‘Porn guys repel women: Addicts are destroying relationships’ by Poppy Sowerby
“… I no longer think this. If my peers are anything to go by, I am not alone. Porn destroys sex and nukes relationships. It makes ordinary men strange, twitchy, impotent losers, and it endangers and repels women, leaving us unsatisfied. Watching it, or being with someone who is addled by it, is an active choice. I finally accepted this when I dumped a boyfriend who, as a result of his porn addiction, was both violent and absolutely abysmal in bed. I know so many women who have been through the same thing. Many are learning to leave at the first sign of pornsickness. Either that, or squander your youth on someone who would attempt to conjure manipulative justifications (“you’re just a prude!”) as a way never to have to even try to stop…”
“Porn is a vengeful Reaper, a pestilence growing more visible as the sexes grow apart and young men disappear into moaning, grunting vortices on their phone screens. Porn is in a death spiral; the accelerating superstimuli of “gooner” material — the subject of a recent viral Harper’s article — can no longer be ignored. Things are getting worse — they can only ever do that, because the more extreme the content, the more hooked the users, the more likely they are to stay on the site, to pay, to return.
Porn feels good until it doesn’t — until the afterglow is gone, until you see the bruises on your girlfriend’s neck, the rings under your eyes from another night’s sleep lost to watching strangers on all fours, the news reports of industry darlings who killed themselves. There’s nothing liberated about this. Once, self-discipline was a virtue. Once, shame provided guidance about how much we could expect others to tolerate or participate in our fantasies. Now, gratification is the means and the end: it flattens all moral values, tramples on women and deflates your dick. Top-down legislation can only do so much — this week’s announcement of a ban on choking porn is a start, and anything that stops 12-year-old girls being strangled during their first kiss is a good thing. Ultimately, though, it’s up to men to pack it in. So stop, for all our sakes.”
See next tweets for the link to the full article and also an archived link.