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 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."

It Was My Friend

I currently see myself as an attractive, mid-twenties young man, with a creative job i love with a steady and good income. I have my first novel under my belt, a reasonably individual dress sense, a good sense of humour and i'm pretty confident to boot. I've come to love women and the female sensibility very much, and enjoy going on regular dates and occasionally falling in and out of love, but i've not always been like this.

I was expelled from school at 14 for drug related reasons, and immediately became a very angry young man, i started writing ridiculously right wing manifestos and generally was full of hate and bile toward the world and the way it had treated me for experimenting with soft drugs. I became lonely and introverted and that's where my healthy / unhealthy relationship with porn came in.

I had recently acquired my first modem, 14.4k, and did not need anyone or anything else. My parents were technophobes at the time and didn't know how to operate the computer my dad had bought for word processing, and i basically went to town looking for and easily finding porn.

I delved deeper and deeper and as my connection got faster and faster i became more and more hooked, until i was only looking for the most perverse and often degrading forms of porn i could find. I came to rely on porn, it was my friend, it made me feel good through the actions of others. Although i was still socially quite active, my friends were racking up notches on their bed posts whilst i stood in the side lines getting drunk and never really meeting any girls. I had lost my virginity at 14, and although i did have a string of - very - short term relationships in the mean time, i didn't  have penetrative sex again until i was 21, and i largely put this down to a mix of confidence issues and the growing porn obsession. I feel, looking back on it, porn stopped me understanding what 'real sex' was like, and put the act in a very weird place in my mind, it made it something sex is most definitely not, and almost made me think that it was a terrible, degrading act.

Porn was my solace and nemesis at the same time. I loved it and if affected me from growing sexually. Today, i still revert back to my old friend and still have a large digital collection of all sorts dating back from over the years that i keep saying to myself 'i'll delete it soon' but never do. I came out of my 'porn shell' through the love of a good, sexually active and knowledgeable girlfriend, without which, i feel i'd still hold sex as a strange, difficult entity in my head. I'm so happy that i have come to understand and enjoy sex more than looking at porn, i thought for a long time that i might never get over it, and i feel for the men that never do - i'm sure they're out there.

although now i'm dating and it doesn't matter so much, i think i know and realise that when i do eventually meet a girl i would like to settle down with, my life partner, that they will have to appreciate the fact porn and i are in it for the duration, i don't think i could every fully give it up, it's just something i need every now and again off the back of my youth. I think convincing her that it means nothing other than a quick release, however, might be more difficult than i imagine. life takes funny turns.