Jess Murray

Pornography’s a problem. Sure, as a compliment to a lonely Thursday night, most guys see nothing wrong in it. But as most women will tell you, it’s degrading, objectifying and the moans of pleasure are about as fake as the tits. Now, I’m sure that most of the woman in those films would much rather be doing something better with their time than sucking off a hill-billy hulk-hogan lookalike whose dick tastes of her rectum. But that angles been covered. So we turn to another affected strata. I’m not talking about the children of said pornography models who twenty years down the line are forced by fellow class mates to watch their mum cough up some mustached latin man’s jizz. I’m talking about the viewers.

Just as concerning as the feminist plight is the affect pornography has on its predominantly male audience. A quick browse on the internet comes up with many articles investigating the subject of pornography addiction, and I’d wager that at least a quarter of the male population under 40 have are affected to some degree.

Pornography addiction does not seem to be defined by a constant, unstoppable desire to get on the world wide web and milk one out as soon as they’ve recovered from the previous session 15 minutes ago (that being said, I once knew a fat bloke who achieved 36 sessions in one day, though had to stop when blood entered the picture). Pornography addiction is one of losing the capability to use one’s imagination. In this case, the TV-cynics were right: the classic trio of hand, mind and penis is not enough for the modern man – it’s only a last resort when you’re by the computer, down to your pants, only to find that BT broadband has fucked you over.

If you’re thinking that us men have it easy – sure, there are many worse addictions –  but I spoke to a friend in this situation a few weeks ago, and to sum it up, he found pornography boring, tedious, and unexciting, as he did smoking. But that didn’t mean he could stop either: one doesn’t have to enjoy something for it to become an addiction – for all those I’ve spoken to this week, it’s a dependence. And dependence on pornography leads to more than just a sore cock: it distorts the line between fantasy and reality, which is a potentially harmful situation.

On Monday night, armed with a bottle of wine and a quick prayer that the IT department wasn’t tracking my website history, I spent some time researching the more obscure side of pornography. I felt like I was in a dream: not in a fantasy / don’t-want-to-wake-up kind of way, but in a I’ve-had-to-much-to-drink-and-my-brain-makes-no-fucking-sense way.  I saw a women stick rubber chickens in all three holes just because she woke up next to them. In another clip, the woman (who was an authentic a replica of Miss Piggy) tells the man (who was also dressed as a pig) to smell her breasts with his ‘dirty piggy snout’. To whom that niche caters for I can only wonder. One of the most perplexing videos involved a couple using a roast chicken to get each other off. In a nice touch, the chicken was actually garnished with cress, so top marks on the presentation front.

Then there are the more common forms of the extreme perverse – you know, a bit of BDSM here, a bit of double penetration there. I also found a lot of things that are perhaps too disturbing for some of the readers, so if you’re interested please just google ‘literally drowned in cum’ and see for yourself.

Do such sites satiate or fuel sexual fantasies? Did the more green-fingered inclined man in  the pre-pornography era have an unfulfilled fantasy to watch a woman bring herself to orgasm with a wheelbarrow, or do some men, suddenly unfulfilled with a multi-racial gang-bang decide they need to throw a midget dressed as a gargoyle into the mix. (This week I’m not making up any lies).

Psychological studies purport that viewing pornography gradually numbs your excitement to levels of sexuality, encouraging you to find gradually more and more extreme fantasies to satiate your sexual craving. In this view, pornography is like a shop: you go in wanting one thing, and come out wanting more. And as men who share bank accounts with women know: that’s a terrible thing indeed.

The crucial question is whether pornography can go beyond being a simple pleasure and manifest itself harmfully in relationships. Testimonies on the internet read of marriages falling apart because girlfriends and wives simply can’t fulfill the extreme sexual fantasies that pornography have made some men reliant on to be satisfied. Unless the female counterpart is willing to be taped to the ceiling and titillated with a dildo strapped onto a punt, the sex life vanishes, the relationship goes stale, your woman leaves while you end up having a wank in your friend’s spare room.

And I’m sure a lot of potential relationships have ended because this blurring of reality and fantasy makes men confused about what’s acceptable and what’s not. Busty Tina seems to like it when she has a finger cheekily inserted up her ass, but that girl you picked up in Life just got all freaked out, left your room and never answered your calls. What about the language we use during sex? Does our loving wife really want to be called a dirty cock loving whore? An old friend of mine showed me a video in which the man shouts at the woman to take it in her ‘babygates’. I can’t think of anything more distressing for a woman than being forced to imagine the penis as a small baby.

Furthermore, there’s a lack of public dialogue about such potential impacts pornography can have on people’s lives. Even between us guys, it’s not something you ever really bring up. None of my friends ever leave a hardcore video from pornhub on my facebook wall (“Check it out m8, came 3 times 2 this!”). Unless you’re a self confessed pornography lover, when such a subject comes up in conversation an air of awkwardness always emerges – we all know everyone logs on from time to time, but no one wants to admit it, probably due to the fact that in hearing about it from a friends mouth means you end up visualising them jizzing into a tissue. I’m sure things are different in Japan, but here in the UK the wider context of pornography gets no publicised debate or coverage apart from cheap documentaries on late night Bravo, which I believe makes the potential hazards even more symptomatic.

Pornography tells men that nine out of ten women love nothing more than at the end of a romantic love-making session to have their face, eyes and mouth plastered in jizz. This was initially going to be a light hearted column of observational comedy about pornography, but I changed my mind, because pornography is an issue that need’s more awareness and debate: for most women, having a facial as a finale never seals her deal.

It just seals her eyelids.