).
I like sex, I like to masturbate, I encourage my husband to masturbate in the shower for his health and so that he can last longer when we make love and porn is not necessary for that.
Anyway, if I had turned my husband down every time he physically repulsed me we would have never hardly had sex. Sometimes you have to look beyond that and remember the person’s heart, soul and mind inside the meat package.
If I were on my death-bed tomorrow, I wouldn’t want any other man but the one I married there by my side and if I had only 3 months to live I wouldn’t want to masturbate those months away just because it ‘feels’ good or eat every cupcake and donut in sight just because they ‘taste’ good.
Natural urges do need to be kept in check for our own health and the health and happiness of our families and relationships imho.
Making real, lasting love has much less to do with sex and a lot more to do with growing up.
Now, now, Hejsan, I’m sure Dr. Helen, and many others, would tell you that any attempt to rein in the porn industry, or prevent the abuse of young women exploited by it, would be trying to control men’s sexuality, and we certainly don’t want that! No sireeeee! To them, male sexuality = Porn; therefore, any criticism of porn is bad, and just a mean ol’ feminist plot, to make men unhappy.
Anyway, it’s all the fault of those bad women, who watch Life time T.V., and read romance novels. Women must not read romance novels. It gives them unrealistic expectations. Men, as has been scientifically proven, are always grounded in reality, and never have unrealistic expectations of the women in their lives.
In fact, it might be better if women didn’t read at all; they might get ideas, and might even start questioning their menfolk. Even worse, they might question experts like Dr. Helen! Worst of all, they’ll take away all that wonderful porn! Waaaaaaaaaaaa!
What’s the world coming to?
/Sarcasm—what else?
I agree that porn hurts relationships. Some men use porn even if their wives are generous with their bodies because 1) they are into perversions that their wives won’t accommodate, 2)they want a ‘variety of women’ even the substitutionary kind, 3)they believe that they will learn something new – very unlikely, 4) maybe it’s just a bad habit from years before marriage … etc.
Women tend to be generous when they are having good sexual experiences – and good emotional experiences. If she is upset, foggetaboutit – so just do what she wants, AND LISTEN! And help with the chores. But don’t become a wuss just for sex – it’s undignified!
Premature ejaculation (PE) is a killer. Many women want the physical act – not just oral manipulation which can sometimes be unpleasant/undesirable for one or both. Here are two methods to prevent PE:
1) most men think the muscles that you use to stop peeing is the same one you use to prevent ejaculation. Not true. The best way to describe the method is ‘anal breathing’. If you pretend to be trying to draw air into your anus, you will feel the muscles that you need to apply. Strengthen those muscles by practicing tightening and holding them for a few seconds while sitting. If you are doing it right, your lower stomach muscles and lower back muscles will tighten too. If you overdo it during sex, you can kill your erection so practice is needed.
2) using more than one condom during sex can help
Many years ago, when I was newly married, I would go to the local bookstore each weekend. While there, I noticed many men looking through all the magazines of semi-nude women with nude center fold-outs, totally concentrating on that.
All the while, beautiful young women were walking through the store, probably unattached, and just as pretty as any of those in the magazines. But the men didn’t notice. They had their faces in the magazines.
When you detach from reality, it is NOT a good thing. It is an escape mechanism that indicates an unhealthy preoccuption with childish things..and selfishness.
Sorry, but time to grow up, men. Looking is fine, but stepping into the mirror is infantile.
Wow. There’s one thing that amazes me every time, how women have no understanding how difficult it is for men.
You see men looking at magazines at beautiful women, and you cannot *possibly* comprehend why they don’t talk to the women in the store.
Because they’ve done that. They’ve tried. They’ve tried all their *life*. Those women have no interest in them. Most likely you’ll get a screeching “Did I give you a sign that I wanted to talk to you?”
Amazing. The answer is sitting there right in front of you and your first instinct is to turn around and blame the Man.
Funny that it’s Christianity that is blamed by so many for “prudishness.” Mao’s China and Communist countries in Eastern Europe were officially atheistic. They were not famous for being hot beds of eroticism, unless you’re turned on by baggy unisex pajamas and frumpy dresses(with the possible exception of Cuba. I understand that lovely young women hang around the hotels frequented by tourists in Havana. However, my guess is that they’re driven less by lust than by a desire to put food on the table.)
I have very little interest in either porn or romance novels. I have a great deal of interest in sex, and my husband and I have a very fulfilling sex life – he satisfies me and I never pull the “not tonight, honey, I have a headache” business. However, he used to travel frequently on business trips and he confessed to me that on those trips, he would frequently settle in with a drink and watch porn flicks. Well, I couldn’t bring myself to care, really. He was stuck in Atlanta or Charlotte or Akron for a couple of days, didn’t know anybody and didn’t have much else to do. Better that he spend it watching a little porn than on picking up some woman in the hotel bar. I’ve never seen it at home, have never worried that our kids were going to walk in on him with his pants around his ankles. If he was addicted to the stuff, I’d feel quite differently.
However, I do find it disturbing that young kids have easy access to very hardcore and perverse acts and I think you’re fooling yourself if you think it doesn’t effect how they perceive women and relationships. Or how it effects young women, who now feel that they have to act like porn stars to get attention from men.
A while back, a male relative who used to be fond of going to strip clubs every so often told me that one day he realized the young woman gyrating in front of him was younger than his own daughter. And that permanently wrecked the fascination those clubs had held for him. My husband told me the same thing began happening to him when our daughter grew up. When he watched porn films, instead of thinking, “God, that’s hot!” he started wondering “where’s your dad? Does he know you’re doing this?” Totally ruined the fun for him, to start thinking of that person as a person, and not someone who existed just so he could get his rocks off.
The anti-sex stance of writers like St. Augustine were a reaction against the extreme sexual permissiveness of the Roman era. Victorianism was a reaction against the sexual hi-jinx of the Regency era, when a great percentage of the babies born in London were illegitimate. The pendulum will eventually swing again – it always does. The problem for humans is that it never stops at the Golden Mean, it swings back to another extreme.
Perhaps the problem is more fundamental for marriage than people are willing to confront. Woman want to control EVERYTHING about their man- and if he lets them, the woman will take it all.
It is all about expectations – women may want to tell men “looking at those other women is wrong as it skews what you will start to expect from me – and I don’t want to have to work meeting an artificial standard just because you are seduced by it..”
Then men can respond by saying – “Well, OK. However I don’t want you consuming images and attitudes that are harmful to me as they seduce you with a standard that is not related to who I am – no hanging around with other women who live fancier lives than we do – no reading or watching media that glorifies a standard of living that we currently do not live. In fact, if I am to be a grown up and not even “look” then we also need to have a discussion about you being a “big” girl and not assuming I will be “Daddy” and provide for you. We can split the expenses 50/50 for everything and you can work.”
To which – I suspect, the woman will respond : “Why don’t you love me? Why do you have to say such hateful things….?…”
Solution – Don’t get married – ever.
On porn and infidelity: I think that the feminist movement in this country has far more to do with the downfall of marriage than any other single entity. This movement seeks to emasculate men and then expect us to still somehow continue to be men. We are asked to get in touch with our feminine side as though we have vaginas and estrogen in our blood. We are asked to teach our children, especially our boys to be “sensitive” and then when they grow up to have homesexual tendencies we wonder why (please if you are gay I’m not attacking you, just making a point). My brothers and I have been watching porn since we discovered the magazines and then later the beta movies in our dad’s collection. None of us are rapists, child molesters, infidels and the like and our marriages are all healthy. Porn allows men to act out their fantasies in a safe environment and porn is “what men do”. I have met very few women who openly admit to liking or watching porn. Contrary to popular belief, porn may be more healthy for marriages because the abilty to act out a fantasy in cyberspace or through a movie negates the need for real life experiences. On the issue of morals and morality, I for one believe that in a marriage sex should not be relegated to simply puritanical sex or sex for the sole purpose of child bearing; afterall when one gets married one forsakes all others and his only recourse for sex legally and morally is in the context of his marriage (I speak of physical sex and not fantasies acted out though cyberspace). Married people should be allowed to engage in whatever mutually consentual sex they want to w/out fear of judgment. Yet, many women come to the table stuck in the 40s version of sexuality but strong post feminist idea of a man’s sexuality. How dare you! We see the hyprocracy of the Religous Right railing against porn and all it’s ills only to discover the “decadent” behavior they themselves engage in when they think no one is looking. In marriage, it is not uncommon for some women to “let themselves” go and to “change the game” after the marriage. Before, you would make sure you wore your victoria secret lingerie and you would cater to your man. You pulled out all the stops and kept him happy in bed and even indulge some of his fantasies. After the “I do’s” you stopped doing. When the children started coming instead of working hard to lose the weight and get your figure back you took it for granted that your husband will not lose attraction to you because you were married and that he loved you. Love is love and physical attractio