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Women and Porn

It's a Woman's Problem, Too

Pornography: We think it's a man's problem, right? It's male college students who are, in that fine evangelical euphemism, "struggling with" porn. We hear about marriages being torn asunder when husbands turn to Playboy bunnies instead of their wives.

Well, yes and no. Men do use porn, of course. And more men than women use porn. But studies show that, increasingly, pornography is a woman's problem, too. One survey showed that 13 percent of women use it at work.¹ Another study found that 53 percent of women have "viewed online adult content."²

Sociologists and pollsters who count such things began noticing an increase of women's porn use with the advent of Internet porn. (Women aren't the only group drawn into pornography through the keyboard. Internet porn also attracts another group we don't think of as porn users: pastors.³

That women have been increasingly attracted to porn since the rise of Internet porn tells us something about women's sexuality. Women aren't naturally "less sexual" than men, less desirous of sex or less prone to sexual sin. Rather, women — and pastors, too, for that matter — didn't use as much porn before the Internet because of the social stigma attached to a woman walking into a seedy bookstore and purchasing a copy of Playgirl. Now people can log on in the privacy of their own home (or office, or dorm room) — no one has to know.

Of course, the rise in women's porn use has happened in tandem with the rise of business people who want to make a buck at the expense of women. In other words, the male porn market was largely saturated. But all those women out there, waiting to be corrupted — why, it was a marketer's dream! And, indeed, the last decade has shown not only a rise in women who use porn, but also a rise in pornography specifically designed for and marketed to women.

What's Wrong With Porn?

What's wrong with porn? Well, some parts of the answer to that question are pretty obvious. Porn is a human endeavor of the most degraded kind; porn looks like sex, but it is in fact as far removed from God's ideal of marital sexuality as one can get. To use porn is to wallow in sin.

When you use porn, you are objectifying another person, turning another human being into an object who exists only to meet your desires. Just consider the verb we attach to porn — what do you do with it? You use it. And when you use porn, you are using another person, the real live person who posed for that shot.

And it is not a great leap from objectifying a person on a screen to objectifying people in real life. If you learn, at your computer, to think of other people as things you use, objects for your pleasure, to be indulged at your convenience, you will soon begin to think of real, three-dimensional people as objects for your pleasure, too. Pornography violates the most basic truths about human beings: that we were all created in the image of God; and that we are to see Christ in every person.

Sometimes, of course, there is no real person behind Internet porn — but that is perhaps even more disturbing! There you are … having a faux-sexual encounter with someone who does not exist.

Men who use porn report that when they spend time with the "perfect" images of buxom porn stars, they no longer find real, ordinary women attractive. Pity the person married to a porn-user who no longer finds his or her spouse attractive, and wishes instead to be interacting with a two-dimensional figure on a screen!

Porn is not just a sexual sin — the social violence it unleashes by teaching us to think about people as objects is not just a "sexual" issue. But porn does have obvious negative consequences for the way we think about sex, too. It teaches very false lessons about what sex is supposed to be.

The sexuality of porn is completely individualistic. It's just you and the computer screen. You do it whenever you want to, and you never take into account the needs, desires or even headaches of another person. From start to finish, the whole experience happens on your terms.

Real sex is about fully giving yourself to another person. Porn is, in every way, the opposite of that: In porn, there is no other person. There is just a twisted encounter with yourself.

Why Women Use Porn

And yet, a lot of people — men and women — use porn. Why? Lots of reasons.

Women use porn when they're lonely. When they're bored. When they're in pain. They say logging on makes them feel better (the language is remarkably similar to binge-eaters'). For a few minutes, you devote all your energies to an intense physical experience, and you distract yourself from whatever is causing you emotional pain. Some experts think that women tend to use porn in order to betray another person — you're furious at your boyfriend or husband, who's just done something nasty to you, and the way to get back at him, without risking an actual confrontation, is to pull out some pornography.

But porn can never be more than a destructive, temporary distraction. It can never truly satisfy emotional, spiritual or sexual needs.

How to Break the Porn Habit

Gals, if you're using porn, the odds are that you're likely to feel shame and embarrassment at the prospect of telling someone. But even though it may feel terribly awkward and embarrassing to admit that you've gotten ensnared in the web of Internet porn, you're likely to find your confidant is more interested in helping you than condemning you. That was the experience of a woman I know, whom I'll call Jen.⁴

Jen was 18 when she first logged on to an Internet porn site. She kept coming back, weekly at least, for three years. "I felt too ashamed to discuss this with anyone. We always speculated about whether the guys we knew used porn, but I felt like it hadn't even occurred to any of my friends that maybe women used it to."

Finally, Jen did summon up the courage to tell a resident advisor on her floor. "I really could have kicked myself for waiting so long to tell her," Jen said. "She couldn't have been more kind! She took the problem seriously, of course, and helped me get help immediately. She never said any of the things I feared she would say. She never said that she thought I was a terrible person, or that she no longer wanted to be my friend, or that I was going to hell." Jen's resident advisor responded appropriately: She knew the issue was grave, she knew it was not to be treated lightly, but she also knew to be compassionate.

There are some small strategies that can help you break the porn habit — like getting your computer out of your bedroom, and into a common room — a den, for example. Jen's resident advisor urged her to do this, and Jen said it helped.

Because people often use porn to meet — or mask — an emotional need, counseling is often recommended. There's no shame in talking to a therapist! A skilled counselor can help you figure out what, at the deepest levels, you were trying to accomplish by using porn, and she can help you make better choices in the future.

As you move into the process of breaking your porn habit, you can begin to ask yourself some questions: Why was I drawn to porn in the first place? How did I feel after a session with my computer screen? How has pornography taught me to think about my body? About men's bodies? About sex? How has it distorted my understanding of the imago dei (Latin for "image of God")?

It's important to remember that because our wills are corrupt, tangled and fallen, you're not likely to break the porn habit simply through the will — simply by swearing off porn. (As St. Paul said, we do the things we don't want to do and don't do the things we want to do.) We also need God's grace.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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How do you think the use of porn takes away from what sex is really meant to be?

Join the discussion!

So perhaps the most important piece of the journey out of porn is a commitment to avail yourself of sources of God's grace: pray; go to church; take communion; steep yourself in Scripture. And know that God has plans for you so much bigger and better than Saturday night in front of your computer screen.