Lessons from a porn user
By: Melanie Robson
Tags: Sexuality, Porn, Media Criticism, Pornography, Sex

It’s not all bad, but it’s not all good either

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Porn. It’s so damn ubiqitous you’d be hard pressed to find anyone from the Internet generation who hasn’t seen any. Whether willingly or not, porn finds it way onto your screen and into your brain in a way marketers can only dream of.

Porn is so powerful and effective in keeping itself alive because of basic biology and neuroscience. Really, anything that taps into the pleasure centres of brain is going to work en masse. For all of our complexities, humans — like all animals — are still driven by base human instincts. Porn dials up desire and makes us want to fuck (even if that’s just ourselves).

Fucking in a broad sense means reproduction. Reproduction means the human species is kept alive.

Basic maths really.

Porn then is in a unique position, and because of the way it works on neural and physical pathways, it will never go away.

And would you want it to?

OK, OK, I know that question is fraught and far from simple, but my point is, porn excites us, teaches us and seduces us. It can also disturb, distort and horrify us. Many would argue that it (mainstream, hetero porn) still denigrates women in addition to putting pressure on men to perform. And both are under pressure to look a certain way.

The trick is to be a conscious consumer of porn… But really, how many of us are like that? We want to get off and we know porn works. It’s a shortcut (or long cut; we all know what it’s like to be scrolling through scenes for sometimes hours trying to find the hottest one, or something we haven’t seen before, only to resort to tried and tested scenes because nothing is fucking working. Goodbye 2 hours to porn — and this is another lesson in brain science) to a good time.

What I’ve learned from porn

It works, and it can give me amazing orgasms;

That watching people fuck excites me;

That if I can imagine it, there’s probably someone doing it (although rarely is there the exact scene that I’ve pictured in my head);

That it’s OK to feel wildly sexual as a woman;

That it’s OK to be sexually attracted to both sexes;

That porn offers an array of new ideas to try, but is also strangely monotonous at times;

That watching real couples fuck is more exciting than commerically produced porn;

That if people are doing something that turns me on despite my fears that it is somehow disgusting (rimming for example), then it’s ok and I’m ok;

That what I thought would really turn me on is different to what actually turns me on, and that this can change;

That people do the craziest shit and love it, and I sometimes love it too (scenes of intense BDSM, homemade porn, machine fucking, brutal anything);

Watching porn with my partner can be super exciting and helps to decrease shame I still have about enjoying porn.

What porn has shown me about myself

That I can override my own concerns regarding porn objectifying women or promoting violence against women;

That I can ignore my own concerns about anyone under 18 shouldn’t watch porn, by continuing to be a porn consumer thus keeping porn well and truly alive and accessible;

That I can disturb myself and feel shame about my porn consumption or what I’m drawn to;

That it kills my imagination and makes me sexually lazy at times;

That sometimes I am deeply concerned about some of the women I see in porn scenes, and yet I still watch it.

That I use it to feel better, console myself, ease boredeom and because I can.

How porn still leaves me feeling disturbed and conflicted

That I would never pay for online porn despite knowing ethically that I should;

That it disconnects me from my body. Porn keeps the focus on the outisde — looking at a screen — rather than on the inside, focusing on sensations, touch and connection;

It can leave me feeling disconnected from myself sexually;

It can genuinely make me feel addicted to it and that my brain constantly seeks new and often more extreme scenes to get off;

Sometimes I’d rather watch porn and masturbate than have sexy times with my partner because it’s just easier and quicker. Then I feel like a shit partner.

It’s overwhelmingly fake and completely unrealistic. Even couples who have their own channels are still ‘performing’, despite not being technical porn performers;

That it can set up very false expectations in men in regards to what women like and want. The obsession with anal — especially rough anal — is an example. And yet I admit to watching that sometimes….

What’s with all the damn spitting and slapping faces? I classify these as fetishes and I don’t know why they’ve become mainstream except for reasons to dominate women in a poorly designed way.

I still watch porn and I probably always will. It fascinates me deeply. Perhaps I have written this article to justify why I like it so I can continue to watch it. But also to confess of my hypocrisy and confusion around my use of porn. I wish I didn’t like it as much as I do. At times I have been so concerned about my porn consumption I have quit it for months at a time, just to see if I could. And I could (phew).

But then I start watching it again.

I’m not sure where to place porn in modern society. But I know that denying it’s role, influence and power is stupid. Better to make friends with the enemy than to fight it though, right?