Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography (4/10)

"You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to." - Henny Youngman

***

Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography / David Loftus


The “Slippery Slope” and the Question of Addiction

"When discussing the effect pornography has on men, its foes often apply a “slippery slope” model. After a while, the theory goes, the friendly nudes of Playboy no longer suit; the viewer must move on to more kinky and violent material...

If the antiporn theory is correct, the men would have used more pornography over time, and its content would have become more vivid and violent. Although most men said there had been times in their lives when they had used pornography more than at other times, high use tended to correlate—as we have seen in previous chapters—with external circumstances: not being in a relationship, being in college, amount of privacy, extra time on one’s hands, or when depressed, under stress, or experiencing relationship troubles.

In reality, only a few men reported that they had gone for the more vivid and kinky over time...

The only change many men cited was toward higher quality. “I look harder for well-produced, more interesting stuff, like Andrew Blake’s films,” said a 29-year-old married man who thought his tastes “haven’t changed radically.” Said a 29-year-old married custodian, “I feel that I’ve become more judicial about what I view now. When I was younger, anything with naked people in it was good enough; now I’m more picky about the performers, directors, and video companies. I tend to go with the ones I know by experience or reputation. With our having a child and my wife getting bored of the ‘same old porn movie junk,’ we rent fewer in a year than we used to in a month.”...

Is Addiction Possible?

A 24-year-old married student drew a clear line between the few who are susceptible and the many who are not:

'I use the analogy of role-playing games and heavy metal music. Some kids have killed people after playing role-playing games, and others have killed themselves after playing heavy metal music. Are these things inherently harmful? No. Many role players develop problem-solving skills through the playing of these games. Most kids listen to such music with no adverse effects.'...

“In true ‘addiction’ terms, I don’t think it is possible to become addicted to porn, just as I don’t believe in the notion of ‘sex addiction,” said a 33-year-old gay researcher. “But that is just my background in psychology speaking. I think it is possible to become a bit obsessed with it—and one can certainly allow it to upset other areas of one’s life. But as a true addiction—no.”

“Pornography is not cocaine or crack!” a 24-year-old engineer exclaimed. “Having lived with a drug addict, I know how consuming true addiction is,” added a 38-year-old homosexual. “I don’t believe a compulsion for pornography—if, in fact, there is such a thing—can in any way be likened to an addiction.”“I don’t get physically ill when I stop using pornography,” a 41-year-old math student dryly observed.

Another man spelled out the differences between truly addictive substances and porn:

'In recent years, it has become fashionable to tag various behaviors as addictive. People will claim that they are addicted to sex, or relationships, or anger, or overeating, or whatever it is in their life that troubles them. The people who exhibit these behaviors may have real problems. In particular, there is often a compulsive component to their behavior. However, these behaviors do not fit the model of real addiction. Someone wrote a book on this subject a few years ago. She suggested that what these people are suffering with is not any true addiction but simply existential anxiety: “the terror of knowing what the world is about.” She felt that it debased the word to call these problems “addictions.” Some people define addiction so broadly that it loses all content and becomes little more than a synonym for “want.” Real addiction generally involves use of psychoactive chemicals. Characteristics of addictive substances include craving, euphoria, tolerance, and withdrawal. Also, use of addictive substances is self-reinforcing: the more you use, the more you want. A few behaviors, such as compulsive gambling, possess some of these characteristics as well. I drank heavily for three years in college. I managed to stop before my life was an utter shambles, but it was a serious problem. I consider myself to have been close enough to real addiction to have some authority on the subject. Pornography is not addictive.'


Reality versus Fantasy: Do Porn Fans Associate Figures in Porn with Real People?

"Contrary to the assertions routinely made by antipom activists, most of the men I talked to were quite clear about the distinctions between pornography and real life. Perhaps those distinctions are what make porn so attractive to men. If so, their taste for porn does not mean they wish real life were more like it, any more than most people would want to live in a D.H. Lawrence novel. The average person is drawn to most entertainment precisely because it is different from life. It provides a temporary respite, a brief thrill, whether it’s a Disney movie or Debbie Does Dallas...

A 21-year-old American student said he never associated the women in porn with girls he knew because “I’m from Illinois, so all we have is corn and fat chicks.”...

Another method of testing the line between the fantasy of porn and the reality of their actual sex lives was to ask the men whether they had ever tried to import something they had seen or read about in pornography to their own sexual practices. Antiporn theorists regularly assert that porn teaches men to use, dominate, and humiliate women. What a man learns to want, they say, are sex acts the woman presumably isn’t going to desire or enjoy—such as fellatio, anal sex, or ejaculation on her face and breasts—and the man has to cajole, negotiate, or just plain impose the practice by surprise or physical force. The underlying assumptions are: Women are never equal parties in what happens in sex; women never want to do the things men become interested in because of pornography; and men don’t really care about women’s sexual pleasure or that they might not wish to do certain things. These assumptions were not supported in any way by the experiences and attitudes of the men in my survey...

Moreover, a number of practices men took from pornography into life were intended to increase their partner’s sexual pleasure more than their own. “I have learned to be much better at cunnilingus by watching it in porn,” a 35-year-old married man said. A 48-year-old widower said porn had given him useful information about “how to sensuously lick nipples and how to perform cunnilingus, both of which I think my wife appreciated.” An unmarried 23-year-old British man said, “My technique for masturbating her by stroking her clitoris has improved since watching ‘educational’ films (barely distinct from mild porn except by the fact that they are introduced by a doctor).”...

A 45-year-old gay man who liked to experiment when he had a long-term partner. “I’d always thought auto-fellatio would be great, but since I’m not that greatly endowed, nor am I very flexible, the act couldn’t be performed. We came as close as possible to it, though, with me standing on my head and cumming in my mouth while my partner held me up and watched. The first couple of times were exciting; after that it became more ridiculous and funny to me until I couldn’t do it at all.”

Whenever men referred to sex acts that antiporn crusaders claim all men are driven to by pornography, it was always in the context of consensual play...

After initial resistance, his wife enjoyed inserting marbles and then a vibrating Ben Wa ball in her vagina at his behest—but fisting, enemas, and sticking metal rods into his urethra and bladder made her sick. At times he traded days of housework for some of the activities she disliked. Although such activities may not be to many people’s taste, it should be noted that most of them involved penetration and manipulation of the man’s body, not his wife’s, so even this doesn’t support the antiporn argument that men force acts on women’s bodies to dominate and humiliate them."


Pornography as Hell, Pornography as Therapy

"Henry also struggled with the unaccountable behavior of some of the women he knew. On occasion, female coworkers seemed to delight in exposing their bodies to their male colleagues. “They would lean very far over while wearing a very low-cut blouse or sit across from me with their legs uncrossed while wearing a very short skirt,”A coworker would come up behind him and make bodily contact with her breasts, either pressing them into his back or brushing them across it...

'At that time I hated my male identity, wished I had been born female, and cross-dressed (privately) for excitement. Girls just seemed to have it so much easier. In the suburban SF Bay area schools I attended, a boy could not show weakness, and school officials did absolutely nothing to keep bullying in check. On the playground, if a bully picks on a girl, those around him will tell him to leave her alone. If a bully picks on a boy, those around him will watch to see if the boy will fight back. When they become old enough to date, girls are not obligated to make the first move. A boy must take the risk of being rejected (a girl who seems very nice can turn out to be very cruel), or he will never go on a date. I felt then, and I continue to feel today, that girls/women have it a lot easier in life.'...

Steve agreed that his experience did not support the notion that exposure to pornography is addictive and leads to ever more violent and kinky obsessions. “On the contrary, the evidence I have is that pornography can be a healing and life-affirming thing, leading to greater self- awareness and self-acceptance.”

For him, pornography “is a part of life, a part of art, a part of the world. It is a major literary genre, and anyone who claims to be literate should have at least a sparse acquaintance with it. Because it is often the honest expression of the human spirit.” Steve recalled Cicero’s quotation of Terence: Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto. A loose translation might be: “I am human; therefore nothing that is human is alien to me.”

Perhaps the best argument by anyone in the survey that objectionable content may lie largely in the eye of the beholder came from Steve:

'I once met a smuggler of pornography; that is, of banned, disgusting, obscene books. It was on a boat, and he had a case of this stuff. The boat would be met in the night by an accomplice who was a local fisherman, and they would transfer the cargo, take it ashore, and distribute it. For this vile deed, both of them faced the death penalty if caught. The place was the Adriatic Sea; the country in question was Albania; and the dirty book was the Holy Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, according to Saint John. I learned two lessons. One, that “pornography,” or “filth,” or “subversive literature—whatever name you call the dog before you hang It—is a social and political construct. Any overlap between the literary genre of pornography and official smut is mere coincidence. The second lesson was that there are people—organized criminals—who believe in what they do. They aren’t just out to make money. An obvious example from U.S. history is the Underground Railroad—an organized conspiracy for the theft of property and the disposal of stolen goods abroad, to take the viewpoint of the Dred Scott court.'

I suggested a reader of his remarks might object to equating the Bible with pornography. Steve responded:

'I assert the analogy. The Fourth Gospel opens thus: “In the beginning was the Word.” In the ultimate analysis, my support for free speech is religious, for I see all speech as a manifestation of the Logos, the redemptive aspect of the divine. The lesson [of the Adriatic smuggler] has stayed with me. May it always do so.'...

By the age of 19 Gerald became disaffected with Christianity. He saw a pornographic movie that featured Harry Reems and ejaculated without even touching himself. "I ejaculated inside my pants. And it was amazing to me. Because it had never happened." [Ed: !!!]"