Nine absolutely untrue myths about porn - and one fact we can all agree on

Nine absolutely untrue myths about porn - and one fact we can all agree on

Opinions about porn are like noses - everybody has one. But varying opinions are so contradictory, they can't all be right.

We actually do know a lot about contemporary porn's use and effects, so let's get some knowable facts out on the table.

* Myth: Porn is mostly violent and misogynist.

* Fact: Most porn shows happy, smiling people doing fairly ordinary things. A lot of porn shows happy, smiling (and perhaps sweaty) people doing exotic things. And some porn shows adults pretending to play dominance and submission games. Pretending? Yes. The actors and actresses are acting.

* Myth: Watching porn causes erection problems.

* Fact: (1) There has been no documented increase in erection problems, so there's no "epidemic" for porn to cause. (2) Of course most young men with erection problems watch porn - because most young men watch porn.

* Myth: Porn destroys good intimate relationships.

* Fact: (1) No one chooses to watch porn instead of being in a vibrant sexual relationship. People do back away from the chance for a good sexual relationship for many reasons, such as anger, guilt, fear of intimacy, depression, and anxiety. The fact that such people may get involved with porn is not the problem.

(2) Sexually unsatisfying relationships are caused by many things, such as misinformation, medication side effects, hormone problems, anger, childhood trauma, fear of abandonment; a refusal to discuss the sexual disconnect is common. Just because one or both partners look at porn doesn't remotely mean that porn is the problem.

* Myth: Most men hide their porn-watching from their partner because they know they're doing something wrong.

* Fact: Most men hide their porn-watching for one or more reasons: (1) they believe their partner would be uncomfortable about it and might insist they have a right to a porn-free house; (2) like most Americans, they are uncomfortable discussing sexuality in general; (3) they don't want to confront the reality of their partner's or their own sexual dissatisfaction; (4) when someone tells their adult partner "I forbid you from watching that in our house," they are really instructing, "You better keep it secret."

* Myth: Only a man would enjoy porn, women simply don't like it.

* Fact: (1) Millions of women watch internet porn - some by themselves, others with their partners. Some women watch porn specifically made for them, while others watch the same videos that men do. (2) Fifty Shades of Grey is the best-selling book in history. It's porn. Its readers are almost exclusively women.

* Myth: Watching adult porn leads to watching kiddie porn.

* Fact: (1) The adult porn industry doesn't make kiddie porn, doesn't promote kiddie porn, and doesn't want its customers to watch kiddie porn. (2) Can you imagine any adult porn that would lead you to want to watch sexual videos of children? Kiddie porn isn't something anyone gradually develops a taste for.

* Myth: Porn is all about men's sexuality and men's pleasure.

* Fact: Most porn includes a focus on the pleasure of the characters portrayed by actresses. This often includes cunnilingus, typically includes a female orgasm (no matter that it may be shown unrealistically), frequently shows her enjoying fellatio, and may include domination that she finds pleasurable. These are standard features of ordinary caring and consensual heterosexual sex.

* Myth: Watching porn encourages violence against women.

* Fact: (1) Since broadband brought free, high-quality porn into almost every home in America, the rate of rape in the U.S. has gone down (according to the FBI). Yes, rape is an under-reported crime - and that was true before porn, just as it is now. (2) This decrease in rape following the spread or legalization of porn has been documented in dozens of countries including Denmark, Japan, and Croatia.

* Myth: Neuroscience proves that watching porn can damage your brain and even cause porn addiction.

* Fact: No it doesn't. (1) The brain lights up during all pleasurable activities, including watching a sunset and playing with your grandchildren. Of course it lights up during sexual arousal.

(2) While there are plenty of people with unhealthy porn-watching habits, no one has actually documented "porn addiction." Unless someone has other non-porn mental health problems (such as bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder), almost anyone can modify their porn-viewing habits if they want to - making it quite different than addiction.

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Here's a fact we should all agree on and act on: that kids need an intelligent, caring adult to talk with them about porn. Kids need to know that:

~ Porn is an adult product, showing adult themes and behaviors that will be confusing to someone without experience.

~ Porn is not a documentary, and doesn't portray sex as it really is. It's made by actors and actresses playing characters that someone made up.

~ The bodies shown in porn are not typical adult bodies. Just as the NBA, NFL, and movie studios select people for their unusual physical characteristics, so do porn producers. You don't look like LeBron James, you don't look like Tom Cruise, and you don't look like Rocky Buttman, either.

Most of all, if your kid has any questions about porn or sex in general, she or he should ask you. And they won't be punished for their question. You do promise that, right?

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Need help discussing porn with your kid? My new video "Helping young people develop porn literacy" will make it easier. It's available as a DVD or mp4 download here.

"Nine absolutely untrue myths about porn - and one fact we can all agree on", Sexual Intelligence (by Dr. Marty Klein), July 12, 2015, https://sexualintelligence.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/nine-absolutely-untrue-myths-about-porn-and-one-fact-we-can-all-agree-on

Comments sent to the author

About the 2nd myth, "watching porn causes erection problems": if anything, some teenager can be impressed seeing a porn actor "hard" for 30 minutes or more with two women, while normal healthy men withstand 15 or 20 (minutes). But if he gets ashamed with it, he can be ashamed, too, when he hears men in his everyday life saying they stayed with a woman a whole night.

About the 4th myth, "most men hide their porn-watching from their partner because they know they're doing something wrong": well, being a Christian was punished with prision in Socialist countries, they would not like if we use this argument here.

About the 5th myth, "only a man would enjoy porn; women simply don't like it", and the 7th, "porn is all about men's sexuality and men's pleasure": only lesbo-feminist cliches, from the same heterosexual-sex-is-rape group, nothing else. But I make two questions: 1) Why 24% of accesses to Pornhub are by women, but the section "For Women" is the 8th most viewed by women, being the 1st "Lesbian" and the 2nd "Gay"? ("More of What Women Want", Jul/25/2015, http://www.pornhub.com/insights/women-gender-demographics-searches) 2) What about the feminist porn movies producer Erika Lust and her low success?

"Fifty Shades of Grey" IS NOT PORN. It's what some call "emotional pornography", women's fantasies of a womanizer or a scoundrel man being domesticated by a woman. Have you seen the video "5 Reasons Pornstars Hate 50 Shades of Grey", with Nadia Styles, Mercedes Carrera and Nina Elle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPE3R8twHrw)?

About the 8th myth, "watching porn encourages violence against women", specially "rape is an under-reported crime": even if the true rape cases are under-reported (20 per cent?), the false rape cases in the police stations surpass the not accounted true cases. Thus, you are right saying that rapes decreased (or increased because of the same reasons than thefts, for example) while access to pornography has grown.

About the 9th myth: porn addict is a woman who is known she saw porn or a man who likes sex more than his grandmother. Hua, hua, hua, hua, hua!

"The bodies shown in porn are not typical adult bodies". Well, for example, you maybe will find a woman with silicone in her breasts or liposuctioned in our Brazilian streets. So, what do we mean with "typical woman body"? In porn industry, we can find siliconed women, really, but we can see actresses with natural big buttocks, like Brandi Love (http://www.xnxx.com/?k=Brandi+Love), or with natural big boobs, like Mia Khalifa (http://www.xnxx.com/?k=Mia+Khalifa), or even fat, like Anastasia Vanderbust (http://www.xnxx.com/?k=Anastasia+Vanderbust). As a straight girl, I do not see attentively the women in porn movies, but I do not find too many more big-tits or big-butts women there than I see on our streets. If we put, for example, Dani Daniels (http://www.xnxx.com/?k=Dani+Daniels) or Nina Hartley (http://www.xnxx.com/?k=Nina+Hartley) in a university campus or a costumer attendance in a store, they would not seem "not typical".

The title you chose with the word "myth" is a kindness of yours. These terrifying hoaxes are produced by and they circulate within two groups: 1) those who confuse lack of sex and never have seen a well-shaped body naked with higher morality; 2) those who preach that heterosexual sex is degradation of women. None of them seem they had ever seen a free preview porn video lasting five or six minutes. If you read a myth about butter and you consume butter, you have some chance of eating only margarine thereafter. If you read a myth about porn and you consume porn, you will say "what a fucking joke is that?". In an outdated research, 10% of adolescents in churches in United States watched a porn movie in the six months before. So, the anti-pornography militants, Feminists and Christian conservatives, have less and less public to spread their myths outside themselves.

You said "if your kid has any questions about porn or sex in general, she or he should ask you", it reminded me a joke I heard: the mother was with her 8-years-old daughter, "Daughter, let us talk about sex", "It's fine, mommy, what is your doubt?". A grudgingly Sexual Education is not an isolated problem in parental education. These parents can be good in basic care and financial support, but they have a morally and intellectually chaotic code to teach their sons. In ancient times, it was clear: it was correct to respect another persons or not to steal, but it was correct, too, a father to kill his own daughter because she had sex before marriage. Confusing frigidity and gymnophobia with moral principles is moral illiteracy.

Thanks for your article. Kisses.

Abigail Pereira Aranha

	Original text English at Sexual Intelligence: "Nine absolutely untrue myths about porn - and one fact we can all agree on", https://sexualintelligence.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/nine-absolutely-untrue-myths-about-porn-and-one-fact-we-can-all-agree-on.
	Original text English reproduced at Men of Worth Newspaper and at Periódico de Los Hombres de Valía: "Nine absolutely untrue myths about porn - and one fact we can all agree on", http://avezdoshomens2.over-blog.com/2016/02/nine-absolutely-untrue-myths.html and http://avezdoshomens2.blogspot.com/2016/02/nine-absolutely-untrue-myths-about-porn.html.
	Questo testo in italiano in Men of Worth Newspaper e in Periódico de Los Hombres de Valía: "Nove miti assolutamente non veri su porno - e un fatto su che siamo tutti d'accordo", http://avezdoshomens2.over-blog.com/2016/02/nove-miti-assolutamente-non-veri.html e http://avezdoshomens2.blogspot.com/2016/02/nove-miti-assolutamente-non-veri-su.html.
	Ce texte en français au Men of Worth Newspaper et au Periódico de Los Hombres de Valía: "Neuf mythes absolument faux à propos de porno - et un fait sur que nous pouvons tous être d'accord", http://avezdoshomens2.over-blog.com/2016/02/neuf-mythes-absolument-faux.html et http://avezdoshomens2.blogspot.com/2016/02/neuf-mythes-absolument-faux-propos-de.html.
	Eso texto en español en Men of Worth Newspaper y en Periódico de Los Hombres de Valía: "Nueve mitos absolutamente falsos sobre la pornografía - y un hecho en que todos podemos estar de acuerdo", http://avezdoshomens2.over-blog.com/2016/02/nueve-mitos-absolutamente-falsos.html y http://avezdoshomens2.blogspot.com/2016/02/nueve-mitos-absolutamente-falsos-sobre.html.
	Este texto em português no A Vez das Mulheres de Verdade e no A Vez dos Homens que Prestam: "Nove mitos absolutamente falsos sobre pornografia - e um fato com que todos podemos concordar", http://avezdasmulheres.over-blog.com/2016/02/nove-mitos-absolutamente-falsos.html e http://avezdoshomens.blogspot.com/2016/02/nove-mitos-absolutamente-falsos-sobre.html.