the case against porn, by el gato malo

Porn can ruin love and real sex. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:

why being pro sex means being anti-pornography

in this age of infinite instant on internet pornography a number of questions have been raised about the health of such a thing and the risks, obsessions, and pathologies that it encourages and instills in its devotees. porn addiction has become a thing and so too perhaps has a basic desensitization and loss of contact with just what sex is and i fear the consequences of this may be greater than many, especially rising generations, realize. from my prior position of “well, it’s porn, who cares?” this has led me to the idea that porn is really not something one wants in their diet.

to be clear, i do not advocate banning pornography, itself a notoriously difficult and imprecise “well i know it when i see it” sort of thing to pin down definitionally but rather abstaining from and eschewing it in the same manner that one should avoid red dye laden processed sugars and for many of the same reasons.

i am far from a prudish or sheltered sort of cat. i’ve seen porn (though found it mostly dull), been to strip clubs in vegas, sex shows in amsterdam, and led the libertine life of the san francisco raver and the black rock city burner. i am far from chaste or reserved and certainly not proscribed or frightened. to use a terribly overused phrase, i’m actually very “sex positive.” this is, in fact, why the more i consider it the more i become so “porn negative” because porn is not sex – in many, perhaps most ways it constitutes its antithesis and abnegation but not, to my mind, in the manner in which many of the “get the vapors every time this topic is raised” class presume.

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