Porn Is Killing Sex
Porn Is Killing Sex
I was a young child in the 1980’s that grew into my teen years in the 1990’s. It was an era where having a quality VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) showed status. The VCR our family eventually bought to keep up with the neighbours and society was a thing of luxury at the time. It was in 1990, and it had a feature on it called ‘Timer Record’ that would actually record your TV shows for you when you were away on holidays…for up to two weeks from the present date! The best part about this feature was that you could set up the timer with your remote control while sitting on your couch… It was technology beyond our wildest imaginations… The price tag on that machine in 1990 was $400, which was quite a sum of money at the time.
My teenage years were pre-internet or what could be referred to as, PEAPY (Pre-Easy Access Porn Years). I remember that in the few days just before I graduated from high-school my friends and I were allowed to go into the school’s ‘computer room’ and a specific computer was connected to something called ‘dial-up’ where we could check this new phenomenon called ‘The Internet.’ However, we did not really know what to do with it when we were given the chance to try to get online. We clicked the mouse on something and then it would not connect, so we just sat there and talked instead because we were not sure we needed to care. (This story sounds like the time when a girl came over to a boy’s house that she was interested in but the boy did not know what to do so he just watched a movie with her from opposite ends of the couch.) Besides, all that my friends and I would have wanted to look at on the internet-thing would have been pornography anyhow, because we had all heard it was a big thing on there. But since we were in the school we would have not be able to satisfy our real interests, we could hardly care less about the opportunity we were given to explore the World Wide Web with Netscape…
I grew up in an era where as a 14-year-old, having a Hustler magazine in your possession would have more personal value to you than your first car would have later on in your life. That is not even an exaggeration. My two older brothers who were 14 and 15 years older than me and that ended up giving me an advantage over my teenage-peers. I found the naughty magazine stashes that belonged to my brothers. I stole those magazines from them. Who were they going to tell, mom? The benefits of those heists would be shared with my pals who were very happy recipients of my fortune in life. We kids wore out those dirty magazines. Pages were creased. Pages were ripped. The magazine generally stayed open to any page that it was flipped to as there was no magazine shape-memory left. Those magazines were flipped through hundreds of times.
In those days, if a family had a little bit of money, they might have one of those big 1980’s satellite dishes. We knew that porn existed on there. Every now and then we might get a glimpse of Playboy without sound, but we knew there was much better pornography out there than breasts and the occasional shot of bush that Playboy showed. We all wanted to see it all. We wanted to see XXX! I will never forget satellite channel ‘S1-18.’ That number will be ingrained in my memory forever. I never actually got to see the channel myself – I just knew it once existed and it showed XXX porn before it was shut down. My best friend had a satellite dish and he knew how to find porn on it through trial and error. He would find channels that would be scrambled and also had no sound, but by looking at it he could figure out that he was probably looking at a porn scene. He would spend hours working at it, trying to unscramble the channel. He would devise different strategies where if he changed from one satellite to another, and then changed to that channel from a different channel at just the right second as the dish was moving…Viola! Porn! Amazing! It did not have sound, but we were too happy with what we had to bother caring. We had porn! I took him a blank VHS tape to record silent porn when his parents were away. It was at this time that I first saw what he referred to as ‘Double-Fucking’ which I would later find out was called ‘Double-penetration.’ I did not even know that such a thing even existed…it was way beyond what my mind would have ever thought of without exposure to seeing such a thing first hand with my very wide and bewildered eyes…
Then one day, lightning struck… We got our hands on a real VHS porn-movie. An older friend was dating a girl whose parents owned a small video rental store in the next town over. He was having sex and was far beyond where we were at, but he had not forgotten about us little guys. He could get us porno…With Sound! We had hit the big time…. Those were fucking exciting times in life. I remember that the first movie he got to us was called ‘Sextravaganza 7.’ It was a fantastic name for the first ever real porno we would all get to see…
When you finally got the VHS tape of Sextravaganza 7, you would wait and hope, nearly chewing your fingernails off, plotting for that moment when both of your parents would be out of the house. You would watch out the front window at their vehicle driving away. Once you were sure they were unlikely to come back for a forgotten wallet or music on a cassette tape for the drive, you moved at lightning speed to your best hiding spot in the house where your new treasure had been lying in wait, hoping from the moment you had hid it there that you would get to see it again soon. You would nearly have the shakes in anticipation as you loaded it into the VCR, pushing it in faster that the VCR could actually load the cassette. The front and back door of the house were locked, just to buy yourself a few extra seconds to get everything shut down and fake regular innocence should your parents suddenly alter their plans and return earlier than anticipated. Porn time! Those were very exciting moments for a 14-year-old kid with typical male curiosity…
One by one, my friends and I each had Sextravaganza 7 to ourselves and we watched the hell out of that video-cassette-tape. We basically wore it out. Those of us that had it early on would tell our friends at school about the movie, and the late receiving friends would be pressuring us to bring it to school so that they could take it home. If you had it at your house, you were never in a hurry to give it up and pass it on, but everyone else was edgy, waiting for a chance to get it for themselves. And when you finally took it to school, it was snuck into your friend’s backpacks as perfectly discreetly as possible. While there was fear of the embarrassment of getting caught with a VHS porno tape at school and the trouble that would get you into with your parents, most of the actual fear was of getting caught with it and having it taken away. We did not want to lose access to what we had! That cassette-tape was worth its weight in gold to us teenagers. When you gave it to your friend, you looked him square in the eye and said, “Don’t get caught with it!” You could care less about the trouble it might get him into; you just did not want to lose this amazing asset.
A typical movie had about five scenes and it did not take you long to pick out your favorite. Every kid watched that scene day after day, any time he seemed to have time alone. We knew every single sound, moan and grunt of those favorite scenes and we could even recite lines with the actors and actresses. The movies would often have a theme through them. At school we would deliver the ridiculous lines to all of those in the know. To us, ‘Sextravaganza 7’ was probably the best porn ever made in the history of time! Certainly the previous six Sextravaganza’s could never be as good as #7 was, because I can tell you that #7 was fucking awesome!
However, those days are over. And it seems like the innocence of it all left with them. I am a full grown man now with the internet as a part of my life at home or from any place I might be standing with my smart-phone in hand. Today, I could watch porn in a tree or in a traffic jam should I so desire. And that, I am realizing, is part of a problem that we have today. Porn is too accessible. Porn is, sadly, killing sex. Pornography is a mental adventure that we all take too often. I for one am extremely guilty myself. Last year, I realized that porn is having a very adverse effect on the sex I have in my life. I am a single man who enjoys the company of women. And because I have seen everything legally imaginable due to easy-access porn (and many things that had previously been unimaginable to me), my views on sex are certainly skewed from what they were 15 years ago. As a result, when a woman ends up in my bed oftentimes I am slightly disappointed by the sex because of her limitations. There are things that I am so used to seeing that they now seem second nature in sex. And then some girl, that I have likely just met a few hours earlier who has come this far with to be in this position with me, does not want to go as far as I want to go? It is often surprising when she stops at something. How can she not like this or not want to do that? It is obvious that everyone else seems to be doing it. Why doesn’t she want to? She is so prude! This is the 2010’s… Vanilla-ice-cream sex? Are you fucking kidding me?
After coming to the realization of pornography’s negative effects, a friend and I were discussing how porn is killing sex. We both took a vow to stop watching it and agreed to admit if we started on it again. He broke first. I toed the line for a long time. In July, I realized that by the time the middle of August would arrive, I would be six months porn-free. A half a year! Of no porn! But, in total honesty I was getting antsy. I knew that I was going to break. I missed porn. In that fifth month I knew that I had that six-month target date to get to, but during those last couple of weeks leading up to it I was nearly counting down the days. I could not wait for my personal ban to be over. Then the date came. I broke. I watched a beautiful woman have a fake orgasm and assumed it was real. I was back in the game. I am now a controlled porn addict again… When I talk to my friends about it, they say that they are all addicted as well…
So, I am not sure what I really gained from the six-month porn-break, other than to prove something to myself and for the rest of my life I would be able to say that I quit porn for six months. But pornography is not like the old days were where we watched those same scenes over and over again, and had every moment of every scene memorized. I glorify those days in a way, but somehow they actually were glorious. We knew every one of our favorite-scene actresses’ facial expressions and knew the moment when her eyes would get big just as she was on the verge of what was to be considered an orgasm. We had seen that same scene many many times. We loved that woman. We dreamed of meeting her. Maybe she would be in two different scenes in the same movie and we would see her perform twice.., something that was nearly lottery luck in those days. I can still picture my favorite girl, a read-head from my favorite youth porn-scene. All she wore where blue high-heels for that performance. I loved every part of her and I would still like to meet her, even if just to say, “Hey, thanks for that. You helped me learn a lot of things during my adolescence.”
Today I feel like appreciating the women in the scenes is gone. Now, you can go to any of the 1000s of websites, scroll through the videos uploaded and pick who you think might be your favorite girl from the clip-features images. You watch that girl. You get to the point you want to get while watching her. You push the ‘X’ in the top of the screen. She disappears from your mind forever. She is just one of the thousands. You put yourself away.
Access of porn today is clearly killing sex and must certainly take much of the sexual instinct out of humanity. You saw a curly blond haired woman with freckles that you could not stop thinking about for the next hour after she passed your way this afternoon? There is not so much need to approach her anymore in an uncanny situation. Instead of dealing with potential awkward rejection that often leads to humiliation, you just can assume your curiosities about what lies underneath when you later type ‘Curly Blond Freckles’ into the search-bar of your favorite porn website and several women that look a little like her will pop up. There is today’s fantasy. How about ‘35 Year Old Glasses Librarian’ or ‘Latin Large Breasts Cocktail Dress’? Hundreds of different movies will come up. You can browse through them, looking for the one that resembles you afternoon desires the most. Sometimes the browse to find the one that best matches her takes longer than her entire scene once you have started the movie. According to Porn Hub statistics from 2014, there are 5,800 visitors to their site per second, with 78.9 billion annual views, with most countries featuring variants of their own country name in their searches. If you not want to make a direct approach with a beautiful woman who catches your eye and grabs you attention, you can cop out with the porn search-bar fantasy instead…
Porn is killing sex and it is not healthy what porn is doing to society.
It is not healthy that I enjoy porn so much…that we all enjoy porn so much. In relationships, sometimes I watch it when I am alone. Then sometimes I wonder about the negative energy field this actually creates in our connections and in our sex life.
The young teenagers today have access to pornography that my generation could not have dreamed of having, but that seems to have come at a harmful cost of either a) lofty expectations or b) melancholy and probable loneliness should you want to take the easy route. I recently read a study that discussed a teenage couple who were dating and had just begun to have sex. The boy had been watching porn for years. Immediately, he wanted to try anal with her, and he wanted to ejaculate on her face: things far beyond her comfort zone as they were just barely beginning to experiment with sex. Somehow, the innocence and the beauty of sex are being completely lost. Sex is becoming what my mother used to refer to as ‘Smut.’ Accessibility has become a serious problem…
Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness, seems to be in a battle against it. He even has a great name for porn!
Lyrics posted below so that you can sing along!:
No Bone Movies – Lyrics
Silver screen, such a disgrace
I couldn’t look her straight in the face
A blue addiction I live in disgust
Degradation, being eaten by lust
No bone movies
No bone movies
No bone movies
Inspiration that’s blue and uncut
Can’t kick the habit, obsession of smut
Voyeur straining, in love with his hand
A poison passion, a pulsating gland
No bone movies
No bone movies
No bone movies
I shouldn’t do it, the guilt tells me why
I just can’t stop it, I try and I try
X-rated demon that lives in my head
Hungry for bodge, and he wants to be fed
Japan is widely known as a country with an openness to pornography which is a major part of their mainstream media. A study from 2010 showed that 36% of males between the ages of 16-19 were adverse or indifferent to sex. (My own biggest problem when I was between the ages of 16-19 was that nearly 100% of the girls in my social circle were adverse or indifferent to me with the exception of a couple of small miracles in life). ‘Adverse and indifference’ means the Japanese age group mentioned is essentially bored with the concept of sex. There is no longer anything rebellious about it in society or culture. No more edge. Porn is killing sex. A generation is losing interest in it and a portion is becoming a-sexual due to over-exposure and pushing its limits. Ever looked up ‘Bukakke’? Point made.
My mom used to say that I was allergic to chocolate when I was a little boy and that it made me extremely hyper and out of control. I am sure that she just did not want to deal with me on a sugar high, so I got very little chocolate as a kid. The result is that I have a serious sweet tooth today and seem to want chocolate after every meal. Did I not get enough porn when I was young and now I really enjoy and crave it? What will be the future effects of the generation of youth today who have access to pornography from the day they learn to type on a keyboard? I do not know what the answer to any of it is for sure, but I do know this for certain…with our modern consumption of pornography where it is today, this can only have negative effects on the future of cultures…
It is undeniable that porn is killing sex.
*While I am at it …
Colin from Papua New Guinea
When we were picking mangoes in Australia in 2007, we met an extremely nice man named Colin. Colin is from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where current times there are times of long long ago for western civilization. No telephone, not electricity, no TV, no magazines. It is an awesome, closed, self-sufficient society. Polygamy is part of culture. Colin’s father had three wives, who were often jealous of each other, which sometimes made things uncomfortable, but made for many brothers and sisters to hang out with.
Colin has really had two lives. Growing up without the all of the western life concepts that we take for granted has made him fascinating to me. Today he told us that he has no idea when his birthday is. He does not even know what month he was born in and neither do his parents. He uses his baptism date (which happened to him in the 4th grade) as his birthday for the sake of having one. He told us he is somewhere around 26 years old, but he is not really sure.
As a product of this closed society, Colin decided to branch out and go to university in Australia. This was a new world for him on so many levels coming from a quiet self-sufficient civilization. One day Colin’s new college roommate, an Australian, came home and told him, “I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I can’t quit masturbating.” Colin had never heard of the word before. His roommate said, “You know….” Colin did not know. His roommate explained and it blew Colin’s mind. He had never heard of such an act before. He had never discovered such an act before. In his small community, with no westernization of television, radio, or magazines, sex was never the hottest subject on every 14 year old’s mind. They never spoke of it. When they would hang out, they would play soccer and have fun, and not try to become the next Casa Nova by talking about screwing girls. The never spoke of such things. Without western society’s shoving sex down everyone’s throat, in PNG, boys were still able to be innocent boys. Colin had heard of sex and had had sex with his girlfriend before he had ever heard of masturbation. When he came home from college, he asked his buddies in PNG if they knew about masturbation. They were dumbfounded.
I asked Colin if he ever masturbates. He said about two times a year, but he doesn’t really enjoy it. We had a talk about life, and in a way, I am jealous of his upbringing. He is married and has a child, but his mind is different than mine. He mind is not based on sex. For me, every single decision I have made since I was about 15 years old probably came down the subconscious basics of a ‘will it help to get me more sex’ scale every single thing I have decided on since. Why did I get a car when I was 16? Why did I move to the city? Why did I go to university? Why did I work on a cruise ship? Why did I move to South Korea to teach English? It is all the same thing over and over. Sex. I have had the idea of sex in my head ever since I can remember, and it makes me very counter-productive because I am so head-fucked about sex. You notice couples kissing in bed together on television at five or six years of age and this is in your mind for the rest of your existence.
It is not that the Papua New Guinean’s are any better off… They have not exactly mastered a plan to take over the world because their whole mindset is not sexually based. However, I do wish I had a little less of this western society in me that keeps me grounded because I care so much about fucking. Sex is basically a drug to us. We go through serious depressions without it (‘Keep them doped with religion and sex and TV.’ – John Lennon). Colin told me, “Sex with my wife, or a night out with my buddies?… A night out with my buddies.” I am sure that seems tragic to our western minds, but it is probably a better way to live. We invest way too much into sex. It is a sickness.
However, Colin was at the end of the innocence. He said that westernization is moving in. When he was a kid, a group of older girls from the next village over would come to his town, and a huge campfire was organized Colin was young, so he was one of the kids who maintained the fire. The older boys would sit around the fire, facing the fire, and the girls would sit on the boys laps, facing the boys, and they would straddle the boys so that the girls would have her right leg across a boys right leg and her left leg would be across another boys left leg, so that they girls were in between the boys and each girl would have two boys to meet and each boy would have two girls to meet. The boys would sing songs to the girls on their laps and the girls would sing songs back to them. It was a tradition of courtship that had gone on for 100’s of years. It stopped sometime during Colin’s generation because after every meeting, two or three girls would end up pregnant. Innocence is over.
Western society is ruining some truly beautiful things…
