The Porn Problem
A deep dive into online pornography and its profound effect on both men and women
"Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men."
- John Stoltenberg
TL;DR
Men need to give up online pornography. It’s an epidemic disaster and a huge sexual and mental health issue.
Foreplay
Oh boy, this is a tough one.
I recently discovered that online pornography is one of the worst things to ever happen to men. Just take a breath and try to contemplate that. It’s bonkers.
It’s like telling someone that their favourite child is a serial killer.
Imagine trying to tell a man that porn is making him worse at sex and relationships?
For most men, porn is a gift. A privilege.
Ok well this humble prose is absolutely going to attempt that. Wish me luck…
I’ll just put the tip in…
Like most men I used fucking LOVE porn. But then I started learning, understanding and writing about love, sex and relationships, and discovered some amazing, yet horrific truths about porn that help explain about male behaviour, sexual problems and other issues that people experience. Simply put, less porn would absolutely change the sexual journey for men and help ameliorate some of the awful effects that women experience. This article is mainly aimed at straight men, as this is my lived experience, but mansplaining notwithstanding, it’s always good for women to get a male perspective on stuff, particularly as men don’t usually talk about this kind of thing.
A history lesson
In the beginning there was man. man was horny. Man painted sexy time on a cave wall. This begat a movement of artistic representation of erotica, from painting, to carving, to sculpture.
The term ‘porn, comes from the word ‘pornography:
1842, "ancient obscene painting, especially in temples of Bacchus," from French pornographie, from Greek pornographos "(one) depicting prostitutes,"
It originates from brothels and prostitution, and the word was used as a charge against obscenity and in description of prostitution (late 19th century)
Like most cool French words, it got repurposed and is now the catch all term for adult content. Also the term ‘porn’ is used to almost sexualise any fetishised version of anything. Hashtag Foodporn, WTF?
Jazz mags
Before the internet, the humble porn mag was the most prevalent persuasion of pornography. Printing was cheap and plentiful.
When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the late 1400's, the resulting information revolution was one of the biggest and most profound changes to society.
It also changed the game for portable porn. Books and other compact publications blew up in the Fifteenth century and everyone had access to filth. The humble porno mag was born, filled with pictorial porn, from engravings, woodcuts and line cuts, to drawings and paintings.
Photography further changed the game. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented practical photography, and shortly after that, the nude photo was born. Printing technology matured and the reproduction of photography was possible using the halftone technique. Boom.
The 1950’s saw the real boom in soft core porno magazines. The first issue of Playboy, was published in December 1953, and up until today, the ‘top shelf magazine’ is still a popular source of erotica.
Video
Note: I’m purposely leaving out the porn film and porn cinema, and going ‘straight to video’, as adult cinema is too niche to include in what is supposed to be a potted history. (I would recommend watching the amazing Boogie Nights by Paul Thomas Anderson. Although completely fictional, it’s timeline chronicles the history of the traditional adult film business, from 8mm black and white celluloid film camera, to 35mm high budget productions, to technology being the cruel mistress of art.)
In the early 70’s porn had a problem, film production was way too expensive. Film cameras were heavy and the celluloid film stock was expensive and required chemicals and processing. Editing was expensive. If you didn’t have a home projector you had to visit an adult cinema, which always struck me as the worst place to watch a skin flick.
Then in the mid 70’s Sony invented the Betamax format and the video recorder was born. People could record a TV broadcast and store it on a magnetic tape. Up until now video cameras were huge and prohibitively expensive, reserved for broadcast television and big budget production.
Then in 1983 Sony released the Betamovie BMC-100P home movie camera. Now anyone could record their own home movie.
The next year JVC released the JVC GR-C1, the first VHS camcorder.
This begat the ‘videotape format war’ the first really relevant example of two formats in the same technology space.
The really interesting thing is that the Porn industry was partly responsible for the VHS tape became the most popular format for recorded filth. Despite Betamax being better quality, VHS was cheaper, longer and more accessible. Also Sony reportedly wouldn’t let pornographic content be put on Betamax tapes, while JVC and the VHS consortium DNGAF.
The humble VHS tape became the de facto Deliveroo of dirty movies. Either self filmed or by mail order, you could copy them and be your own pornographer. Dirty Barry started stocking the videos and the blue movie store was born. (The term ‘blue’ probably originated from the blue-tinted films that were used to shoot pornography as well as the blue dye that was used to distinguish illegal pornographic films from legal ones.)
And all was well, it was just magazines and tapes, a bit of cinema. And then came the problem. Technology drives EVERYTHING. Commerce, art, culture and now pornography was going to get fucked with it’s pants on. And although the huge shift started in the mid 90’s, the technology actually started in the swinging 60’s.
OH HAI INTERNET!
In the 60’s, government researchers were looking at ways to share information, as the only two options were to travel to another computer destination, or put magnetic tapes in the post. At the same time, the US government, in full Cold War paranoia mode, needed to figure out a way for information to be delivered after a nuclear attack. They created ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and the network infrastructure and technology was the beginning of the internet.
Fast forward to the eighties and the actual ‘regarded’ birth of the Internet:
“January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to "talk" to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All networks could now be connected by a universal language.”
- A Brief History of the Internet
As the internet became a method of sharing information and images, just as the printing press did, it became the perfect channel to distribute dirtiness. First low resolution images via USENET groups, then proper porn websites, then as the bandwidth increased, so did the quality, and when DSL broadband rolled out into domestic homes worldwide, the big bad wolf of internet porn huffed and puffed and blew the house down.
Enter the 6-10 minute, HD porn video. The fucking Zenith of pornography.
When they arrived, it was just magical. We streamed these incredibly well produced, well lit and well photographed clips of coitus. It was the best of times.
As with most addictive substances, you get hooked on that amazing first high, and then you chase that first high, which you will never EVER catch up with.
Those amazing slices of a cake of sexual escapism.
There are billions of them now online. ALL AMAZING, all day all night, forever.
Ok we need to stop this
And this is where the problem lies. Internet Porn is bad. So bad, like REALLY REALLY bad for men and women, it’s worse for women, but the problem lies with men.
I previously wrote about toxic masculinity and listed out some of the various variables and influences that explain toxic male behaviour. But I wanted to pass over perhaps the biggest issue that men face, and thats internet porn. It’s fucking profoundly unhealthy.
Men, give the porn a rest. Trust me, it’ll make you a better person. Don’t believe me?
Here are some of the issues with Internet porn:
Porn and sex addiction
Internet Porn is REALLY addictive. It’s a never-ending feed of sex, with every single proclivity know to man, accessible in seconds and free to watch. It's exciting, and feeds the dopamine loops, it’s also intimately connected to masturbation, which on it’s own is healthy, but coupled with internet porn it becomes addictive. It can seriously interfere with work, relationships, and other parts of daily life.
Drug addiction is caused when the circuits in your brain associated with reward, motivation, and memory get turned on. This becomes compulsive. Porn feeds those same circuits in the same way. And Internet porn is free and legal.
Sex addiction is one of those terms that most people believe is for unfaithful men to use as a get out of jail free card. Go watch the movie ‘Shame’ It’s really saddening and perfectly depicts the issues with sex and porn addiction.
Porn is bad for mental health. Particularly if you are low on Serotonin, which leads to risky, compulsive behaviour, which sexually will kill any healthy relationship.
Porn creates a distorted view of sex
Internet porn is not real. It’s a fetishised, hyper-real, fantasy version of sex. One that you will never, ever experience. Everything in it is fake. Girls don’t look like that, they don’t fuck like that, and the guys are genetic freaks or about as clean as Lance Armstrong. Porn is a fantasy, yet the average age at which boys first see pornography is 13, and thankfully having not yet experienced ACTUAL sex, are forming their first impressions and building the foundation of the way they ‘expect’ to treat women sexually. Their sex education is PornHub university. Imagine how they are going to treat the unlucky girl who gets to be their first.
Sex is supposed to be a bit awkward. It’s not supposed to be disrespectful. Women have for years, been treated like a second class ‘vessel’ in bed by selfish, yet sexually uneducated men. The majority of men don’t really know what to do in bed on a good day. Top tip: It’s not treating a woman like a porn star. Real porn stars get paid a lot of money for that. Part of the reason they get paid a lot is because porn sex is painful and degrading. It’s also really difficult to do properly, convincingly, and on camera, in front of 12 guys.
Internet porn is profoundly disrespectful to the average woman, as it create hugely unrealistic expectations about the appearance, performance, and intimate behaviour of women. As if women don’t have enough issues with magazines and social media making them feel fat and ugly, they have to satiate the borderline quixotic expectations of men who spend hours watching skinny, young, beautiful (well lit) girls get railed.
Men, stop watching porn. It’ll make you a much better partner, and ironically, much better in bed.
Porn is exploitative and abusive
Hardcore porn is abusive. It objectifies and dehumanises women. It’s also directly linked to human trafficking, modern slavery and drug abuse. And almost exclusively targets vulnerable women. Why would you want to even passively perpetuate this toxic bullshit?
Porn perpetuates child abuse
Pornhub statistics reveal that the most commonly searched for porn category by men worldwide is 'Teen’. This as depressingly predictable as it is horrifying.
The issue here is twofold. Many of the performers are legally underage (depending on what country you reside). Also for older men, it is profoundly unhealthy watching teen pornography. A 16 year old girl is a child. Even an 18-21 year old ain’t your business, chief.
Privacy and revenge porn
Internet pornography is also highly responsible for a remarkable trend in revenge porn. A worryingly large amount of online porn is a result of nonconsensual sex and lack of consent in the agreed ownership and consent of publication and sharing.
Get Hard
The ground zero of male sexual problems is impotence.
Research in support of the link between pornography and erectile dysfunction argues that porn can desensitise sexual response. If you are over 40, then thats the ballgame fella…
It’s game over if you cant get hard. It’s like playing pool with a piece of rope.
Why would you want to make this dreadful situation worse? But watching porn really does make it worse.
Most guys who watch porn every morning and struggle to get hard during ACTUAL sexual intercourse don’t make this (quite frankly) ridiculous connection.
Porn is one of the main reasons that men struggle with erectile dysfunction. Anyone can get hard watching porn. But it is a sexual simulacrum. Also imagine what your flaccidity does to a woman’s self esteem.
STOP WATCHING PORN FFS
Ok, well lets wrap this up
Online porn is like drugs. They are fucking AMAZING, but after a while you realise that it’s either going to be something you enjoy recreationally, or you need to change your life to make your relationship with drugs work. Or you need to change your relationship.
Being an addict ain’t stable. It’s just sex bro. And you are raw dogging a synthetic version of the good stuff.
At a recreational level, even the most beautiful and willing women will never be able to recreate the stuff you see in porn. Your starting point of a proposed, equitable agreement in bed is done. You will never be satisfied.
Online porn is amazing, but if you want to be a better man you need to give it up.
Thanks for reading!
PS. If you like this sort of stuff, you can read my writings on design and technology over on Medium, or follow me on Instagram
The only "stop watching porn" article I ever liked. Thank you for sharing!
First, never have a favorite child. Doing so always ends with someone in a home. Second, if you need any images for this article that weren't doodled with oxen blood or photocopied from the 1969 Commission on Obscenity, I could probably help you out with that.