One of my favourite Ted Talks ever is Let’s Talk Porn which was given by a feminist called Maria Ahlin. In it, she spoke on how contrary to popular opinion, the production of porn and the greater sex industry has very anti feminist characteristics.
It is a speech I think about each time I see people struggling with pornography addictions or normalising the effects of porn in how women are viewed or treated.
I was reminded of Ms. Ahlin’s Ted Talk when I saw on Twitter, the story of a woman who was confused because a seemingly kind and sweet man had slapped her mid sex.
The conversations that revelation brought up kept going back to the issue of how women’s violence and objectification is so normalised in porn and can easily filter into the actions and sex lives of men who seem good but in actual fact watch porn.
Pornography and the conversations around it continue to be heated because criticising pornography may seem like criticising and shaming people’s love and sex lives.
However, we must remember that in the grand scheme of porn production, the actors are often into the sex industry courtesy of trauma/sex trafficking and the sex scenes are often made regardless of if the porn performers want to because afterall, the agencies are the ones paying them.
Leave the production of even so called “ethical” porn aside. We need to ask ourselves what it means if our partners actively watch porn and how it can reflect in the way they treat women generally.
If a man continually watches videos where women experience slapping, fisting and other forms of violence that are sanitised under the banner of “rough sex”, then we must ask ourselves if our partners may not one day slap us or even see us as objects with no ability to experience true desire during sex.
Pornographic consumption not only affects people who are actively in relationships. The active consumption of porn by both teenage boys and girls can lead to unrealistic perceptions of sex and the female body. It is interesting that in porn, there tends to be only one archetype of the female body while male bodies take on a range.
The women are always with perky breasts, shaved vaginas and cosmetically enhanced hips but older men with relatively bigger bellies can be displayed sleeping with teenage looking girls.
What then does this do to how boys and girls envision sex and the way women’s bodies change during pregnancy especially?
These boys will grow up to be men who do not understand or actively fail to see that their wives’ bodies can and will change during pregnancy. They will fail to understand that their wives do not deserve shame for experiencing a change brought about due to bringing life.
Speaking with Pearl*, she says that having a porn addicted partner affected her sex life.
In her words: “I can remember he wanted me to copy what he used to watch. He’d even say he’s not satisfied and I should watch it with him to see how it’s done.
Which style did I not give him? His sex drive began to get so intense that all he thought of doing when he was with me was to have sex.
I was thinking I was the weird one. How aren’t you satisfied after 5 rounds?😂 Sex with him was hell and painful.
Thank goodness he’s out of my life.”
For Onyekachukwu*, she says that being with a porn addicted partner almost made her lose confidence in herself.
To quote her: “This guy was so addicted to porn that he would have to watch his favourite porn films before we had sex so he could get hard and it would continue playing in the background till we were done.
The first time it happened, he brought it up casually, asking if I watched porn and what I liked.
Then we started making out and we had sex. So it didn’t really register until the third time.
After that, I stopped seeing him because I just couldn’t continue to be with someone who wasn’t turned on by just me. It made me feel less of a woman at the time and it took a while for me to get my confidence back.”
She went on to say: “The second one was way older than me and I guess I was still naive sha. He made me watch his favourite porn films so I could learn what he liked. When I didn’t get it, he would complain. I didn’t realise how it affected my sexual confidence until much later when the next guy brought it up. Men who are addicted to porn don’t view women as sexual partners. They see them as tools for self pleasure and it taints the whole experience for me.”
The truth is that anything that shows women as objects for men’s sexual pleasure must be scrutinised.
It must never be acceptable to normalise the viewing, recording and sharing of violent acts directed towards women.
We must instead reject the sanitisation of violence and engage proper sex education so that we don’t have a generation of men who do not understand how a woman’s body truly works.
*Name changed to protect identity
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.
