Why many women think porn is good?

Let me introduce myself by saying that I am a male. I know a lot of men who watch porn, and I just think it is so negative for their lives.

I don’t know exactly how it works with women, although I assume that some biological responses may be similar, if not the same. But I feel and think that porn nowadays is like a drug. Most men I know who watch porn become kind of addicted to it to some degree. I have actually found that if they started watching it when they were kids or early teenagers, they tend to be even more affected by it.

Let me explain. First, porn can cause imbalances in people’s dopamine levels. It generates satisfaction, which makes them want to seek more of it, and I think this is problematic in two ways. First, you get satisfaction by doing essentially nothing. Second, in order to reach that same level of satisfaction, you may feel the need to keep increasing the stimulation. So instead of watching one naked woman you have already seen, you may want to see another woman. The problem is that, in the long term, this can become really troublesome because some people start looking for increasingly extreme or disturbing things. They may go from looking at a photo of a woman to watching hardcore porn where a woman is slapped or treated like a dog, and then move on to even more extreme content.

Now, you may say, “Well, those may just be some cases.” That could be true, but let’s be honest. When there are no parents at home and kids start watching this because they are curious, or because their friends show it to them, it can become a problem. These things don’t necessarily start when men are adults. Many men start watching porn when they are kids or early teenagers. So imagine what can happen when someone has been watching porn, even for just a few minutes at a time, on a continuous basis since he was a kid or an early teenager.

I think you can understand why I worry about what this might contribute to in some men’s attitudes toward women and consent. Some may say, “Well, that is correlation, not causation, and rape existed before porn.” Maybe that is true. However, if someone regularly watches pornography in which consent is barely shown or discussed and people simply jump immediately into sex, what kind of message can that send, especially to a kid who has not received good sexual education?
If you have a kid watching these things and sexual education has not been properly discussed with him, what do you think could happen? He may grow up with a distorted understanding of how real sexual interactions are supposed to work. What happens when he expects sex and the woman does not want it? You see the problem I am trying to point out.

I think porn can encourage some men to become more selfish and to look at women primarily as sexual objects. Instead of thinking about giving pleasure to their partners, they may focus only on pleasuring themselves, and those would be the milder cases. Where do ideas like thinking it is acceptable to get a woman drunk or drug her in order to abuse her come from? Obviously, there can be many influences, including personal experiences, upbringing, peer groups, and other factors. But if, as a kid or teenager, you repeatedly see women being treated like sexual objects, and that idea keeps being reinforced, don’t you think it could affect how that person thinks and behaves when he becomes an adult?

However, going back to the first point, if someone has porn, there is no need to actually approach another person. You can just think, “I could go talk to that woman, or I could just watch porn and masturbate.” That’s it. No feelings, no interactions, just a transaction where you watch something and masturbate. It feels cold and empty, and I feel that many men, and perhaps some women, are falling into that pattern. I think that messes up society.
A life without meaningful human interaction is depressing. I am not saying that everyone needs to be extremely extroverted, but being alone all day, every day, having no friends or very few friends who are more like acquaintances, and relying on porn for sexual pleasure seems like a sad life to me. I really think this is negatively affecting society.

I know some people will say, “Hey, but porn could help marriages by spicing things up.” I don’t know about everyone, but among many married people I know, when the man is regularly watching porn, it doesn’t seem to be good for the couple. Many times, he can’t get hard or can’t maintain an erection with his partner. I’m being serious. The number of men I have heard about who struggle to satisfy their partners but can immediately get an erection while watching porn is concerning. Then, after two minutes, it is over. That just doesn’t seem healthy to me.

The standards created by porn are also problematic because porn is not reality. I think it is messing with the way people perceive sex, relationships, and other people, especially men’s perceptions of women. I am not married, but I wouldn’t be happy knowing that I couldn’t get hard with the woman I married, or even with my girlfriend, while I could easily get hard watching porn and then last only two minutes.

There is also the effect this can have on women and how they feel about their bodies. I know some people here will say, “I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me.” Maybe that is true for some women, but I have heard about so many women feeling bad or insecure about their bodies because their husbands or partners don’t want to have sex with them but are masturbating in the next bedroom while watching porn.

Finally, I think porn has become too extreme nowadays. Seriously, I know men who started watching one type of porn and later transitioned into watching trans porn or gay porn. I have nothing against trans women or gay people. My point is not that being attracted to a trans person or someone of the same sex is inherently wrong. What concerns me is when someone says that he started watching increasingly different types of content simply because he needed something new or more stimulating.
For example, it may not be that a man is saying, “I am attracted to trans women, and I would be comfortable dating a trans woman.” Instead, he may describe it as something he watches secretly because he feels he needs increasingly novel sexual stimulation. The same could happen with any category of pornography. My concern is about the constant search for novelty and the development of increasingly specific sexual interests through repeated exposure.

Again, you may think, “Well, that is not true, or that is an outlier.” Maybe you are right. However, when I look at the enormous number of categories available on porn websites and consider that many people start watching pornography at a very young age, I have my doubts. We are not in the 1970s, when pornography might have meant something like a Playboy magazine. Today, there are countless categories and multiple websites where people can switch from one kind of content to another instantly.
One day, a guy may like watching women with huge breasts. A few months later, he may prefer women with huge butts. Then what happens after four or five years of constantly searching for something new? Does he move toward increasingly specific or extreme categories? What about content featuring adult women who are intentionally made to look much younger? You see my point. I worry about where the constant pursuit of novelty can lead.

Some people may see this and think, “This guy is an alarmist.” But I was surprised when around five out of ten men I spoke with knew the names of porn stars. You know what was worse? Most of them were young. What was even more interesting was that many of them said they wanted to have sex with older women. At first, I thought, “Okay, I guess everybody has their sexual fantasies,” until I found out that, for some of them, the interest seemed to be heavily connected to the porn they were watching.

You see the pattern I am talking about: men growing up consuming something that is not real and then carrying some of those expectations and fantasies into real life. To me, everything starts to feel connected and messed up.
I was also going to talk about OnlyFans creators, but I think my main point is already clear. Lately, I have been hearing many people say things like, “Porn is great. Porn is good. Porn is healthy.” And I’m sitting there thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me? Like, for real?”

I am a man, and based on the experiences of the men I know, I have seen porn cause far more problems than benefits. I am open to hearing other women’s thoughts.