The idea that porn could once only be accessed by buying a magazine off the top shelf of a newsagents or a video tape from a specialist store will soon seem like a joke. Now porn is a click or swipe away, often completely free, and has been for well over 20 years.
While porn use has historically been less taboo for men, it’s becoming increasingly easier for women to admit that they watch and enjoy it. Slowly the conversation about porn is catching up with the reality of its use and users. But what impact has the unprecedented accessibility of online porn had on the sex lives of women who have grown up with it?
Anyone who has been a teenager or young adult in the past 20 years will know that porn’s accessibility often isn’t accounted for in UK sex education. This can often lead to young people learning about sex from porn. As Vice notes, two recent reports, one from the government and another from the nonprofit Internet Matters found that children as young as 11 are learning about sex from porn.
Sex and relationship psychotherapist Kate Moyle says lack of education is a major issue. “The biggest problem I experience working with people is the gap in educating between what is sex and what is porn. Porn has its role or function. It’s designed to arouse. But the problem is that we didn’t educate young people on the difference between real life sex and pornography.”
But Moyle believes that the accessibility of porn could now be helping young people think critically about it. “I think younger people are naturally more aware because pornography is more present [and] more accessible, it’s a part of the conversation. So they almost can’t avoid some of the [more negative] stuff that goes with it.”
Molly, a woman in her 20s, feels porn has improved her sex life, but precisely because she knows it’s not real. “I have always been reassured by the knowledge that porn is a performance. As I am not a porn star, I don’t feel the pressure to put on an act or a show when having sex. If you’re doing it wrong, I’m not going to lie there and moan theatrically.”
The accessibility of porn was also something that had a positive impact for Hannah*, also a woman in her 20s, as a teen. She says: “I think that it’s impacted me in a good way because I’m bisexual and I don’t think I would have really realised that without porn.” However, she does feel a lack of porn literacy initially led to confusion about where her sexual desires were coming from, and that better sex education might have helped.
She explains: “My sex education was thorough from the protection point of view of consent. [But] LGBT stuff was sort of a passing comment and that made me explore it in my own time. If it was explored a bit more in school and discussed in an open and candid way, it would [have been] less me worrying, ‘oh my god it’s making me gay.’”
Even for Molly, who’s straight, the depictions of female pleasure that exist in porn helped her embrace her desires. “It helped me masturbate and become comfortable with my sexuality and body at a time when most of my friends were horrified by the thought.”
With individuals consuming it at a young age, divorced from the context that proper sex education might bring, porn can arguably contribute to a skewed idea of sex. Moyle says: “Historically particularly, pornography has been very male sexuality, male sexual desire-focused. I suppose designed with men in mind.” Much of mainstream porn can often be degrading of marginalised groups and conversations about consent, contraception, and protection from STIs are also still lacking.
There is evidence to suggest that the widespread use of porn is shaping modern sexual habits. One 2015 study suggested a link between its consumption and sexual aggression. A Guardian article from July this year, meanwhile, cited several experts who believe it is behind an increase in the popularity of choking. This isn’t a problem in itself, and choking can be a part of a healthy sex life, but crucially only when consensual. Unfortunately, because porn frequently doesn’t make consent explicit or show consent being discussed, it may be normalising non-consensual choking.
A survey conducted by BBC 5 Live this year found that more than 1 in 3 UK women have experienced unwanted acts of violence including slapping, gagging, choking, and spitting during sex. A spokesperson from The Centre For Women’s Justice told the BBC the research was evidence of a “growing pressure on young women to consent to violent, dangerous and demeaning acts.” Adding: “This is likely to be due to the widespread availability, normalisation and use of extreme pornography.” The findings bear out anecdotally, with two of the three women I spoke to having been choked by sexual partners without their consent.
Rebecca*, also a woman in her 20s, says of her experience: “I think that [my partner] internalised the whole women like being dominated – he fully dominated me, he was getting off on it so much to the point where he didn’t realise what he was doing. He just thought it was fine.”
She suspected her negative experience was shaped by the way in which women are often treated in mainstream porn, which was later confirmed by a conversation with that sexual partner. She tells me: “I spoke to him about it, I said I think you’ve watched too much porn. And he was like yeah I do, I think I’ve got an issue.”
When porn is discussed in the media, it’s often in relation to porn addiction. It’s still contested whether porn addiction is an addiction in its own right or a symptom of sex addiction. But it follows that the more accessible porn is the easier it is to watch too much of it, and in 2018, a Harley Street clinic said it had seen referrals for porn addiction soar in the previous six years. Addiction or not, Moyle does feel too much pornography can hamper sex lives.
She says: “I think the problem is where pornography use leaks into our sex lives. If we are masturbating and watching pornography, we can become so over stimulated with that we become reliant on it. Then sex with another person can feel more challenging. If you’re watching pornography and masturbating, you don’t have to worry about anyone else. When there’s someone else there we might feel more self-conscious, more vulnerable, and it can create a stronger sense of performance anxiety.”
This is something Rebecca experienced both in her own sex life and with the same sexual partner who choked her without her consent. She explains: “I could tell straight away by the way he was talking dirty and the things he was doing — it was like we were in a porno. At one point, he was like ‘I’m just imagining you in a threesome with two guys and they’re abusing your body’. The reason that I knew and I spotted it straight away was because I was with my ex boyfriend for a long time and there was a point in the relationship where it dried up and I was watching porn and watching quite a lot of it.”
“I thought ‘oh it’s fine, you know, it’s healthy.’ And then when we would have sex, I realised I was finding it harder and harder to be in the moment and come. I was thinking about the porn rather than being in the moment. I can understand how it gets into your brain and how sometimes people feel like they get more pleasure from porn than actual real life sex.”
Unfortunately misconceptions about who enjoys porn shape ideas about who can be affected by watching too much of it. The Internet Matters We Need To Talk About Pornography report shows parents are still more concerned about their sons becoming addicted to porn than their daughters. It’s also easy to see how stigma around women’s use and enjoyment of porn might stop them seeking help for any issues that arise around them watching it.
Accessibility to porn is only increasing. Even as a so-called digital native, Broadband was a new invention in my childhood, but today’s teens will likely never know anything other than WiFi. But sex education is slowly catching up. A new sex and relationships curriculum will be taught in schools in 2020, covering consent, contraception, the Internet, and LGBTQ sex and relationships.
Porn itself is also improving, as Moyle tells me: “I think we are beginning to move out of [male gaze porn]. People like Erica Lust, these more ethical or feminist porn producers are really changing things. I think it’s dramatically different.”
Meanwhile forms of porn are changing. Apps like female-founded Dipsea are reinventing erotica for the digital age with what they call “short and sexy audio stories” intended, per their website, to be feminist, relatable, and full of “enthusiastic consent”. They’re also fairly inclusive, with categories for queer and group sex situations.
But, as Hannah puts it, if general attitudes don’t change, the impact of these well-meaning new inventions will always be limited. “My whole experience with porn has been about shame and hiding it. An app might not work because I wouldn’t want people seeing it on my phone and that’s a problem in itself.”
*Some names have been changed.
