I Know That Only Through Jesus I Am Saved

I'm currently 20 but my history with pornography is complicated. It began when I was 11 or 12, I was attending a relative's 21st party and a stripper had been hired to perform, of course all the children were put in a separate room but I sat behind a partition wall where I could watch without it being obvious that I could see. This is the first time I was exposed to sexual images and the first time I was interested in them. Although I had discovered sexual arousal I still did not fully understand how it worked, fortunately the sex education classes at primary school informed me in that regard.  It wasn't until the next year in high school when I first had access to sexually explicit images through the internet (during the time of dial-up), the site I most often frequented was all about women covered in mud (although not strictly pornographic) and I printed out a whole bunch of pictures from this site and left them in my bottom drawer (I still can't believe I was that stupid).

At this time I still hadn't ejaculated yet and I mostly just looked at the pictures out of interest. Of course my parents eventually found the ones in my drawer and warned me about pornography (my parents are christian so it is expected) and my dad mainly told me that he didn't want me to think of women as objects. I still continued to view pornography more stealthily and eventually discovered the "end result" while veiwing some relatively tame bikini-pictures. From then on I would often stay up late and download explicit pictures on Kazza when everyone had gone to bed (it was a family computer). I remember being quite addicted to self-satisfaction during these years and for a while I would do it once a day. However during the summer when Year 9 had just started I stopped for some reason.

But after a while I stumbled across some arousing images of comic book characters on a counter-strike website and I went back to viewing pornography. Although this time was different, first of all I began collecting images but I was also uninterested in anything explicit, most of my collection was erotic fantasy artwork.  That collection has been continued by until today and but for the hentai section, I would say it's largely not pornographic.  

I only really seem to find depictions of sex attractive in an illustrated form and even then I only view pictures that are not extremely explicit, which is rare in the hentai genre, I remember once sorting through and saving about 70mb of 2Gb of hentai images I had downloaded, because my taste is so particular. The problem I have with most hentai is that after a while it simply becomes a jumble of limbs and orifices and it realy dehumanizes (asthetically as well as morally) the women involved. Also it often verges on a medical diagram which just isn't attractive at all. This is the same problem I have with actual pornography, the explicitness seems more gross than anything and the pleasure felt by participants isn't really obvious, whereas because in hentai you have to create narrative of sexual arousal in one image, it is more evident and relies more on facial expression than genital contact.

In general like to view pictures of women who are happy in exposing themselves and I like the accentuation of the curved female form and the artistic merits of the setting, costume and makeup which pornography at large mostly destroys. Because of my particular taste, I don't see women as objects, rather I adore their physical beauty in a context that is natural. This mainly is how I reconcile my desire to view these images with my Christianity.

Everything else in my life is still exactly as it would be, I don't even drink or swear and I still wish to remain a virgin until marriage. I still believe that sex is the ultimate form of intimacy and should not be entered into without genuine love. I have never yet had a girlfriend mainly because I'm very shy and polite but I want nothing more than to hold hands with a girl and I intend to stop viewing my collection the minute I find a partner.

This is because I place love over lust and although my sexual urges are satisfied by the images I view I still feel a yearning to connect emotionally with a woman and I know that having sex with a woman I love will be infinitley more fulfilling then self-satisfaction. I see sex as a shared experience that benefits a loving relationship and I know that the way I satisfy my self now is only a shadow of that. After being satisfied sexually I often feel the strong urge to have someone beside me and I imagine cuddling up to a future wife in bed after-wards and that is the true pleasure of sex.

Also I keep my collection completely private and I find it acceptable to view alone but I still find fault with the increased amount of sexual images in the mainstream media. I sill believe sex is a private matter between two people (I fully accept homosexual relationships).

Mostly however I know that only through Jesus I am saved and that viewing erotic images and self-satisfaction are simply sins like any other, after all Jesus came to heal the sick not the healthy. For all these reasons I draw a line between myself and the majority of people who view pornography, however pretentious that may seem. 

I'm Never Full

I've never had a problem meeting woman or getting sex. I consider myself pretty normal. I've held good jobs, dated lots of women, married, raising a decent child, and I'm genuinely proud of my life w/ the gross exception of the vice of porn. 

Somewhere along the line I, and I believe my generation, grew to include porn as a gateway to sex in our daily lives. I don't think I'm different from most young men, we learned from our male role models that porn is o.k as long as its a secret. Dad's and men kept closets full of porn magazines, VHS, DVD's and now movie files. Our friends with access to their Daddy's smut also reinforced this idea. As long as its in a box, under the bed, in the back of the closet, etc its kinda OK. It's no wonder that the 'closeted' acceptance has created such conflict for society. Long kept secrets have a way of sneaking out. 

Now that porn is so main stream the sentiment that still lingers with it in society, and for individuals is the sensation that it should somehow still have an association of 'dirty little secret' even though its out in the open. Porn is no longer 'secret', is hardly 'little' anymore and the sentence is still out on whether it's 'dirty' or not.

I've got a very healthy appetite for porn. I could "eat' all day if I really wanted to. The thing about it though is I'm never full after the meals and the more I consume the more I want. If that's not classic addiction I don't know what is.

I go through periods of binging and purging, just like a bulimic, hoarding gigs upon gigs of filth and deleting them with the resolve to " be better about the collecting" 

The powerful need for fulfillment is what porn offers and what I have embraced over the years. It offers a sense of accomplishment- found porn, got hard, stroked, ejaculated/climaxed! "Wow that felt so good. So why do I feel so empty? Let's try that again with something nastier this time!"

The truth about porn is that for all the moral issues that surround it in society, it works. It provides release for the frustrated, a forum for the exhibitionist, a catalyst for the inhibited, a sanctuary for the shy, a stage for the theatrical. It embraces our fetishes and makes them acceptable, giving us a right to do or say just about everything. It can be artistic, commercial or amateurish and still offer value. Its a mirror that holds so many facets of humanity up and dares to say, "Judge me as you would judge yourself!" and in that fatal hour of judgement we categorically exclaim…we're not worthy!

The feelings I have after I've jerked off to 'insert fetish here' are more about me wishing I was better as a person then actually feeling bad for what I've done. Thinking that if I was better, stronger, more capable and confident I wouldn't need this temporary fix. Hoping that some how I will arrive at a place in life where I won't need to look outside myself for satisfaction.

The reasons to obsess over porn are just so myriad. It's a rich juxtaposition of scorn for the totally "sickos" who I feel at least I'm not them. Then there's the envy for at "lucky ones" who get to have the things that I want. Except I don't know that I'd want some of those things had I not seen them. 

I'll probably always be a customer at the porn counter. There are just so many things to sample. The important thing for me is to learn how to 'eat right'. Only consume the things that are good for me, nothing to indulgent. To try and stay in the "organic" isle and get the less processed variety, things that focus on self esteem and not so much on gluttony or excess. 

I feel that education would go a long way in dispelling some of the societal taboos that surround sex and porn. That as a people we could do worse than to explore our pornographic tendencies. The hyper-sexualized world we live in is just a bubble. It will burst just like the dot-com and housing bubbles and we'll all return to a more educated and reasoned acceptance of what porn is and what its values are.

I Don't Think It's Because It Necessarily Makes You a Misogynist

A friend of mine describes pornography as "cigarettes for the brain" -- a kind of high that makes that you feel good at the time, even though you know that long-term, it's not something entirely healthy for you. As for why it's not healthy, I don't think it's because it necessarily makes you a misogynist (How then would we reconcile gay porn?), it's more that while having sexual fantasies is normal and healthy, having unlimited access to people enacting these fantasies (or what you think are your fantasies) for you dulls you to sexual reality because you will expect something from these real encounters that they cannot provide, instead of being interested in what they do provide, meaning that you will be constantly disappointed with the imperfection of reality.

I wouldn't say that I have an addition to pornography, just an unhealthy attraction to it. It's been part of my life ever since a buddy of mine showed me his collection of Playboys back in junior high. These days I'd have to say that I view pornography 2 to 3 times a week, which is much less than it used to be. Part of it is that I've got less time and my chances to masturbate are usually after everybody else has gone to bed. Like cigarettes, I view it as something that I should avoid if I can and if I can't, to keep my exposure to a relative minimum so as to maintain my mental "health".

I never really talked about pornography in my personal therapy, even though my relationships with women played a huge role in those conversations, probably because viewing pornography is really a poor relation of those deeper psychological issues. My mother was a clinical depressive and as part of dealing with this, isolated herself from us both physically and mentally. My therapist is a Freudian and her analysis is that this lack of female attention/intimacy in my childhood is the root cause for why I've struggled with an obsession of needing myself to be wanted sexually by women as a form of self-validation as a sexual adult. Pornography is be a natural partner in this as women are relegated to the role of being in desire to the point of being handicapped by it. And it wouldn't really alleviate the situation as I'm perfectly aware of the artifice involved, none of these women would give me a second glance in terms of raw sexual attraction (or at least that's what I believe).

The most disturbing aspect of my enjoyment of pornography is when I find myself enjoying the fact that the woman involved in the scene is not enjoying herself, yet must pretend that she is, in order to provide me pleasure. It's sadistic and cruel and thoroughly enjoyable in only the way that those who feel powerless feel when they find
themselves with power over others. Recently I've tried to prevent this from happening by avoiding mainstream porn and sticking to higher-quality niche bondage pornography, in which I feel power issues are addressed more honestly and I feel less like a cog in the machine of exploitation.

My wife has sometimes said that we should watch pornography together, although it's never happened. I think it's never happened far more because of me than because of her; it's difficult to tell her that I would, every time, much rather have sex with her and that pornography is mainly a masturbation aid, it's hard to find it actually sexy because so much of it so painfully forced and ridiculous. Watching it with anybody else, especially my wife, would be painfully embarrassing. Most of my time spent watching pornography is scrubbing through a movie or clicking through endless free image sets trying to find that one moment that I actually find sexually appealing. One thing I find particularly strange is the endless amount of time devoted to monotonous thrusting with forced dialogue. Does anybody actually watch that, especially when it's just two sets of genitals interfacing for what feels like an eternity?

Pornography is a crutch, something I lean on in times of need, in dry spells, in times of wanting to feel better about myself, to take my mind off my worries of sexual inadequacy. A lot of the time I resent it and feel like it's something I should take out of my life. When I'm more reflective, I feel like it's healthier to treat it as a cheap indulgence that I can engage in from time to time without feeling too guilty afterwards.

I Am a Writer

Sexual release has always been a compulsion for me. I haven't been diagnosed but I believe I've been a sex addict in the past. I would prefer to stay home and masturbate. This was my hobby and my drug.

I started watching porn young, but only briefly. Years later I got my hands on a sex video catalogue which I heavily used from my early teens until I was in college when I began finding internet porn. It was addressed to my mother and I opened it suspecting what was inside. We lived on a farm so my access to new material was limited. I hid it in multiple places and kept it for over 15 years until I moved overseas. Now I save porn on my hard drive, compulsively, even if I don't watch it I still find and save like a pack rat.

When I entered college I didn't have my own internet hookup so I would sit in the back of the computer lab and surf for porn to download to disc and watch at home. Sometimes I wouldn't make it, having to hide my erection in the lab or having to try to finish it off in the restroom unnoticed. 

I always hoped to find what I saw in the women's faces, someone who hungered for sex as much as I, who didn't need to socialize just fuck me with animal lust. Socializing was a huge bore in comparison with the connection of sex. I could connect with the women abstracted in pictures because they show exactly what I want, someone looking like they want to fuck, not judging me or wondering if their friends will like me. 

I finally lost my virginity when I was 21 to a Russian exchange student who was as hungry for sex as me. She treated my differently, she didn't care about the social pretenses and I could feel she wanted it as much as me. However I had a harder time connecting sexually with her than porn because the condom blocked a lot of feeling. 

Shortly after this I moved to Germany, living with a girl and her parents. We did some of the most depraved sexual acts I've ever done, often mimicking what I was watching online. However I was more excited because she had a dedicated internet connection in her room and I was alone during the day. I could now watch whatever porn I wanted and did, masturbating more than I had sex with her. Ironically the porn often had girls very similar to her doing similar things that we did. The porn was the place where only I could go, like a dream, if I don't like something I can simply find something else. Which was often necessary because a lot of porn is made by men about domination, not about the lust of women, where women are turned on and want it, which is what I crave about porn. I want to see them wanting me. 

Heavy masturbation to porn destroyed a number of relationships and I cannot say I'm sorry. Porn was simply a more pleasing sexual experience most of the time for me. I can sneak it on my iphone, in the bathroom at work, in more than one occasion in my car on my laptop in some deserted place like a cemetery, while driving, in my mind while I'm having sex. The only regret I have is that it competes for much of my creative energy. I am a writer and it's too easy to switch programs or web pages for a creativity-robbing wank.

The biggest sadness in my life I found when I realized I wasn't watching porn anymore. When I was in my early 20s I started taking Propecia to save my hair. I realized when I was 27 that I wasn't connecting with porn as much anymore, or interested in looking at it. My drug was slowing taken away. I no longer sat next to a beautiful woman and imagined her mimicking what I'd seen Belladonna do with me, looking at me with the hungry eyes, begging for my manhood. Masturbation was no longer a multiple daily event, or even daily. I was depressed and had lost the urge to search for new stuff online. My porn collection sat idle as did my lust. I stopped taking Propecia and 4 years later have eventually recovered some of my lust but at a cost. It's limited. I can't look at porn often anymore if I want to have a sexual relationship. Which I now have with that same Russian girl I lost my virginity to. Now there is more porn than ever, more available than ever, and I have to severely limit myself if I want to get an erection a few times a week. It's like putting a brick of black tar in front of a heroin addict and limiting them to once a week hits in order for them to get a buzz. It's torture especially because I spend so much time online, and so much free porn is available with a few "www." keystrokes...

I Was Gonna Explode

I started consuming porn at a very young age. As a budding 10-12 year old boy, it was quite a surprise to find my dad's dirty mags under his nightstand. I didn't even know how to masturbate back then. It was through some friends at school and my brother that I found out what I was "supposed to do" with this pictures. There was no turning back then, I guess. I would scour the whole of my house looking for porn, and found it. The magazines were never in short supply, usually staying in their spot for a month or two before being replaced by new ones. There were also a couple of betamax tapes that I would be itching to watch when my parents were away. I gradually became picky and started to hone my preferences and my taste. When I turned 18 I couldn't wait to buy my very own porn. I remember buying my first magazine, in a comic book and used books store. I couldn't even look at the cashier (a woman), blushed like I was gonna explode and one of my legs started trembling uncontrollably. At this time I also had my first job, and it was in an office. The office had internet connection and I could be left alone for long stretches of time. You know what happened then. I would frantically try to watch as much as I could and often jacked off in the very office. By this time, finding porn had become an obsession, I needed to find as much and the best porn available. I had started a collection. I would cut up the magazines I bought and pasted the pictures that turned me on the most and made a scrapbook. I also kept the very best digital pics I found and load them up to a slideshow viewer, you know, for easier masturbation.

Now I must mention what my sexual and romantic life is like. In a word, nonexistant. As I am writing this I am 27 years old. Virgin, never had a girlfriend, have been on a total of two dates, never even been kissed. I absolutely love women, find them fascinating, intringuing and stimulating. Yet I am a complete failure in social skills. I am incredibly shy, have very few friends, spend most of my time alone and freeze to a standstill when someone tries to socialize with me. Is consuming porn the cause or a sympton of this problem? If I had a girlfriend and a healthy sex life, would I not need to watch porn anymore? I don't know, and it's these kind of questions that are always in the back of my mind. To be sure, porn has had it's benefits. Thru amassing and sorting the collection I've learned first hand lots of skills that are useful in my career, as I am a librarian. Simply by searching for porn I've become a better librarian and able to find stuff for my users in ways that otherwise I wouldn't consider. Porn has been a distraction and a company thru all the lonely nights. And it's also brought me an unxpected and pleasant connection.

About two years ago I started blogging my porn, just to see if there was anyone out there that liked what I liked. Imagine my surprise when not only did I find someone, but it was also a woman. A middle-aged mom in a completely different country and with a taste for porn, started to comment on what I posted and it slowly evolved into an online friendship. Then we started e-mailing and sending each other semi-nude photos. She is now one of my very best friends and we still connect thru porn. I send her pics that I come across which I think are stimulating or that I think she'll like and she answers me back with her thoughts and sometimes a question or two. My life is not fascinating or exciting, but it's also far from miserable. I walk thru the street and fell jealous of the couples I see kissing or holding hands. I want to experience that, but in the meantime I am happy with what I have and I enjoy porn as a means of entertainment and self-discovery. Am I addicted? Yes, probably. But I would rather say that I'm addicted to the world and to beauty. And while not all porn is beautiful (believe me, I know), sometimes a glimmer shines thru it and that is what I'm looking for.

I Was a Geek

While I shan't recollect the details of my life, lest the endeavor elicit boredom in the reader. Suffice it to say, I shall concisely establish the context upon which it began.

My life took an unorthodox divergence rather early; during the Late Formative Period when I had accrued a collection of ritual viewing habits on television concerning alien warriors of an anthropomorphic variety frequently engaging in bloodless warfare with a sorcerous mummy--a subject matter in no short supply in the mid-80s--on a near weekly basis. The accumulated programming appealed to a restless preternatural fascination with the exotic and fantastical which thrived in a decade known for its scientific trends, garish aesthetics, and outlandishly cool-but-inaccurate entertainments. It was this extensive collection of related media that later served as evidence necessary for my first moment of self-awareness.

I was a geek.

And I was rather proud of my deduction, as the means of entertainment, though expensive as they were--as well as unattainable to a young boy devoid of discretionary funding--carried with it a significant increasing awareness that there was a burgeoning community of others whose interest were congruent with mine. And in those wonderful years when the vigor of youth are a sufficient currency upon which to purchase fortune and fun--except for the .25 donations towards video game cabinets in exchange for their services--I thrived in a fashion that supplanted in dominance the position of my preternaturally previous obsession.

The life of a geek in those days was a lonely one. Humiliation was incessant...and every member of elite society had the right to inflict it. And the women of our age found in us, not a single, desirable trait upon which to purchase anchorage for their burgeoning libidos. While I was never subjected to sermons of the demonization of sex (any sermons for that matter, we were secular WASPS), I was never subjected to positive appraisals either; my home life was sexless, and to protect my lascivious sanity from the paranoid ramblings of my critical parents, I suppressed my inclinations until this very day.

A young man with high-functioning autism, who had not enjoyed the benefits of the crucial behavioral education therapy and mentoring that would follow in later decades, could hardly have found himself in worse circumstances: I was unpopular with the peerage, undesirable to contemporary females, and unable to indulge my growing, impulsive need to immerse myself into the reservoirs of sexually charged material...which had been unavailable in my house, due to the austere nature of my parents, since before the age of five, when the interest spontaneously presented itself.

I had resolved, shortly after the age of 12, to never pursue even the most fleeting semblance of a relationship, for such optimism was futile: my autism would yield nothing more than failed proposals and their inevitably recurring humiliations. But such resolutions, though they may be steadfastly held for a few days, are abandoned in a few moments of bleak despair. Unable to change the quality of my station, I decided that, should I become unable to ever acquire sex on my own, I would pursue the next best thing: MEDIA DISPLAYING the intimate activities of those who could. And having a keen curiosity, and a very honed familiarity with stealth, I was able to acquire the first magazines of my youth through the ancient art of "a guy who knows a guy." At the cost of $12, a $5 magazine had been procured, and I was free to indulge my obsession with the previously inaccessible female anatomy in a most entertaining way.

From there, it evolved to videos, which were harder to obtain given that one needed to be in close proximity with the display case in order to ascertain the merit of said product; the solution did not present itself until the legal age had arrived. My natural repugnance continued to remain unchanged through high school, and so I failed to acquire the vile, misogynistic competitiveness of my more successful peers; their aggressive natures, and ruthlessly competitive approaches only reinforced their jaded sexual appetites, making them prone to prefer spectacle in lieu of quality. I suspect this is the key component to the pathological demand for sexual acts of a continually fantastical--and often degrading--"extreme" genres in the field itself.

And so, with no experience in dating or relationships, and an obvious lack of profound good looks, I ventured into adulthood celibate and miserable. My accrued talents of humor, intelligence, and polite behavior failed to compensate for a lack of animal magnetism and thus I was ignored by even the most casual of encounters with the fairer sex. I did not have occasion to lose my virginity until I was 24, and did so with the aid of an adventurous girl younger than myself at a swinger's party...almost the only viable option for me even today. I soon began to take not just solace, but also happiness in my porn, for it represented to me, not the constant ineptitude and failing in my social life, but rather the convenience and variety not found in a normal relationship. And if the truth be told, the dangers of real sex were not to be found either: there is nary a man who, upon the instance of consuming porn, is assaulted by the unpleasant smells, fluids, and frightful diseases, which would surely follow an authentic sexual encounter.

Without a catalyst for escalation, my porn addiction of today has remained largely unchanged: I abhor violent and aggressive sexual scenes, as well as fake lesbian titles. My distaste for anal stems not from ignorance but an obsessive-compulsive fixation on hygiene. And though my sexual life is far from active, it is also far from dead, having occasion to procure a handful of single-encounter horizontal partners at various events where that manner of play is demand, and professors of that science always welcome.

I've come to accept pornography as my surrogate sexual lifestyle: devoid of complication, disease, and odoriferous unpleasantness, and heavily populated with a wide range of women to satisfy every craving, it is a hollow yet adequate solution to my otherwise celibate bachelor existence. And while I am still aware of the inherent pathetic quality of being a man alone at my age, I would much rather be the connoisseur of an under-appreciated form of entertainment continuing to transcend the aesthetic limits hitherto placed upon it by forces of official history than a harried everyman, harangued by the burdens of emotional turmoil, personality conflict, atrophying sexual energy, and ludicrously inexcusable asinine conversations and circular arguments.

Women do not find me attractive enough for anything other than a gilded chair in the Friend Zone. And it is a development about which I can do nothing. So rather than dwell and ferment in my own isolation, I can use porn to have the "good parts" of a relationship while evading the burdens of engaging in a relationship with someone that will inevitably, statistically fail.

In closing, there are those who would sarcastically chastise me with a familiar chestnut of "Yeah, sit and watch your porn so you don't have to go through the actual effort of meeting and getting to know somebody else in the world." To those people I would respond:

"Look at the world and tell me the pleasure of becoming acquainted with it."