I will defend to the death the individual's right to a porn
addiction!
Does this mean I have a porn addiction myself? No.
I do feel alienated from anyone who treats or thinks of those in the
sex industry as subhuman, or who doesn't seem to realize that behind
the fantasy is a real person, with thoughts, feelings, loves, hopes,
fears, dreams, problems.
Freud said that what we like to do in fantasy will always tell us a
very great deal about ourselves.
Here are a few quotes from Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae) that are
relevant to some aspects of how I see the situation:
...The imagination cannot and must not be policed. Pornography
shows us nature's daemonic heart, those eternal forces at work
beneath and beyond social convention. Pornography cannot be separated
from art; the two interpenetrate each other...
...Christianity works least when sex is constantly stimulated from
other directions, as it is now. No transcendental religion can
compete with the spectacular pagan nearness and concreteness of the
carnal-red media. Our eyes and ears are drowned in a sensual
torrent...
...There is no such thing as "mere" image. Western culture
is built on perceptual relations...
...criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to
western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language
of images...
When people started making movies, men were filmed performing various
actions, while women mainly just sat there with appropriate
decorative props looking pretty. This represented the inequality
between the sexes at the time, and the development of movies and porn
might have contributed to creating a monster of gigantic proportions
that is very difficult to fight in the present day.
What we now think of as porn was originally documentary in nature
(scientific attempts to film sex). The makers of it sort of stumbled
upon its titillating properties, and things snowballed from there. Or
at least I think it was something along those lines.
When people give up porn because it is 'bad' (degrading to women,
representative of base desires rather than idealized ones), fantasy
as opposed to reality, when they have a kind of idealized idea of
what love and sex can or should be, believe who a person is should
matter more than what they look like, when they believe that true
love means you will never in your life want to look at porn again,
they are setting themselves up for failure.
It might not be a bad idea to try to go without it for certain
periods of time, to ensure that you don't lose your ability to
respond to regular women or put up with psychological complexity. I
think that is one of the major problems at present that most people
don't realize is there. Everybody is confused and overwhelmed, and
men in particular might find it easier to withdraw than try to talk
about it.
Males grow up with a kind of split or compartmentalized mind when it
comes to love and sex. They know all the things they are supposed to
say and think and feel about love and sex, and they develop an
'official' personality that reflects this to the important women in
their lives. But, most of them feel guilty and like they have to
protect the women in their lives from the brutal truth of their
secret desires. In the moment, when they are with 'special' women,
they can even believe what they are saying. But in the moments when
they are alone, a different self emerges.
Some make a kind of deal with themselves to spare their loved ones
pain. Others question whether they ever really loved their loved one
in the first place. Most people allow their lives to play out without
changing anything, and sometimes this means cycles of abstinence and
indulgence. When a new relationship is fresh, it may be exciting
enough that it's not as difficult to forgo the porn for a while, but
as soon as a person falls back in, there are bound to be feelings of
guilt or doubts about the relationship itself.
What I think is important is the fantasy itself, if men are able to
work out what it is that excites them. In porn, what kinds of porn
are they drawn to? What are the recurring motifs? If there is guilt
afterward, what does it seem to relate to? What happens if you
imagine the women involved as real people, with thoughts, opinions,
hopes, dreams, or life problems? Does it kill the fantasy?
What if the brutal truth is that if men truly felt they had a choice,
they would never choose boring, regular women?
It's not even a question of whether women in porn feel capable of
making good life choices, whether they like what they do, or if some
have been sort of brainwashed in one way or another and don't
recognize that while through porn men acknowledge their power, they
also control it. They limit how much power women are allowed to have.
These women are stigmatized in society, can't move freely among
everyone else if they are open about what they do because there is a
hypocritical element inherent in the structure of beliefs that
represents our everyday lives. They are too much of a threat to the
'real' world and the hypocrisy upon which it is based.
When people meet 'in real life', they may begin kissing, and then one
or the other may try to move things along, but often the way it
happens is related to a need to soothe the anxiety of not knowing if
the other person really likes you. People fall together blindly, not
really seeing each other, not really aware and awake in the moment.
Porn zeroes in and magnifies some of the sexual elements of
seduction, rather than just the sweet or tender ones, such that men
can really look at them, examine them. If you haven't consciously
perceived all of the elements of the seduction process, you might
feel something is lacking, or might be drawn to find something that
represents an essential part of what you are seeking.
As for some background on my personal situation: my parents
divorced when I was young. For visitation with my father, I went to
his adult luxury apartment which he shared with another man. The
place was designed pretty much as a sex pad. There were erotic
pictures on the walls, the bookshelves contained a lot of books about
sex, and both of them had large porn collections, in the days before
everyone had vcr/dvd.
So.. at 10 years old I was looking at a lot of porn, which probably
would have horrified my mother had she known about it. I found it
very stimulating, and it is partly these early experiences which make
it difficult for me to judge now.
It might partly be the way girls are socialized, it might partly be
differences in brain chemistry and evolutionary factors, but as I got
older I didn't have the urge to seek out the same kinds of porn. But,
I did have the idea that it was essential to try to have sex with a
lot of different people. I didn't have a lot of initiative back then,
but it wasn't a major problem because males were aggressive enough
to set things in motion. When I tried to approach females, things
were awkward, and I realized I would probably have to wait until I
was in university.
Later on in different relationships, when examining different kinds
of porn, I found that I would initially respond, but that I would get
desensitized fast. For me, it was like what was exciting was the
psychological novelty of trying to understand something (and someone)
new. And yet I could see that the others involved could continue to
seek out the same types of porn over and over, without becoming
desensitized.
Over the years I have tried to understand this, and think partly it
has to be done on an individual basis, but that also a lot has to be
understood about evolution, mating strategies, evolutionary
psychology. It is not enough to sum it up as men have an unconscious
need to spread their seed while women need to trust that a man will
stick around to help raise offspring - people repeat these things so
often that they have lost meaning and the complexity beneath them. We
also need to understand inequality between the sexes in more depth,
as well as the effect of the motion picture industry on our
psychological development as a society of voyeurs.
Modern life is complex and perhaps for a great many, very
unrewarding. I don't think I would be able to argue convincingly that
porn is not a kind of valid consolation or even stress relief. But,
the ubiquitousness of it does suggest that we are becoming more
detached from each other and unsure of what the opposite sex wants.
We are all more insecure and fearful.
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