Settle down on the policing of individuals sexual desires and freedom, the only rules are the ones laid out by the two (or more) people involved in that specific act of sex.

I am a man (though some here might disagree, I know I am) who was sexually abused (in a rather unusual manner, not going into details) as a child. Growing up I learned to hate my own sexuality, and male sexuality in general, and although I couldn’t get rid of it, I certainly can’t justify exposing others to it. This has made relationships impossible, and so I turned to porn (for a while, and secondary to books on sex) IN MODERATION to learn about these things and to serve as an outlet for the thing I couldn’t quite destroy. I still firmly believe that a man who expresses attraction to a woman is a piece of filth, especially men who show that vomitous thing called “confidence”, and nothing seems to have the power to make me feel differently.

Lots of people somehow tell me that showing attraction to women is “not disrespectful”, but that wouldn’t be true for me because of my feelings about how awful it is. It would be like doing to a woman what was done to me, in a very real sense (again, I’m not going to go into details).

Yeah, I have been in therapy for 10 years, and have talked to many, many people about this before, but I still see no reason to view my feelings of attraction to women with anything other than contempt.

Given this, is it still wrong for me to pursue (softcore) porn as an outlet? Because if no matter what I do I have to be accused of hating women of “objectifying” them (a term I still don’t understand, how is looking at women’s bodies “reducing” them to anything?), I don’t see any reason to go on living. I think it’s in fact an indication of my respect for women that I don’t share this horrible part of myself with them. I was not strong enough to kill my psychological need for a sexual outlet completely. If (softcore) porn is my only psychological outlet (I can’t fantasize for obvious reasons), and it is bad, then I am the enemy of women as long as I live. And I couldn’t bear that.

Just trying to bring another perspective here.

(I say *boy*, because a REAL man wouldn’t treat women like a piece of meat, as you seem happy to do.)

Brett – if this isn’t proof enough that our society is in pathetic shape, and that your site is absolutely necessary… I don’t know what is”
*END HERE*

Aaron, where did you get the idea that I treat women like a piece of meat? =/
Was it just because I am ok with watching them “sell” their body for millions to watch? If that was the reason, then I’ll accept it. However, I shall add that, in that case, you should be careful not to numbly watch the “piece of meat” that cashes your groceries next time you check out the supermarket, or the “piece of meat” that has to take care of your domestic trash, or all the hundreds of “pieces of meat” that have clean up the crap (yes, the actual crap) we send down the drain everyday.
Isn’t professional sports filled with “pieces of meat”? Take the “manly” sport of boxing. People will pay sh*t-loads of money to watch a man try to beat the crap out of another man. I’m sure you all know the damages it causes to their brain. You basically get two pieces of meat trying to bruise the other, and yet I will bet you a great deal of people here who find porn degrading enjoy watching boxing.

Am I taking things out of proportion? I might. But not any more than you guys are with this broad generalisation that porn is evil and should be banned.
There is great quality-women/men respecting-romantic porn and then there is all the other more hardcore types you probably have in mind.

I sincerely hope that all of you who are against porn because it may be degrading and it may destroy moral values, are all 100% against legal possession of weapons. Why? Because if you are able to defend that it’s not the possession of weapons that causes trouble but the human nature that does, not using the same reasoning for porn would be a bit hypocritical (and that ain’t manly at all, is it?)

I think we all men (and women, of course) should understand something, since we are all part of this website and, therefore, take pride in some manlyness. There are all kinds of vicious things out there in the world – alcohol, drugs, tobacco, porn, literature, politics, religion, gambling, music, sports… – all of these have their darkest side, some darker than others. But we are ADULTS, and if we are as manly as we’d like to think we are, then we are responsible for our own decisions and actions. Smoking is allowed and it’s everywhere, yet I have never tried it even once. Drinking is legal and advertised and I never got drunk.

Avoid porn if you want, ban it from your life if you think that it might be bad for you, but don’t blame it on its existence. YOU have the hability to choose what’s best for you. YOU have the hability to distinguish between right and wrong. YOU have what it takes to make sensible decisions. You are only as vulnerable as you allow yourself to be. That, for me, is being manly.

P.S: Aaron, no offense taken, ok? I just quite didn’t get where you drew your conclusion from. Peace.

This article is moronic.

Due to this excessive viewage of porn, a lot of our celebrities (and we youth) are now becoming perverted . There was this case of an actress called Cossy Orjiokafor who shot a “private “bestial(sex with dogs) film with some Lebanese businessmen for $10,000.00.
unfortunately (or fortunately), she was shortchanged and the film shots were exposed by some journalists.
The beginning of the solution to this is to appeal to the conscience of google.com and other search engines to please remove adult directories from their searches(like they do for China).

Interestingly, from history, the 18th and 19th century forebears of the Europeans were progressive due to their restraints: sexually and otherwise. Unfortunately, it seems their offspprings want to ruin it all due to sexual incontinence. Also more worrisome is the
refusal of African societies to imbibe the fine points of European and American character by alternatively engaging in sexual unrestrains bordeering on madness.

I just want to say , thanks to the authors.Anyone is free to exchange intellectual discourses with me through SMS or a phone call. My number is +234 803 444 22 34 and e-mail is eerokan24@yahoo.com

However, I did the search today for anyone writing about this topic because as of the last few weeks, I’ve had to come to terms with the reality that my current relationship is ending largely because of the effects that watching porn has had on my boyfriend. I can sit here and type rational thoughts about all this, but the truth is that it is, and has been for the last year and a half, heartbreaking. I loved this man and so wanted a long-term, deep, meaningful relationship with him (that hopefully included a good sex life) and what I have ended up with instead is the experience of watching that potential slip away because he can’t connect with me sexually. Sure, he can have sex with me, but there’s no heart component to it, there’s no depth of connection in the experience. Early on in our relationship he confessed to me a problem with watching porn and calling 800 numbers in his past relationship. We had many open and honest discussions about the role of porn in his life and his opinions of it in society today. We were mostly on the same page there, although he often took the stance of many on this blog about the concept of “objectifying” people (in that we all objectify each other all the time). Intellectually, we agreed on many things in this area. But what we couldn’t bridge was the fact that this long-term use of porn as a way to manage his anxiety about women/life/the world, etc., had severely impacted his ability to emotionally connect during sex with a partner. As a justification, he would often get in a snit about how men used porn because women didn’t do enough to keep sex interesting and that it was always assumed men automatically wanted to have sex all the time no matter, yadda yadda. I listened. I really did. I tried everything I had in my tool kit. I dressed up, bought toys, tried all kinds of new things and was willing to try others. I was not closed-minded and have never been, but without any kind of emotional connection as part of our sex life, it started to make me feel like crap (as other women on here have said so excellently). I started to feel like I had to be something I wasn’t, to do more than even I was comfortable in order to keep his interest, my self-esteem got shaky, I wondered how much he was actually continuing to use porn regularly as a release for his sexual desire and found my trust in what he was telling me start to slip. We went to a sex therapist, and a couple’s counselor, and I sent him to a workshop on “how to please a woman”, hoping any one of these things would bring about the sense on connectedness I so wanted for us in our sex life. The end result was we had sex less and less often because it just seemed like it was too much effort for him, and I started to run out of energy to make it happen (and ideas, frankly). Without the connection, I started to drift away from him. I wasn’t angry, rather, I found myself depressed, partially blaming myself and wondering if there was something else I could/should do, but also realizing this was this man’s lifelong struggle, and he clearly wasn’t done with it. The problem was there with him from the start, and he made many comments about how he knew he needed to make changes, but it never happened. I hoped for a year and a half that we could find a way past it together, but ultimately I found myself more and more resentful, less and less attractive (I have never felt this way, ever, in past relationships, and have been complimented a lot in my life for physical attributes), and watched my feelings for him start to disintegrate.

There was a lot of love and respect and affection and warmth and friendship that we shared. It was when the conversation turned not long ago to us having a “sexless relationship” that I knew my hope for a meaningful sex life with the man I loved was beyond reach. He had, in fact, chosen the ease of porn and masturbation over the challenge of sexual intimacy.

In my opinion, like others have said on here…it’s much like alcohol…lots of people can go out and have a drink and have no problem result from it. But for others, it can ruin lives…not just the person who is “drinking”, but for the fallout on those all around them who their behavior also impacts. The damage to feelings of trust, intimacy, respect, etc., can take a hard hit that is difficult for a relationship to recover from.

For the men who are staunch defenders of porn and its use, perhaps you have never been in such a spot and have no problem from your exposure or use of it and can separate fantasy from reality. Lots of others cannot. Whether this makes porn on the whole terrible isn’t any more the question than whether alcohol is terrible. If porn isn’t causing problems in your life and/or your relationships, then great, have at it. But, any person out there who uses porn as a replacement or escape from the difficulty of intimacy with your partner has a serious problem to contend with. If you can continue to use porn and not have it affect your relationship and ability to relate to your partner in a meaningful way, then you may not see the dangerous side of this, but please respect that this is not how it is for everyone. For those of us that have lost long-term marriages and the hope of a future with someone we loved, it is a devastating problem. We not only lose the love of our life, but we may even be picking up the scraps of what remains of our self-esteem and ability to trust in men again in the future. It is a deeply painful and damaging problem.

I commend the author of this blog for putting his viewpoint out there, because it is not one often heard coming from a man. For today, I have found comfort in his perspective.

Let me comment on your use of the word “addiction”, if I may.

There are several kinds of addiction, the most difficult of these to overcome (arguably) being “chemical” addiction. We see this sort of addiction in narcotics, alcohol, and tobacco. These addictive substances cause physiological effects in the user when the addiction is not “fed”, and this leads to a great deal of pain and misery.

However, there is another type of addiction. I have heard it called many things, from “emotional” addiction to “personality” addiction. Much as you have described, it takes on the same attributes as compulsive behaviors. When these compulsive behaviors reach a certain level of reinforcement (which varies by individual), there are adverse effects to ending this addiction as well.

“Quitting Porn” is certainly not so easy as just turning off a television or computer monitor. I can attest to that personally.

I am divorced, and looking back on my marriage I can easily see how pornography had a negative effect on our relationship. Early on, my ex-wife saw my pornography habit as a part of me. Being the loving woman she was at the time, she attempted to accept me for that. She even went so far as to join with me, and to try and understand why I enjoyed it.

While I do not wish to blame the divorce on pornography, I can see now that it was a contributing factor. There was a point that I reached where pornography held little interest for me, and our love making had become routine (even if it was out of some of the movies we had seen). In an effort to reach me as I retreated into self-doubt, she escalated what she was willing to do. This ended in arguments, physical violence, and constant screaming matches.

Could this be the effect of something else? Most certainly, yes. Do I feel that pornography had a role to play in that? Yes, I do.

However, I have been unable to give it up. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but simply because I always had some excuse to keep going. “Its only for pleasure,”
or “But I have nobody in my life,” or “looking for ideas.”

Now that I look at my current relationship with a very sweet woman, I realized that my perception of women HAS been objectified by pornography. You struck a chord with me when you talked about men retreating into fantasy, even when with their significant other. This is true in my case, and now that you bring it to light, it terrifies me.

Thank you for opening my eyes to this, and sharing with me the wisdom (one of my five core values from the 30DBM challenge!) to find the strength to overcome this habit. Be it addiction, compulsion, or habit alone, it is something that has become controlling and unhealthy in my life.

So, thank you again. I now know I have something I need to take a more critical eye to. I really enjoy the AoM site overall, and find that coming back here every day gives me something new to think about. You do an excellent job, and your advice could help almost any man.

Regards,
~Matthew