Unrealistic Expectations About Sex That Are Created By Porn

When I was a teenage girl back in the early 1990s, the boys I knew didn’t really have much access to pornography.

I know that they did have some access because I had a male best friend in those days, and he was my number one source of all sorts of sordid information, so I knew more than I probably ever wanted to about what all the guys we knew got up to in that pre-internet world.

I learned that many of them used to look at their dads’ Playboy magazines and do things that would cause the pages to stick together.

I learned that some of them used to do a raid of the dumpsters out the back of the local news agency and retrieve copies of softcore porn mags – the ones that are sold in a plastic cover – and they’d share them around.

I learned that this really, really dodgy man who had been a soccer coach used to invite boys my age to his house to show them dirty movies on videotape (and as an adult this just f*cking horrifies me).

So I guess, aside from the odd movie magazine or even harder to obtain video porn, guys my age didn’t really have a lot of expectations about what was going to happen when they eventually got to have sex with a girl, other than, you know, sex.

What a difference a few decades makes. Porn today is mainstream. The teenage kids today don’t need to go diving through a dumpster to get their hands on it, they can call it up with a few taps of their fingers on their phones and tablets.

There is an entire generation of young men who have been watching pornography for years, who expect what they see depicted in porn is what they can expect from girls.

In porn, women have perfect, often surgically enhanced bodies, and are always up for just about anything. They don’t say a lot, other than to ask for more of the action they’re getting, and there’s none of that annoying stuff like love and feelings to contend with. These women are objects, just there for men to have their way with, and then when they’re done, they move on.

There are lots of stories out there on the internet about men/boys who watch too much porn coercing their sexual partners into performing sex acts they aren’t very comfortable with, because they’ve seen it so often in pornography, they think it is a normal part of everyone’s sex life.

Researchers in 2012 found that adolescents who consume a lot of pornography have attitudinal changes, including viewing women as “sexual playthings eager to fulfill male sexual desires.” They also found that “adolescents who are intentionally exposed to violent sexually explicit material were six times more likely to be sexually aggressive than those who were not exposed.”

Last year, Susan McLean, a federal government cyber safety advisor, told The Australian newspaper that GPs are treating injuries caused by young people being inspired by pornography.

“I’ve had GPs tell me about the injuries they are seeing in young girls when they have been forced or coerced to do what is in porn videos,” she said.

“They’re not watching anything within a circle of normality “” they’re looking at rape, bondage, torture and bestiality. The girls in the videos all appear to like it, so girls think that’s just how sex is.”

A columnist with The Telegraph in London, Allison Pearson, wrote last year that young women are engaging in sex that their bodies are “simply not designed for”.

She claimed to have spoken to a GP who said a growing number of teenage girls were being treated for internal injuries caused by frequent anal sex “not because (they) wanted to, or because (they) enjoyed it “” on the contrary “” because a boy expected (them) to”.

The problem isn’t just with boys.

Even girls who have been exposed to pornographic images can be confused about what is “normal” and what isn’t.

Increasingly, teenage girls and young women believe that having pubic hair is abnormal and disgusting. They also think that there is something wrong with their genitals if their vaginas don’t look like the ones they see in pornography.

They can also think there is something wrong with the guys they are having sex with as well, as pornography often only shows very large penises. They can think that guys with average sized penises are “too small”.

Pornography also gives both guys AND girls unrealistic expectations about how easy it is for females to achieve orgasms.

Addiction to pornography causes sexual dysfunction in relationships and can destroy actual sex lives – guys with a porn addiction are often unable to perform with a real woman, they have become so accustomed to what they see on the screen, it is the only way they can get off.

A writer at Elite Daily bemoans that “making love” has become an out-dated notion:

“Women may find that simply “making love” is an antiquated act. The whole sensuality and tenderness of making love seems to have disappeared from many contemporary relationships and has been largely replaced with bent-over-the-coffee-table, kinky sex.”

Pornography is, by and large, all acting. It’s all show and performance and real sex in real life is something entirely different. It isn’t a performance (unless costumes and role-playing is your thing).

What we need to teach our children is that sex is so much more than you can ever portray in a video. The intimacy it provides is an important part of bonding in a relationship. And we have to hope they listen.

What Can Be Done About Porn Addition?

Porn Addiction is a tough habit to break. There are online programs now such as Remojo which helps users to kick the habit by blocking porn on all devices and has ‘Panic Mode’, a Video Guidance Course and a step by step program on quitting porn for good.