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BY EJ DICKSON AND NICO LANG
On the Internet, it’s easy to find a screed about why you need to give up porn or why it’s ruining our kids, our culture, our relationships, and our lives. You can blame almost anything on porn, from the shortening of our attention spans to the rising divorce rates and the UCSB shootings. If you look, you can probably even find articles blaming porn for Marisa Tomei’s 1993 Oscar upset. #neverforget
While pornography won’t be curing cancer anytime soon, it’s not nearly as bad as the anti-porn frenzy would suggest (the Internet’s version of Reefer Madness) and, in fact, comes with surprising benefits for porn users. To defend porn against its critics, the Daily Dot’s two resident porn enthusiasts, EJ Dickson and Nico Lang, are here to tell you why you a little Internet porn is good for you.
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1. Because it’s healthy.
EJ Dickson: Despite the many, many, many studies claiming that porn is bad for your brain and your relationships, there are just as many studies saying that porn does not cause irrevocable harm to the brain or your sex life—in fact, it might even be kinda good for you. In a paper from 2008, two Danish researchers Gert Hald and Neil Malamuth concluded from a survey of 688 Danish adults that porn did not yield any negative mental or health effects. In fact, the researchers found a positive correlation between the subjects’ porn viewing and increased sexual satisfaction, as well as self-reported benefits in other areas of their lives.
And as for the old chestnut that too much porn viewing can lead to addiction? The consensus is still pretty split on that one, but some sex researchers like Dr. Louanne Cole Weston believe it’s important to differentiate between an addiction and a compulsion, in the same vein as compulsive nail-biting.
“People who say pornography is an addiction, they tend to come from the addiction community and not always the field of mental health or sexuality,” Weston told me a few months ago. “They tend to say ‘This is dangerous, porn is fraught with danger. You better watch out, it’s a slippery slope.’ It was sort of the same as people in the drug addiction community saying if you smoke pot, you better watch out or you’ll be doing heroin.”
Translation: Porn is probs not gonna send you on the street, muttering to yourself about alien satellites in your brain with needles in both your arms. If anything, the only thing it’ll probably do is make your arm a little buffer.
2. Because sometimes it’s better than the real thing.
Nico Lang: Some nights you want to get dolled up, put on a freakum dress, and pretend to be someone does not eat food out of the garbage long enough to trick a guy into having sex with you, but you don’t always want to put in the kind of effort that involves changing out of your pajama pants. In lieu of being able to have sex with your Netflix subscription (in which case no one would ever leave the house), free Internet porn is the next best thing.
Anti-porn nutbags might suggest that you use your one-some time to create your own erotic fantasy, escaping into the vast Blue Lagoon-like garden of your sexual imagination, but that’s not really the point of pornography. Porn is great for when you want your fantasies created for you, because let’s be honest, we’re not always that creative. For someone who writes for a living, my erotic reveries are shockingly dull, displaying all the playful imagination of a golf match. You can only picture George Clooney being bent over a table so many times before you beg to change the channel. (Sorry, G-Cloo.)
I don’t think pornography is a replacement for the real thing, but research has shown that having a healthy masturbation schedule actually makes us better sex partners -- and partners in general. While being good for your physical and mental health (as EJ mentioned), it’s a way to continue making sure that your own sexual needs are being met outside of the bedroom, which is likely why it’s so common, even for those in relationships.
“Surveys show that anywhere from 70 to 95 percent of adult men and women get it on alone, and, yes, that includes people involved in monogamous relationships,” wrote The Frisky’s Erin Flaherty. “According to Kinsey research, 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women in relationships masturbate. A survey of Playboy readers found 72 percent of married men masturbate, and a similar Redbook survey found 68 percent of married women do it, too.”
As Flaherty argues, watching porn in a relationship isn’t cheating, just like watching it when you’re single doesn’t make you immoral or perpetuate our singledom. It’s a necessary part of self-love. Besides, if you’re worried that porn might be ruining your sexcapades or your relationships, perhaps they weren’t that good to begin with.
3. Because it’s hilarious.
EJ: I don’t watch porn often with my boyfriend, mostly because we have wildly divergent tastes—he likes ten-minute sloppy blow-job clips, whereas I’m a fan of narrative-driven vintage content, particularly if the term “X-rated musical fantasy” is somewhere in the title—but when we do, we tend to focus less on the action onscreen and more on what’s going on in the background.
For instance: Why is there a long-haired Maine coon at the living-room orgy? Did he receive an invitation, or is he merely an impartial observer? (We’re not the only people to discuss the presence of cats in pornos, too, if the Tumblr “Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn” is any indication). Why does the same KARLSTAD white chaise sectional appear in literally every gay porn I’ve ever seen? Did every gay porn producer get together and decide to do a run on IKEA?
And why do lady porn stars’ voices always crack like that of a goddamn bar mitzvah boy’s when they’re trying to talk dirty? (In this vein, we’ve taken to greeting each other with the phrase “Wanna fuck my puss-EE?”, our voices going up and squeaking on the last syllable..
By saying that porn is “funny,” I’m not trying to denigrate porn and the people who make it. I’m saying that porn is funny because sex, in general, with its unanticipated noises and bodily fluids and ridiculous O-faces, is funny. The fact that there’s an added level to artifice to porn makes it even funnier: Even if you can’t get into porn itself, you can at least get into the Ron Swanson-esque expression on the Maine coon’s face as he watches his camgirl owner go to town on herself with a drilldo.
And besides, research shows that laughter is an aphrodisiac, so even if you guys are busy chuckling over the Thuja Green Giant-sized bush on that 70s MILF porn star, it’s dollars to donuts if you keep watching, you won’t be laughing for very long. (Because you’ll be fucking. You know, in case that wasn’t, like, clear.)
4. Because exploring your sexuality is how you find out what you like.
Nico: There’s a reason that the first step in every queer man’s coming out process is looking at pornography: Unless you’re exposed to sexual practices outside of what you’ve been told is acceptable, it’s hard to become comfortable with your own desires or normalize them in your brain. Just as sex ed is how we find out about the mechanics of sex -- what goes where -- pornography is how many of us begin to figure out how that relates to our sexualities. Pornography is not an ideal replacement for sex ed (because if you think Bait Bus is realistic, you’re in for a world of hurt), but it’s an excellent education as to what’s out there for you to explore.
This isn’t just true for gay men. Porn allows all users a safe space to work out proclivities they might be uncomfortable elsewhere, like sleep porn or rape porn. There’s not always an opportunity in daily life for a primer on the wide world of tentacle erotica, and finding these resources for ourselves is how many of us become exposed to them. How else would people in the BDSM and leather communities have figured out that’s what they were into without some hot muscle bear action to help show them the way?
And even for those who find themselves entrenched in a niche community, porn can be a way to continue to explore your sexual horizons and reeducate your desires. Sex researcher and blogger Jaime Woo used Internet porn to explore the world outside of who he had been taught to find attractive. In his BOYS essay, “The Gandhi School of Hookups,” the Chinese-Canadian writer describes the process of actively exploring men of a plethora of races like being a “kid who suddenly realized that the candy shop spanned blocks."
We all know that porn is a profoundly racist institution, but so is online dating -- and all dating, for that matter. The more we more to break down the limitations within ourselves, the more we make the world a better place for our wanking and non-wanking needs.
5. Because honestly, guys, you could probs learn a thing or two.
EJ: Let’s just get this out of the way: Porn is by no means an instructional manual for how to have sex IRL. It’s a fantasy, and sometimes it’s a very silly one. No one (or at least very few people) enjoys having sex the way people have sex in porn; no one (or at least very few people) is turned on by spitting into a butt, or gagging on a penis, or washing their face with baby batter, or any of the other porn tropes that lead radfems and anti-porn activists to conclude that porn is dangerous and destructive to women. But just because these things are kinda gross and unseemly to you doesn’t mean that no one likes them, and just because there are a few things you’ve seen in porn that you wouldn’t do in your own sex life doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can learn from watching porn.
The fact is, regardless of whether you think you’re the Yitzhak Pearlman of having sex, you probably aren’t; you’re probably just OK at it. And just as aspiring concert violinists learn how to better their craft by watching Pearlman play, your own sexual repertoire could similarly benefit from watching an adult performer whose skills you respect and admire.
Porn doesn’t just give you the skills to learn how to better please your partner, either: It also can help give you skills for how to better please yourself. If you masturbate semi-regularly, chances are you know enough about yourself and your own body and what it likes to be able to ask for it in bed, which will ultimately lead to a much more satisfying sex life, whether alone or with a partner.
Practice makes perfect, people. So go find your Yitzhak Pearlman of sex and rub out a few practice scales on your instrument of choice today.
