Is Pornography Bad?
- Pornography presents a seriously distorted outlook on bodies, relationships, sexuality and gender – repeated viewing of pornography creates in you the impression that these distortions represent reality.
- When you view pornography, your body learns to respond to an artificial, distorted view of sexuality – and you can actually become unable to respond to real people
- By creating false images and ideas about sexuality, pornography can cause problems with your ability to enjoy a healthy sexual relationship with someone you love.
- Viewing pornography can actually undermine your self confidence because you bond to a fantasy world that the ‘real’ you wouldn’t fit into.
- Healthy sexuality always involves intellectual, spiritual, emotional, social, and physical elements. Pornography presents a shallow, selfish sexuality, where human intimacy is absent. Viewing sexuality as being only physical cuts one off from the full potential and richness of sexual experiences.
- Viewing pornography starts as pleasure, then it becomes a way to try to relieve boredom, loneliness, pain and tension. Over time, it escalates to an essential tool to just cope with life and becomes a substitute for emotionally healthy relationships. Pornography use can change your whole world view, affecting your job performance, personal relationships and your basic self image.
- An addiction can be established when a person becomes dependent upon the “rush” of the sexual arousal caused by pornography, enhanced by the body’s production of adrenalin, endorphins, and other internally induced chemicals. He or she learns to depend upon this activity in order to cope with life’s challenges, difficulties or emotional stressors (such as anger, boredom, loneliness, stress or fatigue). This creates the physical, mental and social elements which can cause an addiction.
The problem with soft core pornography is that it’s voyeurism – it teaches men to view women as objects rather than to be in relationships with women as human beings.” Pornography gives men the false impression that sex and pleasure are entirely divorced from relationships. In other words, pornography is inherently self-centered – something a man does by himself, for himself – by using other women as the means to pleasure, as yet another product to consume. Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families Pamela Paul, p. 80
After two years of trying to make a relationship work, in which the guy used pornography regularly, a woman stated, “I never want to be in the kind of relationship where it’s just physical. I want lovemaking back. . . . I don’t know any man who is into porn who has been able to be truly intimate.” Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families Pamela Paul p. 132
Aline Zoldbrod, a sex therapist, believes many young men today are terrible lovers because they’ve been raised in a pornified culture. . . In pornography, all a man does is touch a woman and she’s howling in delight in two minutes. If men think this is how real women respond, they’re going to be horrible lovers. Today, pornography is so widely used by young men, they learn these falsehoods. . . There’s good evidence that the more men view porn, the less satisfied they are with their partner’s looks and sexual performance.” Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families Pamela Paul, p. 151
It’s hard to find anything more retrograde, repressive, or close-minded than the sexual clichés peddled by pornography. Rather than a mark of escape from the past, the dominant morality of pornography reeks of Puritan and Victorian prudery; it creates a world populated by virgins and whores, by women who are used and shamed for being sexually voracious. . . In pornography, sexuality frequently accompanies or provokes disgust and hatred – something to be done quickly, and just as quickly disposed of. In the world of pornography, sex is generally dirty, cheap and – in the end – not much fun. Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families Pamela Paul p. 248