Can Porn Really Be Healthy for you? - Psychosexual Therapist

0:00Can porn be healthy then, I guess, is my next question. Well, I think the first question to ask is, what is porn to start with? Yeah, actually, yeah, let's dissect it. Yeah, when we talk about porn, and again, the media will say porn, but what does it actually mean? There isn't one single definition of porn. There isn't actually an agreed definition of porn because it can be so many different things. And it's also very culturally based. So what is deemed pornographic here in London can be very different from another a culture that has different norms around nakedness or around bodies. So there's that to start with.

0:36And also, when we say porn, it's almost like we talk as though it's a monolith. But porn is not. There are multiple types of porn, multiple genres, and it's not all the same porn that we tend to criticize. The one that we tend to criticize is the online free porn that we see that has misogynistic So, how many different types of porn is there? Because I think about the landscape today and something that comes to my brain as an evolution of porn is OnlyFans. Right. Right? And so, but for instance, Lily Allen is making a killing by putting her feet on there. And so, that feels like a fetish, but that can also align with porn.

1:16So, how do we distinguish different types of porn? And that's, I guess, the next question. There are so many different types of porn, we can't even say how many types there are, because we cannot watch porn. And there's multiple genres as well. Whatever arouses you can be pornographic, basically. So if you type in, if you go to a pornographic website and you type in whatever arouses you, like, for example, porridge, you will find some porn that is porridge-oriented. Wow. It's so healthy for the show. And there is a fetish around porridge. It's not usual, but there are some people who find porridge arousing.

1:59Is that really a thing? Yeah. Wow. And there's this thing with loads of other things. Some people might be food players, some people might be, a very common one would be feet and shoes and uniforms, all of that. But it's just multiple, multiple genres. Anything can be pornographic, really, if it's something that is a turn-on for you. So, I guess that's where it becomes a bit more nuanced in the terms of it being healthy and unhealthy. If I actually look at the misogynistic porn that you were kind of speaking about, so I guess that's things like Pornhub, where you go on and trying to think of the other ones that are actually now leaving the UK due to the regulations here of age.

2:41But this kind of manosphere-type porn that people are talking about, more so than ever before since that recent documentary, is that seen as harmful to people? Is that seen as the more detrimental type of porn that we're talking about here? I guess that's probably the most widely spoken about. That's right. And I think, again, here the media plays a part in confusing people because we might want to be talking about the porn, but actually it's the people that are a problem, you know, people's attitudes that are a problem, not really very much the porn, even though, of course, if you're going to produce misogynistic porn, that is not, you know, very ethical, for sure.

3:17But pornography is an industry that is for profit-making, originally. It's not there for education. It's a media that is for arousing, you know, it's an adult media for the purpose of sexual arousal. Really, as a nutshell, that's what it is. And so if the porn industries, the big porn studios, produce misogynistic porn, then we have to ask, why do they do that? It is because they respond to a demand. And then we have to look at the demand. Why are there so many people wanting misogynistic porn? And then you'll be looking at the manosphere, you'll be looking at, even outside of the manosphere, how we raise boys and girls and all these gendered scripts that is embedded in our society.

3:59You know, misogyny has been there way before online porn. It predates online porn by decades and centuries. And so you've got to think, OK, do we point the finger at porn? Because that's easy to point the finger at porn. We can create laws, we can regulate it. OK, great. But is that going to really take away the problem? I don't think so. We need to look at society, and we need to look at the people within the manosphere and the people's attitude towards women and towards how they relate sexually and relationally with women. Do you think it's causing this type of porn? Do you think it's causing problems in relationships?

4:40Or is it not? Or is it helping relationships? I mean, it's quite an open question. But what do you think this type of porn specifically that most people talk about? How do you think that's affecting relationships? I think that what's the most commonly discussed is some things like choking, for example. So, people might watch choking videos, and then they might think, OK, maybe that's something that women want, or that's something I need to do in order to feel like a man in the bedroom, and then they're gonna start doing that as well. Now, the problem with this is that choking is actually a very, very specific sexual activity that is part of the BDSM scene and part of the kink scene, which even within the BDSM scene is considered risky.

5:20So it's not something that you do just as your first attempt. It's something that you've got to really learn how to do it properly in order to be appropriate sexually. And a lot of people, even within the BDSM scene, say, you know, you just don't just do it straight away. You've got to really learn about this. And get consent. And get consent, absolutely. So when it just shows up in the free porn, and people watch it, and they watch it without sex education. And that's another issue that we have in our society. Sex education is majorly lacking, and that really shows across all the research. So we don't have sex education.

5:57We go on porn as our first kind of introduction to, oh, what can we do in the bedroom? And if it's the first thing they see, a choking scene, and they're not aware that it is a BDSM risky practice, then they're going to think, oh, maybe then it's something I can do. And then they do it. And as you say, sometimes they don't even have the consent conversation because that's not also shown on porn. And then things can go really wrong. And then when things go wrong, we say, well, that's because of porn. And of course it is, because it's showing it, those things. But actually, the other big part of the picture here is that there is very little sex education.

6:35And we need so much more. We are desperate for more sex education. 100%. I mean, we had Dr. Laurie Mintz on here about female orgasms. and that had such a huge interaction, that video. And we've done over 400 episodes on Live Well, Be Well, and we never spoke about that. And obviously, this entire podcast is based on health and sexual health is such a big thing of our overall well-being. So I think maybe people might be listening to this, maybe feeling like inquisitive about what we're going to talk about. And I think the biggest way to maybe destigmatize this conversation is, what percentage of people roughly do watch porn?

7:14Because I don't think anyone talks about it. So, like, maybe we just lay out, like, what do the stats say? Is it a small percentage? Is it a large percentage? Well, the statistics kind of say about 50 % of UK adults watch porn. But we believe it's an underestimate. And the reason for this is because porn carries so much shame and stigma that not everyone will be honest about it. And even if they respond to a survey, they might not be honest about it. So we think that it's a lot more than that. Porn is just everywhere at the moment. It's so easily accessible. It's definitely, we believe, more than 50 % of UK populations.

7:49And that includes mostly men, but actually a lot of women do enjoy watching porn too, let's not forget. Wow. So how did you get into this area? Obviously, we're having this conversation today on porn, and there's a lot that we're gonna kind of unpack. But as a therapist and psychotherapist, How did you just become interested in this area? I just love talking about the taboos. I think that one great space in psychotherapy is to be able to talk about the things that are hard to talk about out there in society or with friends or just openly. And so for me, it's like one of my best things to do as a psychotherapist is to be able to open those conversations really honestly so that people can start to process things for themselves and make science for themselves.

8:31and sex, porn is one of those topics, and the other one is death. Oh, wow. Gosh, I hope they don't get together. If someone caught just a snippet of that, sex, porn, and death, that feels like a really intense fetish. I did say fetish, it does exist. There are some, uh, you know... Really? Well, vampire porn, for example, is quite popular. Vampire porn? Yes. What's that? You know, like when vampires have sex with each other, and sometimes vampires have sex with, you know, alive people. Yeah, it's a thing. Wow. You've got vampire porn, you've got alien porn. I mean, you name it, anything. I mean, the porridge one's still got me.

9:11I just... So interesting. So I guess, like, listen to this. So 50%, but potentially, everyone thinks it's more than that. And I can guess that because shame and stigma is such a big part of, I think, sex in general. You know, we don't have very good sex education in the UK. In other countries, there's incredible, I think it's Denmark, incredible sex education from quite a young age. It's also similar to the conversations around drugs, um, alcohol, like a lot in the UK, you know, it's kind of forbidden and we're not kind of speaking openly about the risks and the benefits and what this really means.

9:47And so what happens is people kind of go off on their own, more into the dark website of things. And I actually think like now with, you know, the biggest kind of porn sites leaving the UK because of this age verification thing and people don't want to put in their details. Is this now skewing us more towards going into the darker side of porn now and into more of the dark side of the web? I find that quite like where we are right now. Is it going to become more unregulated because it's less easily accessible? Yes, we just don't know because it's still new, those regulations. Some people do say that people are going to go to the dark web and find their own stuff and it's going to be more dangerous.

10:25It's definitely a possibility. but I think a lot of people will be using VPNs now, and so they can still access their porn through VPN, and that's becoming a big thing. So I think that people will still be able to accept the viewing pleasure. And on top of that, there is, as you were saying earlier, OnlyFans and JustForFans, which is also another way of accessing pornography. And with that, the benefit of it is that you can actually directly support the sex workers that are producing those videos. and you can even have some direct communication with them. So, you mentioned something really interesting about porn addiction.

11:01And you told me that it's not real. People might be really shocked by that, because I've had a couple of people come on the Live Web Yo podcast. Even at the very beginning, DJ Fat Tony came on and kind of said, you know, his addiction went from drug addiction to sex addiction. But if it's not kind of a real addiction, people might be quite shocked by that. So can you explain why porn isn't an addiction? Sure. And we have to also talk about what we know currently in research, and that can change, because research is patchy right now. So at the moment, porn is not considered an addiction because there's just not enough evidence to find it.

11:36Same as sex. Now, sex, we pretty much know that it's not an addiction. It will never be categorized as an addiction, most probably. Again, we don't know it can change, but most probably because it's a primary drive, just like hunger is a primary drive. And so we can't get addicted to primary drives. So sex addiction now has actually been named compulsive sexual behavior instead. Being a compulsion rather than an addiction, those things are two different things. And with porn at the moment, it's the same thing. We don't really have an actual endorsed term for this. We know that at the moment there's not enough evidence for it to be an addiction.

12:13Maybe that will change in the future, but there's a lot of disagreement in the scientific field about this. Some people say, no, it's not, and it will never be. Other people say, well, it could be. We don't know. So currently, you know, we have to, as a clinician, certainly I only speak with what we currently know. I don't speak with what could be or couldn't be. And currently, porn is not considered an addiction. But a lot of people do experience some problematic relationship with porn. And one of those things is, you know, what we might call compulsive pornographic watching. But also, we have to pay attention that most people don't watch porn alone.

12:52They watch porn and they masturbate as well to it. So there's an element of sexual pleasure. There's an element of soothing mechanism when you masturbate to watch porn. And porn can also be seen as an aid to masturbation. So the people that may have some problematic relationship with porn is usually people who have underlying emotional or psychological conditions, such as depression, acute anxiety, because pornography and masturbating to it can be a really good way to mitigate depression. So when does it become healthy to unhealthy? Because I always feel like everything can always tip. When does that kind of scale tip here?

13:34It's when watching porn can start to cause some real big impairment in your life. So an example could be somebody that would be watching porn till 5, 6 a.m. and then they just fall asleep and they just don't turn up to work because they just can't get up for work, for example. And if that happens once, okay, not a problem, but if it happens on a regular basis, then that might become a problem. If people start to prioritize watching porn when they need to be doing something else, for example, they should be doing childcare, but they are watching porn instead, and the children are left unattended.

14:06And again, if it happens on a regular basis, then that might be pointing out to an issue. And sometimes there could be some risky way of watching porn. It's not very common, but I have heard people watching porn while driving. Well, that's not a very good idea because obviously it's dangerous. Yeah, please do not. That should be a law.