Pornography is a topic of moral confusion in the U.S. right now.
Internet pornography is more accessible than ever, and as a result, we are warned about pornography addiction and how watching online porn will negatively impact our sex lives and our lives in general. We’ve seen stories on “MTV TrueLife” about marriages failing because men fall victim to this horrid addiction, yet few take the time to publicly thank pornography for all the good that it does in our lives.
Watching porn is a way of expressing sexuality. Masturbation most often goes hand-in-hand with the act of watching pornography. Doctors once told us masturbation would make us go blind or grow hair on our palms, but now they know that masturbation is a natural activity of sexual expression that is healthy and not detrimental to vision or the aesthetic beauty of the human hand.
Pornography is wrongly linked to personal problems in a similar way. People blame pornography – which they voluntarily enjoyed in the first place – for their depression, intimacy problems and relationship troubles. It’s like blaming the gun instead of the person for killing someone or blaming burgers and fries for obesity – some people don’t understand responsibility.
We live in a free country. We can watch internet porn all day if we want to, but just because we enjoy it doesn’t make us addicts. Liking something and doing it again is different from actually being addicted to something, and porn is blamed and shamed for the wrong reasons.
University of Utah psychology professor Victor Cline wrote about the dangers of watching pornography in his article, “The Pornography Trap.” His chilling tale followed an 11-year-old boy who was introduced to porn at his friend’s house. “His natural curiosity combined with the awakening sexual desires of his growing body and soon created an almost overwhelming desire to view more and more. In short order, each exposure to the sexually explicit material was followed by masturbation. Each time he repeated the cycle, the sexual release reinforced his behavior and strengthened the hold the addiction had on him.” What Cline describes is typical of any adolescent going through puberty and sexual discovery, not an addict.
Dr. David Ley wrote in the “Current Sexual Health Reports” Feb. edition that porn addiction research is flawed, and that the addiction model should not even apply in the context of “high-frequency use of visual sexual stimuli.” In other words, porn addiction doesn’t even exist.
Pornography and the porn industry have plenty of faults with their often-exploitative nature, though. There are also probably some who genuinely have problems watching too much pornography and do need help.
Perhaps a person would be psychologically impaired in intimate situations if he or she had solely been exposed to hardcore fetish pornography prior to any real human contact, but chances are those who watch internet pornography already know at least the basics about society. We have a general idea of what is acceptable and unacceptable; we are not animals without logic, reason or empathy.
Porn is not the enemy. If you watch porn from time to time, there is no need to go to rehab. We can enjoy watching pornography for what it’s worth, take responsibility for our own lives and not toss blame where it doesn’t belong.
