To me, what is worrying about porn is not how many people use it, but how many people – like me – have found themselves addicted to it.Īs Dr Jeffrey Satinover stated in his 2004 testimony to the US Senate subcommittee on pornography: “Modern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction.” Impacts of pornĪ lot of studies have been conducted on the impacts of porn on men and women in society. I’m simply sharing the impacts that porn has had on my life and what has changed for me since I’ve stopped using it. I’ve seen some great videos of couples engaging in intimate and respectful sexual encounters – of course, these are often only found on feminist porn sites or in the “female friendly” category (It’s interesting to note what the category name “female friendly” implies about all the other categories).īut I’m not here to judge anyone else for what they choose to watch. Let me also state clearly that I don’t think all porn is bad. Now, I want to be clear here that porn use extends beyond the male/female gender binary, but for the purpose of this post I am sharing my experience with porn from the perspective of a heterosexual, cisgender, white man. It is estimated that one in three porn users today are women. And it’s not just guys watching sex online. And I was not alone.Īccording to a recent study, more than 70 per cent of men ages 18 to 34 visit porn sites in a typical month. I didn’t realize how much watching porn manipulated my mind, warping my sexuality, numbing my feelings, and impacting my relationships with women. I even tried to quit a few times and then rationalized my eventual return to the addiction. I thought I could quit porn whenever I felt like it. It seemed so pervasive and culturally accepted that having an actual conversation about it was a total non-starter. “Yeah, everybody watches porn,” I remember hearing. And, like most addictions, it was a behavior that I was ashamed to talk about or even admit was a problem.
I didn’t know it then, but porn had become an addiction. I thought I’d outgrow my porn habit over time. Fascinated by this world of unleashed sexual expression and fantasy, I couldn’t get enough of it.Īs I grew up and began exploring my own sexuality, I discovered just how different watching pixels on a screen was compared to the intimacy of making love with another human being. I remember when I first discovered internet porn – I was 17 years old.
Here I was, a man who is striving to be an ally to women, perpetuating a culture of violence.