Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families

by Pamela Paul

  Ashley, an attractive, slender five-foot-five blonde, is otherwise comfortable with her looks. But a “small B,” her breasts are not what she sees most men fantasizing about. In bed, she says, men seem to give her breasts cursory attention. “I assume they just aren’t turned on by them and so they move on to other parts,” she says. Her current boyfriend, whom she’s been dating for two months, has done nothing to boost her confidence. He has difficulty maintaining an erection, which she can’t help but take personally. An open fan of pornography, he constantly talks about women’s breasts. “That’s his thing,” she says. One time, she swallowed her shyness and mentioned her insecurity with her own endowment. “Yeah,” he agreed, “it’s such a shame because I’m a real boob man.” She almost didn’t talk to him again. But, she says, what can she do? “As a heterosexual woman, I can’t help but want to attract and please the opposite sex.”

  Competition

  Many women who discover their mate’s pornography preferences feel pressured to pony up. If he’s not getting it from me, she’ll reason, he’ll get it from pornography. She’s got to compete. Jessica, the twenty-eight-year-old whose boyfriend, Joe, openly consumes porn, is making the effort. “Most of the porn stars he looks at have had a lot of surgery. I don’t think most men have a realistic idea anymore of what a normal body looks like,” she complains. A small-framed woman, Jessica says she’d never felt uncomfortable or insecure with previous boyfriends. In fact, she loved to undress and prance around naked in front of them. Not with Joe. Once she realized the extent of Joe’s pornography habit, Jessica didn’t “really like to get undressed in front of him anymore.” Instead, “I’ll kind of go to the bathroom or wait until the lights are off. I mean, compared with the women he likes to look at, I feel like a little girl.” After all, she explains, when you’re constantly exposed to women with large breasts and that’s what your boyfriend gets off on, you can’t help but feel, Well, I’m just not attractive. “Honestly,” she says, “I think if I had a C- or D-cup, I’d be a lot more comfortable and I’d probably ask him to throw all his pornography away. But as it is, I can’t blame him for what he likes and for making up for the fact that he’s not getting it from me. I’m sure he wishes on some level that I were more like Jenna Jameson, so I guess I can’t get mad at him.”

  Jessica is trying to please him instead. At Joe’s suggestion (“A lot of my friends’ girlfriends have done it”), Jessica consulted a plastic surgeon and she’s planning to get implants. “Joe said to me, ‘Imagine what an awesome body you’d have if you had big breasts.’ Unfortunately, the doctor told me that given my small frame, I shouldn’t go bigger than a B. Joe doesn’t think that’s big enough, but he wants me to do it anyway. I may try to find another doctor.”

  In recent years, women in the United States and the United Kingdom have gone so far as to get plastic surgery on their genitals. One form of surgery, vaginal tightening, involves cutting a piece of the vagina to make it smaller. Another is more aesthetics-oriented: in a labial reduction, fatty tissue is removed from around the vagina, giving the area a neater, more childlike appearance.12 But pleasing a man raised on pornography goes beyond improving upon or changing one’s appearance. Not only have one in ten women told the 2004 Elle-MSNBC.com poll her partner seems more critical of her body since he started looking at Internet porn, one in five said that as a consequence, they felt compelled to do more to keep their partners sexually interested.

  Women may be on to something. “The worst is how they say that [porn] makes women feel that they’re not good enough, assuming that all women are NECESSARILY good enough, without even wondering if they make enough efforts to be better than porn for their man,” complained one man recently in an online “support group” discussion about pornography.13 According to Diana Russell, a sociologist who has researched pornography for decades, men who look at pornography repeatedly “come to think that unusual sex acts are much more frequently performed in sexual relationships all over the country, because of course that’s what they’re seeing in porn.” They begin to believe that anal sex and S&M are common practices, part of every happy-go-lucky couple’s repertoire. And if they’re not doing it, something’s wrong with them. They’re not adventurous enough. They’re missing out. And what to do about it? Bring it home to your wife. Introduce it to your girlfriend.

  Because all her male friends and every man she has dated is fixated on porn, Ashley can’t help compare what they view in pornography with what they expect from real sex. “Their view of sex is really skewed. It’s gotten dirtier, raunchier. They want you to do a lot of degrading things.” Many men don’t even realize that what they’re asking for is degrading or unpleasant to women. The pornographic videos and online clips they watch show women smiling in anticipation of “facials” (the term for men ejaculating on a woman’s face), lapping up the semen on their faces and breasts, wiping it all over their bodies, savoring its effects, cooing with delight, and thanking their sexual partner for his generosity. What transpires rarely in real life is especially appealing as a fantasy, so pornography glorifies the practices that women are least likely to accommodate. No wonder male expectations shift. Every guy, Ashley says, asks for anal sex—“It’s huge now.” The most popular thing these days is to “do it from behind.” All the men she’s been with since college—and her friends remark on this, too—want to ejaculate on their faces (and their bodies, to a lesser degree). The big thing is “neck and above.” Ashley refuses to give in unless she’s in a serious relationship. The last two guys both asked her to do so. “I think they were testing the waters,” she says. “And I think if I had done it, they would have seen that as the norm. Whereas for me, that’s definitely not the norm.” With her ex-boyfriend of a year and a half, she eventually let him ejaculate on her. “I didn’t mind so much because we were very close.”

  Trust

  Surprisingly, many women have no idea their husbands or boyfriends would even consider looking at pornography while in a monogamous relationship. Couples therapists tell stories of wives shocked to find their husbands glued to their computers at night blearily masturbating away. They find pornography downloaded onto the family’s computer hard drive and are scared to ask whether it belongs to their husbands or their teenage sons. A girlfriend discovers an online cache of sites on her boyfriend’s computer that baffles as much as it repels: prepubescent girls, hairy women, two-men-on-one-woman action, group sex in Thailand. Is this what he likes? “Men I counsel generally keep pornography a secret from their partners,” says Marlene Spielman, a New York psychotherapist. “They know they shouldn’t be doing it because they’re in a relationship because—let’s face it—when you masturbate with pornography, you really are with someone else, one way or another.”

  That’s not how most men see it. Boys often look at their first pornography together and sign a wordless pact: This is our secret. And those boys grow up to be men who don’t tell their wives what they’re looking at. Scott Halzman, a practicing psychiatrist who specializes in counseling married men, says that if a client came to him and said he was enjoying a “healthy use of pornography” and not telling his wife, Halzman would urge him not to confide. “If you want to call that secrecy, fine,” Halzman says. “But like most fantasies it’s more exciting if it’s kept personal. It loses its mystery if your wife knows.” Halzman has struggled with how to handle the issue in his practice. “Yes, it creates a fundamental deception in a relationship,” he acknowledges. “But I’m torn. The hallmark of my work is to teach men how important it is to respect their wives’ opinions and to find ways to meet their wives’ needs, and if you’re off masturbating to pornography it would seem you’re somehow robbing your wife of something that belongs to her. But I have to believe that it’s not necessarily the case if the man isn’t addicted to porn but is just using it.” As Halzman sees it, if a man uses pornography, he either doesn’t tell his wife or he does and risks her wrath and disappointment. “Some of the men who are most su
ccessful in marriage are not open with their wives all the time,” Halzman allows. “The reality is most women feel a shudder of discomfort about pornography. I think women say intellectually that it’s okay for a guy to look at pornography, but psychologically, it makes them feel bad. It’s difficult to justify to them.”

  Once women discover their spouses’ pornography use, most are shocked that their husbands would blatantly disregard their feelings on this matter, but women are very naive about the way men operate, says psychotherapist Tina Tessina. “Every woman seems to think her man is some kind of saint. But most don’t realize just how susceptible men are to sexual activities.” Women in her practice get very upset about it. “They’re usually shocked when they find out their husbands are looking at porn.” Bridget, the mother of two in Kentucky, says finding her husband’s secret stash “pretty much wiped out the trust in our relationship.” Once she knew about Marc’s years-long subterfuge, “I would find myself worrying all the time. If I were going to take a trip for my job, I’d wonder about what he might be looking at while I was gone.” She tried to keep her eyes peeled, maintaining a tight rein on the family finances and monitoring Marc’s computer use. She couldn’t trust his promise not to use pornography anymore. There’s an inevitable side effect of men’s secrecy around porn: if men are hiding it, women figure, there’s got to be a reason. If they’re hiding it, they don’t want their wives and girlfriends to know. If they’re hiding it, there’s got to be cause for worry. If they’re hiding it, it’s got to be wrong.

  Cheating

  A man spends more time away from his wife. And the time is spent with other women. He’s getting sexual release from these women. He’s getting a certain kind of “emotional” satisfaction, be it excitement, relaxation, an ego boost, a sense of power. Sure, in an affair, there’s another human being involved, whereas in pornography there isn’t, or, at least, not quite. But there is still one human being involved: the husband. According to Jennifer Schneider’s study, about one-third of those married to a cybersex user consider their partner’s online sexual activities akin to adultery.14 In the 2004 Elle-MSNBC.com poll, one-third of women said they considered their partner’s online activities to be cheating, and one in three felt “betrayed.” The nationally representative Pornified/Harris poll found that overall, 34 percent of women see men using pornography as cheating in absolutely all cases. Ashley, the Baltimore twenty-something whose boyfriends are open about their porn, says she knows “rationally” that pornography isn’t cheating, but emotionally, it feels as though it is. “Because you’re getting off to other people, not the person you’re with,” she explains. “How is that supposed to make me feel?”

  Yet only 13 percent of men in the Elle-MSNBC.com poll considered online sexual activity to be cheating; in the Pornified/Harris poll, only slightly more—17 percent—of men equated pornography with cheating. Indeed, most men tend to see pornography as not cheating: a man has his needs and he’s fulfilling them in a way that prevents him from cheating on his wife with a real woman. According to the Pornified/Harris poll, 41 percent of men say pornography should never be considered cheating (only 18 percent of women felt the same way). Trey, a married film editor, explains, “There’s a big difference between porn and having sex. Porn is just an extension of fantasizing and if porn is cheating, then everybody cheats all the time.” No, Trey would never cheat on his wife, Eliza. Whereas in previous relationships he felt he had to keep his porn secret (his other girlfriends all disapproved of pornography), with Eliza he can be more open. At the same time, were Eliza to insist he stop, he would probably continue to use it privately. “What she doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her,” he explains.

  This is how men deal with monogamy, Trey says. Part of him wishes he had slept with ten other women before marrying—in addition to the fourteen women he did sleep with—but it didn’t work out that way. Pornography helps him cope with that reality. “This probably contradicts what I said about cheating,” he hedges. “But there’s very little that’s different about fantasizing and having sex.” For men, he continues, having sex with a woman for the first time is always the best, and with pornography, Trey can have that “first time” all the time, with as many women as he likes. “You get to be with her once—see what she looks like naked and have sex with her—then never see her again. It’s so much less complicated than having an affair in real life.”

  The opposite sex doesn’t always see it that way. “Dear Harlan,” writes one woman to the syndicated male advice columnist, “I have been dating a wonderful man for a little more than a year…. Last night, I walked in on him masturbating while looking at porn on the Internet…. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed, as if I was cheated on. It makes me think he will cheat on me someday. It also turns me off from him, because now I worry that he’s thinking about someone else when we’re together…. Am I overreacting? Should this be a major issue that I should debate breaking up over, or is it something that guys just do and I have just been naive about before this?”15

  Not all men are unaware of how pornography can signify betrayal. After a year of complaining about her boyfriend’s lap dances, Ashley felt as if she finally broke through. “We had this big talk toward the end of our relationship,” she says. “For most of the time we were together, he thought I was being ridiculous when I got upset about pornography. But eventually he told me he had no idea it seriously hurt me.” Ashley believed him. After all, nobody had told him that what he was doing was wrong. His parents knew about his strip club partying. “They just laughed,” she says. “Their attitude was, ‘Boys will be boys.’” The last time his friends planned a strip club jaunt, her boyfriend stayed behind for her sake. That was a big step in Ashley’s mind. “But he lied to the guys so they wouldn’t know the real reason he wasn’t going.”

  The lies of pornography. “No matter what you do, you cannot hide your porn from friends and family,” says a married father of one. “Despite the fact that my wife doesn’t care that much, it is still awkward and embarrassing when you leave porn in the VCR and her sister finds it, or the video store sends out a notice about a porn video being late, or she walks in on you whacking off.” Pornography, he explains, leads to “lots of small lies.” Some of his friends who have been caught with pornography have claimed to their girlfriends that it was his (even when it wasn’t) in an effort to avoid repercussions. The pain of uncovering pornography is clearly not an isolated or easily resolved problem.

  Rupture

  Once she’s discovered his pornography, what next? Psychotherapist Marlene Spielman says when a woman finds out about a man’s pornography habit, the result is usually a back-and-forth of strong emotions. The woman typically feels hurt, angry, and betrayed. Confronted husbands often begin with denial before confessing the truth, followed by a big fight, blaming, and accusations. He may accuse her of driving him to it; she might point to his avoidance of problems in the relationship. After Bridget reproached her husband, Marc, about his pornography, Marc promised to change. Bridget asked him to talk to their pastor, and Marc reluctantly agreed—after she threatened to tell the pastor herself. The pastor, she says, was merciful with Marc, perhaps too merciful. Bridget felt as if their church’s attitude was, “You gave in to a natural weakness. It’s understandable.” So while Marc continued to see the pastor, Bridget took additional measures. She bought a new computer and programmed it with children’s settings, creating special e-mail accounts for all members of the family. Only her elder son, then nineteen, was allowed full access. Problem solved.

  Three months later, her nineteen-year-old approached her privately. Someone had been using his e-mail account. His search history revealed Web sites he hadn’t visited; his account was loaded down with porn. Bridget was devastated. “I felt so betrayed and hurt,” she says. “It was like being stabbed in the back. The person you’re supposed to trust and depend on being honest with you … and then you discover they’ve been lying to you about their secret life.” The
episode set Bridget “way back emotionally.” It had been four years since her initial confrontation with Marc, and she thought “all that” was behind them. Too angry to cry at that point, Bridget demanded that Marc apologize to her son.

  Around this time, Bridget also learned that her younger son, now thirteen, was looking at pornography as well. He had installed another Internet provider service on the family computer and was spending hours online. Bridget found a hardcore lesbian movie downloaded on the computer. At first she wasn’t sure who was at fault—Marc had supposedly stopped again. When she realized it was her younger son, she broached the subject with him and, after several denials, he confessed. “My reaction was much worse than it had been with my husband,” she recalls. She told him that though what he was looking at might seem innocent now, he didn’t know where it might lead and how it might affect his life. But Bridget feels she has only so much control. Her son lives primarily at the house of his father, who doesn’t think pornography is a big deal. The boy’s father shrugged off Bridget’s concerns, which didn’t surprise Bridget since she knew from her first marriage that he liked pornography himself.

  More women are installing programs like NetNanny on their computers to limit home computer Internet access to PG-rated Web sites. According to one filtering company, WiseChoice.net, more than half the company’s 3,000 customers are adults who use the software not to block their kids’ access but to keep themselves and other adults from looking.16 Others see the need for a stronger dose of intervention. In the Elle-MSNBC.com poll, one in four women said they were concerned their partner had an “out-of-control habit” with online pornography, and one in four divorced respondents said Internet pornography and chat had contributed to their split. At the 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, a gathering of the nation’s divorce lawyers, attendees documented a startling trend. Nearly two-thirds of the attorneys present had witnessed a sudden rise in divorces related to the Internet; 58 percent of those were the result of a spouse looking at excessive amounts of pornography online. According to the association’s president, Richard Barry, “Eight years ago, pornography played almost no role in divorces in this country. Today, there are a significant number of cases where it plays a definite part in marriages breaking up.” In an online forum on the Web site Women Online Worldwide, a woman who identifies herself as “anti-pornography” explains: