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How does porn influence our ideas about sexuality and the opposite sex?
by Light (PA)

Pornography has had a tremendous impact on my sexuality and how I view and relate to women. It is a stain that I wish I could wash away, but like a cancer it has spread and grown over the years. I must confess, I have done my fair share of the work, I have fed my porn addiction daily, and it has turned into something that I have trouble separating from myself and my identity. I fear that the glasses I now see the world through are tinted and stained by years and years of porn use and I am left desperate and frustrated, angry that my life has been stained so much by this problem.

When I first started to look at porn as a teenage boy, the images and scenarios it presented to me seemed separate from who I was. I could clearly tell the difference. There was me, upright and clean, but mischievous…I was curious about sex and porn became my teacher. To use an analogy from the comic book hero “Spiderman,” porn became the “Venom” of my life. In the comics, Venom is a alien life form who is a kind of parasite, feeding off of Peter Parker. Peter is faced with a choice, to allow Venom into his life, bestowing great powers on him, but at the cost of his sanity and humanity. By the time Peter realizes Venom’s disastrous effects, it’s too late, and he must battle like mad to remove the parasite.

Over the years, I continued to use porn and it continued to seep deeper and deeper into my consciousness, my being, until to this day I have trouble telling what my true and original thoughts and ideas are, and what elements are there because of pornography. Like Spiderman trying to tear off the Venom costume, it is extremely difficult, and I fear that even after I have been clean for many years I will still be haunted by things that I spent so much time investing in.

If I could cut pornography and it’s effects out of my life cleanly, I would gladly do it, and pay a high price for that freedom. If only I could sign up and have those portions of my memory erased, wiped clean of years of filth and degradation, I feel I would be a happier man today. The problem is, pornography has become so engrained in my mind to the point where I don’t know where it stops and I begin. It’s like a seed that was planted at a young age, and after years and years, the roots have spread out into the soil and it has dug in. I see women walking down the street, and thoughts pop in my head from years past. I could be talking to someone at work, or my mother of all people, and have the most hideous thoughts float into my mind. I am mad at pornography, and I am mad at myself for letting it fool me for all of these years.

Porn has shaped my views of sex from an early age. It has sold me on the idea that for a woman to be valuable, she must be impossibly beautiful with all sorts of plastic enhancements. I am ashamed to admit that for much of my adult life I have ignored women who don’t come close to adhering to this paradigm. Almost as if they weren’t in the room, porn has taught me to look for one thing only in a woman, and I have learned the hard way that that one thing doesn’t even exist out here in the real world. I spent many years in high school and college locked up in my room, masturbating to a screen because I was too scared or too embarrassed to go out and find a real girlfriend. For years and years I avoided real girls. Pornography was my sad escape. I knew I didn’t look anything like the guys in porn. I was self conscious and could imagine girls laughing at what nature had endowed me with, and I was afraid to find out for myself. When I finally did have sex, I learned that girls weren’t like (and didn’t like) any of the stuff I thought they did. Porn’s education on the topic of sex was largely useless for me in the real world.

I think pornography should have a disclaimer on it in much the same way alcohol or cigarettes do. I suggest something along the lines of: “Warning: this substance is known to cause damage and have lasting negative effects on your social values and ability to relate to your fellow human beings, and ability to lead a satisfied and healthy sexual life.” I think it is parent’s responsibility to talk to their kids and give them this warning, and create an open environment where kids can approach them about these issues. But of course for that to happen, the parents can’t be porn addicts themselves. I wish that my parents had taken the time to have at least one serious talk about porn and sex. I probably wouldn’t have liked it. What scares me is we have a whole generation of kids growing up in this porn culture, which is taught to believe that porn is ok and women are told that they have to accept it, and there is no alternative. And what for? So giant corporations can turn a profit while keeping you and me enslaved. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to settle for the lies and deception that pornography has brought to my life. If I had any notion of the pain it has caused me and my family later in life, I would have avoided it like the plague. But now, after years of desensitization and exposure, once in a while that plague seems appealing. It is in those moments I have to catch myself and remember the true reality of the situation and not accept the ideas of modern culture, if the culture that it promotes is inherently false, unsatisfying and untrue. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Like Peter Parker, we must remove the Venom suit before it is too late, before we forget who we are and what is right and true in this world.

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