What’s the Deal With Porn?

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This is a Guest Post by TallahasseeScene’s Noah Gomez. 

 

Is there anything really wrong with pornography?

It’s fun, exciting, inventive, inspiring and prevalent! As David Amsden once said, porn is the “wallpaper” of our lives.

Explicit depictions have been around since the year 79 A.D., preserved in Mount Vesuvius’s volcanic sediment covering the city of Pompeii. 2000 years later in the early part of the 20th century, both artistic creations and photography, accompanied by an overarching cultural modernism, brought pornography to the public sphere.

However, it wasn’t until 1982 that the porn industry really kicked into high gear. VHS and digital mediums made the supply, demand and transfer of explicit videos a widespread phenomenon. Then, at the turn of the century, high-speed Internet made access even easier. Today, 30 percent of all Internet data is pornography, making roughly (no pun intended) three out of every 10 searches about explicit content.

But those numbers probably don’t surprise you, the wise and experienced college student that you are. American universities  – where hormones rage, libido is sky-high, being open-minded is cherished and coexistence is the only appropriate belief –- aren’t particularly insulated from the world of pornography. People joke about it — boys laugh and girls roll their eyes. We accept that porn is a part of our culture.

In fact, it’s so prevalent that many college guys watch porn of a daily basis. “It’s a part of the routine. Every night, just before bed,” said Jonathan, a Florida State University student. “It helps me relax and fall asleep.” Some watch it more often than that.

It’s no news that sex is intriguing to the human mind. After all, we’re born of it, we grow into it physically, we learn and talk about it in school or with our parents (save for the elect few who didn’t have to suffer that awkwardness), we build relationships with it and we typically look forward to it.

Shit. We love the damn thing.

But, eventually it’s gone, an enigma of youth. In this way, sex resembles the whole human development from birth to death; sex is as much a part of our lives as eating, breathing and making friends.

Oh, and if you didn’t already know, sex releases chemicals in our brains that bring us great pleasure. So hell yes, sex is great.

But what exactly is wrong with porn?

Manhattan-based therapist Dr. Ursula Ofman sees many young men coming in to talk about porn-related issues. “It’s so accessible, and with things like streaming video and Webcams, guys are getting sucked into a compulsive behavior,” she says. “What’s most regrettable is that it can really affect relationships with women. I’ve seen some young men lately who can’t get aroused with women but have no problem interacting with the Internet. I think a big danger is that young men who are constantly exposed to these fake, always-willing women start to have unreal expectations from real women, which makes them phobic about relationships.”

What’s more, she says porn is likely responsible for “the truly stunning things women today feel obliged to do sexually with a man, whether it’s something like anal penetration or simply not bothering to please themselves.”

As Naomi Wolf put it, “Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training — and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.”

Some people say there is no problem with pornography. Some say it’s fun and exciting, and it can help to keep sex novel. To those people, I ask, “Why isn’t sex without pornography enough?”

Wolf writes, “I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a headscarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. ‘Can’t I even see your hair?’ I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. ‘No,’ she demurred quietly. ‘Only my husband,’ she said with a calm sexual confidence, ‘ever gets to see my hair.’”

“When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband — the kids are not allowed — the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.”

“She must feel, I thought, so hot,” Wolf continued.

The problem with porn is that it really has become the “wallpaper” of our lives.

It overwhelms young men to the point where they would rather masturbate than have sex with a real woman. It puts a weight on women’s shoulders to live up to unrealistic expectations. It takes the value out of intimacy, out of love and out of the parental bond that is crucial to families.

Strong advocates will say that pornography is a search for our human sexuality — to understand and be comfortable with “who we are” sexually. Advocates will say that people have a right to explore themselves. I don’t disagree, and I myself have done enough exploring for a lifetime. I think we will all explore because porn is everywhere.

But maybe we should start exploring with one person, maybe even the “right” person. For some people that looks like marriage; for others just a committed relationship. Either way, if we want a connection like Ilana–characterized by love, intimacy, and union–we can’t afford to be looking at porn all of the time.

Why isn’t sex without porn enough to satisfy us?

Why can’t we let our sexuality grow in a way that doesn’t damage our relationships, and that doesn’t put expectation anxiety in the minds of young men and woman?

Who knows if we’ll ever get the answers we need for these questions. But until we do, let’s at least try to turn away from the explicit sites and instead turn our attention to more stimulating and real activities.

Now is the time to get bizz-ay, my friends.

Featured photo courtesy of: GQ