I wasn’t the only kid who lost his imaginary virginity to a two-dimensional girl on the Internet – the average age we see our first dirty picture is 11. Researchers aren’t sure what effect this early exposure has on children – testing could be harmful to kids, and parents who would let it happen could be prosecuted for endangering minors.
What’s left is an easily debatable clinical observation. I may not be a bad case study of the ill effects of porn. I’m starting to believe that my mom was right when she said I’d never have a normal relationship after she found my stash.
Statistically, though, I’m fairly normal. In a study published last year in College Student Journal, college students proved porn is more prevalent than we admit at the family dinner table.
Everybody has seen it. Ninety-nine percent of men and 88 percent of women admitted having seen a nipple or two. But less are likely to sign up for their local porn shop’s “Frequent Beatin’ It” card. Thirty-two percent of men and 4 percent of women watch porn three to five times a week. That’s still a hell of a lot of Jergens.
Moving beyond the obscenity debate over sexual morality, research now focuses on the impact of porn on sex psychology. That means it might be affecting you too, Dirty Harry.
It’s generally accepted that watching porn causes sexual expectations to rise. A Swedish study published in the Winter 2007 issue of The Journal of Men’s Studies revealed that younger people are much more likely to engage in oral and anal sex if they have seen it in practice. My intuition whispers “lucky us,” but don’t expect your partner to feel the same way. The next time you get slapped after asking a girl to wink her brown eye, you may want to lend out some of your video library.
According to a study on men’s genital and sexual esteem in the Spring 2006 issue of The Journal of Men’s Studies, porn stars give guys penis envy. Sure, I can’t help but feel intimidated by the dudes I see in porn. Not only are they buff as hell, their members look like they could grow arms and bench press a Ford.
The next time you’re feeling a day late and an inch short, remember that porn is a production. The average scene takes up to eight hours to tape, and if you can last that long, let’s swap notes.
Watching porn can also decrease men’s satisfaction in relationships. According to a dissertation written by Joel David Deloy of the University of North Dakota, porn lovers weren’t satisfied with the frequency of sexual activity in their relationship even though they were getting laid more than those who didn’t watch porn. Not to mention they were disappointed by their partner’s sexuality, physical appeal, affective expression and sexual curiosity. God, what’s left?
But look on the bright side, guys. All you’ve got to do is delete your Internet Explorer history and no one has to know any better.
Brian James Kirk can be reached at
brian.kirk@temple.edu.
Holly Otterbein
The first time I looked at it, I was 11 years old.
It was 1996, and the Internet was an anarchist’s playground, where clicking my mouse led to a world of free music, free information and free lovin’. Maybe other Catholic girls had self-restraint – but a simple spam e-mail in my “HyprHollyO” account was all it took for me to embark on a Tour de Porno.
I invited my best friend Anna along for the ride, and holy anatomy, it was a far cry from my church-issued sex-ed diagram. Some, er, members looked like they belonged in a carnival funhouse. But being a young journalist, I investigated thoroughly – men, women, gay, straight, this hole, that hair. We took a magical mystery tour of human flesh and we turned out alright.
Until Anna’s mom looked at her history folder.
Parents were called, Bibles were thumped and before I knew it, I was pleading my case to 30 family members over Thanksgiving dinner.
Yes, I looked at naked men. Yes, girls too. No, Pop Pop, I’m not a lesbian. They were convinced that watching nude ladies meant I was as gay as a rainbow-colored Cher doll.
My family didn’t understand that I was just a curious kid. I’d argue that porn today, which has more selections than the best Chinese buffet in the universe, caters to that same curiosity.
But this can lead to sexual overeating – like finishing off the General Tso’s, three avacado rolls and ice cream just because you can. As porn expert Dr. Susanna Paasonen wrote in her 2007 case study, “characters [in porn] are not necessarily attracted to each other as much as to the idea of sexual experimentation.”
If you’re hooking up with a different cutie each week, it’s unlikely that you’re head-over-loins in lust with all of them. Are we promiscuous because we’ve been watching fleshy strangers flip, slip and slide for so long? Does life imitate porn? Probably.
But sometimes, that can be good. One ex-boyfriend, who I dubbed the Oral Master, insisted porn was his 3-credit audio-visual course on the subject. But my sexual karma hasn’t always been so positive. Another guy, after watching years of unrealistically rowdy, up-for-anything ladies, thought it was cool to introduce anything (or anyone) into the bedroom.
Not so much. Dudes, please don’t assume that just because the fictional MILF or college co-ed enjoyed sadomasochism, real-life ladies do, too. This is porn’s biggest let-down: it isn’t realistic enough. Nope, not even the amateur sites. Take Playgirl, for example. It used to feature burly men like Burt Reynolds, and now it’s all greased-up girly boys who have longer eyelashes than I do.
And that’s why porn – while it may be all-you-can-eat – is never as good as a real boogie night, baby.
Holly Otterbein can be reached at
holly.otterbein@temple.edu.
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