I listen to Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” podcast, and in episode 228 he takes a call from a guy who’s girlfriend has a massive problem with the fact he watches porn.  The guy isn’t into any freaky shit, he just likes porn!  He doesn’t want to watch it WITH his lady, per se; his question is whether he should 1. honestly stop watching porn, which he feels would be almost impossible  or 2. keep watching porn and lie about it.

Dan’s answer was amazing and hit the nail right on the head for me. He said the caller failed to mention another, far better option: BREAK UP WITH THAT CONTROLLING, INSECURE MUTANT.

This caused me to think back to a couple of different instances.  First being: MYSELF.

I had an almost 4 year relationship from the time I was 18 to about 22. I didn’t lose my virginity to this guy, but he was definitely my first “adult” relationship.  My viewpoints on things like female sexuality, porn, etc. were extremely skewed because of my lack of experience; the bullshit that would come out of my mouth is almost incomprehensible to me now.  I believed any woman who had over 5 sexual partners was a “whore”, I thought porn was disgusting and degrading, I thought women were actually incapable of enjoying sex outside of a committed loving relationship (and anyone who said they did was just lying in order to be appealing to men), and so on and so on.  Mind you, many of my beliefs were tied up in an almost painful, radical form of unhealthy feminism; but that doesn’t make it any better.  I didn’t have any judgment on gays, but MY GOD did I judge straight people, especially women.

It didn’t take me long at all after that relationship ended to see how far I had my head stuck up my own ass. 

Looking back, I wish I could apologize to that old boyfriend of mine, because I really did make his life miserable.  He must have enjoyed it…but still.  I remember finding porn in his place once and FLIPPING THE FUCK OUT! My God, fireworks went off that day.  I told him he was disgusting, deviant, pathetic; inwardly I was repulsed and yet confused at how he could need anything other than my own nubile, voluptuous, young body. 

And that’s really what it comes down to: insecurity and confusion.

My other memory tied to this topic was when myself, Stefan, and Ingrid were helping someone I used to know move (and without thanks, too, it was AWESOME). She was talking about her roommate, who had just broken up with her boyfriend for the zillionth time because she found out he was watching porn and she had asked him not to a ton of times.

This instantly reminded me of myself in the past.  I came to the guy’s defense…honestly, ladies: you cannot stop men from watching porn if they want to. Kind of the way you can’t stop ANYONE from doing ANYTHING they want to do.  Anyway, you get what I’m saying.  I tried to explain the porn had NOTHING to do with his relationship with his girlfriend and that if she thought she’d be able to find a guy who literally NEVER looked at porn, she was going to have a hard life.

OOOOooooOOOOOwee was that a cause for this broad to bust out the bitch! “Yeah, you might be okay with that in YOUR relationship (my God I’ve never felt attacked in such a passive aggressive way and it was, ironically, at this moment I realized I REALLY didn’t want to be friends with this person anymore), but not everyone IS. She ASKED him not to do something, and he did it anyway.  It’s disgusting. I support her views on the matter.” She then went on to talk about how her current boyfriend (who wasn’t there to help her move…ironic) had a swimsuit model as his computer background and she was, again, disgusted at this fact.  Um hellllo! She is like so hot! Why wouldn’t he put HER as the background! Stupid! He should want to look at her face 24/7!

Yeesh.

Dan’s answer to the caller summed up exactly how I feel about people who have issues with porn: get the fuck over it.  Yes, I think a lot of porn is gross, but I don’t think it’s DEGRADING.  We live in a country which allows us to be free in many ways, and porn is one of them! Why don’t you admit the truth of the matter: the idea of your lover getting off to ‘someone else’ is too much for you to handle.  You’re too insecure to understand that even the most primitive of animals have compartmentalized sexualities which means JACKING OFF TO SOMEONE ELSE is not only perfectly normal but healthy and you’re just an idiotic child who needs to experience more shit in this world before you go off and judge other people for their proclivities.

You don’t have to watch porn or like it or fight for it, but for you to treat it like it’s Hitler…get a life.

I’ll catch you on YouPorn when you grow up.